Reality is Different (Alternative)

At first, everything looks the same. Your movie posters, posters of hot babes, almost everything in your room, actually, but then your eyes land on something that definitely wasn't there before and you try to figure out why it's there at all.

It's a flag hanging up on the wall behind your bed. While you've never seen anything like it before, you're smart enough to figure out what it means. Blue and pink divided diagonally, with yellow-colored male and female sex symbols interlocking with each other in the center of the flag. A thought pops into your head, telling you that it's a straight pride flag, but that's nuts, right? Do those things even exist? And if they do, why the hell would you be displaying it in your bedroom? Maybe this was a practical joke, though you're not sure what the joke is.

Putting it out of your mind for the moment, you head to your underwear drawer and put on some boxers, then head to the closet and put on a T-shirt and jeans. But as you do, your eyes keep looking back at that flag. Something about it makes you proud. But that's weird, right? Why would you be proud of being straight?

Shaking your head, you then check your phone for messages, and that's when things get a little weird.

You remember that you got a text from your father the previous day, informing you that both he and your mother were going to be visiting you this week. Well, the text is still there, but now it's different. Instead, your father says something about coming to see you with your dad. That must be a wording error, right?

But then things get weirder when you see other texts, going back for weeks. The texts are still with Rebecca (your ex), but the content has changed. You both talk about going to straight pride parades and volunteering at the straight liberation center. But none of that even makes any sense. Those things don't exist, right? Had someone hacked your phone?

Dropping your smart phone, you head to the window and look outside, wanting to look at something normal. But the moment you do, you get a heavy dose of "not normal". You see two guys walking down the street holding hands! And two women kissing. You know that gay people do exist, but you know that none of those people live in your neighborhood and if they did, then they wouldn't be so open about it. A billboard across the street grabs your attention. You had seen it before. It was an ad for weddings, showing a bride and a groom kissing. But now it's showing two grooms kissing instead!

What you are slowly coming to realize, as impossible or fucked up as it seems, you have woken up in an entirely new reality, a homonormative reality. But while most other guys are homosexual, you are not. You haven't changed, and your ex-girlfriend Rebecca hasn't changed either, but it seems that most others had. Being homosexual is viewed as completely normal and traditional. Being straight, on the other hand, is not. So, from a social point-of-view, being straight in this new world is like being gay in the old one.