I'm posting today live from Java Boy, which is a coffee bar here in the city. Apparently, it's a gay coffee bar, but since I'm totally oblivious to, well, everything, it took me like an hour and a half to figure it out. Even after I checked out their website, which subtlely says "Women Welcome," I was just like, "Why wouldn't women be welcome?" Whatever. I'm not sure why gay people need their own coffeehouse — as if they're totally homophobic at Starbucks — but since I'm just as unlucky at a straight coffeehouse, a gay coffeehouse, or an microphiliac Asian tranny coffeehouse, it doesn't really matter to me where I am.

However, I don't think I'll be coming back here any time soon. I stopped by to try the place out because of their wi-fi, but that's spotty at best, and there goes my incentive. I kind of liked the look of the place when I first walked in, but now that I've been sitting here for two hours, the semi-finished industrial groove they're going for is starting to grate on me. It's ill-planned, and the plasma screen TV's and colored mood lighting don't really make up for the fact that the tables are maybe two and a half feet high and the chairs next to the tables are two feet, five inches high. Seriously, the place is for gay people, not disproportionate people. And a good half of what they play on the radio is The Smiths, so I'm a little surprised it took two hours for the grating to start. But actually, the clincher, so to speak, is the bathroom. Here's the helpful note on the door:

RESTROOM
is Single Occupancy Only
1 Person At A Time

This is the naive me: Who the hell needs to be told that a bathroom is single-occupancy? Twice!?

And now here's the me that finally gets that this is a gay coffeehouse: That sign is why those red states hate us, why there's this gay marraige debate in Congress, why people in the heartland even give a damn about gays. I don't know if there's really hot gay sex going on in there after hours, or during hours, or whenever, but I imagine they wouldn't put that sign there if they weren't trying to obviate some, uh, unmentionable problem. (Maybe it's a legal thing since inside the bathroom — which is gorgeous, by the way: right out of Architectural Digest — they've got the standard No Smoking sign and Employees Must Wash Hands sign, but also a non-standard "Cocaine Use In Bathroom Is Illegal" reminder sign. I always thought that went without saying, but then again, I'm not the kind of person who'd ever even contemplate having sex in a public restroom.) There's a reason we have stereotypes, and he's walking through Chelsea right now in assless chaps, all leathered up and heading out to the bank at three in the afternoon. Dude, The Rocky Horror Picture Show doesn't start till midnight — you're freaking early.

The whole fundamentalist disdain isn't borne of people being sexual creatures — it comes out when they flaunt their sexuality, gay or straight (Flaunting your sexuality by having more kids than a rabbit colony, however, is cool because the Vatican just put out an encyclical about how Jesus wants you to fuck, and fuck copiously, within the confines of your loveless, monogamous heterosexual marraige.) It comes as a psychic challenge; run into a public display of affection and you play that little mental game of Am I Hot or Not? "Look at that bitch, kissing him. I'm better looking than that dickweed. And I'm probably funnier and nicer and I've got a better personality. I bet he doesn't even know how to bathe. I think he's secretly gay." Or the opposite, feeling totally inadequate basking in the glowing presence of the lovebirds. Now take that worry and dredge up that beer-drinking, football-watching, truck-driving latent homosexuality from your teen years, and the easiest way to deal with the conflict, reveling and questioning your masculinity, is to blame whoever pulled this quandry out of your subconscious in the first place.

So the Dust Belt will bitch about gay marraige and then cry their eyes out when Will and Grace goes off the air. I don't drive a truck or own a pair of cowboy boots or know the first thing about football, but even I feel ballsy next to Sean Hayes. He'll tell you which tie goes with those shoes, but he's a shy teenage girl waiting by the phone when it comes to actually having gay sex (and in all likelihood, very, very shrill and annoying sex), and we're all comfortable with that. Makes Jack a dull character who isn't very telegenic, but that's exactly what I want with the random strangers God puts in my milieu. Take your private identity back in private — get a room! — and when you're out in public, just drink your coffee like you'll never experience anything more exciting than caffeine.