Fall Back Disposition

New York City has several recurring themes, most built around notions of high highs and low lows. The city has never been lovelier than it is right now. A perfect summer fading into a truly luscious autumn. More trees and green space than have been seen in centuries, harking back to early industrial times when the city was mostly farmland. A recent panicky shark sighting off Long Island turned out to be a huge pod of dolphins, and whales are so numerous in the harbors that a marine biologist has hailed this "the new Cape Cod." But then my friend Adam Jay, minding his business on his way to our friend Terry's party on Friday night spotted some man making business on the sidewalk.

"I wanted to post about it on Facebook," he told me later, "But had to look up the spelling of defecate to make sure I got it right."

That's New York City for you. The more things change in this city that never stops changing, the more it can't completely shake the vestiges of the past. There is something about this place. You are forced by circumstances to always be moving forward and yet the city makes it so difficult to let go of everything that has come before. Naturally I mean this both in the sense that memories made here can be hard to shake and that you could literally be stuck with the same couch for decades solely because it is impossible (read: too expensive) to get rid of.

Lounging on a chaise lounge in 2001 that, for some reason, I still have. 

I have been writing about New York City since before I arrived and my love of the city hasn't changed (even if I don't write about it as much as I used to). This place is magical. Period. But it is a cruel dark magic, like Ariel trading her voice for legs. You give up so much just to have the most basic necessities. No wonder people who live everywhere else think we are insane. But loving New York City is a form of Stockholm Syndrome. You're a prisoner but where else can you get a bagel like this?

Adam lives in Los Angeles now and while it has many fine qualities (eternal sunshine, air you can see and taste), it's no Manhattan. LA too often can feel like those commercials for depression medication where a sad lady is standing alone in the middle of a party filled with happy, laughing people. "I can't feel my life." Carrie Fisher wrote in Postcards From The Edge and that is LA. You can definitely feel your life in New York City but mostly because it has cut you and you're bleeding.

I realized at Terry's party that it has literally been forever (March) since I wrote about the city. It isn't that I haven't gone out, it is just that my desire to write has. Jimmy made some remark about his long absence from my blog, but it is the blog itself that is long absent. "I think it might be over," I declared, saying out loud what I had been thinking for a long, long time. But here I am again.

Cub and Chris got married this weekend and it reminded me that it has been a long time since I saw them. A quick dash through my blog and I relived quite probably every single interaction we have ever had. A brief, sporadic friendship was writ large, no moment lost to the ravages of time. In that moment, I realized that even as my writing has annoyed and exasperated those closest to me for years, the truth is also that it has documented all of those small moments, good and bad, that make us New Yorkers.

Meeting Cub and Chris at Ben Harvey's birthday brunch in 2009, as New Yorkers do.

We can lose institutions, from Joan Rivers to Roseland, that we thought would stand forever.  Memories can dim and pictures can fade but words are eternal. And if the man relieving himself against the wall of a Broadway theater on my way home after the party is any indication, so is public urination.

Only in New York, kids. Only in New York.

Ben There, Done That

There I was, shivering as the icy wind kicked up off the East River. It’s night in DUMBO and I am in line outside the Galapagos Art Space. I have been here so many times that I can’t possibly recall them all, but I do know that I have never waited in this long of a line before.

"Here we go again. Out at another gay bar."

Apparently the two guys standing behind me were straight (in Brooklyn it can be very hard to tell) and even stranger, one of them was clearly reading my mind. But while they hurriedly texted their friend Rachel, hoping she was already inside, I waited impatiently as the time dwindled away. With the new hours of my show and the rigidity of the Metro North train schedule, I don’t have time to sit idly by on Grindr chatting with Mr. Easy-On-The-Eyes-Even-Though-Mine-Are-Rolling-From-Annoyance. For this latest adventure, I had literally fifteen minutes and the thought of spending all of them in line to get into a club was not my idea of fun. 

My Submission To DouchebagsOfGrindr.com

The occasion was the third anniversary of Ben Harvey’s smash hit GUMBO party. Fittingly, this was my third time seeing Ben this week and my second night in a row out on the town with him. Last night, I was his ad hoc plus one for the Out 100 party at Milk Studios down in the Meatpacking District. If you are keeping kosher, you know Milk and Meatpacking should not mix and in this case you are right. The crowd was lively but the venue was too small.

The Tippling Point

I still wasn’t feeling 100% after last night, but nothing but nothing was going to keep me away from Henry and Dan’s Beer and Nuts Party tonight. As I noted when I attended their Halloween bash last year, Henry lives in a castle. A castle! The living room is in a turret and behind a rendering of Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are, a flat screen TV is secreted. It’s like San Simeon with Henry cast as Marion Davies when knighthood was in flower.

Romaine stayed home from the show tonight to take care of her sick three year old who was projectile vomiting like she was auditioning for a role in The Exorcist. So, I said that ADD Jeff could hang out in the studio, since it is Friday and I knew he would get all nerdy with the guest DJ during the Friday Night Dance Party. And if things got slow, I could always tease him about his sexual habits and his protestations and outrage could easily fill all four hours. But when I encountered him waiting on the subway platform after the show, I considered it fate and invited him to join me at the party.

Birth Of Elation

Birthday parties are for kids young enough to still count their years in fractions and the super elderly where each passing year is nothing short of a miracle. For the rest of us, birthdays should be politely ignored. I was slow to come to this realization, like all people do. When I was in my twenties, I didn’t mind having birthday parties at all. I mean, what’s not to love about a room full of people who are there solely for you? But now, birthdays just seem like a rote chore made more unbearable by constant reminders on social networks that every day is some birthday.

Tonight, I took my friend Adam down to the ACE Hotel for Corey Johnson’s 28th birthday party. Adam is visiting from Phoenix this weekend and I was much surprised on Wednesday night when I came home and discovered him propped up in the guest room bed reading his kindle. He is in town this weekend for my annual Cinco de Mayo party which for some reason in that moment I thought was next weekend and not three days from now. It is this kind of constant surprise about my own life that keeps my roommate Mike in a persistent state of agitation.

As soon as we arrived at the ACE on 29th street, we headed downstairs into the basement party room and waited on line at coat check. A nice young lady was working the table and a copy of “The Actor’s Art and Craft” was tossed casually on her chair. An actor prepares… to check your coat. We dropped our bags and started to head in when suddenly I ran right into that guy who insisted that I stop writing about him. I thought he was in Los Angeles! When I asked him if he was leaving already, he looked past me with solid black shark eyes, gave a negative response in a negative way and moved beyond me in every sense of the word. It was a chilly reception with frosty on top.

Inside, the party was jumping and the boys were hot. As I looked around for Corey, Adam asked if the crowd was here just for his birthday or if this was normally a bar. Adam was dutifully impressed when I said they were all just for Corey. “I could fill a room like this too if I wanted,” I said confidently, but that was a lie. I’m that guy still haunted by the accurate portrayal of his childhood in Little Man Tate, where he is cast as the brainy kid with that kind of dyky warrior princess mom (before Xena made it fashionable) and who had a birthday party that no one came to. To this day, every time I throw a party, I believe that no one will come. The moment that invitation goes out I start dreading the whole decision and the misery doesn’t end until the last person goes home. But I keep throwing parties because little kid fears are no excuse for a life half lived.

I didn’t see Corey right away but I did see Andy Towle. Andy is so adorable and I never see him out. He is not a party animal and with his fabulous apartment and smoking hot boyfriend, why would he ever want to go out for anything more than the morning paper and a fresh bagel? Andy was so sweet to me as I gushed about his blog, towleroad.com, which is a twice daily must-read for me, first in the late morning when I wake up and then right before the show for updates and breaking news.

Wandering off to get a drink at the bar we ran into Corey, twirling through the place with a tiara on his head. He was beyond drunk and everyone was grabbing at him like a pair of twenty dollar Ben Sherman jeans at the Barney’s Warehouse Sale. And then in an instant he was gone so we continued on our journey. Near the bar we settled in with Chris (sans Cub) and Henry. I gently ribbed Henry about the recent photos of him on Facebook paying dodge ball. Chris was missing Cub, who was down in Atlantic City headlining a bachelor party weekend for a straight friend.

I fell in love with Cub all over again when Chris told me that Cub is very down on the whole Fire Island business that, as it launches each spring, grips the Manhattan gay scene annually like a toxin. I just don’t understand the notion of going from the island of Manhattan to Long Island by train, transferring once along the way. Then taking a cab to a boat dock where a ferry takes you to an overpriced, deer tick riddled island filled with all the gays you see all week long back in Manhattan. Of course out on Fire Island, you get to see them in unflattering direct sunlight and ill-fitting Speedos while they rant about their housemate who never does dishes and used all their lube without asking.

It was then that Chris got a happy text from Cub that he had located eternal FM radio personality Delilah on his drive down and my love for him faded away. Delilah and her maudlin love songs and dedications from women who pine away for male co-workers who don’t know they exist and prisoners reaching out to touch in a new way those they have stalked is the quintessence of everything I hate about terrestrial radio. Oh well. I guess no one is perfect.

Then again, I started developing my own weird music obsession recently myself. I noticed a few weeks ago that the music at the supermarket was better than it used to be and then I realized, it wasn’t better, I was just older and the music was targeted to me. And then it hit me. That is how everything is now. Everything is made and sold by people my age, so everything in life is now pitched perfectly for me to experience. It is almost like the whole world is created personally for you, which makes all of life feel like Disneyland to a five year old. So growing uglier sucks and suddenly feeling pain in places you never felt before is always a bad omen of things to come, but all of that is masked nicely by the warm comfort of knowing you are the target demo of modern life.

Even though they have longed for an invite to my house, Cub is in Atlantic City and Chris is using the weekend to go down to DC and neither of them will be at my party. Henry is listed on my Facebook invite as a Maybe but I am certain he isn’t coming. I didn’t even bother asking him. Although his boyfriend Dan did tell me tonight how excited he was when he went to fabulis.com and saw me in the top ten. “You’re number five in the world! I can’t believe I know someone ranked so high,” he beamed even though I never got higher than eight. “I’ve slid since then.” I assured him, my rank now hovering at a still impressive 32 though long since overwhelmed by obsessed college kids with nothing to do in their permanent state of unemployment but vote each other up on the list.

However artificial a popularity contest like the Fabulis list is, it does feel good to have so many votes. Sure it isn’t the same as having a house full of people, hearing your favorite song in the cereal aisle or filling a club on your birthday, but these days you have to take your kudos where you can get them.

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.

The Cult of Celebrity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Head In Search Of A Hairstyle

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

“Eventually.”

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

“It always comes eventually.” And it does.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eventually.

Miss Congeniality

I miss so many things. Since starting this draconian diet at the beginning of the year, I miss eating crappy food. Carrots and celery will only get you so far in life when what you really want is a large order of fries. I keep telling myself that phantom abs from the future will continue to propel me past McDonald's but I don't know what is less realistic: me with abs or me not eating fast food. I guess only time will tell.

Food is on my mind, not only because I am hungry, but also because I went to GUMBO tonight. No, not that delicious Cajun treat. The monthly gay party in the DUMBO section of Brooklyn. Perhaps going to a party named after food while you are dieting is not the best idea anyone ever had. Chris and Cub had made a similar pact so there was some commiserating in the lobby of the Galapagos Art Space when I arrived. Chris brought me a water, which made me want to cry. The very definition of garbage in, garbage out. Cub appreciated my spirit as he limited himself to ginger ale, swearing off alcohol for the night due to a dental appointment in the morning.

I also miss seeing Matty more. He was there, taking a quick breather between marathons. No joke. I was hoping he would be excited to see that I was wearing a Polo sweater I bought on polo.com this fall in my desperate bid to upgrade my image along with my body. For some reason though the John Varvatos button-down I paired it with was gathering funny around the banded waist of the sweater, making me look not dissimilar to a aquamarine-colored gourd, if such a thing exists. Fashion fail, as the kids would say. No wonder Matty insisted that Andrew take a picture of us.

In his defense, it was moments after this classic Derek exchange:

Andrew: "We are going to Houston to run a half marathon. "

Derek: "If I were in Houston, I would be running too. "

Matty: "Andrew is from Houston. "

And... this is why I have no friends. Speaking of friends, did you know I was the first gay man in NYC on Friendster? I miss Friendster too. Not in the same way that I joke constantly now about adding people to my web ring. Friendster was not only a great early adventure in social networking that died too soon. It was also the easiest way on earth to gather intel on that hot guy you saw at a party once. Facebook for all of its applications and like buttons and event invitations and passive aggressive unfriending is Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride in comparison. But after my trip to GUMBO tonight, I spent the better part of an hour trying to find the guy I talked to on Facebook to no avail. This wouldn't have happened to me on Friendster.

As I finally made my way through the party I ran again into Chris, who was by then talking to Tim. Yes, I am sure it was Tim and not Sam, which is what I thought I heard in the din and my deafness. Chris walked away and then Tim and I plunged down the rabbit hole in an insanely nerdy conversation about how TV works and why ABC hasn’t really yet pulled it together. You don't know the joy I have in talking to someone in the entertainment industry who doesn't take my breath away with their mind-numbing idiocy. Tim actually knew what he was talking about! Plus, he told me he was thirty and then kept insisting that he had to explain things to me that happened in the 70s because I was probably younger than he was.

I wanted to keep talking with him but then Ben Harvey came by and wanted me to meet some other people and I whisked away. I didn’t mean to brush him off since I genuinely liked talking to him and wanted to talk more. Who am I kidding? I am pretty sure I wanted to marry him, but naturally I came off as the hateful rube I am and he disappeared into the ether. If this was 2004, I would have not only found him on Friendster already, but I would have secretly made him a bookmark like I did to Cub so many years ago.

So I miss Friendster and fried food and dressing like a homeless person. Finally, on my way out, I gave in. Even though Greg told me that no one is walking around untucked anymore, I pulled my shirt tails out of my pants, threw on my coat and headed out into the chilly night. I think it looks better. But what do I know? Maybe I am just used to things the way they are.

Walking along 42nd Street to Grand Central, I wished there was a Mr. Softee on the corner. Maybe I don’t miss the ice cream so much as I miss the warmth of summer it accompanies. I got a chicken kabob from the street vendor out front, which is not exactly an ice cream cone but on a chilly night maybe it is better. Plus it’s reasonably healthy, especially compared to McNuggets. And summer will be here before you know it. And my future abs and I will enjoy a vanilla cone when it arrives. After all, just because you miss something, it doesn’t mean it is gone forever.

GUMBO Lone

I love Ben Harvey. I am just going to say it. He is so attractive and blond and trim and talented. Basically, he is everything I am not and wish I could be. What isn’t there to love about him? And lately, he has been throwing his hat into the club promotion ring. I recall my own disastrous foray into that business back in the fall of 2001, mostly because I wrote about it in my new book. (“Hey. Manhattan just suffered through the worst domestic attack ever a few days ago. How about launching a new club night across the street from the longest-running, most successful night in gay social history?!”). So I wanted to be supportive of his no-doubt more successful effort. Unfortunately, I was out of town for the first two, so I swore a blood oath I would be at the next one. And I was.

GUMBO is the name and it is a cute squish-up of Gay and DUMBO, an area of Brooklyn unknown to me because I think going South of fourteenth street in Manhattan is equivalent to swimming the English Channel. So an outerborough is completely out of the question. After all, I am the man who declared when he first moved to Manhattan that he would never take the subway and would only travel below Houston if he was fucking a celebrity. But it was for Ben Harvey! So I willingly and happily went.

Before I arrived in DUMBO, I had steeled myself for the kind of gritty urban streetscapes one might expect on a repeat viewing of “Escape From New York.” I was in for a shock. DUMBO isn’t just gentrified, whatever that means beyond “we priced anyone darker than a paper bag out of this real estate market.” It looks like they added a New York land to EPCOT. I was more concerned about getting mugged when I visited the New York backlot at FOX studios in the 90s because it was dirtier and scarier at midday than DUMBO at night. Filled with cozy upscale markets, quaint shops and downright precious cobblestones, I finally understood the outrage New Yorkers felt when Disney moved into Times Square and scrubbed away the porn and hookers.

The party was held in the Galapagos Art Space and it was very ultramodern: multimedia on the wall, quiet conversation nooks floating on water, Christian. Attending GUMBO, I had three goals: attend GUMBO to make good on my promise to Ben, regift a book about lifeguards to Matty Kelleher and also give Matty a copy of my book in which he is featured prominently. The first was easy, but the second two depended on finding Matt and then capturing his attention long enough to make the exchange. This is no easy task.

Along the way, I gave a warm hug of congratulations to Ben. I cornered Dave Rubin in a sexually aggressive way, like a cougar from Cougartown, blocking his escape from inside a floating banquette. It was either go through me or swim for it. I tried to talk to some new people, but they were all so young and mildly scruffy with their clingy cardigans and skinny pants over their skinny legs. This is the year of trying new things for me, but I think Brooklyn was enough new for one day. I don’t want to go overboard.

Finally, I found Matty and as I expected he would, he clapped his hands in delight, jumped up and down, and made a grabby fingers motion toward me to pull us together in a fun embrace. I had been warning him for weeks that the book was coming out and he was extremely excited to finally get his hands on it. Although when I gave him the second book, a regift from my friend Jennifer, I think there were some lifeguards in there he wanted to get his hands on too.



After talking to everyone twice, I started to head for the coat check. I had always planned on a quick visit, and knowing the planes, trains and automobiles it would take to get me home, Ben understood. As I grabbed my stuff, Chris and Cub were headed out in the same moment. Chris reiterated that they want to visit my house soon and Cub told a story about his coat that he bought as it was going out of style, watched it come back in style and was now still wearing it even though it was out of style again because he loved it. And that is why they are my new favorite couple of 2009. I thought they might be on the subway with me back to Manhattan but they suddenly splurged on a cab and I watched them pile into the car and pull away into the night. It all looked like a scene from a movie, the set was arranged and lit just right, with Manhattan shimmering in the background like a pearl.

By the time I reached the subway entrance, the gay din of the party had stopped ringing in my ears and the pristine cutesiness of DUMBO faded away to a more authentic, silent seediness under the bridge to Manhattan. I feel more at home in the grimy part of New York. Maybe it is because it is how I remember the city from my visits filled with wonder as a kid. Of course, now I live a world apart, far outside the city in my Douglas Sirk dreamscape, the cares and concerns of Manhattan now merely a set of small print columns in the copy of the New York Times I read on weekend mornings out on the patio. DUMBO too was like a fantasy bubble, like the one Glinda touched down in OZ in, and as pretty as it was, I think I like my fantasy life better.

On The Eve Of The Eve

Manhattan is a magical place. There is a reason they made a movie called “Miracle on 34^th Street” and, despite the miracle mile moniker, didn’t set it on Wilshire in Los Angeles. LA is where you go to wish for a miracle and Manhattan is where you go to actually experience them. Where LA’s streets are littered with parking fines and moving violations, I found actual cash, $120, on the sidewalk in New York. After several days in glamorous broken down Hollywood, I was ready for the full treatment in Manhattan and the little island delivered.

In honor of robust sales of my new book, I decided to splurge on a new espresso machine for the house. But now having fancy coffee, we needed something to serve it in. The night before Halloween, I was coming into town anyway for Henry and Dan’s party and to have dinner with Matt Kugelman. So I got there a little early and raced to the Crate and Barrel on 60^th. But no! It closed at 8pm, not 9pm like I thought. The security guard assured me that the location on 14^th street was still open, but I told him I had dinner plans and couldn’t possibly make it down there in time and I did come all the way from Westchester.

“Just this once.” He said as he let me, even though the store had closed moments earlier. A Manhattan miracle! $80 and five minutes later, I raced out of there with espresso cups and latte mugs galore, my joy in the city instantly reconfirmed. After dropping my packages in my car at the garage, I wandered down to meet Matt for a little Mexican food. We had a wonderful dinner and I tried to get him to come to the party but he had other people he needed to meet at Rockit at eleven. So since it was only ten, we split the baby and I joined him for a drink at Barrage to keep him company until his thing at 11pm. We parted and I hopped onto the subway uptown.

Henry and Dan threw an amazing New Year’s Eve party two years ago and I was anxious to attend another of their parties. At the time they had been living in an incredible building with views of the Hudson River but the invite for their Halloween Housewarming alerted me to the Central Park West location of their new digs.

I got off the subway and walked two blocks looking for the address. Along the way, I passed a castle with a large courtyard out front overlooking Central Park. “That can’t be it,” I thought to myself as I kept walking. “They can’t possibly live in a castle.” But of course they do. And the second floor ballroom in the turret? Not a day room for all the residents but instead, their elegantly appointed living room.

The party was insane. Filled with room after incredible room of hot hunks in hot costumes. The 1920s styling was intact throughout and the apartment wove its away around the entire floor of the building. I ran into Chris and Cub there, who like me, were not wearing costumes and I have never been so relieved to see two people in my life. In the elevator, I had ridden up with two guys who took one look at me and asked, “This is a costume party right?”

“Costumes were optional,” I told them, “Don’t worry. I didn’t dress up either."

They gave me a funny look. “I’m Rocky Balboa,” one of them said while the other donned sunglasses and assured me he was Donnie Brasco. Well, I wasn’t looking to make any new friends in the elevator anyway.

Also at the party, I ran into Ryan, who looked ready to be defiled in an ancient way in his toga while his friend Mike ran around dressed as a tight end, no doubt looking for someone to throw long and go deep with. Henry and Dan were busy hosting and having a fun time, although Henry kept herding people out of crowded nooks into less crowded ones after some real firemen showed up to inspect the size and density of the party crowd. “Into the library!” he called to me as Cub and I tried to leave the kitchen and return to Chris in the living room. I felt like a game piece on a Clue board.

The apartment made me feel bad about myself but in a laughable, nonsense way. My friends live in a castle! That’s ridiculous. No one lives in a castle. LA makes you feel like a failure all the time because nothing there is every good enough, young enough, shiny enough or new enough. But NYC is an impossible place filled with impossible things. On the news they said that the mayor was the richest man in New York City and I just thought, “How can that be? How can anyone be the richest anything here?” It’s all too much. The heights are so high in Manhattan that they are literally impossible to scale so no one has to feel bad that they didn’t make it. So while you can live in a castle, no one expects you to. Here in New York, you are a hero just for finding a decent one bedroom apartment for under $1500 a month. And there are small miracles inside latte mugs.

So Strange, Yet Familiar

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Glitter And Be Gray

It never occurred to me that this post would end up being about Gray. After all, I hardly know him. And in most of my blog entries, he is a secondary figure, mostly lurking in the shadows. I have made fleeting references here and there but he has never been the subject. Not even a featured player really. If anything, a dress extra. We aren’t even Facebook friends! But suddenly the episode has turned out all about him, even in his own fleeting way.

Last night started out as usual. My annual Spring ritual of returning to Bowery Bar on the first decent Tuesday evening of the year. I try to make it downtown at least twice a year. Once in the Spring and finally on what appears to be the last good Indian Summer night of the Fall. The latter is much harder to time. As I have written before, Beige, like the gay men who attend, is a fair weather friend. You don’t want to rely on it for anything important. It is just there to be fun and pretty and forgotten quickly when things turn dark.

I wanted to spend the evening with Matt Kugelman since Bowery Bar is where we met last year. I was out with Clayton and we rescued poor innocent Matt from standing on one of those sidewalk gratings out front. This began a quick but frankly awesome friendship. And he was there, already drunk when I arrived, with his friend Chip. But they didn’t last long. Moments later, I turned around and they were gone. Later I got some text messages from Matt about a raunchy burp and tequila. Enough said!

Fortunately, I ran into Chris and Cub, who were standing with that hot bartender Aaron who loves my show. One of the few gay men in NYC that has heard it and he is hot too! What a bonus. I first met Chris and Cub at Ben Harvey’s alliterative birthday brunch and spoke more with Chris than with Cub. This time around, Cub and I got into deep far-reaching conversations about the role of academia in the ongoing collapse of the American Empire. He thought they should change from majors to interests to better match the world at large while I wondered if they could even change fast enough with our rapidly evolving times. And I wondered if Americans were adept enough to adapt to a world changing so quickly around them now that they have no skills. Kind of deep for a bar that serves up nearly as many cocktails on a Tuesday night as it does new cases of syphilis.

Well all of that didn’t last long because they had to run out of there, dodging some crazy drunk mess like a creditor. That left me standing alone in the bar once again. Earlier I had spotted Gray and walking in right behind him, Matty. I knew they were still in the bar somewhere. But where? I sent Matty some text messages. No response. A few laps and I was about to throw in the towel. Finally, I found them, hiding in the SE corner of the bar, down where I never go because that outside bar doesn’t stock peach schnapps so I can never get a sex on the beach there.

Matty and Gray were huddled in a deep conversation of their own, too deep for me to want to wade into. So I hung back with trim marathon runner Andrew. His eyes looked especially blue but he also seemed a little weary of the whole bar thing. Beige can do that to you. He was standing with a guy I have met before but didn’t remember the name of. The guy said I was cute but then got annoyed that I lived upstate, basically implying that I was cruelly waving goods in front of people like they were available only to snatch them out of grasp seconds later. It turns out that he was quite drunk, like all the men that flirt with me are, and as soon as Matty and Gray finished their huddle, they dispatched him quickly to the nearest exit, and one assumes rehab facility.

We all wandered a bit and ended up hanging out with Jared who does the Sexy Back Thursdays @ The Park party with Matty. I had never met him before, but Matty took a snazzy photo of him in front of the Bowery Bar sign. I talked a bit with Andrew and give him my theory about why I thought Bowery Bar was still a success after all these years. “It’s the tables,” I told him. “They leave them out and it makes it impossible to get around. But that also makes everyone easy to see but hard to attain. A challenge. So the place always feels packed and the guys are always just a little out of your reach.” He liked my theory and I have to say, it was pretty good. Better than my academic musings with Cub where I, as a lowly college dropout, was way out of my league. My major in college? Sleeping in and skipping my morning classes.

Andrew wasn’t drinking and was feeling a lot of pressure to be drunk like everyone else. Bowery Bar is a peer pressure kind of place, as Cub pointed out earlier referencing his own flip flops in a sea of trendy Converse shoes. I always seem to be swimming against the tide on points like this, even if Babst has accused me in the past about caring more about fitting in than I like to let on. As for sobriety however, I have to admit, I was on Andrew’s side on this one. Being around drunk gays is no fun if you are sober. They are so annoying and messy and obvious. Which oddly enough brings me back to Gray.

I love the movie “Defending Your Life” and in it Buck Henry has a short scene as Albert Brooks’ fill-in attorney: Dick Stanley. “He’s a good man. Quiet but effective.” That’s Gray. He plays it all very close to the vest. He is like the polar opposite of me. My emotions are like weather patterns moving across a Doppler radar map. If severe thunderstorms are on the horizon, you know it! But Gray gives you nothing. He is probably an excellent poker player. When he wants to give you blank, that’s what you get. He is the master of the expressionless expression. And what a contrast to Matty and his whirling dervish of vitality. Gray fascinates me because he is like a neatly wrapped present that you can’t quite pull the bow off of. You want to know what is inside but you can’t get past the beautifully constructed exterior.

And then he was gone. A lovely soft kiss good bye and then a blur into the hazy crowd of gay chattering. Matty was dragging Andrew out of there too, though he was more than willing to make a run for it on his own. I piled into a cab and headed uptown to my waiting car in the parking garage around the corner from my office. My long drives back to the suburbs always give me time to reflect. It made me wish for a moment that I was an international man of mystery like Gray. But then I realized, in my twice yearly appearances at Bowery Bar in my wrong shoes and nine dollar shirts, I already am. So maybe in one small way, Gray and I have something in common. And I don’t mind that at all.