So Just What Is A Bear?

 

Now that is a big question—no pun intended. I bet if you were to ask ten different bears that question, you would get ten different answers. In fact, when I started asking around, I found out that’s true. “Bear” can take on a hell of a lot of definitions, depending on who you ask. And the bear community is a rich and varied culture that continues to grow and change.

I will say this though, as I talked with these men—either in person or through emails and ads and Facebook—I found that I began to hear a common theme. There was a theme going on, baby.

However, all those different men? Those bears? They’re not the ones writing this introduction. I am. And instead of trying to answer the above question with those many-splendored explanations, I’m going to tell you what being a bear means to me.

But first—first I want to step back a few decades and share something very personal about myself.

So there I was, in my early twenties, living with a (wonderful) woman and trying not to be gay—pretending I was straight.

I wasn’t fooling anyone. Not me (not really). Not the mother of my daughter (we met while cruising the same man). Not friends. Everyone knew I was gay. People passing me on the street knew I was gay. To paraphrase Will Truman from Will & Grace, blind and deaf people knew I was gay.

Except all those people, including myself, were wrong.

I wasn’t gay. I was homosexual.

What? What was that you asked? What’s the difference?

Okay. I’ll tell you. It was something I had to learn myself.

No one is born gay.

What they are is born homosexual.

They are born with the genetically unavoidable predisposition to be sexually attracted to members of their own sex. They can deny it all they want. Fight it like crazy. Fool themselves. But they can’t change it any more than they can the color of their eyes or the color of their hair. Sure, they can wear colored contacts or bleach or dye their hair, but they’re only covering up. Wearing a disguise. They can even avoid sexual contact with a member of their own sex—but they are still homosexual.

Being gay is something else completely.

Being gay was that day when I finally realized I didn’t want to be anything else.

Invariably, many gay men will get asked a certain question: “But would you be straight if you could be? If you could take a pill and wake up heterosexual, would you?”

At first my answer was “Hell yes!” I used to cry myself to sleep many a night begging God to make me straight.

With time the answer, thankfully, evolved into, “Well, life would be easier if I were heterosexual, but I’ve made peace with what I am.”

A step up—but I wasn’t gay yet. I was still homosexual. I was still “making peace” with what I was. Like I had diabetes or something. Like it was something I had to learn to live with.

But then finally I got to the point in my life where I knew I would never consider taking that pill. I’d die first. That being homosexual was intrinsic to who I was. It wasn’t even the hair and eye-color thing. Because my hair and eye color did nothing to shape me into the man I am today. Everything that has been a part of my existence—the “good” and the “bad,” the opportunities provided or denied, the aspects of human behavior experienced or witnessed—are things that happened to me because I am “not straight,” things that would not have happened to me had I been “straight.”

I came to feel as if I had been chosen!

Guess what?

I was now gay.

When called to the colors, I’d gladly wave the rainbow flag. Had I never gotten to that point, I would never have been able to know myself.

Now what does this have to do with the question about bears?

Well, I’ll tell you, but first there’s going to be one more tangent.

For some reason I have worked almost exclusively with women all my life. I was either the only man on the job or one of the only men. And for some reason, since I’m a gay man, the women would soon seem to forget I was a man at all and talk about things I’m betting most men don’t hear. Some of these subjects I am not mentioning. What I will say is I have heard the complaint about how unfair it is to be a woman in our culture. That a man can show up in jeans, a shirt, and bedraggled tennis shoes and forget to shave, and all it does is make him look manly. But a woman has to wear makeup and spend a lot of money on her hair, and they have to shave their legs and pits and wear uncomfortable shoes and hose and…

…if they don’t, forget advancing in the workplace and forget attracting a good man. Women who don’t do all these things are virtually invisible to men.

Well, let me tell you what happened to me when I finally came out and hit the bars. The men ignored me! I would ask a guy to dance and he would look right through me! He wouldn’t even say, “Not now, I’m resting”; he would flat out ignore me. I found out I didn’t wear the right clothes or have the right hair, that I was too heavy or that I should “manscape” or shave my chest altogether. At that time, even the five o’clock shadow thing was frowned upon, let alone beards or facial hair. I couldn’t believe the money gay men spent on a haircut!

I went through years of wearing clothes I didn’t like (but pretended to) and putting up with hairstyles I couldn’t stand, shaving my face (and I look like shit without facial hair!), and dieting yo-yo style—starving myself to be good enough to get a man, only to gain it all back when I couldn’t find or keep one.

Then in 1997, I went to my first bear event.

OMG!

I was a hit! The men positively pawed me—pun intended. I could have had sex every hour on the hour if I’d wanted. And I was no boy either. I was a good fifty pounds “overweight,” had facial hair, and was wearing shorts and T-shirts. I was popular!

It was the most liberating experience of my sexual life. Men who liked me! They “really, really liked me!” Because you know why? Some men like big butts. It’s a song even and I tell no lie! Suddenly, if I was losing weight, it was because the doctor told me my knee replacements would last years longer if I took some weight off of them. If I lost weight it was because I wanted to. These men loved each other despite the “flaws” they supposedly had. Men who judged each other for what was in their hearts, and not their guts. Lovely men. Amazing men. Beautiful men!

And that is in many ways the “theme” I heard going on from so many of the bears I spoke with. Nonjudgment. Community. Masculinity. Acceptance.

Bears. We come in all shapes and varieties. Besides your “typical” bear (a hairy, stocky to heavyset man), there are chubs (a heavyset man who isn’t necessarily hairy), cubs (young bears or bears who are very young at heart), daddy bears (an older guy, sometimes looking for a “daddy/son” relationship with a younger guy or cub, definitely not talking pederasty here), leather bears (bear who likes to wear leather), muscle bears (can be very muscular, but they tend not to worry about abs in favor of some nice padding), polar bears (bears who’s hair has gone gray/white), panda bears (bears of Asian descent), black bears (bears of African descent), pocket bears (short bears), Ewoks (very short bears), ginger bears (red-headed bears), and grizzly bears (usually much shaggier and taller and sometimes dominant). And then there are otters (hairy guys who are slim)!

But the one thing we have in common is we aren’t hung up on what most of gay culture, or the world for that matter, qualifies and quantifies as hot or sexy. We are beautiful and sexy in our own way. And we accept each other far more than the average community.

Because that’s what being a bear is all about. It’s more than size. It is accepting ourselves and each other for who and what we are. And refusing to define beauty by what GQ Magazine, or Gold’s Gym, or MTV, or shows like True Blood, Hawaii Five-0 and Grey’s Anatomy say we should be.

This year I was fortunate enough to do something I’ve wanted to do since the fourth grade. I got to edit an anthology! It was a dream come true. And guess what? It’s all about bears! And it’s doing well. I can’t believe how well.

Rewarding considering all the work that went into it. Who knew?

But I loved every minute of it.

I hope you will give it a chance, even if antolgies aren’t you’re usual thing. Because it’s all about what you’ve read above. Being different, learning to accept it, and finding love. So if you’ve read a billion books about beautiful young men with ripped abs and perfect jobs, check out a dose of reality in “A Taste of Honey.”

You won’t regret it!

BG Thomas