"I should have shaved my pussy for this! The stubble is sticking to my dress."
And so begins one mighty headache of a journey out to the One Mighty Weekend VIP reception way out at Disney's Buena Vista Palace. Savannah's playing annoying, no-underpants girlfriend/Gay Days antidote, while I'm doing my best mean-dad-with-a-crumpled-Google-Map, lamenting the absence of actual addresses on the big-eared concourse and grunting obscenities from a vocal register that I thought I lost with my ass cherry.
"Why won't anybody fuck me?" she whines on, oblivious. "I can't even get a redneck skater to fuck me cuz I'm so hip-hop."
"Correction: You're red-hop."
"Why can't I be hip-neck?"
Why can't this be over with? Oh, because the bump-and-circuit-dance of Gay Days hasn't even almost approached its faked anticlimax — cue pink queer in a red shirt passing out on the "It's a Small World" ride — and there's still plenty of meaningless mess to be made. We finally arrive at our destination just early enough to be way too early and just late enough for my pre-event buzz to wane into a pool of rhetoric. Who am I? Why am I here? Who else is going to be here? Is it going to be middle-aged gym-rats in designer-ripped casual chic? Do I have a stomach? Will … she … be … here?
"Ah, Billy Manes. The next mayor of Orlando," comes heaving sarcastically out of an SUV plopped down out of nowhere. Omigod. She is here!
Full disclosure: By some twist of a very short hair, commissioner Patty Sheehan and I have spent the better part of this year in a publicity-fueled version of a slightly uglier Paris and Nicole (I'm so Paris), but perhaps in respect to the launch of the fifth-season reunion of The Simple Life, we are now able to simply call each other "bitch" and get back to the more important business of projected BlackBerry existences. Ah, the magic of Gay Days.
Patty's posse, myself and Savannah's nearly-exposed itchy nethers take our gay parade the 30 miles from parking place to 27th floor of the Palace for some high-end hobnobbery of the homosexual kind. Wait a minute!
"This is why you can't get fucked," I decode in Savannah's direction.
"You are ruining my life," she chafes. "That's it. I'm going to have to get gay guys to fuck me."
Er, you already have, right? Anyway, the party doesn't disappoint in the ridiculously lavish department. Amid the fragrant stench of sushi, pear-tinis and queers-bathed-in-cologne, a slightly frenetic din of cautious braggadocio is producing a white-noise resonance of what must be a very good time indeed. Until, that is, Savannah and I go a little heavy on the wasabi. Ouch! I do have a stomach!
Bored with our standard mingle circle — the Patty brigade, Watermark body hair and Graham from the Weekly (gay!) — we take our Japanese toxicity into territories unknown, hopping — get this — all the way over to the other side of the party. There we find another bored-looking couple-not-really-a-couple and get to chatting about nothing. He works for Logo, she's a photo editor and they both exhibit that medicated quality peculiar to Manhattan panic attacks. We try to make things interesting by dropping a few "when I was in New York" names, but to no avail. He starts lamenting the absence of the Golden Girls house from the MGM studio tour, and we naturally have to go. Thank you for being a friend, etc.
Back on the other side of the party — as the party has precisely two sides — Savannah runs to a window to take in the beauty.
"Look at the pretty colors," she sparkles.
"Look at the dirty pool," I dull.
"No, but look at the pretty decorations!"
"Yes, but look at the dirty roof!"
"You're so negative!"
"Nobody can be negative at Gay Days!" comes a portly voice from behind.
Yikes! "Uh, yeah they can," I reach for the yellow slip in my wallet. Queer Tip: Nobody should use the word "negative" at Gay Days.
Regardless, we are having a good time, especially Savannah, who claims she's "captured the magic" on a number of occasions, each following a posed picture (without underwear!) wrapped around a Disney character. Hopefully she hasn't "captured" too much. Patty's police liaison, the super-hot Jim Young, raises the bar with a story about his niece at the end-of-day Disney parade that ends with, "Uncle Jimmy, you made all of my dreams come true!" I knock the bar to the floor with my own rendition ending in, "Uncle Jimmy, you made all of my wet dreams come true!" All of which is followed by Savannah's suspicion that she and Young would make beautiful, tall, blond babies, to which somebody responds, "Oh, the Führer would be so proud!" This with Parliament House's Don and Susan Granatstein in earshot! Oh, the hilarity!
By the time Susan is punching me, hugging me and crowing, "I could strangle you!" I realize that it's time to go. But how?
"Do you mind if I wipe my hands on your dress?" I grab a corner of Savannah's drapery. "Who didn't wear any underwear?"
"I knew I should have shaved!" she stops the whole gay world.
Indeed.
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