CAMPOut: Fay's Rehoboth Journal

Apparently, my choice of a new car means that I’m actually a gay man.

And the strange thing is this is not the first time my lesbian credentials have been questioned. In several episodes from my past, people have gingerly asked, and in one incident actually shouted, "Are you sure you’re not a gay man????"

Now don’t go queasy on me. It’s not like the plot of The Crying Game (Surprise!!!) or anything. It’s just that sociologically I seem to exhibit some fairly stereotypical gay male behavior.

For one thing, I’m a musical comedy queen. I know the lyrics to every obscure song in the whole Broadway cannon. I can actually sing all the words to Shipoopi from Music Man or everything from Liza Minelli’s Flora the Red Menace. The Liza thing is a ten-pointer on the gay male scale.

I may have been the only lesbian at Follies to recognize that one skit’s songs were from 1947’s Finian’s Rainbow.

And a few years ago, when my sister and I were nostalgically recalling those controlled-substance-filled 1960s, she admitted that while she was in a haze with Jefferson Airplane and White Rabbit, I was the only person she knew to puff on weed and go over the rainbow listening to Judy Garland records—how gay is that?????

More recently than Haight Ashbury, when I was looking to purchase my Rehoboth home, my adored realtor ferried us around extolling the virtues of square footage and environmentally friendly heating systems. All I focused on was curb appeal.

"I love those columns!!!!" I squealed.

"Are you sure you’re not a gay man???" he shouted.

Okay, so I have tendencies.

But apparently the new car sealed it. According to a web site listing official auto choices for gay men and lesbians (yes, really), my old car was the official lesbian car, the Subaru Outback. So there.

But my new car, a diesel powered VW Jetta was listed as the number one choice of gay men. How could that be? I thought my choice made me (all together now) a Diesel Dyke.

Not only was I stung by the accusation that I had purchased the wrong car for my sexual orientation, but I was still smarting over the unfortunate premature demise of the Subaru. It only had 120,000 miles on it, which, ask any lesbian, is mere puppyhood.

Only last week, Bonnie and I discussed getting a new car. Hell, we could get $3000 in trade for the Lesbaru. While the thought of a new car was appealing, the words "paid-off" were far more attractive. Uncharacteristically we decided to do the prudent and practical thing and hang onto the car for another year or so.

Woman plans; God laughs.

Last Saturday on Route One, right in the middle of rental rush hour, the Subaru’s engine ignited like a Weber kettle grill. I pulled off onto the service road by Coastal Gallery and Frameshop and asked the proprietors if I could leave a large smoldering metal sculpture in their parking lot.

Bonnie was summoned to collect me.

Later that day we learned that the Subaru had blown a head gasket—which sounds really awful unless you saw the gasket I blew learning that my $3000 Subaru was now worth bupkus. Nada. Nothing. Toast.

And while this was a terrible blow, I stood there and laughed like the village idiot. It reminded me of the last time I had an automotive asset one minute and a steaming pile of liability the next.

It was back in 1978, with my woozy Judy Garland days behind me, but my non-lesbo musical comedy obsession still flowering. I was on my way to a rehearsal for Gypsy (how gay is that!) in Annapolis, Maryland when my elderly 1964 Corvette suddenly lurched and left me with some kind of car part dragging the pavement beneath my wheels.

With the metal scraping the street, I produced hideous noise and sparks.

"If I can only get two more blocks to the theater," I thought, "I can see what’s wrong."

Unbeknownst to me, just ahead, on a narrow one-way street was a freshly poured speed bump. By this time, the dragging metal on my undercarriage was red hot from being scraped along the road.

My car went over the speed bump with its front wheels, but when the sizzling car part hit the brand new asphalt it sunk into the speed bump like a sack of anvils into a loaf of Wonder Bread, welding me to the street.

Jeesh. No matter how I tried, the car would not move forward one more inch. Traffic backed up behind me, with people finally getting out of their cars to look and laugh. Grown men knelt down on their hands and knees, peeked under the car and howled.

Suffice it to say that when a flat bed truck backed up the street in front of me and tried to dislodge my vintage sports car from the road, the rear axle fell off, turning my pride and joy into a pile of antique rubble.

Meanwhile, it turned out that the culprit in this tale was a dangling leaf spring, which, more like a stereotypical gay man and unlike most lesbians I know, was an item I had never even heard of.

But now, finally, I may have found a way to dispel this long-held notion of my unnatural kinship with the G rather than the L in GLBT.

Since the diesel car gets great fuel mileage, Bonnie has chosen to use it for her business, leaving me with the other family vehicle. And yup, just like most of my men friends, I long to drive a Lexus, Jaguar, Cadillac CTS, BMW or, that ever-popular Guppie vehicle the Jetta. Give me the luxury car with On Star anyday.

But no. You’ll now find me riding around town in a four wheel drive mini SUV Chevy Tracker, complete with surf fishing license plates. It’s my own personal butchmobile. How’s that for proof of my lesbian credentials?

Although if you listen closely as I cruise by, you might still hear the soundtrack from Hairspray blasting from the speakers.

I am Fay Jacobs and I have approved of this column.