Three Ex Presidents and James Franco by John Buchanan Read Free Book Online Page A

"Huh?" I was as bleary eyed as he'd been moments earlier. I was wondering how I'd ended up in his bed, I was sure I'd arrived back with someone else. I said ,“ Where we going?"
     
                  "I'll drive. The trip is a day each way. It will take us maybe four days."
     
                  "Where we going?"
     
                  "To pick up James from prison."
     
     
     
     
    27. So we drove. Jake was energetically smoking, was all purpose and resolve, as he constantly folded and unfolded a map, planning the route. For my part I wondered what we would talk about. The trip was nine hours each way. The longest period we'd spend awake together without booze, without drugs.
     
                  Jake had an idea for a conversation starter: "How long have you been in love with Brandon?"
     
                  Had I been driving we would have been swerving off the road due to my shock. It was the first time I had heard my relationship put like that. The directness offended me. After a while I responded, "Long enough. Too long." An admission, which would avoid a long-winded interrogation. But short enough to demonstrate I didn't want to discuss it.
     
                  "The thing about straight guys is its all about cognitive dissonance," Jake decided to take it in the abstract. "I t’ s a psychological term."
     
                  I was aware of it. It’s one of the first things they teach in psychology. Because you can use it to explain nearly anything.
     
                  At the risk of boring you, it just means that humans need their opinion of who they are and the actions they actually do to be in sync. If you think you're a good person, you will convince yourself that the things you do are good. Or, you realise your actions are bad, and accept you're not really a good person.
     
                  It was always assumed that we do things because we want to do them. We kiss someone because we like them. Fairly straightforward. But cognitive dissonance says it can work in the other direction as well. We kiss someone so we start to like them. We've all been there.
     
                  It's not just about attraction. It happens on nights out all the time, all over the world. Say, your friend does something you object to. But you think, though you're thinking it in parts of the brain that don't tell you tha t’ s what you are thinking, he's my friend. And am I really the type of guy who is friends with assholes? So, you change your opinion, you decide your friend did n’ t act like an asshole. Or, you think, I'm the type of guy who accepts that some of  my mates are assholes. And you're happy again. Because there's no contradiction.
     
                  All that having been said, Jake was explaining it using the example of a straight man. The straight man who takes a walk on the other side of the fence. On the down low. Straight guys who are drunk, lonely or a bit curious.
     
                  When a straight guy is with another guy the cognitive tension rises. The mechanisms and little men inside his brain work overtime trying to relieve the tension. Is he the type of guy who likes sleeping with other men? Is he gay? He just slept with a man, so if he isn't gay, we need some sort of explanation here. Usually his brain decides he slept with another man because he was drunk, lonely or a bit curious. And most times i t’ s the truth. So the guy functions again. The little men in his brain relax.
     
                  "Problems only start when the guy actually starts thinking about it," Jake was saying. "The problem happens when the little men and their mechanisms just can't handle the amount and number of times this straight guy is sleeping with men. I t’ s a contradiction tha t’ s getting too big. So they send the problem to the top dog, to the brain, with an ultimatum. We've run out