Kicky, Kikey Camp Vamp. And no, I don't mean Samuel Clemens.

Mark Twain.  Dorothy Parker.  Erma Bombeck.  Brilliant and talented all.  

But let's face it, they never really amounted to anything.  

No Oprah Book Club.  No Twitter feed.  And no reading at Powell's City of Books.

How sad and tragic and empty and leopardless their lives must have felt.

Filmed by the devoted Cheez, June 30, 2009.

Painting the White House Pink

Over time, many gay couples begin to dress alike.This is not one of those couples.

Which do you think we'll have first, my friend Andrew asked over a rather nice dinner party he hosted last weekend, a homo president or an atheist president?

Andrew often talks about homos. One of his favorite games is Spot the Homo, which we sometimes play at business meetings.

Since Andrew is the type to host rather nice dinner parties, it should go without saying that he is not trying to spot the homos so that he can go after them with a baseball bat.

He is trying to spot the homos because he is a homo.

And a registered voter.

So I felt like I was raining on his gay pride parade when I broke the news to him.

We've already had a homo president.

Ladies and especially gentlemen, I give you James Buchanan.

Our fifteenth president, and the only "bachelor" to ever hold the nation's highest office.

Not that he was sleeping single in a double bed.

At least not during the fifteen years he lived with William Rufus King. (King was an Alabama Senator and later Vice President, though not under Buchanan. Well, maybe under Buchanan in the baby-if-I'm-the-bottom-you're-the-top sort of way, but not in the next-in-line-for-the-Oval-Office way).

I know what you're thinking. Rakish cravat and spiffy curls not withstanding, how can we be sure these two were lovers, and not just a couple of parsimonious pols trying to keep expenses down by sharing the cost of a single kegerator?

Perhaps because King was variously referred to as

• Buchanan's wife
• Buchanan's better half
• Miss Nancy
• Aunt Fancy

by such notables as Andrew Jackson (who, as the guy whose punim is on a bill that gets tucked into the most deserving of mid-range male stripper's g-strings, perhaps ought to know) and Aaron V. Brown (governor of Tennessee and Postmaster General in the Buchanan administration).

Buchanan and King's co-homobitation was interrupted for a stretch when King was appointed minister to France in 1844. I am selfish enough he wrote Buchanan to hope you will not be able to procure an associate who will cause you to feel no regret at our separation.

We all know good fairies can make wishes come true, and King's apparently did, because while he was gone, Buchanan wrote an acquaintance I am now "solitary and alone," having no companion in the house with me. I have gone a wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any one of them. I feel that it is not good for man to be alone; and should not be astonished to find myself married to some old maid who can nurse me when I am sick, provide good dinners for me when I am well, and not expect from me any very ardent or romantic affection.

I believe that's the same personal ad Richard Gere used to land Cindy Crawford.

So why does a perfectly respectable dinner party host and homo spotter as Andrew not know about our great poofdah prez?

Probably because Buchanan was a terrible president. A pro-slavery Northerner, he advocated for acquiring Cuba as a way to expand US slavholding, tried to force Kansas's entry into the Union as a slave state, and completely mismanaged the financial panic of 1857.

His biggest failure by far was the failure to avert the Civil War: he spent the final months of his term twiddling his thumbs (along with who knows which bodily parts of Rufus King) while Southern states began seceding in the wake of Lincoln's election.

Not exactly the guy you want to claim as your role model and great American hero.

Even if he did go to war with Utah over disputes about what household arrangements should be legally sanctified as marriage. Which is pretty much what every homo in California is threatening to do this week. . . if only it didn't mean missing Sundance.

Stereotypes - Hateful, Hurtful, Hilarious

In the late 1980s, I was watching Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons), reading l'écriture féminine, and sharing dresses with Thomas Lauderdale.
Flash forward to 2008, and now I'm listening to l'écriture dangereuse, and Thomas and I are both wearing pants. Well, I'm actually wearing leopard overalls, but more on that in a moment.

Back in the late 1980s, Tom Spanbauer published his first book, Faraway Places. Spanbauer is known for "Dangerous Writing," which, given that it is something he does not define it on his website, in a show of solidarity and/or sloth, I will not define here.

What matters is, it's dangerous + writing + Thomas Lauderdale, who this very evening hosted a reception in honor of the reissuing of Faraway Places (the lambda literary equivalent of the DVD release of a certain Glenn Close/John Malkovich/Swoosie Kurtz/Uma Thurman/Keanu Reaves/Michelle Pfeiffer blockbuster).

The closest I got to dangerous writing back in the late 1980s was writing my senior thesis on ethnic jokes. Which actually turns out to be quite relevant, because the Tom Spanbauer reading turned out to be a long series of ethnic jokes.

Interaction 1:
I remind Adam Levey that I invited him to my seder. He apologizes for not coming and asks how it was. I point out that it has not happened yet - first seder is Saturday night. Really? he says. I was on the phone with my mother this morning and she was talking about her seder for like two hours, and I totally thought it had happened already.

Look, I say, I know you aren't coming to my seder because your shiksa girlfriend isn't in town to drag you to it.

He admits this is true, he's a total guy about social stuff, let's her do all the arrangements. I point out that Jewish men are especially bad in this department. Because of our overbearing mothers? he asks.

Overbearing? Just because she talked about seder for two hours? Yeah, I say, we have a number of friends that the Cheez has mistakenly thought were gay, and I've had to point out repeatedly that he was just mistaking Jewish male emasculation for latent homosexuality.

This is the first year in my life when people I meet assume I'm straight rather than gay Adam admits. I think it's because my neck is starting to get thick.

Or it could be because you walk around with your unbelievably sexy shiksa girlfriend I say.

A lot of gay men walk around with unbelievably sexy women Adam points out.

It's true, I say. No one has ever mistaken Thomas Lauderdale for a heterosexual.

Interaction 2:
After reading from Faraway Places, Tom Spanbauer is taking questions, most of which are about his experiences as a gay man who was raised Catholic in small town Idaho.

As he is answering some deeply personal question, a not-exactly-falsetto-but-still-it-probably-violates-the-bounds-of-don't-ask-don't-tell voice booms out Will all you people who want to talk please move to the other room so the rest of us can hear Tom?

A hush falls on the room, a welcome hush for those of us who have been straining to hear the dangerously softspoken writer.

Thank god for the fags, I say, they take some pressure off the Jewish women, in the telling people what to do department.

It's because I was an Episcopalian choirmaster in the South Bill-the-Shusher says. I know how to shush the boys when they're talking out of turn.

Every Jewish woman and Catholic queer needs a southern Episcopalian choirmaster, I say.

Interaction 3:
I am talking to the only black person at the Spanbauer reading, who happens to also be the only black person in a seminar I am teaching on William Faulkner and Toni Morrison. I hope you aren't suffering from too much sliding eyeball syndrome in the seminar I say.

What do you mean? she asks.

It's when there's one black person in the room, I say, and the topic of race comes up, and so everybody slides their eyeballs over to see how that person is reacting.

Actually I have noticed she starts to say, but she is interrupted by some white person from an insanely small and homogenous Oregon town, who comes over to ask what it was like for her when, while reading from his book, Tom Spanbauer said the word nigger.

Interaction 4:
The room is clearing out for the evening. I'm saying good-night to my outgoing friend Floyd, when a woman comes over, gesturing madly at my leopard overalls, which I have tastefully accessorized with a leopard cape. And a leopard trim purse. Oh, and there are leopard cat ears on my bike helmet, though I hadn't donned that yet.

I'm a costume designer the woman tells me, and you know what they used to call that back in the 50s? Puss Print.

All I can do is wonder why they ever stopped calling it Puss Print. Perhaps my fellow Jew Hélène Cixous (whose been known to sport the spots herself) can write a nice essay advocating a feminist reclamation of Puss Print.

She's beautiful, she's laughing, and nu, she's wearing leopard.

Queer Eye to Supersize the Small Fry

Style. It transforms the mundane into the marvelous.

Here in the land of Nethers, evidence of this ab fab phenomenon abounds.

Chanel has taken the Oma Fiets (literally Grandma Bike - think of it as the Ford K-Car of the Netherlands)

Grandma, what a dull sedan you have.

The better to haul my huge grandmotherly bloomers in.




and made it Haute Couture
Note the signature Chanel leather on the paniers, seat, handle bar grips, and pump.
Who says fashion can't be practical? This is the perfect vehicle . . . if all you ever need to transport is your lipstick, your cigarettes, and your extremely small lap dog.

But it takes more than just your average sense of style to turn this


into this






Able to mute primary colors into pastels . . .
Aesthetically powerful enough to turn McDonald's Playland into Camp Play

Is it a songbird?
Is it a flight attendant?

Is it Superman?

No! It's even gayer!


Gayer than a man who flounces around town in tights?
Prithee tell, what is gayer than Superman?

That would have to be - Sissyboys!

And they are more powerful too. Par example:

At brunch (the gayest of all meals), George ordered the gelati of the day without the waitress telling him what they were.

But Oliver took just one lick of each mystery ball, and his superpalate was able to detect all the subtle flavorings, from amaretto to apricot.



George and Oliver's design firm UXUS has designed the new look for McDonald's Playland. So thanks to them, we can all start calling those Happy Meals by their rightful name.