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I wish I knew how to depict you: yes, Hollywood, there are gay Texans.

Article Excerpt
In the premiere episode of Sordid Lives, a new comedy series created by Winters native Del Shores and currently airing on MTV's queer-themed Logo network, we meet an institutionalized, chain-smoking drag queen named Earl "Brother Boy" Ingram (Leslie Jordan) who is sent into an emotional tailspin upon learning that his idol, Tammy Wynette, has died. (The show, which is inspired by Shores's 1996 stage play and 2000 film adaptation, takes place in 1998.) If this sounds like a grotesque stereotype, it's supposed to. Shores--who populates this mostly Texas-set program with pill-popping matriarchs and trailer-dwelling soap opera junkies-is a proud purveyor of gay camp. If you can get past the sheer dopiness of the whole thing, Sordid Lives might even qualify as a pleasant late-summer diversion--a small-town gloss on Desperate Housewives with a patina of soft-core homoeroticism.

Watch the first few episodes, however, and a depressing realization quickly sets in: These cliched representations of gay life in Texas--the other character on the show, played...