Lazy boy.

In geometry class, my favorite thing was the statement:

A square is always a rhombus, but a rhombus is not always a square.

I remember smiling and drawing a box around this sentence when I wrote it in my notebook. I liked the truth and the poetry of it. Graceful and absolute.

Being the nerdy boy I was, I brought up this sentence with my friends later in the day. To my complete surprise, they didn't even understand it.

"A square is always a rhombus, but a rhombus is not always a square? What? I'm confused," they said.

I tried to explain. "Er, well, you can't really say it any more plainly. A square is always a rhombus, because, you know, a rhombus is a quadrilateral with four equal sides. But a rhombus isn't necessarily a square, because it could be, like, a parallelogram. So...a square is always a rhombus, but a rhombus is not always a square."

Blank stares.

It recently hit me that this square/rhombus relationship -- and the fact that a lot of people don't get it -- applies to a lot of different things.

Let's take the gays. (Why not?)

For instance:

If you solicit sex from strangers in a public restroom, you're gay. But not all gay people solicit sex from strangers in public restrooms.

Or:

If you hate gays, you're a Republican. And probably gay. But not all Republicans hate gays.

(I'm pretty sure about that last one. Or, hopeful, at least.)

I've always found the concept of stereotypes interesting. Because, usually, stereotypes have their origins in some sort of truth, but, per the law of Squares and Rhombuses (Rhombi?) a particular truth is not always -- and, perhaps, is never -- a general truth. That's what makes us humans the wonderfully, frustratingly idiosyncratic creatures we are.

Along those lines, I've decided that I'm part of a new stereotype: the Lazy Gay.

This realization came about the other night, while I was at a bar with a few friends. It was a gay night at a not-usually-gay bar in Brooklyn. The bar was rectangular, a long, narrow space with the bar on the left side, a good deal of comfy couches on the right side, and a minimal alleyway of space in between.

The evening progressed with something of a Gay Bell Curve. When we arrived, the crowd was pretty mixed, and the soundtrack was your typical Brooklyn indie-band kind of thing. Suddenly, an hour in, I noticed that there were lots of gays and songs by the Pussycat Dolls. Then, later, the gays left and the indie-bands returned.

Now, my friends and I spent the entire evening with our beers, sitting in the comfy couch area. At the height of the Pussycat Doll portion of the evening, we noticed that, while the bar was fairly crowded, we were literally the only ones sitting on the couches. The couches took up most of the bar space, so this meant that everyone was standing, herded together in the little room there was next to the bar.

Okay, if there's ever a choice between sitting on a couch and not sitting on a couch, I'm sitting on a couch. And so I dubbed myself a Lazy Gay.

This, too, is a handy phrase for many situations:

"Ooh, Adam, I dig the rugged look. You're bringing sexy back. Why the stubble?"

"Meh, didn't feel like shaving. Lazy Gay."

"Hey, Adam, have you had a chance to write that new song for our eagerly anticipated new musical?"

"Sorry...Lazy Gay."

"Dude, your apartment's a mess."

"Lazy Gay."

I decided that I should start a bar night where there's no option but to sit on couches and have beer brought to you. I shall call it La-Z-Boy.

Hell, you can even pay me a $5 cover and come sit on my couch, drink beer and watch TV. Then I won't even have to leave my apartment.

The moral of all this, I suppose, is that people, like quadrilaterals, are particular creatures. There are trapezoids and rectangles; there are Lazy Gays and Gays Who Like To Stand Up. There's no point in letting generalities guide your life, because they probably won't apply. Life deals in specifics.

So, the next time you meet a rhombus, don't immediately assume he or she is a square. The only way to find out is to measure them and see if their angles are, in fact, 90-degrees.