Gay Racehorse

Video Find of the Day

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The Onion: First Openly Gay Racehorse To Compete Sunday

60s Gender Shock

Video Find of the Day

Here's a delightful video clip from a movie released a year after Jayne Mansfield's death, in which she reports on her shock and astonishment at a Parisian gay bar scene and male prostitute hookups on the streets. Gosh, those are men? And those are women?

Peeve: I Am What I Am

Hardly a week goes by from Fall through Spring that this doesn't happen: I get on a bus downtown. I sit facing sideways at the front of the bus for the sake of the arthritis and the long legs. There's a guy staring at me. Sometimes he's grinning. Sometimes I get some kind of a sign, like an AOK, or he wants to give me five.

I know it can't be because he's read my column and recognized me by the accompanying picture. And sure enough, the first words out of the guys mouth are, "75th Ranger Regiment!" "Who?" I say. "You!" he says. "No, man, it's just a hat," I say.

It's not even a US military design. I picked the black beret I wear to suit Seattle's windy weather, not to resemble something military. If it's a reference to anything it's to my Gaelic heritage. I have a theory that the beret probably got invented in either Ireland or Brittany -- someplace like Seattle, wet and windy, especially windy. It's the ideal head-wear for a man with arthritis who doesn't want to be chasing his Stetson through cow pastures, bogs, or through the streets, every five minutes, dodging traffic.

[Right: I wear a black version of this, adorned with light gray, white, and light brown, cat hairs. It's actually a Basque style beret. Some people say the Basques invented berets. Like Ireland and Brittany, the historic Basque Country faces the Atlantic. Tell me it's not windy.]

Getting back to the peeve. So I explain all this to Mr. Presumptive, and what do you suppose the response is? He says, "No, you're a Ranger alright!"

At which point I'm wanting to kill him with my bare hands. He is in effect calling me a liar. He's saying I'm lying to him about my OWN FUCKING SELF. But I don't kill him with my bare hands because I know that with his last dying breath he'll say, "See, I told you you were a Ranger! If you weren't how could you have done that? --*cough*, *cough*, bleh, feh, FEH, **urk**." I wouldn't want to have to hear that.

The gist of the peeve is, if we're talking solely about me, I'm the authority. Especially if you're a stranger and don't have any experience to go on.

If I say I saw Dr Kildare on TV in 1958, that's not solely about me. You can come back with, "No you didn't, it wasn't on yet," and I can answer, "Not the series -- it was one of the old movie versions," and that could be the start of a fine enjoyable argument.

But if some dunce says, "You're gay," and I say, "No, I'm not," the next words out of the dunce's mouth better not be, "Yes, you are, I can tell." Maybe you CAN tell, but you MAY NOT. You don't have authority in that department. IT'S MY CALL.

It applies to other people. If the woman in front of me looks like a dude but says she's a woman, that's her call, not mine. I'm not the authority on other people's mind-sets, and I can't know how gender identification works because the science doesn't exist yet.

I am what I am, and that goes for everyone else.

American Football Is Gay

Sometimes, as a big football contest is approaching, people say things to me, like, "so Wes, who do you want to win the big game?" And I used to say things like, I don't give a crap.

Then they would spend the next fifteen minutes to an hour telling me how I am a failure as a human being because I don't have an interest in football. (Or any other spectator sport, except women's single figure skating and women's single nude gymnastics.)

Being that sort of person that I am, I got tired of always being the one on the receiving end of the criticism. So rather than say I don't give a crap about football, I now instead say Football Is Gay.

Now, the truth is, I don't think football is gay. But I do KNOW that every guy who insists I'm a failure as a human being for not liking football is a raging homophobe.

Sure enough, almost every time I say football is gay, even people who know me well enough to know better protest vehemently. They walk right into a Football Is Gay diatribe, by demanding to know how I could say such a thing. (If they weren't such big loser homophobes they would just say, "So?")

If you want to play along, here are some of the high points of the diatribe.

Tight Ends. Just anyone can't be a Tight End. It takes talent. It requires flexibility. You have to be able to block OR receive. Good practice: on your dates with your boyfriends, alternate as butch or fem.

Of course all football players live for the chance to handle a ball. Some of them, like these, practice for hours dancing around, handling balls. Note that these players have been practicing so long their balls are blue. Hey guys, the trick for preventing that is to let the balls drop gently before "rushing to the next play."

In the picture below we see the main reason women and gays love football. Men in tight pants freely displaying themselves squatting and bending over.

Football fans point to cheerleaders as proof that football is not gay. But these women are not allowed anywhere near the huddles. They are the fag hags of football. When a player does well do any of these women pat him on the butt? Hell, no! It'll be one of their gay team-mates every time! And the fag hags will cheer them both on!

Maybe this wavehead isn't gay. BUT HE'S PROUD TO BE A FUCKING WAVEHEAD?

Seriously, football isn't gay. But here's graphic proof of how homophobic it is. Look at this picture that shows how a typical center sees himself. A lone lion on the field ready to snap the ball to no one in particular and win the game all by his ferocious own self.

Compare that to the reality, and recognize that the denial can only be explained by a refusal to admit that the job entails a hand up your crotch every five minutes, and you're just one boy in a field of 22, all taking turns rolling around in the grass on top of each other.