Friday, February 09, 2007
"What A Waste!"

The most recent rantings of Jason Heath-Fitzgerald:

As many out there know or assume, my husband and I lead a strange lifestyle. Well, not strange to me, but I believe it to be strange to others. To begin with, we're gay and a 'married' gay couple. Legally, no, we are not married, because our state will not recognized marriage between two people of the same sex, however in our minds, hearts and souls, we are married as much or more as any heterosexual couple we may pass at the local Wal-Mart store. We are also on the road a lot; My husband is known as Oklahoma's Cowboy Crooner, Matthew Heath-Fitzgerald, and we travel most every weekend to different cities and places for him to sing to a variety of crowds. As you might realize Matthew being a vocalist leaves us little time at home. Home. It's a simple word with a lot of meaning.

Matthew and I love many places in this country. Oklahoma City is like home; we have many, many friends there, we met there and he works there often. It's like home. Tulsa is like home, we also have many friends there and we always feel welcomed, however, we choose to call our 'home' Krebs, Oklahoma.

Krebs, Oklahoma is an extremely small town that is basically a suburb of McAlester, Oklahoma, which is small, but the largest town in our area of the state. It may seem strange to most that Matthew and I want to call this area our home. We could easily leave here and move somewhere more accepting like Oklahoma City, Dallas, New Orleans or where-ever we could be ourselves without scrutiny; but we don't, because this is our home.

With all of this being stated, I would like to explain something to anyone reading this; Matthew and I spend most every weekend in a bar, club or other venue where he is performing. Most of these venues are 'gay' establishments or 'gay friendly'. When we come back home during the week, we have little desire to 'go out' and patronize the local bars here in the McAlester area; for two reasons: one is because we need a break from the bar scene and the other is because the bars here are not friendly towards GLBT people.

(for people who do not understand, GLBT means Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual and Transgendered)

This brings me to the reason that I'm sitting down in the early hours of morning to write this...

A couple of weeks back, one of my very best friends, whom also happens to be a lesbian, asked me to come join her and other friends of ours to enjoy a Thursday evening of Karaoke at a local bar. Knowing that Matthew didn't care to have anything to do with the local bars, I realized that if I went, he would not be accompanying me. I was in the mood for a good night out, so I accepted the offer and went without my husband which is very rare. Sherri, one of my dearest friends, went with me and her husband met up with us later. Several of our friends were at the bar and we enjoyed ourselves immensely. It was a very refreshing experience, the crowd was laid-back and dis-concerning that there were gay people in their midst. Over-all, I was pleased to be able to go out in McAlester without the normal homophobic hoopla.

Just so everyone out there knows, in the McAlester/Pittsburg county area, it is not possible for me to walk in any establishment or even down the street without everyone knowing I'm gay. Everyone here knows me and everyone knows I'm apart of the gay community as well as the only gay organization ever to exist in this area, McPride. This fact does not bother me. That being said, you have to realize, that if I walk into any bar in the McAlester area, they know I'm gay, not because of flamboyance or appearance, but because everyone knows.

Tonight, two weeks after my first experience at karaoke, we planned on making another event of it, this time with me looking forward to the evening. Matthew considered going, however, when I was getting ready to leave, he decided he was too tired for a night on the town, so I pulled on my boots and threw a hoody on top of my jeans and headed out.

When I arrived at the bar, there was a small pool tournament in the process and very few other folks outside of the event in the bar. My lesbian friend was chatting with a guy who had been to our home before at one of our infamous Halloween Parties. At that time I'm assuming that she and I were the only gay people in the bar, however it was early. I ordered up my Jack & Coke and kicked back to visit, soon there were other GLBT folks joining us. The pool tournament came to an end and most of the folks left the bar before karaoke even began, which left the majority of the crowd of the gay persuasion.

Karaoke was to begin at 9pm. Cocktails were flowing through our group like water, they were weak drinks, so we ordered often. Of the few people in the bar that were not apart of our group, there was a heterosexual female that I briefly engaged in conversation with. Her appearance was, to be as polite as possible, rough. The saying 'rode hard and put up wet,' comes to mind. Her bleach-blond, poodle-dog hair was dark at the roots and her jeans and top would have looked more fitting on her 30 years and 20 pounds ago, but, who am I to judge? She spoke with me and just like I do with anyone who takes the time to acknowledge me, I was more than ready to respond. The conversation was brief and she went on her way.

Then it was time for karaoke. Several things happened at that moment. First of all, the door opened and one of my oldest friends walked in with her mother. The friend I speak of has been apart of my life for many, many years, well before I was 'out of the closet.' Shes a very dear person and has been a friend to me no matter what, even though we go months at a time without contact, I can still call her up to this day and she'd be by my side in moments. I quickly became engrossed in conversation with her near the front entrance and the door opened again. Another friend of mine, this time a gay male whom is apart of my closest group of friends, he came by and I gave him a hearty hug, then went back to my conversation. Yet again, the door opened, this time, to my surprise, was my husband and our dear friend and roommate, Paul. It made my night to know that Matthew was joining us and we all talked as karaoke began. Paul and Matthew left after a few moments so they could go to the bar and order a beverage.

Here's where it's interesting. The bleach-blond bitch whom I'd chatted with earlier made a remark to my friend whom had earlier hugged me- 'why don't you just go get a room'. Then when Paul and Matthew bellied up to the bar she made another statement like 'this is turning into a fag bar.' She also said, which is my favorite, 'what a waste!' In a huff and a bit of a scene she gathered up her jean jacket and left the bar. Considering that by this time, probably 80 percent of the bar was gay, we all got quite a hoot out of this and talked about her when she left. I looked at my friends and said, 'Well, I should go home and BLOG about this...' which I knew I would do, because it was too fun of a story to pass by, however at this time, I knew that if I did BLOG about this, I would not reveal the name of the McAlester bar that we were in, out of respect for the bar and it's owners. This notion was to change.

So, there we were in the McAlester bar known as 'Players,' karaoke was underway and the crowd was thin. Paul and Matthew had a couple of drinks and decided that they were heading back home and said their good-byes. Like troopers, the rest of us carried on drinking without them. A short while later, there were only 4 or 5 people in the bar that were not gay or lesbian and that was including the bar staff. The front door opened again. In pranced the bleach-blond homophobic woman from earlier. Everyone in our group exchanged amused glances and giggled a bit. She went directly to the bar and talked to someone there and to our surprise and amusement, one member of our group, a very masculine and attractive gay man, went up to her, calling her by name, and said 'let's go dance!' she pretended to ignore him and we all laughed. He did it again 'hey, come one let's go dance!' she turned and smirked at him, then ended up walking past us and leaving the bar again.

Time passed and karaoke went on. Four folks from our group decided to play pool, so we hung around the pool table, having many breaks while my lesbian friend left the game to go sing on stage... remember, there weren't many folks in the bar and she was one of the very few who had the nerve to sing (and very well, I might add).

While standing by the pool table the attractive gay man, whom had earlier asked the blond bitch to dance looked at another male friend of mine and said, 'let's go dance!' He was turned down, this was a bar in McAlester and not a gay bar, guys just don't do those things here. But, my friend wasn't happy with being turned down, so he pointed out that there were only a hand-full of people in the establishment that weren't apart of our group. Then he looked at me and said, 'okay, come on Jason, let's go dance.'

Now, any of you folks that know me, know I can't dance. I try when drunk enough, but it's just not something I do well, so I said 'NO!' My friend repeated himself about there only being a hand-full of heterosexuals in the bar and I shouldn't worry about it. Now, I didn't want anyone to think that I was 'scared' to dance with another man in a McAlester bar, so I said- 'Okay, but I CAN'T dance!' So, we hit the dance floor, two-stepping together for the brief few moments that remained in the song.

No, problems, no looks, just a couple of guys dancing, and the night progressed.

A while later, the same attractive friend wanted to dance again, so, once more he asked the guy whom he'd tried to get to dance with him earlier. This time the answer was 'yes' and they hit the floor two-stepping and they did a great job! I even snapped a photo of them with my camera phone. Everything was good, or was it?

Unknown to all of us who were having a good time, the karaoke 'DJ' took my lesbian friend aside to ask her to 'break them up'.

Now, one of my FAVORITE lines of all time is how he started his conversation with her and it goes like this: "Now, you know I'm not homophobic, BUT... "

Oh, that line! How many times in my 33 years have I heard that from heterosexual folk. So, the karaoke 'DJ' points out that he's not homophobic, BUT the owners of the bar would not want that going on and he had received a complaint about it. So, apparently out of the 4 other people in the bar, one of them must have been offended enough to go to him and complain about seeing two men two-stepping on the dance floor, which I find very bizarre, considering the fact that I never saw anyone approach him while my friends were dancing...

Now, small potatoes? Maybe to you, but not to this man. Consider this: I had been feeding money into that bar (PLAYERS CLUB IN OLD TOWN MCALESTER) since I had arrived there earlier in the evening AND I am confident to state that much more than half of their cash flow this night came from GLBT people.

So, gay folk are good enough to give you their money, as long as they don't act gay? Is that the point of this story? I'm afraid so.

I'm in the process of learning a lesson here. This is something that I've always know as fact, however, wanted to believe I was too harsh. To my GLBT and Ally community out there, please think about this- when spending money in an establishment, it never hurts to stop and question; 'is this a business that deserves my hard-earned money?' Because, folks, sometimes those businesses do not deserve your money. Tonight, I realize that I've added another business to my list and they will not receive any more of my money for their weak cocktails... besides, I have plenty of Jack Daniels at home where there are no 'not homophobic' DJ's and no bleach-blond bitches.

Love to you all.
Jason Heath-Fitzgerald