Puttin' On The Ritz

I am a hermit. But I look like the party planner from Sears compared to my roommate Mike. Mike never likes to leave the house, nor does he like to meet new people. Two weeks ago, when D-A-N tried to engage him in conversation he did his best impression of a cigar store Indian and D-A-N beat it on the lam. I don’t think his boyish charm is used to such a stoic rebuff. So when Mike announced earlier this week that he had been invited to a party, I campaigned like Tracy Flick for him to attend.

Apparently some of the guys from work were having a “So Bad It’s Good” holiday movie party. Being the forceful encourager, I naturally had to attend the party as well, thus guaranteeing Mike would go. Plus, ever since we stopped working together, whenever Mike talks about life at the office, I feel like he is describing a favorite TV show on a channel my cable company doesn’t offer anymore (Seriously FiOS, why no MSNBC????). Unfortunately, median ages dropped like an anvil in a Tex Avery cartoon since I left the company four years ago, and I walked into the youngest group of people I have seen since a high school class toured through SIRIUS last month.

It was a straight party, which was for the best. It is bad enough looking across the room and seeing a cute guy, it’s worse to think he is precisely half your age. At least in a room full of straight people, I could just concentrate on the bad movies at hand and not worry about my libido. We walked in during the finale of Jack Frost, a cheesy horror flick about a serial killer whose DNA accidentally bonds with snow and turns him into a murderous snowman. The effects were about on the level of a third grade play at a very nice public school. Once the film was over, we watched 60 minutes of classic TV show intros as an intermission before the next feature, along with some remodeled intros from a heavenly site called FatalFarm.com (The Facts of Life is my favorite, followed by Cheers, but honestly they are all pretty terrific).

In many ways, it was like attending a party in the future. The house had computers hooked up to the TVs and everything ran off the Xbox 360. It was Hollywood’s worst nightmare of copyright infringements gone amok, but I have to say, it was all so delightfully easy. The second feature was “Silent Night, Deadly Night” about a sweet boy named Billy who becomes convinced that Santa Claus is a killer doling out death to the naughty. Later, he grows up to be a sexy, troubled teen, who went forced to play Santa in a wildly overstaffed corner toy store, assumes the identity himself and goes on a murderous rampage. Along the way, we learn that no one owns a bra and nuns are pretty useless. Hilarity, as they say, ensues.

The film stars Robert Brian Wilson as the sexy deranged teen, an actor last seen in an episode of Jake and the Fat Man. His shirtless moments refocused my libido away from the sexy teens at the party and his wilderness of a hairy ass in his one complete nude scene reminded us instantly that this was 1984, no matter how futuristic the party was otherwise. The movie wasn’t that bad, although the filmmakers clearly had a massive hard-on for Psycho and borrowed liberally from the plot and shot list. The budget of the movie however was so low that at one point a woman refrains from breaking a storefront window to escape because they clearly couldn’t afford the replacement cost.

After the party, Mike and I left to find Jonathan who had been in Brooklyn but by then was partying it up at The Ritz. I had never heard of the bar, but it has only been open for six months, which is fast for me to discover a hip new place. We walked in to the familiar strains of Salt N Pepa doing “Push It” while an early twenty-something crowd giggled with oldies hits delight. At the bar, a fifty year old balding man in a fuzzy short fur coat and rings on each finger clutched a glass of red wine while ogling the bartender’s exposed torso. “That’s me in five years.” I whispered in Mike’s ear, although his askance glance told me it was closer than I thought. From across the bar, I spotted the back of Jonathan’s head moving toward the upstairs. I pushed through the twinks and made my way up the narrow staircase and greeted him in the calmer oasis of the second floor lounge.

Jonathan had already been drinking all night and his “Frak Me” t-shirt seemed less a come on than a declaration of sheer exhaustion. We chatted once again about all of our favorite shows, which is easy to do since we love all the same shows. In fact, I have yet to find anything that we don’t agree on. He is even excited about my Friday night murder ladies (aka ABC’s Women’s Murder Club). The show has been called Sex and the City in a morgue but it’s more like the episode of the Golden Girls where Dorothy solves the murder mystery, but with expensive shoes and a winter color palette. I implored Jonathan to search YouTube for stray clips of my childhood love “Partners In Crime” and sealed the deal with an anecdote about stars Loni Anderson and Lynda Carter wandering into a San Francisco theater and being mistaken for drag queens. We laughed. We shared a Coke and the belief that Diet Coke makes you fat.

It turns out that Jonathan lives mere steps away from the straight party we had attended earlier in the evening. And even though it was out of the way, since we were parked right outside The Ritz, I assured him it would be no trouble to give him a ride home. It is freezing outside now after all. And the journey back downtown allowed Mike and I to be once again in the vicinity of the Taco Bell on 14th Street. Unlikely earlier in the evening when ye just joked about abandoning hope and all entering here, at 2am we did just that. Along with Battlestar Galactica, Veronica Mars, and Arrested Development, Jonathan also shares our love of the bell and a pair of grilled stuft burritos and a soft taco later, we were back on our way downtown.

Jonathan safely dropped off, and our greasiest cravings sated, Mike and I headed back up into suburbia. Okay, so maybe the party didn’t help either of our social skills. We could have stared at a bad movie just as easily at home and skipped the BBQ chips they served. But we did visit a new gay bar. True, Jonathan is already over it, citing its inconsistent DJing, capped by a 30 minute long version of Gimme More. But we ventured out of our comfort zone and down into the secret world of social people. So that has to count for something. Besides, it was the last night before the snow comes, and there will be time enough for hibernating now that winter is officially here.

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.

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.

Starry, Starry Night

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

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

“Yes! How did you know?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See. Sometimes the stars do line up.

Happy Birthday Josh!

Josh is a NYC story. Beautiful man. Perfect body. Occasional Broadway dancer. Met him six years ago when he was a bartender at a new bar called Remote and I was trying my hand at club promotion. Luke from the bar brought me in to start a hot Tuesday night, two blocks away from Beige at Bowery Bar. Beige had been the hot Tuesday night for years and it was time for its moment to be over. Then on the launch night of my new Tuesday night, Britney and Justin showed up at Beige and, well let’s just say it is still the hot Tuesday night party in NYC. September 11^th helped seal the deal, compelling people to stick with what was old and comfortable in our changing times (Golden Girls reruns, M4M chat rooms, Beige) and my club promotion days ended just as quickly as they began.

Tonight, Josh invited me to his friend David Coleman’s apartment for an intimate birthday party. In the intervening years, Josh and I have kept each other on our respective party lists and if I don’t run into him infrequently running around town (read: in a gay bar), then this is our best chance to see each other. Of course I wanted to see Josh again, but it is worth mentioning that David has one of the most unique and sensational views from his apartment: straight up Park Avenue from Union Square looking up at Grand Central Station. It’s always worth a look. And it reminds me of all things fabulous in Manhattan.

I was last in David’s apartment in April, following a night out at Shag with Matty. That night, even Prince Charming was there (although things didn't turn out as Happily Ever After as one might expect). I fully expected to see Matty back there again and didn’t even bother sending him a TXT. I like to surprise Matt by appearing once each decade in just the right place at just the right time. No such luck. However, I did run into Luke from Remote, now six years later. Josh was the only person I thought I would know at the party, so it was nice to run into someone else with a familiar face. I had invited roommate (“You know how I love a party… so no.”), Ben Harvey (“I am at the MOMA being cultural. But maybe?”), and even D-A-N from Tuesday night(“Cool. David emailed me early. I’ll try to make it!), but alas, I ended up at the party alone.

Everyone was very nice although I managed to put my foot in it again. There was a guy at the party who looked kind of familiar but then again, all gay men seem kind of familiar on a certain level after you live in a city for six or seven years. Luke’s friend was musing out loud that even though the party said that it started at 9:30pm people didn’t really show up until eleven. “Broadway people,” I offered. “They don’t get off until 10:15, 10:30, so they can’t get to a party before 11:00pm.” The guy smiled and asked if I thought the newest arrivals were Broadway people. I pointed to the handsome man in the tight button down shirt over the tight body with the tight 30-something face. “He looks like Broadway people. That’s what they look like.” The guy smiled and later I realized as the conversation progressed that he was an actor (hence his familiarity) and probably a Broadway guy too, although I made no effort to lump him in that category. He got be back later though by offering that I might have a future in modeling: for J.C. Penney, perhaps with a briefcase by a hedge or sweeping small children into a minivan with one hand casually tucked into my khaki pants. “There are, you know, the models who are hot, and then there is a whole other category of models who are… well, attractive but not threatening.” Point taken.

Now that my life is more J.C. Penney than ever, I had to leave at the stroke of 11:45pm to make the 12:10am train home. Suburbia calls, and it’s long distance. Saw Corey Johnson on my way out. Luke said I hadn’t changed and of course he meant in the face where it counts, but I think I have changed in the last six years. Of course no one has changed more than Corey, sashaying from high school football star to "Miss Thang" with all of the ease and grace of water overflowing from a stopped toilet. Apparently REMOTE isn’t what it used to be either. “Don’t go there again,” Josh cautioned,” You’ll get shot now.” The Paramus TJ Maxx crowd that followed us was one thing, but I don’t need any holes in my wool/poly blend blazer. Life in Manhattan is fabulous but it isn’t worth dying for. And that minivan isn’t going to drive itself.

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.