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A Comic Outing

My “outing” was pretty hilarious really.

It’s 1994, and I’m working for a regional pool supply wholesaler. Work had recently hired this guy who was a bit odd. He was a health nut. Now being health conscious is great, but this guy was extreme, going out of his way to extol the greatness of his all-veggie smoothie diet. He was obnoxious about it and never stopped talking about it and showing us his liquid food pouches. We quickly gave him the superhero moniker OrganicMan. Oh, he also bragged that he never sat on a toilet. Because your intestines are not “aligned properly” when you sit, he bragged that he stood on the rim and squatted. Soon enough confirmation emerged in the form of shoe prints on the rim of the employee toilet seat.

OrganicMan was in very good shape. He went to the gym, and in case you haven’t guessed… Yes, he bragged about it every day. Shoehorned into that boast was another; all the gay guys at the gym were always hitting on him.

“All gays just want me”.

Yes. He proclaimed it often.

So one day, as OrganicMan was boasting about this, Tommy, the young jokester employee hired at about the same time, turns and says “Well Mike is gay, and he said he’s not attracted to you”. Now Tommy has no idea that I’m gay, nor does anyone else, but the shocked reaction of OrganicMan upon hearing this made my response perfectly obvious. He was shocked, dumbfounded. I HAD to run with this. OM would constantly ask me why I’m not attracted to to him. I just told him I don’t know, I’m just not. At some point during the week he asked if it was because his arm were too hairy. Even though I had said that was not the reason, he came to work the next day and proudly showed everyone that he trimmed his arm hair.

In today’s world this would be flagged as harassment. I’m not sure if management was aware of how much this guy was getting on everyone’s nerves, but they might have, because I know a number of employees were really getting sick of his schtick, and he soon he ended up pulling delivery driver duties, which got him away from us.

Meanwhile, one of the fellow not-weird employees ask if I was actually gay, and I answered honestly. A couple of the guys would give me the “I’m not gay, but it’s no problem” nod, while a couple of others made their negative view of such things known. All in all, it wasn’t the bad experience it could have been.