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...

You’re Not One of Those Black Party Fags…

...although you do find black to be particularly slimming during this time of your self-imposed Gym Hiatus thanks to your recently diagnosed Hurtful Hernia. Besides, the idea of wearing something humiliatingly skimpy to a $140 party for the oh-so-unusual opportunity to hang out with a bunch of drugged up Queens from Queens seems pretty unappealing. In fact you'd much rather wear a humiliatingly skimpy hospital gown for the bargain admission price of a $75 surgical co-pay where, for once-in-your-lifetime, you get to be the (legally) drugged out Queen. And you're not even taking into account that your upcoming Hernia party's admission price includes your own personal Anesthesiologist. Anyway.

Actually, tonight you have something much more wholesome planned and you are very much looking forward to it. Your Literary Lot of friends are getting together in Brooklyn for a Pot-Luck at the Overly Affectionate Straight Couple's apartment. Now, ordinarily, you would probably gag from the thought of accepting an invitation that forced you to cross a river just for the privilege to hang out with a bunch of Breeders, but during this particular river crossing you have decided to drag Blonde Beard along so you can introduce him to all of your friends. And you're pretty darn excited about it, too! So excited that you've actually decided to bake a cake. As an homage to the Black Party, you decide to make a Devil's Food Cake. Well, you actually decided to combine an egg with some Betty Crocker and attempt to figure out how to work your oven (back off Martha!), but an oven is definitely involved.

While waiting for your Chocolatey Creation to emerge from your Easy Bake Oven, you decide to call your Gal Pal who's throwing the Pot Luck to see if she needs any help. Normally, you'd be much to selfish to offer up your valuable Pre-Party Primping Time, but your Gal Pal did just agree to pick you up from the Hospital after your surgery on Monday. However you are absolutely shocked when your Gal Pal takes you up on your insincere offer! Luckily the Cake Fumes coming from your Easy Bake Oven seem to have a soothing affect on you, so you decide to look at the Silver Lining of being volun-told by your Gal Pal to come over early so you can *gasp* help. This way she'll have a chance to get to have some one-on-one time with Blonde Beard since the last time they met he was so ridiculously shy that the Limping Lit Lot Lesbian made some insanely obscure Charlotte Perkins Gilman reference about Blonde Beard being The Yellow Wallflower. You, of course, instantly brought her down a Peg-Leg by asking Charlotte Dykey York, "How many Feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb?" and before she got a chance to ruin your (actually funny) joke you screamed, "That's not funny!"

You call Blonde Beard to ask him about going to the party early and are kind of surprised when he doesn't seem too receptive. After all, it's only a half hour earlier than you had originally told him (even though you definitely planned on getting there on Gay Standard Time), and isn't he supposed to be all gung ho about meeting your friends? So you back pedal a bit and tell him hesitantly that he can come later if he'd like, but then he informs you that if he had to go alone then he probably wouldn't go at all. What the fuck is that about? So you're a bit embarrassed to actually have to say it, but you put yourself out on the line and tell him, "I was really looking forward to having you meeting a bunch of my friends tonight." You're really not happy that you have to guilt him into making the right choice, but you're definitely happier than you would be if he bailed.

After you and the cake have cooled considerably, you apply icing liberally to both, plop the Devil's Food Cake into some Tupperware, and head down to meet Blonde Beard in the last car of the F train. Luckily you time your rendezvous well and, although the train is crowded, you find a seat which helps you take a load off of your Hurtful Hernia. You ask Blonde Beard about his day and he informs you that he isn't feeling well. Again. Your conversation is awkward, but you let it slide. After all, he's not feeling well. Again.

When you get to Brooklyn you pick up some chips and candles on your way over and it's a nice distraction from the stilted small talk. When you arrive at the Overly Affectionate Straight Couple's apartment you are the absolute first guest. Which is an absolute first. You look around in disbelief at the amount of chaos that is being caused by nothing more than you Gal Pal's unruly Lab, Mr. President, who, just like George Bush, was never voted into office by you. This pup is not just a food obsessed vacuum cleaner, he's actually a patented Bagless Dyson who is obsessed with both your crotch as well as your Betty Crocker. And, unfortunately, your job is to keep him away from the food until the guests come. Since Blonde Beard informs you that he's allergic to four legged Presidents, your Gal Pal puts him in charge of gaying up the place with some tea-light candles. And that's when something incredible happens. The guests, (actually you should qualify that), the straight guests start showing up. Early. On time. All of them! Who are these Straight Men and their Stepford Wives? Actually the only person who is more than five minutes late ends up being, surprise-surprise, your BFF. Thank God someone has enough good gay breeding to show up to a Pot Luck after all the offensive carbs have been eaten, and he shows up with a bottle of vodka to boot

You introduce Blonde Beard to a friend or two, and then, like a Homing Pigeon you follow the Vodka into the kitchen and effectively push your Blonde Feathered Friend out of his nest to see if he will take flight. You refill at least twice and have several conversations about extremely interesting things that you will certainly black out long before you make it back to Blonde Beard. You do try to keep an eye on him but you're not too worried because, after all, these are your easy friends! You've decided that he needs to work up to meeting the bitchy Boy Luck Club because, like a Nanny Fine Whine, those boys are definitely an acquired taste.

When you finally get back to Blonde Beard with the Diet Coke he asked for ages ago, he actually tells you that he's going to go home. You don't know what to say so you just look at your watch and realize that it's 9:30pm. On a Saturday night. And then you really don't know what to do. You definitely don't know what to say. He hasn't even met most of the friends you wanted him to meet because a few of them haven't even arrived yet! You're definitely not ready to go. For Christ's Sake, you haven't even cut into your Betty Crocker yet! So even though the incredulous look on your face probably says it all, the words actually come out of your disappointed mouth as you tell him that you're not ready to go. And then you see your Home Schooled Hipster friend and you scramble because you want them to meet because, for obvious reasons, Home School is socially awkward too! You are sure that they will have tons to be shy about, and if they don't they can at least talk about you! But by the time you grab Home School's attention, Blonde Beard has already put his coat on and scaled his way through the crowd as if he's Spiderman making his escape.

By the time you catch up to Peter Parker he's already at the front door. He barely pecks you on the lips and then he's out the door. By the time you ask him if he wants you to walk him back to the subway he's already halfway down the block and can barely hear your question. And you stand there in the doorway until Mr. Fucking Un-Elected President starts to make his unleashed escape, barreling between your legs which force you to pull him inside and close the door. You stand there alone for a minute, unable to even yell at the dog, wondering what the hell just happened? And then you go back inside to your friends who ask you endlessly, all night long, "What happened to Blonde Beard?" Only you don't know how to answer them. Tonight he was supposed to shine. To show all your friends how eager he was to meet them and to fit seamlessly into your life. However, the only thing Blonde Beard was eager about was disappearing. And now you want to disappear, too. In fact, you're in such a dark mood right now that you actually consider going to the Black Party. Anyway...

You’re Not One of Those Fags Who Drinks Bottled Water...

...especially when you're paying for it in fucking euros. However, your Diet Pepsi addiction is slowly burning a hole in your already threadbare True Religion jeans' pocket (you paid extra for that distressed feature). Meanwhile you technically haven't actually had a Diet Pepsi since you left New York, since all you could find in the Alps was Coke Light (which, incidentally, is a thousand times better than the swill called Diet Coke that they sell in the states). But now that you and your BFF have left the Ski Fag trip to join your Literary Lot of Writer Friends for a few days in Berlin, you were sure you'd be able to find a bottle or two of your favorite diet elixir. Unfortunately you've had no such luck.

Since there were four of your friends on overlapping European vacations, you ended up booking an amazing two-bedroom apartment at The Circus Hostel and descending upon East Berlin. After checking in, you find your Home Schooled Writer Friend sitting in the lobby, totally jet lagged and about to fall asleep. You give Home School a double cheek Eurokiss (even though he's straight), and then he immediately produces yesterday's Metro paper from his trendy Manhattan Portage Messenger Bag. You quickly scan the front page headline and realize that one of your Lit Lot friends (the male half of the Overly Affectionate Straight Couple that is sharing the Berlin Apartment with you) has somehow become The Most Hated Man in New York since you left! And all he did to deserve this title was to be poor enough to enter (and win) a New York City Housing Lottery. Four years ago. You burst out laughing mostly because not only is he the Nicest Man in New York, he is also the Luckiest. And his good fortune has much more to do with recently falling for your Straight Girlfriend than with winning the Housing Lotto and purchasing an Upper East Side Studio for $14,000 (plus $295/month maintenance). Anyway.

Eventually your Straight Girlfriend and The Most Hated Man in New York return from an Overly Affectionate bike tour of Berlin and you all go out to a super cute Vietnamese Restaurant called Manngo on Mulackstraße. You've been dragging all day from your Diet Pepsi withdrawal so you order a Vodka Red Bull and quickly become so giddy and wired that you almost get kicked out for laughing too loudly while telling explicit bathing stories about the horrible Bower in Chamonix. Afterwards you all head over to an amazingly fucking cool space called Tacheles, which is an old bombed (and only semi-restored) Jewish department store that was taken over by squatters moonlighting as graffiti artists after the Berlin Wall fell. Every floor has some new bar or gallery to explore, and despite the fact that it is, ahem, not gay, it is the coolest bar you've ever been to. Every once in a while the Breeders do get something right. But, as usual, you digress. You all drink lots and lots of German Beer as you explore each level of the space, and then you and your BFF break off from the straight Lit Lot in order to explore Berlin's dirty gay scene.

When you emerge from the U-Bahn subway, you are a little bit disoriented and a lot bit drunk (especially since it's not only legal, yet encouraged to travel everywhere in Berlin with an oversized open bottle of beer). You wind up asking some Persian Boy with an Abnormally Large Face for help with directions to Tom's. And just like everybody else in Germany, the Large Faced Boy speaks perfect English. He decides to personally escort you to the bar, and on the way he starts offering way too much information about how he just left Tom's after having sex with some Random Trick in the Downstairs Dark Room. When you arrive at the Tom's, the Large Faced Boy's Random Trick is still cruising Tom's (presumably for someone with smaller facial features) and when Large Face Boy introduces you to the Random Trick, he actually extends his hand which you reluctantly shake. You quietly pray to yourself that the Random Trick has washed his dirty hands after finishing up with Large Faced Boy in the Downstairs Dark Room.

After a few more beers, Large Faced Boy walks you over to a gay club called Connection and it's really hopping. The place is an absolute maze, and Large Faced Boy takes you and your BFF on a tour of all the different rooms and levels. However, when you end up downstairs and stumble into a Hot Mess of Dirty Boys doing Dirty Gay Things, you and your BFF instantly begin to giggle uncomfortably, and unfortunately your giggles soon turn into uncontrollable laughter. Which, needless to say, is completely inappropriate and extremely unwelcomed by the Dirty Gay Boys. Especially by the Bitchiest Old Queen This Side Of France who somehow manages to give you the Fish Eye from her very compromising position. So you quickly giggle your goodbyes to the Large Faced Boy just as you get a text from Home School telling you to come meet him at a mixed disco called Berghain.

You arrive to the club at 4am yet somehow wind up in a massive queue with Home School. He's now traveling solo since the Overly Affectionate Straight Couple has gone back to the hostel. Probably to do nasty straight things that you shudder to think about. Not that there's anything wrong with that. As long as they do their heterosexual business in the privacy of their own homes... Behind closed doors and sound-proof walls, of course... But you digress. Your BFF disappears briefly to find a place to pee, yet returns with German sized beers for everyone. He's just thoughtful like that! After an hour of standing in line and meeting adorable Swedish Girls who speak English better than any of the published Lit Lot, you finally get admitted to the club around 5am-ish. You and your BFF immediately ditch Home School and instinctively race to the gay floor. The next thing you know you are dancing on a raised platform to Calvin Harris and you are happier than a gay boy surrounded by Wiener Schnitzel (which you are, Blanche! Y'are!) You dance until the Wiener Schnitzel's shirts start coming off, and then you decide to slink off the stage because after a week of eating fromage in France, you have definitely gotten a bit too Gay Fat to be pulling off your Burqa and exposing more jiggly flesh than the Gay Koran allows any Gay Boy to expose in a Mixed Club.

The next thing you know it's noon and you are in your twin bed(wonder how that happened?) Only you don't wonder too hard because it hurts your throbbing head way too much. Eventually the five of you arise and head over to a nearby cafe called November to have a nice long leisurely brunch. But unfortunately the service is even more non-existent than it was in France (you actually got yelled at when you asked the Bitchy Waiter for tap water). You, ironically, Wait for your Waiter to bring the check for at least twenty minutes. Eventually you decide to embark on a mission to find him and ask for your check as well beg him for another thimble of tap water. Only when you locate the Waiter Who Makes You Wait, he instantly yells at you and gives you an all-too familiar Fish Eye (you obviously had trouble placing his face without the dick in his mouth). As usual, you are way too hungover to argue when he brings you a €4 bottle of lukewarm water (which he has already added to the check). You give him a snarky smile and, you guessed it, he gives you the Fish Eye. Anyway...