How a gay frat boy used his dorm decor to come out

It’s an all-too-common experience for queer people in the closet: despite your best efforts to play straight, other people still assume you’re gay. But one gay frat boy had the opposite problem, and he had a creative method for setting the record straight — or rather, setting the record gay.

TikToker Max Cohen (@murrayhillboy) posted a video explaining the dilemma he faced as a freshman at Tulane University.

“My freshman year, I was getting with a lot of girls and I was going home with a lot of guys, so there was all this speculation on campus, like, ‘Is Max gay? Is Max straight?’” Cohen explained. “I responded the way any normal person would, and I had custom-made 6-foot by 2-foot signs that said, ‘He’s gay, but he loves attention, no matter who it be from.’”

There, Cohen points to the picture behind him of his freshman year dorm, where those signs, just as described, are hanging proudly above his bed. They’re reminiscent of the infamous “Live, Laugh, Love” decor, but for collegiate queer kids instead of middle-aged moms.

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“Important to note: my room was like a common place for people who wanted to burn the magic cabbage, so there was lots and lots of different people walking into my room and seeing this on a nightly and daily basis,” Cohen continued. “I was like, ‘Good! Good! People need to know. Let these rumors go to rest.’”

But Cohen’s message wasn’t quite received as he’d hoped. “This of course, just in turn, created more speculation, because who in their right mind would do this?” he said.

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The signs weren’t the only interior design innovation on display in Cohen’s dorm. Above the signs, he also had a lineup of 19 empty vodka bottles arranged in rainbow order by their cap color.

“All of those were empty and were drank by me and my roommate, who I would force to split a handle of Smirnoff with me every night that we went out,” Cohen explained. “The passion fruit flavor is disgusting; the watermelon flavor is disgusting; I feel like the strawberry and the lemon were, like, fine.” All great info to have in your back pocket.

Though Cohen would eventually be a frat brother, it wasn’t in the cards for his freshman year self — a fact he says makes perfect sense in retrospect.

“What’s funny is looking back, I’m like, ‘How did I not get a bid my freshman year to a frat?’” he said, again pointing to his creative dorm decor. “Like … I don’t know, buddy. Let’s sit on that one. Let’s think about that, okay?”