I heard it again at the gym today.

“Nice shirt, fag!”

It stopped me in my routine, even cutting through the Saosin that was pulsing in my ears, and I almost dropped the bar I was holding. What was it about his shirt that presented itself in relation to homosexual? Was he showing too much skin for your comfort? Were the cutoff sleeves too much for you? Oh, wait… You didn’t mean that he looked homosexual, you mean that he looked like less of a man.

You called him a “fag” because you wanted to undercut his manhood in the testosterone-filled arena of the weight room, where you and your football buddies all donned your football camp shirts and made jokes at the expense of others. His shirt looked almost identical to yours, except it revealed slightly more shoulder. Oh my.