I wore a Captain America t-shirt the other day, a shirt I got at Gamestop on sale. It features a vintage cover of a Cap comic and it’s one of my favorite shirts. I wore it to work and then needed to go to Micro Center (local computer store) to buy a new video card for my PC.
So I’m walking around Micro Center with my husband, who is infinitely smarter about computers than I am (considering I work in IT) and we’re trying to find a better, but cost effective video card and this guy, who looks like he walked out of King of the Hill and who, I kid you not, somehow smelled of pizza and Mountain Dew, glances over at me and with a stupid smirk on his face says, “Bet you can’t name one Golden Age Captain America title.”
Now, don’t get me wrong. I know the rampant trends of shaming female comic book and video game fans are a real thing but I have been wearing DC and Marvel shirts for a very long time and never had someone actually call me on it, least of all in public. My first reaction was to roll my eyes and ignore him. My husband turned his head and said, “Excuse me?” in a rather loud voice, but I decided to embrace this “teaching moment” and turned to him.
I smiled politely and nodded. “I’ll tell you what,” I told him. “I’ll name five Golden Age titles if you can tell me, in a clear and concise way, how to find a woman’s G-spot.”
The look on his face would have been enough to make me turn around, satisfied that I’d shut him up, but I wanted to drive my point home, because fuck that guy, right?
So I stepped toward him and said, “Can you?”
By now, a store employee had stepped into the aisle to pull something from the shelves and overheard my licentious question. Mr. Mountain Dew gaped silently, like a fish out of water and I waited patiently, the same smile on my face. After a minute of silence, I said, “Nothing?”
Mountain Dew finally found his voice and said, “What the hell does that have to do with Captain America?”
“We’ll get to that in a minute,” I said. “First, I want you to clarify something. Do you like women?”
Once again, he was speechless but eventually said, “Yes,” in a defiant, indignant tone.
“Interesting,” I said. “Now correct me if I’m wrong, but your demand that I name a Captain America title was intended to prove that I was somehow impersonating a comic book fan by daring to wear this shirt in broad daylight, am I right?”
“But if I apply the same logic to you, it could be said that you’re impersonating a heterosexual male, because after all, why should you be allowed to fuck women if you don’t know how to do it properly?”
I didn’t wait for him to answer. I grabbed my video card, paid, and left and now, I wear that Cap shirt with a sense of victory I didn’t have before.
Moral of the story, kids: Don’t be a dick to people who wear their fandoms or interests on their clothes if you can’t handle the clapback.
stormborns
romaincrisis
2087
snowghoul
discoholicmusic
andulkaphoto
