nitelite33
Chillin' like a villain
- Joined
- Feb 4, 2003
- Posts
- 1,280
There have been quite a few homophobic threads on the GB lately, and I wanted to throw my 2c into the mix.
As an ex-homophobe and a pretty angry one at that, I can't help but feel a little embarrassed for some of you.
I was a doorman for quite a few years, and one of the nights at the club I worked hosted a Gay Ambient Night. None of the other meatheads wanted to work this night even though the crowd was always polite and restrained and it was easy $$$.
I got to know quite a lot of the dudes, and was on a friendly basis with a small few who clued me in slowly on their scene. While I got to know some of the guys and could plainly see they were normal blokes, I was still a homophobe and would act like it when they were out of sight.
At one point there was one dude who was a working screenwriter (the business I wanted to get into). He was cool as hell and we chatted a lot. But I couldn’t get over the feeling that he was hitting on me or something, and was getting hassled by the other doorman somewhat. Basically I became an asshole to the guy, in an awkward passive-aggressive attempt to get rid of him and satisfy my ‘red meat eating’ crew.
Suddenly it became his little mission to educate me for real and get in my face about homophobia.
I told him I wasn’t homophobic but I didn’t like being hit on, when he knew I wasn’t gay. He responded that he didn’t hit on me ever and that maybe I was projecting it—Got right in my face about it, and I almost became violent when I stopped quickly to give his idea a last thought.
Now I’m not the brightest guy in the world, but one thing that’s helped me get over my caveman upbringing, is the ability for some honest introspection. He was right, I was projecting it somewhat—but by doing so I had inadvertently discovered that I had no ‘true’ interest in other men. It felt like a weight had lifted from me, and I suddenly didn’t feel threatened anymore by this dude or the other gay customers.
I couldn’t really apologize to the guy without losing face in front of the other doormen (important at the time—issues for my personal security), so we ejected him from the club kicking and screaming.
He didn’t come back after that, and I was pretty eaten up with guilt over the whole issue. After a time it all seemed to blow over, but at least I was much more pleasant and open to the gay customers (this tradeoff satisfied me at the time).
There isn’t much of a happy ending to this story, and I never got to apologize to the guy. But he got through to me and showed me the ‘phobia’ part of homophobia.
Later on one of the cops who always did uniformed-security duty at our club told me that the guy was bashed pretty badly with his partner in a local park. Based on the descriptions, we knew with 99% certainty who one of the assailants was, and we went for a balaclava party at the guys house.
The next day the club left a voicemail saying that some flowers were delivered for me at the club office. There was no card, and I never did find out for certain who they were from, but I choose to think the flowers were from dude, and that he somehow heard of my (somewhat juvenile) redemptive gesture /shrug.
Take what you want out of this, I think there are a few points to my story--Hopefully you can discover them more gracefully then I did.
EDIT: Lol my roommate just reminded me that I *did* find out that the flowers were from a waitress I had bonked earlier... Shit, that ruins my last point... ;D
EDIT2: This marijuana memory issue is scaring me!
As an ex-homophobe and a pretty angry one at that, I can't help but feel a little embarrassed for some of you.
I was a doorman for quite a few years, and one of the nights at the club I worked hosted a Gay Ambient Night. None of the other meatheads wanted to work this night even though the crowd was always polite and restrained and it was easy $$$.
I got to know quite a lot of the dudes, and was on a friendly basis with a small few who clued me in slowly on their scene. While I got to know some of the guys and could plainly see they were normal blokes, I was still a homophobe and would act like it when they were out of sight.
At one point there was one dude who was a working screenwriter (the business I wanted to get into). He was cool as hell and we chatted a lot. But I couldn’t get over the feeling that he was hitting on me or something, and was getting hassled by the other doorman somewhat. Basically I became an asshole to the guy, in an awkward passive-aggressive attempt to get rid of him and satisfy my ‘red meat eating’ crew.
Suddenly it became his little mission to educate me for real and get in my face about homophobia.
I told him I wasn’t homophobic but I didn’t like being hit on, when he knew I wasn’t gay. He responded that he didn’t hit on me ever and that maybe I was projecting it—Got right in my face about it, and I almost became violent when I stopped quickly to give his idea a last thought.
Now I’m not the brightest guy in the world, but one thing that’s helped me get over my caveman upbringing, is the ability for some honest introspection. He was right, I was projecting it somewhat—but by doing so I had inadvertently discovered that I had no ‘true’ interest in other men. It felt like a weight had lifted from me, and I suddenly didn’t feel threatened anymore by this dude or the other gay customers.
I couldn’t really apologize to the guy without losing face in front of the other doormen (important at the time—issues for my personal security), so we ejected him from the club kicking and screaming.
He didn’t come back after that, and I was pretty eaten up with guilt over the whole issue. After a time it all seemed to blow over, but at least I was much more pleasant and open to the gay customers (this tradeoff satisfied me at the time).
There isn’t much of a happy ending to this story, and I never got to apologize to the guy. But he got through to me and showed me the ‘phobia’ part of homophobia.
Later on one of the cops who always did uniformed-security duty at our club told me that the guy was bashed pretty badly with his partner in a local park. Based on the descriptions, we knew with 99% certainty who one of the assailants was, and we went for a balaclava party at the guys house.
The next day the club left a voicemail saying that some flowers were delivered for me at the club office. There was no card, and I never did find out for certain who they were from, but I choose to think the flowers were from dude, and that he somehow heard of my (somewhat juvenile) redemptive gesture /shrug.
Take what you want out of this, I think there are a few points to my story--Hopefully you can discover them more gracefully then I did.
EDIT: Lol my roommate just reminded me that I *did* find out that the flowers were from a waitress I had bonked earlier... Shit, that ruins my last point... ;D
EDIT2: This marijuana memory issue is scaring me!
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