Rupert, the Homophobe

The setting for this tale is your standard Chicago sports bar. I was there to watch the Celtics play the Lakers (and hopefully win). But other bar patrons had a different agenda: pounding my sweet ass. After my 6th or 7th drink I was already pretty toasty. When I approached the bar to order another drink I overheard a conversation.

“You are ‘Uber-hot’ and I really mean it!” Said drunken guy #1 to anonymous stranger #4. I paid little attention and continued to order my drinks. Anonymous stranger #4 left and drunken guy #1 approaches me. “You are ‘Uber-hot’ and I really mean it” he repeats to me. I’m not fishing for compliments here, but I know for a matter of personal record that I am NOT “Uber-hot”. Under optimal conditions I am barely usual hot. I’m not butt-fugly but no one would ever confuse me for Brad Pitt.

“I think you’ve had too much to drink tonight” I say to this obviously confused and drunk homo.

“No, no no! You’re uber-hot, man. You want a BJ?”

I didn’t pause to ask him if he was offering up a $100 bill. “I’m sorry, I think this is a misunderstanding” I replied.

“No, no uber-hot guy! I want to blow you.”
At this point I pretended to not hear him and walked away. I guess I’m old-fashioned that way; some guy offers to blow me and I just get all flustered! I proceeded to walk out of the bar and toward the Red line El stop. This guy didn’t slow down.

I conjured up terrible images in my head of this guy following me to my apt. I figured that he would stalk me and then bend me over a table and rape me. I quickly surmised that he was only about 5’8 and that I was probably a lot stronger than him. That being the case, I could probably rape him. For an instant I envisioned yelling, “Fuck off, I’ll rape you, motherfucker!” but I didn’t.

As I walked out of the bar it started to rain and this lonely gay guy made some innocuous comment like, “Wow, when it rains, it really pours”.

“What do the 36th president of the United States and a Mexican blowjob have in common?” I asked him at the turnstile of the Fullerton stop.

“I don’t know” He answered.

“They are both ‘El BJ’”. I said, w/ a smile. I stuck out my hand and he shook it, approvingly. “Get home uber-safe” I commented as I signaled for a cab.

For the Californians Who Voted for Prop 8

I bet you feel like a bunch of schmucks now, huh? In just the past 50 yrs California has been called a lot of things. Some called you hippies or flower children. Brian Wilson wished that every girl could be just like you. Not all the names were playfully kind. Others referred to you as beach bums or weirdos. Of course most Californians, and those in Berkeley, LA or SF especially, thought that they were “progressive”.

And while I don’t necessarily agree that being “progressive” is always the best option (many still believe that ideas like socialism are progressive, despite it universally failing on a national scale), I respect that Californians do things their own way. It’s been cool to see Cali set trends that the rest of the country, including NY, emulate months down the line. No one pays much attention to Arkansas or Mississippi unless there’s a photogenic, white woman missing, some dumbass kid who falls down a well or a college bowl game. Expectations are higher for CA, and you guys really let me down on this one.

I’m not even going to formulate an argument on why gay marriage should be allowed b/w 2 consenting adults. The fact that I would need to construct such a statement is insulting itself. What I don’t get is why it bothers people what others do behind closed doors. There are some personal exceptions that I tend to add to this list and they include: Children, animals and retards. If you belong to one of these groups, you probably need some higher authority to look out for your subpar ass.. Even Forrest Gump had his momma. Otherwise, all bets are off.

You want to be the Felching King of Chicago… at your service, my Lord. Plan on sharing a cold lunch w/ your lover? Bon appetit! Let’s not discuss my med school pal Dr. Sanchez, first name:Dirty. While none of these activities are up my alley (my personal fetish was always having sex w/ really attractive women, but that’s just me) I don’t care if you do any of it in your own home, apt or Grandma’s dining room.

For some odd reason, activities much tamer than these seem to really freak out most Californians. And that’s too bad for them. At least now they won’t have to worry about anyone calling them elitists anymore, because “bigoted cowards” is so much more accurate. “Hippie” doesn’t sound so bad about now, does it?

Gay Lisp Investigation

Per Wikipedia: careful pronunciation, wide pitch range, high and rapidly changing pitch, breathy tone, lengthened fricative sounds, and pronunciation of /t/ as /ts/ and /d/ as /dz/

A lot of gay men speak with a lisp. And not just any lisp, it is a characteristic lisp very distinct to this subset of individuals. Growing up I knew a few little kids who grew up to be gay men. One of them had a lisp but given the small sample size, it wasn’t statistically significant. When I moved to Lakeview, AKA “Boystown”, my 3rd yr of med school this sample size increased greatly. And about 10-20% of these guys indeed did have a lisp. I don't know for sure if this number is truly higher than in the straight population, although I suspect that it is elevated.

So of the people I’ve met in my life, more gay guys have a lisp (and this lisp in particular) compared to straight guys. Still not a good sample size, but I’ll take what I can get. The vast majority of these guys are American, thus I’m not sure if this is an international phenomenon or purely limited to the US. Than the question becomes: Is this a learned, social behavior or an inherited trait?

I did a pubmed search on this topic and it came up pretty dry. If you believe the idea that being gay is an inherited quality, it could be that the lisp is related to this genetic quality. I do believe that being gay is very much genetic (with some social influence, albeit minor) so this is a real possible answer for me. But it also makes sense that this is a learned stereotype.

The one study I did find (of dubious quality, but I won’t get into that) was from Canada. It’s designers found that, “some gay men may be subconsciously imitating certain female speech patterns and if this is true, we want to know how men acquire this way of speaking”. So basically some gay guys are emulating female behaviors, consciously or not, as a means of attracting male attention. All you have to do is watch one episode of Project Runway and I could’ve told you that.