Some things never change.

Last night on my way home from bowling I decided to stop at Clem's for a beer. As expected I ran into some of the guys from bowling and had a pretty good time. While there, this guy whom I'll call R walks up and appears to be interested in the friend I'm talking to, and so therefore starts a conversation with me. No big deal, he seems harmless. After a while, he asks me what happened to my arm. I give the typical "I was born this way, don't miss what I never had" answer. He mulls that over for a second, then looks me square in the eyes and says "You mean you grew up this way and still chose to be gay?" I think my jaw dropped and I repeated his statement for the 8 of us standing there in the group so they could all hear what he said. I replied with the fact that I did not 'choose' to be gay any more than I 'chose' to not have a right hand. This exact statement is why I choose not to go out that much in STL. It sure would be nice to live in a city that isn't so chock full of shallow, hateful people. I'm really not that different than any other gay guy out there. I like the same things. It was an awkward moment and he spent the rest of the night trying to tell me he didn't mean it that way. Doesn't matter, it still got under my skin. I appreciated him asking me what happened rather than assuming anything, but his statement was over the top. Am I overreacting? Feedback please.

In other news, I joined Gold's Gym last week and have been several times. I have a long way to go but I'm looking forward to seeing the results in a couple months.