What do The Gossip, Grizzly Bear and now Vampire Weekend have in common? Well, yeah, since the latter’s keyboardist Rostam Batmanglij came out you would be correct if you said “they are all bands with out, gay members.” But the real answer I was looking for is that they are some of the highest-profile and most-loved indie bands playing in America today. And unless I am sorely out of the loop,hey have hardly been greeted with a loss of fans, dropped sponsorships or boycotts by the religious right. The earth beneath your local record store did not open and swallow passerbies with an assortment of writhing, pink tentacles. In fact, it would be pretty safe to say that no one really fucking cares.

But I know that just because I can do it doesn’t mean that I’ll do it like everyone else. As much as I chuckle at the prospect of my best male friends traipsing around in purple taffeta groomsmen dresses, I know that my relationship still lies largely outside the conventions of society and so my eventual wedding should do the same. I don’t (necessarily) mean that I will coast down the aisle naked on a KY slip n slide, but I will make damn sure that my wedding both has my own tastes reflected and will not bore my guests to the point of hanging themselves in the bathroom with a lacy “Zack’s getting married” gift bag.

Like a transformer toy in briefs and an American Apparel henley, the Californian resources of a massive gay population and readily accessible alternative culture combine to create something intoxicating: The West Coast Homo. I’ve been in search of this pot-smoking, Granddaddy-loving, flannel wearing, dog-owning, chest-hair-having laidback adonis for the better part of four years. Not because I want him (in fact, I doubt he actually exists) but because I someday want to be him. I See California as the simultaneous home and endpoint of gay culture, like life as we know it was born when an LA beach party fucked a seedy San Francisco sex lounge and the offspring is just trying to claw its way back home.

People who live in glass houses should not throw stones. Vegetarian bottoms should not wear white underwear. And I should never, ever, as long as I live, even if I’m asked nicely, go back out to Blowoff in a singlet. Blowoff, for the uninitiated, is bear/leather dance party that happens monthly at DC’s 9:30 club and is DJ’d by alt. legend Bob Mould. A singlet is typically known as a wrestling uniform, though I have mine from when I ran track. And the two combined in celebration of Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend, otherwise known as “the thing Zack will never tell his parents about for many reasons.” What those reasons are, reader, I will leave to your imagination. I’m not pregnant and I can still live within 50 yards of a school. Everything else is for you to guess.

At last Saturday’s Homo/Sonic I was trying to find a friend of mine that I hadn’t seen since he arrived at the party. It can be hard to pick out individuals in such a teeming mass of folks, but I had one little trick up my sleeve: My friend was wearing plaid. I figured it couldn’t be too hard to pick him out of the crowd. But have you seen how many guys will be out wearing plaid at your typical indie fag dance party? I felt like some little kid at the mall who follows a dark haired woman around for thirty minutes before discovering that his mom is still back at the Orange Julius stand. Every guy there, and I almost mean literally, had on a plaid button up shirt. And I’m wondering how this happened.

Did we all get so curious about what’s under a scotsmans kilt that we decided to emulate it on our shirts? Did we finally realize how awesome older lesbians are and put on a show for solidarity? All I do know is that clothing trends tend to burn brightest before they go out, so I’m wondering what will replace some of the recent years’ biggest sartorial mainstays. Below is a handy chart for what gay male fashions will look like in my ideal world of 2010.

The Gossip’s Beth Ditto and Grizzly Bear’s Ed Droste, for example, have emerged as two of indie music’s most visible gay musicians. Droste traffics in beautiful (if soporific) CSNY psych-folk and Ditto does such thorough justice to the stylings of Page and Plant that her band should consider buying rights to the name Lez Zeppelin. Adam Lambert and Lady Gaga may have their place, but the more “gay music” breaks from its reliance on dance-floor edifice the more I feel that individual gay people can do the same.

The songs below are featured because they are either quality songs by out gay artists, or straight-penned songs that I feel have gay themes worth bringing above the surface. What unites them is they provide a window to the past, queer or otherwise, that is too often missing in coverage of contemporary gay culture. This list is highly subjective and by no means comprehensive, so feel free to leave suggestions and additions in the comment box.

Ever since I ended my Thanksgiving by rolling a giant spliff on the cover of ELO’s “Face The Music,” I’ve been thinking just how much of a thrill I get from keeping vinyl around. It’s too expensive to buy new releases this way, but many good record stores (especially 18th St’s Red Onion) have dollar bins of used LPs. And the music found there recalls an era that I still wish I had been a part of, even though its aftermath was certainly nothing I want repeated.

So in case you care, or you spent as much time listening to classic rock radio (70s and early 80s) as I did, here are ten awesome songs I found on Vinyl and soon hope to be playing as I make out with someone.

The Pixies are friggin’ awesome and I wish I knew more of their songs coming into the show. The band began by playing their album “Doolittle” front to back, including all its attendant b-sides. Standouts like “Debaser” actually carried a much greater live punch than they did on their albums, and my surprise at this shows just how accustomed I’ve become to bands whose live shows depend more on pushing buttons or twiddling knobs than on actual members playing instruments.

Last night a new alternaqueer party called Pink Sock debuted in DC. Set in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood of Columbia Heights, at a former gay bar (turned mixed-clientele PBR heaven) called The Wonderland Ballroom, the party promised ” an orgy for the eyes and ears, as [the DJ] pumps out the hottest ass-shaking jams from the most innovative and avante garde performance artists from the 70s-disco era, 80s-new wave, 90-house & hip-hop, to the freshest electro music of today.” This party sounded like a lot of fun and almost everyone I knew was keeping their evening clear to go check it out. However, I was not there.

I love those songs, but I’m still conflicted in my feelings on the disco era. One one hand, three years of life in D.C. make the sexual and pharmaceutical bacchanal of the late 70s sound like Valhalla. On the other, I know that this behavior not only encapsulates the base of some of our most deplorable stereotypes, but also opened the door for the utter decimation that was visited upon us by AIDS in the ’80s.

A decimation, I should point out, that is in danger of revisiting us.