The (Lack Of) Rhythm Is Gonna Get You

 For more than a year, my social life has consisted almost entirely of mouthing "thank you!" and waving through a window at delivery people leaving near daily Amazon care packages on the front steps. As human contact goes, it is extremely unsatisfying  but then again, every day is in the manner of Christmas morning. Let's face it. In some ways, pandemic living is literally the gift we give ourselves. 

So it's some shit that after staring at a social calendar as empty as the calories in my diet I had two things to do on one night. First, a Zoom pride party for the show and then a birthday party for old friends. The Zoom was planned weeks ago when life was still more shut down. An opportunity to have a virtual celebration for those who didn't have anywhere in-person to celebrate. But now everyone is very "pandemic who?" and by the time Friday rolled around, it felt like the last Zoom ever. It's possible we turned the lights off by request as we were the last to exit. 

Code switching from virtual to IRL, I dashed a few blocks away to a gorgeous apartment in Hell's Kitchen where the birthday party was to be held. That I was instantly flummoxed and incapacitated by the intricacies of the auto entry system should have been my first warning of what was to come. In my defense, it told me to enter the apartment number into the keypad but I was going to the numberless penthouse! Fortunately, two nice, possibly already somewhat intoxicated people, Michael and Brandy, arrived right behind me and Michael, not taking my body blocking of the keypad for an answer was already on the phone to the host demanding in his best Albert Finney that the door be opened. 

"Open That Penthouse!"

Normally for me, circles one through seven of Hell are all the same: attending a birthday party where the celebrant is the only person you know. But in this case, it wasn't just Matt Kugelman and his side by side birthday pal Roy Haylock (aka Bianca del Rio) that I knew. It turned out to be a pleasant surprise that as I made my way through the party, every few minutes someone would call out my name and I would be instantly reconnected with someone I hadn't seen in years. Michael Lee! Even Chris Crisco, our former intern, who I thought was still down in Mexico. But I guess now, like the swallows returning to Capistrano, their gay counterparts have made their way back to midtown. 

The stars only come out at night

I spent some time checking in again and again with Matt's mom, who is a very sweet woman I have met numerous times on her many visits to the city and whose best gay party trick is her ability to tell you everything she is thinking after a single glass of Chardonnay. But she was largely tended to by Bobby of Denver who I trust was Good People, because that was printed on his tee shirt and you know how susceptible I am to advertising. 

But the good people I spent the most time talking to was Chris, who was handsome and looked familiar. At first I thought I had just met him before which in gay circles is always possible. But later I realized that it is infinitely more likely that I saw him recently on television. Because TV is more real to me than real life, I frequently see people out and about and think we went to high school together and it turns out to be Ryan Gosling getting a double shot at Starbucks. 

Chris and I were having a great conversation. Nothing like two people who interview others for a living to keep the banter going. We covered all my best subjects from Room Rater to eating at Wendy's to falling down a ski slope. I felt like a Jeopardy champion confidently clearing categories. But then I realized I was getting short on time. The trains stop running at a certain point and as usual I have no sense of time passing so I unforgivably rudely pulled out my phone to check the time. Ten to Midnight, like the awful Charles Bronson movie with the hot naked serial killer in it. Time to go. 

I made my abrupt, nearly mid-sentence good byes to Chris and dashed off into the party to find Roy and Matt to tell them I was leaving. When I had arrived earlier Roy joked that we had to take a picture fast because I would be leaving in twenty minutes. This is a running gag for us after years of me hanging out after my show at one of Roy's bar nights and then leaving the moment that he said he was about to hit the stage. But in my defense, his show would always start at 1am and my last train leaves at 1:50am. I can't alter time. Or can I?

Running into Michael and Brandy to create bookends for the evening, I explained I had to go and then made a big show of checking the train times on my phone. After all, the MTA has a habit of changing schedules around in unusual circumstances like pandemics and I didn't want to be off by thirty minutes. But when I opened the train time app, the schedule was blank. No more trains tonight. I had missed the last train! When I told Roy he rightly howled with laughter. After so many years of choosing the train over the party, I finally chose the party and missed the train. 

Matt made a very kind gesture offering that I could stay with him, even though his entire family was already splayed out Walton Mountain style on air mattresses in every nook and cranny of his new apartment. No No, Good Night Matt Boy, I insisted, I will just stay at my office and catch an early train back. But then after I left I realized I didn't want to catch the side eye from our building super who is very nosy about these things and decided to just check into a hotel instead. 

So roomy I could almost extend both my arms

So there I was, after 1am, no luggage, checking into the Club Quarters Times Square. No one to blame but myself I thought. The world has changed and as usual I refused to double check reality. It's been 20 years since I left LA, and I still never check the weather before I leave the house. So as I settled into my room, I decided to check what time the first trains would be leaving in the morning, so I could get back ASAP. My town doesn't allow overnight parking in the lots so I didn't want to add a parking ticket or tow to my already luxurious hotel bill. 

Open the train time app and there it is. Next train: 1:50am. 

It was 1:45am. I was stripped down to my underwear in a prepaid, non-refundable hotel room, more than five minutes but not much more than five minutes away from Grand Central Terminal. I had screwed myself. The train time app lists all trains by date so when I looked at the app at 11:50pm there were no more trains for Friday but if I had thought to look at Saturday which it technically was ten minutes later or had looked at the app at 12:01am instead, I would have seen I still had two trains to go. Just like always.

So it was my own dumb fault but in my defense, aren't we all a little out of sync? The world has changed, but also stayed the same, and how are we supposed to know which is which. I thought the most difficult thing would be the part where I had to talk to strangers, up close and in person. But instead, I was totally confident and at ease around people again, not just like nothing had happened, but like the after scenes in an anxiety medication commercial. "Look at me, full of life at this party now that all the medication in this ad has made me normal!" But I am clearly not normal. What a mess. Just when I think I have it all together, it all falls apart in my hands. 

The more things change, the more I stay exactly the same. 

Ready! Reset! Go!

 I think we can all agree: it's been a crazy few years. 

My radio show was canceled, but then we successfully relaunched ourselves and have grown into a podcast network with our own smartphone app. A reality star and tabloid fixture decimated a generation of establishment Republicans and ended a 25 year Clinton dynasty before embarking on what can only be described as a turbulent and tumultuous rollercoaster of chaos. Inexplicably I wrote a movie that was actually produced, fulfilling a lifelong dream but then earlier this year all my personal plans for the future were shattered in an instant when the love of my life suddenly died. 

So when X Files creator Chris Carter reminds everyone that there is a nutty conspiracy theory floating around that the relaunch of the Hadron collider in Cern in 2015 sent us into an alternate reality Hellscape, you start looking back on the shocking number of relevant pop culture figures who died in 2016 and think, "Sure. Why not?" After all, to quote George W. Bush at the Trump inaugural, the last few years have been "fucking weird."  

Me thinking about the last six years

But now we have a new old president and a vaccine that is powerfully ending an 18 month pandemic as isolating as a dunce corner timeout. It's summer and the sun is shining and things feel really truly optimistic for the first time in a really long time. Maybe it's too much to hope for that the rollercoaster is finally pulling into the station and we can transfer to a different ride more to our liking. Or maybe it is just the calm before the next series of last gasp loops and turns. 

I started to write about the city opening up a few weeks ago. I walked through Bryant Park and it was full of happy people. For the first time since March 2020, I was annoyed by how many people were in my way on the sidewalk. It felt good. The old New York was back and just as obnoxious as it ever was. And me too, I guess. But then I got busy at work and didn't actually do anything more than walk through a crowded park so without stronger literary inspiration I let it go. But tonight, I am going to a party and that in and of itself should be cause for celebration. 

As the fallow nature of my blog can attest, I haven't been nearly as social in the last few years as I once was. My blog has transitioned from a mixed emotions accounting of various nightlife adventures to quite literally a morgue. Though I confess pride that one of my only true talents as a writer is to capture the essence of another person with pinpoint accuracy, that Eric' husband liberally quoted what I wrote at his international Zoom memorial was bittersweet at best. I may not know myself but at least I have some sense of the people I love. Shame it only comes into focus after they are gone. But I think it is too soon to hang up my hat as a social animal and relegate myself to the grim task of high quality obituaries. So tonight, I'm off to a party. 

In the past year and a half, Matt Kugelman is the only person I have seen socially. Last summer, he coaxed me out to dinner on the streets of Hell's Kitchen. I was wary, but Matt was tested daily at work and I had been a literal and figurative homebound hermit, my only source of entertainment a series of increasingly ill-advised self haircuts that only confirmed that staying home was the best plan. But Matt is social and friendly like a golden retriever with a squeaky ball in his mouth, so I was persuaded to join him for what turned out to be a totally safe and perfectly fun meal outside in a Manhattan gutter. 

Today Facebook served up a photo of us together at a party in 2009. I joked that I would be wearing the exact same outfit tonight, to which Matt replied with a Romy and Michelle "Me Too!" meme. That would be hilarious if I didn't still own and wear that $9 Gap polo. Matt and I don't have everything in common but I realized today seeing that photo that our strongest bond is probably that both of us established a casual look that we will never deviate from, for better or for worse. Take any random photo of either of us, together or apart in the last decade and I dare you to guess the year. Good luck, 

But life is about change, right? Going to new places, seeing new people. But is that really what we all want now?  After the year we've had just seeing the same old people in the same old shirts is more than good enough, and probably exactly what the doctor ordered. This timeline sucks and anything that looks like Earth One these days looks pretty good to me. So tonight I am off to Matt's birthday party, as I have done year after year after year after year. In this case, familiarity doesn't bred contempt, it engenders relief. It's the shiny golden promise of the same comfortable old thing again and, well, as William Mulholland said at the opening of the Los Angeles aqueduct, "Here it is. Take it." And thank you very much, I think I will. 

I just need a minute to dust off this outfit first. It's been a while. 

Club Step

Providence is not only humanity's cruel scorekeeper but also a dark chalet on West 57th Street filled with a complex labyrinth of stairs and levels. It's like a Hamburger Hamlet designed by M.C. Escher. Not the kind of dimly lit establishment where drunk and clumsy people can find peace of mind.

If you get lost inside Providence, here's a handy map.

I turned to Donny, still recovering from a broken hip, and issued a dark warning:

"One of us is going to fall down and the other one is going to die from laughter."

Since Donny fell last time, undone by an icy pathway outside his apartment as 2014 began, I decided to tread carefully through the club. Karma, being what it is, I was more than past due for a hard tumble of my own.

We came to Providence for their new Friday night party Berlin. On line for coat check, I met a nice young man visiting from Germany, who sensed providence in the name and came based solely on that.

"Is this one of the big clubs in New York City?" he asked in flawless if heavily accented English.

I just shrugged. This was my first time too. But I was drawn by Brian Gianelli's suggestion and the prompt 11pm show by local drag pathogen Bianca del Rio. I should have known before we arrived that everything would fall apart, this being the endless winter of our discontent and all, but I tried to ignore the warning signs and instead enjoy a night on the town during one of the first moderately decent nights of the year.

This winter has been unrelenting, like trying repeatedly to squeeze a size 14 into a tuna can. Back in December, I mocked my friend Terry Goldman when he wore a short-sleeved shirt to dinner on the single day that month where the temperature threatened to touch sixty. In retrospect, if I had known about the three months of polar vortex ahead I would have appeared in little more than a bathing suit.

So since it was only just in the thirties tonight, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to pull myself out of hibernation and drag Donny out on the town for the first time since we skied through the Aspen Social Club as winter began. Ryan Hahn was organizing a mini-reunion from his holiday party with Griffin Parsons and Jennifer Cheng in tow, but for one reason or another, they all dropped out at the last minute, almost literally as Brian’s plane was making its final descent into madness.

How bad could it be? Bianca. Bunny. No cover charge!

In addition to the chance to spend some time with Brian, I was lured to Providence by a flyer Bianca del Rio posted on Facebook promising both no cover charge and Lady Bunny. The evening had neither. But Bianca, a giant black cotton ball perched on her wig, made the most of it with her usual warm blend of racism and anti-Semitism. The crowd ate it up. After the show, the crowd swarmed, temporarily overwhelming Bianca with photo requests. I was only half-joking when I suggested to Donny that I should organize them into a line and charge five dollars. Between the $30 in cover at the door and $12 at the coat check, recouping our losses was high on my list.

"That'll be five dollars, please. Insults cost extra."

The club was filled with lots of young men and some of them weren't bad looking either. While waiting for the coat check, however, we landed behind a man in a striped jumpsuit (Donny kept calling it a "onesie") that had a glittery owl on the back.

Stop staring at me! It's freaking me out!

It was so quaint when Donny expressed shock that anyone would buy such a thing. “You know he rolled out an old McCall’s pattern and made that himself down at F.I.T.!” I screeched before suggesting a variety of potential Tim Gunn critiques. Later when we were upstairs, Donny spotted him again and yelled, "Ugh. It's back!"

"The front sucks too." I offered.

Look, if you are going to be a man in a skin tight jumpsuit, you better have the body of death not a dead body. I don't know anything about fashion but even I know that’s the truth.

Unfortunately in the midst of all of our gay shenanigans, we lost Brian and his cute friend Andrew in the crowd. It was the second time tonight that it happened and with the drunk train pending, I did not have time for the third time to be a charm. I texted him one last time and headed for the exits.

On our way down to the coat check, I bumped into a collection of cute guys on their way in and one of them was a Grant Goodeve-looking mother fucker. All sorts of hipsters were floating around in plaid tonight but he was the only one that made it work.

In this case, eight would be enough for anyone.

I suppose the hipster thing is like any movement in fashion. Many will try it but most will fail. In his case, the red plaid tucked into his jeans effectively transported me back to my adolescence. Others just looked like sloppy messes for whom an unkempt beard and ill-fitting tank top was statement enough.

Life is full of potential pitfalls. If it isn't bad fashion, it’s a treacherous staircase. One minute you're a nice Asian woman looking for the ladies room and the next Bianca del Rio is dragging you on stage and forcing you to play the role of manicurist. I think monsters lead such interesting lives, don’t you? Even in party palaces where the stairs climb on forever to nowhere. 

The City By The Gay

Just for the record, when I first moved to New York City, I was hired at a company that worked on the redevelopment strategy turning The Nashville Network into Spike TV. And in between, it was our beautiful missing link The National Network (aka The New TNN). And there, I toiled away writing hilarious puns about Pamela Anderson on Baywatch (“Double Vision”) and Star Trek: The Next Generation (“Set Your Phasers On Fun”) that populated the website. So I would like to take credit for the current passion for puns in everything from The Daily Show to Morning Joe, even though a pun is truly the lowest form of comedy. So don’t think for a minute that my pun headlines are a riff on current popular culture. I am just reusing bits I did eleven years ago. And they were no fresher then than they are now, my friend.

On the subject of the good old days, my ex-boyfriend Curtis is in town. Years and years and years ago, I spied him across Revolver and bravely gave him my number as he was leaving and then he didn’t call. For three years. But eventually he was moving a desk and found my number which had fallen behind it and finally picked up the phone. As it happens, the number I gave him was for my friend Paul's apartment where I had been staying temporarily at that time and purely by happenstance was back there, sitting waiting for Paul to get out of the shower, the night Curtis deigned to call me back and I happened to answer the phone. Please note: if I am close friends with someone, I will wash their dishes if bored, answer their phone when they are in the shower, or sort through their mail even if they are standing right there, so if you value your privacy or personal space, it is probably not a good idea to be my close friend.

The Boyfriend Racket

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Tress This Mess

My hair is a fair weather friend. It does not do well in the elements. I have long been jealous of my grandmother Doris and her sassy wig and I live for the day when I can just give up on hair altogether and don a wig. It must be genetic. Besides, under certain circumstances, like tonight, the mop on top takes on a certain plastic wig-like quality anyway, so it isn’t like synthetic would be some kind of step down from normal.

Since we are on the subject of wigs, it is probably most appropriate that I journeyed down to XL tonight for Hot Mess featuring two of the hottest messes in Manhattan: Bianca del Rio and Lady Bunny.  It is day two of Josh’s first ever visit to New York City and I am determined to make sure he has the most amazing time anyone has ever had in our city ever. If only I approached fitness with the same zeal.

I figured if anyone could put on a show that once seen can’t be unseen, it is Bianca and Bunny. And that is the kind of unshakable memory of America I want Josh to take back to Afghanistan. While he is on leave from his deployment, he needs to see two people who are on leave from their senses. He needs to know what he is fighting for: the right to tell racist jokes in between subpar dance numbers. In this regard, they did not disappoint.

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!

Cross Gown Rivals

Madonna has a new Kraft single out. To say that it is terrible would be purely out of spite. After all, American Life is truly terrible and to be fair, Madonna has been slowly clawing her way back up to musical relevance steadily ever since that creative low point. Her latest is not bad, it just isn’t age appropriate. It sounds like Avril Lavigne covering Debbie Gibson covering The Shirelles. And Madonna still rhymes like a second grader, which aside from close-up shots of her hands, is the worst thing about her.

She is also on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar, another relic of another century. I saw a shot of her standing behind another woman with her arm poised around the lady’s neck. First thought: she is a vampire who will suck the essence out of you! Remember when she kissed Britney Spears and then Britney’s career collapsed and they finally reluctantly replaced Brit with a Japanese sex robot? Maybe almost none of that actually happened but sometimes, in that drowsy part of waking where dreams still seem so real around you, it feels true.

Unsupported Assertions

The Empire State Building took my breath away tonight. I was walking up Sixth Avenue, between 27th and 28th, on the West side of the street, and I looked up and there it was. At that angle, it was muscular, unyielding, and intimidating. And in our world of disposable diapers and casual encounters, that presence is as reliable as the Farmer’s Almanac. As I have been many times before, and not even for the first time tonight, I was left in awe by the wonders of New York.

Some people may think of living in New York as some kind of abusive relationship that is constantly excused away. Every insufferable subway platform (searing heat in summer, glacial tundra in winter), every 1am garbage truck seemingly backing repeatedly over a dumpster under your window, every muttering maniac in a dirty coat, every Wall Street douche screaming into his earpiece, they are all just another doorknob walked into, another encounter he is really sorry about and promises will never happen again. But New York is more complex than that.

To me, to love New York is to know true unconditional love. In fact, I think if you can’t love New York, you can never fully love another person, or even yourself. It is a million flaws, writ large. It is bold, italics, and underline. All caps and all encompassing. It is everything, all at once, all in one place, open all night. The dirt, the temperature, the claustrophobic closets sold as apartments, the speed, the noise. It is an assault on every sense and through multiple dimensions. It seeps into your bones and invades your dreams. Its density is so great that it creates its own gravity. How can you not love something so powerful? So majestic? A rollercoaster forever shy of cresting that first great peak.

And then, one night, you go over that peak.

“Be nice,” Chip had quietly entreated, “but tell the truth.”

New York is about truth. It is truth. Because there isn’t the space or time for lies. And this is the truth of what happened tonight at Matt and Roy’s birthday party.

After the show, I wandered down to a bar called Black Door on 26th street. Don’t worry. I had never heard of it either. It is very nice and way in the back, the birthday party was whirling at full tilt as I arrived. The first person I saw and knew was Chip. He was standing near the door, surveying the fun.

Roy, who is often known as the notorious and outrageous Bianca del Rio, was out of drag but still in fine spirits. He and Matt had found matching tuxedos with blue ruffled front shirts in Chicago and they made quite the duo in them tonight. Roy kept up Bianca’s horrifying banter out of drag, so naturally I was forced to say something. “You know, when Bianca says shocking things, it is appalling and fun, but out of drag, you just sound like a racist.” Roy had to admit that you can get away with a lot when you’re a man in a dress.

On Monday night at Bianca’s show, Matt had arranged for a little person in drag to pop out of a present and molest her. Not to be outdone, Roy secretly arranged for a little surprise of his own. “You know the naked cowgirl, right?” He asked me. We had her on the show, so I nodded enthusiastically. “I have arranged for her to come and give Kugie a lap dance! But it is a secret so don’t say anything!” Why I, the person least likely to keep any secret, am the first to be confided in is a mystery I will never solve.

As it turns out, it wasn’t the official Naked Cowgirl, who had visited our studio, but instead the other Naked Cowgirl, Sandy Kane. Sandy was a bit older, in a blue wig and came ready to party. After she spent about ten minutes getting situated and removing her shorts, the music kicked in and she started lip syncing (quite badly I might add) to some kind of parody song about flatulence. No better or worse than Lady Bunny, but at least the Bunster (usually) knows her own lyrics. Then the bra came off and there she was, with just some star pasties over her breasts. The songs and the shaking continued, soon with a candy cane striped dildo of no significant length or girth tossed into the mix. At the end of the third song, I wondered aloud to Patrick, the cute guy next to me, how quickly it would turn from mildly amusing to sad. And then the impossible happened.

As the fourth and final song kicked up, the pasties disappeared and out came a box of safety matches. And then before all of our eyes (and camera phones), she took two matches and stuck them into the holes in each of her nipples. The matches jutting out of her pendulous breasts, she then struck a third match, lit the two sticking out of her nipples and told Matt to blow them out. Happy. Birthday.

Well, that is New York for you. It is towering achievements of concrete and steel. It is baby boomers with flaming nipples. It is everything, all at once, all in one place, open all night. And I love it. Unconditionally.

Night Light

David Young emailed me today after he read my last blog with some measure of concern. “You sound depressed. You should talk to your doctor about getting on Lexipro.” Let me be clear about something: I am not depressed. I am in love with someone who doesn’t want to be with me and my entire world has collapsed in around me like a mine explosion. But I am not depressed! My social life on the other hand is coding and unresponsive. So even if I can’t have the man of my darkest fever dreams, I can at least get back to having fun. After all, this is Manhattan. If you don’t party, you will notice what a hell hole it is and want to head out of town on the first thing smoking.

So after resorting last week to blogging about quite literally nothing just to fill the Internet with my babble in an effort to dispel the rumor that I had died, I sent Matt Kugelman an urgent text message last night demanding that we hang out tonight. Eminently likeable, I met Matt two years ago while waiting in line at Bowery Bar and it has been friend kismet ever since. What I like about Matt is that I can have a serious deep friend conversation with him or I can have a mindless spin on the town, or both at the same time. After all, why choose?

In The He Of The Night

I stepped out onto the street and the air hit me like wet cotton, hot and sticky. The second day of summer and already the air is so thick you can taste it. This is the reason that New Yorkers have for decades abandoned the city during the summer. But like that poor guy in The Seven Year Itch, I have to work, so I am not going anywhere. And neither is the humidity.

Over Easy

I think it might be the end of Bowery Bar as we know it.

It is not exactly with the heaviest of hearts that I report the long threatened demise of NYC’s most durable club night. For years, I have visited (though not thoroughly enjoyed) my regular Tuesday nights at the famed watering hole. I went there again tonight, the first real night of spring, for what I expected would be the usual gay fanfare. But it had all the charm of the Bates Motel after they moved the highway. They kept lighting the lights but I don’t think anyone is coming anymore.

Classic doorman Derek was positioned outside the entrance but the usual long line of long-legged gays never materialized. Not only did I see him letting in women, a Tuesday night rarity, but he was welcoming them with an enthusiastic smile and at one point, the slightest of bows. The scales of power had definitely tipped. Inside, the attendant gays dripped with the usual unnecessary attitude but it was even more unnecessary than usual in the half capacity crowd. The staff aggressively hustled people away from lingering near the exits but maybe they were just trying to discourage them from leaving.

Adam was waiting for me when I arrived, patiently lurking just inside near the hostess stand. He looks as handsome as ever, and was a little hungry. There wasn’t really anyone there yet, so we got a small table and ordered some food. Near us, a banquette with a wealthy homo stationed inside it swarmed with firm young men in tight new clothes like it was some notorious gay beehive. That was to be expected. But elsewhere the bloom was off the rose and the bees were not buzzing with their usual enthusiasm.

Corey Johnson circled our table three times like a tired dog looking for a place to lay down. He must have found it because we never saw him again. After dinner, we walked around a bit and then ended up at the back bar where we each ordered a drink. Adam and I wandered out to the patio and set up camp near the wall watching the gays pass us by.

“The last time I stood in this part of the bar,” Adam told me, “[A former porn star] suddenly turned and said, ‘I wish someone would just pound my ass right now.’” A startling announcement to be sure even from a porn star, but perhaps it was more startling that none of the men standing around when he said it took him up on the offer. But those were the glory days of Beige, when hot porn stars were just standing around demanding that you have sex with them. Now I am pretty sure they would say that just to have an excuse to leave.

I suppose it was bound to happen. We thought it was all going to come to an end in 2001 but then Britney and Justin showed up and suddenly it all came roaring back in the days following 9/11 when everyone in the city yearned for a return to the comfortable normalcy of the 90s. And in past years, I have tripped over actors and singers and models galore as I snaked my way through the pit. Just four days ago, The Park had porn star Erik Rhodes and fashion designer Marc Jacobs and actor Alan Cumming, which is the kind of star sightings I would have expected at Bowery Bar. But the most notable guy I saw all night was the cream cheesy hunk I spied by the basement coat check line at The Park last week. Hardly something to write home about, though he did look as attractive as ever. And by ever, I mean, since Thursday.

Matt Kugelman had been enthusiastic about joining me tonight, but he and his friend Constantino ended up swinging through G first and arriving much later at B-Bar. Matt was buzzed when he finally got there and I don’t just mean his hair. I had trouble hearing but there was something about margaritas and a party. In retrospect, I probably didn’t need to hear the story to surmise exactly what happened. When it comes to the gays, you don’t exactly have to be Jessica Fletcher to put all the pieces together.

While we were standing there, Bobby popped up out of nowhere. I haven’t seen him in a while. Initially I thought it was at the fancy pride party in the sky I had so much trouble writing about, but he seemed to think it was more recently. Anyway, it was nice to see him, even if it wasn’t for very long. He and his friend, whose name I once again didn’t hear or remember, left almost as soon as they arrived. And even the sudden appearance of Keo Nozari wasn’t enough to keep me there much longer.

“I think Bianca is coming.” Matt said encouragingly, looking up from his phone but that was my cue to go. “I have to leave. You know how I live to miss Bianca’s show.” But in this case, it had nothing to do with Bianca. I could tell Adam was ready to escape the place like it was on fire and I too couldn’t wait to run out of there myself. Perhaps the pulse quickened after I left, but I will never know. As far as I am concerned, it is no longer the beating heart of midweek Manhattan gay life. It's time to call it. Time of death: Tuesday, April 6, 2010.

The Cult of Celebrity

Monday. 11:15pm. Nighttime at The Ritz and the half empty bar is waiting for half in the bag Bianca del Rio to take the stage, such as it is. It seems like a million years ago that I dragged Bobby there and, primarily for my own amusement, encouraged him to enter Bianca’s drunken dance off contest, which he mistook for some genuine opportunity to win cash and fame. But that was just October of last year and about forty tons of snow ago. Not seeing the place through Bobby’s fresh eyes on his first ever trip to NYC, the walls did not vibrate with the same excitement as before but Bianca’s aggressive bray rattled the glassware enough to break the reverie for me.

Kugie and I had finished up a bland meal of Mexican at the nondescript place up the street from Arriba x2, which was “closed for cleaning” (although the appliances sealed in plastic said otherwise) and naturally wandered down to The Ritz to cheer on Bianca. The two of them are just back from Mardi Gras and while Bianca had her game face and enough make-up for six other game faces on, you could tell they were both still a little rough around the edges. Bianca practiced material on us, old and new, and at one point I think was making a subtle dig at me, which is rare for Bianca since her digs are never subtle.

“Oops! I think you dropped a name.” she called out, bending down to pick up an invisible celebrity moniker. “That’s a good bit, but I guess it probably wouldn’t work so well on the radio.” And then she looked straight into my heart.

For the most part, I confine my name dropping to my writing because when you drop them on a page, they tend to stay put. Names dropped in the ether of radio tend to float away, untethered and disconnected, and fade off into the shadows of memory. But print lives forever, more or less (my apologies to shuttered newspapers everywhere), and rarely more vividly than in Michael Musto’s column for the Village Voice. Barely twenty-four hours after abandoning Matt and Bianca at The Ritz, her words were fresh in my mind as I attended Musto's 25th anniversary party in a swanky Fifth Avenue penthouse on the fringes of Chelsea.

Everyone laments that NYC nightlife is just not what it used to be. We traded a cleaned up city and safer streets for evenings as dull as a butter knife. The last mayor erased the sex from the place and our current mayor monetized it. They turned the peep shows into Disney stores and the hustlers into baristas, working at the Starbucks on the corner instead of working the corner itself. Even Musto’s wonderful party was the ghost of Studio 54 past. There were silver balloons and flashing lights and loud middle-aged women flashing their tits, but the gays were encased in tight sweaters with Reagan era precision, while bartenders in button-downs dispensed coke in a glass instead of on a glass table.

As I arrived, two hours after the early 8:30pm starting time, I was met with a rush of fabulousness flooding out of the building. “Well, I’ve missed all the fun.” I thought to myself, already wary of going to a party where the only person I definitely might know was working the door. But upstairs, a familiar face lurked around every facelift. It started with a drunken Jesse Archer rushing me in the dark, aggressively manhandling me in a welcome way. Moments later, I almost walked past Zach, who was seconds away from being furious about it. But as I explained to filmmaker Brian Sloan who was standing with them and later adorable comedian Shawn Hollenbach, when I am in a loud bar, the noise dulls my vision somehow and, mixed with the darkness, makes it impossible to recognize anyone I know.

Frank and Jim and Mike were there from work. And the eternally lean Ken. And Enrique from the Face 2 Face spa. But most importantly, Chris and Cub were there. Chris was working, quizzing people on their favorite and least favorite thing about Michael Musto for a feature I assume he was writing about the party. "He never writes about me," was my quick answer for either one of the questions posed. I felt bad that Chris told me he was interviewing “notable people at the party” while I was standing right next to indie movie star Jesse Archer, since that is usually the kind of thing that happens to me. But moments later, a pushy photographer was shoving me out of the way to get a picture of Michael Urie and two people I had never seen before, so the universe corrected itself very quickly.

Mike and I wandered upstairs to see the roof garden which it didn’t occur to me until that moment was actually outside. But Tony Phillips pointed it out when we met halfway on the stairs like one of those mother daughter confrontation scenes that is a classic movie staple. At the top of the stairs there was a rack of identical red robes and people were donning them before heading outside. I had no idea until that moment that the cult of celebrity had actual cult robes. I wondered if there was going to be some kind of secret ritual outside that we would witness. Perhaps this is how Tara Reid and Mischa Barton lost their careers, penthouse garden religious gay sacrifices in exchange for Lady Gaga at Radio City Music Hall or Tom Ford directing “A Single Man.” Fair trades all.

While chatting on deck with Chris and Cub and lean Ken, that sexy Mark came up behind me and started groping me, a move I pulled later on an unsuspecting Shawn Hollenbach. When it comes to inappropriate touching, the gays love to pay it forward. Mike came by again, raving about the view we couldn’t yet see but I was a disbeliever. Mark and I agreed: we have seen the Manhattan skyline before. But then curiosity overtook us and I shoved past some drag twinks and sixty-something hags only missing a cauldron to huddle around to get to the upper deck for a look of my own.

Suddenly, the Empire State Building loomed before us, towering over the center of midtown like a beautiful middle finger telling the rest of the world to fuck off. But you know, in a really glittering and spectacular way. To the side was my beloved Chrysler building, a fabulous gay pinkie jutting out for spite. You can forget in the city, caught up in dodging filthy puddles and erratic taxis that as annoying as it is, the tourists have the right idea when they just stop and look up for a while. The view however is better from a penthouse, even if the party and the city isn’t what it used to be.

After trying to take a crappy iPhone photo, the chill of the night air overcame us and Mark and I stepped down off the upper balcony. We had reached the heights we were going to reach and it was time to head home. It is easy to romanticize something you never saw, or perhaps never was. Studio 54 was a shitty movie and I am sure the club itself had an off night or two. In 25 years of reporting on nightlife in NYC, I am sure Michael Musto saw his share of duds. Not everyone is a star, not every party is a legend in the making. In our new austere century, all we may have left is the hangover of remembrances of flings past, but you have to keep putting your game face on. Seeing the Empire State Building reminded me that even as the rest of the city changes and changes again, some things are eternal. And spectacular.

The Big Chill

It’s cold. And I know that no one moves to New York for the weather. But still. It is worth mentioning that it is cold. Yesterday, it snowed. In the middle of October. My carefully drawn cotton cobwebs decorating my Douglas Sirk-inspired Cape Cod were laced with real live snowflakes, two weeks before Halloween. It’s most frustrating because we didn’t even have a summer this year. It was just one long rainy spring with five warm days in August, and now this.

In the elevator tonight after the show, Father Dave gently chided me that my fabulous grey wool fall coat wasn’t equal to the weather. It is one of my few possessions that I would actually put into the fashion category. Normally, that coat, with its family von Trapp precision cut, lasts me well into December when I replace it with a bulky snow parka, shades of Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club. I don’t even know where my leather gloves are. Father Dave is right. I have been caught unawares by the weather.

Not that I have any great love for Bowery Bar and the Stepford gays that swirl around inside it like lost guppies, but I do have an annual tradition of visiting on the last bearable Tuesday evening of autumn. Now I fear I have already missed my window. Where will the gays go, now that Fire Island was a soggy, damp huddle around a firepit and their only viral infection this summer was Miley Cyrus’ “Party In The U.S.A.?” Frost has already descended on the Central Park ramble and they will soon, I have no doubt, open the Highline for ice skating.

Monday night I ran down to The Ritz to see Bianca’s show and hang out with Matt Kugelman, the only good thing that has ever happened to me at Bowery Bar aside from that accidental blow job I got a couple of years ago. I don’t know what happened. Matt and I had a good rhythm going of partying down, pulling it together and then partying down a few days later. I blame the self-imposed end of my blog. The unexamined nightlife is not worth living, I guess.

I told Bianca to put Bobby in the show and he was definitely a crowd pleaser. I wish I had taken some pictures. It was fun, but even The Ritz, usually a reliable screeching twink explosion was down to a dull roar. Then again, it was a Monday night, so I suppose they can be forgiven for lacking their usual Saturday night specialness. After all, how can I complain about a slow evening as the nightcap to a weekend where I hung out with more hung porn stars than you can shake a dick at and slept with one of them?

But as I turn around in bar after restaurant after bar in this town, I am starting to think I am not the only one whose party persona is as worn and threadbare as the fashionably unemployed men that populate the grainy/fabulous black and white images of 1930s Manhattan, fedoras pulled low over unshaven grim faces, suit collars turned up against a chilly economy. Perhaps I have been underestimating the financial deathblow our country has been blown. Or maybe I am not the only one craving a solid night of rest in the city that never sleeps.

Five Second Rule

Standing outside Katwalk on a not particularly windy summer night in Manhattan, Listerine breath strips flutter out of their green plastic coffin onto the sidewalk. A spritely young gay leaps after them declaring the tried but not so true rule about putting things in your mouth that have hit the ground. My mind races to the gallons of urine, vomit and dog shit that have washed over 35th Street in the last century and I stop him in his tracks. After all, as important as fresh breath is, it doesn’t supersede the need to not place your tongue on a NYC sidewalk.

It was going to be that kind of night, where bad ideas seemed promising, as I stepped into the joint birthday bash for Matt Kugelman and the Roy boy known as Bianca del Rio. Kugie is well known to my blog and Bianca is widely known as a foul-mouth insult queen from New Orleans whose love of offensive racial humor and abortion jokes is well documented, mostly by the Kuge himself. For Roy’s birthday, Matt put together a “tribute” video featuring other notable drag queens, personalities and me. Never one to pass up the opportunity to be seen publicly or insult someone I hardly know, I jumped at the chance. And if you can do both and eat cake and drink, well it might as well be Christmas!

Generally I don’t like going anywhere that I don’t know people. I do know Matt but it was his birthday, so I knew he was going to be the center of attention and therefore hard to monopolize. But I did see Terron, drunk and clicking away with Matt’s camera. And TJ, who I remembered from our last encounter some weeks ago at Rockit when I scooped his drunk ass over to the Stage Deli in the wee hours of the morning and when I say we ate a side of bacon together, I mean in all literal butcher terms a side of bacon. Matt’s co-worker Chip was there and I chatted with him for a while along with a 22 year old CBS page, who as innocently as Kenneth of 30 Rock, assumed we were roughly the same age. God bless the child.

The video was a big hit with the crowd, perhaps because of the content, or maybe because it temporarily wiped the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue video and a baseball game off the large screens. The place was awash in gays and aside from the very straight manager, no one seemed to notice the scantily clad women on display or the latest run score for the Yankees. Then again, with young gays around, all they notice are each other, and notice they did. My friend Shaun McCarron was in town and he came by with his friend William though they missed my scathing video appearance.

Shaun looked as hot as always and he was in town for another big gay party night of some kind. It is pride weekend after all. He will drop by the show on Friday and I have no doubt havoc will be wrought with guest host Erik Rhodes, after their last adventure in which Erik ate out some woman who wasn’t wearing panties at the gay bar. We talked for a bit and then settled close to the birthday cakes. Against my better judgment, I had two slices of the one with the blue frosting, while Shaun went to talk to Bianca who as he confided to me was his favorite drag queen when he was a kid. Naturally I didn’t miss my opportunity to repeat that to her face and here in the blog.

After they left, I chatted a bit with Chris an aspiring musical theater star and spent more time with classically trained actor TJ. Chris and I discussed musicals which I confess is my worst subject. As a gay man I can talk a reasonably good game with the average Musical Mondays bar homo but when it is a theater queen, I am definitely out of my element. In all though, we had fun, including pointing out to Matt’s roommate that despite the wax number candles on top of his cake, Roy and Matt do not have a combined age of 52. Next time, I told him, just put a one in front of whatever number you come up with and it will be twice as funny. His inability to do quick math infuriated him and he stormed away in frustration much to my amusement.

The party would down rapidly. Roy and Kugie decided to head to The Ritz for JUST ONE DRINK but I decided to end the evening there. With a mouth full of the cake Matt’s roommate made and numbers swirling around in my head, I made my impolite good byes and headed uptown to my car. I suppose I could have joined them at a second location for five seconds, but as a rule, it’s never that short and usually not healthy either.