This one´s per Tiberio

mood: on Uruguayan crack
music: I have no idea who this is
random word: jellyfish

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Today, I walked by a store named ¨Gay Mar.¨ At first, I took a more traditional route of interpretation and figured that they had simply misplaced the ¨t¨ that comes at the end of ¨mart.¨ A quick inventory of the items on display in the window (pots & pans, teacups, a coffee-maker, tupperware) seemed to support the conclusion that this store could easily be of the variety ¨mart.¨

The presence of the word ¨gay,¨however, still struck me as a bit...frankly, queer. In the U.S., I would have assumed it was the name of the owner. Or the founder. Or somebody´s grandfather. But ¨Gay¨is clearly not a Spanish name. Nor is it a Spanish word. This could only mean one thing: this ¨gay¨was none other than the English ¨gay¨we all know and love. There was nothing particularly homosexual (or happy, for that matter) about the merchandise, but then again, Wal-Mart doesn´t sell walls, K Mart doesn´t sell K´s (or even cays), and I have never seen a Quickie Mart that sells quickies, so why should Gay Mart have to sell gays?

But there was still one problem: the missing ¨t.¨It wasn´t one of those neon signs, where the ¨t¨could have just gone out. There was no blank space to indicate that the ¨t¨had fallen off. I suppose it´s possible that the painter ran out of paint or that the owner was so cheap he decided to forego the ¨t¨in hopes that the general public would get the idea. I´m not exactly what you would call the ¨general public,¨and needless to say, I didn´t get the idea. I was, however, entertained by the prospect of searching for it, so I continued along a path of logic, which, precisely because it was my path of logic, hastily veared away from the trend of orthodox interpretation in favor of more spontaneous and creative solutions.

Let us begin with the word ¨mar.¨Sea. There´s nothing gay about the sea. Not at first glance, that is. If we consider the element of water, we´ll notice that it is the only one of the four essential elements that is drawn to its own kind. Water flows over earth, through air and, at times, through fire, but constantly seeks more water. Streams go to rivers, rivers to the sea, and the seas and oceans are all connected, endlessly exchanging vapors in what I guess you could call the world´s biggest orgy! What´s more, the sea has been, throughout history, depicted as female. So if water is homosexual, then that makes the sea a big, salty lesbian!