Okay guys, today I’m trying to polish off an article on the sex life of homos in the provinces. Given my personal peccadilloes, it should come as no surprise that I’ve chosen to focus on the various elements of cruising in the sticks: how to get laid in Redneckistan. I’ve already got a list of pointers worked up (e.g. develop a taste for Coors Lite and don’t be shocked that the local DJ hasn’t got Kevin Aviance’s latest white-label single handy), but I’m wondering if you boys and girls might have anything to add.

Those of you who live outside the metropolis, how is homo culture different in your neck of the woods? What do you find appealing in strangers? Repulsive?

And you city-dwellers who occasionally visit the country, what things do you notice when you go there? What do you find most unusual? Most exotic? Most appealing?

The article’s framed as sort of a Cosmo guide to sex among the haystacks, but I think there are some interesting issues at work here that might make for good reading (if I can manage some good writing to convey it all). So what are you waiting for?

It is a rule of etiquette in the South to refer to certain persons as “Mister/Miss + His/Her First Name.” For example, if I were addressing Leah Chase, famed proprietor of Dooky Chase Restaurant, I might call her “Miss Leah.” It’s a practice more commonly used for women, though I couldn’t say why.

I think it’s great to use a semi-formal term of address like that. It’s a simple, genteel way of showing respect to someone while maintaining the intimacy associated with first-name-basis relationships. Of course, maybe my affinity for the formality has something to do with my upbringing: as a child, if I didn’t respond to an adult with “m’am” or “sir” my daddy would have knocked me into the middle of next week. (In fact, he probably still would.) And if I’d even thought of calling an adult by first name, there’s no telling what would have happened.

Only thing is, this form of address is typically reserved for use with people of color to whom one is obligated to show respect because of their age. The implication is that “Miss Chase” would be too formal, too respectful to be used with a person of color. So by saying “Miss Leah” (and she is, fyi, a woman of color–Creole, to be specific), the subtext goes something like, “I could call you Miss Chase, but since you’re a person of color, I’m not gonna go quite that far. I’ll show you some respect, but not as much as I would a white woman of your same age.”

Of course, that’s pretty fucking lousy. What do you do with a custom that’s so charming and despicable?

I don’t have a problem with Madonna. Really. I don’t.

But, Lord, protect me from her disciples.

Meat-eating robots?. Okay, now I’m concerned.

Um, okay, it’s kinda creepy, but hot, right? I mean all those freshly shorn swarthy men….

Oh. Mathilde finally responded.

First impressions are important, especially when it comes to novels. I have fantastic visions of Danielle Steele and John Grisham cracking cats-o-nine-tails on the backs of a dozen minions, pressing them to think harder, to think outside the box, for that one perfect opening sentence that will draw the reader in with a tantalizing taste of things to come.

But if there were a competition for the best opening passage ever, I think Gore Vidal would probably win for Myra Breckinridge:

I am Myra Breckinridge whom no man will ever possess. Clad only in my garter belt and one dress shield, I held off the entire elite of the Trobriand Islanders, a race who possess no words for “why or “because.” Wielding a stone axe, I broke the arms, the limbs, the balls of their finest warriors, my beauty blinding them, as it does all men, unmanning them in the way that King Kong was reduced to a mere simian whimper by beauteous Fay Wray whom I resemble left three-quarter profile if the key light is no more than five feet high during the close shot.

Now that’s some fancy writin’, ain’t it?

When goddess gives you lemons, make lemonade, right? Same goes for corks, apparently. (Courtesy of the delightfully wacky Mr. Pants, who also links to a video clip of Jenny Jones when she appeared on Star Search sporting the biggest hairdo west of Marie Antoinette’s rotting corpse).

Last night, I took a bus. I used to take them all the time to get back and forth across the city, but now that I both live and work in the same neighborhood and I have my own wheels, I rarely see the inside of a bus or streetcar.

I wasn’t particularly happy about riding the bus. I would have preferred to be in my car, but as vehicles made in 1987 tend to do after 13 years of service, it had broken down. I had it towed to a garage miles away because it’s the only reputable one I know.

[ Of course, I’m probably being too judgemental of the other garages I’ve tried. I’m a faggot and I don’t know much about cars–though I’m always willing to learn–and I feel intimidated by these painfully hetero working-class men covered in grease. It’s like I’m back in high school and although the meatheads aren’t really taunting me or anything, something in their eyes tells me they’re thinking, “Fucking pansy. What can I do to make his life miserable today?” But that kind of defensiveness, it’s just the way I am and since I don’t believe in psychotherapy, I’m probably not gonna change anytime soon. Whatever. ]

Anyway, the car’s not the important part. The bus ride is. I walked out of the garage and over to the bus stop, and there, for the first time in I don’t know how long, I stood around doing nothing. No meetings to attend, no speeding through traffic to get where I’m going, no hammering out grant applications at the last minute to meet deadlines. Just waiting. And waiting. And idly chatting to the other people waiting for the bus. And reading a great book. And getting frustrated when busses would pass on their way back to the station, not picking anyone up. And being relieved to see the right bus finally heading our way. And the smell of the ice-cold air conditioning inside (though the weather was bearable since it was dusk). It would have driven my boyfriend completely insane, but for me….

And on that ride back home, the quality of light in the trees, the color of the sky, the sounds of the bus hulking through early evening traffic–it brought back a flood of memories: back to when I first moved here, and I took the bus all the time, and everything was new and exciting, and I was making friends and living like a kid who’d just graduated from college, and it seemed so long ago and so beautiful I could have cried. It’s like revisiting your old high school or just trying to look at a very familiar place as though you were just seeing it again for the first time: the scents, the colors, everything new and crisp. I don’t get bogged down in the nostalgia; I just like to let that feeling, that buzz, flit around in my stomach for a while and I smile.

“I thank you in advance for your swift attention to this matter and remain, sincerely yours…”

I could write it in my sleep.