Lessons from Pasta

Things I’ve Learned About Gay Guys After Being Subjected to Twenty Berjillion Facebook Posts About Pasta Last Week

1. Immediately after someone posts a notice resolving to boycott a brand of pasta, the first three comments are going to be along the lines of That brand sux! __________ is soooooo much better!

Well, welcome to the conversation, Miss Fancy-Pants. I’m really glad that the latest cause célèbre involving outrages against gays and lesbians has given you the perfect opportunity to leap in and show everyone what superior taste you have. I am so compelled by your exquisite discernment that I am hoping, when I prowl back in time to 2011, I’ll find a sensitive comment from you about the devastating Thailand floods that affected over thirteen million people and killed hundreds that reads, Phuket is sooooo overrated anyway! Go to Aruba if you want a real vay-cay!

That brand of pasta was one I used for over a decade and a half because it was recommended to me by a close female friend’s father, who owned a popular and highly-rated Italian restaurant for years and years. If it was good enough for him and his family—who were all born in Italy—it was good enough for me. I can’t begin to count the number of meals I’ve served to my family over the years made from that pasta. Thank you, but I can do without you seeing my anger and upset at the unkind words of the company’s leader merely as an opportunity to show off what’s in your pretentious little home pantry.

2. The fourth comment is going to be some queen saying So what??? Gays shouldn’t be eating carbs anyway!!!

Hey, thanks. Like we didn’t have enough self-image dysmorphia as a population without some little body Nazi shrilling at us what we can and cannot eat, and what we should and shouldn't look like.

Now sit down and shut up. I’ve got some donuts to eat without guilt while you watch.

3. The fifth and subsequent comments are going to be, I don’t know why you buy your own pasta. Making your own is soooo easy and soooo much more delicious! All you need is flour and eggs!

Oooooo, gurrl. You have picked the wrong stay-at-home husband for this hair-pulling catfight, Martha Fucking Stewart.

I am a man who kneads his own bread. I am a man who boils and bakes his own bagels. I am a man who keeps track of what month it is by what fruits he’s currently making into jams and preserves.

Bitches, I am a man who makes his own yogurt. (And even I think that’s a little excessive on the home self-reliance front.)

I know that making pasta only requires flour and eggs. I’ve made pasta. And you know what? The next time I want to spend two hours making a mini-volcano out of flour and pouring some carefully-whisked eggs into it, and then trying to roll out and slice fresh pasta on the two square feet of kitchen counter that I currently have, before actually making dinner itself, instead of simply taking a box out of the cupboard and boiling the dried noodles inside for eight minutes, I will give you a ring-a-ling on the cell so that you can coach me through the process.

I wouldn’t advise holding my breath until it happens, though.

4. One of the comments that follows will be a passive-aggressive statement to the effect that OMG the Chick-Fil-A boycott was a failure! Why are we buying into the media frenzy? It just makes us look mean and vindictive instead of like nice people!

I’m just going to toss out a quote from Nietzsche, here:

When the oppressed, downtrodden, outraged exhort one another with the vengeful cunning of impotence: "let us be different from the evil, namely good! And he is good who does not outrage, who harms nobody, who does not attack, who does not requite, who leaves revenge to God, who keeps himself hidden as we do, who avoids evil and desires little from life, like us, the patient, humble, and just" -- this, listened to calmly and without previous bias, really amounts to no more than: "we weak ones are, after all, weak; it would be good if we did nothing for which we are not strong enough."

We make a fuss because we are strong and growing stronger. We make a fuss because things matter. We cause a ruckus because we realize we’re no longer weak and without power, and because we understand people are listening.

Boycotts don’t work instantly. Progress comes slowly. Over time, though, and with education tactics like boycotts work; companies and institutions will change and have changed under constant pressure. To assume that every battle will be won instantly, and without setback, is naive.

The show-offs, the diet fascists, and the guys who spend too much time with the Food Network are nothing. They’re comic relief. The apologists who would have us and our allies do nothing, however, so that we don’t ruffle feathers? They’re obstructive. They’re dangerous, because they’d have everyone believe they’re the nice gays, the gays who aren’t controversial, the gays who behave at the table and never make a fuss because it isn’t decorous.

They’re also the gays who accept slaps and pretend they’re kisses, who would rather see us all kicked and beaten rather than run a risk of not seeming nice. In the long view of history, they’re the most dangerous of all.