By Jesse Steele
Crush From Afar (or CFA), noun: a person whom you have a huge crush on, but don’t know their name, major, or really anything about them.
We’ve all had one: maybe it was the guy we saw sniffing soup in Lane, or the girl we pass by coming out of New Testament – CFAs are a real epidemic. They’re people we find just attractive enough to look at whenever they walk in a room, but have no real intention of actually talking to them. It’s not that we want to keep ogling them; we usually just don’t have the courage to strike up a conversation.
The other night some friends and I were in Chester’s, the prime spot for CFA sightings, when a fear suddenly crept into my mind: what if one of his friends heard me accidently say his name? Would they instantly start texting him to tell him that the gays are creeping on Facebook and talking about him? Would I be seen as some perverted creeper for just having a crush?
This “crush-shaming” is a real deal among the LGBTQIA+ community. Unless you know, 100 percent, that your CFA is the same sexuality as you there is normally some type of fear involved whenever you talk about them. Whether it’s about them finding out, or just about someone overhearing you, it’s there when it really shouldn’t be.
The problem is we’re constantly fighting stereotypes like “if you’re gay you must just be attracted to every guy that walks into the room, right?” So, when we might have a crush someone who’s straight we worry that everything we have built against these mindsets will come crumbling down.
As much as I understand the uncomfortable-ness of having someone you don’t like having a crush on you I don’t get why it’s such a big deal when it happens between a heterosexual and a homosexual.
So, quick question for the straight guys out there: what’s the difference between me having a crush on you and you not being interested, and a girl having a crush on you and you still not being interested? At what point do I, the gay male, do more harm with my attraction?
Ironically, what sparked this post was not someone shaming me for one of my CFAs, but actually the opposite. While doing some investigative Facebook stalking to try and figure out this one guy’s name a girl overheard the conversation my friend and I were having. Instead of keeping her thoughts to herself she gave her two cents, meaning she thought she knew who we were talking about and suggested a name.
Other than the fact that she was totally right, and I owe her more free lattes than even possible, I was just so thankful for her because she saw past the fact that one guy was crushing on another guy, and just saw it for what it was: a crush. She had even thrown in a “good luck” before ascending back into the heavens (aka back down to Gillies for her pub fries).
The reason this was such a special thing for me was because, for once this entire semester, I was seen as just me. Not the militant leftist gay trying to change the world, but just Jesse, a normal 21 year old that has crushes. And to have that crush be so normal, nothing radical or new was so calming.
So what do you do if you find out you’re someone’s CFA? Here’s my advice: take the compliment. Most of the time we just think you’re super cute, or really nice, which are both great qualities to have. We don’t even really expect to date you, even though we wish we could, we get that statistically you’re most likely going to go for someone of the opposite sex. But that’s okay.
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Jesse Steele is senior studying communications and political science, and is the Editor in Chief of StudentInQUEERy. He is extremely lactose intolerant but sometimes forgets that, like when he orders an Oreo Milkshake…
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