The 10 Most Boring Things Gays Say!

Photo: Sassy Gay Friend via YouTube

There's nothing duller than a boring gay. After all, gays have the potential to be so wildly enchanting and exciting, but sometimes we fall into hellish conversational traps that make us the opposite of gay. Not to sound like a boring gay, but "Yawn!" And so, here are the 10 worst sounds we emanate, complete with a proviso that I celebrate LGBTs 51 weeks out of the year and can be forgiven this momentary lapse, OK?

"EVERYTHING USED TO BE BETTER"

You know, "In the old days, we had more character, there was more flavor to the community, there was power and beauty in our oppression, we didn't just clutch at mainstream acceptance, we accepted each other for what we were," blah blah blah. I've been guilty of this speech many times, but I'll admit it does grow tiresome. Let's make it history.

"EVERYTHING USED TO BE WORSE"

Conversely: "Back in my day, we had to suffer for every crumb, we were low man on the totem pole and were treated like human garbage, and there was no technology to help find each other with--we had to search around in terror, hoping to uncover a kindred spirit amid the darkness," blah blah. Again: Guilty! And again: Boring!

"LABEL LABEL LABEL..."

You know: "Doesn't my Paul Smith shirt look hot with my Cavalli pants? And aren't my Louboutin sneakers the perfect thing to jazz up my Thom Browne eyewear with? But does my blender really go with my sofa? Does my sofa go with my ceiling? And does my husband go with my thread count?" One always wants to run far, far away from these types, yelling, "Victim!" while praying that they might be overtaken by an occasional spontaneous impulse, just for the fun of it. Nah, keep running.

"I JUST CAN'T GET A MAN"

I'm sure you've heard this one before: "No matter how I try--or where I go--no living organism seems to want any part of me! Everyone gay on earth is pairing up except me, and it's a nightmare because my face/booty/personality/aura obviously makes people sick to their stomachs, and I find myself alone night after night, doomed to spend eternity with my hand as a sex partner." To which you want to say: "It's true! You suck! But keep it to yourself because you don't need to bore your friends too!" (Of course, this monologue--like some of the other sayings listed here--can apply to all sorts of people, but with gays having so many avenues to meet, it seems particularly discordant to hear it from one of us--I mean them.)

"WE'VE GOT TO STOP THE HATERS!"

On Facebook: "Homophobia's got to go! We must battle our oppressors and shout them down with truth, integrity, and righteousness! I am simply not going to take hating anymore, not under any circumstances Bigotry, your time is up!"

In real life: "Um, back of the bus? Sure, that'll be comfortable enough. Thank you, kind sir."

"I WAS AT STONEWALL THAT FATEFUL NIGHT!"

Yes, I know there were a lot of people at the West Village bar in 1969, when the uprising became symbolic of the community's fight for freedom. But there weren't that many people. If everyone who claims to have been there was really there, the event would have had to be staged in a football stadium. Runner-up: "I threw the first bottle!"

"DID YOU SEE WHAT HAPPENED ON [FILL IN THE NAME OF A REALITY SHOW] LAST NIGHT?"

It's OK to watch those shows if you want to, but to actually talk about them? With people you respect? And to act like what happened was a natural human outburst that cameras just happened to catch? Plug it up! Unless I made a cameo appearance!

"OOH, I JUST LOVE ME SOME BLACK DICK!"

"Or any dick! I just love to kneel myself down and pray before the cojones of a giant, cheesy flesh torpedo aimed squarely at my grinning face! There's nothing I love more than a giant slab of dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick...." Boring! Dick isn't boring, mind you, but hearing about it nonstop--especially from stereotypical old-school drag queens--certainly is. Feel free to go for it, just shut your pie hole about it. (Except when engorging it with, you know, dick.)

"HAVE YOU SEEN JOE SCHMO AS BILLY FLYNN YET?"

Again, this kind of thing is hardly exclusive to gays, but it's mostly gays who say it. They're the "replacement queens," the ones who neurotically have to see every single bit of stunt casting on Broadway, which means they've paid for Chicago tickets 150 times and counting and might even spring for the new genie in Aladdin. When they start weeping over memories of Joey Fatone in Rent, you know it's time to block them--with your hand.

"SNAP!"

I'll tell you what's definitely not boring. New York drag personality Adriana Le Glam--who by day does makeup for the drag queens over at The View, lol--has been starring in popular Halloween videos for MTV.com (also posted on YouTube), in which she Le-Glams up and transforms various men and women into the celebrities of their dreams. In her debut video, Adriana wore a black leather dress and a long, green wig as she turned gals into Gaga and Beyonce and a guy into Kylie Jenner. "I'm hoping it becomes a permanent gig," Le Glam told me, "and I get to do more normal transformations and even more epic drag looks as well." Great--I'm ready to become Chris Hemsworth!

HIS VINES HAD TENDER GRAPES

I was transformed into a blithering fan yesterday when I went to Chiller Theatre, the celeb-filled autograph show in Parsippany, New Jersey, and got to meet some of the icons who architected my youth. I was totally gaga on meeting Ron Ely, who used to swing around on a vine in the 1960s show Tarzan, helping catapult me into puberty with the force of a cannonball. I told Ron I loved the episode where Diana Ross and the Supremes played nuns and he smiled and said, "They were great." I stammered and blushed for a few awkward moments, then weirdly asked him how many loincloths he had on the show. "Ten or 20," he replied. "They were very comfortable, made by a man who worked with animal skins." More stammering, more blushing--and then I crawled away, determined to never again accost someone who roasted my hormones.

In another corner, I ran into longtime married couple Robby Benson and Karla DeVito, the latter telling me that she'd just recorded a very hot trio with Meat Loaf and Ellen Foley. (DeVito used to lipsynch Foley's vocals in Meat Loaf videos and she also sang them live in concert). Nearby, two of the babes from Hee-Haw had long lines of fans waiting to greet them, while the show's plus-sized funny lady, Lulu Roman, was at an adjacent table being ignored. That made me run up to the woman and tell her gays absolutely adore her. Since she's one of them there Christians, I wasn't sure how she'd respond, but Lulu answered, "I love everybody!" which was totally the correct answer. Similarly, Lisa Loring--who was Wednesday in the cult sitcom The Addams Family--told me, "I don't care if somebody's gay or purple. We all came from the same place and we're all a part of each other." As someone who's not only gay but purple, that was good to hear. And finally, I chatted up Lee Montgomery, who was the kid in Burnt Offerings, a weird 1976 thriller starring Bette Davis and Karen Black. "At first I was a little intimidated by Bette," he told me. "I'd seen The Nanny--terrifying--and heard the rumors. But she was a love. She would take me upstairs, pour herself a whiskey, and smoke, and tell me stories of old Hollywood." That whole scenario would have terrified the daylights out of me as a kid, but I was glad Lee found comfort in it. Speaking of comfort, I'm off to find those 10 or 20 loincloths on eBay.

John Bolton & Lesli Margherita | Photo by Jeremy Daniel

THERE IS NOTHING LIKE A DAMES?

Nostalgia bubbles over once more in Dames at Sea, the first Broadway production of the 1966 musical pastiche, which spoofs the overnight star cliches that came a-cropping in movies like the 1933 Ruby Keeler vehicle 42nd Street. The show inhabits the kind of world where a girl with show biz dreams can get off a bus from Centerville, Utah, and nab a show and a man faster than she can polish her tap shoes. Where a diva can glance at new sheet music, immediately declare that the song is great, and then launch into it, throwing the sheets to the wind after a few bars because she's instantly absorbed it. Mocking tropes like that isn't as fresh an idea as it once was, and the result is basically a giddy trifle, not for anyone looking for anything meaty or trenchant. But as directed and choreographed by Randy Skinner, the cast of six works so energetically, they make you feel like the stage is filled with throngs of tapping feet. Lesli Margherita has fun as the imperious (yet phony) Mona Kent, Mara Davi is suitably brassy as a tart chorus girl, and Eloise Kropp dazzles in her climactic group dance, "Star Tar." The result is fluff that tickles, even if it's rarely laugh out loud and it tends to evaporate as you enjoy it. Just remember: You're going to see this show as an unsuspecting theater queen--and you've got to come back a star!