" 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!"