Waiter, There's A Horny Rhinocerous In My Pea Soup ...

Waiter, There's A Horny Rhinoceros In My Pea Soup ... On the weekend, I went with my family to the Toronto Zoo. After making arrangements with my daughter, Erin, to meet us there, I hightailed across the top of Toronto to pick up my son, Joshua, who, with the help of the lovely Linda, organised the entire day. The moment I pulled up their driveway, they were quick to pack up the back of my van with a fabulous lunch, a cooler of iced tea, cheese and crackers, bottles of water, stroller, and my granddaughter, the precocious Ava. It wasn't until we had drifted onto the freeway and Josh and Ava had drifted off to sleep in the back seat that questions of my son's sexuality surfaced. As we snaked our way through the morning traffic, the lovely Linda wondered out loud, "Did you know your son is gay?" I was a little taken aback, but not surprised. "Gay?" I murmured. "I suspected he had a fondness for sheep when he was a kid, but, no, I never had any indication that he was gay. Has he developed a fondness for your male relatives?" "No," she said with one of those dry-wry smiles, "but in your blog a while ago, you called me his 'partner.' Wouldn't that suggest to everyone who reads you that I was a guy and so, by implication, that he was gay?" The gay-pride neighbourhood in my brain suddenly lit up, and I swear a little Mardi Gras spontaneously spilled across almost the entire range of my consciousness. I suddenly heard the Village People singing YMCA in my head, and I imagined all kinds of out-rageously dressed transsexuals dancing under a disco ball. All of this occurred in a swashbuckling wink of an eye, but the experience lingered as all these smiley-faced neurons took up a sort of soccer-stadium battle cry that began pulsing in my brain: "We're gay! We're gay! You may be gay too!!" I quickly regained my senses when the driver of an eighteen-wheeler with Louisiana licence plates blasted his horn at me, and I swear I heard him shout, "You're driving on a freeway, you stupid old faggot ..." as he roared past us on the right/wrong side of the van. A tide of road rage sort of swelled up like hurricane Katrina and recklessly flooded over my thoughts as I considered cutting that big rig off into the guard rail and watching him jack-knife his way down an off ramp to Hell. I quickly put the brakes on my emotional response for the more rational concept of driving to stay alive. It was at that moment that I realised how destructive hurricanes of any kind can be. The Mardi Gras in my head had been cancelled, and the smiley-faced gay neurons had checked out, presumably for higher ground. "What's wrong with the term, 'partner'?" I bleeped after taking a deep, diesel-cleansing breath and pressing down with a little more force on the $3.75/gallon gas pedal.. "'Partner' is sort of gender-generic. It suits every occasion." The lovely Linda was unconvinced. "I prefer to be called his 'girlfriend,' his 'fiancée,' the 'mother of his child,' or perhaps even 'the love of his life,'" she suggested. "Oh, I don't like those," I quickly retorted. "Too mushy. How about his 'main squeeze'?" "No, I am not an orange." "His 'foxy lady'?" "No thanks. It's hard enough convincing him that he's not Bob Dylan. Let's not add Jimi Hendrix into the mix.' "Right. You have a point there." A quiet moment sifted through the van, and for a second or two, I wondered if I was actually at home, stoned on amino acids, and dreaming all this. I sensed I wasn't, and so I continued. "His 'better half'?" I offered. "How about that?" "No, too judgemental." "'Time-and-a-half'?" "No, just too mental." "Well, I'm stuck, then. I really don't know what to call you, unless you want something fancifully romantic, like his 'urban oasis'?" "Hmm ... I like that ..." "Of course it conjures up all kinds of sexual excess — belly dancers, glittering fairies, exotic fragrances, sultry wind chimes, and the like. Is that the effect you're looking for?" "Good grief, no. I just don't want people to think that Josh is gay, not because it's wrong to be gay, but simply because he's not. " "Trust me. There are more important things in life than worrying about what others think. Don't worry about whether or not people think he's gay, fat, stupid, or anything else for that matter. Worry about making one another happy, because if your relationship is going to work, only two opinions matter in all things — yours and his." As the van pulled into the zoo parking lot, there was a stirring in the back seat. Father and daughter were done their catnaps to the delightful shouts of "We're here! We're here!" Still, the lovely Linda had a chance for one more question. "What if those two opinions are always different?" she asked in a quiet voice. "Then consider yourself lucky," I threw back. "Imagine how dull life would be if they were always the same." ~Food For Butterflies~ [Toronto Zoo] Copyright © Kennedy James, 2009. All rights reserved.