Popingay

Gays can be so mean. Myself included.

Situational context is so very important in life. I’ve learned many times that the audience should dictate your presentation. You should never wear a meat-bikini into a lion cage, for example, or wear a gold thong into a an elementary school classroom to dazzle them with your mastery of stripercise. I’ve learned this lesson many times, and yet somehow I manage to forget them every time and again, a behaviour for which the world provides swift and painful correction.

Yesterday was one of those days.

There are times in every student’s semester when he or she gives up entirely on maintaining the facade that they’re managing things well. This usually happens around midterm season, and again at finals. You can tell by the masses of pajama-clad students with horrific bed-head stumbling out of the library in the early morning hours and squinting at the rising sun. Between the centre’s opening, midterm exams and assignments, and my other working days, time is at a premium and I’ve ben rushing around so much that each day kind of blurs into the next. That’s the moment I usually decide looking like a respectable human being isn’t worth the effort, and, in fact, sweatpants are a good idea.

You heard me. I wore sweatpants in public. Quel horreur!

While I wait for the world to collectively recover their breath, I’m going to go make some tea.

Ok, done freaking out? Perfect.

You see, it wasn’t enough that I hadn’t shaved for several days, nor that my hair looked like it’d be slept on for days, I had to wear the bloody sweatpants outside because it was snowing and I was tired and cranky.

Here’s my justification: I didn’t want to get out of bed that morning, so I pretended I never did. My choice in clothing was meant to reflect that. It’s a metaphor!

Anyways, the worst part of it all was that I decided to make this grievous offence on a Tuesday, the day all the young gays in Calgary gather up for our weekly coffee adventure. I. Wore. Sweatpants. In. Front. Of. The. Gays.

It was a disaster. Never have I faced such scrutiny before in my life. The normies are bad enough, but the homos are ruthless (side note: I apparently ironically refer to heterosexual people as “normies”). And I deserved it. If someone else had come to coffee wearing sweatpants, I would’ve dropped a glass and trampled over several people to be the first one to openly mock them. I can’t really blame them for doing exactly as I would have.

Still, by the end of the night when my sorry-sweatpants-wearing-ass was called out for it for the nth fucking time all I could do was interrupt screaming, “YES I’m wearing sweatpants! Bite me!”. Thankfully no one did.

(Probably because I looked like I slept on the street—though, as I mentioned numerous times, I was clean. I brushed my teeth and showered and it was all the effort I was willing to put in.)