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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The second time I laughed so hard I fell on my...

The weather has been perfect the past several days. It has been warm with nice gentle breezes. Unfortunately I've been sick and haven't been able to enjoy it. Even worse, I think John has caught my cold. In addition Babe, one of the cats, had a vets appointment this weekend and has been put on medication, so pretty much the entire household is worse for wear these days. Rather than relate the thrilling details of my trying to cough up a lung while trying to give babe a pill, how about a story from my past instead.

I worked as a salesclerk in a bookstore for a while after I finished college. The job was just something to help pay the bills while I tried to figure out what I was actually going to do with my degree now that I had one. To be honest, it was a bit boring.

Now every Christmas the owners hired extra people to help out with the holiday rush. That year the manager Lucy, decided to hire a friend of hers. Let's call him Tom.

Tom had what could be charitably called poor hygiene. In other words, his breath smelled, his teeth were kind of brownish, his greasy hair was normally pulled back into a ponytail which had the effect of showing off his dandruff and he reeked of marijuana. All of this might have been manageable if he at least had worn clean clothes, but somehow he never did. Everything he wore to work seemed to have food stains on it somewhere.

Hygiene aside, he was also really obnoxious. My first conversation with him consisted of him explaining to me how I wasn't very smart. He made great first impressions that way. Generally, when he wasn't talking about how smart he was, he would talking about getting high. I don't think it's big surprise that I thought that Tom was a big loser as well as an obnoxious jerk.

Tom was also straight.

I wasn't closeted at work, so it was fairly easy for him to figure out that I wasn't.

I did try to be civil with him. Barely. I tended to avoid him whenever possible. He was good friends with the manager after all and I didn't want to get on her bad side. I wasn't the only employee who spent time being where he wasn't, but to be honest I'm not sure he ever noticed. Anyway, he stayed on as a part time employee after the holidays and spent most of his "working" hours hanging out with Lucy.

One Spring afternoon I was restocking titles in the science fiction section when one of the other workers came over to talk to me. Tina was normally a very "up" person, so I knew something was wrong when in a very serious tone of voice she asked if she could speak to me. Tina told me that she had spoken with Lucy that morning. After some prompting on my part, she related that Tom had found out that I was gay. In addition he was worried that I had a crush on him because of the way I treated him. Not only was I always so nice and friendly and chatty, but I was also constantly hovering around him. He was worried about what to do because he was straight after all and nothing was ever going to happen no matter how much I wanted it to. He was so worried that he told his good friend the manager about this so that she could talk to me and "let me down easy." However, instead of talking directly with me, Lucy spoke with Tina and asked her to "talk" with me.

I remember staring at Tina for a minute or so not believing a word she had just said, this had to be a really bad joke. It wasn't, she was serious. Tom thought I had a crush on him.

I remember thinking "Tom? What? I have a crush on that?"

I remember trying to say it out loud, but not being able to. My brain just sort of stopped. I was caught in sort of a repeating loop. I was thoroughly disgusted, I was amazed by his arrogance, I was appalled, I was disgusted some more.

I started laughing. I couldn't believe that the most repulsive person at the store could mistake my mumbling hello in his general direction as an impassioned plea for his love, or worse, his body. I started laughing so hard my sides started to hurt.

After several minutes of this I started to regain some control. I was giggling more than laughing now and was leaning against the bookshelves for support. Tina smiled a little at all of this, but I think that she was worried that I was drawing attention to what she had hoped to be a private conversation. People were starting to stare. She tried to end the conversation by asking "So it's not true, you don't have a crush on him?"

She didn't get the response she had hoped for. Instead of calmly saying no, I started laughing again. I started guffawing. I laughed so hard that I lost my balance and fell down. Falling made me laugh even harder. I think that Tina said that she would take that as a no, but to be honest, I have no idea what she said. I was laughing too hard to hear.

Tina and I were good friends and I think I owe her for that day. She was thoroughly embarrassed, but she stayed with me, nodding and smiling at bewildered customers, while I was literally rolling on the floor laughing like a maniac.

After a very long time, I managed to pull myself together enough to get up off of the floor. Tina said that she would talk to our manager and explain that Tom had nothing to worry about. She also told me that I was lucky that Tom and Lucy were on their lunch break. Maybe I was lucky, maybe I wasn't.

I had heard jokes about how straight guys secretly thought that all gay guys were hot for them, but this was ridiculous. Tom thought I was "hot" for him because he was such a "hunk." He was even more self centered and arrogant than I had thought. Seeing my reaction would had taken him down several needed notches.

Lucy may have chastised me, or even have come up with an excuse to fire me for humiliating her friend, but who cared. I didn't. Not anymore. That incident made me realize that I needed to get out of there. Even if I had wanted to stay in retail, I didn't want to stay in a place were this was how management would deal with "personnel conflicts." Person A has a problem with person B, so lets get person C to talk to person B. Not a good way to inspire confidence in management.

I did end up leaving the bookstore a few months later. Eventually, a large discount book chain opened up a store on the same block and the much smaller independent store I used to work at went out of business. A couple of years after that, an even larger "Buns&noodles/ Bounders" type book chain opened up a store across the street and the discount place went out of business as well. I didn't laugh this time.

More later,

nico

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