Last night in the supermarket I was walking behind two of the most effeminate men I have seen in my life.

I’m not going to ‘come out’ and say they were gay but it was very clear they were either a couple or ‘very close’ friends as they both displayed pretty much every possible stereotype imaginable.

These included (but were not limited to): foundation on their faces, a mince in the way they walked, super skinny jeans with no socks and deck shoes, perfectly quaffed and coloured hair, limp wrists and arm motions made with the elbows fixed to the body.

Ok, they were gay.  Super gay. Very very very gay.

OK?

Oh, and they both had ‘the lisp’.

What is the deal with the lisp?

Now, I don’t want to appear as homophobic in any way, so I’m going to do ‘that thing’ where I point out the fact that I have gay friends.  I have gay friends everyone!  They’re gay, they’re proud and they most certainly have not suddenly adopted an inability to use their tongue properly.

Quite the opposite I’d imagine.

Anyway….

Where did this lisp come from?  Can someone please enlighten me?

I mean, I understand that some gay men take on feminine mannerisms like a softly spoken tone of voice and too much perfume (cough cough gasp wheeze!), but I know very few women who have this lisp.

In fact, I know none.

Yes, that’s right; I don’t know a single woman with a lisp.  Yet I have met a lot of gay men in my time (steady on…I work in travel before you ask) and a lot of them….cabin crew mostly….lisp.

Or ‘lithp’

(Isn’t it cruel that ‘lisp’ has an ‘s’ in it?)

Anyway, back to my story.

So these two were in front of me in the vegetable aisle when one of them stopped and pointed suggestively at the cucumbers.

They both exchanged looks and giggled a little before one of them saw something in the racks that had him reeling back in surprise and bemusement.

Serjio  – “Oh my God, what is that?!”

Ramone looked at the label for a second.

Ramone  – “It’s a yam”
Serjio  – “A what?”
Ramone  – “A yam”.
Serjio  – “A yam?”
Ramone  – “Yes”.
Serjio  – “What’s a yam?”
Ramone  – “What do you mean ‘What’s a yam?’, it’s a yam!”
Serjio  – “Yes, but what is it?”

Ramone paused for a moment.

Ramone  – “No idea”.

I laughed (and died) a little inside as they minced away to the fruit section looking for fruit; bananas probably.

And as I walked around the rest of the supermarket I couldn’t help but wonder how these guys didn’t know what a yam was.

I mean, have you seen one?