Disc Jocular

Turning thirty is a big deal when you're gay. I should know. I've done it enough times.

Tonight was the eve of Stephen Bauer's birthday and he celebrated it by working. Times are tough for Millennials. And the city is lousy with them, like third class passengers swarming the deck of the Titanic now that all the boats are away. You can't stand still for a minute or twice as many will take your seat for half the money.

Lately he has been DJing on Friday nights at Vlada, a familiar vodka repository in Hell's Kitchen. On my most recent visits, the bar has felt less like a gay hot spot and more like a well-kept secret. Uh, me too! Let me tell you: nothing feels better than having the hollow echo of an empty bar mirror your own existence. But in Stephen’s defense, this is my first time there on a night he was working and the crowd was squeezed as tightly around him as the sleeves of his joyously clingy t-shirt.

I recognized one of the well-wishers right away, although I couldn't immediately remember his name. Smash cut to me waiting for Facebook to load on my iPhone so I could find a tagged photo of the two of us together at Doug andTerry's wedding last year. 

Memorable Gay Wedding Shenanigans

Beau Mitchell is a particular breed of handsome that Manhattan tends to specialize in: winning smile, ridiculous body, easy laugh. He was gay catnip at the wedding, especially when word spread that he was then newly single.  He sat across from me at the reception, and I got to spend an unhealthy amount of time gazing into his beautiful eyes while a dozen strangers made as much casual physical contact with him as they possibly could.

Wedding Dinner with Beau as Main Course

On a side note about weddings, this is a terrible place to meet someone. I have been to many, many of them and no couple ever celebrated a new union begun at someone else's. Eat all the cake you want. The desperation in the air is so thick every spark of romance is quickly extinguished.

But speaking of desperation, I remembered Beau (not his name mind you, but in true gay fashion, his face and ass) but I got no sense he had any idea who I was. I mean, I think he thought I looked familiar but Google Maps couldn't have gotten him to a place of remembering me. I gave the most amazing wedding toast of all time, but out of context and that blue suit, it would have been hard for anyone to connect the dots. After thirty seconds of the smallest small talk that literally could not be seen with an electron microscope, I excused myself back away to wherever I was in life before I saw him walk in.

Johnny Lazy was supposed to join me out and about, as co-President of the semi-annual Stephen Bauer fan club and I had texted him earlier as I headed over to Vlada. Turns out he was already drunk and at a concert. "Ok still going on they started late," he messaged without punctuation or further capitalization. "will let you know when we leave." I asked him where he was. The Barclay's Center. In Brooklyn. By the time he said he was leaving, so was I.

I knew from the outset this wasn't going to be a long night. After all, I wanted to wish Stephen a happy birthday and support his work as a DJ but we don’t have any friends in common and I wasn't about to spend a long night of lingering alone in a bar full of gay guys dancing excitedly to 90s songs they dimly recalled from the cozy confines of a car seat.  Fortunately, my roommate Mike was there to keep me company and share my outrage when necessary. For instance, the need for groups of gays to cluster in ways that block easy passage through a bar no matter how much open space happens to be around them.

When Stephen said he was spinning at Vlada, I didn't expect an actual spinning turntable but I wasn't prepared for what I got. There he was, next to the bar, running his fingers over a list of songs while a jaunty tune played above them on the crystal clear HD screen of his iPad. That lonely iPad and one slim black cord running off to the side and that was it. To say I was disappointed was an understatement. "That’s how they do it now," Mike assured me but it just made me long for the good old days (i.e. Junior Vasquez in a crow’s nest lording beats over a throbbing crowd of thousands). Stephen looked more like a character in a spy movie surreptitiously emptying the bad guy's bank account than the architect of the evening’s entertainment.

Stephen DJing as Lilo and Stitch look on from above

Even though he was too young to remember the glory days with me, Stephen seemed equally disappointed by the anti-climactic set-up. Where is the glamour? As DJ, you are still the puppet master pulling the emotional strings of the night, but the once grand theatre is cut out of cardboard now, decorated with a Sharpie. Turning thirty is just as disappointingly dull (sorry kids, the real emotional cliff is thirty-one). But all this is a fairly good representation of the Millennial experience in general. What it must be like to be on the most technologically advanced ship that ever sailed, staring out into the darkness at all the lifeboats that left without you. Cheers!

Happy birthday, Stephen!