Through AirBnB, I have made a friend in Orlando. He is unable to drive so he rides a bike or takes buses everywhere. When I spend the night, I try to help him run difficult errands or enjoy a dinner out someplace he doesn’t normally get to go. Like every one of my AirBnB hosts, he is delightful in a myriad of ways.
He is British by birth and has that conservative sensibility and their dry sense of humor, yet also has a razor sharp insight into American culture and Americans. He is able to poke fun at all Americans (but surely not me). He is wispy thin, and enjoys riding on the back seat of my scooter as we motor around Orlando on my half-baked escapades.
Of course, I’m me. I’m gregarious, ridiculously happy, and have no personal boundaries. People pick up the interplay between him and I; the way we finish each others sentences, the concern for each other’s needs and comfort, even the way we arrive together on my big red scooter (dressed in matching yellow safety vests) as obvious proof that we are gay lovers.
We set off “gaydar”, particularly in women, particularly in very social women. This group of women, sensing the “safety” of a gay-male couple, will seek out the two of us by lingering, then doing their best to interact. The conversations roll into private matters, and are peppered with “there’s nothing wrong with that” (you two being gay).
Of course, while I’m crazy social, and break down the walls of personal relationship constructs, I’m very very heterosexual, actually on a quest to define or even find women to date. This creates humorous situations and emits massive mixed signals. Recently, our third hand for bridge charged right ahead as if nothing was said to correct her mistake. She talked about taking the two of us back to her room (because “she likes Bi’s”) and doing embarrassingly explicit things. Her husband, she said, got drunk, was asleep, and she was mad at him for leaving her frisky. It took quite some time for me to figure out that, in her mind, her raunchily seducing a pair of gay males for some “girl on top” action was OK since she could tell hubby “no harm no foul” since us two guys would be only attracted to each other, and not her, come sunrise. She promised (with a devilish grin and a twinkle in her eye) to please us both and to set us free in the morning.
Hokey Smokes!
We both explained: “Hetero! Hetero! Hetero!” Then, looking silently at each other, with the one eyebrow up and head tilted toward the door, signaled each other “let’s get the hell out of here”.
Over pizza and beer later, the two of us howled with laughter, sighed with amazement, and shook our heads stupefied by her behavior. Her opening comments of “I’m a little drunk” and “Here you two, have some tequila” should have been the tip-off to run. We both laughed that we send out “the gay” signals and we speculated what would logically happen when hubby “woke up” to the newly crowded and noisy motel room. We then began to even ponder the more sinister “is there even a husband or is this one of those elaborate robbery & murder plots from TV episodes on Cable?”
Later on we ran into her again (with husband in tow). Judging from his self aware handshake and bizarre hello, I’d say it was a good bet that he was, indeed, drunk and asleep that night and she had, indeed, been left high and dry and had decided to drown her frustration in hotel bar tequila.
The best thing anybody could have done in that situation is run … run fast .. run fast and far in any direction.
One more chapter before my crazy summer ends.
Scooterman Summer 2016 