PLEASE BE GENTLE WITH ME!
Hello, Steven Frank here, who you may know from such recaps as Top Chef, Ugly Betty, and Torchwood. I have a confession to make. When AfterElton.com editor Michael Jensen offered me a shot at doing this column, I met the prospect mostly with sheer terror broken by occasional respites of paralyzing anxiety. But I also felt some excitement, given I’ve had fantasies of being a big, fancy entertainment columnist ever since I saw Sweet Smell of Success.

I thought I’d write the entire column in a witty, gossipy tone of voice, envisioning myself as coming across something like a cross between Kathy Griffin and Suzuki St. Pierre, Ugly Betty’s fab fashion reporter brilliantly immortalized by Alec Mapa. Instead, much to my horror, I wound up sounding more like a cross between Melissa Rivers and Snagglepuss. So no urbane voice here — just the straight gay dope.

I hope you’ll like me, I mean really like me. And when you post your responses to this — and you will — please be kind.

YOU CAN’T HAVE SEX IN THE CITY WITHOUT A FEW GOOD MEN
After a relentless publicity blitz that’s had the advantage of making the Democratic primary season feel utterly breezy, the Sex and the City movie finally opens today, kicking off the summer movie season in a refreshingly gay-friendly fashion.

The TV show earned a huge following among gay men, and it’s easy to see why. For one thing, it featured two recurring gay characters, Stanford (Willie Garson) and Anthony (Mario Cantone), both of whom, I’m happy to report, appear in the movie. But they weren’t the only gay characters during the show’s six-season run, as it continually ventured into gay thematic terrain.

In one of my favorite episodes, for example, a gay couple, “David & David” (Sean Martin Hingston and Brad Hurtado), decide they want to experience sex with a woman and invite Samantha into bed with them. However, once they get south of the border, they find their delicate constitutions just can’t handle the cuisine they’re expected to “dine on” down there. Not exactly the kind of sit-commy premise you’d see on Full House, is it?

From left to right: Sean Martin Hingston, Kim Cattrall, Brad Hurtado

I, for one, never bought the theory that the four Cosmo-swilling women were meant to be stand-ins for gay men. I do, however, think that much of gay men’s fascination with the show came in hearing these women analyze and obsess over the men in their lives in a way more familiar and relatable than straight male doofuses high-fiving over the piece of a** they’d like to tap in some pick-up bar.

As for the men that were the objects of those morning-after brunch discussions, many went on to become gay favorites much discussed around these parts … and here are a few of them!

The Broken Hearts Club alum Timothy Olyphant appeared in Season 1 as a twentysomething hottie with a 20-year-old’s non-stop libido — and a 20-year-old’s dumpy apartment and ever present roomies to match.

Timothy Olyphant