Road Scholar

Stopped for the moment at the traffic light at East 4^th Street, Matty turned a little wistful as he gazed out the car window at the venerable old Bowery Bar across the way. “Do you think people will ever go back there?”

“In a year or so,” I mused, “When some promoter makes a new night there.” What followed can only be described as nonsense as Matty suggested that we could be those club promoters. I was aghast, not forgetting for a second my first failed foray into club promoting in 2001 (not coincidentally down the road from Bowery Bar) that we had just been talking about!  “I’m too old and too disconnected from this community to promote a club night.”  

“You are a pillar of this community!” Matty declared, the seriousness of the statement evaporating faster than the words themselves could leave the air. Sitting next to me in the back seat, ADD Jeff had a good laugh at that. Then Matty added triumphantly, “That’s your blog right there!”

Honestly, I hadn’t given a thought to writing anything tonight. Sometimes I go out just to go out, no matter how wanting my website might be. In fact, my only thought tonight was catching up with Ben Harvey at his Gumbo party at Deity in Brooklyn. And since I spent most of the evening fighting semantically about the show with ADD Jeff and grilling Martin about possible Supreme Court outcomes for the health care mandate, there didn’t seem to be much to write home about. But then Matty and Andrew showed up at Gumbo too and the subsequent ride to Grand Central Terminal delivered all the material I needed.

While Andrew white-knuckled it behind the wheel, stressed about all the late night traffic preventing me from catching my last train, Matty sourced tunes through his iPhone to personally DJ the ride back from Brooklyn. I so rarely get to see them both and I love them so much that it was nice to have this time together, however brief.

But then ADD Jeff was upset about something he heard on the show last weekend. Someone asked me recently what drugs people are doing these days and not being a young person or a drug person, I was at a complete loss. “We’ll ask ADD Jeff when he gets back from the Black Party,” I allegedly (but quite probably) said on the show. Even though I suggested it was the party and not him that was filled with drugs, Jeff feigned outrage, but then seconds later he was explaining what drugs he saw other people doing at the event. So I guess I wasn’t too far off.

“They’re still doing ecstasy.” It was all very clinical the way he said it. Still? That didn’t seem right. It can’t possibly still be 1992. I insisted that it must have left and come back, like cardigans or Madonna. Add Jeff rattled off a bunch of other drugs I had heard of but never done. Apparently GHB has become very hard to come by in New York City. That seems impossible, too. This is the kind of town where anytime of the day or night a governor can get a blow job from a woman who can get a record deal. That’s not the kind of town where they run out of anything, and certainly not moxie or a drug that comes in gallon jugs.Maybe Jeff wasn't anymore knowledgeable about this subject than I was. 

Like a really inappropriate episode of Sesame Street, our conversation was brought you by the letters E, G and K. For those of you who don’t remember the 90s, K (Ketamine) is an animal tranquilizer that was all the rage back when people still knew who Courtney Love was. ADD Jeff the science guy, then started explaining what he had heard about the various forms that Ketamine comes in. If it is liquid then it needs to be double baked. “Like potatoes,” Matty offered brightly from the passenger seat where he had been listening intently. “Like twice baked potatoes.”

Maybe it was the hunger talking but the twice baked potatoes sounded pretty good to me. Much better than the drug that took six steps before you couldn’t walk anymore. “Too much work!” I yelled, “If I wanted to cook, I would have made dinner.” I have no moral problem with people doing drugs. I would do them myself but the circumstances are never right. The only people I ever run into who offer me drugs, I know are also the kind of people that if I had a problem while high, would step over my body and keep going. And besides, all those stories of cooking and baking and sourcing and snorting all sound like a lot of extra work to me. I suppose drugs are for people who are highly motivated and not lazy like me.

This is why I live in the suburbs and I will not be promoting a new club night at Bowery Bar. The discussion about the drugs people do only reinforced for me that I really am too old and too disconnected from this community to get into club promoting, unless it is a club where people mainline twice baked potatoes. I will probably never need to pick E, G or K out of a line-up, but it’s still nice to know how much you can learn in the backseat of a car.

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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.

Holidays and Nights

“Will you have enough to write about tonight?” Matty asked as we positioned ourselves dangerously close to a table filled with cookies. We were both back in Chris Stadler’s cozy elegant apartment in the West Village and it felt good to be back. It is the holiday season in New York and even though the tourists are everywhere, like cockroaches with strollers, it is a wonderful time of year. In fact, it is truly the best time of year to be in Manhattan.

Yes, that first flush of spring is amazing, after a long dark winter, when the tulips and daffodils spread along the avenues like a beautiful infection. Easter this year was as pristine and delightful as any classic MGM musical. And when the air turns crisp in the fall and you finally get to unearth your favorite sweaters and watch the pumpkins sprout along 34th street, there is a certain palpable excitement. But the gaudy fabulous storefronts of Fifth Avenue and the oversized Christmas decorations on Sixth Avenue and the rush of merry holiday parties can’t be beat. We know we are all in for a hell of a winter but at least we are all in it together. That togetherness in the face of near constant adversity is the beating heart of New York life. Plus there is always plenty of vodka to keep us warm.

It is Shay’s birthday so throwing a combination holiday party is in order every year. I went to the party with Matty and Andrew, and brought Pittsburgh Chris along since he is still in town. We started with a pre-cocktail in their apartment, under the blazing lights of their newly erected Christmas tree while, for our collective amusement, Matty opened my book to a random page and read aloud the opening paragraphs of the chapter about his own dog’s first birthday party. During the story, Parker stood by expectantly with a plush toy shaped like a carrot in her mouth.

The whole scene in Matty’s apartment was like an ad for a high end retailer, and the catalog fantasy life continued minutes later as we burst into Chris’ apartment, where we were greeted immediately by his cheerful boyfriend Brent, dressed sharply with a holiday bowtie. He and Chris had coordinating looks, similar but different, like the paintings of sailboats that adorn the front hall. Chris’ hunk of a roommate (and former upstairs neighbor) Mike was packed tightly in a dress shirt and tie, although his tie clip spent the entire evening trying to escape his ensemble, clinging to every sweater it was pressed against in the increasingly crowded apartment.

Chris, Brent and Mike took turns in the kitchen working as bartenders to keep a sense of order, which is very important in a party like this. Most of the food was positioned not far from the alcohol in the kitchen. And combined with using the bed in the bedroom behind the kitchen as the final resting place of the mounting stack of coats created a chaotic traffic jam of laughter, spilled drinks and thwarted ambitions for those who wished to pass. While in the thick of this mess one drunk was a second away from accusing me of trying to put something in his drink, when I was merely trying to right the damned thing before it filled my entire shoe with gin.

I expected to see Gray, who is in town, although he ended up not making it to the party. That worked out well for me because I wouldn’t have been able to write about him anyway. Also there was Erik, who was unhappy with what I wrote last time I saw him, even though, like Gray, he wasn't upset about what I said about him, he was upset about the rest of the content of the entry. Oh well. Par for the course I guess. Matty observed that my blog does have the habit of upsetting people, but I have no qualms about that because what I write is true and I don’t try to portray myself as a nice person along the way because I’m not.

While Gray and Erik have not been happy with being written about, I have no way of knowing how Daniel feels about it. Like Charlie before him, Daniel has been the source of long distance observation for some time now, always in the confines of The Park on Thursday nights. But then suddenly there he was in Chris’ apartment, looking as handsome as ever. We were in close quarters a few times, but never actually spoke. Maybe he didn’t know it was me. I hope so. The party was so much fun, the last thing I wanted was to be confronted by a stranger, even if it was totally justified.

It was an evening filled with pleasant surprises. Hermit Matt, a radio show caller from Arizona who earlier this year I encouraged to take a job in NYC and then snubbed horribly in person at Therapy bar a few short days later, made his appearance on the scene with his hot roommate Trey. I did my best to be my most charming and gregarious self to make up for actually being the real me last time. Aside from Pittsburgh Chris, he wasn’t the only listener at the party. It turned out that a cute blond named Kevin, in the city from New Jersey with another gay named Nathan, recognized me from the sound of my voice. That is a problem. I need to work on a new in-person voice to keep my relative anonymity intact.

After dismembering a gingerbread man with my savage teeth like a character in a Saw movie, I looked up and saw a familiar face making his way into the kitchen. There was Conor blowing kisses to me across a crowded room, his regulation black NY coat still on over his fashionable shawl collar sweater. And standing behind him was his pal Andrew, who is my favorite inconsequential flirt. In a town full of men I flirt with without intent, he is the best at it.

I hated to say good bye mere moments after saying hello, especially with Andrew so handsy, but we had already been at the party for three hours, even if it had blinked by in a flurry of baked brie and Christmas sweaters. I pushed my way through the crowd to the bedroom and joined some others in the vain attempt at finding our coats in the melee on the bed. It all looked like a bin at the Barney’s Warehouse Sale, with a dozen hands circled around clawing and tossing for just the right thing. For an instant, I worried that my beloved grey wool coat had been purloined, as happened to me at Robbie’s party eight years ago. But suddenly, as I voiced my concerns out loud to the disbelieving crowd, I fished it forth from the debris and triumphantly raised it over my head to thunderous cheers.

By now, Conor had made his escape to the living room. As I hugged him good bye, he pulled me close and whispered in my ear, “Tell me everything that is happening with you in thirty seconds.” I caught him up on all the sudden fame in my life: my walk-on role on Days of our Lives, being in the OUT 100 this year. And then I started to tell him a story about a mutual acquaintance. He stopped me short. “I hate [him]!” he declared emphatically. While I don’t share the strength of his disapproval, I too disapprove just the same. One not nice person to another, [he] is just no good.

As I journeyed out of the apartment with Matty and Andrew, we passed Chris and Mike separately on the stairs. Mike was now without his tie. “Did you take off your tie or did the tie clip finally succeed in attaching itself to someone’s sweater on its own?” I asked as he walked by. “Finally!” he called out cryptically and then was gone. Down on the street we ran into Grant and a female friend who was smoking and didn’t seem to mind at all the brisk night air. It turns out that Grant will also be in Utah in the post Christmas frame, along with Matty and Andrew and me. I couldn’t have been happier. December 27th, we hit the slopes in Park City and it will be grand! As much as I love New York, it is ultimately won or lost on the strength of the friendships you make there. And if you can take them with you, out on the town or even all the way to the Rockies, all the better.

Easy Off

Life is riddled with paradox. For instance, I hate the sound of my own voice and yet I am reluctant to ever take a night off from talking on the radio. But tonight I did. In the morning, I will be boarding a plane to Los Angeles where I will be working virtually around the clock for the next ten days. So it seemed prudent to take an evening off and enjoy myself. After all, with the hours I work, I am never around on a Friday night for a movie or dinner with friends. So with this night off, that is exactly what I did.

I started with a late matinee of You Again, the new Kristen Bell comedy (although the way they are pushing current mega star Betty White, you would think she was the lead). After some casual correspondence online with Vanity Fair’s Brett Berk, we had planned to see the movie early and do some kind of online gay dueling review. But we missed the screenings and will have to wait for the next big gay movie, Burlesque, starring Christina Aguilera and what’s left of Cher. You Again was admittedly not a good movie, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t have a few laughs and even a tear or two as everything tied up just as neatly as you would expect. But mostly I came for the popcorn and the Cherry Coke and to relish sitting nearly alone in a massive theater in Times Square, instead of working.

The Big Queasy

I had the whole thing planned out in my head. My LA friend Brian (aka BOC) was in town and just this morning, I had communicated on Facebook with NY-based Brian Babst and it was working out that both of them would be at The Park tonight. This was kismet. I would write about our fabulous evening out on the town. I even had an amazing title: The Life Of Brians. It was all so perfect. Though, as always, my life once again didn’t work out the way I had planned.

BOC and I have known each other for seventeen years, but since I moved to New York in 2001, we have rarely seen each other. The late rise of social networking has made it easy for us to reconnect and talk more which has been great. I have always liked Brian a lot. And over the years we have worked together and played together and experienced life so there was no reason for me not to be excited to see him. We planned a quick bite at Vinyl before heading down to The Park where his friend Rodney was meeting him and my friend Erik was meeting me (and presumably Babst would be waiting).

While at Vinyl enjoying my usual Thai ice tea and Cobb Salad, I bit into something that, in the moment, I thought tasted moldy. In my excitement to catch up with Brian, I ignored the thought and kept going. But ten minutes later, doubled over with cramps in the Elvis bathroom, I realized that my first instinct was correct. But so what?! We haven’t seen each other in years. People are waiting for me. I haven’t updated my blog in two weeks. I need to go. And so down to The Park we went.

All The News That's Fit To Prince

“It’s 1999 all over again!”

Bradford was gleeful when I discovered him holding court in the 2-4-1 room downstairs at The Park with Matty and Andrew. There were other men there at the table and standing around: unassuming gay white men in unassuming gay white v-neck t-shirts. It is all furniture to me now: hot, handsome, muscled furniture. Bradford in his signature tight red was a Fabulis splash of color in more ways than one. The room was hot, stifling. No air but for half price drinks, gay men will put up with almost anything, even each other.

There was a cute young thing standing near us, alone and lonely, in a button down shirt tucked into belted shorts. I know this is what people are wearing these days but to me he looks like the nerds that got teased in the 80s. Bradford is younger than I am so when he parties like it is 1999, he actually means 1999, not 1984, like me. But with the clothes as they are nowadays, it is easy for someone like me to get confused.

"Disturbing, But Possible."

That’s what I said to Mario at his suggestion that an underage twink stripper might spontaneously pop out of the pecan pie resting in front of Matty at the end of his birthday dinner. It is Thursday night at The Park and of course we are all back at the scene of the crime. Mario is excited about the impending arrival of his baby but Brian’s one track mind is on real estate. I dragged Erik over to witness Matty and his sophisticated and fashion-forward friends celebrate his birthday. This isn’t Gay 101. It’s Gay 304. After all, where else will he see a Crumbs cupcake cut ten ways?

I have been trying to arrange a meeting between Erik and Matty so that his gay education can be furthered. When I arrived, Jordy was standing near the front and it was déjà vu all over again. He loved that I described our last encounter at the club as “two ships passing in the night,” as if I invented that dull cliché. He was meeting a straight girl from high school and her boyfriend who were both visiting from out of town. As soon as he spotted them bursting through the door, I waved and backed away slowly like Ann-Margret in “Bye-Bye, Birdie.”

Alone, I hunted through the club for Matty and a few minutes after Erik arrived, he texted me that they were finishing up dinner in the restaurant downstairs near the front. The Park is a huge complex and, as I explained to Erik, exactly the kind of restaurant I wanted to open when I was a kid. He asked me why I didn’t do something similar now and I shot it down instantly. “A restaurant is a financial sinkhole.” There are reasons why you dream about things when you are a kid and don’t make them a reality when you grow up.

After the crumbs from Crumbs were cleared away, we all wandered upstairs. Shay was there and as lovely as always. She keeps trying to get me to add her Facebook Fan Page, probably because she knows I am an outlet mall shopper who needs some ShayStyle, but I am not what I would call a joiner. Matty’s boyfriend Andrew was properly suited to the occasion while I was the bad friend who didn’t wear Polo on his birthday. Matty was justifiably incredulous but in typical Matty fashion, forgot the upset before the possibility of concern turning to a wrinkle could take place.

“Matty should get a job working in Protocol at the White House,” I suggested to his friend Clay as we watched Matty work the crowd like a campaigner, every hand shaken, every baby kissed. Clay was very cute and slender in a v-neck tee under a slouchy wafer of a cardigan. He insisted he has known Matty for years but I was suspicious because we had never met. I like to think I know all of Matty’s friends, even though I say all the time that Matty is the only gay you need to know in Manhattan because he knows everyone else. But still, I should know all the gays at his intimate birthday dinner.

To show Clay my attraction to him, I threatened to throw him down a flight of stairs. And it was said not just once in an amusing way either. More than once so he got the point that I really might actually send him sailing if given the opportunity. Moments early, I had followed Clay and Matty further into the bar, where we engaged in conversation with two men, Ian and Kelly (“Like the color!” I offered, much to Kelly's visible annoyance). Kelly was a fine conversationalist, though with the noise, I couldn’t hear a word he said. And his need to take everything I said literally (for instance, “I work here. I’m a busboy downstairs.”) all had a reasonably unhappy ending.

But the real failure to communicate was with Ian who did not understand that I was joking about owning a Jitterbug cell phone and assaulted me with a barrage of information about his Droid phone that had all the subtly of a Scientologist trying to sell you Herbalife and Amway at the same time. I was trapped and Clay saw that I was trapped, and so in a move that I would have made myself if the roles had been reversed suddenly declared that he had to pee and walked away. Walked away! And this is why I threatened to throw him down a flight of stairs. Because merely pushing him just wouldn’t have gotten the message across.

Come to think of it, I am pretty sure I met Clay before at Therapy quite some time ago. But that was under a staircase on the ground floor, so he was safe from my threat of violence. I suppose it was doubly upsetting because I would have done the same thing. It was just so unpleasant to see the behavior in someone so otherwise attractive. Although in comparison, I love Conor and he doesn’t have a flaw I haven’t been willing to turn a blind eye to.

Conor was with his boyfriend Ryan, who I branded “Dimples” after Conor made such a fuss about his face. The dimples were cute but he had an ass that would not quit, even after the whistle had blown. “Dimples” seemed nice enough although I am fairly certain he was fucking with me when he said he quit his job so he could concentrate full-time on his tan before summer got here. The more I talked to him, the less certain I was that he was joking, but again, the ass, the body, it was all tight like hospital corners, so if his tan needs that kind of attention, well then I guess that’s just fine.

Conor’s friend Andrew was also there. “Will you remember me this time?” he huffed, although I didn’t remember forgetting him before (although he might be easier to remember if he hadn't blocked me on Facebook, no doubt because of my generous links to his profile in my blog). I whispered sweet nothings to him about him being impossible to forget because he is so handsome. And like all attractive men who only care about the massive, nuclear levels of attention they need to receive, he melted like a Soviet reactor.

I love Conor and Andrew but I had to explain to Erik that they are on the dark side of the force. “Conor is not on the dark side,” Matty said, as he sipped complimentary birthday champagne in the VIP lounge area he staked out as his own nearby. “If he isn’t on the dark side yet,” I told him, “He is at least Anakin just before he becomes Darth Vader.” I say all this with the full understanding that I am on the dark side of the force too.

After all, I am not shy about pointing out the shortcomings and foibles of others. I make the most callous observations of friends and strangers without regard to feelings or fallout. I even sent Conor on a mission tonight to get more information on the pretty guy I have seen the last two times I was at the bar. The one I suggested looked like he was made out of cream cheese just at the expiration date. Conor recognized him from his gym. “His name is Daniel and he is from the UK.” Not quite enough for me to find him on Facebook. It makes me long for the days of Friendster, when that would have been everything I needed to unveil his life story.

I live in the world of the disturbing but possible. That is the bread and butter of the gay male existence. Earlier Matty and Mario had been talking about a mutual friend who claimed to have calmed down but was living as wild and on the edge as ever. That’s who we are. I know it’s who I am. Believing in my head one thing, and living a life completely contrary to that vision. I am sure Erik learned a lot about what it means to be a gay man in New York City tonight, but perhaps the lessons learned weren’t the best we could offer as a community. The problem is that I am just not a very good teacher because the only lesson I teach is how to be me. And that is a terrible lesson.

A Head In Search Of A Hairstyle

New York City itself is an act of faith. I know that sneering Fox News pundits (New York residents all, by the way) love to deride the People’s Republic of Manhattan as a Godless island floating in a sea of filth, but I would argue that its very daily existence is based on faith. I am reminded of the story of the tourist approaching a New Yorker waiting on a subway platform. “When does the train arrive?”

“Eventually.”

The tourist is incredulous. “But what if it never comes?”

“It always comes eventually.” And it does.

As the title suggests, I am a head in search of a hairstyle. For several months now, I have been growing my hair out with the idea that I will finally break down and have a real hairstyle. Tom Ford’s A Single Man was luscious and inspired me to get Nick Hoult’s dreamy shag bangs though it would require me to flat iron my luxuriously thick hair to duplicate it. Lately, I have been leaning toward keeping it long like Matt Bomer’s hair on “White Collar.” But maybe I just want Matt Bomer or Nick Hoult and not so much their hair.

But as my hair grows out, I resemble more and more a mad scientist when I struggle out of bed in the afternoon. It is not pretty or as my roommate suggested the other day: “Whatever it is you are doing with your hair, it isn’t working.” And today, it really, really wasn’t working. I briefly tried to split it down the middle and deliver a straight up early 80s feathered center part that would have looked very comfortable on a ride along with Larry Wilcox on CHiPs. When that collapsed in disaster, I doused it and the idea of it with cold water and pulled the bangs up and away from my face in what I hoped would be a romantic wave and ended up being more sea foam than a surfer’s dream curl.

As much as I would have liked to have used my hair as an excuse not to go out to Brooklyn, today is Ben Harvey's birthday. And so, like the good friend I pretend to be, I trotted down to Dumbo intent on only staying for thirty minutes. “I will drop my coat at coat check, buy Ben Harvey a drink (didn’t happen), and then pick up my coat and go.” I tell myself the sweetest lies. Not only did I not buy Ben a drink on his birthday, I stayed much longer than thirty minutes. And I didn’t even get to say hello to Dave Rubin. But I did get to spend plenty of quality time with Matty, who dragged me away to sign a birthday card. As a writer, nothing fills me with more panic than trying to be witty in a birthday card. Signing my book to people is just as creatively paralyzing. “The best of the best,” I scribbled incomprehensibly, in every sense, and then signed just my first name.

“You have to put your last name,” Matty was adamant. “No one can tell what you wrote. You can’t even see the D in your name.”

I traced in the D as best I could and wrote my last name in my best doctor’s handwriting and Matty ran off, leaving me standing next to Chris and Cub. Chris and Cub, you may have noticed are never really separated in my blog because they are never really separated in real life. They are the only couple I know who always stand together at parties. I am pleased that I know them now well enough to know their unspoken signals. While I was rambling on about something that Cub was very excited about, Chris gently ran his hand up the small of Cub’s back. I knew what that meant. “Figure skating. Get your coat.” He might have actually run his finger in a figure eight for all I know, but Cub was blocking my view.

But before they left, Cub ran to the bathroom and Chris passed me off like a tray of appetizers to Adam, originally from DC who was nearby. Adam had been talking to Ben when we walked over and since Ben was saying good bye to Chris I made what I thought was cute small talk with Adam about us being in an alphabetical circle. “Adam, Ben, Chris, Derek,” I said pointing around. “Now all we need is an Eric and a Fred. Although knowing the gays we will just get two more guys named Chris” Well, I thought it was cute. But Adam responded “Or Cub.” I guess he missed my joke. Or maybe, as my ex-boyfriend Curtis pointed out, “Sometimes when Derek is talking, he has no idea who he is talking to.”

Adam looks like an actor whose name escapes me at the moment. At first, I thought I knew him. I wonder who he chose for doppelganger week on Facebook. Maybe that will help me figure it out. I suppose it is possible that we have met before. We do all run in the same concentric circles. And after a while, all gay men look alike. The factory just keeps churning them out. Only the hair and the clothes change.

Even though Matty told me tonight that I look younger and thinner than ever, we all suffer the fate of the law of diminishing returns. Seeing the same gay guys over and over again can give you a repetitive stress disorder. Trying to figure out what to do with my hair has been a forty year journey, I could just as soon do without. And speaking of forty, Andrew, who it should be noted is 22 years old, told me tonight that he doesn’t worry at all about turning forty. “I don’t fear death, why should I fear forty?”

I gently put my hand on his young, firm shoulder and gazed into his eyes through those patented Nick Hoult dreamy shag bangs of his and said, “The difference between forty and death is simple. Death is like losing your keys somewhere in your house. You know they are there somewhere and you’ll find them when you least expect it. Forty is losing your keys in the toilet. You know exactly where they are and how much it’s going to suck retrieving them.”

Adam left without saying good bye. Even though when he told me he used to teach at Georgetown, I said, “I’ve heard of that school. It comes up a lot on Jeopardy. Mostly on college week.” And my personal best, “I’ve been to every continent except South America.” To which he replied, as I hoped he would, “What about Antarctica?” I smiled, “I was there for the white party three years ago. Everyone in white parkas. It was amazing.” It made me happy that he knew Antarctica was a continent, but more importantly, I think the white party joke would have been awkward if he had said Africa, don’t you? Of course I still would have told it. But maybe it was all awkward and only in my head was I both hilarious and charming with beautiful luxurious hair.

“Go after him!” Matty demanded but I stayed put. New York City is about faith, after all. Even though Adam misheard my name as “Pierre” when I met him, if he wants to find me again, he will. Just like my hair. I will figure out a style for it one of these days. And in the meantime, it will just keep growing anyway. I don’t have to do a thing. After I left the party, I hurried down to the subway platform, just to watch the F train depart for Manhattan without me. I was worried about the time because I didn’t leave myself much of a margin of error to get to Grand Central Station for the final leg of my journey home. But I thought about the tourist and the New Yorker on the platform and I realized the train would come when it comes. And just like that, there was a New York miracle. A second F train right behind the first. All you need is a little faith in this town and everything works out the way it should.

Eventually.

A Tale Of Two Sissies

I love a mystery but you know, the kind of mystery that Jessica Fletcher solves when the tea kettle blows and it reminds her of something crucial. There was a mystery of sorts in my blog last fall when I wrote about a bunch of queens bursting out of the Cabanas and heading to Brandon Voss’s apartment. Now I know Brandon, the erstwhile former editor of HX Magazine, and tagged him as such in my blog. But then Brandon wrote to me and insisted it wasn’t him, that he wasn’t even in town that weekend. “That’s the other Brandon Voss” he insisted, but come on. That seemed ridiculous. How could there be two gay men named Brandon Voss in the gay club scene of Manhattan. It seemed impossible. That is until two weeks ago when the other Brandon Voss tried to friend me on Facebook.

I wrote him back, told him the story and how I had believed he was a myth. At first he disowned the queens but on further prodding agreed that they may have headed to his apartment but that didn’t mean he invited them. Fair enough. His reason for adding me was that he thought I looked familiar and he was inviting all the hot guys he knew to a new party he had started called Rockit Fridays. Always open to the sincerest faux flattery available online and looking for new places to blog about, I assured him I would be there on my first free Friday, which it turns out, was tonight.

Conveniently located in midtown near my office and Matt Kugelman’s apartment, we agreed to rendezvous there and get the lay of the land. At first we were dumped into a basement segment of Amalia on 55th Street that had no coat check or cell phone reception. The lack of coat check was a bigger problem since the sudden transition from winter to summer meant plenty of people brought jackets thinking it would be cold only to be jammed into a sweaty dutch oven with nothing to do with their heavy outerwear. As it was, we enjoyed the early 90s tunes, with heaping helpings of En Vogue to make you forget your troubles.

Soon the upstairs opened and as it did I thought I spotted Henry on the stairs. I wasn’t sure it was him until I spotted his boyfriend Dan standing next to him. We caught up with them at the top of the stairs and there we stayed under the watchful eye of DJ Keo Nozari for the rest of the evening. While Henry was busy proving to everyone that White Men Can’t Dance, Dan and I commiserated about life in straight bars that only go gay one night a week.

I am annoyed by cocktail waitresses and the vain attempt at bottle service, an outrage that gays will enjoy for free as VIPs but would never, ever pay for with actual money. He hated the bathroom attendants handing you towels and I had to agree. In a gay bar, if a guy hands you a towel in the bathroom, it’s because you just had sex with him. Our talk was prompted by a bouncer trying to shove us out from our perch at the top of the stairs and keep the walkway clear. That’s crazy. How are you supposed to meet people if you don’t stand at the top of the stairs so you can see everyone who comes and goes? After all, if gay bars didn’t have pinch points, I don’t think gay men would even know how to get laid in person. G lounge in Chelsea was designed with an oval bar that creates a virtual Tailhook Convention around it almost instantly, the only 360 degree pinch point in all of Manhattan! Guaranteed sex.

Ben Harvey soon arrived, having just attended a taping of the new season of The Big Gay Sketch Show. He was blond and trim as ever and I realized later on my walk back to my office to get my backpack that I haven’t had a real quiet moment with Ben since his birthday brunch, and even then we weren’t exactly alone. It seems we are destined to only ever be seen in public together. I also saw Matty’s friend Tyler who swung through at the most inopportune moment while Dan was telling a story about meeting Beyonce and he couldn’t even stay for a split second for the story to end for a proper hello. MUST. KEEP. TWIRLING. And he was gone.

Later I saw Conor standing on the landing near the DJ. I tried to get his attention at first by throwing ice at him, but then I just kept throwing ice at him because it amused me. He was clearly annoyed until he finally saw that it was me, which registered zero surprise on his face. After all, who has worse manners than I? No one! Conor was there with his friend Andrew who once again I did not remember meeting, until he called me a douche and I realized he was the guy from Facebook who tried to add me and became so irritated by my form response denying access. I wrote about him last week. This time Andrew and I spent more time horsing around and I discovered that, like me, he is a birthday deleter on Facebook. This is a genius move, by the way. When someone’s birthday comes up, you check to see how well you know them. If they aren’t vital, that is the moment you delete them. They will be so wrapped up in Happy Birthday posts on their Wall that they won’t notice you are gone for weeks, maybe months.

I really didn’t want to stay all night. Fridays are a tired night for me and all I want to do is get home after a long exhausting part-time week of talking. Plus, I had a stone patio to finish putting together in the backyard and Manhattan gays on the prowl don’t understand what a productive weekend day is unless you count spot checks at the free clinic on your way to the gym to party pump for Saturday night. As I headed for the door, I ran into Ben Dixon, who was on his way in. I wish I could have stayed longer to chat but I did have a train to catch. He has a house upstate so at least he understood the need to get an early start on the weekend and get something done. Pretty doesn’t just happen you know. Maybe in your twenties you can just Rockit and get away with rockin’ it but for the rest of us, weekends wait for no man.