“Are you gay?”

I was a bit taken aback by the question. I’d only just sat down on the Paris-Marseilles train. My interlocutor was sitting opposite, admittedly in a rather tight sleeper compartment. “No,” I replied, aiming for casual.

“Oh, so you’re a hooligan then?”

This frank exchange goes back a few years to the period of the World Cup in France, but it’s hard to forget. For one thing, it contains a plausible theory of football violence. You’re squeezed together with several thousand other guys. Obviously you have to stick the boot in just to make sure no one gets the wrong impression. You’re either gay or you’re a hooligan. Take your pick.

We kept a polite distance from one another, my fellow passenger and I, but he remained nervous in dark tunnels and the like. He wasn’t sure if I was going to kiss him or kick his teeth in. I was reminded of our brief encounter while watching Outrage, a documentary that gives new meaning to the Republican ‘Party’. Some version of the gay-or-straight conversation has permeated the whole of the United States.

Jean Baudrillard, the French sociologist, once said that America is divided into two: on the coasts, people are slim and drive small cars and in the middle they are fat and drive big cars. Living in New York half the time, and given to quoting Baudrillard, I am still amazed at how often American people agree with him. One way or another, the American Civil War is still happening. On the coasts (Austin, Texas is the ‘third coast’) people are either gay or feel that it is OK to be gay. In the middle they are not only straight but fundamentalist about it.

I have a beautiful lesbian friend of Middle Eastern ancestry. In New York, she just blends into the crowd. In New York, everybody is a weirdo. When she went on a road trip to Alabama and Tennessee, it was like she was going to a foreign country. Rules of engagement: (1) remove hijab; (2) stick on stars-and-stripes bumper sticker; (3) claim to be Italian-American; (4) lie about everything, but especially sexual orientation. It was like she had to go under cover in her own country.

New York, Washington, San Francisco, Los Angeles are more like Ancient Greece. Ancient Greek politicians could be outed for having wives. They would be exposed for not being caught in flagrante down dark alleys or cruising ancient Greek bathhouses. The cult of the beautiful boy took priority over any notion of marriage. There was no over-population problem in Ancient Greece.

I know a straight woman in New York who discovered that her husband of 20-odd years was gay and had boyfriends right under her nose. She doesn’t believe that there are any straight men left in the whole state of New York. Working in musical theatre, as she does, may have slanted her perception. But most New Yorkers tend to think along similar lines. At a party in the Village not long ago, I was asked the “Are you gay?” question again. This is how the conversation went:

“Andy, seriously, are you gay or straight?”

“Straight.”

“Really?”

There is a definite note of scepticism. Bill Clinton? Tiger Woods? There are question marks. OK then, what about Warren Beatty? According to a recent biography, he has approximately 12,775 notches on his belt. And that number may well have increased since I started writing this sentence. Clearly, he is just over-compensating and putting on a sideshow.

There is a feeling in the States that everybody is overacting, gay or straight, as if you had to score for the nation. And then make a speech about it. Sex is politics and politics is sex. Maybe in the future I need to be more like one of those cagey politicians and dance around the question and say I refuse to take all these rumours seriously.