Homo-sploitation? Homo-fraternization?

When dealing with a certain sector of the hetero male population, the line gets too hazy to distinguish. The Crypto-Queer — like the cryptozoological missing links of an Edgar Rice Burroughs adventure paperback or Peter Pan’s faction of Lost Boys — is reliant on a dominant male hierarchy and a pack mentality social system. Whether it’s the thrill of pushing a self-imposed boundary or the effects of too much sexual frustration, men (or more technically, man-children) who are the most rigidly heterosexual will flirt with bemusing nasty-boy behavior gays themselves wouldn’t be caught dead acting out.

Sure, it’s a good thing to be in touch with your animal nature. It’s just that some guys maybe need to consider hormone suppressants.

Crypto-Queers have their own highly-specified customs that constantly verge on the brink of all-out gayness but never actually dare to take the plunge. Common markers include: living in close quarters with other members of the herd in the form or brotherhoods and fraternities, spontaneous bouts of public nudity, skinny dipping, circle jerking, pantsing, taking forever to get dressed in locker rooms, rough-housing standing in for actual sexual interplay, spraying one another with beer and putting maximum effort into contorting the body in order to suck their own dicks.

And now a detailed tour through the Unnatural Museum of Crypto-Queerology.

Exhibit A: The Fakey High-Profile Kiss

This is definitely one of the handbook antics of the Crypto-Queer, something we’ve all seen them do at some point in our lives. Two men going for shock value, or sight-gaggery, or a cheap laugh… or something… engage in some wildly parodic big screen-inspired kiss that involves swooning and usually dipping.

It’s all very Dude, Where’s My Car? by way of Quest For Fire.

This year’s Oscars ceremony had two disparate examples. Director Julian Schnabel and Cro-Magnon Javier Bardem took the more standard route (top left) with a goofy, platonic transparency to it; you knew these were two good friends just playing around.

The chaste-but-genuine cheeker between Daniel Day-Lewis and George Clooney was ultimately the more nervy of the two (middle left). Lewis has taken risks with gay roles and his pecs looked so fine in The Last of The Mohicans, so we’re willing to give him a bit more berth than your average marquee blockhead. Clooney’s so smart, classy and hated by Bill O’Reilly that we trust his judgment too.

Europeans are much closer to the gay sensibility when it comes to flouting lame sexual conventions than your standard-issue American male, less uptight about male Stoicism and all that line anyway. These two get an honorable mention.

Now for the bad. Brit actor James Corden latching onto an unsuspecting Daniel Radcliffe like an Alien face-hugger at London’s What’s On Stage Awards (right) was a little too To Catch A Predator to work. Then there’s the who-the-hell-asked-for-it? pairing of Ben Affleck (um, pass) and Jimmy Kimmel (check please!). Ben at the very least committed and the scene (left bottom pic) was marginally more bearable than one of his movies. As for Kimmel, he looked like he’d never actually kissed anyone before.

Finally, there’s country singer Trace Adkins (yes, it sounds like Clutch Cargo’s brother or Jonny Quest’s dad) getting an innocent peck on the cheek from Piers Morgan on Celebrity Apprentice and reacting as if he’d just been bitten by an acid-mandibled tarantula. Watch as he unguardedly goes pallid and slack-jawed, then proceeds to rub his face– Unclean! – and hold his head dejectedly in his hands. A “real” moment in Reality Television? I never! This could just as easily be a clip from Animal Planet wherein a lion pride’s alpha male lurches off in a hissy fit after another upstart gives him a playful love bite in front of all the lionesses.

In Crypto-Queer patois, that’s called being a pussy.

Exhibit B: The Rutting of The Bulls

This is the most alarming and disruptive of the Crypto-Queer’s fraternal rituals. Public drunkenness, streaking and tongue-wagging loutishness ensue when testosterone-fueled straight men are cut-off from female contact and ensconced in an all-male or nearly all-male setting.

Take straight gang bang porn movies where the male performers’ high-fiving bravado will seem to die down awkwardly if their dicks or hands happen to accidentally touch as they DP the same woman. Or have a look at the military. A recent PR debacle in Norway involving a cadre of British soldiers and a game called “Naked Bar” (clever) is the non-civilian epitome. What started out with too much booze then escalated to clothes flying every which way, wanton self-fondling and urine being splashed in every direction.

Sexy.

Military life has historically frowned upon this behavior publicly while being unable or unwilling to discourage it privately. What in-the-know Thumper referred to in Bambi as being “Twitterpated” has now come to be defined as confusion resulting from affection or infatuation.

Essentially, close-knit male settings are innately fraught with unspoken sexual tension and imminent erotic hostility. Whereas bulls in captivity have no qualms about turning to same-sex companionship rather than goring one another when the female kind is unavailable, army men have to play at a futile ersatz game of mate proxy; often an army buddy will sexlessly stand-in for a wife or girlfriend. The loving sobriquet “asshole buddy” is the common term used to describe him and tiffs between the pair are classified as “tangling assholes”.

When these men can’t (or won’t) turn to a sexual outlet, those impulses will be channeled through roistering and/or even violent acts in a group setting like so many warlike chimps territorially hurling their body fluids and rabidly tearing into one another. The kindly and progressive Bonobo deviate from this devolution because they freely mate with either sex and will actually use non-procreative intercourse to defuse volatile situations and to simply relate to one another.

Exhibit C: A Game of Gay Chicken

Innocuous enough, but still stupid. Take two guys in backward baseball caps, puka shell necklaces and T-shirts worn over long sleeves and have them flinchingly kiss until one cringes away in revulsion and washes down his shame with a chug of beer. Commence cries of “Gross! Poll smoker!” and “Ewww!, what an ass bandit!” from surrounding onlookers. Upload it to YouTube and experience the hilarity! It presumably comes courtesy of the same luminaries who brought us such childhood favorites as Cootie Patrol and Smear the Queer.

It may sound cliché, but there are certain markers that will distinguish a gay man from a straight one.

No, we will not eat food that’s fallen on the floor because we have no inherent belief in the ten second rule. While we may shoot videos of ourselves flexing proudly and post them on the web, we will absolutely A) not be wearing visors, B) not have our Incredible Hulk or Terminator posters framed in the background and C) not use generic rap as our musical backdrop.

We don’t organize fraternities for the sole purpose of paddling naive froshes in our basement sex dungeons or to photograph our ruffied brothers with our dicks on their faces. Finally, we don’t find the idea of kissing girls so terrifying that we feel compelled to film it Jackass-style as if we were making out with a python.

We just don’t need all that constant validation.

In the end, gays simply take a cue from the highly-evolved Bonobo and dispense with all the double-talk, preening, and teasing, taking all these “Will somebody Fuck me already?!” Rites of Spring theatrics to their most economical and logical conclusion.

Hot, ass-pulverizing sex.