Letters to the Editor
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Schiaparelli negligee
I found a picture of Schiaparelli negligée & took an informal poll. Apparently all straight guys think that it's not very sexy. I agree.
You may want to use it as a sort of litmus test.
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Softdog
Perhaps you should look into the opinions of Wendy Williams concerning rappers being queer.
You're probably just soft because you like dogs instead of bitches.
I guess I'll just remain a sloppy gay guy with no mani/pedi, chest hair, and no inkling of why anyone would wear used negligees from 60 years ago. Is it like ironic vintage t-shirts?
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Hey, LW -- Niles Crane Needs a New Lady in His Life...
Just call yourself Daphne!!
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Ditto!
"Any man who even recognizes, much less admits recognizing, a "1940s Schiaparelli negligée" is gay. Period. Even if he never touches, looks at, has feelings for, kisses, or has sex with a man in his entire life, he's gay." MBL
Ditto, Ditto, Ditto.
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Friends Might Have a Point ...
I don't know if the issue is really whether the LW's boyfriends are gay. The friends probably think the LW's choice of men are shallow. My boyfriend appreciates fashion, cuisine, and the "Arts" (with a capital A), too. But it seems to me these are the only things the LW seems to care to want to share. Even I'd be bored, having to listen to her go on about vintage underwear and interior decorations.
To her friends, her boyfriends must come off very "gay" (a.k.a. stereotypically shallow) or "retarded" (incapable of having much depth). It's telling that the LW begins her letter telling us her friend is intellectually stimulating, and yet, nothing in her letter reveals how "intellectually stimulating" she herself (or her relationship) really is.
I very much doubt her boyfriends' hobbies would make a dent in her friendships unless her relationships (and the mundanity of their aesthetic tastes) are the sole focus of discussion.
Being a girly girl doesn't mean having to sacrifice substance.
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preferences don't indicate sexuality
My boyfriend lives in the Castro. He made his own curtains and a slipcover for his footstool. He dresses impeccably, sometimes in vintage. He has about 30 pairs of shoes he keeps polished and in shoe trees. He irons. He wers yoga pants around town. He has high thread count sheets, uses moisturizer daily, bakes French pastry, knows obscure details about rugmaking, is an expert on wine, abhors televised sports, and has no porn collection. Nada.
And he's as straight as they come (so to speak). He loves my lingerie fetish. He likes horror movies, action movies, hates musicals and Broadway shows and 'showtunes'. He's an extreme athlete into down-and-dirty week-long hiking, camping and rock climbing trips. He's a great soccer and tennis player.
Depending on how you look at him, he fits the stereotype of a gay, a metrosexual, and a guy's guy. I would say he's an aesthete. He appreciates quality and design. Perhaps some of the interests he has cultivated genuinely speak to him, perhaps they simply reinforce an image of himself that he likes to have and wants others to see. Who cares? People are far more complicated than stereotypes, and even people who fit stereotypes perfectly often have a number of traits that go the other direction as well. Stereotypes are as much about the grain of truth actually present as the selective perception onlookers engage in that makes them seem like incontrovertible truth.
Now, to say your friend is jealous or gay is also a stereotype. My guess is she has difficulty seeing you happy, and that part of that difficulty has to do with feeling put out that YOU seem to know yourself and proclivities so well, while she does not. You have tastes both esoteric and well-defined, e.g. vintage lingerie and Barberesco & Lafitte Rothschild or whatever. It can make people obscurely angry to be compare there their own vaguely dissatisfying lives with those of people who seem to effortlessly sight down the barrel at the happiness target. Rather than trying to discover what might make her as happy as YOU, she takes the tack of trying to make YOU as unhappy as her. She wants something different and more exciting or intriguing or unique for her life, but not knowing how to get it, she mocks it instead.
Cary's answer is good but rather more tolerant than I myself would be capable of. I'd tell her - look, you're entitled to your opinion, I guess, however poorly backed. But since I like this guy and have decided to date him, and you are my friend, do you think you could refrain from saying negative shitty things about him except in response to negative shitty things he's said to you? For my sake? Hmmmm? if she gets all neurotic and defensive instead of genuinely startled or contrite, just say "consider the topic of my boyfriend off limits, then, or find yourself another friend who doesn't mind your boyfriend bashing, because I'm at my limit. Your choice."
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Kevin
Kevin, citing Wendy Williams? A trash talk DJ who specializes in gay bashing and baiting? Seems like someone a closet case would quote.
Saying you're gay and don't know about stereotypical gay topic X, provew my point that knowing highly trivial crap is not about gender, it's about whether one remembers or looks up trivia.
Whether remembering trivia is a sign of intelligence is debatable, but this "knowing stuff is for pussies" undertone is a sign of stupid.
As for the softdog comment:
"When the softdog driver is opened, softdog schedules a kernel timer to expire after a specified timer margin. When some data is written to the driver, the softdog driver re-schedules the timer. The user space watchdog dameon periodically writes to the driver, and the timer is continuously rescheduled and hence the timer callback is never called. If the watchdog daemon stops writing to the driver, the timer expires and the callback is called. In the timer callback, the system is restarted."
Again, available on Google, which you can use no matter who or what you sleep with.
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Real Intellectuals Don't Eat Figs
People assume all the LW talks about is lingerie and fruit simply because this is what she describes in her letter?
She is likely pointing out the things that her friend focuses on when deciding that the men are gay. The friend wouldn't give a crap if the men were reciting Wittgenstein backwards while standing on their heads in the Strand Bookstore. She's focused on those things she thinks are GAY while you are focused on those things you think are SUPERFICIAL.
Stop attacking the LW for being a girly girl. You're as bad as her sourpuss friend.