My math class is full of dudes, twenty seven to be exact, and only three girls. It's a business math class, the foundation for the school of business, accounting, etc. I am the only gay one. Well, there was another gay guy, but he dropped out, leaving the seat next to me open.
Everyday I take my seat as the rest of the class slowly files in; everyone choosing a place to sit. Eventually, it gets to the point where all the seats are taken, except the one next to me—guys choosing floating chairs and the option of doing math problems in their laps, avoiding my neighboring spot. I know I don't smell. I shower twice a day, floss and brush my teeth three times a day. I'm also not a paranoid person—unless it comes to self-diagnosed Internet health issues—so I know I'm not making this up. What the hell? Is my gayness oozing out my giant pores and wafting through the air like deer pheromones? I'm gay, but am I really that gay? I mean, I stopped wearing tiny pants and foundation at the beginning of the new millennium. I don't get it.
Sometimes I think we forget how socially unaccepted gay people still are—especially in the God-fearin' Bible Belt. People just don't like gay people. I read this gay news blog every morning, Towleroad, it's pretty crazy how many gay people are beaten, murdered or prejudiced against every day. It's sad. Everyone should be ashamed. Jesus would be rolling over in his grave, if he only knew. Oh, and did I mention the guys in my class are all fucking gross? I don't know what they're so worried about. I wouldn't touch any of them with a ten foot pole. I'm pretty sure they eat McDonald's everyday and the classroom smells like a junior high locker room. Oh, and the roly-poly-neck-roll-boy in front of me smells like ham.
My theater class smells too. The kid to the left of me has the aroma of slightly soured milk. To my right, there is a girl named Chardonnay. She smells like cigarettes and Bath and Body lotion. In the class, we read plays and analyze them. Chardonnay was terribly disappointed when she came to the realization she wasn't going to be acting. She likes acting. She also likes snapping and popping her gum continuously, that and playing with her multiple gold earrings, sliding them back and forth through their holes rubbing past the callous lumps that once housed bacterial infections. She can get you free cable. She also hates Alicia Keys because she never told anyone she was biracial, so now she feels mislead and won't listen to her music anymore. For Valentines Day, her boyfriend sent her a Valentine from the state penitentiary. She doesn't like him anyway and her other boyfriend made it up to her by giving her a rose dipped in real gold. In front of me sits a young man that looks strikingly similar to Beetlejuice from the Howard Stern Show—no joke. He likes to itch his cornrows through his do-rag. His heart was broken recently and he plans to use this raw emotion in our upcoming class project. He told me only moments after gargling his Mountain Dew.
The other day I was thinking about a world without homosexuals. I really think people wouldn't know what they had until it was gone, you know? Just think of all those cute parts of town that were made cute simply because gays were the only ones brave enough to live there, redoing all the houses, opening coffee shops, opening faggy art galleries. Gays make cute parts of town. They also design clothes and make pretty hair. In fact, most beautiful and creative things are made by gays. I know that's totally stereotypical and kind of a stretch but it's still kinda true. So, if Christian Republicans had their way and all gays were exterminated, like in Uganda (which is my prediction for the next presidential campaign), just think how depressing the world would be? You heteros would have to eat at Olive Garden or Chili's every night, wearing burlap sacks, with six inch roots and you'd have nothing to talk about except what happened on Two and a Half Men the night before (because it would be the only show left on TV). Boring, and the food at Chili's is gross. And just think of what would happen to New York City? All those girls who moved there to be Carrie Bradshaw would be wandering around crying and wondering why there is no one to make their pink martinis and to design their four-hundred dollar shoes.
The Romans and the Greeks accepted gay people, back before Christianity was made up. It was normal back then. Thousands and thousands of years ago. They invented plumbing too, you know, and where would be without plumbing? Swimming in shit, that's where. And where would we be without all the gays throughout history? Leonardo DiVinci? Plato, Socrates, Michelangelo? Sir Elton John? Sir Isaac Newton?? Do you think a heterosexual would have ever noticed gravity? And I bet Alexander the Great wouldn't have been so Great if he weren't a fag and I'm sure no one was "not sitting next to" Aristotle when he set the stage for the future of physics and mathematics.
Just think about a world where all gay people, everyone in fact, could be happy and encouraged to succeed. Maybe Virginia Woolf wouldn't have walked into that river with pockets full of rocks if she had a dyke softball team to play on. And poor Eleanor Roosevelt wouldn't have been forced to have all that sex with fuddy-old-Franklin. The world could have been an even better place, a cuter place.
I'm not pointing fingers, but Christianity is a bit like the irresponsible parent who only feeds their child spaghetti-o's and tells them one side of the story. Unfortunately, until someone tells that parent that they're unfit, this whole mess perpetuates. I know it seems like I am always picking on religion, but it really is what is keeping the gays as second class citizens. Christians need to realize that we are just as normal as straight people. Gays exist throughout the animal and insect kingdom as part of the evolutionary structure and the natural world. It is fact, just as the earth is round, not flat, and the planets revolve around the sun, and that our solar system is in a galaxy that is one of millions in the universe. See what I'm saying? This is the way it is. I don't care if you think Jesus made it this way or microorganisms grew feet, but this is the world and gay people are a natural part of it. We have always been here. I know I can't prove my gayness is innate, just as you can't prove your God is real. You're "faith" is just as good as my word. So for now, we must try to live harmoniously—or at least until I figure out a way to "misplace" the 650 billion Bibles in the world.
In the meantime, I guess I'll just enjoy the elbow room.
