The “I’m Not Gay” School

The “I’m Not Gay” School of poetry is a small but outspoken subset of the Explanatory School. These poets (usually male) home in on very specific subject matter, viz., the state of not being a homosexual.

Typical hallmarks of poems in this school are repetition of a phrase (most often, the simple “I’m not gay”), explanatory exposition, and a confiding, almost intimate, tone, as if the poet is looking into the reader’s eyes and speaking directly to him, iterating and reiterating that very important point: I’m not gay. Really.

Simon van Kempen

b. 1964

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In his “Simon Says,” reality-TV-husband/poet Simon van Kempen combines a confrontational style with sly intellectual humor. Note his clever paraphrasing of philosopher Rene Descartes’s “cogito, ergo sum” followed by a tip of the hat to writer Jorge Luis Borges (“I am Simon” will remind the astute reader of Borges’s “I am the river. . . . I unfortunately am Borges.”).

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Simon Says “I’m Not Gay”

If I was gay, I would be gay,

but I’m not!

I don’t want to have sex with men!

If other manifestations of gay means

that I like to wear nice clothes and go shopping,

then I guess that’s fine!

I love fashion, but I love my beautiful wife.

That makes me gay?

I mean, I’ve worn Speedos—therefore, I must be gay!

. . . I am Simon,

I am

not

anything

more

than

that.

J.C. Chasez

b. 1976

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Singer J.C. Chasez takes a traditionalist approach, focusing not on the broader Aristotelian relational attributes of what constitutes gayness but on the personal “we’re just good friends” trope.

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This Guy Who Is My Friend But . . .

Let’s clear that up real quickly

And the thing is,

We don’t even get to hang out that much.

We are friends,

absolutely,

The guy is a super nice guy and he’s a friend of mine

but

You know the only time people would usually see us together is in some type of photograph

so

They just assume that it’s like that.

You know people hang out with their best friends every day . . .

and I don’t even see this guy every day.

Shemar Moore

b. 1970

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Poet/actor Shemar Moore breaks a bit with the norm by using one specific incident—a photograph of him on a nude beach—as the focal point for his starkly simple and ultimately very convincing “I’m Not Gay” poem.

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On Frolicking in the Nude on a Gay Beach

People find it interesting to try to make me gay;

I’m not gay.

I went on vacation with two girlfriends of mine

who, interestingly enough, got cut out of the pictures.

We found a nude beach, as far as I know,

was a unisex beach.