which_chick | (no subject)

So I'm at a tenant's, installing a ceiling fan. Normally, ceiling fan installs are fairly straightforward undertakings, but this time was different...

I'm reasonably sure that the tenant is gay. I'm not, y'know, a hundred percent certain on that because I've never asked, but he's incredibly neat for a straight guy. He decorates. He accessorizes. He's got a kite with a big red aids ribbon on it in the bedroom. He runs around wearing excessively open-necked shirts with a big clunky mars-guy-person-symbol necklace prominently displayed in the open neck part. And when I say clunky, I mean like the size of bling-bling that, y'know, gangsta rappers wear. It's on a choker-sized chain, though. This is not the jewelry of a straight guy. It just isn't. He doesn't sound particularly femme, but there are far too many signifiers for me to buy him as a straight man. Now, he does have kids from a previous relationship, which you might think would preclude the whole gay thing, but more than a few over-forty gay guys have children from previous relationships. (It has to be true, I saw it on Queer as Folk [US version]. The chiropractor guy -- David, the one Michael moved in with, iirc -- had a kid and an ex-wife.) The world is never as cut and dried as people want it to be. Anyway, kids or no kids, this tenant is a gay man. Bank on it. (He's also a good, quiet tenant who pays the fucking rent, doesn't trash the place, and doesn't bother the other tenants. If I could get more tenants like him, I would. Maybe I should ask if he has any friends who need apartments...)

Anyway, tenant bought a ceiling fan from a friend of his and he wanted me to install it. It's a used fan. He claimed to have all the pieces. Careful inspection of the fan revealed that he did not have all the pieces. *sigh* As it was lunchtime, I had to go drive the boy home from work. I informed the tenant that I was going to drive the boy home, shop for pieces to hang his ceiling fan with, and return in about an hour. The tenant said "Boy? Is he your son?" (I called him "the boy." For newer readers, and I do see that there is one (Howdy,

brni!) the boy is not my son. He is Ash, my friend La's son, seventeen years old, and my employee until school starts.) I said, "No, I don't have any kids." Tenant said, "I should have guessed." I asked why he said that. (Honestly, I was not trying to be all scary and stuff. I just wanted to know if he was willing to admit in exactly that many words that he'd decided I was a dyke.) He replied, "I'm not going to touch that one with a ten foot pole..." and I said "Excuse me? I could have children, I know how it works and all. I just haven't ever exercised that option." Tenant said "Oh, I didn't mean anything by it." My bullshit detector went off big time. Just answer the question, Claire. I looked at the tenant very sternly and said "People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones." Tenant looked suitably chastened and allowed as how I had a point there.

Upside: Tenant is no longer going to ask me dumb-ass questions about why I'm not breeding.
Other Upside: Since I've allowed the tenant to assume that I am a lesbian, I can now observe him to see how long it takes him to figure out he is wrong on that front. :)

Fascinating.