Shimizu... Shle-mah-zu... Hasenfeffer Incorporated.

So last week I was trying to find the Shirley Manson Calvin Klein ad from back in the '90's (please don't ask - I'm just totally obsessed with Garbage and sometimes the obsession takes over my brain), and I was reminded of model/actress/mechanic Jenny Shimizu.

How freakin' hot is she?

Now on the Kinsey Scale I'm about a 5 (predominantly homosexual, only incidentally heterosexual), if not a 5.5. I'm not one of those people who was ever confused, I've never had sex with a woman, and I have never experienced a flicker of eroticism toward the fairer sex. But I would really like Jenny Shimizu to fuck me.

No, I don't want to fuck her. I want her to peg me. (You don't know what pegging is? What kind of queer are you? Click here to find out, and then thank Dan Savage for existing.)

But wait a minute...? What does that mean?

I was enjoying a gigantic cup of hot chocolate and a bread bowl filled with black bean soup with Alex and my high school friend Jennifer at a place called The Raven, which is in the town where I grew up, Port Huron, MI. The Raven is a two-floor coffeehouse. The building housing it is of the Civil War era - one of the oldest in Port Huron - which, after an eight-year process, has been restored with many details authentic to the period. It is a really cool place; so cool in fact, I felt the need to tell Alex that there was nothing like it when I grew up, lest he think I'm lying about how boring my childhood home was.

Everything about the place made it completely unlike the Port Huron I knew. From the fine coffees to the gigantic couches where people were expected to sit and hang out for awhile to the twenty- to thirtysomething single crowd to the vegetarian options on the menu were totally at odds with the drably practical, remote, family-centered carnivorous farmers that surrounded me as a teenager. Part of me was pleased to see that things do change, but another part was fiercely jealous of every twelve- to eighteen-year-old queer person of color growing up in Port Huron now.

We sat there after enjoying our meal chatting and just generally goofing around, when a rough-looking man and two younger guys sat down on a couch situated diagonally from ours. I overheard them for a moment say "meeting" and "sponsor" and from the rest of their highly-charged, awkward conversation could only assume that it was an AA or NA gathering. All three were white and had probably never left Port Huron or at least Michigan in their lives. They ordered a gigantic urn of coffee and between themselves sucked the caffeine down rapidly, as those in recovery tend to do.

At some point, they were all laughing. It was that kind of conspiratorial, I'm-ribbing-you-but-we're-MEN-that-can-take-it-so-I-can-do-that, straight guy laugh. That laugh has always made me uncomfortable, because I assume that something frightening is about to be lobbed my way. At the very least, I assume that something about me - my queerness, for example - is inspiring the laughter. I ended up subtly glancing over to prepare myself for the homophobic barbs that would soon be hurled at us just in time for the older, rough-looking ringleader to catch my eye and then glance at my lap. I thought for a moment about what attracted his gaze: me and Alex holding hands.

Everyone is gay. Everyone. Or at least, I like to think so.

Since being so flustered (and, weirdly, almost offended) by anyone assuming that I was straight, I decided that I would move through life assuming everyone was gay unless they were walking down the street, hand in hand, fingers in rings, stroller leading the charge with a person of opposite gender - if one of them looked particularly trans, however, all bets were off. For a queer man confronting questions about gay marriage, urban entrapment/queer-baiting that leads to bashing, and a Pope who seems intent on blurring the line between Catholicism and fundamentalist fire and brimstone Protestantism, this voluntary delusion makes the world a happy, happy place.

Those guys in the Volkswagen commercial with the old chair become an adorable, bickering couple.

Those Dannon girls aren't just eating Activa on their study break.

Adam Baldwin as Jayne in Firefly, becomes a hot, bisexual boor who sublimates his lust for Sean Maher as Simon by threatening to kill him in the most classic manifestation of pre-school playground syndrome.

And douche commercials, well...they'll never quite be the same.

1 Timothy 5, 1-2: "Rebuke not en elder, but intreat him as a father; and the younger as brethren. The elder women as mothers; the younger as sisters, with all purity."

On the plane from Newark to San Juan with my boyfriend for a bit of a vacation, we are joined in our row by Jan, whose husband and two sons sit across the aisle from us. Jan was born in Japan and then raised from her middle school years on in Arizona. Jan is nice.

Very, very nice. Very nice...all the time. No matter what.

Day One

It's around 8:30 a.m. and I'm in the weight room of the Long Island City YMCA. As you can probably guess, the Y is pretty no-frills (and not at all like that scene in The Village People's Can't Stop the Music), so there's no DJ spinning music. There isn't even one of those pre-recorded, dance hits of the 90's workout CDs. No, no - all we get at the Y are morning radio shows, which is usually just fine. Especially these days since I've been fostering an uncharacteristic obsession with pop star James Blunt.

The music selecting gods of the YMCA aren't having any of that this morning, though, so it's energetic hip-hop that's fueling our workouts. Or it would be, if radio stations actually played music anymore (remember life before the evils of Clear Channel?). So instead of busting rhymes, we're listening to a bunch of dumbass radio personalities interviewing Juvenile whose offerring some farily interesting perspectives on this year's Mardi Gras in his native New Orleans. Not that you can hear what he's saying because Mr. Radio Personality just keeps on saying the word "faggot."

I clean up good...and apparently, I straighten up, too.

I'm not one to dress fancy - hell, I'm barely one to dress. If it's harder than a pair of pants and some kind of pullover, it's too hard to be worth my effort. I have always preferred boxers to briefs (no matter how sexy they make me look), was trained early on to buy all my clothes in the same one or two color families so I never have to color coordinate, and the only label I look for is the one with the sale price scribbled on it in red pen. These basic philosophies have served me well and pretty much guarantee that I don't have to know what I'm going to wear until twenty minutes before I'm out the door.

But I work at a job that involves parties. This past Monday, in fact, there was a work function that required a suit, and so, I suited up. And apparently changing my usual mode of dress didn't only transform my outward appearance - it transformed my sexuality.

I swear to god, people thought I was straight.