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Beware Thou Dating Service
By
Anna Mills
Saturday afternoon I'm in a great mood cutting my toenails and listening to gospel. The phone rings. For once, I decide not to screen. "Hello?"
"Hi, my name is Tracy, and I'm calling with Great Expectations - we're an organization for singles..."
I laugh out loud. These people have sent me letters since I was fifteen, stamped with their logo of two puffy, merging hearts.
"You're laughing...is that because you're married?" She sounds as if she is smiling along with me. What a mellifluous voice. I imagine she has soft, well-conditioned hair and a face evenly colored with foundation. I smile too. My voice gets a smidgen louder.
"No, it's because I'm queer." The word sounds sharp and spectacular, like Everest. It's a hard word for the mainstream ear. The old taunt hits like a boomerang. It doesn't specify who I'm attracted to, but it smacks of defiance.
"Oh, well I guess you're single then," Tracy says after a tiny pause. Suddenly we're keeping score. What does she mean I'm single? Is she rubbing in the fact that the law keeps gays and lesbians legally alone? Is she smirking because I'm still not invited to the married people's hoedown? She used that traditional meaning of "single" - "unmarried." If I said I was monogamously partnered, would she still swoop down and sign me up?
I fail to find a clever response. "Uh, yeah."
She relaxes. "Ah, well, Great Expectations is working on extending our demographic, but you're right that at the moment we don't cover that. However, we do have a plan in the works to serve gays and lesbians within the year."
Aha. "Oh. Well, I'm not gay or lesbian." Silence. I've introduced a line of mutant alligators into her Florida condo. What am I then? I feel smug and then slightly guilty for playing cooler-than-thou with my own queer family. It was those words that made me do it: "gays and lesbians." They're so smooth on the tongue, like lozenges. So pastel. They make me think of homeowner's insurance, log cabins, and rainbow flags with the Budweiser logo in the corner. Now I'm being catty. I've lived in San Francisco too long - here you can delude yourself that "gay" and "lesbian" are establishment. I do appreciate the terms for their solidity and unflinching persistence. Once upon a time in the recent past, I curled up in the word "lesbian" like a lioness. I still savor lesbian feminism, lesbian tea and cats, "dyke drama," U-Hauls, and classic texts like "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence." But the label doesn't fit anymore. I like female bodies and male bodies and bodies in between, and I'm not so sure if I'm a woman or a man myself. After a long pause, I enlighten Tracy. It's best to muster a tone of entitlement, whether you feel it or not. "I'm bisexual. I hope you cover bisexual and transgender people too."
Tracy's voice wavers and the volume drops as if she were suddenly calling from Canada. "Oh. Uh huh. Well, we'll keep that in mind, yes. Right now we're doing this pilot just in the San Francisco area only..." Then she rallies: "So, does that mean you're open to dating men?" Bingo. Straight recruiters jump at the least sign of susceptibility. If I'm that kind of queer, I can still hope for a normal life.
"Not straight men," I say. It's a half-truth because once upon a time I did date one. Still, I would rather spend New Year's alone than meet a straight man through a straight dating service.
I've lost her. "Ah," she breathes.
"Transgender men," I continue. Does she imagine green and orange tufts of hair? She probably doesn't know if I mean women who used to be men or men who used to be women. Shouldn't it be clear that if I say men, I mean people who consider themselves men? I hear a fountain of babbling on the other end. "Oh, well, of course, then I think you'll find... I hope you'll keep us in mind in the future..."
"Yes, and I hope you'll keep this in mind for your marketing - just that transgender and bisexual people exist as well as gays and lesbians. Could you write that down and make a note of it?"
"Yes, I'll do that. Thank you and have a good night."
"Thank you." I almost don't want to hang up. How much did she understand? Will she tell her friends at the water cooler about the freaky respondent? It's hard to imagine her composing a memo. On a whim, I visit the Great Expectations website. The sidebar assures me that "unlike many on-line dating services, Great Expectations members are pre-screened and qualified, so you can enjoy a safe and enjoyable dating experience." They definitely screened me out. What kill me are the photos of success stories. A man hoists his pretty find in the air, and a woman drapes herself around her hubby's shoulders. I can't help noticing that the women position their hands to display rings. Everyone has sparkling teeth; I suspect PhotoShop. No wonder I took on a smug tone in response to all that smugness. The war is on over the rules of love, and queers have lost for centuries.
But is it queers who have lost? Do I need to see this as war? Maybe it's the forcibly straight who have missed out on myriad configurations of attraction and gender. I'd like to tell Tracy, "Don't worry. It's okay. What if you scrambled your clients in the database and flipped through it to get the new demographic in your head? You'd have Pete, 38, princess, with Roxana, 39, cowboy. What about Lisa with Katie or Joan who used to be Juan with Mark who used to be Martha? Your service only works by trial and error. How can you advertise bliss when you restrict the possibilities?"
At least I answered the call. One human who doesn't hang up must represent a thousand non-respondents. Maybe she's beginning to wonder if an army of queers will sue for a chance at Great Expectations. I imagine Tracy and her coworkers puzzling for hours over a grab bag of concepts: "bisexual," "pansexual," "transgender," "genderqueer," "FTM," "MTF," "pre-op," "post-op," "non-op," and the mother of them all, "queer." If they hire me as a consultant I can do some PhotoShop on their images to reflect the clientele. I propose a new name: "Beyond Expectations."
Copyright © 2004 Anna Mills
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