by Brett Leveridge
"Showtunes are upstairs."
The clerk's advice was puzzling at best. I was in Tower Records in downtown Manhattan with the intent of purchasing a new collection of the Fifth Dimension's greatest hits as a birthday present for my mother. The oldies section wasn't where I remembered it being, and I must have looked a bit disoriented. That's when the Tower employee approached me and offered this unsolicited "assistance."
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He could hardly have provided less appropriate information. I don't even like showtunes. Why had this clerk assumed I was a fan of that kind of music?
"He thought you were gay," a friend opined, "and figured that you must like showtunes." I'll admit that this explanation had occurred to me, too, and it had gotten my back up a bit. After all, even if I were gay, why is it a given that I'd like showtunes?
It wasn't the first time a stranger had decided I was gay. When I was in college, I was walking to class on a warm spring afternoon when a young woman I'd never seen before turned to me as we passed in opposite directions and spat out, just as we were face-to-face, "Faggot!" It caught me so off-guard I was certain I'd misunderstood her. "Was she talking to me?" I asked my classmate. "And what did she say?" "She called you a faggot," he answered, as baffled as I was. I didn't know then and don't know now what made her so certain that I was gay, but I was even more puzzled that she'd decided to lash out, to confront me in such an abusive fashion. What in the world had prompted such an attack?
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It's easier to hate someone after you've got him neatly packaged and labeled.
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That was my initiation into the queer life, my first experience with the venom to which gay men and women are subjected in our society. And though many years have passed since that encounter, I don't think things have greatly improved in this regard. On any number of occasions since I've lived in New York City, I've found myself embroiled in a disagreement — when cut off in a crosswalk by an impatient cabby, say, or affronted in a crowded subway by someone determined to impinge upon my already limited personal space — only to have my opponent let loose with the same hateful epithet I heard on the way to class all those years ago.
The fact that I am not, in fact, gay hardly matters in these instances. Something about my hairstyle, my voice, my carriage — who knows what it might be? — puts these people off and they don't hesitate to let me know it. It's easier to hate someone after you've got him neatly packaged and labeled, so the cabbie who slathers me with the homosexual brush likely doesn't care that his assumption is incorrect. To him, I'm still a fag and increasingly, that's just fine with me.
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Still, it's disheartening to see a simple disagreement sink so quickly into slurs. I've found myself haunted by the self-righteous sense of superiority these bigots have flaunted. They seem to be saying, "It doesn't matter who had the right of way, it doesn't matter who was standing in this spot first, because you're a fag."
I'm not sure why it is — in a time when even relatively unenlightened people have learned to at least hold their tongues — that gay men are still considered fair game for such verbal and even physical assaults. Maybe it's the stereotype that gay men are all sissies — the notion that, even if push comes to shove, any straight man could handle a gay man in a fight.
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The fact that I am not, in fact, gay hardly matters in these instances.
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That's patently ridiculous, of course. I'm not gay, but I am a fairly committed pacifist and a resolute and unwavering coward, and therefore completely unschooled in the art of fisticuffs. I was in kindergarten the last time I was involved in such a confrontation — and though I won that bout (rather handily, thank you), I have no doubt that today, most men — straight, gay, bi, or undecided — could use me to mop up the sidewalk, if they so chose.
And that's really the only problem I have now with my status as an "honorary" gay man: the fear that one of these nights I'll be subject to a little "honorary" gay-bashing.
What do you think? Racist jokes brand the joke-teller as a racist in most corners of our society. So why is it that homosexuality is still an subject of derision? Add your opinion to the Society/Culture conference.
Brett Leveridge has his own acclaimed Webzine, is an occasional contributor
to National Public Radio, and lives in the untidiest apartment in the entire Chelsea section of Manhattan.
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