Monthly Archives: May 2005

I have followed through on my threat.

I had the “I’m not Pope Benedict XVI, but my boyfriend is” T-shirt made, and it looks fabulous, mostly because of the very generous design help of this man. I wore it yesterday, and, though not many people caught it, those who did were full of awe and admiration.

Now you can get one too, along with a mug, if you go here.

Enjoy.

Another thing that drives me crazy is when people say that Mercury is “in retrograde.”

Retrograde is an adjective, people. Mercury can be “in Capricorn” or “in Libra” but it can’t be “in retrograde.”

It just is retrograde. Or at least it was until April 12 of this year at 3:45 a.m., Eastern Standard Time.

Not that I pay any attention to that sort of thing.

It drives me crazy when people say things like, “I got all OCD about filling out that form” when what they mean is, “I was more thorough/punctilious/neat than necessary when filling out that form.” Obsessive-compulsive disorder is something quite different. When you have OCD, your mind is filled with intrusive, irrational thoughts often so forceful and terrifying as to render you incapable of concentrating on anything else, and you end up performing rituals with the intent of warding off whatever those thoughts make you afraid of. One of the most common obsessions, for example, is a fear that everything around you is contaminated. This is often paired with a compulsion to wash your hands. People in whom this compulsion is particularly strong can wash their hands until they bleed, and keep on washing. Often people with OCD have more than one obsession and/or compulsion; why just wash your hands when you can wash your hands and have to tap your doorknob with each finger of each hand when leaving or entering your apartment?

I speak, of course, from personal experience; my OCD, while not crippling, has shaped my life in any number of ways, some seriously problematic, others simply annoying. One of my more benign compulsions is displayed to most amusing effect at the water fountain at the gym, where I have to take sips in sets of four or go mad with discomfort. The ideal grouping is four sets of nine sips of water, but usually there are others waiting to drink whom I do not wish to anger, so it doesn’t often work out that way. Most of the time I end up taking four sets of five sips, which is satisfying enough to quiet the urge and yet quick enough not to draw the ire of those behind me in line. If there’s an urgent need for brevity I can take sets of three sips, but if I went down to two I’d have to take four sets of four sets of two sips, and that would be ridiculous.

I was telling E.S. about all this the other day as we waited for the subway. He was fascinated, unsurprising given that he is a psychiatrist-in-training.

“So you usually take 20 sips of water, right?” he asked.

“Yes, exactly.” I said.

“Four sets of five sips?”

“Right,” I said.

He paused. “Well, couldn’t it be five sets of four sips?”

It was the meanest thing he’d ever said to me and I almost pushed him in front of the oncoming train.

Is it wrong to want to sleep with your dog’s veterinarian?

And, if so, how wrong? Really wrong? Or just a little wrong?

So I finally watched last week’s Tivoed episode of America’s Next Top Model, and one question above all is burning in my mind:

Why isn’t everyone in America talking about Janice Dickinson’s smoldering lip-lock with Tyra Banks?

For my part, I’m still trying to figure out if it thrills me or horrifies me.

But then of course I’ve been watching this show for two years and I still can’t figure out if Janice Dickinson herself thrills me or horrifies me. My cousin in Los Angeles says she sees Janice Dickinson every once in a while in her Mommy and Me group. To my mind, this tips the balance somewhat towards “thrills” and away from “horrifies.”

Though of course in this particular case the two are really inextricably intertwined.

Friday night, at the behest of my friend A., I went bowling for the first time since high school.

A. emailed me a week and a half ago saying she was getting a group of people together to go bowling, and wanting to know if I’d like to come. I felt a great deal of reluctance, but I couldn’t figure out why, so in the end I agreed to join them.

Now I know why I was so reluctant.

It was because bowling is the most heterosexual activity in the world.

I live in Manhattan, which is a gay island. I spend all my time either writing musicals by my gay self, talking to other gay people who write musicals, or having sex with my gay boyfriend. I am about to publish a book of gay haiku. I have successfully, if unintentionally, insulated myself completely from the heterosexual world.

But Friday night, throwing bowling balls at fluorescent-colored bowling pins and eating pretzels dipped in cheap fondue, I felt more alienated from the rest of America than I have since Jennifer Hudson got voted off American Idol last year.

In a case on the wall there was a bowling pin autographed by the Fab Five, but its salutary effect was counteracted by the bowling pin autographed by David Hasselhoff, so in the end I was left with nothing but the bad shoes, the sadness, and the pretzel fondue.