Backstory

Nothing clears up a mystery like a flashback. Sure, it’s lazy writing. But in the real world, knowing someone and then discovering something about their past instantly rounds out their character in a way that is not visible to the naked eye. So in a bid to make their characters sympathetic or reveal a crucial detail (i.e. explaining why Miss Marple solved the case before you would have even had a chance to put on your shoes), it is no wonder that screenwriters employ such tactics with frustrating regularity. And now, so will I. In a sense, that is all that this blog is. You think you know me, then you read about the night before and suddenly I am illuminated as if from bad fluorescent lighting in a bus station men’s room.

I thought I might go out on Friday night. But not too late. After all, the DVR at home is at 92% capacity (thanks to a sweeps month filled with High Def two-hour season finales) and the lawn is as high as an elephant’s eye. Yes it has been forever since I wrote something, but I do have a very full life of watching TV and digging wet clogs of grass out of the mower blades. It may not be worth writing about but it sure does fill the time. Lately, Matt Kugelman has been a reliable bar crawl companion but on this Friday night he was locked into his roommate’s birthday party inside his own apartment. “Why don’t you come here?” As much as he likes his roommate, I am pretty sure he stayed for the entire party mostly to make sure the other guests didn’t have sex on his bed or steal his computer. You know how the gays are.

I was in a foul mood on Friday. A bad end to a bad week. Just ready to throw it all in the junk heap. So I knew I wasn’t going to be a great party person, but then again, this wasn’t my party. No real reason to put my game face on. And since I am so rarely invited to any other parties, I have to take the opportunities as they come. Besides, new people mean new unsuspecting blog subjects and radio show gossip fodder. All of this explains why I was so terrible from the moment I arrived until I happily slammed the door on my way out.

You would think a totally nice guy like Matt wouldn’t be happy with this kind of behavior, but it was perhaps strangely just the opposite. We have very different public personas. When I am mad, it’s like Tennessee Williams’ Cat On A Hot Tin Roof: “When a marriage is on the rocks, the rocks are there. Right there!” Mad Matt on the other hand, smiles and laughs and dances like Ally McBeal’s biological clock baby. As a matter of fact, I suspect when he starts spontaneously laughing and dancing at the same time, he is about five seconds away from ripping your fool head off. Although he never does. He keeps it all inside. Which might explain some small satisfaction in seeing me express it all and then some, even if I do end up crossing all sorts of lines that no rational dignified person ever should.

At the party, my worst behavior was confined to vicious asides and they began the split second I entered the room. “There are pregnant women coming in right behind me,” was my opening shot across the bow as I preceded two oblivious and not pregnant women in blousy empire waist tops through the threshold. It was all downhill from there, with guest after guest quietly eviscerated by me slung off in a corner,whispering evil into Matt’s waiting ear. I think we were even sitting for most of it. Look, it was Friday night and I was tired. But not too tired to run off at the mouth about every little nonsense.

Meanwhile, Matt kept a wary eye on his own bedroom door. It had been closed, inside light off, with my coat (such as it is) strewn across his bed. But a steady stream of people wandered in and out all night. To…? No one knows for sure. The cat was sleeping on his bed. And the air conditioner did keep the room a bit cooler than the rest of the party. So there were some objects of curiosity in there. Mostly I think it was the trend nature of the gay community mixed with its heightened need to know everyone else’s business at all times. One person goes in the room, suddenly it’s the place to see and be seen! No doubt photos will surface in this Sunday’s Styles section of The Times featuring the usual assortment of no-name-brand Princesses that seem always to be in season on the Upper East Side and the tight, wealthy faces layered over loose bejeweled necks who love them. This was not to Matt’s liking at all, but he just smiled and waved his hands in the air like a happy-go-lucky marionette, one final broken string of sanity away from freedom.

I downed Fresca like it was scotch on the rocks and the God of my universe was Raymond Chandler. Chachi was there, but though he recognized me, he couldn’t quite place where I was from. Time for a flashback! Though even after I reminded him of the previous party in that apartment we had attended together and the four hours we sat together at the GLAAD Awards earlier this year, he still thought my name was Josh. The news of my radio show moments later also came as a total surprise. But all things considered, he was happy to see me again.

Singer Billy Porter was there, a returning champion from Los Angeles. I rewarded Matt with Billy’s flashback story. He attended one of my parties when I lived up in Harlem but never left the relative security of the welcome mat inside the front door. One of my friends walked up to him and said that he looked just like Billy Porter. When he assured my friend that he was, in fact, Billy Porter, my friend, who was quite drunk simply walked away. This was like exit music to his ears and then it was just eight bars and off. I have seen him many times since, though I don’t like to bring up our first meeting and I didn’t again this time, even though it probably would have jogged his memory. And thus, like a friendly Alzheimer’s patient, he never remembers meeting me before but he is always very, very kind about it.

I wanted to leave even before I got there and finally I had my out. A guy who slept with Matt’s roommate last year started rubbing up on Matt. The skinny twink boy obviously doesn’t know the cardinal rule of gay sex: if you go home with a guy and his roommate is hotter, too bad. That’s just your own bad luck. No do overs. Undaunted, he whispered a sex act into Matt’s ear that he wanted to do to him that I am pretty sure requires if not an advanced degree, at minimum a proposal of marriage. To say the least, it is not the opening salvo of foreplay outside of a straight-to-DVD film directed by Adrian Lyne in a very raunchy mood. This was my exit music. Nothing like leaving a friend stranded in an awkward moment to really cap off an evening you were never in the mood for in the first place. Yes that is terrible behavior, but in the grand scheme of things, that’s me in a nutshell.

Cut To: present day.