At Mucca Pazza...
Hip Woman: So, your friends told me this isn't a bachelorette party [I was wearing a tiara], but I wanted to give you my card, anyway. You're not married are you?
Me: No, I'm gay. They don't let us get married.
HW: Oh. Well, they DO let you have parties, so here's my card.
Hmmm. It was funnier in person.
By the way, if you haven't seen Mucca Pazza, you must. Get close to the stage. It's about the only music I've found that is just purely joyful. Maybe gospel music. Actually, I imagine a good gospel choir whips up the same kind of joyful energy. I wouldn't really know. We were Methodists. As in, Methodical. As in, we try to talk about joy, but really...not that into it. Certainly not at church. Every now and then somebody would try to get the congegration to say an "Amen," but the old ladies would purse their lips and the old men would cross their arms and lean a little further back in the pew, and the one lonely Amen-er would get snickered at. Quietly, of course.
And don't ASK me about altar calls. *Shudder* I believe firmly in the usefulness and...spiritual enlivening of a good altar call, but at the church of my youth, it would have been like trying to get napping cats to come up. The congregation would blink at you, look offended, and lay back down. Seriously. It was embarrassing.
Maybe I should start my consulting business after all...