I feel awful. I just flaunted my sexuality to a stranger.
It’s time for a new bed. Tempur-Pedics are pricey and apparently make some people feel overheated. I researched an alternative called TempFlow, which has a factory showroom near my work. They arranged to have a salesman waiting for me, so I warned them:
I won’t be buying today. I can’t buy anything until my partner checks it out. He’d kill me if I bought a bed without letting him test it.
The salesman laughed in commiseration. Our opponents, though, have taught me that deep inside he must have been suffering: I’d just shoved my sexuality down his throat! Since then I’ve pondered how I could have phrased that without violating his religious freedom to work in a place free of the homofascist harassment and bullying I’d just subjected him to.
Obviously, as a first step, I could choose not to refer to Will as “he.” That’s still leaves the problematic “partner,” though — who besides homosexuals refers to their partner as “partner”?
Finally I came up with this:
I won’t be buying today. I can’t buy anything until the person with whom I share my bed checks it out. The person with whom I share my bed kill me if I bought a bed without letting person with whom I share my bed test it.
There. That’s perfectly natural and not awkward at all. I feel like such an ogre for not plotting this out beforehand, perhaps typing it up so that I could read it from my computer screen, alongside inoffensive versions of a few hundred other comments I might have needed.
Now if I can just figure out an inoffensive way to test the showroom bed with Will…
[UPDATE: Please see here.]
You could ask Will to wear a dress, wig and make-up, and you could introduce him as your wife “Wilhelmina.” That, too, would be “perfectly natural and not awkward at all.” Well, Will might find it a little awkward, but he seems like the good sort who would gladly put on a dress to help keep you from shoving your sexuality down someone else’s throat.
And, by the way, the sentence “I’d just shoved my sexuality down his throat!” is waaaay Freudian.
Five ways that two men in a committed relationship can buy a new bed without shoving their sexuality down the throat of a good, God-fearing Christian salesperson. (Warning: may involve some subterfuge). The men involved can:
1) Go to the showroom together, but only after one of the men puts on a wig, make-up and a dress so that the salesman thinks he is selling the bed to a normal couple.
2) Go to the showroom together, but only after one of the men dresses as a large, furry sheep dog. “This is Fluffy,” the other man will say. “He always sleeps in the bed with me.” The man in the dog suit should pant, bark occasionally, and perhaps lick the salesperson’s hand.
3) Go to the showroom dressed as two Roman Catholic priests. The couple should find or manufacture an occasion to refer to the vow of celibacy.
4) Go to the showroom and patiently explain that although they live separate lives and have separate homes, they share a small apartment in a nearby city which they use as a pied-a-Terre. The men should stress the fact that, although you will both use the bed, they will never, ever, under any circumstances be in that apartment at the same time.
5) Buy two twins, instead of one king-sized bed. They can then push them together in the bedroom at home. This will allow the salesperson to imagine that the beds will be in separate rooms, and allow him/her to avoid having to think about what would happen if the two men were ever in bed together.
You could have skirted around the issue entirely by using gender neutral plural pronouns, like this:
I won’t be buying today. I can’t buy anything until my partners check it out. They’d kill me if I bought a bed without letting them test it.
[...] that last post… I don’t know if I need to say this outright, but that last post was entirely satirical. The TempFlow salesman didn’t blink an eye when I mentioned my [...]
@Rob: You know, I’ve talked myself blue in the face trying to explain this in general terms…what an excellent little example.
@John: That post cracked me up! I think we should all talk that way, just because. Man, if visible gays piss you off, imagine how angry visible poly folk must make you!
“I know it must look odd to you that two men in designer clothes are buying a bed together, but the recession has forced us to make some tough choices.”
LOL@Clayton!
Hee hee, good one!
Hey, just GO together. Test it together. Refer to each other as whatever your endearments are to each other. Anyone that takes offense at that deserves an ulcer and to lose the sales commission. Your money is GREEN like everyone else’s, right?
Besides, I’d envy the fact that you two are a movie star handsome pair of hunks that might have every woman in the place falling over themselves to get your attention. Good luck with the nueva cama!
Rob, I hope you realize my response was satirical as well.
You could, like engage in a blow job together, right there in the store. That way they’d know it isn’t their throat you’re trying to shove things down…