robot_parade

Hey,

So, first, I'm a straight, married guy.

There's a guy I who works at my company. I've noticed him peripherally here or there for awhile, but never knew who he was, etc. Last month, when preparing for a business trip, I ended up spending a little bit of time talking to him, etc - in the context of a group of other people who were going on the same business trip. He seemed friendly enough, but nothing struck me as...odd...at the time.

So today, I passed him in the break room, and he said "Hi, how's it going?", or something similar, and I responded with something like "Fine.". Then he said "See you later!"...smiled...and winked at me. Now at this point my "I'm being hit on by a dude!" alarm went off (which I didn't really know I had until this moment.) So...

Have I just been hit on by a gay guy?

And...

Do I care?

To the first...yeah, I think maybe so. But maybe not.

To the second...not really...but....ew.

I don't want to be rude or hateful to this guy...but I *certainly* don't want to encourage him. I don't think it's really likely to be an issue, since our work doesn't really mean that we interact much at all. I guess I wanted to throw this out there and see what you guys think. I suspect I'm overreacting about it a bit, but it just weirded me out.

I guess the larger issue is trying to figure out my own attitudes toward gays - I'm fairly liberal, and don't really have a problem with gay people, gay marriage, equal rights for gay couples, etc. But that's kind of in a 'theoretical' sense. When it gets personal like this, though...ew.

I've had (openly) gay friends before, and it never really bothered me...but then again, they never winked at me like that, either. :-)

I also understand that, just as (I hope) a girl might find me attractive, a gay guy might also...that doesn't bother me in the abstract, but this kind of did. Maybe it's similar to what a girl might feel if a guy they didn't find attractive winked at them. I dunno.