Not holding my breath. V annoyed Amy is taking an unearned victory lap today. Anticipating the Dems are about to cave on DHS funding. Can someone remind me why we vote for an “opposition” party that complies instead of opposes? FTS. #AbolishICE #ICEOutOfMN

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Coda: I feel a bit guilty posting the story. Wife didn’t want me to. But this space is freeing for me at the moment. No followers or friends. It is my hidden blank canvas. Public, yet unseen. So I hope she will forgive me for indulging my storytelling muscle, if she ever finds this place. (fin)

I hope they fix themselves some day. I hope that the daughter never experiences the life-altering fear of a cancer diagnosis. The loss of a breast. Or two. Or her life. I hope none of them pass on their sad, small, pitiful hatred to a next generation. I’ll tuck these hopes away in my gay hat. (end)

As I was name-called for being chicken and gay, I’d misinterpreted it it as a generalized, lazy, unfocused homophobia. The kind of dumb, misdirected abuse heard in my jr & sr high years. I was wrong. This was worse. An active, multi-generational homophobia from an entire family. During Pride. (17/?)

I recalled that when I’d stopped to admire the haircut and styling, I had received an odd vibe in return. I’d shrugged it off at the time as me misreading people, which I often do. But the misreading was actually done by Mr. Faux-hawk, who’d been threatened by my displayed “gayness”. (16/?)

Wife had gotten the dog & I rainbow bandannas to wear. She’d folded mine and tied it around its stylish but fading band. I was still wearing it hours later at the dive bar during the incident. And it explained so much. (15/?)

It wasn’t until I was driving home that the importance of my hat clicked in. We’d attended Duluth’s Pride celebration at Bayfront earlier, watching Venus DeMars & All The Pretty Horses rock hard and loud, topless & queer as fuck. Always a pleasure. (14/?)

It’s been a while since I’ve been called a “fairy” and even longer since that held even the slightest of stings. So I laughed. Their response to my laughter was an attempt to mimic it, plus a couple more halfhearted gay slurs. They left, deflated. I kept listening to my jukebox tunes. (13/?)

That did warrant a chair swivel & a “wow” from me, but nothing more. It was around this time the bartender walked in, yelled for some calm, and the bullies soon departed, but not without tossing out some homophobic slurs at us. I laughed with each of these sad, small attacks. How could I not? (12/?)

In the end, the rage was just empty words. I remained drunk but in control, even when the language was awful and focused on my wife. The lowest insult came from the daughter, who used my wife’s mastectomy as a nasty, bizarre slur. Something like “one-titted bitch”. (11/?)

I was uninterested in a fight. I knew I’d lose. So I didn’t feed the rage. I took a chance that non-engagement would work. I am told one of his other kids held him back and that he’d lunged at me repeatedly. I could feel his closeness, but it wasn’t my fight. I remained unmoved by his pleas. 10/?

Mr Faux-hawk’s alcohol-addled misinterpretation was that I’d shit-talked him to my wife. I hadn’t, but he was unable to listen at this point. He just wanted to fight me. He goaded, insulted & accused me. In essence, all amounted to me being a “chicken”. I never once turned to reply. 9/?

I wasn’t sure, as the temp in the room rose, if she had heard that this was a father and his daughter. So I turned and told the wife the fuller context. But down the bar, my unheard-by-them reiteration of info was taken in a different way. 8/?

The final misinterpreted sign leads to the big Faux-hawk getting up in my space, challenging me for saying something about him. Which was technically true. But not in the way he thought. It helps to understand that my wife wears hearing aids and sometimes doesn’t hear things. 7/?