Face It, Dude Being a straight guy has never been harder, what with all the temptations of the non-straight world, i.e., everything other than team sports. So men have taken to Twitter and other social media to air their insecurities and receive reassurance from their cyber buddies. An example would be: “Fellas, is it gay that I really enjoy the show Glee? (I seem to have one of these questions weekly.)” So a “meme” has popped up on Twitter to “make fun of scared straight boys” through parodies such as these: “fellas, is it gay to make money? i mean you’re just collecting pictures of other men”; “Fellas is it gay to pee? You’re literally holding a dick”; “fellas… is it gay to look in the mirror? I mean you literally checkin a man out”; and “fellas… is it gay to exist?” An overarching theme is that if you’re a fella, you’re stuck with a fella’s body, which you can’t help but touch, look at, play with… And, admit it: you love your penis. You can never be quite as straight as a gay guy can be gay.
Still Together The Greeks never disappoint. The latest find is a 2,500-year-old bit of graffiti on the remote Aegean island of Astypalaia with an inscription carved in stone that reads “Nikasitimos was here mounting Timiona” (Νικασίτιμος οἶφε Τιμίονα). Plus, there’s a carving of two giant phalluses to commemorate the event—or ongoing relationship, as the use of the continuous verb suggests. So says archæologist Andreas 
Vlachopoulos, who discovered the carving and remarked on its monumentality: “They were what I would call triumphant inscriptions. They claimed their own space in large letters that not only expressed sexual desire but talked about the act of sex itself.” He reminds us that same-sex love was not frowned upon by the Greeks and was clearly celebrated by some. Classicist and G&LR friend Andrew Lear noted that graffiti on the island of Thera expresses similar sentiments using the same verb, which implies sexual penetration. Or was such graffiti only meant as a taunt, a put-down, as some scholars have insisted? If that’s their way of denying the literal (gay) meaning, the presence of the two phalluses carved in stone for all time would seem to put that equivocation to rest.
Out from under the Sheets If any satisfaction could be found in the wake of the neo-fascist rally in Charlottesville last August, it was that many of the young men who participated were photographed, seen on TV or on-line, and promptly fired from their jobs or ostracized by friends. One participant became the poster 
boy for these guys, a 36-year-old neo-Nazi and virulent homophobe named Christopher Cant-well, who appeared on YouTube sobbing uncontrollably as he told his tale of woe: Sure he was at the rally, but now “I have been told there’s a warrant out for my arrest. With everything that’s happening, I don’t think it’s very wise for me to go anywhere. There’s a state of emergency. The National Guard is here!” What’s interesting is that he seems genuinely sur- prised that he’s being hounded; he thought he was doing the right thing. Indeed it’s almost as if someone gave him permission to go out and shout these things, and so he did, only to discover that it’s still against the law to threaten people with violence—including “faggots,” against whom Mr. Cantwell harbors a special animus. But while before he expressed it in the dark corners of the Internet, he now feels emboldened to proclaim it in the public square, albeit bawling like a babe when facing the consequences.
Object of Interest It all began at a Food Fair in New Jersey when a customer was accused of shoplifting by a security guard. “I need to see what’s in your pants,” said the guard, noticing something irregular down there. The customer replied that he was transgender and wore a prosthetic penis. But still he was forced to show his junk, proving that he hadn’t lied; and now he’s suing the store for intimidation and false imprisonment. Not to minimize the victim’s humiliation, but it seems that statistically this sort of thing is going to happen once in a while. Shoplifters have been stuffing stuff into their crotches for centuries, so guards are naturally on the lookout for implausible bulges and occasionally flag someone for questioning. Every so often, they must find something that actually belongs there, such as a prosthetic penis—or a real one, for that matter. At this point—unless the stolen object happens to be a dildo—someone is going to be pretty red in the face.
Counterclockwise One thing that was predictable about Hurricane Harvey was that Bible-thumping demagogues would soon find a way to blame it on LGBT people. But what was the connection? A desperate Ann Coulter blamed the city of Houston for electing a lesbian mayor, Annise Parker—but that was way back in 2010. By the time Irma hit Florida, where nothing gay has happened in years, they’d given up on causality and merely ranted. But a question arises here: why is it always gay people rather than, say, adulterers, and why hurricanes in particular? “What’s up with the homosexual tendencies of hurricanes?” asked one headline. Meanwhile, sane people looked at historical weather patterns and proposed that the severity of these storms just might be due to global warming. Had they wanted to get biblical, they could have pointed out that Houston is the epicenter of the U.S. petroleum industry, while Florida has been throwing up high-rise condos on swamps and sand bars. Of course, the people who are most likely to deny climate change are precisely those who tend to blame hurricanes on gay people—which is to say that their retreat from the Enlightenment and return to medieval thinking is officially complete.
