Steve: This is the story of a simple man, surrounded by rich fabrics, beautiful men, and incredible bargains on showroom-quality home furnishings. Let the man be known as “Ted.” A.K.A. “Snuggles.” Ted’s secret underwear are about to be unleashed on an unprepared world.

Nothing can make you ready to receive what you’re about to encounter.

Steve: "Oh, what? Sorry, I was just working on some things down here. No, it’s alright — come on down. None of this is technically ready to be viewed yet, but I think you can see where it’s going. It’s all about nature and confinement. But the thing is… I can’t find a good way to work in more than just six of seven of these hats, and my iguana escaped from her terrarium last night. She’s here someplace. Bessie! Bessie! Come back!"
 

Steve: This serene, gallery-quality forest print on pressed fiberboard has started to warp and ripple. The humidity level of this environment is TOO HIGH for the proper care of art. This print must be moved to an environment of lower humidity immediately if the remaining value is to be preserved. Art is something that must be treasured, like a fine fur.

David: I know I’m supposed to analyze the interior design elements here but this fucker is wearing my high school ring, the very ring I “lost” at an East LA tarot reading parlor back in 1982. Goddamn it!
 

Steve: “People ask me, ‘where’d you get all this stuff,’ and I always tell them, ‘I just, you know, found it.’ I find stuff pretty much everywhere, and I just take it home. That’s my look. I think it’s cool how everything in the world sort of goes together, you know? A bonus tip is cover things in foil.”

Steve: Classical. That’s the main thing we were going for when we oversaw the decoration of this room, so I told the designer very plainly that I needed there to be lots of swirly bits and… classical stuff that would let people know where Rodger and I stand financially. I told him, “I want there to be… silver things. And swirly things. And satin stuff and tassels. Like in cartoons about people who are rich. Make it like that.”

This is genuine laminate flooring. Please wipe your feet.

Steve: My colleagues are going to disagree, but I’m going to just admit that I’m comforted by this. I know it’s not stylish. But does it look like it’s trying to be stylish? No. The guy knows what he likes and isn’t embarrassed to just display that stuff. The only real issue is posing with an erection in front of a picture of one’s grandmother.

I guess if I were hired to advise him on his interior, I’d bring up the possibility of putting this stuff behind some doors somewhere, and if I were hired to photograph him… it wouldn’t be in front of this particular shelf unit.

David: So many parts work here, albeit parts that are confined within the bookcase grid — but still this gets an A+ from me. Why? Well, it’s the equivalent of a collage, an ensemble that declares one’s essence, one’s ‘isness.’

Yes, as Steve points out there’s a picture of granny (or maybe that’s mom?) but to the right there’s also a picture of the homeowner from his college days. That photo depicts him in a pose similar to the nude shot we’re getting. I like that traveling through time feel — from grandma, to school days, to NOW! Eckart Tolle would like this room too. Also, in a bit of subliminal wonder we have the gigantic Sex Bible (how fine is that?), shoring up his pose. The power of this image rests on unfettered and free libidinal chutzpah … and that’s truly fab.

Steve: Welcome to my humble beachfront property. I’d introduce you to my beagle, Miss Sarah, but she’s been sleeping since Wednesday. We keep things pretty quiet around here. Mostly we like to tell the first part of jokes we remember, or sometimes we compare similar objects and make Jell-o.

Did you notice my monster plant? Oooh! Scary, right? A monster! I think it’s good to keep people on their toes. Got to stay sharp.

What about a game of Uno?


 

Richard: On the upside, thanks to careful washings in cold water (and one teaspoon of vinegar– ancient Chinese secret!), Tom’s 100-count Peruvian slipcovers and throw pillows look just as woodsy and joyless as the day he bought them with his first post-college paycheck from the National Parks Service in 1992. Tom’s posters, bought two weeks later from the same Wal-Mart, also appear to be in great condition.

On the downside, while I appreciate Jerry’s attempt to recreate an Ewok village in the living room, I think their Return of the Jedi costumes are a little weak. And let’s be honest: Leia was always a top.
 

John: It takes real courage to live with such curtains. And certainly a lad who offers himself to the worldwide web in a babushka is not lacking in courage, however foolhardy. He stands like an archaic Greek boy, in the contrapposto position, weight on the back leg, pelvis thrust to the side — quite lovely.

But those curtains, with their stale vaudevillian sweep, keep butting in like a comic at a burlesque show.

How would you describe those colors? Yes, my thoughts exactly: a symphony of bile and piss, the color of sick, with a little blood braided through in the curtain stays for a pinch of horror. Surely he’s in some scared-straight bootcamp for boys, and this room is part of the shock treatment.

I bet it’s a Christian camp, and now we know what Ted Haggard is doing. He’s running a scared-straight camp for boys. It looks like a kitchen: perhaps it’s the common room. Maybe all the boys are being punished for putting naked pictures of themselves on Myspace. This boy is showing how well the rehab is working. He now poses with his underwear on.

Granted the underwear is red and thus code for Satan worship, but Reverend Ted is more than ready to do some one-on-one with the lad in closed door sessions.

Still I do see progress. The babushka suggests the boy is Lourdes-ready and may fall on his knees at any given moment at the approach of a vision, however strange, in some darkened grotto or wood.

Richard: Hernando Xavier Alejandro Garcia Williams may be a fourth cousin (by marriage) twice removed on his mother’s side to superstar swimmer Esther Williams, but that sort of pedigree won’t get him very far in today’s fast-paced, cutthroat world of aquatic choreography.

Here we see young Alley (as he prefers to be known, in honor of his favorite aquatic mammal, Kirstie Alley), rehearsing in the kitchen/bedroom of his apartment in San Juan. Although she has had numerous discussions with her son about the rough-and-tumble lifestyle that choreographers must endure—a seedy twilight world fraught with drink, drugs, and dames—Alley’s mother is convinced of her son’s talent, ambition, and drive:

“When he was five, I was giving him a bath in the kitchen sink,” she recalls, “when all of a sudden he started moving the Brillo pads in time with the music on the radio. I think it was Ace of Base. Or maybe Roxette. Or possibly the Cardigans. I can see them in my head. I know they were blond, and they looked cold. Maybe it was Abba… Anyway, from that point on, I knew he would follow in his cousin’s muy famoso footsteps,” she concludes, lighting a candle and saying a brief novena at the shrine Alley built to Esther in the family bathroom.

Steve: I used to wear a lot of bonnets too.

Steve: I’m totally into this on four different levels, at least. First of all I think it’s phenomenal that Pandit was able to purchase all of the upholstery for his entire home from one massive bolt of fabric. The coordination we’re experiencing in this highly decorative interior is owing to that alone.

But the little details are what make this come together; things you don’t notice at first, like the tiny whimsical birdhouse behind our lover’s shoulder. Note how it has sprouted limbs and is frolicking about as if to say, “I’m here to ensure that every detail of your intercourse is going to be joyful and uplifting.”

Should we need intercession to our Lord, The Blessed Virgin Mary is present in the form of a comforting plaster figurine. In terms of Hell’s fury, there is no safer sex, my friends.

Also, I know some people are going to object to the bunny dolls on the sofa, but that’s because they’ve never had the pleasure of kinky sex with an nicely oiled gym adonis atop a pile of hand-sewn decorative rabbit plush. Let me just tell you that it’s something you’re going to want to do again and again.

There is nothing here to indicate that the sex will be anything other than a 100% fantastic experience. I’m going to recommend that you bring along a Polaroid, because this is the kind of thing you’re going to want to share with people.