Knit One, Purl Two

So, I'm taking this beginning knitting class. This will be the second beginning knitting class I've taken, the first being the one I took with my old roommate, Bridget the Knitter. We were both supposed to be novices; this was supposed to be some fun roommate time, doing something crafty together. Instead, by the end of the first day, Bridget had already knitted 17 scarves and 6 weeks later, by the end of the class, she'd created an entire fall line of clothing.

I made a hat. Kind of.

Anyway, this class. It's all right. I'm taking it with my friend Talley from bookgroup, and it's Bridget the Knitter all over again. It took me the entire first class to (re)learn how to cast on (and PS? After taking the entire class to learn how to cast on, all it took was the walk home from G Street Fabrics to completely forget how to cast on). Talley, on the other hand, was answering questions from the other knitters, giving pointers and generally being supportive:

"That's a great stitch there."

"Oh, look how fast you're learning!"

"Who's my little knitter? Who's my little knitter?"

The class is taught by an older woman named Helen. She's very efficient, personable, and has the breath of death. I've learned to save my questions for desperately important things. Helen likes to get right down next to you, and she likes to exhale, and this combination is lethal.

Oh, Helen also makes weird gay jokes that are thisclose to being homophobic. But maybe she gets a pass because she's my mom's age and there's that generational homophobia that gets a pass for some reason that I don't really remember except I guess maybe because she's old and old people get to do whatever the fuck they want because when you're old, every day's a Make-a-Wish-Foundation day and you do what you want. Who's going to stop you? You're old.

The first day of class, she talked about some friend, and somehow the story was related to knitting or something -- but then she had to throw in the fact that the friend's husband recently came out as gay and left her for another man. She made this disgusted face and said, "And none of us even knew. That he was gay? None of us. Even. Knew." Which, okay, whatever -- and had that been the only thing offputting she'd done then you could call me reactionary and I'd totally have to cop to it. But then, later in the class, she told this really long and involved story about an $8,000 sewing machine, but she was going to get it for $3,000 because it was used, and she justified it by saying that it wasn't so much that she was spending $3,000 as she was saving $5,000 -- and then she said, in this faux-Asian accent, "Ah, it's my Chinese accounting." Complete with little bow. I looked around at the other people, to see if anyone else was outraged, but they were all busy ignoring Helen and counting stitches. I did give Helen a quizzical look; I wish I had done more.

So this past Sunday, we're starting on our project (a hat) and we're at a point where we can sort of have conversations without too much worry about dropped stitches, or purling when we should be knitting. So this very, very, very young girl named Holly (she's something like 19 or 20) was talking about how she wanted to be a fashion designer, but that the closest reputable schools are all in New York, and that she couldn't afford to live in the City itself, and she was afraid of living in one of the "slums" because she'd be kidnapped and no, I don't really know where she got that idea, either, since it's not like there's a lot of white woman slave-trading going on in the outer burroughs but whatever. Then Helen pipes up with, "Well, honey, the safest place for a woman to live in New York City is Greenwich Village, if you know what I mean."

Holly didn't. "You mean because it's a village?"

Kendra looked up, rolled her eyes (I love Kendra a lot), and said, "It's because Greenwich Village is gay. And you're a woman. And Helen thinks that means you'd be safe." Kendra has as little patience with Holly as I have. Holly's pretty; and Holly generally seems kind and nice; but the last think that girl read had a perfume insert -- and I'm using the word "read" in the most general way possible.

Helen nodded, pleased. "I mean, I don't think Mike here would be all that safe in Greenwich Village, would you Mike?"

I didn't say anything. There were a lot of things I could have said. "I can only dream about being cruised in the Village." "I prefer the bath houses of San Francisco to the faux-boho of New York." "Helen: I suck cock." Instead, I just felt mildly uncomfortable and wondered why, again, I was mistaken for heterosexual. I mean, for one thing, I'm a guy in a knitting class. That's gotta mean something, right?

On one hand, it is my fault. I don't present as gay as I should, I guess. I don't dress well. I steer fairly clear of hair styling products. I'm not a fan of any of the following: Madonna, Cher, Judy Garland, Liza Minelli, Bette Midler, Barbra Streisand, Kylie Minogue, et. al. On the other hand, though: shut up, Helen. I hate feeling like I'm the one out of line -- that coming out to you after you've made some stupid-assed homophobic joke is somehow bad manners on my part. Because it's not. But that's usually how I feel, though. I don't want to embarrass the other person at all, make them feel as uncomfortable as I'm feeling right at that moment.

What's that about, anyway? Why am I protecting those people?

So I'm trying to come up with a way to let Helen know, in a way that won't cause either of us too much embarrassment, that I'm gay. And that maybe she could not make so many gay jokes. And, while we're already working on her humor, maybe she could tone it down with the racist shit, too. Knitting and purling are hard enough without putting up with that bullshit.