Slumming Faggot Tourists

Biff is a “designer alternative”. He’s that fag who tries so desperately for an “alternative” look on a Neiman-Marcus budget. What’s with this obsession with working class and alternative types, and how does it make otherwise generic jockohomoclones spend such a fortune on cute, overpriced faux-scruffy clothing?

Look closely at Biff and you’ll see that the old worn-out baggy jeans were actually purchased last week at Abercrombie & Fitch for $85. The jacket which looks like it was pulled from the bottom of a bin at Goodwill was on sale for $195 at that “wild” Urban Outfitters; the small rips and stains were artfully created by a sweatshop worker in a Third World country which didn’t exist three years ago.

The white t-shirt, of course, is $20 Calvin Klein rather than $3 Hanes. Instead of spending $200 for a designer dress shirt at Macy’s, he went Bohemian and spent $250 for a designer dress shirt at some boutique on Haight Street or St. Mark’s Place. And the shoes. Oh my God! No cheap-ass army boots or less-cheap Docs for Biff; he shelled out a week’s pay for Kenneth Cole’s new line of alterna-boots.

Is it because buffed-up Biff wants to look a little less shallow? Or is it just because he thinks a romantic alternative look will get him laid more? Is he horrified by the smell (or the look or the location) of places where his role models actually shop? Or is he just so clueless that he doesn’t know that places other than the mall exist? He may want the look, but he’ll be damned if he wants to seem like he can’t afford better.

Sorry, Biff. You still just look like a Castro clone, despite the $500 you spent on that $50 outfit. And the fact that you spent so much on it calls attention to the sadder fact that you also THINK like a Castro clone.

Why do so many queers have such a problem doing anything right when it doesn’t fit neatly into either the “preppy pretty boy” or “leather daddy bear” categories? Take, for example, those rare moments when pornographers try to do videos about, say, skateboarders or metalheads. The skaters end up looking like someone’s neon wet dream, all decked out in orange lycra and sporting spiky platinum hairdos which weren’t even popular in 1985. And, of course, any character in a rock band ends up looking like some pitiful spandex drag queen, mainly because he’s usually nothing but a steroid clone in a wig anyhow.

They just don’t get it. Nor does the queer bar which has a “hardcore and alternative night” where the closest thing to rock and roll is some house diva’s remake of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, or maybe a Pet Shop Boys song.

Slumming faggot tourists, all of them, looking into a world they’ll never understand because it’s not covered in The Advocate or Out. Amazed at how adventurous they are, and laughing at it once their fascination has passed. Just like the Americans who visit France and are highly amused to find that residents there speak (gasp) French.

Come to think of it, Biff’s also not really so far removed from your Uncle Bob — the one who always started using that exaggerated accent and making “Robert Foo Young” jokes with the waiter every time the family went out to a Chinese restaurant.