David Young emailed me today after he read my last blog with some measure of concern. “You sound depressed. You should talk to your doctor about getting on Lexipro.” Let me be clear about something: I am not depressed. I am in love with someone who doesn’t want to be with me and my entire world has collapsed in around me like a mine explosion. But I am not depressed! My social life on the other hand is coding and unresponsive. So even if I can’t have the man of my darkest fever dreams, I can at least get back to having fun. After all, this is Manhattan. If you don’t party, you will notice what a hell hole it is and want to head out of town on the first thing smoking.
So after resorting last week to blogging about quite literally nothing just to fill the Internet with my babble in an effort to dispel the rumor that I had died, I sent Matt Kugelman an urgent text message last night demanding that we hang out tonight. Eminently likeable, I met Matt two years ago while waiting in line at Bowery Bar and it has been friend kismet ever since. What I like about Matt is that I can have a serious deep friend conversation with him or I can have a mindless spin on the town, or both at the same time. After all, why choose?
Showing posts with label David Young. Show all posts
Showing posts with label David Young. Show all posts
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
All The News That's Fit To Prince
“It’s 1999 all over again!”
Bradford was gleeful when I discovered him holding court in the 2-4-1 room downstairs at The Park with Matty and Andrew. There were other men there at the table and standing around: unassuming gay white men in unassuming gay white v-neck t-shirts. It is all furniture to me now: hot, handsome, muscled furniture. Bradford in his signature tight red was a Fabulis splash of color in more ways than one. The room was hot, stifling. No air but for half price drinks, gay men will put up with almost anything, even each other.
There was a cute young thing standing near us, alone and lonely, in a button down shirt tucked into belted shorts. I know this is what people are wearing these days but to me he looks like the nerds that got teased in the 80s. Bradford is younger than I am so when he parties like it is 1999, he actually means 1999, not 1984, like me. But with the clothes as they are nowadays, it is easy for someone like me to get confused.
Bradford was gleeful when I discovered him holding court in the 2-4-1 room downstairs at The Park with Matty and Andrew. There were other men there at the table and standing around: unassuming gay white men in unassuming gay white v-neck t-shirts. It is all furniture to me now: hot, handsome, muscled furniture. Bradford in his signature tight red was a Fabulis splash of color in more ways than one. The room was hot, stifling. No air but for half price drinks, gay men will put up with almost anything, even each other.
There was a cute young thing standing near us, alone and lonely, in a button down shirt tucked into belted shorts. I know this is what people are wearing these days but to me he looks like the nerds that got teased in the 80s. Bradford is younger than I am so when he parties like it is 1999, he actually means 1999, not 1984, like me. But with the clothes as they are nowadays, it is easy for someone like me to get confused.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Fruit On The Vine
I almost walked up to Sherry Vine tonight and told her, “I thought I smelled Gonorrhea.” Then I remembered that we’ve never met.
Two weeks ago, I ran into Adam Sank out at Therapy when we were there for Mike’s birthday. He did not recognize me. I guess I have the opposite problem. I believe I know people that I have never met. Lynn and Alex from the Amazing Race? Mistook them for listeners outside The Round Up in Dallas and gave them my full “thanks for recognizing me as the movie star I am” treatment. It’s not pretty being me, and not just in the morning or bathed in fluorescent lighting.
But I did know David Young, who is in town, and he joined me for a post show drink at Therapy. I also dragged Erik off down there too to drown his sorrows. Drag queen karaoke is the best place to forget your troubles, mostly because you can’t hear your own thoughts over the caterwauling. Sherry Vine did a few numbers, probably a few lines in the kitchen, and then succumbed to the temptation of playing her Lady Gaga parody video that was last year’s youtube.com sensation. I don’t know about you but I love a greatest hit tour.
After the talent portion of the evening, the music started playing and I noticed that my adorable friend Keo Nozari was DJing. So nice to see him again since RockIt served me with that restraining order last year. Apparently, the Fashion Police have stronger powers of enforcement now under the USA Patriot Act. No big deal. I think the Kuge still likes it there, but I think I have aged out of bars with names that sound like trying-to-pass-for-butch catchphrases. When the former Roxy reopens with “Lady, please” Wednesdays, I will be first in line with my John Blair gold card, a glow stick in a bottle of water, and a mysterious rash inside my Calvin Klein white briefs. The fruit of the loom indeed.
We are in the eye of a “snowicane” as the always cautious weathermen have termed it, and tomorrow will be another blanket of icy powder, even worse they say than the one yesterday. I am done digging out. I just want to wait for the thaw. I guess I feel the same way about the nightlife. Scanning through the bar there wasn’t a single man I wanted to talk to or even look at. Perhaps the grapes are just not tender enough for me. The coat check guy only charged me a dollar for both my bag and my coat, making a big show of fanning out the money in front of me and giving me a knowing look. He probably just wanted a fancy tip but instead of seeing the gesture as a sign of possible blow jobs to come, I was just happy to have the extra dollar. I think my social life is also suffering through the Great Recession.
So then I come back to Sherry Vine, valiantly fighting irrelevance in a bar filled with Grindr gays more interested in what they can put in their own ass than what is coming out of Sherry’s mouth. Even though, in some cases, it might be the same thing. Those stage gigs inside a bar are hard work and a sense of calm washed over me as I thought how much better it is that it is her up there instead of me. A drag queen lip synced to a version of Man of La Mancha sung by a woman. It was so meta, I wondered if Salvador Dali was off in a corner painting us. It reminded me of the gay boys mouthing along to Beyonce’s “If I Were A Boy” on a dance floor. Yes, sweetie, we all wonder what that would be like.
After a few minutes talking about our various troubles, David made a suggestion. “If this is going to get heavy, we should get a drink first.”
“No one says heavy anymore, David.”
He turned to me. “Then what do people say?”
“How should I know?” I shrugged. All I know is the gays are skinnier than ever and are serving up ties and V-neck sweaters like Clark Gable in It Happened One Night, and no one is saying “serving up” anymore either. Sherry Vine has three million hits on You Tube. Maybe she knows the answer. I’ll add her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter and imagine tomorrow when I am snowbound that I am Don Quixote but singing my own parody of the Song of Solomon. I am here to spoil you Sherry Vine, for you have tender grapes. And possibly gonorrhea.
Two weeks ago, I ran into Adam Sank out at Therapy when we were there for Mike’s birthday. He did not recognize me. I guess I have the opposite problem. I believe I know people that I have never met. Lynn and Alex from the Amazing Race? Mistook them for listeners outside The Round Up in Dallas and gave them my full “thanks for recognizing me as the movie star I am” treatment. It’s not pretty being me, and not just in the morning or bathed in fluorescent lighting.
But I did know David Young, who is in town, and he joined me for a post show drink at Therapy. I also dragged Erik off down there too to drown his sorrows. Drag queen karaoke is the best place to forget your troubles, mostly because you can’t hear your own thoughts over the caterwauling. Sherry Vine did a few numbers, probably a few lines in the kitchen, and then succumbed to the temptation of playing her Lady Gaga parody video that was last year’s youtube.com sensation. I don’t know about you but I love a greatest hit tour.
After the talent portion of the evening, the music started playing and I noticed that my adorable friend Keo Nozari was DJing. So nice to see him again since RockIt served me with that restraining order last year. Apparently, the Fashion Police have stronger powers of enforcement now under the USA Patriot Act. No big deal. I think the Kuge still likes it there, but I think I have aged out of bars with names that sound like trying-to-pass-for-butch catchphrases. When the former Roxy reopens with “Lady, please” Wednesdays, I will be first in line with my John Blair gold card, a glow stick in a bottle of water, and a mysterious rash inside my Calvin Klein white briefs. The fruit of the loom indeed.
We are in the eye of a “snowicane” as the always cautious weathermen have termed it, and tomorrow will be another blanket of icy powder, even worse they say than the one yesterday. I am done digging out. I just want to wait for the thaw. I guess I feel the same way about the nightlife. Scanning through the bar there wasn’t a single man I wanted to talk to or even look at. Perhaps the grapes are just not tender enough for me. The coat check guy only charged me a dollar for both my bag and my coat, making a big show of fanning out the money in front of me and giving me a knowing look. He probably just wanted a fancy tip but instead of seeing the gesture as a sign of possible blow jobs to come, I was just happy to have the extra dollar. I think my social life is also suffering through the Great Recession.
So then I come back to Sherry Vine, valiantly fighting irrelevance in a bar filled with Grindr gays more interested in what they can put in their own ass than what is coming out of Sherry’s mouth. Even though, in some cases, it might be the same thing. Those stage gigs inside a bar are hard work and a sense of calm washed over me as I thought how much better it is that it is her up there instead of me. A drag queen lip synced to a version of Man of La Mancha sung by a woman. It was so meta, I wondered if Salvador Dali was off in a corner painting us. It reminded me of the gay boys mouthing along to Beyonce’s “If I Were A Boy” on a dance floor. Yes, sweetie, we all wonder what that would be like.
After a few minutes talking about our various troubles, David made a suggestion. “If this is going to get heavy, we should get a drink first.”
“No one says heavy anymore, David.”
He turned to me. “Then what do people say?”
“How should I know?” I shrugged. All I know is the gays are skinnier than ever and are serving up ties and V-neck sweaters like Clark Gable in It Happened One Night, and no one is saying “serving up” anymore either. Sherry Vine has three million hits on You Tube. Maybe she knows the answer. I’ll add her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter and imagine tomorrow when I am snowbound that I am Don Quixote but singing my own parody of the Song of Solomon. I am here to spoil you Sherry Vine, for you have tender grapes. And possibly gonorrhea.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
XES Farce
Conventional wisdom says that when you are having a hard time getting over someone, you should have sex with lots of hot people. It doesn't really work, but hot sex with hot people is always preferable to being depressed at home. Or so it would seem. It was not my intention to try out this theory last night, but when you wander down to Chelsea for drinks with the boys, these sorts of things are bound to happen.
It all started innocently enough with Judge David Young, who was in town to tape episodes of his hit daytime show, asking to hang out a bit this weekend. We both wanted to see The Women, despite our misgivings about updating a classic (and why Diane English instead of say Nancy Meyers or Nora Ephron or even Elaine May). So I plotted an early show followed by dinner and then some drinks and invited my neighbor Clayton to join us.
We went to Kips Bay to see the film, which is J's old theatre before he moved to Brooklyn last month. He is right that it, among most Manhattan movie theatres, has a minimum of loud teen rowdiness and cell phone interruptions. Bargain basement expectations helped the medicine go down and we all ended up liking The Women overall (as I explained to David's husband Scott over the phone afterward, if you forget that it is a remake and don't spend the whole movie longing for Paulette Goddard to beat the stuffing out of Rosiland Russell in Reno, you will like it much better).
From there we decamped to the Dallas BBQ in Chelsea which was a new place for me (I am still trying to do new things), though I don't know how I feel about a restaurant that has a bouncer. This might explain why when I texted Matt Kelleher to tell him we were there for dinner he responded "God why?" The food was delicious and cheap, which are my two favorite things in a food item, but the atmosphere, especially in the basement party room where we were seated, had the feeling of a stripped down Chuck E. Cheese where the cardboard pizza and skeeball had been replaced with messy ribs and outlandish day-glo frozen cocktails.
After dinner, Clayton ran off to his previously set date to see a band perform and David and I wandered over to Barracuda. At ten p.m. it looked like a pre-Palin McCain rally, though I assured David that in an hour, it would be too crowded to move or breathe. Aside from a guy in a muscle tee basically masturbating at the urinal next to me, the most exciting thing to happen there was running once again into adorable Matt, from Tuesday's ill-fated adventure out at Bowery Bar. He was there with his co-worker Chip and the four of us had a great time, with me embarrassing myself once again with my completely inappropriate jokes comparing Caylee Anthony to a tire iron (I will spare you the sordid punchline).
David left around Midnight and then the rest of us parted ways soon afterward when Barracuda suddenly became unbearably hot. I think the air conditioning must have broken but that is always the way with that bar. In the summer, the a/c breaks or in the winter, the heat goes off, or a sewer pipe bursts and the whole thing smells like shit. Personally I think the owners like to close early so on nights when they think they have made enough money, they just wreak havoc on the environment and wait for the animals to migrate elsewhere.
To make a long blog posting short, I met up with Clayton at XES where he had landed after the band cancelled their show and while there met a hot but very drunk guy named Steven and his even more intoxicated roommate Brad, with whom Clayton had shared some previous dates. Even though he couldn't remember my name all four times I told him, Steven insisted that I go home with him. All the warning signs told me to leave with Clayton and return to the suburbs but a desire to assuage the overwhelming sadness I have with not being with J encouraged me into a harrowing cab ride out to the wilds of Brooklyn.
That Steven was cute with a hot body and lived in J's new neighborhood seemed like just the kind of revenge fuck that drunken four a.m. bragging phone calls are made for. But crossing the Williamsburg Bridge, Steven tossed the half full glass of vodka which he snuck out of the bar out the open window just barely missing my face and for a moment I seriously considered leaping out after it. Their cute apartment was in a terrifying neighborhood and I began plotting my escape, mapping in my head the fastest route on foot to the L train even before my shoes hit the pavement outside the apartment building.
Their mutual friend Davis came along, to sleep on the couch for some reason. Brad stripped down to his underwear and drunk dialed Clayton to come over and have sex with him. It didn't work much to my chagrin since I hoped it would make my eminent escape easier. Moments later, we all went to our separate sleeping arrangements and Steven started in on me in earnest. Steven likes it rough so in order to get me to force myself on him, he got quite violent with me. The story he told back at the bar about showing up at work once with a black eye suddenly became very clear, like my brain flooding with harsh fluorescent lighting. Finally I just decided that despite my intense irritation at that point as long as he had an orgasm he could fall asleep and I could get out of there. It took fucking forever, probably an hour, which was easily 58 minutes after I stopped trying to have an orgasm myself.
A little after six, with dawn creeping through the window and Brad snoring away throughout the apartment, I gathered my clothes and made my escape. While waiting on the hellish humid stinking L train platform I had a lot of time to think about everything. I miss J every single day, and it is like trying to catch your breath at high altitudes. It is exhausting and I just long for the ease of life before I climbed that mountain. But I just can't penetrate that wall of his that surrounds him, make him understand that my love for him is real and intense and permanent. In my mind's eye, his blue eyes starring back at me are as black as a moonless night, my journey into them perilous and fruitless . In both versions of The Women, Mary Haines stands her ground for L'Amore, L'Amore, but celluloid lives can't convey how lonely that stand truly is. And in my heart I know it will never work for me. There is no happy ending in my grudge match between the irresistible force and the immovable object. There is nothing in those robust eyes of his for me and there probably never will be.
It all started innocently enough with Judge David Young, who was in town to tape episodes of his hit daytime show, asking to hang out a bit this weekend. We both wanted to see The Women, despite our misgivings about updating a classic (and why Diane English instead of say Nancy Meyers or Nora Ephron or even Elaine May). So I plotted an early show followed by dinner and then some drinks and invited my neighbor Clayton to join us.
We went to Kips Bay to see the film, which is J's old theatre before he moved to Brooklyn last month. He is right that it, among most Manhattan movie theatres, has a minimum of loud teen rowdiness and cell phone interruptions. Bargain basement expectations helped the medicine go down and we all ended up liking The Women overall (as I explained to David's husband Scott over the phone afterward, if you forget that it is a remake and don't spend the whole movie longing for Paulette Goddard to beat the stuffing out of Rosiland Russell in Reno, you will like it much better).
From there we decamped to the Dallas BBQ in Chelsea which was a new place for me (I am still trying to do new things), though I don't know how I feel about a restaurant that has a bouncer. This might explain why when I texted Matt Kelleher to tell him we were there for dinner he responded "God why?" The food was delicious and cheap, which are my two favorite things in a food item, but the atmosphere, especially in the basement party room where we were seated, had the feeling of a stripped down Chuck E. Cheese where the cardboard pizza and skeeball had been replaced with messy ribs and outlandish day-glo frozen cocktails.
After dinner, Clayton ran off to his previously set date to see a band perform and David and I wandered over to Barracuda. At ten p.m. it looked like a pre-Palin McCain rally, though I assured David that in an hour, it would be too crowded to move or breathe. Aside from a guy in a muscle tee basically masturbating at the urinal next to me, the most exciting thing to happen there was running once again into adorable Matt, from Tuesday's ill-fated adventure out at Bowery Bar. He was there with his co-worker Chip and the four of us had a great time, with me embarrassing myself once again with my completely inappropriate jokes comparing Caylee Anthony to a tire iron (I will spare you the sordid punchline).
David left around Midnight and then the rest of us parted ways soon afterward when Barracuda suddenly became unbearably hot. I think the air conditioning must have broken but that is always the way with that bar. In the summer, the a/c breaks or in the winter, the heat goes off, or a sewer pipe bursts and the whole thing smells like shit. Personally I think the owners like to close early so on nights when they think they have made enough money, they just wreak havoc on the environment and wait for the animals to migrate elsewhere.
To make a long blog posting short, I met up with Clayton at XES where he had landed after the band cancelled their show and while there met a hot but very drunk guy named Steven and his even more intoxicated roommate Brad, with whom Clayton had shared some previous dates. Even though he couldn't remember my name all four times I told him, Steven insisted that I go home with him. All the warning signs told me to leave with Clayton and return to the suburbs but a desire to assuage the overwhelming sadness I have with not being with J encouraged me into a harrowing cab ride out to the wilds of Brooklyn.
That Steven was cute with a hot body and lived in J's new neighborhood seemed like just the kind of revenge fuck that drunken four a.m. bragging phone calls are made for. But crossing the Williamsburg Bridge, Steven tossed the half full glass of vodka which he snuck out of the bar out the open window just barely missing my face and for a moment I seriously considered leaping out after it. Their cute apartment was in a terrifying neighborhood and I began plotting my escape, mapping in my head the fastest route on foot to the L train even before my shoes hit the pavement outside the apartment building.
Their mutual friend Davis came along, to sleep on the couch for some reason. Brad stripped down to his underwear and drunk dialed Clayton to come over and have sex with him. It didn't work much to my chagrin since I hoped it would make my eminent escape easier. Moments later, we all went to our separate sleeping arrangements and Steven started in on me in earnest. Steven likes it rough so in order to get me to force myself on him, he got quite violent with me. The story he told back at the bar about showing up at work once with a black eye suddenly became very clear, like my brain flooding with harsh fluorescent lighting. Finally I just decided that despite my intense irritation at that point as long as he had an orgasm he could fall asleep and I could get out of there. It took fucking forever, probably an hour, which was easily 58 minutes after I stopped trying to have an orgasm myself.
A little after six, with dawn creeping through the window and Brad snoring away throughout the apartment, I gathered my clothes and made my escape. While waiting on the hellish humid stinking L train platform I had a lot of time to think about everything. I miss J every single day, and it is like trying to catch your breath at high altitudes. It is exhausting and I just long for the ease of life before I climbed that mountain. But I just can't penetrate that wall of his that surrounds him, make him understand that my love for him is real and intense and permanent. In my mind's eye, his blue eyes starring back at me are as black as a moonless night, my journey into them perilous and fruitless . In both versions of The Women, Mary Haines stands her ground for L'Amore, L'Amore, but celluloid lives can't convey how lonely that stand truly is. And in my heart I know it will never work for me. There is no happy ending in my grudge match between the irresistible force and the immovable object. There is nothing in those robust eyes of his for me and there probably never will be.
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