#oh HEY does this meet that anon's shitty quota for queercentric posts??! i think it does

[hislittleraincloud]

...So I was just called a faggot near the end of mine and the baby's walk.

Yup...if I had to hear it, you have to read it.

Short (for me) story about it under the cut though, bc I'm posting pics of the canine.

I seem to have an on-sight polarizing effect on people, even though I don't even dress like I could be clocked as anything out of the ordinary: People either quickly gravitate towards me via animal attraction or they quickly decide that I'm somehow dangerous or a threat of some sort and thus I get one of either two reactions...they ignore me or they spew ignorance at me, often loudly. Silence vs. violence. It's always been that way.

We were almost done with our walk and were waiting at the street corner for the light to turn. There was one car at the light waiting to go towards the lake. I watched the gunmetal colored SUV's driver side window through the corner of my goggles because it was billowing weed smoke while he waited at the light. There were no other cars and no one else around. Just him, and me and my baby waiting on the opposite corner.

As soon as the light turned we started crossing and he started moving through the intersection but he leaned out of his window, said "Nice fucking dog, faggot!" Clearly and loudly. Young, barely even out of his mid-20s. I looked over at him as he did, even though he'd sped up. Once we got across to the sidewalk I double checked — he was indeed talking to me, as the sidewalks were still empty of other people and dogs.

My dog/baby is a little 7 pound pomeranian mix. She was bred for no other purpose than to be a companion to people (i.e. she's kind of a 'designer dog' mutt), so she was raised to be my support animal. She's sweet and cute as fuck, and brings a smile to peoples' faces (not that I care about that part... she's my baby). And she often does it by what she wears/what she gets dressed in (people misgender her and it's tiresome). Today she was wearing her Enid 1 jacket (she has a small collection of plush jackets, two are Enid Sinclair-like colored and one is black and white checkered "Wednesday" patterned, and she picks from them herself which one she'll be wearing on the walk).

It looks like this

I don't have pics of her in it but maybe soon she'll have a little fashion show 💀 She's the princess of our neighborhood.

And then I considered myself. What was I wearing to warrant that? I wasn't wearing anything that could even be construed as queer. New jean jacket over my Beetlejuice shirt, plain charcoal colored jogger pants. My 420 cap on backwards, my face fully masked (like in the Lords of Acid pics/video). My cane in my right hand, which is just plain black with a lucite handle.

What was I doing to warrant that hateful shit? Nothing. I was waiting on the street corner with my baby. Quite obviously needing the cane to walk with her. And somehow some asshole thought he would heckle me from his car with the f-slur.

Well okay then.

I don't know. I suppose I'm sharing this because even at 50 years old, even in the Bay Area, and an area in which there are queers everywhere, some asshole is going to call you faggot regardless if you even are one, and sometimes there really is nothing you can do about it except let it roll off your back. Words from strangers who don't know me don't affect me. I don't care what they think. I've never cared what they think. Why should I let such words hurt me? They're words.*

That's how I survived this long.

It's hard for me to accept compliments because the walls against hate are often impermeable towards love as well. Survival can be a trade-off, and sometimes we have to learn where the love is in order to let it in. It's even harder when I see that nothing's truly changed for us in the decades I've been alive. There are always going to be hateful people out there. You cannot just form a movement against it. People have the capacity for love, of course, but some people are just pieces of shit.

I guess that's why I pamper this fur child so much, because she doesn't have a hateful bone in her little body. If that makes me a faggot, then so be it.

She even rocks her Rowan glasses. She has a large collection of glasses/sunglasses. Hmn, okay that might be very, very 🏳️‍🌈. But she doesn't ever wear them outside. Maybe it's her pom quality? Short king with an Elle Woods dog. ...Maybe that was it....