Gayte (gay date)

[cosmolinguist]

D was teasing me on our way to see the Lil Nas X documentary this evening that the attempts to include other people in the outing had failed (P's coming down with something, V had a bad night and it'd mean leaving Gary alone until his bedtime which is unfair on the little doofus) so it was just us two.

"Oh no, the worst," I said, because this is what we always say to each other at the prospect of the other's company.

But it gave him a chance to tell me he'd booked a two-seater sofa as our cinema tickets, "so we can snuggle." And we did!

Afterwards we went to eat and had some Wagamama-fancy cocktails (I really liked my "pad thai sour," rum, passionfruit, lemongrass, lime, and tamarind), nice salads, chili mushrooms, and "Korean vegan corn dogs," which were veggie dogs with crispy noodle crumb where the, uh, corn would be. Drizzled with red sriracha and some kind of yellow turmeric-y sauce, they looked exactly like they would with ketchup and mustard which was amusing.

We had a very nice server but when we asked to pay the bill another member of staff came out and she chatted to us while I was failing to work the card machine (sorry nice dude, you deserved a tip, I just fucked it up!) about Pride and similar. She went back inside and we got ourselves and our stuff ready to go. And then she came back outside with a tote bag for each of us, Pride-related things that Wagamama give out in some kind of event -- she said she has the tote bag for International Women's Day and all sorts. She also said they're normally just for staff! I don't know what compelled her to share them with us like that on such short and mundane acquaintance, but we were both delighted and touched at the gesture.

As we were leaving, I said that between this and Lil Nas X I felt like I'd done enough (Manchester) Pride-related stuff already. And since it was sorta accidentally a date-like activity, that fit too.

"What a nice day it's been," I mused as we held hands and strolled through the sunset towards a pub we'd decided to go to.

"What a nice gay," D said.

We walked through Lincoln Square and he said "Gaybraham Lincoln."

We had our pints under cover, and after we'd been summoned home by reports of a dog who'd been very good but now that it was getting to bedtime he was wound up, we suddenly could hear rain pelting down just as we were having to contemplate going to the bus stop.

As we stood up and prepared ourselves for the deluge, the rain stopped!

We figured this was just another part of our charmed gay evening. "After we've had our pint of gayle [gay ale]," D said, "and...la-gay..."

It was a nice gay.