Performativity the Intersections Between Gender, Sexuality, Identity,

Performativity The intersections between gender, sexuality, identity, and lifestyle converged at an expected moment. I was as prepared as anyone else. Andrew is my brother, and I know him well. It was his friend Darren's 21st birthday. Darren is adorable: he's six feet tall, with plump lips naturally blushed the color of Fuji apples. His skin is milky white, and his eyes are shimmering sateen blue. I haven't got a crush on Darren; I would, but Darren is gay.

He's been out of the closet since he was fifteen years old. My brother has known Darren since the two played together in our little apartment complex playground. Almost two decades later, the two friends are doing shots together in a gay nightclub. My brother is straight. Really, he is. But on Darren's birthday, something happened to place my brother Andrew temporarily in an interstitial realm. My brother, not being the analytical type, did not think too deeply on it but I did. And so, too, did Darren.

My brother kissed Darren on the lips. He was drunk enough to do it, but I still question why. This paper is an analysis of this incidence, which had a huge impact on my psyche because it made me think deeper about human sexuality. My brother and I grew up in a liberal household, and one that cultivated open-mindedness and tolerance for diversity. There was nothing even remotely problematic about my straight brother having a gay friend. I knew other boys at school teased them both.

One of the reasons why Andrew and Darren drifted apart during high school was that my brother was trying hard to establish his identity. His interests (sports, physiology) were not consistent with Darren's (design). So, regardless of their respective sexual orientations, the two friends started seeing other people, so to speak. Darren had his design crowd clique, and my brother had his set of guy's guys. They remained close friends on an emotional level, though. Darren's birthday party raises several issues about the performativity of male sexuality.

I think what happened was that my brother was testing not himself, but every norm that guided his identity formation for the past several years. There were conflicts brewing in Andrew's brain; I knew it. My parents and their left-wing mentality held sway over his heart, but Andrew is not above pandering to the crowd. I'm sure on more than one occasion he kept his mouth shut when the guys in the locker room made homophobic remarks.

And I also know that the only reason my brother escaped the scourge of bullying was that (a) he was strong and looked it; and (b) he was a nice guy and people tended to like him. Darren did get beat up. A lot, come to think of it. My brother stood up for him once, when he was ten. He got a black eye for it, and I think it made him proud. The birthday smooch took him back to that moment.

It made him proud to kiss his friend, in what must have felt like a platonic gesture to them both. My brother was at that moment overcome years of indoctrination into a social code that was at once very much his own (for, after all, he fit in very well with the jocks); and at the same time, very much a source of shame for him. My brother doesn't think too hard about these things, which is good. He doesn't use words like "interstitial" or "performativity." Andrew is just Andrew.

He's lucky that way, because he does not.