Vito and me

I asked a straight colleague here at the office whether he would mention to our peers that he had seen me all dressed in leather at a gay bar, a la Vito in the most recent Sopranos episode.
"What would I be doing in a gay bar?'' he said, making this a lot more complicated thought experiment than I'd originally intended.

Once we worked through a scenario in which he would be there for some reason unrelated to sexuality or gender identity, he said that he would in fact tell our peers what he had seen. He would do it, in fact, with an alacrity which would make my head spin.

"Uh-huh,'' I said. "But what if I asked you not to?'' At this point, he pondered, sighed and said, "Then I guess I wouldn't.''

I was impressed with this guy's decency and honor until I shared that conversation with yet another colleague.

"Riley,'' he said. "I don't think you understand something. No damage would come to your reputation if word got out that you were leather-clad in a gay bar, because you don't have a reputation of any sort to protect. Nothing you say or do would surprise anyone who even had a passing aquaintence with you.''

Which was meant, I suppose, as a kind of insult, but which I have come to see as a kind of compliment. There is a certain liberation that comes from not being predictable, a freedom from knowing that you can be whoever you are or live life in your own way without worrying about what the world thinks.

That liberation should, of course, be accompanied by a kind of honesty in your life, an honesty denied those who live in the workaday world of Soprano's mob thugs. All anybody really wants in this world, straight or gay, is dignity, the courage to be who we truly are and the knowledge that those we love stand by us.