I find myself ogling men more than women as I get older.

This is not a sexual thing, and I’m not dealing with any repressed homosexuality. I just find that as I advance in age, gawking at some 19 year old chick’s perfectly manicured backyard becomes less and less charming. I’ve adopted Seinfeld’s philosophy as I treat leering at hot young women the same way you should treat looking at the sun. Get a sense of it, and then look away before it burns out your retinas.

When I ogle dudes, it’s more because I’ve found a guy whose style I want to take inspiration from or outright copy. And in Denver, that’s rarer than it should be, and in the industry I work in, it’s pretty much unheard of. So when I find a guy who’s put together a cool package, I look at him. And I look at him.  And I stare at his ass – not because I wish I was wearing it as a hat as when I’d stare at a woman’s ass – but to see if I can discern the cut and model of his pants. What brand are they? What’s the cut? Where do they fall on his waist? How can I apply this to my own body? And I burn all this into my memory. Sometimes I’ll make a note of a particular brand I’ve never heard of in my iPhone.

One time a guy caught me staring at one of his labels as I was furiously jotting down notes in my iPhone. He looked horrified. We were on a bus and he got off at the next stop. I don’t think it was his stop. And I don’t blame him for exiting early. If some dopey motherfucker were looking at my ass, then furiously down at his phone to type god knows what, then back at me, then back at his phone, I’d probably call the police.

Related: My friend Mike is an actor, and he was once in a Doritos commercial with the Black Eyed Peas that I don’t think ever aired in America. Check it out here. Cut to the 19 second mark, and that’s Mike fondling a big cardboard cutout of Fergie.

He told me when he auditioned for that role, the alternate take for that scene was him cutting out a bunch of pictures of Fergie from magazines to paste them all over his room. Picture that room The Joker has in Tim Burton’s Batman movie from 1989 when he becomes obsessed with Vicki Vale. He also told me what he thinks won him that role was that while he was cutting these pictures out, he kept muttering in a low, creepy guttural drawl, “Cleeeeaaan… Cleeeeaaan… Cleeeeaaan…”

The casting directors were so taken with the general ickiness of that word choice and repetition, they had to have him to help sell their Doritos.

If you ask that guy wearing the nice pants on the bus that day (the note regarding which I then lost thanks to having to totally reboot my iPhone), he’ll tell you he knows how it feels to be Fergie in that Doritos commercial. I now ogle men the same way I ogle women and look at the sun.

No one wants to be the guy on the bus going, Cleeeeaaan… Cleeeeaaan… Cleeeeaaan…