The Capri Pants Gave it Away

Let me say right here at the start of this post that I am not looking. Mark and I are just fine.

Fifty years ago I couldn't wait to get the hell out of Tinley Park. Suburbia was a vast wasteland for a young gay man. So I packed up my crap, loaded up the VW hippie van, and moved into Chicago. There I found a nice little apartment near Clark and Diversey, Chicago's gay neighborhood at the time. It was so gay you couldn't take out the garbage without bumping into another gay man. There were three gay bars within one block of my apartment, and as a pizza delivery man I got propositioned almost every night. It seemed that some men who were ordering pizza had more than just an appetite for cheese and sausage. Hmmm.... now that I think about it. Anyway, I had moved from the drab suburbs to the center of the gay universe that summer. Over the years I have made friends with a number of people who live out in the suburbs. Gay men embracing the suburban life that I hated. I have often wondered how they did it? What was out there for them? I couldn't figure it out. Forward fifty years and I am out in Tinley Park visiting Mom. Mark is with me and he begs me to take him to the HomeGoods Store out there. Something about their having a better selection than the store in Chicago. So we stop there before visiting Mom and I make a bee line for the bathroom. Fifty miles of driving has shaken every drop of liquid to my bladder. When I'm done and leaving the bathroom I notice a man in an orange tee shirt and shorts right by the door. I wander through HomeGoods looking for Mark. I turn left, there's the man in the orange tee shirt. I stop in the pet supply area. I look up and there he is again. Still looking for Mark, I go over to the kitchen aisles. Mark is looking for vanilla extract and when he sees me, he enlists my help. So I wander down the aisle to ask an employee if she can point me to the vanilla extract. It turned out that they did not have vanilla extract. What they did have was a man in an orange tee shirt following me around that store. That's when I noticed the attractive young man with bleached blonde hair, wearing denim capri pants. I suddenly realize that the two men are not shopping. I wander around a bit more while Mark shops and no matter where I am, there they are. Like sharks circling their prey. My gaydar, now honed by fifty plus years of living in gay neighborhoods, is pinned to 'very gay'. So this is where suburban gay men look for other suburban gay men, HomeGoods. And then I thought about it a little more and wondered, was Grindr not working today?