A few years ago, my friend Marc Wernick and I went to the Fifth Floor restaurant (in San Francisco) for a middle-of-the-week delicious dinner and conversation. We had the chef’s tasting menu, I had the wine pairing, it was a long luxurious and yummy dinner. About halfway through dinner I noticed that almost all of the other tables in the restaurants were obviously business dinners – tables with lots of people in suits. Marc & I told jokes, we caught up, we ate a lot, I drank a lot, and then dessert arrived with “Happy Anniversary” written on the plates and a knowing congratulatory smile from the server.
We laughed giddy and uncontrollably. The waiter came over and we mentioned there must’ve been a mistake. The waiter said we looked so happy together and we were having such a good time that everyone agreed we must be celebrating an anniversary. Ha! Marc’s a gay man, I’m a lesbian, we’re good friends, and it’s good to know we can both still “pass” if needed! They must’ve picked up on something between us that they couldn’t define in any way besides “wedding anniversary.”
It reminds me of the times that Moya and I have been asked if we’re sisters presumably because someone senses that we’re close and can’t fathom that we might be close because we’re married to each other (we don’t look alike – okay, well, we both have curly brown hair).
Tonight I remembered and chuckled about the mistake made at the Fifth Floor, but there’s another side to that assumption – the side that makes the Yes-on-Prop-8 people afraid of and blind to the variety of relationships and afraid to acknowledge and respect the many different ways people love and dine – because they see and believe in only marriage for straight people.
In 2000, on election night when Prop 22 passed in California, Moya and I were just about to leave a hotel with our friends Robert and Dave to go have dinner at the French Laundry. The TV news announcer, before the polls even closed, announced that Prop 22 had passed by a wide margin. Moya threw pillows at the TV and we drove off to a dinner full of champagne and burgundy and a lot of food and flatware and forgetting momentarily, about Prop 22. (Sigh. Robert died before it was legal for him and Dave to marry in California.) That night, at the French Laundry, the wait staff initially thought we were two straight couples out for dinner. Ha! Such flaming queers – how could they miss it?!
It’s not like it happens all that often – usually, particularly here in San Francisco, people know and understand that Moya and I are together, not just together. Though individual incidents stick out — years ago up in Tahoe on valentine’s day in a restaurant full of straight couples out on a date, I was glad when the staff understood that we were on a date too. My friend Ali and I were kicked out of a bar once in St Helena, just north of San Francisco, because (the bartender said) “[they] don’t want your kind here.” Incidentally, we were on our way to more fine dining on that evening too – at Terra.
That’s the “gay lifestyle” – dining with the good company of friends (and lovers).
