Standing there in the parking lot after the delightful little neighborhood weekly drag show, I was thinking about what a strange grouping we made. There was frumpy vanilla straight ol’ me, probably 15 years older than everyone else in the crowd. Then there was my best friend, R, a reserved gay male as big as a Mack truck. And then there was Bobby. Sweet Bobby. Mildly retarded, full of energy, never met a stranger. He kept flitting off into the crowd to hug people, then he’d come back for a time, only to disappear again. He may not have been Einstein, but Bobby was all heart.
The parking lot was crowded, because the thing to do after this show was mingle. So mingle we did. Before long, one of the headliners, wearing a peach silk bathrobe, cut through the crowd as if parting the red sea. She wanted to meet me. I haven’t a clue what I had done to deserve such attention, but there you have it.
But for some reason her idea of flirting was to pick on Bobby. She made fun of the way he talked, the way he moved, and the things he said. She intentionally confused him and laughed about it. She expected me to laugh along with her, like a comrade in cruelty, but I didn’t. She invaded my personal space and offended my sense of compassion.
The next day, R and I were discussing our night out (as you do), and he said, “That girl was really into you! What was her name?”
“True,” I said. “Her name was True. I remember that distinctly because when she said that, I remember thinking, ‘False’.”
“Why, because she’s a tranny?”
“No, darling, because she was a b****. I don’t care if you’re L, G, B, T, Q or purple with pink polka dots. If you’re not a nice person, I’m not going to like you.”
See how inclusive I can be?
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