[Ed’s Note: This article contains content that some may find offensive.]

Whle I admittedly missed some of my straights, this year, I happily spent my Super Bowl with a buncha homos right here in Long Beach—and it was the best, most welcoming stark contrast to last year’s so-called festivities than I could possibly imagine. 

I have never been the victim of what many describe as the “straight-person-accidental-discrimination phenomena,” wherein a straight person—though s/he is clearly supportive of LGBTQers and their attached issues—inadvertently becomes discriminatory due to their overt obsessiveness with the fact that one is gay. It’s much like the white person consistently referring to someone of color as black—”You’re black so that makes sense”—or attaching their color to some inherent spectrum running through space where all people of color are the same—”Do you know him? He’s black too.“

I love my straights: they have supported me, enlightened me, made me (yup, every gay was made by a straight couple—go figure), and even fought for me. And it is here where perhaps that, like much of the blessings in my life, I was spoiled. And when I walked into the home of one of my closest friend’s parents last year, I wasn’t expecting anything different: I had been here countless times, each time with two open arms to greet me, a sense of sarcasm and humor that ran amuck and paralleled my own.

When my best friend and I entered said home, we did the awkward I’m-gonna-say-hi-even-though-I-don’t-know-you-nor-care thing with all the randoms… And it started. 
 
“Oh, I wasn’t expecting you kind of guys to come. You do know what football is, right? Do you know what a quarterback is? Offensive and defensive lines?” At least she referred to us as guys. However, the tone in which the following questions were posed were guised with such a thick sense of belittlement and degradation that one’s gag reflex was hard to control. But per usual my calmness around the straight folk that try to be nice (they’re tryin’—gotta give ’em credit for that), I simply chuckled the thing off: who the hell cares? They’re used to watching Modern Family and thinking that’s all queers and ‘Mos. It’s cool, dude.
 
Then round two: a tall, Amazonian-like white woman with absurdly large tits and a voice that had clearly experienced a pack a day for twenty years points an accusing finger towards my best friend and his now-arrived boyfriend, who (bless his little South Asian heart and roots) looks young and sprite.
 
“Please tell me you like men, Brian,” her finger continuing to disturbingly caress and circle the space between her and the gay couple: she doesn’t want me to be like them. “I like men, Brian. Like my husband. An eight-inch rod. A MAN, Brian. Not boys. Tell your bestie he needs to not reinforce that thought about you gays. You don’t like boys, do you? You don’t seem like that type.”
 
I am not even sure where to begin with this litany of idiotic, inane statements—and this is just part one of round two. Was it the fact that she didn’t consider my best friend’s boyfriend a man? Or perhaps the fact that she paired the utterly archaic idea of homosexuality-as-pedophilia—and then blamed the reinforcement of that imbecilic idea on a consenting, of-age gay couple because she just somehow cannot control herself from separating that from a Mahoney at mass. 
 
Well, let’s get back to her word vomiting:
 
“I’m a wedding planner, Brian”—she repeated my name umpteen times as if it solidified her existence as well as her so-called points—”and I tell my girls getting married the same thing every time: you gotta give up a hole. You have three and they don’t deserve one. I gave this up”—she holds her finger up to her mouth, bulimic-style—”first thing. That’s right. No blow jobs for over twenty years and it feels great. So Brian, when you do find your man, what hole are you gonna give up?”
 
By this point, bafflement and bemusement do not even begin to break the bark off the tree. I slightly stuttered but managed to eek out a, “Well, I, I—I only have TWO holes so there’s little option as to which—”
 
“No, honey, which of the three?”
 
My face—which, for those who know me, does not hide its cold-hearted hidden veneer well when someone provides me a purpose to bring it out—was placid. My eyes, however, slightly cupped themselves in, squinting as if I could somehow make the tragic, middle-aged mess in front of me clearer. It didn’t work so my face went to its usual cold-hearted facade: Did this woman really just think that gay men have three holes?
 
“I am not a woman.”
 
Her surprise was—sadly and depressing as it is true—genuine. “That’s right. Oh, well, honey, I’d still give up one.” Her cackling laugh was nothing short of Lisa Lampanelli’s excitement over a Honeybaked ham and a glory hole in South Central.

Frustrated, bitter, and increasingly intolerant, I walk to the bar where one of my friends was serving as bartender for the evening. “I now know why you don’t hang out with women,” I told her—clearly my vitriol was closing in on my thought to become generalizing at its finest but I couldn’t help myself. Her response was affirming: “Yeah, ’cause they’re all putas.”

Round three (there needs to be an unwritten law: don’t bother a dude who is drinking whiskey on the rocks—he’ll approach you): some blonde, white twat who couldn’t kill a stereotype if she was a black Jewish lesbian saunters over with her vodka-whatever. Pausing dramatically, she drops the side of her head onto her right shoulder, her lips puckered like a bottom, and her eyebrows furrowed with a sense of empathy and sympathy that was as plastic and artificial as her tacky goo-goo-ga-ga voice, “Do you feel left out?”

I cannot reiterate my utter confusion—but this one I’m a little more used to. See, I can sit or stand anywhere, not speak a word, and be perfectly comfortable. Those annoying people, the ones who need to consistently hear the hyena-like projection of their own voices, often confuse this as discomfort and pose similar questions or believe that the book I am reading is a prop or that I really don’t wish to be alone or [insert extrovert-propaganda/pick-up-fails here]. This is where I thought she was going: I was standing quietly, drinking my whiskey, quite focused on the game (let’s be honest: that catch last year by Manningham was captivating).

“What do you mean?”

In a complete reversal of fortune, she mentions nothing of being a loner or introvert or what have you. Much in the same way the Amazonian waved her finger over towards my best friend and his boyfriend in pedophilic disgust, she points towards them with a lover’s sadness.

“Them.” She clasps her hands together, emphasizing that they’re in love, they have it all, The Notebook is real, marriage is the best thing on the planet, I can only exist with someone else. “Do you feel left out?”

I laughed not only at the basis of the question but also at the fact that she was even more unintelligent than I took her for considering I was expecting the usual. Smiling, I state, “No, I’m perfectly fine being single—”

“Wait, wait: you are gay, right?” The interruption was fascinating—did I give her an answer that a gay was not supposed to give her?—but before I could respond, she answered her own question, “We weren’t sure so we asked Shan’s mom and she said yeah. So you’re gay.” Thanks for the confirmation, twit.
 
I attempt to continue. “Yeah, so, as I said I’m quite content being single—I’m rather male in that sense. But if the right guy—”
 
“Ohmigosh, my gay brother is like a male too—well, at least I think he is. He’s gay too.” Yup, ya said it twice. “Here,” and out comes the fuckin’ iPhone. A boy pops up (emphasize boy) who could either go for a blonde lesbian or a Aryan brother Nazi. She flips, picture after picture.

More bafflement: “He really likes manly guys so you’ll totally like him.” Huh?

More: “See? He’s totally male.” I would hope so. “He’s—no joke—the number one handsbag salesperson in the country.” Wow, did that bitch really just say that?

More: A picture passes by, her brother perched on a rock at some beach a la Ariel in The Little Mermaid.

I awkwardly ask, “Was, um, was that him doing The Little Mermaid pose?” She beams with pride (rather cute, not gonna lie, but nonetheless: she’s trying to hook her brother up, not make him sound like he’s auditioning for Drag Race), “Totally. We love The Little Mermaid. You can be his Eric!”

And the icing: “Ugh, I can’t believe no one told me gays would be here—I would have totally brought him so you guys could have people to hang out with.”

The audacity of the layers of egregiousness, battiness, and incongruity are painfully obvious. Everything from errors of essentialist thinking—”You gays are all the same”—to downright displacement—”My brother likes you so you’ll like him and his handbag sales!”—made the conversation one of those pinnacle moments where one has to take a step back and realize that while an argument may seem self-explanatory in your head, one cannot put that argument on the backburner. Just because I know that my sexuality is not the epicenter of my identity and character (though it sadly is for some: case in point the ladies aforementioned), I cannot just assume that everyone knows that.

In the words of my Dad, “Common sense ain’t all that common.”

So the time has come for the redundant and the banal to rear its absolutely ugly mug: DEAR WORLD, I AM NOT PART OF THE INTERNATIONAL PETTING ZOO.
 
You have pushed this poor writer to write about shit we already know—but you displayed your lack of thought with such a lurid flair that I sadly have to go to tautologic reflection. As many I am sure have told you, I’m not here for you to gawk at and mock. You prove it only gets better-ish. So please, for the love and sanctity of everything intelligent, pick up a damn book, talk to an educated person, and step away from the The New Normal because it doesn’t mean you “understand.” You don’t. You don’t actually deserve to watch it because you don’t comprehend the idea that not everyone is the same—including those not like you.
 
Whew, now that I got that out, I’ll make sure next time I head on down to Orange County, I’ll sport heels to the Super Bowl party and grab my crotch. That should help them with their confusion—or at least make them shut up.