Am I going to be a 'one-trip wonder'?

   Alex has given me permission to speak for him, though I have already spoken for him many times without his permission. He and my best friend Scott have agreed on a list of 20 things that a person should do or be prepared for to make traveling with me a more bearable experience:

1. Bring sleeping pills to drug me.
2. Wear headphones to drown out my constant talking at the pool.
3. Be prepared to meet everyone around you.
4. Set the clock a few hours earlier each night so I'll stay in bed later in the morning.
5. Bring a spare laptop for me even if I say I prefers pen and paper.
6. Be prepared to instruct me on how to use the laptop each time I use it for the same task.
7. Add minutes to the international calling plan on your phone.
8. Travel to hot climates where I can take my shirt off.
9. Take pictures of me when I do take off my shirt.
10. Help me trim my chest hair when I ask.
11. Bring my reading glasses in your pocket so you don't have to read every menu for me.
12. Don't expect any help in locating anything on a map or a street.
13. Expect to apologize to waiters for the mess on my side of the table.
14. Order more than you want so I won't eat all your food.
15. Don't be surprised to find food crumbs in very strange places in the hotel room and on my body.
16. Don't be surprised to find me exercising in very strange places.
17. When booking the seats on the airplane, put me in a different row from the one you're in and then blame the airline when I ask.
18. Expect to spend a chunk of your sight-seeing time trying to find a bathroom for me.
19. Expect me to be blogging constantly.
20. Accept the fact that for some crazy reason people still fall in love with me.
       
          And for those friends who doubt Alex would ever treat me to another vacation after having to share the same hotel rooms and bathrooms for 2 weeks along with sitting across the table from me for every meal, let me be the he first to tell you that he is already planning the next trip. This one is going to be to Australia and New Zealand ---
             he's flying himself to Australia and me to New Zealand.

"HELLO, I AM POOPLOS CRAPAKAKAS AND I NEED YOUR BATHROOM."

   Oh, the cruelty of the gods. If someone just told me which god or goddess was in-charge of diarrhea I would have prayed to him or her for mercy.
  I have my suspicions it all can be traced back to that 'special sauce' from my Paris blog but there were so many delicious yet potentially hazardous meals after that I will never know for sure. The ferry ride from Athens to Mykonos was my first clue that something was wrong. Luckily it was a huge boat with ten bathroom stalls on each deck so me clogging three of them went unnoticed.  
  When we reached the hotel I wasted no time. "Hello I am Gary. I need your bathroom."
  "We'll be in the room in a few minutes if you can wait," Alex told me as he continued registering our names and taking care of the paperwork.
  " I would love to wait but I can't," I said as I hurried away to the lobby bathroom. 

"Alex, somebody stole my shirt, I swear!" 

"....again?"

    We were staying at The Elysium, the most beautiful gay hotel on the island.  It is designed in a high-styled 60's motif with white plastic, Lucite and luxurious creamy couches. The only other colors are the blue of the kidney-shaped pool and the orange of huge wicker carved-out egg shaped seats in a line on the pool's terrace that look out onto the ocean. The lobby bathroom was just as stylized as the lobby, as was the bathroom in our room, the bathroom by the pool, and the bathroom near the outdoor dining room. I quickly learned the location of every bathroom I could use in the hotel. They were so beautifully designed that I hated having to do what I had to do to them, even if it was only for a few minutes at a time.

"These chairs are terribly uncomfortable!"

   After a day and a half Alex was getting very concerned and wanted me to see a doctor. I was concerned too, mainly because I had no spare weight to loose. I wouldn't have bothered doing so much cardio on the machines in the gym  before the trip if I knew I would be loosing a few pounds just sitting on the toilet. I owed it to Alex and myself to try and get better as quickly as I could so I could eat and drink whatever I wanted and enjoy Mykonos to the fullest and drunkest. 
   It was Saturday and finding a doctor was very difficult. The lovely and talented Belgium drag queen named Jahn, who was the main entertainment at the hotel, recommended I go to the hospital which treated him very nicely when he fell down the stairs of the little stage by the pool and strained his ankle two years before.  
   I was still trying to look my best as I got dressed in a pair of dark blue light cotton beach pants, sandals, and an unbuttoned short sleeve shirt.
  " No matter how hard you try, you can't be sexy with diarrhea," Alex said.
  "Oh yeah, watch," I said, putting on my sunglasses.  We went to the lobby and the gay Greek man behind the front desk called us a cab to the hospital. "How do you feel? " the man asked me.
   "Not as good as I still look," I answered, striking the most attractive pose I could, making the man laugh and Alex roll his eyes.
    I was worried how much the hospital was going to cost and how long the wait in the Emergency Room would be. Neither was a concern when we arrived. The hospital was basically the size of a large one-level house with the same white stucco and blue shutters that all the other buildings had, and there was no one in the Emergency Room waiting area. As a matter of fact, there was no Emergency Room waiting area. There was just the Emergency Room that you walked straight into.
  There was a male nurse hairier than me standing in orange scrubs all by himself. I introduced myself and Alex then explained with a combination of English and gesturing what my problem was. 
  " Gary, you can stop pantomiming sitting on a toilet. I think he understands," Alex shook his head in embarrassment.
   " I was just making sure," I said, standing back up from a squatting position.
    " Can I see passport," the nurse asked. 
     " Is this expensive? How many Euros will this cost for a tourist?" I asked.
      " No worry. You pay little. Come," he waved me over to a one of three gurneys in one room that served as the office and examination room. He took my blood pressure then my temperature with a thermometer stuck under my arm, which made me feel strangely more away from home than even the nurse speaking Greek. He applied pressure with his fingers to areas of my stomach, then had a doctor in his early 30's do the same. I assumed he was the doctor because he had on a lab coat over his jeans and tee-shirt. Neither had on name tags or had bothered to tell me their names, which as a hospital employee myself, I was shocked at. I was equally as shocked by the open toilet in the middle of their version of a medication room where they stored all the drugs in cabinets, canned food and janitorial supplies including a bucket and mop. After I was hooked up to an IV drip for dehydration, I had to bring the IV pole with me into the medication room every time I needed the toilet. One time I was sitting on it as the cleaning lady, who was at least considerate enough to put her hand up to block her vision of me,  came in to get her mop and bucket. 
    By the end, I was given 2 liters of fluid with electrolytes that lasted for 4 hours and a pill which was "for my stomach". The doctor in the lab coat then felt my stomach in the same way again and told me it was gastritis. "Many tourists have. We give you what to eat. " And then, believe or not, as Zeus is my witness, he lit up a cigarette. But to his credit he did open up the window next to my gurney. 
    The hairy nurse gave me a standard print-out in Greek of a  rice and chicken diet for three days and a prescription for electrolyte powder to put in water. As he was trying to explain  I knew there wasn't a chance in Hades I was following that diet. He handed me a bill for only 20 Euros (How about that US Congress!!!)  and Alex and I hopped in a cab back to the hotel. 
   I starved myself for a day, took Imodium AD and drank bottled water with the electrolyte powder, and didn't drink any alcohol, take any Adderall, or drink any Greek coffee, and just slept for half a day. 
    Who cared if I might have had a little stupid gastritis. Frankly, I didn't give a shit the day after, both figuratively and literally. I was cured.

A ROOM WITH A JEW

     The plane ride to Athens was perfectly smooth until the last ten minutes when there was the worst turbulence I ever experienced. It felt like Zeus was using the plane for a salt shaker. The huge Cumulus Nimbus clouds outside the tiny window were the same ones that must have surrounded Mt. Olympus. I had to do something to stop the plane from crashing. I needed to sacrifice a virgin quickly, but my boyfriend Alex was the only one near me, so we were doomed. Are you supposed to pray to the Zeus or to God when your plane is approaching the runway at Athens Airport? Choosing the wrong one could be fatal.

     Every man who worked at the airport looked like Pericles, or what Pericles would have looked like if he sat around watching too much TV and drinking too much Uzzo. They weren't in as great shape as him but each man had that same regal profile which thousands of years hasn't softened. For the first time in my life my nose wasn't big enough to compete.

     The cab ride to our hotel took 45 minutes and I kept looking for the Acropolis the entire time.

“ I thought I would see it by now.” I told Alex, a little disappointed.

“ Don't worry. Be patient.” He told me as we got out of the cab.

     When we got in the hotel room and put down our bags, he told me he was warm and looked around the room. “ Gary, open that door and see if it actually leads to anything.”

"Oh my Zeus!"

I opened it and stepped out onto a huge patio with the Acropolis right behind it! I was speechless, or more accurately, stutter-less. “Is that close enough?” Alex came up behind me and whispered. He knew all along what was behind the doors and wanted to surprise me. I turned and hugged him then turned back to it and stared, and kept staring. If I cried it would have been really impressive, but being genuinely thrilled was good enough for me. It was an amazing site—first, the perfectly rectangle base carved atop the huge stone hill, then the Parthenon perched atop the base like a beautiful broken birdcage.

     I dragged myself away from the view and we went to eat lunch. Then Alex and I came back and 'pulled a Paris' again by sleeping the entire afternoon instead of going to any museums. My new temporary philosophy about traveling and museums is that 'if you can see it inside a book, why go inside a building.' I'm sure I'll look back on this in a few years and think it's ridiculous, but for right now it's very convenient when you're feeling too lazy to hop from museum to museum. When we awoke from our luxurious lamb-induced nap, we stepped out onto the patio and found the entire Acropolis lit-up like a sports stadium with a night-time game. Nothing else was lit around it and the huge, heavy stone floated in the sky.

     We didn't want to wait for the morning to climb to the Parthenon, so we left the hotel and just started walking uphill. The streets leading to the Acropolis were the original ones designed more for foot traffic than for cars, but one wonders how many merchants lined these small streets in ancient Athens as compared to the restaurants and tee-shirt shops now. After all, having the Acropolis with all its temples and amphitheaters, Athens must have been the world's first tourist trap.

     After turning a corner onto the first of these streets, we didn't make it five feet without the owner of a rug store calling to us.

“Guyz, guyz! Come here. This first stup. I am Theo. See my rugs. Drink glass of wine whit me. Then you see Partenun.” He came between us and put his arms around our shoulders. “ You go Myknos after Ateens, right?”

“Are we that obvious?” I laughed.

“ It's gud. The gay we luf. No Muslims here. You do whatever you wunt. Everyone free here. Dat is Ateens.”

     The Muslim line was just the right hook to get us into the shop. Before I knew it, we were being poured glasses of white wine, being introduced to his father and his nephew, and shown rugs. I was on guard and leary, but Alex was already drawn in. The whole thing was a little arousing to him, reminiscent of the classic French porno filmed in Turkey by Cadinot called Sex Bazaar, one of Alex's favorites. “ This is perfect. I was going to have to buy one in San Francisco after I have my old carpet torn up.”

     “Zan Franziz-Go!” Theo toasted. We all clinked glasses, including his father, who just grinned and had no clue what any English meant.

     We didn't have a clue what any of the Greek being spoken meant either. I hoped they weren't saying anything bad, especially anything anti-gay after acting so inviting. Theo showed us different style rugs and explained the meaning of each. There was the tree of life, the shield of Athena, and the footsteps of wisdom.

     I asked if he had one for the 'missteps of ignorance', which only Alex understood enough to laugh at. Theo gave most of his attention and his wine to Alex who he could tell was going to be the one to possibly do any buying. Theo sensed correctly, and Alex had his Visa Platinum out before the third glass was poured. The transaction felt as fast as a mugging except for the fact that we were sitting in a shop having wine. It just goes to show that a handsome, pushy Mediterranean can get Alex's wallet out of his pants almost as fast as a handsome, pushy Mediterranean can get Alex out of his pants.

     “I promise we won't stop again,” Alex swore as we left the shop after giving Theo the shipping information.

     We kept climbing upwards on streets that turned into stairs that turned into plateaus that turned back into stairs that turned back into streets, all lined with more stores and restaurants with obviously no regard for any regulations or provisions for the handicapped.  A wheelchair-bound person would have to be airlifted to reach the top. It was dark under the spotlights aiming upward at the base as we climbed narrow walkways with no indications of direction. As we got closer to the iron gate surrounding the entrance a Greek woman, sitting in a metal folding chair on the path selling Parthenons made of foam that sat on the head like a pillbox hat clipped into the hair, told us the Parthenon was closed until morning.

     “Terrorists too dangerous for night to be open. You buy one? ” she pointed to the foam Parthenon on top of her hair twised into a bun that looked like the Acropolis.

     “No hair,” I pointed to my head, my baldness finally paying off after all these years. We moved away from her and got closer to the gate.

“ We could climb over,” Alex said.

“And end up in a Greek jail.”

“Sounds like a win-win situation to me.” Alex said with one of his devilish grins.

“ What Cadinot film is that fantasy from?”

“ Istanbul Cellmates.”

“I've waited since I was 10 to see the Parthenon. I can wait one more night.”

"There is no place to tan!"

     We went back to our hotel room and laid down on two lounges on the patio, held hands and enjoyed the great view again. The evening was warm and the street below was surprisingly quiet. Without realizing it, we drifted off to sleep with the Acropolis as our nightlight.

le Pitstop en Paris

     For me, this trip has always been about Greece.  Paris is not a destination; it is just a beginning. But who can complain when Edith Piaf is the opening act. My boyfriend Alex and I would start on the grand boulevards of Paris and end on the beaches of Mykonos. From high culture to the beginnings of culture.

Alex's job is to arrange everything and pay for almost everything. My job is to carry as much of our luggage as I can and pay for as little as I can. This is fair for reasons that go back 30 years, have little to do with Alex, and make no sense to anyone but me.  Luckily, Alex is amazingly generous and doesn't need or even want to hear my retarded reasoning. He has been to Paris several times already but never stayed at a gay Bed & Breakfast, and thought it would give our trip a personal touch and bring us closer to the Parisian way of life. He found one in a perfect central location right across the street from The Monument of Saint-Jacques near the gay le Marias section of town. True, it is owned by a gay man named Fredrick and true, it does have a bed in the spare bedroom of the 2 -bedroom apartment that he lives in and true, Fredrick did offer to make us breakfast if we really wanted him to, but as a Gay Bed & Breakfast, it fell short of Alex's lofty hopes. After giving us the keys and tour of the apartment that only took 30 seconds, he went into his room and promptly removed his pants and spent the next 2 days in 2 different colored Ralph Lauren high-collared polo-shirts and bikini white underwear.

   "I can't believe he's dressing like that. He's more inappropriate than you," Alex whispered to me.

   "I know, isn't it great," I said, taking off my shirt and pants so I could walk around in my underwear too. "I didn't know Bed & Breakfasts were like this."

    "This isn't a Bed & Breakfast, it's a locker room."

“If Fredrick was a swarthy French serviceman in his underwear you wouldn't mind so much.”

“ For that I'd pay double what Fredrick's charging,” Alex said with a devilish grin that showed the less hoity-toity and more debaucherous side of him.

     We were so exhausted from the 12 hour flight that we slept from 1:00 PM to seven at night, missing the entire afternoon. We felt guilty for not forcing ourselves to stay up and see more of Paris since we were only staying for 2 nights before the flight to Athens, so we promised ourselves that we would stay up late and at least go out at night. But we ended up getting drunk  at a great meal where I was served my first peeled tomato, came home and had great sex for 4 1/2 minutes, and passed out again and slept until almost 2:00 in the afternoon. Fredrick had been barricading himself in his small office whenever he wanted to smoke which was whenever he was awake, so he missed the one time Alex and I had actually left the apartment.

“ This is the first time that I had guests who never left the apartment. It's like Ann Frank in the attic.”

When we calculated that we had basically only spent 8 hours awake in Paris so far, we were even more embarrassed of ourselves. Our plane to Greece was leaving at 7:00 the next morning which meant we had to be at the airport by 5:30, which meant we had to leave by 4:45, which meant we had to get up by 4:00 at the latest. We decided there was only one thing to do-- forget about going to bed at night and take a vampire's tour of Paris by moonlight. To celebrate our plan we went back to sleep for a few more hours.

We had a very late lunch at six o'clock then began our walk without any intention. The last time Alex was in Paris was eight years ago so he wasn't sure where we were heading, which was perfect. As we wandered from block to block, we passed so many cafes and pastry shops that we started comparing the number of them to the number of fire hydrants. I can confidently say that there are more places to buy sweets in Paris than there are fire hydrants. This means that French firefighters would stand a much better chance if fires could be extinguished with pralines & crème rather than water. Just by chance, we stumbled across world-famous landmarks and historical monuments, plus a few old churches which we had no desire to go into, nor could we have without bursting into flames. There was one church, however, that looked so sinister it was almost appealing. “ They must have done wonderful things to Jews and gays in this one,” Alex joked. “Not a lot of laughter coming out of there.” We sat on one of the many benches forming a rectangle under trees with the thickest and lowest canopy of leaves I have ever seen. By the entrance to the church was a huge row of high, lush antique roses in gorgeous colors with thousands of tooth-sized thorns that made them as sinister as the church as they stood guard in front of. We followed the roses to the end then walked along the side of the building past one of its massive flying buttress. The side wall kept on going further and further back, forming different chambers of what was turning into a huge, block-long church. When we reached the back of it that opened onto a stone square, Alex and I turned around and realized that what we had thought was the front entrance of a neighborhood church was actually the backyard of none other than Notre Dame itself. We eventually came up on The River Seine and continued as it split in two along more residential areas, and crossed over to make our way all the way back to the gay district. It was almost 1:30 in the morning and the streets were getting more and more empty, especially since it was a Tuesday. All the walking had made us starving so we both scarfed down lamb with special sauce from The Kebab Stand, the only thing still serving food.

Then we were ready for our fête complet, the pièce d' résistance. Alex and I made a promise to each other that we would end our trip to Paris with a walk all the way to The Eiffel Tower, no matter how far it was as long as we could get back by cab in time to leave for the airport at 4:45. To Alex's credit, he had not used his iPhone's GPS app. to cheat once during the entire night, but for this Parisian pedestrian pilgrimage we needed help from the twinkling satellites above. He typed in 'Eiffel Tower' and moved his phone from side-to-side like a divining rod. “ It's 5.2 kilometers from here. And wait a second....by walking it should take under 2 hours. That gives us enough time. Follow me.”

By this time the streets were deserted. As we trekked along and saw no one else walking past us in either direction, we started to realize how special our journey was. To our amazement, we seemed to be the only two people in Paris who were out on the streets besides the homeless who were always out on the streets. It felt like Paris belonged to us alone. There wasn't even a lot of cars passing by; only the occasional cab who would stop and ask if we needed a ride. It was so desolate that we should have been more scared.

“ Alex, it's dangerous out here. There's no one to help us if we need it.”

Alex's ears pricked up when he heard the word 'dangerous' and he made another one of his devilish grins. “ I might get mugged and raped. Well, hopefully not mugged, just raped.”

“ I can't believe you're not more frightened.”

Alex pointed out the the only frightening thing about our walk was my loud farting from the lamb.

“ I can't help it. It's has to be from that stupid special sauce.”

“ You're making sure that I'll be the only one getting raped.”

“ Then I'll keep farting. It's the only weapon I have right now.”

Still there was no one to be spotted as we walked along The River Seine for the second time that night, passed The Parliament, The National Assembly, the Museum of Modern Art, The hugely obscene Petite Palace, the old Louvre and the new Louvre. In the 5.2 kilometers, we saw a grand total of one couple on a street bench, a group of five drunk teenagers yelling French at us, and an older man with his dogs. As the GPS told us we were getting closer, we searched the sky for the lights of the tower until we realized that four poultry dots of red light floating in a square shape in the sky was the only lights left on to show one of the most iconic structure in the world. As we got only a few blocks from it the streets got smaller and the echo of our footsteps got louder. When we entered the park where it stands, all we could still see was the four red lights way above us and four white lights that illuminated only a tiny bit of each corner under the base.

The City of Lights...Off

“There must be a light switch somewhere,” I joked.

“ Wait,” Alex pointed his iPhone at it. “There must be an app to turn it on.”

We both laughed at how ridiculous the lighting was as every picture Alex tried to take of it kept coming out black. But then we both realized something at the same time. How often do any tourists dare to walk all the way to The Eiffel Tower at 3:30 in the morning and see it in all it's glorious blackness. What a brilliant way to see “The City Of Lights”.

The Princess And The Punching Bag

     I know all the many ways in which  I am annoying when I'm awake, but I never thought I could be even more annoying when I was sleeping. I seem to be a 'puncher', or at least that's what some men I have slept next to accuse me of.  I have no recollection of hitting anyone. I've already swung my punches by the time the victim wakes me. It's like a nightmare only the person next to me is having it for me.
    Luckily for me and even more luckily for the man I'm sleeping next to, these nocturnal knockouts happen only when I sleep in a different bed for the first time. I realized this after it happened the third time this year. The first 'incident' occurred with my best friend of 33 years and first ex-boyfriend Scott. I had begged him to meet me in Florida to visit my fat father who was in the hospital for the fourth time for some fat-related reason. My stepmother Cecil had just re-decorated the guest bedroom and was excited for Scott and I to be the first ones to sleep on the new top-of-the-line memory-foam mattress with 1000 thread count linens and 100% goose down pillows. " Tell me how you like it in the morning, boys. Sleep well," she told us as she closed the door for the night. Eight hours later, when she went into the bathroom in her bathrobe to take her morning shower, she pulled back the shower curtain and found Scott sleeping in the bathtub with 2 of the down pillows and a spare blanket folded in half as a makeshift mattress. Scott explained that I had been punching him so much that he couldn't stay in the bed and had to find somewhere to go, and he didn't know if Cecil wanted anyone to sleep on the brand new couch that she had just gotten a few days before.  
   I refused to believe that I could punch someone and not be aware of it, and accused Scott of exaggerating. Then it happened again with one of my dearest friends, Graham. We were visiting his family in England and stayed at his mother's house where we slept in two separate bedrooms, but when we got to a hotel in London, the room only had one queen-sized bed. It so happens that before going to bed that night we had had an argument, which Graham and I seldom have. We had both gone to sleep angry at each other, so when I unknowingly started punching him in the middle of the night, he punched me back. I woke up shocked until he made me realize that I punched him first. We ended up laughing about it but I wondered if my punching episode with Scott was somehow connected.
    It was only after the first time I slept in my boyfriend Alex's bed that I connected all the dots. It was a weekday night and we both had to work in the morning. The first time you sleep over at a potential boyfriend's place could be either a 'make or break' moment.  Punching him in the kidneys as he is peacefully sleeping on his stomach is not the best way to win over a man's heart.
   " Gary, I'm sorry but I can't sleep like this. I've got a a major deal happening tomorrow. I need to sleep. I'll give you cab money and we'll try this again another time."
    " I can't believe you're kicking me out."
    " I'm not kicking you out, I'm just paying you to leave." He kissed me and gave me a reassuring hug, then gave me $20. "Don't worry. I'm still crazy about you. It's going to take more than  few midnight beatings for me to loose interest. Just try to save them for the weekends."
   After that first night I was fine sleeping at his place. It's been six months since I punched him in bed. But now I'm going to be faced with my greatest challenge. Alex is taking me on a trip to Paris for three days then Athens for two days and  to Mykonos for 5 days after. Three places means three new beds, which means three chances of Alex coming home with a black eye from our first romantic trip.

" Excuse me, does this face come in permanent press? "

    There's a trainer named Kyle  in my gym who is actually straight. The 'needle in a gaystack'. He is  either very cool or just very smart. He's got a huge following of paying clients and non-paying onlookers. It's easier to get an appointment with Steven Spielberg than with him after 5 P.M. Like a shrink, the early evening appointments are booked the fastest. Some of his clients have to re-schedule their entire work day for a  training session during the less desirable  9-5 slots, which are very often taken as well. Being able to afford him isn't good enough; you have to also be available at any time he offers. And you can't buy just single appointments, you have to buy package deals that are only refundable if you are in an accident and become a quadriplegic, but not if you become only paraplegic because he can still do upper body training with you.  His clients agree to this and anything else he says because he is beautiful. His body is better than any human or statue I can think of. Of course he doesn't think so. And he's not being humble; he's just being insane.
   " This ab is smaller than this one,"  he lifted his tank top and showed me, as if I or anyone else in the world could possibly be as concerned over it as he was.  
   " A fat person ought to come over and punch you in the face for complaining about that," I shook my finger at him.
   " Come on just look at it," he pointed to the rows of abs on his stomach. "It is, right?"
   I rolled my eyes and turned away, refusing to look. It seemed I was the only one on the entire gym floor not looking at his stomach. It was uncanny how they all sensed him lifting his shirt by picking up on each others' subtle head movements in his direction like gazelles at a watering hole. We gays are very good at that.
    Kyle and I have developed an unlikely friendship. The key is that I don't ever flirt with him. I'm not like some other gay guys who fantasize about sex with straight men. Most of these gay guys have been, as my friend Ron Brock calls it, 'dicknotized'. This is the medical term for a gay man who has been temporary placed into a semi-coma state and will follow instructions given by a gay or straight man with a big dick. A more severe form of dictnotism can make a gay man suck and get fucked by a group of two or more men who are straight or at least straight-acting, which can involve extra planning and a casting call sometimes bigger than for the movie "GLADIATOR."
      Personally, there is nothing a straight man can do to turn me on, not even a beautiful one like Kyle. After having to wait until I graduated High School before I moved to Manhattan and was finally surrounded by gay men who I could have sex with, fantasizing about a straight man was the last thing on my mind. There are so many gay guys who actually want to be part of another gay man's fantasies that having to find straight guys to fulfill your fantasizes is unnecessarily difficult and very self-limiting. And fantasies about straight men are doomed from the start. With so many gay men who will only probably make you hate yourself after sex, why bother with a straight man who will definitely make you hate yourself after?
    Our friendship started when a  friend of mine told him I worked in physical therapy, and Kyle started asking me questions about certain injuries and the exercises best to do for them. He also started confiding in me about his love life, and his frustrations over not finding a woman who was a good match.  To Kyle, a good match meant a female version of himself. Why should he have to settle for something less? He worked on himself too hard and spent too much money making himself flawless for him not to expect the same from any girl he would date. This year alone he spent $6000 on laser hair removal to bring him back to pre-pubescent levels of body hair, and spends $1000 dollars every 3 months for botox. " I want totally  ripped muscles from the mandible down and total muscle paralysis above it. If you think or laugh too hard, it wrinkles these areas," Kyle explained, pointing to his forehead, the outside of his eyes and between his eyebrows." The laser treatments are expensive but at least it's just once and you' re done forever. This other shit  keeps on costing me every 90 days. The problem is all  the guys who can afford me can afford botox too. And if they all do it, I have to keep doing  it too. I always have to look better than them. That's the whole trick.   I'm trying to get my doctor to trade for training sessions but he's got a trainer he's been using for years and won't  switch. I think this guy gives him another kind of workout if you know what I mean". 
    " See, that's where you went wrong. If you were gay, men would be throwing money at you. Well, they are now but you have to still work for it. "
   " I know, it sucks. I could be getting free botox for the rest of my life."
   " You could be a doctor's wife, every body's dream."
   " Sometimes it really sucks being straight," he complained.
    " Only sometimes?" I smiled at him.
    " Especially since I broke up with Tami."
    " Wasn't she the one you brought to your cousin's wedding?
     " Yeah, but her ass was too low."
    Every girl he dated ended up having something wrong with her. Something he would try to ignore at first but it would just get bigger, or flatter, or flabbier. He couldn't help looking at a girl with the same critical eye that he looked at himself.
          And then it happened. He was browsing through Match.Com and came across an actual real, life-size breathing version of Barbie, or what Barbie would have looked like if she was a 35 year old Jewish woman with very generous parents and a very good plastic surgeon. Kyle was ecstatic after they had dinner, and described how he fell in love with her as she told him that she broke up with her last boyfriend because of his skinny neck, and how she proudly revealed  what body parts of hers were altered, and what other work she planned on having done. She was perfect in her fakeness, as only fake can be. Their second date was running up and down the stairs at Ocean Beach seeing who would  tire first. She exercised as much as he did, and kept up  her speed even with her huge fake tits bouncing in her sports bra.
     " And the best part is she has a doctor from India who charges half of what mine does for botox, and she's going to introduce me!" 
         I had never seen him more excited about meeting someone and  he continued to give me updates  until the fifth date, which she canceled because she wasn't feeling good. " She said she was going to go to the gym like she always does when she feels sick  and do cardio for 2 hours  to get it out of her system." Even Kyle thought that was strange, not to mention excessive. As the excuses kept coming, Kyle looked sadder each time I saw him. "I didn't tell you this Gary, but last week she asked me if I ever considered getting calf implants. I don't care what she thinks, I've got good enough calves."  It was becoming painfully obvious that she was  trying to end it, and Kyle was distraught.  And  then a few days later he came into the locker room as happy as could be.
     " Guess what!" he said with a look of joy.
     " You worked things out with her?"
     " No she broke it off. But I got the name of her botox doctor before she hung up on me!"       
 

DING DONG OSAMA'S DEAD

   The fact that the most powerful country in the history of mankind with all it's resources and covert activities couldn't find Osama bin Laden for almost ten years is amazing, in the worst way. But what is even more amazing is the fact that out of all his followers who he depended on to keep him hidden, not one tried to cash in on the multi-million dollar reward for his capture. It's impossible to know just how many people actually knew where he was but just imagine what a difficult task it was to hide him and what elaborate and wide-reaching planning it entailed. And now we know it also involved hiding one of his wives and some of his children as well. Think of the logistics of it, not to mention the food, the health care, the clothing, the education of his children and whatever else he would need from the outside world. There was an entire compound to run including a small army of personal bodyguards and somehow the secret remained. Even the ones who weren't devout followers kept the secret-the doctors, the housekeepers, the cooks, the repairmen,and all the wives, girlfriends,and children of the men there. No one wanted to be a multi-millionaire enough to turn him in. Now that's loyalty.
  It's different in America. Once a reward  for someone is posted, it's just a matter of days. And now with Facebook it's just a matter of hours until the person is turned in. $5,000-10,000 seems to be the average person's breaking point. Personally, a free lunch is all the reward it would take for me to turn in any religious man who the authorities were trying to find. That, along with being a  Jewish homosexual  is on the top 10 List of reasons why I could never be a Radical Islamic Terrorist. I tend to not be blindly loyal to movements or to men who head those movements. Such loyalty can be admired, but it should also be feared. People with such absolute and unwavering loyalty to a movement or a man are usually the same people capable of terrible things. Only that degree of loyalty can turn a person into a merciless killing machine. The closest I've ever gotten to being loyal to a movement was the Gay Rights Movement, but I still would never have blown myself up even if Harvey Milk had told me to.
   Another thing I want to say about this "strangely celebratory event" is that it's great how President Obama is getting so much mileage out of this. It's like killing Hitler, almost. Hitler still wins that contest. There's even clamor that this will seal The President's re-election. First, George W.Bush gave a black man the opportunity to become The President Of The United States just by being such an awful President himself, and now another awful man is going to give the same black man an opportunity to be re-elected. What a wonderful country filled with opportunity we live in.
    The best part is that now we have a  President who can say "Mission Accomplished" and actually means it.

The Real SanFranCRISCO treat

    William Proctor & James Gamble teamed with a German chemist named E.C. Kayser who figured out how to solidify cottonseed oil through the process of hydrogenation and introduced the magic of Crisco.  They showed the world that there is nothing handier than Crisco in your cupboard. No one can testify to this more than it's two best consumer groups, Grandmothers and Gays. For generations, they have used Crisco religiously, and have kept the product popular even in the mid 2000's when the nation-wide campaign against trans-fats threatened the entire baking industry. Combined, grandmothers and gays have spent more money on Crisco than the United States Military Food Suppliers & Preparers Corps. Gays are spending more now than ever on Crisco in these times of inflated costs and job losses, where the only price rising more quickly than gasoline per gallon is lube per bottle. 

   In 2001, Proctor & Gamble sold Crisco to the jam and jelly company J.M. Smucker.  If the P.R. people in- charge of their advertising campaign were smart, they would run an entire campaign in gay cities using a grandmother and her grandson with her holding an apple pie in one hand and he holding a dildo in his hand and the both of them smiling with their other hands held up in a fist giving a variation of the 2-thumbs-up approval sign.  The Slogan can read:

            ' WITH CRISCO FROM SMUCKER, YOUR ASSHOLE WILL PUCKER. '

  The downside of using Crisco is that it's hard to clean off of anything, and your bed can permanently smell from it, like you're sleeping in a giant pie-crust shell. I've had to recently throw out several sheets and pillow cases, and even some pillows. It's even hard to get off of yourself, especially if you're hairy like me. Usually I have to shower with dish washing detergent two or three times before the evidence is gone.

     Luckily the corner market, which never has anything I'm trying to find, for some strange reason stocks Crisco. The Asian family who own the store have no idea what most of the men buying it are using it for, especially in my neighborhood.

   "It's baking time again," I tell the husband and wife who stand behind the counter, as I put  the small tub of Crisco on the counter along with a few meticulously selected smooth, round limes. "Key-lime pie this time."

  " You always bake pies but never bring piece. You bring piece this time," the husband insisted with a smile.

    "Maybe. If it comes out." I don't think they want to taste what I'll be making.