Since I’m back early from my holiday to Mexico City and Playa del Carmen, loyal UYA reader, I have a short tale and a lesson for other queers who may be confronted with similar travel plans in the near future:
Turns out that traveling with two straight guys, I was the gay man out. My friends and I originally planned to stay in hotels and save money by getting rooms with two double beds. The original pitch to me involved a rotating sleep schedule so everyone got their own bed once, which made sense, seeing as I had known these guys for about 5 years and they had known each other for about 15. Good friends, good way to save money on accomodation, so wouldn’t have thought that there would be weirdness about who sleep beside who in separate blankets? Yet guess who came home earlier than expected? The homo. That’s who. Which was a good thing anyway cause I needed the catch up time to prep for a brutal upcoming month and got to fly first class by default.
Still, I just want to say: despite all this new, sexually progressive, no-labels-for-anyone bullshit that 20-somethings are promoting nowadays, I’m hear to tell you firsthand: when the chips fall between gays and straights, you will find yourself on the gay side of the table (which is how I spent many a dinner, I might add, down south).
All of this has left me wondering: straight male friends, what are they good for?
As always, I welcome your comments. Tell me your thoughts, as the following reader did after last friday’s posting:
Sunday, February 22, 2009 5:27 PM
Great.
Another downtown fag in Mexico. The cheapest vacation ever where you
can still feel comfortable cause you know a neighbor with three
roommates and a drug habit will be around.
And as for Tommy D…didn’t he just get fired? Can’t be too good at promotion then.
You guys are so transparent.
Eastside Diva
I’ll let Tommy D speak for himself if he wants, but let me address the first part of your shit (and I mean shit) with the following:
My dear Eastside Diva, the best part of my Mexican sojourn was spent in Mexico City. If you want a culture shock, try visiting la Ciudad. You’ll be hard pressed to find another Caucasian person or any Mexicans who can speak English outside Centro Historico, and even there, they are few and far between. If you haven’t already, you should also try going to Mexico and not going to a resort, which was the point of my vacation. It’s neither dirt cheap nor extremely comfortable and you get the added granola satisfaction of helping local businesses survive.
Maybe it’s the visual stereotyping I got coming through customs that is making me so pissy (apparently my penchant for tattoos, ball caps and baggy shirts mean I’m a drug mule and therefor deserve not one, not two, but three separate searches by customs officicals, including a swabbing of every item in my bag and a grilling on my sexuality and sexual activity on vacation), but I’ve got the same two words for you as I had for my two friends when I left them last week and struck out on my own:
FUCK YOU
You are as bad as the customs agent who made it his personal mission to make the tail end of an already suspect vacation complete hell. Way to facelessly and anonymously propigate stereotypes, Eastside Diva, cause lord knows in the queer community, we don’t have enough of them. Gold star for you! A+++
We can all learn something from the following poster:
It’s a gay dolphin. Enough said.
Why you can trust Xtra
