It Takes Two (Wheels) to Tango

Portland is a lot like Camp Granada: They say we'll have some fun if it stops raining.

And this weekend, it/we did.

We *could* have had our fun at Portland's Pride Festival. But that seemed a little mainstream.

Bear in mind, the Cheez and I did live in West Hollywood for six years.

(and when I say "bear" I do mean this guy:



No, wait, I mean *this* guy:

)

(note to self, where do you place the ")" to close a parenthetical statement that ends with a photo of a topless hairy gay dude? That's an issue they didn't cover in my high school copy of Funk & Wagnalls)

So anyhow, instead Cheez and I did something utterly Portland: Pedalpalooza. Which, if you are too lazy/cautious/immobilized-by-your-mobile-device to click the link, is a two-week festival of biking events in and around Portland. This being Portland, "bike events" can mean things you never dreamed. Mostly soggy things.

But not this:


Yes, bike tango.

The ride met up in Jamison Park, then we biked with tango music blaring (okay, maybe that's not such a big deal) and with portable ballroom dance floor (okay, definitely that is a big deal, albeit one disassembled and folded into neat stacks, then loaded onto a damn sturdy bike trailer) to the waterfront, assembled the floor, and Cheez and Macaroni got their first ever tango lesson.

If you are looking for my usual bike in that film, note that for Sunday at least the leopard had changed her spots, and Cheez and I were riding the tandem.

Because when we left the house, he misheard and thought I'd said we were going on the tandem ride, not the tango ride.

Of course, it takes two to tandem. And to tango. And in fact it took two tandems to tango ride, because another couple showed up on tandem for the same ride.

This is, after all Portland. In any group of forty people, you will find at least 4 (aka two sets of) tandem riders.

Reminds me of the Kinsey report statistic that 10% of the population is gay.

Of course, that was only a general estimate.

In West Hollywood, it was slightly higher, maybe 110%.

In Portland, the lesbian moms also throw the statistic off in terms of 10% homo. But at 4 out of 40 we are certainly 10% bi squared, as in bi-seated bi-cycles.

In other news, I also had a piece in the New York Times this weekend. Because, as usual, war profiteering is breaking news.

Even if it's Civil War profiteering.

But the real news that's fit to upload is in this tango video:

Yes, catch the woman wearing red lacy peds.

Sexy peds, people. Who knew?

I can just imagine Allan Sherman commemorating it in song:
You remember
little Stacey
She's sporting peds that
are red n lacy
on the dance floor
quite a sight
but now the dance floor's
loaded on her bike.


Fun when it stops raining indeed.

Who You Calling a Pussy--or a Faggot or Dyke? Gather Round for CUTE KITTENS AGAINST QUEER-BASHING!!!!

I know Barack Obama. I worked with Barack Obama. And my kitten is no Barack Obama.

She is a lot cuter. Even if she does look like Edward G. Robinson.

But one thing my kitten and Barack Obama have in common: both star in videos about the rather un-cute but unfortunately timely issue of the harassment and bullying of queer teens.

So far, Obama's video has gotten a few more viewers.

Okay, I know. He's THE PRESIDENT. It's a big deal when he speaks out like this.

But how hard can it be? He's got writers, videographers, press people--and an opposable thumb. My cat doesn't have any of that. She doesn't even have her sparkle ball toy. It got knocked under the fridge days ago, and with my bad back, I ain't going in after it.

I am guessing you have already heard about the It Gets Better Project -- organized by sex columnist Dan Savage to give teens who need it some insight into how their future might look. I respect that the President, Nancy Pelosi, Gloria Estefan and a lot of other famous people have made videos. But you know, most of those videos seem kind of like a grown-up talking AT a kid, not someone talking to a kid in the way a kid (and teens ARE kids despite what they want to believe) needs.

So even though I have ten thousand other things to do, I spent all yesterday making this:



I hope you'll take 2 minutes, 54 seconds to watch it. And then a few more to post a comment on youtube about it, Facebook it, Twitter it, forward it to anyone you can. Because some place in WhoKnowsWhereville there is someone who needs to hear what it has to say. Someone whose life it might even save. And since my cat is an indoor cat, there is no way she can go out and find that someone to say it in person. Please help the cat and the kid and the world, by passing it on.

Just for the record, though: the kids out there aren't being bullied because their queer. Or "suspected" of being queer. They're being bullied because we live in a bigoted, cruel culture that likes to pick on anyone who's different.

But sometimes being different can make you want to make a difference. Like that scrawny, biracial guy with the funny name. Or that cat with a face only a gangster movie could love. Or the chick wearing way too much leopard who really should be doing her laundry before she heads out of town on a business trip. So please do your part to pass it on.

England Swings Like a Pendulum Do. If By Pendulum You Mean 50,000 Square Miles Inhabited by 51 Million People Ruled by Constitutional Monarchy.

I have been to London!

I have met the Queen!

Actually, two queens.

Co-owners of 69theGrope.

I mean, 69theGrove, the charming B&B where we stayed in Vauxhall, a quiet residential neighborhood where visitors can enjoy some good clean fun.

We met in church David said, squeezing Kanley's hand.

Normally, I'm not that comfortable staying in the sort of place where you have to stare at a notecard proclaiming Christ is Risen while you eat breakfast. But in this instance, Christ seemed to be risen from his disco nap, just before slipping on some tight pants and heading out to the local.

Because London is all about a good time.

I know what you're thinking, dear reader. Wasn't traveling difficult with my current injury? Well, though the flight was no picnic (despite the presence of plastic cutlery), the week itself was great, since like certain other international travelers, I realized the value of having a strong young man to tote my luggage.

Of course, when you've been with someone as long as I've been with the Cheez, you know he isn't merely a rent boy. More a long-term lease boy.

Remind me to use my stomach muscles to support my spine I said before we departed. Which he took as license to spend the entire week shouting Suck in that gut, soldier.

England was very educational. Even the flight over, on which we watched The Young Victoria like we were cramming for the history exam.

Here's what I learned: circa 1830, sending a chick sheet-music was the equivalent of making her a mixed tape in 1987.

If my knowledge of Brit history was shoddy, my knowledge of Brit geography was even worse. Riding the tube from Heathrow to the B&B, I realized that everything I knew about London came from Clash songs.

White Mac at Hammersmith Tube Stop

As we wandered around the city that first day, I did manage to recognize Buckingham Palace. Even without the usual assortment of flowers and teddy bears they festoon it with every time something so crap happens in Britain they put it on the American tellie.

Oh my, I hope they aren't going to pre-empt my Wheel of Fortune for this one

Tellie, btw, is British for T.V. This is one of the confusing things about Britain: they barely speak English over there.

Fancy a fag? is British for Want a cigarette? whereas Fancy a bloke? is British for Fancy a fag? It's an amazing place, really.

Speaking of fancy fags, at the Tate Britain we learned about the early-17th-century roots of Glam Rock, as in this stunning work, Portrait of James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, Later 3rd Marquis and 1st Duke of Hamilton, Aged 17.

Nothing I enjoy more than a little glitter dust and an interregnum.

Much of the art in England seems to be portraiture. This is not exactly a good thing, given how unattractive the British are.

That is not me being narrow-minded, btw. It is a proven fact. It was in the Telegraph. The Telegraph is British for slightly less sleazy newspaper than most of the rags we've got over here, but what are you complaining about, at least when we're reading them on the Tube you don't have to see our faces.

It was actually the ugliness that sold Cheez on the trip in the first place. Let's go to England, he said, we will be like Supermodels compared to everyone there.

We were mostly supermodels of rudeness, since we spent the entire trip talking in a wide array of fake British accents. Upon viewing this JMW Turner painting, Cheez felt the need to proclamate upon its subject matter:

Religious cows is queued up for church. More godless ones is in the foreground, grazin. Whereas I would find myself rummaging through my luggage as I struggled to get dressed each morning, intoning Where's all me knickers at?

The thing about the British is, they really talk that way. All the damn time. We saw a family in the park playing with their dog, a fluffy white terrier named Snowy. At some point, the adorable daughter of the family threw the ball and Snowy caught it just before it landed in the lake in the park. A mustachioed sixty-something man passing by happened to observe the scene and said to the dog, Well done, Snowy. As if the pup had just rescued his entire regiment from the Germans.

I swear, the whole country is like a freakin Monty Python sketch. Right down to the physical comedy.

Turns out, John Cleese etal. weren't writing comedy. They were merely transcribing it.

I took that video at the Tower of London, another educational stop. We learned that if you are locked up in the Tower awaiting execution, you might as well graffiti the hell out of the place, because what are they going to do if they catch you?

Also we learned that you can trace just how fat Henry VIII was at any given time by checking out his suits of armor, which escalate in size from Normal to Husky to What Else Can We Melt Down to Get Enough Metal to Cover this Fat Fuck?

It is a true fact that there is nothing I enjoy more on vacation than a

ranger-led tour.

In England, due to not having had the good sense of inventing Smokey the Bear, they do not have rangers in Smokey the Bear hats.

So their version of a ranger-led tour involves a guy dressed up like the bloke on the gin. Who spends an hour or thereabouts traipsing around the Tower of London telling you tidbits like For five centuries, we had a moat here that was the largest open toilet in London. Quite a line of defense. Or Pardon me, that was the marmite and cheese panini repeating on me.

Apparently, they should actually call this attraction The Body Functions of London.

We had a great empire not so long ago Smokey the Beefeater noted. We should be proud of that. But we're not. Because we're British.

It's true, they were British. I love it here said Cheez the Canuck I've never been any place where people embarrass even more easily than me. And he was right. At an event at the Victoria and Albert Museum, when a young hipster approached a craft table out of turn, I jokingly muttered Orderly queue under my breath--causing said hipster to apologize profusely and flee the room in mortification.

They were such easy pickings, it was hardly worth mocking them.

And yet, we did.

More of which to be detailed in my next blog post, which at the rate I'm going, should be made sometime in July. July 2011.

Loud Pushy Author, Deal With It!

I have a t-shirt emblazoned with the phrase

LOUD PUSHY JEW—Deal With It

It was a gift from my friend Kent's boyfriend.  I think he meant it as an insult.  But screw him. Because I love that shirt.  

When I used to wear it in LA, people would go wild.  I'd get compliments on it constantly.  I remember the time when a woman stopped me on the street and tried to buy it from me to send to her daughter.  Or the evening the guy behind the counter at the frozen yogurt store loudly announced when my turn came, Can I help the next loud, pushy Jew, please?

Actually, when you work at a dessert-selling establishment on the border of Beverly Hills, there is pretty much always another loud pushy Jew waiting to be served.

In Portland, alas, people plotz when I wear the shirt.  And the worst part is, they don't even know what plotz means.

There are so few Jews here, merely identifying someone as Jewish is presumed to be an act of anti-Semitism.  Even if you are the Jew you're identifying as a Jew.

Actually, just the word Jew itself freaks people out.  They seem to think it is a slur.  So in case anyone of you reserved goyim are still confused about this, let me set you straight:

The word Jew is perfectly fine WHEN USED AS A NOUN.  

When used as a verb, no.  Under no circumstances should you EVER say Jew someone down. Unless of course you want to be anti-Semitic, in which case, go right ahead.  But trust me, you'll pay for such prejudice.  

And I do mean pay retail.

Also not so kosher is using Jew as an adjective.  As in Jew lawyer or Jew neighborhood. Let something like that slip out, and chances are, you are going to offend.  Maybe not every time, but play it safe. Go with attorney of the Hebraic persuasion, or geographical enclave of the former Israelites, and you'll probably be better off. 

I guess it is confusing when a perfectly legitimate, non-derogatory word gets dragged down just because some people use it as a slur.  I once spent a whole summer working with high school students, trying to get them not to use the word "gay" as pejorative, as in that shirt is so gay or that song is so gay.

Years later, I moved to West Hollywood, and let me tell you, it is a city packed full of men in gay shirts blasting gay songs.  

They are, in the words of a certain Jew author, quite regularly gay there.

West Hollywood, that is so gay.  

Not to be confused with San that is so gay by the Bay Francisco.  

Or Vancouver  that is so gay, ay? British Columbia.

Every place I have lived since graduating from college is so gay.   Including, of course, lesbiriffic Portland.  

Today, my squeeze the Cheez and I spotted the same two sensibly-shod women biking together three different times across southeast Portland, with a canvas Pride Festival tote bag dangling proudly from one set of handlebars.  During the final sighting, Cheez overheard the women speaking to each other in what you know I cannot help but describe as a foreign tongue.  

They're German, he said.  That explains their (lack of) fashion sense.

Oh I said.  I thought they were just lesbian business casual.  

Those German lesbians are so gay.  

But what is even gayer than German lesbians (aka dykes auf bikes), or a WeHo gym bunny in a metallic shirt gyrating down Santa Monica Boulevard to the extended dance remix of I Will Survive?

Well, according to the Oregonian:  me!  To be fair, they actually meant me and the rest of the contributors to the new Portland Queer anthology.   But I'm a loud pushy Jew, why shouldn't I elbow (glove) my way to the head of the line, just like it was the fro yo of homo?  

Anyway, if you want to know more, I'll be reading my piece not one, not twice, but thrice (that amount is so gay) in the coming weeks:

Reading Frenzy – 921 SW Oak St, Portland – Tuesday June 16, 7 p.m. 

Powell’s City of Books on Burnside – Downtown Portland – Tuesday, June 30, 7:30 p.m. 

Q Literati! – Q Center – 69 SE Taylor,  Portland – Wednesday, July 8, 7 p.m.

I promise, if you come to any or all of the readings, you'll be entertained.  And I guarantee that once you hear my piece, you will surely proclaim, that is so Jew.  

Milk and Meat

Spring break of my senior year of college, my friend Alan and I went to San Francisco. We were auditioning the city for the role of Place We'll Move to After Graduation.

I don't know Alan said with some tribulation as we walked about the city streets It makes me uncomfortable to see all these men holding hands in public.

Alan I reminded him you're gay.

Well yes he conceded. But I'm Massachusetts gay.

You'd think my senior year was 1647, and the Massachusetts he meant was the Puritan-run colony governed by John Winthrop.
Still, it was all too much for Alan.

But not for me.

It is never too much for me.

Which is why last week I found myself loading the car with Crisco and heading to the city that, according to politician, activist, and stand up comic Tom Ammiano, is named for St. Francis of the Sissies, whose miracle was turning breakfast into brunch.

For the record, the Crisco was for our Thanksgiving pies.

Which were excellent.

Even if they weren't what everyone who was cruising for a piece on Castro Street was after.

Still, we had a gay old time during our sojourn in the City by the Bay Window.

We saw this man making a rather public show with his rather large organ.


It was at the Castro Theater, where Cheez, our friend Brenda, and I joined 1,404 intrepid souls for the Saturday afternoon showing of Milk.

Intrepid being code for homosexual.

I know there were 1,404 of them there, because I happened to notice the seating capacity sign for the theater, which is 1,407.

It was the gayest sight America has seen since Rock Hudson made pillow talk with Doris Day.

And by that I mean, there were lesbians there, too. I know because the minute the movie ended, the Sapphic Siskel and Ebert seated behind us began complaining This is totally inaccurate. There were a lot more women in the movement.

Cheer up, I wanted to tell them. This movie had one whole dyke in it. Which is more than you can usually say for American cinema. Though maybe not for George W. Bush's cabinet.

In case you were wondering, the movie, though a tear-jerker biopic/typical patriarchal erasure of lesbians from history, is very educational.

For one thing, I learned that Sean Penn can act.

Quite well.

I might have really taken him for a Jewish fag from Woodmere, Long Island.

Just for comparison, the night before, we had dinner at an Italian wine bar with our friend Craig.

Craig is also a Jew from Woodmere, Long Island. But about as straight as can be. Soooo not Milk he broke out the travel pack of LactAid as soon as the waiter set the fennel, bitter greens, and montasio panino on the table.

Immoral of the story: If there is one thing we can learn from Milk, it's that the battle against (lactose) intolerance is never over.

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.

FUNdraisers

Last February, a guest looked out the window into our backyard, gestured at the deep plum-colored leaves of the smoke tree, and said of our garden, You have winter interest.

No I answered we have year-round disinterest.

Really, I have nothing against nature. I also have nothing against brain surgery. I just don't feel particularly motivated devoting my free time to either of those pursuits.

But Saturday morning, we were up early, to get out of our preferred bed (queen-size, flannel sheets, with a light toping of purring cats) to clear out the less-favored garden beds.

Because these hipsters

needed some place to put these bulbs.
All 1001 of them.

Bulbs, I mean, not hipsters. There isn't enough irony even in my yard for 1001 hipsters.

The hipsters were a volunteer gardening phalanx under the astute leadership of inimitable Indie Rocker Sarah Dougher. Who knew Riot Grrrrls had such Grrrrn thumbs?

Apparently they are the only ones who do. At least the only ones in our yard on Saturday.


How did the earth outside my home come to this bulbous state? Let's just say it all started when I had a gay old time at a charity auction.

Which you might think would have taught me a lesson about the dangers of charity auctions. But no.

Because like a perennial that blooms anew, just hours after the last hipster furrowed the final tulip, Cheez and I were out at ... another charity auction.

A really bitchin' one.

Although I must say, whoever made the call on the cupcake to salami ratio at the buffet table deserves to have his sausage sliced by a ravenous coven of hormonal harpies.

Still, the booze was flowing, even after the last lick of coconut icing was long gone.

Drink early, bid often, I advised a fellow guest, just to show I knew how things work in this world.

I'm afraid I'll drink too much, she confessed, and end up taking home something awful.

We've all done that, I reminded her. Better to do it at a charity art auction than at a bar.

At least if you get drunk and bring home something from an art auction that you don't really want, you can give it away.

If you get drunk at a bar and end up bringing home something you don't want, then give it away, it probably means you're headed for an uncomfortable swab and a course of doxycycline. Not to mention an angry call from anyone (everyone?) you gave it to.

There was no live auction at the Bitch Magazine fundraiser, which meant it was harder to get into heady bidding danger. But I still managed.

Mostly because I really wanted this fabulous pro-drag mockery of matrimony, an original drawing to watch out for by Alison Bechdel.

And so did my friends Daniel and Matt.

I bid.

Matt bid.

I waited until two minutes before the silent auction ended, then snuck back into the room and bid again.

Daniel marched in after me and bid.

I began writing my name under his while he was still filling in his email address, writing just slowly enough so that I finished after him, precisely as the Mistress of Ceremonies counted down the closing of that section of the auction.

Then I made a big nasty X along the rest of the bid form and cackled It's mine, all mine, like I was a 44 year-old bridesmaid beating back every other single woman at the reception to catch the bouquet.

I felt a little bad about how I trounced Daniel, who is a very sweet person and dear friend.

But then again, they don't call it Thoughtful and Polite Magazine, now do they?

Besides, I'd already done my virtuous deed for the day. Or the week, really.

Because that's how long it took me to make 12, count 'em 12, original drawings to donate to the auction.

They sold in sets of 4. (Click on each image to see it in its full glory)

Set 1: Great Moments in Feminist Pop Culture

Set 2: Great Moments in Feminist World History


Set 3 (and the high seller): Great Moments in Feminist US History

Ed Emberley and Angela Davis - Surely there's some joke in their about the COINTELPRO planting false fingerprints to frame the panthers.

But by the end of the evening, I'd had a touch too much vodka to make it.

Cheez had even more gin than I did vodka. And thus he was the winning bidder on something every queerer than the Mary Transvestite Moore number that I snagged.

Who is the first homo couple most kids know?

Think back to your earliest childhood exposure to "that lifestyle."

Even before the Birkenstocked Peppermint Patty and her BDSM buddy Marcy (how does Patty get Marcy to call her sir?) put something "funny" into your funny pages.

I'm talking pretty in preschool.

Who knew Sesame Street ran through Chelsea?

Or that Cheez and I bore such an uncanny resemblance to its inhabitants?
Or that Bert, Ernie, Mary Tyler Moore, Cheez, and me, Macaronimaniac, could live so happily ever after, just waiting for our bulbs to bloom?

Those Rotten Fruit

Why lookie there, if it isn't US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, decrying the so-called homosexual agenda in his 2003 dissenting opinion Lawrence v. Texas.

It gives new meaning to the phrase oral arguments, doesn't it?

Is there a homosexual agenda — beyond the usual sing a little opera while I fluff the throw pillows, or perhaps strap on my birkenstocks and head out to the womyn's softball game?

There must be. Because the internet says there is.

I read all about it on the Conservapedia, a wonderful resource created just so home schooled kids wouldn't have to be exposed to any diversity of viewpoint. Because new ideas and anyone who isn't in your family — those are the last things you should encounter as part of your education.

You are probably expecting me to mock the whole idea of the homosexual agenda as ludicrous. Or, as Scalia etal. might have it, lewdicrous. But I will not.

Yes, Virginia, there really is a homosexual agenda. And I have fallen victim to it my very self! I will tell you all about it, so that you can protect yourselves and your children from the awful fate I now face.

It all started when I received an email from a woman I'll call "Monica."

Because that is her name.

Monica and her girlfriend invited me to attend a charity event as their guest. The charity is called p:ear - perhaps I should have guessed there was something fruity going on. Note the typographic reference to aural penetration.

p:ear purports to be a nonprofit that mentors homeless and transitional youth. Maybe in their spare time they do. But clearly they are mostly pushing their homosexual agenda onto people like me.

First by inviting me to their fancy fundraiser, even paying for my ticket.

Oh, and telling everyone that because they are raising funds for their new building, the dress code is "under construction" - as if I don't know what power tools are code for.

That's how they seduce you in.
Free ticket!
Free booze!
Free use of the electric drill!

The next thing you know, it's a lifestyle of fine wine and witty repartee.

That is the sick truth of what those people are all about.




But it's only funny until someone loses an arm.

And a leg.

Don't worry, I'm not talking about fisting. This was a far more depraved and degenerate form of seduction . . .

The charity auction.

They push the booze on you, feed you nothing but weenies and nuts (the weenies were small and the nuts were salty, and I think you know what that means). Then they get some platinum blond flitaroo to keep whispering in your ear until you bid more and more and more.

And more.

And the next thing you know, you wake up the next morning the proud owner of 1,001 tulips.

A garden abloom — how faggy is that?
I ask you, is there no Justice in this world?