Hospitality, etiquette, rules of conduct, language
While some websites feel the need to categorize us into outdated and trite groupings, it is our feeling here that all gay men fall into two sects—those who are gentlemen and those who have no manners. Lots of magazines spend time telling people that the way to being a gentlemen is through $300 shoes, six-pack abs, and vacations in far off locations, when the truth is it all comes down to how you behave.
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Odd Couple | Happy Monday, Gents. Is there a better way to kick off the week than with two old, bejeweled broads? Frankly, there are worse women to emulate. I know what what you’re thinking. “This is really sad.” But it’s not. Give the girls a chance. Promise. Socialites, Royce and Marilyn straddle the line between tragedy and fabulousness in a way we haven’t seen since we last caught up with Ab Fab’s Patsy and Eddie or the women of Grey Gardens.
“I’m here to protect my friends.” This is the statement that Lady Gaga made to Corey Johnson on Sunday for Towleroad.com.
“I feel that homophobia runs rampant in the music industry. Artists are allowed to speak openly in a hateful way, in a homophobic way, in a misogynistic way, and the press does not challenge them. I’m going to be taking a very strong stance against that. And I’m an artist that refuses to accept that behavior.”
Does this interview/stance change your perception of Gaga as a pop singer? At least, does it change your mind about her as a coherent speaker?
YouTuber SubmarinerAndroid says:
I dismissed Lady Gaga for months after she emerged, as just another fame-whore girl with some dance songs. But she really is operating on a higher level than most of her competition. The songs have grown on me, and so has she. She takes risks, she’s fun, she’s real, and she’s fabulous.
There can be no question that we live in tumultuous times with a society seemingly on the cusp of widespread proliferation of the civil rights of the GLBT community.
Certainly the press and blogosphere is rife with daily news of the push and pull of issues such as gay marriage or civil unions. But fortunately this is not going to be one those diatribes. What has received far less attention it seems to this writer is a discourse about the inner lives of gay men or perhaps men in general and the fear and anxiety that pervades it.
We don’t like to talk about our fears, particularly in a city like New York where fear is smelt 10 blocks away, emanating through the garbage and the dog pee evaporating on a warm summer afternoon. Of course our fear manifests into a multitude of forms. There are our neuroses about our appearance, our bodies, friendships, careers and our relationships or more pertinently, the lack thereof. More importantly there exists a profound uncertainty about our place in society. In a culture that fetishizes success, power, invulnerability and all over fabulousness, where does the gay man fit in? Are we a tribe? Do we have something that we can call a collective culture? Do we even talk in depth about the common narratives of our lives beyond that which only concerns our own problems and insecurities?
Perhaps a problem that we face is the fact that as a minority, we exhibit such a high degree of heterogeneity, not only in terms of race, demographics and education but also the way in which we manifest our homosexuality. So beyond large unifying civil rights issues in which we face oppression from a common enemy, what else is relevant?
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Let’s just get it out there: Sheree Whitfield has a penis growing out of her armpit. Whew, I feel much better now having sublimated my disgust by sharing this with all of you.
While watching the beginning of the ‘Scrambled Egos‘ episode of the Real Housewives of Atlanta, I was admiring Sheree’s hot bod during her workout with Cliff until I noticed extra meatflaps dangling from her armpits. I gasped in horror, put it on pause, and was mesmerized. How could anyone have such large, vomitous, genitalia-shaped excrescence? She may have a youthful looking face thanks to a talented plastic surgeon, but he apparently redeposited all of those facial wrinkles in her armpits. That girl needs a tuck and lift to circumcise those pits.
DRAGSCRIMINATION // Last week the Advocate released a story about a New York City drag queen who was poorly treated at a taping of the Wendy Williams Show.
According to the article, the controversy arose when Erickatoure Aviance was informed that she could not sit in the audience due to show’s “no costume” policy. While she was eventually allowed in, she was told not to ask “Hot Topic” questions and placed in the periphery of the audience behind a tall man.
The minor gay blogosphere uproar that followed brought many questions, accusations and general shadiness to the table about Wendy Williams, but also the intentions of Ms. Aviance.
Being very familiar with this very interesting queen (FULL DISCLOSURE: we are good friends), the timing of this incident is practically serendipitous (more on that later) and opens up a dialogue on gender politics, a hot topic at the moment.
But first I think some background is warranted.
A gay man who grew up in Portsmouth, NH, Ericka came to New York in 1999 to study ballet and modern dance at the prestigious Tisch school at NYU. Entranced by NYC’s legendary nightlife scene, she “wanted to be one of the pretty people, the glitterati who don’t wait on line or pay for drinks,” as I learned in a previous interview. She went on to work at places like Tunnel, Twilo and Exit while they still existed.
But it was her love for fashion and personal expression (can you find the word “couture” in her name?) that formed Ericka’s persona of today: a New York City queen who dresses in outfits of her own styling; design that reaches for the sui generis in women’s fashion.
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Perhaps you came to New York from your little nothing town out in the middle of nowhere — but I promise you — one month of city living and you realize that the standards that got you laid back in Podunk do not apply in the giant phallus shaped island of Manhattan (or the island’s balls otherwise known as Brooklyn).
There’s skinny. And then there’s New York skinny.
New York standards of thin are much higher than say Atlanta or Chicago or San Francisco — especially among gay men. I challenge you to visit a gay bar in Nashville or Austin or Seattle, and you’ll immediately see the difference. The soft bellies, the muffin tops, the chubby cheeks — the physical manifestations of modern everyday life — these flaws, aren’t as easily overlooked in a city where models, actors, models who want to be actors, and actors who were once models roam the streets freely among normals like you and me.
I know what you’re thinking. This is just some superficial bullshit. Hear me out.
Make a list of the boys you’ve hooked up with. And then compare that list with the boys you hooked up with before you moved to New York. Then compare your own body.
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Cole Escola suggests keeping your mouth closed.
FOOT IN MOUTH DISEASE — It’s party season in New York. And you can literally feel the energy in the air. Fire Island is flaming, sidewalk cafes are brimming, rooftop parties are overflowing — and everybody is hooking up left and right. So here’s some advice for all of my young, drunken homos. Unless, the person you’re addressing is married to you on Facebook or calls himself/herself your BFF in public (!!), don’t ask the following 3 questions in social conversation. It’s just rude. Wait until you’re sitting one on one. And even then, bite your tongue grrl — take if from someone whose foot is permanently lodged in his mouth. Antonio Cerna and Blair Bryant discuss.
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DINNER TABLE TALK | Tonight, at dinner parties across the city, gays will gather around a wine-clad dinner table to discuss Spitzer’s pathetic sex life, David Archuleta, Hill-Boma, Frank Rich, and among other things, the latest on-line video phenom.
Image from X-TUBE video
Which brings up the question: “What did homos talk about before YouTube?” Anymore at friend’s homes, inevitably during the middle of dinner someone will exclaim, “You haven’t seen that video?” And the iBook or MacBook or PowerBook will appear and all the guests and I will huddle around the screen to watch and be the first to see.
Before sounding the alarms that the end of dinner table conversation if fast approaching, think of it this way–dinner parties just got more interactive. More and more our actual lives mirror our virtual lives and activities. The first thing I do in the morning is check my email and read the latest headlines on NYTimes.com or the BBC. The last thing I do, is log out of my xtube.com account. Simple as that. We live in a virtual flux.
At a recent dinner party in Gramercy, I watched blushingly (if not excitedly) at a now famous X-tube video of a young boy sitting on a dildo, which was strapped (gasp) to a washing machine. Spin cycle much? The uncomfortable laughter in the room concealed a sense that dinner parties will never be the same again. Eat your heart out Oscar Wilde.
Two weeks later, at a different party on the upper-west side, the same video was mentioned–the laptops came out–and same awkward laughter resurfaced. The viral video is anything if not awkward making. From Chocolate Rain to Two Girls and One Cup (NSFW) to Amy Poehler as Christian Siriano/Hillary Clinton–the more uncomfortable or observant the video the more we want to watch it–and force our friends to watch it too.
Maybe modern gay men have become lazy–or at least passive–instead of imagining a story, instead of creating a visual image in our minds, we prefer to see it–as it was. We’ve become conversational bottoms and the virtual video is our idiomatic top.
