Recently, I had an experience which seems to be emblematic of being gay in the 21st century.
A guy who was visiting San Francisco from New York said hello to me on Grindr. I thought he was at least acceptably cute, so I decided to bite. Fortuitously, he turned out to be rather engaging. To preserve my phone battery, I gave him my phone number. Upon receipt of his message, things got interesting.
It turned out that he and I already had a text message history. So I instantly knew who he was, and I also knew certain other…um…anatomical details about him. Two years ago, he was visiting the area from Chicago and staying in a hotel near my work. (No, I don’t delete historical text messages, to the detriment of my phone’s storage capacity.) We had similarly connected on Grindr and had migrated to text messages, forming plans to meet up that evening. At the time, I was single, but was very much on the trajectory toward a relationship with X. X invited me over for dinner that night; I declined, saying that I had already made plans.
On that afternoon in May 2017, I texted him as I was leaving work and going to the gym, asking for an update on his timing. This was the conversation:
Me, 5:43 PM: “Let me know your timing. I just got to the gym.”
Me, 6:36 PM: “Done. Gonna shower. What’s up with you?”
Him, 6:39 PM: “Hey bud. I’m about to leave work.”
Me, 6:39 PM: “Ok. Where should I meet you?”
Him, 6:45 PM: “I still need to shower.”
Me, 6:45 PM: “Do you want me to meet you at the hotel?”
I was getting frustrated at this point with his inability to answer simple questions promptly.
Him, 7:10 PM: “Would you mind if we do tomorrow – I’m exhausted AF. And I don’t want to disappoint.”
When I received this message, I was running an errand at Walgreens, killing time while awaiting his response. After a 25-minute delay, he flaked without having the balls to say he was flaking. Immediately I texted X and said I could come over that evening, to which his response was approximately, “You were going on a date, weren’t you?”
But this other guy kept trying:
Him, 7:49 PM: “Lol. My SF coworker wants to smoke. #fly[emoji]skies”
Him, 8:15 PM: “Wait can you even host”
What a mess.
Return to present-day. Given this chat history, I was able to infer that in the last two years, this guy had moved from Chicago to New York. I was also able to infer his propensity to flake. Immediately the tone of my conversation with him stiffened up.
I eventually learned his alleged story from that evening two years ago. He got both drunk and high with his coworkers at the hotel and managed to drop his phone in the hot tub. He apparently really wanted to meet me, but I never heard from him again because he lost my contact information.
Incidentally, the day on which we reconnected was my two-year anniversary with X.
I say this experience is emblematic of being gay in the 21st century for the following reasons:
- Connections are often made over gay social networking apps such as Grindr
- Dick pics are frequently shared before personal contact is made
- Alcohol and marijuana are key players
- Meetups are canceled all the time because someone flaked
- Even while in a relationship, Grindr is still a meaningful tool
* * *
Earlier this week, my friend’s dad passed away. From what I gathered from Facebook, he had Stage IV bone cancer which had been completely undetected before. It all happened very suddenly: he spent several weeks in the hospital and underwent a couple successful surgeries, suggesting that he might pull through. After a couple days, I decided to check for updates on Facebook, and I learned that he passed that day.
This friend is a friend from high school, so I’ve known her for almost 12 years. I was also friends with her older brother, with whom I worked at many years of summer camps. Their family is extremely Christian.
I don’t pray anymore, but after hearing he passed, I felt a strange urge to ask other people I knew to pray for the family. I don’t know what it means that I instinctively thought to ask others to pray. But it is telling that I didn’t think that I should pray for them. Perhaps it’s that I know the family would feel supported with other people praying for them, regardless of the ineffectiveness of prayer to change outcomes.
I suppose that although prayer does not change outcomes, it can change outlook. Even when I believed, I knew that prayer was definitely not for God’s benefit, because God was already all-powerful. Consequently, I deduced that prayer primarily provided benefit for the person praying. I observed the transformative power of prayer in myself in several instances over the next couple years, mostly related to learning how to forgive people. Praying for someone who hurt me was quite effective at gradually chipping away my bitterness.
All that is to say is that this week, I realized prayer is basically a distorted version of mindfulness. I say “distorted” because of the premise behind prayer, which is communication with a supernatural, personal deity. But who am I to say that such a form of mindfulness is unacceptable? If people who pray receive benefit from it, then is it that misguided of an activity?
* * *
Also this last week, this local news story conveyed that the City of Berkeley municipal code was updated to include more “gender-inclusive” terminology. Selected semantic changes include:
“Manhole” replaced with “maintenance hole”
“Manpower” replaced with “human effort”
“Fraternity” replaced with “collegiate Greek system residence”
“Manmade” replaced with “human-made” or “machine-made”
“Pregnant” replaced with “pregnant employee”
“Master” replaced with “captain”
“Sportsman” replaced with “hunter”
“Sister” or “brother” replaced with “sibling”
Now, I’m all for gender inclusivity, but some of these seem to either mischaracterize or alter the definition of the original word.
“Fraternity”, for instance, is by definition an all-male collegiate Greek system residence. Removing the “all-male” component from the description fundamentally changes the nature of the item being described. Using the word “fraternity” is not gender-exclusive; what fraternities are is gender-exclusive. In fact, not acknowledging that fraternities are inherently discriminatory organizations by changing the title actually calls attention away from the real issue. (I also have to wonder if “sorority” was also changed to “collegiate Greek system residence”.)
“Machine-made” is not a synonym for “manmade”. To me, “manmade” suggests that something was made by some combination of manual labor and machine labor. The manual labor portion must be strictly greater than 0%, up to 100%, and the machine labor portion can be 0% or greater, but strictly less than 100%. Machine-made suggests that something was 100% made via machine labor. It’s a subtle difference, but the change implies that “human-made” and “machine-made” are equivalent. (Although, machines themselves are “human-made”, so I suppose if something is machine-made, it is also indirectly “human-made”.)
Similar to fraternity, “pregnant” is by definition associated with a biological woman. Tacking “employee” after it does not change its feminine association. Using the word “pregnant” is not gender-exclusive; how pregnant women are treated in the workplace is gender-exclusive. Changing “pregnant” to “pregnant employee” is similar to defining a word by using that word; the original issue addressed isn’t solved.
“Master” and “captain” are not synonyms, full stop. It’s also unclear if the City of Berkeley was intending to just do a Control + h in their documentation. If so, sentences such as, “A city planner must be a master of concepts in land-use policy, traffic engineering, and environmental review” become somewhat meaningless. I’d have to assume that the replacement would only apply to titles of people. (But then what about “Master of Science”? Ah, whatever.)
Beyond the individual cases, however, some of these just seem like a lot of unnecessary effort. “Maintenance hole” is twice as long as “manhole” in terms of number of syllables, as is “collegiate Greek system residence” to “fraternity”. I have to wonder…were people asking for these changes, or was this a preemptive signaling effort? Do non-binary people really feel safer in the workplace if “human effort” is used in lieu of “manpower”?
Finally, I suppose I should reveal the true reason I’m so critical of this change. It frustrates me that the Bay Area, and especially the city of Berkeley, a college town, is facing a major housing crisis, and yet I can only imagine the number of meetings that were held tying up city employees to discuss this. Would it not have been better if those efforts had been channeled into support for citywide initiatives to allow high-density residential buildings and duplex/triplex/fourplex development on single-family home lots? I mean, priorities.
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