Gay Rehab, or How to Become a Certified Heterosexual

Lessons learned from Reverend Ted Haggard and TV commercials

1. If you accidentally kiss a buddy with whom you work in an auto body shop while gobbling from one end of a Snickers bar, the other end of which is in his mouth, immediately hit him over the head with a tire iron to demonstrate your “straightness.”

2. If the same admittedly unlikely scenario were to take place again, immediately rip off your chest hair. If the “near-kiss” happens a third time, you should immediately look for a job at another auto body shop.

3. If while in the gym locker room, your bare leg happens to brush against the bare arm of another guy, immediately put your head in the locker and smash the door on it.

4. If you’re on a date at a posh eatery – say Thomas Keller’s Per Se – and the waiter brings you “chick food” (defined as anything not on the menu at Burger King), you are to immediately bolt out of your chair, renounce the “chick food,” storm out of the restaurant like a guy having an epiphany at an “Iron John” workshop about how up till now he has been emasculated by chick culture, while summoning your band of brothers who also happen to be having the same realization about the threat to their masculinity by haute cuisine and while singing an ode to manly food, march en masse to the nearest Burger King outlet and order a Texas Double Whopper with Jalapeno. If you can’t find a Burger King, you are given dispensation to find the nearest fast-burger emporium and order the closest approximation to the Texas Double Whopper with Jalapeno. If you are unsure if the food you are eating is chick food, feed it to the nearest chick. If she eats it, it’s chick food and you want no part of it.

5. If you’re an evangelical pastor and a gay escort accuses you of having sex with and buying crystal methamphetamine from him, voluntarily submit to an evaluation of the degree of your heterosexuality by a board of fellow evangelists and have them declare you to be “one hundred percent heterosexual.” If they refuse, based on solid evidence to the contrary, ask if they will grade you on a curve. If you cannot find a nearby board of evangelists, proceed to the nearest auto-body shop and ask the staff if while they were checking your alternator they also would be willing to evaluate your masculinity and declare you to be “one hundred percent heterosexual.” If they don’t hit you in the head with a tire iron, you flunked. If they tell you “Call us Tuesday for an estimate,” and the estimate turns out to be, say, sixty-five percent, get a second opinion at another auto-body shop. If you don’t live near a board of evangelists or an auto-body shop, I hear that you can get your heterosexual certification on the Internet at www.mestraight?.com