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6. MAGNIFICENTLY-BUILT "SISSIES" (Sept. 2002)

          I was walking in New York City's Chelsea neighborhood the other day, and..god some of those gay guys are built. I don't get it. Do you? I thought the gays were supposed to be the sissies. The guys the jocks beat up on in school. Now jocks--- were suppose to be the real guys, the hard-bodied football players. Macho heroes who made the cheerleaders wet, while the little queers hid in their corners of art or style. But a funny thing happened. Mr. Jock's now a typical 42-year-old American male--- 25 flabby pounds overweight, pasty skin, wretched diet, sits in an office 8 hours a day, before he walks the 97 feet to his car for the ride home. Meanwhile, the kid he used to beat up works out 2 hours a day and has cut abs, thickly muscled arms, taut skin, a jock's short haircut--- and looks like he could eat our former high school linebacker alive in a fight. No, not everyone. There are straight guys in shape, gays who still play the role of the chubby or the fay. But there's been a general reversal of roles. For reasons not fully understandable--- though I suppose a narcissistic superficiality has something to do with it--- gay men have embraced a Grecian physical magnificence, while too many straight men seem to have thrown in the towel on their bodies, and accepted a one-way ticket to diabetes or heart attacks or a general physical decrepitude as their inevitable fate. And if, on their way, they still think it might be fun to call someone a "faggot", they'd now probably better watch out.
          Life sure funny.

 

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