I was overdue for a milkshake, so I went to Rori's Artisanal Creamery.
"Oh..." said one staffer.
"We're out of milk," said the other. "Sorry."
A happy ending was not out of reach. "There's a supermarket 75 feet away," I said. But they looked at me as if I had suggested they steal a cow and milk it.
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Adam had to go to L.A. today, so I joined a Newcomers hike this morning. It started out grimly, with me standing alone while the 30 other hikers, who all seemed to know each other, chatted away. A couple of folks engaged with me once we hit the trail, and then, fortunately, five of us set off on a longer, harder route.
I was at the rear, and for an hour, the two guys ahead of me talked about insurance. I found it helpful to think of it as a radio show, and—bright side!—being excluded meant I wasn't burdened with having to pay attention. One of the guys struck me as a blowhard, and I could see why his insurance company had given him hassles over the years: They probably wanted him to switch carriers. He seemed harmless until he said something about "the liberal mentality." Oy. "You give them a job and they expect to get paid forever, even if they're not working." I may have gently scoffed, but I wasn't about to pick a fight. He'd only have relished it, and his mind would remain unevolved.
Later on, he asked what I do for a living. "I remember when journalists used to pride themselves on being impartial," he said jovially, as if any right-minded individual would agree.
"I don't think we should have this conversation," I said, with a tad more curtness than I intended. "We're not going to agree." The two guys at the front stopped, turned, and laughed.
"Imagine that," said one. "Someone is disagreeing with Jeff!"
Jeff doubled down, waxing nostalgic for the time when journalists valued the facts. "The bigger problem," I said, "might be that huge swaths of this country believe in 'alternative facts.'"
Perhaps intentionally, the group reordered itself, and the leader and I fell into one of the better conversations I've had in a while. We talked about the weaponization of misinformation, the unnerving rise of autocratic rule around the world, and the inevitability of climate change, and his point throughout was that he was convinced, despite everything, that people have the ability to come around—to see things both as they are and how they should be. And while generalizing people by type leads to trouble, one-on-one interaction often brings about a change in attitude. As an example, he said, gays and lesbians have gone from pariahs to accepted in a relatively short time. "When people started realizing they knew gay people, they found it harder to demonize them."
"This is where I interrupt to tell you that I'm gay."
When meeting folks in Santa Barbara, I've tended to mention my husband as quickly as possible. Better to get it out there before it feels hidden. Usually, we're at a party or something, and if someone is uncomfortable, he/she can fuck flit off. A three-and-a-half-hour hike is a different kettle of fish. I wasn't worried that the leader was going to say something awkward, but I wasn't sure how Jeff would handle it. To his credit, he joked something along the lines of, "Well you can't hike with us then ha ha," which was not the very best response he might have come up with, but far from the worst.
The conversation drifted from the gays to transgender people, a connection that has always struck me as dubious, but whatever. I was expecting something retrograde from Jeff, but he surprised me. He used to think of transgender people as "the kind of thing you'd see on Bourbon Street"—drag queens? hookers?—but then he read an obituary about a doctor who had performed thousands of reassignment surgeries, and he came to realize that transgender people were "dentists, teachers, even professional football players!"
"Just people," I said.
"Just people," he said.