The Americanization of Richard

By this point, The Park is like an old friend. I haven’t seen it in a while, but coming back was like I never left. It was the place, downstairs by the fire, that Romaine and I first met a decade ago and talked for hours, assured by the end that we could do a radio show together. Years later, near the front bar, I had spotted Erik Rhodes, sheepish after he had been discovered, no doubt feeling guilty after blowing off the show. The subterranean coat check is where I first spotted Daniel, the hot Brit who would make frequent appearances in my writing but to whom I have still never spoken. And upstairs months later, it was Conor McGill who finally helped solve the mystery of his identity, throwing everyone else under the old age bus for not knowing it themselves.

This afternoon it was a different Brit who was the subject of conversation and center of attention. Fresh meat has a tendency to do that, especially when the beef is firm and tender and the winter nights long and lonely. Parked at The Park, sealing in my own juices under the intense heat lamp that Brian Babst called home, I quietly roasted in a wool sweater cleverly disguising long underwear below. Not that anyone there would ever know the difference. I take winter very seriously, but not much else.

In this particular moment, Brian was elsewhere and I was explaining to his friend Omar Torres about my blog and how I write about my nights out on the town and the not-so-ordinary people I meet there. "My fifteen seconds of fame!" he declared excitedly, and that is how long it will be because the subject of tonight's essay is not Omar, or Brian, or any of the other ghosts of bars past. It is Richard, newly delivered to New York City from London.

Omar and Brian enjoy their fifteen seconds of fame while it lasts.

"What a terrible idea!" I told Richard when I heard of his recent arrival. He smiled a winsome grin. "No one has said that to me yet." I didn't mean the city. I meant the weather. January is the worst month in New York, if you don’t count August and about six or seven others. "I wanted to move here now," he explained, "So I had time to get settled and by the time summer rolls around, I’ll be ready." He is a smart cookie, that Richard. Also he has big arms and a good job, so I predict smooth sailing, even now that he is firmly planted on dry land.

Without prompting or request, I gave Richard some of my most valuable advice for living in the city. It started with a story from when I first arrived in 2001. Also known as the year he turned twelve. Oh? Did I not mention that he was born in the 80s? "In November 1989. Slipped in under the wire!" Being exactly twenty years older than he was, I felt it was my obligation, in a strictly paternal way, to tell him everything I knew about the city.

I told about losing my good leather coat on the divine Robbie Hammond's bed at a fabulous party he threw. My coat was exchanged for an inferior leather coat someone else had brought and given how ill-fitting the leftover one was, I don't think it was an honest mistake. I frantically tore Robbie’s bedroom apart for a coat I knew in my heart was gone, a coat that wasn't even mine in the first place, and haven't been invited back since. My bad manners aside, Brian confirmed my advice to always have a couple of cute but cheap coats you won’t mind losing along the way.

"Don't lose your accent" was another sage piece of advice I gave him. "You'll see all sorts of people on TV who came here decades ago and they never lose that accent. It is the secret to their success. And Americans worship class. We think anyone with a British accent is classy. Don’t lose it." Richard insisted he had no plans to lose it but is worried about it slipping on its own as fags became cigarettes and queues turned into lines. "My grandmother doesn't want me to sound like an American." Unfortunately, as I learned from my incomprehensible Scottish friend Jim Hepburn whose mother chided him for talking like an American newscaster, back home they only hear what is gone and we only hear whatever is left.

I have a lot of nerve giving advice. This is the first gay social event I have been to in the city in months. No wonder I persist with perfection as Roy Cohn's definition of a homosexual from Angels In America: Someone who knows no one and who no one knows. I was a host for the event today but my name was misspelled, where you could find it. Ben Roussel, in a crazy fabulous fur hat, his shirt tight like Saran Wrap, fruitlessly toured the bar, never able to accurately determine which VIP table was mine. This culminated in an awkward encounter at table seven where I insisted Brian and Richard could get a drink only to be rebuffed by some queens who had no business being there either.

Aside from the event organizer (the ever handsome and tall Zachary Barnett) and the assorted characters I have mentioned (as well as Ben Dixon and another Ben that I do not know but have seen so many times, I almost feel like we were roommates once), the only other person I knew at the event was someone I met once several years ago at Brian Gianelli's going away party.

"That's Ryan Hahn," I said, gesturing in his direction. "I only met him once but we are friends on Facebook." Knowing my reluctance to digitally befriend anyone, this is me really saying something. But Brian was not impressed. "Are you pointing? In a bar?" His line delivery would have made the Dowager Countess proud as he slipped away from me, drenched in shame. As I told Richard when we met, I am a social dead end. He is wise to stick with Brian Babst who today proved once again to be someone who knows everyone and who everyone knows and who knows not to point at people in public. 

Some man tries to welcome Richard while Ben, never my roommate, looks on warily.

I hope Richard enjoys being in America and more importantly, being in New York. Today Ryan reminded me of the advice I gave to him the first time I met him. "Live in LA in your 20's when you are young and cute and can live well on not much money, but move to New York in your 30's where you can be interesting and afford to live there like a human being." But Richard is starting with New York and I suspect will skip LA altogether, his IKEA shopping spree aside. His quick success will enable him to be young and cute and interesting and afford to live here like a human being all at the same time. 

And that, my friends, is a design for living worth following.