The Americanization of Richard

By this point, The Park is like an old friend. I haven’t seen it in a while, but coming back was like I never left. It was the place, downstairs by the fire, that Romaine and I first met a decade ago and talked for hours, assured by the end that we could do a radio show together. Years later, near the front bar, I had spotted Erik Rhodes, sheepish after he had been discovered, no doubt feeling guilty after blowing off the show. The subterranean coat check is where I first spotted Daniel, the hot Brit who would make frequent appearances in my writing but to whom I have still never spoken. And upstairs months later, it was Conor McGill who finally helped solve the mystery of his identity, throwing everyone else under the old age bus for not knowing it themselves.

This afternoon it was a different Brit who was the subject of conversation and center of attention. Fresh meat has a tendency to do that, especially when the beef is firm and tender and the winter nights long and lonely. Parked at The Park, sealing in my own juices under the intense heat lamp that Brian Babst called home, I quietly roasted in a wool sweater cleverly disguising long underwear below. Not that anyone there would ever know the difference. I take winter very seriously, but not much else.

In this particular moment, Brian was elsewhere and I was explaining to his friend Omar Torres about my blog and how I write about my nights out on the town and the not-so-ordinary people I meet there. "My fifteen seconds of fame!" he declared excitedly, and that is how long it will be because the subject of tonight's essay is not Omar, or Brian, or any of the other ghosts of bars past. It is Richard, newly delivered to New York City from London.

Omar and Brian enjoy their fifteen seconds of fame while it lasts.

"What a terrible idea!" I told Richard when I heard of his recent arrival. He smiled a winsome grin. "No one has said that to me yet." I didn't mean the city. I meant the weather. January is the worst month in New York, if you don’t count August and about six or seven others. "I wanted to move here now," he explained, "So I had time to get settled and by the time summer rolls around, I’ll be ready." He is a smart cookie, that Richard. Also he has big arms and a good job, so I predict smooth sailing, even now that he is firmly planted on dry land.

Without prompting or request, I gave Richard some of my most valuable advice for living in the city. It started with a story from when I first arrived in 2001. Also known as the year he turned twelve. Oh? Did I not mention that he was born in the 80s? "In November 1989. Slipped in under the wire!" Being exactly twenty years older than he was, I felt it was my obligation, in a strictly paternal way, to tell him everything I knew about the city.

I told about losing my good leather coat on the divine Robbie Hammond's bed at a fabulous party he threw. My coat was exchanged for an inferior leather coat someone else had brought and given how ill-fitting the leftover one was, I don't think it was an honest mistake. I frantically tore Robbie’s bedroom apart for a coat I knew in my heart was gone, a coat that wasn't even mine in the first place, and haven't been invited back since. My bad manners aside, Brian confirmed my advice to always have a couple of cute but cheap coats you won’t mind losing along the way.

"Don't lose your accent" was another sage piece of advice I gave him. "You'll see all sorts of people on TV who came here decades ago and they never lose that accent. It is the secret to their success. And Americans worship class. We think anyone with a British accent is classy. Don’t lose it." Richard insisted he had no plans to lose it but is worried about it slipping on its own as fags became cigarettes and queues turned into lines. "My grandmother doesn't want me to sound like an American." Unfortunately, as I learned from my incomprehensible Scottish friend Jim Hepburn whose mother chided him for talking like an American newscaster, back home they only hear what is gone and we only hear whatever is left.

I have a lot of nerve giving advice. This is the first gay social event I have been to in the city in months. No wonder I persist with perfection as Roy Cohn's definition of a homosexual from Angels In America: Someone who knows no one and who no one knows. I was a host for the event today but my name was misspelled, where you could find it. Ben Roussel, in a crazy fabulous fur hat, his shirt tight like Saran Wrap, fruitlessly toured the bar, never able to accurately determine which VIP table was mine. This culminated in an awkward encounter at table seven where I insisted Brian and Richard could get a drink only to be rebuffed by some queens who had no business being there either.

Aside from the event organizer (the ever handsome and tall Zachary Barnett) and the assorted characters I have mentioned (as well as Ben Dixon and another Ben that I do not know but have seen so many times, I almost feel like we were roommates once), the only other person I knew at the event was someone I met once several years ago at Brian Gianelli's going away party.

"That's Ryan Hahn," I said, gesturing in his direction. "I only met him once but we are friends on Facebook." Knowing my reluctance to digitally befriend anyone, this is me really saying something. But Brian was not impressed. "Are you pointing? In a bar?" His line delivery would have made the Dowager Countess proud as he slipped away from me, drenched in shame. As I told Richard when we met, I am a social dead end. He is wise to stick with Brian Babst who today proved once again to be someone who knows everyone and who everyone knows and who knows not to point at people in public. 

Some man tries to welcome Richard while Ben, never my roommate, looks on warily.

I hope Richard enjoys being in America and more importantly, being in New York. Today Ryan reminded me of the advice I gave to him the first time I met him. "Live in LA in your 20's when you are young and cute and can live well on not much money, but move to New York in your 30's where you can be interesting and afford to live there like a human being." But Richard is starting with New York and I suspect will skip LA altogether, his IKEA shopping spree aside. His quick success will enable him to be young and cute and interesting and afford to live here like a human being all at the same time. 

And that, my friends, is a design for living worth following. 

Holidays and Nights

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All The News That's Fit To Prince

“It’s 1999 all over again!”

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

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

"Disturbing, But Possible."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So Strange, Yet Familiar

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A Tale Of Two Sissies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blogged And Tagged

This Sunday marks the finale of another season of my beloved Amazing Race. Even now as I blog from a taxi speeding across a deserted Manhattan in the predawn hours on my way to JFK, I can imagine that I am on the race. As it was, my night out on the town was in its own way a series of challenges, each task completed with the same level of happy satisfaction one would imagine I would employ on CBS primetime. The final challenge being a simple choice: Blogged or Tagged. In this Detour, contestants choose between blogging their adventure out on the town or taking a series of photos to be uploaded and tagged on Facebook. As expected, I chose blogging while Matty’s team went for tagging.

It all started innocently enough at Vlada with Original Jonathan. Initially we were going to have a drink and a snack at Vynl, but that hot slab of a bartender Aaron wasn’t working so we switched to old reliable Vlada around the corner. Jonathan is at something of a crossroads in his life and career in Manhattan and we were long overdue for some one-on-one time to discuss it. In the meantime, some guy named Mark recognized me from who can even say how many years ago. I am sure he knew me because he said, “I thought it was you but then wasn’t sure because you weren’t in shorts.” I was correctly identified but Jonathan was not so lucky, planting a cheek kiss on a guy named Chance, who as it turns out, was not his former co-worker Spencer.

Our drink and discussion at an end, we headed for the coat check, to retrieve our jackets and our next clue. It was there that I ran into Joe, who was just on his way in, but upon seeing me, realized it was already time to leave… with me! Jonathan went back to his apartment and Joe and I hopped into a cab to head down to the Village for a small party at Chris’ apartment, the scene of my notorious Halloween blog entry. Matty would be waiting there for us with his charming Austrian boyfriend Hanno. This time instead of hot shirtless men, the party was jammed with cleavage-heaving young women… and adorable Ryan Newman.

Ryan was there with his new boyfriend who, like me, is from Westchester. Although I own. They must be very happy together because the moment I arrived, Ryan flew into his arms like a long separated lover and was never more than a fingertip away the rest of the evening. Matty, ever the publicist, bragged on Ryan’s Britney Spears dance moves and prodded me to encourage an encore. However, the new boyfriend, in full Footloose-era John Lithgow fashion had banned the dancing. This only encouraged my worst instincts and I relentlessly goaded Ryan to dance, in or out of his underwear, at the soonest possible moment.

Despite my warm small talk about the cookies he had made, the new boyfriend was unbowed in his banned stance. However, before we made our hasty retreat to the Maritime Hotel for our next challenge, I am quite certain that I spied Ryan busting a move or two in the corner. Perhaps he was ginned up by the excessively controlled Vanity Fair cover photo posing that I deftly avoided by ducking under a plate of half eaten chocolate cupcakes, though Matty happily flung himself in despite his less-desirable placement on the third fold next to the perfume ad.

I had thought we would end up at Corey Craig’s CD release party further across town at the Chelsea Hotel, but instead we landed at the new hot gay party in the winterized cabanas off the upper patio of the lovely Maritime Hotel. A birthday party was being thrown for a woman named Zoe, who by all accounts is the woman of the moment in the gay community. The party was a weird mix of young gays in purposefully hetero gear (a self-ripped sleeveless t-shirt… really?), even younger gays in collar and tie and 90s leftovers who don’t realize they are in their 30s now and wearing ANF days after the company posted a steep double digit decline in sales on Black Friday (the final nail in their pop culture coffin) while still clinging to an ecstasy fueled Palladium fantasy that even for them is but a dim memory. For everyone else at the party, that look evokes an era near the end of the last century best described as “middle school.”

Also there seemed to be a lot of vests out tonight. I know I am not exactly the cutting edge of fashion. Earlier while comparing Polo shirts at Chris’ party, a co-worker of Matty’s gave my Ralph Lauren shirt a quizzical look and then smiled a smooth knowing smile. “Ah. Factory. No wonder I didn’t recognize it.” That being said, these boys in their vests just looked like out of work valets. I had to resist the urge to hand them my car keys. I guess it is all part of this ADD generation. Everything is so sped up, they don’t even have time for sleeves! Even the DJ got into the act and spun 28 seconds of all my favorite songs. It was like walking through a low rent carnival game row that didn’t want to pay music royalties. It made me long for the days of exhaustive ten to fifteen minute dance mixes that seemed all too short while dancing under the watchful spin of Junior. I am sure the thirty-something in the Abercrombie tee sipping on a cosmo thought the exact same thing.

Conor was there in a gently worn hoodie that undoubtedly had been tirelessly and expensively distressed to appear so casually at ends on a chilly winter night. He and Matty spotted each other and sparred at a distance though it didn’t have any of the venom I expected. Whatever intense animus there once was between them has apparently since been replaced by the kind of playful sniping that usually ended with Krystal and Alexis plunging into a fountain during sweeps. The ever winning smile of Brian Babst was on hand as well, ready the second he spotted me with lines from last night’s 30 Rock, all perfectly memorized. “I watch each episode twice,” he confided. “Once the night of when I am drunk and again in the morning when I am sober.” It was a tactic that clearly was paying off.

The evening ended as suddenly as it began. Joe was fondling his coat check ticket while lamenting all the photos Matty was taking, and when I returned from the bathroom, he was gone. In a flash, Zoe, the birthday lady in red, was gone from her own party too and it was like the air was let out of the balloon. In the end, some friend of Matty tried to coax us to join them at 3am at Brandon Voss' apartment, but we just stood in stunned horror as they (Conor included) swirled out of the nightclub into the street like the dancers from Fame, screeching and mobbing taxis in a mad clamour to reach the next destination. Matty, Hanno and I slipped away quietly uptown toward Chelsea, where I left them happily on the corner on their way home. For them the adventure was coming to an end, but for me it was just beginning. An hour later, bag in hand, I was in that cab on my way to the airport. For me, the race continues.

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.

Carpet Bomb

A shag carpet is made up of thousands of fibers, interwoven to create a lush, full experience. Over time, it can fade, unravel and pill. Eventually, it just becomes so worn out; it becomes necessary to replace it with something else. Shag is a bar in the West Village, or I should say was, since it closed last night. Matty sent me a text message asking me if I was going and initially I said no, but at the last minute, changed my mind and decided to watch a bunch of gays roll up the old carpet and toss it to the curb.

The bar was more packed than I had ever seen it. Nothing like the very last last call to really bring out a crowd. The gays were six deep on the sidewalk, practically spilling into the gutter, yellow plastic cups firmly in hand. Inside, it was wall-to-wall and sweltering. “Why pay for air conditioning?” one of the patrons observed wryly, a tall radiating fan in the corner doing what it could to blow the heat out the door. Matty was there of course, exuberant in his greeting, and introducing me to Johnny as “the guy in New York you need to know.” That is really who Matty is since I don’t know anyone or anything about the gay world I live in.

Naturally, Conor was also there, melting in the heat but maintaining his cool in a crisp button down. I spied him across the bar while talking to Matty and once Matty swirled away into another cluster of fit and dismissive gays, I made my way through the throng to say hi. I have written before of Conor’s intense border collie stare, though I never mentioned how oddly calming it is on me. I feel so relaxed around him that I am fairly certain I could fall into a gentle nap on his shoulder, even in the midst of a gay melee at Shag.

He introduced me to his roommate Mary, who was a fun bundle of energy, although it may have been the alcohol fueling her along. It was easy to remember Mary (and Johnny) since I just read an article about the most popular baby names and apparently John and Mary were the reigning champs from 1880 until well into the 1950s, where Mary has since fallen off the radar and John has slipped down near the middle of the top ten. Someone introduced me to a guy named Eric and made a big “Eric, Derek, Eric, Derek. Separated by just one letter.” Cute though basically inaccurate. Those are the only names I could remember.

I really didn’t want to stay long. I just wanted to give my last good byes to a bar I had only attended a few times. A spiral bound notebook floated by for people to write their final messages in. I wrote “Dear Shag, I hardly knew you! I only ever came here with MattyK and now that you are closing I will probably never see him again.” I closed with my movie star signature, which doesn’t always come out right, but this time, it was flawless. On the screen over the bar, stills from the past played. Conor remarked that they were filled with old photos of him kissing Matty (remnants of a past heat now turned socially chilly), which inspired one of his friends to take a picture of us kissing. It turned out to be a very funny photo of us lunging at each other with open mouths like we are both trying to eat the other one. Hardly romantic.

I said good bye to Conor and then looked for Matty. I saw him run into the back a while earlier and apparently he never emerged. I sent him some text messages while I waited by the door but he never responded. While waiting, a guy walked up to me and asked how my radio show was. I was so surprised, since no one in the city knows who I am or what I do for a living. My blank expression made him smile. “I used to be the manager of XL” he told me, referring to another defunct Manhattan bar where Romaine and I played Faggot Feud once with Amanda Lepore and Richie Rich. “I live in Tennessee now.” I suppose that was to explain why I haven’t seen him, but given how infrequently I go out, he could have stood at the corner of 23rd and 8th for the last three years without moving and I probably wouldn’t have seen him anyway.

One of the guys at the bar told me that he didn’t even know the place was closing until hours before he arrived. I explained to him that he was part of the classic retail paradox. “If you came here more often you would have known it was closing, but then again, if you came here more often, maybe it wouldn’t be closing.” Then again, it seems like all of NY nightlife is unraveling like a cheap carpet these days. It might be more a sign of the times than a faded love for Shag.

On my way out, I spotted Brian crossing the street to join the fray I had just abandoned. I called out to him and he looked right at me, but then just kept walking. I know he should have recognized me. I always look the same and I am by some measure the worst dressed gay in New York, so you know that sticks out in a crowd. I don’t know. He looked a little frayed and pilled himself rolling into the club. I guess like so many other previously beloved New York establishments, I too can fall quickly into the remnants pile and fade away into the night.

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?

Lotus Entertain You

Ben Harvey was back on the show tonight for Tabloid Tuesday. I always like having Ben on because he really tries to stay focused. He came prepared with notes about celebrities and print outs from PerezHilton.com. I came with a bag of carrots and celery and no mood to talk. We prattled on about the history of our show and Ben’s recent dust-up with Wade Williams, which I would give about a 1.3 on the Andy Richter scale of celebrity feuds. Ben feels things deeply so he took the Wade thing personally but every time it gets mentioned, five minutes later I can’t even remember it anymore.

Ben and I have been anxious to spend some more quality time together, but every time we meet out at a bar there are too many distractions (D-A-N, Conor, etc.) and never enough quiet corners to process like the lesbians we are. So since Ben was on the show tonight, we endeavored to hit the town afterward. Once the show started he sent me a text message about going to Lotus instead of our usual Halloween haunt Bowery Bar. At this point, Beige is as colorless as its name so I am happy to take any other Tuesday night suggestion offered.

It turns out that our quality time was spent on the subway down to 14th Street because once we got into Lotus, it was the usual slew of distractions and loud music. At first, I didn’t think I had ever been to Lotus, but once inside the drunken memories of the Sirius party celebrating one million members came flooding back. My HR pal Calliope had broken her leg and stationed herself with drink in hand in the banquet near the door, passing out car vouchers to the myriad drunk employees so plastered they couldn’t even hail a cab. Chinese food was served with chopsticks that had Sirius printed on them. I squirreled several away in my coat and I still have them at home in my eBay box. The biggest souvenir of the night was not the chopsticks, but the heretofore hot straight male co-worker that made out with me by the bathroom. He too was given one of the coveted car passes from Calliope, who even in per prone state, had already heard about the antics before his tongue was out of my throat.

There was no such straight man-on-gay action at Lotus tonight. The usual Here TV posse was there, encouraged to stop in by The Lair star Peter Stickles who was filling in for a sick friend. Peter looked so sexy in his crisp black shirt and pants, pulled together so smoothly he seemed to be made entirely of cream cheese. Peter is smart and knows he can get a lot of smiles per gallon with that devilish grin of his and a well-placed wink. Chris and Josh were also there from Here and immediately Ben was sucked into the kind of work conversation I know all too well from hanging out with co-workers at bars. I let them have their office gossip while I chatted with my friend Terry and his new young squeeze. Occasionally Chris would swing through with some titty-twisters from hell, that I was fortunately spared. My nipples are for show only, and any attention, even just looking at them, causes nothing but pain. I was ready to shatter a glass on the edge of the bar to prevent Chris’ hand from coming anywhere near my chest.

At one point I started talking to Hunter, a product placement expert, who strategically placed himself in the dead center of the bar for maximum exposure. He looked so familiar and I was fairly certain I have seen him before on Connexion (although hours later I realize he just looks like Brandon’s ex-boyfriend Cliff). We talked for all of two minutes before someone took the stage and announced the beginning of the burlesque show. That was my cue to leave. I could barely hear Peter over the dance mix of Heat Wave a few minutes earlier, so I knew I didn’t have a chance during a live performance. A topless girl twirled glittery fiddle-covered nipples to “The Devil Went Down To Georgia” as I left for the midnight train to suburbia. At least Ben Harvey and I had a few minutes to talk about our lives before I grabbed my old PlanetOut backpack from coat check and headed for a cab. Maybe next time we’ll just have lunch instead. The lighting is harsher but at least you can get a word in edgewise.

And for the most part, people keep their nipples to themselves.

24 Hour Party People

I love to throw parties. I really do.

I have two speeds: utter solitude and massive party. There is no in-between for me. Those are the only two modes I am comfortable in. Fortunately, this weekend, it was all party, all the time.

On Saturday, I threw a much delayed housewarming party. Well, Romaine has been in her house since December 2006 without a party but to be fair, she did have a baby in the interim. Even still, I moved in the weekend before Memorial Day so waiting so long to have a party is somewhat bad form.

The house I bought is a lovely classic 1950s Cape Cod on a quiet suburban street in the middle of nowhere, U.S.A. It has four bedrooms, two and a half baths, and a full walk-out basement, covering approximately 3300 square feet. It's a lot of room for two homos to ramble around in and most of the time, I am alone here. Roommate and I are on different floors in the house, which makes it seem more than ever like I live alone. We occasionally run into each other by the refrigerator, where four lanes of traffic painfully converge into one lane. That narrow strip of misery is just the tip of the poorly planned kitchen, but otherwise the house is, for me, a dream. True it is drenched in heterosexual trappings of the most feminine and tacky kind, which it will take years to excise from the premises, but it is still a quiet wooden suburban oasis to love.

I had an insanely good turnout for the party on Saturday, much better than I would have expected given how far away the house is from all known civilization. But I suspect people wanted to get a good look, cross it off their list, and probably never return. Frank DeCaro accused me of discouraging him from coming and he was very annoyed to discover what a glaring omission he was. Honestly, I didn't think they would all come! And Frank was missed. But he also missed every other party I have thrown for the last four years, so when he didn't make an appearance on Saturday, I was neither surprised nor annoyed.

Romaine came with mother, baby and girlfriend Iris in tow. Iris spent the entire party with the baby strapped to her chest in a baby carrier, rocking back and forth to a classic American Bandstand episode no one else could hear. Cyd and Dan were there in matching grey hoodies, which prompted me to ask them how long into their relationship they starting wearing matching clothes, and explaining to Romaine's mother that the only real reason to be gay is the ability to double your wardrobe instantly.

Fredrick Ford and my old friend Tony were the first to arrive, ironic since they are the newest and oldest friends I have in the city. Tony and I worked together at AOL back in 1947 when it was still called International Business Machines and Fredrick and I met mere weeks ago when he did my radio show for the first time. They were so early that they got to join me on an adventure getting a full propane tank. Who knew that Home Depot sold the tanks empty? No wonder I couldn't get the BBQ to light the first time out.

DJ Ben Harvey was there with Conor of course, along with their cute friend and their other cute friends. Their quartet of cuteness was short-lived and Roommate's now-defunct Friday night geek squad was collectively sad to see them go. They did thoughtfully bring a set of casual matching coffee mugs and a 2008 Chippendale's calendar. I will get some use out of the mugs and Romaine will enjoy the calendar since she has worn out the 2007 calendar we got from model Charles Dera the last time he was on the show. Unfortunately, I didn't get to catch up with Ben Harvey as I would have liked. Nor was I able to get a second to show him my double-sided Ciccone (Six Degrees of Separation From Madonna, as it were), the only thing that could even remotely be considered ART in my house.

As usual, people got stinking drunk. Someone (me), passing through the kitchen, blurted out the recipe for a Sex On The Beach and a few gallons of liquor later, the drunkest part of the party (the last to leave well past the scheduled end time) decided to decamp to Manhattan for more mayhem. The party started promptly at 2pm with the arrival of Fredrick and Tony on the two o'clock train and officially ended at a little after nine when the last drunk piled out the door and headed for the bright lights, big city.

Roommate was exhausted by two weeks of non-stop painting, wallpaper stripping and cleaning before the party even began, so by 9pm he was all sharp elbows and clearing throats despite a drunk gay's inability to sense of subtle hint when they are slammed in the face with it. Finally by 9:30pm, the house was clean again and we were ready to head for the cool expanse of the basement to cocoon in front of the new fall shows on my wide screen TV. And then the doorbell rang.

Misreading the 2:00pm to 8:00pm party time as an 8:00pm start time, burgeoning hip hop duo Goddes and She appeared fashionably late at 9:30pm. Not wanting to throw them out after they drove an hour to be there, I got all Pamela Harriman on their ass, cranked up the BBQ and served up more food and polite company for another two hours. It wasn't until Midnight that we finally collapsed in front of the TV for some much deserved mindless entertainment.

Sunday I journeyed into the city to welcome Chip Arndt back from his latest AIDS Ride. A minimum of fanfare and I was the only one there to welcome him back. I ran into Cory walking by, he and his friend drawn in by curiosity like moths at night to the gay dance music blasting out of the Center. I can't believe it's already been more than a year since we last saw each other just out and about, when he ran over to me plastered out of my mind at Therapy and reminded me that we had met just a few weeks earlier at Another Gay Movie. I honestly hadn't remembered meeting him at the movie, I was so self-involved and also distracted by Michael Lucas, who had encircled me in his cone of gossip on our way out onto the street. Cory with his Master's Degree in Public Policy from Harvard and straight eyebrows on granite overhang shrouding his soulful eyes. Happy birthday. It will probably be another year before I see him again.

Chip's friend Greg was also there, having joined Chip on the ride. Greg, comfortably slim in his tight bike shorts and matching shirt was full of platitudes about my piercing blue eyes, it was the kind of embarrassment I never tire of. Chip and I had a long thoughtful conversation about life and death and in the car ride home I thought how my weekend would have been complete if I had had the same amount of time to just sit with Ben Harvey too. Unfortunately, there is a finite amount of time in a day and in one's lifetime. I always seem to be short of time these days. The never ending story of my laziness versus my grand schemes for life continues. Hopefully, I will finish turning my house gay and have that long talk with Ben Harvey that I have been meaning to have. And maybe I will even see Cory before his next birthday rolls around. Or maybe I will just lay around the house thinking how nice throwing another party would be, but still revelling in the joy of just being alone.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

It feels like all I ever do is go to Bowery Bar and then write about it in my blog. Ugh! I don't even like that bar and yet it feels like I am there all the time!

I’ll admit it. I don’t have much of a social life. My days generally consist of:
- me sleeping until almost noon
- eating a bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats while watching The View
- wandering through my new house annoyed by the disrepair but too lazy to address it
- Fucking around on Towleroad.com, Yahoo News and MySpace
- Realizing how late I am from sitting on the internet
- Hopping in the shower
- Driving to the train
- showing up minutes before my show
- Doing four hours of radio which leaves me with no interest in humanity
- Dashing out of the studio to catch the first train home
- Heating up something to eat while watching Robot Chicken
- Fucking around on the internet until I realize it’s 4am and then going to bed
- Lather, rinse, repeat

This has left me with all sorts of problems. I have a house that needs some TLC. I have no desire to go anywhere or do anything. I have a radio show and a video podcast begging for content (not to mention a blog), and no compelling interest in existing outside of a four square foot area radiating out from my own bed. If I could get away with a bed pan that I emptied out my bedroom window and using a mini-fridge as a nightstand, my dream life would be complete. As a kid I couldn’t understand why people like Howard Hughes ended their lives in a single room, but now I wonder at what age I could get away with it without it being totally creepy and crazy. Is forty too young?

One of our few ridiculously hot listeners was in town this week with his boyfriend so I agreed to give them a studio tour and a drink out on the town. He is fresh out of the Air Force and I like to do what I can to support the troops. It’s my own version of the gay USO. So I took Zach to Bowery Bar since he is relocating to New York City. He needs to know where to find and converse with the other ridiculously hot people in the city once he gets here, and that location on Tuesday nights is still, eternally Bowery Bar. It was also a good excuse to finally see DJ Ben Harvey who has been something of a hermit while packing and unpacking from his move to DUMBO (not the Disney movie, although that would be kind of cool). The stars continued to align with roommate working late and Chip Arndt being in town for the AIDS Ride (please donate money to support Chip. He is a good guy and he is trying to raise a lot of money). I even sent a text message to D-A-N who happened also to be going to Bowery Bar tonight (although I suspect he is always out on Tuesday night and it is not casual coincidence that keeps us running into each other).

Zach only stayed for one drink, but it was long enough for him to swap military tales with roommate. He had a very early flight and a hot boyfriend waiting for him at the Hilton, so he was excused. Ben Harvey was as adorable as ever, and we almost got three sentences spoken between us before the usual suspects began parading through the door like it was a red carpet premiere. First, Peter Stickles, late of HereTV’s The Lair showed up, this time minus his good friend Michael Carbonaro. Apparently Michael couldn’t pull his enthusiasm for going out tonight from a hat, so he opted to stay home. Since he is 15 years younger than I am (at least), that wasn’t excuse enough for me. Then D-A-N arrived in a red muscle tee and playfully tussled hair. His pupils were like two giant black holes from which no light or tall, strapping lad could escape. Draw your own conclusions. I last saw him downing an orange juice like his throat was on fire and talking with Lance, the formerly straight waiter who abandoned his pussy hound ways to chase men. His resume seemed to intrigue D-A-N when I told him, so when I saw them exchanging numbers on my way out for the evening, I wasn’t surprised. Oh and Lance Bass was there and I meant to talk to him because we got offered an interview with him at 11am and I like Lance and NSync and all, but there is no reason for me to reorder my world (i.e. sleeping until noon, Mini-Wheats, etc) just to talk to him on the radio. I was about to go over but they were leaving and I just thought, “Eh. The publicists will work this out, or they won’t.”

I was wearing my shiny PlanetOut backpack from 1998 because it is easy for others to find me that way and I am trying to bolster their miserable stock price by reminding the who’s gay of Bowery Bar that they still exist. This caused me to be spotted by a PlanetOut executive who wondered where I got it then realized that he knew me from FantasyMan Island, my long defunct column. While talking to him, Chip Arndt bounded up to me like a hungry lion with his friend Greg. Greg is everything gay men and straight women aspire to be: tall, thin, and put together just right. He is the gay guy straight girls are always trying to set up with any gay stranger they meet at a party because they can’t fuck him themselves. Chip is sexy and wonderful and I wish he was running for something so I could vote for him. I admire him because when he and Reichen broke up, he let Reichen keep all the fame they accumulated in their relationship. Chip kept his dignity and I suppose a set of dishes, possibly some stemware.

Speaking of dishes and stemware, Wade Williams wandered in and I didn’t even know he was in town. I razzed him about not calling me and insisted that we were now even from when I came to LA and didn’t call him, but he insisted it wasn’t the same thing. Whatever. I feel even. Conor was also there, complaining about an upset stomach, which caused Ben Harvey to also feel unsettled. I think the two of them make each other queasy. That was the last exchange I had with either one of them. Ben slipped away into the crowd, as did Conor at some point. Finally, I realized that it was late and I had to catch the train home. So I bundled up roommate, kissed Peter good bye at the door and sailed away in a cab.

Usually I like to have some kind of 360 degree connection to round out the story but I don’t have a lesson tonight. That would make this blog posting about life out at ye old gay bar outside my normal cookie cutter structure. Maybe the lesson is that I am in a rut. It’s not a bad rut. In fact, I like it very much. I’ll have plenty of time to catch up with Ben Harvey at my housewarming party on Saturday and I’ll see more of Chip on Sunday when he returns home from the AIDS Ride. However, it did feel like a wasted night at Bowery Bar, even down to this blog in search of an ending. I saw most of the same faces. Had the same drink I always have. Hated the same pretentious gays I have always hated. And then came home to eat something fried and watch some TV. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

I may not be living in one room yet, but in my head I am getting pretty close. And honestly, I don’t mind.

Heal, Conor, Heal

I relish my anonymity, such as it is. Of course I have a radio show, which has an audience. But the audience is far away from where I live. So it’s easy to forget if the phone doesn’t ring during the show or after work at a bar, that I have even the smallest measure of fame. Even this blog, with entry after commentless entry, I feel virtually unknown. It’s nice.

The only times I have ever been recognized in the city were in bars and the first time was at Barracuda some months ago. I returned to the scene of the crime last night with my roommate to meet up with Ben Harvey. We have a lovely friendship that is more about the fame of other people than our own. However, Ben gets concerned sometimes that if an evening isn’t interesting enough, I will fail to blog about it, committing our banal existences to the obscurity they truly deserve. However, as I assured him with my last posting, there is no sow’s ear so paper thin that I couldn’t stitch a silk purse out of it. He isn’t the only one. I estimate about ten people read my blog and virtually all of them visit to see if they are back in it again when it updates semi-annually. Sorry Charlie! No mentions today.

It wasn’t my intention to go out, just like last night. But I was reading Ben’s email early yesterday morning(or hours too late depending). I read my mail obsessively but I do have a secret email address now and I forget to read it all the time. Derek@derekhartley.com and my office email are checked obsessively all day. Even MySpace is never left for more than a few minutes at a time during waking hours. But my secret email address known by even fewer than this posting is occasionally forgotten for days. No one writes me there. So it is just too depressing to visit it day after day to see that nothing has changed. Really only Ben and Jennifer actively email me there, and Jennifer is on vacation this week so I have been especially lax.

But Ben had emailed me after midnight last night saying that he was going out to Barracuda TOMORROW (his emphasis) and I remembered him commenting on my funny insistence on carefully using the word tomorrow in my emails because I usually write them at 3am, making the word ambiguous to most earnest observers or those who also are awake and checking email in the middle of the night (like Ben). So I sent him a text message during the show just to make sure that he meant Friday and not Thursday and of course TOMORROW was tonight, and always anxious to see him again, I agreed to dash off for a quick drink before heading home to pack, make breakfast for my visiting Dad and fly off to New Orleans for a long weekend of booze, beignets and boys at Southern Decadence.

At Barracuda, Ben arrived again with Harvard Ryan in tow, along with assorted actorly characters. His friend Dave, the “Al Roker of Australia” who is in fact, hot and thin. Eric Michael, an actual actor who is loathe to say he is an actor for fear of people thinking he is primarily a waiter. “Working actor” I told him, “That’s what you need to say.” Especially if you don’t want to be confused with the homeless. As usual, I could only get two new names so the guy from The Lair and the guy who looks like Josh but with even more intense eyebrows will have to go nameless for this entry. There might have even been another guy floating around there too, but there was just too much gay in our circle to keep an easy focus. I wasn’t the only one having trouble. It was too many people for Ben to juggle at once, and it felt a little like he was trying to manage a party in his own apartment. It is easier to host the Malaria virus than to try to host a gathering inside a gay bar. Too many working parts. And Peter Stickles swirling around in the air like Tinkerbell the whole time, flashing and flinging pixie dust, and my roommate camouflaged in the corner to blend in with the wall did not help Ben in his herding efforts at all.

Finally Conor arrived, his intense, yet oddly reassuring gaze as soothing as a border collie’s. Conor makes me laugh which doesn’t happen very often for me, making it all the harder to cut the evening short to catch the 12:10am train to suburbia. I like funny people because, despite all outward appearances, I don’t like being the center of attention. I am always drawn to people who are more famous, more loud, better grammarians or prettier than I am so that I can enjoy being in the audience. It is more fun for me to not have to work all the time, and being with the crowd, instead of in front of it, is my natural state of being.

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.