What is even stranger: Rod's discomfort with homosexuality is feigned. So much so that it almost rises to the level of the demonstrably true. Rod and I attended a residential high school in Louisiana. He was one of my best friends. In a school like that, where you're kept on such a tight leash, you really get to know your friends. You're locked in together at night, you go away on weekends trips together, you are always in each other's company. I got to know his family and he got to know mine. When we were 16, Rod was one of the first people I told I was gay. Rod was a self-described screaming liberal and was more than supportive. As high school guys do, we talked about sex frankly. He never displayed the least bit of discomfort, and we went into the usual, American-Pie level of detail. We kept in touch after high school. I started to hear rumors some kind of conservative conversion but found it hard to believe. Then I read a review he had written about a gay-themed movie. Suddenly he's claiming that the mild, r-rated gay sex scenes made him cringe. Cringe?? That's simply dishonest. Rod and I went to mardi gras together. We stayed in my parents apartment in the Quarter and hit all the gay bars all night long. During Mardi Gras, guys are having sex all around you. Didn't bother Rod a bit. (Please, do not read here that I'm suggesting it should have bothered him.) So I've seen him watch a lot of actual gay sex, in very good spirits. We hung out for hours and hours in places where this was going on. But then, at the beginning of his career as a right-wing journalist, he plays the blushing puritanical boy? As in "gross man, those guys are doing it!" Of course you could say this is exactly the kind of "decadence" he came to hate. Maybe. It always seems strange, though; forced. But that's not really my point. He cannot claim to be a cringing naif, someone who could be so deeply disturbed by a mainstream movie. Chimes at midnight. We haven't spoken since a mutual friend found out that Rod had actually voted for George Bush. Customarily, quite a few of us would spend the weekend together at this friend's house. His vote for Bush was enough of a shock to us that it fell apart. Imagine that: being shocked that Rod voted for Bush.