oops

sadly, the version of this week's column that got published in baltimore gay life wasn't the right version...so, ignore that one. here's a cleaner one:


Mountaineer
by Robert

"This isn't too steep for you, is it?" my boyfriend Michael asked with a worried expression as I followed him up the mountain.

"No, it's fine. Seriously." We were in West Virginia, on day two of our four-day excursion to a gay bed and breakfast in the middle of nowhere.

I’d given him reason to worry. Weeks before our trip I'd started an anti-hiking campaign. "Listen. I don't really 'do' things like 'hiking,'" I told him, accentuating the statement with Nixon-esque quotation-mark gestures. "I'll make you a deal," I told him over dinner another day. "We can go hiking, if by hiking you mean walking through a field that's completely flat." Then, "See that?" I said, pointing to a serene pasture, dotted with bales of hay. "That's the kind of place I want to hike. That's just gorgeous."

"So really, when you said that you'll go hiking, you meant that you'll go for a walk?" he asked.
“Yes,” I said.

“This is so nice,” I told Michael during our hike. "So this isn’t too much for you? After you made such a big deal about what you would and wouldn't do hiking I didn't really know what your limit was."

"Honestly. It’s great," I said. I followed Michael the rest of the way up the mountain wondering why he seemed to think I was such a weakling. I mean, who does he think I am, for God’s sake? Beth from Little Women? It's as if he expected to turn around halfway up the mountain and find me hunched over a fallen log, holding a handkerchief up to my mouth and coughing up blood, insisting that I was fine.

I've been hiking before. Not mountain climbing, nothing that involved cliffs or rappelling, but I've walked through the woods, so I assumed that I could handle walking through the woods uphill. I am from the country, after all. OK, so I'm from a middle-class neighborhood in a small town in Oklahoma. But it's very near the country.

The truth is I'd never been hiking in the mountains. I didn't know if I'd hate it or love it. I mean, I enjoy camping (as long as it involves a campfire, s'mores, a six-pack of beer, and a fancy tent that zips), so I was definitely ready to give hiking a shot. I really only made such a stink about hiking because, frankly, it seemed funnier to do that than to just say, "Sure! Hiking!"

I seem to do this a lot, though. There are certain situations – when I’m forced to walk long distances (more than, say, six blocks), or when my boyfriend wants to go hiking – that I really play up the bratty, princessy side of my personality.

I can’t lie: That side really is there all along, and there’s more than a grain of truth in everything that I say in jest. If I have the opportunity to make someone laugh I’m going to take it, especially if it’s at my own expense. And one of the easiest ways I’ve found is by taking what I really think – those dirty or hateful or bratty thoughts – and voicing it.

The problem, then, is that I do it so much that people always think I’m serious. Sure, a side of me is a bitch and another side is a princess, but that’s hardly all there is. I’m somehow always surprised when people don’t know that I’m kidding.

It’s not that I really dislike hiking, you see. It was just funnier if I pretended like I only wanted to hike if there was no climbing involved. It’s a reliable way to escape – joking around, playing a character; it’s always easier than telling the plain truth.

“I had a really nice time this afternoon,” Michael said to me when we got back to the hotel.

“Me too,” I said. Michael gave me a skeptical look. “Really,” I told him. And I meant it.

Robert is a classical singer, writer, and secretary who's proud to live in Baltimore, the gem of the bay. Learn more at http://reluctantreceptionist.blogspot.com.