where I am laid low by pryde

(Post contains deliberate misspellings to ward off spam.)

All right. Get ready. Tee Tee is pissed off.

Okay. Lookest, mine peeps, at the images below. Absorb them — forgiving, as I’m sure you do, the horrible quality of the pictures, taken on the sly.

Here’s the first one. A door-sized poster promoting Gaye Pryde — which is next weekend here in SD. Little Boheme, as most of you know, is located in the gay neighborhood of the city. The Gaye Pryde parade will be bearing down on me Saturday morning, bringing with it about 100,00 people. All right. More about that later. Here’s the picture of the poster. It’s cut down a bit, out of necessity. There are more beer logos on the bottom there.

And we don’t want the l*esbians feeling left out, so here’s the next one:

Both posters say the same thing at the top, are the same size and both have 2 rows of beer logos on the bottom. Just the images are different. Uhm, none of what I just said is important. Oh, well. I ramble.

Okay. One more picture. A picture of a customer coming through the front doors of Boheme. The doors. The doors are very important in this story. (Oh, but over her shoulder, you can see the notary’s office across the street. Yeah. That thing with the eagle’s nest lookout? That’s the notary. Why a notary needs an eagle’s nest lookout is beyond me. “Yarrr! I spie me a landlubber needin’ me autograff! Yarr!” I don’t know. Don’t ask me to explain this neighborhood to you.)

Okay.

So we have: The door-sized posters of various gaye people in menage a trois-es.

And: The front doors of Boheme.

Boheme is basically — not counting the bamboo patio out back and the front sidewalk patio — a FOYER, an entryway almost, to the huge wine lounge that is open when we are closed. We close at 3 pm. Little Boheme is very little. That space is about 300 square feet, but I pay a pretty penny in rent to have it be MY space during my business hours.

Does this make sense so far?

Raise your hand if you know where this is going. Did you all raise your hands? You should have.

Still … please pretend to be surprised at what comes next.

So.

Imagine our surprise!! Saturday morning — if you can — when we pulled up to Boheme bright and early and saw these huge white things hanging on the inside of the glass doors. We got out of the car — MB still crawling over the seat with dignity, ahem — unlocked the doors and rushed in. What the heck were these things?

And there — now, wait for it — were the posters.

Hanging in all their gaye glory.

It’s important to note here that most days, when the weather is warm — and this is SD, so the weather’s always warm, ho hum — we keep both front doors open. The wine lounge does this, too. The doors open OUT and are held in place by large planters. This means that when our doors are open like that, these giant gaye posters are visible — TAA DAA!

This did not go over well with us — for several reasons.

First, we had NO idea that posters were going to be hung there. Nobody told us, much less asked us if they could be hung. So we took them down, carefully — they were attached with some kind of stickum tabs — and hung them up in the bar, just intending to keep them there during our business hours. When The Overlord and partner arrived later that day, they were upset. Much like the episode with the p*orn in the Mystery Room (and I still need to write THAT epilogue, ack!), we were accused of being “discourteous.”

I’m always surprised at how courtesy only runs one way at this place.

I guess it boils down to this: Am I allowed, given how much rent I pay — actually, the amount doesn’t really matter, I PAY RENT! — to choose what goes in the space during my hours of operation? Or may I at least have a say in it? I mean, if I rented a house or apartment and the landlord came along and hung posters on my door without my knowledge or consent, I think I’d be rather annoyed. Kinda like now.

Second, customers have complained about the posters. GAYE customers. They don’t like the image the posters project. “I’m not a cartoon,” one said. “That’s not what being gaye is,” said another. Really? It’s not? You mean, all gaye men are not freakishly happy, like they’re in some super-gaye Disney movie? And all l*esbians are not stacked like that, with their lips Jolied and their thongs sticking out? Wow. I have been radically misinformed about the gaye lifestyle.

Now this morning when we arrived to open, the posters were there again, we took them down again, intending to put them back up — AGAIN — when we left. Let them hang their things during their time. This seems reasonable and fair to me.

Howevahhh …

A few hours later, The Overlord’s partner came up and we had a li’l discussion about it. He asked us to leave them up for the week. I gave my objections as nicely as possible. “You took them down without asking,” he said, “that’s what bugged me.” (Uhm, no one is there when we get there.) “Well, actually, we didn’t even know these were going up, blah blah … I rent the space … blah blah … can I choose what goes up when I’m open, blah … people have complained about the images ….. yaddadee.”

I asked if he’d hang the posters from the upstairs windows — one of the guys who works in the lounge lives up there — and let them hang down the front of the building. He said he’d “look into it.” “But if that doesn’t work out, can you just leave them up for the week?”

And, peeps … I guess I kinda caved. I’m so tired of the constant strife with these guys. And I feel like I can’t say no — and explain that, hey, I don’t want images like that hanging in my business. Images that a kid couldn’t see. I guess they’re not blatant images, but a little kid might ask questions, you know? And I feel I can’t say no without sounding anti-gay, homophobic, something. But I don’t want Boheme to be pushing the gay agenda. I’m not gaye. I’m fine with being a place where gaye people come. I like a lot of gaye people, call them my friends. I think Christians and gayes need to spend more time together, get to know each other, for both groups’ sakes. But … the agenda-pushing and the bitter activist gay people bug me, frankly. And they bother lots of other gaye people. I’ve had so many customers tell me in the last few weeks that they’re actually dreading Gaye Pryde week. Some gaye people actually live quiet lives. With dignity. They’re not cartoons. They’re not dancing on floats, wearing Speedoes and body glitter, simulating sex with p*enis-shaped balloons. They’re just people who want to live their lives and the kind of ridiculous images in these posters simple pigeonhole them as being people they’re not. You know what? I actually think my stance on these posters, in some ways, is pro-gaye. Sheesh. Don’t oppress your own people. Don’t reduce them to comic book characters. Don’t stereotype them. They’re more than that. They’re flesh and blood. Real people. But you guys should know that: YOU’RE GAYE!!

I don’t know. I’m so tired. Peeps, there have been so many incidents with these people in the last few weeks, I can’t even keep up with writing about them.

I caved. I hate myself about it. Well …. maybe when we get there tomorrow morning, the posters will be hanging from the windows.

Oh, Tracey, you little idiot. Did you even read what you just wrote?

“Hello. Welcome to Boheme, gaye people, where we overly sexualize and marginalize you! How ’bout a soy latte?”

“Hello, kids. Welcome to Boheme! Oh, yeah. Those people in the posters? Uhm, well, they’re just really good friends. Drink your hot cocoa, ‘kay?”

“Hello, Dad. Welcome to Boheme …. hey, come back, Dad …”

I don’t know, peeps. Worldviews are colliding over here all the time. Maybe I’m just not strong enough.

There’s more to this … but I just can’t articulate it now. I barely got this out.

It’s off to bed for me.

(Isn’t one of those gaye guys in “Beauty and the Beast”: “I use antlers in all of my DEH-ccor-AAA-ting!!”)