Look at the queers

Long-time readers of The Basterd Files, and new readers with access to the archive (read: all of you) will recognize the tale that I'm about to unfold. It’s almost exactly the same as my first anecdote, Look at the Jews, just with a few different nouns here and there.

I understand that some of you may feel cheated by this blatant material-recycling. If so, here are the pertinent setting and character changes for today's narrative, so that you may recreate the story in your mind without having to read seven paragraphs of the same shit:

Jews : queers
An airport : a gay bar
Travis's brother : Julia Gulia
Travis's dad : Coltrane
Travis : Me

And now, onto the meat:

Courtesy of one particular manager's preferences, Wendy's continuously hired a disproportionate number of gay people. So many, in fact, that there were certain evening shifts I felt that I was intruding on a parade more than running the grill.

Of course, being no bigot, I didn't really care, and actually preferred their company to the usual trash that strolled into the kitchen area stinking of cheap cigarettes and cow shit. One of the gay elite, Josh, was even a pageant-winning drag queen. You could tell too; he made every sandwich and took every order with the elegance, poise and limp-wrist that only a homosexual of his standing in the gay community could do.

One Tuesday evening he invited a few co-workers to Uptown, the local gay-friendly watering hole, for a weekly drag show. We happily complied, and in typical fashion, got drunk and stoned to the bejesus bells to make the impending surreality even more entertaining. I, also in typical fashion, completely overdid it, and by the time we got to the bar I had less of an "Oh this is cool, I’ve got a decent buzz, I like the lighting, the music’s not bad, the people here are interesting, I wonder what Josh is going to look like" experience, and went straight into more of a "OH MY GOD IT'S DARK AND WHAT LITTLE STROBELIGHT THERE IS IS TERRIFYING AND THIS MUSIC IS TOO LOUD AND WHY ARE ALL THESE STRANGE PEOPLE STARING AT ME PLEASE GET ME OUT OF HERE RIGHT NOW AAAAAARGH" shock.

After a short while, my discomfort subsided, but my bemusement did not. I couldn't help but stare at each of the men dressed as Vegas showgirls and women dressed as construction workers as they passed; and they weren’t even the performers, they were just attendees. Every now and then, a transvestite adorned in heaps of feathers, sequins and clown makeup would walk by, thus adding to the carnival-like nature of the evening.

At one point I found our small group completely surrounded by these fantastically weird-looking people. I leaned over to Julia covertly, and whispered, “Look at the queers”. She gave only a dumbfounded stare, and so of course, I repeated myself in a harsher whisper. You already know where this is going.

I glanced up and caught the gaze (gays, hurr) of my friend Coltrane. The look on his face was that of an ashamed parent, whose child had just been naughty in public. My realization that I wasn't whispering at all, but actually screaming "LOOK AT THE QUEERS" at the top of my lungs, came from the fact that he had heard my declaration from a full three rows in front of me. In a noisy dance club.

The queers in question may or may not have been offended, I’ll never know. I was fucked up and already babbling about something else within seconds.