You're Not One of Those Fags Who Likes to Go Antiquing...

...although you must admit that every once in a while you can definitely find yourself attracted to a Silver Fox. Or two. Especially an Italian one. However, now that you've arrived in Rome and find yourself surrounded by Hot Boys and Ancient Relics, somehow you find your short attention span constantly turning back to New York and Blonde Beard. You've been emailing back and forth since you left, and now you've really started to miss your hairy cheeked boy. Even though his hair has yet to turn gray, you begin to wonder if perhaps he's the one who you'll grow old with and help dye his beard with Just For Men hair coloring products?

But you realize you are being ridiculous because you and Blonde Beard haven't even had your six-weekiversary yet, and, after all, you are in fucking Italy for God's sake and there are Visa cards to be maxed and Italian boys to be kissed! Since your sappy thoughts are sapping your Jet Fagged libido, you decide to put them on the back burner. After all, how does that age old saying go again? "When in Rome... fuck a Roman!"

Thanks to your 5:10am Wizz Air flight, you and your BFF arrive at the World's Shittiest Hostel before 8am (hungover and still a bit drunk from Gay Hungarian Karaoke) and you are immediately welcomed by a sign informing you that the elevator is broken. You curse yourself for bringing too many cute outfits (that you have yet to wear) as you ascend each flight, and you're definitely in a mood by the time you reach Reception. On the third floor. The Grazie Cunto at the front desk (who must be a distant Italian Relative of the Merci Beaucunt in Chamonix) seems to get pleasure out of the fact that your room won't be ready until 2pm, but she happily informs you that you can store your things in the storage hallway which has neither a lock nor a door, yet somehow, she assures you, is "Very, very safe!"

Since you have hours to kill you decide to leave the Hostile Hostel to do some touristy crap. So you sleepwalk around Rome and annoy your BFF by making him play Japanese Tourist and taking photos of you in front of the Trevi Fountain and the Colosseum. And wouldn't you know it, as you step away from the most famous ruins in the world, you find yourselves being drawn toward a nearby Rainbow Flag, almost as if you're in a some Gay Star Trek Tractor Beam. The next thing you know you're having brunch at a little gay restaurant/bar called Coming Out. You order an omelette and a glass of wine. (Don't judge! It's cheaper than the Coke Light and, besides, you could certainly use some Hair of the Dog). And thank God for the wine because you need something to soothe your stomach while you watch your BFF and the Hot Italian Waiter as they conduct some metallic gay mating ritual where they flirt shamelessly using only their tongue rings. Even though you made your BFF promise that once he finally turned thirty that he would remove his tetanus producing, oral steel girder, for some unknown reason unbeknownst to you, it still remains dangling from behind his pearly whites. The Tongue Knob, however, does double duty as a Built-In Breathalyzer, because once your BFF has had one too many Tanqueray and Tonics, his speech tends to degrade into something that sounds more like a thirsty Helen Keller. But you digress.

After the International Tongue Knob Fest, you do some more half-assed touring of the Spanish steps, The Pantheon, and ultimately you wind up at the Vatican where you end up gawking at the Fashion Challenged Swiss Travesties that apparently guard the Pope from Catty Homosexuals. You think they look much more like The Joker than the Pope's Armed Forces, but who are you to judge? Somehow the two of you don't burn in hell when you go inside (mostly so you can use the bathroom) even though your BFF is actually wearing one of his infamous teeny tiny t-shirts that he special orders from BabyGap. This one, of course, is about as gay as gay gets, and has a picture of a Rooster with the word "Cocky" written beneath it. You pray the Pope doesn't read English, even though you kind of secretly hope that one of his hot Swiss Jokers does.

Eventually you make your way back to the Hostile Hostel and check into your totally busted room that, get this, smells like sewage (even though your backed-up intestines have definitely not contributed to the foul odor). You're (shockingly) too tired to complain to the Grazie Cunto at the front desk, so you wind up taking a disco nap before you put on your skimpiest, most tight-fitting Toga to go out for, surprise-surprise, Gay Roman Cocktails. You felt much better after getting a few Z's, but now you feel much worse after bathing in the non-treated sewage water that sprays out of the Italian ciao-er (pronounced chow-er for the linguistically challenged). You have a few minutes to kill, so you check your email from the Computer Room on your way out of the Hostile Hostel. A big smile takes over your face when you read a sappy email from Blonde Beard who was thinking about you and just wanted to say hi. Meanwhile, that's when your BFF lets out a big girly scream and you practically jump up on top of your chair while looking around for cockroaches and/or Roman Rodents. The Grazie Cunto at Reception gives him the Evil Eye (as if she's running some "Silencio!" library or something) and you ask, "What's wrong?" Your BFF says, "Nothing's wrong! I just got accepted to Graduate School! In Rome!" You both jump up and hug because for years your friend has dreamt of studying International Affairs in Italy in order to perfect his Italiano. You are so happy and proud of your BFF! For about a nanosecond. Then you just feel sad and sorry for yourself because you can't imagine life in New York City without him.

You meet some of your BFF's Roman friends and try to keep a stiff upper lip throughout dinner, but mostly you just drink lots of cheap red wine to ease your selfish pain. Which, as usual, works like a charm! Before you know it, your BFF's Gay Roman Posse whisks you back to Coming Out for some Gay Cocktails and, since you're in a somber, depressive mood, you start chatting up some Cute Lesbians from Arizona (and yes, you know that Cute Lesbian is oftentimes an oxymoron, like Jumbo Shrimp or Deafening Silence, but these girls are cute!) The drunken Oxymorons end up dragging you over to the Colosseum in order to show you a weathered face etched into the ruins, much like the Man in the Moon or the Shroud of Turin, only when the Oxymorons point out the face to you, you all can't help but agree that this face is definitely not Jesus. It's Richard Nixon. You end up unloading on the Oxymorons about how sad you are about your BFF getting into school and they drunkenly promise that you will not be left alone. That you will definitely fall Head-Over-Heels for some Gay Boy (obviously a Belinda Carlile fan) and that eventually you will bring your new beau to Rome so you can introduce him to your BFF. And that's when you imagine yourself standing in front of the Colosseum, holding Blonde Beard's hand while pointing out Rome's highlights, such as the Colosseum's Famous Shroud of Richard Nixon.

When you finish your Peroni you head back to the bar with the Oxymorons to get a refill, and that's when the Gay Roman Posse introduces you to their latest 25 year old addition. It's almost as if the Shroud of Richard Nixon heard your whiny, woe-is-me pity parade, because this boy instantly starts chatting you up. In perfect English, no less. Which definitely helps you look past the bizarre eyebrow twitch. You are in shock when Twitch tells you about his recent trip to New York where he spent each of his ten nights at The Monster. This is shocking mostly because you've only been there once in the past seven years. You're about to say, "Of all the juice joints in New York City..." but you can't because Twitch is kissing you. You close your eyes, mostly to savor the moment, but as soon as you do, your mind begins to wander. And it immediately wanders to Blonde Beard, who, incidentally, is a much better kisser.

The next thing you know, you and Twitch are whisked away by your BFF's Gay Roman Posse to a mixed club called Muccassassina which, although on the outskirts of town, has a line that practically starts in Midtown. You stand there, shivering and chatting with Twitch about all the bars in New York that he should have gone to, although all you really want to be doing is chatting with Blonde Beard about all the dumb bars you went to in Rome. When you realize just exactly how totally dickmatized you have become, you pull out your cell phone and send Blonde Beard an international text telling him that you're waiting in line for a Gay Roman Disco, yet you're too busy missing him to enjoy it. You receive his response almost instantaneously, which says, "What a coincidence! I'm going to a Gay Roman Disco AND I miss you, too!" His text puts a smile on your mopey fish face and you decide, right then and there, that it's time to start following your heart instead of your dick. So once you get inside the club you end up blowing off the Twitchy Twink and end up spending the night standing in the downstairs corner of Muccassassina, drinking €10 Peronis while sending mushy international $0.50 texts to the Bearded American Antique across the Atlantic, who's much more age-appropriate for you. Anyway...

You're Not the Type of Fag Who Skis on a Ski Vacation...

...as usual, you'd prefer to pass out and wake up hungover after too many Gay Cocktails then to never have slept after a long night of powdering your nose. So, as usual, you wake up hungover and drag your lazy ass to the slopes so you can meet your International Friend from Buenos Aires for a day of skiing at Le Tour. You met Ricky Ricardo last October in Rio de Janeiro one day on the gay beach when your bladder was so full that you had to ask him to watch your full beer so nobody would steal it while you excused yourself into the ocean to relieve yourself of the previous five. You weren't sure if Ricky Ricardo was gay since he was sunning with a girl, but after a few more beach beers you realized that Lucy was definitely Ricky's Fag Hag. You all hit it off and since you were traveling alone, they took you in as if you were their Little Ricky. Ironically you all ended up on the same flight to Buenos Aires, where Ricky ended up taking you to the gay equivalent of his Tropicana Night Club, South of the Equator.

So when you found out that Ricky Ricardo was going to be in Geneva at the same time you were in Chamonix you decided to get together for a day of skiing so you could add another country stamp onto your International Friendship Passport. The only tricky part is that you signed a silly waiver promising that you wouldn't bring any non Ski Fags onto the Ski Fag trip. Oops. Your bad.

Ricky Ricardo turns out to be an excellent skier and you and your BFF can barely keep up. The three of you have a fantastic day, except, of course, when you run into the Ski Fag Trip Leader at the Lodge and have to pretend that you just met Ricky Ricardo so you don't have any 'splaining to do to. Afterwards, Ricky offers to drive you back to your hotel, the only problem being that he has borrowed his brother's two seater Mercedes SL convertible, and there are three of you and three pairs of skis. But it sounds much more glamorous than schlepping back on the free l'autobus so you put the top down and pile into the backspace after your BFF immediately calls shotgun.

Perhaps it's riding in the expensive car in the French Alps, or maybe it's the fact that you have the top down in the middle of February, or possibly it has something to do with the fact that you feel like a teenager hanging out of a two-seater sports car even though you're well into your thirties, but you feel utterly fabulous when everybody in the tiny village of Argentière looks your way as you drive down the mountain. The narcissist in you enjoys the spotlight until you find yourself getting caught off-campus by the Ski Fags' Trip Leader, a.k.a. Mrs. Garrett. Only it's like the very special episode where The Facts of Life Goes to Paris. Make that The Fags of Life. You wish you were Tootie so you could just rollerskate away, but, unfortunately for you, you are so cramped into the backspace that you can't even duck or adequately turn your head away from Mrs. Garrett's judgmental spotlight. Ugh.

After Ricky Ricardo drops you off at the hotel, you decide to unpack your laptop and try to work on a blah-blah-blog entry with the free WiFi in the lobby. Yet when you get downstairs, you find ten frustrated Ski Fags trying to get online with their fancy new MacBooks, only nobody can find a signal. So you march over to the front desk to have another fight with the Merci Beaucunt who claims it must be your American computers that are causing le problem. You're about to get all Carrie Bradshaw on her and say, "I'm not an American! I'm a New Yorker!" because suddenly you have the need to explain that just because you live in an country that elected George Bush, twice, doesn't mean you voted for him (actually, after that Florida Chad debacle you don't believe W was ever elected the first time, but the fact that he was elected for a second term? There's really no excuse for that). Anyway. Your BFF yanks you away before you get a chance to get all political and he quickly asks the Merci Beaucunt if there might be a place in town where you can go get some Freedom Frites along with some Freedom WiFi.

The Merci Beaucunt sends you to Le Rusticana and you sit at the bar amongst all the bizarre gay memorabilia in the straight restaurant as you begin to work on your blah-blah-blog entry. You order some Freedom Frites and a few Kronenbourg 1776's and and begin to write about Le Stalquer when your BFF turns to you with the biggest smile you've ever seeen him produce. "What?" you ask, completely confused. He asks if you would watch his stuff because nature has called and he wants to race back to the hotel to use la toilette. You agree even though you are insanely jealous because you still haven't sat your gay ass down to make any deposits at the European Porcelein Bank. After your BFF leaves you devour the rest of the binding Freedom Frites and wash it all down with his pint of 1776.

A few moments later you feel a hand on your back and say, "That was quick," only when you turn around, instead of finding your BFF, you almost do a spit-take when you find yourself staring at Le French Construction Worker (a.k.a. Le Stalquer). He's got a shit-eating grin on his face that somehow eclipses your BFF's recent shit-producing grin. Le Stalquer tries to tell you something in French that you can't understand, at all, and you are in absolutely no mood to parlez français so you end up navigating your way to the Babel Fish website for help with a translation. Le Stalquer types in one French sentence on your keyboard and when you hit "Enter," Babel Fish quickly informs you that, "The lady at the Hotel tell me I could fine you here!" Le Merci Beaucunt strikes again!

The two of you type boring sentences back and forth until your BFF finally returns and begins to giggle uncontrollably when he realizes your predicament. Since Le Stalquer can't speak a lick of English, you just look at your BFF and tell him that he needs to save you. The two of you yap about the best lie to type into Babel Fish until you lamely have it translate, "We need to go have dinner with the Ski Group now." Since Le Stalquer already knows where you live, you let him drive you back to the hotel while you bluntly tell your BFF that he better not leave anything in the damn Smart Car this time. At the hotel your BFF immediately jumps out of the car, allowing you to have another nice quiet au revoir with Le Stalquer. Since you don't want to lead him on, you try to give him a Euro kiss on each of his cheeks, but he isn't having it, and ends up attacking you with another unwelcomed French Kiss. You quickly pull the door open and spill out of Le Smart Car where you find yourself gathering yourself together in front of Mrs. Garrett. She's glaring at you with her patented look of disapproval as if you are some slutty Tootie holding a bong that you've mistaken for a candy dish. You realize that this is the second time today that Mrs. Garrett has caught you being driven back to the hotel (in a second car no less), and you briefly consider telling her that you decided to turn tricks in order to pay off the €120 dinner, but you just smile and race back into the WiFi-less lobby where you receive yet another grande shit-eating grin from the Merci Beaucunt. Anyway...

You're Not One of Those Fags Who Likes to Douche...

...and neither do the French, apparently. The shower situation in l'hotel est très ridiculous! Mais oui! In that same way that "brunch" is a combination of breakfast and lunch, you, my gay friend, have discovered yourself an authentic French bower. It's not really a shower. And it's not really a bath. It's a bathtub with a hand shower that does not attach to the wall. There is no shower curtain of any kind, so if you stand up in the bower you will inevitably flood the entire hotel. So you kind of have to get down on your knees (a position not all that unfamiliar to you) and kind of carefully move the hand wand around your freezing body as if you're bathing in a bidet. But suddenly it becomes crystal clear why the French get a bad rap for not bathing. Don't blame the French. Blame their bowers. Anyway.

After getting into an argument with the Merci Beaucunt at the front desk about the impossibility of moving to another room with an actual shower head, you, your BFF, and your all the Ski Fags in your gay ski group head into town for Gay Cocktails. This poor little mountain town has never seen such a parade of designer jean fabulousness as you all prance your Jet Lagged asses to Le Rusticana. Et voila! Le petite mountain town has its first impromptu gay bar! The red wine flows through your veins in direct proportion with the Euros flowing out of your wallet, and after you are sufficiently liquored up, a bunch of the Ski Fags talk about heading to Chamonix to check out Le Non-Gay Gay Bar that the bartender turns you onto.

However, when le taxi arrives, the other Ski Fags quickly bail so you and your BFF are the only two die hards left. Your unbearable Jet Lag is quickly trumped by your collective need for more Gay Cocktails, coupled with le hope et le possibilitie of actual French French Kisses, en France. Your BFF starts yapping with Le Italian Cabbie in his native tongue as your drunk ass is whisked to Chamonix. After a ten minute ride, Le Italian Cabbie proceeds to rape your drunk ass with a 35 euro fare ($51). Le Italian Cabbie Rapist also neglects to drop you in front of the bar, instead choosing to let the two lost American Fags wander aimlessly through Chamonix in search of Le Non-Gay Gay Bar. But what the Italian Rapist doesn't know is that your liver is like a homing pigeon when it comes to Gay Cocktails!

When you finally locate Le Non-Gay Gay Bar, you are very confused because it’s 11:30pm on a Saturday night and the damn door is locked? You ring the bell and an angry French woman (je ne comprends pas?) comes up the stairs and yells through the glass, en français, and you think she tells you to come back at midnight. Midnight? Are you on the Champs d’ Elysee waiting to get into Le Queen? Unfortunately, when you look around the itty-bitty little ski town you confirm that you are actually standing outside of Le Non-Gay Gay Bar. But you wind up killing the half hour in some straight bar where everybody is drunker than you. And you hate that.

At midnight you and your BFF saunter over for your Non-Gay Cocktail and luckily the door has magically been unlocked. The bar is a tiny dirty little underground hole in the wall with Two Bartenders and absolutely no boys. But after a few Non-Gay Cocktails the place does pick up a bit and you start to get hit on by a French Man who doesn’t speak a lick of English! C’est parfait! You quickly figure out that the Non-Gay Gay Bar’s Female Bartender speaks a little Italian, so you end up enlisting her as your translator and between your merde-y French and your BFF’s Italian, you wind up being able to cobble together enough information about him. You learn that he is gay, that he works in construction and, most importantly, that he has a car. You have fun flirting without words (or comprehension) and after a few more Non-Gay Gay Cocktails, Le French Construction Worker offers to give you boys a ride back to your hotel. Actually, he might have asked you where you were from or what you did for a living, but his accent is so thick and your French is so bad that perhaps you just assume he offered you a ride, but it really doesn’t matter because you quickly accept his kind (and possibly make-believe) offer because you, the Jet Lagged Fag, are ready to say “Bon nuit!”

So you and your BFF pile into Le French Construction Worker’s teeny tiny little Smart Car, and you quickly realize that without the Non-Gay Bartender’s broken Italian, it is absolutely impossible to communicate anything beyond basic French terms like, “Hello my name is…” and “My favorite color is…” or “Voulez-vous couchez avec moi ce soir?” The ten minute ride takes an untranslatable eternity, and when you get back to the hotel your BFF knowledgeably abandons the Smart Car faster than the little voiture could ever get from zero-to-sixty. And there you are: drunk, tired, and trapped in a Dumb French Conversation with Le Construction Worker’s Smart Car who’s expecting toi to couchez avec lui ce soir. But you can barely keep your eyes open. In fact, you may have actually fallen asleep in the passenger seat when you receive your first official French French Kiss.

After about ten make-out minutes (which, incidentally, was equally as long as the ride home), you feel like you have more than fulfilled your obligation, so you say your au revoirs and sleepwalk your way back to your hotel room. Only when you walk into the room, you think something might be wrong when you find your BFF ransacking through his newly unpacked luggage, but you really know something is wrong when he doesn’t ask you any details. At all. Instead he says, “I lost my passport tonight. And my camera.” He begins to freak out as he calculates the time in New York so he can call the U.S. Embassy or whoever it is that you call in these dire, drunken situations. Meanwhile, you’re all pissed because all you want to do is gossip about your first French Kiss with Le French Construction Worker! You can’t get over the gall of your BFF to actually lose his passport on such a momentous occasion! Eventually, of course, he searches through his new TrueReligion Jeans pockets one last time and finds his passport all folded up in some map of the bars you went to in Chamonix.

The next day your hung-over ass is rudely awoken by some French Maid walking into your hotel room because, with all the passport hoopla, you forgot to hang the Do Not Disturb sign. You feel like merde but somehow pull it together to take an irritating bower and get on the slopes by 1pm. Actually, you arrive at le restaurant at the bottom of the slope by then, and by 2pm you are cramming into the Gondola with Europeans who seem to have absolutely no concept of waiting in line. Neither of you have any interest in skiing, and you are both endlessly irritated by everything and everyone. At the top of the mountain you decide to procrastinate over several $5 Coke Lights for the sole reason that it will enable you to put off skiing for another hour. Or so.

Your BFF bitches about not being able to take any photos of the beautiful scenery that neither of you are enjoying. At all. You spend at least a half hour discussing the lameness factor of taking the gondola back down to the base so you won’t actually have to do any skiing, but you decide that is just way too pathetic. Even for you. So you take your first and last run of the day simultaneously and as you walk back toward the hotel you begin to make up an elaborate story about the amazing day of skiing you had so you can save face if you run into any other Ski Fags on your way back to your room to take a Disco Nap. Only by the time you reach the parking lot, you look up and squint your eyes because of the glare coming off of the shiny metal object being held up by, you guessed it, Le French Construction Worker who is sitting on the hood of his Smart Car. Your BFF screams, “Mon camera!” as you want to scream, “Mon Stalkquer!” You begrudgingly decide to take Le French Construction Worker out for (yup, you guessed it) a thank you cocktail. Only today you are exhausted and hung over and you have neither the patience nor the cognitive ability to parlez français with Le French Stalkquer. Anyway...