HX GAY PRIDE 2007 GAY GUIDE: How to do just about anything!
Like all gay men, we’re in a work in progress. So to commemorate our construction-themed Pride issue, our crafty celebrity chums helped us tackle and tool some of life’s hardest how-tos.
How to: Look fab over 30
By Michael Lucas
Step 1: Stay out of the sun. It's better to be pale than to look like Donatella Versace.
Step 2: Go to sleep early. Don’t waste your time on Manhunt until 5am; just get a couple of my movies if you need to get off.
Step 3: Don’t do drugs, drink or eat junk food. For some of you, I would recommend not eating at all — at least for awhile. Get your fat ass on the treadmill and stop complaining.
Step 4: Have lots of (safe) sex. You’ll always have the charming ”just fucked“ glow, and you will feel good about yourself.
Warning: If you are a smoker, disregard everything I have said and just die.
How to: Get mentioned in a gossip column
By Michael Musto
Step 1: Kill somebody! I don't recommend this, mind you, it’s just guaranteed to get you free press.
Step 2: Date somebody — anyone — famous, preferably with lots of tongue action in public.
Step 3: Create conflict. Trash Lindsay Lohan like Lily Allen did. Nice sentiments rarely get noticed by us gossip wrenches.
Step 4: Drink, shoot up, take painkillers, plop a baby on your lap and drive backwards.
Step 5: Accomplish something. You know, write a book, make a movie, win an Oscar. Nah, too hard.
How to: Get your gay movie made
By Another Gay Movie writer-director Todd Stephens
Step 1: Beg.
Step 2: Borrow.
Step 3: Suck.
Step 4: Charm investors.
Step 5: If you haven’t raised the money prior to production, shoot anyway.
Step 6: Get Richard Hatch to show his junk, thus insuring post-production funds.
How to: Rock out with your cock out
By Miss Guy
Step 1: Turn it up, baby! You gotta have it loud and proud.
Step 2: Make it strong. Loosen up with a stiff cocktail.
Step 3: Look sharp! Nobody wants to watch an A&F clone do anything except undress.
Step 4: Literally pull your cock out! And if you’re gonna put it in, put a condom on.
Step 5: Get an audience — which shouldn’t be hard if you follow steps 1–4.
How to: Be a politically incorrect drag queen
By Jackie Beat
Step 1: Have a superior intelligence and an obsessive love for Motown girl groups and/or female TV stars like Mary Tyler Moore, Carol Burnett, and Fawcett.
Step 2: Become a fat kid and learn to make the dumber, skinner kids laugh — confusing them and making them forget that they approached you to punch your fat face.
Step 3: Be blessed with both the Gay Gene and a deep-seated suspicion of just about everything, including organized religion, the U.S. government, the Hollywood star system, and the Surgeon General’s nutritional guidelines.
Step 3a: While steps 1 through 3 simmer during adolescence, add a big handful of Unrequited Same Sex Love for bitterness.
Step 4: Move to a Gay Mecca. Realize that, while a little more comfortable, you still don’t really fit in.
Step 5: Do drag for Halloween, get compliments, win contest, hear cash register bell in head.
Step 6: Walk on stage looking flawless, say the worst possible things about what people hold most dear, and pick up generous paycheck on way out.
Step 7: Repeat step 6 night after night for years until you’ve had enough and either quit and take a “normal” job or kill yourself.
How to: Haggle with a hooker
By Starrbooty star RuPaul
Step 1: Come to terms with the fact that there’s no point in trying to haggle with a hooker because whores have bills to pay just like everyone else.
Step 2: Just go ahead and pay the $20 bucks and be done with it.
Step 2a: If you insist on haggling for a bargain bj, do it with your fat, juicy cock hanging out of your pants for leverage in the negotiations. Very few real whores can pass up a big, fat, lip-smacking, throat-stretching donkey dick.
How to: Get a guy to spill his guts
By Sirius OutQ host Derek Hartley
Step 1: Charm him. Nothing like a little flattery to get a guy to talk about himself. Sure, saying things like “How do you get your arms so big?” is as tired a line as ever floated out of a NYSC steam room, but it’s a classic because it works.
Step 2: Ask open-ended questions that he can’t answer just “yes” or “no” to — like, “What do you do for a living?” No matter what his answer, follow up with, “Is that always what you wanted to be when you grew up and had such big arms?”
Step 3: Get him drunk. Bring on a pitcher of margaritas and he will tell you anything you want to hear.
How to: Make an entrance
By James St. James
Step 1: Dress to offend! Public nudity, gaping flesh wounds, a wig of worms, Nancy Grace drag — the more alarming your look, the bigger the buzz will be, and the brighter your star will shine.
Step 2: Arrive at the party’s peak. If you are too early, stay out of sight until everybody else has arrived and had their ‘how-do-you-dos’. Then, just as conversations begin to lag and people start looking around for the next big thing, climb out of that dumpster and make your presence known!
Step 3: Before you enter, take a deep breath and a double shot of something strong. Arch your back. Arch your eyebrows. Fluff your boobs. Then sneer and snarl and let out a mighty roar. Throw open the door and leap and twirl into the room. Give a big “Ta-da!” and push the little people out of the way. Think of yourself as a one-man Party-Army, storming high society and conquering dullness. Take no prisoners!
Step 4: Enter talking. Be loud. Be energetic. Chatter away. To anyone. Anything. Talk to the wall. Talk to your sock puppet. Just be sure to keep up a random, cheery flow of conversation. Pretty soon you’ll have the whole room roaring at your witty banter, and jostling for your attention.
Step 5: If there are photographers present, plant yourself in front them and begin vogueing madly. Scream: “Look at me! Take my picture! Make me famous!” (They love that.) If possible, tackle a nearby celebrity and drag him or her into the picture. (They love that.) Strike power-poses as if your life depended on it. Contort and preen! Bend it like Miss Beckham! Remember: if you don’t throw your back out, you aren’t doing it right.
Step 6: Work the room, quickly. Give a big air-kiss to everyone you see. Tell them how marvelous they look. Tell them how marvelous you look. Tell them you only have a “hot second” to chat — because, of course, you have a dozen other parties to get to. Shriek to an imaginary friend across the room that you’ll see them at “Sue’s.” Then, loudly hug and kiss-kiss everyone goodbye. Stand in the doorway, sobbing and waving farewell to everyone. Exit talking, just as loud and energetic as when you were entering.
Step 7: Always be in and out of every party in under 20 minutes. Leave ‘em scratching their heads and wondering what hit them. The entrance is what they should remember — not the blah-blah-blah. Then go home alone and check the blogs for your picture. You were fabulous. And what an entrance you made!
How to: Dance till dawn — au natural
By Kristine W
Step 1: Send kids to babysitter at least 48 hours in advance.
Step 2: Arrange to have your bevy of fabulous gay men arrive at your hotel around 10pm.
Step 3: Begin your disco nap no later than 6pm.
Step 4: Drink as many Starbucks as you can while your men create their magic and transform you into their ideal 6 foot Barbie Doll.
Step 5: Hold on tight and don’t stop moving until you’re delivered safely back to your hotel room.
How to: Recover from reality TV
By Project Runway’s Malan Breton
Step 1: Take a holiday on an Atlantis Cruise.
Step 2: Do a day of beauty — if only!
Step 3: Throw a cocktail party with 2,000 of your newest friends.
Step 4: Build an empire.
Step 5: Have a showing at Mercedes Benz NY Fashion Week, design for the hottest celebrities, and dress your childhood icons — like Jody Watley!
Step 5b: Exclude ruching from any future collections.
Step 6: A dirty martini, a box of XL Magnums, and a hot — well, the one you love.
How to: Get the big man on campus
By Matt Maggiacomo, founder of the Delta Lambda Phi National Social Fraternity for gay, bisexual, and progressive men at NYU
Step 1: Plan a study session. The library is lame and Starbucks is noisy, so invite him to your dorm room to help raise his GPA and his blood pressure.
Step 2: Be an athletic supporter. So you fenced and finger-painted in high school; unless he’s seen your dusty old yearbook he’ll never know you weren’t captain of the football team.
Step 3: Let him win a round of beer pong; you can always beat him later.
Step 4: Wine and dining hall him. Treat him to a romantic dinner for two on the meal plan. Nothing seals the deal like a salad bar.
Step 5: Now hope that he’s like your dorm bed sheets: twin, extra-long.
How to: Create a clothing company
By Nasty Pig
Step 1: Grow a set. Starting your own business takes a lot of balls.
Step 2: Come up with a hot name. Then make sure you can own it.
Step 3: Figure out what it is that will make your brand unique and flaunt it. The world will never get you if you don’t know who you are.
Step 4: Service your customers. Never forget that they are choosing to spend their hard-earned money on your creations and they deserve to be treated with the greatest respect. We make love to our customers-sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally.
Step 5: Work diligently. There will always be competition so don’t ever rest on your successes. Designers come and go in a flash. Great brands, on the other hand, are built through consistent, solid efforts.
Step 6: Celebrate your achievements. Every time we see someone wearing our gear we pat ourselves on the back for creating something worth working. And our customers know how to work!
How to: Find a guy with 8 inches plus
By DList.com host/party promoter Daniel Nardicio
Step 1: Ask a drag queen — they always know.
Step 2: Try my trusty throat-o-meter!
Step 3: Watch how he walks; guys with big dicks swagger.
Step 4: Hang out with size queens and steal their boyfriends.
Step 5: Come to one of my Studio 64 parties (8²). The dancers are vigorously pre-screened.
Step 6: Don’t look at hands or feet for a clue; it’s all about the nose.
Step 7: Throw an underwear party and look for the guys in Andrew Christian undies. Hung guys love ‘em.
Step 8: Go to Escuelita.
Step 8b: Avoid The Web.
How to: Increase your flexibility
By twin acrobatic jugglers Jake and Marty LaSalle
PASSIVES
Step 1: Find a position that is (reasonably) comfortable.
Step 2: Relax fully into this position, being careful not to tighten the muscles under stress.
Step 3: Breathe deeply, slowly and uniformly, feeling the burn along the insides of the tissues, letting the force of gravity’s push do the work.
Step 4: Maintain the position for as long as is bearable, then slowly transition into another.
ACTIVES
Step 1: Once again, find a position that is comfortable.
Step 2: Tighten the targeted muscles and release, momentarily, imagining the elongation of muscular fibers in the relaxation.
Step 3: Squeeze the same muscles again, and continue, slightly past the point of satisfaction, the pulsing rhythm of contraction and release.
Step 4: Rest for a bit and, energy permitting, start again… and again.
How to: Throw a Pride house party
By Brini Maxwell
Step 1: Don’t invite everyone you’ve ever winked at at the gym; keep the list down to good friends and their guests. Invite them with evite or e-mails and follow up with a phone call for any that don’t respond.
Step 2: Create a cocktail for the party and serve that exclusively, along with simple drinks like beer, wine, and soft drinks. That way you won’t have to stock a full bar.
Step 3: Pick foods that can be made a day or so before and foods that can be bought ready to eat. You don’t want to spend the whole party in the kitchen. Don’t make the mistake of skipping this step altogether, however — your friends will get very drunk indeed without any nibbly bits.
Step 4.: The most important part of your role as host is to put your guests at ease. If you’re having fun, they will too!
How to: Create a signature style
By Village People “cowboy” Randy Jones
Step 1: Have a sense of humor (especially about self), good personality, large endowment, and tight jeans.
Step 2: Join up with a posse of Girls Gone Wild — like Jerry Hall, Grace Jones, Janice Dickinson, etc. — and proceed to burn up the highways and skyways from NYC to Paris to Rome and back again.
Step 3: Step and appreciate all the support personnel that really help create the illusion of you: stylists, designers, paparazzi, lighting folks, writers, publicists, etc.
How to: Make second place fierce
By America’s Next Top Model runner-up Melrose
Step 1: Do everything in your power not to puke.
Step 1a: Cry. Get it all out.
Step 2: Find a rebound; second is like getting dumped by a pretty cute guy and then meeting the hottest guy ever of your dreams a month later — and finding the most amazing Vivienne Westwood shoes the same day.
Step 3: Pursue bigger, better dreams and put all your energy into reaching your full potential.
Step 4: Sing childrens’ mantras on the way to your first shoot with Steven Meisel, like, “First is the worst and second is the best...”
How to: Forgive and forget
By Kevin Aviance
Step 1: If Hillary can forgive, you can too.
Step 2: Revenge is sweet, so get yourself your own shoe line and make some coins.
Step 3: Pray to our lord, Oprah. That girl is the queen of forgiveness — she and her latest sidekick, that fierce skeleton Dr. Robin.
Step 4: If all else fails, take yo’ problems to the dance floor, ladies.
HX, June 2007; extended online version.