Spring is in the air

[xela]

A man flirted with me this afternoon; the first time that's happened in ages. He was tremendously charming, and so cute I almost wished I was bi. Wistful sigh. He did put a spring in my step and a smile on my lips for the rest of the afternoon.

On another matter at least obliquely related to vanity, can anyone recommend a really good dry cleaner? I'm going through some stuff that's been in storage for a while, and came across one thing I hadn't seen in ... almost as long as it's been since a man flirted with me. Over twenty years ago, when surplus stores still sold actual surplus, I bought a beautiful heavy wool coat, which if I recall correctly was being sold as an East German Army overcoat. It hasn't fit for quite a few years, but I've always kept it, carefully stored, in the hope of one day being able to wear it again. If the stroke did nothing else, it focused my attention on getting into shape, and for the first time in years, actually being able to wear it again someday seems achievable. I'd like to have it cleaned by someone who would know how to give it proper care. I suspect I put it away all those years ago without having it cleaned first (it is, at any rate, not in a cleaner's bag, and doesn't have a tag attached). I'd like to get it properly cared for now.

Comments

[pwaa.livejournal.com]

It is so unusual for a straight person to be happy with being hit on by a gay person of their gender. Kudos for your absolute lack of homophobia!

As for dry cleaners, all I can say is, avoid Zoots like the plague. I've tried Anton's once and it was decent. (Both of those are chains, so there should be one near you).

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

> Kudos for your absolute lack of homophobia!

I'm leery of using words like "absolute" in this kind of context, and I certainly wouldn't use it for me.

For a working-class kid growing up in small-town America in the 70s, I had tolerant influences: Two of my mom's friends were a lesbian couple (though I never knew it until my dad, who was ... rather less enlightened ... referred to them one day when I was about twelve as "those dykes"). And when I was about fourteen, I stayed with my older sister and her husband in Seattle one summer; they were close friends with the gay couple next door, so my first exposure to openly gay men was these two genuinely pleasant guys in their forties, who had all kinds of interesting friends. Knowing them sort of inoculated me against that viral stereotype — the faggot, the queer, the queen, the fudge-packer — that teenage boys whispered about, passing homophobia down the folkways.

My first term in college, my high-school girlfriend (the love of my life, I thought then) dumped me in a particularly humiliating way; part of the fallout from that was that I spent much of a year thinking I might be gay. Or maybe trying to convince myself I was: I certainly wasn't what I'd been brought up to think of as a "normal" guy: I liked the arts; I cried at movies; I even liked cooking.... But the maybe I'm gay hypothesis kept running up against the fact that I just couldn't imagine wanting to kiss a guy on the lips, so I eventually gave it up. But being young and extraordinarily confused, I did end up majoring in theater. I don't know if it's still true, but in those days, when coming out of the closet was still tremendously risky, theater departments were a magnet for gay and lesbian students. Consequently a lot of my friends in college, including my best friend, were gay. (And as for being at ease about being flirted with by a guy:  all but one of the times a guy has hit on me, he's been really sweet and non-threatening; if the one exception had been the first guy to hit on me, I can easily imaging that my attitudes might have taken a very different turn.)

But for all that, for all I've had gay friends for well over 20 years, I still get a little uptight when I see two men kissing. I'm annoyed with myself for getting uptight over it, but there's no denying that I do. I've now reached the point where the last time I saw a friend I've known for years kiss his husband, my reactions went from uptight through annoyed-at-being-uptight in the blink of an eye, to come to rest at oh, they're so sweet. I wish I could could go directly to the they're so sweet reaction, without the preliminaries, as I would with a straight couple I felt the same affection for. But the fact is, I don't.

---

Why, yes, I have been told I sometimes overanalyze my feelings. Why do you ask?

[msmemory.livejournal.com]

My friend tpau, who also has some sort of Russian/Soviet/German army overcoat, says that it should be able to stand up to all kinds of mistreatment, so should clean up just fine even at an ordinary chain type cleaners'. She said "he could probably just throw it in the machine, since it's already felted." If you have a normal cleaners where you'd take a suit or dress slacks already, they should be all right for your coat.