The Real Fallout of the Larry Craig Scandal
So the GOP loses another guy to a sex-related scandal; big whoop. There is another major fallout from this whole thing that has me truly worried: I am now terrified to use the bathroom at an airport.
Why? Let me assure my readers that it is not out of homophobia (I may not like or approve of the lifestyle, but I'm certainly not afraid of them!). I'm not scared that some creepy old Senator is going to accost me in the bathroom in the quest for gay sex. Rather, I'm terrified that I myself will accidentally give off whatever these mystery "signals" are that apparently let one gay man (or undercover police officer) know that the man next to him is interested in a liaison of dubious nature. From what I can glean from the various reports, such things as "tapping one's foot" (which I do compulsively), positioning one's carry-on luggage "just so" (am I to forever obsess over accidentally putting my luggage in the "wrong" place now???), having a "wide stance" (at the urinal? in the stall? help!), or just "standing still" inappropriately can lead to arrest while in a restroom. And I'm not about to go do a Google search for "how to solicit gay sex in an airport bathroom", even if it IS so I can specifically avoid those behaviors -- I suspect Mrs. Red Shirt already worries enough with my strange fixation on "The Princess Bride" and an almost complete lack of interest in traditional "manly-man" areas such as sports, hunting, and tools, without piling it on with a suspect Google search list!
Stupid gay senator. Way to screw up my life, pal!
Why? Let me assure my readers that it is not out of homophobia (I may not like or approve of the lifestyle, but I'm certainly not afraid of them!). I'm not scared that some creepy old Senator is going to accost me in the bathroom in the quest for gay sex. Rather, I'm terrified that I myself will accidentally give off whatever these mystery "signals" are that apparently let one gay man (or undercover police officer) know that the man next to him is interested in a liaison of dubious nature. From what I can glean from the various reports, such things as "tapping one's foot" (which I do compulsively), positioning one's carry-on luggage "just so" (am I to forever obsess over accidentally putting my luggage in the "wrong" place now???), having a "wide stance" (at the urinal? in the stall? help!), or just "standing still" inappropriately can lead to arrest while in a restroom. And I'm not about to go do a Google search for "how to solicit gay sex in an airport bathroom", even if it IS so I can specifically avoid those behaviors -- I suspect Mrs. Red Shirt already worries enough with my strange fixation on "The Princess Bride" and an almost complete lack of interest in traditional "manly-man" areas such as sports, hunting, and tools, without piling it on with a suspect Google search list!
Stupid gay senator. Way to screw up my life, pal!
Labels: politics
posted by Benjamin at 9:41 AM
8 Comments:
In the interest of ensuring your safety in public restrooms, I found this little gem.
I got my first intro to the weird world of gay signaling at a Ramones concert back in the late 70s. I thought I'd be a little off-beat and campy by wearing a Boy Scout shirt to a punk concert. Holy fudge was that a mistake. I never got my butt squeezed anonymously by so many people in my life as I stood in the audience. The people standing around me were almost exclusively guys. The show was in a kind of seedy road house. I held my pee rather than risk the men's room.
My son, who actually is an Eagle Scout, now looks kind of like a hippy with long hair and scruffy beard, but under all that he has very boyish features. He has occasion to act offbeat when he goes out with his friends. One day he was heading out to some hippy thing or other and was wearing his Boy Scout shirt, probably with the same idea of being different that I'd had. I told him my story. He changed.
The same thing happened to me when I wore buttless chaps and fishnet hose to a biker bar. Who knew that was a "gay thing"?
Ben, you have summoned forth a disturbing image, and a long-suppressed memory. My wife and I went to Mardi Gras back in 1981. We went into a bar in the French Quarter to make a phone call. It turned out that the place was a gay bar. Leather uniforms, buttless chaps. The works. The rest of Bourbon St. seemed tame.
Dang, Marty... trolling for boy scouts at a punk concert and hanging out in gay biker bars in N'awlins... I'm glad there's a whole office between us.
Hey! I was with my wife. And she looks good in leather.
The whole Boy Scout thing. I should've known, but it was the 70s, before you were born, and before everybody was being bombarded with the whole gay culture thing.
I kid, I kid... actually, the whole "boy scout" thing does seems a little unpredictable -- after all, why isn't there a "scout master" Village Person if that's one of their "things"?
And walking into the gay bar -- well that's just funny right there. It wasn't called "The Blue Oyster", was it?
Funny you should mention that. I don't remember what it was called, and the place looked unremarkable compared to any other place in the FQ. But once, Chris was taking a bunch of us around on a tour of San Francisco (he lived in Berekely at the time.) We were walking around in North Beach, one of the many gay sections of that gay old town. There was some kind of shop on the corner that had a logo of a white bird. The name of the place was "The White Swallow".
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