{"id":2423,"date":"2015-01-29T08:45:08","date_gmt":"2015-01-29T07:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=2423"},"modified":"2015-01-29T08:49:08","modified_gmt":"2015-01-29T07:49:08","slug":"the-10th-sign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=2423","title":{"rendered":"The 10th Sign"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"confused\"<\/a>I recently came across an article entitled 9 Signs You\u2019re in a Gay Bar.<\/em> The article pointed out that there is no women\u2019s room, but there are drunken bachelorette parties and something called cruising<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It mentioned some chap named Nick Jonas and his rock hard abs, and loads of other clich\u00e9d, yet ubiquitous, features of a gay bar.<\/p>\n

But the 10th sign that you\u2019re in a gay bar is that I\u2019m there and I look confused.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not what you think.<\/p>\n

Well, maybe it is what you think.<\/p>\n

How the hell do I know what you\u2019re thinking?<\/p>\n

For some reason, I have the ability to end up in a gay bar without realizing it\u2019s a gay bar. I have a drink, marvel at the friendly people, the cut off shorts, the mesh. I might even hit on the two most masculine people in the place who happen to be players on the women\u2019s rugby team. And I haven\u2019t a clue. It\u2019s a talent.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a recent talent, either. I have been doing this for twenty years.<\/p>\n

My first gay bar experience was in high school. I was walking to the subway, needed change to buy a token and wandered into the first door where I saw a non-scowling face. The man behind the bar was friendly, asked what I needed. He took no end in delighting about my maroon backpack, my corduroy jacket, and my clip on tie.<\/p>\n

My comedic memory wants the moment of realization to come when I notice he’s dressed in a leather biker’s outfit and assless chaps, but I’m fairly certain now that he was wearing a blue shirt and brown pants. I’m also sure I left without comedic movie incident. I think I figured it out a few months later when one of my classmates made a highly mature joke on the matter.<\/p>\n

My second gay bar upped the ante a bit. Not only did I end up at a gay bar and not know it. I ended up working at a gay bar and didn\u2019t know it. The Frog Pond. The Frog Tree. Something frog-themed. And they had hot wing eating contests every Tuesday night.<\/p>\n

Perhaps I never put the obvious two and two together.<\/p>\n

The ability to unknowingly end up in specific strange locales is not an unknown phenomenon. I knew a woman in college who often found herself at religious structures in Pittsburgh with no prior knowledge of its existence. Another guy used to end up at a car wash anytime he drank Jagrmeister. A fellow teacher in Prague was like the Angel of Death; she always ended up in a place of employment just after someone had died in it. As in, minutes after.<\/p>\n

Odd.<\/p>\n

My exploits have not been sequestered to America. There have been gay bars stumbled upon in Prague, Nuremberg, and Rome. There was a gay bar in Geneva, where it took three beers, no ladies\u2019 room, rainbow themed wallpaper, and a Welshman translating a drunken scene reenactment of The Cage Au Folles<\/em> for me to get the picture.<\/p>\n

So if you walk into a gay bar and see a confused man, as sure as\u00a0H\u00e9ctor Elizondo is the poor man\u2019s Edward James Olmos, it’s me, and I’m enjoying a drink and some Kylie Minogue.<\/p>\n

And all I ask is that you explain just who the hell Nick Jonas is.<\/p>\n

Come clean, Reader! Do you have the propensity to end up in a specific strange locale?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently came across an article entitled 9 Signs You\u2019re in a Gay Bar. The article pointed out that there is no women\u2019s room, but there are drunken bachelorette parties and something called cruising. It mentioned some chap named Nick Jonas and his rock hard abs, and loads of other clich\u00e9d, yet ubiquitous, features of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-D5","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2423"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2430,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2423\/revisions\/2430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}