“What you need is a girlfriend.” The speaker, a heavy-set man in his late forties, chuckled at his own comment, then took another sip of the steaming coffee in his mug. It was late Saturday morning, and he and Dan sat watching the storm raging outside Dan’s home from the bedroom that Dan had converted into a game room. The pool table awaited them, but a sudden burst of intensity in the wind and rain drew their attention to the window.
Dan shook his head slowly and grimaced. “Mark, that is the last thing I need. I have enough troubles without bringing a woman into my life. Besides, I’m too old for that nonsense, and as I told Karena Walsh, I don’t need to prove my sexual orientation to these small-town hicks.”
Mark laughed. “Branner Glen is not a small town.”
“Why do the residents act like it is, then?” Dan asked rhetorically. “Homo-erotic art isn’t my cup of tea, but I know how to turn my attention to things that I do like, rather than get my blood pressure up over things I don’t like.”
“And you don’t impose your morals on others.”
“Right,” Dan nodded, though he wasn’t sure whether his best friend really meant it or was making a jab at him. “I live my life the way I want, and I let others live theirs the way they want. Live and let live, not live my way or I’ll never let you forget it.”
Mark sipped his coffee. “What if I told you that not interfering with the business of other people is your way of imposing your morals on others? They think it is their right and your responsibility to guide those who have gone astray. That’s how some religious people think, I kid you not. It’s like the whole gay marriage thing. Your ‘live and let live’ approach means that what consenting adults do in the privacy of their home is nobody’s business but the adults who consent to be involved. The ‘defenders of traditional marriage’ see that very private behavior, and your attitude of quietly allowing it, as an attack on the very thing they feel a moral obligation to defend.”
Dan sighed irritably. “That’s twisted.”
“True.” Mark laughed. “But it’s real. I mean, you see your side of things and think it’s the right and true path, but the same can be said of them. The only way you can ever achieve peace is to draw people to a middle ground, but people don’t like middle grounds. They don’t like gray areas and things that aren’t clearly defined. It takes too much thinking, too much flexibility. Look at any political discussion you want and you’ll see the extreme ends of the spectrum pulling as hard as they can to have the final word, while those in the middle get yanked back and forth.”
Dan said nothing for a moment, and then turned away from the window as the storm eased. He set his empty coffee mug on a side table and picked up his pool cue. “OK, food for thought,” he conceded as he lined up a shot. “But it doesn’t help me too much with this whole … damn … art teacher controversy.”
“Talk less and you’ll shoot better,” Mark chided Dan for missing what should have been a successful shot. “No, I suppose it doesn’t help directly,” he continued as he considered his own next shot, “but it won’t hurt to keep in mind as you do work through things.” He paused, took his shot, and grinned as the target ball dropped and the cue ball ended up where he wanted it for the next shot. “So tell me about this Karena. Is she cute?”
Click Follow to receive emails when this author adds content on Bublish
Comment on this Bubble
Your comment and a link to this bubble will also appear in your Facebook feed.