So I’m out and about today, manmoded testosterone-maxxing in hoodie and hoary facial roughage. This morning we went to a garden market in semi-rural suburbia, my mans to shop and me to stagger around looking at wildlife while doing my weekly call to busted old paternal unit. I beheld a swarm of tadpoles in a planty tub (idk from garden people lingo), cliff swallows, killdeer, white-crowned sparrows, anna’s hummingbird, goldfinch (i know, u see them all the time, but I don’t, so it was cool), less positively IDed barn swallows, and very remote big-ass birds at high altitude, I think two herons and a bald eagle, but hellifino.
As we get to the counter I was reminded of the differences between the generations. Mild-mannered elders were the main run of customers, well-off and engaged in potentially expensive hobbies. People my age had a bit more aggressive energy. I feel like we’re the ones to blame for this edgy bullshit marketing like “big cock farms” products, and “hot shit” sauce. And then the youngest people were, of course, working all the service jobs.
At the counter, as at all the salvage yards and thrift stores from Ballard to Olympia, the staff had colorful hair and pronouns. Mind you that in this more rural locale they lacked the boldness of a pronoun name tag, but you got the vibe. The gentle and conventionally attractive youth that rang us up had a gender-neutral name, u kno how it be. We also visited one of those thrift stores today.
Later I had to return some junk at the mall, and it’s hard to go out there without wanting some kind of treat for my efforts – a frozen coke, mozzarella sticks, tiny hotdogs wrapped in buttery pretzel dough, u kno, pigs in a blanket. But I felt full and had already had treats to spare today, so what could I do?
I settled on visual treats. The American mall is a dying institution, they say, but the lower rent businesses that are better able to afford devalued storefronts are fascinating. Catholic art and gifts, a barber shop, a nail salon, gluten-free fried foods, a shop that sells freaky homemade fan art products… I used the smartphone to find out that saint with the unicorn horn and Flava-Flav medallion was St. Jude.
As I finished my few minutes of foolery, a child of ten or eleven approached me, and asked “English or Spanish?” I said Ingles and he issued the challenge. “First one to move is gay.”
I was in a bit of a hurry and was like, “It’s cool, I’m gay.” He was like “whoaa” and either him or one of his homies said, “it’s cool” as I walked away. Nice to get the nod of approval u little weirdos.
Kids these days.
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i also saw my first cybertruck today, getting hosed with rain that might void its warranty. hehehe.
Sounds like a pleasant day.
Saint Jude is my favourite. He’s the patron saint of hopeless cases.
manmoded testosterone-maxxing in hoodie and hoary facial roughage
I love that!
I was in a bit of a hurry and was like, “It’s cool, I’m gay.”
That is great.
I used to work with a very out gay fellow back around 1989. I had no awkwardness about him, but he loved to fuck with me, and I decided that playing straight guy was an acceptable role. Besides, he was funny as hell. So one night we were at a conference together and wound up in Dupont Circle in DC, which at the time was a center of the area’s Gay Culture – and a good place there named “pizza and pasta” which was just what you’d expect. So we were walking along and D casually slipped his hand under my arm like we were a couple on a date, and we just kept walking because, why not. Then, a pickup truck drove by, someone rolled the window down, and yelled “FAG!” at me. I was brain-locked, but D didn’t miss a beat and gave a very swishy wave and caroled out, “Meeeee ToooooOO!!!!” and, literally, the entire block burst into laughter.
thx for the saint lore, chigau
marcus, i paraphrased/stole that from a random trans lady being cute on tumblr, i can’t track down unfortunately. she was something like “me: i can’t go out today, i’m a testosteronepilled manmaxxer. me after one beer: i’m the most beautiful princess in the world.”
that anecdote unfortunately reminds me of a friend being mildly homophobique on me. i was out with try-anything-once todd and some other guys on nye at the turn of the millennium. we went to a goth club and he also went to some other club, on a notion that as dorks who hath never gotten laid we must make a move in this direction before the y2k kills us all. we both had some modest success dancing with the ladies. i recall they like when you jump up in the air during that part in chemical bros’ block-rockin’ beats. he had worked out to give himself ok-ish meat titties and biceptimus muscles, had one pierced nipple and a mesh shirt, looked kinda like a white Tricky with better skin but a weirder nose and no pretty eyelashes.
what was i saying? oh yeah, i borrowed a leash from him to wear that night, to look like a proper degenerate. after we had properly struck out and were on the streets, looking to head home, i passed him the handle of the leash and affected a femme voice to say “take me away from this place.” he was like, “grr, i don’t want people to think i’m gay.”
not that i didn’t have homophobias of my own that made situations in life suck, but that moment stuck with me.
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@1 Great American Satan: I saw a cybertruck in person for the first time last week. I was somewhat amazed that they look even worse then in pictures. They look like some art quickly thrown together for a bad PS2 game.
i think the usual comparison has been ps1. it’s like they thought they could make it more efficient by reducing poly count.
Okay. I hadn’t been reading you, for whatever reason (I don’t know. It’s early. I need coffee) but you have got me now.
First, the “cybertruck” looks like the kind of cool futuristic cars, aircraft and spaceships I used to draw in grade-school. That was in the late 1960s, which just shows how passe #QElon’s futurism really is. And I probably gave such vehicles names as silly as “cybertruck” or maybe “spacetruck” back then too, to the extent that I was naming my throwaway creations.
And second, the cybertruck owners’ manual says up front that you have to wipe down your cybertruck every time it gets water or dirt on it, including rainwater and standard road-dirt; otherwise it’ll get permanently stained. I guess it takes a bold genius like #QElon to make stainless steel non-stainless…