boooblog

Verizon sucks sometimes. Most phone companies lure you on board with a two year contract, to which I don't object... but as I found out yesterday when I went to replace my 18 month old phone with a shiny new one, apparently you can't even upgrade your phone for the two year period without paying full price. In other words, they wanted to charge me $400+ for a phone that was listed at $150.

I'm glad they did.

With an extra $150 in my budget and shiny new material possessions on the brain, I took my friend Chrys' (with a 'y') advice and went to eCost.com to check out this bad boy. At $89, it was a no brainer. I made my purchase, requested FedEx second day air for $7, and went about my life. That was after 9:00pm last night.

It arrived today at 1:00pm. At sixteen hours of turnaround, that is some serious supply chain management. I'm not so sure my neighbors aren't running an eCost.com warehouse out of their spare bedroom.

It's another Friday night listening to Derek & Romaine on Sirius OutQ, where they are jamming vibrators and buttplugs into inflatable Pamela Anderson and Jennifer Lopez dolls using Purell antibiotic sanitizer for lube. So anyhow, remember the How Gay Are You? contest I won a couple months ago? Behold my prize!

If you click back and read the comments, you'll notice that Derek Hartley himself replied to the original post. In other words, I'm famous. Anyhow, the aforementioned shirt is a medium after all, so the boyfriend (who despite being an interior design graduate student wants to frame the napkin and hang it in our stairway) gets to wear it until September, when I am back to a medium. Then he can have it back in November when I am a small. I'm just sayin'.

For eight years now I have been going out into the world either alone, with a date, or in a group of gay men who run the spectrum from plain ole guys to big ole gurls. And for eight years I have never once had a problem with the attitudes of onlookers or passers-by. Well I take that back: once in 1999 there was this teenage girl in the mall who was mocking my friend Tim and me until we reminded her how sad and overweight she looked in her overalls. But I digress. So you can imagine my surprise when yesterday, as my friend Josh, his boyfriend Andy and I (closer to "plain ole guys" on the aforementioned spectrum, though the two of them were pretty well manicured) went to have some lunch at the 4rd Street Deli on 13th Street, we were walked past several empty booths and tables and seated alone in the "back room."

We exchanged some odd looks and, after the host walked away, made a few comments about segregation before looking at our menus. "I wonder if everything on these menus is $2 higher than everything on the menus out there," we joked. I didn't really think too much of it until the next party joined us in the back room, who consisted of a flaming homo and a theatre queen. Five minutes later, a lone bear-type was seated across from us.

And then came the server. Nice guy, but what a lady. At this point it was pretty clear that there was a pattern forming. Andy did a little recon work in the main room and confirmed that all of the rest of the patrons were indeed of the heterosexual persuasion. Josh, a law student, and Andy, a recent law school graduate, were ready to file every complaint right up to the Surpreme Court. I however was less offended and more amused. Sequestered in the back room, we were able to make jokes and laugh out loud, which would have been seen as obnoxious out among the "regular" guests.

As soon as I ordered my gyro, I looked the server in the eye and asked "So why is it that we suddenly feel like Rosa Parks?" And then the truth came out.

"I always snag the gay guys because we're better tippers."

It was discrimination after all, and at the hands of one of our own. But it wasn't necessarily bad discrimination. We didn't really know what to make of it; we spent the rest of our meal talking and enjoying ourselves but with an air of awkwardness looming over us, all of the while waiting for the disco ball to drop from the ceiling and the music of Cher to enhance our dining experience.