Sinfully delicious

May 24, 2006 at 12:27 am (Uncategorized)

The always insightful AO approached me the other night and introduced the concept of sinful pleasures. While she groped and otherwise harassed me, she explained the idea. A wine sipping snob who secretly enjoys Maddog is a person with a guilty pleasure. An aerobic instructor who claims to live on tofu and bean sprouts but who secretly gorges on Burger King food is a person with a guilty pleasure. All that is required is some level of hypocrisy or just outright embarrassment. There are perfectly masculine men who like things like knitting, the Christmas Tree Shoppe or bon bons. And fully grown women who still play with No-Bake Ovens, waltz with mannequins or watch shows like Saved By the Bell.

An hour after this discussion, once I'd freed myself from AO's libidinous clutches, I recalled a time in the not-recent-enough-past when I had a short fling with a show called "Yes, Dear." At the time, I thought it was an ingenious show revolving around two couples and their children who were forced to live together in one house. I think I might have had a brain embolism at the time.

That aside, I confessed this embarrassing affliction to the hulking and surly sportswriter Randy Whitehouse. I believe he pondered the thought for a half second before growling, and not for the first time: "You know? Sometimes I have to remind myself that you're not a woman."

The comment is not without justification. I think I have admitted to some of you that my playlist at home features songs that experts in the music industry might describe as "faggish." I have some Carpenters, some Abba, an Olivia Newton John or two. There are some Jewell tunes in there ("you were meant for me. And I was meant for you." Brilliant!) and probably some Andy Gibb.

I'm fairly secure in my masculinity and I know that watching "Yes, Dear" or singing along with "Xanadu" does not make me gay. Effeminate, maybe. But not gay. And I'm quite sure that most of us have such nasty little pleasures we do not share with even our closest friends. I went to Whitehouse's alleged home once, for instance, and found him quilting, listening to Paula Abdul and watching "Full House" while wearing a cheerleader's outfit. And that does not make him gay. That only makes him deranged and complete and utter hypocrite.

An otherwise cool and macho friend of mine, whom I will not name (Randy Baril), once bought a Tickle me Elmo for a buddy's kid but ended up keeping the thing for himself for a few days. And for those few days, he had that creepy red thing on his desk like some mutant trophy. He denied having any sort of attachment to the social disease red colored toy, but when someone hid it on him, the guy was in true panic. I think I saw tears of rage and longing gleaming in his eyes. And I consider that a brief but profound guilty pleasure probably inspired by serious childhood trauma involving a talking doll.

So whatever your secret vice is, be it a toy, a television show, a website, or something inflatable (Bulldog), I invite you to share it with the group. We are all human beings here and that means we all have deep desires that we fulfill in a variety of ways. The idea is to discuss these things so that we might rid ourselves of shame. The idea is to come closer together as a group. The idea is to hear of some guilty pleasures so heinous, that my small transgressions do not sound so bad.