All's Well That Cazwell

It was just one of those nights, where you know you won't have any control over what happens so you just have to give yourself over to the run-on sentences that will be. This feeling about tonight has been building up inside me for weeks now. Too many people in town for the holidays, an underwear model showing off in the studio, a certain crispness in the autumn air. So, I let myself not be my usual type-A nut job about the whole thing and I turned myself over to the adventure at hand. This is that story.

Things began barreling out of control even before the show during dinner with Andrew, his boyfriend Joey and Andrew’s brother and sister-in-law. During our polite meat orgy at HB Burgers, sister-in-law suddenly decided that I was the perfect set-up for her gay friend. For you straight women out there, this is our worst gay nightmare. The words "He's so nice, he's so handsome" just mean "He's so fucked up, he has so many problems" to us. You can't understand why he is single because he is hilarious at the office and wears adorable bow ties. We know he is single because he has a serious meth habit or he hasn't finished building out his basement dungeon yet.

The Boiling Point

It was a busy Friday, which is a problem for someone like me who doesn’t especially love to be busy. On the other hand, it is nice to feel wanted. Woke up at the crack of Noon as usual, poured myself a cup of ambition and headed into the city. First stop: Studio 2 to interview self-proclaimed “Hollywood trophy wife” Candy Spelling. Delicious Candy has been in a tasty battle with her daughter Tori for years and now Candy has a book of her own,“sTORIes From Candyland,” which has all the cardboard depth of the board game you loved with none of the plot twists. A loose thread of shallow Hollywood adventures, heart-clogging recipes and mind-boggling home inventories that attempt to bring some ordered understanding to a decidedly disordered mind are wrapped around anecdotes proclaiming the normalcy of her life amid hoarded mountains of evidence to the contrary.

Candy herself was very, for lack of a better word, sweet. It is clear that the key to success for her is gliding as effortlessly through life as an ice skater sailing through the vacuum of space. She looked good too. So many Hollywood wives are pulled overly tight or try to maintain the appearance of a youth that is but a dim memory. But Candy looks respectable, aging if not gracefully, than ever as slowly as her vast wealth will allow. I did manage to illicit a human emotion out of her when, in our anticipated discussion of her daughter, I brought up the Time Magazine piece on Tori during her terrific turn in “The House of Yes” where she was quite believably a haggard donut shop girl out of her element. Time Magazine, in the midst of a flat out frame-it-and-put-it-on-the-wall rave about Tori couldn’t resist tearing her down to a size zero by referring to her as the “shovel-faced” daughter of Aaron Spelling. Candy’s eyes actually welled up when she described what it was like to be a mother when someone says that about their daughter.

The real story worth crying about was waiting for us after the interview down at a diner in Chelsea when we ran off to see the devil on two sticks himself. Our old board op Ben Dover was waiting there for us on crutches. It was very Vanessa Redgrave in Julia and his story was filled with almost as much intrigue. A few weeks ago crossing the street, a car slammed into him, landing him on the hood like an ornament before sliding off into the street, his leg broken. While he told us this terrible story, I methodically made my way through a banana split the size of my own head. Ben told Romaine later that he had never seen anything like it before, but Romaine casually waved him off. “He eats like that all the time,” she deadpanned, failing to mention that restrictive diet I have been on for two months that allowed me to shed fifteen pounds at the drop of a hat by eating nothing that resembled food.

I ditched Romaine and Hop Along Cassidy and walked up to the world headquarters of Fabulis.com, aka a very nice apartment in Chelsea with a view of the Statue of Liberty, so you were instantly aware you were in the nosebleed section of wealth. Walking in, I knew I could only stay for a half an hour and still get back to the studio in time to do the night’s show and I stuck to my schedule. I amused Young Bradford and the few assembled guests who arrived early by announcing myself as “Number Five,” my local NYC ranking that day on the preview site (or as I like to call it Friendster 2010). I sipped my way through a quick cocktail while chatting with Richard Socarides, lately quite the busy TV pundit. It was nice to dish Obama Administration policy and performance with someone who had actually worked in a White House before. I also spent some time coveting the Capresso machine, so very sad that our Krups fancy coffee machine at home crapped out on us after less than six months. You’d think they won the war!

After the show, I headed downtown, way downtown, for Chris’s birthday party. Chris wanted to celebrate at The Boiler Room, which I hadn’t been to since the last birthday party I attended there. I suppose it was just last summer but it feels like a whole lifetime ago. And it was. The bar was jam packed but that didn’t stop two of the fattest men I have ever seen in a gay bar attempt a round of pool, waving their cues menacingly at all the skinny East Village gays who in their minds had no doubt shunned them one too many times. Passive aggressive is my least favorite gay flavor.

The short-lived pool game was obnoxious but the friends were lovely. I met lots of new guys in the group but I remember none of their names. Why bother? So-and-so was the boyfriend of this one and this guy was the college roommate of that one. I was too busy in my own head making one of those wall maps with string and newspaper clippings that crazy people are always doing in TV shows and movies to show you that they are insane. Guilty as charged, crazy!

My roommate was there and even though grungy east side boys are right in his wheelhouse, he didn’t have a very good time. He didn’t know anyone there and even I only really knew the birthday boy and his boyfriend Cub, so I was no help in introducing him around. Although he did have an amusing obnoxious encounter at the bar while waiting to get a drink. One of the skinny grunge gays turned to another skinny grunge gay and threw his arm up in the air. “Brooklyn?!” came the haughty squeal, “They are so pretentious there!” Takes one to know one.

Charlie showed up and Mike brightened considerably. He had a question about the way Tribal Council is run on Survivor and Charlie, being a former contestant was able to answer. Not only did he know, but he was very anxious to delve into about the nerdiest conversation you ever heard about how Tribal Council works. Mike was happy to get the scoop but Charlie was in heaven. “If you ever want to know more, call me! I love talking about this stuff!” Charlie assured him as we were leaving and I know he meant it.

I ran into Martin on the way out and hadn’t seen him in a while, so that was nice. In fact the whole evening was nice. Of course, then we got to the subway which was closed going the way we wanted and as usual that was a whole ordeal so we just hopped into a cab. “I always say I should come downtown more often,” my roommate opined, “But then I get here and I remember why I never come down here. It’s a pain in the ass.” And so pretentious! The cab whisked us off to Grand Central Station with an ease that no doubt would have made Candy Spelling feel right at home.

Maybe it was the four cups of coffee or the cocktails or the banana split talking, but I was in a good mood. I was so upbeat and loving with Ben Harvey at the bar, it might have scared him, but I don’t care. Who cares? It was a good day. And while I may not have a 56,000 square foot house with two wrapping rooms in it, I am not rambling around in a giant mansion wondering why my daughter never calls and telling my butlers how down to earth and normal I am. My personality is no asset but at least I am not on crutches. So while I can normally be counted on to meltdown in a major way, I won’t be reaching my boiling point tonight. I’m happy for a change and I don’t care who knows it.

Bad Manners

"I should have told you at the beginning of this conversation that I have no people skills."

I am aware when I write about my encounters out on the town, it gives people a thrill to see me say things like this. I promise you that the person hearing it first hand is not thrilled. Case in point: Thursday night at The Park, Matty's monthly soiree of boys, booze and bouncing around. Happening at the tail end of March, this particular event took on all the trappings of a Fire Island pre-party, right down to the hunky gemologist, stunned by his misfortune to be in conversation with me.

Wonderful Brian Babst introduced me to Seth and for a moment, I did my best to engage him in small talk about his favorite subject: himself. Unfortunately, my lack of knowledge about or interest in diamonds, jewelry, abs and the Ascension party on Fire Island turned me rapidly into a pumpkin before his very non-believing eyes. Suddenly, his head was swiveling around like an office chair in an earthquake, desperate to find someone (anyone!) else that he knew so that he could return to his safety zone, waxing poetic about his lock necklace and who accidentally O.D.ed last summer swigging on a sports bottle full of GHB.

All this was later in the evening, when most of the men in suits had faded away and what was left was cruisy, drunk and ready to rekindle old flames from Pines past. Already the muscles are bulging from beneath strained t-shirts like snow crocuses making their first budding ventures out of the frost. Spring is here I hear, and a Summer of thongs and regrets (and regretting seeing some in thongs) is just around the corner. And tonight, in between the Wall Streeters and the hunky casual, a sea of plaid shirts that caught the attention first of Dave Rubin ("Is that what we are doing now?") and then moments later Brian himself ("Brother, can you spare some gingham?"). It's Depression Chic, I assured them, happy to for once be, if not ahead of the curve, at least balancing precariously on it.

I didn't need to meet anyone new, and at this point really, new men are just cannon fodder for my blog anyway. Sorry Seth. I am sure your well-formed shoulders can handle the burden of it all. However, I did bring someone new this time. Delicious Matt Kugelman delighted me by coming along with his friend Chip and the three of us had a gay old time. Matt knows his way around a hot Manhattan gay party so I think he was surprised by how few people he knew there. Fortunately, his winning smile and equally bulging t-shirt signaled that he would fit right in and it wouldn't take him long to meet anyone he wanted to meet.

Having them there with me was a little like taking a date to your high school reunion. I knew so many people, and far more than I actually know in real life. Charlie found us first, while we were still downstairs, drawn over by the siren song of my unmistakable laugh. Gray and Greg were upstairs, looking sharp as always. Chris Stadler was there, though I didn't even get to say hi, it was so crowded. Ben Harvey was a thin slice of blond heaven, a drunk Patsy to Dave Rubin's smashed Edina. Matty was running around taking a hundred and one photos and he positively melted like chocolate on your tongue when I asked him about Austria. Matty took a couple of good snaps of me with Young Bradford who was sad I was spending this weekend in Florida working instead of helping to keep Matty entertained out in the country with them. He introduced me to another guy also named Bradford. "How dare you!" I said to this new interloping Bradford, to which our Bradford whole-heartedly agreed, chiming in himself with a "Yes! How dare you!"Once again, I did everything I could to win over a stranger.

Matt and Chip didn't stay long, having to run off to Bianca's show further uptown. I hope they had fun. Matt sure seemed to enjoy dancing around to the music, although not as much as Corey Johnson, who twirled like a Drag Race contestant lipsyncing for his life. Needing to escape before I did any real damage, I looked for Joe and his cute friend Adam to say good-bye. Adam showered me with flirty attention the last time I saw him, but this time, he was chasing someone else. Naturally, being a self-centered monster, this hurt my feelings. So, I tugged on his suspenders a while, lifted him up a bit to kiss him on the neck and ran my fingers along the back of his ear until he asked me for my number. "Ask Joe for it!" I said as I kissed him good night, knowing full well that Joe doesn't have my number either.

This shouldn't come as a surprise to you because unlike Seth, I told you at the beginning of this conversation that I don't have any people skills. And I still don't.

The Brunch Bunch

Some days just don't come together right. I know it sounds strange to say "I woke up early at ten a.m." but ten is early for me these days, especially on a Sunday. But this is when birthday brunch for Ben Harvey was declared. I tried to have dinner with him on my free Friday night but he was experiencing an alliterative birthday burn out and who can blame him? It has been a non-stop week of bi-coastal adventure, though he looked fresh as a daisy at Commerce while I looked like I had been up all night. I couldn't do anything with my hair so I threw it all under a baseball cap, and as bad as my hair was, I am not a hat person either. Then I had trouble shaving! Like I haven't been doing that for years and years without major incident. By the time I arrived at Commerce through the chilly rain, I had only one thing on my mind: bloody mary.

I sat alone at the beautiful deco bar inside Commerce, my fingers lingering on the edge of the glass. Commerce is a really beautiful place and in a moment like this, I always wish I was more suitable to the occasion. Being the first to arrive gave me time to delight in the whimsy of my drink. I love the green olive and pimento speared on a toothpick floating on top and the jauntiness of the celery stalk erupting from the rouge murkiness of the glass. Matty arrived moments later and we had some time to catch up before the others started to stream in one by one.

Years ago in reading the sensational biography of Louise Brooks, I learned that unlike the fictional depiction in Citizen Kane, Hearst and Davies liked to sit at the center of their long dining table facing each other, with the rest of the guests radiating out from them on either side. Newest arrivals started right next to them and as house guests stayed longer and longer, they moved further and further away. The thinking was that by the time you got to the end of the table, you would know you had overstayed your welcome and would start packing after dinner. This is both a wise dining strategy and a polite way to dispatch with perpetual house guests. Thus the center of the table is the preferred location to always be to see and hear everything. So I immediately rushed to that spot, which was directly across from Ben Harvey, the guest of honor. I probably should have let Ben decide who sat there since it is his birthday, but as usual I stuck to my guns no matter what the social cost.

Charlie Herschel picked the restaurant and it was an inspired choice. The wall murals looked down on us respectfully and amid the amber lighting and witty banter, I felt like I was in a scene from a gay Woody Allen movie. If he ever made such a thing. Dave Rubin arrived to sit in the empty seat next to me that Ben had staked out for him. We pored over the menu together, me hoping for a classy eggs benedict to balance my unkempt appearance and Rubin wanting something akin to a Denny's Grand Slam. "I just want some eggs and bacon." Simplicity is something he does very well, and I have yet to learn.

The rest of the table was filled with Ben's friends that I had never met before. There were two guys named Chris, but it was gay brunch. I think that's the law. Chirag and Al sat across from me on Ben's left and they were very nice. Charlie sat next to me with one of the Chris's on the right of him. That Chris I hardly spoke to even though (or more likely because) he was very cute. I spent more time talking to the other cute Chris who was there with Cub. I had never met Cub, but I had always liked his picture on Friendster and like Shawn Hollenback, he was one of those people that I was connected to through dozens of people but heretofore had never met.

We all ordered and the food was sensational. I felt like a monster compared to the rest of the thin people at the table so decided to order the yogurt and granola, which got shrieks of delight from the table when it arrived. Charlie was particularly enamored and endeavored to chip away at it whenever I let my spoon rest for a moment. "It's delicious! And you obviously don't like it!" he declared scooping up another bit. Charlie also ordered a round of donuts for the table which were a big hit as well, prompting an immediate second round of them along with more mimosas. All of the food was delicious and I ended up stuffed beyond believe even though I had only planned to have little.

It is easy for a grown up birthday to devolve into something wistful, a longing for the past, a fear of the future. But Ben's birthday left me feeling optimistic. "Be honest with me, Matty. Will we all be wearing suspenders this fall?" I had just seen the pictures from fashion week on Andy's blog and it looked like depression era fashion was going to be all the rage: cardigan sweaters, button down shirts with the sleeves rolled up in can-do fashion, baggy trousers with suspenders to hold them up. Matty declared a thumbs up for the 1920s football player look as well, with the padded knit pullovers filling out firm torsos.

The depression era look is something I think I could get away with, so much more than an old baseball cap. For a moment, I imagined us all transported back in time. Pooling our resources for one last great meal before we headed back to the bread lines. Homo night hawks out in the muddy light of day. I wanted a cigarette, not to smoke, but to complete the scene. Instead of leaving me depressed, I find this coming depression strangely exhilarating. We don't know what the new year will bring and isn't that the exciting part? And just because my hair didn't work today that doesn't mean it won't work tomorrow, that America won't work tomorrow. Time marches on, but to me the old fixtures at Commerce shimmer like new. And so do we.

Twice Told Tales

Last night was my second sojourn to Matty’s sensational new party night Thursday at The Park. It also happened to be Roommate’s birthday and after I surprised him earlier at his office with an Oreo cake and presents, I was the surprised one when I spotted him waiting downstairs at The Park. Despite it being his birthday, he had had to work late so he figured he might as well have some fun. We were soon joined by John, whom ADD Jeff had convinced to come out as well. Earlier John and I had been talking about how Facebook had so deftly revealed the myriad friends of friends we had in common, who in turn did not know each other. Well, it was a night of connected connections when Ron showed up a few minutes later. I met Ron last summer on the R Family cruise up to Canada and he came in from Long Island for a planned meet up with his friend Jeff, who it turned out, was friends with and had invited my neighbor Clayton. Soon ADD Jeff appeared to bring us all upstairs and the party really began.

Much of the usual insanely beautiful crew was there. Chris (no slouch himself mind you) was mingling with his breathtakingly hot new boyfriend. Charlie, dark rimmed glasses denoting a more serious tone, passed through briefly before making an early night of it. Joe was revelling in not being the drunkest person at the party, which was already in full raucous and debaucherous swing. Brian was anxious to be home watching Liz Lemon display her trademark angst on the Valentine’s Day episode of 30 Rock and was showing a heretofore unknown soft, gooey interior over his LA-based low carb love muffin. And Matty was encouraging all of us to help make Andrew, the newest addition to the collective, feel welcome. Andrew, tall and trim in the way people used to be before McDonald’s became the shop around the corner and WalMart ate` the world, very politely and quietly got hammered. I found Andrew’s youthful calm endearing and his slight frame said he isn’t quite done growing yet. Maybe the alcohol will help speed things along.

Soon Clayton arrived, followed by Ron’s friend Jeff, and our group was complete. The DJ continued to do that thing I first encountered at the Maritime, where they only play 30 seconds of every hit you have ever heard. “In my day, we had eight minute dance mixes and we liked it!” I heard myself saying, the words echoing in a cavernous Tunnel long since razed into memory. Matty was a little perturbed. “I asked the DJ to play some Cher and Deborah Cox and it’s been more than an hour now. I don’t think he is going to play it!” We feared he might not play it because he didn’t have it, but Matty dismissed that old-fashioned argument in a hand wave through the murky party cloud, exposing our technowonder present. “He can download anything he wants in a second. He just doesn’t want to!” At one point, Ron thought he spotted an Ecstasy tablet on the floor. A guy nearby picked it up and inspected it. “It’s a Centrum” he responded blandly. Later as Ron recounted the story, Roommate panicked for a moment. “I hope it wasn’t a Centrum Silver.” We change with the times, but sometimes the times change with us.

That was never more evident than when I spied my former neighbor Nick Scotti sitting in a quiet nook with his pals. Years ago living on a quaint three block stretch of West Hollywood West called Dorrington Avenue, I had Jenny McCarthy, Oscar winner Linda Hunt, my pal Jeanetta Arnette from Head Of The Class, and hunky Nick Scotti as neighbors. Nick used to walk his dog without a shirt right in front of my house prompting my friend Eric to insist that I call him the moment it happened because he could “be there from anywhere in LA in under five minutes.” I reminded Nick of our old street and his face brightened with recognition. “Wow. Dorrington. I haven’t thought of that in forever.” Nick has since settled back home in NYC, and while over the years we have all travelled more than the 3000 miles from West Hollywood to Chelsea, I am sure no one around him will mind when dog walking weather returns in the next few weeks.

The party was great fun and finally wound down around 2am. Our group decamped around the corner to the Moonstruck diner. Like any good diner should be, the menu was overwhelmingly massive and when people are drunk or have been awake for almost 24 hours, it is tough to get them to make a clearheaded choice. But isn’t that most of the fun of a pre-dawn raid of the local owl wagon? Years ago, Mike and I had another late night awkward meal at that very same table with Patches and his ex-boyfriend Chris. This time was personally less tense, although a few drinks in ADD Jeff produced some graphic bon mots about cum swallowing while the waiter was standing there that made me seriously rethink my rice pudding order (and dramatically increased the tip we ended up leaving that poor man). But that is what happens when you get a disparate group together. Parties big and small are about pulling together the right elements and letting things take their wild and unpredictable course. It amazes me that someone like Matty who is so naturally a gifted party organizer would wait so long to start club promoting. But like a stack of golden pancakes or a platter of fried mozzarella sticks at 3am on a windy winter night, it was worth the wait.

The Gilt Age

My laziness is legendary. So you can imagine my delight when Joe invited me to his birthday party at a bar mere steps from my office. Even closer than my beloved haunt Vlada, The Gilt Bar at the New York Palace is dangerously close to SIRIUS and conveniently almost on the way to the train at Grand Central. The invite implored attendees to wear shirts and “the shirt should have sleeves.” Now, unless it’s a tank top or a muscle tee, all shirts have sleeves. I assumed he meant a shirt with buttons, but that isn’t what he said. And after I looked like a carb-induced monster in the button-down shirt I threw on before I left for work, I opted at the last minute for a well-worn baseball tee instead. After all, a three-quarter sleeve is better than no sleeve at all.

The New York Palace is a turn of the century (turn of that other century?!) gilt gem on Madison Avenue that for a moment as I walked up to it, I mistook for legendary Manhattan eatery Le Cirque. Well it might as well have been because it was just as insanely fancy inside, though without the delicately spun circus animals out front. However, inside I was not shunned by the wait staff as I tumbled in with my giant backpack and ski parka, a welcome relief from the usual New York attitude that attends such places. I found Joe and the usual crowd of suspects, all in crisp button-down shirts, and most in ties and/or vests lounging around the oval-shaped bar.

Charlie was there looking exactly as he always does in a crisp v-neck sweater and button down shirt, as predictably and flawlessly turned out as a figure at Madame Tussauds. Joe was leaned against the bar trying to order another glass of wine, while familiar faces (Gray, Mario, Greg, etc.) lingered in the background like dress extras. Joe had visited The Gilt Bar once before and loved it so much that he endeavored to have his next birthday party there. Some few short months later, there we all were, enveloped in our corner by the unnecessary abstract honeycomb structure that dominates the Northeast corner of the room, enjoying expensive cocktails among the high priced call girls waiting somewhat impatiently for an upturned smile in a downward economy.

I chatted for a few minutes with Joe’s friend Justin, who was very polite and blond. As an interior designer he had much to say about the hotel extension in the next room, where the original horseshoe townhouse structure had been expanded to include a modern high rise hotel. To me it just looked like the lobby of some awful Steve Wynn creation in Vegas. All that was missing, we agreed, were some slot machines and fat women in stretch pants to make the authentic look complete. Justin was hoping to piggyback on Joe’s next smoke break outside, but Joe was so intently involved in his pursuit of another glass of Merlot that Justin’s desire seemed like a far away dream.

Mike arrived and I joined him on the other side of the bar next to Martin, who I met over the summer at Ben Harvey’s rooftop party. Martin wanted me to alert all ten of the readers of my blog to his abnormally large penis, explaining that “Martin” and “penis” are two of the three most commonly searched words online, though he failed to reveal the third. Martin is a lawyer, but don’t hold that against him, he is really a fun-loving guy. He also has a stare that feels like flirting, but I think I have determined definitively now in our second meeting that it is just a signature stare.

Come to think of it, there were a lot of lawyers there tonight. Charlie introduced me to Greg, referring to him as the NYHGL (New York’s Hottest Gay Lawyer). When I quizzed Charlie, who is also a lawyer, if he had given up the title himself, Gray suggested that Charlie was in fact the NYHGLSC (New York’s Hottest Gay Lawyer Survivor Contestant). That seemed like a long and complicated answer to me, but when you work in a profession that bills by the tenth of the hour, the longer and more complicated the answer the better. Especially in this economy.

As I was leaving, Joe implored me to blog about the evening and insisted that I reference his female friends too. “I promise,” I purred.”Even the one who looks just like Jenna Maroney from 30 Rock.” This caused the other female posse members to roar. “Oh no! She hates that!” Well, it wouldn’t be the first time I wrote something in my blog that upset someone. On a completely unrelated note: Ben Harvey and Matthew Kelleher were also in attendance.

Park And Fly

On any given Thursday, there are few places in the world more exciting than New York City. I woke up this morning expecting that the most exciting thing to happen all day would be attending Matty’s inaugural party as club promoter: Sexy Back Thursdays at The Park. But then Sam jumped up from her desk next to me yelling “A plane just crashed outside our office!” and the day briefly took an entirely different turn.

A US Airways flight glided down in the Hudson river a few blocks from my office and quite literally outside the window of my old River Place apartment off the West Side Highway. All of the passengers and crew lived which allowed everyone to start with the gallows humor immediately without fear of much reproach. My favorite comeback being: “If we stop flying, the geese have won.” As it was, the landing and rescue were so quick and uneventful I have to assume that some of the NYC-based passengers merely stepped off the rescue boat, hailed a cab outside the Circle Line Tour and headed back to their respective apartments. After all, they didn’t have much time to change out of their wet shoes and head downtown to Matty’s fabulous new party, and New Yorkers are, if nothing else, a resilient bunch.

I do love The Park. It reminds me of my childhood fantasy of opening a kitschy indoor restaurant designed to look outdoors. I would call it Picnic and everyone would eat fried chicken and hot dogs at wooden picnic tables with red checkerboard tablecloths under a bright kleig light sun. The Park, with its indoor/outdoor motif and heavy doses of camp (what’s with all those Hitchcockian stuffed birds around the back bar mirror?), serves up heaping helpings of broken Asian doll along with expensive cocktails and high-end entrees. It is the restaurant of my childhood dreams if I had grown up in the West Village instead of Utah.

Suffice it to say, Matty’s party was a huge success. And why not? All the usual suspects were there. Gray in black. Mike without Ryan. Charlie in a v-neck sweater. JD and Clayton canoodling while Terry looked on at his handiwork approvingly. Even Brian Babst appeared at the front bar, already armed with lines from tonight’s 30 Rock. He insisted he wasn’t staying long but more than an hour later, I found him upstairs in the Penthouse crush looking determined. Meanwhile, Matty swirled around us all, a social Sonja Henie, skating effortlessly through the scene, smiling for the camera. Chris and Josh were skating too, though their routine was off and I think the judges noticed.

And in the center of it all: me. Poorly dressed as usual, long underwear hidden under my free American Idol shirt, surrounded by Gossip Gays in tiny preppy suits and nerd glasses. They made me want to shove them down the concrete stairs, turning the base of the steps into just a pile of mangled cashmere sweaters and shattered spines. I was inappropriate as usual, pushing my way through the crowd with zero regard for anyone’s safety, including my own. Even creating a short cut by walking across a pair of couches until I nearly stepped on a handsome stranger and his fag hag. “That’s not good for the furniture” I said to him as I climbed back down. He smiled back in a way that said he was charmed now, but sober and in daylight, he would not be so thrilled with me. Story of my life.

Maybe it was the cold but Los Angeles was a hot topic of conversation at Matty’s soiree. Brian deadpanned a story to me about gays in LA stocking up on tonic water like the end times are coming because “it doesn’t have any calories.” JD lamented the shallowness of the LA boys and worried aloud that “the plastics” had followed him to The Park. He seemed amused when I told him that my attitude problem practically got me run out of West Hollywood on a rail. The locals insisted that perhaps I would fit in better in New York, though when I arrived in Manhattan, all anyone ever asked for the first two years was if I was from LA. Perhaps I belong somewhere in between.

Later at the coat check as I bundled up inside my ski parka (an angry lesbian fashion shot fired across a sea of fitted wool coats) a different handsome man came down the stairs and smiled at me. “You look warm,” he cooed, but my only thought was making my train. I muttered “I certainly hope so!” as I pushed past him. After all, why look so out of place if I can’t at least prevent frostbite on my way home. And all apologizes to him and Kathleen Turner but body heat is not how I plan to ride out the winter.

Oh what a night, as the songwriter wrote. The coldest night of the year, of many years even. A plane crash down the street. Only in New York, kids. Only in New York. But as I said before, we New Yorkers are a resilient bunch. I probably didn’t do much to bring sexy back to Thursdays, The Park or the parka for that matter, but at least I was there. And, more importantly, despite my continued surly attitude, I did have a good time.

Wring Out The Old

I have known Terry Goldman for a long time, more than a decade but not quite a decade and a half. I was the first person he ever met online (though certainly not the last) and to show you how long ago it was, online then was a BBS in Los Angeles. And if you don’t know what a BBS is, you are probably too young to read this. Terry is a wonderful friend that I have hung out with in sunshine and now snow, in the desert and on the high seas. It’s been a grand adventure that continued on Saturday night in Chelsea.

Back in December after a long dry spell of not seeing each other, we went to see The Day The Earth Stood Still in IMAX and promised to become regular movie buddies in 2009. Last weekend, we had a gorgeous fatty meal at Outback followed by a bucket of popcorn at Gran Torino. Clearly, feeling on a roll, he suggested dinner, a movie and subsequent boozing this weekend. “We can see Bride Wars or The Unborn,” he suggested. Ugh. Is it January already?! Mercifully, we were spared a two hour sentence in wintry cinematic prison and opted instead for a huge dinner at ELMO, a popular eatery in the heart of gay Manhattan.

With house guests Ryan James and Andy in tow, along with Roommate, I was suddenly four in his ever growing dinner group, which eventually swelled to ten with even my neighbor Clayton thrown in to the mix. For some inexplicable reason, Terry invited only men who had the first letter J in their name: Jacob, Joe, Jeremy and JD. I kid you not that Jimmy and Jonathan were also invited at one point but for one reason or another were not there. For someone like me with so much trouble remembering names, this is mental suicide.

Jacob, Clayton and Terry were there waiting when I arrived, snuggled up close to the flirty DJ, and sandwiched between the plate glass front window and erstwhile party girl Zoe Murphy, her main gay, and what I suspect was her own mother, cooling their heels at the bar. I hadn’t seen Clayton since before the holidays so we had a lot of catching up to do. In short order, Joe arrived, followed by roommates Jeremy and JD. As I often do in these situations, when Terry told me that one of the people coming was on the Bravo series WorkOut, I for some reason thought it was Joe and assiduously avoided him, opting instead to sit next to JD, who it turns out was the reality show participant in question. The best laid plans of Mice and me.

It turned out that even our waiter was also a reality TV veteran, with three different shows to his credit. I am starting to think that reality shows are the new herpes. “Be careful going home with him. I hear he’s got a case of the MTV!!!” Waiter was very nice with a taut frame and the kind of ass you look forward to seeing in your face while he is waiting on the table next to you. But his TV exposure had apparently caused an outbreak that even infected his own apartment. When Terry asked him if he knew Davis from The Real World Denver, he became lovingly agitated. “He’s staying with me! He came for a couple of days and it’s weeks later and he is still there. I love him, but he has to go sometime!”

Despite having a reservation and waiting almost a full hour for our table, ELMO ended up splitting us up and putting us at two separate tables right next to each other. Clayton, Roommate, Andy and Ryan James squeezed into the booth across from us and I joined Terry and the J men at the table for six. Dinner went very smoothly but I started to sweat bullets when the check came. Looking around the table, I feared one of those situations where the check passes around and comes back seventy dollars short and everyone starts getting indignant about how they didn’t want to pay for an appetizer they only got one bite of while ignoring the three cocktails they consumed. We ended up only three dollars short and not wanting a fuss, I quietly threw in an extra five, grabbed my coat and started heading for the door.

Since Andy is underage, he and Ryan James went to the only 18 and over club in Manhattan, while the rest of us braved the cold two block journey to Barracuda for even more cocktails. As soon as we walked in, Terry informed me that Charlie was there, which was something of a relief. After a long meal of chit chat, it was nice to have someone else in the mix to talk to. Clayton and JD got cozy and Charlie became fascinated by Mike. “I love your roommate!” he gushed, ever the optimist, though he wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know. Meanwhile, Terry and I bounced around from person to person trying to keep all of the plates spinning properly, occasionally meeting up in the middle to strategize and relive the good old days.

At one point, while standing at the bar waiting to order more drinks, Mike and I gazed over at the hot bartender in the muscle shirt I have lusted after quietly since moving to NYC eight years ago. It made me a little sad. He is getting older. That means I am getting older too. You always notice your own age in other people before you see it in yourself, no matter how intense your daily wrinkle checks in the mirror may be. And it is always sadder. But as Terry and I stood in the noisy throng, discussing our friends and laughing at nothing, no time at all had passed for me. We were kids again, having fun at The Abbey, back when they still served just coffee and stale pie. I guess that is what keeps old friends together. No matter how old you are, they never get old for you.

Ritz Krieg

"You are so rude to people. How do you ever get boyfriends?" Charlie asks me as two Survivor fans who had been accosting him outside the coat check line at The Ritz wander away. I have trouble seeing the connection, knowing how much young gay men (and straight women) gravitate sexually toward those who ignore them. Charlie's eternal optimism, while very appealing, is not contagious to me, but it does set the old hamster wheel spinning in my head for the rest of the evening as we crush through the crowd at this Hell's Kitchen hotspot.

Earlier, I enjoyed two hours of hilarious racism at a showing of Gran Torino, the story of an old man coming to terms with a younger generation he doesn't understand , only later to find myself surrounded by a sea of unshaven men in skinny ties that I do not understand. Well, maybe that is putting too fine a point on it. Maybe I understand them all too well, in a lather, rinse, repeat sort of way. The beards and the tie/vest combos, a direct rebellion to the clean-shaven, casual Friday 90s, proliferate like the dirty hair and muted plaids of the early 90s that followed the Reagan red tie and shoulder pad suit severity of the 80s. And on it goes.

At JP and Duke's New Year's Eve party, Duke pointed across the way to the windows of a fashionable new apartment building. "Floor after floor of mid-century," Duke commented amid his own 1950s flourishes. When the gays find something they love, they don't so much run with it as sprint at a fevered pace until their hearts explode. I suppose we are all Mad Men in our own way. Later this month on the mall for the inaugural, I have no doubt my mind will wander back to the sea of jean shorts and white Don't Panic t-shirts that remain my sharpest memory of the 1993 March on Washington. It is nice to see that kind of optimism in activism again in our new Obama era, even if I can't transport that same emotion all night to The Ritz like Charlie, awash in the current generation's uniform of change.

After wandering around a bit downstairs with Matty and Joe, waiting for Ben Harvey to arrive, I finally settled in briefly on one of the couches with Charlie, whose snuggle up mode persisted from earlier at Joe's apartment. As we sat together with our arms around each other, Charlie waved across the room to a reasonably attractive man with the kind of severe overbite one only notices while sober or quizzically the next morning when you roll over in bed after a drunken night out on the town. "That's called the 'hi-sies'" Charlie says of his friendly wave. "That's how you meet people." The thought of a blow job from those chompers caused the blood to drain out of my face, and other places. I am all for meeting people, but I still think my more cautious nature is the way to go, especially if you are intoxicated.

However, meeting new people is a volume business. And in the end, Charlie is right, friendly works better than hostile. That was brought home later after Ben Harvey arrived with bandleader Zach. While standing with them Joe's friend Micah, who I only shook hands with earlier in Joe's apartment, made the big approach and tried to start a conversation with me. "You look so familiar," he offered, which I had also initially thought about him, though I chalked it up to his passing resemblance with the charming and upright Brian Ellner, who didn't like me so much anymore after our cab ride together where I refused to wear my seatbelt.

"Fire Island?" Micah asked causing the first in a series of responses that made the moment more and more awkward and less and less sexual. "Oh no. I don't believe in Fire Island. Not like it's a mythical place. I just think it's awful." To say that things went downhill from here is to understate the avalanche nature of the conversation. Micah was a perfectly nice investment banker ("Of course you are") who lives in Chelsea ("Naturally!") and was just trying to be kind and get to know someone. His first mistake was making that someone me.

In an effort to not portray myself as completely rotten, I think I had some nice moments with Chris and Josh, who I met at their Halloween party. Chris and I shared a few laughs at Rob Banning's holiday pretty boy bacchanal and last night at The Ritz, Josh and I had a moment making faces of mock embarrassment at two mid-century gays grinding so intensely on the dance floor I worried their crotches might become fire hazards. I even realized on the train home that Josh and I had met before his Halloween party on the R Family cruise to Canada in July where he was one of Rosie's Broadway Boys and I was the guy at the all-you-can-eat buffet every four hours. So I do have the capacity to make nice to people even with my appalling personality. Though I am fairly certain I kissed Joe's neck six times last night in front of the guy I am pretty sure he was on a date with, and then asked the guy to take our picture together. Eh. Nobody is perfect.

As I was making my good byes and heading for the door, I found Charlie who had left our group to pee, again surrounded by a small cluster of Survivor fans, being asked about Marcus and demanding photos, mere feet from the bathroom door. I rushed up like one of the gang. "I am a huge fan. Can I get a picture with you too?" Charlie laughed at my meanness, but as I tried to hand my camera to one of the real fans, the fan retorted, "We're not done with him yet!" I got that quick picture with him anyway and left him to be devoured by strangers. In moments like that, I relish my anonymity, my lack of politeness and my ability to go to the bathroom whenever I want.

Earlier, I had dinner at the Outback Steakhouse in Chelsea with Terry Goldman and his friend Romeo, in the back where the other gays were secretly eating in white trash heaven. We were talking about the choices gay men make, choosing the wrong men, or breaking up with good guys in favor of worse circumstances. "It reminds me of the old story," I told them, "about the cop walking down the sidewalk at night. He sees a man on his hands and knees under a lamppost looking around. 'Did you lose something?' the policeman asks. 'Yes. My keys.' says the man. So the policeman asks where he lost them and the man points further away to a darkened part of the sidewalk. 'If you lost the keys over there, then why are you looking here?' he asks the man, to which the man replies, 'The light is better over here.'" You can find all sorts of things where the light is bright and cheerful, just not necessarily what you are really looking for. In this circumstance, I prefer to be the cop, and just shake my head and keep walking.

The Conor Role

Though merely a bright Cheshire cat smile of a crescent, the moon was huge tonight, looming over me as I drove up the big hill to my house. It was Cosmo's moon from Moonstruck and suddenly I was reminded that love doesn't make things perfect. It ruins everything. It breaks your heart. I have been trying not to think about love much these days (largely to no avail), but it was contaminating everything tonight at Manhattan's yearly high school gay mono makeout party known locally as Revel.

Revel is an annual charity event to raise money to help gay youth, which is attended by all the hottest and sexiest twenty and thirty-somethings in town. It is all a very worthy cause and a noble idea, just covered in two scoops of vanilla ice cream, a gooey layer of chocolate fudge, a sprinkling of crushed walnuts and topped with whipped cream. Though it is one sundae of a party for which the cherry is a distant memory for those in attendance.

This is one of the few gay musts that I do, and a rare chance for me to hobnob with the homos that I otherwise shun (before they have the chance to shun me, natch). Aside from dropping by Bowery Bar's notorious outdoor patio on the first warm Spring Tuesday of the year and the last balmy Autumn one before winter's chill forces everyone who is anyone to landlock above 14th street until the thaw, Revel is about it when it comes to gay caucus meetings where my vote is annually cast.

I had wanted Hottie Zach and Ronnie to attend, to aid in their quest to get connected in the gay social scene for which Revel is practically a wall socket, but they weren't there tonight. My neighbor Clayton did join me, however, and it was nice to have someone to pal around with. I had fully expected to see Matty, but I suppose I can deduce from his Facebook Mobile uploads that he was watching Survivor tonight with Charlie and couldn't make it. It is likely for the best since my favorite of his exes was there: Conor McGill

Much has been written in my blog about Conor already and you can expect plenty more where that came from. He looked adorable in a tiny bowtie with skulls and crossbones on it (solidarity for Somali pirates?). Conor assured me that it took him hours to get the tie right, after learning to do it on YouTube, and I think it was time well spent. I love Conor and I know between Ben Harvey and Matty, I am woefully in the minority on this one. But once again, I was charmed by his puppy dog eyes, magnetic silver sneakers and a drink in each hand. What can I say? I know what I like and I know everything will stay perfect between us as long as I only see him every few months and things never go further than a polite kiss on the cheek.

Conor was there with his friend Michael, a securities lawyer who didn't like that I wasn't saying much nor that I only work about four hours every day since he works almost twenty. "Just think of it this way," I told him, in a classic flirtation on my part that shows why no one ever wants to date me, "anytime you aren't working, I am!" In between kissing other guys, he drunkenly cajoled me into asking him out on a date. He must be a very good lawyer since it was all over before I even knew what was happening, and he billed me for the whole hour even though it only took about five minutes.

Bobby was there with some co-workers and his insanely hot friend Chris from San Francisco. Chris' adorable argyle print shirt was so tight on his taut frame it looked like it had been ironed onto his perfect torso by angels. Chris was drunk and grabby, which is always hot, but then he was drunk and grabby with everyone (including separately Clayton), which makes it less personally satisfying. But he is insanely hot, so naturally I am willing to let untold amounts of untoward behavior slide.

Ryan Newman was there with his friend Mike, whom I have met a dozen times and am always greeted by with the same granite expression of persistent annoyance. Ryan looked cute with his new short hair cut, according to him a much needed return to form. I think he looks good either way, but he didn't stay long enough to talk about more than his hair. Ryan and Mike were encircled by a cadre of all the people I saw at that Halloween party and election night and countless other times, but who all stare right through me uncomfortably as if I am a peasant child begging with Chiclets in hand in the midst of their otherwise fabulous Mexican vacation.

It was all for the best. At a certain point, the Madonna mashups and the makeouts and the mos were starting to get to me. There is only so much "A" gay someone from the suburbs can take before dinner moves up into their esophagus. When the others headed to the official after party at Mr. Black's or each other's apartments for awkward groping and dark fumblings, Clayton and I grabbed our coats and headed out into the night, on our way back to the middle of obscurity.

The forecast is for snow tomorrow. I really hope it doesn't. But as I looked down at the temperature reading in the car on my way home, it said 26 degrees. Smells like snow. I looked back up at the moon and saw the old Cheshire cat smiling back down at me. Beaming really. Winter is here, he smiled. And you can get as big as you want by telling people "eat me" but you are still in Wonderland no matter how much you try to leave it.

Elevate!

Have I mentioned that Matty works in marketing? I should amend that. Matty is marketing. The living embodiment of presentation as commodity, promotion the coin of the realm. To say that I depend on Matt to connect me to gay life as we know it, I mean it like I depend on my lungs to breathe. And in the world of Matty's social largess, I am the fat welfare queen of Reagan's deepest recession-era nightmares.

As the club promoter of nothing less than the gay scene of Manhattan, clipboard guest list and critical judgment firmly in hand, I am his most pitiful charity case. I am a hopeless Eliza Doolittle in the fair hands of a very impatient Henry Higgins. Even as my public profile has risen, my game is hopelessly stalled in neutral. Even tonight when I assured him on my way out of Barracuda at the end of the evening that I would "step it up" he stamped me with his new idiom "Elevate!"

After the show, I joined Matty at Adam's apartment for an Obama victory party straight out of gay central casting. Adam and all of his subtly hunky friends were J. Crew catalog delicious (Gay Crew catalog, anyone?) and the elegant simplicity of his Chelsea apartment, courtesy the recent interior artistic stylings of Hanno, was the perfect background. It was the kind of cozy clean scene that convinces moderate Republican women that maybe the gays aren't so bad after all.

I always feel hopelessly out of place in environs like these, too thin in the arms, too thick around the middle and always too old. To assuage these and a million other feelings, I like to settle in with the friendliest person I can find or someone I already know. Charlie was there and the way he called out to me from across the spare living room, dotted with snappy gay couples locked together like freshly scrubbed Tetris pieces, said he was looking for the same thing. But maybe he just wanted another blog mention. Either way, mission accomplished. We watched Obama's stellar acceptance speech together while sharing the perfectly made cape cod that Matty had mixed for me in a red plastic party cup in Adam's airmail stamp of a kitchen.

The moment the speech ended was like 12:01am on New Year's Day and the place cleared out faster than the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. I found Matty in Adam's bedroom on the computer with party guest Gray, trying to use Facebook to find the phone number of a faint yet mutual acquaintance to no avail. All our futuristic technological endeavors should be like ideal children: well-behaved, passing through our lives almost unnoticed, and largely confined to the home where when things go wrong they can cause the least amount of trouble and anxiety in front of strangers. At a dead end for the next post-election party, everyone decided to decamp to the old reliable (Sarah) Barracuda for a cocktail.

There was high excitement as we headed down toward the bar and Matty suggested we cartwheel across Seventh Avenue. I was mortified at the thought of my hands touching the urine encrusted thoroughfare. "The street is filthy!" Matty turned to me and deadpanned, "Have you eaten an ass lately? I rest my case." I wasn't sure if the evening was blog-worthy until Matty released that pearl and sealed the deal. Then Gray insisted that I refer to him only as "Will" but since he never explained why, that isn't happening. Besides, Gray is a much better name, evocative, and it's why I instantly remembered him when we first met earlier because of his frequent appearance along with Matty in any number of Facebook photo galleries.

Once at Barracuda, Matty spied a hot young guy in a heather grey t-shirt walking behind me and then tried to shove my lumbering carcass into him. I shot him a dirty look. "You need to get laid!" he screamed at me, the word "laid" lingering in his open mouth for several seconds, which I assume was either to drown out the horrible singing contest in the backroom or to encourage lonely suitors in my vicinity to give me a second, yet scornful look. This started a brief exchange that ended with his immortal insistence that I "elevate!"

Matty is probably right. There is no point in my showing up in public if I am not even going to make an effort to publicize myself. There is no point in putting the goods on the shelf if your primary intention is to discourage the customers from buying. For a moment, I really thought he was on to something, but then that same hot young guy walked by and this time Matty shoved another friend of his into him. I turned to the friend who seemed as equally stunned as I had been and said, "I think Matty just wants us to sleep with the guys that he can't sleep with now that he is in a relationship."

He smiled, a broad knowing smile. "I think you are right."

Eh. In a way, I think we are both right.

Show People

An occupational hazard of my job: I know a lot of people from reality TV.

This is a complicated situation for me because I already have a lot of trouble distinguishing the difference between reality and fantasy as it is. Just today, a listener sent me the Derek doll, lead vocalist from the short-lived Barbie and the Rockers (circa 1985), and even some people at work had trouble believing it wasn't an elaborate trick. We look so much alike, and even share the same name. It begs the question: Am I, with my unchanging hairstyle and sparkling blue eyes, the living promise fulfilled of a hunk of Mattel plastic or am I in actual fact the basis for it?

In much the same way, Reality TV is the ultimate blurring of life imitating art imitating life, and sometimes I wonder if the people who appear on television even know what to do with the resulting by product. In some ways I assume it is like when someone tells you about a dream they had where you played a prominent role. Obviously they recognized you quite vividly in it, though you may feel the portrayal is entirely subjective and personally unfamiliar.

Tonight on the show, our guest host was Shaun McCarron from the Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency, a guilty pleasure of late-middle age histrionics blended smoothly with ample supple human flesh. I shamelessly admit that I am a fan, mostly for the flesh parts. Shaun and his equally well-constructed boyfriend Paul are underwear-clad favorites and two of the few openly gay models on the show. I met them both some months ago when they joined the show as guests and since then have struck up a friendly rapport. They have SIRIUS so I often get random text messages from Shaun about the content of the show while he drives to and from the gym. What I like about Shaun is that he is a smart guy (Master’s Degree!) with a relaxed, comfortable Southern demeanor who understands completely the time and place he exists in and uses it as fully to his advantage as possible. Also he looks amazing in his underwear.

Knowing that he would be in town and would want to go out, when another reality TV veteran (Clay from The Apprentice) wondered aloud how to spend his birthday weekend, I happily suggested New York City. Even though I will be busy painting my kitchen and dining room this weekend, I figured I was still hearty enough to juggle both social obligations with visiting hotties and reconstructing suburban domestic bliss at the same time. To help, I enlisted the ultimate Manhattan party figure: Matt. Our previous Friday and Saturday adventures had been successful enough, even though Gary lost his camera and I was sick for four days. Clay and Matt were already friends so I knew he would be on board for another exciting set of adventures.

The evening started earlier for Matt, who joined Charlie at his apartment for pre-cocktails before heading to Chris’ birthday party at Kelley and Peng down in the Bowery, while Shaun and I were still in Rockefeller Center wrapping up the last few minutes of the radio show. Shaun had just found out before we went on the air that fellow Modeling Agency alum J.P. Calderon was in town as well, headlining an Instinct Magazine party at SPLASH. I met J.P. at Gay Days in October and he might have been on the show once, but for the life of me I can’t remember a single word that has ever come out of his mouth. But since that party didn’t start until after 11pm, we endeavored to head to the Bowery first and then see how things went.

Chris’ birthday party had a nice mix of cute, laidback guys and adorable preppy guys, prompting me to send an enthusiastic text message to my roommate to encourage him to join us. Matt was already there with Charlie and Brian. Brian’s friend Warren, a tightly built South African who is an arched eyebrow taller than Matt, was also there, along with Matt’s friend Will who I have met several times before, yet always greets me with the same spreadable cream cheese expression of blissful and totally willful ignorance. We all had a drink and settled into polite cocktail chatter.

Matt was in a particularly sparky mood, greeting me with open arms and legs, and constantly poking me with excited jabs. He also displayed again his enthusiastic applause mixed with excited laughter, a signature move for him which Brian referred to as his persistent clap (then added, “and I don’t mean that recurring case of Chlamydia either”). After Matt playfully punched him a little too hard in the sternum, Brian’s own enjoyment levels plunged woefully and desperately out of kilter with his own. I reconnected a bit with Charlie who I hadn't seen since his last appearance in my blog in November. When I brought up my blog, which previously had so tickled him to be mentioned in, he waved it off with the haute faux maturity of a fourteen year old girl who insists quite calmly and matter-of-factly that she is now a woman, then asked where Ben Harvey (the reigning king of blog mentions) was. For the record, he is out of town.

Already a fairly low key guy, especially when compared to his vibrant peacock boyfriend Paul, Shaun had settled into a glum trance of text messages and cocktails off to the side of my friend hopping. I don’t think he was having a very good time, but it was hard for me to check in on him and chat up roommate and grasp bits of conversation with Brian and Matt just so I would have something to blog about later. I was jumping around from person to person as if they were all plates that needed to be kept spinning in mid-air at all times. Perhaps I was over my head trying to have it all.

We decided to decamp from the party, with Matt leading the march toward the basement of the Chelsea Hotel, the site of my last public humiliation some weeks ago. On our way out, I charged over to a familiar looking blond man with a scruffy face and no visible ass in his baggy slung jeans. “Haven’t we met sixteen times before?” I asked, to which he replied with hand outstretched, “Yes sixteen.”

Turns out his name is Henry and we met through Cyd Zeigler and the gay football league. Suddenly I remembered where I first saw him (though not where I last saw him): doing his best (worst?) chocolate covered Kimmie impression at a karaoke bar in Harlem. Quite possibly the worst singer I have ever seen belt it in public and yet the bar was filled with adoring admirers by the time he had brutalized his last note. He was there tonight with his friend Patrick, who looked like a younger, slighter version of Jeff in Boston, and another guy whose name I don’t recall because I maxed out the number of names I could remember for the evening. Just then, Will swept into the conversation and when Henry started to introduce us, the continued blankness of his stare made me think he had already, in just thirty minutes, forgotten again that we had already met. It was time to leave.

I grabbed my bag and searched for Shaun who had since disappeared while Matt and Brian went downstairs. Moments later, Mike and I went downstairs only to find Shaun was there, but Matt and Brian were nowhere to be found. Shaun told me that they had already left for the Chelsea so the three of us hopped into a cab. I spotted Charlie on our way out, so I assume he decided to stay at the birthday party, which in retrospect turned out to be the right choice. After the world’s slowest cab ride, we arrived at the Chelsea Hotel to find Matt already inside and a hefty line outside. Matt’s cell phone having died at Chris’ birthday party, there was no way to contact him.

Since it was already Midnight, Mike refused to stand in the line at the bar and opted instead to just make an early trip to the 1am train we had planned to take home anyway. Shaun and I braved the line for fifteen minutes as a series of people he knew wandered up to us in line. It turns out he knows more people in New York City than I do. With time running short and the line just getting longer, Shaun left with his friends to go to G, also in retrospect an excellent idea, while I stood alone in line at the Chelsea Hotel.

While waiting, Corey Johnson arrived with Andy Towle and for a moment, I thought I had been rescued from the line. Unfortunately, moments later, they were in line behind me. I don't know what was more surprising to me: that they couldn't get in either or that Corey had somehow coaxed the reclusive Andy out of his apartment. “Aren’t you someone?” I asked the former high school football captain.

“Not anymore.” He assured me.

“What about him?” I asked, gesturing to blogger Andy Towle, who reaches more gay men in America than Out or the Advocate. Corey just shook his head, then offered politely. “You’re someone.” But clearly that was a reality that only exists inside my own fantasy world.

After waiting forty-five minutes, I was finally ushered in. This left me only enough time to tell Matt that I had to leave to go home. I was furious. Of course I found him and Brian, dancing in place in front of my friend Corey Craig, the DJ for the evening. I immediately swatted Matt in the back of the head. I recapped my horrible experience in line and put all the blame on him for blithely leaving us at the other party. More importantly, after his phone died, he put me in charge of keeping tabs on Clay’s arrival (his plane was much delayed from Texas) then made no effort to stay close to me. At that point, Clay was on his way over but I was out of time to wait for him to pass him off to Matt.

“He is on his way now! Go upstairs and get him!” I yelled at Matt and then as payback for Brian’s sore sternum and my own irritation, punched him in the stomach. Matt looked hurt, but not from the sock in the gut. Matt and Brian both entreated me to stay, and then stay over for the night in the city. But that was an impossibility. I was trying to have it all, and in the process, was watching all of it unravel before my eyes in a fit of bad timing. If I left, I was a quitter in the party scene of fun, leaving three handsome men and who knows what else behind. If I stayed, I would just be proving myself and my roommate right that I can't stay focused to and finish anything that I say is really important to me. So I left, Matt and his hurt feelings, Clay who hadn't even arrived yet, sexy Brian and all his promise, and walked up the stairs to the sidewalk.

"That was the best minute and a half I ever spent in a bar." I yelled sarcastically to the appreciative door staff as I crossed the sidewalk to hail a cab. It was a short ride to Grand Central but it didn't take me long to realize I had made the right decision. In the choice between fantasy and reality, as tough as it is for me to face sometimes, I really do need to choose reality more often. It is just that time.

Party Delayed Is Party Denied

I hadn’t heard from D-A-N in a couple of weeks. We had lunch at elmo, which I thought I had never been to before, until I arrived and like most places in the world, I had been there many times (including Perez Hilton’s 2005 birthday party) but hadn’t remembered. Then two weeks later, he returned from flight training in New Hampshire and invited me to a party. You know me, always ready to meet strangers; though I am trying, after seven years of living in New York, to expand my friend base to a more reasonable size. Read: more than three. But then D-A-N got sick and we rescheduled for our usual hangout at Bowery Bar on Tuesday night.

I arrived at 10:45 but D-A-N was running even later than I was. “You are probably used to that from me by now,” he told me when I saw him later, and as a chronically late person myself I was full of forgiveness. Fortunately, I ran into Charlie, scoping the place for hotties with his lawyer friend Evan. Charlie was lamenting that it wasn’t very crowded (“It’s like a Thursday here.”) which I chalked up to the plunging temperatures. Bowery Bar is a fair weather friend. As the crowd began to thicken like so much turkey gravy, Charlie noticed unhappily that all of the guys outside were smoking. I tried to explain that they were outside because they could smoke and it was too cold outside for anyone who didn’t need to be out there to be out there. My logic did not satisfy him in the least and he dismissed my explanation with a stern yet youthfully unlined expression. I turned my attention to Evan who was my kind of guy (which means he laughed at all my jokes). Charlie would occasionally wend back into the conversation with a query when he heard Evan laughing, but as you know, nothing improves a joke like explaining it. Even then, Charlie greeted my stories with the displeasure of possibly missing his future ex-husband just to hear my uneducated musings on depraved indifference as debated on Law & Order.

Mike arrived from work and soon Evan and Charlie slipped into the crowd in hopes of finding some non-smokers to attend to briefly but vigorously. At that moment, I spied Ben Harvey’s co-host Dave Rubin as he walked in. He saw me too and slowly made his way through the cluster of gay men to join me under the searing heat lamp for a brief conversation. There is just something about that Dave that makes me want to do dirty, oh so dirty, things to him. Most guys, I see them and like Dennis Hensley has often said, I just want to roll a ball back and forth on a floor or splash along the shore with them in an Amy Grant video circa 1990. But something about Dave, the intensity of his gaze, the firm brow, his sexuality so casual in its roughness, that makes me want to tear his clothes off and toss around like pudding wrestlers. His cadence and square jaw are straight out of Dashiell Hammett, and who in their right mind wouldn’t want to fuck the shit out of that?

The literal grilling under the heat lamp was too much for Dave and he had to return to his friends. I finally spotted D-A-N so we made our finally farewells and I headed back into the more temperate warmth of Bowery Bar. D-A-N was there with his usual cadre of friends. I liked Pedro the best because, like Evan, he laughed at my jokes. D-A-N was wearing a tight t-shirt as usual and cut his hair a bit shorter, although his dashing superman swirl is still intact. Hanging out with him in public is so difficult because he is always surrounded by a devoted fan base. He seems to be the homecoming king of Bowery Bar so it is hard not to feel like you are on the receiving line. Of course it was even worse for Mike, who ran quickly from the melee of muscles to find a nearby perch. So being a good friend, which I generally am not, I left D-A-N to his autograph signing and hung out with Mike.

We talked about the crowd and Mike related an overheard conversation from a balding 25 year old who had insisted to his friend that the guy cruising him was too old for him. “He thinks you are his age, that’s why!” I blurted out, Karen Walker spilling from me after only one rum and coke. I also spent a great deal of the evening making snide comments about all of the tweed caps that seem to be in fashion these days. Some of the highlights included: “Somebody loves Newsies!” and “Hey boy. Perchance have you the Saturday Evening Post?”

D-A-N wondered why I had wandered away so I told him I was trying to be a good friend to Mike. That caused him to decamp from his dark corner and drag his hot guy posse out into our neck of the woods. He tried to engage Mike in conversation but Mike was in Buckingham Palace guard mode and D-A-N was instantly thwarted. Really all D-A-N wanted to do was fucking dance, but Bowery Bar tossed a new set of banquets into the center of the room making unlawful gyrations even more difficult than usual. He tried to get me a drink but once again the evening was cut short by that pesky drunk train home. I love my new house upstate but what a kill joy it is to have to go home at 1am, even if it is a school night.

Whatever. D-A-N had plenty of men to keep him warm and I am sure if he started to dance hard enough, the crowd would make the space for him. No one likes to be the one to stand in the way of a hot guy having a good time. And speaking of hot guys, Conor was there too. He had friends with him as well (I only remember the names Michael and Eric because every gay is named Michael or Eric). But my time with him was oh so brief. Stationed close to the bar so his hand was never empty for long, I only saw him in passing on my way to the bar for a refill and off to the bathroom to complete the cycle. He is off to Boston for Thanksgiving tomorrow, and soon D-A-N is off to Boston to fly away for good. But in the meantime, we can pass like drunken ships in the night around the iceberg known as Bowery Bar. It is already too late in the season for that outdoor venue, so it is probably for the best that we are all packing it in for the time being. But why not one last drink?

Jeopardy Hot

Sporty Spice (Cyd) and Dental Dan (Dan) had their annual autumn party tonight and I never miss it. Cyd and Dan are a dream couple, the kind of storybook relationship tailor-made for TV news profiles and conniving bitches hell bent on home-wrecking. After all, the only thing the gays love more than a hot man is someone else’s hot man. With Cyd and Dan, you get two for the price of one. Anyone wishing to break them up (pay attention Charlie) would be barking up the wrong tree, as they are as right for each other as any two people I have ever met. Plus, they are the perfect party hosts.

When I ran into Mark Levine at Therapy last month, my first instinct was to drag him to Cyd and Dan’s annual event. They know virtually every attractive thirty-something guy in Manhattan, and a new man on the scene is bound to find lifelong friendships and at least a few exes at the Autumn Party. I also endeavored to bring Ben Harvey because he had wanted to meet Mark after the tireless cheerleading I have done on his behalf, as well as Cyd and Dan, who he encountered briefly at my housewarming lounging in matching sweatshirts on Adirondack chairs in the back yard while basking in the afterglow of cheese-filled hot dogs.

Ben, Mark and I met up on a familiar corner in the heart of Chelsea before dashing through the forty degree weather. Despite my legendary reputation for shorts and t-shirts under all circumstances in Los Angeles, I don’t fuck around with the cold in New York. I arrived bundled up in my snow parka, looking like an arctic explorer. Ben looked adorable as always and deceptively dressed in light layers over thermals. Mark, still getting used to winter again, just threw on layer after layer until he seemed sufficiently protected from the elements. Once at the party Mark started stripping like Gypsy Rose Lee, which only served to endear him to everyone. By the time he left, he was down to just a clingy t-shirt and jeans.

As usual, their elegantly appointed apartment was packed wall-to-wall with sexy gay men. In the spirit of diversity, a sprinkling of women decorated the otherwise masculine turn out. Cyd and Dan had tirelessly decorated with genuinely adorable fall decorations, virtually invisible to the increasingly intoxicated homos struggling to make eye contact and work up the courage to talk to guys they had seen in the same apartment time and again, party after party. One of those men, Sebastian, cornered me in the kitchen to ask if I was the one who had left the clever response to the eVite in which I said I would be hanging out with Dan in the VIP Room (which in this case was the bedroom, for the Super Bowl party it’s the kitchen). Generally their parties are so crowded; I tend to gravitate to the least crowded location, which is often where I find Dan.

It was all going well until Cory walked in and turned out to be the most pleasant surprise of the night. I last saw Cory at the closing ceremonies for the AIDS Ride, where I was cheering on Chip Arndt. I have written before about his eyebrows and his granite forehead, but it has been so hard for me to fully describe him. I think his face most reminds me of that of the Statue of Liberty, the only national icon I share a birthday with (sorry Julia Roberts). I have always felt a certain kinship with the lady in the harbor and I guess it spills over to Cory. His Masters Degree in Public Policy from Harvard is just the icing on the intellectual cake.

We talked about life and politics (he is just about to move to DC to take a new job) and it was a total delight. By quite some measure the longest conversation we have ever had and it was as rich as I thought it might be. When talk turned to Jeopardy, he too had noticed Alex Trebek’s flirtation with one of the college contestants. I then introduced him to the concept of being “Jeopardy Hot” which is a man who is hot entirely in the context of being on Jeopardy. Outside the nerdy confines of the popular game show, he would just be of normal attractiveness. But when you watch geek after nerd doling out the questions, a Jeopardy Hot guy is a welcome sight. Mike and I use the subtle distinction of Hot and Jeopardy Hot in conversation all the time, as it comes in handy constantly.

After three parties in a row as the last one left in Cyd and Dan’s apartment, I was adamant about not making it four. The party thinned out like hair in a Propecia ad and I hastily rounded up Cory, his friend Jeff, and Ben to continue our fun around the corner at Barracuda. Mark had already gone home, as had 95% of the partygoers, so I knew I had to strike while the iron was hot. Moments later, we were again packed like sardines in a sea of gay men, trying to get a drink at the bar. In between half listening to the hot 80s hits playing in the background (Major Tom, Neverending Story, Hazy Shade Of Winter), Cory and I continued our in-depth conversation about my favorite subject I never get to subject my radio audience to: politics.

Since Cory is from Iowa, I grilled him about the current political climate there. I am always curious about first-hand accounts and Cory was ambivalent about the candidates, a state of mind he also attributed to the rest of the state. I have been riveted to the debates and the tightness of the race, especially among the democrats. Unfortunately, Cory wasn’t able to resolve it for me before he ran home for the night. As usual, it was my cue to leave as well. The damned drunk train was calling again, as it always is. I left Ben in the capable hands of his cousin, who had met us all out at Barracuda, and dashed off into a cab to Grand Central. Two nights in a row of going out has taken its toll on me, and I can’t wait to climb into bed. It’s the weekend and a chilly one at that. I look forward to a party of one, relaxing in my living room, far from the roaring seas of gay men, the political fray of Washington and most importantly, the leering glances of Alex Trebek, where the only Hot I need to worry about is the heat from the crackling fire in the fireplace.

Starry, Starry Night

I didn’t want to go to Bowery Bar tonight, but when the stars align, there is little you can do to stem the gravitational pull. Perhaps it was the weird lunar eclipse. Maybe I shouldn’t look up to the sky for simple answers here on earth.

D-A-N sent me a text message tonight during the show. “Hey. Going to Beige tonight?” No in fact, I planned a rather boring night of heading home and going to bed at a reasonable hour and waking up insanely early (read: 9:00am) to have breakfast with my Dad, who is visiting from Utah. I am already living my life a day late after my car unexpectedly broke down in Virginia on Sunday and I didn’t get home until a full 24 hours after I had expected to be there. Now I feel like I am stuck in an alternate universe where Monday is really Tuesday and nothing I had wanted to get done is actually done. So I decided to leave my bar going decision up to fate and asked guest host Wade Williams “Are we going to Bowery Bar tonight?”

“Yes! How did you know?”

So after the show ended, Wade and I decamped to his hotel to drop off his bag and gaze at the lobby swimming pool with the swim up bar. All straight people frolicking in the water but at least the one guy was reasonably attractive in his bathing suit. You really can’t ask for more in life. From the hotel, we journeyed down to B-Bar with the chattiest cab driver this side of Taxi Cab Confessions. He lives up near Columbia (111th and Broadway) while his girlfriend lives next to B-Bar (Bowery and 4th). Apparently, he was fresh out of the Army where he spent the last 20 years creating tactical scenarios for the NSA. Good thing our nation doesn’t depend on his discretion any longer since he leaks like a colander.

Turns out D-A-N was at Pieces for karaoke with his friends, so Wade and I settled at a table with drinks in hand. So much for that rendezvous. In the meantime, Ari Gold was at the next table, ready to gently chide me about our “diva” dust-up on the air two weeks ago. “See. I am not so diva-like that I wouldn’t come over to say hello,” he purred, although it was I who walked over to him. Charlie wandered in, still carrying that same old book. Charlie is a recent law school grad who is enjoying reading for pleasure again, although he is making extremely slow work of his current tome. I tried to impress him with my dim theory about the connection between gay marriage and kosher food but he was more interested in my church-state discussion about Christmas trees at City Halls. And here I thought I could just be boring at home.

Ben Harvey finally arrived just in time for Charlie to beat a hasty exit. “I am just not feeling it tonight” he had told me as he collapsed into the wrought iron patio chair less than thirty minutes earlier. True to his word, Travels With Charlie closed another chapter, even before Ben could wend his way through the tightly packed crowd.

Ben was as cute as ever, with his Harvard friend Ryan in tow. Ever since David Bianco tortured me during my one year syndication deal, I am wary of gays with Ivy League educations. Then again, David is straight now, last I heard, although I suspect no less annoying to those of us who use the English language like a fly swatter. Ryan seemed nice, but as usual, I was more interested in Ben than in his friends. Ben caught the eye of a cutie in a red polo shirt, and I even forcefully prodded him to make the first move. Although I don’t think anything came of it. I’ll have to ask him next time I see him what happened. Maybe it will make it into his personal blog or his work blog.

Just as I was ready to leave, everything kicked into high gear. After no word from D-A-N in two hours, I sent him a “heading home” text message that revealed a quick response that he was, in fact, now at the bar. Much searching found gay nightlife fixture Corey Johnson casually orbiting one sexy hunk after another, although D-A-N was more difficult to spot. To be fair, I had only seen him that one time before and despite perfect vision, gay bars are too filled with music, lights and pretty for me to effectively search for anything or anyone amidst the sensory overload. Finally found him on the dance floor with a cluster of friends. Still cute, with a winning smile, Clark Kent hair and solid arms. Polite chat about karaoke (he sang a song from Les Miserables) and houseguests staying too long (four day weekend fine, anything longer too long), but nothing worth sacrificing sleep or writing a blog entry over. Moments later, he was gone.

The real excitement came after he left when Wade introduced me to not-out actor on hit TV show recently signed to star in hit movie franchise sequel. I wonder if Michael Musto, who was there, saw him too? I tried to play it cool by not mentioning his TV show and then later realized that I should have mentioned that we had the creator of his show on our radio show. Wade insisted he would want to be a guest on our show, but I wouldn’t hold my openly gay breath on that one.

Then Ben Harvey was found standing with Peter Stickles and Michael Carbanaro. Michael is too adorable for words and like all magicians; he knows keenly where his hands are at all times. Unfortunately, I will have to experience his particular brand of magic on another day. As always, the drunk train beckons and I can’t miss my last ride home for the night. Next time it will be one-on-one with Ben. Just the two of us in the quiet corner of a bar with no Charlie to observe or simple names of hunky accountants to spell. I caught Michael’s eye and waved a final good bye as Wade and I headed for a taxi. The driver was quiet this time, which was just what the doctor ordered after such a busy environment. No national security secrets to divulge. Just a seamless ride up third avenue in the middle of the night. Perfect.

See. Sometimes the stars do line up.

I Love Ben Harvey

It was a typical night at Bowery Bar, and since my entry is really about four very different gay men, I almost feel like I should do four different interlocking entries that you can move back and forth between. Like a choose your own adventure book. I really should use the three-dimensional space of the internet to this advantage, but it's almost 4am, and the plumber is coming at around 10am (why do these people believe in mornings????) and I have something in my eye and it's really starting to bother me. But I need to get this blog done, so I will try to just blink a lot and think of National Velvet and try to cry it out.

It all starts with DJ Ben Harvey. As I mentioned before, he can't just be Ben because there is only one "just Ben" in my life and even though he is the just ben in the lives of about 75,000 other gay men, I have known him longer and better so they can all stick it. My friendship with Ben Harvey was getting a bit tattered around the edges since our nascent acquaintance was really built around Rosie O'Donnell's incendiary point of View. I didn't realize HOW MUCH it depended on Rosie until she left the show and took our frequent email banter with her. So in an effort to kickstart things, we agreed to a night out on the town at Bowery Bar.

I tried to drag some other friends along too. Sent text messages to Mike my roommate (no response) and Matty Kelleher, who asked who was going. I guess I am not as much of a draw as I used to be. Apparently now our friendship needs to come with a solid supporting cast of known players and possibly a gift certificate. Tried to drag Erik Rhodes and his boyfriend out, but the boyfriend was too tired. Given that he is almost half my age, it makes me wonder what is up with these kids today! They all need a little what for!

So I get to Bowery Bar and then I stand in line, like always. No one in NYC listens to my radio show (except Ben Harvey) and so I am not what I would call a local celebrity. News anchors are local celebrities. Britney Spears is genuinely famous. I am just a person who can't dress himself who works in midtown Manhattan. So I wait in line. When I get inside, Ben Harvey is standing there with three people. Charlie is the only one I know. The other two say their names but being deaf from working in radio and also being bad with remembering names, they are lost to the ether before they even open their mouths. It would be exceedingly rude but I almost feel like waving them a "don't bother" gesture when they start to tell me their names because there is just no point to it anyway.

Charlie looks cute as always. Thin. I think he was a wearing a sweater even though its August. He was definitely carrying a book, the title of which was eerily identical to the names of his friends. Apparently, Charlie has a long commute so he needs the book and it is quite the conversation starter if you think "what are you reading" is a conversation starter. I suggested he start carrying "Travels With Charlie" which would both start a conversation and make remembering his name a world easier. Like the ten other people who read my blog, Charlie was disappointed that it wasn't more frequent than a semi-annually white sale. Which reminds me: is celebrating Lincoln's birthday with a white sale considered reparations or something? I find it exceedingly tacky either way. Charlie's favorite thing about my blog (aside from my writing about him) is that I link to random Friendster profiles, including his, to prove my point.

Off we go to the bar for our first drink. Charlie acknowledges the hot bartender in the Boston band tour t-shirt. "Straight but he has gay cheek bones" says Charlie before he is almost immediately besieged by Kyle (attractive in an exclusively gay way), Chris (attractive in any context) and Brand X friend whose name was both unheard and unimportant. Chris tried to pull up a chair and then got flummoxed that no one else seemed to be sitting. He probably did legs at the gym today not realizing that all anyone does in a bar is stand. He should save his leg routine for a night when he isn't going out drinking. You do arms on a drinking night so you have a nice party pump to fill out your t-shirt. Ah but he is young and still learning. He did notice how cute Charlie was but his friend Kyle seemed to be working Charlie pretty hard, like Martha Stewart kneading dough after a rough day at the office, so he kept a respectable, yet longing distance. As quickly as they appeared, they decamped and beat a hasty retreat to the interior of the bar never to be seen again. Maybe Kyle remembered that he has a boyfriend at home, or perhaps Chris' jack-in-the-box routine was getting to him.

Now the story moves into Wizard of Oz territory with me cast as Dorothy. So I pick up two men along the way and as the journey continues, we collect another. Conor, who I wrote about the last time I was at Beige, is also there again. I think my impression of his last time was all wrong, but I think it's because Matty Kelleher (his boyfriend at the time) was there. Where I saw him in the past as "calm and patient and lovely," this time I experienced him outside the looming shadow of Matty and me likey! Me likey very much! The whole time he reminded me of my friend Paul in LA which made me happy and sad at the same time. Like when a cab takes me past Caroline's old apartment on West End Avenue and I smile because I remember all the great times there and then cry because she's gone and I can't just pick up the phone and hear her grande dame 1930s movie accent blaring "Ooooooooo Hellllllooooooo darling!" with a volume equal to her deafness.

I forgot to mention how thin Conor looked too. That's very important. Because at one point we were plunged into a controversy about being called "thin" instead of "buff" as if being called either one was a bad thing, but Ben Harvey had a definite preference for being "buff" instead of "thin." I am soooooo rarely called either one that I am fairly certain that any similar compliment would either win me over or earn my deepest suspicions.

Conor mentioned that he was going through a man drought, which was somewhat the opposite of Charlie's previous man strike. And just as he said that... a cute guy walked by and looked Conor up and down. "He thinks you are cute." I said pointing at the stranger which prompted him to come over and introduce himself. Dan. D-A-N. And his friend Tony. T-O-N-Y. He had a third friend with him but since the name wasn't spelled out for me, he also didn't get heard or remembered. Or maybe it's just me, and I can only remember as many as two names at a time. And to think I was so good at Simon as a kid.

Dan at first thought he had run into Conor on Fire Island over the weekend. Conor assured him that was both unlikely and impossible. Conor and Dan made an attempt at small talk but the two of them had all the chemistry of asbestos and a set of lungs. But he did seem to have an eye for Ben Harvey, who was also in something of a man drought I guess, so I keep talking to D-A-N in the hopes that perhaps my feverish matchmaking skills might coalesce for him and B-E-N. No such luck.

The rest of the evening flew by rapidly. Conor turned out to be a fantastic banter partner. And I always love talking to Ben Harvey. In the process of trying to make magic happen between the two three letter men, I learned that D-A-N was an accountant with Deloitte, liked diet coke but was willing to drink red wine when his friends bought it for him, enjoys big logo Polo shirts, pedicures and facials, spent six years in japan, is independent and financially secure, had friends visiting from the UK and worked a summer as a waiter out on Fire Island. He learned that my name was Derek (which I had to repeat for him later when he forgot it) and that I worked at Sirius. So basically I am a total stranger to him still, even after two hours of conversation.

Finally, it was time for me to leave. The final drunk train home leaves with or without you on it. I made my good byes and headed off to Grand Central station. On the train I ended up in the queer section with the lone homo (there are NEVER homos on the train) who got off early and the tranny reading "A Passage To India" with her party make-up making it's emotionally exhausted journey down her face with the glitter above her eyes being the most suicidal, leaping like lemmings onto her nose and cheeks.

Is there a moral to my story? Probably not. I think any compliment is a compliment, even if it isn't the one you expect. Also, matchmaking is a waste of time. You can't make everyone happy all the time, and you can't pair people up like so many salt and pepper shakers. It just annoys them eventually. Oh and if you are a famous American Idol singer who likes to pretend you are straight, don't have a secret profile on connexion.org. That's not the moral of this blog, but it's good advice for anyone, Zac Efron.