Chapter 1 - Labor Friends
“What does a mirror look at?” -Frank Herbert
I see him at work every day. That part is hard. Sometimes, it is exciting…the part about it being hard-and I don’t mean that in a double entendre way. I don’t know any male dinosaurs who are intimately involved with other male dinosaurs. I’ve seen it on television occasionally, but it often seems to be used as a source for comedy. I laugh along with the studio audience when the masculinity obsessed head of the household side eyes a male character with a lisp on his tongue and flamboyance about his behavior. “Peculiar” comes up in One Flew Over the Pterodactyl’s Nest. Queer is another of these words, and certainly more common nowadays. It’s considered… strange… odd… suspicious… abnormal… or even… …ridiculous behavior… to be a man who is attracted to…other men.
The main point driving this concept seems to be the fact that women like men and therefor a man liking a man is basically a man behaving like a woman. It’s funny stuff. I don’t know why I laugh at it. I don’t understand the humor on any level beyond shock. But once the shock wears off, it just seems like it’s nobody’s god damn business who consents to intimacy with who. And for that matter, who cares which scaly sack of bones and meat behaves as a woman and which scaly sack of bones and meat behaves as a man? It’s not an attack on masculinity, I can tell you that much. My masculinity is an undeniable part of who I am, and my masculinity informs me that anyone who would bother another free citizen of Pangea about what they do with their free time as an adult who is harming no one is a small dinosaur. A coward.
I see him at work everyday.
I also see him after work more often than not, as he has been my best friend for more than half of my life. I used to look at him as long as I could without being noticed by him or anyone else. It felt as though it was important for my own inner monologue that I hold his face in frame while I wonder if he ever thinks about me in the way that I try not to think about him. It’s genuinely hard to tell.
Roy is a Tyrannosaurus Rex. He’s strong, confident, funny, kind, thoughtful, but…he’s not very bright. I feel like if Roy has never had a thought about another man, it was simply because the idea had not entered in head through outside suggestion. I think most dinosaurs like member of the opposite sex almost exclusively because that’s what they were taught. WE were all taught this simply because it’s how to keep propagating all of the dinosaur species, or whatever it’s called. We’re at a point in our society now where it’s becoming clear that we are not going extinct anytime soon. Plus, the majority of men I know commonly engage in sex with their wives that involves contraceptives and pulling out. This doesn’t provide life to a baby any more than two men having sex does.
I decided that today will be the day that I attempt to get Roy into a conversation about sex between men just to see what his response is. He invited me over after work to help him set up his new TV set. He got one of those new big screen TVs that could probably literally fit a football game inside them. I’m talking live, field and all.
Roy checked the TV remote to see if we installed everything correctly, and then upon confirmation that everything was as smooth as fossilized amber, we high fived and struck our cocky “we are men and we can do anything” poses. At leat, that’s what I felt like we were doing. Maybe Roy doesn’t think about things the way that I do. It’s not that I don’t naturally feel manly. I assure you, I am drawn to manly behaviors by an innate drive…and impulse. But the fact that I’m also drawn to the manly behaviors of others…I guess I’m not as disconnected from the shame projected by many members of our society as I would like to be. I tend to point out things like gendered behavior. I tend to notice when that behavior fits like a gloves, or when, as in my case, it’s a bit more awkward and uncertain.
I realized that Roy had been flipping channels for a couple of minutes now as I had seen the same channel pass multiple times…and these new boob tubes get about 18 channels. at least I wonder if he was lost in thought too. I was done with the beating around the bush, though. That’s not the kind of man I am. “Roy, let me ask you something.” I stated, calmly. “You give me no choice,” joked Roy, halfway glancing at me for a moment while still flipping through the channels. I often have to choke back the words that I want to say to Roy, now that I’ve let the tension build so damn much. (please pin me to the ground) "Uhh…have you ever met a gay dinosaur before?“
"Yes, this morning in the mirror.”
“Wait, really?!” I blurted out, as my other senses caught up with the fact that Earl offered a small chuckle as he had made the comment. What was the joke? I looked around the room we were in, scanning all of Roy’s manners with interest. The mirrors throughout his house seem to behave fairly normal, so he was definitely saying that he was the gay dinosaur he saw in the mirror this morning. Rowdy caterpillars turn into rowdy butterflies in my stomach, as Roy interjects.
“Doesn’t gay mean happy?” (to me, yes) “Oh, haha. I guess it does. Or used to. Interesting how words evolve, huh?”
“I don’t know, Earl. I don’t really believe in evolution. Lest you forget about what we learned every summer at bible camp.”
As soon as the words, “bible camp” had left Roy’s full lips, I was sucked back 30 years into a full on “this is a movie” flashback. I could see 10-year-old me sitting in a chair, and the chair was a part of a whole circle of chairs, all full of young dinosaurs, some of which I remember still and some of which are composite images constructed by my brain to fill in the gaps in my memory. I can also see Roy sitting next to me. Young Roy and young me were both giggling loudly, along with the other kids. Everyone looked as though they had just came to am abrupt stop and fell into their chairs a split second before I tuned into the memory. Some dorky looking high school aged dinosaur pressed a button on a boombox and a silly song came on, very loudly, and the kids jumped up and started sprinting in circles around the chairs. Ah yes, musical chairs back at bible camp. If I learned anything at bible camp, it was how to prioritize my seat over everyone else’s. And also, this:
The music stopped and I watched as 10-year-old Earl and Roy went for the same chair at the same time and completely knocked it over, falling onto each other. It wears Roy falling onto me even though I was certain the last time I had the memory that I was the one who fell onto him. I guess it’s just hard to really remember fully, because at that point nothing else existed except for his eyes which were looking into mine, full of smiles. We kissed and withdrew from each other with immediacy as we remembered who we were and that the whole class would surely be staring at the two guys who just fell in what had to be a hilarious way, but as we looked around we noticed that everyone else had experienced similar falls, and were preoccupied with their own resulting fits of laughter and joy. The room dissolved and I was spit back out in Roy’s living room as he was finishing up some kind of comment he wanted to make about intelligent design or whatever. He didn’t seem to notice that I had mentally checked out for a minute to remember the first time we kissed.
I’m sure Roy doesn’t think about it.
Or at least not like I think about it.
I think about it all of the time.
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