Belle Weather (12 page)

Hons, there’s something about me that you should know: I don’t like to brag, but gay men love me.

I mean
love me
. I’m like the poor (gay) man’s Liza Minnelli or Barbra Streisand. OK, the very poor man’s version, but you get the idea.

I’ve been a magnet for gay men for as long as I can remember and I have to say that I adore them right back. That said, there’s something I don’t get about straight guys: Why are y’all so threatened by gay men? They’re not going to bother you because, frankly, have you even looked at your ratty-ass cuticles lately?

As a Friend to All Gay Men I’ve Ever Met (and thanks, by the way, Fernando, for telling me about Spanx. If I was younger and unmarried, I swear I’d have one of those turkey-baster babies with you), I’d just like to say that my one community college psychology course taught me that when people yammer all the time about how they hate somebody else’s lifestyle, it may be because they’re secretly attracted to it.

Remember the Reverend Ted Haggard? He was a famous gay-basher who, it turned out, oopsie daisy, had engaged in repeated amorous encounters with a gay prostitute. This didn’t come out until the gay prostitute saw Haggard on the news one night giving one of his famous anti-gay tirades and dude was big-time “WTF?” So, he alerted the media and Haggard finally confessed to a lapse in his normal completely heterosexual wife-and-kids-and-steak-every-Friday-night lifestyle in exchange for some mind-blowing moonie goonie with the male prostitute.

Not to worry, though. After three weeks of “intense counseling” Haggard was pronounced cured and “completely heterosexual.”

I imagine gay men everywhere breathing a sigh of relief at that.

So what does a “reformed” gay man do when he gets “cured”? In Haggard’s case, he announced that he was going to pursue his master’s degree in psychology.

Isn’t that just the most arrogant thing you’ve ever heard? He gets “un-gay” in three weeks (which, incidentally, is one whole week less than it took Sandra Bullock to kick Val-yum in the movie
28 Days
) and he’s ready to tell the rest of us how to live.

Psychology? I’m thinking Midas Muffler School might be a better fit. Rev, read all the psychology books you want to while you’re eating that ham and cheese sandwich at your desk between (ahem) lube jobs, but don’t try to work on our heads. You think that you can go from gay to straight in twenty-one days, so that tells me right away that you’re Unabomber levels of crazy.

Gay men must get mighty tired of sanctimonious blowhards like Haggard putting them down and telling them it’s their choice to be gay and just snap the hell out of it.

Even when a straight man tries to sound all magnanimous and enlightened, it can backfire. Case in point: Shavlik Randolph, the NBA player who said it would be OK, sort of, for a gay pro basketball player to come out.

“As long as you don’t bring your gayness on me, I’m fine,” he said.

Sure, don’t bring your gayness but could ya maybe bring some of that fabulous potato salad that you brought to the season opener cookout?

Bring your gayness on me?

Still, at least Randolph doesn’t claim to speak for anyone other than himself. Like most heterosexual men, he’s completely freaked out by gay men and he admits it. He might want to dig a little deeper as to why he’s threatened by them but that’s his business.

The king of sanctimony has to be the Reverend James Dobson, whose
Focus on the
(Not Gay!)
Family
series has millions of followers.

Dobson hates gays like Southerners hate toll roads. You could almost say it’s an obsession.

After all, it was Dobson who first pointed out that there was a distinct possibility that SpongeBob SquarePants is gay.

Yes, the cartoon character.

In the words of SpongeBob’s long-suffering co worker Squid-ward, “Oh, my aching tentacles.”

Dobson is the chronically humor-impaired spokesman for the Christian right. That’s how I know he wasn’t joking when he told a roomful of rich supporters that SpongeBob appeared in a “pro-homosexual video” along with other known cartoon deviants including Barney the dinosaur (duh, he’s gay because he’s purple) and Jimmy Neutron, who, while not purple
is
highly intelligent and therefore suspect.

Dobson said that the video would be watched by millions of elementary school students and includes a reference to being “tolerant of differences.” The nerve! Who does SpongeBob think he is? Jesus Christ? Tolerance will not be, uh, tolerated. Oh, and tolerance is quite possibly closely connected to gayance.

As a longtime Methodist Sunday School teacher and a huge fan of Mr. SquarePants, I’m uniquely qualified to say that, having watched every single episode, I see nothing un-Christian in the lifestyle of Bikini Bottom’s most famous resident.

In contrast, SpongeBob consistently puts others first and returns good for evil. He turns the other cheek time and again to his miserly and cruel boss, Mr. Krabs, and has even made heroic efforts to befriend the very unlovable Plankton, the Zaccheus of the undersea world, as it were.

I can see why Dobson would dislike SpongeBob, though. His best friend is a
pink
starfish named Patrick (what a gay name!) and sometimes they even walk and skip arm in arm.

Dr. Dobson, as Aunt Ovaleen used to say when the Sunday sermon hit a little too close to home, you’ve done gone from preachin’ into meddlin’.

If you persist in tarnishing the good name of the gentle-spirited, yea, Christ-like, SpongeBob, it will be obvious that you’re the one who must live in a pineapple under the sea. With your head firmly planted in the sand.

Besides, it doesn’t take gaydar to know that SpongeBob isn’t gay. He wears a short-sleeved shirt with a clip-on tie, for God’s sake. No gay man alive would wear that frighteningly tacky combo.

To be honest, I prefer to deal with men who are straight or gay and comfortable with that. It’s the mishmashy metrosexual that I don’t get. That’s why I was glad to read that the era of this famously
Details
reading, Abercrombie-on-the-weekend wearin’, sushi-lovin’, orchid-growing man-hybrid is finally, mercifully over.

Of course, hubby missed the whole metrosexual movement for lack of interest.

When we visited the cosmetics wonderland that is Ulta, I noted the huge section of skin and hair products just for men. In contrast, hubby noted that the Barnes & Noble across the street would probably have the newest fantasy league baseball magazine and he ran out of there like his clothes were on fire.

Here’s a refresher for those of you who don’t understand fantasy league baseball. This is when you draft real players for your pretend team and then your pretend team plays with other pretend teams and, when the real season is over, you see where your pretend team ranks and you celebrate by going out with all the other guys to buy really top-drawer exfoliating products.

Kidding!

But, like I say, I was always kind of underwhelmed with the whole metrosexual thing. Be gay; be straight; but for God’s sake, pick one.

I don’t like men who flirt with women in the arugula section while softly bitching about the declining quality of their favorite Chilean merlot.

Metrosexual dads wear me out, too. They’re the ones at the playground who loudly brag about the “just a mere hint of asiago” they use in their homemade salad dressing to entice little Audubon to eat more veggies.

“Man up!” is the new battle cry and men are urged to eat hamburgers dripping with Paris Hilton and avoid toasting beers at the top because that’s too much like man-kissing and similar rubbish.

As you can see, it’s hard to get the balance just right. I say: Be gay if you’re gay; be straight if you’re straight.

From a perfectly selfish point of view, I’m glad to see the end of the metrosexual man because they always made me feel a little guilty. Their skin was smoother and it irked me to hear them carping about sheets with low thread counts.

“Go change some oil!” I wanted to shriek every time one of them sidled up to me at a picnic and wanted to discuss the latest Oprah book club pick with me. You don’t like Nicholas Sparks so don’t pretend you do, asshole.

In contrast, if gay men want to talk about the best French coffee press or debate whether tilapia is the new monkfish, I’m all in. But metrosexuals? What is that?

Ultimately, even the metrosexuals grew weary with all that forced shaving, sharing, and shopping. Turns out they really don’t give much of a shit about which of the hand-painted porcelain drawer pulls at Restoration Hardware makes the boldest statement on the armoire, so stop the hell asking them.

As for hubby, he never knew what he missed. He’s the kind of guy who would just assume that “Asiago” was a little-known left-handed reliever throwing in the Dominican leagues.

While I’m not sure exactly when metrosexuals just stopped, it may have been when they sauntered by one of those new Hooters-style barbershops like Bikini Cuts, where scantily clad women cut your hair and are even trained to make “sports small talk” with male customers.

As in, “Sooooo, how about that Boise State?” coos the leggy stylist with the rambunctious rack.

Yeah, girls can say stuff like “rack,” too.

One of these chains brags that you can sit in a “state of the art” massage chair and catch the latest “flicks.”

OK, your cool quotient is as nonexistent as Ann Coulter’s conscience. Flicks? I haven’t heard that slang word for movies since
The Smurfs
went off the air.

At Bikini Cuts in Salt Lake City, you can even check out your stylist on-line. The girls, all wearing the equivalent of three Chinet cocktail napkins, have a wide range of interests. A typical profile promised that the stylist liked old people, vanilla lattes, and Mel Gibson movies.

Just call ’em
girls gone mild!!

These manly barbershops would never have been acceptable to the metrosexual, who would peevishly carp about how they objectify women of which his mother and sister happen to be one. But those days are gone.

The naughty barber shops provide an opportunity for manly bonding in a comfortable way. In other words, not quite sharing ranch-hand duties in a pup tent at Brokeback Mountain but more in a “Whoa, check out the calzones on Misty Sue” kind of way.

I thought about all this stuff—the gay, the straight, the metrosexual, the calzones—while I waited for my eighty-four-year-old father to get his hair trimmed at Great Clips. Everyone kept their clothes on and I thanked God for it.

There was no sports talk, only four other men of varying ages discussing their back problems.

And none of them knew diddly-squat about asiago.

Unlucky in Love

Even though about half of all U.S. marriages end in divorce, people keep getting married. I figure that’s because we Americans are, by nature, hopeful creatures. Our marriage won’t fail; that’s for other people.

So we have engagement parties and bridal showers and a registry at Target and never once do we imagine that we could be the couple that ends up separated in less than a year and squabbling over who’s got custody of the waffle-stick maker.

Lately, technology has taken the place of the annoying first cousin matchmaker in the family and, on the surface, eHarmony and the rest seem to make a lot of sense. At least with “29 Dimensions of Compatibility” you’ve got a fighting chance, it would seem. With eHarmony, for instance, you are matched with someone who’s a lot like you, almost scarily so. But it’s not like when Eddie Van Halen married Valerie Bertinelli or Mick married Bianca because
she looked exactly like him
because that was all about the physical stuff. With eHarmony, they ask hundreds of highly specific questions. It’s deep, y’all.

And while some people sniff at this, preferring to believe in the romantic notion that “opposites attract,” I have to think that eHarmony founder Dr. Neil Clark Warren may be on to something.

I know three couples who are happily married after meeting through eHarmony. Their apparent success would seem to indicate that the compatibility thing works, especially if you’re in it for the long haul and not just a few frisky moments of sparks-flying, toe-curling sex.

But, as my friend, Maybelline, complained after trying a few on-line dating services unsuccessfully: “There ain’t nothing out there for the rednecks.”

Of which she is one, in case you hadn’t figured that out yet.

Maybelline is a terrific woman, but listing one of her “unique attributes” as the “ability to pee off the side of my daddy’s bass boat while standing” wasn’t the sort of thing most on-line dating services could really appreciate.

As I told Maybelline, if she had toned this down to simply “I enjoy fishing and urinating at the same time” it might have sounded a little better.

Then again, maybe not.

Unlike Dr. Warren, I don’t own a soothing voice or a gray suit, but I do know how to match-make a redneck.

At my redneckharmony.com, you would be eliminated or accepted based on my (sort of) patented “10 Dimensions of Compatibility” which I would call “What Y’all Got in Common.” Rednecks need to feel the love, too, right?

Here’s a sample of questions.

1. Have you ever given birth on a pool table? If so, how many times?
   
2. Have you, or any member of your immediate family, ever tried to remove a tattoo with eighty-grit sandpaper? From the baby?
   
3. Have you ever burned all the hair off your body while demonstrating the power of methane gas?
   
4. Have you ever tried to pay for a twelve-pack at the Stop-n-Rob convenience store using your mama’s gold tooth? If yes, did you take it while she was passed out or ask her nice-like for it?
   
5. Have you ever stayed up all night building a beer bong for your little sister’s eighth birthday present?
   
6. Have you ever heard yourself say, “While I admire the lilting oboe duet in Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 5 in D Minor, I have to say that the andante of the final movement is what truly stirs my soul”?
   
7. Have you ever attended a cockfight? With a date? That wasn’t your sister?
   
8. Have you ever gone to the bank and applied for a loan so you could get spinners and nekkid-lady mudflaps put on your Gremlin?
   
9. Have you ever complained to a waiter that, while bleu might be an acceptable substitute for gorgonzola crumbles in his universe, it most assuredly is not in yours?
   
10. Have you openly mourned the fading popularity of the mullet hairstyle?
    

If you answered “Yes” to all but questions six and nine, you will find your mate at redneckharmony.com. I had to add those two weird questions to weed out the riff-raff, you know.

Happy redneck couples, don’t thank me now; just thank me by promising to get all the young’uns vaccinated, you hear?

Services like eHarmony could’ve saved Sir Paul McCartney a lot of heartache.

While I’m not exactly ready to sponsor a telethon for Paul, I do feel sorry for him. If you took away the billions of dollars, the song royalties in perpetuity, and the still-irrationally-cute-at-sixty-something looks, you’d have just another old guy that got hoo-doo’ed by a one-legged heifer.

Happens all the time.

I predicted this breakup a long time ago, of course. You could see that marrying a woman that Paul’s relatives early-on dubbed “an opportunistic cow” was doomed.

It’s almost too easy to track poor Paul’s marital woes the second time around via his greatest hits.

Some people see the Virgin Mary’s face in a puddle of grits; I see that the songs foretold the whole sorry story. And, yes, it is a gift.

It was a remarkably brief journey from “I Want to Hold Your Hand” to “Help!” in Paul’s case.

Asked how things are going, Paul says “I Feel Fine” but there’s no longer any hope that “We Can Work It Out.” Paul has discovered that while it’s true that “All You Need Is Love,” if your wife doesn’t feel the same way, you’re in for “A Hard Day’s Night.”

“Maybe I’m Amazed” that Paul couldn’t just “Let It Be” and cherish the memory of his true soulmate, Linda. But he wanted “No More Lonely Nights” and so he penned a few more “Silly Love Songs” for Heather and proclaimed her to be “My (New) Love.”

It is, after all, “Another Day,” and when someone knocks on the door of your tattered heart, sometimes you just have to “Let ’Em In.”

The British need their very own on-line dating services just for the Royal Family because, clearly, they have no idea how to pick the right spouse.

Look at poor ol’ Camilla Parker Bowles. It took her years to drag Chuck to the church.

When Prince Charles finally agreed to marry his longtime shackmate, he decided the wedding would take place at Windsor Castle, but then he found out that if they got married there, they’d have to open up the ceremony to “commoners,” which is the delightfully infuriating name the monarchy has for everybody else.

Charles and Camilla had a fallback plan and decided to move the wedding to Windsor Guildhall, described by Brits as “a quite handsome building.” Sadly, they discovered they’d have to pare the royal guest list from 700 to just 100 because the Guildhall, while handsome, was too small. Rather like the late Dudley Moore.

Not only that, but the Guildhall, a public building, couldn’t legally be closed to those pesky commoners either. So, it was entirely possible that the Duke and Duchess of Upper Monrovia and Lower Intestine would be seated beside some scurvy bloke eating salted mutton from a grease-spotted paper sack and staring at the royal nuptials like they were hotel porn.

As if that wasn’t a big enough hassle, Chuck and Camilla couldn’t legally marry until the Prime Minister passed a bill saying it was OK. And you thought it was a big deal when you had trouble matching the reception punch to your bridesmaids’ dresses?

While Chuck and Camilla fretted about seating charts (should Lord and Lady Aspic be seated beside sour stick figure “Posh” Spice?), the Queen took a pass on the whole ceremony in favor of attending a private “blessing” ceremony.

I didn’t blame her a bit.

“Y’all know me,” she told the BBC while stabbing at her gums with a toothpick. “With me, it’s all about the cake. Besides, I’d really rather stay home, soak my achin’ dogs, and watch the race cuz
Dale Junior rocks
!”

Oh, no, she did-unt.

Well, of course not. But my redneckharmony.com clients would be able to relate to that little scenario.

I see a world of possibilities for franchising my idea of highly specialized matrimony Web sites. Even the animal world could benefit.

After seeing the fabulous
March of the Penguins
a while back, I was struck by the parallels between human and penguin relationships.

When the female penguin seems to be a little late returning from a food-finding mission while the males have been keeping the egg warm for four months (despite forty-seven-degrees-below-zero temperatures) the mood is, shall we say tense?

Rather like when we’ve gone to the mall and they’re left with three kids and the cable’s out.

In the movie, the males huddle, and although I’m not fluent in penguin, I’m fairly certain that after multiple home viewings of this movie I can interpret some of the chirps and screeches thusly:

Over the years, I’ve heard other women joke that what they really need isn’t a husband at all. What they really need is a wife.

Now that I’ve watched HBO’s
Big Love
series about a Utah polygamist, I get it.

Three women share this very ordinary-looking and bizarrely earnest owner of a home-improvement store and they happily live in a suburban “complex” with a shared backyard.

Although there are three wives, it’s the first one who has the “biggest love” so to speak. She’s the alpha-wife, just like I would be. The “sister-wives,” as the second and third are called, share second-place affections.

But back to why I need a wife.

On
Big Love,
having extra wives makes for a lot less housework. You cook only every third night, if at all. Some of the wives seem to be conveniently absent during much of the meal preparation. There are so many kids that you always have built-in baby-sitters hanging around wearing those ghastly ’80s hair combs and beatific smiles.

Plus, two nights out of three, there’s virtually no chance that you’ll be forced to switch from
The Daily Show
to
Sports-Center.

Perks, perks, everywhere!

So I asked duh-hubby how he’d feel about having an extra wife or two around here and he lit up like the time I told him
MacGyver
had finally come out on DVD.

“No, no, no, don’t get the wrong idea,” I said. “Just some extra wives to help with chores and tend the Princess.”

“Where’s
MacGyver
?” he asked sulkily.

Mormons hate
Big Love
because they’re scared it’s going to get us riled up about the image of eighty-year-old pervs marrying fourteen-year-old girls, but I don’t think they should worry.

We know Mormons don’t do that stuff anymore, except for a few inbred nut-jobs that splintered off to cult-land and live in caves without cable or Starbuck’s so we know they’re all crazy.

Much to the frustration of the Mormons, polygamists tend to hang out in Utah. You won’t ever hear about any polygamists in the South because Southern women don’t share anything.

You honestly believe a Southern woman is going to share her duh-hubby in the sack when she won’t even share her recipe for chicken salad? Oh, hell no.

Billy Bob will never have five mommies. Southern women are notoriously territorial when it comes to circling and spraying around our men. He might be the sorriest excuse for a husband that God ever created, but he’s “our’n” and just cause he wears a paper hat at work and drives a drunk bike, it doesn’t make any never-mind. If another woman so much as looks at our husband, we will tighten our grip on his arm like a python squeezing a live chicken.

Truthfully, I couldn’t be one of many wives because I prefer to nag and belittle one man at a time. Besides, I’d look like shit in a prairie skirt.