It's 10:00 pm on Seattle's Capitol Hill and I'm walking home alone after dinner with friends. It's Tuesday and quiet on a side street. I'm feeling pleasantly buzzed from good red wine. I'm enjoying the way the drizzle catches the street light in the shadows under the neighborhood's stately trees, and wondering if Charlotte Brontë's romantic melancholy wasn't just the way the culture forced her to express being horny. Then I turn a corner and suddenly I'm not alone.

There are three guys on the block ahead and I immediately perceive several things. They're in that testosterone-drenched, 18-25 age range responsible for most violent crime. Their conversation is loud, and from it I can tell they're straight, drunk, and don't live around here. They aren't dressed for baseball, but one of them is carrying a bat.

Capitol Hill is Seattle's most conspicuous queer neighborhood, gay bashings aren't uncommon, and this won't be the first time in my life I've been a target. Adrenaline burns the last of a nice Cabernet from my system as I wonder if I can outrun them. I put my hand in my pocket, dial “9-1”, and rest my thumb on the final “1”. I consider crossing the street, running up on the lit porch of a house, and banging on the door screaming, "Help, help, police!"

This strikes me as very sensible.

Instead, my shoulders go down and back, my chin comes up, and I start breathing all the way down to my toes. I become very relaxed, surreally alert, and feel both light and immovable. I'm acutely aware of being 6'3", 205 lbs, and wearing heavy steel-toed boots. I have a sudden picture in my head of the motorcycle jacket I'm wearing – the armored forearms, shoulders, and kidneys are outlined in red. As I approach the threesome, I'm calculating how to acquire the baseball bat the moment any of them so much as looks cross-eyed at me.

None of this strikes me as remotely sensible, but I've long since accepted that I'm not sensible. Anyone who's lived without pride will tell you that by comparison, little things like teeth, however desirable, are optional.

It takes forever to walk half a block – from my perspective, we're all going in slow motion. Finally the trio barely makes room for me on the sidewalk and staggers around me, laughing apologetically. As they pass, it's clear from their conversation that they finished a game on the field at a nearby park earlier, and have spent the rest of the evening at a bar half a block from where I ate dinner. They're cute – in fact, one of them is downright hot as he meets my eyes and grins goofily. I feel relieved and, perversely, disappointed. Also aroused. I take a quick peek at the hot one's butt as I go on my way and he's fine.

Not for the first time I tell myself, “You are so fucking angry, all the crazy fucking time.”

And I wonder what else I am. A feel ashamed to have thought so ill of some kids out for an evening. Am I also a bigot? What would we call it – “straight-boy-ophobic?” Should I change my attitudes and assumptions?

What if we adjust the details of the story a bit? I am a white woman and the guys are black. Am I a bigot now? Is my fear racist? Should I change?

How about if I'm a middle-aged white guy, the three boys are Hispanic, and I ask them if they'd like to make some honest cash cleaning out my garage as I get out of my BMW sedan? Am I racist pig?

I have other questions, too. Those guys are half my age or less. They're criminally pretty. Am I some vile pederast? Should I pretend I don't know what my adrenaline has turned into? Who would I be kidding? It's clear I won't be needing any one-handed reading tonight.

Sadness comes down out of the gray along with more drizzle. More than anything, I wish we could talk, me and you straight boys. I have questions – questions that I've had for longer than you've been alive. Am I repulsive to you? Do you picture me as Cyril Ritchard playing Captain Hook, sinisterly stroking my own fingers and chuckling effetely? (Do you have a clue who Cyril Ritchard was?) Are you afraid of me? Should I be afraid of you? Can I come watch your game even though baseball bores me and I just want to see how you look in the pants? Does that freak you out? Why?