WeHolloween

New Rule: If you voted FOR Proposition 8, you don’t get to come to West Hollywood for the big gay carnival and street festival.

Every year, WeHo throws one of the world’s largest Halloween parties.  Over 400k people attended this year’s festivities.  Many of the men and women who come to the event are straight people who don’t wear costumes and gawk at gay people.  I hate the boulevard party, ‘cuz the straight-eyes-on-queer-guys mentality makes me feel like I’m an animal at the zoo, or an exhibit at Big Gay Al’s Jurassic Park.  Many of the visitors stand mouth agape and crassly point at gay people kissing or holding hands.  Yes, I said POINT, as in stick their index fingers in the direction of gay people and shake their head from side to side, as if they can’t believe ACTUAL gay people exist and perform ACTUAL gay behaviors.

Media portrayals of gay people are incongruous with the lived experiences of my brethren, so let me clear up three misconceptions for the all the gawkers and pointers.

Misconception #1: The West Hollywood featured in the reboot of Melrose Place is nothing like West Hollywood.  IRL West Hollywood is home to TONS of gay people.  And when I say “gay people,” I don’t mean one hot blonde female who tongue kisses another woman at the end of a series premiere.  The gay people who live IRL West Hollywood have no desire to satiate your warped lesbian fantasy that features two scorching straight women finger fucking one another in a fire-engine-red Porsche.

Misconception #2: Gay people are not like characters from Will and Grace.  Gay people that you see at our festival do things like kiss and fuck members of the same sex.  We don’t disappear into a commercial break the second you might feel any homophobic discomfort.

Misconception #3: Gay guys are not your sidekicks.  This isn’t an episode of Sex and the City.  You’re not Carrie and we aren’t your collective Stanford.  Straight women who come to gay bars should understand that queer men aren’t secondary characters in the gay bar episode of their life narrative.  If you accidentally spill your drink on a gay guy, you should immediately run to the bar, grab napkins, and offer to clean up the mess you’ve made.  If you burn a hole in a gay guy’s clothes with your cigarette, you should offer to cut them a check for the damage you’ve caused.  And don’t expect to cut in line to use the restroom.  Your vagina isn’t Fubar’s answer to a Disneyworld Fast Pass.  While we’re on the subject, understand that most gay bar bathrooms are, in fact, unisex.  Don’t act shocked or put out that men use the door marked “women”; the symbol on the door also doesn’t transform your vagina into a one of those aforementioned Fast Pass cards.

Philosophical Perspectives: A Cheat Sheet

I spent countless hours in graduate school trying to distinguish between the four worldviews that shape understandings of and conversations about truth, being, knowledge and power; these perspectives include modernism, postmodernism, structuralism and poststructuralism.  My professors routinely told me that each philosophical perspective was too complex to explain in a single class period; each school of thought, after all, comprises nuanced, complicated treatises that defy tidy summarization.  TRUE DAT! Many basic conversations that might help students distinguish between the movements unfortunately ended with the “It’s complicated!” (and not in a Denise Richards way) refrain.  Understanding one of these worldviews requires a basic knowledge of all four, because rudimentary understandings each movement are best acquired when the four perspectives are placed next to one another.  I have devised a cheat sheet that I plan to start using in my rhetorical theory seminar.  Any one-page matrix that distinguishes between the four movements will be partial and the characteristics will be woefully under-explained.  The display is intended to start (rather than end) conversations about modernism, postmodernism, structuralism, and poststructuralism.  I’d like to refine the table, so feel free to visit me on Facebook and share your ideas about the display.

Modernism	Focus shifts from religious, faith-based truth to objective, rational, logical means to gain knowledge. Belief in an objective Truth that can be uncovered and discovered via inductive reasoning. Belief in a coherent worldview. Focus on the benefits of progress.
Postmodernism	Belief in multiple, subjective, competing, fragmentary truths that are constructed, not discovered.  Contradiction and ambiguity are acknowledged and celebrated. Focus on newer forms of media, like TV and internet. “Progress” narratives are used to justify cultural domination. Historical, religious, and other cultural discourses are about power, not truth. Discontinuity over unification (e.g., of the subject). Emphasizes how meaning is INTERconnected, INTERtextual, and INTERreferential.
Structuralism	Studies a field as a complex system of interrelated parts. 6 primary themes: 1) All systems have structures. Structures pave the way for shared meaning.  Meaning is in fact derived from relationships (i.e., functional differences) established by structures (e.g., a quarter is more than a penny and is equal to two dimes and a nickel).  2) Structure determines the positions of a system’s parts.  3) Focus on co-existence of elements, not change.  4) Structures reveal the “real” behind a façade. 5) Structures pre-date individuals, so people are more products of structures than structures are products of people. 6) Anti-humanistic insofar as the human subject is no longer central and is replaced by (or merely a product of) language structures.
Post-structuralism	3 D’s, 1 D: Difference= difference and deferral; meaning is trapped in a constant state of differences and infinitely deferred or suspended. 3 D’s, 2 D: Destabilizing the author: Reader perception trumps author’s intended meaning. 3 D’s, 3 D: Deconstruction: focus on hierarchical binary oppositions (e.g., male/female and speech/writing).  Deconstruct the set of assumptions that establishes one as superior to the other. Meanings are best (though never fully) apprehended through disruption, revaluation, and transformation of settled truths (e.g., identity and history). Individuals comprise and are constituted by conflicting knowledge claims/discourses.

October 2K9 Favorite Things

• “HOARDERS”: I am fittingly obsessed with A & E’s “Hoarders,” a program that chronicles people who compulsively purchase junk and obsessively cling to the figurative and literal trash they amass. Last night’s re-run featured a woman named Linda, who, because of a divorce, was being forced out of her home. BTW, Linda’s husband divorced her because he couldn’t spend another day living amid MOUNTAINS of old hamburger wrappers, sticky Big Gulp cups, and thrift store pick-overs. When Linda’s son pressures her to throw away an old 10-speed bike that’s been rusting and rotting away in the garage, Linda replies, “No, it’s a Schwinn! I can sell it!” He tries to convince her that nobody’s gonna’ buy a 1980 Schwinn 10-speed. “Keep it!” she screams. “Put it in the KEEP pile!” This. Show. Is. Heaven. My friend Beth Crosby and I are in a competition to see who can hoard the most by Sunday. Beth’s a fantastic sketch comedy actress, whose internet fame is booming. Beth may be a lot funnier than me, but I’m determined to out-hoard her. She may be days away from her big “SNL” break; but I’m gonna’ get the “Hoarders” gig; and when I get it, we’ll see who has the last laugh.

• YEAST RADIO: I recently revisited one of my favorite digital haunts, Yeast Radio, an always-entertaining podcast hosted by the fabulously brash Madge Weinstein (aka Richard Bluestein). Bluestein is the John Waters of podcasting and one of the key people responsible for discovering and popularizing Fox and the City. If you’d like to hear us interact, visit Yeast Radio and check out episode number 967. We discuss numerous topics, ranging from sexual acts of “space docking” to the “str8-acting” gay man paradox. BTW, if you haven’t already done so, nominate Fox and the City (foxinthecity.libsyn.com/rss) for Best Produced and Best LGBT podcast. Don’t nominate the show in anything but those two categories; nominations in more than these 2 categories will result in a thrown-out vote.

• IGOOGLE: I have recently discovered the awesomeness of igooge.com. igoogle.com allows gmail users to customize and personalize their own “home” site (not to be confused with a homepage). My igoogle site contains a preview of my gmail, outline of top news stories, to-do list, 5-day weather forecast, and variety of fun games. If you decide to start using the interface, be sure to play “Who has the biggest brain?” a fun, 4-part quiz that measures your intellect and compares it against your friends’. Conversely, I don’t understand all the Google Wave hype.  Wave’s currently in limited, invite-only preview. The problem with Wave is that the invites have been so exclusive that those of us who managed to get on the server have very few people with whom to interact. What’s the point of cutting-edge digital interaction when there’s nobody to talk to? Fail!

• KATHY GRIFFIN’S OFFICIAL BOOK CLUB SELECTION: I adored reading Kathy’s memoir. Her unique voice resonates throughout the gripping prose. My measure of a good celebrity autobiography is whether or not I can hear the author’s voice when I read. Not one sentence of this book escapes Griffin’s sublime cadence and intonation. I was particularly fond of the chapters where she narrated awkward and heartbreaking experiences with a child-molesting brother; reflected on the failed mechanics of her ill-fated marriage; and humorously recounted Andy Dick assaulting a university audience in Florida. The only lame part of the book includes a boring assortment of email exchanges between Griffin and Steve Wozniak. Overall, Kathy’s tale is a must-read for anyone who lives in my sexual and/or geographical neighborhood.

• EPISODES OF THE ORIGINAL “MELROSE PLACE”: I am perhaps one of the biggest fans of the old “Melrose Place.”  I’ve seen every episode of the first 5½ seasons four times and plan to buy the remaining 2½ seasons the minute they hit store shelves. I was obsessed with this show when it first aired and spent hours daydreaming of what it would be like to walk in Amanda Woodward’s heels (and Keds). Out of a profound sense of obligation, I’ve seen every episode of the show’s shitty CW reboot. The writing on the new show is ABSOLUTELY HORRENDOUS. First, you don’t START the series with a murder. You start with trite, everyday problems and spend the first two seasons WORKING UP to murder. Second, your bitchy vixen shouldn’t try so hard to be a bitchy vixen. Take a page out of the original MP playbook and make her cutting but misunderstood. Third, get rid of the “Tuesdays are a bitch” slogan in your ads. The original show used “Mondays are a bitch” as a tag and it worked because Mondays are notoriously difficult days. “Tuesdays are a bitch” only makes sense as an allusion; an allusion that ultimately fails because the reference flies over the heads of the new show’s younger target audience. Fourth, it’s hard to construct empathy for the character you’ve pushed into prostitution when all her johns look like they’ve fallen dick-first out of an Armani ad. When Sydney was a whore, she had to screw old, ugly, fat guys for her rent.  We all felt sympathy for Sydney because most of us related to screwing old, ugly fat guys and feeling really gross and remorseful the minute the dirty condom hit the floor.   Finally, the old show may have been over-the-top but at least the apartments were realistic interpretations of where people live in my neighborhood. NONE of the settings look the slightest bit real, nor do they look ANYTHING like the original apartments. I’m willing to suspend my disbelief and assume the building went through major renovations but the new building’s blueprint and basic architecture doesn’t even resemble the original. And the sunlight looks so fucking artificial! Throw me a bone. Give me something—ANYTHING—to make me believe even a semblance of the narrative and setting COULD BE real. I fear that even the upcoming addition of Heather Locklear won’t be enough to save this sinking ship. They should have brought back and focused on the original cast. They should have made an ADULT soap. Keep in mind, the most popular primetime soaps in US TV history (e.g., Dallas and Dynasty) featured ADULTS, not 20-something slackers and art thieves (so realistic!). Oh, and, given that they live in WEST HOLLYWOOD in the MIDST of the prop-8 era, could we get AT LEAST one major gay male character? Obama’s speech to the HRC had more heart and conviction than this sad parody of the real thing.  At least I have the old show to warm my heart each night.  15 years after the original first aired and it’s still one of my favorite things.

the eyes have it

I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard colleagues and students say, “I saw you walking from one class to the next and you totally ignored me.” Just yesterday, one of my favorite Gender and Communication students told me that he tried to say hello to me a couple of hours before class started and I acted like he was invisible. “I turned to my friend,” he explained, “and asked, ‘Did he see me or was he focused on something else?’”

I know exactly when this behavior began. My freshman and sophomore years of high school were particularly difficult. Feminine manners of speech and movement made me a walking bullseye, a perfect target for the razor-sharp darts of homophobia that regularly flew across the hallways of Cy Fair High School. While most students welcomed bells that signaled the end of each class period, I feared them. Exiting classrooms meant entering halls, where countless peers yelled slurs like, “Hey, faggot!” “Hey, faggot!” was like my “Hello, Dolly!”

I developed elaborate strategies for navigating the common areas of my school. I kept my head down and never looked people in the eye, which must have been a tactic I learned while watching a television farmer from Australia interact with wild boars. “If you lock eyes with the pig, the beast’ll think you’re challenging it to a death match. Beware of angry, feral swine, especially charging male pigs and their puncturing husks.”

Years of intimidation and emotional abuse left their mark. Strategies devised to keep me safe in high school were internalized and now significantly inhibit my ability to communicate with people I enjoy. Yesterday, I finally made the connection between the repeated complaints I receive about ignoring people in halls and my experiences in high school.

This internalized behavior may also explain why I automatically turn the other cheek when I see a man at the gym or at a bar to whom I’m attracted. In high school, I constructed detailed sexual fantasies about many of the young men who brutalized me. I associated and to some extent continue to associate physical attraction with name-calling and spitballs.

My friend Peter recently told me that he used to have a hard time looking at men he found attractive. “Help me!” I cried. “I have that problem now and I know it’s fucking up my dating life.” Peter suggested that I treat eye contact like a game. “Make the other guy be the first to look away,” he guided. I love competition! In an effort to un-learn behavior I habituated in high school, I’m gonna’ take Peter’s advice and have Western-style stare-downs at the gym and bars. I’m gonna’ reclaim dignity that was stolen from me in the 9th grade! Look out world, I’ve got EYES and words sharper than husks of feral pigs.

BTW, happy birthday to Peter! Thanks for the fantastic advice. Oh, and, dear reader, if you’re a fan of Friday the 13th, Peter wrote this braziliant book. Peter’s only fault is thinking that he can out-bottom the king of bottoms.

yearbooks

Many moons before I was the sexy, sweaty man in this photo:

…I was a painfully awkward kid growing up in Texas.  Growing up gay in the AIDS ‘80s wasn’t a picnic.  In the 6^th grade, I did all I could to “pass” as straight.   I dated a number of 8^th grade girls and even stuck a finger in a place it never dared venture before (or after).  Here’s my 6^th grade yearbook photo:

By the end of the 1987-1988 school year, I began to explore my queer potential.  I even queered my copy of the school yearbook.  Queering is the rhetorical act of locating and actively constructing queer potential in texts otherwise coded and read as hetero-textual.  My acts of queering included exercises in homoerotic subtitling, like this:

I also scribbled sexually explicit drawings over various yearbook photos.  Perez Hilton’s hardly a groundbreaking rhetor.  Check out my handiwork, circa 1988:

My awkward stage kicked in when I entered the 7^th grade.  I styled and gel-lacquered my hair like I was one of the fiercest Latinas at Labay Junior High.  Check out the transformation:

Here’s a picture of me in the 7^th grade interacting with some of my Labay cohorts.  I think I may be the only person in the photo who escaped Texas.

My exercises in gender ambiguity hit full-blown trannie in the 8^th grade.  A white headband kept my golden forelock from hanging over my eyes.  People who didn’t know me regularly confused me for a girl.  When I auditioned for the High School of Performing Arts, they even handed me a cold reading for a girl character.  Check out my trannie splendor:

9^th grade was a miserable time.  I didn’t purchase a yearbook my freshman year, so I’m gonna’ skip ahead to 10^th grade, the academic year I became a master debater and dyed my hair black.

The guy to the left of me in the following picture is named J.R. McAfoose.  J.R. was an underwhelming thespian who made a number of homophobic comments detailing how my “faggoty gay lisp” ruined a play he didn’t have the chops to be cast in.  He made these comments on a play critique that was turned into our theatre teacher.  He was, to my knowledge, never disciplined for his words, nor was he called out for his actions.  The powers of institutionalized homophobia never cease to amaze me.

Here I am in the 11^th grade.  I’m still rocking gender ambiguity but my peers have started treating me like a human being.  In my latest autoethnography, “Tales of a Fighting Bobat,” I chronicle how theatre and public speaking provided safe spaces for me to experiment with homosocial possibilities and gain the respect of my classmates.

The following photo features my friend Maggie and me.  I LOVE this picture because it so beautifully sums up our friendship.  Maggie and I reconnected when I lived in Austin.  I even lived with her for a short time.  Aren’t we two beautiful girls?

Here I am with Candice Edwards (now Koern).  Candice still teaches theatre at Cy Fair.  I owe so much to this incredible woman.  Candice gave me the freedom to dress in drag and perform off-color monologues for her classes.  I was, in return, a total monster to her.  My junior year, I refused to perform in UIL one-act play competition (ON THE DAY OF THE COMPETITION) after I discovered somebody (Mark Taylor) stole my cigarettes and threw them away.  I spent the better part of my early years hurting the people I loved the most.

The next photo features high school junior Ragan Fox, king of the debate team, and his whack pack of disciples.  I LOVE the cultural diversity of our team: black, white, gay, straight, fat, skinny, nerd, AND geek.

Seniors at Cy Fair HS are expected to have professional portraits made.  I skipped out on THAT tradition.  Hell, I was too busy acting in plays and participating in debate competitions.  The next photo is of my HS and college best friend Brad Stephens and me. Somebody offstage must have asked me how many guys in the theatre department Brad had hooked up with.  My nonverbal response is “10”; I ran out of fingers.

My senior year, the theatre kids poached two seats on the homecoming court.  I was nominated for king and my drama pal Kara Racer was nominated for queen.  This marks a time that my disruptions of heteronormativity became markedly more positive and productive.

I didn’t win homecoming king but my peers voted me “most unique boy” of the senior class.  The following photo was taken at the end of my senior year.  I had just started dipping my toes into the warm waters of gay bars.  You can see how early gay identification did wonders for my personal aesthetic.

Supporting Cast

In the movie of my life, these are the supporting characters:

Jayson (above) is one of Ragan’s many doctor friends. Fox collects doctor friends like Freddy Kreuger amasses teenage souls.  The two brains enjoy harmless flirting, booze drinking, and man hunting.  Jayson is one of Ragan’s most vociferous supporters, reminding all that enter their legion of doom that Fox is a doctor, host of a popular podcast, and acclaimed author.  Thank She-ra Ragan found somebody to toot his horn FOR HIM.

Paul (above) is Ragan’s special needs friend but not “special needs” in the Trig Palin sense.  Paul’s “special needs” take the form of odd demands, like sitting in the back row of movie theatres.  Along with brushing hair, this colorist to the stars has multiple talents, including “polishing off turkey,” eating his weight in Fiddle Faddle, KONG Fu, and lifting nuts and bolts at one of the SIX LA gyms to which he belongs.

Cory (above) is a Hollywood screenwriter and Ragan’s long-distance, heterosexual sidekick.  The two met while living in the same 8-unit Bungalow complex in West Hollywood, where they both adopted puppies at the same time and struck up an unexpected and enduring friendship.  After Ragan learned Helms co-wrote the soft-core porn college football film We are Marshall, he immediately began pitching his hetero-kick film ideas, like Gay Rush Hour, Tyler Perry’s Gay, and Gay 9-to-5 (aka 9″ Long, 5″ Round).  Helms currently lives in Orlando, but Fox continues to conduct weekly telephone pitch meetings with his straight buddy.

Peter, aka “bouncy Bracke,” (above) is new to Ragan’s shirtless-in-West Hollywood fold.  Peter enjoys bouncing, Saturday night pre-parties, bouncing, bartending, playing guitar, bounce dancing, shirtless bouncing, rafting, and bouncing.  The two are on a mission to win one of the gay community’s most competitive titles, West Hollywood’s Next Top Bottom.

Mike (above) is one of the reality TV producers responsible for the latest iteration of Brett Michaels’ Cock Rock of Love. Mike actually traveled with the Rock of Love: Slut Bus cast and crew.  You got to love a gay guy whose last name is MOUNT.  Alliteration and toppy goodness! I’ll take 10 Mike Mounts please. Mike and Ragan wax philosophical about one of the year’s most controversial topics: Big Brother 11.

Phil (above) is Ragan’s favorite chocolatier.  Phil is king of the “long weekend” vacation and queen of the “calling it a night” 10:30 p.m. nightclub departure.  Ragan and Phil have been spotted dining poolside at the Beverly Hills Hotel and worshiping oil paintings of Jeff Lewis’ maid, Zoila.  The two men are routinely mistaken for Sheree of The Real Housewives of Atlanta fame.  People are intimated by their success.

And then there’s Maude/then there’s Maude/And then there’s Maude/then there’s Maude!

Peaches and Cream

I “love me some” Real Housewives of Atlanta.  After last night’s premiere, I stumbled around my apartment in an Atlanta-induced haze.  Season 2 started off bigger and badder than any episode in the history of the Housewives franchise.  Even the peaches were brasher! I can just imagine NeNe going up to a producer and saying, “Last season’s peaches were too damn small.  Get me some juicier peaches up in here.  I want my peach to look like a big old titty”; at which point, Sheree cuts her off and declares, “Hell to the no; we want peaches that look like coochies, with a luscious, scrumptious crack right down the middle.”  Lisa, ever the mediator, steps in and suggests, “What about coochie titties? We could have peaches that look like moist, buxom coochie titties!” Problem solved.  Case closed.

I hate putting this idea out into the universe because I KNOW some a-hole is going to steal it; but, over the last year, I’ve been thinking about transcribing episodes of Atlanta and producing and starring in a stage version of the series, in which a cast of gay actors play all the Atlanta divas.  If you live in Los Angeles, have theatre connections, and are interested in this production, please contact me.  The campiest of authors couldn’t come up some of the delicious, over-the-top dialogue and scenarios featured in Atlanta.  I mean, who in their right mind would hold a charity fundraiser FOR a primarily African American audience IN the South, sell prominent black people AT AUCTION, and then ACT SURPRISED when nobody places a bid?

I’ve already decided which housewife I want to play.  Most of you probably think I’m dying to play NeNe.  Nope! With NeNe, what you see is what you get.  I want to dig my drama claws in the most complex, duplicitous member of the Atlanta cast: Sheree, owner of She by Sheree fashion sketches and self-anointed guest of honor at  every party she attends.  On last night’s episode, Sheree attended comic Niecy Nash’s birthday and acted like she had NO CLUE she was at a birthday party.  That bitch’s bony ass spent the ENTIRE NIGHT at the “step and repeat.”  Don’t confuse my “bitch” and “bony ass” description for vitriol.  In the gay community, “bitch” and “bony ass” have SEVERAL meaning and connotations.  “Bitch” is to the gay community what snow is to Eskimos.  Kelly Bensimon (from the New York series) is a bitch, but in a bad way; when I call Kelly a bitch, I mean to say, “She’s a nasty shiksa whore.”  And she is.  When I call Sheree a bitch, I meant to say, “I LOVE Sheree!” I love her sketches, fashion “viewings,” and “fab-a-lus jury.”  Almost every sentence that drips from her lips is poetry.  Take, for example, some of last night’s gems:

“I would love/

to come in/

on a helicopter.”

&

“Who says,/

‘Yo mama’?/

What ever happened/

to customer service?”

Sheree does her best to put on a Valerie Cherish-like front, acting prim and proper when she has the fortitude to control her emotions; but, boy howdy, look out when blood stains her cheeks a rich crimson, ‘cuz muscles tear through her American Apparel shirt with the words “SHE by SHEree” silk screened on it, and the HULK becomes unleashed.  I’d love to be a fly on the wall when she talks to producers after one of her many meltdowns.  I imagine the scene playing out just like an episode of The Comeback.

Sheree: Can you go back and just erase that nonsense.

Producer: Nope.

Sheree: ‘Cuz I don’t think my fans care about me fighting.

Producer: I’ll tell you what, Sheree.  We can’t erase it but we can flag it.

Sheree: Oh, you can flag it? Well, okay.  Flag it then.  Consider that whole scene flagged.  The entire scene.  Can you put two flags on it? You know what, I don’t want to tell you how to do your job.  Just flag it.  Put a flag on it.  That way the story editors will know not to use it.  ‘Cuz it’s flagged.  That whole scene is flagged.

Internet gods, you got me two book deals.  All I ask from you now is to find a theatre producer for my play.  I’m destined to play Sheree.  DESTINED, I say! In fact, from now on, call me Re-ree (pronounced “ree-ray”), owner of Re (pronounced “ree” & short for “retarded”) by Re-ree.

Return of the Jedi

My latest blog entries consist of ideological diatribes.  I’ve surprisingly abandoned personal narrative.  Over the next couple of weeks, I plan to write several “old school” blog entries, in which I chronicle the minutiae of my life.  Don’t get me wrong. I love the political entries I’ve written over the past few months; but I feel stifled by the emergent political themes in my prose.  I miss the days when I wrote about messy sex; tore apart my foes with narrative shit lists; and didn’t care about typos.  The storyteller in me demands a return to form!

Where to begin? Where to begin?

Let’s re-start at Fubar! Fubar is was my favorite West Hollywood haunt.  The bar’s located about 2 miles from the GWEEN madness of Robertson and Santa Monica.

“Gween” is the word I use to describe gay tweens, or vapid gay guys between the ages of 18 and 26.  Some of my breeder readers may believe 26 is too old to be a gween.  Trust me, gay men measure age with a unique and unapologetic ruler.  Many gay men experience arrested development, which causes them to act like teenagers well into their late twenties.  Conversely, gay men over the age of 35 are treated like senior citizens.  My thirty-nine-year-old friend Matthew recently complained about receiving an A. A. R. P. application in the mail.  I laughed and explained to him that most gays receive GAY-A. R. P. paperwork at age 40.

At any rate, Fubar’s a welcome reprieve to those of us who can’t stomach the gay histrionics of Fiesta Cantina, Mickey’s (aka  “Ickies), and the Abbey.  Most people’s favorite Fubar night is one that I avoid: Thursday’s Big Fat Dick.  The host, Mario, spends most of the night at the DJ booth, yelling over too-loud music, having annoying microphone-enhanced conversations with everyone he knows, and screaming at the patrons to “tip the bartender” and “give money to go-go Franco.”  Mario’s latest exercise in ineptitude involves grabbing the microphone and screaming, “Look! It’s my sister! Everyone say ‘hi’ to my sister”; which would be fine if the chick was in fact his sister and he hadn’t seen in her in ages.  The charm wears off when, ten minutes later, Mario runs back to the mic and yelps, “Look! It’s my brother! Everyone, my brother just came in! Look at how hot my brother looks!” Every ten minutes, a new “brother” or “sister” enters the bar and a recycled, eardrum-piercing announcement is made. Moreover, Big Fat Dick has played boxing ring to most of the gay fights I’ve witnessed in West Hollywood. I’ve seen a relatively unassuming and nonviolent patron pulled out of the bar BY HIS FEET, Drag Me to Hell style.

I’m a Friday and Saturday regular at Fubar because those nights feature a range of non-violent men in their thirties and forties. My favorite night is Saturday’s Locker Room, a once-a-month underwear party, where a number of hot, interesting guys get partially nude and dance, pussycat, dance, dance.  I’m also a bit partial to Friday’s Dance, Bitch, an event hosted by the lovely and luminescent Billy Francesca.  Fubar’s a safe haven, a place within walking distance, a dive where I know all the bartenders and adore Burton, Saturday’s door guard.

Lately, I’ve been falling out of love with my home away from home.  The downfall began when I went on a few dates with my Fu-bartender.  Even if you’re into scat, you shouldn’t shit where you eat; or, more aptly stated, you shouldn’t cum where you drink.  Curtis is a nice guy and, even after our dating situation devolved, we continued to be friends.  So why have I grown tired of Fubar? I should make a list.

• I’m sick of paying $6 for dive bar Bud Light, when much nicer establishments (e.g., Here) charge $5 a bottle.  We’re in a recession.  Love thy customer.
• I spend roughly $500 at Fubar every month. Despite my investment, the owner, who is regularly there, has never ONCE introduced himself to me.  I liken bars to restaurants.  If I went to a restaurant EIGHT times a month and the owner made no effort to endear himself to me, I’d take my business elsewhere.
• They have DJ’s but, each week, the same songs play in almost the same order.  The music situation reminds me of my days working at the Macaroni Grill, where, each and every day, they played the same f’ing tape of corporate-approved Italian music.  After two weeks, I could tell customers the twenty songs they’d hear during their meal.
• The bar’s been catering to the lowest common denominator.  On Saturday nights, the TINY back bar area is draped off and almost pitch black.  Tons of disgusting trolls pack the back room and grope any fool stupid enough to venture to what I can only describe as the “dark side.”  Meanwhile, the front room, which houses most of the bar’s square footage, remains empty, because most of the patrons are sardine-stuffed in the back. Cute guys don’t want to stay at the bar ‘cuz the front is too dead for a Saturday night and the back is too dark and too frightening to stomach.  Like a mossy pool to mosquitoes, the “dark side” provides fertile ground for the most undesirable men in WeHo to grow.  And I’m not talking “undesirable” in a snooty, pretentious, GWEEN way; when I say “undesirable,” I mean horror movie SCARY.  There’s a territory war occurring between the front-bar and back-bar patrons; and, sadly, the back of the bar is winning.

Despite all this, I still love Fubar.  I appreciate the friendships I’ve forged there and genuinely look forward to seeing many staff members, including Cody, Burt, and Curtis.  My agitation may simply be a response to the ebb and flow of gay bar consumerism: a bar that’s hot for 4 months will be dead the next 2, hot 5 and dead again for 3.  I look forward to the return of my Jedi, a time when the front-bar guzzlers will storm the beaches and reclaim, re-possess, re-appropriate.

Str8

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I describe as the “str8-acting gay man paradox” in the gay community.  I plan to spend fall and winter of 2009 researching this phenomenon within the context of gay dating organizations.  “Str8 acting,” for many gay men, is a synonym for “masculine.” The comparison narrowly defines masculinity and implies that gay men are inherently feminine, while straight men are inherently masculine.  This mutually enforcing and reductive understanding of BOTH gender AND sexuality dehumanizes gay AND straight men who fail or simply choose not to excessively perform cultural standards of masculinity.

Nowhere does the str8-acting gay man paradox emerge with more ferocity than in gay porn. Gay porn stars, as my friend and mentor Fred Corey posits, display an air of über-heterosexuality that no straight man possesses. One need only visit some of the most popular gay porno websites to witness the extent to which gay identity is paradoxically negated IN THE NAME OF gay desire. BaitBus.com claims to dupe “straight” guys into having sex with gay guys. “Straight” men are lured into a van with the promise of heterosexual sex; blindfolded; and blown by a gay guy. When the blindfold comes off, the “straight” guy yells a number of anti-gay epithets and is only calmed down and willing to resubmit to gay sex after he’s promised a few thousand dollars.  Both men featured in the video are, more than likely, gay; and each elaborate tale of duplicity is obviously staged. Likewise, CorbinFisher.com boasts a site of “mostly STRAIGHT GUYS exploring their sexuality and earning and [sic] education in hot gay action” (original emphasis retained).  SeanCody.com also proudly claims that, “most of the guys [featured on the site] are straight.”

I am intimately familiar with and guilty of falling victim to this paradox. I’ve watched my fair share of videos from BaitBus, CorbinFisher, and SeanCody.  When I’m at a bar, I tend to seek out and flirt with masculine men. My unhealthy obsession started at an early age.  My feminine tendencies made me an easy grade school target for anti-gay bullying. I, on many occasions, dreamt of licking the lips that spit the word “faggot” in my face. When boys punched me, I felt a mix of anger and yearning. I wanted them to touch me again, to push me down on a bed, and hit me in deeper, darker places.  Up until the age of 21, I frequently had rape fantasies, which first emerged in 1984 after I saw Footloose in the movie theatre.  My 8-year-old psyche over-identified with Lori Singer’s character, especially when her hunky cowboy ex-boyfriend punched and kicked her.  I began to associate violence with foreplay. Is this a fucked up form of post-traumatic stress? Was I trying to make sense of boys I found attractive and their emotional and physical brutalization of me? I have talked to many gay men who, like me, romanticize and sexualize heterosexuality and BRUTAL displays of masculinity.  (For the record, I no longer glorify violence or find it remotely sexy.)

I worry that the str8-acting gay paradox and my complicity in its commodification perpetuate a system that denies the presence and contributions of LGBTQ people, whose identities and themes have been systematically omitted from historical, literary, and scientific canons.  Why do so many men (myself included) ask that gay identity be left out of our PORN? Why do we turn an ambivalent cheek when gay men represent a minority of gay bar employees at places like the Abbey and Here? I think the first step we should take, as individuals, involves obliterating the myth that “straight acting” and masculinity are synonyms and INHERENTLY desirable.

“Ragan Foxworthy”

Special Reader’s Advisory: “Might” does not imply you ARE a douche bag.  But, if you’re guilty of more than three things on this list, you probably ARE a douche bag.

1.     If you are NOT Chinese and any inch of your skin is marked with tattoos of Chinese alphabetic characters, you might be a douche bag.

2.     If you wear black trench coats in temperature exceeding 90 degrees, you might be a douche bag.

3.     If you greet people with a sideways, 2-finger peace sign, you are more than likely a douche bag.

4.     If you’re a vegan AND a smoker, you’re probably a douche bag.

5.     If you add a superfluous “U” to words in an effort to sound more European (e.g., “favoUrite”), you might be a douche bag.

6.     If you wear sunglasses INSIDE the gym and WHILE you are working out, you might be (and probably are) a douche bag.

7.     If you post a Crag’s List “Missed Connection” to find a person you’ve already slept with, you’re a douche bag, unless you asked for, received, and lost the person’s number.

8.     If you STILL wear upturned collars on your primary color polo shirts, you might be are a douche bag.

9.     If you have a beard BUT NOT a moustache, you might be a douche bag.

10.  If people frequently refer to you as “juicy” or a “juice head,” you might be a douche bag.

11.  If a chain connects your wallet to a belt loop, you just might be a douche bag.

12.  If the BACK OF YOUR NECK is pierced, you might be a douche bag.

13.  If you’re a Time Warner customer service representative, make no mistake, you ARE a douche bag.

14.  If you own ANYTHING that’s made out of old airplane seatbelts, you might be a douche bag.

15.  If you regularly smoke pot OUT OF AN APPLE, you might be a douche bag.

16.  If you have had more than ten spray tans and are not a Dancing with the Stars competitor, do not pass “Go”; you ARE a douche bag.

17.  If MOST of your CLOSE friends are more than 15 years younger than you, you might be a douche bag.

18.  If you have ever been divorced AND/OR had sex before “tying the knot,” and are against gay marriage because you claim to believe in its sanctity, you ARE a douche bag.

19.  If you own more than two items with a skull and cross bones stitched into the fabric, you might be a douche bag.

20.  If you use the term “douche bag” to describe annoying people and their habits, you’re most likely a douche bag.