Commentary: Say Hello

TNG is taking a much needed break from Dec 19-Jan 4. TNG will return with new content on Jan 5. Until then, please enjoy this post from the past year. Original publish date: 3/28/08.

I was out with my boyfriend last night at the Xiu Xiu show, which was chock full of homos. There were a bunch of people there who I recognized but with whom I'm not really friends. Acquaintances is probably the right term. The boyfriend found himself standing next to one of these acquaintances, turned to him, and said hello. They introduced one another, and then the acquaintance turned and walked away. Hmph. Was he being a dick? Or maybe he was just shy. In this day and age, if you see someone who is attractive and self-confident-seeming, if they react shyly to a casual social encounter, our first reaction tends to be, "What a dick!" Well, not any more. Not for me. I'm adopting a new philosophy, and you all are part of it.

I rarely watched Six Feet Under. Very rarely. But I can recall one episode where the mother starts getting into this self help guru, and she and a friend go to some seminar. The speaker kept using an analogy about how "your house has to have a good foundation" and shit. Wait. I just found what I'm looking for, on Wikipedia of course:

In the seminar, the leader asks everyone to close their eyes and imagine that everyone else is laughing at them for being stupid, and then asks the participants if they get the joke.

The joke was, of course, that we all walk through this life feeling like everyone is judging us and laughing at us behind our backs. We all feel isolated, alone, vulnerable, worthless.

So, keeping that in mind, I'm adopting a new philosophy. If I recognize your face, from the gym, a bar, wherever, I'm going to smile, nod and say "Hi" to you when I see you on the street. And if I know your name, I'm going to say "Hi, _name_".

I'm hoping that my new approach to greeting familiar faces will be a welcome and refreshing change in the queer scene in DC. I feel that gay spaces in general, and DC gay bars specifically, are filled with attitude. People are very defensive and stand-off-ish. If you try to be friendly to strangers, they think you are hitting on them. I guess everyone is so busy discreetly checking each other out -- sizing up the prey and the competition -- that we forget that we are humans who can benefit from interacting non-sexually with one another.

What will come of this? Who knows. In thinking of this plan, I had flashbacks to the Seinfeld episode "The Kiss Hello". The notion of building social capital by simply being nice to one another and learning one another's names definitely has some merit. But as the Seinfeld episode illustrated, it can go to far. Don't worry, though, I won't be kissing anyone hello. (Remind me to write up a post on an acquaintance giving me a huge kiss hello including full body embrace while at the gym, in the locker room, in his underwear. Talk about potential inappropriate contact!)

But I digress. What will come of this? I'm sure I'll end up learning a lot more names. I'll probably get a general feeling of connectedness to the community at large. Maybe I'll make a few friends. And maybe I'll piss a few people off, but those pissed-off folks are the real dicks. The rest of us might start to realize that we really aren't alone. That we're part of a larger community, and that that community provides support to us, emotional or otherwise. And we'll be better off for that realization.

What about you? Will you pledge to join me in this, my crusade of civility and general be-nice-to-one-another-ness?

PS: The Seinfeld episode "The Kiss Hello" also contains a homo-moment, where Kramer kisses Jerry flush on the mouth just as George walks in. Really funny...