Plus None

Here is a really good party tip from someone who doesn’t go to a lot of parties: If you are invited to an event and you only know the host, make sure you bring a plus one with you. It doesn’t matter how many times I get invited to a party where I only know one person, I always fail to bring someone with me. I suppose it is because I don’t have a reliable standby plus one. This is where having a straight female friend comes in handy. In fact this seems to be the primary motivation for most of these symbiotic relationships. Mental note: make new friend, attend party together.

Last week, I got a text message from Reichen inviting me to the bar Industry for the launch of his new fragrance. It is also called Reichen, so for the purposes of clarity from now on, I will just refer to it as the fragrance. That way, when I tell you some Reichen got sprayed in my eye, you won’t think the evening took a decidedly sexual turn between us. But more on the spritzing later.

My new life strategy is to say yes to everything. I will in fact now attend the opening of an envelope, both literally and figuratively. Just ask! As I have plunged headlong into midlife, I have discovered the reason you don’t see forty-something gay men anywhere: It just becomes easier to stay home. You reach a point in life where you have everything, and have been everywhere. There is nothing waiting for you out at Industry that isn’t either already at hand, or can’t be managed with your own hand. But my career dictates a certain level of sociability. I am not so famous that I can afford to hide at home and wait for the residual checks to roll in. In fact, I am not so famous anything.  I need to work, not just at an office, but also a room, a bar, or launch party for a fragrance.

As I point out in my fantastic new book, When NightlifeFalls (available now on Amazon, for Kindle, and the Nook), I have known Reichen for some time, although not extremely well. He is the quintessence of a celebrifriend. That is a celebrity who I am on friendly terms with but with whom my only contact is in full view of the public.  Truth be told, Chris Rice is my favorite celebrifriend because it feels all literary and classy and he is such a good sport about the whole thing. But Reichen is guaranteed to get attention, anywhere, anytime, and tonight was no exception.

I like Reichen. He is pretty, ridiculously so. And most people stop there. But the more time I spend with him, the more I see only his character. He is honestly and genuinely earnest. If I were pressed and told to describe him in one word, earnest is the word I would choose. Unfortunately, earnest is the gay community’s least popular descriptor, right behind sweet or blousy.  Being earnest gets you into trouble, especially in the big city, because it can so easily read as disingenuous or condescending. I am not at all earnest. I’m blunt and crass. That, for better or worse, is never taken the wrong way. I am like a hostage taker and Reichen is like the negotiator they send in to defuse the tension.

Reichen had the launch party tonight at Industry, one of the newer hot spots in midtown (and about which my feelings are already well established). The party was scheduled to end at ten, which is also when my show ends. So I told him I would be there after the show and he gave me a private password so I would be able to get a gift bag at the event. Since I hate meeting new people, scoring a gift bag became suddenly a primary motivator for attending, mostly out of curiosity as to what might be in it. As I walked out of the studio tonight after the show, I ran into Ben and Dave, making notes ahead of the recording of their latest podcast. I told them where I was headed and joked that since I would be the fattest person at the party, I was going as both me and my own plus one.

Arriving at Industry, I opened the outer door and was immediately greeted by a giant poster informing me that entering was my consent to be filmed. I hoped that by coming late, I could avoid the filming of The A List and as it turned out, while I was waiting to talk to Reichen, some very nice production people shoved me out of the way to cart out the equipment. I’ve never been so happy to be pushed aside in a bar in my life! I don’t know how Reichen puts up with that reality TV nonsense, but then again, people wonder how I talk for four hours every night. I guess it is something you just get used to doing after a while.

Reichen seemed genuinely surprised and happy to see me, but then suddenly blurted out: “You missed the gift bags! I’m sorry. I really wanted you to have one.” Oh well, I thought to myself, it is just a gift bag. But then, noticing an unattended gift bag on a stool, he said, “I wonder who left this here. Doesn’t matter. It’s yours now!” Reichen stole a gift bag for me at his own party! I felt like a star and a criminal at the same time.  That’s a good feeling, in case you were wondering. Intoxicating.

“We’re leaving,” Reichen told me, “Come with us to Le Bain!” Uh. I really had only planned to drop in fast as the white hot party burned down to an ember, so I could quickly nab a gift bag, say hi to Reichen, gather enough intel for a blog entry and still make it to the 11pm train. But I say yes to everything now, so I said yes to Reichen and his after-party adventure! And then just as suddenly I was filled with dread. Tom and Lorenzo had warned us all about the overly dramatic after parties on The A List. Was I leaving the bar just to end up as an extra in some high anxiety wine throwing melee with that horrible hairdresser, the tanorexic bitch with my name and the fat model I’d still fuck even though he got TV fat?

Before I could gather my thoughts, Reichen was introducing me to his friend Zach. “I don’t shake hands!” Zach yelled, simultaneously pushing my outstretched hand away and pouring half his cocktail down my arm, “I like to hug! I love Derek!” I would like to say this was the last time he got alcohol on me, but that instead of love, turned out to be the running theme of the evening with him. 

We all went outside to hail cabs to get downtown to Le Bain, which it turned out is a bar at The Standard. I had never been there before, and I worried about getting past a velvet rope in shorts. I figured I should try to get into a cab with Zach since he was also in shorts and was the only other person I knew, but he and three skinny girls in shiny dresses climbed into a cab behind Reichen’s cab. So, being unusually bold, I waved a heretofore unknown fun black girl and a strapping gay lad into a third cab headed downtown. No doorman in NYC could resist me if I am part of this threesome! I sat in the hump between Farrin, a recruiter visiting from Dallas and Ryan, who said he was an NYU grad student recently relocated from Beijing. They were both a total blast and my favorite part of the evening.

“How did you get a gift bag?” Ryan asked me in the cab ride to The Standard. “There were only like seven of them or something.” Suddenly, I realized that I didn’t see anyone else with a gift bag. Zach didn’t have one. None of the girls in sparkly dresses. Not even Ryan and fabulous Farrin. “Reichen gave it to me.” I offered up but even as I said it, I wondered how I ended up with it too. When pressed about how I knew Reichen, I told them about my radio show. “Oh, like Ben and Dave.” Ryan offered, then suddenly something clicked. “Wait a minute. Weren’t you on their show a couple of weeks ago? I thought I recognized your voice.” True story, I was recognized from someone else’s show in the back of a cab. Only in New York, kids. Only in New York.

Our cab was the first to arrive at The Standard. The three of us waited briefly downstairs to get our ID checked and our hands stamped before we jumped into a packed elevator to the top. The bar itself was not very crowded at all and the view south to ground zero was lovely. Ryan suggested we all go upstairs and that was the revelation. Le Bain is an outdoor rooftop bar and it was spectacular. The night air was crisp and breezy. There was a hint of fall about it but it felt refreshing instead of chilly. Ryan was cold but Reichen agreed with me later that the night air was perfect. It turned out that this was his favorite place in the city and spending only a few minutes up there it was clear why.

Le Bain wasn’t very busy when we arrived but the crowd began to thicken fast. It was a funny crowd too. There were mostly young guys there, mid twenties. There were some older guys in bow ties and button down shirts tucked into shorts. That is trying too hard even when a twenty-something urban hipster does it. A blond guy across the crowd in a tight red t-shirt caught my eye. I smiled at him and he winked back. That was nice. But the best was that none of the other A Listers were there and no one was filming anything. So in all, I had a really good time. In fact, I was surprised. Plus none and non-plussed, you might say.

As the evening started to wind down, I went to say good night to Reichen. Zach was there with a tester bottle of the fragrance. Zach was even drunker at this point, so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when he sprayed me with cologne and then two seconds later forgot that he already had and sprayed me again. At one point, he sprayed it directly into my eyes. “It’s all organic!” Reichen assured me as I struggled to see. The cologne has a nice clean scent to it but I barked at Zach to stop spraying me. “If I get any more cologne on me, they won’t let me on the train!”

He looked at me funny. “What train is that?” Obviously I couldn’t mean the NYC subway, where if you aren’t shitting into your own hand you get a good conduct medal from the city. When I told him, I lived in Westchester, he dismissed me. “Oh, you have no power.” And there it was, I thought, the cruelty of not being a Manhattanite anymore. You live in the suburbs and you are worthless. I asked him what he meant, ready to get into a terrible name droppy fight about how close I live to Martha Stewart and own instead of rent but then in his drunken haze he suddenly made it clear he thought we were all still without electricity since the hurricane last weekend.

I guess that is the lesson of the night, and a fitting lesson when dealing with Reichen. People so quickly assume he is one thing when he is something completely different. I thought I would end up in a horrible reality show but instead I landed in a calm oasis high above the city in the welcoming night air. I thought the rooftop bar at The Standard would be a drag but it was friendly and nice. I met new people and they turned out to be a lot of fun. And even though I was awash in cologne, the conductors still let me on the train back home. Gift bag and all.

Under The Wither

Is it a function of getting older that people just annoy you all the time, or were they always annoying and as the rest of your senses dull it just becomes more acutely obvious? It’s like when you get older and you go to a bar and suddenly the music is always too loud. You would think that a person who has a hard time hearing would never think anything is too loud, but the fact remains that it is. It is probably because we have stopped listening to the music and started trying to have a real conversation just at the moment when our bodies no longer allow us to do so. I guess people are like the club. Just at the moment you want to get serious about knowing them, the noise they generate around themselves is overwhelming.

When my mother turned forty, she said, “I never thought I’d live this long” as she blew out the candles. My sister and I still being teenagers at the time, it seemed strange to think at the time that she would embark on that most important journey of parenthood with no real expectation of seeing it through to the end. But now that I am blowing out similar numbers of candles, I see what she meant. It all went by so fast but at the same time, we’ve been here a long time and we are still here, with a lot more time to go. It is like running a marathon where you ran your heart out for the first ten miles only to discover as you are gasping for air that there are another sixteen miles to go. Everyone is standing around on the sidelines cheering, but all you want to do is sit down for a minute.

A Head In Search Of A Hairstyle

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

“Eventually.”

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

“It always comes eventually.” And it does.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eventually.

Puff Piece: Ben and Dave

So, I had this idea last night while I was not drunk out at GUMBO. I was talking to party host Ben Harvey and his radio husband Dave Rubin about how much I loved the photo of them passed out on a bed surrounded by food. Then, completely in character, I offered up a narcissistic idea disguised as an altruistic one.

"I want to do a book of my favorite photos of my favorite people. Not photos I took. Just photos I like. And I will call it 'Puff Piece.'"

Please note: My favorite. My favorite. I like. I will call it. I. I. I. But with some you in it.

I am not sold on the title, but I am sold on the idea because I really know how to put the "I" in idea. But a book seems ambitious and "I" am lazy. Plus there are all sorts of rights and clearances issues. It just makes me want to put my head down. So instead, I will just repost them on my blog and tell you why I love the photo and the people in it.

Ben and Dave are two of the sweetest people I know, and this is a genuinely sweet photo. It reminds me of the current "Sweet Million" ad campaign for the lottery here in NY, with the little baby animals sleeping in adorable settings. As you can see, I don't mind an ad campaigns with tiny animals that miraculously allow you to say "awww" while simultaneously throwing up in the back of your mouth. I also don't mind a staged photo. In fact, I prefer it. Unless it is news, the only thing a true action shot can capture about a person is a bad angle and a double chin. This photo has good composition, a clever story (love the mini bottle of Pepto!), and two hot shirtless men that I love. And what is sweeter than that?

GUMBO Lone

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

Bad Manners

"I should have told you at the beginning of this conversation that I have no people skills."

I am aware when I write about my encounters out on the town, it gives people a thrill to see me say things like this. I promise you that the person hearing it first hand is not thrilled. Case in point: Thursday night at The Park, Matty's monthly soiree of boys, booze and bouncing around. Happening at the tail end of March, this particular event took on all the trappings of a Fire Island pre-party, right down to the hunky gemologist, stunned by his misfortune to be in conversation with me.

Wonderful Brian Babst introduced me to Seth and for a moment, I did my best to engage him in small talk about his favorite subject: himself. Unfortunately, my lack of knowledge about or interest in diamonds, jewelry, abs and the Ascension party on Fire Island turned me rapidly into a pumpkin before his very non-believing eyes. Suddenly, his head was swiveling around like an office chair in an earthquake, desperate to find someone (anyone!) else that he knew so that he could return to his safety zone, waxing poetic about his lock necklace and who accidentally O.D.ed last summer swigging on a sports bottle full of GHB.

All this was later in the evening, when most of the men in suits had faded away and what was left was cruisy, drunk and ready to rekindle old flames from Pines past. Already the muscles are bulging from beneath strained t-shirts like snow crocuses making their first budding ventures out of the frost. Spring is here I hear, and a Summer of thongs and regrets (and regretting seeing some in thongs) is just around the corner. And tonight, in between the Wall Streeters and the hunky casual, a sea of plaid shirts that caught the attention first of Dave Rubin ("Is that what we are doing now?") and then moments later Brian himself ("Brother, can you spare some gingham?"). It's Depression Chic, I assured them, happy to for once be, if not ahead of the curve, at least balancing precariously on it.

I didn't need to meet anyone new, and at this point really, new men are just cannon fodder for my blog anyway. Sorry Seth. I am sure your well-formed shoulders can handle the burden of it all. However, I did bring someone new this time. Delicious Matt Kugelman delighted me by coming along with his friend Chip and the three of us had a gay old time. Matt knows his way around a hot Manhattan gay party so I think he was surprised by how few people he knew there. Fortunately, his winning smile and equally bulging t-shirt signaled that he would fit right in and it wouldn't take him long to meet anyone he wanted to meet.

Having them there with me was a little like taking a date to your high school reunion. I knew so many people, and far more than I actually know in real life. Charlie found us first, while we were still downstairs, drawn over by the siren song of my unmistakable laugh. Gray and Greg were upstairs, looking sharp as always. Chris Stadler was there, though I didn't even get to say hi, it was so crowded. Ben Harvey was a thin slice of blond heaven, a drunk Patsy to Dave Rubin's smashed Edina. Matty was running around taking a hundred and one photos and he positively melted like chocolate on your tongue when I asked him about Austria. Matty took a couple of good snaps of me with Young Bradford who was sad I was spending this weekend in Florida working instead of helping to keep Matty entertained out in the country with them. He introduced me to another guy also named Bradford. "How dare you!" I said to this new interloping Bradford, to which our Bradford whole-heartedly agreed, chiming in himself with a "Yes! How dare you!"Once again, I did everything I could to win over a stranger.

Matt and Chip didn't stay long, having to run off to Bianca's show further uptown. I hope they had fun. Matt sure seemed to enjoy dancing around to the music, although not as much as Corey Johnson, who twirled like a Drag Race contestant lipsyncing for his life. Needing to escape before I did any real damage, I looked for Joe and his cute friend Adam to say good-bye. Adam showered me with flirty attention the last time I saw him, but this time, he was chasing someone else. Naturally, being a self-centered monster, this hurt my feelings. So, I tugged on his suspenders a while, lifted him up a bit to kiss him on the neck and ran my fingers along the back of his ear until he asked me for my number. "Ask Joe for it!" I said as I kissed him good night, knowing full well that Joe doesn't have my number either.

This shouldn't come as a surprise to you because unlike Seth, I told you at the beginning of this conversation that I don't have any people skills. And I still don't.

Life With(Out) Matty

Before the evening began, it had all the hallmarks of a night of a thousand gay stars. Every once in a while, the planets line up and all sorts of people who are difficult to wrangle suddenly start to coalesce. Even my roommate Mike, who hates going out in general, but even more hates going out to the kinds of places I end up in, agreed to go. And so it went, and within hours, a magical night took form. Tonight was the night and its ground zero looked like the cabanas at The Maritime.

I went to the cabanas last Friday with Matty and Hanno for Zoe's birthday party and expected the same crowd of narrow ties and wide smiles we experienced last time. But more importantly, I expected Matty and Hanno. After all, we had talked about it the night before at Rob and Erik's pretty boy bacchanal, and they had even dutifully RSVP'd on Facebook to Will Wikle's birthday invite. But as I left the show, I noticed they had changed their Facebook status to include a reference to the movie Doubt. Okay, I thought, so after a few hours of the luminous Meryl chewing scenery, they will make their grand entrance up the stairs.

After the show, I walked out with Romaine, passed The Amazing Race's Nick Spangler leaving The Fantasticks, and then headed on the 1 train down to Chelsea. Roommate was still at his office birthday party so I had some time to kill and joined Cyd and Dan for one of their last remaining nights at their tasteful sublet before they make the big move to Los Angeles later this month. They were cocktailing with a couple, both named Matt, which made it so much easier to remember both of their names, even after the white cranberry juice and vodka cocktail that Cyd made for me. Despite not having a solid penny to my name, I impressed them with my theoretical investment strategies. Must have been the alcohol. For all I really know about making money, I might as well have declared at the end that I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

Mike arrived at the cabanas so I gave Cyd and Dan a long quick hug good bye and headed a few blocks down to the Maritime. By now it was almost 11:30 and I expected a line. However, there was no one waiting outside and the coat check was a sea of empty hangers. This was a bad sign. Upstairs the party was small but the music was loud. I found Mike quickly, wearing a cute zip neck pullover and a tie. He looked like all the other cute, preppy gays at the party! I felt so alone in my v-neck Otter Fashion shirt, though I have created an empowering take on my outsider fashion lately where I imagine myself a misunderstood trendsetter who is just too far ahead on the curve for people to even see around it yet.

Suddenly, it seemed like I was surrounded by everyone I knew exclusively through Matty. First, it was Brian Babst who demanded my cell phone number. "I wanted to text you the other day," he started, but I finished his sentence for him with "but you realized you didn't have my number." He plugged every detail of my personal life into his Blackberry, even scheduling a time slot later this week to send me his fabulous new holiday card, which I have to say was a very sweet touch. I was flattered.

Then I ran into Young Bradford (and later Ben appeared to complete the Benford set), who was rocking lederhosen. I thought it was an homage to Hanno, but he yelled "Swiss Miss" over the music and after some coordinated Alpine dance moves, we left it at that. Moments later, an outrageously tall and old drag queen wandered into us, her ill-fitting wig a sneeze away from resting inside her champagne flute. "Elaine Stritch in drag!" I declared but Bradford shook his head. "No. No. That's definitely Melanie Griffith." As she neared even nearer, I said, "Hello Melanie" and she went off on me in a drunken rage, alternately sloshing her drink and tugging on her errant wig. "Have some of my roofie" she smiled as she poured some of her drink into my cocktail before trotting away, one broken heel in front of the other.

Ben Harvey was there, fresh from his trip to London, along with his kissing cousin Christian and Christian's main squeeze Jimmie. Dave Rubin was with them, his square-jawed sexiness firmly in place. I coaxed Mike against his will into being social and hanging out with them and it all went swimmingly. I was still expecting Matty, but when he finally texted me back, it was to say that he and the Austrian were cuddling back at his place. So, to show him what he was missing, I decided to run around the cabanas and take pictures with all the people there that he knew. After all, why should Michael Musto, as always lurking in the shadows of joy, have all the fun?

I dashed around the increasingly packed bar and implored strangers to snap my photo. There was Ryan Newman, so much more fun without his boyfriend. In my attempt to get a photo with birthday boy Will Wikle, I ran smack into that hot slice of man Matt Kugelman. There is something wrong with him because he gets better looking every time I see him. It's a problem. Will was busy twirling up a storm to Get Me Bodied followed IMMEDIATELY by Single Ladies, so I gave his sweaty hunched back a hug as he down pointed his way across the dance floor. As much fun as imagining him in a black leotard is, I can't miss my train and had to make a run for it. Though I did take a second at the top of the stairs to lead the just arrived hot gay comic Shawn Hollenbach in the general direction of Dave Rubin. Always happy to help a boy scout across the street!

It will be sad to think of Manhattan without Cyd and Dan in it, even though I can add them to the growing list of people I don't have time to see on my annual short weekends in Los Angeles. And I have seen so much of Matty this year, more than I have seen him in all the years I have lived here, that I suppose having a single night off won't kill me. True, not having the friends you love around you is hard sometimes. But as the windows steamed up inside the cabanas and the $12 cocktails flowed, the party continues anyway, and we can all still have a good time.

(2nd to the) Last Night On Earth

These posts are often about going out. I suppose I could write about other things, but I am lazy. Since I don’t leave the house very often, it is the perfect compromise. I don’t have to write much, since I don’t go out much. I went out on the town on Friday night and Saturday night, and it was ill-advised since I had a million things to do before I embarked on the R Family Cruise up the coast of New England to Canada on Sunday morning. But Ronnie was in town, and I promised to hang out with him, so duty to friendship won out over bland puttering around the old Cape Cod.

As it turns out, Ronnie was working on a movie and couldn’t get out early enough on Friday night to do the show or hang out with us. I had promised some time before to hang out with Ryan and Ben Harvey on Friday when Ryan was in town, and promptly forgot until Ben Harvey and I were talking about our Friday night plans. So I trekked down after the show to Chelsea to meet Ben Harvey and his cousin Christian at the bar “G.” In the mid-90s as a NYC tourist, I was mad about “G” and its bold oval bar shape and hunky fun patrons. Now, I regard the nearly round walkway as a misery akin to attending the Tailhook Convention in a mini-skirt. But “G” after waning in the early years of the Bush Presidency is, like the Democratic Party in general, making something of a comeback, though I am similarly ambivalent that neither has changed much in the intervening years to deserve it.

I arrived first, my humongous Amazing Race style backpack making me as unwelcome in the slim environs as an elephant in a narrow corridor. But the best thing about being in your 30s is you don’t care who you piss off as long as you get where you are going. So even though two short muscle boys thought they would get my deference as they tried to pass in bar, I instead effortlessly swiveled around and slammed by backpack into their faces as I walked by. That made me feel good for the remaining two minutes until Ben Harvey arrived with Christian and Christian’s new friend, Aaron, a closeted construction worker from upstate.

We decamped almost immediately from “G” to try to find Ryan at ELMO where he had been having dinner with another radio professional. Once at ELMO, however, he had already moved on to someone’s apartment for a party or something, I stopped listening when we arrived at the second location and found our quarry missing. This is very bad form. Trying to connect clusters of gays already in motion is my least favorite activity in the world, especially in bar settings, because no one has any sense of time passing when they are in a club and after two drinks, any gay can be convinced to go anywhere with anyone. Jeffrey Dahmer made a career of that.

In searching for Ryan at ELMO, we wandered into the downstairs bar, which some years ago had been the site of Perez Hilton’s birthday party. On Friday, it was a shocking display of heterosexuality. This is always annoying. I like straight people as much as the next, but straight people who cluster in otherwise gay areas to party are nothing but trouble. The freedom and sassiness that gays display liberates them to dangerous levels and gets transferred into otherwise inappropriate straight behavior and the next thing you know someone is getting stabbed. Sweet, young closeted Aaron didn’t believe me that it was a straight party.
“Maybe there are just a lot of girls.” He suggested.

I assured him it was a straight party because there were only men dancing with women, and no men dancing with other men. Going around to Ben Harvey and Christian, they in quick succession agreed it was straight because the men all had tucked in, button down shirts and by the way, did you see those shoes? The lack of fashion sense was not enough to convince Aaron, who retorted, “Derek is badly dressed and he is obviously not straight.” But a lack of fashion is my thing. It is what separates me from the rest of the maddening crowd. Though at this point, Aaron was the only maddening one.

I liked him a lot and Christian assured me he had an amazing body underneath his ill-fitting shirt, but his youth and inexperience at all things gay was apparent. For instance, he insisted that being out at work wasn’t important and he never planned to be openly gay in the workplace. True he works in construction, so that does make things dicey, but the idea that he works in a sexuality-free environment is to take for granted the background noise of girlfriends and wives that is miraculously excluded from any notion of sexual behavior. I am certain that in a few years he will feel differently.

Just then, Dave Rubin came sweeping in and happily changed the dynamic entirely. With Ben Harvey still texting Ryan trying to find a meet spot, my eye was on the clock and the door. After another round of drinks, everyone bolted for the Chelsea Hotel. I made my good-byes on the corner. Even though I was assured Ryan would be at the Chelsea (at least eventually), my role in L’Aventura had come to an end. With any luck, I could get home early enough to get a good night’s sleep, get some packing done for my trip and still have time to work on the house. Life after all is a balancing act. One of these days, Ryan will see that maintaining that balance means learning to end something when the time is right and move on to the next thing. And perhaps Aaron will learn that there is a time and a place for everything, and sometimes the more you hold back, the less you have.

Transitions

New York City is in a constant state of flux. O Henry once aptly predicted that “It will be a great place if they ever finish it.” Living here, it is the kind of thing you get used to. Buildings get torn down. People move away. Even the seasons, when they end, do so with such a brutal finality it borders on intolerable cruelty. The most frequent NYC transition involves a change of address. Even though it seems like a lease (like any bad relationship) will never end, eventually it does and people move up, on, down, or out. Ben Harvey decided to use his last weekend in his old Chelsea apartment to celebrate the end of an era for himself and, since it was Dave Rubin’s birthday yesterday, the end of a year for Dave as well.

Ben’s apartment was a cozy L-shaped studio in a modern building with modern furnishings. It is the kind of apartment tower that has flourished in the city over the past decade like dandelions, at once adorable and annoyingly ubiquitous. Since he is moments from moving out, the place is pretty cleaned out, save for a few leftover pieces of furniture and (thanks largely to the guests) a refrigerator chock full of liquor. It felt like the endless parade of hot twenty-somethings all arrived carrying a bottle of vodka with them. Maybe they do that so that their bicep is flexed and huge as they walk through the door, or maybe they are just being thoughtful guests. Worried about neither the size of my upper arms or being nice, I came empty-handed.

Some of the usual suspects were there (like Jonathan and Ben’s rascally cousin Christian), but mostly it was filled with people I don’t know. This is my least favorite kind of party since I hate meeting new people. However, one of the first people I met was the delightful Anne (aka Lesbi-Anne), a stand-up comedian with surprisingly nice taste in clothes for a comic and/or lesbian. Ben’s friend Zach, anxious for a blog mention apparently, was also there, and much calmer than my first encounter with him at Ben’s new apartment three months ago. Unfortunately, he was so calm, nothing much happened between us and I have nothing really to say about him other than he was there and he was tall.

My friend Clay joined the party too. He came in town for pride weekend and was instantly dejected by the fashion at the party. The locals were all dressed in various shades of blue, Manhattan’s summer version of basic black. Upbeat and chipper in a bright green shirt, Clay stuck out in a good way in a sea of drab. “What is wrong with everyone? It’s Spring!” he declared, less than a week into Summer. But point taken. New York gays love a man in uniform, even if the uniform is expensive denim jeans and a blue, grey or black t-shirt.

Bucking the drab shirt trend was new arrival Steven, in town from Kansas City, where everything’s up to date. Steven was visiting his friend Marty and joined in the fun in Ben’s apartment, in a clingy white t-shirt that left little to the imagination. Fortunately gay men don’t like to use their imaginations, so he was a big hit. For me, the big excitement was finally meeting the notorious Shawn Hollenbach. I have never met him in person, but his photo has haunted me from Friendster to MySpace to Facebook and beyond. We probably have the most friends in common of two people who had, before tonight, never met. It this regard, the party felt like mission accomplished.

The party moved from inside Ben’s apartment to the roof deck and back, as guests refilled their glasses and then returned to the breathtaking view and perfectly cool summer night. The south view off the roof was really something to see, and there is just something great about the canyons of high rises in Manhattan. They are majestic from every angle, though nothing beats the view from on high. Eventually, building security (as Ben had predicted they would) kicked everyone out of the roof deck and the drunks poured back into the apartment like wet cement, chunky slow and in fear of drying out too quickly. A bunch of us settled onto the couch for a series of photos I am certain to never see again, outside of a tagging frenzy on Facebook. This is fine since I generally hate all photos of myself, so I am happy to see the vast majority of them vanish into thin air.

As always happens, the drunk train was calling so I had to dash while everything was still in full swing. Clay offered for me to stay with him at the W since they upgraded him to a massive suite. “Who needs three walk in closets in a hotel room?” he asked from inside an apartment roughly the size of three walk in closets. Maybe tomorrow night, Clay. Christian, who wasn’t wearing any underwear (no surprise) and kept showing off his tramp stamp tattoo, which looked something like a folded out Rubik’s cube if you made one with origami, also offered me to stay with him. “You don’t mind cats do you?” That wasn’t the pussy I had in mind, so I figured I best stick with the train.

On the walk to Grand Central, I spied another New York landmark. It is almost impossible not to see at least one of them and I purposefully walked up Fifth Avenue just to catch a glimpse. And suddenly there it was, the nearest thing to heaven we have in New York City: the Empire State Building. The lights were off because it was after midnight, with just a UFO-like ring of lights around the top of the tower, but even in the dark, it is as beautiful as ever. The city around it can change all that it wants, but that building always stays the same. Elegant and cool, it is living proof in the heart of Manhattan that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Rocking Horses Can't Be Broken

It was a night for exceedingly attractive people.

Jeremy Blacklow was in town and even dropped by the show for a bit. Romaine was in a foul mood tonight and had no patience for our gay shenanigans. No matter. I knew there would be plenty of that after the show. Jeremy is a dreamboat whom I first met some years ago at Bowery Bar when he appeared as if by magic from kickboxing class, his arms glistening with sweat, his hands still taped up. It was the kind of entrance not easily forgotten.

Of course I met Jeremy through Matty Kelleher, who is the Kevin Bacon of gay life in New York (Dennis Hensley is the Kevin Bacon of gay life in Los Angeles). If you know Matty, you are never more than six degrees away from any other gay man in Manhattan. Matty is insanely adorable and likable and winning. And he really does know everyone. His inner circle is extremely small (and hates me because I am loud and undignified), but the outer rings extend across continents.

Originally, we all planned to go to Bowery Bar tonight. It was where Matty met Jeremy and I met Jeremy, and where I met Zach. And even though "every asshole is there" as Jonathan so aptly put it tonight as he decamped to the cheap and empty confines of the Boiler Room, it is still after more than a decade, the beating heart of midweek gay life, even if the arteries are a bit clogged with nasty cholesterol.

But after the show, Matty was having a change of heart. They had just seen Cry Baby (awful) and wanted to eat, so they ran off to Rocking Horse, a restaurant down in Chelsea, with no intention of going to Beige after all. Unfortunately, Hottie Zach was planning to be there, as was DJ Ben Harvey. I could easily make new plans myself but I hate being the unreliable guy who switches everyone else's plans. As it turns out, all was fine. Zach met me at the Horse where we had some drinks while Jeremy and Matty finished their meals. The three of us told dusty stories of the good old days while Zach politely nursed a pair of Citron and lemonades.

Soon I convinced Jeremy, who then convinced Matty, that we should all go to Bowery Bar to see Ben Harvey after all. Moments later, we piled into a taxi and zipped across town. The dusty stories continued in the cab, mostly concerning who does and does not warrant a mention in my blog, and the ever meta topic of wondering aloud what part of the current evening I will blog about later.

Finally at Bowery Bar, we bypassed the line, the best part of going out on the town with Matty. He just doesn't believe in standing in line for anything, a conviction I firmly stand behind. Once inside, we saw all the usual suspects. The assholes were out in force. Spring makes them flourish like weeds although the weather was not quite warm enough yet for their worst tank top instincts. Ben was there with Dave Rubin and Dave's friend Yuki, who I apparently met the last time I was at Beige. I didn't remember meeting him but he sure remembered me.

"You have lost a lot of weight since I last saw you." was his greeting. My weight has not changed an ounce but for some reason people always remember me as fatter than I am. After leaving LA for a couple of years I came back to visit and someone said, "You've lost an enormous amount of weight." Enormous. Really? How fat did they think I was before? I promise my weight hasn't fluctuated more than twenty pounds in either direction since puberty. And yet, I am fondly remembered as the fat guy at the party I guess.

In the end, the best part of the night was spending a few quiet moments with Ben. We never get to talk and I really like talking with him. I feel (even though we haven't known each other for a long time) like we understand each other. There is a reason he is my most frequent blog character. I really like hanging out with him. He climbed into a cab and sped home while I decided it was a nice enough night for a walk uptown to the drunk train. On my way, he sent me a text message: "Sketchy gay cab driver! Asked where my bf (you) lived!" I was triumphant. It was outside the bar but finally someone at Bowery Bar was asking after me. As demented as it is, a little attention does make you feel better. Maybe not everyone at that dump is an asshole after all.

I'm kidding. Of course they are.

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.

Posh Slice

I hadn’t seen Steven DeLuca since my birthday party back in November. He is one of my oldest friends here in the city and as always our encounters are infrequent. I love Steven. He is one of my favorite people. He invited me recently to the opening of a new play that he and his boyfriend are producing and I reacted in horror. “Why would you invite me? Do you want it to close?” Suddenly, Steven was reminded that I am, in fact, the famous Kiss of Death for all live theatrical productions.

When he was a theater manager and he grew tired of the show that was running, he could send me an email assuring me that there would be two tickets on the aisle for me and sure enough within hours of my attendance, the show would close. He played the card one too many times and even the theater closed. I even invested in an off-Broadway show. It was great. It had a terrific theatre in a great location. The New York Times gave it an unqualified rave. I lost every penny I put into it. Steven met me out tonight at Posh alone. He had invited his boyfriend Carl, who decided to stay in. But Carl did have a message for me. “Don’t come to our show.”

I had planned for us to spend a quiet evening together, catching up just the two of us. But before we could get deeply into the weeds of our daily lives, I got a text message from the original Jonathan. He was, naturally, in the neighborhood and anxious to get together. I blew him off this weekend, preferring to stay cloistered in my Desperate Housewives practical, and had promised him that I would go out with him this week. I just didn’t plan on it being tonight.

Jonathan was there at Posh with his friend Mark, who didn’t stay long. Mark was dressed in a crisp white button down shirt that said he cared about how he looked. He was all wrong for me. Anyway, he is just out of a long term relationship so I don’t think he was looking for anything longer than an episode of Criminal Minds but just about as sordid. He left quickly to walk his dog which is sweet in a way, but it just reminded me that having a dog in Manhattan is cruel for the dog and frankly having a baby at home is less of a chore.

Jonathan was a bundle of enthusiasm, although not about his recent appearance in my blog. “You said I am a whore.” I am certain I didn’t use that term. Then he insisted I implied it by saying that he was out at the bar looking for sex. Except that he was out at the bar looking to get laid and that was simple reporting. Whore is judgment, and I am not one to judge like that. Anyone who knows me knows that if I think you are a whore, I will just say it to your face. So I guess Jonathan now joins the long list of people who for one reason (giving “massages” under another name) or another (in the closet) have reacted badly to their portrayal in my blog. Tough.

The three of us quickly grew weary of the Posh life. There was a somewhat large black man, twirling around like a drag queen though the empress had no clothes. He tried to entreat me to dance with him at the urging of his friend who was giving me the eye from across the bar. But I insisted to him that I have a wooden leg and was afraid it would fall off. He didn’t take Heather Mills for an answer easily and before he came back around on another ecstasy-fueled pass, we closed out our check and headed for Vlada.

Earlier on my way into Posh, I had run into Josh Rosenzweig on the corner. When I told him I was going in to meet a friend, he told me to drag my friend over to Vlada instead. They had had a screening thing earlier he proffered evasively, and then everyone had decamped to my favorite vodka bar. Later at Posh, I suggested the party at Vlada to Steven and Jonathan, but both of them already knew about it, having been invited much earlier than I had. So much for being a HERE subscriber and a national radio show host! I hadn’t been back to Vlada since that last disastrous night with roommate, the other Jonathan, Ben Harvey, Dave Rubin, and the ever notorious Clay Lee, which was just too fucked up and personal a night for me to blog about the next day. But here I was back again, and so was Ben Harvey and Dave Rubin, who didn’t even tell me they were going to be there. I gave Ben Harvey a steaming heap of shit about emailing with me all day and not even mentioning it. I was joking and he knew I was joking, but still he had a bemused look of panic on his face. It might have been the free alcohol.

Chris van Cleef was there too, as cute as always, and hammered. Like take me home and violate me hammered. Fortunately he was on his way out to eat which was a good thing because he was a jagger shot away from an anonymous gang bang in the bathroom. One of the downsides of working in a gay office, like I do, and the HERE folks, you get to know so much more about your co-workers than would ever be legally permissible in a straight environment. And at a certain point, you just kind of get used to behavior that otherwise would raise eyebrows.

I couldn’t stay long at Vlada. I had a train to catch, as always. And not drinking the signature infused vodka, there is no charm to that place. Besides, my primary reason for going out (catching up with Steven) was lost in the shuffle. I left him at the base of the staircase with Josh and JC, whom he has known even longer than he has known me. Even original Jonathan knew JC from an ill-fated date that started at the gym and then never went anywhere. So I am sure the four of them had plenty to talk about.

But on my way out, I made a pair of promises. And if there is one thing I like to think I am, it is someone who keeps promises. I am not perfect mostly because I am self-centered and have a terrible memory, but I really do try to keep my promises. First, I promised to call Steven and hang out with him again within the next two weeks. That will be easy. Then, in saying good bye to a very drunk and clingy Ben Harvey, I promised not to say anything really bad about him in my blog, of which he is the most frequently mentioned player. But then he reversed his position. He wanted me to say things about him because he wanted to be the “bad boy” of my blog. So be it. Who am I to stand in the way of a dream?

Pop (Sort Of) Rocks

Pop Rocks is a Thursday night party in the city. I started going years ago when it first began and the likes of Britney and Justin were the hottest music on the charts. The disposable pop crap was always the best part of the club. The crowd was always very young and I never liked feeling like the oldest person there. But I stopped going because they never had any paper towels in the bathroom. I am not a classy person but while I am not too old to dance to a hot mix of Britney Spears singing "Don't Let Me Be The Last To Know", I am too old to dry my hands on toilet paper. The last appearance I made at Pop Rocks was with the Barbera Twins in 2004 when they were in town to do our radio show and promote their calendar. Where are they now?

Flash forward to last Friday and my friend Josh was throwing a going away party for himself. Since winning Mr. Gay USA by default, he is moving to Los Angeles to take a new job. I guess he figured life in NYC had taken him as far as he was going to go. As I mentioned in the past, Josh and I met in 2001 when I briefly tried my hand as a party promoter when I tried to launch a club night two weeks after 9/11. It was a huge mistake but meeting Josh wasn't. At his going away party, I met Mark, a cute massage therapist who also works the door at Pop Rocks. Since I am on this kick to try new things and meet new people, I thought I would kill two birds with one stone and drag Hottie Zach and my roommate Mike down to Pop Rocks for another attempt at fun.

As it turns out, last night was a Dolly Parton listening party for her new album "Backwoods Barbie." We had tickets to see her at Radio City Music Hall next week but her boobs threw her back out and now it has been rescheduled for May. In the meantime, I have heard nothing but good things about her album so I thought it was a fair bit of kismet that this was the fated night to make a triumphant return to Pop Rocks. I also tried to invite Ben Harvey at the last minute but he was out with sexy Dave Rubin who "frowned when he heard Pop Rocks." Not even Dolly could woo him to join us, and as Romaine and I have learned, when you do a show with someone you turn quickly into an old married couple and it is virtually impossible to split up once you have travelled down the road so far together.

Zach got there first and still being new to the city, he was wary of being alone in the club. I arrived and immediately ran into Mark outside at the door. But it was freezing outside and while on the train down to Union Square, Zach had sent a panicked "I'm scared" message so I knew I needed to hurry inside. Once there, we enjoyed a couple of $1 drinks in the crowded melee as well as some fun pop tunes. I heard some vague strains of something that sounded like Dolly while in line for coat check, but aside from a mix of "9 to 5" an hour later, that was as far as the listening party went. Mike joined a little while later and he and Zach got nice and drunk while I stayed sober to drive Mike home later.

The good news of the night was that I was far from the oldest person there. A few guys looked like they had escaped from a nursing home, so that was comforting. Plus, the bathroom had hand dryers so I didn't need to use toilet paper to dry my hands this time. Then again, the hand dryer was about as powerful as waving your hands in the air like you just don't care, but it was better than it used to be. I also had some time to chat with Mark downstairs under a heat lamp while he alternated eating a sandwich and passing out flyers for 1984.

By 12:30, Zach was ready to go home, and that left Mike and I with plenty of time to make the 1:00am train and get home in time to watch the new episode of Lost (which was surprisingly good, by the way). Unfortunately both of my organized military guys had lost their coat check tickets in their drunkenness, leaving them forced to plead their cases to the super bitchy coat check girl who didn't know the meaning of the word helpful, let alone how to mime it. In the past, Zach has had a tough relationship with coat check people and last night was no exception. Mike was the voice of reason but unfortunately, coat check lady was so slow we ended up missing our window to take the 1:00am train.

While they were fighting with the coat check bitch, I spotted once again a woman who looked like she had escaped, quite unglamorously, from a Soviet work camp. She had toilet paper trailing out from under one of her chunky clogs so I pointed it out to her. Instead of discreetly removing it, she lifted her foot and loudly proclaimed it to her other female friend and her adorable blond fag. The homo who had eyed me earlier in the evening, used this as an opening to start a conversation. He complimented me for rescuing a stranger from embarrassment as he ran his hand along my plaid shirt. He asked me where I was tonight and when I said I was at work he asked, "At an Abercrombie photo shoot?" I smiled politely and said no as I put my coat on. Then he said, "Where are you going? An Abercrombie photo shoot?" This is what is known as a textbook case of blind drunk, with the emphasis on the blind. But I gave him my card anyway and made out with him a bit. It was a terrible line and even though I am as old as Mount Washington, I am only human. There are a lot of sides to this square.

On our way out, I said good bye to Mark at the door and then Mike and I parted company with Zach. Since we had some time to kill, I entreated Mike to come to Taco Bell with me. Mike has sworn off fast food all year and being the horrible influence that I am, I got him off the wagon. Once there, I discovered something new on the menu (though still containing all nine of the usual ingredients). They now have something called a "Fiesta Platter" which is just the perfect thing for me to bring to the Long Kiss Good Night featuring Hillary and Barack at Jonathan's on Tuesday night. The platter with the Grilled Stuft Burrito was almost too much food for one person but I still ate the whole thing while sitting in our usual late night spot at Grand Central Station. I had a good time at Pop Rocks, but the innocent days of Britney and Justin are long behind us all. I may not be collecting social security with Danny Glover and flattering attention from blond strangers is always appealing, but I do think I am getting too old for this shit.