There are worse things I could do....

Not often do I get days during the week where I have no obligations, where there isn't some lesson to teach or a party to schlep out show tunes for or a concert to hack my way through. Weekends are not imune either. Even two hours of work in a day requires a complete restructuring of plans, making sure that lunch with the friends you haven't seen in weeks doesn't run long or that you make it to the gym with enough time to actually break a sweat before you have to dash off to check on Becky's scales.

Today I had a real day off.

I will not go into how my day began, but suffice to say a certain friend on a certain Pacific Island and I have a strikingly similar way in which we think a day off like this should begin, and it did.

I then drug a hung over local friend of mine out for a delightful jaunt to HomoDepot for project supplies, then to Costco, aka Gay Bulk Mecca, where I purchased two huge and fabulous coffee table books, "Neoclassicism and Romanticism", and "Art of East Asia". And cheese. One must buy cheese at Costco. I think they must have the cow in the back churning out the stuff, the price is so low. After another hardware store trip for more fun supplies it was back home to blow things up for a bit and then take a little nap.

And then the fun began. The same friend from the prior shopping festivities was having a few people over for dinner, and I was invited along. We had stew that would have made Julia Childs chortle with delight, and enough wine to make her roar with approval. As I was sat, doubled over with laughter at the tales told at the dinner table, I was reminded why it's just too damn fabulous to be gay. We, as a people, can take just about any event in our lives and spin it into a fantastic tale of epic proportion over a few glasses of tasteful booze, and make even the most horrifying life-event into comedy the likes of which you've never experienced before in your life. I don't know if my tummy hurts now from too much food, too much wine, or too much laughing, but it was all fucking great.

Oh but it doesn't end there. Our host for the evening has a new favorite bar, the Crescent (pronounced cre-SAUnt of course, it's FRENCH!!!). The Crescent is, by all definitions, a dive bar, where the number of teeth in the heads is easily out-numbered by the cigarettes hanging from lips. It was Karaoke night tonight, and the microphone was presided over a drag queen that was the spitting image of the 50-year-old, male version of Blair from Facts of life. Just ponder that for a moment....

We all sang, including myself, who feels much more comfortable making music at a big stringed box instead of at a microphone. I sang "Hello Again" by Neil Diamond, the greatest of all booty call songs (listen to it, you'll know I'm right) and even got up to do a second song "There are worse things I could do..." from Grease, who's second line "..than go with a boy, or two" makes it all worth it. The bar was an indescribable mix of people, from the middle aged woman who had decided that shaving her head today would be a really good look (she sang "Friends in Low Places") to the duet of the wife-beater wearing straight guy and the homo who's trucker cap read "FUCK" in giant letters, to the pretty bartender-ess who served everyone like they were her family with a huge smile.

We're a crazy bunch, us gays. We'll take in anyone. Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses. Your motivated, your rich, your rugged individualists. We come in all shapes and sizes, with every problem and joy in life. And we'll all get together on a Sunday night and sing terribly into a battered mic and not care a wit about any of it, and drink and laugh until we stumble home to write silly blogs. We may joke, we may bitch, but we're all in it together, shaved heads and toothless grins aside. The straights breed, which we certainly need to replenish our numbers, and a they do a multitude of other glorious things, but do they ever get together for nights such as this? Bless their hearts, but I'm not so sure they do.

So yay for the straights, but Fuck Yeah! for the gays.