CW: homophobia
I am sitting in a pub with a guy I met just a few hours before. We are talking about our sexuality and about being gay, when a group of some men come in and take the table basically right next to us. Within the first few sentences we hear them say the equivalent of the word "faggot" in our language. After that we talk much quieter and change topics. We finish our drinks and go find some other place.
Every queer person I know could share many similar stories. I think that this is an experience that many people sadly don't understand. Even if gay people have the same rights as all other people (they definitely don't, where I am from), there are still so many experiences like this one which make being gay difficult. I've even heard people say that it's easier to be gay than to be straight these days. That is just not true in any way. Being gay isn't just a trendy fashionable statement or something like that. If someone thinks something like this, they definitely don't understand the things that every gay person experiences. And I am not even talking about much worse stuff, that I didn't experience and hopefully never will.
It's not fun to hear slurs. It's not fun when you can't be yourself. Not being yourself is draining. You don't want to spend your life hiding.
You don't even really have to be hiding too hard. When you come out, you still aren't out to everyone. When you meet new people there is still the weird period, when you don't know if you should just randomly tell them. Or if you should wait until the topic comes up. Or if you even want to come out to this particular new person. Still, even when you are out to someone, you can experience some subtle annoying things.
It's kind of dumb. Words are just words after all. But words can still have a big effect. When some random person on the street says some slur you can just avoid them. It still hurts to hear it, but stupid people exist everywhere.
We are walking around in the city, it's now about 11 pm. We talk about romantic things we would like in a relationship. I say that I really like holding hands. He gives me his hand and says that we can try it out. After a few moments we see a group of people going the opposite way on the sidewalk. We release our hands.
11. 6. 2020