The Gays Need To Get With It

I am still on the search for a fabulous, gay friend in Seattle. Male, of course.

This closeted gay thing is getting old and since I can't find any good metrosexuals to hob-nob with, the idea of outing people is starting to become more and more attractive.

I even tried it out for size last Saturday night. Just because.

I was out with my new friend Tara, who is also from Connecticut, and I left her mortified when I called it like it is. At this point it is unclear whether Tara will ever hang out with me again, but that's okay. We're in a crisis situation here.

We went barhopping in the part of my 'hood, lower Queen Anne, which is where the young, trendy people hang. The yuppies are just up aways, on the "hill." Believe me when I tell you it's two different worlds. I prefer my yuppies up on the hill.

When we arrived at Peso's, our last watering hole of the evening, we found two seats at the end of the bar. Next to us were three, pretty gay-looking, straight-acting guys. While Tara would later shriek at me that I have no filter and cannot just tell someone they are gay, that's actually not quite how it went down.

One of the three guys, a cute, short little guy in a green sport's jersey was about to pass me on his way out. I touched his arm and said, "You should live in LA." Little guy stopped dead in his tracks. "Why do you say that?" he asked. "Because," I said, "you have an LA vibe." That's all I said. "You have an LA vibe." I was being nice.

I didn't say, because you are obviously gay and West Hollywood would be the best neighborhood for you to live in. I just said he had an LA vibe and left it at that. Then he asked me "are you saying I'm gay"? How he made the correlation between LA and gay came from his own mind, not mine. Mind you, I wasn't trying to be the Gay Whisperer and wasn't trying out any of my extrasensory powers on short little guy.

Of course I answered "yes." I'm an honest Injun. That's when he told me, "I'm not gay."

Okay, if you say so was what I was thinking. He repeated it, about four or five times before he left. But, before he departed, he made sure he told me he thought he came across as rugged and manly. Rugged and manly?

You should be proud of me, because I did not laugh. Even though I wanted to. Desperately. It took everything I had to keep a straight face, because short little guy was about as rugged and manly as...well, me.

He looked like he was about to cry before he ran out of Peso's. That's when Tara laid into me. What did I do that's so terrible? Maybe ten years from now, when short little guy is still in denial, married to a woman and unable to get out of the opium den he's chained himself to in Thailand, he'll remember my words and they will set him free. Or maybe not. The bottom line? It's not my problem. I just tell it like it is.