Downtown Shabby

“I love Kathy Griffith.”

Dear gays,

If you are going to express your devotion for some famous lady, be it on Facebook or talking on your cell phone next to the 14^th Street entrance to the 1 train, please get the name right. I am a man of many pet peeves but this one ranks near the top. Don’t post that you are someone’s biggest fan and then misspell their name. And who doesn’t know that the red headed loudmouth with no loyalty is Kathy Griffin? Not Griffith. Everyone knows that.

I was downtown for practically five seconds, so I guess I shouldn’t have been all that surprised that someone had already annoyed me. Downtown is awful. People in New York complain about neighborhoods the way other people talk about the weather. It is just something we do. So, I'll say it. I hate being downtown. As a snob who hates snobs, it is the worst place on earth. While waiting for my Army pal Josh to arrive in town tonight, I sent a text message to Matt Kugelman to find out if he was out and about so I could kill some time with him in the interim. Matt is a delight and more importantly, he is nearly always out somewhere when my show ends. So when I am in the mood for a drink or well that’s pretty much all we do is drink, so whenever I am in the mood for a drink, that Matt Kugelman is pretty handy to have around!

As it turns out, he was in the meatpacking district at Soho House for Bianca del Rio’s monthly Bitch Bingo party. I have never been there before but that didn’t stop me from confidently striding into the Gansevoort by mistake, which I have been to before. All fancy places are the same to me. Soho House is across the street, and not unlike my trip to see my brother and his 90 year old grandma at the Sherry Netherland last week, the man at the door of SoHo House tried to stop me as I walked in.

“Where is the bar?” I shouted as I entered the lobby, which might as well be the motto for the city of Manhattan.

“What are you here for?” he inquired coolly.

“Bianca’s bingo business.”

His reply matched the arch in his eyebrow. “That’s cute. Sixth floor.”

It turns out that Soho House is a private club and Bianca’s month bingo game is one of the few non-member events they have. Well, I walked into the sixth floor and I almost turned immediately around, and not just because Josh texted me that he was finally at his hotel the moment I stepped onto the cobblestones out front. This place was posh! I always feel like a hobo in the city but this time I mean it. The whole place looked like a cognac ad in the back of Playboy.

I finally found Matt squeezed onto a small sofa near the DJ. He was there with Mikey, who I have met a couple of times before and like very much even though he has a boyfriend. Generally having a boyfriend renders gay men uninteresting to me because as an eternally single person the last thing I need is someone else who makes me feel like the odd man out. Table for three? No thanks. Dead center of the couch was Jill the airplane girl, Matt’s friend that he made on a short flight once. Matt is very friendly and since we met after I rescued him from atop a treacherous metal grating outside Bowery Bar, nothing about her story surprised me.

I literally said hello and good bye to Matt in the same breath. Poor Josh drove all the way from Chicago in the midst of his weeklong American adventure before he returns to his deployment in Afghanistan.   I owe him every second of my time that I can muster. I’m doing it for our country, people! Also, I am very patriotic when hot military guys come to town.

Besides, going to a bar where Bianca is performing and not seeing the show is my thing! Be that as it may, after a while, Bianca is just going to flip out and stab me to death in front of everyone with a sharp eyebrow pencil and no jury of drag queen peers will convict. But before I could make a clean getaway, Bianca returned from her costume change with a sexy guy in his underwear. Wait a minute! I know that sexy guy in his underwear! He was on my show.

There are a lot of attractive people in my world. A lot of very attractive people. The kind of people who work in an office but have Facebook newsfeed subscribers. But there are very few of them that I would actually want to have sex with. I can say with some certainty that I would totally fuck this guy. So naturally I had to hug him hello and good bye about six times each and kiss his neck. But he spends a lot of time appearing in public in his underwear so I am going to assume that my behavior (IN THAT CONTEXT) is not untoward.

I chatted with Bianca a bit, and by chatted I mean, she walked over and said, “How was your show tonight? Dead like your career?” to wish I responded, “I am here on behalf of the CDC. You aren’t allowed to fly anymore.” It was very warm. Like a yeast infection. I honestly wish I could have stayed and I promise to go next month if I am sober enough to remember or I suddenly give a shit. But I do know that I will be at XL tomorrow because Bianca has her shit show there with Lady Bunny and since it is Josh’s last night in New York, he might as well get the full star treatment.

Life in New York is always a surprise. Sometimes the surprise is you walk into Industry for a quiet drink and there is a rock band playing. Sometimes the surprise is finding out that Bianca is performing in a place that wasn’t just closed by the health department. And sometimes the surprise is walking down a cobblestone street and remembering another amazing time you had there once with good friends.

It is a city of memories, this old New York, the ones you look back on fondly and the ones you make new every single night.

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Read more of Derek's adventures in When Nightlife Falls and Colonnade: A Life In Columns. Both are available now On Amazon.com, and in digital form for The Kindle, The Nook, and in the iBookstore.