Basic Instinct

Being so out of the orbit of anything remotely gay (though gay square dancing called by a gay caller sort of bumps us back into that flight path) as Jeff and I have been for these last few years, I was completely taken by surprise at my local newsstand last week when I picked up my first issue of Instinct magazine. I'd heard about it a month or so ago because supposedly there was an article about Sullivan County but by the time I hauled over to Borders, it was sold out, but last Friday, they had the new June issue on the stands so I thought "what the hell" and picked it up.

I will say that even though I was a founding subscriber to Out Magazine way back in the early 90's when getting a non-porno, gay publication sent to home without the brown paper wrapper was avant garde, my toleration for endless renditions of Fabu-Abs pictorials, inane chattering by what I'd imagine to be wiafish twinks on Tina, and really horrible eroto-lite fiction, hit it's limit pretty quick and I was burned out. I stopped buying Out and Genre, even when the covers screamed "I'm too hot for you NOT to buy me" and was fine with the situation because I'm more than willing to be that bad homo who doesn't go to Pride parades and doesn't know what's what in the seemingly endless world of fabulous.

Starting out with Instinct, I had high hopes for something more real and edgy and 21st century. They practically promised just that on the cover and in the editor's piece. And then I got to the "Spice Up Your Couples Life" feature and no, no, no, it all crumbled away, quickly. I was apparently reading Cosmo for Queers: have a three-way, have a FOUR-GY, pretend you don't know each other and hook up at a bar telling each other you have boyfriends and can't go to one another's home and have dirty, forbidden bathroom sex. Oh, and take a violent class together to get your frustrations with one another out so you can have sweaty make up sex. Pick a fight so you can have make up sex. Blah, blah, blah make up sex. This is how you spice up a relationship? When did just regular bedroom sex become something that needed theater? As I said, I guess I've just been left off the Gay Memo.

All this bitching put to the side for a moment, I'm one of those look at both sides of the fence and don't criticize unless you can do better, so I started thinking why MY article for spicing up a relationship might entail. My list, so far, has 'take a pottery class together', 'learn to quilt', sit in opposite rooms doing the things you like to do to waste time without feeling guilty', and the number one thing that can spice up a dull relationship: choose jobs that require you to spend five hours a day in a car together. I'm telling you, ain't nuttin' like good quality time in the ol' Edsel to enliven a dreary, rainy weekend. I'm not talking about giving each other hand jobs in the car, either; I'm saying, spend two hours fighting over the radio station or talking about the weather or just sitting in silence watching the sun come up. Shit, anyone can have a four-gy, it takes an iron giant to weather a daily 4am alarm.

So I'm not sold quite yet. The pictorial of AmazingRace 4's Shhh-Lets-Not-Tell-Them-We're-Gay Hottie, Reichen, of course was a boon to the rest of the magazine, but lets be honest, I can get better porno out of my TLAVideo cataloge. So we'll see.