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muckefuckYesterday, I said that the closest GF and I got to an argument was me teasing him about filling his life with "cheap sensation" and him only hearing the word "cheap". That's not entirely true. Another source of tension was his squeamishness about showing affection in public.
This came to a head in, of all places, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It's an awful place in general, undoubtedly one of the worst-designed museums I've ever been in. The navigation is illegible, the displays are haphazard, and the noise level is ridiculous. Unless you retreat into a far corner, you're always in close proximity of at least three or four sources of blaring audio, and that's before you take into account the crowds around you (and we were there on a Saturday afternoon so it was packed). And they are overwhelmingly not just straight but middlebrow Middle American, making it one of the less queer-friendly spaces I've been in as well.
Still, this was Cleveland, not Kentucky, so when he suggested I wait for him outside while he stood in the checkout line, it wasn't out of some sense of queer rebellion that I tried to give him a quick peck. That's just what I naturally do with someone I'm on romantic (or quasi-romantic) terms with when we're parting for whatever reason. It was disappointing that he wasn't receptive to that, but it was also somewhat understandable.
It was his justification for it when we were back at the hotel room that rankled me. I didn't ask for one; he volunteered, saying, "The reason I didn't kiss you back there was that the straight people weren't doing that."
"I don't pay attention to what straight people do," I replied.
"Sometimes," he continued, "gay people act like we own the world and we don't."
Translation: "You don't know your place."
He's right insofar as we're outnumbered, so we'll always have to watch what we do more than straight people. But we have the same right to exist in public as they do. And I'm of the generation which was taught that if we don't assert that right at every opportunity, we'll lose the right to exist in private as well.
He's only a decade older than me; I thought he was of that generation, too. But his upbringing is very small-town whereas mine was a mix of small-town and big-city. And he lives a semi-cloistered existence in a small city without much queer presence whereas Chicago has one of the most visible LGBTQ populations on the planet.
Nuphy and Monshu are both a decade older than Ginger Farmboy. They also had much more to lose by being exposed in publicly for most of their lives (Nuphy being married and Monshu being a priest). Yet they both overcame that. Even Monkey Boy struggled with the embarrassment of being outed when we first starting dating; you'd never guess that today.
Yeah, people are all different and you have to take them where they're at. Touching should always be consensual and you need to respect others' comfort levels with it, particularly in public spaces. But some things are just non-negotiable.
This came to a head in, of all places, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It's an awful place in general, undoubtedly one of the worst-designed museums I've ever been in. The navigation is illegible, the displays are haphazard, and the noise level is ridiculous. Unless you retreat into a far corner, you're always in close proximity of at least three or four sources of blaring audio, and that's before you take into account the crowds around you (and we were there on a Saturday afternoon so it was packed). And they are overwhelmingly not just straight but middlebrow Middle American, making it one of the less queer-friendly spaces I've been in as well.
Still, this was Cleveland, not Kentucky, so when he suggested I wait for him outside while he stood in the checkout line, it wasn't out of some sense of queer rebellion that I tried to give him a quick peck. That's just what I naturally do with someone I'm on romantic (or quasi-romantic) terms with when we're parting for whatever reason. It was disappointing that he wasn't receptive to that, but it was also somewhat understandable.
It was his justification for it when we were back at the hotel room that rankled me. I didn't ask for one; he volunteered, saying, "The reason I didn't kiss you back there was that the straight people weren't doing that."
"I don't pay attention to what straight people do," I replied.
"Sometimes," he continued, "gay people act like we own the world and we don't."
Translation: "You don't know your place."
He's right insofar as we're outnumbered, so we'll always have to watch what we do more than straight people. But we have the same right to exist in public as they do. And I'm of the generation which was taught that if we don't assert that right at every opportunity, we'll lose the right to exist in private as well.
He's only a decade older than me; I thought he was of that generation, too. But his upbringing is very small-town whereas mine was a mix of small-town and big-city. And he lives a semi-cloistered existence in a small city without much queer presence whereas Chicago has one of the most visible LGBTQ populations on the planet.
Nuphy and Monshu are both a decade older than Ginger Farmboy. They also had much more to lose by being exposed in publicly for most of their lives (Nuphy being married and Monshu being a priest). Yet they both overcame that. Even Monkey Boy struggled with the embarrassment of being outed when we first starting dating; you'd never guess that today.
Yeah, people are all different and you have to take them where they're at. Touching should always be consensual and you need to respect others' comfort levels with it, particularly in public spaces. But some things are just non-negotiable.