posted
My next door neighbor called and asked if I wanted to go down to an arts and crafts thingy in Marietta. She evne had plans for what to do with the kids, so we could go together without the stress of keeping track of the wee ones. I've felt a little off lately, but I thought this might be just the thing.
My friend just found out she's pregnant again. She has three daughters (20, 8, and 4), so they are hoping for a boy. Anyway, it gave us a chance to talk, which was fun.
We got there and she saw some people she knows who are working their, and introduced me. Lots of cool, handmade things, prints of artwork, photographs, handmilled soaps, candles, etc.
It was really neat. We wandered around, and passed by a booth selling cookies. The folks were offering samples. My friend backed away, but I was caught by the lure of chocolate chips. It was good, and I told them so. It's what happened next that amused me so.
"Are you sure your partner wouldn't like some?"
For just a second, I think my eyebrows may have touched my hairline, but I just said, "She's pregnant, and just not doing food well right now." It was true. Just looking at the cookies made her pale, which was why she was out of earshot.
I was amused, and told her when I caught up to her (in the back of my mind, I was wishing Jenny G or Sara had been the one with me, because I knew how they would take it). She said, "Maybe he meant 'partner in crime'." Then she laughed. End of story.
Later, I pondered this. It has happened to my Beloved when out with a friend of his (one particular time when he took a friend along to help him pick out a weight bench), but I don't think I'd ever realized anybody assumed anything about a girlfriend and me.
I wonder, if there had been three or more of us, would the assumption have been different? Or if one of us had been older or younger? I also began to see what it must feel like to have people instantly assume things about your sex life just from looking at you.
Like, is it uincomfortable for gay men to have people assume they're straight? Is that the purpose of 'putting the flame on' - just to make it clear?
And what is it about me (wearing a Holiday Sweater, bought so I'd blend in with the other moms at my kids' Christmas functions) that says "settled in lesbian" when I was trying really hard for "Soccer Mom"? Posts: 1664 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
Maybe it's the nature of the craft show people. I think people who ask about that stuff say more about themselves than they do about you. There is a good chance that they really did mean partner to mean "friend," however...
Posts: 3003 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
It's no different if you're out with a friend of the opposite sex or worse a relative (!) and people assume that you're dating/engaged/married.
Or another thing. Once when I was aged fourteen and out with my mother, I was carrying my baby sister. I was greeted by a stranger who asked, glowingly, if she was talking to three generations.
Did I look like very young teen mother? I certainly didn't dress that way (and I don't mean in a bad way I meant in the sort of way someone who isn't just out of rough and tumble innocent childhood, like I totally was). People always make random assumptions and this is just a new take on that. It's nice that it's become everyday enough to fall under the same category of casual error.
posted
Yeah, Teshi, I think so , too. Same thing happened to me with my sister's baby all the time. I used to babysit a lot when I was fourteen and fifteen.
Posts: 1664 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
Trying being a chick with short hair who happens to just be out with ONE of her female friends.
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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I'll have to say I get somewhat aggravated when people tell me that I look like my step-mom, or when people assume that I'm her sister. She does not look that young and I'm 22.
Oddly, I don't seem to mind it when the same thing is assumed about my Mother, who is older than my step-mother. Hmm...
Posts: 44 | Registered: Mar 2004
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I've had people assume I'm a lesbian without me being anywhere near another female...
And I'm somewhat grossed out when people ask if I'm dating my little brother whenever we do anything together. Posts: 378 | Registered: Aug 2004
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On the opposite side, last night I was at the apartment of the girl I'm seeing. Her roommate had a girl over, and they were chatting. The girl asked who I was, and he indicated that I was with his roommate. The girl went, "She's a lesbian?!" And to bolster the claim, he told her of the woodworking class I'm taking. Evidence, my dears.
Posts: 1261 | Registered: Apr 2004
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Best one I've been through was having lunch with an older female friend who had graduated from my university several years before (21 vs 30 at the time) and her 2 year old daughter. The waitress just had to take the opportunity to say "Y'all have a beautiful daughter."
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This isn't as bad, but a few weeks ago I went to a benefit concert for my old high school orchestra, and sat buy a boy from there, at the end my mom said that a parent of another former member asked if I was dating this guy. She said "I don't think so" even though she knew I wasn't, just sort of funny.
I've also been on both ends of the baby thing, my (half) brother is 18 years older than me, and when he watched me when I was little because my dad worked nights and my mom was taking classes, people would always say it was so nice he was taking his daughter out on his own, and I'd freak out that he was my brother, got even worse when he started dating a girl that looked more like me than he did. But recently I went shopping with my mom and her best friend, and the friend's grandkids, and someone said "usually when a teen has a baby they learn the lesson after one" (Jackson and Lily are about a year and half appart).
Posts: 5362 | Registered: Apr 2004
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dkw and I have been mistaken for a couple, and she and our younger brother have as well. He's 6 years younger than her, and a friend of the family once asked him to introduce him to "our little friend." Or something like that. And once we were at a play at the school my mom works at, and one of her co-workers walked by all three kids and said "Oh! And this must be your daughter!" referring to Mom's sister who was sitting beside her, adn is only 2 yours younger than Mom is. Mom and cindy just laughed and laughed, 'til the co-worker was getting worried she'd said something really wrong.
Also, when I was 18 I would go out to dinner with my uncle, who was in his 40s, and his two daughters, who were about 6 and 8. Everyone always thought they were mine. It was kinda weird.
Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
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I have a skirt, that every time I wore it and went out alone with my Dad, weird stuff would happen. The first time we got pulled over by a policeman who said he'd been called by someone who said I "looked uncomfortable" with Dad, and asked if everything was okay. The second time, a man asked how long we'd been married (and I do NOT look adult. I look about 14, maybe 16 on a good day) I don't wear that skirt when I'm doing stuff with Dad anymore.
Posts: 3493 | Registered: Jul 2001
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Call it bad timing or circumstance - or they're trying to be "hip" and "with it" by recognizing the possibility of alternative lifestyles.
I've had guys make passes at me before, but it was in areas commonly and informally designated as gay-centric. As odd as that phrasing happens to be.
As to the "turning on the flame" - it's a mindset. My gay friend refers to the subset as "nelly queens" - think Nathan Lane from the "Birdcage." The commonly held stereotype holds a grain of truth, but it's a small grain.
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B and I have decided we're a lesbian couple, for the sheer fact that many people (I think the count is around 20 or so) call him "Ma'am". He doesn't LOOK like a girl, he doesn't SOUND like a girl--he doesn't even smell like one, although he does use the same shampoo I do.
On a different note, I had people argue with me about MY OWN SEXUALITY. One would think I would know better than they, no? But when I announced that Bernard and I were dating the number of people who went "Oh, so you're bi?!" was astounding. So I figured if they thought that way, why not take advantage of it?
It's amazing what a twisted smile can do... Posts: 873 | Registered: Apr 2003
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I had an argument with a therapist over my sexuality once.
She said, "I think you're a repressed gay." Me. "But, I'm attracted to men." Her. That's where the repression comes in." Me. "Don't you think that ONCE in my twenty three years, I'd wake up one morning and think 'Hey, I dig chicks'?" She had no answer for that. I found a new therapist.
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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My step sister freaked out for a while because people always thought her then-bf (now husband) was her brother. (Of course, she still married him.)
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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No one mistakes my brother and I for anything other than siblings--that might be, though, that when he rarely walks with me in public there's aways a good three yards between us. And seeing as B's Asian and I'm as white as my keyboard, we're never mistaken for kin either, although my (hispanic) girlfriend is mistaken for his sister occassionally.
Posts: 873 | Registered: Apr 2003
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On several occasions extended family members/strangers have asked my father if I am his new wife. This has happened both with one of my younger half siblings and without. I'm trying to decide if I look old, or if he looks young, or if they think he's robbing the cradle.
Posts: 872 | Registered: Mar 2002
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I was always extraordinarily pleased when people would tell me how much I looked like my stepdad. He's a wise and wonderful man, and now that his hair is white instead of flaming red, we do resemble, I guess.
I once cried for hours when somebody told me I resembled my actual father. I was a young teen and my dad was bald. I was very self-conscious about having a high forehead (I really don't - I was just doing the adolescent insanity thing).
My sister and I are never mistaken for gay, I think. People always see the resemblance (and now they add my oldest niece into it, too). We get "y'all are sisters, right?" and "Are you twins?" That one usually bothers ME 'cause she's six years older than me, but she looks younger than her age.
The best times were when people would tell me how much I looked like my mom, or people who knew my mom in HS would tell me that I looked just like her. My mom was so very beautiful - I know all girls think that, but mine really was.
I ran into some people visiting my grandfather and assumed from the way they were arguing that they were a couple. Turns out they were my grandfather's youngest nephew and the oldest daughter of his oldest niece. They grew up together and were very funny, the way they teased each other. That's a big East TN passtime
Everybody makes those assumptions, I guess. Posts: 1664 | Registered: Apr 2004
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When Christy and I had first started dating -- I was twenty-one, and she eighteen -- we were traveling and pulled into a motel for the night. The clerk saw us and said, "I'm sorry, I don't have any doubles available."
I shrugged and replied, "That's okay. We can share a single."
She raised an eyebrow. "For you and your daughter, sir?"
Christy, of course, leaned forward and asked, "Excuse me, ma'am. How old do you think I am?"
The clerk shrugged. "I dunno. Twelve or thirteen?"
posted
My half brother was born when I was twelve, and people often mistook him for mine, even when it was clear, to me at least, that I was entirely too young to be capable to have a baby.
But the best mix-up happened one night when my stepdad had to go buy new shoes, and mom was still at work, so he took me along to help with the baby while he tried them on. My stepdad was only 26 at the time, but he had quite a bit of gray hair so he looked older. While he was trying on shoes, I was sitting in the chair next to him, playing with the baby, and this old woman came in and sat a little ways away and started trying on shoes too. Then she saw us, looked at my stepdad, looked at the baby, looked at me, then looked at us all again, and stood up and left without even buying the shoes she was trying on. I'm fairly sure she jumped to conclusions. We had a good laugh about that later.
Posts: 349 | Registered: May 2003
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My brother's friends from school saw me with him recently. They thought I was his girlfriend. He's 17. Posts: 5700 | Registered: Feb 2002
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I think my brother and I resemble too much, if not in physical appearance then in gestures, way of talking, voice, etc. And it's not really common to see gay couples either in Romania or in France. But what CAN happen is that people take me for my brother, or vice versa. It has happened quite a lot on the phone: "Hi, is Radu there?" (I'm Radu, and I was answering) "Yeah, hold on a minute..." I'd pause and then talk again: "It's Radu, what's up?" Most of them get it that it was me before, but not all... Or I'd say I wasn't there, just to see if they recognize me... Fun, fun, fun!
Another time I was just getting out of the faculty building and I met one of my brother's classmates who was sitting outside with a girl friend of his. She says: "Hi, wow, you sure changed a lot!" I had NO idea who she was though... And then my brother's friend tells her: "Wrong guy, he's Lucian's brother!"
As for voice: when I came to Lyon there was a guy standing with his back to me, he heard me speaking and turned saying: "Oh, Luci, you're back!" Than he stared at me... "You're not Luci!" How perceptive...
And gesture: one of my brother's ex-girfriends was kind of freaked out when she first saw me and saw how many gestures I had in common with my brother. It reminded me about the Ender - Val situation in Xenocide...
And now that I think of it, there was one time when someone thought I was going out with a girl friend of mine... She had a friend back in Romania, but was on the edge of braking up with him and I was just rejected by someone I liked and we were kind of commiserating together, going out for some fresh air... And there was this guy that fell in love with my friend and he told her at one point that "a friend of his" saw us and wondered if we were together... "A friend of his"... Riiiight... She also kind of liked that guy - they're together right now - but she enjoyed teasing him too!
Edit: Kama, that means they thought you were young! It's ok, we all know you're really old and... Oops, I meant, more mature than that!
quote:I shrugged and replied, "That's okay. We can share a single."
...
The clerk shrugged. "I dunno. Twelve or thirteen?"
He'd obviously just finished reading "Lolita" because that's almost exactly a scene from "Lolita", except of course for the fact that you and Christy are practically the same age. Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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At my brother's wedding, his mother-and-law, her lesbian partner, and her ex-partner were all invited. His mother-and-law kept referring to her "ex-partner," and my aunt thought she kept saying "sex partner." Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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My boyfriend and I often go out to gay bars, because I love to dance and they tend to have the best music and are the most fun. Plus, there is very little chance of some a'hole hitting on me. However, my boyfriend was getting hit on constantly. I had one gentleman get truly angry at me, because he had assumed we were just friends and he was chatting my bf up, trying to buy him drinks while I was dancing and asking him personal questions. He told the guy he wasnt gay, but he wouldnt leave Jake alone. So I went over and sat next them, and naturally leaned in to kiss my boyfriend. The man gave me the look of death, told me I was terribly rude, and stalked away. I couldnt blame him for being disappointed. I think the funniest thing that ever happened to us though, is when we got hit on by 2 straight men. We were walking home one night, after a night of dancing, and were all dressed up. Jake was wearing a sarong, which he loves and looks better in than me, and a silky shirt, and his long black hair was down. These 2 guys drove by in a pickup, hooting and hollering, and yelling sweet nothings out the window, mostly at my boyfriend. They turned thier truck around and started to pull over in front of us. It took them a moment, but they finally realized they were hitting on a man. I heard one of them yell "s***, thats a guy" and then they peeled off, looking sick. We laughed about that one for weeks.
Posts: 499 | Registered: Mar 2004
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Sorry, nothing of importance to add, but I just couldn't believe no one commented on this.
quote:Or another thing. I was out with my mother, aged fourteen and carrying my baby sister. I was greeted by a stranger who asked, glowingly, if she was talking to three generations.
Your mother is 14 and you can type already? Freaking prodigy!
Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
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I don't think this will sound as funny as it was, but a few years ago my older sister and I were walking through the models at a housing addition. You have to walk from sidewalk to sidewalk to get to the houses, and we were in the process of doing so. An empty schoolbus passed us, and the driver slowed down and gave us a really strange look. After he drove on, my sister turned to me and said, "Hey we're just two lesbians buying a house. Nothing to stare at."
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