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I think if I were gay, I could get laid pretty much at will. I know that sounds like a self-call – and it is – but I can back at up. Guys have been hitting on me like crazy lately. It’s kind of flattering, but also kind of creepy, like when someone tells you that he or she airbrushed a mural of you naked and riding a unicorn on their bedroom ceiling.
I’m around gay people all the time now because I work in an upscale restaurant in Boston’s South End, which is to the city’s homosexual population as Provincetown is to the Cape, or San Francisco is to California, or Bravo is to cable. Gay people are everywhere. But I actually view this as a good thing because
a) I almost always like gay people, and
b) there’s nothing wrong with having a well dressed, clean, high-tipping clientele.
It’s just that some of them – not all, just some – make it pretty obvious that they, um, want to bone me.
At first I didn’t realize how big a blip I was registering on the gaydar screen. This is probably because I never score very highly on the ladies’ straightdar. In coffee shops, when I try to make eye contact with a pretty girl, she looks away. In college, when a sorority came out with their list of hot guys, I wasn’t on it. And in online chat rooms, when a “girl” wants a picture, I stop talking to her.
But in the coffee shop/sorority/chat room that is the South End, I’m a hot commodity.
I’ve been trying to figure out why I’m so much more attractive to gay guys than I am to straight girls, and I’ve come up with several theories:
1. People, no matter if they’re men or women, straight or gay, want what they can’t have. I think it’s pretty obvious that I’m not gay – I don’t flirt with guys that flirt with me and I only own one pair of pants.
2. The South End is a gay comfort zone. The other day I went across the street to a café to get a smoothie and a Danish between my lunch and dinner shifts. When I got to the front of the line, the young man behind the counter said, “Hello, handsome!”
I was taken aback so I said, “Um, hi.” He probably thought I was shy. I didn’t want things to get awkward so I ordered my smoothie and Danish.
Now, if this guy worked at the Burger King in Southie, he probably wouldn’t greet his customers like that. Some people are very homophobic and don’t like to be called, “Handsome,” and they’re likely to attack you if you call them that unless they’re a mobster and their name is “Handsome Harry,” but still, you have to figure that Handsome Harry wouldn’t appreciate the cheeriness of the Hello that came before the Handsome so he probably would have attacked the guy behind the counter anyway.
But in the South End, where a healthy percentage of the men are gay, and there are very few mobsters named Harry, people don’t worry about getting attacked because most of the time the response to “Hello, handsome!” is “Well, hey there, gorgeous!” and then the smoothie and Danish are ordered.
3. I’m the new guy. The South End is a fairly decent-sized community, but if you’ve spent a few months there and been to all the local hangouts, you’ve probably seen most of the available men. So when a new guy comes along, people notice. I’m like a goldfish getting added to the shark tank at the Boston Aquarium.
4. I have DSLs.
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When I first started working in the South End, I was reading a book in a Starbucks between shifts, and a man asked me if I had the time. I looked at my watch and told him that it was around three and he smiled, said thank you, and walked back across the café to his table.
Then I realized that two things were weird about what had just happened. First, nobody asks for the time anymore. Everyone has a watch, a cell phone, a Blackberry, or a portable microwave oven that tells time. It’s just not a question that’s asked very often, except in kindergarten and nursing homes, two locations where everyone is either too young or too old to own a watch.
The second thing that was weird about the question was that the man had come all the way across the café to ask it, bypassing several laptops.
Laptops always know what time it is.
Something weird was going on.
Then at brunch the other day one of my fellow waiters said, “The guys at my table like you,” and sure enough, this table of five – and one of them in particular – kept turning around in their seats to check me out. This one guy who was probably fifty years old had to rotate 180 degrees in his chair to make eye contact with me, and when he did, he flashed me a combination of Zoolander’s “magnum” look and a golden retriever’s “I’m hungry/I want to have sex with your leg” look.
At one point, I was walking by the table and this guy arm his hand out and formed a barrier across the aisle between tables.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“Um, I don’t know,” I said.
He probably thought I was shy, too.
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Of course it’s nice to be noticed, but it makes me uncomfortable. Now I know what it’s like to be a hot girl, to have guys mentally undress you and slather you in oil.
It’s a little weird, so I’ve come up with several plans for making these guys go away.
Plan A: Get really fat on smoothies and Danishes.
Plan B: Actually, not smoothies and Danishes. They’re probably sending the wrong message.
So here’s Plan C: get a lip reduction.
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adam@theadamwhite.com |
