When the father and kids next door were moving in, we exchanged some friendly conversations with the dad. But lately this has changed. It happened shortly after the dad tried to establish Gi's and mine relationship to one another by asking if we were sisters, cousins and as last option if I was Gi's mother. Since then, the dad turns his back to us whenever he sits on the porch.

The other day when i was on the porch, the neighbor kids came over and were hanging out around me when their dad came out, glared at me and then yelled at them "I told you not to go over there! Get back in the house! There are no kids there, you shouldn't be hanging out with adults!"

Now every time we come out of the house, the littlest kids run out yelling mine or Gi's name to say hi to us and pretty soon we hear their dad yell from inside, "Don't go over there! Get in here!"

He barely looks at us or says "hello," so I never get a chance to talk to him. Even when he yelled at the kids in my presence, he looked right through me like i was glass.

I feel awkward because the kids run over to say hi and want to talk almost every time I come home or leave the house. At first I thought maybe he didn't want them to bother us, but it doesn't seem so now. Then I thought maybe he didn't trust white people and that upset me, but I thought that I could just be nice and he'd get over it.

Di said it's obvious -- two white women living together, no kids. He figured out you're queer and he's probably freaking out that he just moved his family next to two queers.

I was pretty upset when the possibility of this finally sunk in.

I was trying to think of my dissertation this morning, but the thought kept creeping into my head "who the fuck am i to be an authority on the fucking Central District?"

then on a bike ride to clear my head, i thought, maybe this is a lesson in empathy.