Take yourself back to the early 1990s in Ontario, Canada.

I was a young man with no direction, or grade ten education. Unable to find work, I took a job as a cab driver in my hometown. The pay was absolute shit, but we could sell a bit of weed on the side, and as a bonus I got to drive all my drunk friends around from bar to bar.

Probably the most memorable thing about working there was the time a few of us got off work and were sharing a doobie down at the harbour. There was me, Josh, and Happy.

Josh was raised pretty rough and had some pretty basic outlooks concerning minorities. Any minorities. I guess some might call him a racist homophobe. The weird thing was that he didn't really get to know anybody that wasn't straight or white, so you know his knowledge came from his twenty years of upbringing in a pretty salty household.

Happy was just happy. He was in his thirties and from the city, but fit right into the atmosphere of our little town. He never got bent out of shape over anything and was somehow raising a bunch of kids on far less than $100 a day. He was probably not going to college anytime soon, but he worked hard and had a good heart.

I was kind of in between being a kid who grew up around a lot of racist homophobes, and a man who was learning that everything he heard around the gas station wasn't really how things were. Of the three black guys in town, I was friends with two of them, and while I had the impression that being gay was wrong, I knew, liked, and respected the only two gay people I knew. My mom was the influence that taught me to judge people on their merits and how they treat me, not how other people told me they were. She taught by example.

I mentioned to the guys that Dave and Ray were acting really weird lately. They were coworkers and you would hear them on the radio at night, telling each other to meet at the secret spot. Ray was the night dispatcher, so he had the phone in his car. They never really associated with any of the other drivers, except to give them dispatch orders. Even on Monday nights, when there were only two drivers on and you were lucky to get one or two fares, Ray didn't do much socializing.

We talked about how antisocial they were, speculated as to where the secret spot might be, and what might be going on at said spot. This went on for a bit, with Josh then saying out loud that they were giving each other blowjobs. He wasn't saying it in such a nice way, but the times were different then, so it didn't seem that out of place.

I said that I didn't think they were gay, because Ray had a kid or two, but Josh said it didn't matter. Happy, nodding as he takes a pull off the gagger, exhales and says "No, he is gay." in the middle of a cloud of pot smoke.

Josh says, "Yeah, I think so too." and Happy replies with "No, I know he's gay. For sure."

I am now staring at Happy with my mouth open. (I get a bit drooly when I'm into the electric lettuce.) "How do you know for sure?"

"Well, about three weeks ago, on a Monday, it was after midnight and we hadn't had one call. I saw him parked at he convenience store, so pulled in to have a smoke and see what was going on. He was just sitting on the step, so I said that I was bored and was thinking of going home. He said that we needed two people on shift, but we could go back to his place and watch a movie." He stopped to light a cigarette.

I took the pause as the end of the story and said, "So? That doesn't mean he's gay. Just bored and not wanting you to take off."

Happy held up his hand and said, "No, we went back to his place and watched a movie. Part way through, he asks me if I want a blowjob."

"Holy fuck.", I said. "That definitely points him in that direction, but it doesn't make him gay. He could be bi or just experimenting or something."

While I'm talking, Josh is pointing his finger at me yelling about how he told me so, when Happy looks at me with a condescending eye roll and says, "No, he's gay. It definitely wasn't the first one he ever gave."

I wanted to end the story here, for effect.

But I figured I should finish it off how it really ended, then add my own social commentary. If you want to just leave now though, it's how I tell the story to get a good laugh.

Still here?

I was still staring at him, trying to comprehend the words that he had just spoken, when Josh piped up.

"What? That makes you gay too, Happy! What the fuck?" Josh seemed thoroughly disgusted.

Now Happy's eyes rolled in Josh's direction. "You're not gay if you get the blowjob. That's just natural."

Now for my commentary, decades later.

First of all, I will speak in my defence for not jumping in and calling Josh a douchebag, but actually laughing at his disparaging, abusive behaviour.

I didn't really know any better. I think I felt threatened by gay men. I don't know what I thought would happen, as the two gay men I knew had never touched me, or even let me know they were gay. They were much older, and growing up I had been around them a lot. I just figured they were too busy doing man things to bother with women.

I guess I had just been conditioned to believe that gay men were predators. I know now that isn't true, but I think it takes years of open minded learning to shake the stigma. Probably any stigma, really.

Anyhow, I have evolved in my thinking about almost everything. I have done 180º turns on some things, and have strengthened my position on others. It is ongoing and will probably last for the rest of my life. I'm really not one for conforming, unless it makes sense.