Spitting gay
Cindy Patton
“Speaking moistly”
On April 7, 2020, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau inadvertently offered one of the simplest explanations of how transmission of 2019-nCoV most likely works. Standing in front of his home at Rideau Cottage, our dashing adolescent PM was pressured to answer questions about wearing masks, a precaution that seemed to most of us like a no-brainer.[1] In fact, Trudeau was the first world commander to have a personal brush with the virus: his partner Sophia Gregoire Trudeau was felled by the virus after visiting the UK in mid-March, requiring the entire Trudeau family to quarantine. Canadians had become accustomed to seeing the PM in front of Rideau Cottage at the then-daily governmental updates, and many anxious eyes were glued to their streaming devices to learn how Gregoire – and indeed our collective selves – were faring in a global health crisis.
Trudeau’s top public health officials were in lockstep with the American common health leaders and the World Health Organization in abjuring universal use of simple face coverings as a means of disease suppression, despite the clear role that masks had played in rapid manipulation of the virus in Cana
Someguyspat at our feet on the train to the PJ Harvey concert. Seemingly as unaware of our presence as we'd been of his, I assumed he was just one more person treating a public space as their private restroom and I ignored it.
My boyfriend/girlfriend thought differently however. Glenn got up and yelled in his face ('Why'd you do that?') while pointing at the mess on the floor. I grabbed his arm and pulled him to the other end of the train because it was nothing personal but he was pissed.
This man targeted us because we are a same sex couple.
I dismissed his interpretation because the guy was totally ignoring us otherwise, didn't even look up when Glenn got in his face. I was still psyched about the concert so after leading us to the other cease of the subway machine I relinked our hands and tried to predict the set list for the night ahead.
It wasn't until I got home I thought how strange it was the guy hadn't even looked up when Glenn yelled at him. Regardless of intent when spitting, human stimulus demands the eyes meet an aggressors approach, responding to visual, physical or auditory stimuli.
Lying in bed I knew Glenn was right all along, of course. If the explosive &
We’re All Spitting in One Another’s Mouths These Days
Good in Bed
A series exploring all the ways we are — and aren’t —finding satisfaction in the bedroom right now.
Illustration: Lia Kantrowitz
A partner of mine I’ll contact Natalie matched with this guy on Hinge last year. There wasn’t much of a spark on their first date, but he was tall, sharp, and reasonably good-looking, so when he offered to cook her dinner at his apartment, she reluctantly agreed.
The moment she walked into his place, she knew her initial sense had been right: There was no spark. Still, after dinner they ended up on the couch, where they started making out. Then Natalie noticed something odd. The makeout, she says, was getting kind of spitty. “Not in the way that the guy is a sloppy kisser,” she tells me. “It felt nice of purposeful.” She was still trying to figure out what was going on when the guy leaned back and said, “Let me spit in your mouth.”
Natalie was shocked. The Spitter, as he would come to be known among her friends, had seemed like a wholesome kind of guy: a synagogue member who played rec-center basketball on weekends. It also wasn’t really a questio
What’s In the Box?
This is part of Revenge Week, a series about how vengeance runs America, from the White House to cheating spouses to that bad boss who totally deserved it.
You know that thing where you include a crush on someone but you’re mean to them? It’s like nine-tenths of 10 Things I Hate About You. Adequately, I was once so in love with a fella, I mailed him my poop.
It was 1986 and I was 16. It was a nerve-wracking time to be queer. All you ever heard about gayness in most high schools were brutal jokes about AIDS, so I kind of stayed in the closet at my Catholic academy. I say kind of because I was also appreciate a kid in a candy store. It was an all-boys school.
I was known to be prefer Animal from the Muppets there, playing pranks and acting a fool. (A lot of that was just to get my mind off having the hots for half the student body.) But one guy especially made me weak in the knees. His name was Jason and he was what gays now call a “short king,” or “fun-sized.” He was also quite fit from being on the wrestling team. We met in rehearsals for the spring musical.
I tried not to swoon over him but it was all too much! He had big brown eyes, a plump bubble butt, and Pooh
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