Not All Lesbians Look Like Cubans

You would think that with my brain so damn close, that smarter things would come out of my mouth. Unfortunately the opposite seems to be true. Maybe it's that short route to the tongue that makes it difficult for me to regulate what's about to be blurted out before I actually do. When Mark and I are out at bars, or parties, I have actually seen him cringe when I started making my corny jokes, and observations.

I have said the wrong things in the wrong situations more than a few times in my life. In fact it just happened recently, but I'll not recount that incident as it would only make the results worse. Instead I'll just give you two examples of how I've managed to fit my foot, all the way up to the ankle, squarely in my mouth.

Example number one. While discussing with a friend the health of his partner, I managed to bring up the fact that I knew somebody who had died from exactly the same malady. I immediately realized how insensitive that was, and my gaffe was hammered home by the few moments of silence that followed. Luckily my friend still talks to me, though not too much about his partners health.

On another occasion, Mark and I were at a party and for some reason I decided to bring up the subject of Cuban women's hair.
I opened my mouth and this came out.

"Why do all older Cuban women wear lesbian haircuts?"
After a few seconds of silence, one of Mark's closest friends who happened to be Cuban, informed me in a frosty tone that, "My mother wears her hair like that, and she is not a lesbian."
Unfortunately it created a rift between Mark and his friend, and they never talked again. That was sad, and I obviously shouldn't have said what I said at that time. Now I'm not saying that the content of the statement was wrong, and I shouldn't think that way. No, it was that I said it out loud.... in front of a Cuban..... at a party in front of a bunch of other people.

  

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen