May 15, 2009

Am I Gay, Or Is It The Coffee?


Here’s my theory; we’re all insane until proven otherwise. We just don’t know we’re nuts until you have one of those moments when the soundtrack of your own thoughts falls away and you hear yourself talk.

Like in line at Dunkin Donuts, it was like suddenly someone turned off the stereo and I could hear the words come out of my mouth and echo around the store:

“…thanks, I’ll have a medium light, one Sweet and Low and a chocolate chip muffin”.

It was a car-key moment. The moment when everything drops away but the sound of the car door slamming shut as you lock your keys inside.

I sounded so Man-Gay. Not straight up “Gay Gay”, and nothing on the down low, no inner cowboy secretly looking to take that long weekend escape on Brokeback Mountain.

Just Man-Gay.

“Medium light with one Sweet and Low” isn’t gonna make anyone look up from their morning paper and go “Alpha male on the floor, stand back boys…”. So I stood there fumbling around for some money thinking how MG my order sounded.

And I worried that I’d been too pampered, too lucky in life. And I haven’t even been that lucky. But then I heard something that made me pause, reflect, then almost laugh out loud.

Guy behind me goes “…I’ll take a large coffee, extra light skim…with a splash of cream and four Splendas”.

Okay, I may not be the toughest guy on the planet, but I was ready to hand this guy the ass-less cowboy chaps and say “You go Village People…”.

C’mon.

Okay, the splash of cream is equal to the skim milk content altogether so what’s up with that? Just freaking order it with the cream.

Which brings me to my second point. I know I live in Suburbia now, but who the &^%()*%$ orders a ‘splash of cream” in a $2 cup of Joe at Dunkin Donuts?

I’m all for us dudes getting in touch with our inner Queer Eye For The Straight Guy, but puh-lese, you do not need to be taking the inner Queer Eye out for a picnic lunch.

Or letting him order a ‘splash of cream’, for that matter. And while I’m at it, Splenda? Honest to god are you really gonna tell me you can take the Pepsi challenge, line up packets up Splenda, Sweet / Low, Equal, do a blind taste and pick one out?

And, god help you it you do possess the freakish ability to separate artificial sweeteners by taste, if you are a straight male, can you please not order ‘splenda’?

Why?

Say it again: Splenda.

You order Sweet and Low, you’re calling a spade a spade. It’s sweet, d’uh. That’s it job. And it’s fake as Pam Anderson’s floatation devices so obviously it’s low in calories.

But dude, you order Splenda you better not be wearing a penis because the word Splenda is about one man-gina away from borrowing your wife’s lip-gloss and trolling the park after work.

Hey, order your drink. Live large. But you get two perks per cup. You order coffee, you can add milk or sugar. It can be skim, soy, cream, half and half, hey you can hook up your own cow and squirt away.

But you don’t get to ask for your milk and a splash. No. Not now, not ever.

Unless you are Carston from Queer Eye or Liza Minnelli.

Or maybe Jake Gyllenhaal. Yeah, yeah I know; he was just an actor playing a gay cowboy.

But he was on the bottom.

I’m just saying.

If you're gonna be a muffin, be the top.