A Myth Exploded: Homo Depot

So.

Home Depot is as gay as a Barbra Streisand Film Festival, huh? So Homo Depot even garnered a mention on Will & Grace, huh?

On what planet?

Perhaps you've noticed that I refer to my place of employ as Ho(t)me(n) Depot here on SingleTails. Because it is. This will be evident to the most casual visitor. (Just today, there was this 6'3" built inked slab of muscle with a Marine horseshoe buzzcut wandering through Hardware, though not, alas, Aisle 31, the Rope and Chain aisle.) Hot Men, we got. Homos, not so much.

In fact, I am the only homo at my Ho(t)me(n) Depot. There are a couple of probable lesbians, but I'm the only gay male on the payroll. EVEN THOUGH there are a few guys there whom you would THINK are homos, they aren't. I'm it.

And I'm way too humble to say that I alone put the Homo in Homo Depot. I don't think I even make a dent.

There is, however, this Way Disconcerting experience, which goes down about once a week.

I'll run into him in the (Bonfire Of The) Vanities Aisle or the Bath Accessories Aisle. There he'll be, flapping his hands at the wrists, complaining that the fixture he's after only comes in chrome and brushed nickel (SO ten minutes ago!) and not Antique Bronze. But just as tears are welling up in my eyes and I'm about to give the Top Secret Handshake by which we identify each other--I know that's not near my favorite flavor, but still!--along will come The Wife. As in, an actual biological woman. She'll explain that she's just no good at getting things "to match," but luckily she married a man who seems to have "a knack" for that kind of thing. One woman even cheerfully and without any discernible irony offered that her husband picks out her clothes for her. Every day.

I swear, Montgomeryville, PA seems to be stuck in some kind of time warp, forever trapped in about 1958 or so. And there's even this guy I work with who will drop into a five minute conversation the fact that he Loves Football about four times and who keeps a big framed picture of he and his decade-or-so-older-than-him wife on his desk even though that's not allowed. (Protestething too much, I'd say.) And he's a total flamer if there ever was one.

And I think this explains, in part, all that I manage to get away with when I'm blatantly flirting with my Carhartt wearing tradesmen customers, even going so far as to offer up an appreciative "Woof!" now and then well within earshot: y'see, even if I were to flounce around in a tutu with a cigarette holder securing a Benson & Hedges Deluxe Ultra Light clenched in my teeth, it wouldn't dawn on them that given the choice between oysters and mussels, I'm a mussel man. Homos are just not anywhere on their radar. Because homos aren't in Montgomeryville, Pennsylvania. At all.

So how did this happen?

And it's such a marked contrast to the porch of Starbucks in Doylestown, a mere ten miles up 202, where the openly gay fifteen year old high school sophomores greet their straight male buddies by saying, "Hey handsome man! Give me some sugar!," and said straight male buddies will oblige by giving them a hug and a little peck on the cheek. Man! Is it a Brave New World coming down the pike or what?

Not that I'm complaining, mind you. These days, I'm all about Looking rather than Touching. And in the midst of playing my daily game of Who-Would-I-Most-Like-To-See-Bound-Gagged-Helpless-And-Begging-For-Mercy-But-Wanting-It-SO-Bad, the guy would break into my reveries and ask, "So, what time to you get off today?" That would ruin everything.

But I just want to make one thing clear: the sobriquet Homo Depot is unfounded. There ain't no homo in your Depot, no matter how much you'd like it to be otherwise.