Before the evening began, it had all the hallmarks of a night of a thousand gay stars. Every once in a while, the planets line up and all sorts of people who are difficult to wrangle suddenly start to coalesce. Even my roommate Mike, who hates going out in general, but even more hates going out to the kinds of places I end up in, agreed to go. And so it went, and within hours, a magical night took form. Tonight was the night and its ground zero looked like the cabanas at The Maritime.
I went to the cabanas last Friday with Matty and Hanno for Zoe's birthday party and expected the same crowd of narrow ties and wide smiles we experienced last time. But more importantly, I expected Matty and Hanno. After all, we had talked about it the night before at Rob and Erik's pretty boy bacchanal, and they had even dutifully RSVP'd on Facebook to Will Wikle's birthday invite. But as I left the show, I noticed they had changed their Facebook status to include a reference to the movie Doubt. Okay, I thought, so after a few hours of the luminous Meryl chewing scenery, they will make their grand entrance up the stairs.
After the show, I walked out with Romaine, passed The Amazing Race's Nick Spangler leaving The Fantasticks, and then headed on the 1 train down to Chelsea. Roommate was still at his office birthday party so I had some time to kill and joined Cyd and Dan for one of their last remaining nights at their tasteful sublet before they make the big move to Los Angeles later this month. They were cocktailing with a couple, both named Matt, which made it so much easier to remember both of their names, even after the white cranberry juice and vodka cocktail that Cyd made for me. Despite not having a solid penny to my name, I impressed them with my theoretical investment strategies. Must have been the alcohol. For all I really know about making money, I might as well have declared at the end that I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
Mike arrived at the cabanas so I gave Cyd and Dan a long quick hug good bye and headed a few blocks down to the Maritime. By now it was almost 11:30 and I expected a line. However, there was no one waiting outside and the coat check was a sea of empty hangers. This was a bad sign. Upstairs the party was small but the music was loud. I found Mike quickly, wearing a cute zip neck pullover and a tie. He looked like all the other cute, preppy gays at the party! I felt so alone in my v-neck Otter Fashion shirt, though I have created an empowering take on my outsider fashion lately where I imagine myself a misunderstood trendsetter who is just too far ahead on the curve for people to even see around it yet.
Suddenly, it seemed like I was surrounded by everyone I knew exclusively through Matty. First, it was Brian Babst who demanded my cell phone number. "I wanted to text you the other day," he started, but I finished his sentence for him with "but you realized you didn't have my number." He plugged every detail of my personal life into his Blackberry, even scheduling a time slot later this week to send me his fabulous new holiday card, which I have to say was a very sweet touch. I was flattered.
Then I ran into Young Bradford (and later Ben appeared to complete the Benford set), who was rocking lederhosen. I thought it was an homage to Hanno, but he yelled "Swiss Miss" over the music and after some coordinated Alpine dance moves, we left it at that. Moments later, an outrageously tall and old drag queen wandered into us, her ill-fitting wig a sneeze away from resting inside her champagne flute. "Elaine Stritch in drag!" I declared but Bradford shook his head. "No. No. That's definitely Melanie Griffith." As she neared even nearer, I said, "Hello Melanie" and she went off on me in a drunken rage, alternately sloshing her drink and tugging on her errant wig. "Have some of my roofie" she smiled as she poured some of her drink into my cocktail before trotting away, one broken heel in front of the other.
Ben Harvey was there, fresh from his trip to London, along with his kissing cousin Christian and Christian's main squeeze Jimmie. Dave Rubin was with them, his square-jawed sexiness firmly in place. I coaxed Mike against his will into being social and hanging out with them and it all went swimmingly. I was still expecting Matty, but when he finally texted me back, it was to say that he and the Austrian were cuddling back at his place. So, to show him what he was missing, I decided to run around the cabanas and take pictures with all the people there that he knew. After all, why should Michael Musto, as always lurking in the shadows of joy, have all the fun?
I dashed around the increasingly packed bar and implored strangers to snap my photo. There was Ryan Newman, so much more fun without his boyfriend. In my attempt to get a photo with birthday boy Will Wikle, I ran smack into that hot slice of man Matt Kugelman. There is something wrong with him because he gets better looking every time I see him. It's a problem. Will was busy twirling up a storm to Get Me Bodied followed IMMEDIATELY by Single Ladies, so I gave his sweaty hunched back a hug as he down pointed his way across the dance floor. As much fun as imagining him in a black leotard is, I can't miss my train and had to make a run for it. Though I did take a second at the top of the stairs to lead the just arrived hot gay comic Shawn Hollenbach in the general direction of Dave Rubin. Always happy to help a boy scout across the street!
It will be sad to think of Manhattan without Cyd and Dan in it, even though I can add them to the growing list of people I don't have time to see on my annual short weekends in Los Angeles. And I have seen so much of Matty this year, more than I have seen him in all the years I have lived here, that I suppose having a single night off won't kill me. True, not having the friends you love around you is hard sometimes. But as the windows steamed up inside the cabanas and the $12 cocktails flowed, the party continues anyway, and we can all still have a good time.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Friday, December 12, 2008
People You May Know
Facebook has a box (recently co-opted by MySpace and others) called People You May Know, which shows the profiles of others connected to you through multiple friends on the service. This would be useful if people only connected to their nearest and dearest but since generally these seem to be the sites of endlessly intensive popularity contests, that is not the case. However, the party I attended down at Le Lupanar tonight was like the living embodiment of People You May Know.
I was invited by adorable Rob Banning, who works with me by way of the Martha Stewart cult. Rob endured a particularly amusing and exhausting trip with me to the Olive Garden some weeks back with a very drunken Michelle Collins and her equally drunk gay who was at that intoxicating level of inebriation where he could no longer tell how incredibly loud he was when he talked. Despite (are perhaps because of) that, we have developed a fast friendship. Rob was also at the Cabanas last Friday though I failed to blog about him. Rob has a gorgeous amount of style, a tasteful retro 80s preppiness without the trashy flash, all quaint bowties and catalog-ready long woolen scarves.
Tonight Rob greeted me at the door in a sleek red cardigan and that winning Sphinx smile of his that gives away nothing. The party was a sea of dark colors, save for Rob and me in my red tank shirt from Otter Fashion. For just a moment I didn’t feel so alone. The party was the whitest cream cheesy smooth collection of J. Crew boys I had ever seen, mixed with a smattering of Asians, a few chic young women and three impossibly handsome black men (aka argyle sweater, Club Monaco pullover, and tight green Polo). If it hadn’t been so dimly lit and filled with Beyonce songs, I would have sworn I was at a Harvard MBA mixer. Everyone had the kind of feckless smooth skin usually reserved for after photos in a Proactive infomercial. I’ve never felt so “ethnic” before in my life, awash in my glaring bohemia. That I met at least three men named Blake should come as no surprise to anyone.
Almost immediately, I ran into Hooper from work. Hooper, no stranger himself to this post-post gay narrow tie and vest set, always manages to be a relaxing figure for me in these environs. Maybe because we spend occasional quiet time in the flat unforgiving light of the office, when I make the arduous journey across the building from the sloppy “creative” side to the otherworldly quiet corporate side that is for most of the on-air personalities at SIRIUS as unknown to them personally as the land of Oz. I spent some time with Hooper upstairs before he decided to see what the heretofore unseen basement had to offer.
I decided to wait upstairs, still expecting to see Terry Goldman, who I had invited to join me at the party. Terry never made it, but while waiting, a parade of familiar faces came through the door. It turned out, there were people I did know, mixed in with the people I may know. Corey Johnson was first, and like most of the guests, also in a suit. As usual, he was flitting around bridging the gap between the moneyed A gays who hovered around the edges and the pretty boys who were up and coming in the centers of the rooms. Conor bounded in from the rainy night, embracing me in his warm loveliness. Moments later, almost as if on cue, Matty arrived with Hanno. Upon seeing Matty I knew the night would be fun.
After Matty and Hanno ditched their coats, we pushed through the crowd of familiar faces, recognized from a million Facebook Fire Island photo galleries and fundraiser party pix and headed for the basement. Hooper had since gone upstairs to throw himself on the mercy of a white U-shaped couch. But Chris was there, last seen in his apartment throwing a party of Shay, and we all had a round of drinks together. The basement was just like the upstairs but slightly less crowded and slightly hotter with a more accessible bar and longer bathroom line.
I had a nice chat with Chris and the usual laughs with Matty, but I was anxious the whole time. Something about the party had me on edge and I had a hard time shaking it. Maybe it was the waiting for Terry, or the juggling of Conor and Matty so they were never within drink throwing distance. Whatever it was, something felt not right, and then it went haywire because I think a guy started hitting on me. It’s hard to say.
After our first round of drinks, we all headed back upstairs, and while standing near the edge of the bar, a guy came up to me and started talking. We had met briefly at the front door when he first arrived, and in the jumble of last names as first names that wafted through the entryway like a stiff winter breeze as usual I did not immediately retain his name. (Finley, is that you?) He was handsome, intense of eye, looking without seeing in that way that denotes a still functional yet high level of intoxication. I made a reference to Douglas Sirk that I am quite certain he didn’t get. Then, in discussing his neighborhood, he said “It’s Chinatown” in a sly way that made me think he was quoting Robert Towne’s screenplay but moments later he continued his discussion of the neighborhood in a way that made me think he might not even have seen the movie.
We talked a bit about New York City, and how nice it is when it first snows and the city is covered in that white blanket that calms everything and covers all the grime…for fifteen minutes. That’s the trouble with Manhattan, I told him, nothing good here lasts. You have to enjoy it in the time you have it because you never know when it might be gone. We were rueful about it for a moment, but later as I walked to the venerable Grand Central on my way home; I looked up at the Chrysler Building and smiled. Chrysler itself may be gone soon enough, but the building remains. Nothing in New York City is permanent, but some things are the nearest thing to forever that we have. And in that moment, looking up at the glistening white lights in the hazy night sky, I savored it. Maybe things went right after all.
I was invited by adorable Rob Banning, who works with me by way of the Martha Stewart cult. Rob endured a particularly amusing and exhausting trip with me to the Olive Garden some weeks back with a very drunken Michelle Collins and her equally drunk gay who was at that intoxicating level of inebriation where he could no longer tell how incredibly loud he was when he talked. Despite (are perhaps because of) that, we have developed a fast friendship. Rob was also at the Cabanas last Friday though I failed to blog about him. Rob has a gorgeous amount of style, a tasteful retro 80s preppiness without the trashy flash, all quaint bowties and catalog-ready long woolen scarves.
Tonight Rob greeted me at the door in a sleek red cardigan and that winning Sphinx smile of his that gives away nothing. The party was a sea of dark colors, save for Rob and me in my red tank shirt from Otter Fashion. For just a moment I didn’t feel so alone. The party was the whitest cream cheesy smooth collection of J. Crew boys I had ever seen, mixed with a smattering of Asians, a few chic young women and three impossibly handsome black men (aka argyle sweater, Club Monaco pullover, and tight green Polo). If it hadn’t been so dimly lit and filled with Beyonce songs, I would have sworn I was at a Harvard MBA mixer. Everyone had the kind of feckless smooth skin usually reserved for after photos in a Proactive infomercial. I’ve never felt so “ethnic” before in my life, awash in my glaring bohemia. That I met at least three men named Blake should come as no surprise to anyone.
Almost immediately, I ran into Hooper from work. Hooper, no stranger himself to this post-post gay narrow tie and vest set, always manages to be a relaxing figure for me in these environs. Maybe because we spend occasional quiet time in the flat unforgiving light of the office, when I make the arduous journey across the building from the sloppy “creative” side to the otherworldly quiet corporate side that is for most of the on-air personalities at SIRIUS as unknown to them personally as the land of Oz. I spent some time with Hooper upstairs before he decided to see what the heretofore unseen basement had to offer.
I decided to wait upstairs, still expecting to see Terry Goldman, who I had invited to join me at the party. Terry never made it, but while waiting, a parade of familiar faces came through the door. It turned out, there were people I did know, mixed in with the people I may know. Corey Johnson was first, and like most of the guests, also in a suit. As usual, he was flitting around bridging the gap between the moneyed A gays who hovered around the edges and the pretty boys who were up and coming in the centers of the rooms. Conor bounded in from the rainy night, embracing me in his warm loveliness. Moments later, almost as if on cue, Matty arrived with Hanno. Upon seeing Matty I knew the night would be fun.
After Matty and Hanno ditched their coats, we pushed through the crowd of familiar faces, recognized from a million Facebook Fire Island photo galleries and fundraiser party pix and headed for the basement. Hooper had since gone upstairs to throw himself on the mercy of a white U-shaped couch. But Chris was there, last seen in his apartment throwing a party of Shay, and we all had a round of drinks together. The basement was just like the upstairs but slightly less crowded and slightly hotter with a more accessible bar and longer bathroom line.
I had a nice chat with Chris and the usual laughs with Matty, but I was anxious the whole time. Something about the party had me on edge and I had a hard time shaking it. Maybe it was the waiting for Terry, or the juggling of Conor and Matty so they were never within drink throwing distance. Whatever it was, something felt not right, and then it went haywire because I think a guy started hitting on me. It’s hard to say.
After our first round of drinks, we all headed back upstairs, and while standing near the edge of the bar, a guy came up to me and started talking. We had met briefly at the front door when he first arrived, and in the jumble of last names as first names that wafted through the entryway like a stiff winter breeze as usual I did not immediately retain his name. (Finley, is that you?) He was handsome, intense of eye, looking without seeing in that way that denotes a still functional yet high level of intoxication. I made a reference to Douglas Sirk that I am quite certain he didn’t get. Then, in discussing his neighborhood, he said “It’s Chinatown” in a sly way that made me think he was quoting Robert Towne’s screenplay but moments later he continued his discussion of the neighborhood in a way that made me think he might not even have seen the movie.
We talked a bit about New York City, and how nice it is when it first snows and the city is covered in that white blanket that calms everything and covers all the grime…for fifteen minutes. That’s the trouble with Manhattan, I told him, nothing good here lasts. You have to enjoy it in the time you have it because you never know when it might be gone. We were rueful about it for a moment, but later as I walked to the venerable Grand Central on my way home; I looked up at the Chrysler Building and smiled. Chrysler itself may be gone soon enough, but the building remains. Nothing in New York City is permanent, but some things are the nearest thing to forever that we have. And in that moment, looking up at the glistening white lights in the hazy night sky, I savored it. Maybe things went right after all.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Blogged And Tagged
This Sunday marks the finale of another season of my beloved Amazing Race. Even now as I blog from a taxi speeding across a deserted Manhattan in the predawn hours on my way to JFK, I can imagine that I am on the race. As it was, my night out on the town was in its own way a series of challenges, each task completed with the same level of happy satisfaction one would imagine I would employ on CBS primetime. The final challenge being a simple choice: Blogged or Tagged. In this Detour, contestants choose between blogging their adventure out on the town or taking a series of photos to be uploaded and tagged on Facebook. As expected, I chose blogging while Matty’s team went for tagging.
It all started innocently enough at Vlada with Original Jonathan. Initially we were going to have a drink and a snack at Vynl, but that hot slab of a bartender Aaron wasn’t working so we switched to old reliable Vlada around the corner. Jonathan is at something of a crossroads in his life and career in Manhattan and we were long overdue for some one-on-one time to discuss it. In the meantime, some guy named Mark recognized me from who can even say how many years ago. I am sure he knew me because he said, “I thought it was you but then wasn’t sure because you weren’t in shorts.” I was correctly identified but Jonathan was not so lucky, planting a cheek kiss on a guy named Chance, who as it turns out, was not his former co-worker Spencer.
Our drink and discussion at an end, we headed for the coat check, to retrieve our jackets and our next clue. It was there that I ran into Joe, who was just on his way in, but upon seeing me, realized it was already time to leave… with me! Jonathan went back to his apartment and Joe and I hopped into a cab to head down to the Village for a small party at Chris’ apartment, the scene of my notorious Halloween blog entry. Matty would be waiting there for us with his charming Austrian boyfriend Hanno. This time instead of hot shirtless men, the party was jammed with cleavage-heaving young women… and adorable Ryan Newman.
Ryan was there with his new boyfriend who, like me, is from Westchester. Although I own. They must be very happy together because the moment I arrived, Ryan flew into his arms like a long separated lover and was never more than a fingertip away the rest of the evening. Matty, ever the publicist, bragged on Ryan’s Britney Spears dance moves and prodded me to encourage an encore. However, the new boyfriend, in full Footloose-era John Lithgow fashion had banned the dancing. This only encouraged my worst instincts and I relentlessly goaded Ryan to dance, in or out of his underwear, at the soonest possible moment.
Despite my warm small talk about the cookies he had made, the new boyfriend was unbowed in his banned stance. However, before we made our hasty retreat to the Maritime Hotel for our next challenge, I am quite certain that I spied Ryan busting a move or two in the corner. Perhaps he was ginned up by the excessively controlled Vanity Fair cover photo posing that I deftly avoided by ducking under a plate of half eaten chocolate cupcakes, though Matty happily flung himself in despite his less-desirable placement on the third fold next to the perfume ad.
I had thought we would end up at Corey Craig’s CD release party further across town at the Chelsea Hotel, but instead we landed at the new hot gay party in the winterized cabanas off the upper patio of the lovely Maritime Hotel. A birthday party was being thrown for a woman named Zoe, who by all accounts is the woman of the moment in the gay community. The party was a weird mix of young gays in purposefully hetero gear (a self-ripped sleeveless t-shirt… really?), even younger gays in collar and tie and 90s leftovers who don’t realize they are in their 30s now and wearing ANF days after the company posted a steep double digit decline in sales on Black Friday (the final nail in their pop culture coffin) while still clinging to an ecstasy fueled Palladium fantasy that even for them is but a dim memory. For everyone else at the party, that look evokes an era near the end of the last century best described as “middle school.”
Also there seemed to be a lot of vests out tonight. I know I am not exactly the cutting edge of fashion. Earlier while comparing Polo shirts at Chris’ party, a co-worker of Matty’s gave my Ralph Lauren shirt a quizzical look and then smiled a smooth knowing smile. “Ah. Factory. No wonder I didn’t recognize it.” That being said, these boys in their vests just looked like out of work valets. I had to resist the urge to hand them my car keys. I guess it is all part of this ADD generation. Everything is so sped up, they don’t even have time for sleeves! Even the DJ got into the act and spun 28 seconds of all my favorite songs. It was like walking through a low rent carnival game row that didn’t want to pay music royalties. It made me long for the days of exhaustive ten to fifteen minute dance mixes that seemed all too short while dancing under the watchful spin of Junior. I am sure the thirty-something in the Abercrombie tee sipping on a cosmo thought the exact same thing.
Conor was there in a gently worn hoodie that undoubtedly had been tirelessly and expensively distressed to appear so casually at ends on a chilly winter night. He and Matty spotted each other and sparred at a distance though it didn’t have any of the venom I expected. Whatever intense animus there once was between them has apparently since been replaced by the kind of playful sniping that usually ended with Krystal and Alexis plunging into a fountain during sweeps. The ever winning smile of Brian Babst was on hand as well, ready the second he spotted me with lines from last night’s 30 Rock, all perfectly memorized. “I watch each episode twice,” he confided. “Once the night of when I am drunk and again in the morning when I am sober.” It was a tactic that clearly was paying off.
The evening ended as suddenly as it began. Joe was fondling his coat check ticket while lamenting all the photos Matty was taking, and when I returned from the bathroom, he was gone. In a flash, Zoe, the birthday lady in red, was gone from her own party too and it was like the air was let out of the balloon. In the end, some friend of Matty tried to coax us to join them at 3am at Brandon Voss' apartment, but we just stood in stunned horror as they (Conor included) swirled out of the nightclub into the street like the dancers from Fame, screeching and mobbing taxis in a mad clamour to reach the next destination. Matty, Hanno and I slipped away quietly uptown toward Chelsea, where I left them happily on the corner on their way home. For them the adventure was coming to an end, but for me it was just beginning. An hour later, bag in hand, I was in that cab on my way to the airport. For me, the race continues.
It all started innocently enough at Vlada with Original Jonathan. Initially we were going to have a drink and a snack at Vynl, but that hot slab of a bartender Aaron wasn’t working so we switched to old reliable Vlada around the corner. Jonathan is at something of a crossroads in his life and career in Manhattan and we were long overdue for some one-on-one time to discuss it. In the meantime, some guy named Mark recognized me from who can even say how many years ago. I am sure he knew me because he said, “I thought it was you but then wasn’t sure because you weren’t in shorts.” I was correctly identified but Jonathan was not so lucky, planting a cheek kiss on a guy named Chance, who as it turns out, was not his former co-worker Spencer.
Our drink and discussion at an end, we headed for the coat check, to retrieve our jackets and our next clue. It was there that I ran into Joe, who was just on his way in, but upon seeing me, realized it was already time to leave… with me! Jonathan went back to his apartment and Joe and I hopped into a cab to head down to the Village for a small party at Chris’ apartment, the scene of my notorious Halloween blog entry. Matty would be waiting there for us with his charming Austrian boyfriend Hanno. This time instead of hot shirtless men, the party was jammed with cleavage-heaving young women… and adorable Ryan Newman.
Ryan was there with his new boyfriend who, like me, is from Westchester. Although I own. They must be very happy together because the moment I arrived, Ryan flew into his arms like a long separated lover and was never more than a fingertip away the rest of the evening. Matty, ever the publicist, bragged on Ryan’s Britney Spears dance moves and prodded me to encourage an encore. However, the new boyfriend, in full Footloose-era John Lithgow fashion had banned the dancing. This only encouraged my worst instincts and I relentlessly goaded Ryan to dance, in or out of his underwear, at the soonest possible moment.
Despite my warm small talk about the cookies he had made, the new boyfriend was unbowed in his banned stance. However, before we made our hasty retreat to the Maritime Hotel for our next challenge, I am quite certain that I spied Ryan busting a move or two in the corner. Perhaps he was ginned up by the excessively controlled Vanity Fair cover photo posing that I deftly avoided by ducking under a plate of half eaten chocolate cupcakes, though Matty happily flung himself in despite his less-desirable placement on the third fold next to the perfume ad.
I had thought we would end up at Corey Craig’s CD release party further across town at the Chelsea Hotel, but instead we landed at the new hot gay party in the winterized cabanas off the upper patio of the lovely Maritime Hotel. A birthday party was being thrown for a woman named Zoe, who by all accounts is the woman of the moment in the gay community. The party was a weird mix of young gays in purposefully hetero gear (a self-ripped sleeveless t-shirt… really?), even younger gays in collar and tie and 90s leftovers who don’t realize they are in their 30s now and wearing ANF days after the company posted a steep double digit decline in sales on Black Friday (the final nail in their pop culture coffin) while still clinging to an ecstasy fueled Palladium fantasy that even for them is but a dim memory. For everyone else at the party, that look evokes an era near the end of the last century best described as “middle school.”
Also there seemed to be a lot of vests out tonight. I know I am not exactly the cutting edge of fashion. Earlier while comparing Polo shirts at Chris’ party, a co-worker of Matty’s gave my Ralph Lauren shirt a quizzical look and then smiled a smooth knowing smile. “Ah. Factory. No wonder I didn’t recognize it.” That being said, these boys in their vests just looked like out of work valets. I had to resist the urge to hand them my car keys. I guess it is all part of this ADD generation. Everything is so sped up, they don’t even have time for sleeves! Even the DJ got into the act and spun 28 seconds of all my favorite songs. It was like walking through a low rent carnival game row that didn’t want to pay music royalties. It made me long for the days of exhaustive ten to fifteen minute dance mixes that seemed all too short while dancing under the watchful spin of Junior. I am sure the thirty-something in the Abercrombie tee sipping on a cosmo thought the exact same thing.
Conor was there in a gently worn hoodie that undoubtedly had been tirelessly and expensively distressed to appear so casually at ends on a chilly winter night. He and Matty spotted each other and sparred at a distance though it didn’t have any of the venom I expected. Whatever intense animus there once was between them has apparently since been replaced by the kind of playful sniping that usually ended with Krystal and Alexis plunging into a fountain during sweeps. The ever winning smile of Brian Babst was on hand as well, ready the second he spotted me with lines from last night’s 30 Rock, all perfectly memorized. “I watch each episode twice,” he confided. “Once the night of when I am drunk and again in the morning when I am sober.” It was a tactic that clearly was paying off.
The evening ended as suddenly as it began. Joe was fondling his coat check ticket while lamenting all the photos Matty was taking, and when I returned from the bathroom, he was gone. In a flash, Zoe, the birthday lady in red, was gone from her own party too and it was like the air was let out of the balloon. In the end, some friend of Matty tried to coax us to join them at 3am at Brandon Voss' apartment, but we just stood in stunned horror as they (Conor included) swirled out of the nightclub into the street like the dancers from Fame, screeching and mobbing taxis in a mad clamour to reach the next destination. Matty, Hanno and I slipped away quietly uptown toward Chelsea, where I left them happily on the corner on their way home. For them the adventure was coming to an end, but for me it was just beginning. An hour later, bag in hand, I was in that cab on my way to the airport. For me, the race continues.
Friday, November 21, 2008
The Conor Role
Though merely a bright Cheshire cat smile of a crescent, the moon was huge tonight, looming over me as I drove up the big hill to my house. It was Cosmo's moon from Moonstruck and suddenly I was reminded that love doesn't make things perfect. It ruins everything. It breaks your heart. I have been trying not to think about love much these days (largely to no avail), but it was contaminating everything tonight at Manhattan's yearly high school gay mono makeout party known locally as Revel.
Revel is an annual charity event to raise money to help gay youth, which is attended by all the hottest and sexiest twenty and thirty-somethings in town. It is all a very worthy cause and a noble idea, just covered in two scoops of vanilla ice cream, a gooey layer of chocolate fudge, a sprinkling of crushed walnuts and topped with whipped cream. Though it is one sundae of a party for which the cherry is a distant memory for those in attendance.
This is one of the few gay musts that I do, and a rare chance for me to hobnob with the homos that I otherwise shun (before they have the chance to shun me, natch). Aside from dropping by Bowery Bar's notorious outdoor patio on the first warm Spring Tuesday of the year and the last balmy Autumn one before winter's chill forces everyone who is anyone to landlock above 14th street until the thaw, Revel is about it when it comes to gay caucus meetings where my vote is annually cast.
I had wanted Hottie Zach and Ronnie to attend, to aid in their quest to get connected in the gay social scene for which Revel is practically a wall socket, but they weren't there tonight. My neighbor Clayton did join me, however, and it was nice to have someone to pal around with. I had fully expected to see Matty, but I suppose I can deduce from his Facebook Mobile uploads that he was watching Survivor tonight with Charlie and couldn't make it. It is likely for the best since my favorite of his exes was there: Conor McGill
Much has been written in my blog about Conor already and you can expect plenty more where that came from. He looked adorable in a tiny bowtie with skulls and crossbones on it (solidarity for Somali pirates?). Conor assured me that it took him hours to get the tie right, after learning to do it on YouTube, and I think it was time well spent. I love Conor and I know between Ben Harvey and Matty, I am woefully in the minority on this one. But once again, I was charmed by his puppy dog eyes, magnetic silver sneakers and a drink in each hand. What can I say? I know what I like and I know everything will stay perfect between us as long as I only see him every few months and things never go further than a polite kiss on the cheek.
Conor was there with his friend Michael, a securities lawyer who didn't like that I wasn't saying much nor that I only work about four hours every day since he works almost twenty. "Just think of it this way," I told him, in a classic flirtation on my part that shows why no one ever wants to date me, "anytime you aren't working, I am!" In between kissing other guys, he drunkenly cajoled me into asking him out on a date. He must be a very good lawyer since it was all over before I even knew what was happening, and he billed me for the whole hour even though it only took about five minutes.
Bobby was there with some co-workers and his insanely hot friend Chris from San Francisco. Chris' adorable argyle print shirt was so tight on his taut frame it looked like it had been ironed onto his perfect torso by angels. Chris was drunk and grabby, which is always hot, but then he was drunk and grabby with everyone (including separately Clayton), which makes it less personally satisfying. But he is insanely hot, so naturally I am willing to let untold amounts of untoward behavior slide.
Ryan Newman was there with his friend Mike, whom I have met a dozen times and am always greeted by with the same granite expression of persistent annoyance. Ryan looked cute with his new short hair cut, according to him a much needed return to form. I think he looks good either way, but he didn't stay long enough to talk about more than his hair. Ryan and Mike were encircled by a cadre of all the people I saw at that Halloween party and election night and countless other times, but who all stare right through me uncomfortably as if I am a peasant child begging with Chiclets in hand in the midst of their otherwise fabulous Mexican vacation.
It was all for the best. At a certain point, the Madonna mashups and the makeouts and the mos were starting to get to me. There is only so much "A" gay someone from the suburbs can take before dinner moves up into their esophagus. When the others headed to the official after party at Mr. Black's or each other's apartments for awkward groping and dark fumblings, Clayton and I grabbed our coats and headed out into the night, on our way back to the middle of obscurity.
The forecast is for snow tomorrow. I really hope it doesn't. But as I looked down at the temperature reading in the car on my way home, it said 26 degrees. Smells like snow. I looked back up at the moon and saw the old Cheshire cat smiling back down at me. Beaming really. Winter is here, he smiled. And you can get as big as you want by telling people "eat me" but you are still in Wonderland no matter how much you try to leave it.
Revel is an annual charity event to raise money to help gay youth, which is attended by all the hottest and sexiest twenty and thirty-somethings in town. It is all a very worthy cause and a noble idea, just covered in two scoops of vanilla ice cream, a gooey layer of chocolate fudge, a sprinkling of crushed walnuts and topped with whipped cream. Though it is one sundae of a party for which the cherry is a distant memory for those in attendance.
This is one of the few gay musts that I do, and a rare chance for me to hobnob with the homos that I otherwise shun (before they have the chance to shun me, natch). Aside from dropping by Bowery Bar's notorious outdoor patio on the first warm Spring Tuesday of the year and the last balmy Autumn one before winter's chill forces everyone who is anyone to landlock above 14th street until the thaw, Revel is about it when it comes to gay caucus meetings where my vote is annually cast.
I had wanted Hottie Zach and Ronnie to attend, to aid in their quest to get connected in the gay social scene for which Revel is practically a wall socket, but they weren't there tonight. My neighbor Clayton did join me, however, and it was nice to have someone to pal around with. I had fully expected to see Matty, but I suppose I can deduce from his Facebook Mobile uploads that he was watching Survivor tonight with Charlie and couldn't make it. It is likely for the best since my favorite of his exes was there: Conor McGill
Much has been written in my blog about Conor already and you can expect plenty more where that came from. He looked adorable in a tiny bowtie with skulls and crossbones on it (solidarity for Somali pirates?). Conor assured me that it took him hours to get the tie right, after learning to do it on YouTube, and I think it was time well spent. I love Conor and I know between Ben Harvey and Matty, I am woefully in the minority on this one. But once again, I was charmed by his puppy dog eyes, magnetic silver sneakers and a drink in each hand. What can I say? I know what I like and I know everything will stay perfect between us as long as I only see him every few months and things never go further than a polite kiss on the cheek.
Conor was there with his friend Michael, a securities lawyer who didn't like that I wasn't saying much nor that I only work about four hours every day since he works almost twenty. "Just think of it this way," I told him, in a classic flirtation on my part that shows why no one ever wants to date me, "anytime you aren't working, I am!" In between kissing other guys, he drunkenly cajoled me into asking him out on a date. He must be a very good lawyer since it was all over before I even knew what was happening, and he billed me for the whole hour even though it only took about five minutes.
Bobby was there with some co-workers and his insanely hot friend Chris from San Francisco. Chris' adorable argyle print shirt was so tight on his taut frame it looked like it had been ironed onto his perfect torso by angels. Chris was drunk and grabby, which is always hot, but then he was drunk and grabby with everyone (including separately Clayton), which makes it less personally satisfying. But he is insanely hot, so naturally I am willing to let untold amounts of untoward behavior slide.
Ryan Newman was there with his friend Mike, whom I have met a dozen times and am always greeted by with the same granite expression of persistent annoyance. Ryan looked cute with his new short hair cut, according to him a much needed return to form. I think he looks good either way, but he didn't stay long enough to talk about more than his hair. Ryan and Mike were encircled by a cadre of all the people I saw at that Halloween party and election night and countless other times, but who all stare right through me uncomfortably as if I am a peasant child begging with Chiclets in hand in the midst of their otherwise fabulous Mexican vacation.
It was all for the best. At a certain point, the Madonna mashups and the makeouts and the mos were starting to get to me. There is only so much "A" gay someone from the suburbs can take before dinner moves up into their esophagus. When the others headed to the official after party at Mr. Black's or each other's apartments for awkward groping and dark fumblings, Clayton and I grabbed our coats and headed out into the night, on our way back to the middle of obscurity.
The forecast is for snow tomorrow. I really hope it doesn't. But as I looked down at the temperature reading in the car on my way home, it said 26 degrees. Smells like snow. I looked back up at the moon and saw the old Cheshire cat smiling back down at me. Beaming really. Winter is here, he smiled. And you can get as big as you want by telling people "eat me" but you are still in Wonderland no matter how much you try to leave it.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Unwanted Attention
"This would be a great place for a party." I said in the Rouge Room in the basement of Paris Commune, a chic eatery in lower Manhattan. It would have been a bold suggestion if we weren't already there attending someone else's party. A self-centered asshole like me takes the unspoken "for me" at the end of every statement like that as a given but to casual listeners like Ben Harvey and Navy Man Joe it just came off as a little daft. Sadly, when it comes to words, I work in a volume business and that means the finer points get lost in the rush, which is something of a problem.
Things started out well enough at Rocking Horse, a cozy restaurant in Chelsea where Matty and I finally were able to corner Ronnie and plot his future. I am, by nature, a meddlesome and nosy person, which drives Roommate to distraction as I dissect the personal lives of our neighbors while driving down the street with comments like "I wish Jennifer would sell that house of hers" and "I love her yard. She can't possibly hold down a job and spend so much time landscaping." Matty, as I have often posted, is the most connected person I know. Working in tandem we are like Wonder Twins, swooping down into the lives of the unsuspecting and molding their future like so much modeling clay. In Ronnie, we see a modern day Galatea, already armed with ambition, just waiting to be thrust in the right direction.
Ronnie swilled coffee like an overnight truck driver, worn out from his long and productive weekend in DC with the NGLCC, joining us for dinner direct from the airport, overnight bag in hand. Matty's handsome boyfriend Hanno and Ben Harvey rounded out our fivesome and we had a great time over margaritas and barely recognizable "Mexican" food. "What did you order?" asked Matty, gazing down at what appeared to be a very unappetizing pile of diarrhea in front of me. It was what turned out to be a very delicious hunk of pork on a bed of mashed plantains, but I must confess it did look suspiciously like something a plumber would pull out of a clogged drain.
After dinner, Ronnie raced home to his bed for what I assume was 12 hours of uninterrupted sleep, and Matty piped us down to the West Village for the birthday party of a friend whose name I instantly forgot. The friend was very sweet and fun, and all of his gay friends were pretty and diverse, like the Justice Department forcing A&F to acquire the United Colors of Benetton. Since they hadn't finished eating at the long Captain's table in the basement wine bar, we settled into polite conversation at a quiet table in the corner, and not so long after was joined by Joe, last seen stumbling home from Halloween.
In a self-referential move that would make Charlie Kaufman proud, talk quickly turned to this blog and the damage it has wrought since I started it almost two years ago. "Every time you write in your blog, someone gets hurt!" Matty chided me, not amused that his name and "ass eating" ended up in the same sentence last time, even though Bradford's blog is the first Google search result that comes up when you type them in together (should any weirdo ever want to make such a search). Joe was perfectly happy with his entry and his friends, upon discovering it, expressed their joy at sudden blog infamy, but Matty is right. My blog, despite my intentions to only portray things the way I see them and paint myself in a worse light than anyone else, often backfires. I have inadvertently outed people that I assumed were out and no doubt have made untold enemies along the way. I wouldn't have written about election night at all except that Hanno mentioned that night that his friends back in Osterreich liked the first entry he was in. Apparently, it is true that no good deed goes unpunished, or in this case, misinterpreted.
After a round of intense picture taking, Matty and Hanno headed home, and Ben and I left as well with every intention (emphasis added) to head straight home ourselves. We left Joe behind with a full glass of wine, and half-empty birthday party as well as charge over Matty's forgotten umbrella. Walking up eighth avenue, Ben suddenly got a text from Martin, whom he had forgotten he told to join us at Paris Commune. Martin said he was on his way there and in a moment of guilty panic we both decided not to snub Martin and meet him for a quick single drink at Barracuda. Immediately we thought we should invite Joe since we so hastily retreated from the last party but neither of us had his number. A modern gay Kobayashi Maru if ever there was one.
Barracuda smelled like the quite literal bowels of Hell but it was packed to the rafters anyway. Adorable Ryan Newman was there, showing off his sensational new short haircut. I wanted to go catch up with him, but while waiting for Martin to arrive, Ben mistakenly made casual eye contact with a deranged stranger in a houndstooth jacket. For the rest of my time there, we actively pivoted away from him only to have him counter our every move. Check. Check. Check. Then after Martin joined us and headed up to the bar to get a drink, it was Checkmate when he cornered Martin who was waiting helplessly for his cocktail. That was the end of the line for me. I had only stayed long enough to protect Ben from the clutches of this dubious letch, having failed at that, the drunk train awaited.
There is so much left unsaid out of an evening on the town. I leave many of the best scraps on the floor and sweep them out of my memory because I like my friends and I don't want to engender even more resentment. I am already someone that can be difficult to like and as Curtis once observed, "Sometimes when Derek is talking, it seems like he has no idea who he is talking to." In the case of this blog, the only person I am really talking to is myself. True, other people are able to listen, and I try to be mindful of that. But life is what it is. Sometimes it isn't pretty. And when you only have a few paragraphs to work with, you can see clearly that the Reader's Digest version of my life strips a lot of cartilage off the bone. And that can lead to some very painful moments as we move through everyday life.
Things started out well enough at Rocking Horse, a cozy restaurant in Chelsea where Matty and I finally were able to corner Ronnie and plot his future. I am, by nature, a meddlesome and nosy person, which drives Roommate to distraction as I dissect the personal lives of our neighbors while driving down the street with comments like "I wish Jennifer would sell that house of hers" and "I love her yard. She can't possibly hold down a job and spend so much time landscaping." Matty, as I have often posted, is the most connected person I know. Working in tandem we are like Wonder Twins, swooping down into the lives of the unsuspecting and molding their future like so much modeling clay. In Ronnie, we see a modern day Galatea, already armed with ambition, just waiting to be thrust in the right direction.
Ronnie swilled coffee like an overnight truck driver, worn out from his long and productive weekend in DC with the NGLCC, joining us for dinner direct from the airport, overnight bag in hand. Matty's handsome boyfriend Hanno and Ben Harvey rounded out our fivesome and we had a great time over margaritas and barely recognizable "Mexican" food. "What did you order?" asked Matty, gazing down at what appeared to be a very unappetizing pile of diarrhea in front of me. It was what turned out to be a very delicious hunk of pork on a bed of mashed plantains, but I must confess it did look suspiciously like something a plumber would pull out of a clogged drain.
After dinner, Ronnie raced home to his bed for what I assume was 12 hours of uninterrupted sleep, and Matty piped us down to the West Village for the birthday party of a friend whose name I instantly forgot. The friend was very sweet and fun, and all of his gay friends were pretty and diverse, like the Justice Department forcing A&F to acquire the United Colors of Benetton. Since they hadn't finished eating at the long Captain's table in the basement wine bar, we settled into polite conversation at a quiet table in the corner, and not so long after was joined by Joe, last seen stumbling home from Halloween.
In a self-referential move that would make Charlie Kaufman proud, talk quickly turned to this blog and the damage it has wrought since I started it almost two years ago. "Every time you write in your blog, someone gets hurt!" Matty chided me, not amused that his name and "ass eating" ended up in the same sentence last time, even though Bradford's blog is the first Google search result that comes up when you type them in together (should any weirdo ever want to make such a search). Joe was perfectly happy with his entry and his friends, upon discovering it, expressed their joy at sudden blog infamy, but Matty is right. My blog, despite my intentions to only portray things the way I see them and paint myself in a worse light than anyone else, often backfires. I have inadvertently outed people that I assumed were out and no doubt have made untold enemies along the way. I wouldn't have written about election night at all except that Hanno mentioned that night that his friends back in Osterreich liked the first entry he was in. Apparently, it is true that no good deed goes unpunished, or in this case, misinterpreted.
After a round of intense picture taking, Matty and Hanno headed home, and Ben and I left as well with every intention (emphasis added) to head straight home ourselves. We left Joe behind with a full glass of wine, and half-empty birthday party as well as charge over Matty's forgotten umbrella. Walking up eighth avenue, Ben suddenly got a text from Martin, whom he had forgotten he told to join us at Paris Commune. Martin said he was on his way there and in a moment of guilty panic we both decided not to snub Martin and meet him for a quick single drink at Barracuda. Immediately we thought we should invite Joe since we so hastily retreated from the last party but neither of us had his number. A modern gay Kobayashi Maru if ever there was one.
Barracuda smelled like the quite literal bowels of Hell but it was packed to the rafters anyway. Adorable Ryan Newman was there, showing off his sensational new short haircut. I wanted to go catch up with him, but while waiting for Martin to arrive, Ben mistakenly made casual eye contact with a deranged stranger in a houndstooth jacket. For the rest of my time there, we actively pivoted away from him only to have him counter our every move. Check. Check. Check. Then after Martin joined us and headed up to the bar to get a drink, it was Checkmate when he cornered Martin who was waiting helplessly for his cocktail. That was the end of the line for me. I had only stayed long enough to protect Ben from the clutches of this dubious letch, having failed at that, the drunk train awaited.
There is so much left unsaid out of an evening on the town. I leave many of the best scraps on the floor and sweep them out of my memory because I like my friends and I don't want to engender even more resentment. I am already someone that can be difficult to like and as Curtis once observed, "Sometimes when Derek is talking, it seems like he has no idea who he is talking to." In the case of this blog, the only person I am really talking to is myself. True, other people are able to listen, and I try to be mindful of that. But life is what it is. Sometimes it isn't pretty. And when you only have a few paragraphs to work with, you can see clearly that the Reader's Digest version of my life strips a lot of cartilage off the bone. And that can lead to some very painful moments as we move through everyday life.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Elevate!
Have I mentioned that Matty works in marketing? I should amend that. Matty is marketing. The living embodiment of presentation as commodity, promotion the coin of the realm. To say that I depend on Matt to connect me to gay life as we know it, I mean it like I depend on my lungs to breathe. And in the world of Matty's social largess, I am the fat welfare queen of Reagan's deepest recession-era nightmares.
As the club promoter of nothing less than the gay scene of Manhattan, clipboard guest list and critical judgment firmly in hand, I am his most pitiful charity case. I am a hopeless Eliza Doolittle in the fair hands of a very impatient Henry Higgins. Even as my public profile has risen, my game is hopelessly stalled in neutral. Even tonight when I assured him on my way out of Barracuda at the end of the evening that I would "step it up" he stamped me with his new idiom "Elevate!"
After the show, I joined Matty at Adam's apartment for an Obama victory party straight out of gay central casting. Adam and all of his subtly hunky friends were J. Crew catalog delicious (Gay Crew catalog, anyone?) and the elegant simplicity of his Chelsea apartment, courtesy the recent interior artistic stylings of Hanno, was the perfect background. It was the kind of cozy clean scene that convinces moderate Republican women that maybe the gays aren't so bad after all.
I always feel hopelessly out of place in environs like these, too thin in the arms, too thick around the middle and always too old. To assuage these and a million other feelings, I like to settle in with the friendliest person I can find or someone I already know. Charlie was there and the way he called out to me from across the spare living room, dotted with snappy gay couples locked together like freshly scrubbed Tetris pieces, said he was looking for the same thing. But maybe he just wanted another blog mention. Either way, mission accomplished. We watched Obama's stellar acceptance speech together while sharing the perfectly made cape cod that Matty had mixed for me in a red plastic party cup in Adam's airmail stamp of a kitchen.
The moment the speech ended was like 12:01am on New Year's Day and the place cleared out faster than the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. I found Matty in Adam's bedroom on the computer with party guest Gray, trying to use Facebook to find the phone number of a faint yet mutual acquaintance to no avail. All our futuristic technological endeavors should be like ideal children: well-behaved, passing through our lives almost unnoticed, and largely confined to the home where when things go wrong they can cause the least amount of trouble and anxiety in front of strangers. At a dead end for the next post-election party, everyone decided to decamp to the old reliable (Sarah) Barracuda for a cocktail.
There was high excitement as we headed down toward the bar and Matty suggested we cartwheel across Seventh Avenue. I was mortified at the thought of my hands touching the urine encrusted thoroughfare. "The street is filthy!" Matty turned to me and deadpanned, "Have you eaten an ass lately? I rest my case." I wasn't sure if the evening was blog-worthy until Matty released that pearl and sealed the deal. Then Gray insisted that I refer to him only as "Will" but since he never explained why, that isn't happening. Besides, Gray is a much better name, evocative, and it's why I instantly remembered him when we first met earlier because of his frequent appearance along with Matty in any number of Facebook photo galleries.
Once at Barracuda, Matty spied a hot young guy in a heather grey t-shirt walking behind me and then tried to shove my lumbering carcass into him. I shot him a dirty look. "You need to get laid!" he screamed at me, the word "laid" lingering in his open mouth for several seconds, which I assume was either to drown out the horrible singing contest in the backroom or to encourage lonely suitors in my vicinity to give me a second, yet scornful look. This started a brief exchange that ended with his immortal insistence that I "elevate!"
Matty is probably right. There is no point in my showing up in public if I am not even going to make an effort to publicize myself. There is no point in putting the goods on the shelf if your primary intention is to discourage the customers from buying. For a moment, I really thought he was on to something, but then that same hot young guy walked by and this time Matty shoved another friend of his into him. I turned to the friend who seemed as equally stunned as I had been and said, "I think Matty just wants us to sleep with the guys that he can't sleep with now that he is in a relationship."
He smiled, a broad knowing smile. "I think you are right."
Eh. In a way, I think we are both right.
As the club promoter of nothing less than the gay scene of Manhattan, clipboard guest list and critical judgment firmly in hand, I am his most pitiful charity case. I am a hopeless Eliza Doolittle in the fair hands of a very impatient Henry Higgins. Even as my public profile has risen, my game is hopelessly stalled in neutral. Even tonight when I assured him on my way out of Barracuda at the end of the evening that I would "step it up" he stamped me with his new idiom "Elevate!"
After the show, I joined Matty at Adam's apartment for an Obama victory party straight out of gay central casting. Adam and all of his subtly hunky friends were J. Crew catalog delicious (Gay Crew catalog, anyone?) and the elegant simplicity of his Chelsea apartment, courtesy the recent interior artistic stylings of Hanno, was the perfect background. It was the kind of cozy clean scene that convinces moderate Republican women that maybe the gays aren't so bad after all.
I always feel hopelessly out of place in environs like these, too thin in the arms, too thick around the middle and always too old. To assuage these and a million other feelings, I like to settle in with the friendliest person I can find or someone I already know. Charlie was there and the way he called out to me from across the spare living room, dotted with snappy gay couples locked together like freshly scrubbed Tetris pieces, said he was looking for the same thing. But maybe he just wanted another blog mention. Either way, mission accomplished. We watched Obama's stellar acceptance speech together while sharing the perfectly made cape cod that Matty had mixed for me in a red plastic party cup in Adam's airmail stamp of a kitchen.
The moment the speech ended was like 12:01am on New Year's Day and the place cleared out faster than the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. I found Matty in Adam's bedroom on the computer with party guest Gray, trying to use Facebook to find the phone number of a faint yet mutual acquaintance to no avail. All our futuristic technological endeavors should be like ideal children: well-behaved, passing through our lives almost unnoticed, and largely confined to the home where when things go wrong they can cause the least amount of trouble and anxiety in front of strangers. At a dead end for the next post-election party, everyone decided to decamp to the old reliable (Sarah) Barracuda for a cocktail.
There was high excitement as we headed down toward the bar and Matty suggested we cartwheel across Seventh Avenue. I was mortified at the thought of my hands touching the urine encrusted thoroughfare. "The street is filthy!" Matty turned to me and deadpanned, "Have you eaten an ass lately? I rest my case." I wasn't sure if the evening was blog-worthy until Matty released that pearl and sealed the deal. Then Gray insisted that I refer to him only as "Will" but since he never explained why, that isn't happening. Besides, Gray is a much better name, evocative, and it's why I instantly remembered him when we first met earlier because of his frequent appearance along with Matty in any number of Facebook photo galleries.
Once at Barracuda, Matty spied a hot young guy in a heather grey t-shirt walking behind me and then tried to shove my lumbering carcass into him. I shot him a dirty look. "You need to get laid!" he screamed at me, the word "laid" lingering in his open mouth for several seconds, which I assume was either to drown out the horrible singing contest in the backroom or to encourage lonely suitors in my vicinity to give me a second, yet scornful look. This started a brief exchange that ended with his immortal insistence that I "elevate!"
Matty is probably right. There is no point in my showing up in public if I am not even going to make an effort to publicize myself. There is no point in putting the goods on the shelf if your primary intention is to discourage the customers from buying. For a moment, I really thought he was on to something, but then that same hot young guy walked by and this time Matty shoved another friend of his into him. I turned to the friend who seemed as equally stunned as I had been and said, "I think Matty just wants us to sleep with the guys that he can't sleep with now that he is in a relationship."
He smiled, a broad knowing smile. "I think you are right."
Eh. In a way, I think we are both right.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Mistaken Identities
Halloween night in NYC is just terrific. I don't know why I never noticed before. I suppose it is because I have pretty much skipped active participation in the downtown scene since I moved here from Los Angeles. Halloween in West Hollywood used to be fun, but then it became overwhelmed by people in plain clothes gawking and no one dressed up so much anymore. I blame my dear friend (and long-standing addiction) television for turning us into a nation of lookers instead of doers.
I was most looking forward to Halloween night at my house in the suburbs. We took the night off from the show and finally I had a house in a neighborhood where I could decorate the yard and pass out candy to little kids in cute costumes. I sat there in my cowboy outfit for three hours waiting for a little more than a dozen kids to show up. I had been concerned I wouldn't have enough candy but after I waited an hour for the next batch of kids to come, I instituted a mandatory "take as much as you want" policy lest I get stuck eating my weight in Reese's peanut butter cups and fun size Kit Kat bars. As it was, I powered through at least ten pieces while waiting for the doorbell to ring.
At 8pm I said so long to suburbia and packed up my cowboy hat and duster and headed down to New York City. The train was filled with locals in costume and when it pulled into Grand Central Station suddenly it was like I had arrived at the party. Maybe it was because it was so unseasonably warm or because the holiday landed on a Friday or because the economy is so bad that everyone was desperate for something to take their minds off the misery, but it felt like the entire city had gone all out for the occasion.
I joined Matty and his adorable boyfriend Hanno at Joe's apartment, where the ex-Navy man managed to outfit the cute couple as well as himself and straight girl counterpart Erica in his leftover gear. Matty in a trim khaki suit, Hanno in fatigues, Joe in crisp dress blues and Erica in his dress shirt belted with black leggings. I told her she looked like a stripper. "I look like Pamela Anderson when she married Tommy Lee," she replied. I assured her that that was what I meant.
We cooled our heels at Joe's for a while, consuming champagne, and waiting for others to show up so we could move on to Josh and Chris' party a few blocks away. Finally two girls showed up dressed as an Olsen twin and Amy Winehouse and we ran off into the night. As we sojourned from Chelsea to the West Village, the streets were clogged with revelers, all dressed up with somewhere to go. The Maritime hotel overflowed with Asian flappers and the sidewalks were jammed with all manner of pop culture touchstone.
Outside of the party we ran into playwright Robert Harling who was just leaving, as well as a cute guy dressed as a riff on the woman who claimed someone carved a B in her face, although he had an MJ on his face which had to be laboriously explained to everyone who wasn't dyslexic. This is the trouble with a clever costume. Half the time no one knows what it is, and the other half think it is something else entirely. At Best Week Ever today, Michelle Collins showed up with a crazy wig dressed as Peg Bundy but was instantly mistaken for The Real Housewives Of Atlanta. It's an even bigger problem working in a pop culture crucible because your references have to be so of the moment they are practically predictions of the future.
Inside, it was a very typical gay party. There were four extremely hot shirtless guys in tight football pants dry humping each other, sloppy drunken dancing in the living room to Britney's "Womanizer" and the kitchen was so densely packed it's a wonder the more waifish guests weren't spontaneously expelled from the room like champagne corks every few minutes due to the mounting pressures. Josh and Chris were terrific and welcoming hosts though I spent most of the evening with Joe's girls, not knowing anyone else and being self conscious about what my cowboy hat had done to my hair.
I had really wanted to go to Ronnie's Halloween benefit or even the party that Brian Babst ran off to figuring that me in a cowboy costume might finally be the nudge he needs to make out with me in public. But by the time we got settled it was already too late for me to make it to a third location before the drunk train home. So I settled in to a steady diet of candy corn and cupcakes while trying to avoid all human contact. I danced a little. We escaped briefly upstairs to Mike's apartment (which we called the VIP room). And even capped off the evening on the rooftop deck. The night was cool and still fifty feet above the West Village and if a very drunk and tall Marilyn hadn't stumbled out to smoke, you might almost forget it was Halloween.
I left Matty and Hanno at the party and walked Joe back to his place. Joe's girls had long since departed for a straight bar because quite frankly they hadn't all dressed so slutty and frozen their asses off all night just to go home alone. Joe was so drunk he barely made it down the stairs to the street, let alone the ten blocks back to his place. Earlier at his apartment he had reminded me that we met some weeks ago at Eric's party but in typical fashion I had forgotten. My mind was on other things and another person that night. I tried to look at him there on the street, passing Ugly Betties and a Sarah Palin eating a hot dog, to see if I could conjure a hint of recognition.
As I passed a long sea of sexy kittens and naughty nurses, I thought about how difficult it would be to get my swollen feet out of my boots later after walking all the way back to Grand Central. They may have been made for walking but probably not for a mile or two over concrete. True, my very authentic cowboy drag (happily bought in Dallas, sadly made in China) did get a few catcalls from women and a nice "you look so Brokeback, I love it" from Matty, but it was hardly my only costume of the night. I have been in the same masquerade for months now, putting a happy mask over the man with the broken heart. And as fun as this holiday is, it just isn't the same alone.
I was most looking forward to Halloween night at my house in the suburbs. We took the night off from the show and finally I had a house in a neighborhood where I could decorate the yard and pass out candy to little kids in cute costumes. I sat there in my cowboy outfit for three hours waiting for a little more than a dozen kids to show up. I had been concerned I wouldn't have enough candy but after I waited an hour for the next batch of kids to come, I instituted a mandatory "take as much as you want" policy lest I get stuck eating my weight in Reese's peanut butter cups and fun size Kit Kat bars. As it was, I powered through at least ten pieces while waiting for the doorbell to ring.
At 8pm I said so long to suburbia and packed up my cowboy hat and duster and headed down to New York City. The train was filled with locals in costume and when it pulled into Grand Central Station suddenly it was like I had arrived at the party. Maybe it was because it was so unseasonably warm or because the holiday landed on a Friday or because the economy is so bad that everyone was desperate for something to take their minds off the misery, but it felt like the entire city had gone all out for the occasion.
I joined Matty and his adorable boyfriend Hanno at Joe's apartment, where the ex-Navy man managed to outfit the cute couple as well as himself and straight girl counterpart Erica in his leftover gear. Matty in a trim khaki suit, Hanno in fatigues, Joe in crisp dress blues and Erica in his dress shirt belted with black leggings. I told her she looked like a stripper. "I look like Pamela Anderson when she married Tommy Lee," she replied. I assured her that that was what I meant.
We cooled our heels at Joe's for a while, consuming champagne, and waiting for others to show up so we could move on to Josh and Chris' party a few blocks away. Finally two girls showed up dressed as an Olsen twin and Amy Winehouse and we ran off into the night. As we sojourned from Chelsea to the West Village, the streets were clogged with revelers, all dressed up with somewhere to go. The Maritime hotel overflowed with Asian flappers and the sidewalks were jammed with all manner of pop culture touchstone.
Outside of the party we ran into playwright Robert Harling who was just leaving, as well as a cute guy dressed as a riff on the woman who claimed someone carved a B in her face, although he had an MJ on his face which had to be laboriously explained to everyone who wasn't dyslexic. This is the trouble with a clever costume. Half the time no one knows what it is, and the other half think it is something else entirely. At Best Week Ever today, Michelle Collins showed up with a crazy wig dressed as Peg Bundy but was instantly mistaken for The Real Housewives Of Atlanta. It's an even bigger problem working in a pop culture crucible because your references have to be so of the moment they are practically predictions of the future.
Inside, it was a very typical gay party. There were four extremely hot shirtless guys in tight football pants dry humping each other, sloppy drunken dancing in the living room to Britney's "Womanizer" and the kitchen was so densely packed it's a wonder the more waifish guests weren't spontaneously expelled from the room like champagne corks every few minutes due to the mounting pressures. Josh and Chris were terrific and welcoming hosts though I spent most of the evening with Joe's girls, not knowing anyone else and being self conscious about what my cowboy hat had done to my hair.
I had really wanted to go to Ronnie's Halloween benefit or even the party that Brian Babst ran off to figuring that me in a cowboy costume might finally be the nudge he needs to make out with me in public. But by the time we got settled it was already too late for me to make it to a third location before the drunk train home. So I settled in to a steady diet of candy corn and cupcakes while trying to avoid all human contact. I danced a little. We escaped briefly upstairs to Mike's apartment (which we called the VIP room). And even capped off the evening on the rooftop deck. The night was cool and still fifty feet above the West Village and if a very drunk and tall Marilyn hadn't stumbled out to smoke, you might almost forget it was Halloween.
I left Matty and Hanno at the party and walked Joe back to his place. Joe's girls had long since departed for a straight bar because quite frankly they hadn't all dressed so slutty and frozen their asses off all night just to go home alone. Joe was so drunk he barely made it down the stairs to the street, let alone the ten blocks back to his place. Earlier at his apartment he had reminded me that we met some weeks ago at Eric's party but in typical fashion I had forgotten. My mind was on other things and another person that night. I tried to look at him there on the street, passing Ugly Betties and a Sarah Palin eating a hot dog, to see if I could conjure a hint of recognition.
As I passed a long sea of sexy kittens and naughty nurses, I thought about how difficult it would be to get my swollen feet out of my boots later after walking all the way back to Grand Central. They may have been made for walking but probably not for a mile or two over concrete. True, my very authentic cowboy drag (happily bought in Dallas, sadly made in China) did get a few catcalls from women and a nice "you look so Brokeback, I love it" from Matty, but it was hardly my only costume of the night. I have been in the same masquerade for months now, putting a happy mask over the man with the broken heart. And as fun as this holiday is, it just isn't the same alone.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Play Ball
I get so torn about my life in moments like this. On the one hand, I relish my anonymity and all the trappings of "real life." At the same time, I have frequent urges to be in the center of the action. These are the two pulls in my life, tearing me constantly in opposite directions at the same time. Earlier today I was enjoying my Sunday political shows (who knew McLaughlin was such a raving FDR devotee!) and then winterizing my house. It's a quiet existence where I am more concerned with what to watch on TV than who is watching me. But then later, I headed down to the city for dinner with Ben Harvey and a debaucherous turn at the Hustlaball.
It was a gorgeous fall day. Crisp, as we like to say. And the leaves were just starting to turn and drop, even as the sun shown warmly through the thinning branches. On days like this, I love the long walks the city affords and made the trek from Grand Central to Union Square on foot. Ben was waiting for me in the bar of Republic looking as handsome as ever. Has it really been so many months since I saw him last?
Republic is one of my favorite places in the city. It is communist dining at its finest: inexpensive, fast, spare and they serve thai ice tea and green tea ice cream, two of my greatest rare pleasures in life. It was all new to Ben so he stuck with the reliable pad thai while I indulged in spicy duck noodle broth. We gossiped about work, caught up on love (or lack thereof), shared chicken skewers. Aside from my total domination of the conversation, it was a perfect evening.
I regret to say that, in my usual fashion, I turned to Ben as we got our ice cream and said, "And now in our last five minutes, tell me all about you." Believe me when I say this was not the worst of my conversational crimes. I managed to weave a depressing zinger about our depressed economy as the punchline to nearly every sentence no matter the subject matter. Through it all, Ben was a terrific sport about the whole thing.
From there, I jetted down to the Hustlaball. Last year, I attended under the guise of being Chi Chi LaRue's assistant. This year, I was (thanks to Howard at FabScout) a bona fide invited guest. In many ways, I loved being mistaken for Chi Chi's minion. No one wanted anything from me save access to the terminally accessible and personable star herself. This year, still no one wanted anything from me, though ever the publicist, Howard made sure everyone knew who the hell I was. Though, the one person who had heard of OutQ mistook my show for another, accusing me of an appalling bit about selling a used condom full of cum at 9:30am! "That's our morning show," I assured him, finally with a sense of relief at not having to defend the lurid content of my own show for a change.
Barrett Long was there, looking dapper as we sat together in the VIP lounge. He was anxious to rehash our good times last year when his then roommate Rod Barry picked a drunken fight on the patio. Suddenly, sensing the moment, he stood up and started to unzip his pants. "I've seen it!" I said, but he was persistent. "Yes but you haven't sucked on it." I dodged the inevitable hand on the back of the head and stood up, firm in my conviction to not experience his mammoth eleven inch cock first hand. "I still have my tonsils, Barrett, and this is not how I want them taken out."
Ben Andrews was there early on doing his Clark Kent shtick, but I spent most of the evening with Jackson Wild and Ryan Raz. The two of them were still rattled from some unpleasantness the night before at Octoberfist, another adjunct Hustlaball event. Jackson was drinking up a storm, even charming me into a lemon drop shot I didn't want to do, while Ryan stuck dutifully to water knowing he had a scene to do in the morning with the aforementioned Barrett Long. I didn't envy his future soreness one bit, especially after Barrett told me that once it was in he wanted Ryan to spin on it.
Jackson was excited about the eminent arrival of his boyfriend Jim. After the show on Friday prepping for my last blog entry, I did some recon on the boys and read all about Jim on Jackson's MySpace page. Jackson's love for the hunky stranger seemed worthy to me and the two of us got along great. Good thing since we spent the better part of the evening together while the boys were working the red carpet and dancing on stage. In the interim, I coaxed Jim to take his shirt off and the two of us turned the VIP lounge into our own private dance party.
Events like the Hustlaball are dicey propositions, especially in the VIP room where the crowd is made up of porn stars and the men who love them. Many of the stars are reluctant participants and the admirers are too busy staring to have much fun. That leaves it up to in-betweeners like us to actually bring the party. As an invited guest, I did my best to shore up the proceedings, short of sucking Barrett Long. After all, when all is said and done, I am still just a civilian here, having fun but always with an eye on the door that leads out to the real world where I truly belong.
It was a gorgeous fall day. Crisp, as we like to say. And the leaves were just starting to turn and drop, even as the sun shown warmly through the thinning branches. On days like this, I love the long walks the city affords and made the trek from Grand Central to Union Square on foot. Ben was waiting for me in the bar of Republic looking as handsome as ever. Has it really been so many months since I saw him last?
Republic is one of my favorite places in the city. It is communist dining at its finest: inexpensive, fast, spare and they serve thai ice tea and green tea ice cream, two of my greatest rare pleasures in life. It was all new to Ben so he stuck with the reliable pad thai while I indulged in spicy duck noodle broth. We gossiped about work, caught up on love (or lack thereof), shared chicken skewers. Aside from my total domination of the conversation, it was a perfect evening.
I regret to say that, in my usual fashion, I turned to Ben as we got our ice cream and said, "And now in our last five minutes, tell me all about you." Believe me when I say this was not the worst of my conversational crimes. I managed to weave a depressing zinger about our depressed economy as the punchline to nearly every sentence no matter the subject matter. Through it all, Ben was a terrific sport about the whole thing.
From there, I jetted down to the Hustlaball. Last year, I attended under the guise of being Chi Chi LaRue's assistant. This year, I was (thanks to Howard at FabScout) a bona fide invited guest. In many ways, I loved being mistaken for Chi Chi's minion. No one wanted anything from me save access to the terminally accessible and personable star herself. This year, still no one wanted anything from me, though ever the publicist, Howard made sure everyone knew who the hell I was. Though, the one person who had heard of OutQ mistook my show for another, accusing me of an appalling bit about selling a used condom full of cum at 9:30am! "That's our morning show," I assured him, finally with a sense of relief at not having to defend the lurid content of my own show for a change.
Barrett Long was there, looking dapper as we sat together in the VIP lounge. He was anxious to rehash our good times last year when his then roommate Rod Barry picked a drunken fight on the patio. Suddenly, sensing the moment, he stood up and started to unzip his pants. "I've seen it!" I said, but he was persistent. "Yes but you haven't sucked on it." I dodged the inevitable hand on the back of the head and stood up, firm in my conviction to not experience his mammoth eleven inch cock first hand. "I still have my tonsils, Barrett, and this is not how I want them taken out."
Ben Andrews was there early on doing his Clark Kent shtick, but I spent most of the evening with Jackson Wild and Ryan Raz. The two of them were still rattled from some unpleasantness the night before at Octoberfist, another adjunct Hustlaball event. Jackson was drinking up a storm, even charming me into a lemon drop shot I didn't want to do, while Ryan stuck dutifully to water knowing he had a scene to do in the morning with the aforementioned Barrett Long. I didn't envy his future soreness one bit, especially after Barrett told me that once it was in he wanted Ryan to spin on it.
Jackson was excited about the eminent arrival of his boyfriend Jim. After the show on Friday prepping for my last blog entry, I did some recon on the boys and read all about Jim on Jackson's MySpace page. Jackson's love for the hunky stranger seemed worthy to me and the two of us got along great. Good thing since we spent the better part of the evening together while the boys were working the red carpet and dancing on stage. In the interim, I coaxed Jim to take his shirt off and the two of us turned the VIP lounge into our own private dance party.
Events like the Hustlaball are dicey propositions, especially in the VIP room where the crowd is made up of porn stars and the men who love them. Many of the stars are reluctant participants and the admirers are too busy staring to have much fun. That leaves it up to in-betweeners like us to actually bring the party. As an invited guest, I did my best to shore up the proceedings, short of sucking Barrett Long. After all, when all is said and done, I am still just a civilian here, having fun but always with an eye on the door that leads out to the real world where I truly belong.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Prix de Beaute
Life divides people into two very subjective categories: fuckable and not fuckable. Of course who falls into which category is purely in the eye of the beholder. However, whole industries have sprung up dependent on the notion of fuckability. Tonight I experienced two of them up close: porn and underwear.
Howard Andrew of FabScout is in town for the Hustlaball. To kick things off, he dropped by the studio with three of his fuckable models. The most outgoing and flirtatious was Jackson Wild, whom I nicknamed Jackson Hole because it seems his ass is also a rugged destination. Howard barely knows me but his keen sense led him to believe (correctly) that I would be most attracted to Ryan Raz, a tan dirty blond with glacier blue eyes and jutting ears. Though the third, a quiet reserved Southern boy named Colton Steele, slight and furry, was probably the most compatible with me sexually.
After the show, they headed for The Eagle for the Hustlaball kick off party and I ventured down to Splash to watch Ronnie emcee an underwear model search for Instinct Magazine. Having pulled this kind of duty before, my sympathies were with Ronnie during the slapdash prolonged proceedings as they dragged on into the night. The event was poorly executed, with the models fully dressed for the overwhelming majority of the show. Even Ronnie was demurely attired much to the chagrin of the salivating crowd. Dan and his friend Patrick who was visiting from out of town joined me against their will at the bar, but we were all in agreement about the show. The bar was half empty and most of the bartenders looked more like underwear models than the contestants, but in every case, they were all quite fuckable.
After the judges declared the audience's least favorite the winner, the show was quickly over. I waited forever to say good bye to Ronnie who still had a bunch of signings and poses for pictures to do. He hugged me and after earlier admiring my new short hair whispered in his calm, even Midwest tone, "You look so beautiful." I might dine emotionally on that for as long as Bob Morris calling me "good looking" in the New York Times.
I decamped from Splash and headed to The Eagle, a purposefully dank playpen now around the corner from the priciest and most ludicrous straight clubs in the city. I found Howard and the boys upstairs. Brian had called my haircut a "Saturday night at The Eagle game changer" at Eric's party last month. Though perhaps because it was Friday the game hadn't seemed to change for me.
Jackson greeted me with the same wild "Let's do it RIGHT NOW!!!!" look that seems to be permanently in his eyes. Ryan was sweet and longing to be nuzzled in a rough and ready roundhouse ready for something else. Finally, appropriate to the venue and occasion, Colton appeared in nothing but a jockstrap. Apparently the alcohol had set in. Howard naturally took it all in with his usual sense of bemusement.
I admire how people I know in porn like Howard take it all in stride. They are plugged in to how fleeting it all is. You have to stay in the moment or the whole thing will consume you. The shelf life of a model is short, but it's even shorter for a porn star. So even though I will never be as fuckable as these porn pups or contestants in an underwear contest, I hope whatever beauty I do have is enough to carry me long term through all the many adventures yet to come.
Howard Andrew of FabScout is in town for the Hustlaball. To kick things off, he dropped by the studio with three of his fuckable models. The most outgoing and flirtatious was Jackson Wild, whom I nicknamed Jackson Hole because it seems his ass is also a rugged destination. Howard barely knows me but his keen sense led him to believe (correctly) that I would be most attracted to Ryan Raz, a tan dirty blond with glacier blue eyes and jutting ears. Though the third, a quiet reserved Southern boy named Colton Steele, slight and furry, was probably the most compatible with me sexually.
After the show, they headed for The Eagle for the Hustlaball kick off party and I ventured down to Splash to watch Ronnie emcee an underwear model search for Instinct Magazine. Having pulled this kind of duty before, my sympathies were with Ronnie during the slapdash prolonged proceedings as they dragged on into the night. The event was poorly executed, with the models fully dressed for the overwhelming majority of the show. Even Ronnie was demurely attired much to the chagrin of the salivating crowd. Dan and his friend Patrick who was visiting from out of town joined me against their will at the bar, but we were all in agreement about the show. The bar was half empty and most of the bartenders looked more like underwear models than the contestants, but in every case, they were all quite fuckable.
After the judges declared the audience's least favorite the winner, the show was quickly over. I waited forever to say good bye to Ronnie who still had a bunch of signings and poses for pictures to do. He hugged me and after earlier admiring my new short hair whispered in his calm, even Midwest tone, "You look so beautiful." I might dine emotionally on that for as long as Bob Morris calling me "good looking" in the New York Times.
I decamped from Splash and headed to The Eagle, a purposefully dank playpen now around the corner from the priciest and most ludicrous straight clubs in the city. I found Howard and the boys upstairs. Brian had called my haircut a "Saturday night at The Eagle game changer" at Eric's party last month. Though perhaps because it was Friday the game hadn't seemed to change for me.
Jackson greeted me with the same wild "Let's do it RIGHT NOW!!!!" look that seems to be permanently in his eyes. Ryan was sweet and longing to be nuzzled in a rough and ready roundhouse ready for something else. Finally, appropriate to the venue and occasion, Colton appeared in nothing but a jockstrap. Apparently the alcohol had set in. Howard naturally took it all in with his usual sense of bemusement.
I admire how people I know in porn like Howard take it all in stride. They are plugged in to how fleeting it all is. You have to stay in the moment or the whole thing will consume you. The shelf life of a model is short, but it's even shorter for a porn star. So even though I will never be as fuckable as these porn pups or contestants in an underwear contest, I hope whatever beauty I do have is enough to carry me long term through all the many adventures yet to come.
Friday, October 10, 2008
My Vynl Offer
I am so tired of having the same conversation over and over with my friends. Tonight after the show, I soldiered down to local eatery Vynl to swill a few cocktails with Hottie Zach and flirt pointlessly with sexy bartender Aaron. It had all the makings of a perfect evening, combining three of my favorite activities. But as it always does lately, talked turned to the infamous J.
Zach is not just cream cheese pretty on the outside, his soft gooey center is equally hot and delicious. I would just have much preferred discussing his impending trip to Morocco (a long held fantasy of mine) or the carelessly hunky demeanor of Aaron (a decidedly briefer though no less intense fantasy) than the dead ended runaway mine car ride that was my association with J. But like all of my well-meaning NY friends, he is anxious for me to move, not just on, but up. It is a desire I do not share.
Perhaps I am just totally and completely out of my mind. This is a distinct possibility. But after twenty years of dating, and meeting quite literally tens of thousands of gay men on numerous continents, finally last November, I found someone that I felt such an intense connection with that I was willing to cast aside all preconceived notions, emotional insecurities and boundaries. For almost a year, I have unpeeled like an onion, growing more nakedly raw and smaller by the day, until now there is nothing left but the involuntary tears such a task is bound to draw. And to what end? The umpteenth conversation about how important it is to move on?
I am not a very good driver, dresser or investor, but my instincts about people are uncanny. And in my life, I have done very well letting the natural flow of things guide me to my next destination. With only minor hiccups here and there, I have alighted from an obscure trailer in rural Virginia to a national radio show in New York City with as thin a resume as Sarah Palin and a mere fraction of her ambition. Never have I been so wrong about a person as I have been with J. Never. And in my heart, I still refuse to believe I was wrong. And yet there is no denying the sorry state of affairs now.
Flirting with Aaron felt good. I can see now why people with no self esteem sleep around a lot, and always desperate to bed the hottest person they can. I have never been that guy and I haven't turned into him now. True I was always quite anxious in my twenties to have a boyfriend and live the settled down dream but more recently I realized what a hollow ambition that was. Then I met J and the echo flushed out, and I filled instead with the rush of promise. It feels like love, truly for the first time, but maybe it's just a midlife crisis. I never really felt a powerful love before but then again I've never had a midlife crisis before either. Maybe I just don't know the difference.
As I walked up the hill tonight to my house, the sky was a sea of stars. It was so magnificent and each time when I look up past my roof and the trees to the twinkling night, I am filled with awe that I own a small piece of this magic. I scanned the sky anxious to find my Friendly Star, but such things don't exist. I see the magic all around me but I feel now like a fool. Someone who believed in the reality of a paper moon sailing over a cardboard sea, only to have the harsh fluorescents of life clicked on suddenly revealing the sad flimsy truth. What is there to move on and up to, now that I have seen the magician's secrets revealed? What does it matter now that the lights are all on and everyone has gone home?
This weekend Jeff and Bond are coming up from Boston. More harmless flirting. And Sunday, Howard is taking me and his cadre of hot porn boys to the Hustlaball. Certainly one of them will be sexually satisfying, though more likely I will flirt around a while like I did with Aaron tonight and then lose interest in the pointlessness of it all. It is all so empty, like the vast hunger you feel hours after you finish a huge meal. So much greater and more painful a hunger than if you had never gorged at all.
Zach is not just cream cheese pretty on the outside, his soft gooey center is equally hot and delicious. I would just have much preferred discussing his impending trip to Morocco (a long held fantasy of mine) or the carelessly hunky demeanor of Aaron (a decidedly briefer though no less intense fantasy) than the dead ended runaway mine car ride that was my association with J. But like all of my well-meaning NY friends, he is anxious for me to move, not just on, but up. It is a desire I do not share.
Perhaps I am just totally and completely out of my mind. This is a distinct possibility. But after twenty years of dating, and meeting quite literally tens of thousands of gay men on numerous continents, finally last November, I found someone that I felt such an intense connection with that I was willing to cast aside all preconceived notions, emotional insecurities and boundaries. For almost a year, I have unpeeled like an onion, growing more nakedly raw and smaller by the day, until now there is nothing left but the involuntary tears such a task is bound to draw. And to what end? The umpteenth conversation about how important it is to move on?
I am not a very good driver, dresser or investor, but my instincts about people are uncanny. And in my life, I have done very well letting the natural flow of things guide me to my next destination. With only minor hiccups here and there, I have alighted from an obscure trailer in rural Virginia to a national radio show in New York City with as thin a resume as Sarah Palin and a mere fraction of her ambition. Never have I been so wrong about a person as I have been with J. Never. And in my heart, I still refuse to believe I was wrong. And yet there is no denying the sorry state of affairs now.
Flirting with Aaron felt good. I can see now why people with no self esteem sleep around a lot, and always desperate to bed the hottest person they can. I have never been that guy and I haven't turned into him now. True I was always quite anxious in my twenties to have a boyfriend and live the settled down dream but more recently I realized what a hollow ambition that was. Then I met J and the echo flushed out, and I filled instead with the rush of promise. It feels like love, truly for the first time, but maybe it's just a midlife crisis. I never really felt a powerful love before but then again I've never had a midlife crisis before either. Maybe I just don't know the difference.
As I walked up the hill tonight to my house, the sky was a sea of stars. It was so magnificent and each time when I look up past my roof and the trees to the twinkling night, I am filled with awe that I own a small piece of this magic. I scanned the sky anxious to find my Friendly Star, but such things don't exist. I see the magic all around me but I feel now like a fool. Someone who believed in the reality of a paper moon sailing over a cardboard sea, only to have the harsh fluorescents of life clicked on suddenly revealing the sad flimsy truth. What is there to move on and up to, now that I have seen the magician's secrets revealed? What does it matter now that the lights are all on and everyone has gone home?
This weekend Jeff and Bond are coming up from Boston. More harmless flirting. And Sunday, Howard is taking me and his cadre of hot porn boys to the Hustlaball. Certainly one of them will be sexually satisfying, though more likely I will flirt around a while like I did with Aaron tonight and then lose interest in the pointlessness of it all. It is all so empty, like the vast hunger you feel hours after you finish a huge meal. So much greater and more painful a hunger than if you had never gorged at all.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Seeing Is Belying
Whenever I head out to the West Coast there are always too many people for me to see. I used to live there for 15 years and over time, I have accumulated a massive number of friends and family. Now gone almost a decade, the friends and family have only grown, making short visits back even more taxing. I want to see everyone and it is just physically impossible.
Some years ago, I sent an email to all of my friends with carved out time slots and asked them to pick a time that worked for them. This annoyed them to all end. I was just trying to be efficient but it struck them all as typical self-centered Derek behavior. The blow back was so intense that I hardly bother telling anyone I am coming to town anymore. If it is someone I really want to see, I make a big effort to make a connection happen. If not, and they run into me accidentally on a sidewalk in West Hollywood, oh well.
Aside from my family, there were only two old friends I really, really wanted to see. Ben Patrick, who I don't think I have seen in person since we were at the Gay Games together in Chicago in 2006 and David, who I have been trying to convince for months to get out of his townhouse and move to New York City. On the newer friend front, I did want to see Jason, as well as Jeremy and Ross. Jeremy and Ross both planned to be guests on the radio show when we did our live remote from the House of Blues during Gay Days, but work interfered and we pushed it off to Sunday.
As it happens, Jason and Jeremy ended up being sluggish homebodies and suddenly lacked the power to leave their couches and one assumes open bottles of wine. Ben Patrick was sick and wanted to meet up on Monday when he was feeling better but I was already back in New York by then. But Ross agreed to join me out for an early drink, so even though my batting average was terrible, I did make at least a couple of hits.
I dropped my tiny backpack off at David's picture-perfect townhouse. He marvelled at my ability to travel light and immediately suggested we backpack across Europe together. Maybe after my new hip. We walked down the hill to Eleven which used to be a Bell Telephone switching station and is now the kind of fancy gay bar with bottle service, velvet banquettes and the shelf life of fresh milk. It seemed to be packed entirely with men entering a fictional big arm contest, all of them knew David, whose own arms were definitely in contention.
Ross joined us midway through our first drink and I have to tell you: that boy is famous! He couldn't move through that bar without someone saying what a fan they were. Such an opportunity for him to be a whore and sleep his way through the steroidal mountains of the west side, but instead he was just polite and smiley and quickly moved on.
I noticed adult star Blake Riley dancing on one of the bars. As he scanned the bar with a come hither look designed to elicit tips, his demeanor changed suddenly to shy embarrassment when he realized he was coming on to me. I ran over and gave him a quick hug and carried on the kind of conversation one has when one runs into a friend who is dressed only in dollar stuffed briefs. Just like the stripper stereotype, he is working his way through school and I have to say I was genuinely impressed with his planned post-porn career path.
Even though later I saw Jerell from this current season of Project Runway quite literally twirling through Here Bar, the highlight sighting of the night was when I spotted Thomas Roberts across the bar at Eleven. I have had a major crush on him since his earliest days on CNN. I love his shy snaggletooth smile and gently hunky way. Now off TV, I was dying to have him back on the radio show, if not my lap, so I ran over to give him my card. He was quite drunk, celebrating his birthday, but he politely remembered our interview almost three years ago. He even held my hand while talking, which was the kind of personal touch that sent me over the edge, even as he used his other hand to point out his insanely hot boyfriend across the way in between tequila shots.
Later Ross headed back home and David and I went to dinner at my old haunt Tango Grill. The owner Gene was there and hardly recognized me with my short shorn hair and one assumes the intervening years. Darin and my old LA roommate Eric surprised us at dinner and then coaxed us to drive up the hill to their fabulous new penthouse high above Fountain. David and I zipped up in my rented convertible to check it out. The view was spectacular and the apartment massive, but it seemed as though they were living with an entire cast of reality show characters, as if the original Real World LA camera crew left in 1992 and the participants just stayed behind waiting to grow into the VH-1 generation. They both seemed really happy there and I hate to begrudge their decision, but it was a Penthouse of Horrors for me. The last place I want to be as I am dragged screaming into the ever-widening abyss of middle age is in a rented apartment with five roommates. That is the stuff of recent college grads and gold digging hussies in classic Hollywood gems like How To Marry A Millionaire.
All too soon, I was headed off to the airport in the pre-dawn hours to fly back to New York. I would love to convince David to abandon his rut and move to the glamour and excitement of Manhattan, but with winter around the corner and the economy in free fall, now hardly seems the time for a bold gesture. I know my suburban life works for me, but maybe it isn't right for him. Seeing Darin and Eric's place, I know they have moved in other directions. I suppose there is no right way to do anything. All you can do is your best. And choosing where to live and being able to see the people you want to see is always more about timing and luck than it is about desire. Maybe someday I will live in perpetual summer again, if the timing is right, but for now, it's a nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there.
Some years ago, I sent an email to all of my friends with carved out time slots and asked them to pick a time that worked for them. This annoyed them to all end. I was just trying to be efficient but it struck them all as typical self-centered Derek behavior. The blow back was so intense that I hardly bother telling anyone I am coming to town anymore. If it is someone I really want to see, I make a big effort to make a connection happen. If not, and they run into me accidentally on a sidewalk in West Hollywood, oh well.
Aside from my family, there were only two old friends I really, really wanted to see. Ben Patrick, who I don't think I have seen in person since we were at the Gay Games together in Chicago in 2006 and David, who I have been trying to convince for months to get out of his townhouse and move to New York City. On the newer friend front, I did want to see Jason, as well as Jeremy and Ross. Jeremy and Ross both planned to be guests on the radio show when we did our live remote from the House of Blues during Gay Days, but work interfered and we pushed it off to Sunday.
As it happens, Jason and Jeremy ended up being sluggish homebodies and suddenly lacked the power to leave their couches and one assumes open bottles of wine. Ben Patrick was sick and wanted to meet up on Monday when he was feeling better but I was already back in New York by then. But Ross agreed to join me out for an early drink, so even though my batting average was terrible, I did make at least a couple of hits.
I dropped my tiny backpack off at David's picture-perfect townhouse. He marvelled at my ability to travel light and immediately suggested we backpack across Europe together. Maybe after my new hip. We walked down the hill to Eleven which used to be a Bell Telephone switching station and is now the kind of fancy gay bar with bottle service, velvet banquettes and the shelf life of fresh milk. It seemed to be packed entirely with men entering a fictional big arm contest, all of them knew David, whose own arms were definitely in contention.
Ross joined us midway through our first drink and I have to tell you: that boy is famous! He couldn't move through that bar without someone saying what a fan they were. Such an opportunity for him to be a whore and sleep his way through the steroidal mountains of the west side, but instead he was just polite and smiley and quickly moved on.
I noticed adult star Blake Riley dancing on one of the bars. As he scanned the bar with a come hither look designed to elicit tips, his demeanor changed suddenly to shy embarrassment when he realized he was coming on to me. I ran over and gave him a quick hug and carried on the kind of conversation one has when one runs into a friend who is dressed only in dollar stuffed briefs. Just like the stripper stereotype, he is working his way through school and I have to say I was genuinely impressed with his planned post-porn career path.
Even though later I saw Jerell from this current season of Project Runway quite literally twirling through Here Bar, the highlight sighting of the night was when I spotted Thomas Roberts across the bar at Eleven. I have had a major crush on him since his earliest days on CNN. I love his shy snaggletooth smile and gently hunky way. Now off TV, I was dying to have him back on the radio show, if not my lap, so I ran over to give him my card. He was quite drunk, celebrating his birthday, but he politely remembered our interview almost three years ago. He even held my hand while talking, which was the kind of personal touch that sent me over the edge, even as he used his other hand to point out his insanely hot boyfriend across the way in between tequila shots.
Later Ross headed back home and David and I went to dinner at my old haunt Tango Grill. The owner Gene was there and hardly recognized me with my short shorn hair and one assumes the intervening years. Darin and my old LA roommate Eric surprised us at dinner and then coaxed us to drive up the hill to their fabulous new penthouse high above Fountain. David and I zipped up in my rented convertible to check it out. The view was spectacular and the apartment massive, but it seemed as though they were living with an entire cast of reality show characters, as if the original Real World LA camera crew left in 1992 and the participants just stayed behind waiting to grow into the VH-1 generation. They both seemed really happy there and I hate to begrudge their decision, but it was a Penthouse of Horrors for me. The last place I want to be as I am dragged screaming into the ever-widening abyss of middle age is in a rented apartment with five roommates. That is the stuff of recent college grads and gold digging hussies in classic Hollywood gems like How To Marry A Millionaire.
All too soon, I was headed off to the airport in the pre-dawn hours to fly back to New York. I would love to convince David to abandon his rut and move to the glamour and excitement of Manhattan, but with winter around the corner and the economy in free fall, now hardly seems the time for a bold gesture. I know my suburban life works for me, but maybe it isn't right for him. Seeing Darin and Eric's place, I know they have moved in other directions. I suppose there is no right way to do anything. All you can do is your best. And choosing where to live and being able to see the people you want to see is always more about timing and luck than it is about desire. Maybe someday I will live in perpetual summer again, if the timing is right, but for now, it's a nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Blood Orange Crush
My body has been in full revolt for a week, since that ill-advised sandwich in Dallas that gave me food poisoning last Friday. Since then I have gone from queasy to sniffly with barely a moment's feeling of real wellness in between. I told myself that if I didn't feel better by today, I would skip doing the show and have a restful three-day weekend. But then I was feeling a bit better and Romaine beat me to the punch with her own sickness, leaving me alone to do the show tonight (with quick pinch hitter Cyd Zeigler from OutSports.com).
Of course I had to come in anyway no matter what since Shaun McCarron was flying up from Florida to do the show and I couldn't cancel on him. Ironically enough, bad weather kept him from the show with a delayed flight and I didn't see him until hours later when he joined me at Eric Kuhn's party downtown. With Shaun coming up to Manhattan, I had sent Matty a text earlier in the day to alert him, and he suggested we join him at his friend Eric's place. Generally I hate going to the homes of strangers because it increases the likelihood that I will feel alienated and alone in a room of unknowns but for some mad reason I am still trying to do new things.
Original Jonathan joined me for the trip downtown after the show. It's been a while since our last adventure and I thought the fresh air of the subway would do him good. On the train, a homeless guy with two bass guitar cases did a bit of performance art/impromptu retail sales in front of us, though the slow dragging around of large black cases on the subway by a deranged, mumbling loner just brought out the Fringe paranoia in me and I became transfixed at the notion of the freaky, unexplained Hi-Def death that awaited us inside.
Emerging at the Broadway-Lafayette station, I could have sworn I saw J.'s friend James walking up the stairs in front of us. Impossible, I thought, since he lives in Baltimore and J moved to Brooklyn. I thought about calling out his name but fear that I was right made me turn in the opposite direction and dash to Eric's party. If it was James, J. was certain to be close at hand and I knew I wasn't ready to see him again now.
Eric is a gorgeous man with a truly beautiful apartment. The moment I saw his outrageous and stylish building, I knew this was not the party for me. His living room with its soaring ceilings and full length suicide windows had the sweeping cleanliness of Page 28 of a West Elm catalog. The whole railroad-style floor plan looked like the set of a hot new sitcom about New Yorkers who live in an apartment that might at first glance be mistaken for the lobby of a W Hotel. Not funny, per se, but I found his lack of a nightstand (his clock radio rested unceremoniously on the otherwise uncluttered floor) oddly charming. Also I couldn't place it at the time, but now in retrospect I realize that he looks a lot like D-A-N.
Matty was as adorable as ever, sweeping us into the kitchen and plying us with a truly staggering array of vodka choices. The mixers were all pale, down to the white cranberry juice, a fancy touch I greatly admired for its attempt at a stain-free party. Matty is an indefatigable publicist on my behalf which is always appreciated. "Derek is famous!" he would cry to any big-armed stranger there who would listen, never minding that insisting someone is famous is always guaranteed proof that they aren't. Though I can't fault him for trying.
Soon Matty's friend Brian joined in the fun and I was delighted to see him. Of all the people he knows, Brian is my favorite to flirt with. I have such a little boy crush on him, almost pre-sexual in it's middle school way. I just want to hold hands with him and make out a little and then be home by ten. Brian always seems very confused about how to handle me. We are similar in a way that we both insist that other people don't know what we are really like on the inside, but then we quickly squirt ink in the water and swim away if they make any attempt to get genuinely close. Maybe we are both afraid of getting hurt. And then my reason to be afraid walked in to the party.
J. arrived with James, who was in fact on the subway with us earlier, and two other friends that I vaguely met when they were quite drunk at J.'s birthday party some months ago but who really remember me only through the Facebook photos we inadvertently ended up together in. My stomach that was finally calm after a week of turmoil was churning again. We hadn't spoken in weeks or seen each other in even longer, though in the last couple of days J. has been inexplicably in the forefront of my mind. Maybe it was the impending Presidential debate or the new season of our shared love The Amazing Race. But whatever the reason, there he was.
I tried to do the fake small talk thing a bit, but he knew it was fake and rightly steered clear. What is there to say? Every minute without him in my life is like a living hell, and I will love him every day until the day I die. It is what I should have said the last time we talked but instead I just turned sullen and defeated about the whole thing and insisted I was fine when it was obvious I wasn't and that was that. And what difference does it make now? He saw my new super short haircut which I knew he would like but there was no smug satisfaction there for me. Only loneliness.
I wish I had his powers of compartmentalization. When it comes to emotions, he is like Martha Stewart organizing a junk drawer, all neat rows and P-touch labels, and I am the fool who pulls the drawer too quickly out of the wall causing everything to come crashing down on the floor. This is why flirting with Brian is so much better, and easier. I know each of our own insecurities and issues will keep us politely at bay, like a nice Oscar Wilde play, filled with witty banter and, that great 19th century expression: intrigues!
But what I feel for J. is just too real and dangerous, our fourth wall permanently shattered. He hugged me good bye and I held my breath. I didn't want the moment to linger for fear that I would hold on to it too much in my heart and I never wanted it to end. Didn't want to breathe in and risk the wonderful musk of Axe body spray he occasionally wears that always makes me think of him and hoped for a moment that he was wearing it so I could smell it all one last time. My gaze found the sidewalk as we said good night. All evening I couldn't look directly at him, like a solar eclipse, for fear of catching his eye, and then, all too quickly, he was across the street and gone.
Earlier Brian told me of a drink he had concocted with crushed ice, vodka and a splash of champagne. "I call it 'Blood Orange Crush'" he told me, named for the signature citrus added to the mix. The cocktail sounded light and summery and delicious, like my meaningless crush on him, even if the name of it had a ring of darkness about it. The darkness for me is the real crush of my love for J., an inescapable weight on us both, coursing through my veins, and forever on the rocks.
Of course I had to come in anyway no matter what since Shaun McCarron was flying up from Florida to do the show and I couldn't cancel on him. Ironically enough, bad weather kept him from the show with a delayed flight and I didn't see him until hours later when he joined me at Eric Kuhn's party downtown. With Shaun coming up to Manhattan, I had sent Matty a text earlier in the day to alert him, and he suggested we join him at his friend Eric's place. Generally I hate going to the homes of strangers because it increases the likelihood that I will feel alienated and alone in a room of unknowns but for some mad reason I am still trying to do new things.
Original Jonathan joined me for the trip downtown after the show. It's been a while since our last adventure and I thought the fresh air of the subway would do him good. On the train, a homeless guy with two bass guitar cases did a bit of performance art/impromptu retail sales in front of us, though the slow dragging around of large black cases on the subway by a deranged, mumbling loner just brought out the Fringe paranoia in me and I became transfixed at the notion of the freaky, unexplained Hi-Def death that awaited us inside.
Emerging at the Broadway-Lafayette station, I could have sworn I saw J.'s friend James walking up the stairs in front of us. Impossible, I thought, since he lives in Baltimore and J moved to Brooklyn. I thought about calling out his name but fear that I was right made me turn in the opposite direction and dash to Eric's party. If it was James, J. was certain to be close at hand and I knew I wasn't ready to see him again now.
Eric is a gorgeous man with a truly beautiful apartment. The moment I saw his outrageous and stylish building, I knew this was not the party for me. His living room with its soaring ceilings and full length suicide windows had the sweeping cleanliness of Page 28 of a West Elm catalog. The whole railroad-style floor plan looked like the set of a hot new sitcom about New Yorkers who live in an apartment that might at first glance be mistaken for the lobby of a W Hotel. Not funny, per se, but I found his lack of a nightstand (his clock radio rested unceremoniously on the otherwise uncluttered floor) oddly charming. Also I couldn't place it at the time, but now in retrospect I realize that he looks a lot like D-A-N.
Matty was as adorable as ever, sweeping us into the kitchen and plying us with a truly staggering array of vodka choices. The mixers were all pale, down to the white cranberry juice, a fancy touch I greatly admired for its attempt at a stain-free party. Matty is an indefatigable publicist on my behalf which is always appreciated. "Derek is famous!" he would cry to any big-armed stranger there who would listen, never minding that insisting someone is famous is always guaranteed proof that they aren't. Though I can't fault him for trying.
Soon Matty's friend Brian joined in the fun and I was delighted to see him. Of all the people he knows, Brian is my favorite to flirt with. I have such a little boy crush on him, almost pre-sexual in it's middle school way. I just want to hold hands with him and make out a little and then be home by ten. Brian always seems very confused about how to handle me. We are similar in a way that we both insist that other people don't know what we are really like on the inside, but then we quickly squirt ink in the water and swim away if they make any attempt to get genuinely close. Maybe we are both afraid of getting hurt. And then my reason to be afraid walked in to the party.
J. arrived with James, who was in fact on the subway with us earlier, and two other friends that I vaguely met when they were quite drunk at J.'s birthday party some months ago but who really remember me only through the Facebook photos we inadvertently ended up together in. My stomach that was finally calm after a week of turmoil was churning again. We hadn't spoken in weeks or seen each other in even longer, though in the last couple of days J. has been inexplicably in the forefront of my mind. Maybe it was the impending Presidential debate or the new season of our shared love The Amazing Race. But whatever the reason, there he was.
I tried to do the fake small talk thing a bit, but he knew it was fake and rightly steered clear. What is there to say? Every minute without him in my life is like a living hell, and I will love him every day until the day I die. It is what I should have said the last time we talked but instead I just turned sullen and defeated about the whole thing and insisted I was fine when it was obvious I wasn't and that was that. And what difference does it make now? He saw my new super short haircut which I knew he would like but there was no smug satisfaction there for me. Only loneliness.
I wish I had his powers of compartmentalization. When it comes to emotions, he is like Martha Stewart organizing a junk drawer, all neat rows and P-touch labels, and I am the fool who pulls the drawer too quickly out of the wall causing everything to come crashing down on the floor. This is why flirting with Brian is so much better, and easier. I know each of our own insecurities and issues will keep us politely at bay, like a nice Oscar Wilde play, filled with witty banter and, that great 19th century expression: intrigues!
But what I feel for J. is just too real and dangerous, our fourth wall permanently shattered. He hugged me good bye and I held my breath. I didn't want the moment to linger for fear that I would hold on to it too much in my heart and I never wanted it to end. Didn't want to breathe in and risk the wonderful musk of Axe body spray he occasionally wears that always makes me think of him and hoped for a moment that he was wearing it so I could smell it all one last time. My gaze found the sidewalk as we said good night. All evening I couldn't look directly at him, like a solar eclipse, for fear of catching his eye, and then, all too quickly, he was across the street and gone.
Earlier Brian told me of a drink he had concocted with crushed ice, vodka and a splash of champagne. "I call it 'Blood Orange Crush'" he told me, named for the signature citrus added to the mix. The cocktail sounded light and summery and delicious, like my meaningless crush on him, even if the name of it had a ring of darkness about it. The darkness for me is the real crush of my love for J., an inescapable weight on us both, coursing through my veins, and forever on the rocks.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
XES Farce
Conventional wisdom says that when you are having a hard time getting over someone, you should have sex with lots of hot people. It doesn't really work, but hot sex with hot people is always preferable to being depressed at home. Or so it would seem. It was not my intention to try out this theory last night, but when you wander down to Chelsea for drinks with the boys, these sorts of things are bound to happen.
It all started innocently enough with Judge David Young, who was in town to tape episodes of his hit daytime show, asking to hang out a bit this weekend. We both wanted to see The Women, despite our misgivings about updating a classic (and why Diane English instead of say Nancy Meyers or Nora Ephron or even Elaine May). So I plotted an early show followed by dinner and then some drinks and invited my neighbor Clayton to join us.
We went to Kips Bay to see the film, which is J's old theatre before he moved to Brooklyn last month. He is right that it, among most Manhattan movie theatres, has a minimum of loud teen rowdiness and cell phone interruptions. Bargain basement expectations helped the medicine go down and we all ended up liking The Women overall (as I explained to David's husband Scott over the phone afterward, if you forget that it is a remake and don't spend the whole movie longing for Paulette Goddard to beat the stuffing out of Rosiland Russell in Reno, you will like it much better).
From there we decamped to the Dallas BBQ in Chelsea which was a new place for me (I am still trying to do new things), though I don't know how I feel about a restaurant that has a bouncer. This might explain why when I texted Matt Kelleher to tell him we were there for dinner he responded "God why?" The food was delicious and cheap, which are my two favorite things in a food item, but the atmosphere, especially in the basement party room where we were seated, had the feeling of a stripped down Chuck E. Cheese where the cardboard pizza and skeeball had been replaced with messy ribs and outlandish day-glo frozen cocktails.
After dinner, Clayton ran off to his previously set date to see a band perform and David and I wandered over to Barracuda. At ten p.m. it looked like a pre-Palin McCain rally, though I assured David that in an hour, it would be too crowded to move or breathe. Aside from a guy in a muscle tee basically masturbating at the urinal next to me, the most exciting thing to happen there was running once again into adorable Matt, from Tuesday's ill-fated adventure out at Bowery Bar. He was there with his co-worker Chip and the four of us had a great time, with me embarrassing myself once again with my completely inappropriate jokes comparing Caylee Anthony to a tire iron (I will spare you the sordid punchline).
David left around Midnight and then the rest of us parted ways soon afterward when Barracuda suddenly became unbearably hot. I think the air conditioning must have broken but that is always the way with that bar. In the summer, the a/c breaks or in the winter, the heat goes off, or a sewer pipe bursts and the whole thing smells like shit. Personally I think the owners like to close early so on nights when they think they have made enough money, they just wreak havoc on the environment and wait for the animals to migrate elsewhere.
To make a long blog posting short, I met up with Clayton at XES where he had landed after the band cancelled their show and while there met a hot but very drunk guy named Steven and his even more intoxicated roommate Brad, with whom Clayton had shared some previous dates. Even though he couldn't remember my name all four times I told him, Steven insisted that I go home with him. All the warning signs told me to leave with Clayton and return to the suburbs but a desire to assuage the overwhelming sadness I have with not being with J encouraged me into a harrowing cab ride out to the wilds of Brooklyn.
That Steven was cute with a hot body and lived in J's new neighborhood seemed like just the kind of revenge fuck that drunken four a.m. bragging phone calls are made for. But crossing the Williamsburg Bridge, Steven tossed the half full glass of vodka which he snuck out of the bar out the open window just barely missing my face and for a moment I seriously considered leaping out after it. Their cute apartment was in a terrifying neighborhood and I began plotting my escape, mapping in my head the fastest route on foot to the L train even before my shoes hit the pavement outside the apartment building.
Their mutual friend Davis came along, to sleep on the couch for some reason. Brad stripped down to his underwear and drunk dialed Clayton to come over and have sex with him. It didn't work much to my chagrin since I hoped it would make my eminent escape easier. Moments later, we all went to our separate sleeping arrangements and Steven started in on me in earnest. Steven likes it rough so in order to get me to force myself on him, he got quite violent with me. The story he told back at the bar about showing up at work once with a black eye suddenly became very clear, like my brain flooding with harsh fluorescent lighting. Finally I just decided that despite my intense irritation at that point as long as he had an orgasm he could fall asleep and I could get out of there. It took fucking forever, probably an hour, which was easily 58 minutes after I stopped trying to have an orgasm myself.
A little after six, with dawn creeping through the window and Brad snoring away throughout the apartment, I gathered my clothes and made my escape. While waiting on the hellish humid stinking L train platform I had a lot of time to think about everything. I miss J every single day, and it is like trying to catch your breath at high altitudes. It is exhausting and I just long for the ease of life before I climbed that mountain. But I just can't penetrate that wall of his that surrounds him, make him understand that my love for him is real and intense and permanent. In my mind's eye, his blue eyes starring back at me are as black as a moonless night, my journey into them perilous and fruitless . In both versions of The Women, Mary Haines stands her ground for L'Amore, L'Amore, but celluloid lives can't convey how lonely that stand truly is. And in my heart I know it will never work for me. There is no happy ending in my grudge match between the irresistible force and the immovable object. There is nothing in those robust eyes of his for me and there probably never will be.
It all started innocently enough with Judge David Young, who was in town to tape episodes of his hit daytime show, asking to hang out a bit this weekend. We both wanted to see The Women, despite our misgivings about updating a classic (and why Diane English instead of say Nancy Meyers or Nora Ephron or even Elaine May). So I plotted an early show followed by dinner and then some drinks and invited my neighbor Clayton to join us.
We went to Kips Bay to see the film, which is J's old theatre before he moved to Brooklyn last month. He is right that it, among most Manhattan movie theatres, has a minimum of loud teen rowdiness and cell phone interruptions. Bargain basement expectations helped the medicine go down and we all ended up liking The Women overall (as I explained to David's husband Scott over the phone afterward, if you forget that it is a remake and don't spend the whole movie longing for Paulette Goddard to beat the stuffing out of Rosiland Russell in Reno, you will like it much better).
From there we decamped to the Dallas BBQ in Chelsea which was a new place for me (I am still trying to do new things), though I don't know how I feel about a restaurant that has a bouncer. This might explain why when I texted Matt Kelleher to tell him we were there for dinner he responded "God why?" The food was delicious and cheap, which are my two favorite things in a food item, but the atmosphere, especially in the basement party room where we were seated, had the feeling of a stripped down Chuck E. Cheese where the cardboard pizza and skeeball had been replaced with messy ribs and outlandish day-glo frozen cocktails.
After dinner, Clayton ran off to his previously set date to see a band perform and David and I wandered over to Barracuda. At ten p.m. it looked like a pre-Palin McCain rally, though I assured David that in an hour, it would be too crowded to move or breathe. Aside from a guy in a muscle tee basically masturbating at the urinal next to me, the most exciting thing to happen there was running once again into adorable Matt, from Tuesday's ill-fated adventure out at Bowery Bar. He was there with his co-worker Chip and the four of us had a great time, with me embarrassing myself once again with my completely inappropriate jokes comparing Caylee Anthony to a tire iron (I will spare you the sordid punchline).
David left around Midnight and then the rest of us parted ways soon afterward when Barracuda suddenly became unbearably hot. I think the air conditioning must have broken but that is always the way with that bar. In the summer, the a/c breaks or in the winter, the heat goes off, or a sewer pipe bursts and the whole thing smells like shit. Personally I think the owners like to close early so on nights when they think they have made enough money, they just wreak havoc on the environment and wait for the animals to migrate elsewhere.
To make a long blog posting short, I met up with Clayton at XES where he had landed after the band cancelled their show and while there met a hot but very drunk guy named Steven and his even more intoxicated roommate Brad, with whom Clayton had shared some previous dates. Even though he couldn't remember my name all four times I told him, Steven insisted that I go home with him. All the warning signs told me to leave with Clayton and return to the suburbs but a desire to assuage the overwhelming sadness I have with not being with J encouraged me into a harrowing cab ride out to the wilds of Brooklyn.
That Steven was cute with a hot body and lived in J's new neighborhood seemed like just the kind of revenge fuck that drunken four a.m. bragging phone calls are made for. But crossing the Williamsburg Bridge, Steven tossed the half full glass of vodka which he snuck out of the bar out the open window just barely missing my face and for a moment I seriously considered leaping out after it. Their cute apartment was in a terrifying neighborhood and I began plotting my escape, mapping in my head the fastest route on foot to the L train even before my shoes hit the pavement outside the apartment building.
Their mutual friend Davis came along, to sleep on the couch for some reason. Brad stripped down to his underwear and drunk dialed Clayton to come over and have sex with him. It didn't work much to my chagrin since I hoped it would make my eminent escape easier. Moments later, we all went to our separate sleeping arrangements and Steven started in on me in earnest. Steven likes it rough so in order to get me to force myself on him, he got quite violent with me. The story he told back at the bar about showing up at work once with a black eye suddenly became very clear, like my brain flooding with harsh fluorescent lighting. Finally I just decided that despite my intense irritation at that point as long as he had an orgasm he could fall asleep and I could get out of there. It took fucking forever, probably an hour, which was easily 58 minutes after I stopped trying to have an orgasm myself.
A little after six, with dawn creeping through the window and Brad snoring away throughout the apartment, I gathered my clothes and made my escape. While waiting on the hellish humid stinking L train platform I had a lot of time to think about everything. I miss J every single day, and it is like trying to catch your breath at high altitudes. It is exhausting and I just long for the ease of life before I climbed that mountain. But I just can't penetrate that wall of his that surrounds him, make him understand that my love for him is real and intense and permanent. In my mind's eye, his blue eyes starring back at me are as black as a moonless night, my journey into them perilous and fruitless . In both versions of The Women, Mary Haines stands her ground for L'Amore, L'Amore, but celluloid lives can't convey how lonely that stand truly is. And in my heart I know it will never work for me. There is no happy ending in my grudge match between the irresistible force and the immovable object. There is nothing in those robust eyes of his for me and there probably never will be.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Live Blogging Hurricane Gustav
For years, I have been trying to convince my friends in gay media to join my call for all gay people to go to New Orleans and support the local economy. Gays do one thing well: travel and spend lots of money. It's just what a down on its heels tourist destination needs. And each year over Labor Day weekend, there is Southern Decadence (sort of gay Mardi Gras), which was blamed by certain bloated TV preachers for Hurricane Katrina. Never mind that very un-gay friendly Mississippi got much worse out of that storm. So each year since then I have traveled down to New Orleans for Southern Decadence to show my support and this year has been no different.
Wednesday, August 27th
8:40pm Tropical storm Gustav begins to appear to be strengthening and heading for New Orleans. Expected landfall: Labor Day. Mike and I decide to see how things are shaping up before deciding to cancel our trip.
Thursday, August 28th
9:10pm Gustav looks headed for hurricane status. I dine with Cyd and Dan and Mike at Rocking Horse in Chelsea. Mike is still firm on going to New Orleans. I decide to see if they announce an evacuation on Friday morning.
Friday, August 29th
8:31am Travel companion Clayton backs out of the trip, even though Jet Blue steadfastly refuses to refund or change the ticket without a fee.
10:00am Clay Lee decides he isn't flying in from Texas after all. "If I come, we will be evacuated. If I stay home, the weather will be great and nothing will happen."
10:45am Mike and I decide to make a go of it (along with the other Mike who is meeting us at the airport) and continue packing for our 2:50pm flight. I go online to the airport's official website to see if there is any info. It's url flymsy.com (flimsy?) doesn't instill much confidence.
2:45pm "This is the Captain speaking. Welcome to flight 119 to New Orleans. The weather is beautiful there now. I can't say it will stay that way. Why are all of you going to New Orleans today? Shouldn't you be headed the other way?"
5:30pm Deplaning, I notice that the guy in my row is wearing a Red Cross name badge. The guy in the row in front of me is wearing a Weather Channel baseball cap and carrying a television camera. As I watch the Red Cross organizers meet in a huddle outside our gate upon landing, I start thinking this might be a short trip.
7:05pm I arrive at the Decadent Ducks cocktail party, for which I have been made a guest of honor. I forget that I am still wearing the red v-neck shirt that says "OTTER" on it as I wander into a room filled with hundreds of bears. I am a big hit for all the wrong reasons.
9:18pm Mike and Mike and I wrap up dinner at the my favorite New Orleans restaurant, The Gumbo Shop. I tell the waitress that we come back each year to support New Orleans because of Hurricane Katrina. She hugs us. We leave her a big tip.
11:37pm The Bourbon Pub is so packed you would hardly know there was a hurricane coming. The rest of the French Quarter is even quieter than usual, but the gay part is in full swing. David my favorite bartender watches as a dozen or so listener ask him where I am and then come up to take pictures with me. "I guess a few people know you are here" he smiles as he gives us a mind eraser to share. I am coy. "One or two."
Saturday, August 30th
3:23am A long day of flying and drinking has caught up with me. I want to go to bed and I am worried about a possible early morning evacuation. Listeners Josh and Nick assure me at the Bourbon Pub that no mandatory evacuation will happen.
4:30am I arrive at my hotel to find notices posted everywhere and under my door announcing a voluntary evacuation starting at 8am, and directing people to buses at the Sheraton to get to the airport. I call Jet Blue to change my canceled flight. I am rebooked for the 5:45pm flight on Sunday, meaning I could spend as much as 36 hours at the airport before leaving. I set my alarm for 9:30am and try to get some sleep.
9:27am Banging at my door by a hotel employee. She demands I leave the hotel by 10am. I argue with her and slam the door. I hate being woken up in the morning but especially moments before my alarm is set to go off.
9:56am A phone call from Dave, the hotel manager at the Hilton Garden Inn. I tell him my flight has been changed to Sunday evening. There is no mandatory evacuation yet. I can stay until there is one. Fine. He gives me his cell phone so I can reach him if I need anything. I go back to sleep. I have a nightmare about a large drag queen maid trying to get into my room to clean up.
1:00pm Automated phone call from Jet Blue. My flight on Sunday has also been canceled. I am connected immediately to an agent who books me on the just created red eye flight out that night at 11:50pm. Mike and Mike are on that flight too. We plan to head off to the Praline Connection for lunch and fried pickles.
2:32pm Praline Connection is closed so we go to Port Of Call for a sensational cheeseburger and a baked potato drenched in the works. Thought about going to the Chartres House but they were boarding up the windows with the patrons still inside. Scary!
3:45pm Walk down Bourbon Street. The Quarter is largely quiet and boarded up. The gay area is still in full swing. Gays are pouring into the streets with to-go cups in hand. My old friend Allen is working the bar at Bourbon. I say good bye and head for the hotel to pack up, watch some TV and get on the shuttle bus to the airport.
4:48pm Ray Nagin urges the tourists to get out of town now while they still can. I try to call down to the desk at my hotel but there is no answer. I go down in person and there is one guy there hanging out watching the hurricane coverage on the news. It is Dave the hotel manager. "You must be in 1621." I am the last hotel guest, though four journalists are staying in the hotel through the storm. He and one other woman are the only staff left. "We can open the bar for you if you want one last drink before you go" he offers. I check out of the hotel and head for the city shuttles from the Sheraton.
5:23pm Mike and Mike are already waiting at the Sheraton. The city shuttle buses spontaneously stopped running an hour earlier much to the anguish of the few tourists left and trying to leave. Mike secures a taxi to take us to the airport. Traffic being a concern we leave 3 hours for the trip since it was reportedly taking that long in the morning. Cab driver knows all sorts of short cuts. There are lots of hot National Guardsmen lingering next to Humvees along the way. We get there in 35 minutes.
7:07pm Sitting on the floor in the middle of the terminal, eating my supplies of beef jerky and nutter butters that I secured at the corner market before I left in case the airport didn't have anything open. Everyone in the city is in surprisingly good spirits given that a potential Category 5 hurricane is headed straight for them. I had a fun adventure though I am sad the weekend is ending early. Should be home at the crack of dawn to start another adventure, preferably aside Clayton's pool.
Wednesday, August 27th
8:40pm Tropical storm Gustav begins to appear to be strengthening and heading for New Orleans. Expected landfall: Labor Day. Mike and I decide to see how things are shaping up before deciding to cancel our trip.
Thursday, August 28th
9:10pm Gustav looks headed for hurricane status. I dine with Cyd and Dan and Mike at Rocking Horse in Chelsea. Mike is still firm on going to New Orleans. I decide to see if they announce an evacuation on Friday morning.
Friday, August 29th
8:31am Travel companion Clayton backs out of the trip, even though Jet Blue steadfastly refuses to refund or change the ticket without a fee.
10:00am Clay Lee decides he isn't flying in from Texas after all. "If I come, we will be evacuated. If I stay home, the weather will be great and nothing will happen."
10:45am Mike and I decide to make a go of it (along with the other Mike who is meeting us at the airport) and continue packing for our 2:50pm flight. I go online to the airport's official website to see if there is any info. It's url flymsy.com (flimsy?) doesn't instill much confidence.
2:45pm "This is the Captain speaking. Welcome to flight 119 to New Orleans. The weather is beautiful there now. I can't say it will stay that way. Why are all of you going to New Orleans today? Shouldn't you be headed the other way?"
5:30pm Deplaning, I notice that the guy in my row is wearing a Red Cross name badge. The guy in the row in front of me is wearing a Weather Channel baseball cap and carrying a television camera. As I watch the Red Cross organizers meet in a huddle outside our gate upon landing, I start thinking this might be a short trip.
7:05pm I arrive at the Decadent Ducks cocktail party, for which I have been made a guest of honor. I forget that I am still wearing the red v-neck shirt that says "OTTER" on it as I wander into a room filled with hundreds of bears. I am a big hit for all the wrong reasons.
9:18pm Mike and Mike and I wrap up dinner at the my favorite New Orleans restaurant, The Gumbo Shop. I tell the waitress that we come back each year to support New Orleans because of Hurricane Katrina. She hugs us. We leave her a big tip.
11:37pm The Bourbon Pub is so packed you would hardly know there was a hurricane coming. The rest of the French Quarter is even quieter than usual, but the gay part is in full swing. David my favorite bartender watches as a dozen or so listener ask him where I am and then come up to take pictures with me. "I guess a few people know you are here" he smiles as he gives us a mind eraser to share. I am coy. "One or two."
Saturday, August 30th
3:23am A long day of flying and drinking has caught up with me. I want to go to bed and I am worried about a possible early morning evacuation. Listeners Josh and Nick assure me at the Bourbon Pub that no mandatory evacuation will happen.
4:30am I arrive at my hotel to find notices posted everywhere and under my door announcing a voluntary evacuation starting at 8am, and directing people to buses at the Sheraton to get to the airport. I call Jet Blue to change my canceled flight. I am rebooked for the 5:45pm flight on Sunday, meaning I could spend as much as 36 hours at the airport before leaving. I set my alarm for 9:30am and try to get some sleep.
9:27am Banging at my door by a hotel employee. She demands I leave the hotel by 10am. I argue with her and slam the door. I hate being woken up in the morning but especially moments before my alarm is set to go off.
9:56am A phone call from Dave, the hotel manager at the Hilton Garden Inn. I tell him my flight has been changed to Sunday evening. There is no mandatory evacuation yet. I can stay until there is one. Fine. He gives me his cell phone so I can reach him if I need anything. I go back to sleep. I have a nightmare about a large drag queen maid trying to get into my room to clean up.
1:00pm Automated phone call from Jet Blue. My flight on Sunday has also been canceled. I am connected immediately to an agent who books me on the just created red eye flight out that night at 11:50pm. Mike and Mike are on that flight too. We plan to head off to the Praline Connection for lunch and fried pickles.
2:32pm Praline Connection is closed so we go to Port Of Call for a sensational cheeseburger and a baked potato drenched in the works. Thought about going to the Chartres House but they were boarding up the windows with the patrons still inside. Scary!
3:45pm Walk down Bourbon Street. The Quarter is largely quiet and boarded up. The gay area is still in full swing. Gays are pouring into the streets with to-go cups in hand. My old friend Allen is working the bar at Bourbon. I say good bye and head for the hotel to pack up, watch some TV and get on the shuttle bus to the airport.
4:48pm Ray Nagin urges the tourists to get out of town now while they still can. I try to call down to the desk at my hotel but there is no answer. I go down in person and there is one guy there hanging out watching the hurricane coverage on the news. It is Dave the hotel manager. "You must be in 1621." I am the last hotel guest, though four journalists are staying in the hotel through the storm. He and one other woman are the only staff left. "We can open the bar for you if you want one last drink before you go" he offers. I check out of the hotel and head for the city shuttles from the Sheraton.
5:23pm Mike and Mike are already waiting at the Sheraton. The city shuttle buses spontaneously stopped running an hour earlier much to the anguish of the few tourists left and trying to leave. Mike secures a taxi to take us to the airport. Traffic being a concern we leave 3 hours for the trip since it was reportedly taking that long in the morning. Cab driver knows all sorts of short cuts. There are lots of hot National Guardsmen lingering next to Humvees along the way. We get there in 35 minutes.
7:07pm Sitting on the floor in the middle of the terminal, eating my supplies of beef jerky and nutter butters that I secured at the corner market before I left in case the airport didn't have anything open. Everyone in the city is in surprisingly good spirits given that a potential Category 5 hurricane is headed straight for them. I had a fun adventure though I am sad the weekend is ending early. Should be home at the crack of dawn to start another adventure, preferably aside Clayton's pool.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Best Face Forward
I have had a lot of facials lately but you can get your mind out of the gutter. Enrique, the handsome and charming owner of the Face To Face Spa offered me the once over after his first appearance on the show and it ended up sandwiched between two other “corporately-mandated facials” that Romaine and I got as part of the launch of a new advertiser on the show. Three facials in three weeks and the ensuing overly intense scrubbing since then on my skin at home has left me noticeably younger in at least one regard: I have broken out like a teenager. Even worse, it is in a conspicuous arc under and around my eyes giving me the look of a bandit who is deeply allergic to his mask.
Despite the baleful condition of my skin and my impending pool party tomorrow at Clayton’s house, I agreed to join Hottie Zach out for a short drink at Therapy after the show. I orchestrated original Jonathan’s appearance there as well, which wasn’t difficult since he lives around the corner and is always as game for a cocktail as a scuba diver is for more air. Walking into Therapy the first person I saw was adorable Ronnie Kroell. He and Zach both share a feckless cream cheese complexion that even under my best circumstances I envy with the bloodlust of Snow White’s wicked queen. But his warm giddiness at seeing me melted my self-doubt and I threw myself wholeheartedly into the experience.
Ronnie is actively trying to make his way in the big city, a modern gay version of Mary Tyler Moore, but substituting a modeling contract for the beret. Perhaps I am the gruff and wise Lou Grant type here to guide him along, coaxing him relentlessly but unsuccessfully into my web of cynicism. Ronnie was there with Hottie Zach and original Jonathan and a fashion designer named Sergio (“Serge!” he implored me in a beautiful yet booze tainted accent while insisting on joining in on the round of hugs that accompanied my arrival).
Moments later, upstairs with drinks in hand, Serge explained that he was a fashion designer for whom Ronnie’s body was the perfect hanger. Earlier in the day, they had gone to Bergdorf’s so Ronnie could try on a selection of his Italy-made designer duds, the tale of which invoked instant flashes of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. The way Ronnie described his fantasy of walking through Central Park in Serge’s jeans and gorgeous cashmere sweater, latte in hand, made me realize that despite having a masters degree in political science, his dream of being a paper doll has been a long time coming.
“Ronnie has told me wonderful things about you!” Serge purred in my ear. I demurred. “Lies,” I smiled, both deflecting the flattery and knowing full well that I had no chance of living up to Ronnie’s earnestly Midwest rendition of me. “I will get you a pair of my jeans. What size are you?” Petite is always my stock answer but the language barrier made my joke even more incomprehensible than usual. “I have a 32 inch waist.” I told him. Serge nodded, “I am going to get you a 33. My sizes…” his voice trailed off into a sea of fashion jargon I will never comprehend as I fixated on his insistence at sizing me up against my will.
As I headed off to the train, original Jonathan offered to take the jeans off my hands. When it comes to pants we can practically wear the same size, but when it comes to style, he leaves me in the dust. This is for the best. When I wear something fashionable, instead of looking sexy, I end up looking like Edina from Absolutely Fabulous. I can carry off a suit or a tuxedo, just like every gay man can, as evidenced by the preponderance of three year old brother of the bride photos that spread through gay dating sites like Syphilis. But high fashion is lost of me. Head to toe, I am a lost cause. I am sure Ronnie’s complexion can handle a hundred face scrubbings a week and still look flawless, and original Jonathan can fill out a pair of designer jeans like an application, but my lack of style is a style all its own. And even such as it is, unfashionable and unkempt, I should probably stick with what I know. As the saying goes, better to be thought a fashion victim than try something new and remove all doubt.
Despite the baleful condition of my skin and my impending pool party tomorrow at Clayton’s house, I agreed to join Hottie Zach out for a short drink at Therapy after the show. I orchestrated original Jonathan’s appearance there as well, which wasn’t difficult since he lives around the corner and is always as game for a cocktail as a scuba diver is for more air. Walking into Therapy the first person I saw was adorable Ronnie Kroell. He and Zach both share a feckless cream cheese complexion that even under my best circumstances I envy with the bloodlust of Snow White’s wicked queen. But his warm giddiness at seeing me melted my self-doubt and I threw myself wholeheartedly into the experience.
Ronnie is actively trying to make his way in the big city, a modern gay version of Mary Tyler Moore, but substituting a modeling contract for the beret. Perhaps I am the gruff and wise Lou Grant type here to guide him along, coaxing him relentlessly but unsuccessfully into my web of cynicism. Ronnie was there with Hottie Zach and original Jonathan and a fashion designer named Sergio (“Serge!” he implored me in a beautiful yet booze tainted accent while insisting on joining in on the round of hugs that accompanied my arrival).
Moments later, upstairs with drinks in hand, Serge explained that he was a fashion designer for whom Ronnie’s body was the perfect hanger. Earlier in the day, they had gone to Bergdorf’s so Ronnie could try on a selection of his Italy-made designer duds, the tale of which invoked instant flashes of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. The way Ronnie described his fantasy of walking through Central Park in Serge’s jeans and gorgeous cashmere sweater, latte in hand, made me realize that despite having a masters degree in political science, his dream of being a paper doll has been a long time coming.
“Ronnie has told me wonderful things about you!” Serge purred in my ear. I demurred. “Lies,” I smiled, both deflecting the flattery and knowing full well that I had no chance of living up to Ronnie’s earnestly Midwest rendition of me. “I will get you a pair of my jeans. What size are you?” Petite is always my stock answer but the language barrier made my joke even more incomprehensible than usual. “I have a 32 inch waist.” I told him. Serge nodded, “I am going to get you a 33. My sizes…” his voice trailed off into a sea of fashion jargon I will never comprehend as I fixated on his insistence at sizing me up against my will.
As I headed off to the train, original Jonathan offered to take the jeans off my hands. When it comes to pants we can practically wear the same size, but when it comes to style, he leaves me in the dust. This is for the best. When I wear something fashionable, instead of looking sexy, I end up looking like Edina from Absolutely Fabulous. I can carry off a suit or a tuxedo, just like every gay man can, as evidenced by the preponderance of three year old brother of the bride photos that spread through gay dating sites like Syphilis. But high fashion is lost of me. Head to toe, I am a lost cause. I am sure Ronnie’s complexion can handle a hundred face scrubbings a week and still look flawless, and original Jonathan can fill out a pair of designer jeans like an application, but my lack of style is a style all its own. And even such as it is, unfashionable and unkempt, I should probably stick with what I know. As the saying goes, better to be thought a fashion victim than try something new and remove all doubt.
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