My Christmas List – 11/30/1999

This is the penultimate Christmas shopping season of the Gay Nineties. What to get my gay and straight family with only thirteen months left until the year two thousand? Incidentally, my hipper friends tell me I’m supposed to call it Y2K – Y (year) 2 (2) K (thousand). One of my mildly dyslexic gay men friends thought I said 2KY. “Two tubes of KY? Let the millennium begin! Is that ball going down that pole awfully fast, or is it me?”

I’ve been making a list, checking it twice, and as always, trying to be nice. The older I get, however, I find I’m a quart low on estrogen and thinking about getting a gun.

My Partial Christmas list:

An Olivia Cruise
— for Ann Paulk
The Exodus International’s poster girl and so-called “former lesbian.” She just hasn’t met the right woman. Annie, it’s time to have some fun and go cruising.

(Please note: Olivia’s aqua-separatists are girlcotting Alaska and Hawaii since those electorates voted down same sex marriage. The Alaskan “KlonDykes Tour” and Hawaii’s “Let’s Get Leiied Tour” are no longer available. Check out the “Denial is a river Tour”. The choice is yours. You’ll fly out of Houston’s recently renamed Bush International Airport. My treat.)

New stationery
— for the Human Rights Campaign
Which claimed to single-mindedly and pragmatically focus on gay and lesbian issues when they endorsed New York’s Al “Right to Life Party” D’Amato for re- election to the Senate. The stationery features their new name, “The Gay and Lesbian Rights Campaign” and replaces the equal sign with the division sign. My fondest hope is that they will throw their weight behind Trent Lott, Newt Gingrich and Jesse Helms in future elections.

New stationery
— for The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
Which will take a position on anything from welfare reform to school uniforms to The Mill on the Mall in the Mill to the Persian Gulf and should therefore be renamed, “The Human Rights Task Force.” They get an embossed multiplication sign.

Androstenedione
— for Nathan Lane
Look how it helped Mark McGwire’s career! The red-headed batting champ, and single Dad, broke Roger Maris’s home run record with the help of the steroid based muscle builder. Nathan’s year supply also comes with a carton of Viagra and specially lengthened forks and spoons for those meals when enlarged biceps impede hand to mouth motion. Encore! Heck, I might even throw a cruise on Denial.

Her Surgeon General job back
— for Joycellen Elders
Talk is cheap. There are apologies and then there is action. President Bill Clinton should show he means he’s sorry and reinstate Dr. Elders, then she could give him a little talking to about not using condoms and what kind of message is that to send. All the conversations about race would sound less empty if President Clinton made amends to black women. Make Lani Guinere head of the Justice Department.

Front row seats to the all male version of Swan Lake
— for Gary Bauer of the Family Research Council
His seat comes with mandatory seat/chastity belt. Talk about your Schwing Vote. Although I’m still mad at the director who didn’t need to say in an interview, “If I had used female dancers, I would have found it very difficult to do anything original.” How about Corpus Christi, a theatrical sacrilege, with an all chick cast, call it Julie Christie.

A family sized box of Raisin Bran — for the Pope His new encyclical, to celebrate his twenty years (has it only been twenty), called “Faith and Raisins” shows the hardening of the categories in the Catholic Church. All that talk about raisins and not a mention of WWJB, What Would Jesus Buy, the corrupting raisin d’avoir is the raisin d’etre of these late capital years. A little bran might get things moving.

Term limits
— for Geraldo Rivera, Cokie Roberts, George Stayontopofthis, George Will, Tim Russert, Chris Matthews, Larry King Sort of Live
and other members of the impeachment industry who refused to quit using the “I” word, then got mad at the public for getting tired of it, then told us we weren’t going to vote, then got mad at us for voting.

An S/M chip
— for everyone’s TV
Blocks out all news of Starr/Monica and replaces it with reruns of Mary Tyler Moore. With a little fiddling you can use it in your PC to block out those stupid S/M Dr. Seuss rhymes that everyone thinks are so funny. And another thing don’t send me those e-mail chain letters – I’m the weak link, the end of the line, the cul de sacko, buck stopper. Or that one about the virus, then the one about the virus hoax. The biggest virus I’m worried about is those Goverly Love Bush brothers. They’re scarier than the Baldwin boys.