Hold the Mustard

One thing that my Asian friends complain about is that men in Chicago aren't into Asians. They feel that there are a lot of stereotypes that work against them and that the men who do want to date them are only fulfilling some fantasy because they enjoyed M.A.S.H. when it was on television... or because the men want an authentic "Oriental" massage. That's when I sit them down and tell them my quirky little story about the mustard bottle.

I once had breakfast in a pancake house in Houston with my friend, Sam, after we stopped dating. He dumped me for someone cuter, but we became friends again after he got dumped by the cuter boy when the cuter boy found someone cuter. Then I thought to myself that gay men pick boyfriends exactly like they pick shoes.

Sam and I sat at the table, deciding what to order, when I asked him why I had such bad luck dating men. He reached toward the condiments and placed a ketchup bottle next to a mustard bottle. He pointed to the half empty ketchup bottle and said "I'm the ketchup. See how everyone likes ketchup? It goes with everything." He then pointed to the mustard bottle and said "you're the mustard. It's just there on the table and collects dust because no one ever wants it."

That comment set into motion a series of events that would test the strength of my resolve. I spent years trying to make myself perfect because I didn't want to be the mustard bottle. I wanted to be the ketchup, or maybe even the hot sauce. Only brave people ask for the hot sauce. After practically killing myself with the intense workouts so I could look skinny and nights of binge drinking so I could fit into the bar scene, I still had trouble getting people to like me.

One day, after I eventually made my way to Chicago, I had lunch at Clark Street Dog with my roommate at the time. I noticed that he was putting mustard on his Italian sausage. The mustard bottle was practically empty, and I couldn't stop staring at the full bottle of ketchup next to it. He told me that a lot of people in Chicago love their Italian sausage with just mustard on it.

EPIPHANY! It wasn't that everyone in the world hated mustard. Who would use mustard on anything in a pancake house, anyway? I realized that the Richie who got dumped by a person who would eventually get dumped by the person that he dumped Richie for in the first place was fine just the way he was. Just because mustard bottle Richie wasn't popular in one place doesn't mean that he couldn't be accepted in another. Different strokes for different folks, right?

So whenever one of my Asian comrades whines and complains about people not liking Asian guys, I just tell them that in a place with an abundance of meat, the mustard bottle reigns supreme! And that reference works on so many levels!

I Carried a Watermelon

Twenty years ago, a girl and her family drove up to the Catskills for a relaxing summer. There, the girl fell in love with a dancer at the resort. He was a bit older than her, and definitely more experience in the ways of passion. She was entranced by his dance moves and the quick thrusts of his pelvis as he shook the sweat from his brow. She later agrees to fill in when his dance partner finds out that she's pregnant, and her father is furious to see his little girl cavorting with a scummy floor show dancer boy. Now she must choose between discovering her blossoming womanhood or staying loyal to the stern guidance of her family.

If you don't already know, I'm talking about Dirty Dancing! May 1 is the twentieth anniversary of the release of one of my favorite films of all time. You bet your sweet patootie that I'm going to see it in the theatre.

I wasn't old enough to go see it when it first came out, so I had to watch it on HBO. At first, I thought it would be a nasty movie because of the title. I was heavily into porn at the tender age of eight. There was nothing nasty in it, but I was pleasantly surprised by the fun songs of the 60s and the suggestive dancing moves. If the sight of me dancing and singing along to "I've Had the Time of My Life" didn't alert my family to my latent homosexuality, then I don't know what did.

There's no reason why people can't celebrate this movie as much as they do with The Sound of Music, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Goonies, or Hedwig and the Angry Inch. I can totally see people showing up to the theatre wearing the Johnny/Baby outfits. Or they can stand in the lobby and pretend to search their purses for their beige iridescent lipstick. I'd be the one in the dumpy outfit carrying a watermelon.

If you didn't get any of the references in that last paragraph, you obviously aren't a fan and therefore you should kill yourself. Seriously.

Ya Don't Say!

When I was a kid, Nintendo games were huge. All my friends bragged about how many games they owned and how good they were at playing the games. As one of five kids living in a low income household, it was pretty tough to keep up with the Jonses. That's why I usually had to make up some phony story about how I had tons and tons of Nintendo games and that I finished them all days after I got them. Looking back on it, I think that a lot of my friends did the same. It was compulsory. The trick was to try to trip them up and find holes in their stories so you could call them out on their dirty, filthy lies!

Fifteen years later, I find that people are still weaving intricate tales to try to make themselves look like hot shit. One person in particular makes me roll my eyes and tune out whenever he starts another story about his fabulous party life. For the sake of simplicity, let's call him "Bill" in honor of Pecos Bill, one of my favorite tall tales.

Every week, we'd go around telling each other about how our weekends were. My stories were never very exciting because I'd usually sit at home and masturbate. Then Bill would tell about how he went to a bar and met a really cute 23 year old grad student and took him home, making my story seem like a real snooze fest. Sometimes Bill got into a scuffle with a drunk person and he became the hero of the evening for pummeling the guy before he could do any more damage to the property. Once, Bill even managed to get cruised and picked up by two 21 year old boys from Indiana while walking across the parking lot of the 7-11.

How does a freak like Bill manage to get so much exciting and sexy action so easily, while I have trouble getting people to tell me what time it is? He smells like an old French whore, for fuck's sake! Then one night I went to the famous bar where he supposedly made more connections than Southwestern Bell and I just happened to see the grande dame in action.

Bill was alone, and stayed alone for most of the evening. I know because I could follow his scent from across the room. I later met him around midnight at the non-busy coat check and he left alone. Fast forward to the weekday after, and you'll find that Bill is telling yet another story about his wonderful Saturday night where he met and went home with the cute barback who doesn't go home with just anyone! According to Bill, he and his friends stood in line at the coat check for an eternity and finally got their coats at 1:30. Then he went on about how he went to another bar afterward.

Hmm... did Bill forget that I saw and talked to him that night? And what happened to the barback that he supposedly went home with? Did he go to the other bar with him? Why did he insist on keeping up the facade of the jetset party guy who has so much sex, even after I caught him alone and pathetic at the empty coat check line? I can only guess that Bill was so immersed in his fantasy world that he completely lost all sense of reality.

It makes you wonder if the people he talks about in his stories even exist. I'm starting to feel like I'm hanging out with my old friends in my neighborhood, trying to figure out if their Nintendo stories are real or not. You'd expect such wild stories from kids, but to see it happening to an adult is just plain scary!

There really isn't any need to tell stories to impress people. Half the time, no one even believes the things that people tell them. Lying to people like that just sets off a shockwave of unbelievable stories where people try to one up each other and then you end up with some cracker jack story about how someone is a direct descendant of Jesus and how another person saw Lance Armstrong at Taco Bell.

One good thing to come out of this mess is that I can sleep easier knowing that Bill wasn't getting more play than I was. Whew!

Shiny, Crappy People

There's a bartender somewhere in Chicago that my friend Joe loathes. According to him, the guy has an amazing body and a cute face. The problem is that the guy is really snotty and stuck up, and in a constant state of grumpiness. He's always surrounded by men who can't stop drooling whenever they come within five feet of his aristocratic aura.

Have you ever seen people swoon over a really attractive jerk? It happens all the time. They swagger past us, wearing their best clothes and largest pair of sunglasses. When we glance at them, they put their noses in the air and roll their eyes because their shit smells like Egoiste and ours smells like actual shit. The fact that nobody calls them out on their rude behavior only reinforces the theory that 90% of the people in the dating pool want to be with someone who will treat them like garbage.

In a perfect world, we'd be able to do something dramatic like enslave all of the pretty jerks and use them for sex. Since we can't have people chained up in a secret room of our home, we'll just have to find a way to coexist. The question remains: how do you deal with a beautiful fiend who has entranced all of the suckers who follow him around?

• Wait it out if you're patient. He may look good now, but years of smoking and drinking can turn an Adonis into a Don Knotts. It happens to everyone.
  

• Launch a full frontal attack on them. Blame the alcohol and let loose with a good old fashioned tirade. If you're in a public place, you'll probably embarrass the hell out of yourself and eventually get kicked out... but you got to stick it to the pretty jerks! Go you.
  

• Play the intellectual route and try to make them look stupid. Watch every Hannibal Lecter film, read "The Art of War," and get ready for the battle of wits! If you're sharp, you can get the stupid pretty boy to talk and then twist his words around to make himself doubt the very nature of his existence. Be warned though - shiny stupid boys have low self esteem and may end up cutting themselves with sharp objects. But we don't care about that, do we?
  

• Ignore them. A lot of the smarter people will go with this tactic. Attractive boneheads are a lot like small children who try to get your attention by acting out. When you ignore them, they'll eventually tire themselves out and curl up into the fetal position with their thumbs in their mouths. Our time is too precious, anyway. Who wants to waste it worrying about people who are probably in need of serious therapy?

Whenever you see a pretty person and you get that idiotic thought in your head that he's mister right, just remember this little rhyme:

He's nice to look at,
a pleasure to blow,
but he's got issues
and he's probably slow.

Trial and Eros

When I was a young man exploring my sexuality, I dreaded sex because of my painful first experience letting someone in through the back door. He just jammed it in there without lubing it up, so you can imagine how much pain I was in. Nobody told me that you have to be greased up for it to feel good. Masturbation was also an ordeal because I was allergic to a lot of things that people normally used as lube, such as lotion, baby oil, and shower soap. There's nothing more embarrassing than scratching your rash-ridden crotch in gym class.

It wasn't until I got older that I realized that there's a HUGE selection of personal lubricants out there. But have you ever gone to the store to buy lube? It can be a daunting experience, especially if you aren't familiar with the types of lube on the market today.

Water based lubricants are generally the safest to use because they don't damage condoms. They're cheap and easy to wash off. It's not my favorite because it tends to dry out and get sticky easily, and as half of the gay community knows, I like to fuck for hours and I can't be bothered with reapplying. It's a real mood killer.

Oil based lubricants are great because they last long and are never sticky. It's not safe to use any oil-based lubes with condoms, so watch out for that. They're great for masturbation, but a bitch to clean up. I've spent many hours cleaning lube off of my keyboard and my remote controls - hours I could have spent taking a yoga class.

Silicone based lubes are great for so many reasons. They're condom safe, they don't get sticky, and some of them even moisturize your hands. The next time you shake someone's hand and feel that it's soft and smooth, just think that he may love to masturbate with silicone based lube. The only down side is that you can't use silicone based lubes on sex toys made out of silicone. It degrades the surface of the toy and eventually renders it unusable. Imagine using a dildo with cracks and tears in it. EEEEW!

I really love Gun Oil, which is a silicone based lube. It's not thick, it washes off easily with Bath and Body Works Country Apple antibacterial hand soap, and it's moderately priced. Eros is another popular brand, but it's pretty pricey and can get really thick after extended use. Both are great during marathon fuck sessions as well as quiet evenings at home with Jack Handey.

I love masturbating with Boy Butter, mostly because of the cute name. The packaging is reminiscent of the margarine tubs you'd find at the supermarket, and the texture is similar. It's made with coconut oil, which is great for the skin, but bad for condoms. Fortunately, the makers of Boy Butter have a water-based alternative called You Won't Believe it's not Boy Butter. I've gotten some really wonderful hand jobs with that lovely product.

Finding your own personal lube is not a difficult task. Just go out and try different brands. A lot of lubes now come in individual single use packs, which are great for sampling. It's a wonder that there are still men out there who haven't found the brand that is right for them. I can't tell you how emotionally distressing it is to go to a guy's house and have him break out a bottle of KY or Astroglide, or worse yet... some kind of lube brand that you'd never heard of and looks like it was made in the 80s.

There are three things you just don't skimp on: toilet paper, Q tips, and lube. EDUCATE YOURSELF!

The Hunting Party and Fate's Intevention

My friends and I went out on a Monday in hopes of ensnaring some cute guys because gay men operate a lot like a pack of wolves. They cooperate, they act on instinct, and they attack from every angle as they target the youngest and most helpless. It's all very interesting, and it's such a pleasure to watch. Forget Planet Earth! Seeing three queens work together to snag a man is more interesting than anything you'd see on the Discovery Channel.

We eyed a potential shag for me, a nice and burly manly man who didn't smile and was the type of guy who would enjoy rough sex then fall asleep on top of you. The plan was for one of us to go to the bar to get a drink, then casually ask the man if he had a cigarette. I don't smoke, but it's a good way to find out whether or not his mouth would taste like a tar pit. The second person would pretend to be drunk and walk over to the conversation and act like a trainwreck, leaving the third person (me) to swoop in and act as the cool and sane breath of fresh air.

Before we could implement our plan, a song came on the video monitors. It was showtunes night at Sidetrack, where many different showtunes are played and all the queens sing along. It's like being in a seaside pub with the drunken whalers singing a classic pub song as they raise their beer mugs, except the pub is a video bar and the whalers are gay men and the beer mugs are martini glasses. The men are still drunk, no matter what time period you're in.

Anyway, a song came on the monitor and it was the Skid Row song from "Little Shop of Horrors." My fantasy man who I thought would fuck me vertically against a wall suddenly dissolved into a big flaming nancy boy who shrieked when he saw that his favorite movie musical was playing. The sight of him singing along and doing all of Audrey's hand gestures as she lamented about living in Skid Row was enough to make me throw up in my mouth a little.

What do we call this? Deus ex machina? Serendipity? Fate's cruel joke on the gay boys? Whatever you want to call it, it was definitely a harsh lesson in the difference between fantasy and reality. I also learned that instinct means next to nothing when you're on a manhunt.

I would also like to thank Sidetrack for having showtunes nights. Not only does it entertain the masses, but it also acts as Wonder Woman's golden lasso. It forces people to tell the truth and reveal their fondness for impersonating female vocalists, something that a lot of gay men try to hide. That saved me from a potentially awkward situation in the bedroom! Thank you, Sidetrack!

Becoming

Girl meets boy. Boy plays sports. Girl suddenly chooses boy to be her future husband and father of her children. Boy is oblivious to girl's devious planning. Girl is shocked to see boy getting a manicure the next day. Boy rents both "Fight Club" and "Steel Magnolias" for their movie night. Girl is confused. Girl calls her gay friend for help.

Sound familiar? It happens all the time. A girl doesn't know if the guy she likes is gay because he exhibits ambiguous behavior such as extensive knowledge of fashion designers and a fondness for breasts, so she calls her wittiest gay friend to sniff him out.

If you've ever seen the movie "Highlander," then you can sort of imagine what it's like when one gay person comes in contact with another gay person. They call it the highlander buzz. Two immortals sense each other and they hear this sound and feel the presence of one another. How can I describe the feeling I get when I see another gay person? It's like everyone has an aura and only gay folks can see it. I see the aura and I hear Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" in the air.

A lot of my heterosexual gal pals always ask me to meet some guy in their life so I can gauge whether he's a big flaming queer or a poontang-nuzzling straight boy. They always call me whenever they have a gay problem. I'm like Triple A, but more like triple GAAAY. I once met one of my friend's potential boyfriends in hopes of setting the record "straight," so to speak. Her newest love interest had precision-sculpted eyebrows, a Lacoste shirt with the collar flipped up, eighty four girls on his myspace friend list, and a pair of those Willy Wonka goggle sunglasses.

At that point, I still wasn't convinced. A lot of people would be quick to say that he loves to tongue-dart the stink tubes, but my "effemi-sensors" are a little more precise. Remember playing that computer game "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" You can't apprehend a suspect without a warrant. In this case, I needed hard proof. The only way to get that was to caress his midsection and invite him to have drinks. Yes, it worked and yes, the boy was gay. He seemed to respond very well to tactile contact, which is typical of a lot of latent homosexuals. It's like there's another person inside of them that craves the touch of a lithe young man who gives good head.

I don't see much of my friend anymore. The word on the street is that she fell into a depressed state when she realized that yet another one of the men she'd slept with turned out to be gay. A lot of people called her paranoid, but the gay community refers to women like her as "Messiah." Now if I can just get her to sleep with Jake Gyllenhaal, the natural order of the world will be restored.

It'll happen to YOU!

When I was twenty one, I frequented a gay coffee shop in Houston. It was the perfect place to meet new people, hang out with a lot of your friends, grab a nice big cafe mocha, and look at porn magazines while you watch all the cute guys pass by. I hadn't gone out much before I turned twenty one, so I was considered to be the 'fresh meat' for quite a while.

I would burst in and wave to everyone and make some obnoxious, whorish gesture while making people notice how well my ass fit into a size 29/30 pair of jeans. The cute coffee boy behind the counter knew that I liked my cafe mocha with extra syrup and extra whipped cream and we'd laugh as I'd regale him with stories of how I made out with so many guys at the club the night before. I was able to find a man from across the room and study his every move without him seeing me so I would be prepared to chat him up when I accidentally bumped into him later. The world was my oyster and life was a bowl of chocolate-covered cherries.

Sometimes I'd notice a couple of the older guys staring at me and whispering to each other as I sat at the table with my friends. I'd see them making fun of me and shaking their heads and would just assume that they were bitter old queens who were jealous of someone who looked so fabulous and young. They sipped their plain black coffee and read boring books and wore these ugly spectacles that kept falling off of their faces. I remember them adjusting their specs every so often as they found another way to mock me. But I didn't care, because my life was KICKASS!

The coffee shop eventually closed down and I ended up moving to Chicago once I realized that I'd slept with half of the men in Houston. I was finding it increasingly difficult to work my charm on some of the guys there and I just figured that I needed a new shtick. Suddenly, it dawned on me that the cruel ravages of time have had surreptitiously stolen my youthful glow.

I woke up one day and realized that I would be turning twenty eight in a few months. I stagger to my drawers and decide which pair of size 32/30 pants make me look the least dumpiest and I proceed to make my morning coffee. It's dark roast coffee with two packets of Splenda because the years of downing giant glasses of cafe mocha left me with a ton of back fat and nasty case of the sugar shakes.

I can't have a lot of spicy foods now because I get heartburn. I'm twenty seven and I fucking get heartburn. Can you believe it? If you like that, you'll love the fact that whenever I sit down or get up from a seat, I groan like someone who just had hip replacement.

Now whenever I go to the coffee shops, I'm the bitter old queen who is making fun of the young twinkie boys who waltz in there with their size 28 waists and frosted spiky hair. I'm the one sipping my plain black coffee, reading a book with my glasses because my eyesight has deteriorated in the past few years. I'm the one who the young boys pity because I go to bed at 9:30 and I've never seen an episode of Laguna Beach.

I just want to tell all the young boys who think that their lives are so perfect that one day it will all come to an end. I'll go to Roscoe's on a Saturday night and I'd go up to random people, clutching my Manhattan and drunkenly point to them as I say: LOOK AT THIS! LOOK AT ME! THIS IS YOUR FUTURE, BOY! YOU CAN'T BE YOUNG FOREVER!! Then the security guys will drag me away and throw me in the alley. Sometimes I get really dramatic and imagine that I'm the ugly old clairvoyant lady who appears at the wedding of some prince and princess in a fairy tale, the one everyone laughs at but later are shocked to find out that her prophesy came true.

My advice is to be as well-informed as you can. Read books, watch TV, get caught up on current events, and enrich your creative side. That's the kind of stuff that time can't touch. Looks fade, waists expand, and your dance card begins to gather dust.

You're Invited!

It's not often that two simple words can make you feel appreciated, accepted, and just plain fabulous. No, it's not "let's fuck," although that does make me feel fabulous 99% of the time. I'm talking about opening up an e-mail or an envelope and reading the first two words on the page: YOU'RE INVITED

You get all giddy with anticipation. You feel so proud to have been included in whatever the hell the event is (you don't even care because you just got INVITED to something!). What are you going to wear? Who else will be there? How many of the guests will you have sex with? It's so easy to get caught up in the excitement. Oh, and you if you are "cordially" invited to something, then clear your calender for the week leading up to it!

I first learned what power these two words held when I was in the fourth grade. Up until the third grade, you were pretty much friends with everyone in the class. Then you notice groups of people whispering and meeting each other on the playground. The game of 'freeze tag' is not cool anymore, and everyone is suddenly into 'four square.' My biggest burn happened when I arrived at school one Monday and heard that one of my friends had an awesome birthday party and I wasn't invited. It's a feeling that forces you to examine your self worth. What was so wrong with me that my friend didn't invite me to his party?

It's then that you realize that the world is no longer a happy playground with smiling faces and kickballs for every ten kids. It's cold, savage, and only the cool kids get invited to parties. The sting of not being invited never dulls, no matter how old you get. It happens to all of us.

It even happens to Asian bloggers with big booties and deep voices. Sometimes they don't get invited to the weddings of some of their closest friends, and then they give some lame-0 excuse like they didn't have his address or phone number or e-mail. PSHA! The bitch just didn't want me there. UH! Gay men give fabulous gifts. I don't see why she wouldn't want me there. The only thing I can think of is that she didn't want anyone sexier to draw attention away from her and her holster hips. There, I typed it. Holster hips!

I think that the act of purposely not inviting someone to a special event says something about the strength of the relationship between inviter and invitee. The person HAS to know that they're not sending an invite to someone and they're just too spineless to tell them that they don't matter enough. Remember what happened to Princess Aurora (sleeping beauty) when the king didn't invite Carabosse to the christening? The entire kingdom was cursed with slumber for a hundred years! It really started out as a simple curse of death to the princess, but if you recall, the last fairy was able to make it into a sleepy curse. Anyway, if you think that an evil fairy's curse is bad, just imagine how a gay man would react to the news that one of his good friends didn't invite him to her wedding! Nothing hurts more than the frosty gaze of a scorned gay in the lobby of a Starbucks in the suburbs.

Oh, and I love how all my other friends didn't bother to tell me about the wedding. You can guess where all of them are now. Yep, they're out of shape and divorced or trying to have a baby to save their loveless marriages. I'm like the evil fairy in Sleeping Beauty, but without the dancing rats.