Brian and Robert

This post is a tribute to the phan group Brian and Robert, the collection of homophans who love Phish.  Apparently, sexual orientation is related to the way these folks absorb music.  I have nothing against homosexuality.  Its probably awesome.  Who fucking cares.  My issue here is that its adding another level of legitimacy to the phishosphere that just seems unnecessary.  Why cant we just be normal people who really like a certain band?  Why do we need to extend a level of complexity to the Phish reality that is based on absolutely nothing.  There should be no difference between straight fans and gay ones, because in the end they are both just upper-middle class males from New England colleges who enjoy recreational drugs.  Who they have sex with is wholly unrelated to my concert experience.  Perhaps Brian and Robert exists to offer support to those phans who are spurned by the gay community, and opposed to the Phish community.  This spurning I speak of would likely be the result of a non-phan Gay realizing how Phish fans are dressed, and thus spurning all homophans for wearing patchwork pants, ironic T-shirts(hipster phan assholes), Birkenstocks, or whatever(lets face it, you all look like retards).

Of course I realize that there are reasons to have groups like this.  The main one being that gay fans may feel threatened by the 20% or so of the attending audience who look and act like they are all members of the Duke lacrosse team.  This is a valid point.  Furthermore, while I think the existence of groups like Brian and Robert are a little silly, I have no hatred towards their members.  However, to the 5000 members of the Duke lacrosse team present at every show, I fucking hate you.

In addition, lest I end this post without making it clear I am not a homophobe, let me totally clear: as far as Gays at phish shows go, I would take 30,000 members of Brian and Robert over 1000 of the severely repressed yet clearly gay drunk broseph Yankee fans from Colgate who put their arms around eachother so they can sing along to Character Zero and Mexican Cousin.  Those guys I do hate.