Pride Midlife Syndrome (PMS)
As Pride season approaches, many of you are probably starting to think about your personal preparation plans. Perhaps a brand-new wardrobe is in order. Maybe you’d like to lose a few pounds, and tighten up your abs. Or, it could be that your top priority this year is to acquire the full-blown, incredibly obvious “Pride Midlife Syndrome” (or PMS).
If the latter is among your plans, you are indeed a lucky person. That’s because I’m going to share with you several helpful tips, each of which is designed to ensure you make many large, highly regrettable mistakes.
It should be noted that this information could have been based on extensive medical/scientific research, but it would have required actual work, and, more importantly, taken precious time away from my own full-blown, incredibly obvious PMS.
Which brings us to…
Tip No. 1: Be First If you have a significant other, it’s critical that you have your PMS before your partner does. Otherwise, it’s entirely possible that he or she will fritter away all joint funds in some very foolish manner, such as rent or VISA payments, and nothing will be left to meet your critical need for hair extensions and/or a rainbow feather boa.
Recently, for example, my friend, Troy, asked his partner, Drew, “Do you think I should grow a goatee for Pride?” Realizing that this question could be symptomatic of an impending, possibly painful foray into personal fulfillment, Drew offered his unwavering support by gently knocking Troy to the ground, and forcibly removing his checkbook, ATM card, and assorted loose change.
Tip No. 2: Do Not, Under Any Circumstances, Use Your Brain If you want your PMS to be a big success, it’s essential that important purchasing decisions, particularly those that will have a long-term financial impact, not be made if there’s ever a remote possibility that you’ve given them a moment’s thought.
I have been a witness to this very effective strategy. A few weeks ago, my friend, Jeff, brought his sensible, “lesbian-family-style” automobile in for servicing.
While he was waiting, Jeff walked next door to the dealership that sells impractical, not-vaguely-familiar-with-the-term ”lesbian-family-type” automobiles. He had instant PMS hallucination of driving this shiny, boy-magnet convertible in the Pride Parade.
Of course, considering that Jeff had never driven such a vehicle, knows absolutely nothing about such a vehicle, is 100 percent financially unqualified to own such a vehicle, and is approximately 1,700 years too old to even look at a picture of such a vehicle, there clearly was only one logical thing to do:
Become, in less then 72 minutes, the “pride-fuel” owner of such a vehicle.
Tip No. 3: Act Like a Crazy Person In an effort to make sure that your PMS is readily apparent to every living or deceased individual in the known world, you are strongly advised to, essentially, go wacko. This can be accomplished in many ways.
For example, you can behave in an uncharacteristic manner. Again, Jeff is a case in point. Over the years, he has owned several vehicles, and never paid much attention to any of them, except when they were on fire, which happened with surprising frequency. To him, an automobile was just a means of transportation, or a convenient place for his friend (yours truly) to become carsick and vomit vodka sours.
Now, however, Jeff has a slightly different attitude to the extent that if you so much as bring one speck of dirt within 400 square yards of his car, you will be, in all likelihood, a dead person. Of course, I’m kidding, but would you trust someone who has:
• Forced innocent people, before being allowed into the car, to place their shoes in airtight Ziploc storage bags?
• Covered the vehicle’s carpeted floor mats with clear plastic floor mats that may, in the very near future, be covered with no-wax linoleum?
• Driven his automobile through a carwash during a rainstorm?
Which brings us to…
Tip No. 4: Seriously Consider the Source of your PMS Then, simply watch the Pride Parade in front of your favorite Hennepin Avenue gay bar with the old regulars wearing rainbow-colored flip-flops.
Bye for now
Kiss, kiss.
Happy Pride, Everyone!
