Cheap shot of the month

And I'm happy for him. I don't mean to knock the guy, and I truly believe that a person's private life should be exactly that - private. I'm just bringing it up to comment on a recent phenomenon that's been sweeping the nation: gayness. We are, in fact, living in the Gatrix, and no one knows it. And again, I'm not knocking it, just making an observation. Don't believe me? Read on, if you dare.

Let's start with "straight" males. Did you know that men are now getting more plastic surgery than women? Dudes are getting lipo'd, botox'd, tucked, cut and sliced up like mad. Dudes. And what are they wearing to complement their newly-perfect faces and physiques? Tight pants, exposed ankles, exposed NAVELS, etc. Again, these are dudes I'm talking about. Today's perfect man is buff, tight, toned and trim, perfectly coiffed and smelling like a rose. In short, every man cruising the streets of Chelsea.

And these men are so perfect that they're hardly human, and are more in the line of - you guessed it - machines. With their stainless shirts, their gelled hair, their hairless backs, not to mention the fact that they know how to communicate their feelings, that they share, that they LISTEN, they are every woman's wet dream. And they have spawned followers galore, a nation of Will and Grace-watching fag hags, only wishing their boyfriends could be so perfect. And while previously that's exactly what they did - wished - over time they began to actively transform the men around them into what they perceived to be superior beings, thus setting the wheels of the Gatrix in motion.

To the men's credit, while many things continued to escape them - hygiene, affection, birthdays - at some level they understood what was going on. They knew that in order to keep their women, they had to change. So they did - somewhat. They pretended to listen more, to care about their partner's mothers, to remember to put the toilet seat down and so on. Some of them took this even further, using gayness as a means to actually score with the ladies. This is best expressed by the New York band Licky's song: "Sometimes you've got to pretend to be gay to get some pussy."

But the women weren't fooled, and they knew that the men weren't serious in their efforts. So they went to work. Through a tireless campaign, based largely on passive-aggressiveness, beginning with hints ("my gay friends actually like shopping with me"), to outright nagging ("I wish you would lose that beer gut") to the oldest and most lethal of measures ("I'm not having sex with you until you listen to me for once"), the straight males had no choice but to try and live up to their gay counterparts, and ultimately became them.

However, while this phenomenon has occurred in many parts of the country, it has largely been relegated to the major cities. So to ensure that their message reaches a wider audience, the women have taken their cause to television. Starting in July, Bravo will broadcast "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," a show that will allow five gay men to overhaul the style of heterosexual males. At least, that's what the show claims it will do. The actual goal is much more sinister and ambitious. Make no mistake about it: these men will be made-over to the point of no return, and will join the new breed of males that I call Strays.

A Stray is any straight man who keeps up with the latest fashion trends, who wants to look good, and will go to any means to do it. Strays spend more on clothes than women, more time in front of the mirror than women, and more time in the gym than women. They practically are women, except for the fact that they like pussy. In fact, the average Stray has less in common with a straight male than with a lesbian. I'm not talking about bull dykes or angry militants, but lipstick lesbians. The LL's and the Strays are virtually identical. They work hard. They play hard. And they both love pussy. And both are ideal specimens, Brave New World-embodiments of perfection, more machine than human.

But all of this couldn't go on without some form of leadership. The Strays, after all, need role models to keep them in line. Which is why there are a number of high-profile people in place to keep the Gatrix going. Look at Clay Aiken, the American Idol runner-up. The guy is as gay as Christmas, and yet chicks go ga-ga for him. There's even a group of his fans who have dubbed themselves "Claymates." With his svelte figure, his caring nature, his emotive voice, he is the embodiment of their perfect man, and a role model for Strays everywhere.

But the king of the Strays is of course Keanu himself. Is he gay? Is he straight? Who knows? Who cares? All that matters is that he looks good, he's sensitive, and he's manly in a non-threatening way, girly in a non-wussy way. He is the perfect representative of the entire movement, the face of the Gatrix, and the fact that he is the star of one of the most successful film franchises in history, which was conceived by a fellow Stray, only solidifies the movement's validity. Think about the party scene in Zion in The Matrix: Reloaded. Did that not strike you as merely a huge rave? More precisely, a huge, gay rave one would find in a warehouse in the meatpacking district, filled with scores of flawless, beautiful bodies?

Now, I know for many of you that the idea of the Gatrix is quite literally hard to swallow. And if you don't believe me, I really don't blame you. No one wants to discover that their entire world, everything they've ever known, is a lie. But I swear to you it's the truth. The Gatrix is real my friends. All I can do is point this out to you; how you come to terms with it is entirely up to you. You can continue to live in denial, or you can accept the truth.

To illustrate this better, let's pretend that the two of us are in a dark, dreary room together, sitting on old, beat-up chairs. I am black, bald and wearing sunglasses. My name is Morifice. In one hand, I hold a pink pill. In the other, a lavender one. If you take the pink pill, you will forget everything I've told you, and you will go back to living as you did before, in complete and utter ignorance and bliss, unaware of the way things really are. If you take the lavender one, you will see everything clearly, perhaps for the first time in your life. And although it will be difficult, you will understand the world as it is, with the full rainbow of the Gatrix spread out before you.

The choice is yours.

--Russ Josephs

E-mail: Filthstar@aol.com