The Anti-Calvin

Don't worry - I'm not starting a Calvin-Hating Club with clandestine ceremonies at the witching hour gathering the masked members together to denigrate his manifold virtues, tear apart his hitherto spotless reputation and plan malicious ends for him.

Far from it.

You see, today I had a leisurely lunch with my friends and Zany Zinedine gave us prior warning that he'd be bringing someone new along. A fellow colleague and ex-classmate he actually termed a rabidly homophobic religious zealot ( from Zinedine's hush hush accounts anyway ) so you can imagine we all stared agog at the message he sent.

And then Zinedine then took pains to remind us all to remain on our best straight-acting behaviour.


Beware the Anti-Calvin!
Seriously. The thought of bringing an aggressive red-necked homophobe to a collection of fags already boggles the mind. Might as well wave a red flag in front of a raging bull. Wasn't he afraid that we'd all turn into drunken Maenads, fall into a crazed, savage fest of violence and tear him into little pieces? Or worse, fall so desperately in lust with his virile flesh that we'd all collectively leap onto him like sex-starved godless degenerates - that he no doubt assumes all debauched gay men are?

So we waited for the coming of the Homophobe. Coincidentally we later found out that the man shares the exact same name as Charming Calvin so I started dubbing him the Anti-Calvin instead.

Have to admit I was a tad disappointed. Was half-expecting a drooling red-neck Bible-thumper with blood in his eye and a rusty axe in his hand to cull the earth of debauched devil-worshippers - when all I saw was a regular guy. Actually seemed nice enough even when Anti-Calvin came up for an introductory handshake. Now I couldn't very well hawk spit onto his hand, backhand him and stalk away, could I? After all I hadn't even seen any proof of his supposed prejudice.

Anti-Calvin : Hi.
Paul : I'm queer. I'm gay. I'm homosexual. I'm a poof, I'm a poofter, I'm a ponce. I'm a bumboy, battyboy, backside artist, bugger, I'm bent. I am that arsebandit. I lift those shirts. I'm a faggot-ass, fudge-packing, shit-stabbing uphill gardener. I dine at the downstairs restaurant, I dance at the other end of the ballroom. I'm Moses and the parting of the red cheeks. I fuck and am fucked. I suck and am sucked. I rim them and wank them, and every single man's had the fucking time of his life. And I am not a pervert.

Stuart Alan Jones would have been proud.

Of course I didn't manage to reproduce that particular monologue. Zinedine ( who was busy watching our reactions ) would probably have stabbed me dead with his dining fork. And despite the Chinese Exemption, I don't think Calvin would appreciate me going around forking shamelessly.

But what do you do when faced with homophobia?

There are some gay men who'd cower and hide behind their relentlessly straight persona, erasing that particular lisp in their voice while making sure their pinkies are all held in tight. Me, I suddenly had this uncontrollable urge to stick my tongue down Jaunty Jared's throat, run my feet up Lanky Lex's thigh and limp-wrist my way through the conversation peppering my sarcastic one-liners with repeated lashings of dahlings and fahbulous. Oh, and grab my pink fluffy feather boa.


Unashamedly gay.
I'm unaccountably peculiar that way :P Just that wicked self deep inside that feels that rules were meant to be broken. Doubt poor ( prudish ) Jared and Lex would have approved though.

No doubt Zinedine breathed a sigh of relief when I did none of those things. Since Anti-Calvin didn't say anything remotely discriminatory, I couldn't very well go on the offensive. Turns out finally that Lanky Lex was the one who so very innocently let the cat out of the bag.

Lex : Oh, so are you going over to {insert gay club here} tonight as usual?

If the Anti-Calvin had been obtuse enough to miss the flagrant fabulousness of Zinedine before ( though how could he! ), surely he wouldn't be able to miss something quite so obvious.

Then again, who knows, we might have unfairly misjudged the fella after all.