My friend Steve has accused me of not being a very good gay. He doesn't mean that I rob banks, or forget and lust after big-breasted women. He means that I betray the grand traditions of gaiety, and care nothing for what's truly important. Is this true, I wonder? Am I out of touch with the rest of the tribe? Surely not, I replied. But the doubt remains, so I undertake now to explore the darkest regions of the human mind, going bravely forth to seek out the sociological and psychological undercurrents at the heart of sexuality itself. And the most revealing place of all is: the bathroom! Why? Because the ancient Egyptians got it wrong when they said the heart is the seat of the soul; clearly, that designation belongs to the bathroom. Where else do people go to not only contemplate the universe, but to materially add to it? So, if you dare, let us venture into the mysterious Bathrooms of the Gays.

Steve has a busy bathroom. The shower curtain has multiple layers, the top one being like long curtains held back against the walls with tasselled cords. The effect makes it look like you'll find an old timey movie screen back there, not a tub. The little carpet on the floor matches the shower curtain. There are ornaments on the counter, things like ceramic angels and seahorses. The seahorse motif, because it dawns on the viewer that there is indeed a motif, is echoed in some framed prints of seahorses. And little handtowels that aren't meant to be used. And the pattern of the shower curtains. Everything that isn't a seahorse (and there's a lot, since putting too many seahorses in is as great a crime as omitting them altogether) matches the colors, of which I'd dare to say there is a "scheme". I'd call it gray and dark blue. Steve calls it, without being prompted, silver and midnight. Which makes me think of gypsies fighting werewolves in the dark forests of Wallachia, two opposing forces pitted in a savage struggle for survival.

The nondecorative contents of the bathroom consist of roughly half of the "beauty" aisle at the grocery store. No, wait, I am guilty of hyperbole. Steve doesn't buy any of his products at the grocery store. He gets them from expensive specialty stores in the mall. "I have trouble finding an apricot facial moisturizer" he told me. Now there's a problem. His telling me that was like me telling the Amish that I have trouble unlocking the rocket launcher in Grand Theft Auto. All of these products are named for mixtures of fruit so bizarre that they'd probably poison anyone who tried to eat such a combination of the eponymous fruit. Like "Honeydew and Apple Cinnamon" and "Guava Pine Nut" and "Nectarine Sunflower Banana Springtime Lychee". What they're supposed to do I can't imagine, since they all seem to be the same stuff in different colors. It's scented slime, Steve. It's not going to make you any prettier, although it will make you smell like you fell into a particularly exotic mixed drink. All of these little bottles are arrayed impressively on little glass shelves on the counter, or in colorful ranks along the edges of the bathtub. A woman, taking a bath there, would be thrilled by the selection. Me, I'd be tempted to see if I could knock them all down like dominos.

So what, you ask, is my bathroom like? Well, it has a shower curtain. I chose it by utilizing the highest of artistic principles. Meaning, it was the cheapest one there that didn't look like it would rot. The pattern is a bunch of bright blue and bright green lines sort of fading into each other like a gradation scale. Steve called it "eyewatering" and said it makes him dizzy. I thought it was pretty cheerful-looking. I need cheerful-looking surroundings in the mornings, or else I'll just go back to bed. There is a little carpet. It's light blue. The shade doesn't match the shower curtain, but why should it? Blue goes with blue, right? I don't have matching towels, either. I worry that if everything is the same color, I'll get lost in the bathroom. Things go together not because they are similar hues, but because each individual object relates to the others on a transcendent scale as part of the harmonic universal interrelatedness of all matter. Plus, Mom gave me those towels.

I actually do have an ornament in the bathroom. It's a pottery fish my sister got me from the Mexican Market in San Antonio. This fish sits on the toilet tank. It's painted about fifty colors, all of them primary. It's not a cute fish. It's a fish that would haunt the nightmares of an Aztec god. "Iztilquitzlqatlcuatlzitl", it seems to sneer, "If you can't aim better than that, you'd best sit down before I take your soul to the bottom of the pond!" An artistic statement? You bet. The statement is "I have this fish and need somewhere to put it." Visually stunning. It gives me something to look at when I pee.

There are also two framed pictures of dinosaurs, nice ones, not childish ones. Steve asked why. I told him that merely asking that question provided the answer, which he's still puzzling over. Really, the overall motif of my bathroom is "things that I like", and I like evil garish fish and dinosaurs. Who doesn't? ("Fish and dinosaur, together at last! The taste sensation that built a confectionary empire! Tonight, on the Discovery Channel.")

Steve's still in shock from exploring the bathtub and discovering inside, rather than the range of little bottles with fruit-named gels, all that's there is one bar of soap (in actual bar form!) and a bottle of the cheapest shampoo that doesn't stink. It's called "Pert", and lasts me for six months at a time since I usually have a buzzcut. In the absence of all those little bottles, Steve asked me how I moisturize. I told him that being wet was the ultimate in moisture, and that at all other times I expected as a matter of course to be dry. We're descended from monkeys, not snails, and as such don't need a constant coating of fruit-scented slime. I also don't have any "product", since I long ago figured out that the people with crazy hairstyles look good with messy bed hair because those people would look good no matter what they did with their hair. I have my own personal charms, but nothing that will stand a hairstyle that involves hair pointing in more than three directions at once.

The only thing that I'm embarrassed about in my bathroom is that rather than waste paper using those little paper cups, I use, for rinsing while brushing my teeth, a small pink plastic cup that came in a box of cereal. It has Mulan on it. I usually remember to hide the pink Mulan cup when people come over, but when I haven't it's the occasion for much hilarity. Steve found it particularly amusing. So I accidentally spilled half a bottle of that bright blue Listerine onto his gray ("silver!") seahorse towel. It will take a hell of a lot of watermelon-and-seafoam scented room spray to get that smell out of his elegant, elegant bathroom.

In conclusion, dear reader and fellow explorer of bathrooms, you can see that compared to Steve, I'm straight. I don't have products. The entire contents of my bathroom could be replaced for about thirty bucks. There are no tassels, no motifs, no color scheme. Mulan and the pottery fish can't compete against Steve's mighty army of color-coordinated seahorses, armed with a hundred types of fruit-flavored slime. So I must conclude that my bathroom is a complete betrayal of gaiety. I can only cast myself upon the mercy of my peers, and hope that they don't raise their moisturized hands and cast me out of their elegant society.

But at least I don't have to look at damned seahorses at six in the morning.