So last night we attended a screening of an odd yet hilarious independent film called "Co-dependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same," starring a college friend. After the credits rolled, the producer bounded onstage with the following announcement: "Ladies and gentlemen, I thought you might like to know that our state legislature just legalized gay marriage." The cheers were deafening. There are good days, aren't there?
There's been a subtle yet unmistakable shift. Today we are less of a them and more of an us. And that's what Gay Pride, with all its disco, leather harnesses and g-strings, has always been about (yet we admit a platoon of dykes on bikes leading battalion of baton-twirling homos prancing about in jock straps is an excellent way to be seen as a "Them" with a capitol "T"). And yet, the straights came through. Even some Republicans. Overwhelmingly, gay family members and friends changed their hearts and minds.
And with that in mind, this is how we met Rob...
Once upon a time we'd throw annual gay pride parties on our massive East Village roof deck. There were balloons, streamers, grilled fruit skewers, reefers, martinis, and (at the party's apex) servings of magical mushroom tea. Folks came in drag, leather, party boy spandex. But it was all very co-ed. Male, female, gay, straight. Fellini on poppers. And on the boombox, Ethel Merman's disco album did battle with ABBA, Madonna and Carmen Miranda (thank you, Bruce).
During one such soiree, two stunningly beautiful heterosexual women (fierce bitches by the name of Claudia and Deborah), both clad in halter tops and daisy dukes, briefly left the festivities to pick up some ice at the corner bodega. While they were there, they thought it would be cute if they also purchased some chocolate covered cherries and several dozen condoms in festive gold coin wrappers.
At this point, they caught the eye of a handsome Jewish straight NYU student who was buying a six pack of Heiniken.
"Hey, What's your name?"
"Um...Rob."
"Hi Um Rob, I'm Claudia. This is Deborah."
"Hi."
"So we're having a party, care to join us?"
Poor thing. Two primo specimens of babe-a-licious boobocity, brandishing a bag of ice, chocolate covered cherries and enough prophylactics for the Russian army. He thought he'd stumbled onto the kind of paradise you only read about in Hustler or the Koran.
We remember when our girls escorted a stunned Rob into the throng of the party and immediately abandoned him to flirt with the homos (a zero stakes game). The homos, in turn, preferred flirting with Rob, the reluctant belle of the ball. We have photographs of that party. There's Rob on a bench, surrounded with homos, his lopsided grin frozen, his eyes betraying a kind of terror.
We must have had a profound effect on him, for he promptly abandoned his studies and fled to Budapest to write about gypsies. We stayed in touch, though. And evench, after he returned stateside, he even moved into our vast, decrepit cold-water loft where he lived for a few years.
He saw us through a brutal break-up with an attorney who turned out to be a married embezzler. We, in turn, commiserated with him through two nasty divorces.
Rob has a bad habit of falling in love with the kind of gal you can live with for several years, but runs screaming for the hills within a year of exchanging vows, suddenly discovering she doesn't "see herself married." And frankly, we're not sure we do either.
Perhaps us homos are like the indians who were so ecstatic at first to receive those pox infested blankets from the white man. Marriage equality is divorce equality, after all. Hooray! And...um...thanks?
We recall when Rob returned from vacationing in Majorca with a contraband bottle of Absinthe in tow. During the trip he'd broken up with a dishwater blonde Polish gal (he tends to like fair-haired Eastern European chicks with thick accents who are perpetually bored and have rude personalities).
We each did a couple shots, getting acquainted with the green fairy. Rob grew increasingly remorseful about his lost Polski baleboste.
And absinthe made the tart grow blonder.
xox
WAM
Claudia 'n' Deborah say: "we DARE you to subscribe to this blog's feed."