To gay or not to gay?

That is the question..

After my exhausting, not to mention spectacularly steamy mid day in Florida, trip to Orlando my Big and I spent dinner time at Chipotle discussing the evenings events. My Little showed up and got in on our drama filled hash session of did-you-hear-about's and sorority gossip. While sitting there I noticed a relatively hip looking grunge female duo walk by hand in hand. Now under normal circumstances I wouldn't bat an eyelash and would probably comment on how awesome one of the girls shoes were. But tonight, I comment on something totally different.

The other day I was on Facebook, casually stalking a girl who I kind of know via an ex boyfriend whom she also dated. She moved to another state shortly after graduation to pursue a career clearly unavailable in our retirement town. She has dated a few, dare I say, very handsome men.. She has rubbed elbows with celebrities, been on tv shows, a couple commercials and won a few singing competitions. Don't get me wrong, the girl won a particular gameshow by flaunting her obnoxiously large breasts and giggling way too loudly, but that constitutes a cable tv career, right? The point of this is not to establish my semi-jealousy of her but to point out that after a thorough creeping of her page I realized, homegirl has a girlfriend!

Now I understand that there are a number of explanations for this Facebook Official Relationship Status, but believe you me, I did my research. My Facebook friend lives far away, the girlfriend lives in my state. FB Friend has begun a tattoo brigade of side pieces and wrist quotes, the new GF has a full sleeve of cartoon Gay & Lesbian rights activism. Seriously, it's been mobilly uploaded. FB friend travelled cross country to post pictures of them making out with the caption decidedly reading "Love comes in all shapes and sizes.."

Okay, back to my trip to Orlando, I now find myself sitting on a friend's couch listening to his flamboyant advice on a fresh new sorority dramafest. Now, why on EARTH would my sophisticated, successful and fabulous Big be listening to a boy's opinion on such a matter? Because he's the token gay bestie, duh! We discussed his take on Greek life, chit chatted about boys, booze, his favorite gay bar & bar tender, our jobs, over time at them, Disney Land, Halloween Horror Nights, life, death, and then the fact that it was time for us to go home because he was tired and it's 3am.

When we got home and flipped the tv on (I know a motif of WANLM -with a name like magen- already..) Real World, no I haven't given it up permanently, was on. The new season is in San Diego and they have their token lesbian this year as well. However she wasn't the one being called nasty names this episode. It was Frank, the bisexual hot head to called a bar rat "trashy" because she was guzzling their liquor. She in turn took one glance at the cameras and proclaimed "we're getting kicked out of VIP by this *insert f word that means pile of sticks here*". At this point it dawned on me! Holy inappropriate! Yes, we all slip up and declare that something is gay, as if it means lame, stupid, weird, or any other word with that connotation. So why did hearing the word faggot grab my attention so quickly when I'm using the word gay to be just as hurtful in my every day vocabulary? At that very moment I decided, enough is enough. I love "A" my Big's boy bestie, whether he's black, white, yellow, red, likes boys, girls, Britney Spears or Justin Timberlake, so why slap him across the face every time I want to insinuate that something is annoying, repugnant etc. It's time to stop. To gay or not to gay? Definitely have a gay confidante, definitely don't tell him he's gay for not coming to your party.

Bucket List; change of vocabulary. Love comes in all shapes and sizes guys :)