Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Eternal sunshine of the spotless marketing mind

I've been hiding under my bed amongst old Vogues and stray socks since my last posting, only to emerge to an ad for a new energy drink called Gay Fuel .

After stuttering "gay fuel" about 100 times while picturing some wormy, white Midwestern marketing exec/adulterer pitching the crap in a cheap suit ("the gays will love it: think Queer Eye For the Straight Guy, Judy Garland, circuit parties, rainbows..."), I sat down at the bar and wondered what would happen if I, a straight woman, were to imbibe the fuel of the gays?

I asked my roommate if he would like to participate in a weekend-long Freaky Friday experiment whereby he drank Female Fuel and I guzzled Gay Fuel, but he declined. He also refused my alternative Straight Man Fuel® creation (Jaegermeister, warm Budweiser and spit tobacco), so I faced the experiment alone.

Friday: Gay Fuel tastes like Red Bull, only fruitier. No noticeable changes.

Saturday: Will faithfully recount the tale of dinner party when I am able to do so without the aid of atavan or the fetal position. I am pretty certain that the wonderful course of that evening's events was due to the Gay Jewel who dared to mix San Pelligrino Limonata, tequila and lime, and not the Gay Fuel. No noticeable changes.

Sunday: Had hetero sex. Walked into my kitchen and was greeted by my roommate, my roommate's out-of-town houseguest and a friend of mine that I hadn't seen in some time. The three proceeded to burst out laughing, after which my friend said that he thought I lived here as he recognized my voice due to the series of moans he heard from my room earlier that morning. My boyfriend blushed, my friend laughed even harder. I fake laughed, then commented that that was really funny since it was coming from a man who just turned a random trick on my living room couch with the houseguest. No noticeable changes.

Monday: Got up late, dressed in a green vintage dress, big sunglasses and silver and black shoes as if I were going to a cocktail party in a Fellini film, chainsmoked and drank coffee and cursed my way to work on the stuffy underground. Went home, tried to exorcise Queen's "Bicycle" from my head via a green tea bath, but to no avail. No noticeable changes.

After a Gay Fuel weekend binge, it turns out that I'm not gay. Maybe that's because I drank it straight.

(Following my experiment, I read one of Gay Fuel inventors quoted as saying he came up with the idea after he and his father "had found out about an energy drink targeting the black rap community, called Death Con3," and thought "'why not develop one specifically for gays?'" I have now decided to focus my science on developing a machine to erase all memories of and presence of advertising campaigns.)