Who’s Gay?
© 2005 Michael Mort
So I was at lunch yesterday with my bisexual friend.
Got your interest?
Okay, details. She’s a woman. And hot looking. I mean a gorgeous specimen of female pulchritude, so to speak. So I call her “Hottie.” She knows I call her that, don’t worry. And we are just friends, so please, no judging.
Anyway, Hottie was telling me about this questionnaire that assesses one’s sexual preference on a scale of 0 – 6. If you could score 0 you would be purely heterosexual and anyone who could score a 6 would be purely homosexual. I say “could,” because, according to Hottie, the makers of the questionnaire claim that no one could score a 0 or a 6. I asked her what she scored. 1.5. Wow. Now you have to know, Hottie and I talk about sex a lot, and the only kind of sex she talks about is same sex sex. So I was floored when she told me that she scored only 1.5.
“In light of that revelation,” I swore, “I would be the first person ever to score exactly 0.0.” She smiled that kind of smile that women smile when they think they know something you don’t know. “No, no, really,” I said. “You don’t understand. I call myself a ‘flaming hetero-sexual.'”
Still the smile.
“What?”
“You have any guy friends?” she asked as she leaned across the table. Now you have to know, Hottie is, well, rather well endowed, shall we say, and she was wearing this kind of tight, low cut thing. But I wasn’t noticing that at the moment. I was concentrating on the question.
“Sure. Maybe a couple,” I started. “But friends? Come on. That doesn’t count.”
“Counts.” She leaned back.
“No! Really?” I was incredulous. I really wanted that 0.0.
“I thought you had some ski buddies.”
“Well, yeah, but that’s a mixed group of men and women. And besides, I like the women better.” I started sweating just a little bit. I didn’t mention that on occasion, some of us guys have been known to go to lunch, you know, without any women along. But in my mind that didn’t matter, because all we talk about is women when we’re at a lunch like that. And we look at the women in the restaurant, and comment on the women we see, and have known, and…. Well, you get the idea.
Hottie was still smiling. “I thought you played golf with some guys. I bet there’s no women on the course with you.”
“Well, uh, no. But that’s because…” Why was that again? My mind was playing tricks on me. “Oh, because women play slow. Yeah. And besides the guys I play with are old married guys. And not even attractive.”
Hottie, smiled broader.
I cocked my head at her. “Come on. You know what I mean.”
She crossed her legs. Quite pretty legs they are too. And she was wearing a really short, tight skirt. But I hardly noticed that at all. We are just friends you know. “You can’t tell me you have no guy friends at all,” she said.
Now it was my turn to smile. “All my guy buddies are married. In fact, I would like to have some more guy friends. But you know why? Because single women always travel in packs. There are always at least two of them. And being a solitary guy in that situation makes it hard to start a conversation with one of them. It would help to have another single guy along. So in effect, I need a guy buddy just so I can use him to get to the women.” I sat back in my seat and folded my arms across my chest, confident that my point had been made. I was going to be the only “0.0” on the planet.
Hottie sort of grimaced. Ah! I had her. Just to ice the cake, I went on further. “In fact, I am so into women, whenever I’m at a party, I always find myself in the middle of a group of women. I never like the things men talk about. I much prefer to be around the women.”
Now she smiled, and chuckled, and crossed her arms over her ample chest and said, “Just like a gay man would.”
My mouth dropped open, just as the waiter brought our sushi and Hottie began to dive into lunch.
Fast forward to tonight. I had totally forgotten about my conversation with Hottie yesterday. I just wanted to try this new restaurant called Townhall in Glover Park on Wisconsin Ave. As I always do when I dine alone, I sat down at the bar, which was totally empty when I entered the place. In the middle of my glass of wine, as I was waiting for my meal to be delivered, two pairs of people came in. A couple of guys sat down on my left, and two women on my right. Both pairs were deep in their own conversations, and both pairs totally ignored me. My food arrived and I just listened as I ate.
“Who’s winning?” one of the men asked the male bartender as he peered at the giant High Def plasma screen mounted above the bar.
“So, you have any interesting cases this month at your law firm?” I heard one of the women ask her girlfriend. They were dressed in business suits.
“Can you believe the Redskins?” came from those casually dressed guys on my left.
“Well I have this new client in international banking…” came from one of the two attractive ladies on my right.
Left: “That’s a good picture on that plasma. You know I’m thinking of getting HD myself.”
Right: “Oh, did I tell you my car was stolen?”
Left: “Well you really need to look at DLP and rear projection LCD…”
Right: “A squad car came to pick me up…”
Left: “But I like the flat screen so I can mount it on the wall…”
Right: “…took me to this awful neighborhood where my car was supposedly abandoned…”
Left: “And of course you can get a really big one…”
Right: “…then I had to get into the car of some plainclothesman…”
Left: “…imagine the Super-Bowl party with that in my apartment…”
Right: “…When I mentioned I had friends in the DA’s office…”
Left: “Hey, as long as you have good food…”
Right: “…I had to drive it home with a screwdriver in the ignition…”
Left: “…leaving that up to the girls…”
I gently set my fork and knife down beside my plate. Then I turned to the women on my right. “Excuse me.”
They stopped talking and looked at me.
I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry but I couldn’t help but overhear your rather interesting conversation, and well, to tell you the truth it reminded me of a conversation I had yesterday with a bisexual friend of mine.”
Those two rather attractive women now turned fully in their stools and faced me. One of them, the one with the long brown hair and big brown eyes, smiled at me and said, “Really? How could that be?”
“Well first,” I started, “I have to ask you something.”
I had the undivided attention of both of these rather astonishingly beautiful professional women now. So I asked them outright, “Do you think I look gay?”