More Disasters of Amateur Gay Pornography

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.

Dig in!