When we arrived in Los Angeles, the Writers Guild was in the middle of what would turn out to be the longest strike in its history. In one sense it was terrible timing; for five grueling months the entertainment industry was effectively shut down and along with it any possibility of Tom and me getting our foot in the door, because there was no door. (After the strike, the problem stopped being the lack of door and started being our lack of foot.)

But in another sense it was fantastic timing; we had a new apartment to furnish and thanks to widespread financial hardship, there were endless lawn and garage sales with amazing bargains. That Yin/Yang coffee table we were so proud of? We got it for pennies on the dollar in Sherman Oaks. At a yard sale in Toluca Lake, we bought a pair of mirrored end tables for ten bucks. And they threw in a a semi-functional lava lamp for free.

Style!

At another garage sale, this one in the flats of Encino, Tom bought a king-sized, four-poster bed for a steal from a balding, out-of-work cameraman in a too-small Molly Hatchet t-shirt that exposed his gut. Before the strike, and hopefully after, he worked on a sitcom called "Perfect Strangers," operating the B-Camera, making him the most powerful industry insider we had met so far. (And for those of you who are not familiar with the technical aspects of multi-camera comedies, B Camera is the one between cameras A and C. You're welcome.)

While Tom fished the bills out of his wallet, the cameraman turned to me. "It's a really nice bed," he said pleasantly.

"OK," I replied neutrally. Per usual, I had no interest in the topic of other peoples' furniture.

"It's very comfortable," he continued.

"I'm sure it is." I had no idea why he was telling me this.

"The springs are really firm."

Oh.

Finally I understood his implication. To me, his belief that Tom and I were a couple was ridiculous. After all, we had been to at least a dozen yard sales together and nobody else had leapt to that conclusion. (Or more likely, I realize now, everybody had leapt to that conclusion; they just hadn't said anything.) So I was surprised, but not insulted.

Tom, by contrast, was surprised and insulted. "He's just my roommate," he said. "That's all."

"Really, honey?" I teased. "Is that all I am to you?" I batted my eyes.

"Stop it!" he hissed.

Jesus.

This was a side of Tom I hadn't seen before. And perhaps not coincidentally it was the last yard sale we'd go to together. Which was fine by me. I already had my lava lamp. What else did I need?

A few months later, Tom and I decided to join a gym, because it was Los Angeles and that was the law. A massively muscled trainer, who we secretly nicknamed Mongo, gave us the tour of the facilities.

These are the heavy lifty things!

Those are the belty runny things!

That's the watery drinky thing!

Then he sat us down in front of his woody desky thing and asked us about our fitness goals. I said that I wanted to be able to crack walnuts with my butt. Tom said he wanted the power of flight. Mongo said that he couldn't promise that, but after a good workout, you feel like you're flying, which struck us as nonsensical and, also, a lie.

Then Mongo told us how much it would cost to join. It seemed like a lot, and that was before we realized it was on a monthly, rather than yearly basis. "You know," Mongo said, when we balked at the price, "I can save you thirty-three percent if you join as a couple."

Tom's response was instantaneous and emphatic. "But we're not a couple."

I sighed inwardly. This again.

Mongo shrugged his cannonball shoulders. "That's cool. You can still join as a couple."

"But we're not a couple," Tom said again.

You know someone has a strong personal conviction about something when it pointlessly costs them money. Here, the conviction was I'm not gay! and it would cost him — and, worse, me — a hundred-and-twenty dollars a year. Un-fucking-acceptable.

I asked Mongo if I could have a moment to confer with my lover. Mongo walked away, the ground trembling beneath his veiny feet.

There's a cliché that you see in movies and TV shows — and also among conservative politicians — in which the most rabidly anti-gay person turns out — plot twist! — to be gay himself. I'm not saying that Tom was anti-gay; he was just anti-people-thinking-he-was-gay. Which I guess is kind of the same thing. And while he was technically not gay — or maybe he technically was (this gets very confusing) — he definitely felt that there was something wrong with him, and he didn't want anyone to figure it out.

In the end, Tom couldn't martial a coherent argument and we joined the gym with our couples' discount. I worked out regularly, but Tom stopped going after the first month. I had thought that it was because he was still worried that people might see us as a gay couple. But now that he — she — is fully out, she is still terrible about going to the gym. So maybe Tom was just lazy. 

Not everything is about orientation, people. Lighten up.

Truly, I could not understand Tom's defensiveness when it came to homosexuality and I confess that I did feel morally superior for my relative high-mindedness. But then there was this.

For a few horrific years, I temped downtown for the investment banking jerkoffs at Cambridge Capital. I was, as I mentioned earlier, a secretary; the only male secretary on the floor. It confused a lot of people when I answered the phone. Hearing a male voice they would assume I was an investment banker myself and start asking me questions about projects worth, in some cases, a billion dollars. (And back in the late '80s, that was considered a lot of money.) I was always tempted to give them made-up answers, just to see what would happen.

Wall Street suffered its worst day in a decade thanks to some smartass wannabe writer....

My boss's name was Jason Baines and he had a corner office. He was short, bombastic and condescending (see also: complex, Napoleon). To my face, he called me Ruby and behind my back he referred to me as That Faggot.

His stated reason for this was, "No straight guy knows how to type!" To you younger people this probably makes no sense, because nowadays everybody does their own typing. But not that long ago, a lot of people didn't, and no self-respecting executive did. Instead, they'd either dictate their letters and memos into a tape recorder or write it out longhand and have the secretary — a woman — type it.

So to Baines, a guy who knew his way around a QWERTY keyboard may as well have been gargling semen. And weirdly, he liked to entertain his subordinates with graphic fantasies about my gay exploits with my "special friend" Tom. In most of his scenarios, Tom was either waiting for me in a men's room stall, or hiding under my desk, unzipping my fly as I did paperwork. It was why, Baines said, that it took me so long to finish his expense reports.

The other investment bankers — all of whom were male — followed Baines's lead, treating me dismissively and snickering to each other whenever I went to the men's room. This went on for months without me having any idea what was going on. And I only learned the truth, ironically enough, because I was banging the hot receptionist.

His name was Ed.

Ha! No. Her name was Tori and honestly, I feel kind of guilty about saying I was "banging" her. It seems like a disrespectful way to introduce another human being. So let me back up. Tori was from the Bay Area, the rebellious, hard-drinking, heavily tattooed daughter of two Stanford professors. At nineteen, she dropped out of college, told her parents to go fuck themselves and moved to Los Angeles in pursuit of a modeling career which never panned out. We had almost nothing in common besides a powerful — and in her case inexplicable — sexual attraction, but she was a kind, good-hearted person who liked to give her friends thoughtful little gifts, and would read books to kids in a children's hospital on a weekly basis.

And I was banging her.

It was after the third time we slept together, when I finally performed up to her exacting standards, that she flopped back on the bed, chuckled to herself and said, "I can't believe everyone thinks you're gay!"

"I'm sorry," I said as my post-coital glow vanished. "What?"

Back at my apartment, I told Tom about what Baines had been saying.

"I should fucking sue him!"

"You really fucking should!"

"'Cause that's fucking libel!"

"Are you sure it's not fucking slander?"

"I am not sure it's not fucking slander!"

"I'm not sure what the fucking difference is!"

"Neither fucking am I!"

"Fucking sue him for both! Let the fucking judge fucking sort it out!"

"I fucking will!"

We were, I should have mentioned earlier, drinking copious amounts of vodka-based mixed drinks while we said this all this. And obviously, when I sobered up I decided not to fucking sue Baines. But the fact that I even thought of it tells me something about the attitudes I had back then. Someone called me gay and I considered it slander (or libel). My threshold was higher than Tom's — it took more than a pot-bellied cameraman or a steroidal gym rat questioning my sexuality to set me off — but I was basically no different. I'm not saying that I was anti-gay; I was just anti-people-thinking-I-was-gay.

Which I guess is kind of the same thing.

But unlike Tom, who was slowly losing a war of attrition against his demonesses, my problem soon resolved itself. Dee, the sleuthy secretary who prided herself on knowing all of the office gossip, figured out what was going on between Tori and me. When confronted, I implored Dee not to tell anyone that Tori and I were having heart-pounding, mind-blowing heterosexual sex on a regular basis, hoping that she would tell everyone. Which she of course did.

And then everything changed for me at Cambridge Capital. Well, not everything — I was still a low-paid temp working in an office that was lousy with self-important money-grubbing douche bags in custom-tailored Armani suits — but now they had respect, even admiration, for me. Especially since a nontrivial percentage of them had tried, without success, to bang Tori, too.

I realize now that the status upgrade after my straightness was confirmed was not only a horrific example of homophobia — it is no wonder that gay people pretend to be straight — but also misogyny. My co-workers congratulated me for having "hit it"or "tapped that." Me, subject. Tori, object.

Hell, even Baines couldn't help but be impressed. "Jesus, Ruby, how do you rate a piece of ass like that?" I shrugged modestly. It was a mystery to me, too. "You must be swinging some serious pipe!" 

I'd be lying if I said that I didn't walk with some swagger after that, even though his theory — I'm sad to say — was incorrect.