Ouch! My nerves. I guess they hurt so bad because Vaj is on them so hard this week. And, oh yeah, I always hate Sean.

Under a typically slate gray Boston-in-the-month-of-every-month sky, Genesis, Kameelah, and Elka follow a map toward the ultimate destination of, as Genesis squeals, "the upside-down pink triangle." They are soon to stumble upon a street corner's worth of rainbow flags, and Genesis runs girl-on-girlishly ahead as Kameelah and Elka wave goodbye and watch her disappear. As Genesis walks alone through a few racks of magazines and a postcard stand or two inside of The Gay Store (that's not really what it's called), she tells us in a confessional, "I was so happy. I swear to God, I was like a damn child getting candy. Because you can't find that in Mississippi." What, exactly, can't you find in Mississippi? Books? This place looks to be just about the most pedestrian, non-kitschy, decidedly ungay manifestation I've ever seen at this point in the "I'm gay and this is how a well-trained panel of highly-paid producers -- I mean this is how I -- choose to explore my oft-discussed gayness" Real World gay character story arc. But hey, if Genesis is content to explore her burgeoning sexuality by thumbing through a three-year-old dog-eared copy of People with a cover story about Ellen's increasing mainstream appeal as she moves into feature films with comedically mismatched co-star Bill Pullman in what's sure to be the sleeper hit of 1994, go her. I don't have any idea of what Kameelah and Elka were doing all the while Genesis was in there (though I imagine the conversation to include Kameelah's asking, "We don't have to go in there, do we? I mean, we walked her all the way here, right? Going in there would make God mad at you, wouldn't it?" and Elka shooting back the hilarious God-fearing barb, "Yeah, smite back at you."), but when we join the three back outside heading home, Elka asks if Genesis is "happy now," and Kameelah celebrates that Genesis is "in her element!" Yeah, if you call several dusty copies of the unauthorized biography of Rock Hudson and the guitar charts to Classic Queen the height of lesbian emancipation, I'm sure The Gay Store did just the trick.

In a storyline of pointless filler concerning characters who pointlessly fill out a show that legitimized the good name of pointless filler to begin with, we are back in the firehouse to find Jason, Elka, and Montana speaking in poor British accents and informing us that they have started a British, Irish, Scottish rock band called -- and I hope you're all sitting down so there's less room to travel when you become doubled over -- Scotch Tape. Har. The three of them have glammed themselves out in glittery make-up and wrapped themselves in Union Jacks, and they dance around for their own, seemingly unending, merriment. As Genesis takes hilarious Polaroids of them, Jason takes this confessional moment to play either God or Dad (which is so sad, as those are the only two roles Elka has already cast in her life) in preaching, "There's a whole side to Elka that wants to let go, let her hair down, she wants to rage. She's nineteen years old. It's time." Later on during that TV night, Elka voice-overs, "There are certain qualities about me that no one else has. Other people have other qualities I wish I had." Is that, like, a palindrome? Or a Chinese riddle, perhaps? 'Cause it sure don't make that much sense from a linear perspective. But the visual punch line of Elka telling us that she feels that she is "adapting okay here in Boston" comes when the comment is juxtaposed against the image of an increasingly God-free Elka on the phone lighting a cigarette, all of which only goes to show that the fine folks down at B-M headquarters aren't taking any cigarette breaks of their own and lying down on the ironic editing job today. She's not fine. She's smoking!