How to do the wrong thing right
Blow a kiss up to heaven, bois and girlz, for eternally grim and gray, truncated February’s firmament this year has miraculously aligned. It will be a dazzlingly starlit Aquarian’s month-long, carnival-bazaar bonanza of GLBT-quenching holidays. This month is one day after another of notable calendar landmarks: The razzle-dazzle opening day ceremonies of The 2018 Winter Olympiad (Feb. 9), glittering green-gold-and-purple beaded Mardi Gras (Feb. 13), mirthfully naked cherubs firing heart-aimed, fancy chocolates-and-roses indulgent arrows at Valentine’s Day (Feb. 14), the always lucky Year of the Dog’s gong-banging officiation to Chinese New Year’s (Feb. 16), a humbly selfless Random Acts of Kindness Day (Feb. 17), grand crimson-white-and-blue festooned Presidents’ Day (Feb. 19), cuddlesome Love Your Pet Day (Feb. 20), gaily whimsical Tell a Fairytale Day (Feb. 26), and finally napping down at last (loose dental crowns be damned!) with a waving stardust wand on National Tooth Fairy Day (Feb. 28). And we all bite the baby in our sparkly, shimmering king cakes, ‘cause it’s official, guys: Cher will be heading Nawlins’ Mardi Gras Parade, marshalling in stride alongside our fabulously iconic she was a scamp, a camp, and a bit of a tramp, she was a V-A-M-P, vamp dark lady’s spirit during this most colorfully shortest of months. So heedful Howard here has selected a fave smattering of my born-in-the-wagon-of-a-travelin’-show’s more kaleidoscopically-colored queries devoted to gay-slang abbreviations: Let’s get right to it.
Dear Howard,
I just turned 60 and I’m calling it quits — quits with being a “practicing” gay, that is. I’m so done having sex with men. Kaput. The older I get, the harder it’s gotten to even keep pace anymore with this near daily deluge of insipid, new gay internet lingo: Could you please be so kind to clarify a particularly opaque burr-of-slang that just rubs my gray, furry butt raw—what on God’s abridged Earth is a “BBC” sexual lifestyle? Every Google search I try only contradicts my previous one, until I’ve about reached the conclusion that it’s a British Broadcasting Corporation lifestyle. That’s the hypothesis I’m running with at least: I’m hanging my bowler hat on a hook, pouring a spot of tea with some spotted dick, and enjoying the flecking-gilt remainder of my golden years gazing into the soft, Thames-grey eyes of my hunky, invisible Millennial companion cuddled next to me in a cricket outfit, “Jolly good, eh, Pip?” — Fagan G.
Dear Fang,
The sexual acronyms for BBC are, I agree, frustratingly myriad as they are masochistic; however, if I may borrow just a minute of your remaindered randy time here, Guv’nor, I can bestow upon you some clarification.
At passing glance, BBC so closely mimics BDSM (Bondage, Discipline, Sadism, Masochism) and BDDS (Bondage, Discipline, Domination, Submission) that one could go tumbling down a phantasmagorical rabbit hole of presuming it is yet one more insanely perverted lifestyle acronym (a lifestyle, Foggy, that you’re just so over and done with already, remember?). I’m almost tempted to mollycoddle your middle-aged miasma of droopy man-boobs and dropped testicles with a flat-out lie—that BBC is simply gay slang for, oh, Bitches Be Crazy; or the dispiriting answer Born Before Computers. But in truth, BBC is just a lazily pointless acronym for Big Black Cock: That’s it. Nothing else. An ample ebony schlong. BBC can theoretically be (but, in truth, never is) equally acronymic for Big Beautiful Cock, but either way, bitches, the cock’s still fuckin’ big!
Dear Howard,
Have you ever heard of some Dallas gay thing called blowing clouds? I live fulltime in Waco — happily married, straight, three decent kids — but business takes me up to Dallas a couple times a month where every now and then I’ll pay a quick call on one of those anonymous, off-highway XXX stops for a little “stress relief.” The point is, this one greasy loiterer yesterday followed me into the booth mumbling, “OK if I get you off blowing clouds?” Unzipping, I nodded, “Whatever, sure, hell, but make it fast.” Well, from out of nowhere, this bruise-kneed charmer suddenly whips out a loaded-up glass pipe, ignites its bulb end with some kind of pocket torch, inhales blissfully for what squandered a solid minute of my time, finally dives down onto what he’s there to do and… whoa, Katy bar the caveman’s door! I’m talking the single most euphorically “happy ending” of my entire life … from some street junkie! My question is, whether whatever “clouds” the creature was blowing, and slurping all over my cowboy’s full attention, could possibly have penetrated into my penile canal? Seriously, the corporation I’m employed with doles out random drug screenings, so it does have me concerned a bit just the same. — Mitt Rail
Dear Myrtle,
Your compassion is the pillars on which Herculaneum was built… “penile canal?” Forgive Dr. Howard’s guffaws, you vainglorious rotter, but exactly what kind of 1950s Stepford Township are you creatures living down there in Waco? Wake up in the here-and-now year, Miss Piss: Your blow-job “euphoria” resulted solely from inhaling second-hand smoke, via Tina clouds wafting up into those rhinoplastied-patrician nostrils—courtesy of your “bruise-kneed” manwhore’s charming handy-dandy meth pipe, and not any noxious “vapors” laughably infiltrating your cheatin’ soul’s crystal-smoke-white, three-inch erection. Oh, and about that random drug test you’ve gotten your Spanx all twisted into a juiced-up aerosol wad about? I wouldn’t fret too overly much — Lady Cristal only stays in one’s system for three or five days; however, if it’s a hair sample Big Brother’s after instead, I’d highly recommend going, um, total cue-ball . . . and quick, too. Oh, and FYI, “blowing clouds” isn’t — how’d you so primly phrase it? — a “Dallas gay thing”? Mz. Girl, it’s globally gay.
Dear Howard,
I’m almost too terrified to even ask you this, but: I keep noticing a phrase popping up on men’s online “likes” that I’m certain isn’t G-rated. So even as a GLBT-welcoming pastor, I don’t feel particularly comfortable doing a Google search of it myself, so could you please inform me instead, precisely what the rather expressive term “Water, Thunder and Lightning” means? Am I being just a complete ostrich’s-head-in-the-sand by not assuming what’s, more or less, only too flagrantly blatant — that it means they’re into, well, urine and flatulence? — Jacques Overboard
Dear Jacqueline: “Urine and flatulence?” My, someone’s tuition dues at Miss Porter’s sure paid off! Alas, the unfortunately correct answer is just a smidge less… umm, “Christian-dating-singles appropriate.” (Good guess, though! … and an A+ to you for at least attempting to apply some semblance of grace and beauty to the vernacular vulgarisms of Gayville.) Now, I’m afraid, comes the sick reveal… You ready?
On the bright side, at least your fine kid gloves won’t go ruined; on the dark side, everything else fuckin’ sure as hell will be. You were wise not to taint your “recent history searches” with Howard’s truculently lurid discovery — that “Water, Thunder and Lightning” translates into using gamma hydroxybutyrate, aka GHB or G (water); heroin, aka smack (thunder); and crystal methamphetamine, aka Tina (lightning). You came to the right person —Howard here doesn’t mind slumming about The Dark Web murk. In fact, Reverend, it’s indefatigably what my column’s here for: To open those doors for you down in the dungeon, where thou dost not dare venture alone, a malodorous stench wafts, and faint scuttling sounds emanate—like those odd noises coming from the ceiling in The Exorcist.
— Howard Lewis Russell
Do you (attention-seeking freaks and all) have a question — about etiquette, love, life or work — that needs a special spin from Howard? Send your problem to AskHoward@DallasVoice.com and he may answer it.
