Categories and Orientations

Since first attending high school, Billy tries to put himself in a category. He does not know if he is gay, if he is straight, if he is bi, if he loves Elaine, if he loves cross-dressing, if he loves someone else, and many other things. He is trying to define himself, like all teenagers generally do. He is trying to become his own person. 

Once Billy figures himself out, he is caught amongst everyone he knows trying to define him. His family, friends, and even acquaintances put labels on Billy, and define him in ways only they know how. 

This is not only a question of the homophobic. Even those who are gay and frequent they gay bars downtown, as Irving describes, cannot accept that Billy is not just gay. He likes men and women, and this is something that no one at the time would accept. Even transgenders, hermaphrodites, and transsexuals that Billy enters relationships with will not accept that Billy does not categorize himself. His lovers become paranoid that he is romantically involved with friends or with other people, simply because they cannot grasp the concept of liking someone not for their gender, but for their person. 

The AIDS epidemic that ran rampant in the United States throughout the 1980s put Billy in another category, and allowed others to once again find a clear path to define the love lives of others. Billy is constantly asked if he has contracted HIV or AIDS, and Billy's straight friends are in fear of him, afraid that they would contract the disease. 

The last line of the book goes as follows: "'My dear boy, please don't put a label on me--don't make me a category before you get to know me!' Miss Frost had said to me; I've never forgotten it. Is it any wonder that this was what I said to young Kittredge, the cocksure son of my old nemesis and forbidden love?"

Are categories and labels the only way the human mind can process things? Or are we as a society not broadening our minds to different possibilities? Is it possible that this categorization of people by other people is the number one cause of illness/death/suicide in the world?