“The Gayest Super Bowl Party Ever” suggests a scene of unprecedented fagginessโ€”buffalo-wing fondue on the flaming plains of Sodom, or a real-time drag reenactment of the game in progress followed by a hot cocksucker’s ball. In fact it’s far more prosaic, involving nothing more than a gaggle of gays gathering in a condo with their small dogs and one token straight couple (Clinton and Margi, represent!) to completely ignore the Super Bowl while getting drunk and watching Steel Magnolias and Beaches.

Having seen Steel Magnolias a dozen times and Beaches once, I loathed them both. Still, I was determined to play the game of the day: getting intoxicated enough to actually be moved to tears by these craptastic tearjerkers. Along with the various intoxicants (booze, enhanced brownies), there were movie-themed treats: Steel Magnolias brought Dixie cups of champagne-spiked orange juice for Julia Roberts’s diabetic freak-out and slices of an expertly rendered armadillo cake (see photo above) for Shelby’s wedding.

But what can you eat for Beaches? Rancid ham, in honor of Bette Midler’s performance? Collagen-filled bell peppers, in honor of Barbara Hershey’s lips? I stuck to booze and soon realized that none of us were headed toward boozy weepiness, as all of us were mired in drunken mockery of everything. While we were squawking about bionic diabetes and Iris Myandowski the hand-walking queer, Julia Roberts died, Barbara Hershey died, and the New Orleans Saints won their very first Super Bowl. I made it home alive.

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David Schmader—former weed columnist and Stranger associate editor—is the author of the solo plays Straight and Letter to Axl, which he’s performed in Seattle and across the US. His latest...

7 replies on “Party Crasher”

  1. I cried at the end of Beaches. I really did. But only at the first ending of Beaches – where Barbara Hershey did dying so well – not the subsequent 12 showboating Bette endings.

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