Do you have to be Gay and Successful?

When you're gay, out or undercover, there's plenty of pressure to be a high achiever: to drive your own car, to have enough money to live a good and fairly luxurious life and to best your peers at whatever it is that you do.

I have (or had, since we're not as close as we used to be) a friend in the Service Industry who used to constantly drill some similar facts into me. Coe to think of it; I've got quite a few who told me similar things. Alfred happens to have worked at a couple of high end five star or boutique hotels in Nairboi, and when he gets down to business, he's really good at what he does.

'There's this guy who came by and wanted to get freaky with me in his hotel room...' he'd started as we previously had a conversation.

'And... and.? Did you? What happened?' I pressed.

'Cornelius! Come on! That's my workplace. Of course I'd do no such thing!' I remember he emphatically responded.

Of course not many, and not often would turn down advances at the work place, expecially if its from wealthy clientelle, but at the heart of the matter is the fact that he takes his work very seriously, and he excels at it. I watched him rise from Assistant positions to managing entire wings of brand new elegant hotels that keep cropping up here.

Two other friends of mine work for airlines, and they are equally, if not more, successful: driving their own SUVs and staying in middle class suburbs of the city. They're the friends who can order bottles of Captain Morgan or Jameson without feeling a pinch, and that's at each club they hop to.

Then attending some 'community' parties, you're often surprised, and admittedly jealous that some of the guys drive there in Jaguars and Discoveries while you're cabbing there.

Now, I'm not talking about the gold diggers, I'm talking about those men who've worked hard for their money, or simply found themselves in the right place at the right time. I've wondered why gay men tend to be the most attractive, well-looked after and successful people there are, and if it happens to stem from being a minority or having a buffer for being shunned by society.

My girl friend, Sally often bemoaned the fact that each guy she found attractive whenever we went out turned out to be oh so gay, both our gaydars beeping off the charts.

There may be no correlation to sexual orientation and success, but the ratio is definitely high. Has anyone else noticed the same thing?