So close and yet so far

I was pleasantly surprised this weekend when a friend I've been out of contact with called to invite me out to join her and a few others to celebrate the Halloween weekend.

We gathered together in one of their DC apartments and spent some quality time hanging out there before heading out to bars in DC. When we did finally leave the apartment, we first headed to Mad Hatter and then later made our way to Garrett's.

Unlike the bars that I usually frequent, neither of these were queer bars. And, to be honest, I was quite intimidated going into both. None of the others I was with, however, seemed the least bit concerned about this (despite the lot of us being queer). In the end, my fear turned out to be wholly unfounded. The other patrons of the bars where in a festive enough mood, and we were all just trying to enjoy our Saturday night.

Sad to say, though, that before the night ended we were faced with a rather unpleasant incident. In fact, it was literally when we were half a block from getting back to the apartment where we started from, walking home from the metro, that a man in a car driving by made a homophobic comment aimed at us, referencing our costumes. I was dressed as an angel, and the other two I was with were the Saturday Night Live Spartan cheerleaders. Ironically, we spent the entire night with two other friends dressed as Saturday Nigh Lives' Ambiguously Gay Duo with no such incidents (there were in fact the biggest hit wherever we went).

Why mention any of this? Oh well, I guess because I'm still puzzled about the particular homophobic slur hurled at us--it was a specifically anti-gay male epithet (and none of us are gay males, nor did I think that we could be read as such). It just seems so sad to me that after a night out in "mainstream" culture without incident, that we'd be so close and yet so far from getting home unscathed.

Everything earlier in the night served to prove me and my distaste for straight mainstream culture wrong. I don't want these five seconds at the end of the night to erase the whole night, but I just can't seem to let it go, either.

Unfortunately, it was far from the first time I'd been on the receiving end of homophobic slurs (and in all honesty probably not the last time), which is why I'm stumped as to why it's been three days and I'm still thinking about it. Then again, I guess that's a good sign--when we accept too easily the hate aimed at us is when those that hate us have truly won.