Procrastinet

Henry the Helpful Homophobe

filed under: Idle Chatter

So this morning I agreed to give buddy Sanpete a ride in on the scooter. Which meant two guys who each go about a buck ninety-five on a scooter with a 50cc engine. I figured we outweighed the scooter itself by at least a hundred pounds.

We were stopped at a light when a Honda Accord got stopped in gridlock just in front of us, perpendicular so that the passenger was about ten feet in front of me. He looked at us, looked at the scooter, made eye contact with me and started saying something. His face had really lit up, like he had noticed something important, and he was tapping on the inside of the window.

Finally, he rolled the window down a crack and pressed his face against it, eager to tell me what was on his mind.

"Yo!" he said. "Yo! That's HOMO!"

I waved and shouted "thank you!" as they pulled away.

We laughed for the whole rest of the trip about that. The best part was that he really looked pleased with himself, like he'd passed along a helpful tip that we might somehow have missed. Like "Oh, my god, THANK you sir! We might not have noticed that one fully grown man clinging to another fully grown man's back like a biker bitch on a smallish scooter had ANY GAY OVERTONES AT ALL. And by the way, that sweater is FABULOUS! Is that 100% acrylic? You shop at Kohl's, don't you, I know you like a bargain!"

Thank you, transit strike, for helping New Yorkers pull together.

We didn't endure any more outright abuse, though Sanpete reported getting many pitying, sympathetic looks. "It's all right," they seemed to say, "we're gettin' by however we can..."

And off we wobbled, like a couple of bears on a tricycle...

Posted by rjt at December 21, 2005 12:10 PM