This week, I wrote the paper's cover story on the gay wedding business that's popped up in the District since same-sex marriages were legalized in March, and how local businesses are competing for a piece of the pie. Pick up a paper or read it online here.

City Paper contributor Trey Graham subscribes to Living Social, a Web site that alerts him to daily deals in the D.C. area. Today—the first day that gay couples in D.C. can legally be married—LivingSocial offered Graham a very special discount at Too Hotties Haircuts, an Alexandria-based salon for "manly men" who aren't into all that gay shit. The ad:

We know: You manly men are a little sick of the froufrou salons. All you want is a good hair cut, not a pink-haired Angel razoring your locks and slicking them with 80-dollar "molding cream." So, how about this? $20 for $50 worth of high-class barbershop services from Too Hotties Haircuts—a man-centric salon with massage chairs, an Xbox 360, and plenty of HDTVs. Each haircut ($25) comes with shampoo, cut, style, hot-lather razor neck shave, second shampoo (to get rid of those itchy clippings), and a scalp massage. Also available: a classic shave ($25) with hot towels, citrus mint facial cleanser, shaving oils, and that decadent hot lather; or a haircolor for men ($25), using a "Camo" color that blends away gray in 10 minutes. Lest you ladies feel left out, Too Hotties offers a full line of services for women as well. Our thought: A good deal to double up on. While your highlights are processing, Mr. Perfect can get his shoe's shined ($5), then play a game of pool (free).

Sexist Translation:

THIS SALON IS NOT A GAY SALON. It is a "manly" salon. It is a "man-centric" salon. It is stocked with an X-Box and "plenty" of HDTVs. We can't even count them they're so plentiful! The only thing this salon does not have is some pink-haired dude touching your neck hairs, because that would be gay.

And we're not gay! We're just a couple of dudes, hanging out, applying some decadent hot lather to each other. Don't be shy. Slap on some "haircolor for men"—it's  "Camo" colored. Relax with our totally un-homosexual citrus mint facial cleanser. It's manly because there's an X-Box in the room—kind of like how a perfectly straight dude can get together with another dude and "feel the other man’s penis bump up against his own," as long as there's a vaginal wall between them, neutralizing the gayness.

Bring your girlfriends.

Graham, who is gay, was understandably disconcerted by this auspicious gay marriage day greeting, and called LivingSocial to tell them so. Something tells me that today's happy same-sex couples won't be getting their pre-wedding pamper at Too Hotties.

The Washington City Paper's Best Of D.C. reader's poll debuts today, and we're inviting District residents to file their favorites in the worlds of food, drink, shopping—and, of course, the commercialized end of sex. Need some inspiration? Let's revisit some ghosts of Sexist past for possible nominees in the poll's sex-related categories, from Best Strip Club to Best Local Scandal:* Best Strip Club: If you're not into strip clubs, but are interested in delivering a pity vote, try Good Guys. In 2007, convicted arsonist Vasile Graure set fire to Glover Park's Good Guys strip club after being ejected for snapping a cell-phone photo of one of the dancers. The incident sparked a lengthy trial in which many of the club's dancers were forced to testify about being forced to run, unclothed, out of the flaming building. These women deserve your most generous tips.

* Best Gay Bar/Club: If you'd like to support gay bars that reach out to a wider audience, pick Cobalt. Recently, the club made an effort to move past the traditional GaGa/Madonna/Cher house mix by hosting alterna gay night SHIFT. And last year, Cobalt made a good-faith peace offering to District women when it retired its longstanding anti-high-heels policy.

* Best Local Scandal: Councilmember Marion Barry put a woman out in Denver 'cause she wouldn't suck his dick.

* Best Adult Novelty Shop: Want to support a return to extravagance in the novelty shop world? Pick The Leather Rack. Due to the recession, the District's go-to joint for BDSM and leather gear has experienced a slight downturn in sales for the most elaborate of its fetish ensembles. Customers in the Dupont shop, a manager told me last year, have been trending toward the more demure items. Going balls-out just isn't practical in the current economic climate. "Let's say you buy a whole Army uniform. That's all you can wear," he said. Here's to hoping the Leather Rack's days of subtlety are soon ended.

* Best Drag Queen: Last year, local drag queen Charles McWilliams, a.k.a. Ophelia Bottoms, surrendered all his drag secrets to the Sexist in an hour-long display of falsies, ponytail bumpers and drawn-on diva brows. How can you argue with that face:

Your turn! Get over there and submit your picks.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

The Washington City Paper's second Best Of D.C. issue since 1987 hits newsstands today. Since this is our staff's second Best Of, we're honoring the District's second-bests in 2009. My picks—including "Second-Best Strip Club Excuse," "Second-Best Item of Clothing to Remove at a Gay Bar," and "Second-Best George Mason Personality" (pictured)—are after the jump.

Second-Best Dog

Second-Best Item of Clothing to Remove at a Gay Bar

Second-Best Place to Prepare for the Upcoming Apocalypse

Second-Best Use of the Postcard

Second-Best Strip Club Excuse

Second-Best Way to Pick Someone Up

Second-Best DURKL Brother

Second-Best Reason to Claim a Pew

Second-Best George Mason Personality

Second-Best Celebrity-Watching with Side of Half-Smoke

Second-Best Dude Blogger

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

City Lights Editor Mike Riggs, a born, bred, and lapsed Florida Christian, explains whether the definition rings true for evangelicals and fundies "looking to skirt rules about sex." [Hint: they're more into oral].

THE SMILE, BABY GUY (noun).

Origin: Metro stops, Metro buses, sidewalks, major thoroughfares, porches and verandas (in warmer weather).

Generally considered one of the more innocuous permutations of the Street Harasser, the Smile, Baby Guy is nevertheless suitably condescending and often persistent. His tactic is seemingly straightforward: as you pass his field of vision, he will note that you are not smiling, and insist that you smile, generally against your will. He may then insist that you date, kiss, and/or have sex with him, generally against your will.

EXCEPTIONS (1). Tony, a Smile, Baby Guy who lives on my street and with whom I forged the following verbal agreement last summer: In exchange for smiling each time I saw Tony, baby, he would help me move a truckload of my personal belongings into a row-house inside which I had recently rented a third-floor room. He did so.

See also: the Why Aren't You Smiling, Baby Guy, the You're Too Beautiful To Not Be Smiling, Baby Guy, and the Smile, Ladies Guy.

WHY I'M NOT FUCKING SMILING:

(a) The illness progressed quickly: sneezing, sore throat, swollen lymph nodes, post-nasal drip, funny-sounding voice, protracted Web MD consultation, call to my mother, death rattle, insomnia, inability to swallow, pain, oh the pain, peach sorbet, full submission into the waiting arms of the pharmaceutical industry.

(b) I needed those meds. Yesterday morning, I rode a Metro bus to the "Urgent" Care Center (emphasis mine—in truth, the workings of the facility were hardly urgent). It was the only of its kind located within the limits of the District of Columbia and covered by my Creative Loafing End of Season Ski Sale bottom-barrel health insurance plan (now even worse than last year's!).

(c) Upon waiting two hours, competing with a half dozen other patients (most of whom looked like non-ill little fakers looking for a last-ditch excuses to miss their psych finals), I was victorious—the lady called my name. A scrubbed woman led me into an examination room marked, with pen and notebook paper, as room "3." Once inside room "3," I was asked to exit room "3," whereupon I was led down a hallway ending in a human scale, and weighed. The woman first estimated my weight at 140 pounds, but subtracted five pounds in order to account for my shoes and coat, perhaps expecting that the lower number would please me.

Back in room "3," I opened my throat—wider—to facilitate the woman swiping a cotton swab across the mucus that had accumulated at the back of my throat. She then took leave of me. While waiting for her return, I opened a February 2007 copy of Mother Jones magazine. Inside was a smiling photograph of a neo-conservative former classmate of mine from University who had run for Congress in his home district, won the Republican nomination, then lost to the Democrat in the general election by 17 points. He attributed his moderate success to "the Web."

After many minutes, a different woman entered room "3." Everything suddenly urgent, she informed me that I did not have strep throat, but rather that I had contracted "some sort of virus" that would "go away on its own" with the help of "drinking fluids" and "lots of rest."

I paused. Was this woman a medical doctor or mere spectre, a lab coat filled only with age-old conventional wisdoms? You don't have strep throat, and a penny saved is a penny earned, I imagined her saying. You don't have strep throat, and slow and steady wins the race.

After shining a newfangled medical light-emitting device (a "flashlight") in my throat, however, the woman reversed her position, urgently, and concluded that my tonsils were fucking enormous and that I ought to ingest 500 milligrams of antibiotics every eight hours until the infected region had been cleared.

"You've had something like this before, right?" the woman asked me.

"I've actually never experienced anything like—"

But she was already gone.

(d) This interaction cost me $25.

(e) I adjourned to a pharmacy to fill my prescription. Upon realizing, at the pharmacy counter, that I had in fact left my medial insurance card within the godforsaken Urgent Care Center, my eyes, reddened from congestion, flirted briefly with tears. I exited the pharmacy and hastened toward whence I had come. It is at this point that you:

(f) stopped me, on the street corner, and demanded that I smile, baby. Did your testicles retract into your body when I mumbled an incoherent response to your request, my voice high and unnatural, a bitter concoction of nasal drip and post-nasal drip? Or had I simply imagined it?

(g) Turns out I just left the card in my cubicle. I got my meds!

(h) And yet, I would not sleep that night. Foolishly—had I thought myself invincible?—I had consumed several swigs of Night Time Robitussin, the small plastic measuring cup having long ago disappeared into the realm of ideas. It was around the ten o'clock hour that I turned to the medicine cabinet. The sedative far too weak to overcome the sickness, I lay in bed with my eyes open an hour later, waiting for the low buzzing—incessant, purposeful—of every electronic device within a 20 foot radius of my bed to quiet its faculties. When taken deliberately, this gentle overdose of medicine followed by a resistance to sleep is colloquially referred to as "Robotripping," and creates such an uncomfortable high as to only be undertaken by particularly desperate thrill-seekers of little means (i.e., high school students).

(i) Yesterday, I took six (6) baths. In the sixth and final bathing, which took place at approximately 11:20 p.m. yesterday evening, I endeavored to exorcise my Robo-demons. However, the reserve of hot water in my unit having been devastated by the five baths that had gone before it—and the long, meticulous Lady Macbethian scrubbing of dishes I had mounted earlier in an attempt to forget—I emerged, not healed, but rather defeated, a cold, writhing rat-person, devoid of feeling save for the prickling fear of

(j) Ran out of tissues.

(k) Figured out a way not to swallow while sleeping! Wait until the liquid fills your throat and begins to drip toward your lungs. Then, your body just wakes you up every ten minutes to urgently rake the phlegm from the back of your throat and spit it into one receptacle or another.

(l) Jesus fuck, where did this rash come from?

(m) Tonight is my corporate Christmas party. In this state, I have effectively been disqualified from winning the Lampshade Award, a yearly honor designated for the party attendee who makes the largest fool of themselves. This is no small loss; the Lampshade Award, while dubious, was certainly not outside my grasp.

IN CONCLUSION, I maintain that it is none of your business why I'm not fucking smiling, baby, and I move to request you never to demand that I do so again. As a good-faith measure, I'd ask that you also refrain from making kissy noises at me, baby, or informing me that you would pay an exorbitant amount of money to switch your body with the form of my bicycle seat, which routinely comes in close contact with my vagina, baby.

Photo by ghedo.

Topics discussed: Jane Austen, morality, ballet studio, Pootie Tang, Edward Cullen, Zac Ephron unlike Edward Cullen, Mike Riggs unlike Edward Cullen, feasts of flesh

* okay, ten minutes.

Tomorrow, I'll be blogging live from spots around the city on City Paper's homepage. I'll also be twittering every step of the way. Join the Washington City Paper's twitter feed—updated live on our website—by tweeting to #dcvotes. See you tomorrow!

Photo by Perla*

- Sexy/Unsexy, in which we praise, shame last week's talking points.

- Intern Bobby, in which intrepid City Paper intern Bobby Allyn asks the questions.

- Hess v. Riggs, in which we disagree.

All in a handy downloadable widget! In this, our inaugural episode, spend five minutes with us on modern voyeurism. Topics discussed: Sarah Palin, hair, overseas wiretapping, pillow talk, amateur porn, and Ron Jeremy.

Or, download the podcast here.

* we round down.