What do reading, television/film and then just plain busses, trains and planes have in common? Unlike most of the pointless and douchey GRE, this answer is easy: traveling and experiencing different places. I, though well-traveled, do not need to do anything more than hang out with my friends to pass into a different world, visually, culturally, gastronomically. This is not a kvetching of minority stati but more an exploration of perspective.
I literally live in a different world. I never realized before because of my different view the world around me is constructed-formed- differently.
When a straight woman says “he's probably gay” it reflects on an unfortunate irony that sometimes occurs. When a gay woman says “she's probably straight.” it is a cold, hard and unavoidable statistic. The idiom goes that “all the good ones are gay,” but if you're a practicing homosexual, literally “almost all of the ANYONES are straight.” Ten percent is a depressing club name, if you ask me. My ears are fine tuned to hear any reference to queer anything and my body will tense up and my neurons fire. When I go out, I consciously avoid, basically, men. Ring-less and female it would be assumed that I am in their market. I also go on an avoidance of women to respect the camouflage I have that they might assume me to be straight. Although, I even managed to have a guy hit on me at a “10%” dance—so it might just be me. But I am an alien walking among you.
And what really inspired this concept relates to my perversion: I'm a lefty. Even in the late eighties, it was a yardstick-beatable offense. Ableism as far aside as I can place it when referring to a physical difference—despite the fact that there's a loose joke about lefthanders looking strange when we write (the ominous lefty hook) the other day I realized that everyone else still looks weird to me when they write. So instead of the occasional novelty when a Right handed person stumbles across one of us, almost everytime I see someone writing the place where my sight meets my brain feels weird.
That was potentially the most interesting of my recent travels. A brief note on Judaism in pleasant exile. I was at the mall...in a different city with a real-er mall, the other day and while my female-er friends were browsing clothing, I was indulging in the petting of clothing and the perusal of material basis via tags.
“oh, it's 40% something, 60% something else” I mutter destitutly, “not kosher.” My friends, who are active residents of pleasant exile, give me that weird fact tilt/tick that signifies some strange thing that looks as if it feels I've seen a Right handed person sign a paper but I believe represents intrigue.
For anyone who doesn't know, the Levitical Holiness Codes clearly state that one should not mix two types of thread in the same garment. While I don't always adhere to this, the few articles of clothing I have purchased in the closest to us years, have been 100% something. Regardless of my observance, I have no choice but to think this when I encounter poly-cotton or parallel blending in fabrics.
Everyone, each person sees the world differently. Probably physically as well as perspectively, but I live in a different world. I share a planet and a country and a state and a city and often a cohabitative space with others, but somewhere between the outer and the inner the plane of existence skews.
