Stuff Gay People Like: Awkward body piercings

Everything must be decorated! Gays live in a post-utilitarian universe, where every activity is in some way artistic. How many gay people do you know of who live on a farm and grow shit, or hunt and gather, which is the only literally necessary profession? In all likelihood a gay man will have booked it out of the rural areas before turning 19. In fact most of humanity lives in that universe; all who do not farm are forced to do something with their time just for the hell of it, like draw pictures or learn musical instruments, or work on Wall Street, which also has no fucking function or benefit to society except to put up offices and skyscrapers that are our cities’ most cherished things precisely because they house our most useless people.

In search of meaning, humanity has developed the fine arts: theater, painting and sculpture. Gay men, whose penises are also in search of meaning, drive them to be especially artistic. We should add that so many of the people who started that stuff were gay. Think of the Greeks, who were all gay, and all those Renaissance artists, and their secret boyfriends, etc.

Because humans have found true meaning lies in the non-necessities, we build fountains and public art, museums, zoos, galleries, the ballet, mini cocktail umbrellas, drag shows, feather boas and sequins. That philosophy continues, logically, to the body: manscaping, and then the pinnacle of manscaping: body piercings.

Certain parts of the body simply must be emphasized. Which parts of the body are gay men going to emphasize? The ears, which allow communication? The nose, which allows you to chew with your mouth closed? The eyes, without which, you don’t even know who you’re fucking? No, none of these things: gay men will pierce the superficial attributes of the torso – a mostly-boring, flat plane but for a few bumps, which needs to be enhanced lest we confuse it with a whitewashed wall, or coffee table. The body is certainly not either of those things!

Bear with us as we try to make sense of this thing which really does not make any more sense to us than we are currently making to you. A nipple piercing does a great job of enhancing and creatively transforming the canvass it was put on. A nipple is a big useless colored dot on a man’s chest. He’s never probably gonna use it for anything, except maybe to swing from if he’s real kinky, and nipples, even on men, are pretty hard to miss. A nipple piercing, by extension, is a useless colored dot in the middle of that useless colored dot, on a rather bland part of the body. We think that is pretty sublime!

A navel, similarly, is sort of just this random hole in your gut, another thing that has absolutely no point as soon as you are born. You might as well just patch it up or ignore it all together, which is what the vast majority of us do. But if you are gay, and under the age of 21, and are a post-utilitarian, who has shaved off all his body hair, that is the very part of your body you want to decorate by putting little silver balls or dangling things from it, and flip it around the dance floor at 18-and-up night.

That is why we love you so much, gays; because you are beautiful.

Stuff Gay People Like (SGPL) is a satirical/cultural column featured in Out Front Colorado. Visit the Facebook Page or view the whole list.

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