“I’m sorry, but could you hang out just a sec?” I say to him. “I have to go cross-post today’s piece.”
“That’s right, it’s after noon,” he says. “What did you put out for an article today?”
“Oh, it’s a post on amatonormativity. Being single. The hidden cost of art,” I say. “But I don’t think you’ll like this one.”
“I’ll read it while you’re in the other room.”
I leave to do my business. The auto-poster has been on the fritz for some time. And it’s easier to cross-post on my desktop. I’m gone only a few minutes.
“I disagree with you,” he says when I come back. “You missed the whole point of what the Intellectual Homosexual was saying in his post.”
“No, I got the point,” I reply.
He stares back at me incredulously.
“I did,” I continue. “You’ll note that I do say in my piece that it’s tough to be single, and there are advantages to being coupled. I do know where he’s coming from. There’s merit to his argument. I just took it somewhere different. Somewhere I haven’t really seen anybody take it before.”
He says, “I don’t like the way you framed it. It makes you sound like you disagree when you really agree. Kind of undermines your whole argument.”
We talk for 90 minutes.
Brown Grass and a Resort that Doesn’t Exist #
“The problem is that people always think the grass is greener. Where the truth is that the grass is kind of brown everywhere except where we consider it green. And where we work to keep it healthy,” I say.
I tell him that the problem isn’t that people are living their lives differently from one another, whether by chance or circumstance. The problem is that society is lying to us. With brochures advertising a resort that doesn’t actually exist. Blindingly green grass that just grows that way as if by magic.
He listens to me carefully. He says I’m making sense.
But something on his face tells me that what he’s saying isn’t quite the whole story.
I get it. I wouldn’t want to believe me either.
*
My book is out!