Big Fat Hairy Living

Anyone who says that outing doesn’t work or that it’s a “violation of privacy” needs to take a look at this posting on BlogActive. (There’s also another post to read on the same topic.)

To summarize, Republican Congressman Ed Schrock, who co-sponsored an anti-gay constitutional amendment in the US and whose homophobic voting record earned him a 92% rating from the Christian Coalition, is gay. Click on the link and scroll down to hear MP3 audio of his personal ad on a gay phone sex line. He’s resigned and won’t be running in the November election. Outing works.

This man did everything in his power to set back gay rights, yet was secretly gay. And still there are people who think that he and people like him deserve “privacy.”

The Toolbox had its closing party on Saturday, though the actual last night is September 2. It will be the last Naked Night ever.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go to the corner of Morse and Eastern again. I’m going to deliberately avoid it, because if I go there and see townhouses I’ll probably cry.

It took a bit of time to work up the courage, but on Friday I finally took porky Adam from sales up on his offer and decided to give him a call.

“Hi Adam. It’s Dave. About last week. Sorry I didn’t call you earlier. I was sick for a few days.”

“Oh, Dave!” He recognized my voice at least, if not my surname. “Hey man, That’s ok. Are ya OK? Ya better?”

“Yeah. I’m feeling better…”

He interrupted me. “Glad you’re feelin’ better. Do you wanna grab a coffee later?” I only hate people who drop the final “g” on “-ing” words when it’s affected. With Adam it’s not.

“Oh. Yeah. Sure.” I was mildly surprised that he was asking me out for a coffee.

“You know where I sit, right?” He told me his location. “Wanna come and pick me up?” I find it hard to believe that choice of words was unintentional.

“OK. Sure. Um… three o’clock?”

“Great, man. Sorry, but I’ve got a call to make. See you at three?”

“OK. Bye.”

“Lookin’ forward to it. Talk to ya later!”

The call was pretty brief, but he sounded happy enough. The arrangements to meet later for coffee suited me perfectly; this time I would have the advantage of non-surprise, and I was determined to act a little less like a deer caught in headlights.

At around three o’clock, somewhat mentally prepared by still incredibly nervous, I dropped by his cubicle and knocked on his filing cabinet.

“Hey, Adam. Want to go for coffee?”

He turned his head and smiled. “Hey man. Sure.” He locked his computer and swiveled his chair to get up.

I don’t really like handshakes, so I never offer my hand. This time, though, I decided to take a play from Claude’s strategy book. Not even waiting for him to stand up completely, I looked him directly in the eyes, smiled, and extended my hand to him. He took it and returned my handshake, looking me back in the eye and smiling. I let the handshake linger a little bit, then broke it, letting my hand slide along his.

“Good to see ya, man.” He was positively beaming. His cheeks are so fat. SO FAT.

I took some more of Claude’s advice and ask him all kinds of questions about himself, hoping to extract some information. It was pretty banal: he’s from southern Ontario, studied business administration in college, and actually doesn’t work in sales anymore. But it was once we sat down in the lounge with our coffees that the actual interesting part of the conversation started. He asked me was what I had planned for the weekend.

“Well, my favourite bar is closing. I’m going to a big party on Saturday.” Thanks, Claude.

“Oh yeah?” Uh oh He didn’t know it. He wasn’t gay. Or maybe he’s just prompting me for more information?

“Yeah, the Toolbox. Have you heard of it?” A gamble.

“Oh yeah.” He nodded! There it was! “I know the Toolbox.” So he was gay.

Now it was my turn to beam. “Do you go there a lot? I’ve never seen you there.”

“I don’t go out much, though. Hard to get away from the wife.”

My heart sank. I probably looked as deflated as I felt. “Wife.” It wasn’t even a question, it was a statement.

I couldn’t believe I’d wasted all this time and fantasy energy on chasing after a closeted straight asshole. I wanted to run. Instead I started playing with the lid of my coffee cup.

He nodded. His fat double chin wasn’t as appealing any more. I looked away from him, and my mouth was dry again. “Yeah. For now.” He lowered his voice a little. “I’m kinda gettin’ a divorce.” Gay? Closeted? Divorced? Coming out? “Maybe we can talk about this later?” I looked back at him. He wasn’t looking me in the eyes anymore.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

He interrupted me. “That’s ok, man. Just … not here.” He was looking at the surroundings, probably looking at the tacky bagel poster behind me. Either that or the bunch of ugly people business casual sitting in horrid brown chairs having loud, boring conversations. There was an awkward silence.

I piped up. “Listen, I…” I always start apologies with “Listen.”

He still wasn’t looking at me. “Hey man. It’s OK.” He lowered his volume some more but looked me in the eyes again. “I like you. I like… ” Whispered, staccato delivery. “I like… big. Guys. I’m just new. It’s new.”

Closeted.

How could someone who had (admittedly only in retrospect) blatantly come onto me in the urinal — the urinal of all places — suddenly be nervous? He was the one who asked me to go for a coffee!

“New?” I swear, I’m really am an idiot when it comes to unscripted conversations. It wasn’t that I didn’t know what he meant, just that I didn’t know what to say.

“Yeah.” His eyes darted around, and he paused. I look around. Nobody was paying attention to our conversation, though by this point I had leaned in close enough to violate some kind of Desmond Morris rule of social distance. “Just goin’ through bad stuff.” He looked down at the table. “I wanna see ya again, man.” He returned to normal volume. “Can we talk later, man?”

“OK.” I looked at him. He looked up and smiled.

“Call me?”

“OK.” I managed a smile.

I don’t know what to think. Is he just a closeted guy trying to come out? Am I the only gay person he really knows? What does he want? A blow job? A friend?

In 1997, the Harris government in Ontario entered into a contract with Andersen Consulting, now called Accenture, to redesign the computer system that the Ministry of Community and Social Services uses to administer social support payments. When the new Liberal government took over late last year, they discovered that the system was so fundamentally broken that it’s incapable of even such basic tasks increasing payment rates.

Kevin Brennan of Tilting at Windmills has written an excellent series of articles on what went wrong with the system. (Summary: The Harris government was incompetent and Andersen Consulting took them for a ride.)

Those who don’t want to wade through the whole thing can read the summary, but I highly recommend that anyone interested in politics and government read all the posts:

Part 1: “The most complex systems I ever worked on would be similar in scope to this one and they were delivered for 5% of the cost or less.”

Part 2: “[Accenture's] rates for consulting work … are simply outrageous. I’m not kidding. Disgusting is the only word that comes to mind.”

Part 3: “The system is shoddy beyond all reasonable standards for a simple reason: Accenture developed it for free. I know what most of you are thinking: $246 million doesn’t sound like free to you. But it’s true.”

Part 4: “to justify the reported benefits, you have to assume that this project was solely and completely responsible for the decline in welfare cases in Ontario over that period (in fact, even that comes up $37 million short).”

Part 5: “the Harris government got overly enamoured of the kind of ideas that are overly common in business schools.”

Part 6: “The provincial auditor doubted that any of the reduction in welfare cases ought to be attributed to the project, but [Accenture] and the Ministry had agreed that they would be.”

Part 7: “I’ve seen many similar screw-ups in the private sector, but I’ve never seen a contractor get as good a deal as Accenture did here.”

Part 8: “Since the new system has gone into place, staff have spent so much time struggling with it that they’ve been forced to neglect their primary job”

Part 9: “[Accenture] responded that the savings didn’t come from taking payments away from people who were entitled to them. Of course, when the policy was changed, those people weren’t entitled to the payments anymore…”

Does 6′ 2″, 260 pound American wrestler Rulon Gardner wear a jockstrap? A burning question!

According to the pictures, the answer appears to be a resounding no. And judging from those pictures and from his place of birth (on a farm), it’s also a fair bet that he escaped the knife.

I had written a long post about how someone misrepresented what I wrote and took it completely out of context, but after thinking about it for a while, I decided to delete it. I should expend energy worrying about people and things that matter, and not fretting over what someone I’ve never met thinks of what I’ve written.

Let him have the last word. It doesn’t matter anyway.

On my way out of the office, I turned a corner to head to the foyer and ran into (figuratively, not literally) Adam from sales.

He smiled when he saw me and slowed down to stop. “Hey. How’s it goin’? You headin’ home?”

Please, not smalltalk.

I came to an awkward stop, afraid of the conversation. “Yeah. Just going home.” I can’t do smalltalk. It feels weird.

“Yeah, a long day. Hey, you still in the same group?” He reached his arm behind his head to scratch or rub something on the back of his head.

I couldn’t help but look at his armpit.

“Yeah. Yeah. They’ve been keeping me busy.”

I looked away from his armpit, eyes darting to the tacky green posters on the wall. He lowered his arm. The armpit thing. He so was not coming onto me.

“Me too. Hey man, I won’t keep you, just gonna to make a pit stop and head out. You too?”

“Huh?” A pit stop. A pit stop. I can be so dumb.

“You too? Just headin’ home?” He smiled, his ruddy cheeks inflating. He’s like a giant ball of dough.

“Umm… yeah. Talk to you later?” I need the word OBLIVIOUS tattooed on my forehead.

His smile weakened. “OK. Gonna take a leak. See ya, man.”

“See ya.”

He nodded just like he always does and continued on his way, heading towards the washroom at the end of the hallway.

He called out without looking back at me.

“Call me.”

My mouth was dry.

I went home.

I was at a house party on Saturday night, and Joel Gibb, lead singer and songwriter for The Hidden Cameras was there. I briefly considered saying hi to him, but I was too shy. I didn’t really have anything to say other than “I LOVE YOUR MUSIC!!!”

Mark knows such fabulous people.

Neatly written in marker on top of a faded driving school advertisement taped to the bus stop near my work: “Just because I take the bus does not mean that I need to learn how to drive, damnit! — A Proud TTC Rider”

•

At the bus platform at the subway station, a man in a garish shirt was puffing away on a cigarette. I hate people who smoke where they shouldn’t, so I walked up to him and politely asked, “Excuse me, sir, but smoking isn’t allowed on TTC property.”

“What? I’m outside. Do you work for the TTC?”

“No…”

He interrupted me. “Well then suck my dick, asshole.” He kept puffing.

“I don’t suck off guys who wear their kitchen drapes.”

“Fuck you!”

I walked away, and a few seconds later, he called after me as if he had just understood:

“Faggot!”