IT FALLS
By Kael
It all started off on Monday afternoon at around 3:40 p.m. Luke Murray was working the late afternoon shift at the Starbucks (that new Starbucks located on the forty-fifth floor of the “Pay-Before-yo-yo-yo-Payday” building downtown), when Aaron James and Taylor Danes came in. The two had been downstairs making a payment on a two-year-old loan that Aaron took out to pay his baby-mama’s August 2005 rent. Aaron had made his final 100-dollar monthly payment on his 500-dollar loan and decided to celebrate with a shot of espresso. Luke was in a good mood that afternoon since the previous evening his boyfriend of five years finally moved out after having gained 50 lbs over the course of their relationship, and his B.F.F., Gloria Hammer, had applied glitter to his highlights.
Luke took the boys order, told them how fabulous they both looked, and swiped their Starbucks card. The guys even left him change in the tip jar. What Luke didn’t know, and really how could anyone know this, but both Aaron and Taylor had already had three Red Bulls, and were pretty wound up. They sat near the edge of the building overlooking the street and when Luke came by to clean the tables on the patio Aaron was sure that he had winked at him.
Of course no one can ask Luke if this were true or not, since they threw him over the edge of the building while yelling, “I wonder if Fairies really can fly, you dumb Faggot!” and he died.
Where the controversy arises is that although Superman is not expected to save every falling person from every building in the city, he was actually in the area at the time. He was flying past the Starbucks and actually admits to having seen the original scuffle take place. He was distracted by a young woman on 23rd Street tripping in her high heals while carrying a twenty inch computer display from her car into her apartment. He heard the yelling and later screams by Luke, but he arrived on the scene too late to do anything but bend his head back, lift his fisted hands in the air, and bellow out a resounding “NOOOOOOOO!”
It was a public relations nightmare. Lois Lane, who up until this point had been a one-woman press corps for the visitor from another planet, led the charge on Superman’s apparent homophobic decision. Her headline, “HIGH HEELS BEFORE HIGH DIVE … Superman’s Decision to Save Tripping Woman over Gay Man” raised more than a few eyebrows. Gay web sites, usually very pro-Superman (One actually offering one million dollars to anyone who could produce a picture of Superman shirtless), became hypercritical. One actually took him off their hottest super-hero’s list and replaced him with the Flash.
Superman released a public apology stating that he did not choose the woman over the gay man, and that some of his best friends were gay (Jimmy Olsen, being the only known friend of Superman released a press statement two hours later stating that he was NOT gay). He attended a very public sensitivity training class held by the local PFLAG (Parents Family & Friends of Lesbians and Gays), and even let the cast of the popular Bravo Show, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, make him over with a new costume (the new costume was black leather, with a lower neck line, showing for the first time that Superman had chest hair, with his traditional “S” displayed a little higher.)
Nothing helped. Pictures from Luke Murray’s MySpace page, and Gay-dot-Com profile appeared nightly on every cable news channel. Two years prior Bryan had actually done a YouTube video which mentioned Superman by name and stated “Girlfriend, I’d jump off a building twice a day to have that guy catch me, mmmm mmm.” Newscasters speculated that Superman might have seen this video and purposely let Bryan plunge to his death.
A national campaign to throw glitter at Superman every time he appeared in public was beginning to gain steam, and Superman couldn’t go anywhere in the world without mass amounts of people throwing glitter at him. There was actually a glitter gala thrown on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco where 40,000 people threw glitter off the bridge in protest to Superman (Bio-Based Glitter of course, which polluted the bay anyways). It was actually quite beautiful.
And perhaps it’s the nature of the public to throw away issues with one simple turn of a page, or it’s the nature of super-heroes to work tirelessly on situations that end up having incredibly simple (and dumb) solutions, but one day with one gesture, the issue just went away. Superman was flying over the city one night and noticed the opening of a new gay bar downtown. “The A-Null Cavity” had a very public opening that several gay-lebrities showed up to. Superman just decided to fly down and go in. The bouncer, a straight heavy black man named Malcolm Mulligan, was so awestruck to see Superman that he just let him in without thinking about how the crowd would react.
Although the music didn’t stop when he walked in, it certainly seemed like it did. The whole room paused in their tracks, and tried to figure out if this was indeed the real Superman or just a really hot guy wearing a Superman costume. Oddly enough, Superman was only one of three men in the bar wearing a cape, and one of eight who were wearing a square cute red Speedo. He walked up to the bar, where two men were standing, Hayden Revert (pronounced Ree-Vart), and Michael Montoya, and asked them what was good here. They both blurted out how fabulous the Lemon Drops were, and Superman ordered one. Later Hayden and Michael commented on how amazing Superman smelled, and how surprised they were that he ordered a regular alcoholic drink just like any other guy. One broken heel, one dead gay guy, one polluted bay, thousand of tons of glitter, and countless hours of blogging just ended with one Lemon Drop that the bartender didn’t even make with good vodka.
Years later a gay blogger named Nathan Bellows wrote this about the event. “The man’s 6-3, 210 lbs, wavy black hair, with beautiful blue eyes who flies around in a skin tight costume accenting his puur-fect Kryponian ass … shit, a gay man can only hate something that looks like that for so long!”
the end
