We Got Him!

Mets sign winning 'Han'

Getting Hit on by a Gay Man at a Redneck Bar

Redneck Pub* is the last place a person would expect to meet a flamboyant gay man, let alone get hit on by one. Redneck Pub has NFL pennants, NASCAR decals, a pool table and dartboard, Vietnam POW-MIA drapings, live country bands and a dance floor, and a steady diet of Michelob Ultra, Miller Lite, and Budweiser. Yet on Friday, the unwanted advances of a gay man are exactly what happened.

I went to Redneck’s with my friend Angela. I was the designated driver, but at the start, I still had fun. We even played darts with a couple of locals. Soon, the monotony of middle-aged mustachioed men was delightfully disrupted by the entrance of the most beautiful woman I have seen to date in my year and a half living in the North Country.

If I were a romance novelist, I’d give a metaphor-filled description, starting with, “Her flowing curly blond locks radiated…” But I am terrible at describing, so I will break the unwritten bad writer no-no by comparing her to a celebrity. I will just say, “She was in her early 20’s, and looked kind of like Taylor Swift, and just as beautiful.”

She walked in with her slightly less hot, but still very attractive, female friend (no problem there). But right behind followed their two good looking mid 20’s male companions (darn!). No sooner did I glimpse her, than I got tapped on the shoulder by a man who looked like Al Franken. “Al” (not his real name, but I will call him “Al” for anonymity purposes), was very friendly and very flamboyant. He talked like Stuart Smalley. He introduced me to the man and woman standing with him. They were not with him, just people he’d met, like me. I though, ‘Okay, he’s a friendly gay man introducing himself to everyone since he likes to make conversation. No problem.’

My mind (and my steady shifting glances) was still on the curly blond haired beauty. To my delight, Al called her over. “Come here. I just HAVE to talk to you.”

The conversation was interesting. “You know, you’re gorgeous, right?”…“I LOVE that jacket! I designed it myself!”

She responded to his compliments with head nods, thank you’s, and delighted (‘delight’ and its variations will be my overused word for this essay) blushes that augmented her natural beauty.

Al introduced “Taylor” (what I shall call her for purposes of anonymity) to me and the others in our group. ‘This is great,’ I thought. ‘The gay man is going to help me talk to the pretty girl. Too bad she is with those guys over there, but it’s always good to get practice talking to beautiful women, whether they are available or not.’

Of course, I wasn’t sure what to say. ‘So, you come here often?’ roamed through my head, until I quickly swatted that pathetic cliché out of my mind. ‘Are you from here?’ wouldn’t work either, since she already told Al she lived in Ogdensburg. Like I usually do, I froze up, didn’t know what to say, so I just said, “Hi, I’m Sean,” and smiled.

Then, Al re-grabbed the reins of the conversation and took things in a great direction. He asked Taylor, “So which one of those pieces of man-candy are you with?”

“None of them,” said Taylor. “I’m single. They aren’t my type.”

“We need to talk,” said Al. Al and Taylor went off to chat, and I went to the bathroom. I played some more darts with my friend Angela and the locals. Soon, Al came strolling over. He asked me about my hair, what I did with it, complimented me on it, and even suggested where I should go to get it cut and styled. He even asked me how old he looked, and since he was acting like a middle aged woman, I treated him like one, and gave him friendly compliments, just like I would to placate a middle aged woman. “You can’t be older than 35,” I said, even though it was obvious he was in his 40’s.

“I’m 49!” he said.

I thought to myself, ‘this is fun. He noticed me glancing over at Taylor, and he came over to help me out. He’s going to be my “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” helper. He’s giving me style tips so I can go talk to Taylor.’ And, I certainly needed all the style tips I could use, seeing as a pack of 20-something-year-old meatheads swarmed around Taylor, all vying for attention. I had one of those jungle kingdom flashbacks, just like Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls. If I was going to break through the lion pack and assert myself as King of the Jungle, I had better listen to Al and play along.

“Have you ever heard of this restaurant in Potsdam?” asked Al. “It has nice Italian food, a great wine selection, and a full Starbuck’s coffee bar.”

‘Wow, what a nice guy,’ I thought. ‘He’s even giving me dating suggestions.’ ‘Gay guys have so much style, it’s a good thing they aren’t into girls,’ my thoughts continued, ‘or we straight guys would never get any dates with the ladies.’

“So, you wanna go sometime?” asked Al. Wow! That question was a huge sucker punch to my naiveté. I just gave him a blank stare.

It got worse. He put his hand on my arm and said, “Ooh! Do you work out?”

I bluntly said, “No.” My mind started going into hyper-drive. ‘What did I do wrong? How could I have possibly led this man on? Do I exude Gay-Dar? Do I really need to wear a “Do Not Enter” sign on my back just above my pants? Did I make a mistake—is the name of this bar not “Redneck’s” but “Bathhouse”?’

Now, I’ve always thought of myself as tolerant. Yes, my beliefs on dating are similar to the teachings of my Catholic faith. But, I am against gay bashing. I am against employment discrimination. I think “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” should be abolished and gays should be allowed to serve openly in the military. I think gay and lesbians should be able to do anything they want in their personal life, free from state interference. And, just as I would never judge or condemn a straight couple living together outside of marriage, even though I believe it is wrong, I would never dream of judging gays in person, no matter my personal beliefs on the lifestyle. I believe gay couples should receive government benefits, even if I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman.

I had never before thought of myself as homophobic. I had always enjoyed meeting gay men and lesbians. I had always found gay flamboyance (and—yes—I know not all gays are flamboyant. Probably most aren’t. I’m just saying…) entertaining. But, I had never been hit on before. I was uncomfortable and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to just come out and say, ‘I am into women,’ because, maybe he really wasn’t hitting on me (maybe he just wanted to make a new friend. Doubtful, but still…), and that would be interpreted as awkward and rude. Also, I had already told him my age (27). I thought it was creepy that someone 22 years older than me—someone old enough to be my parent!—was hitting on me. I mean, “middle-aged-man” is the exact opposite category from the type of people I am attracted to. I like 20 to 30 year old women.

If I were a woman, it would have been perfectly socially acceptable to flat out say, ‘you’re a creepy old man. Get away from me.’ But if I said that, it could come across as homophobic. So, I couldn’t just tell the truth—I am straight—since it might come across as awkward. I couldn’t point out the creepiness of the age dynamic since that might be interpreted as a homophobic excuse. And, I couldn’t lie and tell him that my friend Angela and I are dating, since I had already told him that Angela and I are just friends.

If Taylor, the beautiful curly haired blond, was not there, I would have lied and said Angela was my girlfriend. But I was hoping for the chance to talk to Taylor, so I had told the truth. Since I was the designated driver, I played that up and said I needed to get going, and after awhile, Angela and I were finally able to escape Al’s conversation and fake pouting at my reticience towards his advances, and we left without me getting the chance to talk to Taylor (who was still surrounded by the herd of every twenty-something male in the bar).

I am not a redneck gay basher. I am also not a 21st century enlightened tolerant man. I am probably smack dab in the middle, the embodiment of Seinfeld’s comment on gays, “…not that there’s anything wrong with that.” I am a typical male who tries to be tolerant and open minded, but is still slightly uncomfortable around gay men. I realize the flaw lies with me. But on the bright side, I used to always get made fun of in high school for wearing mismatching clothes. This proves my fashion sense most certainly has improved since then.


*Name of the bar changed for purposes of anonymity AND to give a better picture of the environment.

Huckabee and Edwards are Catty Mean Girls

“Change over experience,” scream the pundits, newsmen, and Monday Morning Quarterbacks after Thursday night’s Iowa caucuses. Republican Mike Huckabee and democrat Barack Obama, the first round winners in this year’s presidential race, are viewed as agents of change. Frank Rich called it in his Sunday New York Times column, "They Didn't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow". But, it is not Obama who should be lumped in with Huckabee. It is Huckabee’s fellow prophet of doom, democrat John Edwards, who should be linked, says Washington Post columnist George Will, in "Iowa's Histrionic Hucksters".

There are two wings in the modern Republican Party; the social conservative wing, and the economic, Wall Street, conservative wing. One, as Will says, wants to “take back this nation for Christ,” and the other wants to “take back the nation for James Madison.” These two wings tolerate one another, so long as they allow the other to exist. It is an uneasy alliance that mixes rich businessmen who secretly pay for their teenage daughter’s abortions with evangelical Christians who probably think Dow Jones is a local preacher.

But Mike Huckabee, the modern William Jennings Bryan (despite Will’s allusion of John Edwards to the famed lawyer/three-time presidential candidate), is a Christian populist who rejects the Wall Street message, simultaneously opposing the murder of unborn children (sorry for the blunt language; that is what it is) and favoring government spending to help the poor. He is on a messianic mission to save America. This man, outspent twenty to one by republican contender Mitt Romney, was able to beat the former Massachusetts governor, he of the heretical Mormon faith, through the grace of the One True God. Huckabee won, by “the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of 5,000 people.” George Will says, “God so loves Huckabee’s politics that He worked a Midwest miracle on his behalf? Should someone so delusional control nuclear weapons?”

John Edwards is no less messianic in his populism. Obama wants the establishment and the pandered-to masses to hold hands and sing kumbaya. Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton is the establishment. Edwards excoriates the establishment, speaking out against the supposed futility of working with the producers of corporate greed.

Could we call Edwards and Huckabee Old Testament-style populist prophets of doom? No. Edwards and Huckabee are not true prophets. They do not follow in the footsteps of Isaiah and Elijah, Micah and Amos, or the one man worthy of a messiah complex, Jesus Christ, the Messiah Himself. Huckabee and Edwards are Cady Heron, Regina George and Gretchen Wieners, Mean Girls who smile to each other’s face, but talk gossip behind the back. Huckabee and Edwards are typical teenage girls who act friendly, but throw the “bitch,” “slut,” and “whore” accusations around to improve their own fragile social standing.

Sure, Huckabee and Edwards speak out against the Man. They condemn corporate greed, and the fat cats who get rich off the poor. But, do they ever do this at fat cat meetings? No, they preach to the choir, to friendly crowds who buy into their message. They are not true prophets, but rather cowards. Those Old Testament prophets directed their message to the bad guys; they didn’t sit around talking about the bad guys to crowds of fawning admirers. Jesus didn’t say, “let’s go tell those Pharisees, I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword.” He told the bad guys themselves, “I bring a sword.”

Huckabee and Edwards are telling America to repent of its sinful, corporate greedy, ways. But, they aren’t telling “America” that. They are kissing America’s ass, and telling America we need to fight together some ephemeral enemy.

Sorry, Huckabee. Sorry, Edwards. You can’t fight the Man by pandering to the common man. If Huck and Edwards want to be prophets of change, they need to bring that message to those corporate baddies they believe are ruining America. It doesn’t cut it to smile politely at the establishment, then call the populist people on the phone and spread the class warfare gossip. Huckabee and Edwards are no Messiahs. They are just small town Mean Girls.