The Unit of Caring

Clara and I were waiting for the light to change in San Francisco when we were accosted by a pushy street preacher who said vague street preacher things I wasn’t really listening to and then said to me “you and your sister -”

“Oh,” I said, “she’s not my sister, she’s my girlfriend.” (I’m really not sure why he went for ‘sister’ instead of ‘friend’ - I wouldn’t have corrected him over ‘friend’ - I don’t think we were even holding hands or anything else you might parse as sisterly if you weren’t inclined to parse it as romantic.)

“Oh,” he said. “Well, I don’t really believe in lesbianism.”

I was not actually sure he had said that until I talked to Clara, and by then the light had changed and so we just crossed the street. It was just as well because neither of us could really think of anything to say. 

I am very happy to live somewhere where this is rare enough to be hilariously funny when it happens. 

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A couple weeks before this a guy asked me out when I was walking at night. “Sorry,” I said, “I have a girlfriend.”

“Oh!” he said. “That’s cool, I’m totally cool with that, I’ve got nothing against that. Good for you! It’s totally cool. Great! Okay.”

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When I kiss a girl in public I have noticed people going out of their ways to smile supportively at us.

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I think there’s something like a progression here, from forbidden to ‘technically allowed, but with invisible social penalties and lots of bad reactions’ to ‘okay, with some risk of bad reactions and everyone else demonstratively signaling that they won’t have a bad reaction’ to ‘literally not even a thing’. I live in a ‘literally not even a thing’ community, from which vantage point both the demonstrative signaling and the disapproval are kind of entertaining. But they aren’t funny to the people actually immersed in them. 

• 3 June 2017
• #lgbt[a-z]*
• 110