We’re celebrating 8 big years of GGT this year with a look back at some of the favourite stories we’ve published.
This week Jared Mitchell gives straight guys the gay goods and a little light read at the same time.
We’re glad that straight men have finally given up their oppostion to us and are receivng tutelage a la Queer Eye For The Straight Guy on matters of dress, hair comportment and social grace. But these frills and flutterings about dressing stylishly ignores the real lifestyle secrets of being gay. You’re about to receive the real advice gay men need to pass on to straight men so you can impress your girlfriend with the inner insights of queer fabulousness.
Read, breeder boy and learn…
1. Vegetable shortening isn’t just for deep-fried chicken. It’s fattening to stuff it down the front of your food pipe, but you won’t gain a calorie pushing it in the back. And it feels great! Yes, you owe it to yourself to explore the manly world of anal fisting. If your girlfriend thinks the idea is icky, it’s still possible to do it to yourself – but never infront of her without warning.
2. Today’s evolved man knows that it’s okay to cry in truly dreadful situations – on the battlefield, at the hospital bedside, at your own wedding. It’s also really, really okay to cry in bars, when it’s 1 a.m., you’re smashed and surrounded by colleagues from work. Blubbering on a barstool and shreiking “I didn’t want to be a policy analyst, I wanted to be a dancer” is totally, totally cool.
3. Repeat after us: “The road gets rougher; it’s lonelier and tougher.” Always keep at least one black rooster wig in your closet along with a sequined matador jacket and black capri pants. Dressing up and belting out “The Man That Got Away” or “Over The Rainbow” – and doing it really well – can only win you the widest circle of friends.
4. You probably saw high-school films in which you were taught that real courage doesn’t come from a bottle of liquor. (Actually, real courage comes from a bottle of moisturizer.) Rather, liquor is more like your friend always there for you. It provides you an excuse not to go into work, with ways of supersizing your dull little personality and best of all, with helping you clear a soiree of tired old friends who really need a public telling off.
5. K and E are drugs. Beware the dreaded K hole, in which your mind becomes a drained sump, a disorganised file folder, a wretched sock drawer. You temporarily lose your mind and talk gibberish. Be assured, you won’t lose your bedrock identity. We fondly remember one straight chap we met kn a college street bar who responded to all our banal questions with “jffle bib gligfkg” and “bibble icg jorg zidum.” And yet when we asked him if he would suck us off, his primordial straightness stood fast and he said, clear as a bell, “I don’t do that.”
6. We remember an otherwise obscure British Railway executive who once copmplained that passenger rail service was about as useless as the male teat. Lord Dodo might have understood choo-choos but he didn’t understand nannas. Your titties are there solely to give you pleasure. They can be pinched, twisted, bitten and licked. If you want to choose to get one or both nipples pierced do not eat a hot smoked meat sandwich while it’s being done because you will faint.
Jared Mitchell is a novelist, magazine writer and film maker. His latest video is showing at the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival in May.
Mar
12
We’re celebrating 8 big years of GGT this year with a look back at some of the favourite stories we’ve published.
This week Ryan Farrell shares his top 20 benefits of party drugs!
A few months ago, my friend Glenn got stood up by a guy who was too high to call him. He got stood up again by someone who had taken partying a little too extreme and couldn’t handle a relationship with another person. That same month, a friend of mine was too stoned to leave his apartment and asked me if I could do his laundry for him because he was afraid he’d screw it up somehow. That same month, I asked a bartender at Byzantium to give me an idea for my column and the one concern he identified in the gay community was the drug culture. ‘It’s destroying the city,’ he said. ‘People aren’t going out anymore. They stay at home and get high. The gay scene has no night life. It has no life at all. It’s pathetic.’ Recently on a cottage getaway weekend, the concern of drug use came up and was discussed at a more international perspective as the use of drugs, specifically crystal meth, has damaged gay communities of New York City, San Francisco and Paris. (more…)
Feb
25
We’re celebrating 8 big years of GGT this year with a look back at some of the favourite stories we’ve published.
Enrico Mandarino is Participant “A”.
(From the former GGT column, “Our Man In The Field”)
Last month a historical first-ever marijuana study in Canada took place, in which researchers evaluated the best method of ingesting weed. The delivery system chosen will then be used in a pilot study.
I was ‘Participant A’.
Two delivery systems were being tested: the pipe and the joint. I was asked to refrain from smoking weed four days prior to taking part in this study. (This was easily the hardest part of the study for me, but anything in the name of science.) I arrived at St. Michael’s Hospital excited that Canada is finally moving forward on researching marijuana. The researchers involved in this study seemed equally excited.
They met me in the only smoking room in the hospital, used for palliative care patients who smoke cigarettes. A sign on the door read: ‘This room is being used for medical purposes’. I need a sign like that for my apartment.
A nurse, who at first had no idea what the study was about, set me up with an IV catheter with a valve on one end of it; over four hours she would collect blood samples at various intervals after smoking to be tested for levels of THC. I felt like an Italian barrel of wine with a tap.
Then the fun began. (more…)
Feb
19
We’re celebrating 8 big years of GGT this year with a look back at some of the favourite stories we’ve published.
Murray Jose explores the power of nasty thoughts.
(From the former GGT column, ‘Poz P.O.V.’)
There I was all organized and excited to start spring cleaning at nine on a recent Saturday morning – but somehow by 9:30 I was on a telephone chat line cruising men.
How did that happen? I had no real control; my libido just kicked in all of a sudden, leaving my Saturday plans derailed. (more…)
We’re celebrating 8 big years of GGT this year with a look back at some of the favourite stories we’ve published.
Shaun Proulx talks to Rev. Troy Perry
(From the former GGT column, ‘Step Into My Parlour’)
Billed as Canada’s largest and sexiest weekend, the Mr. Leatherman Toronto Competition is back at the end of this month. Included among the judges is the Reverend Troy Perry.
Nearly four decades ago while Perry was in his twenties his watershed disclosure of his homosexuality destroyed his life and branded him a pariah. In a headline-making scandal the Pentecostal minister from California – first licensed in Florida at the age of fifteen – lost his wife, his ministry, and was abandoned by his two sons amidst persecution leading to a failed suicide attempt. (more…)
We’re celebrating 8 big years of GGT this year with a look back at some of the favourite stories we’ve published.
STEPPING OUT OF THE CLOSET – AT FIFTY-EIGHT
(From the former GGT column, ‘Turnstyle’ with guest writer ‘Mr. X’ – September, 2002)
EDITOR’S NOTE: MR. X IS A PSEUDONYM TO PROTECT THE IDENTITY OF THIS PROMINENT TORONTO BUSINESSMAN NOT OUT TO HIS WIFE AND
THREE GROWN CHILDREN.
When I was asked to write this it was with a great deal of trepidation that I agreed. After some thought I realized that there are no doubt hundreds like me, struggling as I’ve struggled with the realization after years of being married that I am gay. (more…)
We’re celebrating 8 big years of GGT this year with a look back at some of the favourite stories we’ve published.
DATE-AND-DASH
(From the former GGT column, ‘Dating With Scissors’ by Jesse Trautmann)
My friend Matt met Chris at a bar one night. After some chatting, they discovered that they had quite a bit in common. They both used to work for Chrysler, and both now make a living navigating through the cubicle labyrinths of RBC’s banking offices in west Toronto. Matt got Chris’s number. A date was planned, but by the next week, neither boy had called the other. Instead, ‘we text messaged each other, like 1,800 times,’ Matt said, ‘and finally set a date for Friday.’
Little did Matt know that this incessant texting behaviour was foreshadowing the outcome of a soon-to-be-ill-fated date. (more…)
