Start a conversation with someone with whom you have "nothing in common" and no possibility of scoring with, networking with, or even seeing again. In other words, a conversation just for the civilized hell of it.
Perry BrassThe lowest form of barbarism is smugly to berate someone for extending an act of kindness.
Perry BrassStay up and listen to lightening. If there is no lightening around, stay up and listen to nothing. Just listen to the sheer joy of your thoughts trans-versing from one corner of your brain to the next.
Perry BrassRealize the complicated specials of what we call the "inferiority complex." In other words, what, Miss Thing, is so damn special about you to make you feel so specially inferior to any other jerk?
Perry BrassFalling in love with another man is like falling into a vast vat of yourself. For some men this is ultimately nourishing, for others . . . it is drowning.
Perry BrassDon't waste your love on stupid people. Anyone stupid enough to deny or reject it-in the midst of the Love Depression we're in-does not deserve it.
Perry BrassLearn to detest things that do not allow you to be yourself, and embrace things that make that self larger, more thrilling, and voluptuous.
Perry BrassThe most amazing thing about young men is how invisible they were to you when you were young. It is also the most poignant.
Perry BrassHold the door for an old man. Old ladies can take care of themselves; they've been doing it long enough.
Perry BrassThere are two things in life that money cannot buy: health and happiness. Aside from that, it does an excellent job.
Perry BrassPerhaps success should not mean that you have nothing to say to anyone, no time for anybody, and not a moment left in your calendar for someone whom you might suddenly realize you love.
Perry BrassRemember that that "rude awakening" which your parents and well-meaning relatives threatened you with as a kid is better than no awakening at all.
Perry BrassGays feel about popularity the same way teenage girls do. Is it that we really want friends we can count on, or do we just want guys around us whom we can share our curlers with?
Perry BrassWanting someone so much that his very presence takes your breath away is one of the most thrilling happenings in life. Not getting him in no way diminishes this.
Perry BrassThere are certain restaurants where you should photograph the food rather than eat it. These are great places to bring a narcissistic boyfriend before you break up.
Perry BrassOne of the problems with technology is that no photograph, as superb and outstanding as it may be, will ever be as satisfying as the most middle-rate painting.
Perry BrassEat without the TV going on. Learn to appreciate food with only the entertainment of conversation-yours and someone else's.
Perry BrassSports (and the often barely withheld violence around them) have become one of the few modern ways to connect with strangers. They give an amazing number of geeks things to talk about. In the old days we settled for, "Hello, how are you?
Perry BrassHave hot, wild sex with a friend. Then go out and do something stupid, like bowl, afterwards.
Perry BrassRealize that the banality around us that passes as "hipness" or "mass culture" is as satisfying as "mass food"-only it comes in much more unappetizing portions.
Perry BrassGet out of your house in the middle of a rainstorm, get soaked in it, and then strip down-to nothing but a smile.
Perry BrassThe most wonderful revenge you can have is by dumping an attractive, vacant man for an uglier one. That way all of his friends can scratch their heads, and for the next year or so wonder why.
Perry BrassAgeism is the racism of the gay world. We really believe that age-and all of our fears that it carries-will "rub off" on us, the way that racists once believed blackness would.
Perry BrassThere may be a point in your life in which you are drowning so fast and fighting it so furiously that you don't have the strength left to call out for help. At that point don't expect one of your friends to jump into the water, if you've spent most of your life instructing them to mind their own business.
Perry BrassIf you've been taught to keep every part of you to yourself, don't expect people to come knocking on your door to run their hands over the choice parts-either for your pleasure or theirs.
Perry BrassTake up something that you know will never bring you any returns except pleasure-in other words, allow yourself to live the way brilliant eighteenth century courtesans lived. Don't be afraid of having a decorative life, even if all the decorations come from you.
Perry BrassThe most beautiful man in the world says everything with his eyes, and the rest with his hands and mouth.
Perry BrassThe Egyptians had a particularly nasty way of getting rid of people they felt had no consequence. Instead of embalming them, they simply constructed a fake mummy made from old strips of linen wrapped around a dummy of mud. If, in our modern world, you feel that there are a lot of "mud mummies" around you, get rid of the mud.
Perry Brass