By this point, The Park is like an old friend. I haven’t
seen it in a while, but coming back was like I never left. It was the place,
downstairs by the fire, that
Romaine and I first met a decade ago and talked
for hours, assured by the end that we could do a radio show together. Years
later, near the front bar,
I had spotted Erik Rhodes, sheepish after he had
been discovered, no doubt feeling guilty after blowing off the show. The
subterranean coat check is where I first spotted
Daniel, the hot Brit who would make
frequent appearances in my writing but to whom I have still never spoken. And
upstairs months later, it was
Conor McGill who finally helped
solve the mystery of his identity,
throwing everyone else under the old age bus for not knowing it themselves.
This afternoon it was a different Brit who was the
subject of conversation and center of attention. Fresh meat has a tendency to
do that, especially when the beef is firm and tender and the winter nights long
and lonely. Parked at The Park, sealing in my own juices under the intense heat
lamp that
Brian Babst called home, I quietly roasted in a wool sweater cleverly
disguising long underwear below. Not that anyone there would ever know the
difference. I take winter very seriously, but not much else.
In this particular moment, Brian was elsewhere and I was
explaining to his friend
Omar Torres about my blog and how I write about my
nights out on the town and the not-so-ordinary people I meet there. "My fifteen
seconds of fame!" he declared excitedly, and that is how long it will be
because the subject of tonight's essay is not Omar, or Brian, or any of the
other ghosts of bars past. It is Richard, newly delivered to New York City from
London.
 |
| Omar and Brian enjoy their fifteen seconds of fame while it lasts. |
"What a terrible idea!" I told Richard when I heard of
his recent arrival. He smiled a winsome grin. "No one has said that to me yet." I didn't mean the city. I meant the weather. January is the worst month in New
York, if you don’t count August and about six or seven others. "I wanted to
move here now," he explained, "So I had time to get settled and by the time
summer rolls around, I’ll be ready." He is a smart cookie, that Richard. Also
he has big arms and a good job, so I predict smooth sailing, even now that he
is firmly planted on dry land.
Without prompting or request, I gave Richard some of my
most valuable advice for living in the city. It started with a story from when I
first arrived in 2001. Also known as the year he turned twelve. Oh? Did I not
mention that he was born in the 80s? "In November 1989. Slipped in under the wire!" Being exactly twenty years older than he was, I felt it was my obligation, in a
strictly paternal way, to tell him everything I knew about the city.
I told about losing my good leather coat on the divine
Robbie Hammond's bed at a fabulous party he threw. My coat was exchanged for an
inferior leather coat someone else had brought and given how ill-fitting the leftover one was, I don't think it was an honest mistake. I frantically tore Robbie’s
bedroom apart for a coat I knew in my heart was gone, a coat that wasn't even
mine in the first place, and haven't been invited back since. My bad manners
aside, Brian confirmed my advice to always have a couple of cute but cheap
coats you won’t mind losing along the way.
"Don't lose your accent" was another sage piece of advice
I gave him. "You'll see all sorts of people on TV who came here decades ago and
they never lose that accent. It is the secret to their success. And Americans
worship class. We think anyone with a British accent is classy. Don’t lose it." Richard insisted he had no plans to lose it but is worried about it slipping on
its own as fags became cigarettes and queues turned into lines. "My grandmother
doesn't want me to sound like an American." Unfortunately, as I learned from my
incomprehensible Scottish friend Jim Hepburn whose mother chided him for
talking like an American newscaster, back home they only hear what is gone and
we only hear whatever is left.
I have a lot of nerve giving advice. This is the first
gay social event I have been to in the city in months. No wonder I persist with
perfection as Roy Cohn's definition of a homosexual from Angels In America: Someone who knows no one and who no one knows. I was
a host for the event today but my name was misspelled, where you could find it.
Ben Roussel,
in a crazy fabulous fur hat, his shirt tight like Saran Wrap, fruitlessly
toured the bar, never able to accurately determine which VIP table was mine. This
culminated in an awkward encounter at table seven where I insisted Brian and
Richard could get a drink only to be rebuffed by some queens who had no
business being there either.
Aside from the event organizer (the ever handsome and
tall
Zachary Barnett) and the assorted characters I have mentioned (as well as
Ben Dixon and
another Ben that I do not know but have seen so many times, I
almost feel like we were roommates once), the only other person I knew at the
event was someone I met once several years ago at
Brian Gianelli's going away
party.
"That's
Ryan Hahn," I said, gesturing in his direction. "I only met him once but we are friends on Facebook." Knowing my reluctance to digitally befriend anyone, this is me really saying something. But Brian was not impressed. "Are you pointing? In a bar?" His line delivery would have made
the Dowager Countess proud as he slipped away from me, drenched in shame. As I told Richard when we met, I am a social dead end. He is wise to
stick with Brian Babst who today proved once again to be someone who knows
everyone and who everyone knows and who knows not to point at people in public.
 |
| Some man tries to welcome Richard while Ben, never my roommate, looks on warily. |
I hope Richard enjoys being in America and more
importantly, being in New York. Today Ryan reminded me of the advice I gave to
him
the first time I met him. "Live in LA in your 20's when you are young and
cute and can live well on not much money, but move to New York in your 30's
where you can be interesting and afford to live there like a human being." But
Richard is starting with New York and I suspect will skip LA altogether, his
IKEA shopping spree aside. His quick success will enable him to be
young and cute and interesting and afford to live here like a human being all
at the same time.
And that, my friends, is a design for living worth following.