I just wanted to relate a short conversation my seatmate and I had on the plane from Lynchburg to Atlanta last month. I had booked my reservation long after Thom did his, so we weren’t able to get seats together on the small regional jet. It was a short enough flight that we didn’t bother asking another passenger to switch seats with one of us.
After the plane landed in Atlanta, the older gentleman sitting next to me, who was perhaps in his sixties or seventies, asked where I was headed. I told him San Francisco and mentioned that I had been in Virginia with my partner (sitting a few rows ahead of us) to visit his family for Christmas.
He asked, “How long have you two been together?”
Wow. I thought we were going to gloss over the fact that I have a “partner,” but with that I was completely disarmed and at ease.
“Coming up on six years,” I said.
Then he told me about his niece and her partner, who run a B&B in Mendocino! (I should’ve gotten the name of the place!) I guess I needn’t have been quite so wary. Older people know gay people, just like everyone else. And they’ve been around a while. They’ve seen it all.
3 replies on “Seatmates”
Perhaps the most encouraging sight I saw while protesting Prop 8 at San Jose City Hall were the elderly women holding up signs supporting us. They were so charming and sweet that it gave me hope not just for the future, but for our past.
I’ve heard similar stories, and I think we’re often surprised when we encounter older people who are comfortable with gays and lesbians because of the common perception that older = traditional or older = close-minded. This might be true for the majority of older people, but those outlier percentages still do exist.
Patrick and I had a brief chat on April 3, 2006, at Rainforest Cafe in Downtown Disney (Anaheim) with two older women who were there with a grandson who had just turned 7. I don’t recall that we explicitly mentioned that we were gay, and they didn’t explicitly mention that they lesbian, but I think it was obvious to both couples that we were. We were already visiting the happiest place on earth, and I thought it even happier that a lesbian couple was able to share that experience with their grandson in a special way.
Hey Jeff! Kinda counterintuitive coming from a flight out of Lynchburg, Virginia, home of Jerry Falwell.