Pith and Vinegar Presents:
Rob Bartlett Wants You to Know He’s Not Gay

I’ve always been suspicious of anyone who is overly outspoken about their
sexual identity. I don’t think people should be defined by where they choose
to put their naughty parts. That said, I think it’s more than a little weird
when someone makes a huge grandstand play to proclaim their heterosexuality.
Calling a press conference to announce that, "Once and for all, for the last
time...I did not have sexual relations with that Bat Boy", to me, just smacks
of classic Shakespearean ‘Methinks thou doth protesteth too much’. And
while we’re on the subject, I’m convinced the Bard himself was an
Elizabethan Drag Queen. I mean, just look at the way the man talks... ‘doth
protesteth’, a lisp like that not to mention those tights and pointy slippers
and accordion collars he wore. Get real. That Romeo was a Juliet.
Mike Piazza’s vehement assertion that he doesn’t have a fondness for the
Fungo bat plays right into the same kind of homophobia that causes these
people to think these kinds of statements are necessary in the first place.
Making it a point to say you’re not gay is the worst kind of homophobia.
Because it implies that being a homosexual is a BAD thing.
Now, granted, there are some of you out there who do believe that it is. I
know some parents of homosexuals, even as much as they love their children,
would prefer they had the American Taliban for a son, rather than deal with
the fact that he spends his weekends on Fire Island sipping Cosmopolitans and
noshing on cracked crab with his ‘young gentleman friend’. I don’t think
it’s bad to be gay, although I do imagine there are a few down sides to the
homosexual lifestyle. For one, the uniform can get expensive. For a gay
man, the pressure to look fabulous all the time, 24 / 7/ 365 must be worse
than anything Claudia Schiffer has to deal with. The summer wardrobe alone,
I’m sure, runs into the tens of thousands. Have you ever seen a gay man who
wasn’t impeccably dressed? No. Ever run across a homo hobo? No. That’s
why there are no gay homeless people.. Not to mention, of course, that if
gay man were to keep all his worldly possessions in a shopping bag, he’d need
about fifty of them just for the window treatments alone. And they’d all
have to be matching from Barney’s.
Homophobia is a very powerful emotion. The aversion some people have to
gays, their lifestyle, or their culture is almost more prevalent, and in some
cases, even more readily accepted than, racial prejudice. Homosexuals are
despised almost more than any ethnic group. Except maybe the French. I
think it’s because some heterosexuals are afraid that being gay is
communicable, like you can catch it the way you do a cold. Shake hands with
a gay man or a lesbian, and you better hope there’s some germicide soap in
the bathroom. I can almost understand this kind of thinking from the less
enlightened of the world, especially when you consider the theory that some
members of the homosexual community subscribe to:
Deep down, everybody is gay.
I’m beginning to believe that the above statement may have some validity,
because apparently, there is some new historical data that suggests that even
Abraham Lincoln was gay. I don’t know about you, but if it proves to be true
that ol’ Honest Abe was, in fact, a ‘Friend of Barney Frank’, then anything
is possible.
The evidence is somewhat compelling. I’ve seen daguerreotypes of Mary
Todd that make me suspect that our country’s 16th President was sporting more
than one beard. To be kind, she does look strikingly similar to J. Edgar
Hoover in a dress. Let’s look at the facts: Lincoln WAS known to accessorize
his outfits...what with that stovepipe hat of his. He was thin, he liked to
read rather than work in the fields, there were reports that he often
wrestled with the town bully…
And of course, he did enjoy the theatre.
Hmmm. Perhaps Honest Abe wasn’t really all that honest with himself.
I was so startled by this allegation that I went to one of my friends who
just so happens to be homosexual, to get the, you should excuse the
expression, ‘straight story’. He told me that not only was it documented
fact that Lincoln was gay; I would be shocked to find out how many people
throughout history were as well. For instance:
John Wayne.
He wore a bracelet, for crying out loud.
Columbus. Christopher, (like the street in Greenwich
Village...coincidence? I think not.) was a sailor who traveled across an
entire ocean just to find spices.
Gay? Please.
Henry Ford was so fond of cruising, apparently, that he developed the
automobile to help facilitate the practice. And if you find it difficult to
believe that Alexander Graham Bell was Gay, just consider the first words
ever spoken over the telephone: His plaintive cry of ‘Mr. Watson! Come here!
I WANT YOU!"
Red Buttons...Red Foxx, Red Skelton?
Pink, pink, pink.
Helen Keller had a mighty special relationship with Annie Sullivan, what
with all that touching and feeling going on.
Humphrey Bogart? Think about it. The lisp thing. Dead giveaway.
Thom Mcann?
Definitely "Light in the loafers".
John Cameron Swayze? Took a licking...kept on ticking.
Moe, Larry and Curly? Gay, gay and gay, respectively.
Although, by all accounts, Shemp, apparently, was not.
Perhaps one of the most startling revelations came when I saw a play by
Terrence McNally alleging that Jesus was gay. Look at the clues: he never
married, he spent an awful lot of time hanging out with all those male
apostles, preaching about ‘loving your fellow man’...plus, HE WORE SANDALS.
Take a look at the list, and it seems that just about everybody in
history, from Robert E. Lee to Lee Marvin, was gay. And just about everybody
you know today is gay as well. Bill Clinton, with his insatiable sexual
appetite for women, is a textbook, albeit closeted, lesbian.
And it’s too bad that Gaylord Perry isn’t playing baseball today, in the
atmosphere currently said, in the opinions of Bobby Valentine and the
aforementioned Mr. Piazza, to be ‘ready’ for an openly gay player. Not only
did Gaylord ‘pitch’ for San Francisco, look at his name, for crying out
loud! C’mon, he didn’t even try to hide it!
The fact remains that, ultimately, a person’s sexuality shouldn’t be
any more a part of who he or she is as a person than hair color, eye color,
or who their favorite Beatle is. Personally, I think I speak for most
baseball fans when I say that so long’s you hit when you’re in the batter’s
box, nobody will care if you hit on the
towel boy in the locker room after the game.
By the same token, I don’t want to know the gory details of some fat Left
Fielder’s escapades with some Dugout Bunnies on a Cleveland Road Trip either.
Gay or straight, I don’t want your sexuality shoved in my face.
At least not on the first date.