The bright side? I hadn’t thought of Ricky Martin since shaking my bon-bon in my parents’ basement at the respectable age of 13. His coming out lifting him from obscurity and catapulted him back to the level of his days sipping out of the Cup of Life. I was hearing about him virtually everywhere. Ricky Martin hid from fame for so long and with his news, came out of a closet and basked in US Weekly glory, paycheck after paycheck.

Coming out in Hollywood is like working overtime.  It’s the key to success for has-been A-listers, a chance to return to relevance and once again soak up the limelight.  Look at Lindsay Lohan for instance; she didn’t need her leggings line anymore once she started toting DJ Samantha Ron-Hizzle around.  And who needs the title of American Idol when you’re sporting eye liner and getting frisky with other dudes on stage like one Mr. Adam Lambert? And you know Lance Bass’s “I’m Gay” cover story took him from former boy-bander who no one remembered to insta-celebrity over night.

It’s true: going gay is the life jacket to Hollywood careers. It does what no publicist, Oscar nomination or incarceration could ever manage. It’s more powerful than a nipple slip, more potent than an ill-fitting stage ensemble, and more memorable than general douche-baggery. It’s the key to going from child-star-turned-Vegan-farmer to Reality TV Show host with endorsement deals and magazine covers to boot.

And keeping that in mind, I’m surprised Heidi Montag hasn’t gotten a girlfriend yet there are a few suspect D-Listers out there who might want to consider throwing open the doors of the closet they’ve been hiding in. We haven’t seen or heard much from these peeps in awhile, but that’s nothing that an “I’m Gay” won’t fix. You can thank us later, Hollywood.

Jonathon Taylor Thomas: Those frosted tips? That boyish smile? Don’t tell me you never thought about it. OK, so you probably didn’t want to think about his sexual orientation lest all your dreams of becoming Mrs. TT would be crushed, but it’s totally possible. And embracing it is just what JTT needs to make it big once again. Home boy hasn’t seen fame since 2005 (and it was in Veronica Mars, so that doesn’t even count), but saying those three words could take America’s favorite ’90s boy toy from total obscurity to the cover of every magazine once again.

Macaulay Culkin: The last time Macaulay Culkin received an MTV Movie Award (which is true celebredom, obvs) was in 1993.  He even received “Best Kiss” for My Girl in 1991.  Wanna get back to those child-star days, Mac? Come out in People Magazine and then follow it up with a super saucy My Girl spin-off for LOGOonline. Boom. Famous.

Tara Reid: I think I recently saw a shriveled up, pruney version of once-sex kitten Tara Reid on a gossip magazine a year ago. And she was wearing a belly chain. Her last seven flicks have gone straight to DVD and the last time she starred in a semi-good movie was back in the dark ages of 2003 with My Boss’s Daughter (and the movie was only good because Ashton Kutcher co-starred). Tara clearly hasn’t had much luck with the boys, so maybe it’s time she take a different path (Hey, it worked for Anne Heche, right?). My advice to you, Ms. Reid, is to find yourself a woman who can treat you right, then do an oh-so-sexy spread with the lucky lady in Curve Magazine. You’ll be raking in the dough in no time.

Joey Lawrence: Joey’s first mistake came from shaving off those thick tresses. Seriously, I thought he was hiding a secret up there and I loved it. His new bald head hasn’t done much worth noting since 2009′s movie-I’ve-never-heard of, Killer Pad. Lawrence has the classic washed up actor resume, starting with the early-’90s sitcom and ending with a stint on Dancing With The Stars in 2006.  Come on, Joey Lawrence; wake up and smell the glitz and glitter.  One quick gay dancing DVD (in full-on spandex) and a guest hosting gig on The View, and it you’ll never have to do another Lifetime movie again.

No? That’s what makes my exes special.

When I saw that my former beau was posting pictures of sexually adventurous Brooklynites, I had to call him up.

“Those ladies sure do like to lick each other,” I said. “Why is that? Are they tasty? Are they all covered in nacho cheese?”

“Girls do this,” he said. “Every time I get out the camera, they start making out with each other. I take picture one, they’re friends, picture two, they’re friends, picture three, they’re sucking face. I just stand there, like, ‘I didn’t ask for this! This is all on you two!’”

Kissing girls, to be honest, is trendy. Right now, one of the biggest songs out there is called “I Kissed A Girl.” It’s by Katy Perry, and it’s got all the right props: drinking (“I got so brave, drink in hand”), a Lolita vibe of horny-yet-so-far-untouched experimentation (“It’s not what, I’m used to / Just wanna try you on / I’m curious for you”), and, most depressingly, a boyfriend lurking just out of sight, reassuring us that this girl isn’t really a lesbian (“I kissed a girl just to try it / I hope my boyfriend don’t mind it”).

These things may be familiar to you from, oh, every girl-on-girl porn film ever. (The video doesn’t exactly shy away from that association.) Like those movies, the goal of the song is to present both girls as femme (“soft skin, red lips, so kissable”) and desirable to men, while also suggesting that sex between girls isn’t really sex at all (“ain’t no big deal, it’s innocent”) and that what these two kids need is a dude to occupy the center of their silicone sandwich.

See, here’s the thing: I’ve kissed girls. I’ve kissed boys. I’ve liked both experiences, because I just plain like kissing. I think it comes down to the Kinsey Scale and the vagaries of human nature – even my Midwestern pastor-in-training mom thinks “everyone’s bisexual,” so that’s no big earth-shaking statement. It also comes down to my mad-scientist-in-training approach toward sex in general: you don’t know what you’ll enjoy until you try it, so why not try everything that looks good?

It’s also about the fact that people change over time. Someone might live as a Kinsey 2 (“predominantly heterosexual, but more than incidentally homosexual”) for years, then go up to a 5 (“exclusively homosexual”). I’ve gone back and forth between 3 (equal interest in both genders) and 0 (exclusively straight people have the lowest score on this scale – and I’m not going to make any jokes about that, no matter how much I want to). Once, in the months following a particularly bad breakup, I was X (“asexual”) – I tried making out with people, cute and funny and nice people, and found that it was about as fun as putting a live slug in my mouth.

So, given this, I don’t know why I’m so disappointed in the Katy Perry song. I think it comes down to the fact that, no matter how much she may get off on making out with her girl, or on bragging about how naughty she is, she is not really going to open up her mind to what that might mean. “It felt so right,” she sings, “don’t mean I’m in love tonight.” Her boyfriend, after all, might mind that. It’s safer if it “ain’t no big deal.” No matter how much fun she’s having with that girl, she’s going to stay straight. That seems like a pretty sure-fire way to avoid learning about yourself, and – in the long run – to make yourself very unhappy.

As for my friend, our conversation moved on to other photos from the same party, including one in which a boy and girl were kissing.

“It’s really beautiful, actually,” I said. “He looks so into her.”

“Yeah. He’s gay, though,” my ex said. “I was like, ‘oh, an ironic makeout.’ But after a while, I wasn’t so sure.”

[By the way, if you'd like to hear a really fun song about all this, click here. For a smart and realistic song, click here. Don't say I never did you any favors.]

[Photo courtesy of www.flickr.com/photos/katyperry]

I get looks a lot. That shouldn’t really strike me as surprising; everyone gets looks. Amused looks, horrified looks, heartbroken looks, enamored looks…I’ve gotten them all. Still, nothing was quite the punch in the gut as the look my mother gave me when I told her I was going out with a girl.

I’d been dating Megan for something like six months around the time I finally talked to my mom. For six months, I was horrified at the concept of telling my middle-aged, old-fashioned African-American mother that her daughter, the girl she had been a father and mother to for twenty years, was very much in love with your typical Irish girl (sans fiery-red Weasley hair).

I had told my mother that I was bi before, but it was some six years ago and I’m pretty sure that she just passed it off as me being dazed after being hit over the head with puberty. I was almost certain that she’d forgotten (she hadn’t, the old elephant), and when I told her, a look of terror and disgust would follow suit.

It didn’t, and I still can’t decide if I’m grateful for that or not.

It was a little after Christmas when I finally decided I was going to fess up. Megan had just had surgery on her knee, and I wanted to be there for her (read: be her slave for a week). I had told my mother a half-baked excuse as to why I was hoping on a Greyhound and going from Long Island to Virginia to see one of my “friends” from school. After a lot of thought, I decided to just lay it all out.

At first, her expression was the sort of quiet, understanding, thoughtful expression that moms usually have when you’re pouring your heart out to them. I explained in slow, carefully chosen words that I had been in a relationship with Megan for a few months, and that I felt like it was time to tell her such. There was a five second silence that stood between my voice and hers.

“I don’t want you to make decisions based on a few negative experiences,” she finally replied. I hastily explained that, no, it wasn’t because of the horrible ex-boyfriend fiasco (we were never actually going out). She nodded, and I could tell that it was forced. She wasn’t upset or horrified, but I could tell, I could see that she was disappointed, and that hurt me more than if she had thrown me out the house. Here was my mother, a black woman that grew up in Brooklyn during the Civil Rights movement, who was barely a generation removed from Barbados and had been instilled with good, honest West Indian values, and she was disappointed.

“I figured it out already,” she added after a few seconds with a forced smile. I had a feeling she did, and I coughed out a chuckle as a reply. Megan had come to visit me that summer, before she had even asked me out. My mother can be and often is intimidating, so Megan spent most of her time upstairs in my room. (“Megan can sleep in the guest room, if she wants,” my mother helpfully suggested on Megan’s second night with us. “I know,” I sheepishly replied. I think that was when she figured it out.) We were silly and flirty the entire time, but it wasn’t really until she got on the Amtrak back to Virginia that I realized that I was lovesick.

After a few more awkward exchanges (“Does she only like girls, or is she…?” “No, no, she’s…she’s like me, too.” “Just be open to…” “I will.”), I scurried back to the security of my room. The next day, it seemed like nothing had really changed. She didn’t treat me any differently, and it seemed like she had forgotten the conversation entirely. Maybe she had.

My mother occasionally asks how Megan is when I talk to her on the phone, but not often. I’ve come to realize that there will always be a part of her that is disappointed in me, and that realization sleeps in my gut, coming out of hibernation every now and then to pace around and growl at me. In time, I hope that she’ll accept the fact that, yes, I do love this girl. But for now, knowing that my mom still loves me is good enough.

I remember standing in the hall with one of my best friends since Freshmen year. We were pretending to have a conversation so I could stare over her shoulder at the snowboarding, dimpled love of my life. He didn’t know he was the love of my life, but somehow I was going to fix that. Somehow.

When I finally steered my gaze back to her face (the love of my life had fallen into a trashcan and was stuck in an adorable drunken stupor), I noticed she was looking at me strangely.

“Hey” she said, shifting her weight and pushing her long hair out of her face, “I need to tell you something.”

“Sure” I said, although I was hesitant to take my attention off my trashcan love. What if he got out and I wasn’t there?

“Let’s go into your room” she said, “it’s sort of…a weird thing.”

“Okay…” I followed her down the hall, a little nervous about her behavior. And a little nervous about leaving Mr. Adorable Snowboarder with a bunch of scantily clad angels who weren’t so much angels as girls dressed in tiny white swatches of cloth and an occasional tinfoil halo.

“So…wow.” She laughed as she shut the door. “This is so weird. Okay.” She laughed again, plopping herself down on my bed. “You have to promise…you won’t get mad. You can’t get mad!”

She was a little drunk, but still, the nervous laughter was making me anxious. Why would I be mad at her? What had she done? As I sat down at my desk across from her, I began to panic. Had she hooked up with Adorable Snowboarder? I knew they were friends. Had she HOOKED UP WITH HIM? Oh my GOD! I was going to KILL —

“I…I…” she laughed and fell backwards onto my bed. “I think I like girls!”

Her laughter died away and the thoughts in my head screeched to a halt and slammed together.

“I…I think I always have.” She stayed lying down, hiding her face. “I haven’t ever told anyone this. Ever.”

Then she stopped talking. And we sat in silence.

“Bonnie” I started, “are you serious? I…had no idea.”

“I know. No one does. Remember when I told you about being depressed for a long time?” She sat up, and even though she was still smiling broadly I could see tears in her eyes. “I think that’s why. Because I…I was this way and I didn’t want to admit it.”

I got up and sat next to her. “Why did you warn me not to get mad, Bonnie? Why the hell would I be mad about this?”

“I don’t know” she said, “just…because.”

“I thought you had hooked up with Sean!”

She laughed, her cheeks wet. “Sean! He’s too short for me. Plus…I mean, the girl thing”

“I’m so glad this is about you being a lesbian” I said, giving her a hug. “Because if you had hooked up with Sean I would have hated you forever.”

Since that conversation, Bonnie has been the happiest I’ve ever seen her. All her fears about her friends rejecting her or acting awkward were completely unfounded. Not one person walked away after she told them.

Nothing about my friendship with Bonnie changed after that day. Every once in a while I was conscious of the fact that I was changing in front of her in the locker room, or sitting close to her on my bed, but I’d let those thoughts slip away as quickly as they came. Bonnie was still the Bonnie I had known for four years, and when we were laughing together or drinking beers or studying for that weird hippy New England Forests class, we doing these things as friends, like we had always done.

Besides, I wasn’t her type anyway. She preferred blondes.

If your friend came out of the closet, would you be as accepting of her?