Ask Anyone

FRIENDS DON’T LET FRIENDS…

I have two questions:

1. I have a friend who uses the wrong words all the time—like he’ll say, “Oh, this weather is grandiose today.” Should I correct him?

2. I have another friend whose table manners are not very good. He is about to be interviewed for law jobs, and I know the firms will take him out to eat. Should his friends (I’m not the only one who notices) tell him how to use a fork and so on?

I really like these guys and I don’t want to offend them, and I know I’m not perfect.

—Buffalo Guy

The Gay Perspective:

1. No.

2. Yes. (But first ask if he wants instruction in formal table manners).

Sigmund Fraud says: The pen name you’ve chosen indicates that you long to be perceived as a regular dude, but your gripes expose the persnickety schoolmarm inside who’s struggling to get out. What kind of grown man would correct his buddy’s vocabulary? Yes, the way he talks drives you nuts, and you shudder to think that others within earshot will assume that since you don’t protest, you must talk that way too. But think about it. Do you want to be observed and overheard correcting him? Do what a real guy would do. Tune him out. As for your friend with the bad table manners, what freaking charm school did you graduate from?

Mismannered says: I will acknowledge that this dilemma is, in fact, trickier than my colleagues above suggest. I know, for am that guy. Long ago a close friend told me that my table manners were atrocious. I had never considered them to be, but he was (and remains) a fastidious guy with smart manners, and so I took him seriously. Too seriously. Even now, 20 years later, I remember his evaluation of my manners, especially when I am confronted with a situation like the one your aspiring lawyer friend is about to face in these interview luncheons. I freeze up; I worry I’m going to make an ass of myself; I wish I had an effortless grasp of etiquette. And I curse that friend of mine for creating this anxiety that I’ve been feeding lo, these many years. So my advice: Don’t tell him his table manners suck. Give him a book on interview strategies for job-seekers that includes a chapter on table manners. (No, don’t earmark that chapter; let him find it or not find it on his own.) There are lots of these, and they’re all equally dull and useful. You’ll have done your duty as a friend without risking a direct, stinging insult.

As for question #1, I am less sensitive. Correct him. If Yogi Berra gets all up in a bag about it, too bad—language is important.

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CAR-CROSSED LOVERS

Help! I think I’m falling in love with a guy who drives a Hummer with a Bush-Cheney bumper sticker on it. (My friends don’t even call him by his name; they just refer to him as “the Republican.”) Should I get out now, and risk losing someone great, or stick around and risk ending up with Archie Bunker? And if I don’t stay, does that mean i’m as intolerant and prejudiced as I thought he would be? —Lefty Leaving

The Gay Perspective: Are you for real? Are you, by any chance, in a rock band and do you suspect that this guy with the Hummer hates your music? This is such a straight dilemma! Since you obviously have nothing else in common with the guy, let me be the one to break the news to you: This is all about sex. The only other possibility is that it is about money. Not to worry; you have as much right to be shallow as the Republican. My questions are simple. Is the sex terrific? Is he generous with his money? And is that enough for you? Okay then. Please don’t write again, your problem is tedious.

Sigmund Fraud says: It’s an insult to Archie Bunker to imply that he would have driven a Hummer. He was a bigot, but a poor, simple one. And while he often unwittingly offended nearly everyone he came in contact with, he always loved his wife Edith and daughter Gloria. And he correctly identified his son-in-law as a “Meathead” who would eventually go on to break his daughter’s heart. Edith would not have loved Archie if he’d driven around town in a converted military vehicle advertising a brutal regime engaged in an ongoing war that is destabilizing an entire region of the world while trampling US citizens’ rights and destroying the economy and the environment—and neither should you.

By the way, that little voice you hear, warning you not to be intolerant and prejudiced? That’s just Satan talking.

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