Freddogg Off The Chain

Last summer a tobacco chewing retired football coach and my lumbar 5 left leg limping self were power trudging north on the Rehoboth Boardwalk savoring the colorful sunset of our waning years as the waxing moon cast a glow over the sea that spawned the diversity of the genus homo.
An older woman sporting an Our Miss Brooks Eve Arden sundress from a consignment shop intercepted our glide path. “Excuse me, gentlemen, but can you tell me how to get to Poodle Beach?”
“It’s the beach directly off the south end of the Boardwalk,” I told her, clear as a bell on a nun buoy.
“Poodle Beach? What the hell is Poodle Beach?” Coach asked, snorting before making a dune deposit of grasshopper juice.
“It’s the gay beach off the end of the boardwalk,” I said.
“Jesus, you don’t think she thought we were gay, do you?”
“Heck no, Coach,” I answered. “We ain’t in good enough shape for that.”
Delmarva is culturally and diversity rich with more accents, dialects and clothier combinations than a 1950’s carousel of gay ponies. There is nothing straight about an up- and-down pole mounted colorfully painted hobby horse with a yellow mane and purple saddle.
I recently stepped into the Obamanizer of Political Diversity looking for a workout tee shirt but was reluctant to “come out of the walk in closet” with certain manifestations of symbolic speech I have been rejecting for 20 years or shorter.
I am the double x guy who thinks X rated shirts are rude and unimaginative and so “tourist in a resort town” overstatement. But I do have a collection of cool and unique shirts that don’t represent who I am--they are just shirts. And I am the ultimate live and let live heterosexual Caucasian grandfather, a person who reacts to diversity with no emotion and no judgments passed. So why do I keep passing on tee shirts that will most certainly cause me to pause the IPOD and answer questions?
“Poodle Beach, huh? Nice tee shirt. I can’t believe you wore it to Gold’s Gym. Where did you get it?”
“My wife got it at a gay garage sale” I would answer which is the truth. “She knows I like saying ‘Poodle Beach,’ and a lineup of pastel poodles--how cool is that?”
I also regularly pass up my red tee shirt with a logo of the Gay Fishing Company-a fleet of shrimp boats from Beaufort, South Carolina. I’m guessing inside the gay community you don’t want to be a Carolina guy from the ‘society of shrimpers.’
Twenty-two years ago I did wear my “No Gerbils” shirt-a blue gerbil on a gray tee inside a red universal “No” symbol. The shirt was created by a high school senior and sold out of the trunk of his car. The motivation for the creation was an urban myth story out of Philadelphia involving a gerbil and a newscaster named Jerry.
I received so many looks I couldn’t categorize. Symbolic speech is like a Bob Dylan lyric meaning different things to different people or like a Roy Rogers song, “Habitrails to you.”
One of my sons cut the sleeves off the “No Gerbils” shirt to wear under his equipment when he plays lacrosse. He wouldn’t think of going into the battle without Mojo Gerbil having his back, so to speak.
I am president and founder of the Lewes Polar Bears and have 25 years’ worth of designer tee shirts I just never wear because they make me look North Pole porky. But my vanity tag reads DABEAR, which I’m told in the gay community means a big burly gay dude like the construction worker in the Village People.
All we real guys want to be Macho Men--the song is way gay-- but from the shores of Carolina to the streets of Philadelphia, play it and everyone in the Village starts dancing and a prancing.
The rugged real guy doesn’t care what people think; he knows who he is. But the symbols of role confusion are hanging in everyone’s closet and it’s a personal decision when and if to come out.