The one good thing about racist sexist homophobes is the hilarity factor

I had lunch on a patio yesterday next to three of the most timid, prejudicial morons you’d ever want to meet. You know the kind of person who’s always got a mental inventory at the ready full of all the things they hate about each individual group of people who are different from them? And you know the sort of angry, insipid conversation that takes place whenever you put three of those people together in the middle of a heat wave? I swear to God, you guys, it was like Do the Right Thing without decent dialogue or a point.

As I mentioned yesterday, one of the early highlights of that particular conversation was a brilliant remark about the Queen being in town. “We just did Pride!” one of them said. “We’ve got enough queens!”

I can honestly say it was the first time in my life that I’d wished it was possible to get on the phone and get a hundred leather daddies delivered to the next table – just for the sheer pleasure of standing there and saying “This is happening, dude. This is your awkward reality.”

By the way, after I mentioned that, Justin Stayshyn – a local queer activist who I keep promising to tell you more about in a future post – totally dampened my enthusiasm about the “hundred leather daddies” business model simply by saying “My Craigslist record is 5.” In light of that, frankly, a hundred just seems implausible.

After that, there was a lot about “the blacks” and “the gays” and the Portuguese – and whenever the woman in the trio wasn’t within earshot, there was a lot about women. That’s the way it goes when you’re an opinionated coward who doesn’t know how to deal with other people.

But the high point of the conversation – the moment that really tells you all you need to know about the acute lack of self-awareness of the part of the average bigot – was a rambling dialogue prompted by three Spanish guys walking by on their way to watch a World Cup game. They were laughing and joking, slapping each other on the back, and basically having a loud and jovial time.

“I don’t get those guys,” the woman said in an unmistakably and ironically “not from here” accent. “Why do they have to be so loud all the time? Other people want to have their conversations too, you know? I don’t get why they have to be so loud!”

“They’re always loud,” said the guy who looked like the actor who played the pedophile in Boogie Nights, if that helps to sufficiently demonize him. “They don’t care how loud they are. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

“But why do they have to be so loud?” she asked again. “You can have a conversation without being annoying!”

“Like we’re doing right now,” the pedophile lookalike said.

“Exactly!” the “not from here” woman concurred.

Now, I was already on thin ice with the pedophile lookalike. Earlier on, I’d shot him a dirty look because of something he’d said about “the fucking faggots.” It was a split-second exchange, but it was more than enough time for me to conclude that he was an ignorant asshole, and for him to conclude that I was probably just another one of “them” anyway. And at the end of the day, who’s to say who was right and who was wrong, you know?

For the record, and to the limited extent that it was actually relevant, I’m not a homosexual. Admittedly, I am an Irish Canadian who happened to be drinking alone on a Tuesday afternoon, which should have been an absolute freebie for any “jack of all bigotries” who happened to be paying attention. But that’s another story.

The point I’m trying to make is that if you subject the average jackass to a half-hour full of bigotry, forcing him to struggle against his every impulse to just lay into the people responsible, then something’s going to have to give eventually. In other words, if the group of bigots in question happens to suggest that the lusty Spaniard should take a cue from the timid white heterosexuals of the world, who know how to have a conversation without “being annoying,” then the jackass at the next table who finds unabashed prejudice “annoying” is bound to laugh and blurt out something like “Wow! Really? That’s hilarious!”

And dudes, it’s all downhill from there. The table full of bigots will lower their voices and mumble a bunch of things about the jerk at the next table. The waitress will come along and ask that jerk if he wants another, and he’ll say something along the lines of “Yeah, but can I take it inside? Because this patio is basically ridiculous!” And then, before you know it, the whole thing winds up on some guy’s blog.

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