How to do the wrong thing right
My building’s cheerful mailman—postal deliverer, excuse me — arrives each afternoon straight out of Central Casting: Tall, wiry, the obligatory corona of frazzled gray hair, grizzled complexion, retirement age-ish, and ever-smiling. I’m certain he enjoys a nice relaxing pipe in his favorite armchair, warming his tired pups next to a toasty fire after work. Only too easily can one imagine his gleaming white van out front replaced by a faithful old bicycle with a crooked tag clattering on the back of its wire carrier rack that reads, MY GIRL MAY (named after his wife, naturally, in homage to their 30-plus years of monogamous bliss), which he pedals down any imaginary Main Street of Hollywood yore, tipping his cap. “Looks like she’ll be another beauty!” he smiles toward wisteria-columned porches bathed in a transformative sunshine that is the entire plotline to his bit-player speaking role in every June Allyson, Jimmy Stewart or Judy Garland film ever made. He rattles beamingly by, hollering back across a shoulder to whoever’s shelling spring peas in their rocker, “Oh, and Chester tells me the new Sears & Roebuck oughta be gettin’ in just any day now, Mrs. Orchard!”
I try to avoid our postal deliverer if I can help it — not because of his eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind shtick, but rather because he never quite goes all-out-Mayberry-R.F.D. enough with it. (There are depths to him that MGM did not hire him for.) It’s inevitable our paths cross occasionally, yet he always kick-starts our languid chitchat to the same topic: Homosexuality.
“I’d love to read your column sometime,” is how it usually begins. Apparently, I represent some rare zoo creature in his world. “Trust me, no, you would not,” is my stock answer. “I’m very open-minded,” he constantly assures me. “Open-minded is the very last adjective you are,” I assure him. “Besides, you would no more understand what you were reading than if it were written in Martian.” He snorts dismissively, and I sigh. “OK, then, so tell me what you think about, say, watersports; you ever get much into that?” His face lights triumphant. “Absolutely, love ’em! Why, I even went boogie-boarding just last weekend with the grandkids and…”
“STOP!” I smile, extending my arms, palms splayed, “Just stop right there. This is exactly why you are never going to read my column.”
When last I stumbled across my postman, he was blessedly preoccupied, humming while placing various-sized rectangular envelopes into stacked rows of numbered boxes simultaneously; nonetheless, he managed to spot me just as I was stealthily swiveling a mad dash back for the hills.
“Speak of the devil, there he is! I was hoping to see you.” Trapped, dammit! “Mind if I ask you a personal question?”
I could faintly hear the opening electro-chords of bad gay vintage porn music psychedelically thumping in the background. Accepting fate, I shrugged. “Whatcha got?” With a puzzled strain, his brow furrow clenched, “I’m just curious, and you’re clearly the man who’ll give it to me straight: Why do gay people want to get married? The real reason, I mean. Is it just money?”
And faster than a DJ spinner’s eyewink, the mailroom suddenly transformed into Studio 54. “Come again?” I asked, trying to figure out whether that damned porn music was indigenous more to one of the pre-condom vault classics of, say, just any given Catalina or Colt production, or did it stretch all the way back to the pre-hysterical, now-extinct NOVA Studio. Regardless, the pulsations kept only growing ever louder. I attempted a sort of DOA chuckle, “What do you mean, why do gay people want to get married?” and grinned. “Are you just ‘ribbing’ me again here, sir?”
“You don’t have to shout quite so loudly,” smiled Mr. Postman, “it’s only the left ear I’m little deaf in.” Beatifically, he began stuffing supermarket fliers into every resident’s slot. “Seriously, I would think all people, heterosexual and homosexual, share the same kind of problems.” To which I swiftly quipped, “Well, there you go, then. You answered your own question for you… About how far away — ballpark — are you from finishing floor 16, ya think?”
“I think of myself as very open-minded,” he drawled on, trance-like, “but when people eliminate morality, and disrespect any sacredness inherent to what are genuinely holy spousal vows, well, I have a difficult time believing they’re hitching-up for any reason ‘cept money. Heck, it’s the only reason left for them bother marrying at all.” He turns back around to collating envelopes by floor number. “Money changes lots of things.”
I manage to refrain (barely) from swerving low-road; instead, I nod calmly to the window. “Beautiful weather for your route today.” He concurs, blank-faced. And with that, so ironically conjoins our “We Shall Overcome” arrival of same-sex couples’ legalization with mindsets clinging on for dear life to last century’s perfectly imaginary radiance — each of us hopeful that a few reflective rays of illumination refract against the other’s personal peccadillos. Thus, on such a note, bois and girlz—speaking of the devil after all —it looks like we may even have just enough room here still remaining for Dallas’ very own gay sex advice columnist to assist you sharpening your very own marriage fangs! Let’s get grinding right to it.
Dear Howard: I got proposed to at the beach Easter weekend by some man I’d known all of a month. Out of nowhere, I heard myself go, “Sure.” It’s a mystery what the dude does for a living. The only two things I know he likes to do is pee down my mouth and listen to his Cyndi Lauper CDs… but on vinyl! Like, I’d never even heard of this woman before Kinky Boots, and now we’re practically a threesome. The only sex me and my fiancée have together, when it’s only us two alone, involves just my throat crammed full of his erection. He barely lets me even touch him otherwise, and it’s a mighty fine show pony he’s packing, too. Only one time did I successfully beg him long enough that he finally caved and agreed to fuck me. It was a disaster. He pulled out three seconds in, and barked I wasn’t clean. I almost cried. I guess he felt bad after that, ’cause the very next day he pulled my face off his dick long enough to hand me a small box. “A gift for our wedding night,” he winked. But when I opened the box, the only thing in it was a gift card for something called a “colonic irrigation.” After googling it, I thought what weird kind of wedding present is this, but then went, “Duh, dummy, it is a gay honeymoon you’re on,” and now I think it’s, honestly, rather thoughtful,,, you think? — Yryn Dreenx
Dear Mr. W/S Enthusiast: Be sure to hold onto that honestly insane thought when, 10 years from now, you’re thoughtfully choosing between arsenic in the orange juice or a tumble down the basement stairs. Quite a splashy little sobriquet you’ve got working, nonetheless: Your current “stage name,” I presume?
Why is it, Urinetta, you’re even wanting to marry, at all, particularly this sorry excuse for a lifelong spouse? Understandably, you were of course only doing a bit of escorting on the side (to supplement the “real job” you don’t have) until something better came along, but I can’t imagine someone with such street cred as you getting sucked into the clichéd Hallmark homily, “He completes me.” By calling yourself Urine Drinks, I’m glad you enjoy doing that; someone totally blinded by lust and boulder-dumb as your fiancée is, he surely must possess enough remedial math capabilities to grasp that the real cost of marrying someone just to have a convenient mouth always on hand for exclusive use as his personal depot runs higher than if he instead simply rented you by the hour, every hour, throughout your lives eternal?
What about when things just “arise” sans any scheduled advance-prep? In marriage, you’ll have conjugal clout, too — and every right to request he switch to your other morning-wood, penile-accommodating orifice occasionally. Inarguably, your fiancée possesses not one scintilla of spontaneity, which ensures he has no sense of humor, which means you’re engaged to a personality-free old maid who brings nothing to the marriage table except spotless sheets. Be forewarned: You are marrying the very man we’ve all met and loathe — the one who drives 10 miles to the next town to save two cents a gallon on gas. You might as well begin selecting either his method of murder or your suicide now, because one or the other is surely coming sooner than later, and for what? Having to put up living with this old roll of cheap toilet paper, for whom love means always having to say you’re too shitty?
Any husband who won’t make spur-of-the-moment love to his own spouse unless their interior is first rinsed cleaner than the insides of a Kenmore means your next post-honeymoon opportunity to enjoy a real erection emptying deep up inside you, will come rotating back around again just soon as it’s time for your first colonoscopy prep — guaranteeing you’ll receive, on average, one solid-clean sparkling fuck about once a decade. But, hey, if real queens can make do with even less sex (Anne of Cleves pops to mind) then why not a regular ol’ manure-stomping/urine-guzzling Texan queen? Love, like a colonic, means never having to say you’re crappy. Money changes everything.
— Howard Lewis Russell
