Gay? No Way! (Not with This Guy, Anyway)
I visited my friend Mike in Eugene the other day, as I mentioned in an earlier post. Whenever the two of us are visiting, we do things as friends: go to movies, go out to eat, swing by the grocery store really quick for food, etc. It never fails that when this happens, people assume that we are a couple. Seriously. This is not homophobic paranoia, trust me. Neither Mike nor myself particularly gives a shit if people think we're gay, but people do, and this is a source of constanct amusement to us.
Mike is clean, mild-mannered, and well-groomed. I am not "femmy" my any stretch, but I am admittedly not the most masculine person in the world. I understand where the misapprehension comes from, and on the one hand, I'm pleased to say that we have never been treated poorly by somebody because they thought we were "together". In fact, people tend to be pretty polite, even in the redneckiest areas of the Eugene/Springfield area: ya gotta love Oregon.
But, at times, it's just frustrating, as it was during this visit. We went to Wal-Mart to get some cheap food supplies for breakfast, and Mike had his 1-year old boy with him, who he was pushing in a stroller. He is a bi-racial baby, and Mike and I are both about as white as you can get. So, here's two guys pushing a bi-racial baby through Wal-Mart, and a woman who worked there smiled and said, "That's a pretty little baby you guys have there!" You guys, like it was our baby: a bi-racial baby who we had obviouly adopted to complete our family unit.
What amused and sort of irritated me about this situation is that it's apparently more acceptable for the denizens of Wal-Mart for us to be a gay couple who adopted than for the baby to be the product of Mike's interracial marriage. You know? The gay thing is the first, and somehow less offensive, deduction.
So, congratulations, gays! It's now officially easier for you in this country than it is for straight non-whites!
