Damn My Eyes! Careful, Y'all....

I used to run with a cadre of very fem men. A gay six-pack. Back after I graduated college. A girlfriend of mine (and by that I mean a friend who is a girl...I am painfully straight, y'all) knew them first, thought they were a riot, and introduced me and several other girls to them.

They WERE a riot.

We were all in our very early 20s. Not married. We hung out a lot together. We ate a lot. We drank a lot. We went to concerts together, and played board games. They told us stories about men they'd fucked, sugar daddies who picked them up in the gay bars downtown and promised to make them huge pron stars in L.A. We whined to them about the guys we dated and how we'd all be better off marrying gay men, 'cause then we'd have mates who had half a clue how women felt.

And one of the guys DID find a sugar daddy.

And he DID move to L.A.

And he DID become a pron star.

We rented his movie when he visited us. The so-called "Plot" was about two gangs of gay guys, one who rode motorcycles, one who didn't. And for some reason they ended up 'rumbling' but not so much fighting as fucking.

We were impressed.

"How did you keep it up for so long?"

"Fluffers."

"OOOOHHHHHHH!!!!"

The guys all ended up moving within a few years. Some to Cali, some to Chicago, some fell off the earth on the flat side. I think one O.D.ed. I think about them sometimes and wonder if they still like Erasure and pretty drinks.

BUT.

They keep popping up in my head more now lately.

WHY?

Damn commercial on the Food Network.

For Brawny paper towels.

Have you seen that one?

Guy in flannel shirt making a cake, voice-over, "Something's cooking at the Parker house."

And this guy, in tight oh-my-god-you're-dressing-right jeans, flannel shirt, that sort of foppish haircut, stands at the counter with his ASS STUCK OUT LIKE HE WAS IN PRISON, frosting a cake. And the creepy voice-over guy is no doubt trying to seduce women into thinking this guy is some kinda catch.

But any woman with two eyes and a blip of gay-dar can tell the guy is

OBVIOUSLY GAY.

No woman has a husband like this who isn't OBVIOUSLY GAY.

The guy picks up a puppy with frosting on it's nose, and creepy voice-over guy says, "Now that's a bad boy."

Brawny Paper Towel Gay Guy looks at the camera in that way, the way that says, "Let me help you off with those jeans, Big Guy, and I'll find some other use for all this frosting! Sit down, I'll make you a cocktail. Cock. Tail."

I watch that commercial in full, every damn time.

It's like I touched an electric fence and can't let go.

I'm achingly aware at the end of the commercial that my face is twisted in horror and dismay, like I just saw a dog fucking a horse in my driveway with the cat on the horse's back wearing rubber ducky boots and playing "Oh Danny Boy" on a harmonica.

What?
The?
Fuck?

Don't try and seduce me with gay guys to sell me paper towels! Show me a wet paper towel holding an entire 10-lb sack of potatoes, and I'll buy 'em! Scrub a gross bathtub with the same paper towel, and yes, that will impress me! Show me a cross section of how thick they are and how they sop up an entire glass of orange juice that your daughter tipped over on the dining room table, and I'll run right out and buy a whole dozen!

But. DO. NOT. use my precious remembrances of sweet men to sell me...to sell me Anything. Okay?

If I want to see gay men in seductive poses, I'll rent pron. Good quality pron.

I do wonder what happened to my gay friends of old. But if they tried that shit, if they did a stupid commercial for goddamn paper towels and stuck their assholes out so's someone could stick their carrot in there, I'd bitch-slap them til they cried for their mommies.

Paper towels.

Humph.

Not unless you're gonna use 'em afterward to clean that...er..."frosting" off the countertop.

Big Guy.