The Italian Stallion

I am so mad right now! This weekend was my birthday and everything was a hot mess until The Italian Stallion decided to be an utter douche bag. I need to give some background of The Italian Stallion so you all can understand why he's a douche bag and no longer my friend.

The Italian Stallion (further called TIS from here on out) is a colleague at work. He was one of my first straight friends in Frederick. TIS was very nice and welcoming. He starting inviting me to bars with him and other colleagues, and we quickly became close. Eventually, TIS started talking about sex with women, picking up on chicks, etc. I always came up with an excuse or just changed the topic. I asked another colleague who already knew that I am gay about coming out to her and the rest of her lab. She said that should be perfectly fine. I did that and TIS seemed to be ok with everything. Quickly, our friendship changed. He was no longer inviting me to events and texting me. Then he started avoid conversations with me. It became interesting, but I decided not to care because I have made other friends. Jump forward to this weekend.

I invited his lab to go out with me to celebrate my birthday. A couple of them wanted to go to a gay bar and club to experience it. He told me that he was going to Delaware this weekend and couldn't make it. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and believed he was actually going to go to Delaware. Well, last night I come to find out that he did not go to Delaware and stayed home this whole weekend. Again, I decided not to care because I don't consider him a close friend anymore. Then he started texting one of the male colleagues during the evening. He was asking about the gay people hitting on my colleague, how weird it was, etc. That started to bother me. I didn't let it get to me and ruin my night though. Then this morning he texted a couple of my male colleagues asking them if they were ass raped last night and received HIV from it, because all gay men have HIV. That seriously irritated me. What kind of naive, conservative douche bag is he? It makes me wonder what he thinks of me. I'm guessing he thinks I'm a whore who has HIV and who is spreading it around to all of the heterosexuals. UGH! I want him to say something to my face so that I could confront him. I have A LOT I want to say to him.

As I have been talking to my colleagues, we have all decided that TIS is a closet gay. He is very homophobic, hypermasculine, insecure, touchy-feely (he touches everyone but me whenever they walk by him), never has had a girlfriend, and other markers. Also, TIS will not make eye contact with me for fear of catching the gay, but I catch him staring at me all the time when I'm not looking at him.

My question is what do I do? Should I just confront him about everything that is bothering me or should I just let it go? I'm not one to take crap from people, but I don't want to mess up work dynamics and have people start hating him and me. Also, if he is truly gay, I don't want to force him out of the closet when I feel like he is so very deep in it. Sigh... I wish there was an easy way out of this one.