"faggot!"

i don't know what's going on, but i keep getting called a faggot lately.

now, it's not like the ladies at work are whispering about me at their cubicles or bus drivers are sneering at me when i board the bus. but in the last two weeks i swear that i've been verbally hate-crimed four or five times. this is very unusual for me, because even though i always feel like i'm a conspicuous homosexual i'm very seldom actually threatened or yelled at. however, in the last couple weeks i've had incidents: a teenage boy yelled "fire!" at me (i was prepared to ignore it, as i prefer to spend my life oblivious to such things, when michael explained to me that yelling "fire" is the jamaican way of saying that gay people should be set on fire, as they do in jamaica. apparently this kid was listening to some rastafarian rap that taught him the phrase.); some drunk, ugly 19-year-old hopkins students rolled down their windows at a stop light to verbally harrass michael and i and then call me a faggot.

let me explain this one, as it's bizarre enough to warrant explanation: we were on our way home from hilary's house, where we'd just finished watching a rousing episode of reno 911, and were at a stoplight by the hopkins campus. michael made a motion for me to roll down my window, and i looked over to see two hopkins undergrads riding in their mother's station wagon. assuming they wanted directions or something (you don't wanna get lost in baltimore) i rolled down my window. the drunk driver flashed me a "west side" gang sign. wanting to play it cool, i told him, "you really shouldn't do that in baltimore. you'll get killed." "are you gay?" was his response. i was dumbfounded. in hindsight i should've said something like, "why, are you looking for a cock to suck?" but i didn't. i just rolled up my window and did my best to ignore him. when we drove away, michael said, "i'm surprised that you didn't get out of the car and get in his face. whenever someone calls me a faggot that's my first response." i didn't know until then that the noises i heard them making after i'd rolled up my window were the sounds of rich white undergrad boys calling me a faggot.

what's the deal here? michael claims that it's because our social climate is becoming so unfriendly to gay people. it's true that there's been a backlash, and that the fake-puritanical american ideal is in full force these days. but can things really have changed that much in the last two weeks? did someone pass some sort of it's-ok-to-hate-crime-punky-faggots bill when i wasn't looking? please, help me figure this out.