In this gender-neutral age of trans this and bi that, I suppose being simply gay has become the new being straight. My gay co-worker, Andrew, for example, no longer seems as outré as he was twenty years ago, although he's not changed one iota. These days, dressed in bright red skinny jeans, sandals, and mildly provocative t-shirt, he's nothing more than a regular metrosexual man. Just one of the guys, in fact.
Janine, a dyed-in-the-wool lesbian client of ours, appears equally conventional to contemporary eyes. When she's being especially demanding we might even describe her as dowdy. I guess women in crewcuts and cowboy shirts don't cut the alternative lifestyle mustard anymore.
Yesterday's peacock has become today's ostrich, apparently, which I suppose makes me dangerously close to being a dodo. God knows I'm going to accidentally say something misguided and hurtful when we do hire our first trans-whatever employee. I'll just be trying to be jocular and friendly in my own old-fashioned way. But no doubt I'll get it wrong and cause a commotion.
Fortunately, we have enough unclaimed offices full of obsolete technology that it will be easy to transform one of them into a "safe space" when the law demands that all businesses install such zones.
