Top 20

Normally, I wake up a little late on Saturdays, so while VH1 is running their top 20 videos, I’m watching last week’s episode of Bill Maher, but today I woke up early and was finished with my weekly ritual just in time for the 20th video.
Which was Paris Hilton’s latest masterpiece.
Seriously, why does this bimbo have a career? Is it really that it only takes money to establish yourself as a musician of note these days?
Her song is something about being hot and stupid (I don’t know if those are actually the lyrics, but all I heard out of her mouth was, “I’m so hot you don’t care that I have a touch of the Downs.”) But the video was what really pissed me off.
It was soft-core kiddie porn.
Basically, the premise of the video is “Paris Hilton is Hot.” But there’s also the subtext “Paris Hilton is Altruistic” (although she doesn’t know that—because she would never in a million years know what Altruistic is. She’d wonder if Al Truistic was the sexy tomboy-next-door character she was supposed to be playing in her video. But her name is Paris. So that can’t be right.)
For those of you who haven’t seen it (you’ll be the ones without the strong desire to burn your retinas right now), a 14-year-old boy has a crush on Paris Hilton. He’s a loser (you know because there’s a big graphic that reads, “Sometimes the dreamer is a loser.” That doesn’t even make sense!) and gets beat on constantly by the other cool kids in his high school who look old enough to buy beer with their own IDs. His only escape is Paris Hilton, who is shown rubbing up on him, rubbing up on the cheerleaders in his school, gyrating on a desk in what I’m guessing was an homage to “I’m Hot for Teacher.” It’s basically her sex video with better lighting and a tweed vest. In the end, the dorky 14-year-old gets Paris Hilton for real (apparently, all you have to do is show up at her door and ask) and the popular boy in high school gets his lunch dumped on him just like he dumped the dork’s lunch on said dork earlier in the video. Well played, Karma. Well played.
But what really got me was the fact that this was on the Top 20 countdown. Top 20. That means that out of all the videos out there in the entire world this was one of the best. Let me say that again. Out of all the videos out there in the entire world, Paris Hilton’s “I’m Hot and Stupid” (or whatever the hell it was really called) was one of the 20 best. In the world.
What the hell has happened to taste in this country? The only reasonable (and I use that word loosely) explanation I can come up with is that, much like senior citizens are the only ones who vote in local elections and we wind up with low property taxes and shitty schools, the only people who are voting in these surveys are 14-year-old losers who look at that video and think, “I’m a loser! Maybe that can be ME one day!” and vote with the pre-pubescent little head instead of the big one.
Where are the music geeks? Where are the people who spend their lunch periods getting hard-ons over Lou Reed and are struggling to get their cover bands to learn “The White Album” in time for the high school talent show? I knew these people in high school. They were the ones I made out with in the back of the chorus room. Do they not exist any more? Did they fade out in the GenX/GenY crossover? Are we now destined to have a lot of little people who revel in the term “Tweens” determine our musical and cultural landscape?
All I know is I am NOT wearing legwarmers.

Always The Last to Know

AJ and I broke up. There were just too many things wrong. Namely that, the last night we went out, he spent the entire night following his friend Joe around and leaving me in an awkward position. It’s never fun when you’re out with your boyfriend for the night and guys are hitting on you because they have no idea you’re with somebody. But whatever, let bygones be bygones and I wish those two crazy kids all the best, just as soon as they come out of that glass closet.
So, two weeks later, Jules and I are shooting the shit at my kitchen table when the subject of AJ comes up. We’re talking for a little bit when, all of a sudden, she asks me, “Did you ever think maybe he was gay?”
I was kind of surprised by the question. “Yeah, the thought crossed my mind. Especially after the shaved chest thing. Why?”
“Well, don’t get upset, but me and Sculls were talking with Tuz” (a friend of theirs that I don’t know very well but absolutely adore. How can you not love somebody that regularly just slips into a Cartman from South Park voice?) “and I told them the background you just told me and they both were like ‘GAY!’”
“Really? Why?”
“Well, basically, they both couldn’t understand how a 33-year-old guy, hell a guy of any age, wouldn’t want to sleep with you. You’re 25. Every guy wants to sleep with a 25-year-old. And you’re beautiful and smart and funny. They just didn’t get it.”
“That always bothered me. But I thought maybe he just had a lot of guilt over it. I didn’t want to push the issue too much. But it really bothered me that, after 4 months, he just didn’t seem interested. That and the shaved chest thing. That really bothered me, too.”
“That did it for Tuz. He went to Key West. He shaved his chest for Key West. She thought that was totally gay.”
“Who knows? But to quote your own lyrics at you, his problems, they ain’t mine.”
Later on, though, I got to thinking about the whole situation again, wondering how the hell I was the last to know that my boyfriend was really wishing for a boyfriend and not a girlfriend under the Christmas tree. The warning signs were there: good dresser, kind of fussy, got a facial, had no interest in me sexually but was willing to spend a Saturday afternoon in SoHo looking for suits. It’s just that these damn Metrosexuals keep everybody confused. Nowadays, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. It used to be that hair products and face moisturizers were for the gays. Now everybody’s coiffed and properly moisturized. How the hell are we supposed to tell the difference?
The more I thought about it, though, the sadder the story got. AJ’s 33. His father’s a former priest; his mother’s a former nun. His family is very Catholic. At 33, it doesn’t even seem like he’s come to terms with the fact that he might be gay. And even if he did, would he ever be able to come out of the closet? With a family like that, it doesn’t seem very likely. His grandmother cried for a week when his dad left the priesthood. Imagine what she would do if she found out her grandson was gay. It’s the kind of reaction that might force you to deny your true orientation for a very long time.
And that’s when I realized I might not be the last one to know this time.

Not ANOTHER one.

At first, AJ just seemed really respectful. We had gone home together several times and kissed and cuddled, but he always wanted to wait.
“For a certain level of intimacy,” he always said. I thought it was endearing. And it made me feel safer. I wasn’t with somebody who was just looking for a chick to bang. This was a relationship. He wanted it to mean something. And that was refreshing. So I went along with it.
For four months.
The questions started forming in my head when we went to a wedding, stayed in a beautiful hotel room all night, and all I got was a cuddle and another $34.50 on my Visa courtesy of Victoria’s Secret. Why didn’t he want to have sex with me? What the hell was he waiting for? We talked, we emailed, we saw each other at least twice a week. Why weren’t we getting to that level of intimacy he was looking for?
I asked him. I got a very vague answer that I didn’t really understand. And, by his tone of voice, I could tell he wasn’t interested in talking about it. I left it alone. We were having a nice weekend, I didn’t want to push the envelope.
I thought, after coming back from a very long vacation that I had planned before I met him, that he would be bursting, that he would barely be able to wait to get me in bed. I mean, it was four months. I knew I couldn’t wait.
Instead, he wanted to go to a “dear, dear friend’s birthday party” (already my gay-dar was starting to hum in the back of my head … who’s got dear friends? Victorian-era fictional heroines, that’s who. Real men don’t have dear friends. And was the second dear really necessary?). Not exactly the homecoming reunion that I was hoping for, but I decided to just roll with it.
When we got to the party, he introduced me by my first name. No “This is my girlfriend, Hopeful.” Just “This is Hopeful.” I thought it was odd, but I wasn’t going to make a big deal of it.
Then, while he was in the bathroom, his “dear friend” asked me, “So, how do you know AJ?”
“I’m his girlfriend.” I said.
“Oh, isn’t that cute?” she responded. Normally, that would sound bitchy or catty, but it didn’t. It sounded slightly condescending, but it a way that made the gay-dar increase it’s buzz. She said it the way you might say it to an 8-year-old who has a crush on somebody four times her age. You want to indulge her because you think it’s just so cute, even though you know, unless the tale takes some horribly “Thornbirds” twist, you’re never going to get the invite to their wedding.
We went home together that night and crawled into bed. Like every other day. Except, this time, when he pulled me in to spoon me into our very non-sexual cuddle, I felt something different.
“Did you shave your back?” I said, pulling myself away from the chest stubble.
“Yeah, last week.”
I could barely hear my own words over the buzz. “Why?” I asked. “Why would you shave your chest?”
“I was heading down to Key West and I did it for aesthetic reasons,” he’s getting hedgy again. Meanwhile, all I was thinking was “aesthetic reasons”? Was he taking his SATs next week? Who uses words like that when you’re in bed with a 25 year old in a tiny, tiny negligee? You shouldn’t be able to use words period in that situation, never mind multiple-syllabic ones.
And then there was the whole Key West thing. I’m pretty sure Ernest Hemmingway was the last straight man to head down to the Keys by himself. AJ and his boys went down for a bachelor party that was starting to sound more and more like a circle jerk.
All I kept thinking was, “Not another one.” This one was trickier, because he wasn’t a theater director who, a full year after we broke up, was sending me pictures of himself in a tiara (lord, how I wish I was kidding), but there was definitely something familiar about this situation.
AJ interrupted my thoughts. “Hey, wanna go shopping with me Saturday afternoon?”
The buzzing in my head kept me up all night.