Devil in blue jeans

Whoa. Saw my first really gay advertisement the other night. Not the Ikea ones where the men sit at a table across from each other--inferring that they are gay. But a real, can't be interpreted any other way-gay one. And it was Levi.

I was watching Project Runway, where, of course, the only straight designer was auffed. Then that damn Levi commercial comes on where the guy pulls up his pants--it seems like his hands are delicate, with a tremor, but we learn it is the force of pulling them up that makes his hands shake. He pulls them up an inch and the earth starts to shake. For some reason this makes him feel secure--and curious--so he pulls them up a little more. Ceiling tiles fall and still he has no objection to causing the Armageddon, or that he will be caught with his pants down. He finally jerks them all the way up and a phone booth (who needs to use a phone booth these days?) pops up through the debris.

There she is--a stringy haired, skinny girl who also wears Levis and who is also not worried that the ground just tore apart. They walk off together, sharing one of those coy smiles that confuses me. And this is where the the "gay version" steps in so casually. While ABC and NBC are playing that commercial, Bravo is playing one that is exactly the same, except in the phantom tollbooth is a man--decidedly gay. He has that smoothed hair and that scrubbed look of a man who knows his facial products.
They, in their Levis, walk off into the misty street, the same one he once traveled with the girl on another channel.
So it brings me to the dude. I never thought he was attractive. In fact, he has this primative, monkey look to him, but not the attractive type like Matthew McConaughey or Clive Owen who have that testosterone-laden look, but just plain monkey. I thought they had done a bad casting, as if I wanted some jeans, I would not have been taken with this guy--pants on or off. But when I saw him with the gay man I realized that the casting was brilliant. He is a single-sex gender bender. His primal look can take him either way. His smile was now, not non-committal--but mysterious. His facial features were not an acquired taste, but so neutral that it took talent.
I believed the stringy-haired girl was into him and I believed the slick Liza was too. Bravo(a).