More than 9 to 5: whether they're baking, designing, or training people to ride horses, gays and lesbians across the country enjoy glamorous careers.

Bryan Thompson 

Car designer San Diego 

Bryan Thompson was 5 years old and living in Phoenix when his neighbor's seemingly innocuous Datsun Honey Bee ignited his passion for car design. Its sleek vehicular perfection pierced Thompson's young psyche and sent him down the road to a career in four-wheeled fashion. "I just really loved that little car," he says. "From that point on I was drawing cars all the time."

Now Thompson, 31, is a key member of the design team at Nissan, the parent company of Datsun, creator of the Honey Bee that bit him in his youth. Thompson's Nissan credits include interiors for the Titan and Armada truck line as well as for the Actic concept car. As a freelance designer (www.bryanthompsondesign.com), he numbers Airstream among his clients.

"I'm definitely the only gay car designer I know," says Thompson, who shares a home in San Diego with his partner of three years, a local TV newscaster. "It's such a mixed field. It's cars, which is gasoline and testosterone, and then obviously it's fashion. You have to know all about trends."

Though Thompson says he definitely loves the drawing and design portion of his job, his other favorite part is the research. "We get to be kind of like method actors, where you live the life and get into the head of the person you're designing for," he says. "Let's say I'm working on a full-size truck. Well, I'm not a big guy, and I'd never have a truck, but for a while I get to be in that mind-set. For a while I get to be a cowboy."

Leigh Grode and Joan Spitler

Cake Divas Los Angeles 

Say you're the pop star Pink. Say you're about to marry your longtime boyfriend, motocross racer Carey Hart, and you need a really spectacular wedding cake, but it's got to be made onsite in Central America using your favorite brand of U.S. store-bought mix. Who on earth can you trust to fulfill your covert sweet desires? Who else but the Cake Divas, the reigning can-do darlings of A-list Hollywood dessert indulgence.

"See, Pink is a seriously devout Duncan Hines woman," explains former New Yorker Leigh Grode, 48, who founded Cake Divas with her life partner, Southern California native Joan Spitler, 36, nine years ago. "Joan and I wound up smuggling 200 pounds of Duncan Hines cake product into Costa Rica for her wedding. And when I say 'smuggle' I'm not exaggerating. It was terrifying."

Little could either Cake Diva have known what border-crashing batter-y exploits lay ahead when they first met in 1993 at a Los Angeles screening of Grode's film Outcasts, where Spitler was a volunteer ticket-taker. While their personal pairing was fairly immediate, it took a while for their professional union to start cooking. Yet in the few short years since, the pair have become confectioners of choice to a wide variety of international celebrities and other royalty, including Ellen DeGeneres and Ashton Kutcher.

Whenever they can, both still pursue their own visual art projects. "But together we get to make edible art, and we get to go on adventures," says Grode. "And the best thing is that it's something that we created from nothing, so it's inherently us. We aren't going to get to be mothers of children, so this is our child and our contribution to the world."

Parisa Parnian

Fashion designer Brooklyn, N.Y.

Clothing designer Parisa Parnian is working to pulverize gender-based fashion boundaries. With her RIGGED OUT/fitters clothing line (www.riggedoutfit.com) splashed all over the last season of Showtime's hit lesbian drama, The L Word, Parnian's dream of dressing "the hot, masculine dykes and gender-queers I lust after in my queer femme-girl fantasies" has quickly become a reality.

"Hey, if Calvin Klein can create a clothing empire around his obvious lust for hot, ripped homoerotically positioned men, I can create a clothing line that basically allows me to push the envelope and bring to life my vision of what I think is really hot: handsome, charming, masculine, and androgynous queers who were born with female bodies but who like to dress in masculine style," explains Parnian, who is single and lives in Brooklyn. "To me, there's nothing hotter or more subversive."

Born in Tehran but raised in Scottsdale, Ariz., Parnian, 33, studied at New York's Parsons School of Design, where instructors urged her to focus on menswear. Her talents landed her stints as a menswear designer for Target and Old Navy, but she eventually realized how ready the world was for a strong line of butch-gal wear. So she launched RIGGED OUT/fitters 1 1/2 years ago.

"The first collection played around with some classic homoerotic male icons but reinterpreted for the dyke sensibility," says Parnian, whose muses for the line included sailors, soldiers, cowboys, hustlers, pirates, and wrestlers. "But I like to mix it up by creating things like 'preppy pirate' gear."

For her next collection Parnian is looking homeward for inspiration. "I want to pay homage to my political and artistic roots in Iran and the Middle East," she says. And lately, Chicana artwork and icons also have provided some inspiration for her designs. "The Virgin of Guadalupe is a badass," she says. "And she just happens to be shaped a lot like a certain female body part that we dykes just love, even on a subconscious level."

Bob Dickinson

Lighting designer Los Angeles

"When I go to work in the morning, I get to interpret and create things," says acclaimed lighting designer Bob Dickinson. "And then at the end of the day somebody not only pays me a nice fee, they give me awards."

Dickinson has received 15 Emmys, but it's his expertise in lighting other people as they win awards that has become his trademark. The Oscars, the Grammys, the Golden Globes, the Tonys--Dickinson has lit them all and many more productions in his 27 years in the stage-lighting business. "In the world of theater and live television, the lighting designer is the person who uses light to interpret a scene or a mood," Dickinson explains.

Born in England and raised in Southern California, Dickinson, 52, credits a high school stagecraft teacher with hooking him on "the intoxicating and emotional quality of light." Among his early credits is the '80s pop music and dance series Solid Gold, for which he won his first four Emmys. He and his partner of 15 years, Michael Marler, who also happens to be his business manager, split their time between their three California homes: one in the Hollywood hills, another in the Napa Valley, and the third in Palm Springs.

Dickinson is currently prepping for the Kennedy Center Honors, an event he does every year. With a constant roster of such top-tier affairs, Dickinson admits that even while he's working, it's sometimes hard not to be blown away by the glamour and spectacle of it all. "They can be just incredible experiences," he says, pointing especially to the 2004 Athens Olympics, where he lit the opening and closing ceremonies. "That was truly a lifetime experience."

Jonathan Soresi

Equestrian New York City 

"I've never exactly been conventional," explains equestrian Jonathan Soresi of his professional journey from successful horseman to successful actor and back again. Now, as owner of Soresi Show Stables in Morris County, N.J., he's training others to ride in his footsteps.

Soresi, 47, began riding in his native Virginia when he was 6, and by 19 he had turned professional. He trained under George H. Morris, one of the nation's top professionals, and eventually became the former Olympian's assistant.

But by age 27, Soresi was burned out on horse-training. He moved to the United Kingdom to study acting at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. A series of successful stage roles and a part in 1989's Batman followed, leading Soresi to relocate to Los Angeles in pursuit of a movie career. But his passion for thoroughbreds still burned. He resumed horse-training on the side, building up a roster of celebrity clients including Tom Cruise, Uma Thurman, and Janet Jackson.

Exhausted by the Hollywood acting grind, Soresi decided to leave for quieter pastures two years ago. "Long story short, a friend of mine said, 'If you had all the money in the world, what would you do?'" Soresi recalls. "I said, 'I'd have a very nice small stable with a very nice clientele.' And that's what I've created."

Among Soresi's many affluent clients are a number of starry-eyed kids who train with visions of gold medals. "I have one little girl who says, 'I want to go to the Olympics,'" says Soresi, who himself still rides in 35 to 40 jumping competitions a year. "Of all the people I teach, this girl has the best attitude of them all."

As for his own unusual career trajectory, Soresi is grateful to have found success in more than one field. "If I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I would not have any regrets whatsoever," he says. "I've had a good time riding and a great time being me."

Chuck Gurney 

TV meteorologist Columbus, Ohio

In few professions can the variables change as drastically from hour to hour as they do for a TV meteorologist, and in few places can that shift happen as quickly as it does in the Midwest. "It definitely keeps me on my toes knowing that there have never been two days in which the same weather conditions created the same outcome," says Chuck Gurney, who's been reporting Columbus, Ohio-area weather for WBNS TV for the past six years. "I really enjoy the fact that my work is always in a state of change."

A native of East Freetown, Mass., Gurney, 44, was fascinated from a young age by New England's harsh weather systems. After studying meteorology at the University of Utah, Gurney became a television meteorologist in 1986, a career that took him to Oregon, Michigan, and upstate New York before landing him in Columbus.

A participant in numerous local gay activities, Gurney received a national volunteer award for his work at the national convention of Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays in Columbus in 2002.

Indeed, the civic aspect of being a TV meteorologist also drew Gurney to that career. "I see it as one of the few professions in which you can provide one singular service that helps many people on a daily basis," he says.

Allen is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles.