Here I am, a day late and a dollar short again, but I figure that I ought to jump in--

In case you haven't figured it out, Bobert, P-Vine's friend is trying to be herself in a world that doesn't really very much like people who are as different as she is--

James Brown said, "It's A Man's World"--It is, and not in a good way.

Men have a nasty tendency to expect that woman are there to wait on them, and that women's needs, interests, and friendships are not as important as getting the beer from the fridge to the couch--women have to deal with it all the time.

As young, longhaired, blues playing, pot tokin', left leaning hippies, we knew that we weren't what Time Magazine and the Reader's Digest said we were, and "The Man" just didn't understand--we did our best to conduct our lives out of line of sight, cause we knew it made us harder to use for be target practice. Same for Gay and Lesbian folks. Especially in and those beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains.

I hate to tell you this, Bobby, but starting out in this situation, you were sounding a bit like "The Man"--rather than being trusting and accepting, or even just getting to know the person before you came to a conclusion, you've been leaning toward "the uncomfortable feeling", based on labels and hair styles, and such things.

My neighbors, the right-leaning "Christian" home schoolers, told me, "I just have a funny feeling about Obama." Sometimes we have to question our "feelings", rather than counting emails--

Now that you've met the person in question, you're starting to get to know the person, which is really the only way to find out what they're about--and that's about all there is to it.