Small Town

I don't know why this came to mind, but it did and I wanted to share it:

About two weeks ago I was riding the elevator from the courthouse basement to the 3rd floor to meet with a judge. I was wearing khakis (it was a Friday) and a sweater and my cute half-boot cowboy boots. My outfit didn't exactly scream "straight girl" but it wasn't overly butch either. Anyway, at some point a male court employee got on the elevator. He was dressed in the work-casual attire of someone who works behind the scenes in the courthouse. He was also pushing a hand-truck with a box full of inter-departmental mail loaded on it.

This young man takes a look at me and starts chatting with me with the typical, "are you new?" "when did you start?" and "what is your job title?" type questions. Very friendly, in fact it made me a smidge nervous. Maybe too friendly? I started to worry because usually when men give me this much attention it's because they're hitting on me, they pretend they just want to be friends and ask for my number and next thing I know I can't shake them. Note that this doesn't happen too terribly often, but often enough that I have learned the warning signs and dread such attention.

Just as these alarm bells are going off in my head the guy says, "what's your name?" I reply, "I'm Emily." He then extends his hand to shake mine, limp-wristed, his posture softens and he cocks his hip to one side and says, "Hi, I'm [So-and-so]."

Apparrently the Alaskan gays have gay-dar scramblers. This guy had all the signals completely turned off until he was ready to establish true contact and then, voila, the needle on my gay-dar shoots over into the pink zone and I'm saved! This situation started as a nerve-wracking situation where I imagined myself trying to avoid some guy who finds me at least mildly attractive in the smallest legal community in the US, maybe even the WORLD, while working in the same building complex. Luckily it ended with a subtle acknowledgment that I am not, in fact, the only non-straight person working for the Court System.