Southern Barbie Meets a Lesbian

For the most part, all of my friends and coworkers who know I'm gay have been great, ranging from 'uninterested' to 'thrilled' on the supportive scale (one of my closest friends, a lesbian herself, shrieked "I knew it!" at the top of her lungs, wanted every single detail, and insisted that she'd had to constantly defend me as straight to her friends). If any of my coworkers are uncomfortable with it -- which is a distinct possibility, since the place I'm working now is relatively 'backwoods' with a lot of hardcore Republicans -- they've kept it to themselves. The two coworkers with whom I have gotten into in-depth conversations on the subject were casual, curious, and funny. And last month, Aphrodite came to our company's Christmas party with me, and everyone liked her a lot and treated her completely normally.

Except.

There is one woman I work with -- late 40s, long blond hair, nice body, Southern accent, looks rather like an aging Barbie -- who makes me feel, for lack of a beter analogy, as though I'm a bug under a microscope being poked with a stick. I believe that she is genuinely interested in my relationship on some level, and I don't really mind talking to her about Aphrodite or about lesbian relationships in general, but the way she goes about asking questions sets my teeth on edge. There's no hint of malice in anything she says -- but the general vibe just makes me so uncomfortable. It's hard to explain. I don't feel as though I can even talk to Aphrodite on the phone when she's around, even about everyday things, because I feel like she's hanging on my every word.

When I casually mentioned "my girlfriend" for the first time, in the context of a conversation about something entirely different, one of the first things out of Barbie's mouth was, "Oh, it doesn't matter to me. At my other job, there are these two guys who are homosexual and we just make fun of them all the time, and they do the same thing to us. Nobody cares that they're queer."

((I should interject here that I don't like to be described as 'queer' by straight people. I know there are some gays and lesbians who prefer to identify as 'queer' over any other term, and that's fine -- I don't have a problem with the word itself -- but for some reason it bothers me when straight people use it, maybe because it feels like they're telling me I'm 'queer' in the old sense of the word -- strange, odd, weird in some way. The closest I can come to an analogy is that nowadays, black people can call one another 'nigger' and it's perfectly okay, but if a white person tries it, he or she is liable to get jumped in a dark alley. I'm not sure if that makes sense to anyone else -- but the point is, she put my hackles up right from the start. I'm surprised I didn't physically flinch.))

She rambled on about her daughter and how she would react if her daughter came out as a lesbian. "That doesn't mean I'd want to watch her shove her tongue down her girlfriend's throat, but I wouldn't love her any less."
"Well, most people don't want to watch heterosexuals stick their tongues down each other's throats in public either," I pointed out dryly.

A few minutes later, she began to qualify, "Now, I don't want to pry... I don't want to make you uncomfortable... I'm just curious..." blah blah ramble ramble." I braced myself, fully expecting a question about my sexual habits, wondering how to respond.

Five minutes later, when she finally managed to get to the point, what I got was, "Do gay and lesbian couples keep their finances separate or put everything together?"

I blinked. "Um. Well. Aphrodite and I keep everything separate, at least for now, but I know other couples who have joint accounts, because they have houses or children or whatever and it just makes sense. I mean, it's just like with heterosexual couples -- just personal preference."

"Oh." Silence descended.

...What was she expecting me to say?

At the Christmas party a few weeks later, she brought her 22-year-old daughter along. Our table was having a perfectly nice conversation about the music business, among other things, until Barbie managed to work the conversation around to what she was clearly dying to hear about: Aphrodite and me. Her daughter took the conversational reins from her after a few minutes and asked us both, "Did you always know? I mean, that you were... you know. Did you always know?"

(In the car, Aphrodite exploded, "She's known me for ten minutes! It's not that I mind talking about it -- but there is a polite, classy way to ask things like that. Honestly!")

After we summarized our 'histories' in as few words as possible, Barbie got into a conversation with Aphrodite about something else, and her daughter started insisting to me that Aphrodite and I should hang out with her and her friends sometime. "Yeah, we should all totally go out and do something together." And then, all wide blue eyes and blond innocence, she asked me, "You do hang out with normal people, right?"

What? What?

I laughed. I couldn't help it. Then I affected my own sweet innocence (blond and blue-eyed though I am not), looked at her, let a touch of fake hurt creep into my own wide eyes, and asked, "You mean we're not normal people?"

She backtracked so fast I'm surprised she didn't fall out of her chair. "No! No, that's not what I meant at all. I just... you know..." and on and on she stumbled. I kept a pleasant smile on my face, caught between wild laughter and the list of snotty comebacks that kept popping up in my mind ("So where did you get the Post-It on your forehead that said 'normal'?") Et cetera. Somehow, the party ended, and Aphrodite and I had quite a few good laughs in the car on the way home.

I haven't worked with Barbie much since then, but recently, we got a new employee, a girl just a few years older than me, with enough personality for three people. I'll call her Marcia. She identifies as bisexual (of the 'happily married to a man, but likes to fuck women occasionally' variety), and we've had some great conversations, ranging from the serious to the hilarious. In the past two weeks, she and I have worked together several times, with great enjoyment -- and, for completely unrelated reasons, she despises Barbie with a passion that transcends hellfire. Yesterday, she told me that she'd worked with Barbie the previous day, and that she (Marcia) had mentioned to her how much she enjoyed working with me. According to her, Barbie (who didn't know that Marcia knew anything about my personal life) responded, "Oh, yeah, I like working with Athena. She's pretty quiet, because of the lifestyle she leads, but if you ask her, she's really quite open about it."

Um, what?

My response: "Yeah, damn, it really sucks how having sex with women affects your vocal cords. All that screaming, you know."

Aphrodite's response, via cell phone amid gales of laughter: "So what you're saying is, you're discreet and that bothers her." As I cracked up, she continued, "Honestly, it's like they think we're a different species, like we all live in pink houses and sleep in hammocks."

Marcia's actual, sweet response: "Well, Barbie, seeing as how I've already 'been there' myself, I don't think I'd really have any questions for her."

How much would I have paid to be a fly on the wall during that conversation?!

Have any of you ever experienced a person like that -- not openly malicious, and seemingly interested and supportive, but you just feel that something is way, way wrong? I've experienced the two extremes -- verbal abuse and warm support -- but never felt this foggy middle ground until now. In a way, it's more uncomfortable than the slurs, because you don't know exactly where you stand.

Anyone know what I'm talking about?