There’s a Golden Girls episode where Blanche meets a guy at the library, agrees to go out on a date with him, balks when she realizes he’s in a wheelchair, and hilarity (naturally) ensues. At one point, the girls find themselves sitting around the kitchen table hashing out the pros and cons of Blanche’s latest romantic entanglement — you remember that episode, right? — and Sophia weighs in: “Just because a man’s in a wheelchair,” she says, “doesn’t mean he can’t satisfy a woman.” Invited to elaborate, she unspools one of her famous Sicily stories. “Picture it,” she says (and I paraphrase here), “Sicily: 1918. A man in a wheelchair satisfies a woman. It’s a short story but I think it proves my point.” In this spirit, the following post:
When I was in the eighth grade (nearly thirty years ago, I am aghast to calculate), our school was one block from the nearest 7-11, and, with unfettered access to the Big Gulp soda fountain, I became what might charitably be described as a fan of Diet Coke. I had only recently grown tall enough that my body stretched my weight up and down rather than from side to side, and I wanted to stay that way, and it had the word “diet” in it — if one Diet Coke could make you skinny, imagine the miracles that 200 fluid ounces a day could make manifest. On the very first day (literally Day One) of high school, therefore, I didn’t even hesitate — why would I? — to plunk in my two nickels or whatever vending machines cost in those days and order up my Diet Coke come lunch time. I wish I was exaggerating, but the hostile, shitty, faggot-bashing, limp-wristed lisping “Diet Coke” heckling started up before the actual can even clunked out of the machine, and it carried on for two years, until I transferred schools. You read that right: I was intimidated and verbally hassled by the same eight or ten dickheads every single day (they did take weekends off), for two years, because I drank a fucking Diet Coke with my lunch. A few of my so-called friends bailed on me, one or two of the gayer ones actively participating in the bashing bullshit to deflect attention from the faggoty gold bracelets with which they dripped, but my friends who had the balls and the strength of character to stick around were heckled by association, some to an extent of which I have only been made aware in recent years. All because of a can of pop. (Well, that, and a crippling fear of Self, with which I truly hope those guys grew up to come to terms, not that it’s my job to wish them well.)
Skipping ahead: Picture it: The airplane the other day, from LAX to Denver. A big gay flight attendant serves a Diet Coke to an honest-to-God (according to his leather jacket, leather hat, t-shirt, and tattoos) Hell’s Angel. And this burly, bearded, busted-up-lookin’ biker dude, when offered the can, demurs, satisfied with a little 6-oz. plastic cup of it. Which is fine; I’m way past the point of judging people by what they order to drink on the airplane (although not above judging them by how they order it. “Would you like something to drink?” “No, thank you. Just a black coffee and a tomato juice.” OK, if those aren’t “to drink,” I’m gonna need to know just what the hell you are planning to do with them before I serve them to you…). You want a Diet Coke, I’m happy to serve it to you, and you wanna split the can with your tough-as-nails wife, frankly, I think there’s a certain romance in there somewhere. But I’d be lying if I said it didn’t strike me; would those Regis dipshits have had the nerve to laugh at this guy? To belittle or berate him over a beverage choice? And pay for it — if you’ll allow me to rhetorically ascribe imaginary and stereotypical violent tendencies to a man who was perfectly friendly to me — by spitting their teeth into a puddle of their own blood in the parking lot? I doubt it. And not least because by now I bet they all drink the shit on airplanes, too. A big reason that being bullied is so frustrating is that it can be so frickin’ arbitrary. I was an easy target, and self-loathing has to go somewhere, although a better place to put it would be Away. I’m out now. I’ll never be skinny again, and I don’t drink more than a 6-pack of pop in a year. I serve a million Diet Cokes a year, to every kind of person, without even thinking about it. It struck me funny the other day, is all — this dude as butch as they come, and all the shit I had to put up with? Like I said, it’s a short story. But surely it proves some kind of point…
At least, don’t you hope it does? Romance inflames our senses — Sight. Touch. Smell, for better or worse. (These clever boys are in the shower, washing away any worries in that department…) It satisfies so many of our basic urges: there’s suspense, there’s (hopefully) action; the instinct to hunt — and perhaps also to gather, I don’t judge — is exercised in ways it might not otherwise be if you don’t have a gun, you don’t want to kill animals, or you look a fright in camouflage. I write, and love to read, stories with a romantic element because they’re hopeful, they’re hot, and they give your characters all kinds of excuses to act like idiots and then kiss each other.
mister stewardess 