The Two Night Show

Well if you were wondering if it is summer in New York yet. It’s fucking summer. After struggling last weekend to resist the urge to turn the heat back on after the nighttime temperature plunged back down into the 40s, this week has been a parallel struggle to not install the air conditioners. It has been 90 degrees every day for the last three days and now we are supposed to be grateful that this horrible storm from the Midwest (that dropped enough twisters to get Dorothy a dozen round trips between Kansas and OZ) will be the thing that breaks the hot and humid spell that has fallen over the city.

But I can’t complain about the heat (even though that is exactly what this sounds like) because our winter was so arduously long this year that anything, even 90 degree highs, are an improvement. I was commiserating tonight with another New Yorker at a party about the temperature swing but more importantly, the long winter that made everyone I know question our decision to live in this urine soaked wonderland.

Route Canal

I never go downtown, all the way downtown. When I first moved to Manhattan, I declared that I would never go south of Houston unless I was fucking a celebrity. So far, the most famous person I ever had sex with in town was a porn star on loan from Florida. And in the meantime, I have been downtown many times. But now I have been there three times in a week. This is ridiculous.

In tonight's performance, the role of steamer trunk will be played by my laptop.

The first time, I took the One train to Canal Street was Wednesday of last week to attend a cocktail party benefit for Lambda Legal. I had RSVP’d as a Maybe on Facebook because it started at 6:30pm and my show starts at 8:00pm. Also it is downtown. And am I fucking a celebrity? No. But then Ari Ezra Waldman sweet-talked the fifty dollar cover out of me and convinced me to go. The only problem: the event was on Thursday, not Wednesday.

So stupidly, Wednesday, I came in early, trudged down to Canal Street, forced my way through some construction and made my way to the locked door of a darkened art gallery next to a mattress store. The two ladies working in the store must have been very amused to watch me repeatedly shake and rattle the door next door, certain that I was in the right place at the right time, despite no visible signs of life. Oh yes, and that locked door.

Romaine was much amused when I returned from my trip to nowhere, as anyone who knows me would be. I am not much for the details. I just naturally fail upwards in life. And honestly, when you are that kind of person, the less you know about how things work the better. But then this necessitated me making a Groundhog’s Day of it hours later for the actual event on Thursday.

I support the fine work of Lambda Legal and Ari is as handsome a college professor as you are going to get without landing on Gilligan’s Island (apologies to Doug), but a room full of lawyers is the last place on earth I want to be. As I explained to Ari in my feeble attempt at declining, I will be the only one there without a degree that isn't carrying a tray. As it turns out, I didn't fit in with the tray carriers either because they were literally Model Bartenders and one of them was so handsome I actually had trouble breathing. And I am certain that while he might have attempted mouth to mouth, I don’t think it would have had any hope of reviving me. Quite the opposite in fact.

Naturally, I knew no one there until Martin Barna finally arrived. Harvard Ryan was not far behind him and eventually Ari dashed his way in as well. Martin was also on the committee for the event, but he didn't strong arm my attendance the way Ari did. The same cannot be said for the cocktail in his hand after a long day at work. I would have loved to have heard the details, but naturally the minute anyone I knew arrived, I had to leave. There was barely even a second to congratulate Charlie on his recent wedding and for him to pet my hair in a dreamlike trance. It does have a certain wig-like quality to it at times and I think Charlie was just making sure it was at least human hair.

Of course I thought this would be my last adventure downtown for some time but lo a mere six days later, there I was on the One train again, getting off on Canal Street. This time I was down there to visit the SoHo Grand Hotel and the dot429 event featuring Ben Harvey. Perhaps I didn't think I would be in the neighborhood again so soon because when I said yes, I thought it was at the SoHo House and wouldn't that have been an hilarious adventure.

Even though Ben had no compunction skipping my Cinco de Mayo party just this past weekend, he knows there isn't a place in New York City I won’t go if he asks, be it Brooklyn or West Broadway at Canal.

Upside of subway travel: hilarious advertorials inside the subway stations.

So I walk into the party and I don’t know anyone. As usual. But then some nice guy named Alex from the Gay City News strikes up a conversation with me, as does Tim from InStyle Magazine, a work neighbor two doors down at the Time-Life Building. Tim actually recognized me, which never happens in Manhattan, confiding that even though he doesn't regularly listen to my show, his ex-boyfriend was obsessed, a hardcore superfan. That’s the fame I have. I don’t like you but I have heard of someone who does.  

A few minutes later, Martin walked in and since he is a lawyer, I warned everyone that anything said in their conversation could be used against them in a court of law. But later, Adam Hignite insisted that the person people needed to be Mirandized against was me. “I am afraid to say anything in front of you,” he sighed. “Who knows what will end up on that website of yours?” Well in this case, it is a shameless plug for his realestate website since he is back from selling sea shells by the sea shore and making a go of it again in Manhattan.

The clock was ticking down and I still hadn't seen Ben, but I did see his friend Zach and Zach's blond dreamscape of a boyfriend Daniel. “I think we've met before,” he purred. I don’t know why the two of us have so much trouble remembering that we have met thousands of times but we do. Zach and Daniel let me know that lime green pants are hot and so it was since both Daniel and another guy standing with them were in nearly identical pants. “Chartreuse!” was the official, loudly declared color. #trendy. A cute guy stood with them, his tan pants and jacket blending awkwardly with the curtains behind him. “Do you feel left out?” I asked him as he nodded and disappeared before my very eyes.

In case I didn't see Ben, I checked in on Facebook, so that like a criminal, I would have a solid alibi. See, he could look on Facebook and see that I was there, even if he didn't see me in person. As it turns out, moments after I said hello and good bye to Jonathan D. Lovitz in the same breath, Ben entered the party. I made sure he saw me in the crush of fans before I slipped away.

Harvard Ryan didn't think it was fair that I came and went so quickly but Martin agreed with my reasoning that with the new schedule, it was better that you could see me more often now, even if it was of a shorter duration. “I am the Vine video of NYC social life!” I declared prophetically. In our rapidly changing times, there isn't even fifteen minutes of fame left. I can only give Canal Street six seconds of my life, but apparently those same six seconds can loop three times in a week. 

Cuts Like A Night

To say that I fell off the map in the last few months is an understatement. Moving to the suburbs has gone from nightlife inconvenience to the real estate equivalent of faking your own death. For months I have championed our new time slot which ends our radio show at 11pm instead of 10pm, since it didn't disrupt my already arduous train schedule. But it appears I underestimated the toll it has taken on my social life.

So it was with this in mind that I agreed to join my friend Brian Westbrook out at a bar after the show. He is in town from Seattle and beseeched me to join him and his friends at Mickey Spillane's, a sports bar on the corner of 49th and 9th, mere steps from my radio studio. Since his cute friend Jon was certain to be there too, it seemed impossible to refuse. Besides, as my regular nightlife friends have drifted away to boyfriends and IndieGoGo campaigns, I have scrambled to make new friends. So far Stephen from December has been a huge asset on Facebook but decidedly absent in person.  If I am to prevent the Grey Gardens scenario I have joked about for months, I am going to have to get back out there.

I ran down to the bar after the show and Brian was there with Jon, along with the news that Jon has a husband. Oh well. I still like looking at cute people. In fact, I probably like it more than anything given how many handsome friends I have and how little sexual interest I have in them, despite their obvious good looks. But I wasn't staying long. Just one drink and then off to the 11:47pm train. Barely enough time to reminisce about the last time Brian was in town (which neither of us could remember) before I had to make a mad dash for the door.

But it was in the madness and the dashing that my story of the evening was born. Because even though I have made quite a few literary silk purses out of sow’s ear nights out on the town, tonight the gruel up to this point was so thin, there was barely enough for we three, let alone leftovers to share with the world. But then I saw Frank Conway outside the bar and my evening was made.  

After waving good bye to Brian and Jon, I exploded out of the bar onto the street, screeching and caterwauling my way into Frank's cozy group that included Bobby and three men I had never seen before. "Your voice cuts through everything," was how one of the other men greeted me and in an instant I knew I'd have plenty to write about later. As if Frank's greeting of "I just watched you in a porno!" pitched to the third balcony wasn't enough to convince me this would be an encounter to remember.

This is the sad truth. If anyone has seen me lately, it is from my (all too brief) cameo in the new Michael Lucas porn opus "Kings Of New York." I ran into the film's editor at The Hookies last month, and he told me that I was very funny and I made him laugh. This is high praise indeed because you know their eyes and ears weld shut after the millionth time they have cut together a scene, even when it involves hot naked people.

The hottest of the guys with Frank Conway quizzed me about the film and then confessed it didn't sound like it would be to his liking. He was very handsome so I suppose if I had the option to be in a different porn film just to get his interest, well so be it. Then again, at this stage of my career, being asked to do anything is an honor.  And by asked, I mean, emailing the organizers of The Hookies and begging them to have me back this year. Or agreeing to play a version of yourself in a porn movie who apparently had a lot of plastic surgery even though you haven't had any and you are the only one in the movie with no make-up on. 

It seems Frank and company had all been to 54 Below to see Barbara Cook sing her heart out. This is the exchange we three had:

Frank: Barbara Cook. 85 years old and she can still sing!

Bobby: And eat! She came out in a two-piece-

Derek: -and a biscuit?

I had a train to catch and they were all on their way home. That adorable kid from the La Cage tour was also on the street, but he didn't recognize me or remember that we had met before. More than once. To be fair he was drunk. The first time we met and possibly tonight too for all I know. And I meet people all over the place and never remember them either, but then again, my voice cuts through everything. It should even cut through the fog of a boozy haze.

As we walked down the street, them to their lovely Manhattan apartments, me to my commuter train back to nightlife obscurity, the one who commented on my voice (prodded helpfully by Bobby) put two and two together and figured out who I was.

"Of course. That's the voice I hear in my car."

He stated it with some measure of relief and I suddenly felt like Kathleen Turner, recognized by voice print alone. "See. My voice has to cut through everything," I assured him, "It has to cut across the whole United States!" Although by then, it was time to let it rest. My work here was done. And the only thing I needed to cut through was Times Square on my way back home. 

The Americanization of Richard

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.