You may recall my frank discussion of my balls some weeks back. Well, I have some resolution to the story. Just in time for the holidays! Because nothing says holiday cheer like discussing your scrotum in public.
The final step in the process was a review of the situation by the urologist. I have never been to the urologist in my life. Why should I? The junk works, so why mess with perfection? As usual, in need of a doctor, I rummaged around on the internet for a while and then picked someone with a catchy name who was nearby. I suppose I could check credentials or something, but I have to assume a total quack would not be able to afford to pay rent in one of the most expensive cities in the world if he didn’t know what he was doing. And yes, I did specifically choose a male urologist. It is weird enough having a stranger manhandle me under fluorescent lighting, I don’t need to make it completely bizarre by bringing a woman into the mix.
The doctor I chose was in Gramercy Park, steps away from a convenient subway stop and my regular doctor. He is right around the corner from the National Arts Club, which when I passed it reminded me that it had been a long time since I saw Manhattan Murder Mystery, so I picked it up on DVD. I had to wait seven weeks for my appointment, and even though my doctor told me it was probably nothing and the two women at the ultrasound office couldn’t even FIND what I was talking about, I was still filled with a certain level of anxiety.
I had my appointment in the week before Christmas. I trotted down to his office and sat in the waiting room filled with current magazines and old men for about 45 minutes before he finally saw me. The urologist looks like all doctors in Woody Allen movies: tall, reed thin and expressionless. He also spoke with a German accent, but not like a character actor in a Hollywood movie about Nazis. He sounded more like a mad professor in an old Looney Tunes cartoon (although visually lacking the mess of white hair and the cheesy Frito Bandito moustache). The whole package instantly filled me with confidence, as all situations that remind me of the movies do.
He asked me the usual routine questions, even though I had filled them all out on the form in the waiting room.
“How many zexual partners: zingle or multiple?”
“Um. Right now, or over my lifetime?”
“In your lifetime.”
“Oh. Multiple.”
He arched his eyebrow and gave me an ever so disapproving murmur. I was instantly outraged and defensive about what a slut I have been. You know what. I am a sexually active 38 year old man. I don’t need to get shit from some stranger about the fact that I have had sex with more than one person in my whole life. Granted, the number isn’t two. But how does he know that? If I want to feel judged, I’ll go to a department store cosmetics counter and put my head inside the black light box with the magnifying mirror in it that makes you buy anything they put in front of you. I don’t need to hear it from the man who is going to tell me definitively if I have cancer.
So he sends me off to the waiting room while his assistant contacts my doctor to have my records faxed over. After that he calls me down to the separate exam room.
“Take your pants down and I will take a look.”
I kick off my shoes and then start in on my pants when he stops me.
“You can leave your shoes on. I von’t be examining your feet.”
So, like James Edstrom in the Ramble, I just shoved my pants down around my ankles and hopped (quite literally) onto the table. I laid back as instructed and he began to dispassionately knead my balls like bread dough.
“Zo. What do you do for a living?”
Really? A conversation about the wonders of satellite radio while you are all over my balls like a case of the crabs? This is definitely one of those situations, like when you are standing at a urinal, when I am not in the mood for idle chit chat. He asked me where the lump was that I felt, and when I told him, he stopped the exam as suddenly as he began.
“What is behind and above the left testicle is a normal structure. Put your pants back on please and see me in my office,” he declared as he ripped his surgical gloves off dramatically and dispensed with them in the trash can nearby. He just left me lying on the table with my pants down around my ankles. I felt so vulnerable!
Once I pulled myself and my outfit (such as it was) together, I went back to his office. He glanced over my paperwork and looked up at me. “There is nothing going on in your genitals.” He stated it so flatly I instantly wanted a second opinion. It was the second meanest thing a doctor has told me during this ordeal, only behind my regular doctor assuring me that I have nothing to worry about because “testicular cancer is a disease of young men.” I don’t need a stranger to tell me there is nothing going on in my genitals. I live with them. I know what they are doing at night.
Unfortunately, my ultrasound results weren’t there, so he insisted that I come back on Monday for a follow-up. Monday, as in Christmas Eve. Aren’t Jewish doctors the best? I guess he doesn’t like movies and Chinese food. However, it did take seven weeks for the initial appointment and he is on the American Board of Urology, so I guess I should take whatever appointment I can get. I trotted back down to the city on Christmas Eve, waited once again in his waiting room with several of the same loose characters I saw during my initial visit. He called me in, glanced over my ultrasound, and then waved his hand over it as if performing a magic spell.
“Nothing. There is nothing here. Go home. Enjoy your time. Have fun. I will see you in six months. Maybe there will be something there then.”
And with that my testicular cancer ordeal was over. As definitive as the Supreme Court ruling in Bush Vs. Gore, the process was stopped dead in its tracks. Yes, maybe something else will go wrong in my genitals, but as I will be six months older during the next go round, I am that much further away from testicular cancer. So now there is nothing left to do but sit back, enjoy Diane Keaton reunited with Woody Allen and pronounce my personal Manhattan mystery solved.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Phoenix Rising
It is so hard for me sometimes to know what to write here. I try to at least mention my adventures out on the town. Being something of a hermit, going to a bar is as close to an event as my life has these days. Well, yesterday a deer wandered right up to the bay window in the front of the house and was giving a disapproving glance at my Christmas tree when I spotted her from the kitchen. I really felt for a moment like I was in a Douglas Sirk movie, and not just because light was coming in from every direction at once. But when I went to get my camera, Mike scared the poor animal away. This is what passes for excitement and high drama at my house, so you will understand why a trip to a grungy watering hole is what I choose to write about in my semi-annual blog.
I wonder if grungy is really the right word for the Phoenix, an alt-boy neighborhood bar in the East Village. Seedy doesn't seem appropriate because I never worry about losing my wallet. And it isn't disgusting like The Cock, which in its past location had a bathroom so filthy I preferred instead to urinate outside against a wrought iron fence. That dump really knew how to put the anus in tetanus. Now that the Cock is by some necessity in the Hole (that, as they say, fits), I haven't been there since it moved. I'll just wait for the Health Inspector's final report and a booster shot.
The director Richard Brooks told a great story about making "The Blackboard Jungle" at MGM and how he wanted it to be "gritty" so, for instance, he had them make the walls near the light switches dirty, like in a real life high school. But every night, the old craftsmen of MGM would dutifully paint everything back to a pristine white because that was the MGM way. Most Manhattan gay bars are sophisticated and pristine, like an old MGM movie as are the fussy young queens who go to them. But the Phoenix is gritty, yes that's the word I want, but in just the same manufactured way the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland is dangerous. There is graffiti on the bathroom walls, but it's all very clever and occasionally political or deeply thought. There is a gruff bear of a man in the basement, but he is polite and runs the coat check. So the gay boys can have their sense of life in an old fashioned road house, but still order a fancy mixed drink without getting punched in the face.
The Christmas holiday is right around the corner and that means everyone is escaping the island of Manhattan like it's Paris 1940 and the Nazis are about to march in. And in much the same way, the gays like to have one last drink before they fly off to fly over places where mind-numbing conversations will take place in living rooms crowded with knick knacks and oppressive memories, and the last gay person they will see for a week will be a weary flight attendant more interested in his own frosted tips than your safety in the air.
Mike had just said good bye to his mother, who visited us for a week instead of the other way around, and was certainly in the mood for a night of East Village boys, his favorite kind. I invited him along even though I had really invited myself along. Terry and Jonathan had hatched a plan to hang out there together, but since they hatched the plan on my own Facebook Wall, I felt no compunction about inviting myself and a few friends along as well. As it turns out, that was the right move, as a little rain earlier had caused Cinderella to meet her midnight a little earlier than planned and Terry bailed on the whole thing. That would have left Jonathan alone to hunt his neighborhood haunt, and we can't let that happen, can we? Not right before Christmas!
I invited Zach to come along who insisted he would stay away from the gin and tonic this time around. He brought along his very newly single friend Jon, who looked very familiar to us all, but mostly looked like Zach in five years. The conversation spun easily between the five of us into a roundelay, layering over and over again in its series of recurring themes (the pending election, gay life, 30 Rock, Britney, Manhattan), while past acquaintances of Jonathan's made blatant overtures for rematches that he oh so coyly moved to the txt realm or rebuffed entirely. Meanwhile, Mike was struck by Zach's powerful and rigid stoicism, more than a match for his own blank visage. Jon was bored, and I passed the time waiting to see who I would run into at the bar.
I don't know many people in New York City, and I infrequently go to the Phoenix. But it never fails that someone I know is in that bar! This time around it was Michael, Melissa's contortionist of a roommate, who had shaved his head and packed on easily thirty pounds of muscle. If I were living back in Los Angeles, I would assume that he got a part in a movie and had altered himself for a character role, but in New York, even though he might well be an actor preparing for his Broadway debut, it seemed more likely that he just was tired of the old Michael and decided to make a drastic change. Having worn the same hair style for twenty years now, it is a notion I don't easily understand.
In the end, it turns out that everything else with me was still exactly the same. Outside the coat check, a drunken Jonathan confronted me about my electric blue polo shirt. "I know why you wear blue all the time," he smiled as though revealing a surprising secret. But it was no secret to either of the blue-eyed people in the conversation, whose own vanity led them to the matching color. We got into a competition about the blueness of each other's eyes and I insisted on one-upping him by telling him that my eyes change color with the color around them. Then with great effect, I zipped up my pale grey jacket and Jonathan watched my blue eyes turn pale grey. "I hate you," he said as he turned on his heel and stumbled up the stairs.
It is true that I am often an enormously unlikeable person. I don't know why anyone listens to our radio show. I tell Romaine all the time that we are two of the most unlikeable people ever and then we just laugh about how silly it all is. Maybe people like us together because we are both so horrible that we deserve each other. Out in the real world, my terrible personality keeps my number of close friends conveniently small and my desire to leave the house even smaller. But as long as I have a blog to write and a radio show to do, I will continue to burn my way through modern gay life, rise from the ashes once more, and do it all again the next week.
After all, it is Winter, and we have to keep warm somehow.
I wonder if grungy is really the right word for the Phoenix, an alt-boy neighborhood bar in the East Village. Seedy doesn't seem appropriate because I never worry about losing my wallet. And it isn't disgusting like The Cock, which in its past location had a bathroom so filthy I preferred instead to urinate outside against a wrought iron fence. That dump really knew how to put the anus in tetanus. Now that the Cock is by some necessity in the Hole (that, as they say, fits), I haven't been there since it moved. I'll just wait for the Health Inspector's final report and a booster shot.
The director Richard Brooks told a great story about making "The Blackboard Jungle" at MGM and how he wanted it to be "gritty" so, for instance, he had them make the walls near the light switches dirty, like in a real life high school. But every night, the old craftsmen of MGM would dutifully paint everything back to a pristine white because that was the MGM way. Most Manhattan gay bars are sophisticated and pristine, like an old MGM movie as are the fussy young queens who go to them. But the Phoenix is gritty, yes that's the word I want, but in just the same manufactured way the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland is dangerous. There is graffiti on the bathroom walls, but it's all very clever and occasionally political or deeply thought. There is a gruff bear of a man in the basement, but he is polite and runs the coat check. So the gay boys can have their sense of life in an old fashioned road house, but still order a fancy mixed drink without getting punched in the face.
The Christmas holiday is right around the corner and that means everyone is escaping the island of Manhattan like it's Paris 1940 and the Nazis are about to march in. And in much the same way, the gays like to have one last drink before they fly off to fly over places where mind-numbing conversations will take place in living rooms crowded with knick knacks and oppressive memories, and the last gay person they will see for a week will be a weary flight attendant more interested in his own frosted tips than your safety in the air.
Mike had just said good bye to his mother, who visited us for a week instead of the other way around, and was certainly in the mood for a night of East Village boys, his favorite kind. I invited him along even though I had really invited myself along. Terry and Jonathan had hatched a plan to hang out there together, but since they hatched the plan on my own Facebook Wall, I felt no compunction about inviting myself and a few friends along as well. As it turns out, that was the right move, as a little rain earlier had caused Cinderella to meet her midnight a little earlier than planned and Terry bailed on the whole thing. That would have left Jonathan alone to hunt his neighborhood haunt, and we can't let that happen, can we? Not right before Christmas!
I invited Zach to come along who insisted he would stay away from the gin and tonic this time around. He brought along his very newly single friend Jon, who looked very familiar to us all, but mostly looked like Zach in five years. The conversation spun easily between the five of us into a roundelay, layering over and over again in its series of recurring themes (the pending election, gay life, 30 Rock, Britney, Manhattan), while past acquaintances of Jonathan's made blatant overtures for rematches that he oh so coyly moved to the txt realm or rebuffed entirely. Meanwhile, Mike was struck by Zach's powerful and rigid stoicism, more than a match for his own blank visage. Jon was bored, and I passed the time waiting to see who I would run into at the bar.
I don't know many people in New York City, and I infrequently go to the Phoenix. But it never fails that someone I know is in that bar! This time around it was Michael, Melissa's contortionist of a roommate, who had shaved his head and packed on easily thirty pounds of muscle. If I were living back in Los Angeles, I would assume that he got a part in a movie and had altered himself for a character role, but in New York, even though he might well be an actor preparing for his Broadway debut, it seemed more likely that he just was tired of the old Michael and decided to make a drastic change. Having worn the same hair style for twenty years now, it is a notion I don't easily understand.
In the end, it turns out that everything else with me was still exactly the same. Outside the coat check, a drunken Jonathan confronted me about my electric blue polo shirt. "I know why you wear blue all the time," he smiled as though revealing a surprising secret. But it was no secret to either of the blue-eyed people in the conversation, whose own vanity led them to the matching color. We got into a competition about the blueness of each other's eyes and I insisted on one-upping him by telling him that my eyes change color with the color around them. Then with great effect, I zipped up my pale grey jacket and Jonathan watched my blue eyes turn pale grey. "I hate you," he said as he turned on his heel and stumbled up the stairs.
It is true that I am often an enormously unlikeable person. I don't know why anyone listens to our radio show. I tell Romaine all the time that we are two of the most unlikeable people ever and then we just laugh about how silly it all is. Maybe people like us together because we are both so horrible that we deserve each other. Out in the real world, my terrible personality keeps my number of close friends conveniently small and my desire to leave the house even smaller. But as long as I have a blog to write and a radio show to do, I will continue to burn my way through modern gay life, rise from the ashes once more, and do it all again the next week.
After all, it is Winter, and we have to keep warm somehow.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Out With The New
I think watching old movies might be dangerous for me.
The Hollywood writer's strike has been going on for weeks now and it has finally caught up with us on the small screen. We are fresh out of fresh episodes of our favorite shows. And while some shows will be starting or returning in January (Lost, New Adventures Of Old Christine, American Idol and a thousand other reality/game shows), the momentum built up so far this fall is at an end. As an avid TV viewer, this has put me in a terrible quandary. What am I supposed to do with all this free time and my incredibly honed staring skills?
It is with this in mind that I have recently returned to watching old movies. What can I say? I am a homo, and I love an old movie. Last month was Guest Programmer month on TCM and even though I owned "The Letter" on DVD, I have never actually watched it. But I did TIVO guest programmer Gore Vidal and that film last month and finally this weekend, at a loss for new TV, settled in to watch it. I enjoyed it far more than I thought I would.
I have seen the enormously famous opening and closing scenes a million times, but the whole movie in between was a swift and engaging good time. Somerset Maugham (who I have decided might be my new favorite dead playwright, knowing now that he also wrote the source material for the hilarious Being Julia with Annette Bening) wrote the original play and it starts off rather delightfully with a quiet night on a rubber plantation interrupted by Bette Davis plugging six bullets into a man trying desperately to get away from her. It is all shot very dramatically and powerfully and I thought William Wyler might have used his best tricks in the first two minutes, but the overall film remained sensational right up to Bette's famous final declaration, "With all my heart, I still love the man I killed." Gore said the film still gives him chills, which at his age could honestly be caused by almost anything. But as much as I liked the film, I fear it might stay with me the way other recent old movies have.
I am well known as a soft touch when it comes to the movies. I might have gone to see the most-awful Deep End of the Ocean with Michelle Pfeiffer because I cried TWICE during the trailer ("Children don't get lost. People lose them!"). As much as I love a good comedy, I think I love to cry at a movie even more. I like it best when I cry at a movie you would least expect tears from, like the unexpectedly poignant ending of the Albert Brooks comedy "Defending Your Life." After all, there is no challenge in crying at something like "Dumbo," easily the most gut-wrenching 64 minutes ever committed to celluloid, although it is satisfying just the same.
This week on my train ride, I settled back in to watch "National Velvet" with a young and powerfully earnest Elizabeth Taylor. You can see instantly in the movie why she became a star and her clarity of character is staggering, especially in her scenes with Anne Revere who plays her mother. Taylor breaks your heart in every scene, her pure faith in that wild horse never wavers, and I can usually wring at least five or six cries out of every showing. Even jammed in the drunk train home on Friday night, I freely let the tears flow for all to see. And this is part of the problem.
I let myself become overly involved in this movies, even to points where I don't realize they are influencing me. I am just too susceptible Years ago in Los Angeles, my roommate Eric and I were shopping for wine at Trader Joe's and I picked out a bottle. "I've heard good things about this one," I said, not being a wine drinker myself. "No you haven't." Erik replied flatly, "There is a billboard for it outside our apartment." The moving images on the screen are even more of a draw to me than a flat advertisement under the warm California sun. Eight weeks after a chance purchase of "Christmas In Connecticut" with Barbara Stanwick and dozens of viewings in a row, I abandoned my perfectly comfortable Manhattan apartment for a house in the country with a bay window, a fireplace and a piano. I guess after buying a whole house, running around all the time saying "I know men. Some of my best friends are men" in a throaty rendition of Tallulah Bankhead in "Lifeboat" isn't so bad, but the end result is the same.
Maybe the problem is that I feel out of control in the whole process. The movies are long since finished and in the can, but my life is still malleable and open to broad interpretation. Not that I think that watching a movie will lead me to stand trial for murder, join the circus, or sit out on the open sea for as long as 43 days with a Nazi; it's just that after buying a house and nearly purchasing bad wine, I am filled with some caution. Then again, these movies can also provide important life lessons, like my favorite from "National Velvet":
"Win or lose. It's all the same. And how you take it that counts. And knowing when to let go. Knowing when it's over and time to go on to the next thing. Things come suitable to the time. Enjoy each thing and then forget it and go on to the next. There is a time for everything."
So I guess now is the time for me to watch old movies, and sit in the window box of my room and blog while the deer and squirrels roam through the yard like extras in a Douglas Sirk movie. And then at some point, it will be time for me to do something else. In the meantime, I suppose I can learn some lessons on my own. Like, just because there isn't anything on TV, that doesn't mean I don't have plenty of other things to watch and do. Another Gore Vidal pick "That Hamilton Woman" is sitting in the TIVO now and since it is unlikely that the Queen of Naples will rise from the dead to oversee my affair with Lord Nelson, I think I am safe for the time being.
The Hollywood writer's strike has been going on for weeks now and it has finally caught up with us on the small screen. We are fresh out of fresh episodes of our favorite shows. And while some shows will be starting or returning in January (Lost, New Adventures Of Old Christine, American Idol and a thousand other reality/game shows), the momentum built up so far this fall is at an end. As an avid TV viewer, this has put me in a terrible quandary. What am I supposed to do with all this free time and my incredibly honed staring skills?
It is with this in mind that I have recently returned to watching old movies. What can I say? I am a homo, and I love an old movie. Last month was Guest Programmer month on TCM and even though I owned "The Letter" on DVD, I have never actually watched it. But I did TIVO guest programmer Gore Vidal and that film last month and finally this weekend, at a loss for new TV, settled in to watch it. I enjoyed it far more than I thought I would.
I have seen the enormously famous opening and closing scenes a million times, but the whole movie in between was a swift and engaging good time. Somerset Maugham (who I have decided might be my new favorite dead playwright, knowing now that he also wrote the source material for the hilarious Being Julia with Annette Bening) wrote the original play and it starts off rather delightfully with a quiet night on a rubber plantation interrupted by Bette Davis plugging six bullets into a man trying desperately to get away from her. It is all shot very dramatically and powerfully and I thought William Wyler might have used his best tricks in the first two minutes, but the overall film remained sensational right up to Bette's famous final declaration, "With all my heart, I still love the man I killed." Gore said the film still gives him chills, which at his age could honestly be caused by almost anything. But as much as I liked the film, I fear it might stay with me the way other recent old movies have.
I am well known as a soft touch when it comes to the movies. I might have gone to see the most-awful Deep End of the Ocean with Michelle Pfeiffer because I cried TWICE during the trailer ("Children don't get lost. People lose them!"). As much as I love a good comedy, I think I love to cry at a movie even more. I like it best when I cry at a movie you would least expect tears from, like the unexpectedly poignant ending of the Albert Brooks comedy "Defending Your Life." After all, there is no challenge in crying at something like "Dumbo," easily the most gut-wrenching 64 minutes ever committed to celluloid, although it is satisfying just the same.
This week on my train ride, I settled back in to watch "National Velvet" with a young and powerfully earnest Elizabeth Taylor. You can see instantly in the movie why she became a star and her clarity of character is staggering, especially in her scenes with Anne Revere who plays her mother. Taylor breaks your heart in every scene, her pure faith in that wild horse never wavers, and I can usually wring at least five or six cries out of every showing. Even jammed in the drunk train home on Friday night, I freely let the tears flow for all to see. And this is part of the problem.
I let myself become overly involved in this movies, even to points where I don't realize they are influencing me. I am just too susceptible Years ago in Los Angeles, my roommate Eric and I were shopping for wine at Trader Joe's and I picked out a bottle. "I've heard good things about this one," I said, not being a wine drinker myself. "No you haven't." Erik replied flatly, "There is a billboard for it outside our apartment." The moving images on the screen are even more of a draw to me than a flat advertisement under the warm California sun. Eight weeks after a chance purchase of "Christmas In Connecticut" with Barbara Stanwick and dozens of viewings in a row, I abandoned my perfectly comfortable Manhattan apartment for a house in the country with a bay window, a fireplace and a piano. I guess after buying a whole house, running around all the time saying "I know men. Some of my best friends are men" in a throaty rendition of Tallulah Bankhead in "Lifeboat" isn't so bad, but the end result is the same.
Maybe the problem is that I feel out of control in the whole process. The movies are long since finished and in the can, but my life is still malleable and open to broad interpretation. Not that I think that watching a movie will lead me to stand trial for murder, join the circus, or sit out on the open sea for as long as 43 days with a Nazi; it's just that after buying a house and nearly purchasing bad wine, I am filled with some caution. Then again, these movies can also provide important life lessons, like my favorite from "National Velvet":
"Win or lose. It's all the same. And how you take it that counts. And knowing when to let go. Knowing when it's over and time to go on to the next thing. Things come suitable to the time. Enjoy each thing and then forget it and go on to the next. There is a time for everything."
So I guess now is the time for me to watch old movies, and sit in the window box of my room and blog while the deer and squirrels roam through the yard like extras in a Douglas Sirk movie. And then at some point, it will be time for me to do something else. In the meantime, I suppose I can learn some lessons on my own. Like, just because there isn't anything on TV, that doesn't mean I don't have plenty of other things to watch and do. Another Gore Vidal pick "That Hamilton Woman" is sitting in the TIVO now and since it is unlikely that the Queen of Naples will rise from the dead to oversee my affair with Lord Nelson, I think I am safe for the time being.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
I Fall To Pieces
Years ago, when Romaine and I first started working together, she introduced me to one of her great loves in Manhattan: Pieces. The shoebox of a bar hosts a legendary karaoke night on Tuesdays that is something of a drunken staple. As we were getting to know each other, we would drop by occasionally after the show and I would sit back while Romaine would belt out a favorite country tune, her trusty leather jacket on, a bottle of beer in one hand, the microphone in the other. As time went on, we went to fewer and fewer bars together and my Tuesday nights gravitated to hot boy central at Bowery Bar. Flash forward a few years and in need of somewhere new, I headed instead to somewhere very old.
Hot listener Zach, who recently relocated to New York, wanted to hit the town and had initially suggested Bowery Bar. During his last visit to the city, I took him there on a hot summer night and I suppose he just assumed it was hot every Tuesday night. But Bowery Bar has seasons, which is part of why it has remained the hottest Tuesday night in town for more than a decade. Spring and Fall are the best times to go, weather-wise, and during the summer, when most gay New Yorkers spend their weekends out of town, Bowery Bar is a perfect weeknight opportunity to regroup and exchange notes. But in winter, the giant outdoor patio all but abandoned, Bowery Bar is off the radar, and brave New Yorkers disperse to neighborhood bars that are easier to navigate to in the midst of an ice storm.
I shot down the idea of Bowery Bar and suggested instead that we hang out in a fun midtown bar, conveniently near my office. I wanted Jonathan to join us too, but after spending his entire long weekend with his sister in midtown, he was anxious to explore another part of the city, one would assume in close proximity to his apartment and/or the late night Taco Bell on 14th Street. So I suggested our long ago haunt Pieces. Even though singing was anathema to each of us, it seemed like a fun environment to have a casual drink and pass judgment on strangers. And really, what more do you want in a bar?
I suggested we meet at the studio and head down together. Jonathan had never heard the show so he came an hour early to share in the “magic”. He settled down in Romaine’s usual chair on the other side of the studio while Romaine ran the board. Almost immediately, he pulled out a crossword puzzle and started in on it with his usual intensity and an ink pen. Occasionally, he would chuckle or look up and smile when the show caught his fancy in one ear, but soon he would return to the trials of down and across as we ran out the clock on another show.
As we were walking out, we gathered Zach from the main lobby and the three of us headed for the One train to the heart of the West Village. Along the way, Jonathan and I traded off as tour guides and New York historians, tossing in our own experiences into the mix to give it some humanity. Most of it, like the location of the Stonewall Inn, was already well-known to Zach and with the temperature dropping, we hastened our walk to Pieces.
The bar was just as I remembered it. The narrow entrance was Tailhook Convention-style cruising. The right side devoted to the stage and the devoted sing song regulars. The left side, running the length of the bar itself, was for fresh meat, like us. We immediately took up our position near the stage but decidedly in the fresh meat section. Earlier Jonathan and I had been buzzing like gay hornets about Xanadu and the disappointment that the slim country vignette from the finale was cut from the soundtrack recording as well as the new Broadway show, but Zach was ready for a meaty political conversation better suited to Hardball than gay bar. Jonathan is a political animal like me, so he was happy to pile into the fight. We discussed electability and the fascinating mysteries of the Iowa caucus system.
All the while, Zach was chugging, CHUGGING gin and tonic. As the drinks disappeared he became more and more adamant about mobilizing Jonathan and I to a higher political calling. He is recently out of the Air Force and I think just getting out of the military is a little bit like just coming out of the closet. He is filled with years of pent up gay with a capital “G” energy and he can’t wait to translate it into action now that he no longer has to look over his shoulder. Jonathan and I, much longer in the mix, are far more comfortable with the current state of affairs. But I admire Zach’s pluck and enthusiasm. Jonathan thought his youthful, untainted vigor refreshing and sweet.
As usual, the hour was drawing late. Zach left to get his coat at coat check and I soon followed. When I got there, I thought Zach had already left, but instead I found him getting the bum’s rush from inside the coat check area. Initially I assumed he had lost his claim check and went in to help them find his coat, but apparently, the cigarette break the coat room attendant took was too long and Zach in full military zeal, charged into the coat area to leave no jacket behind. I didn’t realize until that moment just how plastered he was, but I guess the four drinks he had before he arrived at the bar were just too much for his system to bear.
I really should have gone with him to make sure he got home okay, but by the time I told Jonathan I was leaving too, Zach was gone into the night. He ended up sending me a text message in the morning which confirmed that he did in fact get home safely. I said good night to Jonathan hastily and dashed out to find a cab to take me to Grand Central. Mike was already waiting on the drunk train to join me on the long journey home. As I bounced along sixth avenue in the back of the cab trying to ignore the cab TV in the back, it occurred to me that I probably should have made sure Jonathan got home safely too. I really am not a very good friend. Especially since I suspected he was quite intoxicated too. That was only confirmed for me a few minutes later when he sent me a text message of regret that he hadn't dueted to something from Xanadu.
But by then, suddenly, the wheel's were in motion on the train leaving the station. There will be other nights for two bad singers to duet. Xanadu isn't going anywhere, and neither is our friendship. And that's the great thing about a bar like Pieces, and old friends too. You can leave it just where it is and come back, even a few years later and find it exactly the way you left it.
Hot listener Zach, who recently relocated to New York, wanted to hit the town and had initially suggested Bowery Bar. During his last visit to the city, I took him there on a hot summer night and I suppose he just assumed it was hot every Tuesday night. But Bowery Bar has seasons, which is part of why it has remained the hottest Tuesday night in town for more than a decade. Spring and Fall are the best times to go, weather-wise, and during the summer, when most gay New Yorkers spend their weekends out of town, Bowery Bar is a perfect weeknight opportunity to regroup and exchange notes. But in winter, the giant outdoor patio all but abandoned, Bowery Bar is off the radar, and brave New Yorkers disperse to neighborhood bars that are easier to navigate to in the midst of an ice storm.
I shot down the idea of Bowery Bar and suggested instead that we hang out in a fun midtown bar, conveniently near my office. I wanted Jonathan to join us too, but after spending his entire long weekend with his sister in midtown, he was anxious to explore another part of the city, one would assume in close proximity to his apartment and/or the late night Taco Bell on 14th Street. So I suggested our long ago haunt Pieces. Even though singing was anathema to each of us, it seemed like a fun environment to have a casual drink and pass judgment on strangers. And really, what more do you want in a bar?
I suggested we meet at the studio and head down together. Jonathan had never heard the show so he came an hour early to share in the “magic”. He settled down in Romaine’s usual chair on the other side of the studio while Romaine ran the board. Almost immediately, he pulled out a crossword puzzle and started in on it with his usual intensity and an ink pen. Occasionally, he would chuckle or look up and smile when the show caught his fancy in one ear, but soon he would return to the trials of down and across as we ran out the clock on another show.
As we were walking out, we gathered Zach from the main lobby and the three of us headed for the One train to the heart of the West Village. Along the way, Jonathan and I traded off as tour guides and New York historians, tossing in our own experiences into the mix to give it some humanity. Most of it, like the location of the Stonewall Inn, was already well-known to Zach and with the temperature dropping, we hastened our walk to Pieces.
The bar was just as I remembered it. The narrow entrance was Tailhook Convention-style cruising. The right side devoted to the stage and the devoted sing song regulars. The left side, running the length of the bar itself, was for fresh meat, like us. We immediately took up our position near the stage but decidedly in the fresh meat section. Earlier Jonathan and I had been buzzing like gay hornets about Xanadu and the disappointment that the slim country vignette from the finale was cut from the soundtrack recording as well as the new Broadway show, but Zach was ready for a meaty political conversation better suited to Hardball than gay bar. Jonathan is a political animal like me, so he was happy to pile into the fight. We discussed electability and the fascinating mysteries of the Iowa caucus system.
All the while, Zach was chugging, CHUGGING gin and tonic. As the drinks disappeared he became more and more adamant about mobilizing Jonathan and I to a higher political calling. He is recently out of the Air Force and I think just getting out of the military is a little bit like just coming out of the closet. He is filled with years of pent up gay with a capital “G” energy and he can’t wait to translate it into action now that he no longer has to look over his shoulder. Jonathan and I, much longer in the mix, are far more comfortable with the current state of affairs. But I admire Zach’s pluck and enthusiasm. Jonathan thought his youthful, untainted vigor refreshing and sweet.
As usual, the hour was drawing late. Zach left to get his coat at coat check and I soon followed. When I got there, I thought Zach had already left, but instead I found him getting the bum’s rush from inside the coat check area. Initially I assumed he had lost his claim check and went in to help them find his coat, but apparently, the cigarette break the coat room attendant took was too long and Zach in full military zeal, charged into the coat area to leave no jacket behind. I didn’t realize until that moment just how plastered he was, but I guess the four drinks he had before he arrived at the bar were just too much for his system to bear.
I really should have gone with him to make sure he got home okay, but by the time I told Jonathan I was leaving too, Zach was gone into the night. He ended up sending me a text message in the morning which confirmed that he did in fact get home safely. I said good night to Jonathan hastily and dashed out to find a cab to take me to Grand Central. Mike was already waiting on the drunk train to join me on the long journey home. As I bounced along sixth avenue in the back of the cab trying to ignore the cab TV in the back, it occurred to me that I probably should have made sure Jonathan got home safely too. I really am not a very good friend. Especially since I suspected he was quite intoxicated too. That was only confirmed for me a few minutes later when he sent me a text message of regret that he hadn't dueted to something from Xanadu.
But by then, suddenly, the wheel's were in motion on the train leaving the station. There will be other nights for two bad singers to duet. Xanadu isn't going anywhere, and neither is our friendship. And that's the great thing about a bar like Pieces, and old friends too. You can leave it just where it is and come back, even a few years later and find it exactly the way you left it.
Sunday, December 9, 2007
See Or Be Scene It
Jonathan invited me to a party in his apartment tonight. His sister is in town (the one whose face he appears to be licking in one of his Facebook photos) and since she is under 21, he decided staying in to party would be a much better idea. Since it is well-established that we like all of the same things, he felt it was safe to invite me to a Harry Potter-themed party in which we would play Scene It (the Muggles edition) and other fun board games. Since I will take any excuse to hang out with Jonathan and I am highly competitive when it comes to games of all kinds, I was happy to sign on for the adventure. I even dragged Roommate along because I didn't want to him to feel left out or spend the evening home alone on a Saturday night.
We sojourned down to the city and descended on Jonathan's apartment with a regifted bottle of champagne (I have FIVE of them in my house and no one will ever drink them) and a plastic container of 23 store-bought bakery sugar cookies with holiday sprinkles on them (one of them accidentally fell into my mouth while bored in traffic on the West Side Highway). The cookies were a big hit and I am sure Jonathan will find a good home for the champagne this holiday season.
If I may veer off on a non sequitor for a moment... I just don't understand champagne. I have never really been wild about the taste of it (although I am also not a wine person so I am probably not the best judge). It seems fine in mimosas, but a mimosa isn't the kind of drink you can have six of. Really you just have one. The problem with champagne is that it is a commitment issue. Once you open the bottle, you have to finish the whole thing. You can't just put a cap in it again and file it away for later, like a trusty bottle of gin. And given that it is an alcohol that can only be sipped and not chugged or downed in shots, you really need to have something of an enthusiastic crowd to even bother to open the damn thing. For all these reasons, I hate champagne. It is the devil. I hope Jonathan likes it, or passes it along because I am certain now that champagne has become the 21st century version of the Christmas fruitcake.
Jonathan was already half in the bag when we arrived, which is just how I like a man. We are so alike, I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised when I discovered he also throws a party in the same way I do: unnecessarily intensely. Like Robert DeNiro sweeping dirt into a dustpan. So much anxiety over nothing. I wasn't there five minutes before he said, "Are you going to sit down? You just standing there is making me nervous." I felt like I was having an out of body experience. It's a dull cliche but he literally took the words right out of my mouth.
We settled in fairly quickly to a deeply nerdy game of Scene It devoted entirely to Harry Potter. I think I would enjoy (and would win handily) in a regulation game of Scene It, but although I liked the films, I only saw them once, and really couldn't remember any salient details that might have helped me out in this immediate circumstance. In between, there were plenty of jazzy conversational bits about other pop culture phenomenons and I was right in the mix with all of those. A discussion about an upcoming version of the Veggie Tales on the big screen led to my best line of the night:
"I thought after the Terri Schiavo case, the Christians were done with Veggie Tales."
It got a mixed reaction from the crowd. Maybe it was too soon. After all, my comparison a few moments later of Courtney on Survivor to a Holocaust victim went over like classic Don Rickles in Vegas, so it was definitely a group that appreciated more daring material. Jonathan laughed heartily at all my jokes which is all I really ask for in life.
Terry was there as well, although he was anxious to escape the house party at a reasonable hour and hit the bars. Roommate sat out the Harry Potter game and tried to enjoy whatever was happening on the TV screen while also desiring to join Terry in his planned escape from the fun. Unfortunately, Terry wanted to go to Barracuda, which I have previously established is a cluster fuck nightmare now that I am just too old to deal with anymore. I am convinced that one of these nights, just like the mythical rat king on 30 rock, a knot of gays will become so entangled in their own egos and drama that they will be unable to pull away and will just have to fight each other to the death to escape.
The Harry Potter portion of the evening over, Terry Goldman bailed to meet up with people who were still interested in getting laid on a Saturday night. The gaming at Jonathan's then turned to something much more up my alley: Namesake. Jonathan had raved about this game before when he first invited me over for the party. He had played it in the past and loved it so much, he found one on eBay (it is out of circulation) and bought it. In the game, much like the early scene in the movie Go where the checkers battle each other to name a famous person who's name starts with X to decide who will work the cash register, players must name famous people in a series of categories with particular first names. Jonathan's entire pop culture canon can be perfectly summed up in his illuminating examples for the name "Ethel": Ethel Mertz, Ethel Merman, or Ethel Rosenberg." Namesake could be the new gay version of the Rorschach test. I'll tell you a first name, and you tell me the first famous person that comes to mind.
I loved the game because it was right up my alley. My brain is like a dusty attic filled with old, broken pieces of pop culture just waiting to be brushed off and sat on the front lawn for strangers to bid on in a mixture of shock and wonderment. Roommate on the other hand was in a new circle of hell. It was all the things he hated most in life: socializing with people and being put on the spot about pop culture. Plus, the TV was tuned to endless episodes of "I Love New York," a show that represents everything he can't stand about the darkest low points of his beloved TV programming universe.
Unfortunately, the structure of the game play and general intoxication made the experience last for hours longer than necessary. It is always a bad idea to play board games with drunk people. They have no sense of time passing, which is always a problem, and their slowed reaction times can make something as simple as picking up and reading a card off the board take ten minutes. At two am, perilously close to the end of the game anyway, there was a general movement to call it quits and head home. It was getting late, and my earlier off-hand suggestion of Taco Bell was looking more and more necessary. Jonathan was also in the mood for making a run to the border, so he closed up his party and joined us on our fourth meal adventure.
The Taco Bell on 14th street is open until 5am on Saturday nights and by 2:30 when we arrived, the scene was in full swing. The crowd was almost entirely straight, and a mix between drunk twenty-somethings needing a greasy bite and teenagers with nowhere else to go. I suggested to Roommate that it would make a perfect video podcast. Fourth Meal: A Late Night Soap Opera. So much drama was played out between bites of chalupas that you wouldn't need to do much more than set up a camera and start shooting. Jonathan and I engaged in a deep conversation about the shared sitcom structures of I Love Lucy and the Golden Girls (did you know they both shot on the same sound stage? True!) while, to paraphrase The Remains of the Day, Roommate put his thoughts elsewhere while we prattled on endlessly.
And then, just as soon as it began, it was time to call it a night. We dropped Jonathan off and made our way back out of the city. Okay, so Roommate didn't have the best time but tonight was just the way I like it. And it was nice for a change to be at a party and not spend the whole evening worrying if everyone had enough to eat or drink. Jonathan said once that he thought he would be me in a few years. Having seen how he throws a party, I think he is already me in far too many ways. But I don't mind it, if he doesn't.
We sojourned down to the city and descended on Jonathan's apartment with a regifted bottle of champagne (I have FIVE of them in my house and no one will ever drink them) and a plastic container of 23 store-bought bakery sugar cookies with holiday sprinkles on them (one of them accidentally fell into my mouth while bored in traffic on the West Side Highway). The cookies were a big hit and I am sure Jonathan will find a good home for the champagne this holiday season.
If I may veer off on a non sequitor for a moment... I just don't understand champagne. I have never really been wild about the taste of it (although I am also not a wine person so I am probably not the best judge). It seems fine in mimosas, but a mimosa isn't the kind of drink you can have six of. Really you just have one. The problem with champagne is that it is a commitment issue. Once you open the bottle, you have to finish the whole thing. You can't just put a cap in it again and file it away for later, like a trusty bottle of gin. And given that it is an alcohol that can only be sipped and not chugged or downed in shots, you really need to have something of an enthusiastic crowd to even bother to open the damn thing. For all these reasons, I hate champagne. It is the devil. I hope Jonathan likes it, or passes it along because I am certain now that champagne has become the 21st century version of the Christmas fruitcake.
Jonathan was already half in the bag when we arrived, which is just how I like a man. We are so alike, I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised when I discovered he also throws a party in the same way I do: unnecessarily intensely. Like Robert DeNiro sweeping dirt into a dustpan. So much anxiety over nothing. I wasn't there five minutes before he said, "Are you going to sit down? You just standing there is making me nervous." I felt like I was having an out of body experience. It's a dull cliche but he literally took the words right out of my mouth.
We settled in fairly quickly to a deeply nerdy game of Scene It devoted entirely to Harry Potter. I think I would enjoy (and would win handily) in a regulation game of Scene It, but although I liked the films, I only saw them once, and really couldn't remember any salient details that might have helped me out in this immediate circumstance. In between, there were plenty of jazzy conversational bits about other pop culture phenomenons and I was right in the mix with all of those. A discussion about an upcoming version of the Veggie Tales on the big screen led to my best line of the night:
"I thought after the Terri Schiavo case, the Christians were done with Veggie Tales."
It got a mixed reaction from the crowd. Maybe it was too soon. After all, my comparison a few moments later of Courtney on Survivor to a Holocaust victim went over like classic Don Rickles in Vegas, so it was definitely a group that appreciated more daring material. Jonathan laughed heartily at all my jokes which is all I really ask for in life.
Terry was there as well, although he was anxious to escape the house party at a reasonable hour and hit the bars. Roommate sat out the Harry Potter game and tried to enjoy whatever was happening on the TV screen while also desiring to join Terry in his planned escape from the fun. Unfortunately, Terry wanted to go to Barracuda, which I have previously established is a cluster fuck nightmare now that I am just too old to deal with anymore. I am convinced that one of these nights, just like the mythical rat king on 30 rock, a knot of gays will become so entangled in their own egos and drama that they will be unable to pull away and will just have to fight each other to the death to escape.
The Harry Potter portion of the evening over, Terry Goldman bailed to meet up with people who were still interested in getting laid on a Saturday night. The gaming at Jonathan's then turned to something much more up my alley: Namesake. Jonathan had raved about this game before when he first invited me over for the party. He had played it in the past and loved it so much, he found one on eBay (it is out of circulation) and bought it. In the game, much like the early scene in the movie Go where the checkers battle each other to name a famous person who's name starts with X to decide who will work the cash register, players must name famous people in a series of categories with particular first names. Jonathan's entire pop culture canon can be perfectly summed up in his illuminating examples for the name "Ethel": Ethel Mertz, Ethel Merman, or Ethel Rosenberg." Namesake could be the new gay version of the Rorschach test. I'll tell you a first name, and you tell me the first famous person that comes to mind.
I loved the game because it was right up my alley. My brain is like a dusty attic filled with old, broken pieces of pop culture just waiting to be brushed off and sat on the front lawn for strangers to bid on in a mixture of shock and wonderment. Roommate on the other hand was in a new circle of hell. It was all the things he hated most in life: socializing with people and being put on the spot about pop culture. Plus, the TV was tuned to endless episodes of "I Love New York," a show that represents everything he can't stand about the darkest low points of his beloved TV programming universe.
Unfortunately, the structure of the game play and general intoxication made the experience last for hours longer than necessary. It is always a bad idea to play board games with drunk people. They have no sense of time passing, which is always a problem, and their slowed reaction times can make something as simple as picking up and reading a card off the board take ten minutes. At two am, perilously close to the end of the game anyway, there was a general movement to call it quits and head home. It was getting late, and my earlier off-hand suggestion of Taco Bell was looking more and more necessary. Jonathan was also in the mood for making a run to the border, so he closed up his party and joined us on our fourth meal adventure.
The Taco Bell on 14th street is open until 5am on Saturday nights and by 2:30 when we arrived, the scene was in full swing. The crowd was almost entirely straight, and a mix between drunk twenty-somethings needing a greasy bite and teenagers with nowhere else to go. I suggested to Roommate that it would make a perfect video podcast. Fourth Meal: A Late Night Soap Opera. So much drama was played out between bites of chalupas that you wouldn't need to do much more than set up a camera and start shooting. Jonathan and I engaged in a deep conversation about the shared sitcom structures of I Love Lucy and the Golden Girls (did you know they both shot on the same sound stage? True!) while, to paraphrase The Remains of the Day, Roommate put his thoughts elsewhere while we prattled on endlessly.
And then, just as soon as it began, it was time to call it a night. We dropped Jonathan off and made our way back out of the city. Okay, so Roommate didn't have the best time but tonight was just the way I like it. And it was nice for a change to be at a party and not spend the whole evening worrying if everyone had enough to eat or drink. Jonathan said once that he thought he would be me in a few years. Having seen how he throws a party, I think he is already me in far too many ways. But I don't mind it, if he doesn't.
Saturday, December 8, 2007
Meeting Face To Facebook
I have been spending a lot of time on Facebook.com lately. So, MySpace.com, if you are reading this, you know where I have been most nights these past few weeks. I hope you won't be mad. It's not you. It's me.
My first online social love was Friendster.com in 2003 and it was a glorious adventure. Friendster is a dream for stalking people, which is why I link to it so liberally in my blog. It's always the first and easiest place to find anyone you casually bump into at a party or meet at Bowery Bar. I was one of the first gay adopters of Friendster in NYC (Hell, one of the first adopters period -- user number 2876 thank you very much) so I like to think I personally turned it into the server crashing nightmare it was when most everyone I know abandoned it a few months later. I still keep my Friendster profile up and, to a certain degree, running, but it is a little bit like colonial Williamsburg now. A functioning place trapped in the past.
I dabbled a bit in Connexion.org land. The nice thing about Connexion: no straight people! If you saw a cute guy, he was a homo. The downside was that he was probably a Denver homo, but a homo just the same. Connexion seemed mostly to be a quickie Friendster knockoff with a political edge to it. It can also be useful for online stalking, but functionally much less interesting than Friendster. Connexion is basically Friendster's slutty kid sister. Different, younger, faster, but still sharing a LOT of the same DNA.
After the radio show launched, music artists kept raving about MySpace.com. I resisted because it seemed like something for the kids. But guests on the show kept talking about what a great organizing tool it was and how useful in informing fans of upcoming events and new developments. So as a show, we jumped in feet first. We each made profiles and we even created a show profile. When I launched my video podcast, it got a page too! Soon, MySpace became the space for me to wallow in during all my free time. True, I was lax in updating my top eight friends, and any new changes there just caused grumblings from those who got dropped or never were included.
I don't know why MySpace became the rock that everyone's ego shattered on, but such was the case when people didn't rank where they thought they should. I have no patience for this. I was only on there for the show, so why would I highlight friends and family who have no connection to the show at all? It is a skewed perspective on what my life is. A public profile for a public life. But private people didn't always see it that way.
More recently, the invites to join Facebook started coming in droves. As soon as it opened up outside its college core, I had to start avoiding the requests like they were calls from creditors. If MySpace was for the kids, Facebook (in my mind) was for the babies. There was no way in hell I was joining a primarily college network. The offers kept coming and serious friends tried to assure me that it was a place for grown-ups. I wasn't buying it. But then everything changed at the Gay Life Expo.
There was much chatter from Terry Goldman and friends about Facebook. Cast in the Doubting Thomas role, I threw myself into the part body and soul. But Jonathan made me see the light. During the course of our brief conversation I determined that we liked the same TV shows and he was even reading "The Nine," which like the Alexander Hamilton Exhibit at the Natural History Museum in 2005, I had been meaning to check out for weeks but had not gotten around to it. So, with his credibility firmly in place, he persuaded me with the final, crucial piece of information that changed my mind: you can play Scrabble on Facebook.
Now my waking hours are spent cramming QI into triple word scores on Scrabulous and battling Australian high school students on Bogglific. I am practically untouchable at Boggle so it is nice to have an outlet for that since Games.com got so sketchy after 9/11. Scrabble is another matter and I remain ever vulnerable to endless defeat as my romantic side is always lured to the fancy word over the high point score. Story of my life. Go for the joke or the bit instead of the money or ambition. Since Jonathan is the reason I joined Facebook, I spend an enormous amount of time being beaten by him at Scrabulous. Not only does he have a fancy education (you know Johns Hopkins is a good school because they throw in that extra S to confuse and thus weed out the idiots), but he is smarter than I am. He does the Sunday Times Crossword in ink, which I would likely only attempt after a pitcher of mimosas and no will to live.
However, I like to think my quick wit has the upper hand. In between rounds of Scrabble, I spend a lot of time leafing through his many photos looking for snappy photo caption opportunties. A photo of Jonathan smiling from inside an apple tree gets "Lot of fruit in that tree" while a strict rectangular pattern of flowers in a garden is declared "The Tomb of the Unknown Florist." He has a strange habit of being photographed with weird blank expressions where his mouth is hanging open which has led to an unfortunate string of captions related to short buses and the Special Olympics. This is probably all just passive-aggressive misery on my part at being bested constantly on the Scrabble board, but mostly I just amuse myself endlessly. He seems enormously patient while I commit this travesty on his treasured photo memories and I apreciate that.
With all of the applications on Facebook, it is easy to kill thousands of hours in a single day without even noticing. Yes, some of them are mildly irritating (do we really need more than one travelled world map application?) while others are downright bizarre (nevermind, the obvious gay angle to my profile, why does Compare People keep asking me if I would rather marry my sister or my sister-in-law? What kind of choice is that?). My friend Alex Kang just keeps lashing out in all directions on Facebook with status updates that started casually enough ("Alex is thinking he still don't "get" Facebook. What do people do on here besides send vampire bites to one another? Do we not have any thing better to do?"), progressed a bit ("Alex is so bored with this site. And he doesn't want to be bitten by vampires, or given eggs to hatch, or the millions of other pointless stuff on this site.") and now borders on mutiny ("Alex is tired of comparing people, stripper naming and defining himself. Is this ALL there is to Facebook?").
Personally I am willing to judge this Facebook by it's cover. It's a game of modern socialism. A website for people with tons of time of their hands (i.e. college students and adult gay men with high powered careers). None of us have kids of our own, so why not just play in the sandbox a little while longer. Lighten up, Alex. Maybe a few rounds of Scrabble will help balance out your Qi.
See? I am learning something! Johns Hopkins here I come!
My first online social love was Friendster.com in 2003 and it was a glorious adventure. Friendster is a dream for stalking people, which is why I link to it so liberally in my blog. It's always the first and easiest place to find anyone you casually bump into at a party or meet at Bowery Bar. I was one of the first gay adopters of Friendster in NYC (Hell, one of the first adopters period -- user number 2876 thank you very much) so I like to think I personally turned it into the server crashing nightmare it was when most everyone I know abandoned it a few months later. I still keep my Friendster profile up and, to a certain degree, running, but it is a little bit like colonial Williamsburg now. A functioning place trapped in the past.
I dabbled a bit in Connexion.org land. The nice thing about Connexion: no straight people! If you saw a cute guy, he was a homo. The downside was that he was probably a Denver homo, but a homo just the same. Connexion seemed mostly to be a quickie Friendster knockoff with a political edge to it. It can also be useful for online stalking, but functionally much less interesting than Friendster. Connexion is basically Friendster's slutty kid sister. Different, younger, faster, but still sharing a LOT of the same DNA.
After the radio show launched, music artists kept raving about MySpace.com. I resisted because it seemed like something for the kids. But guests on the show kept talking about what a great organizing tool it was and how useful in informing fans of upcoming events and new developments. So as a show, we jumped in feet first. We each made profiles and we even created a show profile. When I launched my video podcast, it got a page too! Soon, MySpace became the space for me to wallow in during all my free time. True, I was lax in updating my top eight friends, and any new changes there just caused grumblings from those who got dropped or never were included.
I don't know why MySpace became the rock that everyone's ego shattered on, but such was the case when people didn't rank where they thought they should. I have no patience for this. I was only on there for the show, so why would I highlight friends and family who have no connection to the show at all? It is a skewed perspective on what my life is. A public profile for a public life. But private people didn't always see it that way.
More recently, the invites to join Facebook started coming in droves. As soon as it opened up outside its college core, I had to start avoiding the requests like they were calls from creditors. If MySpace was for the kids, Facebook (in my mind) was for the babies. There was no way in hell I was joining a primarily college network. The offers kept coming and serious friends tried to assure me that it was a place for grown-ups. I wasn't buying it. But then everything changed at the Gay Life Expo.
There was much chatter from Terry Goldman and friends about Facebook. Cast in the Doubting Thomas role, I threw myself into the part body and soul. But Jonathan made me see the light. During the course of our brief conversation I determined that we liked the same TV shows and he was even reading "The Nine," which like the Alexander Hamilton Exhibit at the Natural History Museum in 2005, I had been meaning to check out for weeks but had not gotten around to it. So, with his credibility firmly in place, he persuaded me with the final, crucial piece of information that changed my mind: you can play Scrabble on Facebook.
Now my waking hours are spent cramming QI into triple word scores on Scrabulous and battling Australian high school students on Bogglific. I am practically untouchable at Boggle so it is nice to have an outlet for that since Games.com got so sketchy after 9/11. Scrabble is another matter and I remain ever vulnerable to endless defeat as my romantic side is always lured to the fancy word over the high point score. Story of my life. Go for the joke or the bit instead of the money or ambition. Since Jonathan is the reason I joined Facebook, I spend an enormous amount of time being beaten by him at Scrabulous. Not only does he have a fancy education (you know Johns Hopkins is a good school because they throw in that extra S to confuse and thus weed out the idiots), but he is smarter than I am. He does the Sunday Times Crossword in ink, which I would likely only attempt after a pitcher of mimosas and no will to live.
However, I like to think my quick wit has the upper hand. In between rounds of Scrabble, I spend a lot of time leafing through his many photos looking for snappy photo caption opportunties. A photo of Jonathan smiling from inside an apple tree gets "Lot of fruit in that tree" while a strict rectangular pattern of flowers in a garden is declared "The Tomb of the Unknown Florist." He has a strange habit of being photographed with weird blank expressions where his mouth is hanging open which has led to an unfortunate string of captions related to short buses and the Special Olympics. This is probably all just passive-aggressive misery on my part at being bested constantly on the Scrabble board, but mostly I just amuse myself endlessly. He seems enormously patient while I commit this travesty on his treasured photo memories and I apreciate that.
With all of the applications on Facebook, it is easy to kill thousands of hours in a single day without even noticing. Yes, some of them are mildly irritating (do we really need more than one travelled world map application?) while others are downright bizarre (nevermind, the obvious gay angle to my profile, why does Compare People keep asking me if I would rather marry my sister or my sister-in-law? What kind of choice is that?). My friend Alex Kang just keeps lashing out in all directions on Facebook with status updates that started casually enough ("Alex is thinking he still don't "get" Facebook. What do people do on here besides send vampire bites to one another? Do we not have any thing better to do?"), progressed a bit ("Alex is so bored with this site. And he doesn't want to be bitten by vampires, or given eggs to hatch, or the millions of other pointless stuff on this site.") and now borders on mutiny ("Alex is tired of comparing people, stripper naming and defining himself. Is this ALL there is to Facebook?").
Personally I am willing to judge this Facebook by it's cover. It's a game of modern socialism. A website for people with tons of time of their hands (i.e. college students and adult gay men with high powered careers). None of us have kids of our own, so why not just play in the sandbox a little while longer. Lighten up, Alex. Maybe a few rounds of Scrabble will help balance out your Qi.
See? I am learning something! Johns Hopkins here I come!
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Back To The Future
Hollywood, USA. April 1996
I am on top of the world. As I blogged before, I have my insanely cushy job at SONY, working Special Events on the old MGM lot. I am making more money than I had ever made in my whole life. I had access to awesome swag (Mary Rielly nightshirt, anyone?) and I was able to get my long suffering friends into glamorous movie premieres featuring big stars (Peter Weller! Neve Campbell! Ricki Lake!). And yet, all of my wildest dreams coming true didn't make me the least bit happy. If anything, it just made me more sad. And then, after only nine months of glitz and excitement, I was unemployed again, a combination of my own lack of ambition and a boss hopped up on Phen-Fen. What followed was a manic-depressive summer of highs (sex with Mitch) and lows (a string of low paying crap temp jobs), yet a collision-course that sent me careening into the career I have today. Subsequent years of intense alcohol abuse would normally be enough to wipe it all away, but now it comes flooding back like Christina Applegate's memories on Samantha Who? thanks to my good friend Paul Horne's retro blog: The Horneblower.
Holed up for two months in a string of world class spas in Thailand with nothing better to do than dredge up the past and report on the seedy present, Paul has finally put his creativity and vast tech savvy to good use. I highly recommend his current and past blog, although for me, the joy and the heartache are all in the past. Things begin with a bang in the premiere issue with our attendance at the Sharon Stone naked Oscar bid "Last Dance" which Paul describes as "In a nutshell: Sharon Stone/Death Row/Made-for-TV Movie. I could barely hear the film over Derek's snoring, but from the wisp of a plot I could find, you could cut the tension with a gossamer thread. I did think the anguish of the death penalty debate was effectively "fleshed out" when a prime witness--who happened to be a stripper--could only answer questions while gyrating in pasties over Rob Morrow. " It was not however "our movie" (studio speak for a film we had made). I had met Jeff Hare a few weeks earlier. We were both publicists at studios (I at Columbia-TriStar, he at Disney) so we agreed to swap movie premiere invites. He sent us off to "Last Dance" at the Director's Guild and I think I was able to return the favor once before I got shit canned three weeks later. I don't remember sleeping through the movie but pretty much everything else, from Faye Dunaway alphabetizing the candy to Sharon Stone's death stares on our way out, feels completely accurate.
As I leaf through his blog, I can feel the countdown to my demise at SONY. The following week, we are at the premiere of "The Craft," my last movie at the studio, and I was once again talent escorting, this time at the VH-1 Honors. Although as I recall, I got there late or they didn't have an assignment for me or something because I have no recollection of the event outside of waiting behind the Universal Amphitheater for a shuttle bus. See! The alcohol is working! Just so long as I never decide to write a memoir. I click the link to week three and bam!, I am already unemployed.
Paul makes no mention of it but when I see his movie review for Twister "Ooooh... windy. If you can't see it now on a big screen with a big audience and surround sound, then wait for the ride at Universal." I know exactly what week it is. I am fired but don't care because I have tons of money saved up and in severance, and I have just reconnected with Mitch. Our fateful meeting for coffee at The Abbey (remember when they used to serve coffee) turned quickly into five solid hours of sweaty sex in his apartment. I could have stayed all night, but in those pre-Moviefone days, my unemployed ass had agreed to buy everyone's tickets that morning at the Chinese Theater and everyone's Friday night fun at the opening night of Twister was sitting in my shoe on the floor.
However, I don't dwell on what happened to my life for long because I am quickly drawn into Paul's classic, brilliant stories including "You Can't Throw It Away -- It's A Cookie" (scroll down). But he really hit his stride with "Cafe Gal." The Horneblower led to an extremely brief stint as a columnist, writing "Enough About You" for Detour until the magazine folded (though not before his brilliant first column Starbuckers appeared). Then undaunted by the failure of Detour he went and launched his own magazine HERO.
It is fun to look back on it all now. The cutting edge technology of it all. Email newsletters! Cellular phones! My own AOL Keyword! Janeane Garofalo, movie star! I can't regret anything that happened there because it all set in motion the life I have today. Paul is back writing, and the technology has improved quite a bit since then. Now its RSS feeds instead of emails, blogs instead of newsletters. I am still friends with Jeff Hare, who left Disney for Warner Bros., but never did invite me back to another premiere. And I still have my Mary Rielly nightshirt. I kept it all these years and for a reason that didn't even exist back in April 1996.
eBay.
I am on top of the world. As I blogged before, I have my insanely cushy job at SONY, working Special Events on the old MGM lot. I am making more money than I had ever made in my whole life. I had access to awesome swag (Mary Rielly nightshirt, anyone?) and I was able to get my long suffering friends into glamorous movie premieres featuring big stars (Peter Weller! Neve Campbell! Ricki Lake!). And yet, all of my wildest dreams coming true didn't make me the least bit happy. If anything, it just made me more sad. And then, after only nine months of glitz and excitement, I was unemployed again, a combination of my own lack of ambition and a boss hopped up on Phen-Fen. What followed was a manic-depressive summer of highs (sex with Mitch) and lows (a string of low paying crap temp jobs), yet a collision-course that sent me careening into the career I have today. Subsequent years of intense alcohol abuse would normally be enough to wipe it all away, but now it comes flooding back like Christina Applegate's memories on Samantha Who? thanks to my good friend Paul Horne's retro blog: The Horneblower.
Holed up for two months in a string of world class spas in Thailand with nothing better to do than dredge up the past and report on the seedy present, Paul has finally put his creativity and vast tech savvy to good use. I highly recommend his current and past blog, although for me, the joy and the heartache are all in the past. Things begin with a bang in the premiere issue with our attendance at the Sharon Stone naked Oscar bid "Last Dance" which Paul describes as "In a nutshell: Sharon Stone/Death Row/Made-for-TV Movie. I could barely hear the film over Derek's snoring, but from the wisp of a plot I could find, you could cut the tension with a gossamer thread. I did think the anguish of the death penalty debate was effectively "fleshed out" when a prime witness--who happened to be a stripper--could only answer questions while gyrating in pasties over Rob Morrow. " It was not however "our movie" (studio speak for a film we had made). I had met Jeff Hare a few weeks earlier. We were both publicists at studios (I at Columbia-TriStar, he at Disney) so we agreed to swap movie premiere invites. He sent us off to "Last Dance" at the Director's Guild and I think I was able to return the favor once before I got shit canned three weeks later. I don't remember sleeping through the movie but pretty much everything else, from Faye Dunaway alphabetizing the candy to Sharon Stone's death stares on our way out, feels completely accurate.
As I leaf through his blog, I can feel the countdown to my demise at SONY. The following week, we are at the premiere of "The Craft," my last movie at the studio, and I was once again talent escorting, this time at the VH-1 Honors. Although as I recall, I got there late or they didn't have an assignment for me or something because I have no recollection of the event outside of waiting behind the Universal Amphitheater for a shuttle bus. See! The alcohol is working! Just so long as I never decide to write a memoir. I click the link to week three and bam!, I am already unemployed.
Paul makes no mention of it but when I see his movie review for Twister "Ooooh... windy. If you can't see it now on a big screen with a big audience and surround sound, then wait for the ride at Universal." I know exactly what week it is. I am fired but don't care because I have tons of money saved up and in severance, and I have just reconnected with Mitch. Our fateful meeting for coffee at The Abbey (remember when they used to serve coffee) turned quickly into five solid hours of sweaty sex in his apartment. I could have stayed all night, but in those pre-Moviefone days, my unemployed ass had agreed to buy everyone's tickets that morning at the Chinese Theater and everyone's Friday night fun at the opening night of Twister was sitting in my shoe on the floor.
However, I don't dwell on what happened to my life for long because I am quickly drawn into Paul's classic, brilliant stories including "You Can't Throw It Away -- It's A Cookie" (scroll down). But he really hit his stride with "Cafe Gal." The Horneblower led to an extremely brief stint as a columnist, writing "Enough About You" for Detour until the magazine folded (though not before his brilliant first column Starbuckers appeared). Then undaunted by the failure of Detour he went and launched his own magazine HERO.
It is fun to look back on it all now. The cutting edge technology of it all. Email newsletters! Cellular phones! My own AOL Keyword! Janeane Garofalo, movie star! I can't regret anything that happened there because it all set in motion the life I have today. Paul is back writing, and the technology has improved quite a bit since then. Now its RSS feeds instead of emails, blogs instead of newsletters. I am still friends with Jeff Hare, who left Disney for Warner Bros., but never did invite me back to another premiere. And I still have my Mary Rielly nightshirt. I kept it all these years and for a reason that didn't even exist back in April 1996.
eBay.
Monday, December 3, 2007
Puttin' On The Ritz
I am a hermit. But I look like the party planner from Sears compared to my roommate Mike. Mike never likes to leave the house, nor does he like to meet new people. Two weeks ago, when D-A-N tried to engage him in conversation he did his best impression of a cigar store Indian and D-A-N beat it on the lam. I don’t think his boyish charm is used to such a stoic rebuff. So when Mike announced earlier this week that he had been invited to a party, I campaigned like Tracy Flick for him to attend.
Apparently some of the guys from work were having a “So Bad It’s Good” holiday movie party. Being the forceful encourager, I naturally had to attend the party as well, thus guaranteeing Mike would go. Plus, ever since we stopped working together, whenever Mike talks about life at the office, I feel like he is describing a favorite TV show on a channel my cable company doesn’t offer anymore (Seriously FiOS, why no MSNBC????). Unfortunately, median ages dropped like an anvil in a Tex Avery cartoon since I left the company four years ago, and I walked into the youngest group of people I have seen since a high school class toured through SIRIUS last month.
It was a straight party, which was for the best. It is bad enough looking across the room and seeing a cute guy, it’s worse to think he is precisely half your age. At least in a room full of straight people, I could just concentrate on the bad movies at hand and not worry about my libido. We walked in during the finale of Jack Frost, a cheesy horror flick about a serial killer whose DNA accidentally bonds with snow and turns him into a murderous snowman. The effects were about on the level of a third grade play at a very nice public school. Once the film was over, we watched 60 minutes of classic TV show intros as an intermission before the next feature, along with some remodeled intros from a heavenly site called FatalFarm.com (The Facts of Life is my favorite, followed by Cheers, but honestly they are all pretty terrific).
In many ways, it was like attending a party in the future. The house had computers hooked up to the TVs and everything ran off the Xbox 360. It was Hollywood’s worst nightmare of copyright infringements gone amok, but I have to say, it was all so delightfully easy. The second feature was “Silent Night, Deadly Night” about a sweet boy named Billy who becomes convinced that Santa Claus is a killer doling out death to the naughty. Later, he grows up to be a sexy, troubled teen, who went forced to play Santa in a wildly overstaffed corner toy store, assumes the identity himself and goes on a murderous rampage. Along the way, we learn that no one owns a bra and nuns are pretty useless. Hilarity, as they say, ensues.
The film stars Robert Brian Wilson as the sexy deranged teen, an actor last seen in an episode of Jake and the Fat Man. His shirtless moments refocused my libido away from the sexy teens at the party and his wilderness of a hairy ass in his one complete nude scene reminded us instantly that this was 1984, no matter how futuristic the party was otherwise. The movie wasn’t that bad, although the filmmakers clearly had a massive hard-on for Psycho and borrowed liberally from the plot and shot list. The budget of the movie however was so low that at one point a woman refrains from breaking a storefront window to escape because they clearly couldn’t afford the replacement cost.
After the party, Mike and I left to find Jonathan who had been in Brooklyn but by then was partying it up at The Ritz. I had never heard of the bar, but it has only been open for six months, which is fast for me to discover a hip new place. We walked in to the familiar strains of Salt N Pepa doing “Push It” while an early twenty-something crowd giggled with oldies hits delight. At the bar, a fifty year old balding man in a fuzzy short fur coat and rings on each finger clutched a glass of red wine while ogling the bartender’s exposed torso. “That’s me in five years.” I whispered in Mike’s ear, although his askance glance told me it was closer than I thought. From across the bar, I spotted the back of Jonathan’s head moving toward the upstairs. I pushed through the twinks and made my way up the narrow staircase and greeted him in the calmer oasis of the second floor lounge.
Jonathan had already been drinking all night and his “Frak Me” t-shirt seemed less a come on than a declaration of sheer exhaustion. We chatted once again about all of our favorite shows, which is easy to do since we love all the same shows. In fact, I have yet to find anything that we don’t agree on. He is even excited about my Friday night murder ladies (aka ABC’s Women’s Murder Club). The show has been called Sex and the City in a morgue but it’s more like the episode of the Golden Girls where Dorothy solves the murder mystery, but with expensive shoes and a winter color palette. I implored Jonathan to search YouTube for stray clips of my childhood love “Partners In Crime” and sealed the deal with an anecdote about stars Loni Anderson and Lynda Carter wandering into a San Francisco theater and being mistaken for drag queens. We laughed. We shared a Coke and the belief that Diet Coke makes you fat.
It turns out that Jonathan lives mere steps away from the straight party we had attended earlier in the evening. And even though it was out of the way, since we were parked right outside The Ritz, I assured him it would be no trouble to give him a ride home. It is freezing outside now after all. And the journey back downtown allowed Mike and I to be once again in the vicinity of the Taco Bell on 14th Street. Unlikely earlier in the evening when ye just joked about abandoning hope and all entering here, at 2am we did just that. Along with Battlestar Galactica, Veronica Mars, and Arrested Development, Jonathan also shares our love of the bell and a pair of grilled stuft burritos and a soft taco later, we were back on our way downtown.
Jonathan safely dropped off, and our greasiest cravings sated, Mike and I headed back up into suburbia. Okay, so maybe the party didn’t help either of our social skills. We could have stared at a bad movie just as easily at home and skipped the BBQ chips they served. But we did visit a new gay bar. True, Jonathan is already over it, citing its inconsistent DJing, capped by a 30 minute long version of Gimme More. But we ventured out of our comfort zone and down into the secret world of social people. So that has to count for something. Besides, it was the last night before the snow comes, and there will be time enough for hibernating now that winter is officially here.
Apparently some of the guys from work were having a “So Bad It’s Good” holiday movie party. Being the forceful encourager, I naturally had to attend the party as well, thus guaranteeing Mike would go. Plus, ever since we stopped working together, whenever Mike talks about life at the office, I feel like he is describing a favorite TV show on a channel my cable company doesn’t offer anymore (Seriously FiOS, why no MSNBC????). Unfortunately, median ages dropped like an anvil in a Tex Avery cartoon since I left the company four years ago, and I walked into the youngest group of people I have seen since a high school class toured through SIRIUS last month.
It was a straight party, which was for the best. It is bad enough looking across the room and seeing a cute guy, it’s worse to think he is precisely half your age. At least in a room full of straight people, I could just concentrate on the bad movies at hand and not worry about my libido. We walked in during the finale of Jack Frost, a cheesy horror flick about a serial killer whose DNA accidentally bonds with snow and turns him into a murderous snowman. The effects were about on the level of a third grade play at a very nice public school. Once the film was over, we watched 60 minutes of classic TV show intros as an intermission before the next feature, along with some remodeled intros from a heavenly site called FatalFarm.com (The Facts of Life is my favorite, followed by Cheers, but honestly they are all pretty terrific).
In many ways, it was like attending a party in the future. The house had computers hooked up to the TVs and everything ran off the Xbox 360. It was Hollywood’s worst nightmare of copyright infringements gone amok, but I have to say, it was all so delightfully easy. The second feature was “Silent Night, Deadly Night” about a sweet boy named Billy who becomes convinced that Santa Claus is a killer doling out death to the naughty. Later, he grows up to be a sexy, troubled teen, who went forced to play Santa in a wildly overstaffed corner toy store, assumes the identity himself and goes on a murderous rampage. Along the way, we learn that no one owns a bra and nuns are pretty useless. Hilarity, as they say, ensues.
The film stars Robert Brian Wilson as the sexy deranged teen, an actor last seen in an episode of Jake and the Fat Man. His shirtless moments refocused my libido away from the sexy teens at the party and his wilderness of a hairy ass in his one complete nude scene reminded us instantly that this was 1984, no matter how futuristic the party was otherwise. The movie wasn’t that bad, although the filmmakers clearly had a massive hard-on for Psycho and borrowed liberally from the plot and shot list. The budget of the movie however was so low that at one point a woman refrains from breaking a storefront window to escape because they clearly couldn’t afford the replacement cost.
After the party, Mike and I left to find Jonathan who had been in Brooklyn but by then was partying it up at The Ritz. I had never heard of the bar, but it has only been open for six months, which is fast for me to discover a hip new place. We walked in to the familiar strains of Salt N Pepa doing “Push It” while an early twenty-something crowd giggled with oldies hits delight. At the bar, a fifty year old balding man in a fuzzy short fur coat and rings on each finger clutched a glass of red wine while ogling the bartender’s exposed torso. “That’s me in five years.” I whispered in Mike’s ear, although his askance glance told me it was closer than I thought. From across the bar, I spotted the back of Jonathan’s head moving toward the upstairs. I pushed through the twinks and made my way up the narrow staircase and greeted him in the calmer oasis of the second floor lounge.
Jonathan had already been drinking all night and his “Frak Me” t-shirt seemed less a come on than a declaration of sheer exhaustion. We chatted once again about all of our favorite shows, which is easy to do since we love all the same shows. In fact, I have yet to find anything that we don’t agree on. He is even excited about my Friday night murder ladies (aka ABC’s Women’s Murder Club). The show has been called Sex and the City in a morgue but it’s more like the episode of the Golden Girls where Dorothy solves the murder mystery, but with expensive shoes and a winter color palette. I implored Jonathan to search YouTube for stray clips of my childhood love “Partners In Crime” and sealed the deal with an anecdote about stars Loni Anderson and Lynda Carter wandering into a San Francisco theater and being mistaken for drag queens. We laughed. We shared a Coke and the belief that Diet Coke makes you fat.
It turns out that Jonathan lives mere steps away from the straight party we had attended earlier in the evening. And even though it was out of the way, since we were parked right outside The Ritz, I assured him it would be no trouble to give him a ride home. It is freezing outside now after all. And the journey back downtown allowed Mike and I to be once again in the vicinity of the Taco Bell on 14th Street. Unlikely earlier in the evening when ye just joked about abandoning hope and all entering here, at 2am we did just that. Along with Battlestar Galactica, Veronica Mars, and Arrested Development, Jonathan also shares our love of the bell and a pair of grilled stuft burritos and a soft taco later, we were back on our way downtown.
Jonathan safely dropped off, and our greasiest cravings sated, Mike and I headed back up into suburbia. Okay, so maybe the party didn’t help either of our social skills. We could have stared at a bad movie just as easily at home and skipped the BBQ chips they served. But we did visit a new gay bar. True, Jonathan is already over it, citing its inconsistent DJing, capped by a 30 minute long version of Gimme More. But we ventured out of our comfort zone and down into the secret world of social people. So that has to count for something. Besides, it was the last night before the snow comes, and there will be time enough for hibernating now that winter is officially here.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Jingle Balls
I am a double Scorpio with a Gemini moon. This is my way of excusing my intensely private nature. Even though I have spent the last decade writing about my life and half that time talking about it daily on the radio, there are still vast aspects of my life I prefer to keep to myself. In the finale of Six Degrees Of Separation, I find my life’s thesis. I too am not interested in reducing (and thereby diminishing) every aspect of my life to a witty anecdote, parsed out at luncheons and swank cocktail parties. But in this case, I am willing to make an exception because I am an inveterate storyteller and can’t pass up the opportunity to tell what I think is a particularly entertaining tale about myself, no matter how personal it might be.
A few weeks ago, I was in the throes of another birthday. I don’t relish getting older, but as my mother has always insisted based on no evidence whatsoever, it beats the alternative. So it was in this mindset that as I was soaping up carefully in the shower, I found a lump in one of my testicles. Normally, I am a vigorous sudser, working myself up into a lathered frenzy. But just days earlier I had strained my back while aggressively shampooing (still better than the alternative? I wonder) so I was trying to be a little more cautious. In my lack of haste, the lump became apparent and right there in the shower the end of my life flashed before my eyes. Cancer! Balls chopped off. Chemotherapy. My beloved hair in clumps in my hands. If Sweeney Todd had left a straight razor in my shower, I’d be dead right now.
Hurried scans through webmd.com and Wikipedia assured me that even if it was cancer, it was 95% curable and likely would only require one of my balls to be chopped off. In this case, I mused, it would beat the alternative. But since I live in the world of worst case scenarios, I prepared myself to hear six months to live when I saw my doctor a few weeks later. I scheduled an appointment as soon as I could but in the meantime, I did have a previously scheduled dermatologist appointment. So I figured, one doctor was as good as another in doling out the bad news. So when my dermatologist asked “Is there anything else?” I happily journeyed outside his specialty with him and encouraged him to rummage around in my junk like it was a yard sale and see if he could find anything worthwhile.
My dermatologist, ever a good sport, obliged my mania and felt me up. He groped behind my left testicle and felt what I felt. He opined that it was probably nothing but that I should keep my appointment with my regular doctor and have him run some tests. The following week, I was in my regular doctor’s office, my underwear around my ankles, my junk on display again. This time, my doctor had real difficulty finding specifically what I was freaked out about. He said he felt a “fullness” but not a mass, which he suspected was not cancer. Besides, he assured me with all late 30s of me hanging out for the world to see, that testicular cancer is a cancer of the young and therefore probably not a worry for me. So he ran some tests and gave me a referral for a scrotal ultrasound and a visit to the urologist.
I know that some men guard their genitals like they are state secrets in a time of war. Personally, I have never understood the notion of being pee shy. Yes, it is annoying when you are trying to urinate in a gay bar and some guy leans over so far you start to know what a drinking fountain must feel like. But as a rule, if someone wants to see my cock and balls, what do I care? I am perfectly content with them, so have a look. It’s not like I haven’t been looked at before. When it comes to disrobing for doctors, I am even less shy. In order to work successfully in retail, you have to take the attitude that the money changing hands is not the same as the money in your wallet, and I imagine genitals are the same way for health care professionals. They dispassionately count it out and put it back in the drawer, like a bank teller in a white coat. This attitude was seriously tested however at the ultrasound.
First of all, since it was an ultrasound, I journeyed to a women’s clinic and naturally was the only man sitting there. Having seen plenty of medical shows, I knew how an ultrasound worked, and I imagined that running that wand over my balls would be a fairly zippy procedure. I was directed to a small changing room where a shorty pink robe awaited me. I changed and dashed across the sterile hallway to the exam room. Being nervous always activates my already weak bladder, so the second I laid down I had to pee. But it was already too late. I had to just go for it and hope that I didn’t accidentally pee all over myself in the midst of the exam.
The ultrasound technician was a very nice young black woman and the first woman since being a baby to manhandle the goods. She was very dignified about it, casually draping a large paper napkin over my genitals and directing me to slide it up over my stomach so that my penis could be simultaneously covered and pulled out of the way. I described my lump and where it was and then she set about to map my reproductive system like a cartographer. She squeezed the gooey ultrasound gel on my balls like ReddiWip. The wanding went on for what seemed like forever, and on top of wanting to pee, I also had the desperate urge to fart too, which I knew would be the height of rudeness with her hand on my balls. So like my terror, I held it all inside while I tried to read her blank expression for sudden signs of cancer discovery. Her expression never changed and after twenty minutes of mapping she asked me to point out directly where the bad lump touched me. I pointed it out and she went over it from every angle. “I am just going to show your film to the doctor and then we should be all done.” She declared dispassionately and left me alone in the room.
Moments later, a nice Asian lady who looked to be about 14 years of age came in and announced that she was the doctor. She told me that she had looked over my ultrasound but was still unclear about the location of this lump I left. I rummaged around in my junk like it was a disorganized handbag trying to find what I was looking for. The gel made grasping any part of my balls slippery work, like trying to rescue a panicked bird from an oil slick. In my fevered attempts, I had significant trouble finding it myself. I tried staying on my back, then moving onto my side, and finally, standing up. At this point, I abandoned all hope of dignity and just let my junk swing in the wind as my hand molested my ball sack. “I am not crazy. I know it’s in here,” I insisted, filled with panic that she would now think I was some kind of weirdo that got off on exposing himself to the ladies in a medical setting.
We both looked at the monitor together. “That’s your testicle” she told me, pointing to an egg shaped pale mass. I marveled at what a perfect oval I had, which temporarily distracted me. There was a sea of darkness next to it. “Those are blood vessels over there. It seems like you just have a lot of blood vessels, which might be what you are feeling. It is not uncommon to have extra blood vessels it is just unusual that you just now noticed it. But we will send off the results to your doctor in the next four days and he will go over it with you.”
"Big blood vessels," I thought as I put my clothes back on, gingerly trying to avoid getting the gel that was all over my hands and balls on the rest of my outfit. Maybe I had a blood clot in there and at some point it will travel from my balls to my brain and give me a stroke! Sometimes you don’t even need to consult a doctor or the internet to get crazy ideas. So I will see my urologist and my regular doctor in the coming weeks and likely will hear that the only issue with my balls is a lack of symmetry. Not the worst thing that ever happened to anyone. As usual, the worst things in my life are happening in my own head and my genitals are merely supporting players in the larger drama of my life. But I guess it beats the alternative.
A few weeks ago, I was in the throes of another birthday. I don’t relish getting older, but as my mother has always insisted based on no evidence whatsoever, it beats the alternative. So it was in this mindset that as I was soaping up carefully in the shower, I found a lump in one of my testicles. Normally, I am a vigorous sudser, working myself up into a lathered frenzy. But just days earlier I had strained my back while aggressively shampooing (still better than the alternative? I wonder) so I was trying to be a little more cautious. In my lack of haste, the lump became apparent and right there in the shower the end of my life flashed before my eyes. Cancer! Balls chopped off. Chemotherapy. My beloved hair in clumps in my hands. If Sweeney Todd had left a straight razor in my shower, I’d be dead right now.
Hurried scans through webmd.com and Wikipedia assured me that even if it was cancer, it was 95% curable and likely would only require one of my balls to be chopped off. In this case, I mused, it would beat the alternative. But since I live in the world of worst case scenarios, I prepared myself to hear six months to live when I saw my doctor a few weeks later. I scheduled an appointment as soon as I could but in the meantime, I did have a previously scheduled dermatologist appointment. So I figured, one doctor was as good as another in doling out the bad news. So when my dermatologist asked “Is there anything else?” I happily journeyed outside his specialty with him and encouraged him to rummage around in my junk like it was a yard sale and see if he could find anything worthwhile.
My dermatologist, ever a good sport, obliged my mania and felt me up. He groped behind my left testicle and felt what I felt. He opined that it was probably nothing but that I should keep my appointment with my regular doctor and have him run some tests. The following week, I was in my regular doctor’s office, my underwear around my ankles, my junk on display again. This time, my doctor had real difficulty finding specifically what I was freaked out about. He said he felt a “fullness” but not a mass, which he suspected was not cancer. Besides, he assured me with all late 30s of me hanging out for the world to see, that testicular cancer is a cancer of the young and therefore probably not a worry for me. So he ran some tests and gave me a referral for a scrotal ultrasound and a visit to the urologist.
I know that some men guard their genitals like they are state secrets in a time of war. Personally, I have never understood the notion of being pee shy. Yes, it is annoying when you are trying to urinate in a gay bar and some guy leans over so far you start to know what a drinking fountain must feel like. But as a rule, if someone wants to see my cock and balls, what do I care? I am perfectly content with them, so have a look. It’s not like I haven’t been looked at before. When it comes to disrobing for doctors, I am even less shy. In order to work successfully in retail, you have to take the attitude that the money changing hands is not the same as the money in your wallet, and I imagine genitals are the same way for health care professionals. They dispassionately count it out and put it back in the drawer, like a bank teller in a white coat. This attitude was seriously tested however at the ultrasound.
First of all, since it was an ultrasound, I journeyed to a women’s clinic and naturally was the only man sitting there. Having seen plenty of medical shows, I knew how an ultrasound worked, and I imagined that running that wand over my balls would be a fairly zippy procedure. I was directed to a small changing room where a shorty pink robe awaited me. I changed and dashed across the sterile hallway to the exam room. Being nervous always activates my already weak bladder, so the second I laid down I had to pee. But it was already too late. I had to just go for it and hope that I didn’t accidentally pee all over myself in the midst of the exam.
The ultrasound technician was a very nice young black woman and the first woman since being a baby to manhandle the goods. She was very dignified about it, casually draping a large paper napkin over my genitals and directing me to slide it up over my stomach so that my penis could be simultaneously covered and pulled out of the way. I described my lump and where it was and then she set about to map my reproductive system like a cartographer. She squeezed the gooey ultrasound gel on my balls like ReddiWip. The wanding went on for what seemed like forever, and on top of wanting to pee, I also had the desperate urge to fart too, which I knew would be the height of rudeness with her hand on my balls. So like my terror, I held it all inside while I tried to read her blank expression for sudden signs of cancer discovery. Her expression never changed and after twenty minutes of mapping she asked me to point out directly where the bad lump touched me. I pointed it out and she went over it from every angle. “I am just going to show your film to the doctor and then we should be all done.” She declared dispassionately and left me alone in the room.
Moments later, a nice Asian lady who looked to be about 14 years of age came in and announced that she was the doctor. She told me that she had looked over my ultrasound but was still unclear about the location of this lump I left. I rummaged around in my junk like it was a disorganized handbag trying to find what I was looking for. The gel made grasping any part of my balls slippery work, like trying to rescue a panicked bird from an oil slick. In my fevered attempts, I had significant trouble finding it myself. I tried staying on my back, then moving onto my side, and finally, standing up. At this point, I abandoned all hope of dignity and just let my junk swing in the wind as my hand molested my ball sack. “I am not crazy. I know it’s in here,” I insisted, filled with panic that she would now think I was some kind of weirdo that got off on exposing himself to the ladies in a medical setting.
We both looked at the monitor together. “That’s your testicle” she told me, pointing to an egg shaped pale mass. I marveled at what a perfect oval I had, which temporarily distracted me. There was a sea of darkness next to it. “Those are blood vessels over there. It seems like you just have a lot of blood vessels, which might be what you are feeling. It is not uncommon to have extra blood vessels it is just unusual that you just now noticed it. But we will send off the results to your doctor in the next four days and he will go over it with you.”
"Big blood vessels," I thought as I put my clothes back on, gingerly trying to avoid getting the gel that was all over my hands and balls on the rest of my outfit. Maybe I had a blood clot in there and at some point it will travel from my balls to my brain and give me a stroke! Sometimes you don’t even need to consult a doctor or the internet to get crazy ideas. So I will see my urologist and my regular doctor in the coming weeks and likely will hear that the only issue with my balls is a lack of symmetry. Not the worst thing that ever happened to anyone. As usual, the worst things in my life are happening in my own head and my genitals are merely supporting players in the larger drama of my life. But I guess it beats the alternative.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Party Delayed Is Party Denied
I hadn’t heard from D-A-N in a couple of weeks. We had lunch at elmo, which I thought I had never been to before, until I arrived and like most places in the world, I had been there many times (including Perez Hilton’s 2005 birthday party) but hadn’t remembered. Then two weeks later, he returned from flight training in New Hampshire and invited me to a party. You know me, always ready to meet strangers; though I am trying, after seven years of living in New York, to expand my friend base to a more reasonable size. Read: more than three. But then D-A-N got sick and we rescheduled for our usual hangout at Bowery Bar on Tuesday night.
I arrived at 10:45 but D-A-N was running even later than I was. “You are probably used to that from me by now,” he told me when I saw him later, and as a chronically late person myself I was full of forgiveness. Fortunately, I ran into Charlie, scoping the place for hotties with his lawyer friend Evan. Charlie was lamenting that it wasn’t very crowded (“It’s like a Thursday here.”) which I chalked up to the plunging temperatures. Bowery Bar is a fair weather friend. As the crowd began to thicken like so much turkey gravy, Charlie noticed unhappily that all of the guys outside were smoking. I tried to explain that they were outside because they could smoke and it was too cold outside for anyone who didn’t need to be out there to be out there. My logic did not satisfy him in the least and he dismissed my explanation with a stern yet youthfully unlined expression. I turned my attention to Evan who was my kind of guy (which means he laughed at all my jokes). Charlie would occasionally wend back into the conversation with a query when he heard Evan laughing, but as you know, nothing improves a joke like explaining it. Even then, Charlie greeted my stories with the displeasure of possibly missing his future ex-husband just to hear my uneducated musings on depraved indifference as debated on Law & Order.
Mike arrived from work and soon Evan and Charlie slipped into the crowd in hopes of finding some non-smokers to attend to briefly but vigorously. At that moment, I spied Ben Harvey’s co-host Dave Rubin as he walked in. He saw me too and slowly made his way through the cluster of gay men to join me under the searing heat lamp for a brief conversation. There is just something about that Dave that makes me want to do dirty, oh so dirty, things to him. Most guys, I see them and like Dennis Hensley has often said, I just want to roll a ball back and forth on a floor or splash along the shore with them in an Amy Grant video circa 1990. But something about Dave, the intensity of his gaze, the firm brow, his sexuality so casual in its roughness, that makes me want to tear his clothes off and toss around like pudding wrestlers. His cadence and square jaw are straight out of Dashiell Hammett, and who in their right mind wouldn’t want to fuck the shit out of that?
The literal grilling under the heat lamp was too much for Dave and he had to return to his friends. I finally spotted D-A-N so we made our finally farewells and I headed back into the more temperate warmth of Bowery Bar. D-A-N was there with his usual cadre of friends. I liked Pedro the best because, like Evan, he laughed at my jokes. D-A-N was wearing a tight t-shirt as usual and cut his hair a bit shorter, although his dashing superman swirl is still intact. Hanging out with him in public is so difficult because he is always surrounded by a devoted fan base. He seems to be the homecoming king of Bowery Bar so it is hard not to feel like you are on the receiving line. Of course it was even worse for Mike, who ran quickly from the melee of muscles to find a nearby perch. So being a good friend, which I generally am not, I left D-A-N to his autograph signing and hung out with Mike.
We talked about the crowd and Mike related an overheard conversation from a balding 25 year old who had insisted to his friend that the guy cruising him was too old for him. “He thinks you are his age, that’s why!” I blurted out, Karen Walker spilling from me after only one rum and coke. I also spent a great deal of the evening making snide comments about all of the tweed caps that seem to be in fashion these days. Some of the highlights included: “Somebody loves Newsies!” and “Hey boy. Perchance have you the Saturday Evening Post?”
D-A-N wondered why I had wandered away so I told him I was trying to be a good friend to Mike. That caused him to decamp from his dark corner and drag his hot guy posse out into our neck of the woods. He tried to engage Mike in conversation but Mike was in Buckingham Palace guard mode and D-A-N was instantly thwarted. Really all D-A-N wanted to do was fucking dance, but Bowery Bar tossed a new set of banquets into the center of the room making unlawful gyrations even more difficult than usual. He tried to get me a drink but once again the evening was cut short by that pesky drunk train home. I love my new house upstate but what a kill joy it is to have to go home at 1am, even if it is a school night.
Whatever. D-A-N had plenty of men to keep him warm and I am sure if he started to dance hard enough, the crowd would make the space for him. No one likes to be the one to stand in the way of a hot guy having a good time. And speaking of hot guys, Conor was there too. He had friends with him as well (I only remember the names Michael and Eric because every gay is named Michael or Eric). But my time with him was oh so brief. Stationed close to the bar so his hand was never empty for long, I only saw him in passing on my way to the bar for a refill and off to the bathroom to complete the cycle. He is off to Boston for Thanksgiving tomorrow, and soon D-A-N is off to Boston to fly away for good. But in the meantime, we can pass like drunken ships in the night around the iceberg known as Bowery Bar. It is already too late in the season for that outdoor venue, so it is probably for the best that we are all packing it in for the time being. But why not one last drink?
I arrived at 10:45 but D-A-N was running even later than I was. “You are probably used to that from me by now,” he told me when I saw him later, and as a chronically late person myself I was full of forgiveness. Fortunately, I ran into Charlie, scoping the place for hotties with his lawyer friend Evan. Charlie was lamenting that it wasn’t very crowded (“It’s like a Thursday here.”) which I chalked up to the plunging temperatures. Bowery Bar is a fair weather friend. As the crowd began to thicken like so much turkey gravy, Charlie noticed unhappily that all of the guys outside were smoking. I tried to explain that they were outside because they could smoke and it was too cold outside for anyone who didn’t need to be out there to be out there. My logic did not satisfy him in the least and he dismissed my explanation with a stern yet youthfully unlined expression. I turned my attention to Evan who was my kind of guy (which means he laughed at all my jokes). Charlie would occasionally wend back into the conversation with a query when he heard Evan laughing, but as you know, nothing improves a joke like explaining it. Even then, Charlie greeted my stories with the displeasure of possibly missing his future ex-husband just to hear my uneducated musings on depraved indifference as debated on Law & Order.
Mike arrived from work and soon Evan and Charlie slipped into the crowd in hopes of finding some non-smokers to attend to briefly but vigorously. At that moment, I spied Ben Harvey’s co-host Dave Rubin as he walked in. He saw me too and slowly made his way through the cluster of gay men to join me under the searing heat lamp for a brief conversation. There is just something about that Dave that makes me want to do dirty, oh so dirty, things to him. Most guys, I see them and like Dennis Hensley has often said, I just want to roll a ball back and forth on a floor or splash along the shore with them in an Amy Grant video circa 1990. But something about Dave, the intensity of his gaze, the firm brow, his sexuality so casual in its roughness, that makes me want to tear his clothes off and toss around like pudding wrestlers. His cadence and square jaw are straight out of Dashiell Hammett, and who in their right mind wouldn’t want to fuck the shit out of that?
The literal grilling under the heat lamp was too much for Dave and he had to return to his friends. I finally spotted D-A-N so we made our finally farewells and I headed back into the more temperate warmth of Bowery Bar. D-A-N was there with his usual cadre of friends. I liked Pedro the best because, like Evan, he laughed at my jokes. D-A-N was wearing a tight t-shirt as usual and cut his hair a bit shorter, although his dashing superman swirl is still intact. Hanging out with him in public is so difficult because he is always surrounded by a devoted fan base. He seems to be the homecoming king of Bowery Bar so it is hard not to feel like you are on the receiving line. Of course it was even worse for Mike, who ran quickly from the melee of muscles to find a nearby perch. So being a good friend, which I generally am not, I left D-A-N to his autograph signing and hung out with Mike.
We talked about the crowd and Mike related an overheard conversation from a balding 25 year old who had insisted to his friend that the guy cruising him was too old for him. “He thinks you are his age, that’s why!” I blurted out, Karen Walker spilling from me after only one rum and coke. I also spent a great deal of the evening making snide comments about all of the tweed caps that seem to be in fashion these days. Some of the highlights included: “Somebody loves Newsies!” and “Hey boy. Perchance have you the Saturday Evening Post?”
D-A-N wondered why I had wandered away so I told him I was trying to be a good friend to Mike. That caused him to decamp from his dark corner and drag his hot guy posse out into our neck of the woods. He tried to engage Mike in conversation but Mike was in Buckingham Palace guard mode and D-A-N was instantly thwarted. Really all D-A-N wanted to do was fucking dance, but Bowery Bar tossed a new set of banquets into the center of the room making unlawful gyrations even more difficult than usual. He tried to get me a drink but once again the evening was cut short by that pesky drunk train home. I love my new house upstate but what a kill joy it is to have to go home at 1am, even if it is a school night.
Whatever. D-A-N had plenty of men to keep him warm and I am sure if he started to dance hard enough, the crowd would make the space for him. No one likes to be the one to stand in the way of a hot guy having a good time. And speaking of hot guys, Conor was there too. He had friends with him as well (I only remember the names Michael and Eric because every gay is named Michael or Eric). But my time with him was oh so brief. Stationed close to the bar so his hand was never empty for long, I only saw him in passing on my way to the bar for a refill and off to the bathroom to complete the cycle. He is off to Boston for Thanksgiving tomorrow, and soon D-A-N is off to Boston to fly away for good. But in the meantime, we can pass like drunken ships in the night around the iceberg known as Bowery Bar. It is already too late in the season for that outdoor venue, so it is probably for the best that we are all packing it in for the time being. But why not one last drink?
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Jeopardy Hot
Sporty Spice (Cyd) and Dental Dan (Dan) had their annual autumn party tonight and I never miss it. Cyd and Dan are a dream couple, the kind of storybook relationship tailor-made for TV news profiles and conniving bitches hell bent on home-wrecking. After all, the only thing the gays love more than a hot man is someone else’s hot man. With Cyd and Dan, you get two for the price of one. Anyone wishing to break them up (pay attention Charlie) would be barking up the wrong tree, as they are as right for each other as any two people I have ever met. Plus, they are the perfect party hosts.
When I ran into Mark Levine at Therapy last month, my first instinct was to drag him to Cyd and Dan’s annual event. They know virtually every attractive thirty-something guy in Manhattan, and a new man on the scene is bound to find lifelong friendships and at least a few exes at the Autumn Party. I also endeavored to bring Ben Harvey because he had wanted to meet Mark after the tireless cheerleading I have done on his behalf, as well as Cyd and Dan, who he encountered briefly at my housewarming lounging in matching sweatshirts on Adirondack chairs in the back yard while basking in the afterglow of cheese-filled hot dogs.
Ben, Mark and I met up on a familiar corner in the heart of Chelsea before dashing through the forty degree weather. Despite my legendary reputation for shorts and t-shirts under all circumstances in Los Angeles, I don’t fuck around with the cold in New York. I arrived bundled up in my snow parka, looking like an arctic explorer. Ben looked adorable as always and deceptively dressed in light layers over thermals. Mark, still getting used to winter again, just threw on layer after layer until he seemed sufficiently protected from the elements. Once at the party Mark started stripping like Gypsy Rose Lee, which only served to endear him to everyone. By the time he left, he was down to just a clingy t-shirt and jeans.
As usual, their elegantly appointed apartment was packed wall-to-wall with sexy gay men. In the spirit of diversity, a sprinkling of women decorated the otherwise masculine turn out. Cyd and Dan had tirelessly decorated with genuinely adorable fall decorations, virtually invisible to the increasingly intoxicated homos struggling to make eye contact and work up the courage to talk to guys they had seen in the same apartment time and again, party after party. One of those men, Sebastian, cornered me in the kitchen to ask if I was the one who had left the clever response to the eVite in which I said I would be hanging out with Dan in the VIP Room (which in this case was the bedroom, for the Super Bowl party it’s the kitchen). Generally their parties are so crowded; I tend to gravitate to the least crowded location, which is often where I find Dan.
It was all going well until Cory walked in and turned out to be the most pleasant surprise of the night. I last saw Cory at the closing ceremonies for the AIDS Ride, where I was cheering on Chip Arndt. I have written before about his eyebrows and his granite forehead, but it has been so hard for me to fully describe him. I think his face most reminds me of that of the Statue of Liberty, the only national icon I share a birthday with (sorry Julia Roberts). I have always felt a certain kinship with the lady in the harbor and I guess it spills over to Cory. His Masters Degree in Public Policy from Harvard is just the icing on the intellectual cake.
We talked about life and politics (he is just about to move to DC to take a new job) and it was a total delight. By quite some measure the longest conversation we have ever had and it was as rich as I thought it might be. When talk turned to Jeopardy, he too had noticed Alex Trebek’s flirtation with one of the college contestants. I then introduced him to the concept of being “Jeopardy Hot” which is a man who is hot entirely in the context of being on Jeopardy. Outside the nerdy confines of the popular game show, he would just be of normal attractiveness. But when you watch geek after nerd doling out the questions, a Jeopardy Hot guy is a welcome sight. Mike and I use the subtle distinction of Hot and Jeopardy Hot in conversation all the time, as it comes in handy constantly.
After three parties in a row as the last one left in Cyd and Dan’s apartment, I was adamant about not making it four. The party thinned out like hair in a Propecia ad and I hastily rounded up Cory, his friend Jeff, and Ben to continue our fun around the corner at Barracuda. Mark had already gone home, as had 95% of the partygoers, so I knew I had to strike while the iron was hot. Moments later, we were again packed like sardines in a sea of gay men, trying to get a drink at the bar. In between half listening to the hot 80s hits playing in the background (Major Tom, Neverending Story, Hazy Shade Of Winter), Cory and I continued our in-depth conversation about my favorite subject I never get to subject my radio audience to: politics.
Since Cory is from Iowa, I grilled him about the current political climate there. I am always curious about first-hand accounts and Cory was ambivalent about the candidates, a state of mind he also attributed to the rest of the state. I have been riveted to the debates and the tightness of the race, especially among the democrats. Unfortunately, Cory wasn’t able to resolve it for me before he ran home for the night. As usual, it was my cue to leave as well. The damned drunk train was calling again, as it always is. I left Ben in the capable hands of his cousin, who had met us all out at Barracuda, and dashed off into a cab to Grand Central. Two nights in a row of going out has taken its toll on me, and I can’t wait to climb into bed. It’s the weekend and a chilly one at that. I look forward to a party of one, relaxing in my living room, far from the roaring seas of gay men, the political fray of Washington and most importantly, the leering glances of Alex Trebek, where the only Hot I need to worry about is the heat from the crackling fire in the fireplace.
When I ran into Mark Levine at Therapy last month, my first instinct was to drag him to Cyd and Dan’s annual event. They know virtually every attractive thirty-something guy in Manhattan, and a new man on the scene is bound to find lifelong friendships and at least a few exes at the Autumn Party. I also endeavored to bring Ben Harvey because he had wanted to meet Mark after the tireless cheerleading I have done on his behalf, as well as Cyd and Dan, who he encountered briefly at my housewarming lounging in matching sweatshirts on Adirondack chairs in the back yard while basking in the afterglow of cheese-filled hot dogs.
Ben, Mark and I met up on a familiar corner in the heart of Chelsea before dashing through the forty degree weather. Despite my legendary reputation for shorts and t-shirts under all circumstances in Los Angeles, I don’t fuck around with the cold in New York. I arrived bundled up in my snow parka, looking like an arctic explorer. Ben looked adorable as always and deceptively dressed in light layers over thermals. Mark, still getting used to winter again, just threw on layer after layer until he seemed sufficiently protected from the elements. Once at the party Mark started stripping like Gypsy Rose Lee, which only served to endear him to everyone. By the time he left, he was down to just a clingy t-shirt and jeans.
As usual, their elegantly appointed apartment was packed wall-to-wall with sexy gay men. In the spirit of diversity, a sprinkling of women decorated the otherwise masculine turn out. Cyd and Dan had tirelessly decorated with genuinely adorable fall decorations, virtually invisible to the increasingly intoxicated homos struggling to make eye contact and work up the courage to talk to guys they had seen in the same apartment time and again, party after party. One of those men, Sebastian, cornered me in the kitchen to ask if I was the one who had left the clever response to the eVite in which I said I would be hanging out with Dan in the VIP Room (which in this case was the bedroom, for the Super Bowl party it’s the kitchen). Generally their parties are so crowded; I tend to gravitate to the least crowded location, which is often where I find Dan.
It was all going well until Cory walked in and turned out to be the most pleasant surprise of the night. I last saw Cory at the closing ceremonies for the AIDS Ride, where I was cheering on Chip Arndt. I have written before about his eyebrows and his granite forehead, but it has been so hard for me to fully describe him. I think his face most reminds me of that of the Statue of Liberty, the only national icon I share a birthday with (sorry Julia Roberts). I have always felt a certain kinship with the lady in the harbor and I guess it spills over to Cory. His Masters Degree in Public Policy from Harvard is just the icing on the intellectual cake.
We talked about life and politics (he is just about to move to DC to take a new job) and it was a total delight. By quite some measure the longest conversation we have ever had and it was as rich as I thought it might be. When talk turned to Jeopardy, he too had noticed Alex Trebek’s flirtation with one of the college contestants. I then introduced him to the concept of being “Jeopardy Hot” which is a man who is hot entirely in the context of being on Jeopardy. Outside the nerdy confines of the popular game show, he would just be of normal attractiveness. But when you watch geek after nerd doling out the questions, a Jeopardy Hot guy is a welcome sight. Mike and I use the subtle distinction of Hot and Jeopardy Hot in conversation all the time, as it comes in handy constantly.
After three parties in a row as the last one left in Cyd and Dan’s apartment, I was adamant about not making it four. The party thinned out like hair in a Propecia ad and I hastily rounded up Cory, his friend Jeff, and Ben to continue our fun around the corner at Barracuda. Mark had already gone home, as had 95% of the partygoers, so I knew I had to strike while the iron was hot. Moments later, we were again packed like sardines in a sea of gay men, trying to get a drink at the bar. In between half listening to the hot 80s hits playing in the background (Major Tom, Neverending Story, Hazy Shade Of Winter), Cory and I continued our in-depth conversation about my favorite subject I never get to subject my radio audience to: politics.
Since Cory is from Iowa, I grilled him about the current political climate there. I am always curious about first-hand accounts and Cory was ambivalent about the candidates, a state of mind he also attributed to the rest of the state. I have been riveted to the debates and the tightness of the race, especially among the democrats. Unfortunately, Cory wasn’t able to resolve it for me before he ran home for the night. As usual, it was my cue to leave as well. The damned drunk train was calling again, as it always is. I left Ben in the capable hands of his cousin, who had met us all out at Barracuda, and dashed off into a cab to Grand Central. Two nights in a row of going out has taken its toll on me, and I can’t wait to climb into bed. It’s the weekend and a chilly one at that. I look forward to a party of one, relaxing in my living room, far from the roaring seas of gay men, the political fray of Washington and most importantly, the leering glances of Alex Trebek, where the only Hot I need to worry about is the heat from the crackling fire in the fireplace.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Judge And Jory
It seems like all Ben Harvey and I do is rendezvous at Vlada. We are like a bad sitcom. On TV, the characters always converge over and over in the same public locations, mostly because it’s just cheaper that way. But in life, we imitate art more than we would like to believe. Hence, another Thursday night spent at Vlada with Ben Harvey.
I love Ben, and not just because he looks like David Anders the actor who plays Adam/Takezo Kensei, the blond warrior from feudal Japan on NBC’s Heroes. It isn’t even because he also works in radio so he understands the crazy world I live in. We even have a shared love for Rosie O’Donnell’s brief but heavenly stint on The View. But that isn’t it either. I love Ben because he is like a delicious piece of blond peanut brittle: sweet and crackly and impossible to believe that anyone could be allergic to.
Our intention is always to catch up when we see each other, but it never works out that way. The distractions are legendary. Tonight, it was Jory, the hottest property tonight at Vlada. His form-fitting, wrinkle free heather grey t-shirt and low slung jeans casually draped over his exquisite body. His physical form said lifetime of athletic endeavors instead of the usual gay steroids plus too much gym time combination. His Roman nose and crisp haircut set off his model-perfect looks to a tee. He looked like a man. Not in a gay vs. straight way, or even in a masculine vs. feminine way. He just looked like the ideal embodiment of man in its purest form, like a paper doll ready to hang your fantasies on.
I saw Jory and immediately had no interest in him. A guy like that belongs on the arm of someone who is either: equally hot, famous, wealthy or some combination thereof. I could never think he was interested in me, and if we were together, neither would anyone who saw us. I did however think he was perfect for Ben. I am not even certain Ben was as convinced about him as I was. However, he has the wholesome and squeaky clean look that Ben seems to like, and the notorious matchmaker in me was dying to make some magic happen. But Jory couldn’t see past his own eye lashes. He made no eye contact with anyone outside his own small cadre of devoted admirers, and even then, seemed constantly waiting for a better offer to arrive.
Mike was also there tonight and on our walk to the train we openly mused about what it must be like to be someone like Jory. Mike thought he ignored people because after a while it is just so difficult getting hit on all the time. I thought he might be almost blind like my adorable former intern Patrick, who was exactly like Marilyn Monroe in “How To Marry A Millionaire.” He even asked me if his date was cute once at Bowery Bar (he wasn’t), and then politely made his escape into the crowd. If I was meeting him out, he would call me on my cell phone as he was walking in the door, so we could find each other. With his blindness and my inability to see through all the flashing distractions of a bar, we could otherwise be in the same nightclub for years without ever meeting again.
Whatever the reason, Jory was in his own class and his own world at Vlada. In a way, it’s kind of a shame. Yes, Mike is probably right, it would be a burden to be so attractive. But if he didn’t want guys hitting on him, he would get fat and wear a loose-fitting sweatshirt with a stain on it, or take down that shirtless Facebook photo of himself strumming a guitar. No no. He likes the attention he draws and I am fairly certain that he was hoping Prince Charming might walk through the door and carry him away. Too many Disney movies I think. It’s the curse of the gay community: So many princesses in need of rescue and too few princes to ride in and save the day.
I love Ben, and not just because he looks like David Anders the actor who plays Adam/Takezo Kensei, the blond warrior from feudal Japan on NBC’s Heroes. It isn’t even because he also works in radio so he understands the crazy world I live in. We even have a shared love for Rosie O’Donnell’s brief but heavenly stint on The View. But that isn’t it either. I love Ben because he is like a delicious piece of blond peanut brittle: sweet and crackly and impossible to believe that anyone could be allergic to.
Our intention is always to catch up when we see each other, but it never works out that way. The distractions are legendary. Tonight, it was Jory, the hottest property tonight at Vlada. His form-fitting, wrinkle free heather grey t-shirt and low slung jeans casually draped over his exquisite body. His physical form said lifetime of athletic endeavors instead of the usual gay steroids plus too much gym time combination. His Roman nose and crisp haircut set off his model-perfect looks to a tee. He looked like a man. Not in a gay vs. straight way, or even in a masculine vs. feminine way. He just looked like the ideal embodiment of man in its purest form, like a paper doll ready to hang your fantasies on.
I saw Jory and immediately had no interest in him. A guy like that belongs on the arm of someone who is either: equally hot, famous, wealthy or some combination thereof. I could never think he was interested in me, and if we were together, neither would anyone who saw us. I did however think he was perfect for Ben. I am not even certain Ben was as convinced about him as I was. However, he has the wholesome and squeaky clean look that Ben seems to like, and the notorious matchmaker in me was dying to make some magic happen. But Jory couldn’t see past his own eye lashes. He made no eye contact with anyone outside his own small cadre of devoted admirers, and even then, seemed constantly waiting for a better offer to arrive.
Mike was also there tonight and on our walk to the train we openly mused about what it must be like to be someone like Jory. Mike thought he ignored people because after a while it is just so difficult getting hit on all the time. I thought he might be almost blind like my adorable former intern Patrick, who was exactly like Marilyn Monroe in “How To Marry A Millionaire.” He even asked me if his date was cute once at Bowery Bar (he wasn’t), and then politely made his escape into the crowd. If I was meeting him out, he would call me on my cell phone as he was walking in the door, so we could find each other. With his blindness and my inability to see through all the flashing distractions of a bar, we could otherwise be in the same nightclub for years without ever meeting again.
Whatever the reason, Jory was in his own class and his own world at Vlada. In a way, it’s kind of a shame. Yes, Mike is probably right, it would be a burden to be so attractive. But if he didn’t want guys hitting on him, he would get fat and wear a loose-fitting sweatshirt with a stain on it, or take down that shirtless Facebook photo of himself strumming a guitar. No no. He likes the attention he draws and I am fairly certain that he was hoping Prince Charming might walk through the door and carry him away. Too many Disney movies I think. It’s the curse of the gay community: So many princesses in need of rescue and too few princes to ride in and save the day.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Down The Rabbit Hole
It seems like I am always running late. I don’t know why time consistently slips away from me, but the older I get, the more it seems to evaporate before my very eyes. Over the years, I have had jobs that have barely required me to show up at an office, let alone at a specific time. I used to joke during my years at America Online that I worked dry cleaning hours: In by ten, out by four! Even that was an improvement in structure after working from home for two years. Since coming to SIRIUS, I am required to physically remain in one place during very specific hours. This has been the hardest challenge for me. I just don’t know that it is in my nature to be on time.
I was watching a documentary a while ago about Marilyn Monroe, a woman notorious for being horrendously late. She apparently arrived at her last photo shoot before her death only two hours late, which was early for Marilyn. When she sang for President Kennedy, Peter Lawford introduced her as “the late Marilyn Monroe” an irony brought home weeks later when she died. During the shooting of “Some Like It Hot” a few years earlier, she was eight hours late to the set. Director Billy Wilder was exasperated but not surprised. “I got lost on the way to the studio,” she declared of the studio lot she had worked on for more than a decade. I figure as long as I am never that bad, I am money ahead.
Last night after the show, I had agreed to attend a Project Runway premiere party, hosted by my new friend Jack Mackenroth. The TV show started promptly at 10pm of course, which also happens to be the exact moment my radio show ends. So it was physically impossible for me to travel from my studio in midtown Manhattan to Greenwich Village is the blink of an eye. I warned in advance that I would be late, but even still. It just seems so like a diva to stroll in late for a live show. Especially when claiming your own celebrity as the excuse for such bad behavior. But it is the nature of the beast. It also happened to be the last day of work for our show producer Dan. I entreated everyone to not have the going away festivities on that night because I knew I wouldn’t be able to stick around, so that is exactly when they scheduled them. So then I got to look like a complete douche running out on everyone. But when you live a story, I guess people around you want you to live it too. Consistency, however annoying, is more important than perfection.
The party was in a converted carriage house and I must say it was a delightful living space. NYC is the best place to go for unusual homes and I was most impressed by how simultaneously modern and antiquated the place was. When I arrived the door to the street was wide open and a hundred attractive men were squeezed into the upstairs watching a flat panel 70 inch screen on the wall. I made amazing time, arriving just 20 minutes into the show, but still, I was too late to mix, mingle, or talk to Jackenroth. I watched the show there (and again when I got home), and I am definitely looking forward to this season. However, I hated most of the clothes. Just blah. And Jack’s model walked like a lumberjack carrying an axe uphill. Jack’s dress was cute, a perfect Barbie ensemble, that I half expect closed in the back with a large metal snap at the neck. But then, Lumberjack Barbie started trudging down the runway and I thought he should have swapped out her sexy purse from Bluefly.com with a nice redwood log.
While the show was going on, a cute guy named Ben started up a conversation with me. He was adorable with a rocking body and we seemed to be hitting it off. Then, Michael Lucas met my eye and started over toward me. “Do you know Michael?” I asked. Ben let out a declarative bleat and beat it on the lam. Michael was in rare form, air kisses and broken English filled the air like perfume. He lifted his shirt several times to show his amazing abs, which were quite impressive. It must be hard in the winter time to have a sensational body and have to hide it under so many layers. His abs popping out made me sad that I love ice cream more than physical perfection, but then I remembered that I get to eat ice cream and no one has to see me naked in order to have a career. It turns out that Michael and Ben had shared an awkward moment earlier in the evening when Michael introduced himself and Ben reminded him that Michael had fucked him three months ago. “I did not remember him, “Michael purred as he gazed at Ben’s perfectly formed back from across the room, “but then I saw his ass and it all came back to me.” I have to admit that Ben did have, in jeans, one of the most perfect asses I have ever seen. “He also has a huge cock” Michael assured me, his head nodding carefully in approval.
Moments later, lurid creep Baby Chic entered the party which caused Michael Lucas to bristle like he had just wandered into a smoldering dump. You may recall that Baby Chic tried to molest me and Ben Harvey at Vlada some months ago, while Ben was trying to make nice with Jonathan of the famous Biscuits and Bath Jonathans. I remembered Baby Chic’s clammy hands all too well and did everything in my power to escape his clutches. Michael and I parted company and I think he was more successful at getting away than I was since seconds later Baby Chic was grabbing my chest as I pushed my way through the kitchen. I was trying to meet Jack but his adoring fans had him completely surrounded and pinned up again the stove. He didn’t seem to mind at all.
Jack is so pretty, and as one of the contestants pointed out on Project Runway, he looks like a superhero. He seemed to be in his element last night, a gorgeous tipsy doll swirling through a glamorous party of attractive men and waif thin girl models. We chatted in the kitchen and he introduced me to the other contestants from the show. It was fun to meet all these people just at the beginning of fame, not after they had already been cast aside by the cruel fate of reality television. Jack also pointed out a beautiful blond model named Megan who had been on America’s Next Top Model, although during that reality stint, she was Meg, the rocker chick with the brown hair and bold-faced attitude. She was giving us full tilt Grace Kelly though as she slipped away from the crowd and down the stairs.
Unfortunately, my own time at the party was drawing short. Even though I am late all the time, the train home to the suburbs doesn’t wait for middling radio personalities, no matter what their reputations. So I made my good bye to Michael Lucas and to sexy Jack Mackenroth. I tried to say good night to Ben but I think my obvious friendship with Michael Lucas had tainted me for him. He was in the midst of a conversation about fisting with a sexy blond named Chris, who like me, had not had sex with Michael Lucas. Ben related a tale of fisting a guy once, pushing down, down, down, finally getting in up to his mid-forearm. “There is an artery right there and it sort of squeezes around your hand tight and you can feel their body. It’s so intense.” That was my cue to leave. I love intensity in life as much as the next person. But if I want to feel blood racing through an artery it’s because I am in a panicked dash through Grand Central Station trying to catch my train home to Normal Town, USA.
I was watching a documentary a while ago about Marilyn Monroe, a woman notorious for being horrendously late. She apparently arrived at her last photo shoot before her death only two hours late, which was early for Marilyn. When she sang for President Kennedy, Peter Lawford introduced her as “the late Marilyn Monroe” an irony brought home weeks later when she died. During the shooting of “Some Like It Hot” a few years earlier, she was eight hours late to the set. Director Billy Wilder was exasperated but not surprised. “I got lost on the way to the studio,” she declared of the studio lot she had worked on for more than a decade. I figure as long as I am never that bad, I am money ahead.
Last night after the show, I had agreed to attend a Project Runway premiere party, hosted by my new friend Jack Mackenroth. The TV show started promptly at 10pm of course, which also happens to be the exact moment my radio show ends. So it was physically impossible for me to travel from my studio in midtown Manhattan to Greenwich Village is the blink of an eye. I warned in advance that I would be late, but even still. It just seems so like a diva to stroll in late for a live show. Especially when claiming your own celebrity as the excuse for such bad behavior. But it is the nature of the beast. It also happened to be the last day of work for our show producer Dan. I entreated everyone to not have the going away festivities on that night because I knew I wouldn’t be able to stick around, so that is exactly when they scheduled them. So then I got to look like a complete douche running out on everyone. But when you live a story, I guess people around you want you to live it too. Consistency, however annoying, is more important than perfection.
The party was in a converted carriage house and I must say it was a delightful living space. NYC is the best place to go for unusual homes and I was most impressed by how simultaneously modern and antiquated the place was. When I arrived the door to the street was wide open and a hundred attractive men were squeezed into the upstairs watching a flat panel 70 inch screen on the wall. I made amazing time, arriving just 20 minutes into the show, but still, I was too late to mix, mingle, or talk to Jackenroth. I watched the show there (and again when I got home), and I am definitely looking forward to this season. However, I hated most of the clothes. Just blah. And Jack’s model walked like a lumberjack carrying an axe uphill. Jack’s dress was cute, a perfect Barbie ensemble, that I half expect closed in the back with a large metal snap at the neck. But then, Lumberjack Barbie started trudging down the runway and I thought he should have swapped out her sexy purse from Bluefly.com with a nice redwood log.
While the show was going on, a cute guy named Ben started up a conversation with me. He was adorable with a rocking body and we seemed to be hitting it off. Then, Michael Lucas met my eye and started over toward me. “Do you know Michael?” I asked. Ben let out a declarative bleat and beat it on the lam. Michael was in rare form, air kisses and broken English filled the air like perfume. He lifted his shirt several times to show his amazing abs, which were quite impressive. It must be hard in the winter time to have a sensational body and have to hide it under so many layers. His abs popping out made me sad that I love ice cream more than physical perfection, but then I remembered that I get to eat ice cream and no one has to see me naked in order to have a career. It turns out that Michael and Ben had shared an awkward moment earlier in the evening when Michael introduced himself and Ben reminded him that Michael had fucked him three months ago. “I did not remember him, “Michael purred as he gazed at Ben’s perfectly formed back from across the room, “but then I saw his ass and it all came back to me.” I have to admit that Ben did have, in jeans, one of the most perfect asses I have ever seen. “He also has a huge cock” Michael assured me, his head nodding carefully in approval.
Moments later, lurid creep Baby Chic entered the party which caused Michael Lucas to bristle like he had just wandered into a smoldering dump. You may recall that Baby Chic tried to molest me and Ben Harvey at Vlada some months ago, while Ben was trying to make nice with Jonathan of the famous Biscuits and Bath Jonathans. I remembered Baby Chic’s clammy hands all too well and did everything in my power to escape his clutches. Michael and I parted company and I think he was more successful at getting away than I was since seconds later Baby Chic was grabbing my chest as I pushed my way through the kitchen. I was trying to meet Jack but his adoring fans had him completely surrounded and pinned up again the stove. He didn’t seem to mind at all.
Jack is so pretty, and as one of the contestants pointed out on Project Runway, he looks like a superhero. He seemed to be in his element last night, a gorgeous tipsy doll swirling through a glamorous party of attractive men and waif thin girl models. We chatted in the kitchen and he introduced me to the other contestants from the show. It was fun to meet all these people just at the beginning of fame, not after they had already been cast aside by the cruel fate of reality television. Jack also pointed out a beautiful blond model named Megan who had been on America’s Next Top Model, although during that reality stint, she was Meg, the rocker chick with the brown hair and bold-faced attitude. She was giving us full tilt Grace Kelly though as she slipped away from the crowd and down the stairs.
Unfortunately, my own time at the party was drawing short. Even though I am late all the time, the train home to the suburbs doesn’t wait for middling radio personalities, no matter what their reputations. So I made my good bye to Michael Lucas and to sexy Jack Mackenroth. I tried to say good night to Ben but I think my obvious friendship with Michael Lucas had tainted me for him. He was in the midst of a conversation about fisting with a sexy blond named Chris, who like me, had not had sex with Michael Lucas. Ben related a tale of fisting a guy once, pushing down, down, down, finally getting in up to his mid-forearm. “There is an artery right there and it sort of squeezes around your hand tight and you can feel their body. It’s so intense.” That was my cue to leave. I love intensity in life as much as the next person. But if I want to feel blood racing through an artery it’s because I am in a panicked dash through Grand Central Station trying to catch my train home to Normal Town, USA.
Friday, November 9, 2007
I'll Take Manhattan
I never look at the weather before I leave the house. It’s a terrible habit I picked up while living in Los Angeles. In LA, the weather just never changes. Today’s weather report in Hell: 72 degrees and sunny, just like every other day. Sure, there are a couple of rainy days in January. But just looking out the window you can tell what the weather will be like for at least the next 48 hours. Besides, everyone drives. So even if it does rain, everyone has an umbrella (along with a sweatshirt and rollerblades) in the trunk just for emergencies. In fact, the flat line weather is such a cliché in Southern California that Steve Martin made it a significant plot point in L.A. Story. It is for this reason that I was caught unawares by the rain in Manhattan tonight on my way home.
Earlier in the day, when I was frantically tearing the house apart looking for my iPod so I could rip Britney’s terrific new CD into it, I noticed my umbrella sitting on the sideboard in my dining room. It came into focus as if a piece of crucial evidence in a Hitchcock movie: a folded newspaper on a motel room nightstand, the flicker of a lighter in a pair of eyeglasses, and now my umbrella lying dormant under a window, a cloudy sky foreshadowing in the background. But I ignored the umbrella to pursue my missing MP3 player. It turns out the iPod was in my backpack all along, right where my umbrella had been until I tossed it out after wearily carrying it around for two unpredictably dry months.
Today I wore my favorite grey wool coat that I picked up last fall at the Barney’s Warehouse Sale. It is a short, fitted jacket that makes me feel like one of the Von Trapp boys in The Sound of Music, my tribute to Gwen Stefani and her “Wind It Up” video. Unfortunately only an old sheep dog smells worse wet than a wool coat. So I ran as quickly as I could through the rain, Britney’s ridiculously hot “Toy Soldier” song urging me along, as I wove a delicate race between umbrella-carrying tourists and the dangerously slippery metal grates strewn about the sidewalks like land mines waiting to fell the unsuspecting with their cruel slickness. Diagram that sentence, bitch!
Britney and Los Angeles were both on my mind as I ran from Rockefeller Center to Grand Central Station. Earlier in the day, Michelle Collins emailed me to let me know that she had quoted me on her Best Week Ever blog. Yesterday on the show, she was raving about Britney’s new album, although with the caveat that it was processed to the point that on some of the songs she sounds like Gwen Stefani. After hearing “Toy Soldier,” I said that it was as “processed as a Kraft single.” Michelle couldn’t believe that I made it up in the moment and expounded on the theory (even further in her blog entry about it), perfecting it for the audience. Her rabid enthusiasm drew me to the Virgin Megastore after the show last night to experience Britney’s collective Blackout for myself. And Michelle is right. It is good. Arguably, the best Britney album ever, especially given how utterly shitty most of her work is.
I will be in Britney’s adopted town of Los Angeles this weekend. I read on PerezHilton.com that she has a new Mercedes SUV, which is good to know. If I see one coming, I will pull over immediately, like when an ambulance is going by. I am in town for my high school reunion. It’s been just over twenty years since I walked out of that school for the last time. It is strange for me to be going back this week since it is also the twentieth anniversary of my lost virginity. What does one give as a gift for that anniversary? A shop-worn, empty box?
All I really care about is looking better than everyone else who comes to the reunion, which is the only reason to go. I remember Cindy Crawford bringing her House of Style crew to her ten year high school reunion and thinking that there is no finer revenge, or better use of a television crew. No doubt her former classmates ran around telling everyone what good friends they had been with the supermodel, only to have those lies ripped to shreds right there on TV for everyone to see. Cindy confronted all of the popular girls who had been so mean to her, and cornered the boys who had refused to ask her out. And she killed them with kindness, a brand of torture porn the makers of the Saw movies could only aspire to. People were more relaxed at the Nuremburg trials. Cindy is my hero.
I don’t have a camera crew to follow me around, nor do I have a TV show. It is unlikely that anyone in my suburban LA high school would be impressed with my lowly satellite radio career. It’s not like I am in the movies or something, as most of them doubtlessly are, even if it is below the line. Then again, I still look pretty good for my age, mostly the product of vanity, no kids, and lots of product. I have a cute suit to wear and I am approximately the same weight I was in high school. Unfortunately, there isn’t anyone from my school that I care to torment. I wouldn’t mind seeing the guy I lost my virginity to. And our pompous class president. Neither of them came to the ten year reunion. Oh well. At least I will get a meal out of it, and a long weekend in Los Angeles. I hope it doesn’t rain though. I already packed nothing but shorts and t-shirts, and true to form, I didn’t bother to check the weather.
Earlier in the day, when I was frantically tearing the house apart looking for my iPod so I could rip Britney’s terrific new CD into it, I noticed my umbrella sitting on the sideboard in my dining room. It came into focus as if a piece of crucial evidence in a Hitchcock movie: a folded newspaper on a motel room nightstand, the flicker of a lighter in a pair of eyeglasses, and now my umbrella lying dormant under a window, a cloudy sky foreshadowing in the background. But I ignored the umbrella to pursue my missing MP3 player. It turns out the iPod was in my backpack all along, right where my umbrella had been until I tossed it out after wearily carrying it around for two unpredictably dry months.
Today I wore my favorite grey wool coat that I picked up last fall at the Barney’s Warehouse Sale. It is a short, fitted jacket that makes me feel like one of the Von Trapp boys in The Sound of Music, my tribute to Gwen Stefani and her “Wind It Up” video. Unfortunately only an old sheep dog smells worse wet than a wool coat. So I ran as quickly as I could through the rain, Britney’s ridiculously hot “Toy Soldier” song urging me along, as I wove a delicate race between umbrella-carrying tourists and the dangerously slippery metal grates strewn about the sidewalks like land mines waiting to fell the unsuspecting with their cruel slickness. Diagram that sentence, bitch!
Britney and Los Angeles were both on my mind as I ran from Rockefeller Center to Grand Central Station. Earlier in the day, Michelle Collins emailed me to let me know that she had quoted me on her Best Week Ever blog. Yesterday on the show, she was raving about Britney’s new album, although with the caveat that it was processed to the point that on some of the songs she sounds like Gwen Stefani. After hearing “Toy Soldier,” I said that it was as “processed as a Kraft single.” Michelle couldn’t believe that I made it up in the moment and expounded on the theory (even further in her blog entry about it), perfecting it for the audience. Her rabid enthusiasm drew me to the Virgin Megastore after the show last night to experience Britney’s collective Blackout for myself. And Michelle is right. It is good. Arguably, the best Britney album ever, especially given how utterly shitty most of her work is.
I will be in Britney’s adopted town of Los Angeles this weekend. I read on PerezHilton.com that she has a new Mercedes SUV, which is good to know. If I see one coming, I will pull over immediately, like when an ambulance is going by. I am in town for my high school reunion. It’s been just over twenty years since I walked out of that school for the last time. It is strange for me to be going back this week since it is also the twentieth anniversary of my lost virginity. What does one give as a gift for that anniversary? A shop-worn, empty box?
All I really care about is looking better than everyone else who comes to the reunion, which is the only reason to go. I remember Cindy Crawford bringing her House of Style crew to her ten year high school reunion and thinking that there is no finer revenge, or better use of a television crew. No doubt her former classmates ran around telling everyone what good friends they had been with the supermodel, only to have those lies ripped to shreds right there on TV for everyone to see. Cindy confronted all of the popular girls who had been so mean to her, and cornered the boys who had refused to ask her out. And she killed them with kindness, a brand of torture porn the makers of the Saw movies could only aspire to. People were more relaxed at the Nuremburg trials. Cindy is my hero.
I don’t have a camera crew to follow me around, nor do I have a TV show. It is unlikely that anyone in my suburban LA high school would be impressed with my lowly satellite radio career. It’s not like I am in the movies or something, as most of them doubtlessly are, even if it is below the line. Then again, I still look pretty good for my age, mostly the product of vanity, no kids, and lots of product. I have a cute suit to wear and I am approximately the same weight I was in high school. Unfortunately, there isn’t anyone from my school that I care to torment. I wouldn’t mind seeing the guy I lost my virginity to. And our pompous class president. Neither of them came to the ten year reunion. Oh well. At least I will get a meal out of it, and a long weekend in Los Angeles. I hope it doesn’t rain though. I already packed nothing but shorts and t-shirts, and true to form, I didn’t bother to check the weather.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Gay Life Exposed
Yes, I am possibly the gayest person alive. But for me, being gay is something of a hobby. I enjoy it, but I like to think I can’t make a full time occupation out of it. Then again, it’s a little bit like being a die-hard Yankees fan. It doesn’t matter what career you may pursue, everyone assumes that most of your waking thoughts are about baseball. I wish there was a way to leave the unfinished puzzle of my gay life on a game table in the living room and run some errands unrelated and unfettered by the lack of resolution. After all, it will still be there when I get back. But as gay people, we are vertically integrated by not just our love of sex with men but also a desire to arrange flowers, listen to Judy Garland or declare someone too fat for that outfit. As much as you may want to quit, hide or sideline it, gay can pour from your pores like the smell of gin from a notorious alcoholic.
Apparently, for some people, gay isn’t just a hobby, it’s a way of life. And for them we have the Gay Life Expo. These kinds of expos are like speed dating between gay consumers and mainstream corporations. In each case, they are hoping to find perfection. But just like most speed dating rounds, what actually stands in front of you can often be very disappointing. For the gays: disappointment in the quality and diversity of the companies that bothered to show up. For the companies: wonder as to the location of these high end consumers demographers have been promising them for years. And if you ever want to dispel the myth of gays as fashion forward, articulate trendsetters, this is the weekend adventure for you! Other myths, such as gays being indiscriminant whoring drunks and lesbians being aggressively cheap and demanding of free items, remain woefully intact.
I wanted to go because I think it’s important for our company to crack into the NYC gay market in a substantial way. And a trade show seven weeks before Christmas is as good a place as any to plant the holiday gift seed. It was also a chance to spend some time hanging out with co-workers that I like (Jeremy Hovies, Keith Price) without the embarrassment of needing to be nice to the ones I don’t like, which I will have to do soon enough at the annual holiday party.
I had a short segment on the stage that I originally thought was just an opportunity to wave to the crowd and throw some free t-shirts to the lesbians. But when I was at the office thirty minutes before the show printing out the information, I noticed that I would instead be an emcee and be introducing some of the performers. This was not good news. Emceeing at a pride event is hard enough, but at least the crowd is drunk and excited. Performing at a trade show is like trying to sell real estate to death row inmates. The chairs are usually filled with people too lazy to walk the length of a convention center without needing to rest an hour for every ten booths they passed. I tried to encourage them to enter to win the free radio we were giving away, not more than ten feet from the closest chair but most of them preferred to stay in their seats and stare dead-eyed ahead. I don’t need a TV show now. I already know what it feels like when people watch you on TV, from the perspective of the television set itself.
The lowest form of degradation came at the end of my set when Scott Nevins launched into his “game show” with the OutQ personalities playing along with “real people” from the audience. Scott, with his Groucho brows and pancake make-up projecting like Ethel Merman to the third balcony, took to the stage like a rat diving into a sewer. For the purposes of the game and a chance at some playful nastiness in my direction, he paired me with a genetic male cross of Ab Fab’s Edina Monsoon and Jodie Foster in Nell. He was wearing X-Ray goggles from the back of a 1970s comic book and a puffy white jacket with the entire NYC subway map printed on it, his native language that of Leeloo from The Fifth Element. It seemed from his insistent waving of a gay bar rag in my face that he was in the current issue of HX Magazine, photographed for Halloween in what I can only assume is his normal attire, and captioned as “Bee Bitch.” So the other hosts had actual contestants and I was paired with a lump of mashed potatoes. As I should have learned from the Faggot Feud with Richie Rich in 2004, never walk on a stage where someone else is controlling the mike. Point taken.
After the event, I decamped with the folks at HERE TV for dinner. Cutie pie Chris was there again, although in retrospect, I realize he was the only actual HERE person at the restaurant. At the Expo, I saw Josh, but he opted to head home after the long weekend and crash. Earlier from the stage, I saw Peter Stickles walking around, but he left before I was unshackled from the umpteenth just-so Judy impression emanating from little Scotty Nevins. I hope Peter didn’t see me, but as a performer, I am certain he would have sympathized with my plight. Lady in a cage!
So it was Chris for dinner and my friend Terry from Los Angeles. The other two were flirty Jimmy with sad eyes and a boyfriend in the steam room (unrelated) and adorable newcomer Jonathan, who was too young to appreciate my dusty early 80s references. Hey, did you know that Vic Morrow was named Rotary Club Man of the Year?
What? Too soon?
We went to Ariba Ariba, which in the absence of real Mexican food, will do in a pinch. Jonathan and I bonded over our mutual hatred of the sexy yet slow homos who were occupying our future table. Besides, we were in a hurry. I noticed in the midst of the football game playing on the TV over the bar that the Amazing Race was starting that night and I was fairly certain it wasn’t in the DVR at home. There were 3:34 minutes left in the third quarter which I gay-estimated was about an hour left in the game. With an hour of 60 Minutes sandwiched in between, I knew I had to leave as soon as the game ended to be home in time to not miss the start of the show.
It turns out Jonathan is as plugged in to politics as I am, and he is in the midst of reading The Nine, which I have been dying to pick up. I am such a Supreme Court junkie, I would call in sick to work just to watch a televised confirmation hearing. Then again, I would call in sick to eat a container of ice cream, so the threshold there is pretty low. And I was enjoying all of our banter until I looked up and noticed the football players touching each other inappropriately and CBS announcing the Play of the Day. In my head I heard the stopwatch ticking and Leslie Stahl, with her whipped cotton candy hair and dulcet tones, laying out her segment about famine in Africa, Lindsay Lohan or both, and I knew it was time to go.
As I raced home through the wooded splendor of the Saw Mill Parkway, the concrete monoliths of Manhattan in the rearview mirror, I took stock in the level of gay in my own gay life. Years ago, I left the ghetto behind. I loved my time in West Hollywood, but a body can only take so much abuse, and really that kind of stress testing is for the young. My existence now is suburban, surrounded on all sides by the known markers of heterosexual existence: soccer moms and RVs. And in the middle of it all, my little Cape Cod house, with the bay window and stocked bar in the basement. It’s as gay as a picnic basket, even without the bags of flower bulbs waiting on the window seat to be planted, carefully arranged by blooming season and chosen to resist the voracious dietary habits of the deer that cruise my yard like it’s The Ramble. In looking over the goods presented at the Gay Life Expo, I don’t think my life, as defined by their terms, is gay. Yes, I am fussy about my few precious elegant things, but I think that is borne more out of a desire for strict traditionalism and less about homosexuality. I’m old-fashioned, and I don’t mind it, as the song says. But given how unlike the rest of my family that is, I suppose I can lock that final piece in my gay life puzzle and consider it solved.
Apparently, for some people, gay isn’t just a hobby, it’s a way of life. And for them we have the Gay Life Expo. These kinds of expos are like speed dating between gay consumers and mainstream corporations. In each case, they are hoping to find perfection. But just like most speed dating rounds, what actually stands in front of you can often be very disappointing. For the gays: disappointment in the quality and diversity of the companies that bothered to show up. For the companies: wonder as to the location of these high end consumers demographers have been promising them for years. And if you ever want to dispel the myth of gays as fashion forward, articulate trendsetters, this is the weekend adventure for you! Other myths, such as gays being indiscriminant whoring drunks and lesbians being aggressively cheap and demanding of free items, remain woefully intact.
I wanted to go because I think it’s important for our company to crack into the NYC gay market in a substantial way. And a trade show seven weeks before Christmas is as good a place as any to plant the holiday gift seed. It was also a chance to spend some time hanging out with co-workers that I like (Jeremy Hovies, Keith Price) without the embarrassment of needing to be nice to the ones I don’t like, which I will have to do soon enough at the annual holiday party.
I had a short segment on the stage that I originally thought was just an opportunity to wave to the crowd and throw some free t-shirts to the lesbians. But when I was at the office thirty minutes before the show printing out the information, I noticed that I would instead be an emcee and be introducing some of the performers. This was not good news. Emceeing at a pride event is hard enough, but at least the crowd is drunk and excited. Performing at a trade show is like trying to sell real estate to death row inmates. The chairs are usually filled with people too lazy to walk the length of a convention center without needing to rest an hour for every ten booths they passed. I tried to encourage them to enter to win the free radio we were giving away, not more than ten feet from the closest chair but most of them preferred to stay in their seats and stare dead-eyed ahead. I don’t need a TV show now. I already know what it feels like when people watch you on TV, from the perspective of the television set itself.
The lowest form of degradation came at the end of my set when Scott Nevins launched into his “game show” with the OutQ personalities playing along with “real people” from the audience. Scott, with his Groucho brows and pancake make-up projecting like Ethel Merman to the third balcony, took to the stage like a rat diving into a sewer. For the purposes of the game and a chance at some playful nastiness in my direction, he paired me with a genetic male cross of Ab Fab’s Edina Monsoon and Jodie Foster in Nell. He was wearing X-Ray goggles from the back of a 1970s comic book and a puffy white jacket with the entire NYC subway map printed on it, his native language that of Leeloo from The Fifth Element. It seemed from his insistent waving of a gay bar rag in my face that he was in the current issue of HX Magazine, photographed for Halloween in what I can only assume is his normal attire, and captioned as “Bee Bitch.” So the other hosts had actual contestants and I was paired with a lump of mashed potatoes. As I should have learned from the Faggot Feud with Richie Rich in 2004, never walk on a stage where someone else is controlling the mike. Point taken.
After the event, I decamped with the folks at HERE TV for dinner. Cutie pie Chris was there again, although in retrospect, I realize he was the only actual HERE person at the restaurant. At the Expo, I saw Josh, but he opted to head home after the long weekend and crash. Earlier from the stage, I saw Peter Stickles walking around, but he left before I was unshackled from the umpteenth just-so Judy impression emanating from little Scotty Nevins. I hope Peter didn’t see me, but as a performer, I am certain he would have sympathized with my plight. Lady in a cage!
So it was Chris for dinner and my friend Terry from Los Angeles. The other two were flirty Jimmy with sad eyes and a boyfriend in the steam room (unrelated) and adorable newcomer Jonathan, who was too young to appreciate my dusty early 80s references. Hey, did you know that Vic Morrow was named Rotary Club Man of the Year?
What? Too soon?
We went to Ariba Ariba, which in the absence of real Mexican food, will do in a pinch. Jonathan and I bonded over our mutual hatred of the sexy yet slow homos who were occupying our future table. Besides, we were in a hurry. I noticed in the midst of the football game playing on the TV over the bar that the Amazing Race was starting that night and I was fairly certain it wasn’t in the DVR at home. There were 3:34 minutes left in the third quarter which I gay-estimated was about an hour left in the game. With an hour of 60 Minutes sandwiched in between, I knew I had to leave as soon as the game ended to be home in time to not miss the start of the show.
It turns out Jonathan is as plugged in to politics as I am, and he is in the midst of reading The Nine, which I have been dying to pick up. I am such a Supreme Court junkie, I would call in sick to work just to watch a televised confirmation hearing. Then again, I would call in sick to eat a container of ice cream, so the threshold there is pretty low. And I was enjoying all of our banter until I looked up and noticed the football players touching each other inappropriately and CBS announcing the Play of the Day. In my head I heard the stopwatch ticking and Leslie Stahl, with her whipped cotton candy hair and dulcet tones, laying out her segment about famine in Africa, Lindsay Lohan or both, and I knew it was time to go.
As I raced home through the wooded splendor of the Saw Mill Parkway, the concrete monoliths of Manhattan in the rearview mirror, I took stock in the level of gay in my own gay life. Years ago, I left the ghetto behind. I loved my time in West Hollywood, but a body can only take so much abuse, and really that kind of stress testing is for the young. My existence now is suburban, surrounded on all sides by the known markers of heterosexual existence: soccer moms and RVs. And in the middle of it all, my little Cape Cod house, with the bay window and stocked bar in the basement. It’s as gay as a picnic basket, even without the bags of flower bulbs waiting on the window seat to be planted, carefully arranged by blooming season and chosen to resist the voracious dietary habits of the deer that cruise my yard like it’s The Ramble. In looking over the goods presented at the Gay Life Expo, I don’t think my life, as defined by their terms, is gay. Yes, I am fussy about my few precious elegant things, but I think that is borne more out of a desire for strict traditionalism and less about homosexuality. I’m old-fashioned, and I don’t mind it, as the song says. But given how unlike the rest of my family that is, I suppose I can lock that final piece in my gay life puzzle and consider it solved.
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