perfidy

Every Friday, weather permitting, I walk with the Li'lest Lethal. Lady Lethal takes him every day, pretty much, but Fridays I have him to myself. We have a pretty good time, I like to think, and getting out of the house a little is good for both of us.

Oftentimes we go one town over, which is alot nicer than the town we actually live in. Not that we live particularly shabbily, but THAT town has longer and nicer sidewalks, many of which wrap around its stately olde towne common. The historic homes overlooking the olde towne common advertise their historicity with placards declaring how old the place is and who built it: Elihu Jehosephatt, 1713. Fitzhugh Broadwinnings, 1805. Jeremiah Broadwinnings, 1842. They're interesting in their details and pleasing to the eye. But in the back of my mind I think what a drag it is to own such a house, needing the local historical committee's permission to drive a friggin nail.

The war memorial sits in the center of the common, an arc of dry-stacked stone and aging words facing a single simple flagpole. The memorial includes the names of the town's men who fell in battle as far back as pre-Revolution campaigns against the native tribes. Some of the names on the cold, weathered bronze tablets are the same as on the houses we just walked past.

The only business near the common is the cosmetic surgeon and day spa, but even they are set up in small, restrained structures that fit the neighborhood. It's almost as if they were always there, where George Washington got his DaVinci veneers, and Paul Revere had a little nip and tuck after one too many Boston winters.

It's a nice place to walk, overall, on a cool spring day.

'Cept for the gay-bashers.

Last Friday a friend from my part time job, whose name is Storm (really), came over before work to hang out. Instead of lunch we got some beverages and walked on the common. We were just gabbing about this and that, work, that sort of thing. Storm was digging all the eye-candy in the area at that time of day, between a local college, random passers-by, and a heavy MILF concentration. At one point I said something along the lines of, "You know Storm, we probably look like a coupla homos with our adopted baby, between the big baby stroller and the Starbucks cups." Which, don't get me wrong, was fine- just that Storm is always on the lookout for female companionship, and with me looking a little bear-ish and he looking a little femme (he can't help it), well...well, it didn't happen for him that day.

But it turns out we weren't the only ones who thought we looked like a gay couple.

Not a half hour after making that observation, two peckerwoods cruising down the street in a car with crappy music blaring from crappy speeakers shouted something to us at the top of their lungs. I think I know what they said, but you know what, I won't even repeat it. It certainly wasn't welcoming, and absolutely wasn't an invitation to discuss evolving paradigms of modern life and marriage.

So we're in the middle of Idyllic Suburb USA, broad daylight, middle of the day- and get hassled for being gay.

Now, here are a couple of things that those two punks completely missed, in the same order that they occurred to me at that moment:

-My baby son was in his stroller, at arm's reach. When I heard the shouting and the language, surprising me and coming from behind- which could only be construed as threatening- I kicked into ultra defense mode. It was like, threat-baby-defend-adrenaline spike-defend-destroy. It's the kind of feeling that causes people to go from calm to rage in a straight-for-the-windpipe sort of way, which I did not fully appreciate until I was a parent, and for which I would have been in a heap of trouble had those two clowns been close enough to throttle. Dunno if that's a new daddy thing I'll grow out of, or what, but there it is and I don't have alot of control over adrenaline.

-On Fridays it seems I'm walking alone, but usually I'm not. Sure at the time Storm was with me, and of course the baby's always there. But I keep a close friend nearby; ideally you won't see him.

-My close friend has 8 little buddies he never leaves the house without.

-If you just shout stuff at people out of your moving car, you're not cool or even funny. You're just a douche.

-Oh, and I'M NOT GAY.

Fucking imbeciles.