Rambling Rhodes

She Didn't Give You Gay, Did She? Did She?!

Melissa, my girlfriend, the woman with whom I have considerable coitus, is really attuned to gay culture. I guess that's understandable, being that her dad is gay and all, and her good friend in her interior design classes at the university is very gay and dons women's clothes when the mood so strikes him. So, yeah, she probably understands gay culture far better than I do.

Invariably, her preoccupation with all things gay tends to spill over into my little world, and I find myself watching programs that I would never, ever, ever, ever watch unless Melissa has control of the television remote.

Consider Friday night.

As we lay in bed, with Mel happily clicking through the channels, she discovers. . . Bravo. Now, Bravo was featuring a Cher concert. Okay, you know, whatever. Maybe I've just been stupid all these years, but I didn't realize, until that very moment, that Cher is considered an icon of gay culture. I mean, this is Cher we're talking about, a women who thinks a spool of thread constitutes a wardrobe. How could she be an icon of gay culture?

"How can you not know that?" she asked me. "She changes outfits after two or three songs because, if she doesn't, some of her gay fans will actually complain."

I did not know that. But, now that I think about it, it makes a lot of sense when you think about Jack on Wil and Grace and his obsession with all things Cher. I guess I just never made the connection.

Following the Cher concert, Bravo rolled out one of their newest programs, Queer Eye For The Straight Guy. Now, seeing as how I was fresh off my first televised Cher concert ever, I thought I had filled my gay quota for the evening, but Melissa insisted. I don't know what to tell you about QESG, except to say these guys were REALLY gay. I think it would be interesting to see what those five guys would think of my living establishment, food tastes, and wardrobe. It would probably take four full episodes to straighten me out, er, so to speak.

By this point in the evening, I had pretty much absorbed as much gay television radiation as I thought possible, but then Bravo rolled out Boy Meets Boy. And. Mel. Insisted! Soooo, I watched this bit of homosexual reality television in which a gay guy has to pick from a group of 15 elegible men. There is a hitch, of course, and that hitch is that, amongst the gay men, there are a few straight men trying to pass themselves off as gay in a bid to win fabulous cash and prizes. This little fact is unknown to the guy to the choosing. He thinks all the men are gay. Reality TV fever. Catch it!

So, of course, Melissa and I sat there for a full hour trying to guess which men were gay and which were straight. It was a very gay night.

Would I recommend any of the shows we watched? Actually, yes I would. QESG is a laugh-out-loud scream, and Boy Meets Boy has the whole "is he or isn't he" thing going, which helps to strengthen your gaydar. However, I can't see myself tuning into the shows unless Mel is with me clicking the channels. I'm just not into gay culture quite as much as she is. Perhaps that's for the best.

(by the way, extra credit points if you can tell me where I conjured the title for this blog entry)

Posted by Ryan at August 4, 2003 05:08 PM