Wow. Thanks for all the emails on “what a waste.” In general, I’m in favor of not taking offense unless you really have to. Life’s too short. And y’all tend to agree. Here’s a representative email, from the belly of the beast, Manhattan:
As a reasonably attractive straight male living in New York, I’ve been surrounded by gay men all my life. Many’s the time I’ve been told it’s a shame I’m not gay, often in highly ribald terms. Once, as a teenager, when I offered one of my mother’s friends a bite of my roast beef sandwich, he replied with heavy sarcasm, “I’ll take a bite of your ‘sandwich’ any time.” A gay colleague of hers asked if I was interested in men; she said, “He’s yours if you can get him.” In 1979, I worked at the Strand Bookstore, whose staff would be decimated by AIDS in the 80s; gay colleagues followed me around and spied on me through the bookshelves. Far from being offended by this kind of attention, I’ve always accepted it as a genuine compliment, though it sometimes verged on sexual harrassment. But it’s the kind of thing that women put up with all the time, and though it can always be a problem if it goes too far, men, like women, generally like to be flirted with and made to feel attractive. In the age of ‘Will and Grace,’ in my opinion, any straight man who is offended by a little gay flirtation has a problem he’s not dealing with.
That’s grown-up, although, frankly, I wince when gay men sexualize straight men inappropriately. A little mutual respect is more seemly. But context is everything.
SPEAKING OF CONTEXT: Art Buchwald’s words of wisdom obviously have a couple of exceptions:
Your quote of the day from the always amusing Art Buchwald “if a man doesn’t drive, they think there must be something wrong with him” has one major exception (at least): the city of New York. As a New Yorker who only got his license this year at the age of 30 (!) I can attest to this: “As many as 3 million New York City voters do not have a driver’s license. Indeed, 1990 census data showed that less than 50 percent of New York City’s voting age residents had a driver’s license compared with 91 percent of the state’s residents overall.” I suspect, but cannot say for certain, that other large cities share comparable stats. In major cities, people walk or take mass transit. Which leads to the Mission Persons’ lyrics “Nobody walks in L.A.”, but again with their new system I suspect that this is not quite as true anymore.
I’ve lived in Oxford, Boston, Provincetown and D.C. in my adult life. In all those places, cars can be more hindrance than help for a man with no kids. Just try parking.
The Dish 