This post was submitted by Amelie

Hello there dear readers! I’m finally back after my extended vacation, semi-well rested, wearing cowboy boots and holding a Texas Longhorns bottle opener I bought at a gas station. For my first column back, I’m going to treat you to some of my experiences actually getting to Texas.

Just to get this out of the way first: I took the train from D.C. to Texas. I know, I know–that’s crazy Amelie! Why would you do that? Because I don’t like flying. Airplanes are scary. The end.

Anyway, so I took the train to Texas. It’s really not that bad. I do the trip in two legs, with a couple hours break in Chicago. Every year when I stop in Chicago, I try to find pizza near by. I have yet to succeed, and the only pizza I have had in Chicago is Pizza Hut. But that’s not the point. I usually do the trip in two parts, and for one of the parts, I usually get what Amtrak likes to call a “roomette.” Roomettes are definitely tiny, but are also definitely great for pretending that you are riding the Hogwarts Express. For the other portion of the trip, I ride coach, which generally involves a seat buddy.

My general train routine, when riding coach, is such: Sit. Take out teddy bear. Take out laptop. Put on movie/TV show/music. Put on headphones. Ignore pretty much everyone else on the train.

That’s my general rule. Unfortunately, the first part of my trip this time had something unexpected. The nice thing about the train is that even the coach cars generally have two power outlets for each seat. And since my computer’s battery doesn’t work, I’m completely dependent on my powercord, so that outlet was something that was pretty important. When I sat down, the outlet was the first thing I looked for. But it wasn’t there. I turned to my seat buddy–a guy about my age, with a giant camouflage backpack and a Texas sweatshirt. He knew what I was looking for. “I don’t think they have outlets on this type of train–it’s an older one. They have them in one of the other cars, though.” With those words, I knew I wouldn’t be able just plug in my computer and ignore everyone. While I had some music on my iPhone, there wasn’t that much. And, as became evident in the next two minutes, my seat buddy was a talker.

It’s not that I don’t like talking to the people sitting next to me when I travel. Sometimes it can be enjoyable. It’s more just that I’m incredibly bad at small talk, and when I have something else I need to be doing–like studying for the GRE–I don’t really want to make a lot of train small talk. But, sometimes it just ends up happening.

We had been talking for a few minutes when the inevitable question came up. He asked me if I had a “significant other.”

That’s when I almost completely froze up. I hate answering that question. Especially to a person who I now knew to be a native Virginian, who was an Iraq vet, and who really liked guns. Not that liking guns or being a war vet makes someone a bad person (especially not the latter), but it does imply a more conservative worldview that isn’t always consistent with being cool with the gays.

I had about five seconds to make my decision: tell him I had a girlfriend I loved very much, or be intentionally vague, lie and tell him I had a boyfriend.

I chose intentionally vague. I sputtered something about being with someone, but that it was complicated, hoping that he wouldn’t press the issue since I noted that it was complicated. It worked, for the most part. He said he was in the same kind of thing.

We chatted for the next few hours, save the hour or so I used attempting to study for the GRE. A few hours later, while he was telling me why he liked reading the Twilight series, I had a thought. Maybe I was wrong about him. He hadn’t done anything homophobic or said anything that would indicate that he though being queer was horrible. I started to feel a certain amount of guilt for pre-judging him. I thought back to when he asked me if I was in a relationship. I remembered that he asked me if I had a significant other, not if I had a boyfriend, as most people do. I got kind of excited–maybe he was more progressive than I thought! Maybe I was the jerk for judging him!

But then a few minutes later, he brought up relationships again, asking about my boyfriend. I didn’t correct him; I was a little too disheartened. I quickly turned the conversation back to him and his ladyfriend. Through telling a few stories about his friends and ladies, he made a quasi-homophobic remark, which kind of reaffirmed my fear that he probably wasn’t cool with the gays, and that his use of the term “significant other” really had no significance at all.

One night while I was home in Texas, though, I caught a clip of Mary-Louise Parker giving a speech after accepting an award from the Hetrick-Martin Institute. In it she spoke of her father, a coal miner who, by every account, should have been a big ol’ homophobe. But he wasn’t. And that ignorance isn’t an excuse, because some of the people who should be most ignorant, can be aware that discrimination and predjudice are wrong. And that didn’t make me feel much better about the fact that I had pretty much decided someone was probably a homophobe, because he seemed like he was more conservative than I was.

Maybe I didn’t give my seat buddy enough of a chance. Maybe, under his conservative views and his mildly homophobic remark, he was really an accepting guy. But at the same time, I didn’t want to put my safety at jeopardy in order to find out. I’m sure we can all imagine the awkwardness (if it was just awkwardness) that could have ensued if I had told him that I was gay. But, at the same time, it feels weird to pre-judge and stereotype others when that’s what we’re fighting against right now.

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