"My Face is sliding off my head." I say this outloud as I examine myself in the mirror, checking and reconfirming that I’m not getting any younger. My slackening jaw line is in no way cute and unfortunately a inevitable fact of gravity. While the onslaught of time is cruel and unkind – who likes to see their face slide off their head? I am struck by the notion that no matter how I age into my mid-life, I’m still a high school student working diligently at life the same way I struggled in Mr Putorti’s 10th grade trigonometry class – I tried the formulas, tapped on my calculator and put it all down on paper but always with one eye on the clock. I was there but never really there, present but never engaged. I never really tried. And so, I’m still approaching life as I always have, except now with the knowledge that time is ticking – tick, tock, tick, tock, take a chance you stupid ho.
Now, adult life is like high school with fatter, more wrinkled kids. And I sometimes wonder if I’m present but not engaged. I want don’t want to be here, you see. I want to be there -- LA, Cabo, The French Riviera, Sundance – cavorting with Tara Reid or Tommy Lee and his penis or Beyonce and hers. I want to play like a child and run around half naked and have paparazzi photograph me nude as I stretch on my private balcony after having sex with entire cast of The O.C, even Peter Gallagher and his eyebrows. I want a scandal to rock my world and a lawsuit to follow after these photos find their way to a website and a Details article about the penis size of male celebrities. Instead, I dress in Express Men’s button down shirts and smart flat front pants where I keep my penis modestly hidden away. I’d like a weiner scandal or a paternity lawsuit that confuses my family back home and all my gay friends who’ve never known me to sleep with women.
I’ll do anything to keep perpetually 18 - 25, the MTV demographic I’ve so mourned the loss of as I’ve slipped deeper into my 30's. I want to suspend in a moment of youthful exuberance and leap into the pages of InTouch or US Weekly, Hollywood’s year books. I want a permanent tan that’s applied like cooking spray. I want to talk about my fast metabolism and that’s why I’m so skinny and not because I puke or eat a steady diet of air, cigarettes and Red Bull. I want to wear wildly inappropriate, large reflecting pool sunglasses and date someone with the same first name as myself, whose last name ends in "adopolous". I want to stay young, fit, sexy and, most importantly, smokin’ hot. I want to get pregnant so I can loose the weight "fast" after working out seven hours a day, because that’s what most mothers get to do. Of course, as a man, the pregnancy stuff is tough – but I still want to work out seven hours a day – It would mean that that was my job. And that my job wouldn’t be my job. Which mean I’d be rich or have a sugar daddy or mommy. If it keeps me young and beautiful and barely skimming reality, sign me up. I could look at myself all day and stay stuck and enjoy it.
I want it all, not this mundane existence where I age, go to work, have messy relationships where I can’t say I love you; fuck the wrong people; fuck over the right ones; try to be kind to my family even though I want to light them on fire; try to make a difference. I want a tabloid existence, where I’m only seen at parties or on holiday. I don’t want the uncomfortable ick and mess of real life, where things don’t wrap up so tidy after my publicist does a spin cycle. I want denial of all the inevitable truths about life and age and death. I want to be the "it boy" posing for the celebrity mags. I want to win the senior poll. I want best looking, most likely to succeed, best abs, I want it all. And I want my frame of reference to eternally be grades 10 - 12.
That’s why I love 50 year-old gay men in Abercrombie and Fitch. It’s desperate. It’s an over-identification with the cute boys in the billboard. It’s false. There are hot 50 year old for sure, but even that hot 50 year-old in Abercrombie is a desperate attempt to stay relevant long past the MTV demographic has expired. I’ll let you know what I do when I get there. If you see me with a Von Dutch cap turned sideways, sign me up for lethal injection or at the least a mild shock therapy. Hopefully by that time, I’ll be happy with here, and not care about there. Here’s to hoping.
My face continues to slide, and it will. Aging doesn’t stop. All you can hope for is a few expressions of disbelief when someone younger finds out you’re the age you’re at. "Oh god, I thought you were 27!" "Me", I’d reply, mock surprised. "No. I’m not. Now, seven years, ago, maybe, but no, I’m 34." As I’m saying this I think of the at home peel I have sitting in my medicine cabinet. The bowls of blueberries and other age defying fruits that I readily ingest. The way I hang from my ankles like a bat when I sleep at night. How I grow disappointed in myself that I can’t sleep like Cleopatra in a tomb and instead toss and turn and lie on my face, adding to my wrinkle potential. And then I think something slightly deeper than the shallow waters I’m wading in. That this focus on the external, the lines in my face that will be deep enough to hold coins (have you seen my dad?), is all subterfuge -- a form of resistance that keeps me worrying about the inevitable and uncontrollable and from not achieving the tangible. It’s bullshit and it’s got to stop. Here’s to being here and not there. It begins today.
Friday, July 27, 2007
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
From The Desk of My Dad
Barbara Ann Marie Lorio. It wasn’t intentional that I married a woman who has the same first, middle and confirmation name as my first wife. Not at all. I guess when you think about it, it wasn’t intentional that I’m named after my father and my son is named after me. I like to think of these things as serendipitious coincides that I had a spefiic influence and control over. And when your two wives have the same name, there's a certain emotional getting over of the first one I didn't have to do. When I was a boy I had several cats with the same name. One would die, and get a new one and give it the same name. Replacment pussy.
Some people might argue that we, my father and I, wanted little spitting images of ourselves. But when it was abundantly clear that my little spitting image was more interested in Sonny and Cher for the Bob Mackie gowns and lively banter and witty repartee and not Cher’s ass, I pretty much gave up on molding him in my likeness and turned to my daughter, immediately shoving a ball and mitt into her eager little hands. Goddam it, I was going to a baseball game that my son was going to play at even if that son was my daughter. And shit, she’s my best friend. Even if she hasn’t talked to me since I got married to Barbara 2: Electric Boogaloo.
I like to tell myself that it’s not because of me that the family has fallen apart since the divorce, because it’s absolutely not. I never once expected my daughter to rifle through the desktop on the computer we shared when we all lived at her mother’s house. I never expected her to find that email from Barbara 2: Electric Boogaloo about that blow job – which by the way was euphemistic and a metaphor for something and not actually what any of you might think it is. Sometimes when somebody writes at three o’clock in the morning in an IM that they want to tickle your balls with a feather and blow you retarded, they don’t necessary mean it. And Barbara 2 is not a bar cow cuntrag that my daughter has often called her, but quite a lovely thrice married woman who vaguely resembles George Washington, when her hair goes gray and Captain Caveman when she colors it, who may or may not know her siblings because and these are her words not mine – "My father fucked all of the immigrant factory works he employed." Except the guys. Her father didn’t fuck guys.
That’s left to my son. Who, did I mentioned took the buns out of his foot long Princess Leah and gave her a fabulous cut and color right before the one dinner party I had with some of the guys from the firehouse, back in the 1978? I use fag speak like "fabulous" because I support my son’s gayness. Well lets just say we never had another one of those parties and let’s also just say that no one bought the lie that my wife tried to float that my son was my daughter who was just a little bit butch. She was mortified by the kids early predilection for all things fag. Imagine me still being married to wife one, with her feet planted firmly in the soil of delusion – which blossomed wild and ravenously the longer we stayed married and the more my son cranked his Madonna collection and spent hours in front of that TV switching from Designing Women and The Golden Girls. Funny shows, but even I felt like sucking a dick after an hour or two. The kid was drawing large silhouetted pants suits for Delta Burke. And my wife ignored this. Ignored it!
That was the problem with our marriage, I was the realistic one and my kid’s mother, she was the one out there. I mean really out there. I, on the other had was able to recognize, through my dry heaves, that the men calling my house asking for my son were probably one of the many smooth Asian, puerto rican or black men (because they just couldn't white, could they?) he was having group sex with and probably getting infected with all kids of sexually transmitted diseases. But I also realized, that it was more than likely a passing phase and once the right woman came along, he’d rejoin the ranks of heterosexuality and make his father proud. And maybe he’d finally get over my asking him to begin going by his middle name, for some, you know, autonomy. I mean look at the freak David Bowie’s kid. He named him Zowie Bowie. And now he goes by Randolph. Randolph Bowie. Or Matlida. With a half a fag father like David Bowie, a boy can be given a girls name and it’s okay. Fruits. So Tom the 3rd shouldn’t feel bad by going by another name. The time’s run out on the family name. The pride in it is gone. I tell this to Barbara 2 and she feels there doesn’t need to be two living Tom Lorios. It’s just weird. She agrees.
Some people might argue that we, my father and I, wanted little spitting images of ourselves. But when it was abundantly clear that my little spitting image was more interested in Sonny and Cher for the Bob Mackie gowns and lively banter and witty repartee and not Cher’s ass, I pretty much gave up on molding him in my likeness and turned to my daughter, immediately shoving a ball and mitt into her eager little hands. Goddam it, I was going to a baseball game that my son was going to play at even if that son was my daughter. And shit, she’s my best friend. Even if she hasn’t talked to me since I got married to Barbara 2: Electric Boogaloo.
I like to tell myself that it’s not because of me that the family has fallen apart since the divorce, because it’s absolutely not. I never once expected my daughter to rifle through the desktop on the computer we shared when we all lived at her mother’s house. I never expected her to find that email from Barbara 2: Electric Boogaloo about that blow job – which by the way was euphemistic and a metaphor for something and not actually what any of you might think it is. Sometimes when somebody writes at three o’clock in the morning in an IM that they want to tickle your balls with a feather and blow you retarded, they don’t necessary mean it. And Barbara 2 is not a bar cow cuntrag that my daughter has often called her, but quite a lovely thrice married woman who vaguely resembles George Washington, when her hair goes gray and Captain Caveman when she colors it, who may or may not know her siblings because and these are her words not mine – "My father fucked all of the immigrant factory works he employed." Except the guys. Her father didn’t fuck guys.
That’s left to my son. Who, did I mentioned took the buns out of his foot long Princess Leah and gave her a fabulous cut and color right before the one dinner party I had with some of the guys from the firehouse, back in the 1978? I use fag speak like "fabulous" because I support my son’s gayness. Well lets just say we never had another one of those parties and let’s also just say that no one bought the lie that my wife tried to float that my son was my daughter who was just a little bit butch. She was mortified by the kids early predilection for all things fag. Imagine me still being married to wife one, with her feet planted firmly in the soil of delusion – which blossomed wild and ravenously the longer we stayed married and the more my son cranked his Madonna collection and spent hours in front of that TV switching from Designing Women and The Golden Girls. Funny shows, but even I felt like sucking a dick after an hour or two. The kid was drawing large silhouetted pants suits for Delta Burke. And my wife ignored this. Ignored it!
That was the problem with our marriage, I was the realistic one and my kid’s mother, she was the one out there. I mean really out there. I, on the other had was able to recognize, through my dry heaves, that the men calling my house asking for my son were probably one of the many smooth Asian, puerto rican or black men (because they just couldn't white, could they?) he was having group sex with and probably getting infected with all kids of sexually transmitted diseases. But I also realized, that it was more than likely a passing phase and once the right woman came along, he’d rejoin the ranks of heterosexuality and make his father proud. And maybe he’d finally get over my asking him to begin going by his middle name, for some, you know, autonomy. I mean look at the freak David Bowie’s kid. He named him Zowie Bowie. And now he goes by Randolph. Randolph Bowie. Or Matlida. With a half a fag father like David Bowie, a boy can be given a girls name and it’s okay. Fruits. So Tom the 3rd shouldn’t feel bad by going by another name. The time’s run out on the family name. The pride in it is gone. I tell this to Barbara 2 and she feels there doesn’t need to be two living Tom Lorios. It’s just weird. She agrees.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
"My Dog is Racist"
I've begun taking my dog Samson for walks and it's been a fantastic way to meet other dogs and dog owners. I met a gay couple and their Yorkie who spoke of their dog and them selves in the first, second and third person. Their dog was precious in a way that made me want sqeeze it to see if it pooped cotton candy. It didn't. I met a straight girl who warned me to keep away from her Lilo & Stich looking pooch because, "He's a biter," she said as she made a clawed grab at my face. Woof.
"One night he bit my nose and I gushed blood all over my pillow. I needed stiches. It was very bad of him, wasn't? Wasn't it?"
She said this to the dog and he stared intently at her, as if he imagined her head a pork chop enticing him to take a nibble. He was a rescue dog but it seemed she'd benefit from a rescue as well. I've also met several pugs -- there's one name Louie whose owner didn't get my sarcasm when I responded that I gave my dog Quaaludes when she commented how calm he was.
Generally my dog walking excursions have been lovely. It's a pretty simple formula: Walk cute dog, meet many people. Recently, though, these excursions have taken a much darker tone. I met the town drunk, a "professional dog walker" who's rumored to tie each dog to various doors in his apartment while he goes and gets hammered at PJ O'Shitteries. He gave me some dog training advice that sounded vaguely like, "Dfawgs, dfawgs...slippers and rotten kotex assumption." Which I took as a warning. I met an older Filipino gent who, after mooning over my dog, grabbed my shoulder and said, "You work out, you need massage, I do massage in my apartment, free." He love me long time. I also met a dog owner who told me in a hushed tone that her dog was a racist. Really? A racist dog?
"My dog doesn't like black dogs." I knew where this was going.
"Oh." That's me, increduosly.
"Or...." looks around and whispers,"...black people."
This was an older German woman, with a thick German accent --just the right age to remember first hand a certain kind of intolerance popular circa WWII.
"I couldn't get him groomed because the groomer was black."
"Really?" Me again. I don't believe this. But I don't challenge it either. I'm too concerned with being polite than challenging her. I could have just said, "Well my dog doesn't like racists," and walked away.
Instead I imagined this woman five years earlier in a KKK hood placing a smaller hood over her puppy. I imagined her dog in his little matching hood dancing around a cross and practicing his new trick --woofing "white power." I go to the surreal when I should be angry. It's not working anymore.
We parted ways and I realized how profoundly stupid her statement was. Did she actually believe her dog was racist from his own free will? Dogs absorb so much -- I see it with my 4 month old puppy every day. When I'm sad, he's sad. When I'm elated, he is too. When I create a profile called DONKYHUNGXLG to stalk my ex on a website he's not even on, my dog is ashamed for and with me. And so I imagined my older German friend transmitting her own fear of black people straight to her young puppy, a telegraph of specific stranger anxiety that lasted until this day.
So far my puppy isn't afraid of any specific type of person. But I'm not sure I am either. Although I did almost cry a little the first time I saw a middle eastern woman in a full birka. She was driving down the road coming toward me in a black SUV. All I saw were her eyes. She looked liked a slightly crazed female Darth Vader and I almost crashed my car into a busload of children. Okay, women in birkas on an imaginary jihad scare me.
As for my dog, I am certain he fears two things -- the trash compactor and a cardboard cat in my hallway that he either thinks is real or recalls the bang it made when I accidentally kicked it over when I first brought him into the house when he was 12 weeks old. He'd never seen a cat before and so I've theorized that it's tied to his fear response of loud unfamiliar noises.
The next time this issue of racist dogs comes up, and I'm sure it will -- it's happened twice already -- I'll turn it around a bit. I'll ask flat out about how the owner feels about; black people, Mexicans, gays, meter maids or who ever is being maligned. Because I can't contain the stupidity anymore. And can't collude with it either. My silence gives permission and surely there's some crime in that as well. Remember, it's not the dog who's afraid, it's the owner, unless of course, the offending person raped or mugged the dog. If the said person is a dog rapist, then the dogs fear is understandable. Although, if your dog is getting raped by anybody other than you, there's a bigger problem at hand here.
"One night he bit my nose and I gushed blood all over my pillow. I needed stiches. It was very bad of him, wasn't? Wasn't it?"
She said this to the dog and he stared intently at her, as if he imagined her head a pork chop enticing him to take a nibble. He was a rescue dog but it seemed she'd benefit from a rescue as well. I've also met several pugs -- there's one name Louie whose owner didn't get my sarcasm when I responded that I gave my dog Quaaludes when she commented how calm he was.
Generally my dog walking excursions have been lovely. It's a pretty simple formula: Walk cute dog, meet many people. Recently, though, these excursions have taken a much darker tone. I met the town drunk, a "professional dog walker" who's rumored to tie each dog to various doors in his apartment while he goes and gets hammered at PJ O'Shitteries. He gave me some dog training advice that sounded vaguely like, "Dfawgs, dfawgs...slippers and rotten kotex assumption." Which I took as a warning. I met an older Filipino gent who, after mooning over my dog, grabbed my shoulder and said, "You work out, you need massage, I do massage in my apartment, free." He love me long time. I also met a dog owner who told me in a hushed tone that her dog was a racist. Really? A racist dog?
"My dog doesn't like black dogs." I knew where this was going.
"Oh." That's me, increduosly.
"Or...." looks around and whispers,"...black people."
This was an older German woman, with a thick German accent --just the right age to remember first hand a certain kind of intolerance popular circa WWII.
"I couldn't get him groomed because the groomer was black."
"Really?" Me again. I don't believe this. But I don't challenge it either. I'm too concerned with being polite than challenging her. I could have just said, "Well my dog doesn't like racists," and walked away.
Instead I imagined this woman five years earlier in a KKK hood placing a smaller hood over her puppy. I imagined her dog in his little matching hood dancing around a cross and practicing his new trick --woofing "white power." I go to the surreal when I should be angry. It's not working anymore.
We parted ways and I realized how profoundly stupid her statement was. Did she actually believe her dog was racist from his own free will? Dogs absorb so much -- I see it with my 4 month old puppy every day. When I'm sad, he's sad. When I'm elated, he is too. When I create a profile called DONKYHUNGXLG to stalk my ex on a website he's not even on, my dog is ashamed for and with me. And so I imagined my older German friend transmitting her own fear of black people straight to her young puppy, a telegraph of specific stranger anxiety that lasted until this day.
So far my puppy isn't afraid of any specific type of person. But I'm not sure I am either. Although I did almost cry a little the first time I saw a middle eastern woman in a full birka. She was driving down the road coming toward me in a black SUV. All I saw were her eyes. She looked liked a slightly crazed female Darth Vader and I almost crashed my car into a busload of children. Okay, women in birkas on an imaginary jihad scare me.
As for my dog, I am certain he fears two things -- the trash compactor and a cardboard cat in my hallway that he either thinks is real or recalls the bang it made when I accidentally kicked it over when I first brought him into the house when he was 12 weeks old. He'd never seen a cat before and so I've theorized that it's tied to his fear response of loud unfamiliar noises.
The next time this issue of racist dogs comes up, and I'm sure it will -- it's happened twice already -- I'll turn it around a bit. I'll ask flat out about how the owner feels about; black people, Mexicans, gays, meter maids or who ever is being maligned. Because I can't contain the stupidity anymore. And can't collude with it either. My silence gives permission and surely there's some crime in that as well. Remember, it's not the dog who's afraid, it's the owner, unless of course, the offending person raped or mugged the dog. If the said person is a dog rapist, then the dogs fear is understandable. Although, if your dog is getting raped by anybody other than you, there's a bigger problem at hand here.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Gay Dog, Gay Owner?
I was walking my puppy, Samson, last night when I intersected another dog walker and her cute Silky Terrier (it’s bigger than a Yorkie and way silkier). We talked for a minute or two and she told me how cute my dog was, which got no protest from me because he is friggin' adorable and smarter than most people you went to college with and your dad. I reached down to her dog, Elizabeth, she moved toward me, sniffed my hand and went about her business. Her owner was shocked.
"Usually Elizabeth is terrified of men. She's just terrified."
"Oh, well maybe she can feel my good vibe."
I remembered my childhood pet squirrels, Chip and Dale. They would sit on the window sill of our breakfast nook and look in on me. I'd take a bag of peanuts to the backyard and hand feed them until I exhausted my supply. I wasn't the only one in my family who had a way with the rodent. My great-grandfather, Clarence Bell, a mailman in Somersworth, NH, used to have a family of chipmunks that lived in the rocks in his basement that he hand fed from their infancy. I swear, there's pictures.
I used to pretend I could nonverbally communicate with my squirrels just by making eye contact. I also used to think I could will a tennis ball into a net or beyond the baseline, especially when Chris Everett-Lloyd was locked in a battle with Martina Navratilova. I also used to get Chris Evert-Lloyd confused with Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac. But that's another post.
"I just can't believe that Elizabeth likes you, she really is afraid of men."
Pause.
Me blinking. Her thinking.
Pause.
"Are you gay?" she said jokingly, with a you must be tone.
"Yes." I tried to say it immediately, to prove, I was comfortable with this easy and obvious acknowledgment. Tip: I'm not. Also another post.
And then her nonverbal eye communication -- "Well that explains it."
"You couldn't tell with my dog?"
I have a four month old Shih-Tzu, who's cuter than any kid you'll pop out, except Amanda Clayman's, especially if she's reading this. Then it was over and we went about our business. I was a gay gay non-man because her dog liked me.
A day later, I'm mad. Because what happened is an example of the way some straight women (even some fag hags) view gay men. We’re seen as less than "men". I hate to break it to you ladies, you your dog does not have gaydar. It's a dog. They just respond well to kind people. That's it.
I admit, when I first got Samson, I joked that my dog only liked gay men and straight women. But he’d only met gay men and straight women. Then Samson met my sister's boyfriend. Not gay. And his breeder, Mark, wasn’t gay either. I have realized that my dog is more reserved around straight men I meet on the street. But that's in response to a straight man's reserve toward him. I read many straight men's response to my dog. I get it. When a dog looks like an Ewok, Gizmo and the Olsen Twins it's hard not to froth like a strawberry smoothie with cotton candy frosting. Samson is that cute. More secure straight men can admit it and then punch themselves in the balls to compensate for their lapse. "We tough." Other less secure straight may tense up and get a look like they might want to kill a busload of retarded children with a crossbow. Secretly they want to melt, too. Instead they act macho, realizing a crack in their facade could compromise their status as unadulterated pussy fucking men.
So I ‘m a little mad. This women intended no harm, I truly believe that. But what it speaks to is how wrong we get it. The sensitive male gets pegged the homo. The homo male has to feel bad for liking the small, cute dog. The straight male can't like the cute dog for fear that he'll be labeled the homo. As my straight dad says, "It's pure bullshit." It speaks to our internalized homophobia and what "gay" and "straight" means to us – especially the older we get.
There are several pre-teen boys on my floor. They've yet to be touched by the severe straight acting expectations that will get placed on them as the mature. Right now, they love my dog, think he’s cute and knock on my door to pet and hold him. It's sweet. I've never given thought to who may be gay or straight, I don't even think of myself as a sexual orientation when we're all sitting on the floor outside my apartment joking around and playing with the dog. I just enjoy the moment, free of societal expectations and implications. It brings me back to a time where I would enjoy feeding the squirrels and just being -- there was no anxiety, no fear, just freedom. This weekend, my dad comes from Florida to meet the dog. My guess is the dog's going to love him. If Samson does love him, I wonder if that will mean my dad's gay?
"Usually Elizabeth is terrified of men. She's just terrified."
"Oh, well maybe she can feel my good vibe."
I remembered my childhood pet squirrels, Chip and Dale. They would sit on the window sill of our breakfast nook and look in on me. I'd take a bag of peanuts to the backyard and hand feed them until I exhausted my supply. I wasn't the only one in my family who had a way with the rodent. My great-grandfather, Clarence Bell, a mailman in Somersworth, NH, used to have a family of chipmunks that lived in the rocks in his basement that he hand fed from their infancy. I swear, there's pictures.
I used to pretend I could nonverbally communicate with my squirrels just by making eye contact. I also used to think I could will a tennis ball into a net or beyond the baseline, especially when Chris Everett-Lloyd was locked in a battle with Martina Navratilova. I also used to get Chris Evert-Lloyd confused with Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac. But that's another post.
"I just can't believe that Elizabeth likes you, she really is afraid of men."
Pause.
Me blinking. Her thinking.
Pause.
"Are you gay?" she said jokingly, with a you must be tone.
"Yes." I tried to say it immediately, to prove, I was comfortable with this easy and obvious acknowledgment. Tip: I'm not. Also another post.
And then her nonverbal eye communication -- "Well that explains it."
"You couldn't tell with my dog?"
I have a four month old Shih-Tzu, who's cuter than any kid you'll pop out, except Amanda Clayman's, especially if she's reading this. Then it was over and we went about our business. I was a gay gay non-man because her dog liked me.
A day later, I'm mad. Because what happened is an example of the way some straight women (even some fag hags) view gay men. We’re seen as less than "men". I hate to break it to you ladies, you your dog does not have gaydar. It's a dog. They just respond well to kind people. That's it.
I admit, when I first got Samson, I joked that my dog only liked gay men and straight women. But he’d only met gay men and straight women. Then Samson met my sister's boyfriend. Not gay. And his breeder, Mark, wasn’t gay either. I have realized that my dog is more reserved around straight men I meet on the street. But that's in response to a straight man's reserve toward him. I read many straight men's response to my dog. I get it. When a dog looks like an Ewok, Gizmo and the Olsen Twins it's hard not to froth like a strawberry smoothie with cotton candy frosting. Samson is that cute. More secure straight men can admit it and then punch themselves in the balls to compensate for their lapse. "We tough." Other less secure straight may tense up and get a look like they might want to kill a busload of retarded children with a crossbow. Secretly they want to melt, too. Instead they act macho, realizing a crack in their facade could compromise their status as unadulterated pussy fucking men.
So I ‘m a little mad. This women intended no harm, I truly believe that. But what it speaks to is how wrong we get it. The sensitive male gets pegged the homo. The homo male has to feel bad for liking the small, cute dog. The straight male can't like the cute dog for fear that he'll be labeled the homo. As my straight dad says, "It's pure bullshit." It speaks to our internalized homophobia and what "gay" and "straight" means to us – especially the older we get.
There are several pre-teen boys on my floor. They've yet to be touched by the severe straight acting expectations that will get placed on them as the mature. Right now, they love my dog, think he’s cute and knock on my door to pet and hold him. It's sweet. I've never given thought to who may be gay or straight, I don't even think of myself as a sexual orientation when we're all sitting on the floor outside my apartment joking around and playing with the dog. I just enjoy the moment, free of societal expectations and implications. It brings me back to a time where I would enjoy feeding the squirrels and just being -- there was no anxiety, no fear, just freedom. This weekend, my dad comes from Florida to meet the dog. My guess is the dog's going to love him. If Samson does love him, I wonder if that will mean my dad's gay?
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