You're Not One of Those New Jersey Fags...

...but you are definitely a Beach Ho, so when your Gal Pal invites you to her Mom's shore house for Memorial Day weekend, you pull your best gold chain out of retirement and pack up the Bitchen Camero with the rest of your Bada Bling and head down to Seaside Park. The traffic is, predictably, horrendous, and you are trapped in the back of the Overly Affectionate Straight Couple's Bitchen Camero with a large dog named Mr. President who you'd definitely like to impeach since he is hogging more than his share of the bench seat.

As you approach Exit 100 of the Garden State Parking Lot, your Gal Pal turns down her new favorite song "Paper Planes" by M.I.A. from her blown out speakers. Then she casually informs you that her Niece and Nephew will be joining you for the weekend. And suddenly you put a pretend to put a gun to your head while you sing along with the song, "All you wanna do is go Bang, Bang, Bang!" as if you're the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang, Bang Bang! Now it's not that you hate children, per se, in fact, way back when you were a little boy some of your dearest friends were actually children. But now that you are thirtysomething you find them to be, shall we say, a bit irritating. Now it's not like you hate all children, actually it's mostly the ones you are related to that you can't stand. But you digress. You are in a bit of shock as you utter, "Babies?" with more than a bit of disdain. "No, no, no!" your Gal Pal assures you. "My niece is six and my nephew is thirteen. But he's troubled." "Oh good," you say as you imagine your lifeless, body hanging from a fence along the boardwalk à la Matthew Sheppard. "I hear troubled teenage boys love the gays."

But the kids actually turn out to be cute and the six year old girl is this adorable Mini Pink Fluffy Thing who is so mature that you wouldn't be surprised if she told you she had scheduled her first boob job for next week. She makes you watch Hannah Montana and then flits around the house, walking with her arms up in the air as if she's eliciting applause while giving dramatic sighs every time somebody changes the conversation to a subject other than her. You absolutely love this Little Drag Queen In Progress and, later on at the beach, you spend the afternoon building her elaborate Gay Sand Castles, which, of course, the Troubled Teen knocks down. Actually the Troubled Teen isn't too terrible either, at least not when he's properly medicated. Anyway.

After a delicious barbecue you all decide to take the kids to the boardwalk, mostly so you can beat their asses in Skee-Ball, which, of course, you do. You basque in the pleasure of whipping two whipper snappers, and tease them about how bad they are until they're almost at the point of tears, before you end up bribing their frowns away with the wad of Skee-Ball tickets that you won. When you leave the arcade you notice that the social scene has dramatically changed. The boardwalk has become overrun with Seventeen Year Old Thugs with Pen-Line Jaw Beards. These Future Ex-Cons strut along with their Candy Cotton-eating Ho's who seem to have missed the memo that skintight Lycra went out of style along with David Lee Roth. Only these girls actually look like they may have actually eaten David Lee Roth, because they all have a disturbing Muffin-Top effect where their exposed bellies ooze out in the space between their Lycra and their low-cut jeans. Welcome to Senior Week on the Jersey Shore! Which does nothing but making you feel like a Senior Citizen living in fear of being mugged. You grab the kids and drag them home, stopping only briefly to ride the Go-Karts with a few overly made-up Go-Go-Tarts.

When you get back to the house you immediately send the overly-sugared children back to their grandmother, and that's when the Overly Affectionate Straight Couple begins to fake some yawns. You can't help but think to yourself, Is this what it feels like to be straight? 10pm Yawns after a day of Medicated Children and Pin-Line Jaw Beards? What is wrong with these people? And why aren't they having Gay Cocktails? However, there is only one problem to your conundrum. You are at least forty-five minutes away from the nearest Gay Bar! Not to mention the fact that you have no car! After a brief panic attack, your Gal Pal's boyfriend, The Most Hated Man In New York, generously offers you his jalopy so you can drag your ass up to Asbury Park to get your long overdue daily dose of Gay.

Driving the Bitchen Camero is a chore in itself, but you are happy to have access to it. Until, halfway to Asbury, you realize that you'll have to drive the damn thing home! How on earth are you supposed to do that? All this pesky driving is already interfering with your drinking and you haven't even had your first Gay Cocktail yet! Anyway. You park next to the Empress Hotel and make your way over to Paradise, which, unfortunately for you, will obviously be more of a Dry Desert than a Cocktail Infused Oasis. You do allow yourself to order a Bud Light, and as you are paying for it the DJ puts on some incredible Shep Pettibone-esque mega-mix of "Don't Stop the Music." You quickly pay the bartender and race over to the dance floor where, of course, you jump up on the stage and start dancing because that's exactly the type of exhibitionist you are. You'll show these Jersey Boys how we do it in New York! Only when you look around, there aren't that many Jersey Boys. The club that you just spent forty-five minutes driving to, the same one that you can't drink in because you have to drive forty-five minutes back, is practically empty!

After paying your respects to Rhianna, you do a quick Fruit Loop around the sprawling club and check out the Pool Area. The Sunday crowd is definitely not so cute. At all. Except for one boy who quickly catches your eye and actually says, "Hello," as you pass by. Suddenly your sober evening doesn't seem like such a bust, until the cute boy asks you in a familiar accent, "What are you doing down here?" Your mind begins to race as you try to place him! Suddenly he looks familiar, but you can't remember from where! You have some quick chit-chat while studying his face for clues. His current haircut is rather tragic, and you are sure that's what's throwing you off. But when he mentions that he is at the shore visiting some friends of his who are also from Venezuela, you instantly remember who he is. You actually met this boy at a gay bar in Dublin last summer, and you hooked up once in New York. Although he was incredibly sexy, he was rather rude to your friends and you felt like something was a little bit off. Of course you slept with him anyway, but you never called him back. Cut to 2008 in Asbury Park with a tragic haircut. The Vengeful Venezuelan tells you to come and hang out by the pool with his friends, but you tell him that you're gonna grab another beer and excuse yourself while making a mental note to avoid The Pool area as if it was quarantined.

That's when you stumble upon another room which is playing '80s New Wave which, of course, draws you in like a Star Trek Tractor Beam. You actually do wind up ordering one more Bud Light (you wouldn't want to break your word to the Vengeful Venezuelan...) and you sit down on a couch while scanning the room for cute boys whom you haven't slept with. Unfortunately there aren't any. So you just pick up some random New Jersey Gay Rag and start flipping through it. You are instantly drawn to a review of your Internet Crush's movie, A Four Letter Word, and you are instantly up in arms because, although it was a fantastic little film, this Critical Jersey Queen has given it a bad review! You seek solace in the fact that the Jersey Queen can't write for shit, and is obviously unable to grasp the deep nuances of the magic, infectious sparkle that is Jesse Archer. That's when some Big Boy sits down next to you on the couch with his even Bigger Boyfriend and they start chatting you up even though the bad review has thoroughly upset you and has left you feeling quite unsocial. The Big Boy asks you, "Is there any place better than this on Sunday nights?" And you look over at the Big Boy rather quizzically and say, half joking, but mostly not, while doing your best Tony Soprano, "Do I look like I'm from Jersey?" And that's when the Big Boy actually says, "Yes." Anyway...