Nobody enjoys having their buttons pushed. Maybe a masochistic few, but most of us react badly when other folks exploit our pet peeves. It brings out the worst in us.

Responding in anger, we go on autopilot: Adrenaline and noradrenalin surge, and we’re instantly in fight-or-flight mode. Research indicates that the things we may say in this fitful state most closely resemble the unadulterated truth—at least, our individual conceptions of it. 

But that’s not the only reveal involved. Idiosyncratic tones of voice and rapid gesticulations tend to accompany emotional outbursts, and they may let on more about you than you intended. The worst in us gets personal.

“He’s gay, so, you know, it just figures.”

I stood, pressed against the railing in front of Artpark’s stage, phone in hand, desperately trying to block out the drunken ramblings of the insufferable tart behind me. Prior to intermission, I’d told her that she was going to have to stop talking, which went over like a lead balloon. When she continued, I aggressively  shushed her and shoved her body over—it was more of a nudge—with my upper arm and shoulder. It was one of those autopilot moments. I can’t recall deciding to nudge her; it just happened.

“Maybe you shouldn’t come to concerts anymore,” she said, and boy was she proud of her snarky reply, all smug in her bedazzled cowgirl hat. Now, maybe 20 minutes after the incident, she was recapping it for her friends. In her mind, she’d dropped the mic, and she was milking her moment of glory like it was a swollen prostate. I really just wanted the sound of her voice out of range, and whether that was achieved via falling anvil, some sort of mobile Kevorkian unit, or an on-the-spot glossectomy didn’t much matter. 

She had obviously been brought along as someone else’s luggage for the evening: Earlier, before the band came out, she’d inadvertently made someone else in her group cry by asking too many questions about the recent death of a loved one. Most of her cohorts were more interested in what was happening on stage than she was, but I was the only one who felt strongly enough to speak up.

Here’s the thing: Concerts only happen once. I’m not talking about a pop show like Bieber’s, where everything is digitally moderated and done exactly the same way every night, but rather real live music created in the moment, warts and all. The nuances of that specific performance are fleeting and irreplaceable. If you’re distracting me from being able to listen, you’re stealing that experience from me.

I’ve been attending concerts since I was five years old. The most successful period of my writing career in Boston mainly comprised reviewing concerts for a daily newspaper. I used to get paid handsomely to write up shows. So this blathering idiot had really stirred up some rage in me, yarning on about how I have no business going to see live music, that I obviously don’t understand what concerts are all about, and that I should probably just stay at home and listen to music in a chair.

And now she was hauling it into another stratosphere by pinning my behavior on my sexuality. All else aside, I was just stunned that she’d picked me off so easily, that she felt confident announcing my sexual preference in a public setting. I’d barely said three sentences to her.

Talking at shows has been an issue with me for years. I was recently reminded of a Rickie Lee Jones concert in Boston when I threatened to rip some kid’s nuts off and shove them down his throat if he didn’t stop whining. And another time, seeing Sara Bareilles, when sexuality got brought up. “You gays are all the same, you want to come to shows and be able to hear a pin drop,” a guy said. “It’s not right!” At the end of the show, he expressed outrage that I hadn’t apologized to his girlfriend (incessantly complaining about an issue with her hair) for telling her to STFU. 

Apparently, I’m gayer when I’m upset. My sexuality is somehow inherent in my emotive expression. It’s a tell, and I hate it.

At least I hate it when it becomes weaponry that gets incorrectly attributed and/or thrown back in my face. And I struggle with this notion that bringing out the worst in me is tied into stereotypes associated with my sexuality. Obviously I’m not gay because I want to be able to hear at concerts. I’m gay because I experience a strong same-sex attraction; I want to hear at concerts because I like live music to remain in the foreground.

Concerts aren’t the only place where someone has equated my emotional expression with being gay. I’d run out of money while renting an apartment in 2010 and briefly lived with a friend’s mother while I saved funds to start over. For the next 10 weeks, she regularly complained to her son (also gay, but more bottled up than I) about what an emotional being I was. She just couldn’t understand it. Mind you, I was at loose ends. I’d basically been evicted, my things were all boxed up and out of reach, and my cat would not stop pissing on her basement carpet—an ongoing protest to the changed environs. Safe to say, I was tightly wound. 

But her reaction to me felt homophobic. My being emotional confronted her with my sexuality in a way that made her uncomfortable. Next to her stoic son, who hadn’t come out until his mid-40s, I must have seemed like Paul Lynde having a dressing-room breakdown. And yet she’d come down to the basement and get me all riled up on a regular basis, like I was a freak show curiosity.

A few years prior, I cringed when I overheard a roommate describing my behavior on the phone. I’d been put in charge of screening tenants for our four-bedroom apartment, and I’d rented a room to a young undergrad who turned out to be a monster. I wanted her gone, but evicting a tenant even in the loosest of living arrangements is difficult. 

Through the sheet of plasterboard between her room and the living room I heard her say, “Yeah, he wants me out…totally flamed out on me.” I envisioned myself as a ranting pink emoticon, breathing fire and singeing the edges of her clothes and hair. When she finally left, she managed to lock an open quart of milk in her bedroom. It was August. A locksmith was eventually brought in, and, if the pattern holds true, he got to see me at my absolute gayest. 

I’m fully aware that these examples all involve what I’ve characterized as difficult women. But before anyone shouts about misogyny, consider that having a straight woman react negatively to your feminine expressions as a gay man is about as humiliating as it gets. Why? Because they emulate their own emotional expressions. 

According to a 2008 study done at a Swedish research institute, gay men and heterosexual women have similarly symmetrical brain spheres, whereas gay women and heterosexual men have slightly asymmetrical spheres. The number of nerves connecting the two sides of the brain in gay men were also more like the number in heterosexual women than in straight men. This dense network of nerve connectivity stems from the amygdala, the brain’s emotional center. We are, it is therefore posited, emotionally wired like women.  

It’s one thing when another guy calls you out as faggy or makes fun of effeminate mannerisms. Those of us who grew up before bullying was taken seriously dealt with plenty of that and learned that it often points to masculine/sexual insecurity. But it feels different coming from a woman, more stinging—like they’re saying we missed the mark. 

Not to worry, one day soon anvil-carrying drones will solve this problem. Permanently.