Gobble, gobble, what a wattle!
Y’all a-cookin’ this Turkey Day, bois and gurlz? Anyone? Or instead, like a dear friend of mine from Preston Hollow always so piquantly points out every November, “Honey, please: I’m a looker, not a cooker!” Alas, whether you just look, cook, or do nothin’ by-the-book, I’m here to share — during this season of giving gracious thanks for everything we so normally take for granted — a few of my own personal merriments of appreciation from this past year’s cornucopia of plenty:
For starters, I’m very grateful my 22-year-old nephew survived COVID this past summer — by a Hail-Mary/medically-induced coma he ultimately pulled through, somehow, no worse for the wear.
What else? Let’s see. Oh, yes, I’m sublimely thankful to the SPCA this year for bestowing a beautiful little furry ball of green-eyed joy upon our little family in the form of Miss Pineapple, our newly-adopted, half British-blue/tortoiseshell companion for a bereaved, inconsolable Roo, my 17-year-old Abyssinian who, late last year, lost his 21-year-old big brother, Boo, the only other cat he’d ever knew existed. Miss Pineapple and lonesome Roo became instant BFFs. Hey, happiness happens.
Agreeably, Thanksgiving’s here at last, pilgrims! Toss off your cockle hats, unbuckle those latchet loafers squeezing your feet too tight and, neighbor, pass me the gourd of applejack, please. Let’s get turkey trottin’ right to it, shall we?
Dear Howard: I feel obligated to preface my question for you by stating, emphatically, that I am a heterosexual female. Personally, I don’t know or care how prevalent “a matter of size” is in the gay dating world, but penis length isn’t, nor has it ever been, a real issue for me. As long as it’s not entirely dysfunctional, I’m happy. Nevertheless, allow me to share a dating experience I had last weekend with a man whom I met off of an app I’ll politely not reveal, but it goes by the name of what permits a door to swing open.
I’d agreed to meet Mr. Charmer over dinner for our first date, as opposed to just coffee — like any sane woman ought to have done. His opening words, as he tardily oozed himself up next to me into our booth, fondling my knees, were, “Am I late? I just finished getting massaged by four girls! Sugar, I’ve got an 18-inch penis, but I’m ENM — how ’bout you?”
Honest to God, Howard, this was his conversational lead! Like, what on Earth was I even supposed to do with that — other than quietly stand up and leave? Is going out on a simple date this fu**ed up now in the gay world, too? I thought I’d done my best at screening-out the obvious nut cases — informing everyone, upfront, to all swipe left if either they voted for Trump or any of their profile pix show them proudly holding up a dead fish hanging from a string. Howard, you write specifically for a gay audience. Clearly, I’m missing something crucial here in my mating-game strategizing within the straight world. Any helpful tips? — Rebecca of Sunnybrook
Dear Becky: A pity you didn’t have a tape measure on hand to prove, for the pleasure of my own readers, what a liar Mr. Anaconda was. Let me start, Sunny, by simply saying thank you for writing me. I so seldom hear from heterosexual females. Straight men, yes, but not too often straight women.
And, certainly, none didactic as you. FYI, too, my tribe probably isn’t as familiar with the ENM acronym as those of you living in Heteroville are: Kids, ENM is shorthand for Ethical Non-Monogamy. “Gurl, wha?”
ENM, in theory, is the practice of taking part in a mutually agreed upon non-exclusive relationship between two people. (In Gayville, it’s just called “tricking around.”) Yet, the “ethical” loophole here implies that everyone involved agreeably consents to the situation without deception. Ha!
So, bois, what’s the difference between ENM and just plain old cheating, you still wonder? The answer, bluntly, is nothing. Absolutely nothing. After all, whomever is telling you they’re in an ENM relationship will be doing so without their “agreeable” partner being present. It’s the equivalent of a man proving to you he’s single simply because you don’t see a wedding ring on his finger.
Allow me to share with you, Rebecca, my own favorite comeback line for whenever I find myself in such a situation that renders one speechless. It comes courtesy of Elon Musk who, following a particularly uncomfortable round of Capitol Hill questioning from Bernie Sanders, slowly deadpanned, “I keep forgetting you’re still alive.”
Dear Howard: I’m a bi female, forty-something, still attractive and fuckable. Even better, I come without baggage — I’ve no kids; I don’t live with my parents, and I banish my cat to her nest by the fireplace whenever a rare date sleeps over. My question to you is, though, “Where have all the real men gone?”
It’s getting trickier all the time to find one. They’re all such namby-pamby wusses. Spineless.
Overly-sensitive. None of them wanna take the lead, and I’m tired of having to always wear their pants. Last week, one of them purred, “You’d be such fun to travel with. I’d love to take you to the Caribbean. Care going Dutch with me?” Coquettishly, I demurred, “No. No thank you, bitch. What am I? Your mother?” Promptly, he then burst into tears, squalling, “I really don’t need the sex; I just want us to be friends. Please? I even wrote a poem for you on my guitar. May I play it for you?”
I mean, WTF, Howard? Where have all the real men gone? It’s my special gift, apparently, to bring out whatever latent gay tendencies have been lying dormant in these himbos since birth; like, how did I become every straight man’s last pitstop on the road to Gayville? All that I ask for is a bit of take-charge masculinity on an erection attached to a man — he doesn’t even have to be rich! When did plain chivalry become just a bridge too far? — Nancy, The Girl with the Fancy-Boy Tattoo
Dear Fancy Nance: Like a Victorian remembrance locket carved of jet (containing the locks of some long-forgotten bravehearted battlefield doughboy), your hopes for landing a man to support you in the lifestyle to which you aspire is, well, sentimentally priceless and commercially modest. There are no unapologetically gallant males anymore. All the frontiersmen have gone the way of cigarette ads, water beds and Rock Hudson movies: Everyone’s fey now. Hey, Nance, I know of a fun Airbnb in Nassau, though. Fancy going Dutch?
Happy Thanksgiving, sweet readers — all you hookers, lookers, cookers and do-nothin’-by-the-bookers — things will look up again, next year. They have to. Concernedly, too, like all fellow Americans amidst this divisive new, geopolitically-charged global landscape of mean-spirited/mob-mentality vitriol we now live in, it’s becoming seemingly impossible of late to even remember that we’re all much more similar to one another than we are too very different.
Meanwhile, everybody, enjoy a big old piece of punkin’ pie now . . . on me!
— Howard Lewis Russell
Have a tasty comment or tasteless question for Howard? Go ahead. Send it, sealed with a holiday kiss, to AskHoward@dallasvoice.com
