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by Pam Young

Gayly Making Groceries...

So Mardi Gras is over and it's time for life to get back to normal...a time to finally wash the dog, sweep the kitchen floor and refill the refrigerator with something other than fast food left-overs. Yep, it's time for making groceries.

Making groceries-another term for braving the aisles of superstore heterosexuality, pushing our baskets across floors lined with products aimed at housewives who haven't existed in modern society for at least the last 30 years.

It's always an adventure. We go to a grocery store selected generally because of its close proximity, its prices, or because that's where our mothers shopped. We drive into the parking lot, feeling the anticipation of wheeling our shining cart up and down the aisles of plenty. Sometimes, we have lists; sometimes, calculators. Ever budget conscious, we set out to do the modern equivalent of hunting and gathering.

But gayly making groceries can present its own dilemmas. A few examples:

Deciding who is going to push the cart.
For many couples, this division of labor is set up early in the relationship. Other divisions of labor often include who has custody of the list, the coupons, and the money.

Grazing habits.
Grocery stores want us to eat...so badly, in fact, that they feed us while we are there, hoping we will buy more. There is nothing more thrilling to the heart of a grocery retailer then to see baskets loaded to the brim, overflowing with those special "end of the aisle" bargains they were pushing that week. If they can get us to taste these delicacies, we might be tempted to buy those fresh, not frozen, smoked sausages that give both of us indigestion. But we taste anyway, careful not to feed each other with the little tooth-picked samples.

The grandmothers who serve us comfort food.
We enter aisle one, moving steadily toward the lettuce. Ever conscious of our low-fat diets, we encounter grandmother #1 offering us a taste of a new oily, cheesy, garlicky salad dressing. She beckons us over. "Here. Sonny, you and your friend give this a try." You and your "friend" amble over and wind up with not one, but two bottles of the stuff in your cart. Never could resist matronly grand parental types who think everything is "good for you."

Your "friend" and you finally escape the fruits and vegetables, but not before catching the eyes of another gay or lesbian couple on their own safari to the suburban mega-store. They are over by the cucumbers...careful not to spend too much time selecting just the right ones. What does one look for in a cucumber?

Next stop, the canned goods.
Here the gay or lesbian couple must resist the impulse to do "family-size" shopping. Do you really need that 60 ounce can of peas which will feed a family of six? How long will peas keep in the refrigerator? And this is the row where some elderly person will inevitably need your help because the single serving cans are always on the top-most shelf. Now the scenario changes, as you hear the woman-with child strapped into the seat of the grocery basket-tell her three year old how nice it is to see children shopping with their elderly parents.

Displays of affection.
It is especially important to shop in near silence. Any naming of names will be a dead-giveaway that you are "outsiders." Conversations about Betty and Sue's artificial insemination are taboo. Discussions of Bill and Wayne's trip to Key West are verboten. And terms of endearment are red flags. "Honey, do we need bran flakes..." is sure to raise eyebrows. Or "Baby, let me pick that up for you, it's heavy..." will bring stares. Oh, and no kissing is allowed in the grocery.

Eye contact.
On every trip to the grocery, we employ our gaydar to locate others like us. As a gay couple enters our aisle, we find ourselves watching them as they approach. Sometimes we nod or smile, but generally eye contact is sufficient...a secret sign between people like us.

Buying habits.
Do you argue about what to buy or do you sneak things into or out of the basket because it's not a "necessary" purchase? And what about those two different brands of shaving cream, or those two varieties of tampons-different sizes, one deodorant, one non. A basketful of cereals ranging from Lucky Charms to Frosted Mini Wheats can indicate that there is no adult supervision in this household. And please, shop elsewhere for the unmentionables: Vaseline, KY Jelly, condoms, dental dams. One gay man I know buys a box of Kotex on each shopping trip so that the grocery-store "police" will think he's buying something for his wife.

Outraging other shoppers.
Playfulness is usually discouraged in grocery stores. After all, food purchasing is serious business. Still, every now and then, the devil takes hold, especially if the shopping experience has been less than pleasurable. On a recent excursion to a suburban superstore, I had already heard one too many mumbles about "queers staying where they belong," so we began our reign of terror. "Sweetheart, don't forget the condoms," I called down a long shelf..."I mean the condiments..." this followed by nervous laughter from my partner and the near clearing of the ketchup aisle. And cucumbers can almost be used as teaching tools. Hold each one up for your lover to examine for smoothness, circumference, and firmness. Oh, we can be a challenge to quiet suburban areas!

Checking Out.
In some grocery stores, this term could easily be confused with cruising. The produce section is a great place to meet people, especially if you suffer from ripeness-amnesia. "How DO you tell if this watermelon is sweet?" is a good intro for starting up a conversation with that fabulous hunk in the tank top or that cute dyke with the Nike cap. But be sure that you remain alert for the return of a lover who might have gone to get a plastic bag.

Checking out also means paying for your groceries. Nothing is more revealing than laying out your selections on a long black conveyer belt for all to see. Will people judge you by the number of frozen dinners, the three bags of cookies, or the absence of any one of the essential food groups? But the moment of truth comes when the check-out person doesn't know who should be given the order's total or to whom he/she should address her request for payment. Two women or two men together complicate the checker's life. Generally, the partner with custody of the grocery money will step up to the counter and relieve the clerk's distress. But it's the double-take, the confusion, the tennis-spectator head movements in that brief moment before the designated payer steps forward that gives us away yet again. The check out counter can be a piece of cake or an excruciating exit. Giggles are frequent as clerks count out your change and thank you for shopping at Food City.

So you have survived the Grocery-Shopping Gauntlet, safely navigating the assumptions, the moments of clarity from more savvy shoppers, the slips of the tongue in the ice cream section when you asked "Honey" to get the fudgesicles. With pride, the two of you walk out into the sunlit parking lot to your car, your pick-up, or sports utility vehicle with the rainbow flag on the bumper. You load those groceries proudly into that gay transportation and climb in. It is at this point, that my lover and I present the coup de grace, the parting shot that says "Hey, we eat, too...and our money is green...and we can live in the suburbs if we want to" (and many of us do): we kiss fully on the lips and smile as I slide my arm along the back of the seat to touch her shoulder as we drive away-gay sticker bouncing proudly over the parking lot potholes and onto the highway. Heigh-ho Silver...away!

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