a lot of americans are gay people

one of the great things about living with hilary is that she's an avid reader. which means she buys a lot of books. which means that when she finishes those books they go right onto her shelf, where i pluck them up like it's my own personal lending library. granted, a lot of the books have pink covers and are called things like girl power: being strong enough to find a boyfriend and i'm me and you're you so let's have a baby (just kidding, hilster. she's a hardass and reads things like american psycho, which is next on my list.).

anyhoo, what i've most recently picked up is nick hornby's new novel, a long way down. it's written from the perspective of four different people; they all pick up where the other left off. it's a cool way to write a book and it's good so far. i won't give away too much, but it starts when the four of them run into each other as they're all trying to jump off the same roof. ok so that's actually all i can give away because i've only read forty pages. but i ran across this quote (on page 37) that i wanted to share with you.

"My own feeling about JJ, without knowing anything about him, was that he might have been a gay person, because he had long hair and spoke American. A lot of Americans are gay people, aren't they? I know they didn't invent gayness, because they say that was the Greeks. But they helped bring it back into fashion. Being gay was a bit like the Olympics: It disappeared in ancient times, and then they brought it back in the twentieth century. Anyway, I didn't know anything about gays, so I just presumed they were all unhappy and wanted to kill themselves."