I just returned from the beach club, where I had “a picnic” with my grandparents and their friends. We sat ten at a long table, with a white tablecloth, place settings, candles, and a flower centerpiece. I guess it is a picnic because we were outside? (Though we were in a gazebo, with a roof.)
My favorite of my grandparents friends, sensing my slight discomfort with the situation, told me a story about a tennis player who was transgendered, and around the age of 40 had a sex change operation (male to female). The people at my grandparents’ beach club (which is very old and exclusive and takes 8-10 years to get into) thought that this tennis player had changed her sex because she wanted to be able to keep playing tennis at a high level, which she could do as a woman but not as a man.
I have no words to respond to a story like that. Who are these people, and what are they thinking? Are they thinking at all?
Later in the evening, which was marked by much political back-and-forth between the Obama fans and the Republicans (started up again anytime someone asked me what I am doing right now), the Olympics came up. Someone said they don’t like watching beach volleyball, and then a woman sitting across the table from me said “They’re like lesbians, all over each other! Ugh!” She gave a delicate shudder. Another woman beside her said, “The paper was full of homosexuals today!” I felt sick, the way I did years ago when I went to a Baptist church and the minister preached tolerance, except for gays and people who had abortions. But I didn’t say anything.
These are my grandparents’ friends, and we were in a public place – a place where probably lots of people hold the same views. It was certainly polite to sit there and stay silent, and several people noted my bitten tongue, which I suppose is a form of protest, to not laugh, to sit and stare in shock and horror. Or maybe it was just the coward’s way. I am so used to being around people who think like me that I don’t know how to talk to people who shudder at the thought of gay people. I don’t know where the line is; what is condoning bigotry by staying silent, and what is just getting along and picking my battles?
It’s all well and good to go to the tennis club, and the beach club, and take a boat ride, and stay out all night with rich pretty young things from elite colleges, drinking and talking and flirting, as long as you remember that’s not all there is. This is a fantasy world, and like any fantasy it has its dark side: prejudice, willful ignorance, high walls that protect it by keeping out people who, unlike me, would have the courage to say something.
