Enough (Not in a JLo Kind of Way)

The grocery store is one of the least threatening place to be.

Or, is it?

The electric doors slide open; my wife heads through another set of doors while I head left to grab a cart. I haven't noticed, but there is a disagreement developing between two men.

I start to head through the second set of doors and hear the man behind me say:

FAGGOT!

The word, dripping with disdain, not directed at me, creepy-crawls its way up my spine, swings from my brain stem like it's playing a cruel game of keep away, and finally lands on my head like a large piece of excrement. Just as it was intended for the other man who kept walking.

I can feel the rush of blood in my veins. I hear this shit all the time on television, in movies, from religious followers, in politics (though politicians never use derogatory terms so blatantly; they are far more underhanded when it comes to insulting gays and lesbians). I need to make a decision. I can either be the change I want to see in the world, or I can keep walking.

I turn around to find an older white male, his black hair thick on his head, his stomach rotund, wearing a dirty t-shirt tucked into his large pants. I say, very calmly (I'm not kidding: I am quite calm,) "Faggot? Really?"

He is not amused. His nostrils flare. He face reddens. The look on his face suggests he would kill me if there weren't witnesses. The silence becomes more and more awkward. The wife at his side keeps looking down at the ground. She will play no part.

Okay. I guess we are done here.

I walk through the second set of doors and he tells me to mind my own business, calls me a bitch. A bitch? No, no. Anything but that. Why can't I be a faggot, too?

"Okay. Whatever you say, big man."

My wife is standing there, looking puzzled. And then he really let's me have it. "Oh, are you a dyke? Fucking dykes!"

Now, that's more like it.

Unlike his wife, my wife does get involved. "Proud dykes, thank you!" she announces as she takes my arm.

We are too far away from him to reach out and strangle us, so instead, he turns his hand into an imaginary gun, aims, and fires at us both.

Someone forgot to take their Zoloft.

Despite the round of fire we have just taken, my wife and I laugh all the way to the fresh vegetables.

My wife says she is proud of me. I am proud of me too. Whether or not he thinks twice about calling someone a faggot again is out of my control. I just couldn't let him simply get away with it. It was one more thing that felt like enough.

Light a Fire

I've been rather fired-up lately concerning an incident that took place last week. A gay man--someone I do not know--was talking about his boyfriend coming back home and how he needed to get back into shape because his "hot body" had disappeared. Later in the conversation, he mentioned having an oral fixation (he chewed on his fingernails.) A woman--a straight woman--was highly offended.

Straight people are granted the courtesy to define themselves in a myriad of ways: by being single or married, through their professions, the kind of shoes they wear, the kind food they make, the kind of car they drive, their hair, their clothes, their children, the church they attend, how much money they make, the jokes they tell, the friends they have, the talents they possess.

Gays are not afforded the same consideration when it comes to being who we are. Instead, we are immediately defined by the kind of sex we have. When a straight person finds out we are gay, they--for some insane reason--picture us in the bedroom. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why it is straight people are so obsessed with what we do with our sexual lives. There is an arc of perversion when a gay man can sit next to a straight women and not say a word about his sex life, yet she immediately sees him on his knees when he says oral fixation. Seriously!? Get your mind out of the gutter, straight lady, and get over yourself. What does it say about this woman? It says that she has a mind that works in a very strange, creepy, warped way. The last thing I do when I know someone is straight is picture them boning someone of the opposite sex. It's just gross.

I would bet a trazillion dollars that if it had been a fellow straight woman talking about her husband coming home and how she needed to get back her hot body and needed to curb her oral fixation--biting her nails--the woman who was offended would have thought nothing of it. She might have even had suggestions. I know it in my heart.

Ken Buck, a viable option to represent the citizens of Colorado in the United States Senate, believes being gay is a choice. The only way that argument makes sense is if Ken Buck has fantasies about the opposite sex. And because he is inherently straight, he thinks he's choosing not to be gay. Those who protest to much, who gladly show their ignorance, show the true nature of their fears: that they will not only be discovered as frauds, but their darkest thoughts will be revealed if they show compassion or understanding.

I lived a straight life for the first twenty-two years of my life. And had I chosen that life, I would have chosen emotional death. Fuck you, Ken Buck. Fuck you for just opening your mouth and speaking on a subject you know nothing about. You're entitled to feel the way you do, but when you're running for high office I expect your mouth to remain closed on the gay issue. Because when you say, to a national audience, that being gay is a choice, they are only words to you. But to me, it is real. To me, it is young gay people killing themselves because they were incessantly bullied. To me, it is gays being beaten, tied to fences, and left to die. To me, it is not holding my wife's hand in certain places for fear we will be targeted. To me, it is a gay man, just being who he is, offending a straight woman because people like you will always make it okay to hate and judge, preserving your "rightful" place by feeling better than others.