2011-03-22 - 2:13 p.m.

Last night, waiting for the Indian food to get cooked, I stopped into the neighborhood grocery store. It's not a very good store, but nothing much else was open, and so I grabbed a plastic basket and dropped in some seltzer water, a bottle of orange juice, and a rubber-band-wrapped bunch of green onions. I was just killing time. "Eddie's will be closing now," a woman's voice crackled over the public-address system. Please come to the registers. Have a great night."

I stopped at the ice cream freezer, for a look. Already standing there was a short, white-haired man I recognized as the deli-counter guy. He studied the Ben & Jerry's for a moment.

A cashier, a young man with a beard, shouted to the deli guy. "Ice cream and a Judy marathon?" The cashier was clearly gay. I live in a part of town with a lot of gay people.

"Huh?" the deli guy said.

"The ice cream. It's for a Judy Garland marathon, right?"

And the deli guy smiled a small smile, shook his head, and selected a pint of ice cream.

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