Nothing like a hurricane bearing down on you to really convince you to get your affairs in order.
It is Thursday night in Manhattan but it is like any other run of the mill Thursday. You would never know that churning hundreds of miles away in the Atlantic Ocean, Irene approaches. New York is a busy place and everything happens in time here, even destructive forces of nature like hurricanes or tourists. Irene won’t arrive until Sunday, a veritable lifetime when counted in New York minutes, so there is still plenty of time to have a cocktail down at a small local bar, which is what I did.
Earlier, I joined the busy online world buzzing like hornets about the weather. Since I live in the suburbs, my concerns are for my roof or that great old tree in my backyard that has lately turned leaning toward my patio into an art form. But for the city dwellers, where this kind of weather event is beyond their control, thoughts turn elsewhere. In this case, the impending interruption of life out on NYC’s decadent gay oasis of choice: Fire Island.
Personally, I have no love for the place. I had lunch there once in 2001 with my old boss and stayed overnight a few years later with Cyd and Dan. My boyfriend of the time Sean and I shared a sandy twin bed and I found the other housemates (one in particular) insufferably fussy. Cyd and Dan are lovely, laid back people but they had ended up in a share with someone so tense that dinner felt as if it was made of a ticking time bomb with only 15 seconds left on the clock. Throw in my dislike of sun, sand and the ocean and you have the makings of the most unpleasant 24 hour period this side of Jack Bauer. I have not been back since.
If it wasn’t guaranteed to confirm for certain religious zealots that God hates fags, I would wish Irene wipe the place off the map. It could use, as I posted on Adam Sank’s Facebook wall earlier, a good hosing off like a “50 MPH enema.” I was less kind on Zachary Barnett’s wall where I followed a string of stringy gays wondering if they should stay or go under his status update heading “Fire Island: Forced Evacuation.” Sounded like a good porn title to me, but a lousy way to spend a weekend vacation out of town. “How dedicated are these homos,” I posted aloud to those very same homos, “to the prospect of getting laid that they would want to ride out a hurricane in one of those claptrap 1970s asbestos palaces that linger outside the meat rack filled with ghosts of popper bottles past like a rash that won’t go away?”
Further evidence of why I have no friends.
But as I took stock in my life tonight in a tiny piano bar on the Upper East Side, collecting friends was as far away from me as that dreaded hurricane. There was only one friend that mattered in that moment: Barton Brooks. Barton is perfect. He is the Ken doll of compassion and charity. He is the person you pretend to be at your high school reunion. He is wonderful.
We met at Brandy’s, a saloon with a solid wood bar and a central piano. Like all places in New York, it is old with a quirky plumbing issue and at least one patron who seems to have lost touch with modern life just about the time The Jeffersons went off the air. This is what is known as character, and Manhattan is busting with it. It oozes, like a sore that never heals.
Like me, Barton is also in a place of evaluating his life but it isn’t related to the weather. Whatever gets you to that point, so long as you arrive at your destination I suppose. As Madonna (and no one ever before her or since) said, “an unexamined life is not worth living.” So here we are: two people examining our lives. We did it over chocolate cake shots and a slice around the corner at Two Boots and as best we could while an opera singer screamed a show tune into a microphone like he was trying to fill Carnegie Hall (and I don’t mean with people, either). I don’t know that we accomplished anything but we had a good time anyway.
Soon enough it was time for me to leave, and not by ferry to Fire Island or even the Hamptons Jitney bus parked so forlorn around the corner from the bar. As I waited in Grand Central Station for my train to open up, I gazed around at the expanse of marble. Was it for the last time? The new Apple Store is under construction on the far mezzanine. I hope it doesn’t destroy the character of the great hall, but knowing Apple it will be cool and amazing and the worst thing about it will be the constant lines to get in, like the hottest nightclub in town, where people consume overpriced accessories and cruise processors instead of people. I wonder if Steve Jobs will ever see it. I hope so.
I hope the hurricane ends up a dud. I hope the worst thing that happens is how bored I am in my house without electricity and all the wonders that the mother’s milk of power provides. I hope Grand Central is spared so future generations can search the ceiling, past the stray Mylar balloons, for their astrological signs. And Apple can sell whatever crazy new thing they shit out after everyone realizes the iPad is just an iPhone you can’t make calls on, like the regular iPhone you can’t make calls on, only twice as big and more expensive.
Spare our city, Irene, in all its terrible glory. Spare it all. But if Fire Island joins Atlantis, so be it.
Showing posts with label Dan Pinar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dan Pinar. Show all posts
Friday, August 26, 2011
Friday, April 1, 2011
There's No Fool Like An April Fool
Sometimes it is hard to tell the exact moment that things have stopped going your way. I think it is because it doesn’t happen all at once. Problems drip slowly out of a faucet of misery, though initially it is nothing you can’t handle. For the bold or naïve, it is easy to go about your routine until you turn around and realize that all hope is lost, as is any chance of getting back to it. I should have seen the signs earlier, but when it is April Fool’s Day, it is easy to become distracted.
It all started this morning at work. I am in Los Angeles doing the show for the week and this morning, I was hosting Frank DeCaro’s show instead of my own since Frank and his co-host Doria were doing my show with Romaine in Palm Springs for Dinah Shore weekend. The first hour was beset by technical problems that threw my guest host Dennis Hensley temporarily off his game, but they were all resolved pretty quickly so I thought nothing of it. By the end of the show, Dennis and I were pleased with the result.
It all started this morning at work. I am in Los Angeles doing the show for the week and this morning, I was hosting Frank DeCaro’s show instead of my own since Frank and his co-host Doria were doing my show with Romaine in Palm Springs for Dinah Shore weekend. The first hour was beset by technical problems that threw my guest host Dennis Hensley temporarily off his game, but they were all resolved pretty quickly so I thought nothing of it. By the end of the show, Dennis and I were pleased with the result.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Giving Tanks
(This is a continuation of the entry Ain't That A Mother)
I suppose it was the universe’s little joke when I got to the Hertz location at LAX and looked around for my car in the President’s Circle and found waiting for me a vehicle as big as my ego. All of the sass disappeared from my walk and I crumpled like a trailer in a tornado. Suddenly, looming before me was the largest SUV I had ever seen. It was a Lincoln Navigator. It seats seven comfortably. It probably sleeps seven comfortably too. I am pretty sure as a kid I rode on smaller school buses. In a moment of panic, I almost went in to the counter and insisted on a smaller car. However that is always a pain in the ass and they were just being polite trying to upgrade me.
It was just ironic that on my last trip to LA, they gave me a Prius and this time, I was handed the genetic opposite: a thundering thirsty mastodon. Of course, last time it took me thirty minutes and a dutiful scan of the owner’s manual in the parking lot just to figure out how to drive the Prius, so perhaps my issue is not so much the cars they give me, but instead the fact that I am just not a very good driver.
Times have been tough since my heyday in Hollywood and jumbo SUVs have been getting a bad rap. Gas prices have been high, the environment is in a shambles. Just this week, a massive oil spill in the gulf has dominated the news. This is not the moment to tool around town alone in something four times the size of my little convertible at home. I felt self conscious as I drove down the street, the wheels barely fitting inside the white lines on the road. “I’m not an asshole. It’s a rental,” I wanted to call out to what I assumed were astonished locals, shaking their heads in deserved disapproval.
I suppose it was the universe’s little joke when I got to the Hertz location at LAX and looked around for my car in the President’s Circle and found waiting for me a vehicle as big as my ego. All of the sass disappeared from my walk and I crumpled like a trailer in a tornado. Suddenly, looming before me was the largest SUV I had ever seen. It was a Lincoln Navigator. It seats seven comfortably. It probably sleeps seven comfortably too. I am pretty sure as a kid I rode on smaller school buses. In a moment of panic, I almost went in to the counter and insisted on a smaller car. However that is always a pain in the ass and they were just being polite trying to upgrade me.
It was just ironic that on my last trip to LA, they gave me a Prius and this time, I was handed the genetic opposite: a thundering thirsty mastodon. Of course, last time it took me thirty minutes and a dutiful scan of the owner’s manual in the parking lot just to figure out how to drive the Prius, so perhaps my issue is not so much the cars they give me, but instead the fact that I am just not a very good driver.
Times have been tough since my heyday in Hollywood and jumbo SUVs have been getting a bad rap. Gas prices have been high, the environment is in a shambles. Just this week, a massive oil spill in the gulf has dominated the news. This is not the moment to tool around town alone in something four times the size of my little convertible at home. I felt self conscious as I drove down the street, the wheels barely fitting inside the white lines on the road. “I’m not an asshole. It’s a rental,” I wanted to call out to what I assumed were astonished locals, shaking their heads in deserved disapproval.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Hollywon't
Los Angeles is a cruel episode of The Twilight Zone. I spent several days out there this week for my birthday and as usual, it did not disappoint. I have a rule about visiting LA that I have to go for a minimum of three days. In the first two days, it is easy to fall back in love with the wonderful weather and the hot men around every corner. At the end of day two, you start debating in your head if you are cool enough to live in Los Feliz or such an alcoholic that only West Hollywood makes any practical sense. And then on day three, the shit hits the fan.
In my case, it was the $280 parking ticket I got around the corner from The Waffle, a fabulous 70s themed diner with a Brady Bunch staircase and brown and orange décor. “Did you park on a baby?!” was the incredulous response from a friend of mine. Oh no. Just a poorly marked bus zone in a bankrupt city in a bankrupt state desperate for cash.
On Tuesday night, I went to dinner with Mike, who was with me on the trip, Cyd and Dan recently relocated to the LA cast and Jason. We went to Vermont, a new restaurant on Vermont where my friend Brandon works, which several years too late picked up the generic restaurant name trend that haunted Manhattan in the 90s (I’m looking at you Food Bar, Cafeteria, et al). It is a companion place to Rockwell, the outdoor venue next door that my friend Jeremy tried to convince me to have an LA-based birthday party at. After our dinner, I am relieved that I was too lazy to pull something together there.
Turns out the bad service at Vermont was genetic since the place is owned by the same people who brought you my personal LA hell restaurant Mark’s on La Cienega. The last time I ate there I waited an hour and a half to be seated inside a dumpster because my biceps weren’t big enough and I wasn’t sufficiently famous. We sat inside at Vermont but under a strangely placed tree, which combining the horrible waiter with my nasty cold, made me long for a noose. I don’t understand how LA, a city populated entirely by waiters, past and present, can have a single restaurant with a middle aged server who can’t get a single aspect of your order right. By Wednesday morning, I couldn’t get on the plane back to New York fast enough.
It is disheartening to think that the city I lived in for fifteen years can now cause a near allergic reaction. Part of me really wants to move back, to take up with my old friends. To spend more time with my family. To get off work at 7pm and have a real life like a real human being. Plus, the new Pavilions in West Hollywood is amazing. If I moved back, I would want to have my mail forwarded to the produce section. But as I collapsed with some relief in my window seat on the flight home, I knew that as much as LA has to offer, it just doesn’t offer enough. It’s a bad ex-boyfriend you still love who is really sorry for everything but you know in your heart will never change. And I am better off without him.
In my case, it was the $280 parking ticket I got around the corner from The Waffle, a fabulous 70s themed diner with a Brady Bunch staircase and brown and orange décor. “Did you park on a baby?!” was the incredulous response from a friend of mine. Oh no. Just a poorly marked bus zone in a bankrupt city in a bankrupt state desperate for cash.
On Tuesday night, I went to dinner with Mike, who was with me on the trip, Cyd and Dan recently relocated to the LA cast and Jason. We went to Vermont, a new restaurant on Vermont where my friend Brandon works, which several years too late picked up the generic restaurant name trend that haunted Manhattan in the 90s (I’m looking at you Food Bar, Cafeteria, et al). It is a companion place to Rockwell, the outdoor venue next door that my friend Jeremy tried to convince me to have an LA-based birthday party at. After our dinner, I am relieved that I was too lazy to pull something together there.
Turns out the bad service at Vermont was genetic since the place is owned by the same people who brought you my personal LA hell restaurant Mark’s on La Cienega. The last time I ate there I waited an hour and a half to be seated inside a dumpster because my biceps weren’t big enough and I wasn’t sufficiently famous. We sat inside at Vermont but under a strangely placed tree, which combining the horrible waiter with my nasty cold, made me long for a noose. I don’t understand how LA, a city populated entirely by waiters, past and present, can have a single restaurant with a middle aged server who can’t get a single aspect of your order right. By Wednesday morning, I couldn’t get on the plane back to New York fast enough.
It is disheartening to think that the city I lived in for fifteen years can now cause a near allergic reaction. Part of me really wants to move back, to take up with my old friends. To spend more time with my family. To get off work at 7pm and have a real life like a real human being. Plus, the new Pavilions in West Hollywood is amazing. If I moved back, I would want to have my mail forwarded to the produce section. But as I collapsed with some relief in my window seat on the flight home, I knew that as much as LA has to offer, it just doesn’t offer enough. It’s a bad ex-boyfriend you still love who is really sorry for everything but you know in your heart will never change. And I am better off without him.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Live Blogging Hurricane Gustav
For years, I have been trying to convince my friends in gay media to join my call for all gay people to go to New Orleans and support the local economy. Gays do one thing well: travel and spend lots of money. It's just what a down on its heels tourist destination needs. And each year over Labor Day weekend, there is Southern Decadence (sort of gay Mardi Gras), which was blamed by certain bloated TV preachers for Hurricane Katrina. Never mind that very un-gay friendly Mississippi got much worse out of that storm. So each year since then I have traveled down to New Orleans for Southern Decadence to show my support and this year has been no different.
Wednesday, August 27th
8:40pm Tropical storm Gustav begins to appear to be strengthening and heading for New Orleans. Expected landfall: Labor Day. Mike and I decide to see how things are shaping up before deciding to cancel our trip.
Thursday, August 28th
9:10pm Gustav looks headed for hurricane status. I dine with Cyd and Dan and Mike at Rocking Horse in Chelsea. Mike is still firm on going to New Orleans. I decide to see if they announce an evacuation on Friday morning.
Friday, August 29th
8:31am Travel companion Clayton backs out of the trip, even though Jet Blue steadfastly refuses to refund or change the ticket without a fee.
10:00am Clay Lee decides he isn't flying in from Texas after all. "If I come, we will be evacuated. If I stay home, the weather will be great and nothing will happen."
10:45am Mike and I decide to make a go of it (along with the other Mike who is meeting us at the airport) and continue packing for our 2:50pm flight. I go online to the airport's official website to see if there is any info. It's url flymsy.com (flimsy?) doesn't instill much confidence.
2:45pm "This is the Captain speaking. Welcome to flight 119 to New Orleans. The weather is beautiful there now. I can't say it will stay that way. Why are all of you going to New Orleans today? Shouldn't you be headed the other way?"
5:30pm Deplaning, I notice that the guy in my row is wearing a Red Cross name badge. The guy in the row in front of me is wearing a Weather Channel baseball cap and carrying a television camera. As I watch the Red Cross organizers meet in a huddle outside our gate upon landing, I start thinking this might be a short trip.
7:05pm I arrive at the Decadent Ducks cocktail party, for which I have been made a guest of honor. I forget that I am still wearing the red v-neck shirt that says "OTTER" on it as I wander into a room filled with hundreds of bears. I am a big hit for all the wrong reasons.
9:18pm Mike and Mike and I wrap up dinner at the my favorite New Orleans restaurant, The Gumbo Shop. I tell the waitress that we come back each year to support New Orleans because of Hurricane Katrina. She hugs us. We leave her a big tip.
11:37pm The Bourbon Pub is so packed you would hardly know there was a hurricane coming. The rest of the French Quarter is even quieter than usual, but the gay part is in full swing. David my favorite bartender watches as a dozen or so listener ask him where I am and then come up to take pictures with me. "I guess a few people know you are here" he smiles as he gives us a mind eraser to share. I am coy. "One or two."
Saturday, August 30th
3:23am A long day of flying and drinking has caught up with me. I want to go to bed and I am worried about a possible early morning evacuation. Listeners Josh and Nick assure me at the Bourbon Pub that no mandatory evacuation will happen.
4:30am I arrive at my hotel to find notices posted everywhere and under my door announcing a voluntary evacuation starting at 8am, and directing people to buses at the Sheraton to get to the airport. I call Jet Blue to change my canceled flight. I am rebooked for the 5:45pm flight on Sunday, meaning I could spend as much as 36 hours at the airport before leaving. I set my alarm for 9:30am and try to get some sleep.
9:27am Banging at my door by a hotel employee. She demands I leave the hotel by 10am. I argue with her and slam the door. I hate being woken up in the morning but especially moments before my alarm is set to go off.
9:56am A phone call from Dave, the hotel manager at the Hilton Garden Inn. I tell him my flight has been changed to Sunday evening. There is no mandatory evacuation yet. I can stay until there is one. Fine. He gives me his cell phone so I can reach him if I need anything. I go back to sleep. I have a nightmare about a large drag queen maid trying to get into my room to clean up.
1:00pm Automated phone call from Jet Blue. My flight on Sunday has also been canceled. I am connected immediately to an agent who books me on the just created red eye flight out that night at 11:50pm. Mike and Mike are on that flight too. We plan to head off to the Praline Connection for lunch and fried pickles.
2:32pm Praline Connection is closed so we go to Port Of Call for a sensational cheeseburger and a baked potato drenched in the works. Thought about going to the Chartres House but they were boarding up the windows with the patrons still inside. Scary!
3:45pm Walk down Bourbon Street. The Quarter is largely quiet and boarded up. The gay area is still in full swing. Gays are pouring into the streets with to-go cups in hand. My old friend Allen is working the bar at Bourbon. I say good bye and head for the hotel to pack up, watch some TV and get on the shuttle bus to the airport.
4:48pm Ray Nagin urges the tourists to get out of town now while they still can. I try to call down to the desk at my hotel but there is no answer. I go down in person and there is one guy there hanging out watching the hurricane coverage on the news. It is Dave the hotel manager. "You must be in 1621." I am the last hotel guest, though four journalists are staying in the hotel through the storm. He and one other woman are the only staff left. "We can open the bar for you if you want one last drink before you go" he offers. I check out of the hotel and head for the city shuttles from the Sheraton.
5:23pm Mike and Mike are already waiting at the Sheraton. The city shuttle buses spontaneously stopped running an hour earlier much to the anguish of the few tourists left and trying to leave. Mike secures a taxi to take us to the airport. Traffic being a concern we leave 3 hours for the trip since it was reportedly taking that long in the morning. Cab driver knows all sorts of short cuts. There are lots of hot National Guardsmen lingering next to Humvees along the way. We get there in 35 minutes.
7:07pm Sitting on the floor in the middle of the terminal, eating my supplies of beef jerky and nutter butters that I secured at the corner market before I left in case the airport didn't have anything open. Everyone in the city is in surprisingly good spirits given that a potential Category 5 hurricane is headed straight for them. I had a fun adventure though I am sad the weekend is ending early. Should be home at the crack of dawn to start another adventure, preferably aside Clayton's pool.
Wednesday, August 27th
8:40pm Tropical storm Gustav begins to appear to be strengthening and heading for New Orleans. Expected landfall: Labor Day. Mike and I decide to see how things are shaping up before deciding to cancel our trip.
Thursday, August 28th
9:10pm Gustav looks headed for hurricane status. I dine with Cyd and Dan and Mike at Rocking Horse in Chelsea. Mike is still firm on going to New Orleans. I decide to see if they announce an evacuation on Friday morning.
Friday, August 29th
8:31am Travel companion Clayton backs out of the trip, even though Jet Blue steadfastly refuses to refund or change the ticket without a fee.
10:00am Clay Lee decides he isn't flying in from Texas after all. "If I come, we will be evacuated. If I stay home, the weather will be great and nothing will happen."
10:45am Mike and I decide to make a go of it (along with the other Mike who is meeting us at the airport) and continue packing for our 2:50pm flight. I go online to the airport's official website to see if there is any info. It's url flymsy.com (flimsy?) doesn't instill much confidence.
2:45pm "This is the Captain speaking. Welcome to flight 119 to New Orleans. The weather is beautiful there now. I can't say it will stay that way. Why are all of you going to New Orleans today? Shouldn't you be headed the other way?"
5:30pm Deplaning, I notice that the guy in my row is wearing a Red Cross name badge. The guy in the row in front of me is wearing a Weather Channel baseball cap and carrying a television camera. As I watch the Red Cross organizers meet in a huddle outside our gate upon landing, I start thinking this might be a short trip.
7:05pm I arrive at the Decadent Ducks cocktail party, for which I have been made a guest of honor. I forget that I am still wearing the red v-neck shirt that says "OTTER" on it as I wander into a room filled with hundreds of bears. I am a big hit for all the wrong reasons.
9:18pm Mike and Mike and I wrap up dinner at the my favorite New Orleans restaurant, The Gumbo Shop. I tell the waitress that we come back each year to support New Orleans because of Hurricane Katrina. She hugs us. We leave her a big tip.
11:37pm The Bourbon Pub is so packed you would hardly know there was a hurricane coming. The rest of the French Quarter is even quieter than usual, but the gay part is in full swing. David my favorite bartender watches as a dozen or so listener ask him where I am and then come up to take pictures with me. "I guess a few people know you are here" he smiles as he gives us a mind eraser to share. I am coy. "One or two."
Saturday, August 30th
3:23am A long day of flying and drinking has caught up with me. I want to go to bed and I am worried about a possible early morning evacuation. Listeners Josh and Nick assure me at the Bourbon Pub that no mandatory evacuation will happen.
4:30am I arrive at my hotel to find notices posted everywhere and under my door announcing a voluntary evacuation starting at 8am, and directing people to buses at the Sheraton to get to the airport. I call Jet Blue to change my canceled flight. I am rebooked for the 5:45pm flight on Sunday, meaning I could spend as much as 36 hours at the airport before leaving. I set my alarm for 9:30am and try to get some sleep.
9:27am Banging at my door by a hotel employee. She demands I leave the hotel by 10am. I argue with her and slam the door. I hate being woken up in the morning but especially moments before my alarm is set to go off.
9:56am A phone call from Dave, the hotel manager at the Hilton Garden Inn. I tell him my flight has been changed to Sunday evening. There is no mandatory evacuation yet. I can stay until there is one. Fine. He gives me his cell phone so I can reach him if I need anything. I go back to sleep. I have a nightmare about a large drag queen maid trying to get into my room to clean up.
1:00pm Automated phone call from Jet Blue. My flight on Sunday has also been canceled. I am connected immediately to an agent who books me on the just created red eye flight out that night at 11:50pm. Mike and Mike are on that flight too. We plan to head off to the Praline Connection for lunch and fried pickles.
2:32pm Praline Connection is closed so we go to Port Of Call for a sensational cheeseburger and a baked potato drenched in the works. Thought about going to the Chartres House but they were boarding up the windows with the patrons still inside. Scary!
3:45pm Walk down Bourbon Street. The Quarter is largely quiet and boarded up. The gay area is still in full swing. Gays are pouring into the streets with to-go cups in hand. My old friend Allen is working the bar at Bourbon. I say good bye and head for the hotel to pack up, watch some TV and get on the shuttle bus to the airport.
4:48pm Ray Nagin urges the tourists to get out of town now while they still can. I try to call down to the desk at my hotel but there is no answer. I go down in person and there is one guy there hanging out watching the hurricane coverage on the news. It is Dave the hotel manager. "You must be in 1621." I am the last hotel guest, though four journalists are staying in the hotel through the storm. He and one other woman are the only staff left. "We can open the bar for you if you want one last drink before you go" he offers. I check out of the hotel and head for the city shuttles from the Sheraton.
5:23pm Mike and Mike are already waiting at the Sheraton. The city shuttle buses spontaneously stopped running an hour earlier much to the anguish of the few tourists left and trying to leave. Mike secures a taxi to take us to the airport. Traffic being a concern we leave 3 hours for the trip since it was reportedly taking that long in the morning. Cab driver knows all sorts of short cuts. There are lots of hot National Guardsmen lingering next to Humvees along the way. We get there in 35 minutes.
7:07pm Sitting on the floor in the middle of the terminal, eating my supplies of beef jerky and nutter butters that I secured at the corner market before I left in case the airport didn't have anything open. Everyone in the city is in surprisingly good spirits given that a potential Category 5 hurricane is headed straight for them. I had a fun adventure though I am sad the weekend is ending early. Should be home at the crack of dawn to start another adventure, preferably aside Clayton's pool.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
I Am A Camera
I bring my camera out with me on nights on the town like this because I always intend to take photos to better commemorate the evening. After talking to Gary today about his lost camera and the contents of our first fun night together, I am a little sad that my blog and my own memories are all we have left of it. It helps that I was spending tonight with two of the most photogenic and photographed friends I have.
Shaun McCarron, along with his boyfriend Paul, is a model, most recently featured on the Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency. I think the show is a fine diversion thanks to its ample mixture of hunky horseflesh and outlandishly phony drama. It isn’t going to win a Peabody Award anytime soon but it’s always good for a late night zip through on TiVo, scanning from underwear photo shoot to brief moments of mild tension teased and slo-mo played ad nauseum. It really fills the time.
After being on the show Friday and Monday, I told Erik Rhodes that even though we don’t like the same food, go to the same places or have any friends in common, we really should hang out more. He heartily agreed and we decided to go to Bowery Bar tonight, and drag Shaun along with us. So I slipped my camera into the pocket of my cargo shorts and headed downtown. I wore a cute shirt from Old Navy that cost me $6 when I bought it in Utah back in January. It is the perfect thing to wear to a place like BBar, I thought as I passed the French Connection store around the corner, because I am guaranteed to be the only gay there in it. True enough, while someone at the bar was wearing my favorite Club Monaco shirt, I was the only one there in Old Navy.
There was an insane line outside. So long that if I wasn’t meeting several people at the bar, I would have turned and walked away. This is Roommate’s biggest pet peeve with me. He doesn’t understand the point of having a national radio show if it can’t get me to the front of lines at trendy places. But I relish my anonymity in the city and part of me thinks that if I don’t start pressing doormen for favors, I can still hold onto that feeling, even as the phone numbers of the callers creep closer and closer to home. My friend Dan who agreed to meet me out was the first to arrive and he had the same reaction to the line I had. “Don’t worry,” I assured him. “As soon as Erik Rhodes gets here, we won’t be in this line any longer.” Sure as shooting, Erik arrived and hurriedly whisked us to the minor mob of impatient gays in tight t-shirts waiting at the main door.
“This is where all the fags who think they deserve to be inside already stand and wait.” His dismissive attitude of the pretentious boys at the door made me love him even more. Going to a gay bar with Erik Rhodes is like going to the prom with the captain of the football team, and where he thinks the whole high school thing is one big joke. It’s twice the delicious. Naturally, we were swept into the bar faster than you can say tank top weather.
I was glad to be out of the line. Not just because it is humiliating to stand in a long line outside of a virtually empty bar. But also because I was in the line for all of one minute before the homos behind me started the worst conversation I ever had to hear with the opening line, “How was Fire?” The kid meant Fire Island, but after I told occasional Fire Island share veteran Dan that story we both agreed that no one calls Fire Island “Fire.” In one word, they managed to take something that was already obscenely obnoxious and shoot it off into a whole new orbit. I don’t exaggerate when I say they should be stoned to death in the streets.
As much as we trash “the scene” at Bowery Bar, the guys who go there, fueled by the patented blend of drugs, liquor, desperation and sardine-like proximity that has kept it a downtown staple for more than a decade, are surprisingly chatty and friendly. Most gay bars in New York, no one wants to talk to anyone, with the exception of happy hour at Therapy which is so spontaneously kissy at times that it constantly threatens to make mono Manhattan’s most common communicable disease (second only to rudeness to tourists). On my first trip outside to rescue Shaun from the long line, a guy tapped me on the shoulder and told me I had a nice body. I stared at him blankly, asked him where it was, and then kept going. Later a guy walked up to me and said, “Someone put a roofie in my drink. Can you believe it? Come see me later. I’ll be over here.” I am certain I would not get this reaction if I went to Bowery Bar often. It is only because I make an annual pilgrimage that I am greeted as fresh meat.
The same cannot be said for Erik. He could go to that bar every single night and still be a hot property. First he ran into his friend Phil, who threw a birthday party for him two years ago. Phil is a photography student and a “prodigy” according to Erik. I was tempted to do that thing where you pretend like you don’t know someone is a famous photographer and ask them to take a picture of you and your friend in front of something. My camera was in my pocket and I did want a picture of me and Erik since there isn’t one that I can recall, but I got shy and thought better of it. Even Shaun ran into people he knew at the bar. So did Dan and later so did I when the DJ Keo Nozari swept in with his ultra low key cool vibe and sweet smile.
The place was also awash in reality show people. Erik Rhodes of course made a famous splash on My Life On The D List last year when Kathy Griffin ever so patiently stripped him of nine layers of clothing at the GayVN Awards. Shaun was on last season of Janice Dickinson, his ass so delightfully cupped into tiny underwear like two ripe peaches wrapped up in a very expensive napkin. Keo ran into his friend Ronnie who had been one of the contestants on Manhunt, the Bravo male model series (not to be confused, as Keo initially was when I asked him if Ronnie was from Manhunt, with the dirty hook up website). I even saw Project Runway reject Milan sitting at a table, not looking rejected so much as tired and in need of one of those five minute face lifts they are always advertising on late night TV.
I suppose it is too bad that I only took one photo all night. Waiting for the train in Times Square to go down to the bar, I snapped a photo of some funny graffiti scribbled on an ad that I will put in my ongoing New York photo project that I not-so-ironically call “Advertorial.” So this will have to be the only record of the event. The sight of Erik Rhodes putting his head on my shoulder so sweetly, the bags under Milan’s eyes, and the Long Island gay Guido poser who tried to blend in between Shaun and Erik who were oblivious to his presence will live on only in my mind. Maybe Christopher Isherwood was on to something. We are our own cameras, viewing life, shutters open, through our own lenses and filters, and recording. But I am thinking, about the antics we see from our single perspectives, and knowing that we view only what we want to see.
Shaun McCarron, along with his boyfriend Paul, is a model, most recently featured on the Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency. I think the show is a fine diversion thanks to its ample mixture of hunky horseflesh and outlandishly phony drama. It isn’t going to win a Peabody Award anytime soon but it’s always good for a late night zip through on TiVo, scanning from underwear photo shoot to brief moments of mild tension teased and slo-mo played ad nauseum. It really fills the time.
After being on the show Friday and Monday, I told Erik Rhodes that even though we don’t like the same food, go to the same places or have any friends in common, we really should hang out more. He heartily agreed and we decided to go to Bowery Bar tonight, and drag Shaun along with us. So I slipped my camera into the pocket of my cargo shorts and headed downtown. I wore a cute shirt from Old Navy that cost me $6 when I bought it in Utah back in January. It is the perfect thing to wear to a place like BBar, I thought as I passed the French Connection store around the corner, because I am guaranteed to be the only gay there in it. True enough, while someone at the bar was wearing my favorite Club Monaco shirt, I was the only one there in Old Navy.
There was an insane line outside. So long that if I wasn’t meeting several people at the bar, I would have turned and walked away. This is Roommate’s biggest pet peeve with me. He doesn’t understand the point of having a national radio show if it can’t get me to the front of lines at trendy places. But I relish my anonymity in the city and part of me thinks that if I don’t start pressing doormen for favors, I can still hold onto that feeling, even as the phone numbers of the callers creep closer and closer to home. My friend Dan who agreed to meet me out was the first to arrive and he had the same reaction to the line I had. “Don’t worry,” I assured him. “As soon as Erik Rhodes gets here, we won’t be in this line any longer.” Sure as shooting, Erik arrived and hurriedly whisked us to the minor mob of impatient gays in tight t-shirts waiting at the main door.
“This is where all the fags who think they deserve to be inside already stand and wait.” His dismissive attitude of the pretentious boys at the door made me love him even more. Going to a gay bar with Erik Rhodes is like going to the prom with the captain of the football team, and where he thinks the whole high school thing is one big joke. It’s twice the delicious. Naturally, we were swept into the bar faster than you can say tank top weather.
I was glad to be out of the line. Not just because it is humiliating to stand in a long line outside of a virtually empty bar. But also because I was in the line for all of one minute before the homos behind me started the worst conversation I ever had to hear with the opening line, “How was Fire?” The kid meant Fire Island, but after I told occasional Fire Island share veteran Dan that story we both agreed that no one calls Fire Island “Fire.” In one word, they managed to take something that was already obscenely obnoxious and shoot it off into a whole new orbit. I don’t exaggerate when I say they should be stoned to death in the streets.
As much as we trash “the scene” at Bowery Bar, the guys who go there, fueled by the patented blend of drugs, liquor, desperation and sardine-like proximity that has kept it a downtown staple for more than a decade, are surprisingly chatty and friendly. Most gay bars in New York, no one wants to talk to anyone, with the exception of happy hour at Therapy which is so spontaneously kissy at times that it constantly threatens to make mono Manhattan’s most common communicable disease (second only to rudeness to tourists). On my first trip outside to rescue Shaun from the long line, a guy tapped me on the shoulder and told me I had a nice body. I stared at him blankly, asked him where it was, and then kept going. Later a guy walked up to me and said, “Someone put a roofie in my drink. Can you believe it? Come see me later. I’ll be over here.” I am certain I would not get this reaction if I went to Bowery Bar often. It is only because I make an annual pilgrimage that I am greeted as fresh meat.
The same cannot be said for Erik. He could go to that bar every single night and still be a hot property. First he ran into his friend Phil, who threw a birthday party for him two years ago. Phil is a photography student and a “prodigy” according to Erik. I was tempted to do that thing where you pretend like you don’t know someone is a famous photographer and ask them to take a picture of you and your friend in front of something. My camera was in my pocket and I did want a picture of me and Erik since there isn’t one that I can recall, but I got shy and thought better of it. Even Shaun ran into people he knew at the bar. So did Dan and later so did I when the DJ Keo Nozari swept in with his ultra low key cool vibe and sweet smile.
The place was also awash in reality show people. Erik Rhodes of course made a famous splash on My Life On The D List last year when Kathy Griffin ever so patiently stripped him of nine layers of clothing at the GayVN Awards. Shaun was on last season of Janice Dickinson, his ass so delightfully cupped into tiny underwear like two ripe peaches wrapped up in a very expensive napkin. Keo ran into his friend Ronnie who had been one of the contestants on Manhunt, the Bravo male model series (not to be confused, as Keo initially was when I asked him if Ronnie was from Manhunt, with the dirty hook up website). I even saw Project Runway reject Milan sitting at a table, not looking rejected so much as tired and in need of one of those five minute face lifts they are always advertising on late night TV.
I suppose it is too bad that I only took one photo all night. Waiting for the train in Times Square to go down to the bar, I snapped a photo of some funny graffiti scribbled on an ad that I will put in my ongoing New York photo project that I not-so-ironically call “Advertorial.” So this will have to be the only record of the event. The sight of Erik Rhodes putting his head on my shoulder so sweetly, the bags under Milan’s eyes, and the Long Island gay Guido poser who tried to blend in between Shaun and Erik who were oblivious to his presence will live on only in my mind. Maybe Christopher Isherwood was on to something. We are our own cameras, viewing life, shutters open, through our own lenses and filters, and recording. But I am thinking, about the antics we see from our single perspectives, and knowing that we view only what we want to see.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Dinner At Eight
Last night I was riding in the car with a slutty lesbian with a southern accent and I called her the "Paula Deen of pussy!" Everyone in the car laughed and in that moment I thought, "Oh I can't wait to post that in my blog." When I woke up this morning, it was still on my mind and when I started to post about last night I realized that the whole encounter was part of a dream I had, Romaine was not suddenly a blond from Alabama and it in fact never happened. I think it says less about how I amuse myself even when sleeping than it does about the sudden pressure I feel to write a good blog entry.
My last posting involved a very long night hanging out with Matt Kelleher. My retelling of Friday's events passed through his social network faster than Syphilis and by early Saturday night on our way to dinner for round two, the pressure was on! Matt is someone who has always been in my life in waves. When I lived in LA and he as always was in NY, we would see each other once or twice a year for intense weekends of type A gay behavior on such a grand scale that a routine schedule of that level of activity would cause the heart of an American Gladiator to explode. Perhaps it is for the best that we always have months in between to recover.
This weekend has been typical for us. We are like two planets in the same solar system with erratic orbits who have near fatal encounters every few cycles. Eventually we will either slam directly into each other and go supernova or our orbits will just naturally send us spinning further and further apart. This weekend, the planets aligned in their own way and we had two very intense days together. And then we won't see each other again for months, as Matt's orbit takes him very close to Uranus, and mine takes me back to the outer reaches beyond the gay galaxy (aka Westchester County).
After Friday night, I only had four hours of sleep and I was hurting by the time I got home at 1pm. It took all the strength and brainpower I had to pull together my blog posting, shower and change and get back to the city for dinner. I had noticed earlier this week that Chip Arndt and Matt Kelleher were carrying on a private discussion of their dinner plans Wall-to-Wall on Facebook (tacky, but in this case, helpful) and I endeavored to shoehorn my way into their social calendar. I never see either of them, so the ability to see both of them at the same time relieves a lot of my guilt about being a good friend. This set our weekend in motion and Ben Harvey's party ended up being the appetizer for a very long 36 hour meal.
Originally, Chip had wanted to go to a restaurant called "Employee's Only" which being me, I had never heard of. But since Chip really wanted Andy Towle, the Nora Ephron of gay society*, to come, it really needed to be a place very close to his apartment. (*Far Too Obscure Reference Alert: In a press junket interview for the film "You've Got Mail," Tom Hanks revealed that increasingly Nora likes to stay very close to home, down to filming scenes for their latest work together inside her own apartment building. He joked that her next film would be set entirely inside her apartment so she could just direct it from her bedroom.) Matt always the arbiter of where the gay sheep are headed insisted ELMO was the practical solution. Quickly the guest list snowballed and Chip made a reservation for twenty, which I feared (especially after his open invitation on my radio show on Friday) would be insufficient.
I met Matt at his apartment where Gary, who had not intended to crash there, was in need of a fresh shirt. "He's about your size. Bring him something cute!" Matt insisted, forgetting of course that I am the least fashionable person he knows and asking me to bring something cute from my closet is like asking a lesbian to tip better than 15%. It could happen, but not without a lot of anxiety and effort. Gary is blond and fair so I brought him a brown retro vintage Buffalo humor printed ringer t-shirt (origin unknown) and I wore a green Otter Fashion shirt from their collection that they thoughtfully sent me, knowing either one would work for him. The brown shirt was a little big on him, so we switched and he filled out the Otter top perfectly. And, in my personal fashion-blind opinion, the hue of the olive green really worked for him.
Dan also met us at Matt's place since he lives close by, a gay football widow free for dinner while Cyd had a game to play, and Matt's friend Brian and his statistically-handsome date Dallas met us around the corner for the short walk to ELMO. I met Brian forever ago at (I think) SHAG, Matt's favorite hangout and have always found him very sexy, but never more so then when he gushed about what a great writer I am. He has the eyes of a winning poker player and a smile that says "I'm going to eat you." an expression which is open to wild interpretation, although I mean it in the sense that he will in fact devour you if you aren't careful. On our walk to ELMO, we swapped our favorite 30 Rock lines (he is obsessed) and he expressed an interest in the wider use of the words "chortle" and "guffaw" and I promised to work them into the blog.
At ELMO, Chip and Rob were there, as were my friend Kevin, the sexy homo from Chicago and the original Jonathan with his friend Mike. We congregated in the bar for a few minutes as the ultra fit and flitty staff put the finishing touches on our two tables. We moved en masse to the back of the restaurant and then were forced to chose which tables to sit at. I immediately took the middle seat in the smaller table for eight. At San Simeon, Hearst had one of the longest tables I have ever seen, set inside a chapel he had imported stone by stone to make a dining hall. In Citizen Kane, Kane and his wife always sat at long ends where they couldn't hear each other but in reality, Hearst and Davies sat in the dead center facing each other with house guests emanating out from them newest to oldest. Once you got to the end of the table as Louise Brooks reported, the implication was that it was time to pack up and go home. In dining out in big settings, egomaniacs like me always want the center most seat so the conversation radiates out from you as if you are hosting the dinner party.
In the end it didn't matter much where anyone was sitting because it was a non-stop game of musical chairs (set once again to Britney's album playing in its entirety in the background -- did Gary tip someone twenty bucks?). At one point, Mike and Dallas were sitting next to each other and their arguing got so passionate I thought they were going use my bleu cheese dressing as lube and start fucking right on the table. Jason Bellini came in without Will Wikle, who was at home nursing a sore throat (insert your own cocksucking joke here). And Andy Towle finally arrived with his hot boyfriend. Andy's arms were massive and the talk of two tables. Plus, they allowed me to sandbag him with Bette Midler's famous hello to Bruce Springsteen at We Are The World: "You look fabulous! What happened?" which she followed up with "I remember when his arms were as skimpy as his chord changes." All the seat hopping was a little much for our appropriately hot waiter whom I dubbed "Supergirl" because of his famous S logo belt buckle. He dealt with our physical instability by just calling everyone "tranny," "fierce" and "hot mess" every fifteen seconds until I was almost sorry Project Runway and SNL existed.
From there, we of course had to go to a club. Matt offered up his tried and true SHAG but no one was having it. Finally we settled quite reluctantly on SPLASH because it was close by and we knew we could, with a little wrangling, all get in free. I was relieved because the DJ Tracy Young had been on the show on Friday and I told her I would stop by (which is usually a lie). At the door, the doorman our group knew (Derek) wasn't there yet and there was much strum und drang (and minimal guffaw and chortle) about getting ten of us in for free. Dallas was put in charge of this effort as we all bantered on the curb. The whole thing chaffed like a dry rubber leading me to grouse "We have two TV personalities and a radio person who just interviewed their DJ yesterday to promote the night and everyone is hot. What more do they want?"
I think John Blair is a lovely person but the state of NY nightlife is in such disrepair that SPLASH is one of the only options in town if you are in the mood for an old fashioned Saturday night muscle fest set to a bone-rattling beat. Yes, going there is like going back in time to the early 90s and they might as well require high-waisted acid-wash jeans at the door, but what else are we supposed to do? Andy's new arms are nice but they aren't the only game in town. Eventually Derek arrived and we were all ushered into the fixer-upper sanctum. I chatted with Tracy, who gave me some drink tickets which when he saw them caused Matty to do his trademarked clap excitedly and guffaw thing. His friends should know he didn't laugh like that until he started hanging out with my incendiary laugh, and for this reason, I apologize.
At one point, the dancers climbed on top of the bar over us and we all did our level best to ignore their gaze, lest they try to shove their giant crotches in our faces in the hopes of getting spare change. All of them had completely outsized packed-to-the-brim thongs which because of my height kept ending up in my hair (is it possible to get MRSA in a hair follicle? I hope not). It also caused me to suggest they were "holding Nana's purse for her" but it was either too loud or too late for the joke. When the bowl of fresh fruit appeared on the bar, I knew it was time to disembark from the Love Boat and started quickly looking for the exit and bottle of hand sanitizer.
I made my good byes and dashed out into the still of the night. My stomach was still aching from the night before and the beats and cheek implants made me dizzy. It was a sweet weekend with Matt but the shirtless John Blair muscle crowd had a nostalgic feel to it, like watching RENT on Broadway. Even though it is still the current production, the whole thing felt like a creaky revival. At one point for old time sake, Matt stuck his tongue in my mouth like we were back in Terminal Six at LAX in 1997 or back at SPLASH in that same year when I got really drunk and shoved my hands down his shorts, but the whole experience just ended up reminding me that we are too old for this kind of thing and so was everyone else there.
My last posting involved a very long night hanging out with Matt Kelleher. My retelling of Friday's events passed through his social network faster than Syphilis and by early Saturday night on our way to dinner for round two, the pressure was on! Matt is someone who has always been in my life in waves. When I lived in LA and he as always was in NY, we would see each other once or twice a year for intense weekends of type A gay behavior on such a grand scale that a routine schedule of that level of activity would cause the heart of an American Gladiator to explode. Perhaps it is for the best that we always have months in between to recover.
This weekend has been typical for us. We are like two planets in the same solar system with erratic orbits who have near fatal encounters every few cycles. Eventually we will either slam directly into each other and go supernova or our orbits will just naturally send us spinning further and further apart. This weekend, the planets aligned in their own way and we had two very intense days together. And then we won't see each other again for months, as Matt's orbit takes him very close to Uranus, and mine takes me back to the outer reaches beyond the gay galaxy (aka Westchester County).
After Friday night, I only had four hours of sleep and I was hurting by the time I got home at 1pm. It took all the strength and brainpower I had to pull together my blog posting, shower and change and get back to the city for dinner. I had noticed earlier this week that Chip Arndt and Matt Kelleher were carrying on a private discussion of their dinner plans Wall-to-Wall on Facebook (tacky, but in this case, helpful) and I endeavored to shoehorn my way into their social calendar. I never see either of them, so the ability to see both of them at the same time relieves a lot of my guilt about being a good friend. This set our weekend in motion and Ben Harvey's party ended up being the appetizer for a very long 36 hour meal.
Originally, Chip had wanted to go to a restaurant called "Employee's Only" which being me, I had never heard of. But since Chip really wanted Andy Towle, the Nora Ephron of gay society*, to come, it really needed to be a place very close to his apartment. (*Far Too Obscure Reference Alert: In a press junket interview for the film "You've Got Mail," Tom Hanks revealed that increasingly Nora likes to stay very close to home, down to filming scenes for their latest work together inside her own apartment building. He joked that her next film would be set entirely inside her apartment so she could just direct it from her bedroom.) Matt always the arbiter of where the gay sheep are headed insisted ELMO was the practical solution. Quickly the guest list snowballed and Chip made a reservation for twenty, which I feared (especially after his open invitation on my radio show on Friday) would be insufficient.
I met Matt at his apartment where Gary, who had not intended to crash there, was in need of a fresh shirt. "He's about your size. Bring him something cute!" Matt insisted, forgetting of course that I am the least fashionable person he knows and asking me to bring something cute from my closet is like asking a lesbian to tip better than 15%. It could happen, but not without a lot of anxiety and effort. Gary is blond and fair so I brought him a brown retro vintage Buffalo humor printed ringer t-shirt (origin unknown) and I wore a green Otter Fashion shirt from their collection that they thoughtfully sent me, knowing either one would work for him. The brown shirt was a little big on him, so we switched and he filled out the Otter top perfectly. And, in my personal fashion-blind opinion, the hue of the olive green really worked for him.
Dan also met us at Matt's place since he lives close by, a gay football widow free for dinner while Cyd had a game to play, and Matt's friend Brian and his statistically-handsome date Dallas met us around the corner for the short walk to ELMO. I met Brian forever ago at (I think) SHAG, Matt's favorite hangout and have always found him very sexy, but never more so then when he gushed about what a great writer I am. He has the eyes of a winning poker player and a smile that says "I'm going to eat you." an expression which is open to wild interpretation, although I mean it in the sense that he will in fact devour you if you aren't careful. On our walk to ELMO, we swapped our favorite 30 Rock lines (he is obsessed) and he expressed an interest in the wider use of the words "chortle" and "guffaw" and I promised to work them into the blog.
At ELMO, Chip and Rob were there, as were my friend Kevin, the sexy homo from Chicago and the original Jonathan with his friend Mike. We congregated in the bar for a few minutes as the ultra fit and flitty staff put the finishing touches on our two tables. We moved en masse to the back of the restaurant and then were forced to chose which tables to sit at. I immediately took the middle seat in the smaller table for eight. At San Simeon, Hearst had one of the longest tables I have ever seen, set inside a chapel he had imported stone by stone to make a dining hall. In Citizen Kane, Kane and his wife always sat at long ends where they couldn't hear each other but in reality, Hearst and Davies sat in the dead center facing each other with house guests emanating out from them newest to oldest. Once you got to the end of the table as Louise Brooks reported, the implication was that it was time to pack up and go home. In dining out in big settings, egomaniacs like me always want the center most seat so the conversation radiates out from you as if you are hosting the dinner party.
In the end it didn't matter much where anyone was sitting because it was a non-stop game of musical chairs (set once again to Britney's album playing in its entirety in the background -- did Gary tip someone twenty bucks?). At one point, Mike and Dallas were sitting next to each other and their arguing got so passionate I thought they were going use my bleu cheese dressing as lube and start fucking right on the table. Jason Bellini came in without Will Wikle, who was at home nursing a sore throat (insert your own cocksucking joke here). And Andy Towle finally arrived with his hot boyfriend. Andy's arms were massive and the talk of two tables. Plus, they allowed me to sandbag him with Bette Midler's famous hello to Bruce Springsteen at We Are The World: "You look fabulous! What happened?" which she followed up with "I remember when his arms were as skimpy as his chord changes." All the seat hopping was a little much for our appropriately hot waiter whom I dubbed "Supergirl" because of his famous S logo belt buckle. He dealt with our physical instability by just calling everyone "tranny," "fierce" and "hot mess" every fifteen seconds until I was almost sorry Project Runway and SNL existed.
From there, we of course had to go to a club. Matt offered up his tried and true SHAG but no one was having it. Finally we settled quite reluctantly on SPLASH because it was close by and we knew we could, with a little wrangling, all get in free. I was relieved because the DJ Tracy Young had been on the show on Friday and I told her I would stop by (which is usually a lie). At the door, the doorman our group knew (Derek) wasn't there yet and there was much strum und drang (and minimal guffaw and chortle) about getting ten of us in for free. Dallas was put in charge of this effort as we all bantered on the curb. The whole thing chaffed like a dry rubber leading me to grouse "We have two TV personalities and a radio person who just interviewed their DJ yesterday to promote the night and everyone is hot. What more do they want?"
I think John Blair is a lovely person but the state of NY nightlife is in such disrepair that SPLASH is one of the only options in town if you are in the mood for an old fashioned Saturday night muscle fest set to a bone-rattling beat. Yes, going there is like going back in time to the early 90s and they might as well require high-waisted acid-wash jeans at the door, but what else are we supposed to do? Andy's new arms are nice but they aren't the only game in town. Eventually Derek arrived and we were all ushered into the fixer-upper sanctum. I chatted with Tracy, who gave me some drink tickets which when he saw them caused Matty to do his trademarked clap excitedly and guffaw thing. His friends should know he didn't laugh like that until he started hanging out with my incendiary laugh, and for this reason, I apologize.
At one point, the dancers climbed on top of the bar over us and we all did our level best to ignore their gaze, lest they try to shove their giant crotches in our faces in the hopes of getting spare change. All of them had completely outsized packed-to-the-brim thongs which because of my height kept ending up in my hair (is it possible to get MRSA in a hair follicle? I hope not). It also caused me to suggest they were "holding Nana's purse for her" but it was either too loud or too late for the joke. When the bowl of fresh fruit appeared on the bar, I knew it was time to disembark from the Love Boat and started quickly looking for the exit and bottle of hand sanitizer.
I made my good byes and dashed out into the still of the night. My stomach was still aching from the night before and the beats and cheek implants made me dizzy. It was a sweet weekend with Matt but the shirtless John Blair muscle crowd had a nostalgic feel to it, like watching RENT on Broadway. Even though it is still the current production, the whole thing felt like a creaky revival. At one point for old time sake, Matt stuck his tongue in my mouth like we were back in Terminal Six at LAX in 1997 or back at SPLASH in that same year when I got really drunk and shoved my hands down his shorts, but the whole experience just ended up reminding me that we are too old for this kind of thing and so was everyone else there.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Matt and Ben
This blog is primarily dedicated to my adventures out on the town, which might lead some people to believe I am a raging alcoholic. Everyone that is except my grandmother who insists that I don't drink enough. While it is true that many of my nights out happen in dank bars, over the last couple of years I have severely cut back on my drinking. Yes, I still go out, but instead of eight to ten drinks, I am down to one or two. More recently, I went a solid six weeks or so without a single cocktail. That ended last night when I didn't so much fall off the wagon as throw myself onto the Oregon Trail and allow an entire wagon train to roll over me.
Much of this new found sobriety has been necessitated by my move to the suburbs. Invariably I need to drive home at the end of the evening, leaving me at a serious drunken disadvantage to other New Yorkers. More of it has to do with getting older. To paraphrase Catherine Deneuve, at a certain point you have to choose between saving face and saving your ass. To continue drinking heavily means choosing your ass over your face and that is something I have just never been willing to do. Mornings are unpretty enough with your face memorizing every pillow crease from the night before without the telling boozy puffiness lending it a helping hand.
But last night was Ben Harvey's party celebrating his much-heralded TV show debut on HERE TV. I absolutely had to go to support him. And since it has been a while since I had a few cocktails and I knew I didn't need to drive home later, it was the perfect opportunity to enjoy a rare liquor-fueled night on the town. When I arrived, Ben offered to make me a cocktail and while waiting I threw myself on the mercy of his tastefully modern sofa with Cyd and Dan, sitting close together like a comedy team. It was nice spending time with them since I don't ever get enough time to see them. Dan listens to the show on his commute home quite regularly so he usually knows what is going on in my life, but the one-sidedness of it leaves me a little wanting.
Matt Kelleher finally arrived a few minutes later with his adorable blond charge. Gary is a Notre Dame (Matt's alma mater) senior in town looking for jobs and fun before his May graduation. If Roommate had been at the party he would have known immediately that Gary was just my type: tall, blond, sweet with a naturally perfect body and just a hint of chest hair. Matt was busy instructing him in the ways of New York and helping to prepare him for life in the outside world, by way of parties filled with gorgeous gay men and enough liquor to explode ten livers.
Ben arrived in our circle with drinks for the two of them and I held out my hand expectantly. At first Ben was confused but then he realized that he completely forgot to bring me my drink. "What were you waiting for?" he cried. "That was half an hour ago!" It was the very same conversation I had with Jonathan two days earlier. I suppose I am a fool for expecting people to keep their word even in intensely trivial matters, but if seven years in New York City has taught me anything, it is that reliability is essential to keep life running smoothly (as everyone who stands on subway platforms knows all too well). Or maybe I am just spoiled by the military-instilled precision of my parents, later reinforced by the even greater efficiency of Roommate.
Ben finally made good on his promise but unfortunately, my body had completely forgotten what alcohol was and two drinks later, I was flying like Sally Field in a perfectly symmetrical habit. Chris Van Cleef was there and my last blog entry was the talk of the party and the halls of HERE TV. One of his friends even quoted it in his Facebook Wall, citing my blog as "honest and trustworthy." I felt so famous! But Chris was tickled by the blog entry and insisted that he was stone sober when I saw him, which means I guess we can chalk up his willing sexual personality to nothing more complex than a willing sexual personality.
The party was fun, but Matty had another party to go to and I had one eye on the clock for the drunk trains home and the other eye on his blond companion. On our way out, outside the bathroom Sara of the Josh and Sara podcast made the feisty demand "You better not put me in your blog!" which naturally guaranteed she would make it in. (As a side note while I am on the subject of the bathroom, I fell madly in love with the art over Ben's toilet which as I dimly recall was a series of faux mid-century comic panels that started with one of the characters saying in effect: It rains here two out of three days, and during the rainy season, it snows like a bitch! That caused me to laugh so hard, I actually doubled over. So yes I was quite drunk at that point.) Ben's cousin Christian arrived late, almost simultaneously with us leaving so I barely got to say hi. And the presence of Dave Rubin's boyfriend made dry humping his leg even more embarrassing and inappropriate, though I did it anyway.
Matt, Gary and I decamped from Ben's fabulous party to another fabulous party, back in Union Square at David Coleman's place. I tried to tell a very drunk Gary about the remarkable view of Grand Central Station and why the Chrysler Building is my favorite in all of New York but he was instantly obsessed with playing Britney Spears on David's iPod-driven music system. He even went so far as to replace the iPod with his own iPhone and proceeded to turn himself into impromptu DJ. Moments later, egged on by Ryan Newman, he engaged in and narrowly lost a dance off. I felt like I was in a scene out of a gay rip-off of She's All That.
Conor was there, his collie eyes obscured by eyeglasses, reminding me once again of my preference for Clark Kent over Superman. Ben was there too, making a rare public appearance without Bradford. I also ran into Barton who was sexy and lovely as always, and who sat by with a bland expression while I dirty danced with Gary to Radar. In my state, I tried to convince him (unsuccessfully) that I am not the kind of person who does this sort of thing, but he just looked back with an expression lacking both moral judgment and belief. Moments later, the party broke up with most of us headed over to the Chelsea Hotel. And then things got interesting.
It was a night of firsts for me, though none I would recommend. The first first came on the dance floor in the basement bar of the Chelsea when Gary took his shirt off and then insisted I take mine off. I have never been shirtless in a gay club in my life and the only other time I was shirtless in a gay social setting was August of 2001 and we all remember how that ended! Later another clubgoer tapped my bare shoulder and sniffed, "Have you noticed you are the only two people in here with your shirts off? This isn't that kind of place you know." In that moment, I just hoped that he thought we were both too young to know better as opposed to one of us being too young and the other one being definitely old enough to know better. My shirtlessness also got an askance glance from Barton on his way out, again with his trademarked judgment-free judgment which to me is as unrealistic and suspicious as sugar-free, fat-free Cool Whip.
Gary ran into Matt's friend Ian, whom he had met when he met Matt down in South Florida last week. Ian and other friends at the Chelsea who were not at the party pulled the three of us out of the Chelsea and off to another house party. Ian's driver Joe pulled his Bentley up to the curb, graciously took my tacky backpack and ten dollar coat from the Barney's Warehouse Sale and laid them in the trunk with the kind of care usually reserved for fragile antique crystal. I squeezed myself into the backseat with Ian, Gary and to my right, Itay Hod from LOGO News who is just as sexy in person if not more so, while Matt rode in the front seat. Joe drove us to the elegant apartment of Tim who thoughtfully hosted a passel of gay men well into the wee hours of the morning.
Tim worked overtime as a host, entreating smokers not to toss their butts over the side of his balcony onto the neighboring balcony below, filling drinks and otherwise making sure everyone had a good time. Gary settled in on the floor next to the music system, and once again, replaced Tim's music with his own iPhone and set about on another three hour musical journey dedicated almost entirely to the Britney canon with a reverential devotion usually reserved for patron saints and Madonna. By this time, I was just too drunk to keep up the pace and switched to water to keep me from shriveling up like a prune before morning. Gary once again took his shirt off and convinced me to do the same, which lead to first number two: being photographed in public with my shirt off. I had always said I would never, NEVER do that, and yet, here I was, shirtless and grinning like an idiot for the camera.
An hour later, I experienced my third and final first. Gary and I were canoodling on a lovely leather armchair and suddenly, drunk and shirtless in a strange apartment, dawn nearly breaking through the window like a runaway freight train, I felt lost. But how could I be so terribly unhappy? Here I was, in the arms of an adorable guy at a fun party and yet not having J.G. in my life made me feel as lost as a rudderless ship at sea. If I still had his number in my phone, I would have sent him an ill-advised "I am lost without you in my life" text message at six a.m. I was coloring outside the lines and it just wasn't for me. And yet being so fiercely self-reliant as I am, needing someone like this has never been me either. There I was, left between the devil and the deep blue sea, not knowing where to go next or what to do. But true to form for me in moments like this, I mustered my strength and emanated fun without actually having fun until the feeling passed.
A while later, Matt was ready to go and we all put on our shoes and coats and headed out into the soft, lush opening notes of dawn, quickly hailing a cab and heading to Matt's apartment. I thought about just going directly to Grand Central to head home, but realized that a couple of hours sleep would probably be better than just heading home cold. "We'll sleep until ten and then all go to brunch!" Matt offered brightly, still in full cruise director mode, and then seconds later he was fast asleep. I woke up at 11:30am and Gary and Matt were still dead to the world. I put a mirror under each of their noses to make sure they were alive, patted Parker pug on the head and stumbled out the door. It was a great night, to be sure, and probably one of the last all-nighters I will ever have. Hanging out with Matt is always a reliable treat, and there is so much comfort and trust in spending time with someone you have known for more than a decade. In the end, it turns out there are some things, I know I can rely on: old friends, pillow face and always myself.
Much of this new found sobriety has been necessitated by my move to the suburbs. Invariably I need to drive home at the end of the evening, leaving me at a serious drunken disadvantage to other New Yorkers. More of it has to do with getting older. To paraphrase Catherine Deneuve, at a certain point you have to choose between saving face and saving your ass. To continue drinking heavily means choosing your ass over your face and that is something I have just never been willing to do. Mornings are unpretty enough with your face memorizing every pillow crease from the night before without the telling boozy puffiness lending it a helping hand.
But last night was Ben Harvey's party celebrating his much-heralded TV show debut on HERE TV. I absolutely had to go to support him. And since it has been a while since I had a few cocktails and I knew I didn't need to drive home later, it was the perfect opportunity to enjoy a rare liquor-fueled night on the town. When I arrived, Ben offered to make me a cocktail and while waiting I threw myself on the mercy of his tastefully modern sofa with Cyd and Dan, sitting close together like a comedy team. It was nice spending time with them since I don't ever get enough time to see them. Dan listens to the show on his commute home quite regularly so he usually knows what is going on in my life, but the one-sidedness of it leaves me a little wanting.
Matt Kelleher finally arrived a few minutes later with his adorable blond charge. Gary is a Notre Dame (Matt's alma mater) senior in town looking for jobs and fun before his May graduation. If Roommate had been at the party he would have known immediately that Gary was just my type: tall, blond, sweet with a naturally perfect body and just a hint of chest hair. Matt was busy instructing him in the ways of New York and helping to prepare him for life in the outside world, by way of parties filled with gorgeous gay men and enough liquor to explode ten livers.
Ben arrived in our circle with drinks for the two of them and I held out my hand expectantly. At first Ben was confused but then he realized that he completely forgot to bring me my drink. "What were you waiting for?" he cried. "That was half an hour ago!" It was the very same conversation I had with Jonathan two days earlier. I suppose I am a fool for expecting people to keep their word even in intensely trivial matters, but if seven years in New York City has taught me anything, it is that reliability is essential to keep life running smoothly (as everyone who stands on subway platforms knows all too well). Or maybe I am just spoiled by the military-instilled precision of my parents, later reinforced by the even greater efficiency of Roommate.
Ben finally made good on his promise but unfortunately, my body had completely forgotten what alcohol was and two drinks later, I was flying like Sally Field in a perfectly symmetrical habit. Chris Van Cleef was there and my last blog entry was the talk of the party and the halls of HERE TV. One of his friends even quoted it in his Facebook Wall, citing my blog as "honest and trustworthy." I felt so famous! But Chris was tickled by the blog entry and insisted that he was stone sober when I saw him, which means I guess we can chalk up his willing sexual personality to nothing more complex than a willing sexual personality.
The party was fun, but Matty had another party to go to and I had one eye on the clock for the drunk trains home and the other eye on his blond companion. On our way out, outside the bathroom Sara of the Josh and Sara podcast made the feisty demand "You better not put me in your blog!" which naturally guaranteed she would make it in. (As a side note while I am on the subject of the bathroom, I fell madly in love with the art over Ben's toilet which as I dimly recall was a series of faux mid-century comic panels that started with one of the characters saying in effect: It rains here two out of three days, and during the rainy season, it snows like a bitch! That caused me to laugh so hard, I actually doubled over. So yes I was quite drunk at that point.) Ben's cousin Christian arrived late, almost simultaneously with us leaving so I barely got to say hi. And the presence of Dave Rubin's boyfriend made dry humping his leg even more embarrassing and inappropriate, though I did it anyway.
Matt, Gary and I decamped from Ben's fabulous party to another fabulous party, back in Union Square at David Coleman's place. I tried to tell a very drunk Gary about the remarkable view of Grand Central Station and why the Chrysler Building is my favorite in all of New York but he was instantly obsessed with playing Britney Spears on David's iPod-driven music system. He even went so far as to replace the iPod with his own iPhone and proceeded to turn himself into impromptu DJ. Moments later, egged on by Ryan Newman, he engaged in and narrowly lost a dance off. I felt like I was in a scene out of a gay rip-off of She's All That.
Conor was there, his collie eyes obscured by eyeglasses, reminding me once again of my preference for Clark Kent over Superman. Ben was there too, making a rare public appearance without Bradford. I also ran into Barton who was sexy and lovely as always, and who sat by with a bland expression while I dirty danced with Gary to Radar. In my state, I tried to convince him (unsuccessfully) that I am not the kind of person who does this sort of thing, but he just looked back with an expression lacking both moral judgment and belief. Moments later, the party broke up with most of us headed over to the Chelsea Hotel. And then things got interesting.
It was a night of firsts for me, though none I would recommend. The first first came on the dance floor in the basement bar of the Chelsea when Gary took his shirt off and then insisted I take mine off. I have never been shirtless in a gay club in my life and the only other time I was shirtless in a gay social setting was August of 2001 and we all remember how that ended! Later another clubgoer tapped my bare shoulder and sniffed, "Have you noticed you are the only two people in here with your shirts off? This isn't that kind of place you know." In that moment, I just hoped that he thought we were both too young to know better as opposed to one of us being too young and the other one being definitely old enough to know better. My shirtlessness also got an askance glance from Barton on his way out, again with his trademarked judgment-free judgment which to me is as unrealistic and suspicious as sugar-free, fat-free Cool Whip.
Gary ran into Matt's friend Ian, whom he had met when he met Matt down in South Florida last week. Ian and other friends at the Chelsea who were not at the party pulled the three of us out of the Chelsea and off to another house party. Ian's driver Joe pulled his Bentley up to the curb, graciously took my tacky backpack and ten dollar coat from the Barney's Warehouse Sale and laid them in the trunk with the kind of care usually reserved for fragile antique crystal. I squeezed myself into the backseat with Ian, Gary and to my right, Itay Hod from LOGO News who is just as sexy in person if not more so, while Matt rode in the front seat. Joe drove us to the elegant apartment of Tim who thoughtfully hosted a passel of gay men well into the wee hours of the morning.
Tim worked overtime as a host, entreating smokers not to toss their butts over the side of his balcony onto the neighboring balcony below, filling drinks and otherwise making sure everyone had a good time. Gary settled in on the floor next to the music system, and once again, replaced Tim's music with his own iPhone and set about on another three hour musical journey dedicated almost entirely to the Britney canon with a reverential devotion usually reserved for patron saints and Madonna. By this time, I was just too drunk to keep up the pace and switched to water to keep me from shriveling up like a prune before morning. Gary once again took his shirt off and convinced me to do the same, which lead to first number two: being photographed in public with my shirt off. I had always said I would never, NEVER do that, and yet, here I was, shirtless and grinning like an idiot for the camera.
An hour later, I experienced my third and final first. Gary and I were canoodling on a lovely leather armchair and suddenly, drunk and shirtless in a strange apartment, dawn nearly breaking through the window like a runaway freight train, I felt lost. But how could I be so terribly unhappy? Here I was, in the arms of an adorable guy at a fun party and yet not having J.G. in my life made me feel as lost as a rudderless ship at sea. If I still had his number in my phone, I would have sent him an ill-advised "I am lost without you in my life" text message at six a.m. I was coloring outside the lines and it just wasn't for me. And yet being so fiercely self-reliant as I am, needing someone like this has never been me either. There I was, left between the devil and the deep blue sea, not knowing where to go next or what to do. But true to form for me in moments like this, I mustered my strength and emanated fun without actually having fun until the feeling passed.
A while later, Matt was ready to go and we all put on our shoes and coats and headed out into the soft, lush opening notes of dawn, quickly hailing a cab and heading to Matt's apartment. I thought about just going directly to Grand Central to head home, but realized that a couple of hours sleep would probably be better than just heading home cold. "We'll sleep until ten and then all go to brunch!" Matt offered brightly, still in full cruise director mode, and then seconds later he was fast asleep. I woke up at 11:30am and Gary and Matt were still dead to the world. I put a mirror under each of their noses to make sure they were alive, patted Parker pug on the head and stumbled out the door. It was a great night, to be sure, and probably one of the last all-nighters I will ever have. Hanging out with Matt is always a reliable treat, and there is so much comfort and trust in spending time with someone you have known for more than a decade. In the end, it turns out there are some things, I know I can rely on: old friends, pillow face and always myself.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
In Need Of Therapy
It was the end of a long week. It seems silly to complain about this amazing job of mine. Tonight we asked people to call in and tell us about disgusting things they saw at work, and for a solid hour we just sat there while strangers grossed us out. I couldn't believe sitting in our beautiful glass cage that we get paid to do a that as a job. But as entertaining as it was, it is still a job at the end of the day. And at the end of the week, we are just as tired and ready to pack it in as the next person.
Chip Arndt was on the show tonight. He is just as strapping and tall and wonderful as ever. I just love his chiseled marble Connecticut Yankee persona mixed with Yale rugby team exuberance. He came to talk about the Gay American Heroes Foundation. They are doing a benefit tomorrow at Therapy which Romaine and I are attending, and on his way out he suggested I join him and his friends at Therapy tonight for a drink after the show. I skipped going to Pop Rocks last night with Jonathan because I was really sick to my stomach and not in the mood to be the oldest person in a bar, which I certainly would have been there. But I was feeling much improved tonight and even though it's going to be a rock party weekend of seemingly non-stop activities, I figured "why not kick it off a night early?"
I sent text messages to a slew of people. Roommate. Jonathan. The original Jonathan (why must all the gays have the same three names?). Hottie Zach. Cyd and Dan. And of course the ever elusive Ben Harvey, who went to visit his family in December and never seemed to come back. Come back to the five and dime, Ben Harvey, Ben Harvey! Last minute bar appeals are always hit and miss and last night proved to be no exception. Mike was stuck at work, Jonathan at a comedy show. Cyd and Dan who had been out, packed it in early. Missed communications led to missing Ben Harvey yet again. But the original Jonathan and hottie Zach both agreed to meet me out at Therapy with Chip and his friends. Unfortunately, moments after they both confirmed, Chip claimed old age and an early morning and skipped Therapy himself, thus ending the only reason I was going in the first place.
As it turns out, it was a good opportunity to spend some quality time with the original Jonathan. He moved to New York City two and a half years ago from Atlanta and I have only seen him sporadically since. My work schedule and hermit-like behavior coupled with his dating life have conspired to keep us apart. But after missing my housewarming BBQ and Thanksgiving, his holiday card was nothing less than a demand for an audience.
Likewise, Zach moved to the city this fall and while we have hung out a couple of times since then, it hasn't moved into what I would call a regular rhythm. The holidays really toss everyone into the air like ingredients in a Cobb Salad. People start out so orderly and geometrically aligned, but the one-two wintertime punch of Christmas and New Years leaves them swirled around and obscured by heavy dressing.
Despite both of them insisting that the gym is a distant memory, they both looked incredible as always. We chatted about work, and life and love. While I was in the bathroom, talk turned briefly to the world of professional ice skating, reminding me once again that I was in a gay bar after all. I had forgotten that the original Jonathan was an ice skater so now I know our next adventure will have to be a lunchtime skate in the new rink at Bryant Park on my new skates! We drank. We laughed. We cruised. It was a perfectly acceptable evening.
To kick off the night, I had a vodka with grapefruit juice. Earlier on the show during our gross out segment, a former bus cleaner told a story of finding a hooker stabbed to death in a tiny dirty bathroom on a Greyhound bus, just like the opening crawl of an episode of Law & Order. Reflecting back on the grisly scene on my way to the bar reminded me of my former favorite drink the greyhound and I endeavored to order one as soon as I arrived. But I only had one since after boarding the drunk train at 1:00am, I still needed to drive the rest of the way home.
However, being more sober at gay bars has caused me to be more keenly aware of the mating rituals of gay men. New Yorkers get a bum rap for not being friendly, which when you compare the chattiness to other gay bars in other parts of the country is reasonably true. However, once you start talking to a New Yorker, you will find that in general, they are very engaging and fun people. But breaking through that initial barrier is not easy at all. In NYC, I have started to notice that gay men do a lot of what I call proximity introduction. They want to talk to someone, but they don't want to make the first move, so they choose a position of close proximity, preferably in the eye line of the target and wait.
Sometimes, the guys just stand nearby very casual but expectantly, like they are waiting for an imaginary bus to arrive. Other times, they get very close in and wordlessly involve themselves in whatever is going on in the group near them. They smile at the jokes, nod their heads vigorously in agreement, and of course, make desperately welcoming eye contact. One guy last night during my breakdown of the differences between an Obama and a Hillary presidency, seemed as anxious to jump into the conversation as Eleanor Clift on the McLaughlin Group. He would have been more effective if like the table of guys we sat next to two years ago at Therapy, he had suggested some kind of impromptu contest to see who was the best kisser, leading to a memorable roundelay of mono and other fond memories.
Coincidentally or not, we did manage to position ourselves quite near to someone that Jonathan knew, who as it turns out was with someone from the Gay American Heroes Foundation. They were both hot, hunky guys, the one from Florida wearing an unseasonable tank top with a word search puzzle on it. I have to say that is one of the best shirts I have ever seen for simultaneously attracting as well as evaluating the intelligence of other men. Maybe I should start wearing Jeopardy answers or the New York Times crossword on my person and see what happens.
Then Mike sent me a text message to join him on the 1:00am train and I wrapped up our short but enjoyable evening. Jonathan ran off to get a slice of pizza he will no doubt regret in the morning. Zach who lives closer to Grand Central than to Therapy decided to walk and talk with me. As we went along however, the military man in him began to worry about me missing my train. Nothing makes you feel better about yourself at one in the morning than trying to keep up with a 29 year old Air Force academy graduate in perfect shape while you are lugging another decade and a full backpack.
As we neared the station, the burden inside the backpack gave away before I did and one of the straps on my beloved, tired old PlanetOut backpack snapped. Instantly, it was the end of an era for me. I made my train with plenty of time to spare while Zach stood by sweating it out in his clingy wool sweater. But maybe the bag was a good warning for me. Running with a younger crowd has a lot of perks, but the risks of breaking are so high, it may not be worth it in the end.
Chip Arndt was on the show tonight. He is just as strapping and tall and wonderful as ever. I just love his chiseled marble Connecticut Yankee persona mixed with Yale rugby team exuberance. He came to talk about the Gay American Heroes Foundation. They are doing a benefit tomorrow at Therapy which Romaine and I are attending, and on his way out he suggested I join him and his friends at Therapy tonight for a drink after the show. I skipped going to Pop Rocks last night with Jonathan because I was really sick to my stomach and not in the mood to be the oldest person in a bar, which I certainly would have been there. But I was feeling much improved tonight and even though it's going to be a rock party weekend of seemingly non-stop activities, I figured "why not kick it off a night early?"
I sent text messages to a slew of people. Roommate. Jonathan. The original Jonathan (why must all the gays have the same three names?). Hottie Zach. Cyd and Dan. And of course the ever elusive Ben Harvey, who went to visit his family in December and never seemed to come back. Come back to the five and dime, Ben Harvey, Ben Harvey! Last minute bar appeals are always hit and miss and last night proved to be no exception. Mike was stuck at work, Jonathan at a comedy show. Cyd and Dan who had been out, packed it in early. Missed communications led to missing Ben Harvey yet again. But the original Jonathan and hottie Zach both agreed to meet me out at Therapy with Chip and his friends. Unfortunately, moments after they both confirmed, Chip claimed old age and an early morning and skipped Therapy himself, thus ending the only reason I was going in the first place.
As it turns out, it was a good opportunity to spend some quality time with the original Jonathan. He moved to New York City two and a half years ago from Atlanta and I have only seen him sporadically since. My work schedule and hermit-like behavior coupled with his dating life have conspired to keep us apart. But after missing my housewarming BBQ and Thanksgiving, his holiday card was nothing less than a demand for an audience.
Likewise, Zach moved to the city this fall and while we have hung out a couple of times since then, it hasn't moved into what I would call a regular rhythm. The holidays really toss everyone into the air like ingredients in a Cobb Salad. People start out so orderly and geometrically aligned, but the one-two wintertime punch of Christmas and New Years leaves them swirled around and obscured by heavy dressing.
Despite both of them insisting that the gym is a distant memory, they both looked incredible as always. We chatted about work, and life and love. While I was in the bathroom, talk turned briefly to the world of professional ice skating, reminding me once again that I was in a gay bar after all. I had forgotten that the original Jonathan was an ice skater so now I know our next adventure will have to be a lunchtime skate in the new rink at Bryant Park on my new skates! We drank. We laughed. We cruised. It was a perfectly acceptable evening.
To kick off the night, I had a vodka with grapefruit juice. Earlier on the show during our gross out segment, a former bus cleaner told a story of finding a hooker stabbed to death in a tiny dirty bathroom on a Greyhound bus, just like the opening crawl of an episode of Law & Order. Reflecting back on the grisly scene on my way to the bar reminded me of my former favorite drink the greyhound and I endeavored to order one as soon as I arrived. But I only had one since after boarding the drunk train at 1:00am, I still needed to drive the rest of the way home.
However, being more sober at gay bars has caused me to be more keenly aware of the mating rituals of gay men. New Yorkers get a bum rap for not being friendly, which when you compare the chattiness to other gay bars in other parts of the country is reasonably true. However, once you start talking to a New Yorker, you will find that in general, they are very engaging and fun people. But breaking through that initial barrier is not easy at all. In NYC, I have started to notice that gay men do a lot of what I call proximity introduction. They want to talk to someone, but they don't want to make the first move, so they choose a position of close proximity, preferably in the eye line of the target and wait.
Sometimes, the guys just stand nearby very casual but expectantly, like they are waiting for an imaginary bus to arrive. Other times, they get very close in and wordlessly involve themselves in whatever is going on in the group near them. They smile at the jokes, nod their heads vigorously in agreement, and of course, make desperately welcoming eye contact. One guy last night during my breakdown of the differences between an Obama and a Hillary presidency, seemed as anxious to jump into the conversation as Eleanor Clift on the McLaughlin Group. He would have been more effective if like the table of guys we sat next to two years ago at Therapy, he had suggested some kind of impromptu contest to see who was the best kisser, leading to a memorable roundelay of mono and other fond memories.
Coincidentally or not, we did manage to position ourselves quite near to someone that Jonathan knew, who as it turns out was with someone from the Gay American Heroes Foundation. They were both hot, hunky guys, the one from Florida wearing an unseasonable tank top with a word search puzzle on it. I have to say that is one of the best shirts I have ever seen for simultaneously attracting as well as evaluating the intelligence of other men. Maybe I should start wearing Jeopardy answers or the New York Times crossword on my person and see what happens.
Then Mike sent me a text message to join him on the 1:00am train and I wrapped up our short but enjoyable evening. Jonathan ran off to get a slice of pizza he will no doubt regret in the morning. Zach who lives closer to Grand Central than to Therapy decided to walk and talk with me. As we went along however, the military man in him began to worry about me missing my train. Nothing makes you feel better about yourself at one in the morning than trying to keep up with a 29 year old Air Force academy graduate in perfect shape while you are lugging another decade and a full backpack.
As we neared the station, the burden inside the backpack gave away before I did and one of the straps on my beloved, tired old PlanetOut backpack snapped. Instantly, it was the end of an era for me. I made my train with plenty of time to spare while Zach stood by sweating it out in his clingy wool sweater. But maybe the bag was a good warning for me. Running with a younger crowd has a lot of perks, but the risks of breaking are so high, it may not be worth it in the end.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
All About Eve
"Is this the most over-hyped night of the year or what?" Cyd Zeigler asked rhetorically at Henry's swank New Year's Eve party. For me, it is often the most dreaded night of the year. So much sweating and anticipation. Where to go. Who to go with. Forced to drink champagne against your will and then stumble through the virtually incomprehensible auld Scottish lyrics of Auld Lang Syne. And for what? To see how Dick Clark is fairing since his stroke? Note that Anderson Cooper and Ryan Seacrest seem to revel in working the holiday since they can assiduously avoid kissing anyone personal at midnight? It's all just a lot of show. No wonder the older I get, the more I just want to stay home in bed.
On Friday night, Mike and I met up with Cyd and his wonderful boyfriend Dan at Barracuda. Earlier in the evening, I had been roped into hours of joyous heterosexual mayhem by Elaine Miles, the best friend of my newly discovered half sister. I had sipped $600 a bottle red wine while I came to realize from their foreign party rituals that I don't spend much time in groups of straight people anymore. It was a bit like discovering a lost civilization. But moments later, a cab had whisked me down to homo town and I was back in my noisy, ass-grabby element.
Cyd and Dan are a sensational couple with a romantic love story straight out of 1940s MGM. Like Enchanted Cottage with homosexuality but without the disfigurement. Unfortunately, our work schedules are so dramatically different, it is rare that we get to spend much time together. So when they suggested Mike and I join them at a party on New Year's Eve, we jumped at the chance. As it was, we had headed to the bars on Friday night to pick up copies of HX for some ideas of what to do on the big night. Going to a house party with Cyd and Dan was the perfect solution. A room full of strangers but also a couple of built-in reliable conversationalists too. Even Mike, who hates meeting new people and going to parties, seemed to approve of the idea. And, we figured, if the party sucked, we could always wander down to Therapy and have a few drinks in public. As if to make our plans even more fateful, on New Year Eve, the drunk trains run well past their usual killjoy time of 1:50am, guaranteeing us an easy way home no matter when we wanted to call it all quits.
So, Mike and I headed off into the city with a bottle of champagne and a bottle of vodka in a brown paper bag. Mike thought we should have put it in more discreet packaging, but it's December 31st, I think everyone knew exactly what we were carrying. Plus Mike brought along mini bottles of rum to warm us up along the way. He chugged his as a shot before boarding the train, but I kept mine in my pocket. By the time we got to the city, my short nap on the Metro North Train made me hungry. Unfortunately, everything in Harlem was closed except for our tried and true Popeye's Chicken. I ordered a chicken strip combo, and poured my mini bottle of rum into my medium Coke and drank it on our way down to the party near Columbia University.
We got to the party and it was in a very glamorous new building with fresh wood paneling in the elevator that Mike insisted on sniffing like he was a junkie and the elevator car was made of modeling glue. We hung up our coats and wandered into the sea of cute guys. We struck gold! It was just the right party to be at. Tons of food and booze and cuteness. We set about immediately to get smashed off our asses.
It turns out that Henry, our party host, wasn't a stranger since I met (and lusted after him) at a karaoke night with Cyd some months earlier. Mike knew instantly that I liked him because he was completely my type, although he wasn't the only one. There was a cute guy named Justin acting as one of the party hosts and he was also adorably blondie pie, though in a different way from Henry. Henry looks more like Daniel Craig as James Bond minus 20 years of rough living, while Justin looks like Torrance's unsupportive college boyfriend in "Bring It On". Justin was very solicitous to everyone in the room, so it was impossible to feel special when he would get kissy and grabby. It was still welcome though. Turns out he was 28, not 22 as I first suicidally suspected, and he had an equally adorable boyfriend hosting with him named Dan, who didn't seem to mind how flirty he was with everyone.
The party was in full swing for hours after the ball dropped, but Cyd and Dan were ready to drop before 1am. Once they left, Mike and I kept drinking and tried to meet a few of the other drunk strangers at the party. I got into a deep discussion about developing nations and how clean water programs, the Life Straw (perhaps the innovation of the early 21st century) and Heifer International lay the groundwork for economic development with a guy who specialized in such things but probably preferred to make out than explain the complexities of emerging economies in Africa to a drunk college dropout. I was just trying to show an interest in his work, which did not interest him in me at all. Later, we ran into a friend of Cyd's named Sergio, who had initially been driven away by our feverish discussion of the pending Iowa caucus. We do like our deep discussions at shallow gay parties, don't we?
Much drunker and later, Sergio took a second crack at us and found a much lighter conversation going on. The discussion evaporated entirely when we decided to make out instead of chat. And let me tell you, it was just what the doctor ordered. I didn't get his number. I didn't want to go home with him. I just wanted to spend a few moments at a party talking about nothing (his favorite color is red) and kissing intermittently. After all, it is New Year's Eve. The night of the year designed for making out with a stranger. And so much better than the year I randomly made out with Paul's friend Manfred after he had thrown up in the gutter outside Revolver. However, all good things must come to an end. Mike and I left to take one of the drunk trains home and I gave Sergio one last good kiss good bye. And that was the end of the that.
Now boozed up but good and happy after an hour of canoodling, I sailed into Grand Central Station and fell in love once again with its simple grandeur and the thrill of the crowd. No one told me but it turns out that Grand Central is THE place to be on New Year's Eve after midnight. In lieu of striking clocks and abandoned glass slippers, it is a sea of hot young drunk straight guys, smiling and having a blast. Everyone is infused with the joy of the night, boisterous and friendly, waiting for their respective trains home.
The party continued on our train, although it quieted somewhat as one by one, the passengers passed out in their seats. We did get caught at one station while the police were called aboard to deal with some belligerent passengers. Later, an attractive red-headed woman ran into her old friends who were sitting around us. The boys had given her the charming moniker "butt lice" and it was "butt lice" herself who explained that her friends had been the rowdy boys who had been pulled off the train. Another local mystery solved, although the origin of her nickname remains purposefully unknown.
A little after six AM, the train pulled into the station and Mike and I made our drunken way up the hill. Dawn was just starting to break and the town was covered in a slight foggy haze, blurred considerably at the edges by my drunkenness. By the time we walked up the hill and turned into the driveway, the dawn's early light was making its way slowly through the clouds, dramatically lighting the night sky above the bare tree branches and filling the yard with an eerie blue glow. It was all so beautiful to come home to. My home.
Eight is my lucky number, I thought as I tumbled into bed. And this year is 2008. So maybe this will be the year it will all fall together. This will be the year my luck returns in force, and all the pieces fit together the way they should. I already got a little lucky at the party, so there is no reason to think that kind of luck won't last all year long. I pulled the covers up to my head, nestled into my sea of pillows and drifted off to sleep with visions of my happy new year to come. Just the perfect ending to a perfect New Year's Eve.
On Friday night, Mike and I met up with Cyd and his wonderful boyfriend Dan at Barracuda. Earlier in the evening, I had been roped into hours of joyous heterosexual mayhem by Elaine Miles, the best friend of my newly discovered half sister. I had sipped $600 a bottle red wine while I came to realize from their foreign party rituals that I don't spend much time in groups of straight people anymore. It was a bit like discovering a lost civilization. But moments later, a cab had whisked me down to homo town and I was back in my noisy, ass-grabby element.
Cyd and Dan are a sensational couple with a romantic love story straight out of 1940s MGM. Like Enchanted Cottage with homosexuality but without the disfigurement. Unfortunately, our work schedules are so dramatically different, it is rare that we get to spend much time together. So when they suggested Mike and I join them at a party on New Year's Eve, we jumped at the chance. As it was, we had headed to the bars on Friday night to pick up copies of HX for some ideas of what to do on the big night. Going to a house party with Cyd and Dan was the perfect solution. A room full of strangers but also a couple of built-in reliable conversationalists too. Even Mike, who hates meeting new people and going to parties, seemed to approve of the idea. And, we figured, if the party sucked, we could always wander down to Therapy and have a few drinks in public. As if to make our plans even more fateful, on New Year Eve, the drunk trains run well past their usual killjoy time of 1:50am, guaranteeing us an easy way home no matter when we wanted to call it all quits.
So, Mike and I headed off into the city with a bottle of champagne and a bottle of vodka in a brown paper bag. Mike thought we should have put it in more discreet packaging, but it's December 31st, I think everyone knew exactly what we were carrying. Plus Mike brought along mini bottles of rum to warm us up along the way. He chugged his as a shot before boarding the train, but I kept mine in my pocket. By the time we got to the city, my short nap on the Metro North Train made me hungry. Unfortunately, everything in Harlem was closed except for our tried and true Popeye's Chicken. I ordered a chicken strip combo, and poured my mini bottle of rum into my medium Coke and drank it on our way down to the party near Columbia University.
We got to the party and it was in a very glamorous new building with fresh wood paneling in the elevator that Mike insisted on sniffing like he was a junkie and the elevator car was made of modeling glue. We hung up our coats and wandered into the sea of cute guys. We struck gold! It was just the right party to be at. Tons of food and booze and cuteness. We set about immediately to get smashed off our asses.
It turns out that Henry, our party host, wasn't a stranger since I met (and lusted after him) at a karaoke night with Cyd some months earlier. Mike knew instantly that I liked him because he was completely my type, although he wasn't the only one. There was a cute guy named Justin acting as one of the party hosts and he was also adorably blondie pie, though in a different way from Henry. Henry looks more like Daniel Craig as James Bond minus 20 years of rough living, while Justin looks like Torrance's unsupportive college boyfriend in "Bring It On". Justin was very solicitous to everyone in the room, so it was impossible to feel special when he would get kissy and grabby. It was still welcome though. Turns out he was 28, not 22 as I first suicidally suspected, and he had an equally adorable boyfriend hosting with him named Dan, who didn't seem to mind how flirty he was with everyone.
The party was in full swing for hours after the ball dropped, but Cyd and Dan were ready to drop before 1am. Once they left, Mike and I kept drinking and tried to meet a few of the other drunk strangers at the party. I got into a deep discussion about developing nations and how clean water programs, the Life Straw (perhaps the innovation of the early 21st century) and Heifer International lay the groundwork for economic development with a guy who specialized in such things but probably preferred to make out than explain the complexities of emerging economies in Africa to a drunk college dropout. I was just trying to show an interest in his work, which did not interest him in me at all. Later, we ran into a friend of Cyd's named Sergio, who had initially been driven away by our feverish discussion of the pending Iowa caucus. We do like our deep discussions at shallow gay parties, don't we?
Much drunker and later, Sergio took a second crack at us and found a much lighter conversation going on. The discussion evaporated entirely when we decided to make out instead of chat. And let me tell you, it was just what the doctor ordered. I didn't get his number. I didn't want to go home with him. I just wanted to spend a few moments at a party talking about nothing (his favorite color is red) and kissing intermittently. After all, it is New Year's Eve. The night of the year designed for making out with a stranger. And so much better than the year I randomly made out with Paul's friend Manfred after he had thrown up in the gutter outside Revolver. However, all good things must come to an end. Mike and I left to take one of the drunk trains home and I gave Sergio one last good kiss good bye. And that was the end of the that.
Now boozed up but good and happy after an hour of canoodling, I sailed into Grand Central Station and fell in love once again with its simple grandeur and the thrill of the crowd. No one told me but it turns out that Grand Central is THE place to be on New Year's Eve after midnight. In lieu of striking clocks and abandoned glass slippers, it is a sea of hot young drunk straight guys, smiling and having a blast. Everyone is infused with the joy of the night, boisterous and friendly, waiting for their respective trains home.
The party continued on our train, although it quieted somewhat as one by one, the passengers passed out in their seats. We did get caught at one station while the police were called aboard to deal with some belligerent passengers. Later, an attractive red-headed woman ran into her old friends who were sitting around us. The boys had given her the charming moniker "butt lice" and it was "butt lice" herself who explained that her friends had been the rowdy boys who had been pulled off the train. Another local mystery solved, although the origin of her nickname remains purposefully unknown.
A little after six AM, the train pulled into the station and Mike and I made our drunken way up the hill. Dawn was just starting to break and the town was covered in a slight foggy haze, blurred considerably at the edges by my drunkenness. By the time we walked up the hill and turned into the driveway, the dawn's early light was making its way slowly through the clouds, dramatically lighting the night sky above the bare tree branches and filling the yard with an eerie blue glow. It was all so beautiful to come home to. My home.
Eight is my lucky number, I thought as I tumbled into bed. And this year is 2008. So maybe this will be the year it will all fall together. This will be the year my luck returns in force, and all the pieces fit together the way they should. I already got a little lucky at the party, so there is no reason to think that kind of luck won't last all year long. I pulled the covers up to my head, nestled into my sea of pillows and drifted off to sleep with visions of my happy new year to come. Just the perfect ending to a perfect New Year's Eve.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Jeopardy Hot
Sporty Spice (Cyd) and Dental Dan (Dan) had their annual autumn party tonight and I never miss it. Cyd and Dan are a dream couple, the kind of storybook relationship tailor-made for TV news profiles and conniving bitches hell bent on home-wrecking. After all, the only thing the gays love more than a hot man is someone else’s hot man. With Cyd and Dan, you get two for the price of one. Anyone wishing to break them up (pay attention Charlie) would be barking up the wrong tree, as they are as right for each other as any two people I have ever met. Plus, they are the perfect party hosts.
When I ran into Mark Levine at Therapy last month, my first instinct was to drag him to Cyd and Dan’s annual event. They know virtually every attractive thirty-something guy in Manhattan, and a new man on the scene is bound to find lifelong friendships and at least a few exes at the Autumn Party. I also endeavored to bring Ben Harvey because he had wanted to meet Mark after the tireless cheerleading I have done on his behalf, as well as Cyd and Dan, who he encountered briefly at my housewarming lounging in matching sweatshirts on Adirondack chairs in the back yard while basking in the afterglow of cheese-filled hot dogs.
Ben, Mark and I met up on a familiar corner in the heart of Chelsea before dashing through the forty degree weather. Despite my legendary reputation for shorts and t-shirts under all circumstances in Los Angeles, I don’t fuck around with the cold in New York. I arrived bundled up in my snow parka, looking like an arctic explorer. Ben looked adorable as always and deceptively dressed in light layers over thermals. Mark, still getting used to winter again, just threw on layer after layer until he seemed sufficiently protected from the elements. Once at the party Mark started stripping like Gypsy Rose Lee, which only served to endear him to everyone. By the time he left, he was down to just a clingy t-shirt and jeans.
As usual, their elegantly appointed apartment was packed wall-to-wall with sexy gay men. In the spirit of diversity, a sprinkling of women decorated the otherwise masculine turn out. Cyd and Dan had tirelessly decorated with genuinely adorable fall decorations, virtually invisible to the increasingly intoxicated homos struggling to make eye contact and work up the courage to talk to guys they had seen in the same apartment time and again, party after party. One of those men, Sebastian, cornered me in the kitchen to ask if I was the one who had left the clever response to the eVite in which I said I would be hanging out with Dan in the VIP Room (which in this case was the bedroom, for the Super Bowl party it’s the kitchen). Generally their parties are so crowded; I tend to gravitate to the least crowded location, which is often where I find Dan.
It was all going well until Cory walked in and turned out to be the most pleasant surprise of the night. I last saw Cory at the closing ceremonies for the AIDS Ride, where I was cheering on Chip Arndt. I have written before about his eyebrows and his granite forehead, but it has been so hard for me to fully describe him. I think his face most reminds me of that of the Statue of Liberty, the only national icon I share a birthday with (sorry Julia Roberts). I have always felt a certain kinship with the lady in the harbor and I guess it spills over to Cory. His Masters Degree in Public Policy from Harvard is just the icing on the intellectual cake.
We talked about life and politics (he is just about to move to DC to take a new job) and it was a total delight. By quite some measure the longest conversation we have ever had and it was as rich as I thought it might be. When talk turned to Jeopardy, he too had noticed Alex Trebek’s flirtation with one of the college contestants. I then introduced him to the concept of being “Jeopardy Hot” which is a man who is hot entirely in the context of being on Jeopardy. Outside the nerdy confines of the popular game show, he would just be of normal attractiveness. But when you watch geek after nerd doling out the questions, a Jeopardy Hot guy is a welcome sight. Mike and I use the subtle distinction of Hot and Jeopardy Hot in conversation all the time, as it comes in handy constantly.
After three parties in a row as the last one left in Cyd and Dan’s apartment, I was adamant about not making it four. The party thinned out like hair in a Propecia ad and I hastily rounded up Cory, his friend Jeff, and Ben to continue our fun around the corner at Barracuda. Mark had already gone home, as had 95% of the partygoers, so I knew I had to strike while the iron was hot. Moments later, we were again packed like sardines in a sea of gay men, trying to get a drink at the bar. In between half listening to the hot 80s hits playing in the background (Major Tom, Neverending Story, Hazy Shade Of Winter), Cory and I continued our in-depth conversation about my favorite subject I never get to subject my radio audience to: politics.
Since Cory is from Iowa, I grilled him about the current political climate there. I am always curious about first-hand accounts and Cory was ambivalent about the candidates, a state of mind he also attributed to the rest of the state. I have been riveted to the debates and the tightness of the race, especially among the democrats. Unfortunately, Cory wasn’t able to resolve it for me before he ran home for the night. As usual, it was my cue to leave as well. The damned drunk train was calling again, as it always is. I left Ben in the capable hands of his cousin, who had met us all out at Barracuda, and dashed off into a cab to Grand Central. Two nights in a row of going out has taken its toll on me, and I can’t wait to climb into bed. It’s the weekend and a chilly one at that. I look forward to a party of one, relaxing in my living room, far from the roaring seas of gay men, the political fray of Washington and most importantly, the leering glances of Alex Trebek, where the only Hot I need to worry about is the heat from the crackling fire in the fireplace.
When I ran into Mark Levine at Therapy last month, my first instinct was to drag him to Cyd and Dan’s annual event. They know virtually every attractive thirty-something guy in Manhattan, and a new man on the scene is bound to find lifelong friendships and at least a few exes at the Autumn Party. I also endeavored to bring Ben Harvey because he had wanted to meet Mark after the tireless cheerleading I have done on his behalf, as well as Cyd and Dan, who he encountered briefly at my housewarming lounging in matching sweatshirts on Adirondack chairs in the back yard while basking in the afterglow of cheese-filled hot dogs.
Ben, Mark and I met up on a familiar corner in the heart of Chelsea before dashing through the forty degree weather. Despite my legendary reputation for shorts and t-shirts under all circumstances in Los Angeles, I don’t fuck around with the cold in New York. I arrived bundled up in my snow parka, looking like an arctic explorer. Ben looked adorable as always and deceptively dressed in light layers over thermals. Mark, still getting used to winter again, just threw on layer after layer until he seemed sufficiently protected from the elements. Once at the party Mark started stripping like Gypsy Rose Lee, which only served to endear him to everyone. By the time he left, he was down to just a clingy t-shirt and jeans.
As usual, their elegantly appointed apartment was packed wall-to-wall with sexy gay men. In the spirit of diversity, a sprinkling of women decorated the otherwise masculine turn out. Cyd and Dan had tirelessly decorated with genuinely adorable fall decorations, virtually invisible to the increasingly intoxicated homos struggling to make eye contact and work up the courage to talk to guys they had seen in the same apartment time and again, party after party. One of those men, Sebastian, cornered me in the kitchen to ask if I was the one who had left the clever response to the eVite in which I said I would be hanging out with Dan in the VIP Room (which in this case was the bedroom, for the Super Bowl party it’s the kitchen). Generally their parties are so crowded; I tend to gravitate to the least crowded location, which is often where I find Dan.
It was all going well until Cory walked in and turned out to be the most pleasant surprise of the night. I last saw Cory at the closing ceremonies for the AIDS Ride, where I was cheering on Chip Arndt. I have written before about his eyebrows and his granite forehead, but it has been so hard for me to fully describe him. I think his face most reminds me of that of the Statue of Liberty, the only national icon I share a birthday with (sorry Julia Roberts). I have always felt a certain kinship with the lady in the harbor and I guess it spills over to Cory. His Masters Degree in Public Policy from Harvard is just the icing on the intellectual cake.
We talked about life and politics (he is just about to move to DC to take a new job) and it was a total delight. By quite some measure the longest conversation we have ever had and it was as rich as I thought it might be. When talk turned to Jeopardy, he too had noticed Alex Trebek’s flirtation with one of the college contestants. I then introduced him to the concept of being “Jeopardy Hot” which is a man who is hot entirely in the context of being on Jeopardy. Outside the nerdy confines of the popular game show, he would just be of normal attractiveness. But when you watch geek after nerd doling out the questions, a Jeopardy Hot guy is a welcome sight. Mike and I use the subtle distinction of Hot and Jeopardy Hot in conversation all the time, as it comes in handy constantly.
After three parties in a row as the last one left in Cyd and Dan’s apartment, I was adamant about not making it four. The party thinned out like hair in a Propecia ad and I hastily rounded up Cory, his friend Jeff, and Ben to continue our fun around the corner at Barracuda. Mark had already gone home, as had 95% of the partygoers, so I knew I had to strike while the iron was hot. Moments later, we were again packed like sardines in a sea of gay men, trying to get a drink at the bar. In between half listening to the hot 80s hits playing in the background (Major Tom, Neverending Story, Hazy Shade Of Winter), Cory and I continued our in-depth conversation about my favorite subject I never get to subject my radio audience to: politics.
Since Cory is from Iowa, I grilled him about the current political climate there. I am always curious about first-hand accounts and Cory was ambivalent about the candidates, a state of mind he also attributed to the rest of the state. I have been riveted to the debates and the tightness of the race, especially among the democrats. Unfortunately, Cory wasn’t able to resolve it for me before he ran home for the night. As usual, it was my cue to leave as well. The damned drunk train was calling again, as it always is. I left Ben in the capable hands of his cousin, who had met us all out at Barracuda, and dashed off into a cab to Grand Central. Two nights in a row of going out has taken its toll on me, and I can’t wait to climb into bed. It’s the weekend and a chilly one at that. I look forward to a party of one, relaxing in my living room, far from the roaring seas of gay men, the political fray of Washington and most importantly, the leering glances of Alex Trebek, where the only Hot I need to worry about is the heat from the crackling fire in the fireplace.
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