Dag!

I finally got my bloated butt back into Curves this week after a bit of an absence, which was due partly to having the flu and mostly to a fundamental distrust of movement, which itself stems directly from years under the "guidance" of the brides of Satan who taught me in elementary school gym class, (but that's a whole other story, and besides, the lawsuits are still pending so I'm not really at liberty to discuss it).

At any rate, I was richly rewarded upon my return to Curves with the opportunity to overhear what is quite possibly the best conversation yet carried out in my presence: Heather and Mary Pat discussing strippers.

See, Heather went to a bachelorette party last weekend which was co-ed, (yeah, I don't get it either), and they went to a strip club. A female strip club. You know, the kind with boobies? Why? Well, I suppose that, even though the bachelorette party is supposed to be for the ladies, the guys in the group just couldn't deal with seeing male strippers. Because, you know, seeing other men naked in anything other than a totally hetero locker-room situation might make them feel funny and then they'd be forced to confront certain feelings...but more on that in a moment.

By the way, and just so you know where I stand on the whole stripper topic, I have absolutely no problem with it. I think male strippers are hilarious, (the outfits! the shaved chests!), and as for the women....well, when I was 14 and all "I'm so serious about saving the world that you're gonna want to smack my self-righteous ass within 5 minutes of meeting it" I would have sung a different song, all about the shameful exploitation of women who are trapped in a cycle of self-abuse and blah blah blah. The older I get, though, the more I abide by a live-and-let-live policy. I truly believe that life is tough and most people are doing the best they can to get by in this cruel world, and if "getting by" involves running your ass crack up and down a pole for wadded-up dollar bills from greasy strangers, well, at least you're paying your own rent, sister.

Anyway, true to form, Mary Pat's fountain of opinions was not running dry on the topic of the strip club. But what was truly, fantastically, there-is-justice-in-this-world wonderful was when Heather started talking about this one stripper who attempted to give her a lap dance, (I say 'attempted' because Heather apparently hasn't tapped into that end of her Kinsey Scale yet and didn't accept the offer), and upon hearing this, Mary Pat's eyes widened and she wanted details, people! What was Heather wearing that night? Was she showing a lot of skin? What was the stripper wearing? What was her name? How, precisely, did she try to initiate the lap dance? What did Heather do? Did they have a conversation? What did they say? Why did the stripper single-out Heather? Oh, the stripper said Heather was sexy? Really?

And then Mary Pat ended the conversation by exclaiming "Dag! My life sure is boring!"

So, are you thinking what I'm thinking? Because I'm thinking that I've finally figured out why Mary Pat is such a negative, agitated bitch: The poor woman is nothing more than an unrealized, frustrated lesbian. No wonder she's so judgmental -- it's just a subconscious defense against others reading into her bland and outdated hairstyle and discovering the truth about her -- that she's not just some suburban mom who knows a thing or two about a thing or two, she's as queer as a two-headed goat, (which is also the name of a very popular lesbian sex toy).

Wow.

I've got to tell you, this realization has kind of rocked my world. It turns everything I've been thinking about Mary Pat on its head, and I think there's a lesson in this for us all, and that is: Don't be so quick to dislike opinionated, hateful, racist, Republican busybodies -- they're probably just gay.

Now if we could all take that into our hearts, imagine what a beautiful place our world would be.