do you believe in life after love?

It's from that vibe thumping and ridiculous Cher song and is the topic of today's blog. This past weekend Jess and I visited a friend (Kari via Minneapolis) in a north Chicago neighborhood. We walked the Chicago streets and decided to sit on a park bench and soak up the sun (it was gorgeous and nearly in the 60s). The air was nice too but the cars were moving slowly on North Broadway. As we talk and catch up on life, this very sleak silver BMW rolls along blasting 'Do you believe in life after love' and there is some jocko-looking dude driving it. He looks like he could be one of those 'Night at the Roxbury' types. So naturally, I facetiously ask Jessamyn and Kari..... "Would you think I'm cool if I blasted Cher in my suped-up BMW?" And followed up that question with a comment along the lines of, 'I can't believe that guy likes Cher and thinks it's cool to stroll his BMW and cruise the strip.'

Then Kari simply responds and communicates his vibe to me. "Nick, he's gay." And then it dawned on me that we are in 'boystown' and there are several rainbow flags within eye sight. I guess that he's probably just doing his version of checking out the scene to see if anyone is checking him out...... but it seems that his serious vibe was targeted towards people who were in the know. I was definitely NOT in the know and, in my mind at the time, was somehow was trying to correlate Cher/BMW in the WHY?/Yuppi-ness category of my brain instead of correlating Cher/BMW with the 'guy likes guy' category of my brain. And after subsequent analysis, it occurred to me that.... I no doubt lack the 'guy likes guy' awareness receptors in the brain.