Steve: Hi, my name is Nathan Reynolds-Dowager, but my friends call me Delicate Mr. Nate and you should too, now that we’re sharing this beautiful moment together. The truth is… I’m known for my extreme sensitivity towards all beautiful things and that’s why I surround myself with colorful patterns, artistic objects, tasteful furniture, and glistening, showcase-quality musical instruments.

Living here, in this paradise, I have become lonely. My sensitive, darling penis is erect most of the time these days, just waiting to share.

My perfect evening of romance would involve a satisfying dinner of meat loaf and lima beans in the velvety comfort of my plush, quilted bedding. Afterwards maybe we’d watch reruns of Silver Spoons, or maybe I’d play something soothing and folksy on my trumpet. You could run your fingers through my hairpiece, or sweetly tickle my nippies and make me giggle with innocent glee.

Thanks to Aymeric for the Photo
 

Richard: How very international. You’ve got Hitler on black velvet (Germany), a trompe-l’oeil lithograph (France), a reproduction sarcophagus (Egypt), broken Venetian blinds (Italy), a 5-gallon paint bucket (Taiwan), and a sconce from Wal-Mart festooned with frippery straight outta Michael’s (Iowa) — all in one Adam4Adam profile pic.

Prospective fuckbuddies should expect a jet-setting roll-in-the-hay, capped off with a midnight snack of whole wheat rusks (Holland), Marmite (England), and Coors (West Hell).

John: Why do I know this guy votes Republican? Why do I know that Norman Bates’ mother is in the Egyptian sarcophagus? All those authoritarian trappings! Somebody’s trying hard to compensate for something, hey Elmer? Let us just point out what all our readers have noted already. No dick. No dick anywhere. There’s a reason for that.

Tip of the hat to The Gideonse Bible for this fabulous find!
 

John: You know, straight men can go deaf, but gay men go deft! This is what I call profound deftness in the adult homo. The level of coordination here is simply… not … of… this … fucking world. I mean, either that chair … and that sofa …and, dear God, that rug too … are all woven out of chest hair, or Leatherguy’s chest hair is made of crushed velvet.

Curtis: Well, it matches the sofa perfectly, you know — and it’s totally handy that his dark, splotchy, beige, velour love throne has wheels, don’t you think? If I need to vacuum I can just trolley my dungeon master aside for a moment and suck up any errant gummy bears, pretzels, or whatever. The only problem lies in what happens when you add the inevitable cat hair. Never mix cat hair and a blow job. Also, what does it mean when you have a racing stripe down your pleather Speed-o?

Richard: JONATHAN ADLER: All right, contestants: the judges and I have discussed each of your rooms, and now we’d like to ask you some questions. Mr. Steve, let’s start with you. Kelly, would you like the honors?

KELLY WEARSTLER: Well, I’m not sure about your palette here, Mr. Steve, but I like what you’re doing with textures. You’ve got a wool rug, a velour sectional, and what’s that on the wall?

MR. STEVE: Clam dip.

KELLY WEARSTLER: Genius. And of course the chest fur.

MARGARET RUSSELL: Too little of it, I think. If you’re going to try to pull off “Policeman Leather Bear”, you need much, much more. Did you consider choosing a different fur? Maybe baby seal? Or “fun fur”? Something to really make the room “pop”?

MR. STEVE: Actually –

SPECIAL GUEST DESIGNER, THE GHOST OF MICHEL FOUCAULT: Excusez-moi mesdames, but we asked these designers to create a sex dungeon, n’est-ce pas? What kind of sex dungeon has such fabrics? How can you expect to clean Astroglide from such a sectional? And your rug! Even Scotch Guarded — please dit-moi that you would never do such a thing! — it would last maybe a week. Non, absolument non! And why should you place the armchair in the middle of the room? In reverse cowgirl, I could see nothing of my fellow orgiastes on the sofa!

JONATHAN ADLER: But you have to admit, Michel, the leather is a nice touch — and an additional bit of texture.

SPECIAL GUEST DESIGNER, THE GHOST OF MICHEL FOUCAULT: Mes amis, perhaps none of you have experienced the joys of being penetrated by a Tanzanian ironsmith over a bed of glowing embers.

KELLY WEARSTLER: I have.

SPECIAL GUEST DESIGNER, THE GHOST OF MICHEL FOUCAULT: But there is a Querelle sort of quality to such men that this girlyman action figure does not possess. Mon dieu! He has had the Brazilian wax!

JONATHAN ADLER: All right, moving on to Construction Worker Carl
 

Richard: And here we have Chi Chi’s private living room, designed by Miss LaRue herself. Oh, and what luck! Here we have an actual hustler, ladies and gentlemen, probably plucked from the very sidewalks of Santa Monica Boulevard! Take your photos quickly, my dears — tomorrow he’ll be charging $300 an hour for it!

David: I’m a sucker for composition. And it’s fabulous how the model looms out from the center of the image, claiming his domain. It’s an effect that’s amplified by the crazy lines of the wainscoting zig-zagging through the blazing orange room — “Yeah, baby!” Everything here screams ‘A’ for effort. Still, I’m filing this under: Celine Dion’s Venetian (Tangerine) Daydream.

Heather: Real Men Decorate With Naugahyde. Ooh, and that paint! Must be from the new Campbell’s Soup Collection.

John:The more I look at this photo the more fake it becomes. Is this the hocus pocus of Dr. Photoshop? Can he really be looming so enormously in the foreground? Of course, there is a whole genre of amateur porn photos — I call them the Colossus of Rhodes photos — shot from the floor where the head seems to brush the ceiling. Still…

So anyway, here we have yet another Colossus of Rhodes on the loose. This one rampaging through the pages of Architectural Digest. Correction, through the home of someone who reads entirely too many Architectural Digests. You know how there is such a thing as Fashion Victims? There is such a thing as Architectural Digest Victims.

David: They can’t fool me. That isn’t real brick. Here we’re on the set of the new and improved Jerry Springer Show. And that’s, no doubt, Jerry’s first guest of the new season. The topic of the moment being: “Men Who Love Western Shirts and Jewelry…and the Men Who Love Them.” I can’t wait.

Richard: It had been over a decade since Ignatz left his squalid little abode near Yermolayev Lane in the dizzying madhouse that was and is Moscow. Today, the sight of his old bedroom — a converted bomb shelter with a government-issue sofa bed — brought a tear to his eye and a spring to his groin. “So many memories I have of comrade Ivan Ivanovich Leproskaya and I on this little tiny bed in Yermolayev Lane. I will masturbate, then we will drink from the samovar to honor his memory.”

Heather: This is so not what I meant when I said I wanted some exposed brick. That guy isn’t even packing masonite, for crying out loud.

John: That is, I believe, wallpaper behind him. Raised wallpaper. Embossed raised wallpaper. And what is that list up on the wall? Is this a lobby? Is he sitting on a bench, draped in a sheet, in the lobby of an apartment building? So this is what the doorman does when he finishes the TV Guide crosswords.

David: This is a wonderful interior. Art, to me, always involves audacity, and to have the balls to hang that picture that way above the couch deserves applause. The plugs and wires, to the left, have a Frankensteinian charm, too. The Cezzane-like oranges on the right help anchor the triangular effect (another Cezzanish theme) which the painting brings into high relief. This is a beautiful disaster. I love it.

Richard: It’s not the minimalism to which I object. It’s the fact that this poor deluded soul (a) inhabits an apartment wired by people too lazy to put outlets at baseboard height, and (b) thought this pic would entice potential AOL-fuckbuddies to his Spartan boudoir.

John: The model sits before us in the formal pose of an Egyptian Pharoah. The painting behind him, which seems vaguely like a lyrical Impressionist landscape, is joyfully askew. The wires and rechargers criss-crossing on our left balanced by the muted simplicity of a small lamp on the end table cinches it for me. This is post-Modernism at its best. Despite his archaic pose, the model is not presented in an ironic fashion, but is noble, arresting. This works!

John: Living dangerously, the boys did not cover that gorgeous couch in plastic. They will soon regret that. In about two seconds. The mix-and-no-match pillows are a treat to the eye, sort of a tour of fabric samples. I love that the boy has removed his glasses and holds them ready to be put back on. Monica must have her fantasy, however brief.

Richard: What a glorious slice of contemporary American life! This moving portrait of a modern family shows the lengths to which today’s single parents will go to serve as both mother and father to their children. This hard-working mom — surrounded by bolts and bolts of fabric she uses in the millinery she runs out of her garage — knows that her young boys are growing up. Every time she bathes them, she sees a new patch of hair sprouting from a different part of their young, nubile bodies. Today, she has chosen to have “The Talk” with them, scrupulously detailing every bit of the birds’ and bees’ activities and demonstrating with utmost attention to detail the correlatives in human mating ritual. Her devoted sons return her love by watching her actions closely and taking copious mental notes. Who needs Dorothea Lange, I ask?

Heather: “Hey, Joe? I’m glad you’re getting head and all, but have you given any thought at all to those pillows I showed you in the Pottery Barn catalog yet? I just really think we don’t have enough throw pillows.”

David: When I saw the blonde’s carefully-held-to-the-side specs, I knew immediately that that was a wig and just a homo with a fat ass administering frat house flavored BJs on another “I’m bored…whadda you wanna do?” Saturday night. And, really, Heather’s right…would straight dudes have that many throw pillows? Though, I do covet that fuzzy, Chairman Mao green and red cushion on the right.

John: The decor speaks to us of finer things and Quiet Good Taste and the Merv Griffin Suite at the Bellagio. The model is untouched by all this tamping down of artistic expression and is pretty fantastic on his own, being the only thing in this done room of unimpeachable beauty. My Prediction: This genre of people photographing themselves in the mirror, with the digital camera in the picture, will be collected someday as an artifact of sappier antique times.

Heather: I can’t even look at this picture for more than a couple of seconds without realizing that there is clearly more than one reason I have never moved into one of those cookie cutter apartment complexes. I give thanks that I have been spared such a fate.

Richard: If I squint really hard — and I’m trying to — this photo melts into an inoffensive beige blob. When I focus, it’s worse. The ting-ting in the Pier One vase, the Wal-Mart sofa table, and the white-enamel furniture are bad enough, but why-oh-why did the owner have to go the extra step and place that A&F mannequin in the middle of the goddamn living room?

David: This redefines the word “artifice.” And frighteningly, the interior matches exactly the exterior — (of the model). The only pittance of realness is the poor little kitchen plant struggling to radiate its green hues into the blanched and barren beige of the domain. I bet this guy’s mom was a wannabe executive with nouveau riche taste who struggled hard just to keep the Town And Country subscription renewed each year. File this under “Sins of the Mother.”