"Did I tell you that I was kidnapped?"
I have many friends who could say these words to me at a party in lower Manhattan and I would be forced to respond, "Which time?" Over the decades I have collected more than my fair share of loose characters and have long suspected that the reason some people stay friends with me is that I am the kind of person who you can call from jail at 3am and will not only answer the phone without judgment but also be able to arrange bail before dawn.
Matt Kugelman is not one of those people. He is a good person. A nice person! And yet this was his opening salvo at Matty Kelleher's #MattGala birthday party. Kugie is so thoroughly midwestern that the worst thing I have ever heard him say is, "Hmmm... I'm not sure that will work out that way." For Kugelman, as brutal a takedown as there ever is. And yet, inexplicably, he has been punched in the face, doxxed, revenge porned and yes even kidnapped.
While waiting at the bar, a woman insisted Kugie looked like some movie or TV star, she just couldn't put her finger on which one. "I get that a lot," he insisted even though while genuinely possessing movie star good looks, he literally looks like no specific movie or TV actor I can name. "It must be nice," I assured him coolly, briefly channeling Barry Humphries from the great beyond "to be in Manhattan where you look like a movie star, as opposed to Chicago where you look like literally everyone else in Chicago." Midwestern nice I am not.
But maybe that is why Matty Kelleher has kept me around all this time too. Like me, he has assembled his own distinctive band of loose characters and many of them descended tonight in a torrent of rain and fabulosity, in near equal measures for a costume party to celebrate a milestone birthday of his which you can guess based on my answer to the persistent party question, "how do you know Matt?"
"I met him when he was working at Barnes & Noble. No. Not at a store. They had a website. BN.com. They sold books." Finally weary of trying to explain what a book used to be, I settled on, "We went to elementary school together. He was my third grade teacher." If only the party hadn't featured projected photos covering decades of adventures that belied my lie. I told Jeremy Blacklow it was the Wall of Incriminating Evidence. The photos were in semi chronological order and at a certain point, my already infrequent appearances ended. "I'm coming up to haunt your pool one day this summer," I told Matty to his patented hand-clapped squeal of delight, "But I won't stay over. Just come up one afternoon, take a lap around the deck and head home." I want to be in some new photos but I don't want to be a nuisance about it.
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| "Work's been kinda slow since cartoons went to color." |
Seeing so many of the old faces again brought back of a flood of memories. Meeting Blacklow for the first time at Bowery Bar when he oh so casually showed up to see Matty fresh from kickboxing class, his sweaty shirt clinging, his hands taped up, the entire bar transfixed by his hotness. Another B-Bar night, rescuing Kugie from standing on the metal trapdoor out front. "Samantha fell through one of those on Sex And The City," Jeremy's boyfriend declared. "My number one fear" all New Yorkers responded in unison with Carrie Bradshaw.
Robbie Hammond regaled us with the time we were in Provincetown, when I was newly ejected from gay Los Angeles and Matty tried unsuccessfully to introduce me into impolite New York society. Despite our happy times balancing cock rings on our noses in PTown that weekend, I am not fun and fabulous and all of top tier gay Manhattan eventually nodded in approval when I was again ejected, this time to the suburbs and I never looked back for fear of turning into a pillar of saltiness. "I've never been to Provincetown, "Mario Palumbo sniffed dismissively as photos of him outside the Crown & Anchor scrolled behind him on the ever-looming Wall of Incriminating Evidence.
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will do over and over and over again... forever" |
Brian Babst was there, and we were both in jovial spirits although Babst was not fully remembering the last time we saw each other. But speaking of incriminating evidence, that is what my blog is for! No use crying over spilt wine, or in the case of this blog, voluminous decades of tea. My writing truly serves no other purpose than to tickle Matty relentlessly and infuriate nearly everyone else. Young Bradford was there as an internally youthful vampire swathed in a cummerbund while Lina Bradford (no relation but let's see how the evening goes) worked the DJ booth before an eager and packed dance floor.
My original costume idea was to come as me circa 2007. I pulled out a Digg.com hoodie, my Fab.com tee shirt, a pair of cargo shorts and some shiny metallic Nikes I owned but knew I could never pull off. I was all set to twist my hair into a faux hawk when Matty's boyfriend Austin sent along a "helpful" Pinterest look book filled with costume suggestions that can best be described as Grace Jones on a horse at Studio 54. End of list. "I was so stressed out!" one partygoer confided. Uh. Me too!
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| Groove is in the heart |
I knew I had to step my game up so I was going to wear same said cargo shorts, a Polo shirt (from Matty's stint at Ralph Lauren, after the books and before the search engine thing) and then craft an oversized Polo logo so big I would have a face hole cut into it. Unfortunately for the fleet of Lauren family copyright lawyers looking for billable hours, I am not crafty enough to pull that off either, so I decided to get a Jedi costume to go with my ridiculously expensive lightsaber that was otherwise collecting dust.
I wasn't sure the Jedi thing would be good enough but as it turned out, it was a generational hit. And whipping out the lightsaber and lighting it up a few times during the party ended up being the kind of crowd pleasing prop comedy I don't usually get to pull off, personally or professionally, much to my chagrin. There was a drag show in the middle of the party and at one point, during a fantastic performance one of the queens came over to dance up on me, I assume because like a third grade teacher, she saw me not paying attention talking to Kugie and decided to make herself known. I lit the lightsaber and she improv'd all over it and that was my gag of the evening.
"You look like Ewan McGregor. I guess that's the idea, right?" one partygoer said to me. "If I kept my hair natural, I'd look a lot more like Alec Guinness." Thank god even at my advanced age, I still can't grow a goatee. Later in line for the bathroom, a fabulous woman was waiting before me but the fabulousness was starting to get to her. "My back hurts from these heels." she confessed. The hunk of a man behind me squinted at the basket of toiletries across from him and then waved them away. "Without my glasses I can't see a thing." Thank God Matty is still Matty. I can handle anyone in the world getting old but him.
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| TWINKle TWINKle forever our little star |
Creaking knees aside, the costumes were great, the people were fun and it was an incredible party though I was grateful for the midnight end time. It felt good to be out with the old gang but not feel like when I rushed off to the drunk train at the stroke of twelve like Cinderella past her prime and pressed for time, that the party was just getting started. The Wall of Incriminating Evidence isn't the only thing moving in chronological order and even as we add more photos to it, ain't none of us needs to scroll as hard as we used to. But still, it's fun to play dress up and twirl around once more. It may not yet be the Last Days Of Disco but there is no denying there aren't as many nights left in this Donna Summer as some of us would like.
Not pictured: Gray Hudkins.
