Pride month is here and while I’m not proud of anything I still intend to rub my homo sensibility all over your grateful faces in the next four weeks. So in your sweet unbalanced mind change the chorus of “Free Fallin'“ by Tom Petty into “Teabaggin’” by Simon ‘Even More Petty’ Randall. You will never sing it in the car any other way, I promise. You know how fond I am of you, you delightful creature. Now listen carefully.

You must understand that despite the appearance of frivolity, camp was a means of survival for gay men.

Of course you’ve read the seminal and iconic Susan Sontag essay “Notes on Camp,” which appeared in the august Partisan Review in 1964 (but not the August issue), altering the landscape of cultural studies and making the queer writer famous. If you haven’t read it then what exactly are you doing with your absolutely darling little life? I adore your bangs by the way, they really suit you. Come give Auntie a hug but don’t muss the wig. But there’s also Camp: The Lie That Tells the Truth, by Philip Core, a gay American writer and artist who deCamped to London after a triumphant and erotic matriculation at Harvard, a man I’d love to know more about who sadly died from AIDS in 1989 at just 38 years old. He prefaces the book with his famous list of Camp Rules. Memorize these. You will be quizzed.