The Nearest Thing To Heaven

(This is an unfinished blog entry. Explanation at the end. But, as fate would have it, I was about to write about my adventures tonight inside an existing document I write in on my laptop before I post it all online and I didn't think I had put it up. Turns out that I hadn't. And it seemed too good to me to just throw away, even if it is half-thought, unedited, and incomplete. See what you think.)

Sunday, June 28, 2009 2:31am

Sure, I had heard of gay billionaires before. After all, I used to live in Los Angeles. There were always stories of someone or other throwing an amazing party with hot guys twirling around a swimming pool in the highest altitudes of the “swish alps,” the gentle mountain range that separates West Hollywood from the dreaded Valley. I was even invited to one such party in the late 1990s and sure enough boys in tiny bathing suits danced around a kidney pool, swilling cocktails and enjoying the largesse of an unseen benefactor. I am pretty sure a certain MTV personality dragged a friend of mine into the bathroom with him, did an enormous amount of coke next to the sink and then whisked him off to a wild night out in Hollywood which ended with them getting thrown out of the after-hours party at the Coconut Teaser on Sunset for sneaking in a beer. I thought I had left such shenanigans behind on the left coast. But then I was invited to a party in the sky in the apartment of a gay billionaire in Manhattan and my life was changed forever.

At the risk of lobbing another cannon shot into the battle of class warfare in America, I will just say this: rich people live better than you. Much, much better. Years ago in the Egyptian Theatre at the OutFest premiere of “Get Bruce” the terrific documentary on Bruce Vilanch, a much vaunted and moneyed Hollywood figure with an equal love of hot young men and plastic surgery occupied the row right behind me. He had not one but two insanely beautiful men with him, flanking him on either side, one of them infused with such fragile, farm-fresh dewiness that I wanted to slip him a bus ticket back to Kansas before it was all too late and the L.A. machine consumed him. Maybe I was fueled by jealousy or the inherent wastefulness of having two whores when clearly one would have been more then sufficient.

But as reclusive billionaire John Hurt assured us in “Contact,” why have one when you can have two at twice the price? I suppose at a certain point, “money is no object” isn’t just a casual expression it represents an actual mental omission. Price tags and receipts fall into a gentle grey area of the wealthy brain inaccessible at all times, rendering them a financial amensiac with no interest in remembering what reality is for other people. And thus the billionaire journeys through life unfettered by what things cost, buying jets in every color they come in. Laughing annoyingly, as Louise Brooks once wrote of her own mother, like one with a happily corrected blind spot.

This is conjecture on my part. I don’t know what kind of lives billionaires really have. After all, I live like a squatter in an abandoned downtown warehouse. If it wasn’t for my roommate Mike’s constant stares of blank disapproval, I would devolve into full-tilt Grey Gardens in a matter of hours. From the outside looking in (like Stella Dallas longing for a life filled with problems never to be had) there seem to be two kinds of billionaires. I suppose if you are someone like, say, Oprah, who grew up desperately poor with an outhouse and earned your billions the hard way, you know where every penny is at all times. But if you invest Daddy’s money and it hits like the lottery, you may not have the same sense about dollars and cents that someone else might have.

The billionaire apartment I went to seemed to fall more in the category of the latter. Famous works of art abounded askew from a thousand drunken love taps from the partygoers, a tiny Cartier clock sat helpless and unprotected in a shelf in the guest bathroom. The library was filled with boxes of the same book, no doubt a favorite, soon-to-be thoughtful gift to everyone from the doorman to a liked, though not well-liked uncle. The paroramic views from every window, including the bathroom, seemed merely to be a natural extension of the already lavish embarassment of riches strewn careful amount the penthouse.

It was pride weekend. The 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. Naturally, I was at the IMAX Theater near Lincoln Center watching the Transformers sequel with my friend Clayton. I knew that my other friend Clay was in town for the weekend, in from Texas, and Jeff and Bond had driven down from Boston. That’s the nice thing about pride weekend. Everyone is there. The only real question is where to go to party. Plenty of people have parties but you want to go to THE party. I only know a handful of important and/or connected people so for me, this time of year is a delicate dance.

Clay told me that he had been invited to a party on the East side, in the Bloomberg building. The sexy party promoter Michael Warner had invited him and he offered that Clayton and I could join him on the list. Once I heard that Warner was working that party, I knew that Jeff and Bond would be there too. And I suspected some of the rest of my usual NYC people would be there too, like Matty Kelleher.

(This is the end of the unfinished entry, and there it stayed forgotten for nearly six months, although I explained why it was unfinished in an entry titled "The End" back in August, which includes more details about the party for the deeply curious.)

GUMBO Lone

I love Ben Harvey. I am just going to say it. He is so attractive and blond and trim and talented. Basically, he is everything I am not and wish I could be. What isn’t there to love about him? And lately, he has been throwing his hat into the club promotion ring. I recall my own disastrous foray into that business back in the fall of 2001, mostly because I wrote about it in my new book. (“Hey. Manhattan just suffered through the worst domestic attack ever a few days ago. How about launching a new club night across the street from the longest-running, most successful night in gay social history?!”). So I wanted to be supportive of his no-doubt more successful effort. Unfortunately, I was out of town for the first two, so I swore a blood oath I would be at the next one. And I was.

GUMBO is the name and it is a cute squish-up of Gay and DUMBO, an area of Brooklyn unknown to me because I think going South of fourteenth street in Manhattan is equivalent to swimming the English Channel. So an outerborough is completely out of the question. After all, I am the man who declared when he first moved to Manhattan that he would never take the subway and would only travel below Houston if he was fucking a celebrity. But it was for Ben Harvey! So I willingly and happily went.

Before I arrived in DUMBO, I had steeled myself for the kind of gritty urban streetscapes one might expect on a repeat viewing of “Escape From New York.” I was in for a shock. DUMBO isn’t just gentrified, whatever that means beyond “we priced anyone darker than a paper bag out of this real estate market.” It looks like they added a New York land to EPCOT. I was more concerned about getting mugged when I visited the New York backlot at FOX studios in the 90s because it was dirtier and scarier at midday than DUMBO at night. Filled with cozy upscale markets, quaint shops and downright precious cobblestones, I finally understood the outrage New Yorkers felt when Disney moved into Times Square and scrubbed away the porn and hookers.

The party was held in the Galapagos Art Space and it was very ultramodern: multimedia on the wall, quiet conversation nooks floating on water, Christian. Attending GUMBO, I had three goals: attend GUMBO to make good on my promise to Ben, regift a book about lifeguards to Matty Kelleher and also give Matty a copy of my book in which he is featured prominently. The first was easy, but the second two depended on finding Matt and then capturing his attention long enough to make the exchange. This is no easy task.

Along the way, I gave a warm hug of congratulations to Ben. I cornered Dave Rubin in a sexually aggressive way, like a cougar from Cougartown, blocking his escape from inside a floating banquette. It was either go through me or swim for it. I tried to talk to some new people, but they were all so young and mildly scruffy with their clingy cardigans and skinny pants over their skinny legs. This is the year of trying new things for me, but I think Brooklyn was enough new for one day. I don’t want to go overboard.

Finally, I found Matty and as I expected he would, he clapped his hands in delight, jumped up and down, and made a grabby fingers motion toward me to pull us together in a fun embrace. I had been warning him for weeks that the book was coming out and he was extremely excited to finally get his hands on it. Although when I gave him the second book, a regift from my friend Jennifer, I think there were some lifeguards in there he wanted to get his hands on too.



After talking to everyone twice, I started to head for the coat check. I had always planned on a quick visit, and knowing the planes, trains and automobiles it would take to get me home, Ben understood. As I grabbed my stuff, Chris and Cub were headed out in the same moment. Chris reiterated that they want to visit my house soon and Cub told a story about his coat that he bought as it was going out of style, watched it come back in style and was now still wearing it even though it was out of style again because he loved it. And that is why they are my new favorite couple of 2009. I thought they might be on the subway with me back to Manhattan but they suddenly splurged on a cab and I watched them pile into the car and pull away into the night. It all looked like a scene from a movie, the set was arranged and lit just right, with Manhattan shimmering in the background like a pearl.

By the time I reached the subway entrance, the gay din of the party had stopped ringing in my ears and the pristine cutesiness of DUMBO faded away to a more authentic, silent seediness under the bridge to Manhattan. I feel more at home in the grimy part of New York. Maybe it is because it is how I remember the city from my visits filled with wonder as a kid. Of course, now I live a world apart, far outside the city in my Douglas Sirk dreamscape, the cares and concerns of Manhattan now merely a set of small print columns in the copy of the New York Times I read on weekend mornings out on the patio. DUMBO too was like a fantasy bubble, like the one Glinda touched down in OZ in, and as pretty as it was, I think I like my fantasy life better.

On The Eve Of The Eve

Manhattan is a magical place. There is a reason they made a movie called “Miracle on 34^th Street” and, despite the miracle mile moniker, didn’t set it on Wilshire in Los Angeles. LA is where you go to wish for a miracle and Manhattan is where you go to actually experience them. Where LA’s streets are littered with parking fines and moving violations, I found actual cash, $120, on the sidewalk in New York. After several days in glamorous broken down Hollywood, I was ready for the full treatment in Manhattan and the little island delivered.

In honor of robust sales of my new book, I decided to splurge on a new espresso machine for the house. But now having fancy coffee, we needed something to serve it in. The night before Halloween, I was coming into town anyway for Henry and Dan’s party and to have dinner with Matt Kugelman. So I got there a little early and raced to the Crate and Barrel on 60^th. But no! It closed at 8pm, not 9pm like I thought. The security guard assured me that the location on 14^th street was still open, but I told him I had dinner plans and couldn’t possibly make it down there in time and I did come all the way from Westchester.

“Just this once.” He said as he let me, even though the store had closed moments earlier. A Manhattan miracle! $80 and five minutes later, I raced out of there with espresso cups and latte mugs galore, my joy in the city instantly reconfirmed. After dropping my packages in my car at the garage, I wandered down to meet Matt for a little Mexican food. We had a wonderful dinner and I tried to get him to come to the party but he had other people he needed to meet at Rockit at eleven. So since it was only ten, we split the baby and I joined him for a drink at Barrage to keep him company until his thing at 11pm. We parted and I hopped onto the subway uptown.

Henry and Dan threw an amazing New Year’s Eve party two years ago and I was anxious to attend another of their parties. At the time they had been living in an incredible building with views of the Hudson River but the invite for their Halloween Housewarming alerted me to the Central Park West location of their new digs.

I got off the subway and walked two blocks looking for the address. Along the way, I passed a castle with a large courtyard out front overlooking Central Park. “That can’t be it,” I thought to myself as I kept walking. “They can’t possibly live in a castle.” But of course they do. And the second floor ballroom in the turret? Not a day room for all the residents but instead, their elegantly appointed living room.

The party was insane. Filled with room after incredible room of hot hunks in hot costumes. The 1920s styling was intact throughout and the apartment wove its away around the entire floor of the building. I ran into Chris and Cub there, who like me, were not wearing costumes and I have never been so relieved to see two people in my life. In the elevator, I had ridden up with two guys who took one look at me and asked, “This is a costume party right?”

“Costumes were optional,” I told them, “Don’t worry. I didn’t dress up either."

They gave me a funny look. “I’m Rocky Balboa,” one of them said while the other donned sunglasses and assured me he was Donnie Brasco. Well, I wasn’t looking to make any new friends in the elevator anyway.

Also at the party, I ran into Ryan, who looked ready to be defiled in an ancient way in his toga while his friend Mike ran around dressed as a tight end, no doubt looking for someone to throw long and go deep with. Henry and Dan were busy hosting and having a fun time, although Henry kept herding people out of crowded nooks into less crowded ones after some real firemen showed up to inspect the size and density of the party crowd. “Into the library!” he called to me as Cub and I tried to leave the kitchen and return to Chris in the living room. I felt like a game piece on a Clue board.

The apartment made me feel bad about myself but in a laughable, nonsense way. My friends live in a castle! That’s ridiculous. No one lives in a castle. LA makes you feel like a failure all the time because nothing there is every good enough, young enough, shiny enough or new enough. But NYC is an impossible place filled with impossible things. On the news they said that the mayor was the richest man in New York City and I just thought, “How can that be? How can anyone be the richest anything here?” It’s all too much. The heights are so high in Manhattan that they are literally impossible to scale so no one has to feel bad that they didn’t make it. So while you can live in a castle, no one expects you to. Here in New York, you are a hero just for finding a decent one bedroom apartment for under $1500 a month. And there are small miracles inside latte mugs.

Hollywon't

Los Angeles is a cruel episode of The Twilight Zone. I spent several days out there this week for my birthday and as usual, it did not disappoint. I have a rule about visiting LA that I have to go for a minimum of three days. In the first two days, it is easy to fall back in love with the wonderful weather and the hot men around every corner. At the end of day two, you start debating in your head if you are cool enough to live in Los Feliz or such an alcoholic that only West Hollywood makes any practical sense. And then on day three, the shit hits the fan.

In my case, it was the $280 parking ticket I got around the corner from The Waffle, a fabulous 70s themed diner with a Brady Bunch staircase and brown and orange décor. “Did you park on a baby?!” was the incredulous response from a friend of mine. Oh no. Just a poorly marked bus zone in a bankrupt city in a bankrupt state desperate for cash.

On Tuesday night, I went to dinner with Mike, who was with me on the trip, Cyd and Dan recently relocated to the LA cast and Jason. We went to Vermont, a new restaurant on Vermont where my friend Brandon works, which several years too late picked up the generic restaurant name trend that haunted Manhattan in the 90s (I’m looking at you Food Bar, Cafeteria, et al). It is a companion place to Rockwell, the outdoor venue next door that my friend Jeremy tried to convince me to have an LA-based birthday party at. After our dinner, I am relieved that I was too lazy to pull something together there.

Turns out the bad service at Vermont was genetic since the place is owned by the same people who brought you my personal LA hell restaurant Mark’s on La Cienega. The last time I ate there I waited an hour and a half to be seated inside a dumpster because my biceps weren’t big enough and I wasn’t sufficiently famous. We sat inside at Vermont but under a strangely placed tree, which combining the horrible waiter with my nasty cold, made me long for a noose. I don’t understand how LA, a city populated entirely by waiters, past and present, can have a single restaurant with a middle aged server who can’t get a single aspect of your order right. By Wednesday morning, I couldn’t get on the plane back to New York fast enough.

It is disheartening to think that the city I lived in for fifteen years can now cause a near allergic reaction. Part of me really wants to move back, to take up with my old friends. To spend more time with my family. To get off work at 7pm and have a real life like a real human being. Plus, the new Pavilions in West Hollywood is amazing. If I moved back, I would want to have my mail forwarded to the produce section. But as I collapsed with some relief in my window seat on the flight home, I knew that as much as LA has to offer, it just doesn’t offer enough. It’s a bad ex-boyfriend you still love who is really sorry for everything but you know in your heart will never change. And I am better off without him.

The Big Chill

It’s cold. And I know that no one moves to New York for the weather. But still. It is worth mentioning that it is cold. Yesterday, it snowed. In the middle of October. My carefully drawn cotton cobwebs decorating my Douglas Sirk-inspired Cape Cod were laced with real live snowflakes, two weeks before Halloween. It’s most frustrating because we didn’t even have a summer this year. It was just one long rainy spring with five warm days in August, and now this.

In the elevator tonight after the show, Father Dave gently chided me that my fabulous grey wool fall coat wasn’t equal to the weather. It is one of my few possessions that I would actually put into the fashion category. Normally, that coat, with its family von Trapp precision cut, lasts me well into December when I replace it with a bulky snow parka, shades of Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club. I don’t even know where my leather gloves are. Father Dave is right. I have been caught unawares by the weather.

Not that I have any great love for Bowery Bar and the Stepford gays that swirl around inside it like lost guppies, but I do have an annual tradition of visiting on the last bearable Tuesday evening of autumn. Now I fear I have already missed my window. Where will the gays go, now that Fire Island was a soggy, damp huddle around a firepit and their only viral infection this summer was Miley Cyrus’ “Party In The U.S.A.?” Frost has already descended on the Central Park ramble and they will soon, I have no doubt, open the Highline for ice skating.

Monday night I ran down to The Ritz to see Bianca’s show and hang out with Matt Kugelman, the only good thing that has ever happened to me at Bowery Bar aside from that accidental blow job I got a couple of years ago. I don’t know what happened. Matt and I had a good rhythm going of partying down, pulling it together and then partying down a few days later. I blame the self-imposed end of my blog. The unexamined nightlife is not worth living, I guess.

I told Bianca to put Bobby in the show and he was definitely a crowd pleaser. I wish I had taken some pictures. It was fun, but even The Ritz, usually a reliable screeching twink explosion was down to a dull roar. Then again, it was a Monday night, so I suppose they can be forgiven for lacking their usual Saturday night specialness. After all, how can I complain about a slow evening as the nightcap to a weekend where I hung out with more hung porn stars than you can shake a dick at and slept with one of them?

But as I turn around in bar after restaurant after bar in this town, I am starting to think I am not the only one whose party persona is as worn and threadbare as the fashionably unemployed men that populate the grainy/fabulous black and white images of 1930s Manhattan, fedoras pulled low over unshaven grim faces, suit collars turned up against a chilly economy. Perhaps I have been underestimating the financial deathblow our country has been blown. Or maybe I am not the only one craving a solid night of rest in the city that never sleeps.

About Derek's New Book

Okay. Finally after all of these years, I wrote a book. It is called Colonnade: A Life In Columns and it is coming out on my birthday: October 28th! If you want to order a signed copy, you can click here.

Want to know what the book is about? It's about 380 pages and it has a lot of very unfortunate sexual adventures on my part (with mostly comic results), drunken stories out on the town with my friends in 2001 and 2002 and the best part... I come off as self-centered, desperate and sad (no big surprise). But most of it is really funny. Here is the back cover blurb:

Colonnade: A Life In Columns is a wild journey through gay Manhattan at the beginning of the 21st Century. Columnist Derek Hartley recounts his first two years in the city and his attempts to turn himself into a local celebrity with a little help from his friends. Along the way he experiences love and heartache, tragedy as a first-hand witness to the events of 9/11, personal and professional failures and his eventual rise as a radio talk show host in this unflinching look at a life lived in the big city.

Through it all, his weekly columns include tons of insight into the world of online dating, sex and romance. They are combined here for the first time with the unvarnished truth of the story behind the story, giving a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a writer. Colonnade: A Life In Columns also includes some of Hartley’s most popular columns including:

*Ten Essentials In Your Search For Love

*The Seven Deadly Gay Sins

*The Seven Heavenly Gay Virtues

Plus, Hartley explains how to survive a gay cruise, inconsiderate orgasm guy, the dynamics of a successful three-way and tips for winning the games men play. With nearly 100 original columns included along with sordid tales of sex and celebrities, Colonnade: A Life In Columns has a little something for everyone looking for adventure in the big apple.

(If I tagged you in this note on Facebook, it is because you are in the book.)

Derek Fails As A Filmmaker

Separated at birth?

The first photo is me at sixteen in my mom's living room.

This is a publicity photo of Chris Colfer who plays the gay kid Kurt on GLEE.

The Private Lives Of Dayton And Tory

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Bailouts, Babes and The Deranged Elderly

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Monday Irritations

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The End

This has been coming for a while and I suppose it isn’t a surprise now that the day has arrived. I’ve been writing about my adventures out on the town for a few years now, so long in fact that I started with links to the Friendster.com profiles of total strangers. In the process, I have annoyed good friends and created near-enemies out of casual acquaintances. That isn’t to say that some people haven't enjoyed what I have written, it’s just that at a certain point the vehicle in any adventure simply runs out of steam.

I went to an amazing party in an apartment in the sky back in June. My friend Bobby who invited me has been impatiently waiting for me to write it up for months. And there was so much grist too. I flirted with an extremely drunk guy who no doubt has no recollection of either said flirting, nor my Herculean efforts buttoning his tiny cutoff shorts back up for him. There were friends in from out of town (Clay Lee!), adorable Matty K and party doll Will Wikle. It even had Lance Bass and party-crashing paparazzi, and Lance’s boyfriend mistaking me for a bartender and trying to order drinks from me. This is an important detail since the bartenders at the party were as hot as the panoramic city views and if anything, the way I am dressed, I am usually mistaken for a bike messenger.

But it has been two months and pertinent names have already faded into the distance. For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out why I hadn't written it all up. At first I told myself that I didn’t want to annoy the billionaire apartment owner upon whose largess I would hope to impose further in the future. Then, I told myself in between repeated viewings of Mad Men that I was just too busy. In reality I am just tired. Tired of facing down the inevitable ire of people I genuinely care about and fighting with doormen to hold onto a nightlife that has been on life support for some time. And for what? So I have something to write on the internet? Enough.

So this will be my final posting in this form, at least for a while. Maybe if the spirit really moves me, I will post another epic long story. In the meantime, my blog will take a different tack, closer to daily and in a pop culture form, and the reluctant personal life I am so reluctant to reveal will slip once again behind the veil.

Fitting then that there was an ending of another sort tonight as Jonathan held his goodbye party at Vintage in Hell’s Kitchen. He is moving to Los Angeles for his own exciting adventures out west. Maybe he will write a blog about it and you can follow that for a while. I was the first to arrive and we sat for a few moments in the back of the bar on paired red velvet sofas like talk show guests forced to interview each other. While he told me about his recent work off in Nevada, I tried to remember the last time I was at Vintage. I think it was with Terry, who showed up a few minutes later with his boyfriend Doug. The place looked so familiar even though I think then it was wintertime and I feel like John Tartaglia was there but I don’t remember how many years ago it was (2004?) or why I was there.

Normally I wear a blue polo when heading out to a gay bar, letting my icy eyes blend like camouflage into the color creating a matching accessory. But Jonathan also has blue eyes and since we can often be found dressing alike, among other alike things, I figured I would play it safe and wear a yellow Otter polo, a color I never wear and I suspect he wouldn’t wear either. After all, it is his party. No need to pull focus.

The other guests started to trickle in and I settled down on the couch with Terry, who has been my friend for 14 years. Like always, he overestimated the years, this time to a whopping seventeen. He always does that! I guess he just goes by how long it feels. “The years stretch as you get older,” Margo Channing warned us in All About Eve and she wasn’t kidding. Since both Terry and I lived in LA once (we met there), we both took turns torturing Jonathan with stories of West Hollywood life. Naturally, all of them revolved around sex.

Being in your mid-twenties and gay in West Hollywood is a bit like locking a kid in a candy store, only the store doesn’t open again until you are thirty-something, bloated and filled with regret. Jonathan had considered moving into an apartment on Palm Avenue, which coincidentally was the first street I lived on in West Hollywood. This set us off on a war of remembrances of tricks past, most residing in the notorious Mediterranean apartment complex at the foot of that hill.

“It’s a labyrinth,” I warned Jonathan. “You won’t even know you are in it until you are already inside. You are guaranteed to sleep with at least one person who lives there.” Terry nodded vigorously behind me.

After Jonathan went off to attend to the other guests and escape our dusty war stories, Terry turned to me with sudden seriousness. “That was a whole lifetime ago.” I am going through my old writing preparing a book to go out this fall that chronicles my life then so I know exactly what he means. Reading again what I wrote then and it feels like it all happened to someone else. A long time ago, in a sunny sex galaxy far, far away… filled with cheap food at Baja Buds, smoothies at Jamba Juice and late night noshing first at Canter’s and then when we had more money, the Jerry’s Famous across from Cedars.

Terry and his boyfriend Doug left and I tried talking to some new people. And they were nice enough. But my heart wasn’t in it. I hate saying good bye to Jonathan but I know that LA is the right place at the right time for him. And what’s next for me is right here in New York. His other friends didn’t see the finality in his jump to the left coast but I do. I know what it is like to be 27 and in West Hollywood with the whole wide world in front of you. Why would you want to carry groceries eight blocks in the snow or wait endlessly on a sweltering subway platform when there’s paradise in a beat up convertible sailing up the Pacific Coast Highway at sunset?

So off to LA for Jonathan. And for me here, something new. Maybe I will write about people I don’t know for a change. Matty has a boyfriend and I don’t see him so much anymore. Kugie is off in Chicago visiting and while he is a good sport about the blog, we can’t just hang out for the sake of entertainment. We gave at the office. And even though I am not going anywhere, I am ready for a change too. This blog has been like an infection in Manhattan: raised temperatures, broke out in a rash, and then ran its course. And now that the center of gravity is shifting to Brooklyn, with all its expanding waistlines and hipster edginess, I feel as arcane as Carrie Bradshaw. Even I don't live in Manhattan anymore. The time has come everybody. Hang up the Manolos already.

On my way to the train, and the inevitable final blog written on the Hudson line north heading off to my Don and Betsy Draper dream world, I dropped by the terrible Starbucks near my office. The guy behind the counter kind of flirted a bit and charged me an iced coffee instead of my iced venti soy chai. I left the two dollar difference in the tip jar, smiled and waited for my drink. That attention felt good, in a color I don’t like to wear and under such harsh lighting. But maybe he was just being nice, one New Yorker to another. It’s like that when you live here. Maybe that is something Jonathan will miss. No one who has ever lived here likes feeling like an outsider when they come back. Or worse, a tourist. NYC gets in your blood and it never leaves. For a while I had switched to vanilla lattes and even dropped soy altogether from my diet, but now I am firmly back in the old routine. I guess it’s true what they say: the more things change, the more they stay the same.

So even though I am saying goodbye, maybe you should stay tuned. Life has a funny way of surprising you. You never know what might be waiting next.

Rockit Splashdown

The doorman doesn’t like me. Again. I had told Matt Kugelman this earlier when he suggested Rockit, but he assured me that there was a new doorman now. It turns out the new doorman doesn’t like me anymore than the old one did. “Uhhhh” he sighed miserably to the security guard holding the rope in place, “they are… okay.” His okay was not at all okay, but instead dripping with nastiness. As in, if I were stranded on a deserted island for a decade, I guess, if I was facing certain death and there was oxygen in his dick, it would be…. just okay.

While we were waiting, a friend of the doorman strolled up in a mesh t-shirt and camo cargo shorts. Not what I would call a style icon, unless you consider the International Male catalog the height of fashion. Moments later, the doorman was chiding me for wearing cargo shorts. “I don’t normally like cargo shorts. Can you wear something else next time?” Really? Because I am pretty sure a pair of ratty cargo shorts just rolled all up in this shit five seconds ago. Even as the words were coming out of his mouth, he knew what a hypocritical douche he came off as. Whatever, Matt really had to pee or I would have made the kind of “don’t you know who I am” scene that would have ended with me being happily banned from what is, frankly, a subpar bar experience. We only keep going because it is close to my office and Matt’s apartment and we are lazy drunks.

This is my fourth or fifth adventure at Rockit and it is still a mystery to me why this is supposed to be a hot place. Yes they have open bar from ten to eleven, but it’s almost turpentine what they serve. The crowd is nice but hardly crazy attractive. Right now, in the throes of summer everyone who is anyone is out on Fire Island, or the Hamptons or Provincetown. You would think they would be grateful to have ANYONE in their bar. Even a broken down mid-century radio show host like myself. The doormen act like its Studio 54 circa 1979. Honey, it isn’t even Studio 54 now.

Originally I planned to go to a birthday party tonight but didn’t get the location until 9:45pm. With only fifteen minutes left to the show and facing the end of a long week, I was already thinking about just heading home. Once I heard that the party was at Sugarland (which a quick Google search informed me was in Brooklyn), I knew I was going to pass. Not that the 30+ minute trip out on two subways wouldn’t have been fun, but the prospect of trying to find my way back to Manhattan after Midnight to catch the train home seemed frankly just this side of impossible. So, it was back to the old standby: Matt Kugelman and Rockit.

Once inside, we enjoyed our mutual friend Keo Nozari spinning tunes upstairs and I even ran into my adorable pal Rob Banning, who was just making a quick circle through the place before jetting away. A steady stream of admirers paraded up to Matt, undaunted by my presence. Unfortunately, the only steady stream I was enjoying came from all of the drinks being splashed on me. Must have been the open bar because these drunks tonight were messy. And when a drink is free, you don’t mind spilling some of it along the way. It seemed I couldn’t turn around in that place without getting a half glass of vodka tonic sloshed on me. I was trying to text with Ryan Raz up in Boston, but I started to worry that my iPhone wasn’t waterproof. Is there some kind of windshield wiper app for the iPhone I can download?

Neither of us wanted to make a late night of it, so we cut out pretty early. A couple of drinks was plenty and once again the doorman’s attitude did not put me in a party mood. As we left, his back was to us and I was glad. There he was, not particularly good looking, in his preppy button down shirt, open enough for open heart surgery, tucked into a painful pinch in high-waisted ticking stripe shorts. Yes, shorts! Even though his were ill-fitting and atrocious, my cargo shorts were cause for alarm. Oh enough. I can’t hear myself think over the sound of my own eyes rolling into the back of my head. Besides, I know I have no fashion sense. What is his excuse?

I love you Keo, but I won't be back.

So Strange, Yet Familiar

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Five Second Rule

Standing outside Katwalk on a not particularly windy summer night in Manhattan, Listerine breath strips flutter out of their green plastic coffin onto the sidewalk. A spritely young gay leaps after them declaring the tried but not so true rule about putting things in your mouth that have hit the ground. My mind races to the gallons of urine, vomit and dog shit that have washed over 35th Street in the last century and I stop him in his tracks. After all, as important as fresh breath is, it doesn’t supersede the need to not place your tongue on a NYC sidewalk.

It was going to be that kind of night, where bad ideas seemed promising, as I stepped into the joint birthday bash for Matt Kugelman and the Roy boy known as Bianca del Rio. Kugie is well known to my blog and Bianca is widely known as a foul-mouth insult queen from New Orleans whose love of offensive racial humor and abortion jokes is well documented, mostly by the Kuge himself. For Roy’s birthday, Matt put together a “tribute” video featuring other notable drag queens, personalities and me. Never one to pass up the opportunity to be seen publicly or insult someone I hardly know, I jumped at the chance. And if you can do both and eat cake and drink, well it might as well be Christmas!

Generally I don’t like going anywhere that I don’t know people. I do know Matt but it was his birthday, so I knew he was going to be the center of attention and therefore hard to monopolize. But I did see Terron, drunk and clicking away with Matt’s camera. And TJ, who I remembered from our last encounter some weeks ago at Rockit when I scooped his drunk ass over to the Stage Deli in the wee hours of the morning and when I say we ate a side of bacon together, I mean in all literal butcher terms a side of bacon. Matt’s co-worker Chip was there and I chatted with him for a while along with a 22 year old CBS page, who as innocently as Kenneth of 30 Rock, assumed we were roughly the same age. God bless the child.

The video was a big hit with the crowd, perhaps because of the content, or maybe because it temporarily wiped the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue video and a baseball game off the large screens. The place was awash in gays and aside from the very straight manager, no one seemed to notice the scantily clad women on display or the latest run score for the Yankees. Then again, with young gays around, all they notice are each other, and notice they did. My friend Shaun McCarron was in town and he came by with his friend William though they missed my scathing video appearance.

Shaun looked as hot as always and he was in town for another big gay party night of some kind. It is pride weekend after all. He will drop by the show on Friday and I have no doubt havoc will be wrought with guest host Erik Rhodes, after their last adventure in which Erik ate out some woman who wasn’t wearing panties at the gay bar. We talked for a bit and then settled close to the birthday cakes. Against my better judgment, I had two slices of the one with the blue frosting, while Shaun went to talk to Bianca who as he confided to me was his favorite drag queen when he was a kid. Naturally I didn’t miss my opportunity to repeat that to her face and here in the blog.

After they left, I chatted a bit with Chris an aspiring musical theater star and spent more time with classically trained actor TJ. Chris and I discussed musicals which I confess is my worst subject. As a gay man I can talk a reasonably good game with the average Musical Mondays bar homo but when it is a theater queen, I am definitely out of my element. In all though, we had fun, including pointing out to Matt’s roommate that despite the wax number candles on top of his cake, Roy and Matt do not have a combined age of 52. Next time, I told him, just put a one in front of whatever number you come up with and it will be twice as funny. His inability to do quick math infuriated him and he stormed away in frustration much to my amusement.

The party would down rapidly. Roy and Kugie decided to head to The Ritz for JUST ONE DRINK but I decided to end the evening there. With a mouth full of the cake Matt’s roommate made and numbers swirling around in my head, I made my impolite good byes and headed uptown to my car. I suppose I could have joined them at a second location for five seconds, but as a rule, it’s never that short and usually not healthy either.

Fashion Victim

My inability to dress myself is well known. Look. I know I am not a fashion plate. No one is ever going to hire me again as a model. (Editor’s note: my one modeling assignment in Genre Magazine in the early 90s was not a fashion spread but instead a background shot for an article on gays on college campuses). When I try to wear fashionable clothes, I look ridiculous. It just isn’t who I am. Yes I can pass off a suit at a wedding, but as every homo with an online profile can tell you, that doesn’t make you special.

So I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised when my outfit got me into trouble last night at Rockit. It was a rainy night and everyone looked a bit bedraggled. I was in my usual cargo shorts and t-shirt with a damp hoodie thrown over my head. Yes, I looked somewhere between a homeless man and a pile of discarded dishrags, but still, it wasn’t any worse than usual, or even the last time I ran into Derek the doorman. The difference of course was that this time I was alone.

Derek is a reasonably famous doorman in NYC and I believe I mentioned him in yesterday’s blog entry. (You don’t suppose he read it do you? Impossible!) I don’t really understand the need to have a who’s in/who’s out doorman in gay clubs. The power is in the mailing list. If you know enough hot and well known people, the right mix makes a successful party. The notion of a selective doorman worked for Studio 54 because it was world famous and all sorts of nobodies were trying to get in. This is not the case with Rockit Fridays. Studio 54 welcomed royalty (Princess Grace!) and children (Drew Barrymore! Anderson Cooper) and every sexy thing in between. In today’s NYC a nightclub that let a nine year old drink wouldn’t be celebrated, it would be razed to the ground.

“Is this how we dress to go to a nightclub in midtown Manhattan?” Derek queried me, rhetorically.

“This is how I dress.” I shot back.

His gaze narrowed in irritation. “Well, step it up for me next week, will you?”

Next week?! I thought to myself, as I descended (in every sense of the word) into the club. There won’t be a next week. For me, or maybe even for your party. You are running a Friday night party in the summertime in a town where everyone is away on Fridays at much better weekend places. The only people who are going to be at your party this summer are people like me, who don’t go to Fire Island or the Hamptons or Paris. You know, the unfabulous people you are so desperate to keep out.

Besides, next Friday, I will be the main attraction somewhere off the map. And the next Friday too. The Friday after that is Pride weekend and you can bet no one will be coming to your party when there are 100s of better places to be, no offense to your turpentine-laden open bar from 10-11pm. And then after that, it’s July 4th, guaranteed to empty gay Manhattan faster than fluorescent lighting. Suddenly it is more than a month later and before you can say “What’s Rockit?” the tastemakers will have moved on to greener, fresher pastures.

But most importantly Derek, you might think letting in weird drag queens and curious characters in pajamas makes you hip and interesting, but the one most essential thing that you don’t understand that separates your midtown Manhattan party from Studio 54 is publicity. Rona Barrett may have been a 100 year old midget, even in the 1970s, but they knew then that good publicity is important. The doorman knew who was whom and could separate out the Jersey trash washing up on our teeming shores from the badly dressed radio show host with the blog all of your friends read. So how about you step it up for me next week, will you?

Key To The Shitty

Life in Manhattan is just a series of overlapping circles, looping around and around, giving the illusion of movement and change. But in the end, you always end up back at the same place you started. Every once in a while a new circle begins and everyone rushes to twirl in its path in the hope that it will finally take them somewhere new. Well, more to the point, they hope it will take them to someone new. Because at a certain point, if you are a man of any age with arms of any notoriety, you quickly discover that there is no one new left to meet. And then you are forced to choose between a repeat visit or moving to Los Angeles.

There is a new party in town called Key Klub. Brandon Voss is one of the promoters. You know, the other Brandon Voss who isn’t the former editor of HX and doesn’t have wild party boys crashing his apartment in the middle of the night. Or maybe he does, but that doesn’t mean he invited them. In any event, he has already launched the successful, if instantly familiar Rockit on Fridays and is now branching out. New Night! New Faces! The second claim can not be backed up as readily as the first, though in retrospect how new is Thursday?

Derek is the doorman and though we share a name and I have met him hundreds of times he doesn’t know me. All he knows is what he sees, which is new each time, and based on my appearance he knows I am neither famous, nor important, nor hot, and therefore, I can wait in line and not get comped at the door. It always bothers my roommate that I don’t assert a “don’t you know who I think I am!” in these situations, but I prefer the honest realism of his assessment. If he floated me in past everyone else like a star, I might for a second think my arms are big enough or my soul worthy. And we can’t have that can we? After all, feeling self-conscious and unworthy is the cornerstone of any successful nightclub, alcohol problem, or mid-week sexual hook up. And fair is fair. If he wasn’t working the door, he would be standing in line too. Don’t kid yourself. The bullied becomes the bully.

Matt Kugelman was there, my faithful bar standby. I honestly don’t know what I or my blog would do without him at this point. When did I come to depend on him so utterly for nights out on the town? We were both there to meet Danny’s new boyfriend also named Matt. (For the love of Christ, can we please have an end to all gays named after apostles? I’m over it.) New Matt is tall and thin and on his way to being a doctor. He should be comped at the door, instead of that 23 year old steroid monkey, the over processed bottle blond, with two-tone tan and last year’s faux hawk. You know who you are, so there is no point in searching for your Facebook profile. Everyone knows who you are. But this is the world we live in. And as much as I bitch about the steroid monkey, he was kind of adorable in a use and lose kind of way. If only there was a gay recycling center where all of the boys you fucked could go to be sorted, washed and reused. Oh wait there is. Fire Island.

I told Danny that the troubled looks on most of the faces were just them thinking about which tank tops to pack for this weekend. After all, it is Thursday night. And after the well vodka settles and the lube is washed off, they will all be carefully folding their tiniest outfits into their cutest satchel , and hoping they don’t forget to shave their feet and asshole before departing their PR job and boarding the Long Island Railroad at the crack of noon. And magically a short two hours later, there they will be. Surrounded by all the same men in all the same tank tops who were just wandering past them at the Key Klub while they dreamt of waves crashing at the Pines and the promise of true love in the Meat Rack.

Ben Andrews was there, tall and angular in a hoodie. Kugie’s roommate was there, almost unrecognizable under new hair, which I suppose is a good way to keep things fresh (though I did think he looked much hotter with his old wavy hair). The hot real estate agent who used to be Tag Ericsson the porn star was also wandering around. That was almost new. Haven’t seen him in a year or so. As I was waiting to leave, the guy who didn’t sleep with Michael Lucas walked in and the circle was complete. I hadn’t seen him since the In The Life pride party last year. Well, enough is enough. Time to head home.

I piled into a cab only to have it stalled in traffic a block later, stymied by the filming of a crappy new Nicholas Cage thriller “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” They were filming it all of last month right next to my office, which was annoying enough. But now, I had a train to catch and the entirety of Sixth Avenue was blocked. Finally it cleared and we slowly made our way down 21st Street toward Eighth Avenue. And just ahead of us, the camera car with a station wagon mounted on it, two dim figures (male and female) in the front seats. Probably Nicholas Cage, I shrugged, annoyed yet devoid of any real feeling at the same time. The camera car was circling around the block to film again, and I was circling up and around to get back to my office and the train. And back at the Key Klub, the circling continued, around and around, massive arms and tiny shirts, go-go boys and drag queens, porn stars and nobodies, and always the same sameness swirling around in the bowl waiting to be flushed away. See you next week!

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.

Pyramid Scheme

They say that what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas but I am pretty sure that was a notion invented by straight guys for whom nothing ever happens but they want it to see like it does. That way, you can brag without substantiating your claims in any real way. Gays do not have this problem. Shit goes down for them all the time. Also they are notorious gossips and braggarts. So no, what happens in Vegas doesn’t stay there, it goes global. Case in point: my weekend at The Luxor.

I got invited out for the weekend by the Luxor Las Vegas as part of a deal with the radio show. Who wants to say no to a free weekend out of town? Not a cheap ass like me. Plus, I have connections in Vegas. And even though I can do nothing for them in return, they are still happy to help me out. Suddenly, thanks to my friend Ryan, I was busy every night I was there. And I made the most of it.

Roommate came with me and my friend David flew in from Los Angeles to hang out with us too. Of all the people I knew in my fifteen year prison sentence in that exotic hell hole, David is the one I have remained the most in contact with. He does prefer long distance situations, so in a way, my moving out of town was the perfect excuse for us to hang out more. And when we hang out, we drink. A lot.

Friday night, we went to see Wolverine, which was a terrible movie, only made better by the fact that we had consumed a delicious tapas meal just before. After the movie, Roommate was dead beat tired from all the travelling and drinking that had already taken place. So he sacked out early while David and I headed down to Piranha to hang out with Ryan and the host there: Hot Chocolate. Piranha was like a dream come true. When I arrived, everyone made a giant fuss over me. I felt like a celebrity, ushered past the velvet rope in a blurry haze and then escorted up to a private room overlooking the dance floor with my friend Roman Heart twirling on a box below.

The VIP room was isolating from the rest of the bar which was a little frustrating but the party really came to us. Reichen came by, beyond blind drunk, mumbled something sweet and wandered off with a muttered but later unfulfilled promise to return. The drinks kept coming though as did two dancers from Zumanity who then enacted part of their act for us. Then Brent Everett came in and we all took pictures with him in various stages of undress. He didn’t know who any of us were but he went along for the ride. He’s a good sport. Then suddenly it was past four am (seven am my time) and really way past time to go home!



Saturday morning I had some work obligations, including some morning activities. Running on a lack of sleep and not able to nap, I made effect use of the jacuzzi tub in my suite at The Luxor to compensate. It worked pretty well and by Saturday night I was really for more marathon adventures. Our first stop was the Chippendales show. My friend Michael is the publicist and has had several of the dancers up to the show in the past. They ushered us in, plied us with drinks and we had an incredible time. It was really a ton of fun. A quick trip through IN N Out and it was off to a late show of Zumanity. Back to back shows was draining but we still had enough energy to pull another four am non-stop party at Krave afterward.

Krave had some kind of contest going with Janice Dickinson and designer Andrew Christian. There was a nominal emcee but I don’t think Janice thought she was sufficiently loud and proceeded to take over hosting duties from a chair on the side of the stage. The main attraction was really just hot guys parading around in Andrew’s underwear and after that was done, the twirlers returned to twirling on the dance floor, the music cranked up, and Janice returned to the relative safety and security of her VIP banquette packed, PACKED with gays. My friend Ryan asked me if I wanted to meet Janice. She had been a guest on our show once(over the phone) and I ran into her in 2005 at the White Party in Miami, but I knew she wouldn’t recognize me.

Ryan made the introductions and Janice pulled me down into the banquette into a seat right next to her deep inside the horseshoe. She told me I looked familiar and I mentioned the White Party. “How fucked up was I?” I tried to demur, but she pressed. “It was early,” I offered though that answer didn’t seem to please her. She was excited to do my radio show to promote her upcoming appearance on “I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here” and help her raise money to fight AIDS. “It’s for the gays. I only do gay charities.” I let that pass. Then she told me about her recent experience hosting the notorious gay porn awards, the GayVNs in San Francisco. I told her that I had hosted it the year before. “Oh, then you know. I don’t know what it was like for you but it was eye opening for me.” Her face turned serious in the moment. “You know, I’m a soccer mom.”

What does one do when the world’s first supermodel describes herself as a soccer mom? Not to diminish the many soccer games that I have no doubt that she attended for her son and daughter, but soccer mom is not the first moniker I would have used to describe someone who vivacious and dynamic. But I guess we all see ourselves in our own way. Suddenly, she leaped up. “I love this song. I want to dance.” She jumped out of the banquette and started to dance with some gays near by. This was my exit. It was never going to get better and this was the perfect moment to slip away unnoticed. I made my polite good byes to her gays and headed out.

“Soccer mom, huh?” I thought to myself as I headed out into the predawn strip. “Maybe some things are better left in Las Vegas.”

Bland Items

“Don’t write about me anymore.”

The message couldn’t be more clear. The bar was loud and crowded, but I could tell what he was saying by the stern look on his face, even if I hadn’t been able to hear his words as clear as a bell. Unlike me, this is not a character known for his wild swings of facial expression, though in his case, sometimes less is decidedly more. This isn’t the first time someone has expressed this sentiment to me, the first time at Splash, although the venue shouldn’t have surprised me either. Clogged with closeted Staten Island hunks who still live at home with their unsuspecting blue collar parents and quiet midwestern gays on vacation, it doesn’t have the kind of patrons that request the attendant attention one might expect of, say, The Real Housewives Of New Jersey. So running into an otherwise trendy pack of Manhattanites in such a place reeked of “don’t ask, don’t tell” nightclubbing. Duly noted.

Two listeners invited me to join them out at the bar and lacking much else to do, I decided to join them. I wasn’t much in the mood to go out and I am never in the mood for Splash, but I do have a blog that needs to be filled with idle chatter. Plus, living so far out of town, I really have to force myself sometimes to just go out and have a good time. The boys forewarned the club promoter who was overly happy to see me (as job title personified) when I arrived, and then ushered me in ahead of some drunk smokers and made quite a fuss over me in front of the expressionless cashiers who didn’t care either way.

One of the listeners had briefly been a dancer at the club some years ago, but unlike me, excelled at keeping up with old friends. He knew everyone. I was relieved to know no one. Not even my friend who is an occasional dancer there himself was in attendance that night. So I perched myself on a barstool near the front, drink in hand, and let the noisy bacchanal wash over me, waiting for blogtastic inspiration. An inspiration that never came.

Moments earlier, I ran into that frequent blog subject who didn’t want to be in the blog anymore. I was on the fence about not blogging the night as it was and that pretty much sealed the deal. He was travelling with the hot boyfriend of another hot blogger, so I wouldn’t want to incur his wrath by giving less than a flat out rave to his man while at the same time reassuring him that everything was totally above board. Better just not to write about it at all. After all, haven’t I caused enough trouble already? While the former dancer twirled around the dance floor from pal to pal, his boyfriend kept me company by the bar which while fun, was not really story enough to string my blog on, as flimsy as it may be most of the time.

At one point, or I suppose I should just call it the point, a hunk of a man walked up to me and asked if my name was Derek. “Derek Hartley?” Yes, I half smiled, a mix of excitement, dread and panic. I am so bad at remembering people, even the hot ones. Turns out he is a reasonably new listener of the show and happened to spot me by chance. This almost never happens in NYC, but when it does, the end result is always the same. For the next five minutes he tried to explain to his totally uninterested friends that this weary figure slumped unseductively across a barstool like a dust cover in an abandoned summer house was in fact someone famous. No one believed him, not even me.

That fame is a funny thing. It really isn’t any fun or remotely funny at all. I like to say that fame is just a series of humiliations, and it is your own willingness to be humiliated that determines how famous you are going to become. Obviously, the guy I wrote about in my blog who asked me not to anymore found his fame ceiling right here on my site, or more likely probably some miles back before he made the unfortunate mistake of knowing me. I can see my own fame ceiling getting closer and closer. If I get up on my toes and extend my fingers out as far as they can reach, I can almost brush it with my fingertips. But for now, it is just an object lesson in being in the wrong place at the right time.

Glitter And Be Gray

It never occurred to me that this post would end up being about Gray. After all, I hardly know him. And in most of my blog entries, he is a secondary figure, mostly lurking in the shadows. I have made fleeting references here and there but he has never been the subject. Not even a featured player really. If anything, a dress extra. We aren’t even Facebook friends! But suddenly the episode has turned out all about him, even in his own fleeting way.

Last night started out as usual. My annual Spring ritual of returning to Bowery Bar on the first decent Tuesday evening of the year. I try to make it downtown at least twice a year. Once in the Spring and finally on what appears to be the last good Indian Summer night of the Fall. The latter is much harder to time. As I have written before, Beige, like the gay men who attend, is a fair weather friend. You don’t want to rely on it for anything important. It is just there to be fun and pretty and forgotten quickly when things turn dark.

I wanted to spend the evening with Matt Kugelman since Bowery Bar is where we met last year. I was out with Clayton and we rescued poor innocent Matt from standing on one of those sidewalk gratings out front. This began a quick but frankly awesome friendship. And he was there, already drunk when I arrived, with his friend Chip. But they didn’t last long. Moments later, I turned around and they were gone. Later I got some text messages from Matt about a raunchy burp and tequila. Enough said!

Fortunately, I ran into Chris and Cub, who were standing with that hot bartender Aaron who loves my show. One of the few gay men in NYC that has heard it and he is hot too! What a bonus. I first met Chris and Cub at Ben Harvey’s alliterative birthday brunch and spoke more with Chris than with Cub. This time around, Cub and I got into deep far-reaching conversations about the role of academia in the ongoing collapse of the American Empire. He thought they should change from majors to interests to better match the world at large while I wondered if they could even change fast enough with our rapidly evolving times. And I wondered if Americans were adept enough to adapt to a world changing so quickly around them now that they have no skills. Kind of deep for a bar that serves up nearly as many cocktails on a Tuesday night as it does new cases of syphilis.

Well all of that didn’t last long because they had to run out of there, dodging some crazy drunk mess like a creditor. That left me standing alone in the bar once again. Earlier I had spotted Gray and walking in right behind him, Matty. I knew they were still in the bar somewhere. But where? I sent Matty some text messages. No response. A few laps and I was about to throw in the towel. Finally, I found them, hiding in the SE corner of the bar, down where I never go because that outside bar doesn’t stock peach schnapps so I can never get a sex on the beach there.

Matty and Gray were huddled in a deep conversation of their own, too deep for me to want to wade into. So I hung back with trim marathon runner Andrew. His eyes looked especially blue but he also seemed a little weary of the whole bar thing. Beige can do that to you. He was standing with a guy I have met before but didn’t remember the name of. The guy said I was cute but then got annoyed that I lived upstate, basically implying that I was cruelly waving goods in front of people like they were available only to snatch them out of grasp seconds later. It turns out that he was quite drunk, like all the men that flirt with me are, and as soon as Matty and Gray finished their huddle, they dispatched him quickly to the nearest exit, and one assumes rehab facility.

We all wandered a bit and ended up hanging out with Jared who does the Sexy Back Thursdays @ The Park party with Matty. I had never met him before, but Matty took a snazzy photo of him in front of the Bowery Bar sign. I talked a bit with Andrew and give him my theory about why I thought Bowery Bar was still a success after all these years. “It’s the tables,” I told him. “They leave them out and it makes it impossible to get around. But that also makes everyone easy to see but hard to attain. A challenge. So the place always feels packed and the guys are always just a little out of your reach.” He liked my theory and I have to say, it was pretty good. Better than my academic musings with Cub where I, as a lowly college dropout, was way out of my league. My major in college? Sleeping in and skipping my morning classes.

Andrew wasn’t drinking and was feeling a lot of pressure to be drunk like everyone else. Bowery Bar is a peer pressure kind of place, as Cub pointed out earlier referencing his own flip flops in a sea of trendy Converse shoes. I always seem to be swimming against the tide on points like this, even if Babst has accused me in the past about caring more about fitting in than I like to let on. As for sobriety however, I have to admit, I was on Andrew’s side on this one. Being around drunk gays is no fun if you are sober. They are so annoying and messy and obvious. Which oddly enough brings me back to Gray.

I love the movie “Defending Your Life” and in it Buck Henry has a short scene as Albert Brooks’ fill-in attorney: Dick Stanley. “He’s a good man. Quiet but effective.” That’s Gray. He plays it all very close to the vest. He is like the polar opposite of me. My emotions are like weather patterns moving across a Doppler radar map. If severe thunderstorms are on the horizon, you know it! But Gray gives you nothing. He is probably an excellent poker player. When he wants to give you blank, that’s what you get. He is the master of the expressionless expression. And what a contrast to Matty and his whirling dervish of vitality. Gray fascinates me because he is like a neatly wrapped present that you can’t quite pull the bow off of. You want to know what is inside but you can’t get past the beautifully constructed exterior.

And then he was gone. A lovely soft kiss good bye and then a blur into the hazy crowd of gay chattering. Matty was dragging Andrew out of there too, though he was more than willing to make a run for it on his own. I piled into a cab and headed uptown to my waiting car in the parking garage around the corner from my office. My long drives back to the suburbs always give me time to reflect. It made me wish for a moment that I was an international man of mystery like Gray. But then I realized, in my twice yearly appearances at Bowery Bar in my wrong shoes and nine dollar shirts, I already am. So maybe in one small way, Gray and I have something in common. And I don’t mind that at all.