Stories from a man who fails to meet media expectations of what it means to be gay:
white, frivolous, over sexed yet sexless, shrill, single, stylish, a clown, unimportant, et al.

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Two scenes from a Friday spent in a halfhearted attempt at shopping for gifts.

Scene one:
Looking through a wall of discounted children�s books at a local indie bookstore chain, I overheard a conversation between two men standing at a table behind me.�

They were both in their early twenties.� One tall, pale white, and had a long scraggly goatee.� He was dressed in �ethnic� clothes, including a woolen Nepalese Sherpa hat and a scarf in Guatemalan colors.� His posture and clothes screamed, �I am young, I am hippie, I am at one with my downtrodden third world indigenous brothers and sisters.� Can you not feel my moral outrage?� It is tremendous!�

The other was a short, dark skinned, Latino man with strong Indian features, and had a long pony tail tightly wrapped in a leather thong. Except for a few paint stains splattered on his pants, he was dressed totally in black,.� His appearance did not scream, but it did plainly say that he was an artist, or at the very least that he wanted to be mistaken for one.

They were flipping through books, and one said in heavily accented English �This is exactly what we need!�� He then went on in a mixture of English and Spanish to describe something about astrology and proceeded to analyze the compatibility of their different friendships.� They talked for a while, with thick, heavy accents depending on if it was in English or Spanish, or more commonly, a mixture of the both.

After a few minutes of this, the shorter man started to analyze their relationship, happy that they were of compatible signs, happy that they made a good couple.�� When he noticed that I had moved on from the children�s books to a table nearer to them, he brought his voice down to a whisper, apparently correctly deciding that I could understand them.

I was tempted to tell him that I wasn�t intentionally listening in on them.� That it was just that I rarely heard anyone speaking Spanish at that store, that I was gay as well, and that regardless of whatever the book said, they were a cute couple, but I kept silent, deciding to allow us all the comfort of anonymity.

They passed by me when they left, and I noticed that they briefly held hands, interlocking fingers for a moment before going into a more crowded section of the store.

It�s sad that they couldn�t continue that small, quiet, moment of affection.
�

Scene two:
I was in a discount DVD store with different movies blaring over various TVs installed around the place.� Near the action flicks area of the store, Spiderman was bouncing around fighting Alfred Molina�s CGI mechanical arms.� I never saw the second Spiderman movie.� I intended to, but I just sort of never got around to actually doing it.� Besides, between the trailers, commercials, and a mountain of online comments, it was easy enough to forget this and think that I had.

I looked up at the screen at one point and saw a scene with a maskless Spiderman desperately trying to stop a speeding out of control subway train.� From what I understood, this was one of the many scenes where the hero gets unmasked, but in this case it did not matter because the average Joe New Yorkers he saved all agree to keep his identity a secret.�

There were many reactions to this online.� Depending on the writer, they varied from outrage (disgruntled fanboys), to folks remarking about the prospects of a movie studio working around having the big name star of a movie constantly wearing a face-obscuring mask, to indifference, to a thing relating the nonconsequence of a superheros unmasking as a metaphor for growing acceptance of gays and lesbians in society.

The one thing I had not read anywhere was a mention of the religious imagery used.� Spidey stands in front of the train with arms outstretched in great pain, and afterwards, the masses he suffered for and in doing so saved reverently take his body and rest it on the ground.� People NOT reacting to the idea of Spiderman as crucified Christ really surprises me, although I guess an argument could be made about it being a perfect Christmas gift?

�
More later,
nico
�

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