Breeder's Digest

There comes a time in every gay’s life, Dear Breeder, when he/she/ze must reflect on his/her/hizzie reputation. Usually, when that moment strikes, we’re too busy having mimosas or ruining our reputations to notice. Sure, we’ve all made questionable choices in our lives last night, but, more than most, we gays know that we only have…one life to live.

Tina Fey, in an early dramatic role.

Whereas your dignity is held dutifully intact by your two-car garage or that 6-month period in which you had dental insurance, gays have a more tenuous relationship to dignity—that is, with the quiet struggle to live nobly without breaking a sweat. But, Dear Breeder, lest you forget, there’s a lot of pressure that comes along with being a gay.

At least Lady Di understood…

For example, our day-to-day lives are consumed by countless moral quandaries. These may range from regretting those nasty remarks we made to the Wendy’s employee, to accidentally careening onto a busy sidewalk at rush hour and sideswiping your stroller (Sorry, I thought that stroller was a shark!). As I then speed away in my Mini Cooper, I reflect in the rearview mirror on the undignified corners we gays back ourselves into, simply to remind ourselves that we’re actually alive. All too often, those compromising situations involve 8-balls, group sex, and/or ruining relationships we’ve had for years. Sorry, we said we were sorry!

Desperately seeking Susan Lucci’s dignity.

The truth is that gay dignity is a very real myth. It’s only by turning up our noses at conventional decorum that we get some satisfaction for the often humiliating circumstances of our existence. That’s why we compel ourselves to construct rich fantasy worlds wherein the most dignified of gays will wear skinny vintage fashion belts, undergo complicated brain transplants over the course of a commercial break, replace ourselves with slightly older child actors, and harbor intricate revenge plots for more than three seasons. By vowing to live our lives from cliffhanger to cliffhanger in open-ended, episodic narrative arcs, we, the bold and the beautiful, the young and the restless, can summon the courage to spend the days of our lives in search of a guiding light, general hospital, or free clinic.

And if that doesn’t spell DIGNITY, Dear Breeder—well, I don’t know which letters do.

Tags: Days of Our Lives, Gay Dignity, Gay Ethics, Gay Mini Cooper Conspiracy Theory, Gay Ruination, Princess Diana, Skinny Fashion Belts For Beginners, Soap Operas, Stroller Panic, Stroller Sharks, Susan Lucci, The Fall of Rome, Tina Fey

This entry was posted on April 30, 2009 at 11:17 pm and is filed under Emotions, Gay, Genre, Lesbian. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.