Don't ask, don't tell

When I first started working as a postdoc, I was amazed at how many gay and lesbian people I was meeting. Especially the latter. I had never ever made friends with lesbian women, but that might be because I have a very small number of friends until then. When I started postdoc-ing, as the groups in the same corridor mingled a lot, it was easy to get to know people. When I did my PhD, our lab was like the only occupied lab on the whole damn corridor.

Anyway, there was this one PhD student. Let's call him X.
He wasn't one to flaunt his sexuality - he was more... asexual than anything, to everyone concerned. He had enough friends to keep him socially busy, was not reliant on a one-to-one relationship as so many others were. I always thought he had better things to do (like research, duh), and him being a foreign student, thought that he didn't want to be attached to the area (or the country) too much.

So one day, another friend of mine tells me that someone in his lab found some gay porn on a disc that X gave to another student (female). Somehow - I am not sure of the turn of events - it ended up so that the postdoc Y of the lab had to deal with it. Yes, there was a lot of talk going around that lab about it - it was kinda scandalous. But all done hush-hush to the PI.

Now, postdoc Y was a good guy. Great sense of humour, and also a long-suffering postdoc under the hands of the PI. I believe he just had a word with student X, reminded him not to download porn on to a disk you used at work, and that was that.

It might have been that they could never figure out whether X downloaded it at work or not - probably he did, since internet connection is so much faster than anything at home. It also might be that postdoc Y was a good person, and had a relatively good relationship with the rest of students. Student X was also well liked too.

I have kept in touch with student X even after he finished his PhD - he already was a good friend of mine before that incident. I never told him about the incident, thinking discretion, and I really never knew at the time whether he was gay or "it's just a phase he is going through". And I wasn't bothered anyway.

About a year after he started working in another city, I went over to see him, and he came out to me. It was because there was a man in his life, and I guess that the timing was right. He was very uncomfortable about it, and I couldn't have had a more "TV drama" moment than that (walking home after a night out, deserted street at midnight, cool air, us talking...ah).


Anyway, the moral of the story is, never download porn at work.