"Do you think you would be in a situation where you would want to rent to own?" asked the man on the other end of the telephone. He had a whiskey-tinged voice that made me think he was somewhere in his sixties.
"The rent-to-own situation is something you would have to talk to my roommate about," I said. "She's the one who might be interested in doing something like that."
After all of our walking around downtown St. Petersburg, my straight female friend Roach and I had found a few places that we liked and one that we really liked. I had written down the phone number for the vacant apartment, and during the middle of the week, I called to find out about the price.
"I'll tell her to give you a call or send an e-mail about the rent-to-own situation," I said.
"OK, but just since, you know, you said 'her,' I was wondering if you two were together, dating," he said. "I mean, it doesn't matter either way or anything."
My knee-jerk reaction was to make a bad joke about playing for different teams or how we weren't exactly Prince William and Catherine Middleton, but I stopped myself.
What if he doesn’t want to rent this place to a queer?
This article appears in May 26 – Jun 1, 2011.