Recently there was a story on NPR about why time flies, why the clock seems to move faster as we get older. The answer? Scientists think that the human brain pays less attention to established routines. So the first time you do something — drive a car, walk a dog, kiss your lover — you remember it because it’s shiny and new. The more you do it, the less you’re likely to take notice.

As much as I hate to admit it, there may be some truth to the theory. It probably explains why I often find myself driving away from the house, suddenly in a panic because I can’t remember if I locked the front door. And that means that, unfortunately, my mind is pretty normal and like most people, I take things for granted.

I try to make Jonno an exception to that rule. It’s hard, and sometimes it’s painful, but before I come in the house after a long day at work, I try to pretend that there’s no one on the other side of the door — not him, not the hounds, no one. And as corny as it sounds, I’m always just a tiny bit surprised to find all four dogs lolling about in the hallway and Jonno standing in the study, ready to do the “welcome home” dance that he often does. (One day, I’ll share secret video, I promise.)

After 14 years, you’d think we’d have gotten beyond that. But then, that’s what you get for thinking.

Happy anniversary, Jonno. I love you.

P.S. Yes, I know that technically, we were married less than a year ago, but (a) that only applies in Massachusetts, and (b) part of the agreement was that I wouldn’t have to remember a second anniversary date. April 22 it was and April 22 it remains. So there.

I don’t mean to draw dividing lines. I’m not trying to revive the Mason-Dixon. But its no secret that folks who grow up in the South* have their own traditions — some real, some imaginary, some copped straight from Gone with the Wind, which is a little of both.

Occasionally, those traditions can be as charming and genteel as an icy pitcher of sweet tea. Other times, they’re downright intimidating, like the complex social negotiations involved in putting together a cotillion. To non-Southerners, it can seem as if we’re speaking in tongues (and not just because of our accents).

At heart, the problem lies in the different expectations that Southerners often have of friends, family, and most importantly, significant others. It’s like a language barrier — one that’s prone to sink relationships. And so, being the helpful kind of guy that I am, and being a yenta at heart, I thought I’d offer a few practical tips for anyone interested in dating a Southerner. They don’t apply just to gay relationships, but I think they might have special resonance with guys, so for what it’s worth….

1. Before he comes over, clean your house.
Non-Southerners, I’m not insinuating that you’re all slobs, nor am I implying that every Southern man’s a neat freak. I’m just saying that many of us from Down Here were forced to straighten up the place before company dropped by, or else we’d be outside picking our own switch. (You know what I mean.) Show your date that you’ve gone to a little trouble and made the place presentable.

On the other hand, if you’re the one doing the picking up, try not to judge — at least not out loud. And for goddess’ sake, spit-shine your car.

2. Apologize for keeping such a dirty house.
I don’t care if you have a staff of 20 maids, if your house reeks of bleach, if you’ve gone over it with an ultraviolet light looking for dirt and bodily fluids: apologize for the mess. Blurting out something like “Please excuse the place, it’s a total wreck” makes you seem more casual and human, and it’ll put your date at ease.

On the other hand, if you’re the one dropping by, your Southern date will expect you to reply to his apology with something like, “Not at all, your home is lovely. I wish mine looked half as nice.” Do it even if the place looks like Atlanta after the Civil War. If you don’t, you’re in for a very awkward evening.

3. Dress up for your date.
Religion is still big business in the South. That’s changing as America becomes more connected and cosmopolitan and homogeneous, but in many smaller towns — which were, until recently, what most of the South consisted of — Sunday church is the high point of the social calendar. And I don’t care what they’re wearing to those megachurches on TV, the men and women at First Baptist do not wear blue jeans on Sunday morning. EVER. Treat your date like a visit to church and put on a nice pair of Duck Heads, won’t you?

4. Offer to pay for dinner exactly three times.
Sexual liberation is awesome. Every gay man should be marching in the streets for women’s equality, just as every woman should be marching for LGBT rights. But there’s one rule that Ms. Steinem hasn’t been able to change:  the dude pays for the meal. In the case of two dudes on a date, the dude who asked the other dude out is responsible for the check. If that’s you, that means that when the bill comes, you need to reach for your wallet first.

However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that your credit card will be the one zipping through the swipe. Your date may offer to pick up the tab — and you may well let him, but not before you’ve insisted on paying three times. IMHO, it has to be three times on the nose, three instances of “Oh, no, let me get that”, “Your money’s no good here”, and “No, I insist”. Less than three and you look like a cheapskate, more than three and you start to make a scene. Once you’ve used up your three protestations, you’re on your own. Figure it out.

Agreeing to go Dutch is fine, I suppose, but it’s not very romantic and probably won’t get you into anyone’s bedroom — at least not on the first date. Which brings me to…

5. Don’t be shy about sex.
According to stereotypes perpetuated in literature and on certain Lifetime movies, everyone in the South is all god-fearin’ and shy when it comes to their own bodies — doubly so when it’s a matter of letting those bodies play with others. But consider two things, friend: (a) it’s hot down here, and (b) we drink a lot.

I’ve never understood the song “Too Darn Hot”, because frankly, I think the sun goes to men’s heads — their smaller heads, I mean. If you’ve ever been to Panama City Beach or New Orleans in August, you know what I’m talking about. Throw some whiskey on all that writhing, seething exuberance, and you’ve got a gangbang that Titan Media could only dream of.

Bottom line: yes, we’ve had sex, and yes, we’d like sex again — right this very minute, if you don’t mind.

 

* Naturally, there’s not just one “South”, but I think we can talk generally about the region — though there are limits. When I came home for lunch yesterday, I was sitting at the kitchen table leafing through Southern Living (I subscribe, natch), reading about how this was so Southern and that was so Southern and this was the way that so-and-so’s grandmama always did it — and they were talking about Oklahoma. Now, Oklahoma is a perfectly lovely state, but I kinda doubt that the residents of Tulsa consider themselves “Southern”.

Over the weekend, I learned two unpleasant things:

A. Lindsay Lohan may play Sharon Tate in a new movie about Charles Manson.

B. Robson Green doesn’t get enough airtime on BBC America. For the unfamiliar, here’s a screencap of him in Being Human:

And another:

And one from Wire in the Blood, which we do not get in the U.S., but which I will lobby for very soon.

 

Last week, I shared a few suggestions for making a good self-vid. None of it was rocket science — just a bunch of simple, common-sense tips I’ve picked up over a lifetime of avid viewership. What can I say? I take notes.

I was going to post the rest of my suggestions the following day, but then Liz Taylor died, and I wrote about it, which made all the sex talk slightly uncomfortable and awkward — even though, to the best of my knowledge, Liz was not an avid reader of this site, nor did she ever make a sex tape. More’s the pity.

But whatever. That’s behind us now, so for those of you still bound and determined to share your smutty side with complete strangers, here are the rest of my ideas — including my #1 super-serious most important rule of all time. Don’t say I never gave you anything.

P.S. Remember: Xtube embeds are iffy. If something’s not loading, click it to watch it in its original milieu.

P.P.S. Yes, mom, you can stop reading now.

Continue reading

I feel like all I’ve done the past 48 hours is write about Elizabeth Taylor — partially because it’s true — but I need to write just a little more.

You see, Liz was fundamental to my college education — the social part of it, anyway. It was in college that I learned how to communicate with people, how to carry on a real conversation, how to make friends and be a friend in return. I didn’t get any of that high school, with its cliques and peer pressure and the nonstop bible verses being thrown my way and the incessant fear of being outed as a boy-kisser.

In college, I began as an unknown. Only a couple of my high school buddies went to Millsaps — which was, and is, a college for nerds — so I reinvented myself. And when I recast myself as the person I wanted to be, I discovered who I really was. (Not surprising, really.) Once I had that part cleared up, I could be honest and open around friends — real friends who liked me for the real me.

One of my first real friends, Estus, was a freak for Liz Taylor movies. Most nights of the week, we’d crack open a case of beer and fire up the bong (it may have been nerdy, but Millsaps was still college) and watch whatever he had on hand. And more often than not, what he had on hand was a film called The Driver’s Seat.

The Driver’s Seat is a novel — a novella, really — by Muriel Spark. It’s the story of a spinster from northern Europe who goes to Italy for…well, for various reasons.

The novel isn’t that good. Spark has an unusual writing style that flattens out time, simultaneously describing events of the past, present, and future. Unfortunately, for a suspense story like The Driver’s Seat, Spark’s approach spoils the ending pretty quickly.

In movie form, however, it’s very, very different. Even though director Giuseppe Patroni Griffi tried to incorporate Spark’s time-flattening storytelling technique, The Driver’s Seat (or Identikit, as it was known most places) remained a fairly suspenseful film. And in typical early-70s style, it was quirky to the point of being nonsensical, but it was a feast for the eyes. Given my mental condition during those get-togethers, visuals were all I really cared about. I couldn’t get enough of it — or her.

Someone’s been kind enough to post the entire film to YouTube, but sadly, it’s not embeddable. Here’s a great clip from the middle of it. The scenes with Liz and Mona Washbourne — whom she befriends on her trip — take place in the past; the others take place in the present. I’ll let you guess which scene is my favorite.

 

 

Self-pics are a bitch.

To create the requisite combo of cool + interesting + saucy, you have to hold the camera at arm’s length and hope you frame the shot just right. More often than not, you crop off an eye, or you notice something hideous in the background that you hadn’t seen before, all because your phone doesn’t have a front-facing camera, thankyouverymuch, Steve Jobs.

Of course, you could take a shot in the mirror, but that feels like cheating to me. (NB: why the hell do folks who take mirror pics always stare at their viewfinders? Look up, people: we can see you.)

All told, the ratio of bad self-pics to good is about 10:1. If we agree that duckface is a bad thing, it’s more like 50:1.

Last year, the New York Times ran a semi-helpful feature on how to take a flattering self-pic. Given my work on Lurid Digs [thoroughly NSFW], my friend Tyler suggested that I write a follow-up piece on self-vids. You know, the sexy kind. And I thought, “What makes you think I’d know anything about dirty movies?” And then I thought, “Okay, fine.”

Before we get started, however, I should mention a couple of things. First, I freely admit that smutty is in the eye of the beholder, and I know that everyone has his or her own turn-ons, but there are a few tried-and-true rules that apply across the board, no matter what your kink may be. (Unless your kink is terrible videography, in which case, you’re on your own.)

Also, I should point out — though it’ll be obvious very soon — that all of the following clips are of guys because that’s what I tend to watch, but again, the rules are more or less the rules, no matter what Skittle you diddle. And last but not least: Xtube embeds are notoriously janky; if something below doesn’t load, just click the video to watch it on Xtube proper.

And so, for what it’s worth, my short list of self-vid DOs, with a few DON’Ts thrown in for good measure — all after the jump.

P.S. Mom, if you’re reading this, maybe you should stop here.

Continue reading

Just so you know: love is a terrible thing.

It’s a distraction, like pornography.

It’s all-consuming, also like pornography.

In fact, love is a lot like pornography, except that love makes you worry, and porn doesn’t, unless you’re the sort of person who worries that you’re eating up too much space on your hard drive with videos organized into handy folders labeled with acronyms like ATM and ATOGM and MMMMFFT, in which case, love is totally, 100% EXACTLY like pornography.

Maybe the only way that love is NOT like pornography is in its gift of empathy.* Love has the unfortunate side-effect of making you identify with complete strangers, including fictional characters. Inside your love-addled brain, love reshapes the movies that you see, the TV shows, the commercials, casting you and your paramour in the roles of hero and victim. Love makes every zombie film a story of you and your honey, cheating death, every sweet undead goodbye a stab in your heart.

Love is even worse when it comes to newscasts of real-world tragedy. They’re almost unwatchable. I usually opt for Family Guy reruns, which don’t have the same effect at all, thankfully.

And yet: love is something that most people aspire to, while only a sliver of the population aspires to porn stardom. Seems like a conundrum to me. Perhaps more people would find love if they opted for careers in the adult entertainment industry. I should talk about that more next week….

 

* Actually, I once wrote a seminar paper arguing that pornography depends on empathy: it assumes that the viewer will identify with someone in the scene. But then I got distracted (not with love, but with hatred for my advisor) and moved on to other things, so I think I’ll drop the argument.

I think something’s wrong.

By now, I should be covered in glittery residue, reeking of booze and sweat. I should have made a fool of myself at least once and, ideally, made a fool of someone else, too. At the very least, I should’ve paid homage to the corner of Bourbon and Dumaine, sneered at drunk sorority girls on their way to karaoke bars, pondered a meal at Clover Grill and quickly decided against it.

But none of that. I’ve seen no parades, nothing. I did go to the Society of Ste. Anne ball, which is always amusing. But even there, I spent most of my time in corners, talking to friends I haven’t seen in a while.

I outgrew xmas ages ago: it became an ordeal, a gauntlet of social obligations. Carnival doesn’t feel that way — it’s a vacation with pals, really — but something is different. Maybe it’s the length of this year’s season — one of the longest possible. Maybe I’m distracted with work. Maybe I’m older and more worried and less carefree. Or maybe I’m annoyed by the huge crowds, especially the huge crowds in our neighborhood.

Whatever the reason, I’m feeling grouchy this year. The suddenly cold weather isn’t helping. Hopefully I’ll perk up by the time guests arrive for this morning’s open house. And if not, well, at least there’s king cake and the knowledge that it’ll all be over at midnight.