These posts are often about going out. I suppose I could write about other things, but I am lazy. Since I don’t leave the house very often, it is the perfect compromise. I don’t have to write much, since I don’t go out much. I went out on the town on Friday night and Saturday night, and it was ill-advised since I had a million things to do before I embarked on the R Family Cruise up the coast of New England to Canada on Sunday morning. But Ronnie was in town, and I promised to hang out with him, so duty to friendship won out over bland puttering around the old Cape Cod.
As it turns out, Ronnie was working on a movie and couldn’t get out early enough on Friday night to do the show or hang out with us. I had promised some time before to hang out with Ryan and Ben Harvey on Friday when Ryan was in town, and promptly forgot until Ben Harvey and I were talking about our Friday night plans. So I trekked down after the show to Chelsea to meet Ben Harvey and his cousin Christian at the bar “G.” In the mid-90s as a NYC tourist, I was mad about “G” and its bold oval bar shape and hunky fun patrons. Now, I regard the nearly round walkway as a misery akin to attending the Tailhook Convention in a mini-skirt. But “G” after waning in the early years of the Bush Presidency is, like the Democratic Party in general, making something of a comeback, though I am similarly ambivalent that neither has changed much in the intervening years to deserve it.
I arrived first, my humongous Amazing Race style backpack making me as unwelcome in the slim environs as an elephant in a narrow corridor. But the best thing about being in your 30s is you don’t care who you piss off as long as you get where you are going. So even though two short muscle boys thought they would get my deference as they tried to pass in bar, I instead effortlessly swiveled around and slammed by backpack into their faces as I walked by. That made me feel good for the remaining two minutes until Ben Harvey arrived with Christian and Christian’s new friend, Aaron, a closeted construction worker from upstate.
We decamped almost immediately from “G” to try to find Ryan at ELMO where he had been having dinner with another radio professional. Once at ELMO, however, he had already moved on to someone’s apartment for a party or something, I stopped listening when we arrived at the second location and found our quarry missing. This is very bad form. Trying to connect clusters of gays already in motion is my least favorite activity in the world, especially in bar settings, because no one has any sense of time passing when they are in a club and after two drinks, any gay can be convinced to go anywhere with anyone. Jeffrey Dahmer made a career of that.
In searching for Ryan at ELMO, we wandered into the downstairs bar, which some years ago had been the site of Perez Hilton’s birthday party. On Friday, it was a shocking display of heterosexuality. This is always annoying. I like straight people as much as the next, but straight people who cluster in otherwise gay areas to party are nothing but trouble. The freedom and sassiness that gays display liberates them to dangerous levels and gets transferred into otherwise inappropriate straight behavior and the next thing you know someone is getting stabbed. Sweet, young closeted Aaron didn’t believe me that it was a straight party.
“Maybe there are just a lot of girls.” He suggested.
I assured him it was a straight party because there were only men dancing with women, and no men dancing with other men. Going around to Ben Harvey and Christian, they in quick succession agreed it was straight because the men all had tucked in, button down shirts and by the way, did you see those shoes? The lack of fashion sense was not enough to convince Aaron, who retorted, “Derek is badly dressed and he is obviously not straight.” But a lack of fashion is my thing. It is what separates me from the rest of the maddening crowd. Though at this point, Aaron was the only maddening one.
I liked him a lot and Christian assured me he had an amazing body underneath his ill-fitting shirt, but his youth and inexperience at all things gay was apparent. For instance, he insisted that being out at work wasn’t important and he never planned to be openly gay in the workplace. True he works in construction, so that does make things dicey, but the idea that he works in a sexuality-free environment is to take for granted the background noise of girlfriends and wives that is miraculously excluded from any notion of sexual behavior. I am certain that in a few years he will feel differently.
Just then, Dave Rubin came sweeping in and happily changed the dynamic entirely. With Ben Harvey still texting Ryan trying to find a meet spot, my eye was on the clock and the door. After another round of drinks, everyone bolted for the Chelsea Hotel. I made my good-byes on the corner. Even though I was assured Ryan would be at the Chelsea (at least eventually), my role in L’Aventura had come to an end. With any luck, I could get home early enough to get a good night’s sleep, get some packing done for my trip and still have time to work on the house. Life after all is a balancing act. One of these days, Ryan will see that maintaining that balance means learning to end something when the time is right and move on to the next thing. And perhaps Aaron will learn that there is a time and a place for everything, and sometimes the more you hold back, the less you have.
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