Inside Outsider

As I mentioned in my last post, I am having a lot of trouble distinguishing reality from fantasy these days. It isn't so much that I don't know the difference between the two. It is just that lately the lines between the two have gotten increasingly blurry, the colors melting into one another, with the lines that had been around them obscured. (See also: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). This weekend in South Florida took an already troubling situation and threw it right down the rabbit hole, and me along with it.

Friday officially kicked off my season of pride events. Each year, I spend my sunny weekends on the road, emceeing pride events, to help promote my radio show. Since these trips tend to include all of my least favorite activities (leaving the house, dealing with airport security, meeting strangers, public speaking, etc.) it is honestly hard for me to have a genuinely good time. As it is true in life in general, happiness is not a sustained state of being, it is merely flashing moments, highlighting the otherwise dull and painful patches. So I can't say I didn't have any fun, the strobe flickered many times, but in the end, I am glad to be back home. At least in my house, I can manage the dull patches a little more effectively.

The organizers of Pride South Florida (in particular Mike Cruz) are lovely people, who fly me down, put me up at a nice place, and send cars to cart me around. It is one of the few events we do each year where I feel like a genuine celebrity. Most of the time, it is me and Romaine piling into a rental car and navigating our way to whatever cheap dump I booked us into, with a stop at the Waffle House along the way. This year, Mike sent a stand-up limo van for me, that was bigger inside than my own bedroom, and nicer too. The limo took me to my hotel for the weekend, a gay resort called The Grand. And Grand it was.

I am not much for B&Bs because I like my anonymity. Give me a big impersonal chain hotel with at least 300 rooms and I am all set. I don't even like maid service if I am staying for only one or two days. I can use a towel twice and I don't need my bed made every day. It feels like such a waste. A gay guesthouse is a decent middle point. I can still have a little anonymity (no surprise wake-up visits by the owner with a cup of coffee in hand) while also not feeling like I am sleeping in a lifeless mattress ad. The Grand lived up to its name and I did enjoy my quiet room way in the back.

Of course, my room was just past the "nature walk" (aka late night cruising zone) and the clothing optional jacuzzi. Each time I walked past the hot tub area, day and night, I was cat called and wolf whistled, which I guess is flattering, but on Friday night, rushing through with a warm plate of Greek food on my way in to watch the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica, I was in no mood for it. Even though I left the "Do Not Disturb" sign on my room all day Saturday, the sneaky maid managed to come in and organize everything anyway, including hiding my iPod in a decorative candy dish which while pretty when I found it, did cause my heart to panic for a moment when I thought it might have been stolen.

The pride event itself was quiet on Saturday. A decent but not spectacular turnout, with a shy spot of rain in the early afternoon which made the heat moist and the ground too wet to sit on, though otherwise did nothing to dampen the event. I left early to attend the GLAAD Awards, which happened to be going on at the Hard Rock the same evening. Earlier last month when Neil Guiliano, the President of GLAAD was on the radio show, I mentioned that I was going to be down there at the same time, and to my surprise a few days later, I got an email from a GLAAD staffer saying that Neil requested that I be his guest at the South Florida event.

In my nascent celebrity, this is something of a big deal. It was an opportunity to attend an A-gay event, walk the red carpet to get my picture taken and hang out in the VIP area with the other celebrities, board members and big donors. I felt like Cinderella but in a grey Barneys suit that I picked up for a song last year at the Warehouse Sale. So off I went to the red carpet and for a moment, it was magical. The photographers all wanted my photo and I posed and posed and posed in my marked down suit with the four year old tie, nine year old shoes, borrowed socks, and a dress shirt from the early 90s that if I took off my jacket gave me the distinct air of a gay pirate. All of the film crews, save the folks from Bravo, were Spanish speaking and had zero interest in me. I got asked one question by Bravo, which I answered very badly, and was sent on my merry way. Flickering moments of happiness, long stretches of sad reality.

Once inside the door, I realized that I was there completely alone. My original invite had mentioned a personal talent escort which I assumed would be with me all night so I would at least have a GLAAD volunteer to talk to all night. But at the event I discovered that there were two kinds of celebrities: white folder and black folder. I had a white folder which meant, I was on my own, while the black folder celebrities who were winning or presenting, had a cute young person dressed all in black with a headset who waited on them hand and food. I turned slowly around in a circle not knowing what to do next and then mercifully ran into my best frenemy Dan Renzi. He saved my life.

Dan and I have a long, complicated, non-sexual history which mercifully he remembers little of. However, over the last year or so we have been reasonably chummy and in 2007 he even appeared, quite deliciously, in my video podcast The So Real Life. I couldn't ask for a better person to shove me over a pile of garbage than Dan. It was kismet, as was our meeting at the GLAAD Awards. We palled around, we made jokes, we compared white folders, and when we left the VIP reception to go down for the dinner, even though we were at separate tables, we sat in chairs next to each other so we could dish all night long.

Unfortunately, the only dish I was able to do was the one my food was on because instead of being placed at some out of the way non-table like I thought, I was at THE table. I was seated between Neil Guiliano and his hilarious brother John. Apparently it was a very personal invitation to the awards I had accepted. Also at the table, the night's big honoree Wilson Cruz and his parents, and Denise Williams, the mother of Simmie Williams, a young gay man murdered in Florida earlier this year. Oh yes and me! What the hell was I doing there? I started sweating I was so nervous but knew I couldn't take off my jacket for fear of a parrot settling on my shoulder.

Being South Florida, the show and presenters were very Latin focused and much of the proceedings were in Spanish. I missed a lot flipping through my phrasebook but the gay storyline clips from the telenovelas were the highlight of the evening for me until I saw 500 gay men sing along to Deborah Cox's sensational closing performance. In moments like that I thought, "I wish Jonathan was here. He would love this." but thoughts like that only served to pull me out of the moment and remind me how alone I tend to feel in a room filled with hundreds of people. But then the alternate reality I was living in would lure me back with another amazing flash. For instance, the big drama of the evening happened at our table, when Wilson Cruz (allergic to shellfish) bit into the chicken only to discover it was stuffed with shrimp. He was fine but I leaned into John and cracked, "Maybe next time your brother should consider not poisoning the guest of honor right before he goes on stage."

The whole thing was so surreal to me. On the one hand, I was treated like a celebrity, but inside I just felt like me, in an ugly shirt and painful shoes. It felt so fraudulent. Wilson is from TV and then there he was sitting at the table with me. On my way into dinner I ran into my friend Brandon's ex-boyfriend Cliff who I know from Arizona and who was recently embroiled in a gay public scandal of sorts, adding another dimension to the otherworldliness of it all. It all happened so fast, I never really had a moment to take it all in. Back at the dinner, I looked up and there was Neil, who just moments earlier had been making small talk with me at the table, now up on stage, projected onto the big screen TVs all over the auditorium, talking about Denise, who was sitting next to me, while photographers and cameramen rushed around me to capture the moment. As we stood for Denise's ovation, I instinctively felt the cameras at my back and leaded over ever so slightly to my left so they could get a better shot of her. I was participant and observer, and neither of them felt real to me.

After the awards Matt from Fab Scout picked me up and took me out of the surreal frying pan and into the fire: Boardwalk. The notorious South Florida stripper bar has turned into ground zero for me when I am in town, thanks to my friendship with Howard of Fab Scout, and it is where I spent Friday night as well. Howard wasn't there, but Jason Crew from Big Rig and Barrett Long were there, along with two new porn pups, annoyingly in love with each other and themselves, and Cort Donovan who charmed me in a way porn stars aren't normally charming to me. Jason remembered me from Big Rig and other run-ins and I reminded Barrett of our last meeting, at the HustlaBall in New York were I pawned Rod Barry off on him after Rod got too violently drunk for me to handle. Our Friday night adventure had ended with Jason telling me that I was "so squeezable" and then drunkenly asking me on the ride home if he and Barrett could gang bang me later in their hotel room. As tempting as 24 inches of cock may be for some people, I politely passed, ran past the nude men in the jacuzzi with their siren song and locked myself alone in my room.

Back at Boardwalk on Saturday making a second run at it and this time in a suit, I stood out like a sore, but wealthy thumb. The solicitous strippers were even more solicitous than usual. While waiting for the porn boys to do their show, so I could poke gentle fun at them later, into the bar walked the most perfect physical manifestation of my "type" that I have ever seen. As if things couldn't get any worse/better. He was blond, with Cory's hunk o' granite forehead, a cute button nose and bee stung Angelina Jolie lips that he kept in a pugnacious snarl at all times. If he had been four inches taller (say 6'2"), I would have kidnapped him and kept him in a dungeon somewhere. His name is "Brock" (may not actually be his real name) and he is apparently a "notorious bottom" and an escort. I was also told he was a complete mess, and when I met him, he was already if not blind drunk, then at least visually impaired intoxicated. He admired my light wool suit, then leaned in to make out with me, and when I tried to have small talk with him, asked me, "Are you going to take me home now?" Ugh! I am only human here.

His friend, who earlier had been nice to me, and bragged about his long friendship with Barrett Long, suddenly grabbed Brock and pulled him close. I heard him hiss in Brock's ear, "You aren't leaving this bar. He only wants to take advantage of you!" I was so offended. I didn't even have a car to take him home in, even if I really really really wanted to. And while I did want to take advantage of him, I certainly didn't mean it in a bad way! People can be so judgmental. He is an escort after all. So I am a bad person for wanting a free throw? I thought I was a celebrity. Didn't my VIP tickets include an open bar, a gift bag and a blow job? I guess he wasn't what GLAAD meant when they mentioned a talent escort for the evening.

Me in a suit, making out with a hot stranger. It just isn't me. Walking red carpets and mingling with people I heretofore have only known in the abstract. Just plain strange. I was still completely beside myself on Sunday when a pair of Broadway actors who listen to the show and happened to be in South Florida at the same time, dropped by pride to meet me. I was still queasy and tired from the night before, and my emcee gig had definitely taken a desperate shticky turn for the worst as they arrived. I couldn't have been at a lower ebb for what I had been looking forward to as the highlight of my weekend.

Kevin plays Scrabulous with me endlessly on Facebook and emails with me regularly, but we had never met before, so our encounter had the happy, excited feel of meeting a junior high school pen pal. But that comparison may be apt only because my tongue was nuclear green from the lollipop I consumed earlier to mask the Munchos aftertaste in my mouth. His boyfriend Chris I knew a little more about because I had read about him and saw him on TV a few times, but virtually all of my interaction up to this point had been with Kevin who I knew less about but somehow knew better, so meeting Chris was weirder for me.

This is difficult to explain in words. I meet people all the time from TV shows or movies or what have you because of my job, but rarely do I meet someone from that world who also listens to the show. Usually, we interview someone who doesn't know anything about us, but we know all about them, in much the same way that listeners meet us at events and know all about our lives but we don't know anything about theirs. So here we were two people who knew each other's resumes basically, and a little more perhaps, but meeting for the first time. It was like a real life version of the old Spy Magazine section Logrolling In Our Time. It was all too much for me.

I know you. You know me. We don't know each other. Maybe it was the heat and humidity after a long cold winter. Maybe it was the 48 surreal hours that had gone before. Real names hidden under porn names. White folder celebrity versus black folder celebrity. Untoward sexual advances from hot strangers. By the time Kevin and Chris arrived, I was mentally throwing in the towel. All I wanted to do was flee to the airport. Being in a strange city, meeting new people, I felt like an astronaut in space who becomes untethered from the ship, and then ever so slowly but quite desperately floats away.

I wanted my boring life back. I just wanted the security that comes with sleeping in my own bed in my house built to withstand a nuclear war with the furniture too heavy to move. When I landed at La Guardia and walked into the parking structure, I was never so happy to see my little beat up old red convertible. And parked right next to it, another little red convertible with a tiny SIRIUS antenna stuck on the trunk, just like mine. It made me happy in that instant because for the first time in three days, I felt like I belonged. Not as someone who talks on the radio, but as just another person in this city that listens. And then I drove home and climbed into bed. And for perhaps a little longer than usual, I was happy.

Vlada Vignettes

2:30am. 96th Street Subway platform. iPod on shuffle. Tears well up in my eyes. Oh no. Bruce Vilanch is right. At a certain point, you do start breaking down all the time for no reason, like an old Buick.

Why am I crying? And it’s not even crying. It’s movie crying. A welling of tears, a trickle out of one eye. That’s how I know it’s not real. But why the tears? Was it something someone said at the bar tonight?

“You are forty, so who cares what you think.” That can't possibly be it. That was hilarious.
I click to the next song. kd lang singing Big Boned Gal. I am already welling up. I might as well go full tilt boogie. I search kd for Three Cigarettes In An Ashtray.

“Two cigarettes in an ashtray. My love and I in a small café. Then a stranger came along. Everything went wrong. Now there’s three cigarettes in the ashtray.”

I saw kd lang sing this as the encore at her concert in Reno last year. Next to seeing Ella Fitzgerald in her final concert at the Hollywood Bowl before they cut off her legs, this is my most treasured concert memory. Suddenly, I am my own grandmother, welling up at Johnny Hodges. My mind turns to the call with my home insurance lady Mary Anne today. We spent an hour on the phone talking about my new house to determine my coverage and when the questioning turned to possessions, I got very depressed. First item: jewelry. I don’t own any and I’m a man and who cares. But then as we went down the list, I realized I don’t have anything of value. Some sentimental things, but nothing worth keeping when I am gone. I am the only thing I have of value.

Damn, now the song is over. Need to start it again if I am going to maintain this dramatically somber mood.

“I watched him take her from me. Now his love is no longer my own. Now they have gone. I sit alone. And watch one cigarette burn away.”

This is good but it doesn’t really match the mood I am in. True, I was at a bar tonight with Ben Harvey but Vlada hardly counts as a “small café.” And true, someone did horn in on us, but so what? We were just talking.

I switch to kd lang’s cover of the Valley of the Dolls theme song. I have a remix of it in my iPod that is a better match to the late hour otherworldliness of the subway platform. And earlier our conversation was straight out of the movie (and probably the book, although like most books I can discuss in casual conversation, I have never read it).

Normally, I look for Charlie at Vlada, but this time, Charlie’s friend Ben Harvey was there. I need to use his full name because he can’t be Ben because Ben is Ben. Some people just sound better with their whole names. Like Dan Renzi. And I link to his Friendster profile because it tickles him when I do that in my blog and I know he is reading this.

Ben Harvey and I have been emailing for weeks now, since we finally met at the Godawful Gay Expo, which I think should be their official name. I think he was reluctant to meet me at the event for some reason, but in some ways he seems like a reluctant person. I am also reluctant and I sensed that we are alike, although I know someone who always says to me “guys like us” which invariably is a comparison of how we look and I think I am much cuter than he is. So at the risk of seeming like THAT guy, Ben Harvey and I are alike I think.

Heavenly development though, he got hit on tonight and I was completely ignored. That was delightful. Some people who like being the center of attention (like me), like it all the time. I only like it part time. So when I am not in the mood, I am delighted to retreat into the shadows. Tonight, Ben Harvey was the shimmering light of blond deliciousness and I was the fat friend in the shadows, drinking down the remnants of my thirties like so much melted ice in a cocktail glass.

I made no effort today. I spent hours dealing with the new house. I cooked dinner at 1pm and socked it away in the fridge for later enjoyment. I barely brushed my hair and wore an eight year old Gap shirt that every gay man in the world owns, just like always. I rolled into work with my winter parka and an air of resignation an hour before the show. Typical. I was all set for a night of TV viewing at home. Lost, Top Design, Top Model. Top ass sitting in a recliner in front of a 50 inch TV. But Ben Harvey sent me a text message (txt to the kids out there) but then followed with an email in case I was too old to be a text messenger. Eh. He’s right. I am on the cusp.

In the bathroom at Vlada wondering why gay men don’t know how to flush a urinal, trying to do something with my hair in the mirror. I catch eyes with the gay at the sink next to me.

“It looks good.”

Is he talking about my hair or referring to me as a third person object? Either way, it’s enough to propel my carcass out of the men’s room and return to the gay fray. Ben Harvey and I have long entwined discussions about gay media, radio, dating, and relationships. A few laughs here and there, the biggest when I talk about going to Starbucks the next morning after drinking in gay bars all night and pulling a dirty wad of ones out of my wallet, change from the various twenties I tossed out the night before. “I have to stop stripping.” I say as I hand the money to the cashier. It’s a good line. Maybe I will use it at pride this weekend, although in most parts of the country, you get fives and tens back when you pay for a drink with a twenty. It might not work outside this moment in time.

Ben Harvey goes to the bathroom for the 70th time. A man walks past, but then stops. He has a variation on the worst line in bar history.

“Why aren’t you smiling?”

So many good answers. “Because you didn’t keep walking.” Or “Because you are talking to me right now.” I choose “Because I am an alcoholic and my glass is empty.” He moves on. I have too much baggage for him.

Another man walks over. Will my empty glass and I get no peace tonight?

“I am in town from Texas. I have been in New York for four weeks. In all the time I have been here you are the most masculine I guy I have seen.”

I stifle a girlish giggle. “You are kidding right?”

“No I mean it. You are so masculine. What do you say?”

“Leave now.”

He whines. “Most guys at least say ‘thank you’ when you compliment them.”

“Sorry. I meant, you should leave now before I say or do anything so you might still believe that. To be honest, I am just too old and too tired at this hour to wave my hands about wildly.”

And then there was JT and of course Jonathan. The third cigarette in the ashtray.

Ben Harvey and I were having a perfectly nice time at Vlada. First we are standing downstairs but Ben Harvey is fragile and needed to sit down. We move upstairs, but then Edie, who is talented but loud, starts in on her show and a couple of homos who work in radio can’t hear each other talk because they are both varying degrees of deaf now. It comes with the job.

We move to the seats downstairs and continue our conversation. Suddenly, exuberant and crazy in love, JT gallops into our conversation. He is nice enough. 26 and full of enough energy for us both to think he might be taking drugs. But what? Through his succession of ridiculously hot friends, we learn he is a dancer or maybe choreographer. I hear a connection to Britney Spears mentioned but since she shaved her head and beat a parked car with an umbrella she hardly seems like the kind of reference you want printed in bold on your resume.

JT introduces us to his “famous” best friend Jonathan. Jonathan is a cutie 25 year old who is as comatose as JT is gregarious. It is almost as though JT is actually sucking the life out of him in the middle of the bar, right before our eyes. Ben Harvey and Jonathan hit it off, but Gay Commandment #1: Thou shalt not covet thy homos best friend if thy homo hit on you first, even if thy homos best friend is way hotter than thy homo and totes into you.

In my good ear, I half hear Ben Harvey tell JT that I am his boyfriend. Happy to run easy interference I play my role to the hilt. Of course, I also use this as an opportunity to tease Ben Harvey mercilessly. “My boyfriend LOVES it when guys hit on him. He loves the attention!” Well the attention from JT goes on too long and too dramatically and Ben Harvey wants to leave and even I start longing for a nap. Earlier JT didn't believe I was really 37, but now he is annoyed enough to use it against me. "You are forty, so who cares what you think.” His flounce is especially pronounced as he dismisses me like a school bell. Hmmmm... maybe I am the most masculine guy in New York City.

Jonathan, who isn’t “famous” at all but instead, is a very attractive dog washer at Biscuits and Bath, leaves. JT invites us to someone’s apartment for a party, but I am far too old to be attending impromptu parties at strange apartments on a Wednesday night. Ben Harvey is right. It is time to call it a night. So I leave Ben Harvey on the corner of 8th Avenue with a promise to blog our evening for posterity. And then decide to take the subway home. I could take a cab, but I want the extra time to really work over the details in my drunken head.

This endless post later, I am ready to climb into bed. Tomorrow I will get up early and watch a sea of TV before heading into work. I probably should have stayed home and watched TV tonight but that’s what an old person would do. I have decades of that ahead of me, in my house filled with sentimental favorites and nothing of real value, listening to kd lang and thinking about the good old days when I saw her in concert and what life was like with record players and before the internet. But tonight I am the only thing I have of value and I choose to release my asset (such as it is) from the vault, to put my cigarette in the ashtray and experience life in the small café.

Just this once.