UW Spectator

Saskatchewan Plates by Sean Lynch

Mr. Sean Lynch is a UW Computer Science Digital Hardware Option student who is currently working as a summer intern at Google, Inc.’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. For those of you who don’t know, Digital Hardware Option is a program that allows exceptional Computer Science students to take Electrical Engineering courses as electives. In other words, Mr. Lynch belongs to the “overachieving-est” of the overachievers.

And, Mr. Lynch has a terrible, terrible secret, a secret he can’t tell a soul about. Exactly what that secret is, I will discuss later in the entry.

Unlike most overachievers (especially the Math and Engineering kinds), Mr. Lynch is also a voracious socializer. His blog entries actually have comments (and not just on the flamebait entries).

Judging by the photos on his Flickr account, Mr. Lynch dresses himself quite well (a little bit too Urban Outfitters, but whatever). He is also a lover of indie music and a regular reader of Pitchfork.

On top of all this, Mr. Lynch is rich. He lives in a nice apartment in San Francisco, possibly the most expensive place to live on the American continent, and he used to live in a nice apartment in Vancouver, definitely the most expensive place to live in Canada. He also frequently takes transcontinental flights to just see friends, a privilege that very few university students enjoy.

Naturally, Mr. Lynch is quite popular with the ladies. Dozens of photos on Flickr and Facebook attest to this.

Yet, he has no girlfriend and can’t even get laid! And, herein lies Mr. Lynch’s terrible secret.

Before I divulge his secret, let’s recap:

• Mr. Lynch is smart.
• He makes friends easily.
• He dresses well.
• He has a refined taste.
• He is rich.
• He doesn’t have a girlfriend nor does he ever get laid.

It should be obvious, but I will say it anyways. Mr. Lynch is gay, and it’s killing him inside.

I imagine many of my readers will object, pointing out that Mr. Lynch does not look or act gay. To this, I say this is exactly Mr. Lynch’s problem - his self-image is completely incompatible with the gay stereotype that pervades our culture. He only finds himself attracted regular guys like him (e.g. Seth Rogen - calling it a “man crush” is not fooling anyone, Mr. Lynch), not hairless guys dancing to Scissor Sisters on a Gay pride float. Mr. Lynch fears that he will be rejected by both the heterosexual and homosexual mainstream were he to come out.

I suggest Mr. Lynch take advantage of his current location (San Francisco wasn’t the west coast epicenter of AIDS crisis for nothing) and set aside a day to go people watching in The Castro (just go the Starbucks there and have a cup of coffee or something). I am sure Mr. Lynch will come to realize there are gay men who are just like him, and he is not alone in agony of sexual orientation/self-image incongruity.

Recommended readings for Mr. Lynch:

• Empty Closets - self-explanatory
• BUTT Magazine - an interview-centric magazine that focuses on interesting gay artists, writers, directors, and musicians (e.g. Gus Van Sant, John Waters, Michael Stipe); available at A Different Light Bookstore in The Castro.
• Discordance between Sexual Behavior and Self-Reported Sexual Identity: A Population-Based Survey of New York City Men, Annals of Internal Medicine, Volume 145 Issue 6, Pages 416-425 - Mr. Lynch is not alone. Disjunction of self-identification and actual sexual orientation is extremely common. According to the article, about three quarters of men who have sex with men identify themselves as “straight.”