Obviously, the hack who wrote this article on the disappearance of the custom of “family honor” has never been to Mississippi. All through my life–even today–my dad’s had the same response to anything the least bit unconventional that my brothers and I might do: “Well, now, that won’t look good.” “To whom, dad?” we’d ask, “Who on earth is going to care if we stay home from church tonight to play a little Dungeons and Dragons? We’ll stay away from the windows….” “It just won’t look good, son.”

The closest I ever got to making my father realize the foolishness of worrying over our family’s (meager) reputation came in the early 1990s, when my then-boyfriend, Martin, and I moved into a kick-ass swankster pad in the middle of the Quarter with our friend Victoria. Dad’s admonishment came right on cue: “What on earth will the neighbors think? Living with a woman!” And of course, he wasn’t just talking about my neighbors, he was talking about his.

My response went something like, “Well, dad, my neighbors are really too gin-soaked to give a damn about how I carry on. And as far as your neighbors are concerned, considering that I’m living smack-dab in the middle of the French Quarter, in the middle of what Baptists like to call Sodom on the Mississip’–aka New Orleans–with my boyfriend, the fact that I’m living with an honest-to-goddess, biological woman is kind of a saving grace. I mean, who knows–maybe the Sauciers and the Bushes will think I’ve moved down here to be a closet heterosexual, which might reflect well on all of us…. Of course, that begs the question how on earth they’d find out in the first place: are you planning to take out a classified ad in the paper? Does the Baptist church have an army of robot rats, mounted with high-tech spy cameras? Or maybe Brother Billy tagged me with some kind of tracking device when I got dunked in the baptismal font?” Though Dad didn’t admit defeat, he didn’t try to argue with me either, which is kind of the same thing.

I should point out that the notion of “family honor” doesn’t depend on money: my family isn’t particularly wealthy, just genteel. And I should also point out that I’m not the only one who’s been through this. Throughout my childhood, I overheard similar conversations murmured at friends’ dinner tables, hissed to children at the mall, and shouted in cars that passed me by in the school parking lot. There were many others with me–many others intent on following my teen idol, Princess Stephanie of Monaco, down the path of bad behavior, sleeping with an army of gardners, carpenters, and circus freaks along the way.

“The best writers won’t want to bury themselves beneath a weblogsinc.com subdomain,” he wrote at nickdenton.com. “Writers take satisfaction, not in the paltry recompense for Web writing, but in the boost it can give to their personal brands and the freelance income that comes from a strong Web profile.”

— CBS Marketwatch

Not that, based on my recent output, anyone would consider me a writer or anything.

Well, Burning Man may not be what it used to be, but at least someone’s documenting it.

What on earth are we ever gonna do with Ms. Wainright? Sweetie, we love your music–really we do–but in all honesty, you shoulda been an actor, ’cause we ain’t never seen a drama queen that could hold a candle to you.

They’re here. I can smell them–the heady, noxious aroma of tanning oil, Kiehl’s “Creme de Corps,” Aveda Rosemary Mint Shampoo, and day-old Ketamine sweating from pores.

I can hear them, too. Their music is loud, booming from convertible Volkswagen Beetles and Miatas and other god-my-penis-is-small cars in 4/4 time. It’s called High-NRG, but it puts me to sleep. Above the clash of artificial percussion instruments, I can hear only their sibilant tongues as they coil and unfurl around words like “Balenciaga,” “Anna Sui,” “Versace,” and of course, “ecstasy.”

And now, at last, I can see them. The sun glints off glossy, glabrous abdomens and triceps as though they were ripples on a dead lake. I see waves of identical armband tattoos, snap-and-glo bracelets, and cheap necklaces of Puka shell.

I sound bitter. You’re waiting for me to say, “Damn, Decadence didn’t used to be this way, with all the circuit faggotry and shit.” But to be fair, it’s been like this for a long, long time. And to be fair, I kinda like it–not the crowds and the crackwhores and the prissies and the general stupidity of your average tourist, but the stoop-sitting and people-watching and socializing with friends I haven’t seen all year. I may not don a wig on Sunday like I used to–I mean, it’s fucking hot out there, Mary–but I’ll do my thing, say my piece, cut my rug.

Anyone wanna join me?

Uh, I don’t know if some search engine went haywire or what, but to the sudden deluge of folks who’ve wound up here looking for information on you-know-who: you’re barkin’ up the wrong tree.

But more importantly: nearly all of you missed a fabulous party last night. Oh, you kid!

Give me style over substance any day.

As someone who has slept with a variety of Judeo-Christian religious figures over the years–including youth ministers, pastors, priests, deacons, and a rabbi or two–I find it amusing that some PC extremists would like to draw clear, distinct lines between homos (that’s us) and certain Catholic priests recently in the news (that’s them). Such folks like to base their distinctions on the difference between homosexuality and pedophilia–a distinction I understand and with which I generally agree. In this particular case, though, I think there’s significant fuzzy area–and fuzzy area, unfortunately, is one thing PC/queer theory dullards can’t seem to abide.

You see, my friends, in many, many of the aforementioned cases, priests were abusing kids in their teens–long after the elementary school androgyny that so turns on the pedophile had worn off. And when we’re talking about men who fuck boys 14, 15, 16, 17 years old, I think it’s a patently ludicrous political move to try to lump them all in with the pedophiles; obviously, a significant percentage of them are homosexual. Maybe they’re homosexual pedophiles–who am I to say?–but after the kids sprout pubic hair, we’re clearly moving into a different territory.

I don’t understand why activists are so reluctant to acknowledge that Western gay culture has a thing for the teenage body. I mean, have these people never been to a circuit party and noticed that most of the homos there shave their chests to affect a pre-bar mitzvah look? Have they looked at gay porn sites recently? Of course they have! (I know because PC gay men are always-already pro-sex and pro-porn.) How can they not notice that every other smuty popup is flashing something about “barely legal” twinks? When it comes down to it, the majority of gay men are no different from the majority of straight men: most of ’em just want a young, tight ass to bang. Does that make them pedophiles? If so, you’d better ring up Morris Bart, ’cause we’ve got a nation full of child molesters to start prosecuting.

But enough polemics. All I’m saying here is that it’s wrong to try to completely distance our community from the priests in question by saying they’re not really homosexuals. Frankly, it’s been my experience that many folks in religious positions are, in fact, closeted homos who have turned to religion because it’s an answer to the moral ambiguity of secular life: if I’m a priest–so the thinking goes–I can’t be gay because it’s not allowed, so all this emotional/sexual anguish I’m feeling with simply go away. It should be no surprise that that kind of running from one’s own psycho-sexual makeup isn’t very effective.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that I myself was sleeping with 30-, 40-, and 50-year-old men when I was 14, 15, 16, 17. (In my hometown, there were no kids my own age with whom I could fool around, and without these older guys, I would have killed myself or gone crazy–not necessarily in that order.) These men, though, weren’t just having sex with me, they were sleeping with each other, too–other men their own age. So, I speak from experience when I say that just because someone’s getting it on with a 14-year-old doesn’t necessarily make him/her a pedophile.

Trust the tramps of the world, dearie. We sometimes know what we’re talking about.

So, a friend of mine who works for a major library in Mississippi (yes, people actually read there, can you believe it?) was recently given the task of cataloguing a bunch of old films from the Mississippi Cooperative Extension Service (that’s a farm thing, for you urbanites). Among most titillating titles she’s tagged have been:

• Chickens of Tomorrow
• It’s Lamb Time
• Meat and Romance
• Pork Around the Clock
• Men Who Grow Cotton

Maybe it’s the theatre fag in me, or maybe…nah, it’s the theatre fag in me: they sound like song titles from a fabulously tragic 1953 movie musical about impoverished migrant laborers of the Delta.

Just wait till I pitch it to Hal Prince.

Tonight on Sex and the City: Carrie picks apart her current relationship like a Lobster Fradiavolo dinner platter. Samantha’s in over her head in bed. Charlotte’s Prince Charming turns out to be a freak. Miranda’s freak turns out to be a Prince Charming. The four gals avoid work, eat countless meals, never gain an ounce, and end up back at square one.

I love that episode.

Meanwhile, on network television, Trading Spaces: Boys vs. Girls is helping the homo recruitment cause by encouraging boys to discuss color swatches and teaching them words like “gusset,” “porte-cochere,” and “window treatment.” It’s so gratifying to see our agenda at work.