What does offended feel like?

On creativity as retaliation

Last night, I was introduced at a dinner as my boyfriend’s friend:

“And that’s Noah… and Noah’s friend Jesse.”

And with that, the introductions swiftly moved on.

Noah turned to me and whispered, “are you okay?”

“I could give a fuck,” I said. With a smile.

I woke up today feeling creatively energized. I’m working on designing my 40th birthday party and it’s been very challenging. And fun, definitely fun. But definitely challenging.

I’m struggling.

Nah, it’s fun.

I’m drowning in expectations of “40.”

Nah, nah, it’ll be fine! It’ll be great, actually.

Please help me.

The truth is I go through bouts of excitement and unreasonable pressure and that’s just my process. One day it’ll be healthier. Maybe.

Anyway—so yeah, I wake up today and I’m fucking jazzed. It was one of those mornings where my eyes opened and it was as if I already had been dreaming of new ideas. And as I got up and took a shower, the shower thoughts did their thing and the juice just kept flowing.

Ahh, flow state. I get it now ;)

When all of a sudden, as I’m riding up an escalator to get my morning coffee from the Starbucks tucked inside Ralphs, a very curious question popped into my head: did the (arguably discriminatory) comment from last night propel me into a creative state of mind?

Pause.

I don’t know why the host of the dinner party introduced me as Noah’s friend. It could have been because he genuinely didn’t know that we were dating (unlikely, but still—we love a MGI moment). Or maybe it was because he had some conservative friends over and maybe, in a moment of maybe panic on their end, they maybe just blurted out “friend.” Maybe even they felt weird about it or even regretted it! The host’s wife came over swiftly after introductions and genuinely apologized, saying she didn’t know why he did that and assured Noah and I that we’re so very much welcome in their home.

So that was nice.

But the point isn’t why he said that. The point is, as Noah said, am I okay?

I don’t know.

I think so.

But it does occur to me that these subtle, seemingly harmless moments are those exact moments we file under “discrimination.” And I think discrimination can happen with intention and without intention. And I also think discrimination is a word. And words are loaded.

And words aren’t always a good way to explain how we feel.

It definitely felt weird. And, perhaps unfortunately, it felt familiar: explaining away to everyone in my vicinity, including myself, how un-offended I was in that moment. And also!—how dare anyone assume I’m offended—that’s the real offense! It’s absurd to even think that I could be offended by such a thing! I wasn’t offended! I was un-offended!

It’s exhausting to perform un-offense because it misaligns you. If you feel closely enough, you can sense that child inside on the playground being called gay in the not-good-way. He just hangs his head a bit lower and goes, “no, don’t worry about it. I’m used to it.”

Oof.

Someone else would have just walked out of the house, mid-introductions, with no explanation (honestly a very exciting idea in theory—one where a well-timed “well, I NEVER!” with a swift slam of the door could have been the highlight of my life.)

Someone else would have discreetly gone to the host afterward and said, “Hey, I just wanted to clarify… Noah and I aren’t friends. We’re boyfriends. And we’ve been dating for several years. And I’m really grateful that you’ve included us in dinner tonight.”

Someone else would have punched the host in the face.

So maybe I was offended. It’s curious how immediate my response was to downplay it in the moment. Who knows if that was “right”? Who knows if there is a “right”?

But this morning, my entire system responded in a way that shocked me—again, an out-of-nowhere creative explosion. And that’s when that random potential connection occurred to me on that Ralphs escalator:

I think I retaliate to discrimination by doubling down on the artistic projects I’m working on.

By doubling down on creativity.

By doubling down on focusing.

By doubling down on me.

And that’s really all I have to say about it for now.