Me and the boys had a fun time this weekend, just the three of us (it was Cowgrit’s weekend to work at the hospital). Going to a couple of parks to play, going to the pool to swim, going to a picnic with his Cub Scout Pack, reading comic books, watching cartoons, playing Bionicles, playing Pokémon, so on and so forth.

The building permit for our new house just finished its trip through the red tape last week. It normally takes 3 weeks, but this took 7 weeks — so we’re 4 weeks behind schedule. OMG! We had our initial sit-down talk with the building supervisor this morning. I like him. Actual construction will be starting this week. Yay!

Our Disney World vacation is just two weeks away! Oh god, we need this fun, so much. I’m almost shaking in anticipation.

I really don’t have anything insightful, interesting, or even funny to say today, but I have to post something if just to bump the whole “The Gay Lifestyle” post series down the page. All the ads popping up here are for gay and lesbian cruises or dating sites. Someone coming here for the first time might think this is a gay-blog.

What do y’all think of how I broke that series up over several days, instead of posting it all in one or two longer posts? I didn’t initially intend to have it run five days, but there were some natural breaks in the narrative that let me spread it out for a week’s worth of posts.

Does breaking longer stories up over multiple days make for easier or more difficult reading? Is it helpful or annoying?

Bullgrit

Continuation of The Gay Lifestyle.

This guy came up and stood beside me for a moment before speaking. The moment couldn’t have been more than three or four seconds, but it felt a lot longer. Oh geez, this guy’s gonna hit on me, I winced. And he did.

“I see you lusting over him,” he said, meaning the current strip dancer.

“Not really,” I answered, “I’m not gay.”

I didn’t want to be an ass, here. I was trying to be polite while straight forward. I mean, after all, I was at a gay/lesbian club, so I had no right to be rude to a gay guy approaching me. And so far, for the couple of hours I’d been there, no one had made a move on me. (I figured my woman-shield had been working as planned.)

“You’re not gay?” he said. “What’s a straight guy doing at a gay bar?”

I avoided looking at him as I said, “I’m with my girlfriend.”

He made an obvious show of looking around me, and then noted, “Where is she at?”

“Yeah,” I sighed, “I think she went up to the bar. She’ll be back in a minute.” I hope.

He continued, “So what do you think of the dancer, as a straight guy?”

“Well,” I said, “he’s not in really good shape.”

“Yeah, they don’t get the high-end dancers for places like this,” he said.

“And,” I said, “he’s kind of staring off into space. I thought the dancers were supposed to play to the crowd.”

“He’s not gay,” he said, “so he’s not really into it tonight.”

He continued to chat, friendly, not aggressive. This experience taught me something about personal interaction that I have never forgotten. No matter how much someone doesn’t want to have anything to do with you, if you are friendly, polite, and persistent, you can win that someone over. In the five minutes this guy stuck there with me and chatted, he got me to actually like him, despite my initial revulsion over being hit on by a gay guy.

He was sort of becoming a new buddy. I even eventually turned to face him as we talked, rather than continuing to keep my eyes averted and my expression neutral. It was like just talking with any other guy, in any other venue. We could have been chatting about watching a baseball game or listening to an opera (two things I have about as much interest in as watching male strippers — all not exciting to me).

“Well,” he said, to end the encounter, “I hope you enjoy the club with your girlfriend.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Just don’t ever tell a gay man that your not gay,” he advised.

“Huh,” I said, “OK, but why?”

“It’s a turn on.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Have a good night,” he said. He patted me on the chest and then turned and walked away.

The pat on the chest surprised me.

A moment later, all three of my female companions came back to me. “Sorry we left you alone, there.”

“Yeah,” I said, slightly perturbed at them. “I got hit on.”

“We saw it.”

Turns out, they hadn’t meant to leave me alone, against their promise, but when they saw the guy talking with me, they decided as a group, to watch how the situation played out. Errr.

Anyway, nothing else interesting occurred for me at the gay and lesbian club that night. We didn’t stay much longer, and I never went to such a place again. If the experience did anything for me other than give me a fun story to tell, I guess it disensitized me to any “fear” of gay men.

Bullgrit

Continuation of The Gay Lifestyle.

Turned out that the high-density crowd at the club that night was unusual for a regular Saturday night. There was an event for the night that the girls who’d brought me hadn’t expected: male strippers.

Thinking back on this whole evening, now, I see how it was really turning out to be like a script from an unimaginative sitcom. I mean, getting me to go along to a gay/lesbian night club is slightly funny, but to then throw in a male stripper review, well, that was really pushing into the ridiculous. Come on, who writes this kind of plot?

After midnight, the stripper show started. I basically knew what to expect of a male strip show just from cultural osmosis. The guys came out, in turn, dressed as cops, construction workers, etc. During their individual dance, they took off their clothes down to their g-strings, and humped the air.

It wasn’t anything unusual for what it was, I guess, but two things did surprise me. First, the dancers were not in the perfectly buff shape that I expected. I mean, they were far more muscular than I was, but they didn’t have the ripped definition I thought they were supposed to have. A couple actually looked like they hadn’t worked out in a while; some fat had layered over their muscles. A couple showed no six-pack abs at all. That’s kind of pathetic for strip dancers, no?

Second, some of the dancers had a thousand-mile stare. They didn’t even look down at the audience. They just did their moves as by practice, with no audience interaction at all.

The gay men had moved up to the stage, and the lesbian women had fallen back to the tables. I was standing between the back of the men and the front of the women, supposedly with at least one of my female companions.

They had promised that they wouldn’t leave me alone in the club. But, as would be written in a bad sitcom plot, of course, I had been momentarily abandoned, on my own. And that’s when a guy approached me.

Continued: The Gay Lifestyle part 5

Bullgrit

Continuation of The Gay Lifestyle.

My friend and the sister rejoined us with their drinks. The four of us stood in the crowd talking, looking around, and generally doing the nothing that is hanging out at a club. Eventually, we wanted to dance, so we went up on the dance floor as a foursome and danced gaily (again, pun intended).

After a while, the DJ put on a slow song. The sisters stepped off the dance floor, but I snagged my friend and we stayed. We were the only boy-girl couple on the dance floor. OK, now I have some idea of how a gay/lesbian couple feels at a normal night club. It really did feel kind of weird. I felt like everyone was staring at us, but really, they probably weren’t.

Most of the same-sex couples slow dancing were just dancing close and talking in each others’ ear, enjoying some slow time with each other. Nothing shocking — I had already gotten over the mild first-contact shock of seeing men arm-in-arm with men, and women arm-in-arm with women. But there were two slow-dancing women right next to me and my friend who were . . . getting “closer,” shall we say.

Everyone was fully dressed. But still. To all the men reading this and wondering all the questions I bet your wondering, let me just answer with, “Yes.”

My friend was a bit embarrassed by the girls next to us. I didn’t verbally question her embarrassment, but it did cross my mind, You’re bi, shouldn’t we both be having the same thoughts about that scene?

After the slow song, we rejoined the sisters. We all danced some more, talked some more, and they drank some more. The next slow song had me dancing with the straight sister. The “closer” girls were slow dancing again, but they were much more calm than before.

“They finished up in the ladies’ room,” my dance partner told me. She had seen them come out of one of the stalls together while she had been in the room.

“Just like that,” I commented.

“Yeah,” she said, “I guess that’s a benefit.”

Continued: The Gay Lifestyle part 4

Bullgrit