In a conversation with one of my managers at work today, I found myself using the phrase “on our side of the family” to (politely) inquire as to the sexual orientation of one of our peers. It represented a bit of a landmark moment for me: never before have I felt comfortable using some queeny expression to dance around the subject of someone being gay. It’s all so handkerchief-in-the-back-pocket 1970s queer that I’m not sure I can handle it. I can only hope it doesn’t escalate into calling people “sweetie” or referring to Madonna as “the queen.” In the event that it does, I hereby grant any of you permission to kill me.
Relatedly, I’ve also (apparently) become a lot worse at correctly identifying my coworkers by their respective sexualities. The problem, I think, is that working at Apple for so long has trained me to actively convince myself that everyone is heterosexual until proven otherwise, because the company is full of highly metrosexual people who send my gaydar spinning so quickly that I need the iPhone Compass application to get it in order again. Even people who are most obviously on my side of the family had me wondering whether I was just imagining things; I missed an entire intra-Apple Store relationship, and like 70 percent of the management team.
The other outing procedure at work is, of course, the outing of World of Warcraft players. This is a somewhat more formalized process.
Employee 1: “For the Horde!”
Employee 2: “Fuck that! Alliance!”
Employee 1: “You play?!”
Employee 2: “Yeah man!”
Employee 1: “Cool!”
Employee 1: “Time to take another appointment.”
Employee 2: “Yeah. Fuck the Genius Bar.”
Employee 1: “Word.”