We are all gay!

The older we get the more we try to hold onto things that our generation considered ours when we were cool. For instance, I grew up in the golden era of hip hop. The late 80's (Big Daddy Kane, KRS One, and Rakim), early 90's (MC Lyte, The Fresh Prince, and Salt and Pepper), and the late 90's (Tupac, Snoop Dogg, Biggie, Eminem, and Jay Z), were the boom of hip hop the same way the 70's ushered in soul music and rock n roll. That is why my grandmother loving Jay Z as if he were her grandson, my grandfather being enamoured with the way P Diddy dresses, and my company's middle-aged white Senior Vice President having both Outkast and Kanye West in his CD collection, is so hard for me to swallow. Once they have what's mine in their position, it becomes instantly tainted and uncool.

Arsenio's fist pump was cool until the "uncool" crowd got a hold of it. "Whoomp there it is!" was cool until teachers, politicians, and religious figures begun to use it. "Wild thing," "I'm too sexy," Hammer, Hammer pants, and Lauryn Hill were all cool before they got into the wrong hands.

I can say the same about this dumb ass game that I am too old to play because I somehow became part of the "uncool" crowd because what is now cool has changed because the only things that you think are cool are the things that were cool when you knew what was cool. Whew! I'm tired from just writing all of that.

The game is called "No Homo" or "Pause." It originated in New York City and was introduced to the masses by a Harlem rapper named Cam'ron. Yes, the Cam'ron that used to wear pink a lot and was on 60 Minutes and said that he would not report a serial killer to the police if he knew the killer was living next door to him or his family. Cam'ron thought that this would somehow break the "No Snitching" street code. In this game, if you were to say something that sounds homosexual (My friend Iman is really big; big meaning tall or obese as opposed to having a large kickstand) you have to say "No Homo" or "Pause" to announce that you don't like to fence if you know what I mean.

I recently had dinner with a group of intellectuals. One of the attendees was a cultured white woman. You know, the white girl who was always cool with the black kids in school, picked up some of the lingo, but isn't annoying in the Paris Hilton I have a rich or annoying black girlfriend kind of way. She instead gets the whole black person deal, wouldn't be mad if Jesus was black, thinks of Barrack as her Denzel Washington, and would stand on the black side of the street in a race riot because she hates the Man. During dinner, the cool white girl told me that she told her parents about the No Homo/Pause phenomenon that was sweeping the country. Her parents now participate.


This makes it official. All of you younger cool people are getting closer to being old and uncool like me and you have to stop using No Homo/Pause in fear of other people finding out that you are not aware of what is not cool.

An Old Person's Guide to "No Homo"