A few months ago, Vivica (drag name) called me and, with purses falling out of her mouth, she squealed, "I had sex with a straight guy!"

"Yea? When? Where is he?" I responded.

"Right here, playing Halo!"

Uh-huh.

Just this past weekend, darling Katy of Kate's Random's Musings was driving me home from our meet-up when she turned to me and asked: What percentage of straight men have sex with other men?

Do you want the official stats or personal experiences?

I'm here to tell you, ladies, it's a lot of them. And in this, your best gay girlfriend is not going to be your best friend.

A few years ago, the popular media became obsessed with the racist and homophobic concept of "the down low," thanks to people like Keith Boykin and, ha, Oprah. It's racist because it targets men of color as sexual predators, and it's homophobic because it is another part of the cultural rhetoric that says gay sex is bad and will kill you. The down-low is rarely framed as much more than an AIDS thing.

The white straight girls out there usually giggle when we talk about the "straight" boys we hook up with. First, they think it's funny because they equate it with the down low. Second, if they don't, they think that they, too, could pick up these guys out of a crowd just because they have a few gay friends and, thus, a touch of the gaydar.

Sorry, ladies, my mother can pick up on the closeted theatre kid pretty quick these days, too.

And we're not necessarily talking about the stereotypical white version of the down low -- the "three beer queer" -- oh, no, I have slept with and talked about sleeping with a large handful of perfectly sober "straight" men.

The original version of this column started off talking about a particular straight man that wants to have sex with me. "I just want to see what it's like, getting head from a guy," he tells me every time he sees me. But, over the past week, I had to add three more notches in my bed post from otherwise straight men.

The reason the column changed was a specific experience with this one young UC boy who, just five hours before he showed up at my front door, had had sex with his girlfriend and now was asking to be on his knees for me.

I called him out: No man who sucks cock can truly call himself straight.

He left a little while later, hustling out the front door to walk the mile plus back home at 4:30am, sobbing. He was an idiot, and I don't have time for apathetic self-delusion.

It's funny that, while we -- your best gay girlfriend -- joke regularly about how hot your boyfriend is, your dating pool represents a large and growing field known as my "potential fuck pool." The chat rooms are littered with married and straight men who know perfectly well the fetish they are playing into. They understand the sexual power their so-called sexuality has over gay men.

You could make an argument that it's unfair to talk like this, as queer theory talks about the difference between identity (straight vs. gay) and behavior (homosexual vs. heterosexual), but no queen calling me at 3am saying "I just had sex with a straight guy!" is thinking about Michel Foucault, let alone the inner workings of gender and sexuality identity politics.

What I should be talking about here is the fetishization of 'straight' men in the lives of gay men. I should discuss how disgusting it is that we have completely given up on our identities as gay men to pursue some idealized version of masculinity and how we should embrace the gender spectrum our community purports to represent. I should be talking about how disgusting the ideal is and how bisexual men, and "masculine" gay men use the fetish of the straight fuck bud as a way of getting laid more easily. I need to talk about how beautiful and wonderful and strong all those people out there are who are not afraid of being themselves and expressing themselves outside of the expected gender norms of male vs. female.

But I'm not.

I just wanted to brag. Ladies, I'm having sex with your boyfriend, and I'm not sorry about it. I buy into the fetish, too; I like a little roleplay in my life. And if he thinks he's fooling me into believing that this is his first time with a dude... well, if that gets you off, bud.

Because I know better. You're a man whore, plain and simple, and you're insulting gay men, you're insulting your girlfriend, you're making straight men look like shit, and you're nothing but a jackass.

But, sometimes, I just need to get off, too. . . and sometimes, when you don't leave crying, the apathetic self-delusion is kinda hot.

PS --> I wanted to add this in real quick. There is a valid point to guys wanting to "experiment." Fine. But your command of the subleties of gay sex and communication on sites like Craigslist tells me that you've done a little more than experiment. Please, explore, have fun, just don't have the stupidity to think this queer is going to buy into your heterosexuality.

Barry blogs regularly at QueerCincinnati.com and Twitters even more regularly.