gay day

"This is the gayest day ever!" exclaimed the young woman working the register at the supermarket check out. Her name was Annica and she was just finishing with the customer in front of me in line.

The customer in front of me was having problems reading the display on the card reader and had asked Annica which button to push for "debit". The reason the card reader wasn't displaying properly was that everything electronic was a bit fucked up that day. "There's no dairy, meat, or frozen goods but there is produce and other groceries" a boy standing at the front of the store had told me when I came in and stopped short at the surreal, underlit aisles. The lights were completely out in produce, but with some light trickling in from the front windows and a set of lights on the back wall of the store. In addition to these few peripheral lights, the registers, scanners, and card readers were working, more or less. The less part must have been giving Annica problems for some time, I assumed. After the customer's second request, Annica heaved herself up from the register well and peered over at the buttons on the less working contraption. She seemed genuinely put out at having to exert this energy. A typical late adolescent petulance was coming off her in waves. I could sense them in the combination of her posture, features, gestures, and quasi-verbal utterances up to that point. A series of huffs, puffs, thrusts, and squints conspired to give away the climaxing frustration that was that day, a warm, humid Memorial Day weekend Saturday which might have been full of presummer promise and thrills had Annica not been stuck working in a half lit, under airconditioned supermarket checkout line with moron customers who couldn't interact with a poorly working card reader.

"This is the gayest day ever!"
The customer in front of me paused. He glanced back at me. I had been humming absentmindedly to myself and hit a sour note, stopping abruptly when Annica erupted. The customer said "What?"
I said "Oh, 'gay' means anything negative to young people these days." The customer looked to be a bit older than me. He was attractive and well put together looking. I considered for a moment whether or not he was gay. He looked at my hello kitty t-shirt. Annica looked at my hello kitty t-shirt and then up to my white bandana. I wondered if I looked gay to either or both of them.

"If it were gay" the customer said to Annica and me "that would mean it was fun and open and exciting..." I nodded vigorously in agreement with him. I could feel my mouth twisting in a sarcastic half smile as I glanced over at Annica and saw that she seemed to have taken an extreme interest in the more or less functioning register keys.

The customer picked up his bags and left. Annica started ringing me out. "So...it's a gay day, huh?" I said to her. The sarcasm was in full swing now. I was hoping though that she would engage in a dialouge with me about this. Unfortunately, Annica didn't say anything. I had only one item, for which I am pretty certain she was thankful, so our official exchange was over quickly. "23.99" she told me. I handed her a five and a twenty, got my change and my bag, and then turned and looked her in the eye saying "Thanks. Thanks a whole big bunch Annica."

I started to leave, got about half way across the front of the store, then paused and looked back at Annica. She looked at me. She had a blankish look of crafted incomprehension. Not total misunderstanding or bewilderment. It was the kind of look I get from my students when I've asked them "Ok, so who didn't do the reading?" after I've been lecturing for 20 minutes and am starting to get the sense that this is all brand fucking new information. It was the look which says to me "You don't seriously expect me to answer that do you? Oh shit, you do. Um...If I just look at you like you're speaking another language, maybe you'll think my lack of response is an indication that I simply fail to understand what you are asking me rather than an admission that I haven't done the reading..."

I looked long enough for her and I to have a mutual recognition of this moment. The moment was broken when a hassled looking manager hustling up to the customer service desk passed near me, drawing first Annica's and then my attention.
"Excuse me, are you a manager?" I asked turning to the woman.

After explaning that Annica should be spoken to about how to either keep her mouth shut or how to do some rudimentary damage control for her mouth when it gets away from her, I left.

On my way home, I considered the remark again. "The gayest day". I fucking hate this. I remember asking a (different) young woman who had a tendency to overuse the word "gay" as a catch-all pejorative if perhaps she could imagine a big burly masculine looking leather daddy saying "WHAT?!" every time she found herself considering something "stupid" something "gay".

After yesterday's supermarket moment, I was thinking - what if whenever some kid says something like that, it in fact DID turn into a "gay day"? What if, that remark was like the "hey cool aid!" call in the 1970s kids' drink advertisements? What if speaking those words summoned up something of a less harmful gay stereotyped production which would evolve out of or descend upon the moment turning it into a broadway or hollywood musical dance sequence?

I imagined the store shifting from dim grey supermarket drabbery to a stage covered by flashing colored spotlights, laser-sliced fog, and speckled with twinkling flecks from a series of twirling disco balls which had descended from the ceiling as soon as the word "gay" had sprung so carelessly off the lips of some homo-aggro child.

Ranks of attractive dancers in coats and tails, top hats, and bikini briefs or denim short-shorts would spin, leap, and glide out of doorways. A moving chorus line of leg kicking fellows would emerge from seemingly out of nowhere, backlit by the eerie glow from the still functioning lights against the far wall, spotlights racing across them as they marched toward the registers, timed to seamlessly switch places with the flipping, cavorting, and leaping dancers all around. Streams of Lawrence Welk like bubbles would flow across the scene and a dusting of glitter would appear on the floor, where the tiles would pulse like the Saturday Night Fever dancefloor. The disco-thumping orchestral theme would swell as the dancers, some still kicking and leaping, others having taken partners from the crowd to pull into free form cha-cha, hustle, and the occasional tangos, converged on the registers, now brightly flashing in time with the music.

"Did somebody say it's the GAYEST DAY?!" a drag MC would yell into a megaphone while strolling down the checkout counter like it was a catwalk, pausing to flick her rainbow feather boa at Annica before launching off into the waiting arms of a dozen strapping young dancers who would wisk her away as the entire entourage shimmied and high kicked its way out the door to disappear into the parking lot and beyond, off to make another "gay day" come true.

or maybe something a little like this but with better lighting and wardrobe