Live, Laugh, Loathe

A Sleazy, Homosexual Deviant’s Approach to Valentine’s Day

Jay Walker

February 13, close to midnight… Disgraceland (House Show Venue in Mpls).

I usually stray from covering more nebulous topics such as love, the passions of the heart… and of the groin. It is more in my scope to assign my journalistic energies toward matters that involve hookers, pimps, and senators… But I digress. Still, I had been on this couch for awhile now… in dire need of another beer, but I had been sidetracked by this cute guy sitting next to me.

“So, where you from… maaan?” he slurred.

“Saint Paul…” I answered, noting his beanie that was centimeters away from his eyes.

“Ahehheh! I knew it!” He shrieked, stomping his foot loudly on the hardwood floor.

“But I recently moved to Minneapolis… house burned down over the holidays…”

“Oh shiiit, man.” He offered some likely intoxicated sympathy, and then his grin dropped, and he became quiet, and began explaining in a more reserved tone, “Between you and me, maaan… Minneapolis likes to think it’s insane, but Saint Paul is where it's really crazy… and that’s why me and my giiirl at the time smoked meth in Saint Paul…”

God… this jackal before me was a bonafide patriot! And I meant that, which is why I shouted “Hell yeah!” And offered a high five.

He looked confused and chuckled, “No, not hell yeeeah.”

The guy said he had a girl, and although he may be partial to taking a ride on a disco stick, he was far too impaired for me to try to do the mattress mumbo with. So I considered the first night a loss in this journalistic quest to cover this elusive beast called ‘love.’ At the very least, I had potentially made a new friend.

February 14, 11:14 p.m., Gay 90s

I need to apply some Westward-Expansion-style pressure on these lusters if I am to succeed in this thing. So naturally, I opened Grindr and Tinder, and began boosting away while in the bowels of the Gay 90s (figured I’d apply some decent firepower tonight since it was Valentine’s Day). I had waded through a room ceaselessly being pumped with bath bubbles (got-damn bubbles in my damn tequila sunrise!), rode atop a glorious phallic statue, and even had my box cutter confiscated at the door, but I didn’t need to search far before arriving at trouble… in the form of a desperate suitor.

There was this one room wrapped in vibrant arcade carpeting, which was further illuminated by black light. I had been talking with the friends I was there with, and some beer-wielding fool stumbled up to me.

“Uhhh… nice shirt man.”

I thanked him. He began eyeing me up, probably feeling an urge to start licking his chops.

We stared at one another for a moment. He had a look in his eyes that I usually observe in fiends coming down from their latest fix. The man was desperate, and that was made apparent when he grabbed my arm and tried to wrap it around himself. I stopped him and stared at him. He backed off, and whispered to me, “Sorry, didn’t mean to disrespect bro…” and he sauntered off, completely demoralized.

I bounced back and forth for a while, between hanging with the people I came with and frantically spasming with the other fish in the pond… out on the dance floor. 

“God damn it! My shoes!” They were all wet, as I had idly walked into a pile of bubbles. The homosexuality in the establishment was only made more pronounced as half of us were decorated in bubbles.

As for the boosts… they only got me scammers, unsolicited nude photos, DM-to-DM salesman, and supposed pick up artists… and a lack of resolve to push this thing further. Yet, I must…

February 18, 5:22 p.m., on my sofa.

I feel my phone buzz several times in between gasps of consciousness. Someone had been messaging me on Grindr… have those boosts finally paid off? 

As I opened the messages, I found some man demanding I sell him my feces in exchange for $2,000. His deadeyed stare and general caucasity made me wonder if he had been vaguely racist. After considering the proposition and interviewing him briefly, I found no love that I wished to be involved with… and once more pondered.

In such pursuits, one must always have their wits headquartered in their cranium instead of in between their legs… lest they find themselves tragically held at gunpoint by an absent father of three in a McDonald's restroom while being robbed of their excrement… or essentially broken down, chased from the land like cattle… and without any shits to give.

Jay Walker, a perpetual prisoner of love…

Over and out.