On Failing Gaydar

Fred Bernstein writes for the New York Times:

The real reason my gaydar has failed is that there is no such thing as gaydar. No item of clothing, speech pattern, hairstyle or career choice (or even facial topography) is enough to identify someone as gay. In reality, the way you know, when you enter a room, if another man is gay is by seeing how he looks at you. If he maintains eye contact a split second longer than he needs to, or gives you a once-over, he’s gay. After all, those are things a man does if he’s interested in what he sees. So if I don’t have much gaydar anymore, it may be that not many men I come across are interested in what they see. In other words: At 55, I’ve become invisible to them, so they’ve become invisible to me. If they won’t check me out, I can’t check them off.