* * * * *

                                     Tea

Several days after G came out to me [1], a few of her friends show up from
out of town on their way somewhere else. There was A, a beautiful woman who,
from what I could gather, wasn't quite interested in men. The second woman
was average and seeing how I don't recall her name, I'll simply call her
Jane. The third friend, to be polite, had a wonderful personality (she
reminded me of a female Winston Churchill [2], only shorter).

Now, E couldn't come with us, having to work, but G's girlfriend K (G & E's
marriage was … complicated and let's just leave it at that) was free to come
along. So the six of us, G, K, A, Jane, Churchill and I headed out into the
frozen wasteland of a Bostonian winter for sustenance.

At the restaurant we ran into John (not his real name), another friend of G
and the seven of us sit at a large table.

During dinner, John was holding court, talking about tea. G, K and A were
deep into the conversation with John, while Jane, Churchill and I were more
or less listening to the intricacies of consuming tea.

But … the way they were talking about tea I found it rather hard to believe
they were talking about the consumption of Camellia sinensis. Even though
green tea is often used for medicial reasons, I've never heard of a doctor
prescribing it. And the side effects mentioned at the table didn't quite fit
any type of tea I've ever heard of. It was as if they weren't talking about
tea but about—

OH!

T!

As in testosterone [3]!

OH!

Much like G wasn't born a girl, John wasn't born a boy. And then it dawned on
me—A wasn't always a beautiful woman, and K, who I found to be a cute geeky
girl, wasn't born a girl. Jane and Churchill weren't what they seemed to be
either, but they were transvestites, not transexuals.

I never expected to end up in an episode of “Three's Company [4]” (or would
that be a Very Special Episode™ of “The Facts of Life [5]”?). Only, it wasn't
bad; it was rather nice, if odd.

It was certainly a dinner I'll never forget.

[1] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2009/01/14.1
[2] http://images.google.com/images?q=Winston%20Churchill
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testosterone
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three's_Company
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Facts_of_Life_(TV_series)

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