Wednesday, June 05, 2013
Blue is the bluest colour
The manager of the safari camp can’t wait to see the epic French lesbian film that won the Palme d’Or at Cannes.
“I had to sit through Brokeback Mountain with my buttocks clenched because my wife wanted to see it,” he said. “At last there’s a gay picture for the whole family!”
“That all depends on who’s in the family,” I observed. “I doubt it would have much appeal for the dowager aunt or the pet poodle.”
According to Variety magazine, the film has “the most explosively graphic lesbian sex scenes in recent memory”. I hope that doesn’t mean there’s fisting in it. I’ve never liked the practice myself. My old friend Smacker Ramrod, the circus vet, says it reminds him of what he did to help mares give birth. We traditionalists believe that lesbians should stick to good old-fashioned carpet-munching and leave the more invasive procedures to the gynaecologist. Imagine having to call emergency services if someone’s hand got stuck in your birth canal. It’s not the sort of condition on which ambulance crews receive in-depth training.
A lot of women can’t fathom why men enjoy watching lesbian sex scenes, given that there’s no obvious role for them in the action. It’s a question that’s puzzled me too. Perhaps they imagine themselves doing a similar job to the referee in a boxing match, shouting out instructions, keeping score and breaking up clinches. I should imagine it would be easier than refereeing a real fight, where the contestants must abide by the Queensbury rules. There’s no need to penalise low blows in a Sapphic encounter.
No post about lesbians would be complete without discussing the latest exploits of Ellen Degeneres, who has recently acquired a $26.5 million mansion with her wife Portia di Rossi. Have you noticed how Ellen always wears men’s clothes when the couple appear in public? And that Portia is always referred to as her wife (and never vice versa)? This is Ellen’s way of telling us that she is the nominal husband in the relationship, which avoids the linguistic anomaly of having two wives in a marriage.
Maybe the opposition to gay marriage would be less strident if all gay couples adopted this convention, so that marriage remained a union between a husband and a wife. This would be easy to achieve for two men, when it’s normally pretty obvious who the wife is (e.g. Elton John in his marriage with David Furnish). Unfortunately, matters are rarely so clear-cut in a lesbian relationship. I really have no idea how they decide who wears the trousers.
Before you accuse me of being a nosey ape, I fully acknowledge that it’s none of my business how lesbians sort out their titular arrangements. That doesn’t stop me from wanting to know, of course. If any lesbian would like to let me in on the secret, she should send me a discreet email, which I would treat in the strictest confidence. Gorilla Bananas can be trusted not to spill the beans.
Labels: Ellen Degeneres, Elton John, fisting, gay marriage, lesbian
