I have a day job. And at this day job I have a coworker. And this coworker’s name is Ruby. Ruby is an African American grandmother who looks like she is 35 (but I know she’s about 20 years older than that. I would never ask a lady her age).

It took a while for our trails to converge here around the office, and before I started talking to her regularly, I would just silently be in awe when overhearing her amazing, limit-busting Southern dialect. Southern accents are always kind of musical, but hers is Big Band. Wall of Sound. More like she is singing than talking. And I love it.

I could write a whole book about the special affinity GWMs like me have with Black Women. It’s a giant sociopolitical-racial loophole. Because there is precious little love lost (in general) between straight white males and Af-Am ladies. (Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings excepted.) And yet no love is spared between your average Gay White Boy and your average Strong Black Woman.

The bond is mysterious, and not without occasional miscues and awkwardnesses. I had to laugh the other day when Ruby sidled up to me and said, “Hey, I seen Sylvester on TV last night. Did you see that too?”

Confused, I paused for a moment to think. “You mean… what do you mean? The ’70s drag disco diva Sylvester? Like, ‘You Make Me Feel Mighty Real’ Sylvester? Or… Sylvester the cat? Or…”

She interrupted me loudly, like a car horn. “Yeah, the disco one! You like her?”

Sure, who doesn’t? I thought. Then I saw what this was. Ruby is very religious, she don’t like cussing, she says grace before eating anything, even a chili dog and potato chips. She’s a generation older than me and lives in a different world than I do. This was a coded overture, a special invitation to share, the charmingly clumsy thought behind it having probably been, I’m a black woman, he’s a gay guy, we’ll meet in the middle with Sylvester.

_____

I went over to her area of the office to get something recently and she said, “Hey, Scott. Come show me that thing you was talking about the other day. That picture of you and Aretha.” Ruby and the other Af-Am ladies had very graciously listened to me rehearse my story “Why Doesn’t Aretha Pay Her Bills?” and given me lots of helpful feedback (as well as blunt criticism, when I asked for it. Such as: “You should try to make it… you know… funnier.”)

“No, Ruby, you’re thinking of the picture of me with Queen Latifah.” “Yeah, where’s that at?” she asked. So I stood over her computer and told her to google Shrake and Huffington or something, and my post about crashing the White House Correspondents’ Dinner came up. Ruby was a bit lost about what she was looking at, so I explained that this was a hobby of mine: Crashing swanky events and then blogging about it, after hours. She had some follow-up questions, but then she understood.

“Oooh, okaaay,” she said/sung. “You just do this [Points at the pictures of me with celebrities] for a hobby, then?” I nodded yes. “You don’t get paid or nothin’?” I shook my head no. Ruby then explained, with a tetch of disappointment in her voice, “Oh, see: I thought you had a part-time job where you was famous, or something.”

I wish.

_____

If you read my stuff, you will quickly notice my lifelong affinity for Divas of Color. Etta James. Bessie Smith. Tina Turner. Aretha, of course. When I started telling my stories six months ago, those were the ones that jumped out first. No mystery. They just seem like the right voices to personify my inner life.

Ruby and her girlfriends here at work don’t seem to mind at all when I imitate the way Aretha talks in my Aretha story. Again, I just don’t think my straight white male counterparts would fare so well with that.

Last week one of the girlfriends inquired how my story show had gone at the art museum the night before. Ruby then asked which story I had done. “Was it the one about Barbra Streisdale?”

We all laughed. Ruby shrugged dismissively. “StreisAND!” her friends corrected her. I don’t know, I kind of like Streisdale better. It sounds more melodious, and classier.