Fag Gag

A couple nights ago, the girls in our group dragged me out to a straight bar called Toby Joe's.

"More like Toby Hoes," one of the girl's quipped about the club, but I didn't think it was my place to judge...yet.

I stumbled with them toward the club on Friday night. I was excited to see the graphic t-shirts so many of the british boys here wear. So hip! So with-it!

Toby Joe's was a teeming mass of college-aged students, and reminded me of Laguna Beach, that godawful OC ripoff with the brain-dead kids that like to pause five fucking minutes between every painfully obtuse and evasive sentance.

"Yeah. He's just being so...."

"Yeah. I know."

"It's just..."

"Mm hmmm...a bitch."

"Total."

I guess rich white kids don't have to say as much to get their points across. The clothes and bling say much more intelligent things, things about Dior and Marc Jacobs. You don't have to say much when Marc Jacobs is in the room.

Okay okay. Toby Hoe's wasn't that bad...the kids weren't that dumb. It was just boring. That was, until, I met a girl named Beverly Elizabeth.

"Ohmygawd" she wandered up to me and said, head flailing back, and then coming to rest on her busom, "Are you an American?"

"Yes I'm an American!" I yelled.

"Ahaaaa. That is so cool." She said.

"Hey. Can you do me a favor?" I asked her. "Do you know where all the gays are?"

"The gays! Ahhhhhh!! You're gayyyyy!! Aahhhhhhh!! Ohmygod we must talk about fashion. Justasecond."

Then Beverly handed me her drink and told me she needed to go to the bathroom. Five minutes passed. Then ten. Beverly had told me to watch over her drink to make sure no one slipped ecstacy in it.

I waited a bit longer for her.

Longer.

Then I took a sip of her beer. Then another sip. The beer tasted so good. It tasted like victory. It tasted like retribution for every instance I'd been labeled the stereotypical gay by stupid drunk females. Beverly may have just been one girl, but in my mind she was millions of girls I'd met, every single one of whom totally overreacted to me coming out to them, then assumed I would be able to help them with something gays are supposed to help girls with. Things like purses, hair, shoes...all the stupid fucking things I don't know jack shit about. What about love, Beverly? Why not ask to talk about love. I left her drink sitting on the table.

"I want to leave," I told my friend Melissa, but she was too busy engaged in a conversation with some really friendly looking South Africans. I tried to join the conversation but I couldn't hear what they were saying and I kept on asking people "whaa??" and getting blank stares. So I gave up. I don't like being the deaf one.

I wandered back into the center of the club, where members of my study abroad group were dancing on the stage with their shirts off.

"USA! USA! USA!" one of them was chanting ironically. Girls were fauning over them, because they are big African Americans and look different from everyone else in South Africa. "Can I take a picture with you?" one of them asked Zach. I bet he's annoyed by this question by now.

"Zach, I want to leave," I said to him.

"Steve. This place is fucked up. Someone just said 'can I take a picture with you, my nigga?"

"What?!?! That's outrageous, Zach. Did you beat him up?"

"No, but I wanted to."

"I'm leaving." I told him. I feel like I'm always announcing my departure. Goodbye. I don't like it here. I'm gone.

And then, exasperated, I left.