Boot.

I do not like this punchline at all. Another one where I tried ten versions and could not let go of the last panel - I wanted it to be shocking, but when you throw that word down, having the character do anything but react appalled really limits what joke you can do.

The symptom of being gay in San Francisco in 2000 and thirty and just out of grad school and newly married is that EVERY.SINGLE.THING. was a huge, huge deal. The strip got a little preachy around this time, and not always in a funny way. This one got complaints about printing a slur in what was supposed to be a funny comic strip, and I got to write an editorial about it which was fun. It's good to see how dated this looks - these days the manager would be fired instead of Tad. Progress?