Expertly managing the cunning of a used Subaru car salesman, teeth clenched in a Cheshire-Cat-like grin, she gushed: “Oh no, I like him very much!”, in a vain attempt to mask her intention to pawn this rhetorical lemon off, on her skeptical one man audience. Daily theatrical masterpieces of mistruths and soul-selling, ‘till’n entire addled lifetime has passed when she’d realize: she’s never actually said quite exactly what she really means, only slick verbal abstract representations of what she believed the situation called for. Plainly insisting on my tacit collusion in her pseudo-feminist philosophy, she pressed: “Well we can’t simply all go around saying e-x-a-c-t-l-y what we’d really like to, now can we love?”, in her best-affected, forward-thrusted lower locked-jaw, nasal New England drawl. “Can’t we though?”, I think as my thin, closed-lipped, ironic grin and muffled groan reveal my masked disapproval. “After all, we women have had to learn to communicate in strategic ways, indirectly – with men I mean, it’s how we get things done! – to get the things we want, eh need – for our children, I meant to say”, she added with an awkward mix of pride and regret following an uncomfortable, protracted, sufficiently pregnant pause. “For yourselves”, I mentally interject, when suddenly, a piercing sliver of silver light reflected off the crest of jewels sitting atop her diamond, sapphire and green emerald encrusted right middle finger, momentarily blinding my view. I’m often happily reminded of the gratitude I forget to feel for the double-edged sword of the complicated, but fundamentally more authentic life I’ve been required and more importantly, teemingly squired to live as a mostly happy gay man.