Huzzah! Birthday pics, posted by the birthday boy himself. There’s even one of me … somewhere. (FYI: click the “index” link along the top of the frame for a thumbnail view.)

Another posting to the Miscellaneous section. This time it’s an essay on the homo fascination with Halloween–timely, no? I wrote it for a magazine, so technically they own the copyright, but I doubt they’ll care if I post it here. Enjoy, if you must.

I can’t help but cringe when I hear the words “gay lifestyle.” The term “lifestyle” implies a sort of trendy social movement comprised of individuals blessed with a significant degree of free will: Californians living the surfing lifestyle, for example, choose to surf morning, noon, and night, but many grow out of it as they get older. Same goes for hippies, junkies, and even Presbyterians.

It’s a little offensive to hear cocksucking described in this manner–like it’s a trend or a phase. I mean, despite all the hoopla surrounding ex-gay movements, I’ve never met a fudgepacker who’s just gradually stopped, er, packing fudge.

Of course, I’m still not sure exactly what “gay lifestyle” implies, but if I let my imagination run wild, the phrase does bring to mind several frightening images: a completely gay shopping mall, where the background Musak is nothing but Madonna, Mariah, and show tunes; a special pride issue of Martha Stewart Living, featuring Pottery Barn porch swings festooned with rainbow-colored ribbons; and a man-made island about the size of Nantucket located 15 miles off the northern coast of Morocco with an all-gay government, a booming haircare industry, and an annual island-wide holiday commemorating Joan Crawford’s birthday.

Interestingly enough, however, I’m much less resistant to the idea of an Internet lifestyle. Pass the DSL, please…

Well, Tim, maybe he’s from New Orleans. When it comes to accents, there’s not a hell of a lot of difference between ours and the one you’d hear in the Outer Boroughs:

A few words on New Orleansese: in a city whose very name is pronounced in nearly 100 different ways by its citizens, all the way from the filigreed, nearly five-syllable “Nyoo Ahhlyins” to the monosyllabic grunt of “Nawln'”, it takes a very sensitive ear, not to mention years of practice, to pinpoint the incredible binds the native speaker encounters, those specific words where the slow tongue gives up and makes a leap of faith. For those who have never heard it, you must begin by imagining Brooklynese on Quaaludes.

–via Chuck

[Ed. note: I hope you had your coffee this morning…]

Like my boyfriend, I also logged quite a few grad school hours trying to pin down queer sensibility. Obviously, it can’t just be defined by sexual preference or even sexual activity: football players slapping one another on the butt and gay-for-pay porn stars fucking around on screen have very little to do with queerness (although they do represent interesting fissures in the binary hetero/homo system). Likewise, on the erstwhile Ellen, even after Ellen came out on-screen and off, I wouldn’t say the show had a particularly strong queer sensibility….

Were I ever to write another 30-page seminar paper on the subject (and let’s hope I don’t), here’s the way I’d argue it. Homosexuality (e.g. a love of kissing boys) is innate and learned; it is both genetic and a result of socialization. Queer sensibility (e.g. an appreciation of Dame Edna), however, is something we develop over time. In my case, it began when I accepted the fact that I was different from the other guys. For years I tried hopelessly to fit in, to no avail. Then I discovered John Waters (on USA Night Flight) and saw how hip it was to like him and the lights finally came on: why bother feigning interest in stockcar racing any longer? I dropped the beer/pussy/football routine like a wheel of hot brie.

To my mind, my appreciation of Waters and Divine and Pee Wee’s Playhouse and beehive hairdos and Christopher Durang put me intellectually and culturally head-and-shoulders above the straight boys: I got the jokes they didn’t get, I saw beauty and humor where they saw only strangeness. I laughed, they could only shake their heads. Ultimately, it’s that sort of mental/aesthetic one-upsmanship that most typifies queer sensibility to me.

Lo and behold, Sontag agrees. In “Notes on Camp,” she argues that the queer sensibility is key to the wide(er)spread acceptance of homosexuality. Just as Jewish intellectualism (grounded in a strong history of Talmudic study) has provided Jews entree into mainstream culture, so “Homosexuals have pinned their integration into society on promoting the aesthetic sense.” In that article, of course, she’s focused on camp, but her statements obviously apply to more than just that. In fashion and the arts, we’re always one step ahead of the pack, our inside jokes are the very source of hipness. It’s this state of being “in the know” aesthetes that’s at the root of our queer sensibility. It’s our secret language. (In pre-Stonewall Britain, polari was a very literal manifestation of this phenomenon.)

Now, it could be argued that all minorities use a sort of secret aesthetic language–in black literature or Latino art, for example. I’d argue, though, that the queer lexicon is the most highly developed of these, if for no other reason than that most of us can pass; I mean, just to look at me, a stranger might not know I liked to kiss boys (well, unless he saw me sucking cock). In fact for most of us, until we came out, passing was a way of life. So in response to our typically hostile environments, we’ve developed a litany of hidden meanings that allows us to communicate with one another without blowing our cover. For me, learning this secret language–watching Miss Yvonne do her schtick and recognizing a humor in that performance that my parents and siblings couldn’t see–kept me sane.

Summary: Ability for homos to pass in mainstream cultcha –> the development of secret lingo and hidden meanings (which feed into the queer desire to be different/aesthetically superior to hets) –> memorization of every line Joan Crawford and Mink Stole have ever uttered.

Does any of that make sense? That’s as articulate as I can be this early in the morning….

P.S. Little or none of this applies to lesbians. That’s an entirely different ball o’ wax.

File under Obvious, But Bears Repeating: It feels strange logging onto the Ebola Fan Club when there’s an actual outbreak of Ebola going on. Of course, the same could probably be said during random outbursts of Ricola and the Hezbollah, too….

Or not.

Go boyfriend with your beautiful new design! Oh, to have eyes like him…

Such a very weird review, don’t you think? Clearly he had a good time, but he had to be drinking more than Abita….

I guess when you’re married to a talented photographer and best of friends with another big art gun, you develop a need to express yourself….

The highlights of my day…

* Fixing a moderately complicated plumbing problem with only my bare hands, the world’s tiniest flathead screwdriver, and a well worn pair of Revlon tweezers. (And they say plucking isn’t butch.)

* Finishing a grant application I’ve been promising to turn in for a couple of months.

* Playing The Sims and having Michael Bachelor sex up everyone in the neighborhood, male and female. I’ve still not been able to get a partnered person to dump their spouse and move in with me, but I’m working on Mortimer. Will Bella ever speak to me again? (If you don’t understand a word of what you just read, I’m profoundly sorry. For myself.)

* Loving that adorable curmudgeon of a boyfriend of mine.

Other things…

* There is absolutely nothing on television this evening–not that I spend much time in front of the tube, but I like having my options, you know? Good thing Jonno and I have plans to catch a movie–thanks, in part, to a certain webmistress’ glowing review.

* One TV show in which I am a little interested is the new John Goodman piece, Normal, Ohio, on Fox. Apparently, the big lush (who’s got a big-ass house out in Old Metairie) is playing a big homo on the small screen. First we were niched for the clothing market (International Male, Tzabaco), then film (remember New Queer Cinema, my darlings?), and now television! Expect a bonafide 24-hour queer cable channel within the next year or so–if it’s not already running by the time this post goes up.

P.S. Yes, I think John Goodman’s kinda sexy in that big, klutzy, bearish sorta way.

Um, okay, like does this guy look familiar to anyone? I mean, I could be wrong and all, but I think he looks suspiciously like a certain boy-band homo-in-waiting (whose pic was recently snapped on the dancefloor of Oz as he shook his post-concert ass )….

You know, I think it’d be great for little Lance to come screeching out of his walk-in closet–not only for our sake (a highly visible–if artistically questionable–role model for tomorrow’ homosexuals), but also for his own. I’m sure the first real lover he scored would put an end to certain promotional campaigns that’ll inevitably come back to haunt him.

Of course, it’d also be fun to watch as hundreds of thousands of squealing prepubescent girls’ faces twisted into expressions of confusion, disbelief, anger, deep sorrow, back to anger, despair, and finally morose acceptance. Crushing children’s fantasies–it’s what makes life worth living.