Dear Bachi,

I am 27 years old and gay. My family might accept me but mysociety is not that practical. Some of them know about me and make fun of it. I really have a strong desire to have my own child. Whenever I am with my straight friends, somewhere I feel ashamed of myself that unlike them, I am unable to satisfy a woman.
 
It’s not that I am unhappy, but this is something I did not want. I am worried about how I will survive after my parents. I am easily attracted to masculine bisexual men. They respond to a limit, but after that, all I really get is ignorance, which is painful. I know they are not made for me, but like every girl I need a man. In the first paragraph, I have shown my desires to have a man’s life and in the second, a woman’s. Don’t find me diplomatic, this is what I am. Hope you will understand.

-  Tied-up-in-knots 

Dear Tied-up-in-knots,

I am often accused of being very harsh with heterosexual love angst, but going pathetically soft on gay queries. Look, I know you guys have a really tough time, first, coming to terms with your homosexuality, and then handling the jibes, harassment and heartbreak. But sometimes, I really lose my patience with the usual nobody-understands-us whingeing. Like now.

The good news is that you have overcome the first step. You have come out of the closet. I can’t figure out whether your family has accepted your sexual orientation, or whether it’s just your desire/hope masquerading as fact. Regardless of the answer to that, you have to sort yourself out vis-à-vis the rest of the world. What’s all this nonsense, about feeling ashamed that you cannot “satisfy a woman”. That problem is not on the agenda, I would imagine. I’d be worried if you could not satisfy a man either. So just get your priorities straight, pun unintended.

Then there’s this gripe about your impotent ‘desire to have my own child’. Well, surrogate mothers are  a reality, as we read in the case of the Israeli (I think) gay couple who came to India,  found a woman willing to get artificially inseminated for a price, and went home happily ever after with their bouncing baby. It may not be that easy, but I suggest you keep that worry on hold, and sort out the more pressing issues about your attitude to your own homosexuality.

If the bisexual men play hot and cold — which they too can’t help — forget about them, and seek out those more fully your kind. But first clear the confusion in your own head. I can’t climb inside it to do it for you. All I can do to help is to say that it’s okay to be gay.