Luck of the Drawl

Whenever my friend Bertam calls me to go to the bars with him, I always hesitate. The evenings always result in him entrancing a lot of the men without even trying, leaving me to sit in a dark corner as invisible as a middle child at my family's dinner table. I'm a middle child.

I'd like to think that Bert and I are on the same level. We're both pretty good looking, we dress well, and we're not dumb by any means. So why does he command the attention of every man he talks to while I struggle to keep conversations going? The answer is that he's from the U.K. and has a distinct British accent.

Four out of five gay men I asked admitted that they find a man with an accent absolutely irresistible, three of those four having drooled so much thinking about such a man that I had to follow them with a paper towel. The fifth person claimed to not be interested in the accent, but later admitted that he'd be curious as to where the person with the accent was from. This means that he really is interested but feels that there should be a bit of conversation before the eventual pants dropping because he doesn't want to seem easy.

A single gay man's brain works like a point-tallying computer whenever he's in a situation where there's a chance of hooking up. Whichever man gets the most points in one evening scores a free trip to the bedroom. Here are just a few of the standard point values:

Full set of teeth - 5 points
High School Diploma - 10 points
College Degree - 20 points
Tattoo - 25 points
Car - 30 points
Job - 50 points
A bed that doesn't fold - 75 points
British, Australian, French, German, or Swedish accent - 1,000,000 points

As you can see, you can be a degreed professional with a job, a car, and shiny white teeth and still lose out to Bert or any other man with an accent. What's worse is that American gays can't go to other countries and expect the same type of attention. My friends in Europe tell me that nobody thinks that Americans are sexy or smart and that the American accent is as charming as a genital rash.

There is hope, though. A man named David A. Stern has developed an extensive guide to learning various dialects. You can find some of them on The Costumer, or on Amazon.com. With these guides, you can easily pass yourself off as a Brit. Just tell people that you've spent some time in England and that you were so engrossed in the culture that you picked up the dialect. Throw in a few phrases like "I'm gagging for a shag" or "sod off, you bollocky bastard" and you'll be in the zone!

Be sure to pick one dialect and stick to it or else you'll look like Madonna when she appeared on Oprah that time and everyone fixated on her fake accent instead of her adopting that Malawian baby.