when did this happen. and why. cause, lately, we've become quite the popular hangout for those whose persuasions tend to the homosexual. this used to be far from the case. last summer? nary a homosexual to be found. even before last summer. in all our over four years, you could search high and low among the tables and not encounter one single solitary gay person.

but lately? the past month or so? take it from me, you can't figuratively swing a cat without figuratively smacking a homosexual right in the face. (figuratively speaking.) we're wall to wall gay once in a while. it's like we've become their DESTINATION OF CHOICE. alan suggested flying a rainbow flag out front. i thought he was kidding. he wasn't kidding. then he wouldn't drop it. i finally had to just tell him, 'hey. alan. enough with the FLAGS, we're not flying any FLAGS.'

don't get me wrong, we've had ... gays ... in here before. just not many. you could count 'em on the fingers of one hand. there's the boyfriend couple who broke up then got back together. i've mentioned them previously. ALSO, round thanksgiving last year, there were the two lesbians who brought their parents in to meet each other for the first time. all six of 'em sat at that big round table. it didn't appear to be a relaxed conversation/dinner/evening. big long uncomfortable silences. the air fraught with tension. thank god the food went out more or less without a hitch. (dunno why i remember this, but one of the fathers had the rib eye, and he didn't so much cut it as he did stab it with fork and knife then pull it apart. he seemed to have more than a bit of pent up frustration. that poor, poor steak. for once we cook it properly, for ONCE medium rare when that's how it was ordered, only to have it ripped to shreds by a man who resented deeply either his daughter's girlfriend, or simply even his daughter's lesbianism to begin with, or that this was the place chosen to break the news to him, that they couldn't piss him off someplace NICER.)

so there's just two examples of customers that have been gay. those two're just off the top of my ... oh. plus there used to be the book club. the first tuesday night of every month, we had a book club that met. the book club was run by a gay man. and when he wasn't running it, the woman who took over was lesbian. she still is. it's just that they don't run the book club anymore. they got tired of all the flak so they gave it up and no one was willing to take the reins, so it kinda just ... disbanded.

but other than those three sets of people i just talked about, we've been mostly for the most part gay-free.

unless we're lumping BI-sexual in with the HOMO-sexual. if we ARE, then we've had BI-sexual in here, also. last year. this ... BI woman, i guess, and her ... girlfriend, i guess. they came in and were so comfortable in their surroundings, they did not hesitate to display their affection publicly. this they did by playing footsie with each other under the table. (i didn't even know she was bi, at first. i asked regina if that woman used to date that guy who used to come in but has since moved to lowell, massachusetts. regina told me yessiree bob. i asked her why, then, was that woman now playing footsie with another woman, right out in the open like that. regina told me that the woman was playing footsie with another woman because they might be girlfriend-girlfriend. it embarrassed me to hafta ask, but i did hafta ask. did that make the woman bisexual? regina told me she didn't understand why i was so fascinated by such a common everyday sight. then she said i needed to get out more. then she walked to the end of the bar where i was not. the other end. the far end.)

anyways, things are changing round here. they sure are, that's for sure. last night, maybe twenty minutes before the kitchen closed and who should walk in but gay men. not only gay but handsome and built. very handsome, very well built. i thought laura was gonna have a conniption of lust til she realized they were gay and therefore unlikely to fall prey to her apparently considerable and irresistible charms. didn't stop her trying, though. boy oh boy, man oh man, did she ever try.

it's not like i'm sitting here making a gay mountain out of a gay molehill, by the way. this isn't based on one table, cause one table of gay men does not a trend make. one table would only be an occurrence. an interesting occurrence, but ... just an occurrence, that's all, nothing more. no, something's a brewin' round here. change is in the air. something wicked this way comes. cause we get table after table after table. we are no longer crustily, obstinately straight. (some of our more ... long in the tooth customers don't seem to be in favor of the change. i think they're uncomfortable with all the ... flamboyance.)

nor is it like i'm resentful or against it. hey, business is business, numbers are numbers. we'll serve gays just as when-we're-good-and-ready-and-not-a-moment-sooner just as we'll serve straight. we'll take gay money just as happily as we'll take straight. we'll swipe gay credit cards just as without hesitation as we swipe straight. i'm just kinda flummoxed as to why now.

i'm not the only one who's noticed it, either, nor am i the only one at wits end about why now, why us. soon as this ... trend ... was discerned, people tried to figure out if there's any specific reason. the staff and a few of the more regular regulars. jason mentioned we got some kinda mention in one of the gay weeklies. i asked him why he's reading gay weeklies. he told me to go fuck myself. (then he poured himself a drink when there was still another hour and a half to go.)

but THAT can't be it. can it? is a mere mention in a gay weekly enough to get the gays in here in relative droves? cause we've had mentions before. we were in the reader before the summer began last year, and it was a positive blurb or two we got. a couple of those 'this place doesn't exactly SUCK' blurbs, you know the ones. jimmy and i saw the blurbs and we ran around high fiving each other like we could retire to some yacht off the greek islands or something. we sat back and waited for the masses to arrive, based on a free paper saying we didn't exactly suck.

the masses did not arrive. not as a mass, they didn't. maybe as trickles, but a trickle's not a mass, and trickle's what we had before the blurbs, which means the blurbs didn't do us a lick of good. jimmy and i were disappointed. me more than him cause he's rich to begin with. me, i can't even afford a land line at home.

so i dunno if the gay weekly mention's enough to account for all these gays swooshing in here suddenly all of a sudden. gotta be something, less the homosexual grapevine is so damn efficient that one tells two friends and THEY tell two friends and so on and so on and so on ... like that commercial.

gotta be something, it really does gotta be something, to account for suddenly all of a sudden, word's on the street that a nice place for a gay to drop twenty or thirty or (hopefully way) more dollars is our place.

they're dropping money. drinks drinks drinks, then food food food, then more drinks drinks drinks, then they stumble out the door, disappearing into the night. they must like it here, too, cause they return for more. these gays are turning into repeat customers. (jimmy keeps track of trifling details like who comes back and who realizes, after trying us once, that life's too short/valuable to try us again.) which flies in the face of several gay stereotypes, the fact that they like it here so much they frequent us again and again and again to the point of us discerning the trend. several gay stereotypes, not the least of which being that gays are persnickety about their food. seems they're just as 'i could give a shit what it tastes like, long as i'm not paying too much for it' as the straights. they also must not value cleanliness, enthusiasm, attention to detail, coherence or martinis as much as i've been led to believe.

of course, i spose it could be possible that they're foodies, foodies who've been turned onto the slow food movement, so they innocently enough wander in, under the mistaken impression that what we do is slow food. no. no, no, NO, that's not what we do. we don't do slow food. what WE do is food slowly. THAT'S what we do. the difference is a crucial one. (besides, it wouldn't explain why they return.)

but the way things are going, if we keep ... trending gay, dare i say, a few of these repeat gay customers might even turn into ... gay regulars. we've never had a gay regular. there's tuna can, but he's mostly straight. all he ever did was french a few guys in college, or so he says, and he claims it was merely a fraternity dare. me, i'm skeptical, i suspect there's more to tuna's guy-frenching story but he ain't fessing so i ain't pressing.

ANYHOO, i'd be willing to wager that by the end of the summer, we'll have a gay regular. (we'll hafta be more careful when we bandy about the nickname candidates. we can't ... for example ... just kinda blurt out 'homo-farmer' like we did when we were trying to figure out what to call homo-farmer. he was just called his normal first name til we realized he was prolly a regular. it was also the night he wore those dark blue slim cut jeans and a john deere hat and mispronounced homogenized milk. he picked a bad night to mispronounce homogenized milk.)