
Nobody can screw up a room like a gay man on a mission.
All the mythology about the deft taste of gay men may be great to keep the rubes shelling out the big bucks to home decorators with fire in their eyes — but buyer beware. Lemmings are committed to a vision too.
One thing that gay men have in abundance is taste. Not necessarily good taste. Just tons and tons of vivid taste.
And this aesthetic imperative, this relentless ordering of the world into “pretty” (or “trendy” or “ugly beautiful”) boxes, smacks up against another gay imperative. The swinish male onrush to have sex everywhere and with everyone.
Sex and taste? — when worlds collide! As the film critic Pauline Kael once observed: “Sex is the great leveler; taste the great divider.” And never, never should they play in the same sandbox.
But they do! Oh do they ever, in the communal sandbox we call the Internet chat room. Here photos ping back and forth through hyperspace as a form of flirtation. Not only is the smooth naked flesh of the body exposed, but stray bits of home decor as well, cropping up like uninvited kibitzers telling much more of the naked truth than the sender might wish.
In fact, Nightcharm has built a whole site around these sex-meets-taste disasters called Lurid Digs. Here a panel of experts (translation: our friends) pass cruel but swift judgment on the heavy-wood, mustard-shag, plastic-armchair follies of our fellow man.
A few samples follow.
Heather Corinna: Though Laura Ashley has previously denied the existence of her first born son, this photo shows us everything — really, everything — she’s been trying to keep locked in the linen closet.
Jim Buck: Remember in The Andromeda Strain when Kate Reid — looking like an older, heavier Velma from Scooby-Doo — is trying to work up a vaccine to this epidemic, and she’s looking through all the viral samples, and they’re cycling through the computer, and finally she gets to the crucial one, the one that’s seen no growth, and the screen’s flashing red, and it’s all, like, "NO GROWTH, NO GROWTH," but of course, the flashing red lights have induced a petit mal seizure in little Ms. Reid and she’s helpless to move or do anything but stare out at the monitor through big clunky glasses? That’s how I feel when I see this picture.
John Calendo: Another post-Modern masterpiece — this one co-opting the vocabulary of the French Impressionists. The reclining model, who eyes us with such worldly candor, seems a direct quote from Manet’s Olympia — that outrage of 1865 where a visually obvious prostitute was substituted for the Goddess Venus. Venus was usually idealized in a generically pretty way, but in Manet’s painting, a very real flesh-and-blood woman assumes the iconic Goddess position. So what we have in our amateur photo is something of a boy Goddess and something of a vaguely bored courtesan. I also see Matisse in the wallpaper, in the contrast between the stark expanse of flesh and the busy disintegrating patterns going off everywhere. What a feast for the eye! And have you checked out that dick!
David K: What none of you realize is that this guy is only two inches tall! You’re looking deep into the interior of a Fabergé egg. (How’d they do that?!)
Jim Buck: Okay, so two problems: (a) Mary’s thong, (b) Mary’s inability to coordinate his pastel undergarments and hand towels into his very bold, patriotic bathroom color scheme. She is so fired.
Heather Corinna: “Yeah, it’ll hold, but do you really think that the wedgewood blue matches the hot pink? It’s just so…avant garde.”
David K: God, those DeMille curtains again. If this is what goes down in their bathroom, imagine the rest of the house. These are the sorta folks who have those gigantic, 3-foot-long, teak fork and knife “art” pieces hanging on their kitchen wall. And their couch, in the living room, is actually the 20-square-feet equivalent of a baby’s play pen — (upholstered in navy blue velour). Lemme outa here.
John Calendo: I blame Broadway. I blame showtunes. And given the patriotic theme, I blame ice shows. Ladies and Gentlemen, presenting my ass! Start the balloon drop. We knew drama queens were always creating tedious little “scenes” for themselves; we just didn’t know they were tedious little set designers as well. I’m sure the raised toilet seat means something. Never show a gun in Act One that you’re not going to use by Act Three.
You can see the whole sorry cavalcade
at Lurid Digs.
And if you love domestic catastrophe,
be sure to visit the Ladies of Casa Susanna.
(Cocktail hour is best.)






God you guys are gay… you’re starting to make me doubt my own f*cking gay-ness!!! Anyway, I reckon my tons and tons of vivid taste are in music i.s.o. room decorating… again you guys are SO gay
I love the lsat two pictures though, look like they came from some very old hand-job magazine or something. Even though I’m not really into strings… at all, really. Don’t you think he’d look better with a tight boxer’s-short?
And I SO hate the hair on the first and third guy… I don’t know what it is.. maybe that unnatural way it hangs… Not very fuckable hair, if you’d ask me.
The first guy didnt have hair! Ya soem guys hair goes everywhere soem has a general direction, mines goes a direction so I dont wax it,
Sometimes the bad decor is more memorable than the performers or performance. Some people’s taste is all in their mouth!
Looking at these pictures (and yes it’s only the decor I notice) I really rather be gay anymore.
Christopehr
well yeh the guy did screw the room up.
DonPato
San Jose