An encounter with a connoisseur

After leaving an excellent exhibition at the Folk Art Museum (Eugene Von Bruenchenhein‘s sexy pics of his wife, if you must know), Sabine and I stopped to look at the African art for sale on the street. I never know what to make of that stuff – is it genuine? Surely not, but it definitely looks real to my untrained eyes. And if it is real, how does it end up for sale on the street? Then again, how does it end up at galleries?

As I was musing these admittedly less-than-fascinating questions, someone passed by me and muttered under their breath, “fucking homo!” While it’s been several years since I’ve been called that (the last time was by a very angry, and relatively tiny, old Puerto Rican in the N Train in Astoria, maybe 10 years ago), it was clearly directed at me.

I looked around in surprise and saw a middle-aged, ham-faced cretin turning to glare at me as he walked away. I then caught my reflection on a window, and I thought “Why, that hydrocephalic oaf has a point – I do look unusually good today!” I was wearing a very nice Marc Jacobs coat (a hand-me-down from a, yes, gay friend), a lovely Ralph Lauren sweater (a gift from a bi friend), and a fetching man-bag (a Christmas gift from my wife, whose sexual history I won’t discuss in public). He also might have picked up on the fact that I’ve been exercising for the last six months, and while my physique is far from Chelsea standards, it doesn’t look much like the result of his nightly diet of Coors Lite, Hot Pockets and Glenn Beck, either. Besides, I figured, this mouth-breather is probably frustrated that he is not adequately represented by his state government.

But here is the surprising part – the knuckle-dragger then walked into the MoMA store! What could someone born with an extra-chromosome be looking for there? Might he also be looking for a flower vase, like Sabine and I were? Sabine was concerned about following him into the store, but we needed something to put flowers in, and I was counting on the safety of being surrounded by so many other similarly-dressed men that the effect on the troglodyte would be like being surrounded by a herd of zebras, making it difficult for him to pounce on one victim.

I didn’t get to see the clod anywhere, but since I’ve recently bought a membership to the museum, it’s highly likely I’ll run into him again at the Andy Warhol movie retrospective.