I love to throw parties. I really do.
I have two speeds: utter solitude and massive party. There is no in-between for me. Those are the only two modes I am comfortable in. Fortunately, this weekend, it was all party, all the time.
On Saturday, I threw a much delayed housewarming party. Well, Romaine has been in her house since December 2006 without a party but to be fair, she did have a baby in the interim. Even still, I moved in the weekend before Memorial Day so waiting so long to have a party is somewhat bad form.
The house I bought is a lovely classic 1950s Cape Cod on a quiet suburban street in the middle of nowhere, U.S.A. It has four bedrooms, two and a half baths, and a full walk-out basement, covering approximately 3300 square feet. It's a lot of room for two homos to ramble around in and most of the time, I am alone here. Roommate and I are on different floors in the house, which makes it seem more than ever like I live alone. We occasionally run into each other by the refrigerator, where four lanes of traffic painfully converge into one lane. That narrow strip of misery is just the tip of the poorly planned kitchen, but otherwise the house is, for me, a dream. True it is drenched in heterosexual trappings of the most feminine and tacky kind, which it will take years to excise from the premises, but it is still a quiet wooden suburban oasis to love.
I had an insanely good turnout for the party on Saturday, much better than I would have expected given how far away the house is from all known civilization. But I suspect people wanted to get a good look, cross it off their list, and probably never return. Frank DeCaro accused me of discouraging him from coming and he was very annoyed to discover what a glaring omission he was. Honestly, I didn't think they would all come! And Frank was missed. But he also missed every other party I have thrown for the last four years, so when he didn't make an appearance on Saturday, I was neither surprised nor annoyed.
Romaine came with mother, baby and girlfriend Iris in tow. Iris spent the entire party with the baby strapped to her chest in a baby carrier, rocking back and forth to a classic American Bandstand episode no one else could hear. Cyd and Dan were there in matching grey hoodies, which prompted me to ask them how long into their relationship they starting wearing matching clothes, and explaining to Romaine's mother that the only real reason to be gay is the ability to double your wardrobe instantly.
Fredrick Ford and my old friend Tony were the first to arrive, ironic since they are the newest and oldest friends I have in the city. Tony and I worked together at AOL back in 1947 when it was still called International Business Machines and Fredrick and I met mere weeks ago when he did my radio show for the first time. They were so early that they got to join me on an adventure getting a full propane tank. Who knew that Home Depot sold the tanks empty? No wonder I couldn't get the BBQ to light the first time out.
DJ Ben Harvey was there with Conor of course, along with their cute friend and their other cute friends. Their quartet of cuteness was short-lived and Roommate's now-defunct Friday night geek squad was collectively sad to see them go. They did thoughtfully bring a set of casual matching coffee mugs and a 2008 Chippendale's calendar. I will get some use out of the mugs and Romaine will enjoy the calendar since she has worn out the 2007 calendar we got from model Charles Dera the last time he was on the show. Unfortunately, I didn't get to catch up with Ben Harvey as I would have liked. Nor was I able to get a second to show him my double-sided Ciccone (Six Degrees of Separation From Madonna, as it were), the only thing that could even remotely be considered ART in my house.
As usual, people got stinking drunk. Someone (me), passing through the kitchen, blurted out the recipe for a Sex On The Beach and a few gallons of liquor later, the drunkest part of the party (the last to leave well past the scheduled end time) decided to decamp to Manhattan for more mayhem. The party started promptly at 2pm with the arrival of Fredrick and Tony on the two o'clock train and officially ended at a little after nine when the last drunk piled out the door and headed for the bright lights, big city.
Roommate was exhausted by two weeks of non-stop painting, wallpaper stripping and cleaning before the party even began, so by 9pm he was all sharp elbows and clearing throats despite a drunk gay's inability to sense of subtle hint when they are slammed in the face with it. Finally by 9:30pm, the house was clean again and we were ready to head for the cool expanse of the basement to cocoon in front of the new fall shows on my wide screen TV. And then the doorbell rang.
Misreading the 2:00pm to 8:00pm party time as an 8:00pm start time, burgeoning hip hop duo Goddes and She appeared fashionably late at 9:30pm. Not wanting to throw them out after they drove an hour to be there, I got all Pamela Harriman on their ass, cranked up the BBQ and served up more food and polite company for another two hours. It wasn't until Midnight that we finally collapsed in front of the TV for some much deserved mindless entertainment.
Sunday I journeyed into the city to welcome Chip Arndt back from his latest AIDS Ride. A minimum of fanfare and I was the only one there to welcome him back. I ran into Cory walking by, he and his friend drawn in by curiosity like moths at night to the gay dance music blasting out of the Center. I can't believe it's already been more than a year since we last saw each other just out and about, when he ran over to me plastered out of my mind at Therapy and reminded me that we had met just a few weeks earlier at Another Gay Movie. I honestly hadn't remembered meeting him at the movie, I was so self-involved and also distracted by Michael Lucas, who had encircled me in his cone of gossip on our way out onto the street. Cory with his Master's Degree in Public Policy from Harvard and straight eyebrows on granite overhang shrouding his soulful eyes. Happy birthday. It will probably be another year before I see him again.
Chip's friend Greg was also there, having joined Chip on the ride. Greg, comfortably slim in his tight bike shorts and matching shirt was full of platitudes about my piercing blue eyes, it was the kind of embarrassment I never tire of. Chip and I had a long thoughtful conversation about life and death and in the car ride home I thought how my weekend would have been complete if I had had the same amount of time to just sit with Ben Harvey too. Unfortunately, there is a finite amount of time in a day and in one's lifetime. I always seem to be short of time these days. The never ending story of my laziness versus my grand schemes for life continues. Hopefully, I will finish turning my house gay and have that long talk with Ben Harvey that I have been meaning to have. And maybe I will even see Cory before his next birthday rolls around. Or maybe I will just lay around the house thinking how nice throwing another party would be, but still revelling in the joy of just being alone.
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