Virginity: Found & Lost
“Over-fed, over-sexed and over here.” Such was Churchill’s poignant assessment of all the young American grunts gathering in Britain during the spring of 1944, prior to the D-Day invasion. My, but how springtime and wartimes never change.
Flash forward 80 years to a time with multiple wars running amuck, and the current of horniness in April’s air is palpably electric, as every species on Earth — battlefields be damned — suddenly becomes obsessed with the same laser-beam-focused commonality: finding their perfect mate.
Violence in the springtime is pretty much a given. Unfortunately, however, this spring we also find ourselves flailing helplessly in a quagmire of the most contentious election year ever; homelessness has exploded volcanically; Putin’s threatening outer-space nuclear war, and, here in America, our border patrols are overwhelmed by immigrants arriving by the multi-thousands daily to surrender for an amnesty that ain’t happenin’— underfed, unemployable and unstoppable, with no solution in sight.
Oh, well. At least we’ve still got mating season to enjoy … or not. Let’s just get fairytale-flatlined right to it, shall we?
Dear Howard: This past Easter holiday, following a whirlwind romance, I married my Prince Charming. More than 150 guests attended our reception; both our families accepted us with open arms, and even the weather approvingly glittered. Literally, I stood breathless, tears in my eyes, as Roger dropped down on one knee in the glorious sunshine and slipped his ring onto my finger. Every man should be so lucky!
And to think we’d initially met in circumstances stupider than any plotline out of a vintage porn flick: I was at Home Depot, deceiving myself into believing I’d build a birdhouse for the sycamore limb overhanging my patio, when out of nowhere materialized every gay man’s archetypal sexual fantasy of a construction worker: big and rugged, tatted-up arms, bulging biceps, lantern-jawed and a swagger like John Wayne. He even had the filthy tool belt strapped about his waist.
He was getting lumber or something and grinned at my ridiculous little bluebird house kit, then winked that he, too, was building a home. Perhaps I’d even care to see it sometime? Well, twist went my arm! I wanted to see all of it!
During our brief courtship, all I could do was fantasize about what he’d be like behind the closed doors of our finally sanctified-by-marriage bedroom: See, Roger wanted to wait to have sex — he’s a super-staunch Catholic — to which I frustratingly acquiesced, realizing all the while my fantasies would eventually be fulfilled.
At last, the big day arrived! The bedroom was appropriately staged: myrrh-scented candles, American Beauty roses, and me in my crimson Andrew Christian jockstrap, prepped to be ravished. The lights dimmed from the bathroom, a hairy leg garbed in flamingo-pink, fishnet hosiery (WTF?) extended coyly from behind its door, accompanied by the demure voice, not of my burly new husband, but of a kittenish Gypsy Rose Lee!
“Some men accuse me of being an ecdysiast.” Roger’s mammoth pink ankle did a dainty little twitch. “Do you know what that means? Do you?” Slowly, the flamingoed foot unfurled, teasingly, from around the door. “Don’t be embarrassed; I like a man without hair.” (Howard, just for the record here, I possess a voluptuously full head of hair.) “An ecdysiast is one who, or that which, sheds its skin. In vulgar parlance: a stripper!”
Boom-chicka, boom-chicka, boom, boom boom! And out waltzed a creature in lavender bunny ears, flickering a lilac cottontail!
Like, who the hell kidnapped my husky new husband, whose ring I’d accepted just a few hours previous? Apparently, though, the show was only warming up.
“Let me entertain you, let me make you smile.” (The bunny ears began flapping) “Let me do a few tricks, some old and then some new tricks; I’m very versatile.” (Oh, fuck me! Another bottom!) (He sidewindered a feather boa across the carpet toward me, drawling out his big finale.) “And if you’re real good, I’ll make you feel good, I want your spirits to climb!” (But the opposite was happening; the bulge inside my Andrew Christion honeymoon jock had long since deflated.) “So, let me entertain you, and we’ll have a real good time! Yes, sir!” Boom-chicka, boom-chicka, boom, boom, boom! “We’ll have a real good time!”
Whatcha got, Howard? I’m begging here, man. — Where Did All the Tops Go?
Dear Topless: Well, on the bright side, at least you found out why he didn’t believe in premarital sex. And it had nothing to do with religion, thank God! For as we all know only too well, monogamy and honeymoon-virgin brides are the two worst sadisms Christianity ever invented. That you even referred to your dating period as a “courtship” dishonors practically everybody who survived, say, the Eisenhower administration.
Don’t fret too much, Topless. I’m sure you’ll be able to get your unexpected marriage to a Broadway diva easily-enough annulled, if based upon nothing else but false advertising and psychological trauma — forced, there in your alluring honeymoon jockstrap, to witness emerge from your nuptials’ chamber a cross-dressing Ethel Merman erection-annihilator, bellowing showtunes in bewitching pink lace fishnets, Bugs Bunny ears and a Peter Cottontail butt plug twitching seductively from a walrus’s gyrating ass. Yeah, I’d sufficiently call that bill of annulment a given.
NOTE: Dear Readers, this next question — I’m not at all ashamed to admit — was lifted verbatim from Philip Galanes’s “Social Q’s” column in “The New York Times”: Gotta love a columnist who knows he’s being trolled, yet prints a fake question anyway just to permit his barely-contained, volatile inner snark a relieved and rare opportunity to finally go all mushroom-cloud with dismissive contemptuousness. He might even vaguely remind you of another columnist you’re already familiar with.
So, directly from the pen of Philip Galanes and his “Social Q’s” column, I hilariously present, “Not Every Wedding Needs a Dress.”
“My gay son and his partner are getting married. They plan to wear themed outfits. I support their union and their choices. They wear traditional male garb. But secretly, I’ve dreamed that one of them, preferably my son, would wear the traditional white wedding gown that I wore. Its elegance contrasts sharply with their outfits. Should I share my desires? — MOTHER
You may be trolling me here [well, duh!], but your question would strike me as homophobic even if you weren’t: Why mention your son’s sexuality at all? Do you think it makes him more likely to wear a dress than a straight son? I would let all your children dress in peace for their weddings. Donate your gown to a clothing charity if you want it to be worn again.
—Howard Lewis Russell
And for you cherished readers of mine, I’ll see y’all here again during next month’s merry, merry May! Simply forward your any, many questions of the abominable to
AskHoward@dallasvoice.com; or, as Galanes wittily prefers rather to sugarcoat it, “for help with your awkward situation.”