How to do the wrong thing right
My fellow fey pilgrims! Can you even believe an entire 12-plus months have now passed since last year’s Black Tuesday election… or as I call it, The Day of the Locust? We’ve since harvested a plentiful bounty of mourning for the moral integrity that America (our shining city on a hill!) once stood for.
Happily, though, here in HowardLand, our daily concerns are a bit less, um, apocalyptic: If only I had a roast turkey leg and a slice of punkin’ pie for every size question I’ve received this year — why, I’d probably be devoting this entire column to questions pertaining to drumsticks instead of dicks! Nonetheless, per usual, it’s, “Yes, we have no bananas.” Rather, I should indeed have consecrated this week’s column to, minimally, the sin of gluttony, or at least have juicily reported to you a bariatric surgery nightmare question; yet, not one of you ’roided-up turkey gobblers has any gluttonous angst concerns. So let’s all just cuddle up with our gluten-free egg white omelets and get cockily right to it.
Dear Howard,
Who’s the most influentially famous gay porn icon of each decade since the ’60s? — Kenny D.
Dear Mrs. Kennedy,
It is with my deepest regrets I must inform you I’m stooping to conquer this query: Any specific reason as to why you’re asking me this? You’re not, I take it, writing a doctoral thesis on, oh, The Influence of Homosexuality in Cinema on Late 20th Century Culture? No, I didn’t think so. (Sigh) How did Howard just psychically know you boys wouldn’t be exactly interested in asking me, say, for stress-free secrets to that perfectly foolproof Thanksgiving turkey? (The answer: A good caterer. Da-dum-dum.)
Regardless, in the name of lending an ejaculatory patina of respectability, Kendra, to the apparent fact that you do nothing all day long but surf “Dark Web” gay porn sites, just please keep in mind, however, that sweet Howard here has actual, legitimate dibs on exploring this piggy turf: “No, but wait, Your Honor, you don’t understand, it was for my work research.”
As with all sexual attractions, Kendall, the correct, objective answer to your question depends entirely upon whom you subjectively choose answer it. Thankfully, you chose the most sexually-superficial human on Earth. Thus, with lollipops in our mouths, and some simple butter up our backsides (I just watched Boogie Nights … again!) let’s all hop aboard for Howard’s Horn-Of-Plenty shaped “Wayback Machine” and see whom we can smuttily roast up as the defiantly definitive dick-wonders of their respective decade:
1960s: Joe Dallesandro. A heterosexual, notoriously endowed Warhol “street hustler” creation of The Factory’s brief Flesh/Trash homoerotic cinema phase.
1970s: Jack Wrangler. The first “masculine, all-man” gay performer who always acted “believably straight” on film, no matter how many lucky dudes got to enjoy his blue-jeaned erection.
1980s Jeff Stryker. The only horse-cock top of the hysterical AIDS’ era peak who, though obligated to perform always donning a condom, could nonetheless reliably maintain his famously fluffed wood for hours.
1990s: We have a tie! Ken Ryker/Ryan Idol. Each of them more robotically gorgeous and hung than the other, and both (allegedly) sporting equally engorged attitudes to match.
2000s: Dawson. The first gay porn star whose name, singularly, became synonymous for literally every single sexual taboo that you’d always been warned never to practice, outside the safety of a hazmat suit: From “Cum Dump” Dawson forward, porn “stardom” is completely DOA as video cassettes and Tina-free shooting sets.
Subsequent gay porn “star” performers — as any sort of individually exploitable, long-term commercial “star” commodity — cease forevermore to exist; Dawson’s very arrival as the sleaziest, filthiest, XXX “raw” bottom porn pig imaginable, hailed the end of there ever being another actual “plain vanilla” porn performance again: The single most influential dick flick of all time is, arguably, 2004’s Dawson’s 20 Load Weekend (“the most important gay film ever made,” according to Mark S. King of The Huffington Post). Prior to Dawson—a 40-year-old bald bottom, incredibly enough — conventional gay wisdom in the XXX-world dictated that to become a superstar (via having no discernible talent beyond allowing one’s self be filmed as an anonymously bred bottom) did require at least a modicum of closed-set shame. Ha! Dawson’s grinning, unconventionally-attractive sexual voraciousness ended all vestiges of XXX film stardom necessitating any star-quality talent whatsoever, beyond a smirking enthusiasm to perform, on-camera, being a slammed-up, insatiable sex fiend. Thus barebacking became, after Dawson, the one-&-only “star” that sold porn profitably. No plotline needed. No sleazy background music wanted. Producer Paul Morris (having no room in his Treasure Island Media budget for “production values” anyhow, by even porn’s poppers-bottle-high bar) became, overnight, XXX filmdom’s pioneering “genius” who figured out, by default, what’s the simplest truth: Just give ’em the money shot, continuously, and you’ll always be in business.
Dear Howard,
If you had the option, like, to marry either some ugly fat fuck who’s loaded, or a hottie hunk who’s hung like a fire hydrant, which dude would make for, I dunno, a better husband in the long run? I strip at one of the clubs here in town (started last Saturday!) and both kinds are my biggest tippers. But I’ve been dangling ’em on the same line since, trying to decide which one I really wanna hitch-up forever with. — Robby The Knob
Dear Doorknob Brains,
Precious, these aren’t actually “real” betrothal options. Flashing before me, Knobby, is a priceless scene in Postcards from the Edge: Meryl Streep, a recovering addict, is being exhaustedly badgered at sunrise by her Hollywood star mother, and secret alcoholic, Shirley MacLaine: “How would you like to have gotten Joan Crawford for a mother, instead, or maybe Lana Turner?” Utterly exasperated now, Streep sighs, “These are my options?” Chew on Howard’s Hollywood parable a bit, Rob, stuff it in your jockstrap, get some good musky holiday flavor smeared all over it … because they’ll be another two separate marriage proposals coming at you altogether this next Saturday night. .
— 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.