This one is a direct dedication to King Helene.

In high school, my best friend, who—in the grand tradition of my close male friends since kindergarten—turned out to be gay but-I-was-too-dumb-to-realize-it had this thing where we’d sit in the black leather seats of his deluxe SUV smoking Parliaments and belting pop songs together. By ‘together’ I mean to each other, wailing our hearts out, all the pathos of what we couldn’t have in life melting into the warm platonic nest of each other. Our favorites were ‘N Sync, Lil Kim, Britney, but then there was this song, which stood above all others.

In retrospect, I’m pleased as pudding that this was our song because it holds up nicely as a banner of fag haggery in its puzzling, dulcet complexity. There was the fact that both of us would fight over who would get to be the Christina in the duet (understand though: who can resist delivering the “lah-ooooonging to ho-old you” at 3:26?), there’s the campy drag queen/Orlando, Florida quality, there’s the way it’s a kabuki telenovela (yes there is a Spanish language version of this song), but mostly there’s the dominant flavor of this song and video, which is that of two sexually incompatible magnets passionately rebuffing each other in the dark (or actually in an Aladdin castle).

The non-chemistry of these two is the Vegas go-go dancer version of Don and Betty Draper: you’re hot, I’m hot, but I do not desire to put it in you, and there’s something lonely-making yet poignantly compelling about that.  Something that glamorizes and throws into relief the sex that happens for each of us, elsewhere, while purifying this space.  Something that makes us want to stand around in the vicinity of each other and writhe in a thwarted, masturbatory manner.

There’s the two dynamics: 1. the genial battle for diva-hood 2. the non-threatening mannequin sexuality. It’s a competition of two peers with nearly identical (societally marginalized) standards transposed over an essential apple vs. orange quality that saves each party from ever being subsumed by the other. Competition brings out the best in both without a phallic spear puncturing the bubble.  

Watching Ricky paw at nubile Christina makes me think of Holly Golightly’s “He’s harmless—he thinks girls are dolls literally.” Ricky, at the forefront of his maze (“the mind’s mazes”) is a minotaur of a different color, the bestial half stored offscreen. With these two only hand gestures make the scene; they pass among each other as CGI ether instead of into each other as grinding hip motions, which is I think where it’s at with gay/girl friendships—it’s this chance to duet enthusiastically beside one another, inviting only the better angels of each gender.