from saying something stupid, a credo that supermodels should adhere to.
It was a perfect October day, very warm, but not hot. And topped by a cloudless sky so blue it could just make you cry. The doors to the house stood open to the summer breeze that had just about disappeared everywhere else in the United States, but hung on here like the last guest to leave a party. As soon as I entered the house, I was accosted by a giant penis. I looked to the right: another penis, this time hanging from a sculpture on the wall. To the left, more penises. On the hall table, more penises. And around the living room, more penises, in paintings, more sculptures, water pitchers—you name it. And the one thing they all had in common was that they were large. Very large and pendulous. I wanted to pull a giant condom over my head. Ian had changed his décor again.
I’m not an expert in male homosexuality, having missed my ex-husband’s desires even after he told me he was bi, but if you have to have penises all over your house in every form possible, you’re not getting any. The other sign that you’re sex-starved is that you’re overweight. If you’re not putting a cock in your mouth, you’re shoveling food in it instead.
The house had changed since I was last here, at a party with me as the official fag hag. But then, if you had money like Ian had, you could afford to change it to suit your whims. It still had overtones of Spanish here and there, but it had taken a turn toward the dark side. Ian now had it decorated in Early Spanish Inquisition with a touch of monastic modernism. It was plain, simple, and with furniture that looked like it had been hewn out of old railroad ties, and on closer inspection, proved that my guess was probably right. I sniffed discreetly for the scent of creosote. The place dripped in forced masculinity, which was often the case with big ol’ queens. It’s not all taffeta, darlings.
“Ian, Amanda is here,” Drake called up the stairway, reminding me how few homes had a second story in Palm Springs because of height restrictions. But this house had been built long before that. In fact, it had been lived in by many a silent film star—none of which I could prove because of a large fire in the town records building decades ago. I guess it didn’t matter now to the Gen-X kids who were taking over the town. “Theda Bara who?” they’d ask. “Charlie Farrell? Who the hell is that!” they’d answer, taking a moment from their iPhones to text someone interconnected to the human race only by the safe skin of electronic transmissions. No human contact necessary. (Charlie Farrell, for whom Farrell Road is named, was part creator of the famous—infamous—Palm Springs Racquet Club, the lodging, swimming, and tennis club in north Palm Springs that helped put this town on the map. It attracted the biggest and brightest stars in the world at the time to Palm Springs, from Marilyn Monroe to Audrey Hepburn, from Joan Crawford to heiress Christina Onassis.)
A moment later, the biggest star in the world appeared: Ian. At the top of the stairs, he floated down in a cloud of not-so-subtly-perfumed hair, too long for the year 2012.
If you live in a cave and have never seen Ian on countless television programs burning the hair of annoying Hollywood celebrities, then let me describe him to you and let me tell you a little about his past.
Ian is the head of a ginormous hair-care products and salon empire. Some estimate that the entire net worth of his holdings tops $400 million. He wasn’t always this wealthy or this well-known, however. Rising from very humble (dirt-poor) roots in Glasgow, Scotland, he had a salon there for a while and then immigrated to the United States a bazillion years ago. Well, while you can take the boy out of Scotland, you can’t take the itchy wool out of the boy. To capitalize on his Scottish heritage, to this very day he wears a kilt, works on his legs in the gym religiously (but sadly, not his stomach or his diet), and for some unknown reason, also wears a sort of headband to hold back his Braveheart mane. He rounds out the whole chic-and-trendy oddball appearance with large Jackie O sunglasses. Ian is the opposite of the