Last night I met up with a long-time friend (OK, he’s an ex-boyfriend) at one of our regular gay bar haunts. I didn’t know he would be bringing anyone with him, because we had not seen each other for about a month, and had some catching up to do. But in he walks with this spritely looking fellow, who was probably 20 or 21. Cute, or cute enough, with hair that took a half hour to perfect, so it looks like it took a half minute. I wasn’t thrilled by the unsolicited extra body in the room, but fine, I’d make do. With a few Jack and Cokes. Turns out Mr. Spritely and I shared a few friends in common, as is always the case when you know more than 10 gays in the tri-state area. But we shared the wrong friends in common — the ones I always keep on the periphery of my life, having dubbed them not valuable enough to warrant much investment, but they make nice accessories at larger social gatherings, when I enter a party at an apartment alone and can quickly scan the room to find someone to “Hiiiii! How are you???” with. So there we are, standing at the bar, leaning but avoiding actually sitting on the wet bar stools that nobody has the good sense to wipe down, and there is a lull in the conversation, as my friend has now gone to the bathroom for the second time (but does not have a coke habit, swear it), and forcing me and Mr. Spritely to make or avoid eye contact. So, while avoiding it, I bring up up that recent report about Count Laszlo de Almásy, the WWII spy who inspired the main protagonist in The English Patient, and how he was actually gay, enjoyed romances with Egyptian princes, and was in love with a young soldier named Hans Entholt, and Mr. Spritely looks at me, locking eye contact, and in the same motion that his tongue finds the straw to the drink he’s holding in his left hand, asks me, “Who?”
When my friend returns from the bathroom, I cut off the beginning of some wandering statement he is about to make and mention that I have a birthday party to get to, and I’m already running late, and need to pick up a bottle of wine en route, so please excuse me. And I left.
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adman
Your conversations in bars aren’t satisfying if they aren’t entirely self serving? And? Uppity queens who are old and still pretentious need to GTFO. Sorry, ‘struth. I’ll give a nod to the sexiness of well preserved gentlemen, salt and peppered and well, dreamy; but that’s where the buck stops.
Ben
Sounds like you’re just a pretentious asshole. So some guy didn’t understand your obscure reference to past queers. Maybe instead of being a douche when he didn’t immediately reveal himself to be a walking encyclopedia of WWII gay history, you could have explained this person to him rather than blowing him off like a fucking asshole.
Jake the libertarian
I wont be as blunt as ADMAN up there, but I tend to agree with his sentiment. I am a 30 year old, very well educated homo. I follow politics (although, as my name suggests, I am probably not in the same camp as a lot of gays), and I read and study history. In short, I can hold an intelligent conversation with most people on most subjects… however I know better than to get all high and mighty when I am talking to a 20 year old twink.
If you go into a gay bar and are talking to a cute kid, expect to talk about cute kid stuff. If you are talking to an older queen… don’t be surprised to hear about organizing the movement in the 70’s or 80’s. If you are talking to a black guy, don’t expect to talk about Conway Twitty albums.
I do agree though that it’s a bit annoying when you don’t get a chance to talk with someone who has common interests or is your intellectual equivalent… All I am saying is that you threw out a nuanced topic to a non-nuanced individual… don’t be such a big bitchy fag about it though.
Adam
Right, so this 20-year-old doesn’t read this blog, and is friendly with your ex, and therefore a useless douche without a brain. Gosh. Grow up.
Wyatt
If not knowing WWII history is naivete, consider me naive. Also consider that not everyone is a history buff, and when the fuck is WWII history relevant for good bar conversation with someone you barely know and is obviously younger and disinterested?
Secondly, who considers lesser friends accessories? You’re a douche.
Ben
P.S. It would be foolhardy for us to assume that you know anything about WWII history outside of what you’ve seen in the movies.
scott
I’m going to join the chorus of dissent. Moreover, the report to which your link is attached is an English paper. Though it is respected, only a very small percentage of Americans read it. Although it was shared in some blogs, many younger queers (at 22, i consider myself to be one) are no longer living such gaycentric lives. I’m going to venture out and say the bar probably isn’t where you will find your ideal match.
Nickadoo1970
If only had had enough cultural naivete to have avoided the crapfest that was The English Patient, I’d be a better person today. Mr. Spritely missed nothing.
Travis
Why bother posting this? I no sprightly young thing, and I’ve have had to ask you what you were talking about as well. I’m also well read, educated, and not naive. Some people don’t buff up on obscure bits of history. I love to talk about post-modern critical theory with people, I also know it’s not really everyone’s cup of tea and I don’t hold it against people when they don’t get it. Realizing you’re gay doesn’t mean you get an introduction package going over the topics you’re got to care about now or all the other queers will laugh at you. The community is less and less insular as we receive wider acceptance, this is a feature not a bug. Deal with it.
elvischomsky
You left because someone you haven’t met before hadn’t heard about someone not very well-known that you just mentioned?
Guess you must do a lot of leaving – if people you’ve just met don’t beat you to it…
Gobear
Instead of leaving in a supercilious huff, the authir could have responded to the twink’s “Who?” with a friendly explanation of who Count de Almásy was. I’m an educated 48-year-old gay man, and I only had heard of the story from reading Queerty.
I get the feeling the author was threatened that the ex showed up with a hotter, younger boyfriend, so the author felt it necessary to put the twink in his place and therefore rescue his own self-esteem. Pathetic.
On the other hand, the younger generation does seem to be less educated in general. Watching Rupaul’s Drag Race, I was disappointed to find that the queens had never heard of Oscar Wilde. I don’t expect that younger gay guys will know WWII trivia, but Oscar wasn’t just a gay martyr to Victorian hypocrisy; his plays are required reading in any English literature survey college course.
jeffree
Was this whole story a stab at satire?
If so: grade it B-. The prose was solid, but the ending fell flat.
If it is a true story: grade the attempt at human interaction D. Stick to popular culture: Adam Lambert, the price of cocktails or the declining quality of the towels at the local gym.
fuzz
I’m gonna be on your side in this one. I can’t stand willful ignorance. He could have said, “I never heard of him, can you tell me more?”
This is not a “naive young man” thing, though. This is a “young person” thing. For every young person I meet who’s willing to have an interesting, intelligent conversation, there are seven who can’t talk about anything but the last episode of whatever reality tv show they just saw. Stimulating conversation it isn’t.
I would have split, too.
elvischomsky
@fuzz:
Couldn’t asking ‘Who?’be considered the same as asking ‘Can you tell me more?’
Unless someone’s desperate to be patronising, of course.
Jason
I am less of a person for reading this.
Shame on me.
Cam
Either this was wrtten by Quentin Crisp or it was written by somebody a bit younger, who is so desperate and insecure that they most likely scour the library (The internet is so common) to find references that they feel make them sound like the bored decrepit old souls who once inhabited the piano bars of the West Village in it’s heyday.
You may as well have just started discussing seeing Hecuba with Venessa REdgrave or the latest Opera drama. I can picture you, in your ascot, thinking that you are so superior, but I have to say, that several lines before you brought up your interaction with the younger person while your friend was away, you had already revealed yourself to be a poisonous person. And I seriously doubt you are keeping those friends away from you, but rather that the decision to avoid a close friendship was on ther part. The fact that your immediate raction to seeing your friend walk into with somebody was negative shows that you most likely are selfish and demand to be the center of attention, and additionally, are jealous of any and all things youthful.
DR
@fuzz:
The interpersonal dynamics of this situation make any motive to discuss an obscure piece of trivia suspect, but in the bigger picture, Fuzz has a really good point. I can’t count how many times I’ll slog through personal ads and when I get to the section on “favorite books”, it’s left blank, or there’s a snarky comment about “reading is dull and boring”. I’m not going to go all culturally elite because I have my own guilty pleasures, but at the end of the day, it does get tedious when you find that you far too often have to sacrifice intellectual discussion in order to make it in social circles.
RomanHans
The beginning and end of the story are fine with me. The author is self-deprecating. He’s unhappy at his ex dragging along a new friend, and it’s exacerbated by the kid’s age, later by the usual cluelessness of youth. There’s no judgment against anybody here except the author himself.
But that middle bit about “wrong friends” not being “valuable” but rather “accessories” is preposterous. If anybody spouted this stupidity to my face, I’d remember a birthday party too.
QueertySucksLikeBeingServedChickenAndRiceOnSt.Patty'sDay
Bitter OLD bitch! Hurry and go put a deposit down on your spot at the All-Gay Nursing homes that are sprouting up slowly around the country. The retiring Gay seems to be your “intellectual equal”…so go age bitterly and twink-free with them and stay the fuck out of the bars. Bitchy Ol’ Troll. Note, this comes from a Queerty-Annoyed 40 yr old.
Nurture the young, and don’t be a Cunt.
Cunt.
Yet Another
Yeah, this is sad. You were looking for a reason to judge the guy. You found one. And you left.
But on the real “age” divide, everyone needs to get a grip. I’m only 27 and most times I feel like 21-24 yos are clueless. You’re older. Older people always feel that way about younger people. Thats why each generation think’s there’s was the best at something. As you get older, you need to adjust to the growing percentage of people that are younger than you. Eventually life will become less about finding peers and more about new experiences for you and them. So I guess what I’m trying to say is, Grow up old, lady.
biguy
@Adman you need to get over yourself, you’re such a self-absorbed jerk no wonder your ex is running around with the twink. Ever think your friend didn’t have him around for the conversation?
lisa rosenthal
So how old are *you*? 26?
Alejandro
@Cam “You may as well have just started discussing seeing Hecuba with Venessa REdgrave or the latest Opera drama.”
You say that like there’s something wrong with that. While I think the story in question has more to do with the writer feeling terribly insecure at the ex arriving with a 20 year old plaything, I do think there tends to be a real dislike and distrust of anything intellectual or cultural in popular discourse these days (be it gay or straight). Yeah, everyone in this story could have handled themselves better . . . but you know if I was at a bar and someone brought up that English Patient thing, I would have infinitely preferred that than the usual tripe I hear from people.
Yes, we can be nicer to one another and yes, we can also try to gain some cultural literacy (and for the record, I know many guys in their early 20s who can more than hold their own with that sort of conversation . . . it has nothing to do with being some old queen or whatever).
Tessie Tura
I am 50 years old, have a college degree, am moderately successful in my career as a musician, teacher, composer, and writer on the subject. Many of my compositions have been performed, some published and recorded, and as a writer I have an article that has been published in a national magazine, that has become a “standard” article, often quoted.
(Not bragging, just making a point. And in my youth, I was quite a catch, and never suffered for lack of male companionship.)
That being said, I have never seen the movie “The English Patient”, have no idea who the “real person” is on which this movie was based (and from what little I have seen of this movie, I deduced it was a crashing bore in the name of ahhhht)
If this is your criteria for Someone I Must Engage In Conversation, you may have missed out on something. Perhaps Twinkette spends much of his time in a practice room at Juilliard. Or with his face crammed in a book at Harvard Law School. Or with his eye stuck to a microscope at Johns Hopkins.
While you gloat over the fact that you actually possess an Agathe Faltskog turd in a Ziploc bag.
Alejandro
@Tessie Tura:
Tessie, you’re not missing much with The English Patient. 🙂
Tessie Tura
@Alejandro: I had seen enough on TV to know that. I could talk that queen under the table on opera plots, singers, pianists, and possibly even violinists. And I have grown accustomed to finding few men in bars who share my passion. Having grown up in rural Alabama, however, I can adapt. And do. Ever pick up a straight guy in a redneck bar on karaoke night? I have. And I was 46 at the time.
Alejandro
@Tessie Tura: Well, there you go.
At 36, I was a little dismayed to have realized I had developed a taste for opera. I realized I just acquired another one of those passions destined to make me the most unpopular guy at the party. But at least I can boast that I lift weights while listening to Callas sing arias from Nabucco and Macbeth. That’s good pumping iron music, right there.
gomez
you really wrote this inanity and posted it for the world. and i read it.
um, i think i’m done with this site.
Dave Johnson
I must say, the comments for this particular post are some of the most insightful, well written things I’ve ever read on Queerty.
ColinATL
Poor form, sir.
Jason
I have to say I know there are a lot of stuck up people in this world but you by far take the lead. Friends as “accessories” seriously, who are you?
I am 25 years old, I am educated, currently in school for my masters degree, I have know idea what you are talking about either, an old movie, where a guy was gay? I don’t know, nor do I care, I do care about how the DOJ is defending DADT, I do care that Constance McMillen is fighting for her rights, I do care that American man was sentenced to 8 years hard labor in North Korea and so on, just because someone doesn’t know about everything or everyone that is gay, doesn’t make them uninteresting or not caring about gay rights, – amazing as it may seem, not all gays are alike, SHOCK!
Oz
This is why I stopped calling myself bisexual. Everyone seems to have their own rigid definition of the word, and few people actually fit into that definition. There’s no reason why a “gay” person can’t be physically, sexually, and/or emotionally attracted to the opposite sex, and there’s no reason a “straight” person can’t be attracted to a member of the same sex. Why do people feel the need to discourage acting on those feelings? Sexual preference is just that…a preference. It’s never 100%, it’s never 50/50, and there’s no reason it can’t change from one day to the next.
TommyOC
I’m a 29-Year Old History major, with a major fancy for 20th Century warfare, an autodidact of sorts and I consider myself extremely well read on subjects far and wide.
And my response to your attempt at a conversation would have been the same: “Who?”
I would hope that when discussing a topic few other gay people – or, Americans, for that matter – have an interest in, like my love for soccer, that I wouldn’t act like an asshat and get all high-and-mighty because someone else had no idea what I’m talking about.
You should be ashamed of yourself for your condescending behavior.
Timothy
The English Patient came out in 1996, when the Spritely fellow was 6 or 7.
It won a lot of awards and was promptly forgotten (it was a dreadful movie which tried to elicit sympathy for dreadful people behaving dreadfully). If Spritely wanted to pick up a copy on Blu-ray, it’s available at Tower. There are only 18,141 movies doing better in sales.
As for Laszlo de Almásy, other than the movie – an articles, books, etc. that address the movie – he has been mentioned in two German books and one history of the Desert War.
All of which is to say that like virtually everyone his age, Spritely hasn’t seen the movie, has no intention of seeing the movie, doesn’t know who Almasy was, and probably was wondering why on earth you were stealing five minutes from his life to discuss him.
And it isn’t a matter of “kids these days”; It just has no social relevance. I’m sure that if I cornered some 30-year-old and wanted to discuss recent discoveries about the real person on whom Sophie Zawistowski (the character in Sophie’s Choice) was based I’d get the same response: Who?
And at least that was a movie worth watching again.
Erv
Ummm… I found the sprite, if the conversation is spot on accurate, to be a rude and inconsiderate person. When somebody tells me something that I have no knowledge about, I don’t say “Who?”
Surely anyone with any sense of manners knows by saying one word question of who as a response is intimating that the person is either antiquated or talking about something of no consequence.
The fact is, The English Patient is not something most people know about. But, if a person talks to me about Lady Ga Ga, I am polite. I am not a fan nor do I really care. But if a person is making conversation I would ask what style she has? About what they like about her music? Or in the case of the English Patient, I don’t know about this. What happened to the Count? What moved you about that story?
This is not relegated to the young. It is a symptom of the vacuous. Maybe we should be less about what we know, (that could be for the author and sprite as well) and more about manners.
Yet Another
@Erv:
lol, anyone who uses the english language daily knows by asking the one word question of who as a response you’re asking “WHO”?
Jeremy
Tessie Tura and Timothy both hit the nail on the head. Not only was your behavior disgusting had he actually been an empty-headed twink, but you didn’t get the chance to find out anything about him, and you might have walked out on a brilliant young man, because as both Timothy and Tessie have said, knowing about the abysmal movie that is the English Patient is not a litmus test of culture and education.
For example, I’ve never seen the English Patiest and don’t really want to. I’m 20 years old, a twink, and very handsome. I speak Latin, ancient Greek, and French and can discuss the entire history of Western art beginning in the Mycenean Age and progressing throughout the Mediterranean and Europe until the 19th century.
Rando
Latin and Ancient Greek are dead languages. While you may have an idea of their grammar, syntax and possibly even phonetics, it doesn’t mean you speak them.
Cam
No. 23 · Alejandro
@Cam “You may as well have just started discussing seeing Hecuba with Venessa REdgrave or the latest Opera drama.”
—
You say that like there’s something wrong with that. While I think the story in question has more to do with the writer feeling terribly insecure at the ex arriving with a 20 year old plaything, I do think there tends to be a real dislike and distrust of anything intellectual or cultural in popular discourse these days (be it gay or straight).
__________________
Hi Alejandro,
My comment wasn’t a dig at people that like Theater or Opera, but rather I was trying to point out that since his actual intent wasn’t to have a real conversation, but to try to act superior, he could have pulled out any ridiculously miniscule subject and gotten the same result. He would have been dissappointed if the kid had actually known about the issue.
NAP79
After reading this nonsense, my first instinct is to tell the pompous asshole that wrote it what a pretentious bitch he is, but I see you guys already beat me to it. Good for you.
This asshole will come up with any ridiculous justification for his bruised ego when his ex walks in the door with someone younger than him – in this case, not recognizing very obscure current events. I would guess that once your dumbass pranced off to your pompous Huffy bike, your ex and his new boy toy probably had a great time and at least mentioned how glad they were that you were gone.
Space Jesus
Old peoples are funny. Is he died yet?
But seriously, I’m glad you left. Young homos like me aren’t all vapid Gaga morons with a dearth of culture. We just leave the boring stuff for old people. I guess.
Sorry, got to go, telephone is on the radio!
Paschal
@Gobear: And Oscar Wilde was Irish. I’m Irish, if you couldn’t tell that by now. As is Pierce Brosnan, Just in case anyone thought that he was British.
amazingpenis
LOL. The real problem is that you’re an insecure snob. You came up with some excuse not to like the guy so you could leave. Gimme a break!
DSNX
I’m 33. I have no idea how old the author of this post is, but let me offer the following: I’ve found the true hallmark of intelligence and maturity (age not necessarily relevant) is being confident enough in your own skin and abilities not to feel the need to try and prove how smart you are in conversation with strangers. Also, making snap judgments about others based on VERY little evidence is VERY junior high.
That is all.
Kieran
If you want my professional opinion, this isn’t about Count Laszlo de Almasay at all. It’s about you being jealous of cute, young, spritely-looking fellow.
JDR
So, I totally get the distaste for “vapid” twinks. I myself am a 25-year-old cub studying queer theory from a musicological perspective. But I’m also an intellectual populist. I’m not sure what anyone expects to talk about at ANY bar, gay or straight, regarding ‘academia.’ I find that places like that are meant for the exact opposite; I don’t go to gay bars to talk about early modern notions of sexuality in northern Italy…that’s what my WORK is for. For people who don’t spend their days in an actual ‘academic’ field but want to have ‘intellectual’ conversations, I still think that we create spaces that either nurture or hinder them. Not everyone is going to self-identify as ‘intellectual’ (a word I DETEST because it drips with elitism). At the same time, I would never go to an academic conference and expect a 55-year-old scholar to be able to discuss what Cameron said on last week’s Modern Family. The moral, I guess: know where you are and what our society expects of certain cultural spaces…
Henry Holland
You show your lack of intelligence by not having paragraph breaks. I guarantee I’m 10 times smarter than you, you poseur, and I’d have given you the cold shoulder too.
Please do better Queerty.
david
Just because you read one news story on CNN and regurgitated it to some twink doesn’t make you interesting and him a moron. Your insecurity is hilarious.
Michael
It’s not the mature response, but: it seems as though the people are you’re talking to (and later about) are the ones who should almost always find the conversation unfulfilling. At least have the good sense to use a dictionary and proper grammar when you’re being superior.
Arkano18
I’m wondering if the author is 14 yrs old. I hope he is (fake IDs can get you in a bar, but they don’t make you a man).
Otherwise is just a bitch, bitching.
Speedsausage
Bringing up some obscure factoid that was reported only two days ago in a blatant attempt to make this twink feel ignorant or inferior doesn’t make him naive, it makes you an obsessive-compulsive asshole.
adman
@biguy: @BIGGUY_ You’re confusing me with the person portrayed in the article, and I’m the one that’s self absorbed? Got it. I think. I also remember I have a birthday party to attend. Bye “Bigguy”
Chris Knightley Hill
What a pretentious load of crap. Judgemental, superior, snotty, up your own arse. Who do you think you are with the grander than grand attitude? Who the hell cares who was what, when and in what war? If you can’t communicate on the same level as other people, and then have the audacity to accuse them of being stupid, then it’s you that has the intelligence issue. Grow up and chill out. Life is not about being smarter and wittier etc, it is about being a good non-judgemental (that counts me out, given my rant)receptive, accepting human being. A good person.
This kind of bollocks gives us a reputation for being snooty madames, and I for one don’t subscribe.Please stop damaging the rest of us and keep you snidy remarks to yourself.
Jeremy
@Rando
Latin and Ancient Greek are not dead languages, Rando. You might say comatose, but they aren’t dead as long as people know them.
Latin has actually been spoken aloud continuously since antiquity, and linguists and Classicists can recreate how the phonetics of Greek would have worked.
Perhaps it would be better to say I am conversationally fluent in Latin and can easily read Greek. Do you know that the official language of the Vatican is Latin? The atms there operate in Latin, even.
Anyway, my essential point was that people may have a great breadth and depth of knowledge, which may or may not be considered obscure, and still not have seen the English Patient or the recent news article about it.
Miss Understood
Why is there such a personal essay here without an author listed? It’s not a news item.
scott ny'er
@Ben: I agree with most folks here and what Ben said. The dude is pretentious and needed to educated the sprite if he felt like the sprite was really interested. What’s the big deal?
I’m glad that most people thought this dude was pretentious. It says a lot. There’s hope for us gays.
Oh, and I wouldn’t know what the hell the dude was talking about and I’m past the late 30’s.
Bil Browning
I’m disappointed that the link didn’t say more about Count Laszlo de Almásy. That was like a cock tease; if it’s that good of a story that the twink should know, there should be more info there, well, to know. Those sparse paragraphs don’t tell you enough!
chris
For a moment there I thought I had accidentally clicked my bookmark for ‘the onion’. Seriously, Mr. Douchebitch?
Devon
How was this story not preceded by a “Why, back in my day we had to walk 18 miles in the snow…”
tofer david
is this a joke meant to get us all chatting? odd. the english patient was something i never watched, nor will i.
Z.L.
I was writing a nice, long, snide comment but what’s the point? OP is going to be as snotty and pretentious tomorrow.
Therefore, I’m reducing my comment to this: So I’m not the only person in the world who hasn’t seen The English Patient, and who still doesn’t fucking care? Cool beans.
Elvis
wait… so you didn’t get laid?
jeffree
When someone brings up something I dont know anything about, I learned from Miss Manners (or her gay cousin, Mister Mild Mannered) to either
**respond with an “oh, really?”
**change the subject with the o so clever “doesn’t that remind you of ___”?
**or if mildly interested, just say “tell me more.”
I dont actually use those tactics very often –being honest– but might be tempted 2 bore the boring dude by discussing the potential use of nanoparticals in lube, along with human pheremones .
“Oh really??”
Jay
@ Tessie Tura
“Agathe Faltskog” ?
Yuki
Okay, sorry for any rudeness with this statement, but…
Get the fuck over it, Queerty. Not everyone is going to know every single piece of history; simply because they don’t know something YOU do doesn’t mean they’re worthless. Get over yourself.
FunMe
I am well-educated and travelled many places in the world. I am no longer in my 20s … but when I go to the bars, I go to have FUN! I may meet someone, I may not … but I go to have FUN not to judge or show-off insecurities like the writer of this article.
Seriously, you need to either stay home or go out and just enjoy the night without judging. Who knows, you may even get laid. What a concept!
myrios123
You showed him.
Unless this bar also doubles as a coffee house, you might have been better off keeping the conversation light.
Tessie Tura
@Jay:
First, in my rush for intellectual purity, I spelled her name wrong. It is Agnethe Faltskog.
http://www.ask.com/music/artist/Agnetha-F%C3%A4ltskog/74834
There is a character in “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” who possesses what he claims is a turd, shed by this singer, “preserved” in a jar of water.
Secondly, I presuke you have not seen “Priscilla”, so I guess that means that I think you are a mindless twink, and therefore I will move to a barstool across the room.
Just kidding. Come here often?
Tessie Tura
@Tessie Tura: That, of course, should read “presume”. It’s early, and last night I was late.
Cam
Who wrote this anyway?
zeke
Yaaaaaawn…
I’ll take a cute young twink over a pretentious old gay man any day/night of the week.
The English Patient?! lol…found that film to be dreadfully painful to watch and to think someone is discussing it in 2010 in a gay bar no less? Yikes! I’m sure they were thrilled that you had a “birthday party” to get to. haha.
Madeleine
Wow, talk about stuck up! Is it so hard to accept that people grow up exposed to different things, and what may seem obvious to you, may not be to others. You could have used this moment for education, but instead you chose to walk away. No wonder the new generation doesn’t know their gay history.
Allen
@Erv: You don’t think ‘who’ is a legitimate response? The poor kid had no idea who he was talking about, I think it’s pretty reasonable to reply with ‘who?’.
Maybe if you were slightly less gigantically dickish, maybe responded with who indeed this English Patient dude is, the kid may have been interested, or be inspired to watch it, or something. But instead you put on your ARTY HOLIER-THAN-THOU KNOWLEDGABLE QUEEN hat and were a douchebag. You’re no better than the kid who didn’t know about some obscure World War Two dude.
Could you hold a conversation on every person who’s had some gay significance over the past sixty years? I doubt it. And nor could this kid. Let him go take some E and listen to Lady Gaga while he’s still young, could you? Leave the World War Two stuff to when he reaches your apparently impressive age.
Erv
@ Allen, ummmm, not what I was saying.
Yes, who was rude. I don’t care if he did know about anything the other guy was talking about. It was his friends friend. You act like a decent human being and say something like, no, I never have seen that can you tell me or something less assholey then responding by saying who.
Like I said before, maybe it is not about your age and what you know, it is about the manners. And again as I said before, that applies to both the other and the kid.
No, I couldn’t hold a conversation, but I would not shut down someone who wanted to talk about something.
hadjalexiou
@elvischomsky
Yes, I’m so glad you mentioned the Oscar Wilde thing on Drag Race. It is a shame that they hadn’t heard about him, and they being Tatiana.
Most recently, Tyra Sanchez didn’t know what “Bollywood” was. Really?