Jack And Ennis Were Just Cuddling For Warmth. What?

We came across an interesting interview with Jeremy Irons in the UK Evening Standard yesterday. Now, Irons is clearly not a homophobe - but some of the things he said made us do a double take. Take, for example, his interpretation of the relationship between Charles and Sebastian in Evelyn Waugh's exhausting love chronicle "Brideshead Revisited." He calls their closeness a "male platonic friendship, spanning many years."

Riiiiight. And Oscar Wilde was just Bosie Douglas' "mentor."

But we especially like this part of the interview, when the author asks if Irons has ever fallen in love with another man:

"I think I am too competitive with men, that is what gets in the way. I can understand love between two men, I have no trouble getting my head around that. But I have never fallen in love with another man."

Let us digress for a moment, into personal territory...

We have been single for approximately one month in New York City. In that month, we have started going to the gym at least four times a week, spent approximately $1,000 on denim, shoes, and furniture to spice up our apartment, tried two new facial products and three new haircuts.

On Tuesdays we go to Beige. On Wednesday we go to Phoenix. On Thursdays we go to Duvet. On Friday we go to Opaline. On Saturdays we go to Starlight. On Sundays, we go to Hiro. (On Monday, the Gay Sabbath, we rest.) On each of those nights, we stand by the bar, with every other 23-38 year-old on the city, sizing up whether the boys around us have the right body, haircuts, denim, shoes and facial products. If we find a boy we like, we then have to size up all of the rest of the crowd around him to see if their body, haircuts, denim, shoes and facial products are better than ours. We are 6'3" with brown hair and blue eyes. But that guy over there who is eyeing the same cutie is 6'1" with BLOND hair and blue eyes. Who wins out?

If the temperature is right, we strike up a conversation. If we want to impress the person, we mention our fabulous job. If his is more fabulous, we might be forced to bring up our Ivy League education. If he name drops his law school, we name drop our prep school - all the while eyeing the boys around us who might have gone to prep school AND law school, and checking to see if our eyebrows are better than theirs. "You read New York Magazine?" we ask. "We prefer the New Yorker."

"Oh, you played squash at Brown?" we murmur politely. "We rowed at Yale."

So, Jeremy Irons, you think you're "too competitive with men" to be gay, eh?

Bring it on, bitch. You wouldn't last a day in Chelsea with that haircut.