Heather Christena Schmidt

So I was sitting at Topper’s Pizza today, minding my own business and trying to ignore my father’s incessant complaining and the Pookies whining about this being the last time we eat pizza before we go on vacation (have to clear our pizza palettes of the crap we have here in California before heading home to Chicago…); when I noticed out of the corner of my eye a couple of computer geek-World of Warcraft nerds sitting at the table next to us.

Now I know, I know: I’m such a bitch to be stereotyping these guys like this, but I swear to God they looked like something you see out of a LARPing how-to video. Slegowartz t-shirt and all.

They were rambling about online gaming tournaments or some bullshit. Then they got into a heated discussion about some drama that went down at the gaming shop down the street over a Magic the Gathering event where a girl showed up or something, thus proving my stereotype absolutely true. How dare a woman show up to a Magic the Gathering gaming day? What a bitch!

The Slegowartz nerds moved on to agree that they only had about ten more minutes before they had to get going, back to the ol’ slave driver day job. It was then that they started discussing things relevant to adult life, like their jobs. And their sexuality. It’s all sort of a blur to me now, but somehow they were talking about how stressful their jobs are and the guy that looked exactly like this pimply dude in this often-used meme just blurted it out:

Fair enough.

It’s funny that I encountered this today, because just yesterday I was sitting at the frozen yogurt shop when two lesbians walked in. I know, I know again: sounds like I’m about to make some horrible and borderline-homophobic joke here. “Two lesbians walk into a frozen yogurt shop…” right? Wrong.

First off, I’m not homophobic. I have a lot of friends that are gay. Some of them are married, and are more committed of couples than any of the straight ones I know.

Now I may have been stereotyping when it came to the whole Slegowartz thing above, but I definitely didn’t call that those guys were gay. I am pretty bad with gaydar – when it comes to homosexual men or women. I just don’t know. I’m pretty aloof. Well, I was sure that these two chicks were lesbians because one kept grabbing the others ass, and then while they were eating their fro yo, the one whose ass had been grabbed started sticking out her tongue for the other to lick it off.

Pretty sure they are carpet munchers. And before you start getting all offended that I called them that, some of my greatest lesbian friends are totally cool with the use of that term. Quite frankly I’m jealous – it’s a concept my husband has never heard of.

So back to the story. The lesbian whose ass was grabbed, who then stuck out her tongue with fro yo on it, looked really familiar. I couldn’t place it for the life of me. And it bothered me, you know? Really bothered me, because I felt like she may have recognized me but because I didn’t say anything like ‘hey how are you?’ or anything, I then offended her. Or something.

I figured out on the ride home who she was. A former pharmacy customer. From her days before becoming a lesbian.

How do I know that? So this girl used to have a boyfriend. Yes, many homosexual people have been in heterosexual relationships before coming to terms with their sexuality. She may also just be experimenting now, which I suspect because people that are in long-term relationships are miserable, not licking frozen yogurt off each other’s tongues.

Anyway, so she used to have a boyfriend and they were customers at the pharmacy. Maybe once or twice a month they would bounce down the aisle towards me at the prescription drop off window. I mean literally bounce. It never failed that every time they would be freshly showered – hair wet. Smelling of soap. He would be giggling and she would loudly announce: “we just had amazing sex and it was unprotected, … ohhh was it unprotected …. I need to get some Plan B because he for sure just put a baby in my stomach.” Every time. Just like that.

Now she’s a lesbian. She was probably a lesbian all along, which brings us back to Slegowartz and the question all of this raised for me: why does it seem like gay people are so much more comfortable talking about their sexuality? Is it because they’ve had to overcome the stigma associated with it? Is it because they just don’t care?

Or is it something else?

I don’t really have a problem with it, anymore than I do when heterosexual people I know talk about sex way louder than they should around children. That’s the extent of the ickiness to it for me, though. But I still remain curious. And perplexed. I just can’t imagine myself ever saying that I know my husband just put a baby in my stomach to a complete stranger at the pharmacy. And I can’t imagine licking the frozen yogurt off anyone’s tongue. I especially can’t fathom myself ever saying to someone that sometimes I have to just take a step back and enjoy the love of a man’s penis.

Can you?