Last week I suffered the embarrassment of finding myself living in a country that is the butt of a Jimmy Fallon joke. Kuwait and a few other Gulf countries are trying to develop a scientific gaydar. They don't want gays here. This is an interesting development and I have a couple of stories to tell from my outsider's perspective of an expat. 

When I first arrived in Kuwait I saw lots of local men wearing what are known as dresses where I come from. They call them dishdashas here, and I bought one as a way of demonstrating my interest in participating in the culture. Men, in recent history, have had to wear bifurcated garments, unless you're brave enough to wear a kilt (something I'll get to in a moment). So, I had to adapt my gaydar here otherwise I would have been struggling to stifle a grimace most times I saw a formally dressed man. Another thing I have seen here is men kissing. Admittedly this is on the cheeks, but still it is a real no-no where I come from. I am sure most people are aware it's a common way to greet each other in many parts of the world, but a lot of man touching goes on in one of these greetings, and it's more than what my gaydar says is ok, so this is another way I had to adjust it. And that's not mentioning the number of men that go around holding hands. They're usually young men, and it's not hugely common, and about half of them would be Indians - but if you saw two young men holding hands in Australia that's an automatic gay. If you want to preserve your man points, you don't touch a man's hand unless it's his right hand and it's a particular type of touching called a handshake. More of a grip really. A manly grip. A brief manly grip. 

KILTS

For some reason I brought my utilikilt to Kuwait. Mainly because I didn't bring it to Cambodia and there were a few moments there where I wish I'd had it. I innocently wore it outside once with an Indian friend. Nothing happened, I wasn't arrested, no one really looked at me, all was good. Then one day I was going out to lunch with a girl and earlier I had been telling her about my kilt. Jokingly I asked her if I should wear it and, as I found out later, jokingly she said yes. So I did. This lunch was up in Salmiya, 40 minutes away by taxi. During the trip it became clear she was not expecting me to be wearing a kilt. I began to develop the suspicion that I might be about to actually commit a crime. So I consulted 3 friends, all of whom confirmed this suspicion, one saying basically the police might bust me for transvestitism. This actually began to make me scared. I couldn't believe I was actually going to run the risk of arrest, possible jail time and deportation for having on a kilt. Usually I would ignore these types of statements, but the fact that I was not at home but in a conservative Muslim country like Kuwait gave me pause.

This was a humbling moment. I've long been proud of my capacity for nonconformity. Wearing my kilt has been like my biggest, easiest most impressive way to display this. Now I had to deal with the fact that I was going to have to admit defeat. I had to admit that actually I did like my job and the international career I was building more than my desire to display irreverence. In a detestful tone I told the taxi driver to take me back home, I changed and we retraced our route back to the restaurant, me walking in nearly an hour late to lunch. How did it go? Well, we had something to talk about at least.

I guess all of this begs the question: what would happen if I fronted up to immigration at Kuwait airport in my kilt? Would their evidence based gaydar return a false positive?