I’m a regular at Encore Lounge, a piano bar in downtown Boston. You can find me there any time that Steve and Rob are hosting. It’s good, clean family fun, but with booze. Steve has a great rapport with the crowd, he’s funny, he lets my theater nerd friends and me sing during the open mic part of the night, and he’s even featured several of my friends, letting them share the stage with him for the evening.

As per yooge, me and the group of quaids were there this past Thursday. Steve and Rob finished up their set around 12:30, but we stuck around for a little while longer.  This post is about to take a dramatic turn. Do not associate the content that follows with my prior ringing endorsement of Steve and Rob, who you should go see wherever they may appear.  Steve and Rob are good people, a sharp contrast to what follows.

The only bar patrons at this point were about 25 twentysomethings and one older couple.  This is a usual occurrence – the bar, being attached to a Marriott and right next to two dance clubs, tends to attract a diverse age range – business travelers, foreign tourists, and college students.  Then, there was a less than usual occurrence. Indeed, I would go as far as to say that it was an unusual occurrence. The older couple was handjobbing. Hand. Jobbing. Right at the table, right in front of everyone, right in plain sight of my impressionable, naive, society-trusting eyes.

Oh my, I said to myself.  I have hit the Are you this person? jackpot. Us suddenly unintentional voyeurs were hooting, hollering, cheering, screaming in fear, squealing in disgust, vocalizing the entire gamut of reactions possible when abruptly being unwittingly thrust into a couple’s Private Time. They acknowledge the crowd with a little wave and a smile, then get back to business.  Cameras flash.  They don’t stop.  They are very clearly enjoying the spotlight.  There may or may not have been a cell phone with video capability shining a very bright LED light on them for holy-shit-that-just-happened posterity purposes.  (A video which may or may not be located here. You can’t see anything, other than be able to confirm that the arm is going up and down.  It’s very grainy, so step away from your screen and squint.  It’s solely to prove I’m not a liar about this, and also some of the screams are quite entertaining as people realize one by one what is happening).  She says, “Send us over a drink, at least!” and HOLY FUCK SHE’S GETTING ON HER KNEES. My stomach and repressed, discretion-valuing Catholic upbringing can handle it no longer.  I go to the other side of the bar, back turned, hands around my eyes like horse blinders.  A minute or two later, they exit the bar and go into the hotel.

In the next 5 minutes, the phrase “That just happened.” was spoken no fewer than 642 times. People wept, people laughed nervously, people sat in corners rocking back and forth.

Then! The woman came back! She sat at the bar! And ordered a glass of wine.  I went over to her and chatted up the Susan Boyle of hooking up.  Here’s our conversation, reproduced to the best of my trauma-blunted hippocampus’ ability. (for best results, read her lines with a Long Island accent, and every time there is a vowel sound, hold it out for 50% longer than you would think is necessary. Also, add a smidgen of MadTV’s Stewart’s mom’s intonation)

Me: Wow, that was quite the performance.  Can I take a picture with you??

Nelly: Of course, darling.

Me: Um, my name’s Steve.

Nelly: Well, it’s very nice to meet you Steve.  My name is Nelly*.

Me: So like, who was that dude?

Nelly: His name is Robert*.

Me: Where did you meet him?

Nelly: At a gay bar.

Me: A gay bar…?

Nelly: Yeah, a gay bar.  It’s right around the corner.  My gay friend was like “Let’s go out! To the gay bar!” Well, it’s not so much a gay bar. It’s more of a whorehouse.

Me: Oh, a whorehouse.

Nelly: Yeah, a whorehouse.  Anyway, I met Robert, and then we went to this patio of this restaurant around the *other* corner from here and we did it on the patio.

Me: So this is your second public encounter tonight?

Nelly: Well yeah! I went out to lunch at this nice restaurant that had a nice patio, so I brought Robert there and we had sex on one of the tables, and then we came here.  He has a room in the hotel tonight, but he wants me to come back to his house.  I don’t think I trust him enough for that.

Me: … (short inhale, squint) …

(Robert enters the bar)

Me: Nice to meet you, Robert.  Well done today.

Robert: Thank you. That was a nice tribute to Michael Jackson that you sang tonight.

Nelly: Robert can speak Italian!

Robert: Something in Italian

Me: You guys know that there were people that saw you, right?

Nelly: Oh yeah, what’s the big deal?

Me: Did you notice the camera flashes?

Nelly: Ya, we put on quite the show, didn’t we!?

Me: You guys make such a cute couple.  Can I take a picture of you two?

Robert: Please do!

Nelly: Here, take my business card! Email it to me! Hold on, let me write down my personal email address for you.

Me: Oh, well thank you! I’ll be sure to send it!

Click. (Beep, rather. It’s a camera phone. But “click” is a word more strongly associated with the sound a camera shutter makes. You get the damn point.)

Me, mind collapsing from the gravity of the situation I have experienced: Okay, well I’m going to find my friends. You two have a good night…

***

I hate straight people.

*This is a morally ambiguous post at best.  I at least changed their names, because I have at minimum 0.002 souls.

Here’s Colbert’s The Word from last night, and it’s clear from the segment that he is an avid reader of this blog!  “He’s giving you things, just not your rights.”

Bonus! Here’s a quick clip of Press Secretary Robert Gibbs confirming that Monday’s White House reception for LGBT leaders is just for show and no actual action is being considered with regard to gay rights legislation:

I took a long weekend trip down to D.C. to help move my sister and her boyfriend into their new apartment.  Repeating earworm refrain of the weekend: Good lord does it feel good to be a useful human.

Moving my sister’s wardrobe burned many, many calories.  You don’t even know. That calorie expenditure turned into a voracious hunger, the type of hunger that requires Meat to replenish.  Luckily for my stomach, she lives within walking distance of that awesome hamburger joint that Obama took Biden to a while back when Biden was all “Not to cause a panic, but I have Bubble Boyed my entire family and am living underground and you should also do this if you love your family because SWINE FLU IS GOING TO KILL THE WHOLE COUNTRY” because Biden used to be a local news anchor, as we all know. Then Obama ordered Dijon mustard on his burger, conclusively proving that he is a gay French British communist, also a liar. Remember that? Yeah, me too. We went to there.

I ordered a burger with mustard because I am those above things as well.  It was delicious.

Let’s get something clear: Ray’s Hellburger is my favorite place in the world.  First off, its name is a terribly forced pun, which automatically puts it into the “friend” column of this site.  Second off, its menu is off of chains. They don’t just sautee their mushrooms, they sautee them in sherry.  You can upgrade from beef to foie gras.  Yes. Like, not just a bit of foie gras thrown in with the ground beef. Like, instead of beef, foie gras. Burgasms abounded.  (I did not get foie gras, as it was an extra ten dollars, and I am a man of modest means. For the record, I am pro-force feeding geese through intubation a la Kirstie Alley because once I used some foie gras in collard greens and wept like Chris Crocker it was so delicious [similes!])

Bottom line: om nom nom. I didn’t think the lunch could get any better. WRONG. Enter this matching couple:

What a delightful pair.  They are wearing matching pink shorts! Ahhh-dorbs. They then levelled up big time when, as I was taking this picture, the guy proclaims “WE DIDN’T DO THIS ON PURPOSE!” Me: “Even better! I’m putting this on my blog so the internet knows that you are a Good.”

I know there is at least one math major that reads this blog.  Does he or she want to figure out what the probability is of two people wearing pink shorts? I’m estimating it is approximately impossible.  It would be something like [p(someone owns pink shorts) x p(that person chooses to wear those pink shorts)]^2 x [p(choosing to wear a white shirt with it)]^2, which is probably within 5% of the probability of Moby not having herpes, which is also known as zero.  (I can confirm second-hand that Moby has herpes).

Thank you so much, pink-shorts wearing couple, for perfecting my already perfect day.  Thank you, Ray’s Hellburger, for attracting couples that wear matching pink shorts. God bless Rosslyn, Virginia.

Dan Savage had a great post yesterday that I found to be a pretty good thought experiment. Many have suggested that while full repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell does indeed require legislative action from Congress, he has the legal ability to stop implementing the policy until Congress can review the legislation.  He notes that Janet Napolitano has suspended implementation of another law, the widow’s penalty, under which foreign nationals who marry Americans are denied permanent residency if their spouse dies before their second wedding anniversary, which is how long binational couples need to be married to be eligble for expedited residency and citizenship consideration.

A commenter asked whether I thought Obama’s inaction on gay rights was a political calculation or if it gay rights just aren’t on his radar at all.  I think what’s  frustrating for the gay community is that it’s become increasingly difficult to tell if the president’s recent overtures – the recent extension of a few benefits to federal employees, inviting some gay leaders to the White House to celebrate the Stonewall anniversary – are signals that the administration will be taking a slow, incremental approach to extending rights to gays, or if it’s just damage control when people like Howard Dean and campaign advisers on LGBT issues are pulling out of LGBT-focused fundraisers for the Democratic Party.

One of the more surprising things for the gay community has been the change of tone from the administration.  Dial back to January, before the inauguration, and we were hearing the administration saying things like “…you don’t hear a politician giving a one-word answer much, but it’s yes.” when asked if the administration was planning to repeal DADT.  Dial forward to May, and the same person is giving a waffley, politicky, (realistic) answer – conversations are being had between the administration and the Pentagon, we favor a legislative solution, other rhetoric.

If you read that HuffPo article from January I just linked to two sentences ago, you’ll see how outdated it is six months later.  We were really led to believe and allowed ourselves to believe that gay rights would be a priority from Obama and that we weren’t going to repeat the Clinton administration, which started off being a vocal supporter of gay rights but ended up signing both DOMA and DADT.  So while a lot of the gay anger towards Obama might be explained by gays coming back to planet Earth after having unrealistic expectations, I don’t see anything wrong with keeping pressure up and keeping expectations high to avoid repeats of disappointment.

I agree with Gibbs when he says that Congress needs to get rid of DADT and that congressional action will create a longer-lasting solution, and I’m pretty sure Dan Savage does too, but in the meantime, Obama has fired approximately 264 people for being gay.  I take that as a personal affront, but I also realize that gay people are a political liability.  What a sad sentence to have to write.  I’m really looking forward to what Obama has to say on Monday when he speaks at the Stonewall celebration.

Double dose of fabulous today!

If there was anything we learned in the 80s, it’s that all good songs fade out at the end. Glad HUNX and his PUNX took note.

See how the genitals make use of the gap.

Surely some people are going to be confused by this NY Times article and surrounding hooha about how Obama signed an executive memorandum (basically an executive order) that extended federal benefits to gay couples, but gay people are mad about that.

I’m one of those mad gays, and I must admit I’m a little confused too, so I think writing out a quick nonexhaustive representative recap of everything Obama and gay that has happened in the past year or so would help me get a handle on it and put it all in perspective.

Campaign season – Obama has nine campaign promises related to gay rights, declares himself as a “fierce advocate” for gays and lesbians (PS great word choice re: fierce)

1. Pass hate crime legislation to include gay, transgendered people
2. Pass a workplace antidiscrimination bill – ENDA
3. Fully repeal DOMA, which keeps the federal government from recognizing gay relationships or states from recognizing other states’ same-sex union contracts
4. Create federally recognized civil unions, an everything-but-marriage alternative to marriage
5. Won’t sign a constitutional gay marriage ban
6. Repeal DADT – allow gays to serve openly in the armed forces
7. Protect and extend adoption rights for gay couples
8. AIDS – he’s against it, supports curing it.
9. Pass the Uniting American Families Act, listed here, which would allow binational same-sex couples to be treated as real life couples in immigration law, such as gaining citizenships or being approved for visas.

January, Inauguration – Invites Rick Warren, someone who compares being gay to incest and pedophilia, to give the invocation.

February – Nothing.

March – Nothing. Be patient! Recession!

April – Nothing yet! You are not important as other things!

May – Nothing yet! Quiet your grumbling! Dijon mustard, more recession!

June – Obama addresses gay rights for the first time, sort of, with an eye roll.

The Department of Justice releases a legal brief comparing gay marriage to incest and saying that a discriminatory law is okay as long as it saves the government money.

Obama, smelling the shitstorm, quickly signs yesterday’s ineffectual executive memorandum to mollify the angry queers to save a DNC fundraiser (which the White House admits). The memorandum, to review, gives gay partners some benefits, which they sometimes already had, and not healthcare or pension benefits, to some federal employees, but not if you’re in the military, in which case you get fired, and it expires when his term is up. What do gays get to do now? Use sick days to take care of spouses and children and get included in calculations for family size when determining overseas housing allocation.

More detail and background here.

***

One of my favorite consequences of being gay is that you are automatically thrust into an advanced civics class.  Upon coming out, I became immensely fascinated with all of the complicated ways that discrimination can be written into law.  You really get an appreciation for checks and balances and the deliberate mechanisms that make all government changes proceed at a snail’s pace, necessitating extensive and exhaustive debate on every issue before it becomes law when your personal love life, relationships, and your family are the subjects of the debate. I think a significant portion of gay activists’ frustration and anger stems from the appreciation of the system we have – we know that our best strategy to gain our legal rights is to convince people that we are real, live humans.  It’s much more satisfying to have our rights acknowledged through a popular vote or legislative process than through judicial decree.

Every once in a while, though, it really becomes overwhelming and too much to handle.  Shit is seriously convoluted when you need to go to a lawyer to figure out how much you’re getting fucked.  “Partners will be considered in calculations for housing allotments”. Give me a fucking break. I don’t want to be a special case for HR, I don’t want to be fine print. I am not an issue.  I am not an issue. I am not up for debate.  You really go crazy when every day you hear things like “the gay rights debate” or “the delicate and divisive issue of gay rights”.

It’s tiresome to debate people on a false premise. Gay rights are often presented as a moral issue.  It’s not. For it to be a moral issue, it would have to be a choice.  It’s not a choice.  Let’s not get confused here, love-the-sinner, hate-the-sin people. Gay rights are not a moral issue, other than the immorality of denying/obstructing/failing to advance (when able) civil rights.  Gay sex and gay relationships are as moral and immoral as straight sex and straight relationships.  Gay cheating should be as immoral as straight cheating, and gay PDA is as gross as straight PDA. If you want to crusade against sleeping around, knock yourself out, but do it fairly and do your moral grandstanding against everyone.

Here’s honesty: I’m young, healthy, unemployed, a pacifist, single and a UBT. Not one of those nine big gay rights issues or bills affect me in any way, yet I am deeply and personally involved in the outcome of all of them. DADT, DOMA, ENDA, hate crime legislation, etc. are all just a layered, codified way to express the following phenomena while in civil society and in public discourse:

6 in 10 Americans think gay marriage should be illegal.

Half of Americans think that homosexual relations are immoral.

Americans rank homosexuality in between euthanasia and abortion in terms of morality.

4 in 10 Americans believe that homosexual relations should be illegal.

4 in 10 Americans think that being gay is unacceptable.

4 in 10 Americans think that gay people should not be allowed to be elementary school teachers.

4 in 10 Americans think that homosexuality is a result of environmental factors.

4 in 10 Americans don’t even know a gay person.

I don’t have the data to look at, but I bet dollars to donuts that those four people are the same four people all the way down the list.  R-squared is at least 0.9.

Please excuse me while I fagaliciously and indignantly wave my finger up and down, pop my hip, purse my lips and say “YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW ME”  in a serious manner.

This is where the outrage comes in – the people that we are debating about gay issues think being gay is a choice, therefore a moral question, and then that it’s immoral, yet they don’t even know any gay people. It’s absurd that it’s a public debate, and it’s more absurd that politicians need to pander to these people.

It comes down to this: We understand that people that don’t know us don’t like us.  However, self-respecting gay people should have no need to persuade, compromise, or debate on civil rights.  We should have full rights and recognition from our government. Failure to extend full rights, despite promises to do so at some point in the future, is the same as saying we can’t have rights.  Both end in no rights.  So when Mr. Fierce gives us a laundry list of expectations, but then insults us, ignores us, ignores us some more, insults us, and then signs a patronizing, nonconsequential symbolic act to salvage a fundraiser, fuck him.  Get back to principled, effective leadership like he’s shown in the past and then we’ll talk about throwing you fundraisers.