When I was in my twenties, I helped a friend rebuild a car engine. The car was mine—a '66 Valiant with a 170 c.u. Slant-6—but he knew how to do it and I didn't. As I recall, it took something like two years.

The conversations were fun, the companionship was fun. But as for what I remember verbatim, there are only two words:

Fag band.

I don't remember what band we were talking about. Flock of Seagulls or somebody. Coincidentally, the same band had come up at work recently, and a girl I worked with—she was what my friend Terry affectionately called a fruit fly because he didn't like fag hag—rolled her eyes and flourished a hand, and in that imitating-gay-men way said fag band.

It was so evocative and assonant that it parked itself in my head. So then this band came up while we were rebuilding this engine, and I said fag band, and my friend gave me a weird look. I didn't say oops or explain myself, but I never used the term again.

All I'd wanted to do was evoke that same thing my co-worker had so effortlessly floated into the conversation. I didn't. I came off like a homophobic prick instead. Oh, said my friend's expression. I didn't know you felt like that.

But I didn't feel like that. I felt like this. However, for all I know, he still thinks I have a homophobic streak.

Moral #1: Context can make the same word harmless in one instant and harmful in another.

Moral #2: Sometimes you really can't tell what somebody meant.

Moral #3: If you want people to know what you meant, you have to tell them.

As I was on my way to the DMV to register the car with its new rebuilt engine, two years in the making, the bearings seized. Formulate Moral #4 as you wish.

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