Guy Society

There is never anything I want to do more on a Friday night after the show than go home. But my world has been shattered since the death of James last week and it has created a certain fever pitch of impetuosity on my part. I thought about the last time I saw him, sweating like a whore in church at XL a few months ago. And maybe it was the magical thinking that if I just went out to every bar in town, eventually I would see his hulking frame lumbering through the space like an elephant moving slowly through the jungle, a catastrophe of casual destruction in his wake.  Like the months after 9/11 when I would gaze down Seventh Avenue at Times Square hoping to catch a glimpse of the twin towers, I think I will forever be looking over my shoulder with a sense of maybe.

In my grief, I sent a flurry of messages to my local friends that I had been remiss in seeing these past few weeks. I guess the arrival of spring had made me anxious to wring every second of delight out of my house that I can and my friendships, long on nightlife support, finally faded away. Ryan White and I planned to get together this week and then never did, but MattKugelman and I shared a delightful late meal at Vinyl on Monday. My friend Erik and I made plans to venture down to The Park on Thursday but fearing the zit on my nose would get worse, I pawned him off to a Friday party in SoHo.

Fable For Two

Once Upon A Time… I woke up two days ago to find Reichen had sent me a text message while I was sleeping. For some reason, when my phone is next to the bed, I sleep through everything, but when it is across the room, even on vibrate, any activity wakes me. In this case, the phone was on the nightstand and I pleasantly slumbered through his message. He wanted to invite me to another viewing party of his VH-1 show “Couples Therapy” at a bar I had never heard of before called Fairy Tale Lounge. Even though I instantly assumed it was on the other side of the world (read: Brooklyn), I knew I had to go after the sign off moniker he used was “The Irish Setter.”

You see, the last time I went to a viewing party Reichen invited me to, I described him here as being like “an Irish Setter whose only interest is in setting.” This gave me great pause. It is rare that I hesitate before I hit the old PUBLISH button, as evidenced by the invariable typos and spelling errors I spend the next two days correcting. But as accurate a description of his personality as that may be, I was still comparing one of the more handsome members of our community to a dog. So I wasn’t sure how he would accept that. Naturally, he took it with his usual equanimity and it turns out I am not the first person to see a personality resemblance between him and this particular breed.

Birthday Preppers

Life is really unexpected. You just never know what is going to happen. This is why my new obsession is Doomsday Preppers, the show where ordinary people hoard a decade’s worth of food in their basement in the unlikely event of a water landing. Even today, I was crossing Sixth Avenue at 48^th Street and an SUV was driving the wrong way toward me, right past the cops permanently stationed by their cars outside Fox News. Always ready to channel Albert Finney in The Dresser, a movie I have never seen, I stood in front of her car and simply lifted my hand. She slowed to a stop and gave me a funny look and I showed her the error of her ways by merely gesturing back past her. Seconds later, she was completing a U-Turn and we were both on our merry way. The cops didn’t even bother getting in their cars and chasing her. That’s New York. And if you are going to freak out at every little thing, don’t come here.

I was making a rare Saturday night appearance in the city for back to back birthday celebrations. It is also Mike’s birthday on Sunday but he doesn’t feel like celebrating this year even though now that we have our glorious new coffee station in the kitchen, amazing new bathroom and showstopping fireplace, there is every reason to rejoice! I even upgraded the shelves in the closets so our own doomsday prepping won’t look as sloppy as that girl in Houston who plans to shoot her kittens in the head when we run out of oil.

First stop was The Tenth Rail down on 10^th Avenue and 33^rd Street. The neighborhood is so sketchy, the highlight is the well-traveled drive through McDonald’s next door from which the pernicious glare of the fluorescent lighting is a vision direct from the worst nightmares of the Dowager Countess, minus the gaiety. Perhaps they should rename the place The Seventh Circle, although we were really only there for the Third. As the strangers streamed into the empty bar from the street, each entered with a bewildered look on their face. “I took the M-11 bus!” one woman declared incredulously. I would have been less surprised (or concerned for her safety) if she had said she took an M-16. 

Tsuris Season

Tonight, I saw a baby in a stroller being pushed out of a restaurant by Santa Claus, but I didn’t have time to stop. Manhattan is a busy place and if you stopped for every crazy thing you saw, you’d never get anywhere. The other day, I was rushing to the train and I passed a homeless man noisily humping the pole of some scaffolding while shouting aggressively at his reflection in the building. I suppose I could have stopped to find out what that was all about but, like Santa and his baby stroller, it is almost better when you don’t get the whole story.

It is Friday and (as usual) the show was a freight train barreling out of control. We had so many calls in the first hour, our producer Amber didn’t even want to answer the phone anymore. Whenever the lights on the phone would flash, she recoiled in horror. It was pretty much like that all night. ADD Jeff was there and the first thing he did when he walked in was whip out a bottle of Stoli Vanilla. I was already worried about all the visitors we would have dropping by and when I saw Jeff plunk the bottle down on the counter, I knew it would be trouble.

Industrious Fellows

My beat, if I have one, is not what is new and cool. There was a time in my life when being at the place everyone else was at was of utmost import. Since moving to New York ten years ago, I have enduring the sameness of Bowery Bar, the overpriced drinks at Duvet and the allure of the John Blair Gold Card. As much as I may loudly proclaim my status as an outsider, I have spent more than my fair share of time on the inside.

Winter is a difficult time in New York City. Before the year ends, the city swells with unbearable tourists, clogging every artery like unwelcome cholesterol, the heart of the city seizing under the stress. January brings in the inevitable trade-off of fewer people but more snow and bitter cold. If you polled eight million New Yorkers, they would overwhelmingly champion the latter. These twin anxieties lead to a kind of hibernation. As uninhabitable as most NYC dwellings are, they become more palatable as the pendulum swings in their favor during the darker months of the year.

With Six You Get Eyeroll

I don’t think Laura Bennett is related to the notorious Bennetts of New York acting fame, but it doesn’t matter. Arriving at her apartment last night for her Halloween party reminded me instantly of Louise Brooks off to visit Barbara Bennett on the morning of her unexpected firing from the George White Scandals. Barbara was an aspiring dancer like Louise, living in the shadow of her famous actor father, her Vanity Fair Magazine society dame mother, and more glamorous older sisters Joan and penultimate Bennett girl Constance. It was, more than anything, the inherent theatrically of the Bennett family that reminded me of the other Bennett family last night.

Laura was one of my favorite contestants on Project Runway some years back and, like Austin Scarlett before her, was robbed of glory by the show’s need to be a show and not actually a crucible for design talent. After all, Austin with his lush fantasy dresses and Laura with her stylish uptown Manhattan style are far more suited to the modern suited fashion wave of the skinny gays and the Gossip Girls than the winners have been. I love Jay McCarroll and his hot bag of crazy but Austin could have brought a whole generation of young women into the world of Haute Couture and Laura could have sent them off to work in style.

Where I didn’t wear a costume Saturday night, I felt a certain Venus-like imperative to really step out of my half shell and make an honest attempt at a costume for Laura. After all, this is a woman with six kids, five of them boys still living at home, who makes her own clothes and lives the high life in high heels. I couldn’t just wear a printed Hefty bag from Party City or that same old cowboy outfit, no matter how impressive my authentic duster is when I saunter down the sidewalks of New York. In a fit of last minute inspiration, I decided to go as my high school doppelganger Kurt from GLEE, as played by Chris Colfer on the hit show.

In order to be Kurt, I knew I had to dress upscale crazy. I needed to wear a bunch of things that only tangentially matched and the more outlandish the better. I knew the cornerstone of the outfit would be a pair of plaid golfing jodhpurs that I found fifteen years ago in a thrift store. They were my bowling night staple for much of the late 90s, where whenever I would bowl a strike I would lay down across the lane like Katarina Witt.

I put a blue shirt with a subtle polka dot under an argyle sweater and paired it all with shimmery bowling shoes and socks from a Boy Scout uniform that was my Halloween costume for too many years to be wholesome. I wanted to turn the matching Boy Scout kerchief into a necktie but I couldn’t find it in the many boxes of crap crammed in every nook and closet in my room. To complete the outfit, I threw a red Polo scarf around my neck, an old hat I found in a hat box in the garage when I bought my house and threw a leather tote bag on my shoulder like a purse. The accessories were more Truman Capote in training than Kurt but let’s face it, Capote is Kurt’s future if he ever gets out of Ohio or graduates high school.

Much to my surprise, Laura’s apartment was not the hotbed of homosexual activity I would have expected from a spontaneous gay icon such as herself. “The gays have abandoned me!” she declared, pointing the finger at her mommy alter ego as the culprit. But her gay manny Blake was there, in and out of his costume that couldn’t decide if it was Elton John or Phyllis Diller, and spent most of the evening keeping a wary eye on the rowdy teens to make sure no sex or drinking occurred in the darker recesses of the loft. Laura really outdid herself with the decorating and parts of the apartment were genuinely spooky, which did not faze any of the myriad children of all ages who whizzed past in sugar-fueled frenzies.

At one point, Laura, dressed as the bride of Frankenstein, but reminding me a bit of Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, took control of the remote control and zipped through the digital files to pick something to project on the screen. “What should I put up? Michael Jackson’s Thriller or The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” she asked as a pack of second graders ran screaming by. In my head I heard her say, “Accused pedophile or pansexual transgender orgy?” These are the options? I chose Thriller as the lesser of two evils but later I overheard a mother in the nearby kitchen with a terrified tot say, “He won’t go in there. They are playing Thriller on the screen.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her what the second bill on the double feature was.

I met five of Laura’s six kids (she is quick to point out the existence of her older daughter whenever she is pegged as the slacker mother of merely five) and each of them is packed with their own unique personality. I liked Truman the oldest the best. Maybe it was because when he saw that I was dressed as Kurt he gave me a huge hug and could carry on a reasonable conversation. One of them, when Laura told him who I was dressed as asked me to lean down to his level. “Are you really gay?” he asked me. When I replied in the affirmative, he became very serious. “No. Are you REALLY gay?” Laura assured me that he says inappropriate things to everyone. That’s his shtick. But I thought it was charming.

My friend Erik joined me at the party dressed as partly cloudy with a chance of showers. While explaining his costume he would whip a spray bottle out of nowhere and spritz you in the face like someone’s hilarious grandfather at a child’s birthday party. After a night spent in the presence of a frenzy of gay men, the constant mad tsunami of screaming kids was strangely calming. Although as I scanned the ankle deep piles of empty candy wrappers, abandoned cups and spilled popcorn, I was relieved I didn’t have to clean it all up in the morning.

As the party wound down, Truman in full Marilyn Munster mode announced loudly that he was headed to his room to study before bed. Laura was incredulous! Apparently his teacher had scheduled a quiz on hominids the next day in his history class. “The day after Halloween? What is wrong with him?!” I wondered when hominids moved from anthropology or biology to history. I guess a lot has changed since I was in school, in the time of hominids. But before he left, I made Truman promise me that if there was a question he absolutely didn’t know that he would put “Carol Channing” as his answer. “I am pretty sure she is old enough to be a hominid,” I assured him, injecting a little homosexuality back into Laura’s mommy world.

After all, life has to be about finding balance between serious and fun, between the sacred and the profane. It is why Halloween is followed by All Saints Day. And why every superhero needs an archenemy (Barack Obama and Sarah Palin, for instance, although you can decide for yourself which is which in that case). So a fourteen year old needs to leave a Broadway legend in an answer box on a history test and a woman with six kids needs a gorgeous pair of shoes, a smashing evening gown and a few gays around to keep things interesting. Because that's how you make it work.

Stuck In Park

Thursday night at The Park has been a thing for a while now. Last year, Matty was promoting a night there. This year, it has been Josh Woods’ turn. Certainly over the last few months, the Fox party has been the most consistent night out for me. So I suppose it was no surprise that on my first Thursday out in a while, The Park was on the agenda, even if we only planned to stay for a short bit. Erik didn’t mind going again, but the drinks are kind of pricey ($13 for a tiny glass of ice with a heavy pour of vodka on top). So we made a plan to stop by for the first hour when the drinks are two for one and then head on up to Hell’s Kitchen.

ADD Jeff sent me a text message during the show to see if I was going out tonight. As fate would have it, I was. So when the show ended, he was waiting downstairs on the plaza outside our building with his muscled pal Eddie. Eddie is the kind of walking slab of beef that should either be hanging in a meat locker or punching the beef in one. Together we hopped on the subway and headed down to The Park to begin our evening.

The Big Queasy

I had the whole thing planned out in my head. My LA friend Brian (aka BOC) was in town and just this morning, I had communicated on Facebook with NY-based Brian Babst and it was working out that both of them would be at The Park tonight. This was kismet. I would write about our fabulous evening out on the town. I even had an amazing title: The Life Of Brians. It was all so perfect. Though, as always, my life once again didn’t work out the way I had planned.

BOC and I have known each other for seventeen years, but since I moved to New York in 2001, we have rarely seen each other. The late rise of social networking has made it easy for us to reconnect and talk more which has been great. I have always liked Brian a lot. And over the years we have worked together and played together and experienced life so there was no reason for me not to be excited to see him. We planned a quick bite at Vinyl before heading down to The Park where his friend Rodney was meeting him and my friend Erik was meeting me (and presumably Babst would be waiting).

While at Vinyl enjoying my usual Thai ice tea and Cobb Salad, I bit into something that, in the moment, I thought tasted moldy. In my excitement to catch up with Brian, I ignored the thought and kept going. But ten minutes later, doubled over with cramps in the Elvis bathroom, I realized that my first instinct was correct. But so what?! We haven’t seen each other in years. People are waiting for me. I haven’t updated my blog in two weeks. I need to go. And so down to The Park we went.

"Disturbing, But Possible."

That’s what I said to Mario at his suggestion that an underage twink stripper might spontaneously pop out of the pecan pie resting in front of Matty at the end of his birthday dinner. It is Thursday night at The Park and of course we are all back at the scene of the crime. Mario is excited about the impending arrival of his baby but Brian’s one track mind is on real estate. I dragged Erik over to witness Matty and his sophisticated and fashion-forward friends celebrate his birthday. This isn’t Gay 101. It’s Gay 304. After all, where else will he see a Crumbs cupcake cut ten ways?

I have been trying to arrange a meeting between Erik and Matty so that his gay education can be furthered. When I arrived, Jordy was standing near the front and it was déjà vu all over again. He loved that I described our last encounter at the club as “two ships passing in the night,” as if I invented that dull cliché. He was meeting a straight girl from high school and her boyfriend who were both visiting from out of town. As soon as he spotted them bursting through the door, I waved and backed away slowly like Ann-Margret in “Bye-Bye, Birdie.”

Alone, I hunted through the club for Matty and a few minutes after Erik arrived, he texted me that they were finishing up dinner in the restaurant downstairs near the front. The Park is a huge complex and, as I explained to Erik, exactly the kind of restaurant I wanted to open when I was a kid. He asked me why I didn’t do something similar now and I shot it down instantly. “A restaurant is a financial sinkhole.” There are reasons why you dream about things when you are a kid and don’t make them a reality when you grow up.

After the crumbs from Crumbs were cleared away, we all wandered upstairs. Shay was there and as lovely as always. She keeps trying to get me to add her Facebook Fan Page, probably because she knows I am an outlet mall shopper who needs some ShayStyle, but I am not what I would call a joiner. Matty’s boyfriend Andrew was properly suited to the occasion while I was the bad friend who didn’t wear Polo on his birthday. Matty was justifiably incredulous but in typical Matty fashion, forgot the upset before the possibility of concern turning to a wrinkle could take place.

“Matty should get a job working in Protocol at the White House,” I suggested to his friend Clay as we watched Matty work the crowd like a campaigner, every hand shaken, every baby kissed. Clay was very cute and slender in a v-neck tee under a slouchy wafer of a cardigan. He insisted he has known Matty for years but I was suspicious because we had never met. I like to think I know all of Matty’s friends, even though I say all the time that Matty is the only gay you need to know in Manhattan because he knows everyone else. But still, I should know all the gays at his intimate birthday dinner.

To show Clay my attraction to him, I threatened to throw him down a flight of stairs. And it was said not just once in an amusing way either. More than once so he got the point that I really might actually send him sailing if given the opportunity. Moments early, I had followed Clay and Matty further into the bar, where we engaged in conversation with two men, Ian and Kelly (“Like the color!” I offered, much to Kelly's visible annoyance). Kelly was a fine conversationalist, though with the noise, I couldn’t hear a word he said. And his need to take everything I said literally (for instance, “I work here. I’m a busboy downstairs.”) all had a reasonably unhappy ending.

But the real failure to communicate was with Ian who did not understand that I was joking about owning a Jitterbug cell phone and assaulted me with a barrage of information about his Droid phone that had all the subtly of a Scientologist trying to sell you Herbalife and Amway at the same time. I was trapped and Clay saw that I was trapped, and so in a move that I would have made myself if the roles had been reversed suddenly declared that he had to pee and walked away. Walked away! And this is why I threatened to throw him down a flight of stairs. Because merely pushing him just wouldn’t have gotten the message across.

Come to think of it, I am pretty sure I met Clay before at Therapy quite some time ago. But that was under a staircase on the ground floor, so he was safe from my threat of violence. I suppose it was doubly upsetting because I would have done the same thing. It was just so unpleasant to see the behavior in someone so otherwise attractive. Although in comparison, I love Conor and he doesn’t have a flaw I haven’t been willing to turn a blind eye to.

Conor was with his boyfriend Ryan, who I branded “Dimples” after Conor made such a fuss about his face. The dimples were cute but he had an ass that would not quit, even after the whistle had blown. “Dimples” seemed nice enough although I am fairly certain he was fucking with me when he said he quit his job so he could concentrate full-time on his tan before summer got here. The more I talked to him, the less certain I was that he was joking, but again, the ass, the body, it was all tight like hospital corners, so if his tan needs that kind of attention, well then I guess that’s just fine.

Conor’s friend Andrew was also there. “Will you remember me this time?” he huffed, although I didn’t remember forgetting him before (although he might be easier to remember if he hadn't blocked me on Facebook, no doubt because of my generous links to his profile in my blog). I whispered sweet nothings to him about him being impossible to forget because he is so handsome. And like all attractive men who only care about the massive, nuclear levels of attention they need to receive, he melted like a Soviet reactor.

I love Conor and Andrew but I had to explain to Erik that they are on the dark side of the force. “Conor is not on the dark side,” Matty said, as he sipped complimentary birthday champagne in the VIP lounge area he staked out as his own nearby. “If he isn’t on the dark side yet,” I told him, “He is at least Anakin just before he becomes Darth Vader.” I say all this with the full understanding that I am on the dark side of the force too.

After all, I am not shy about pointing out the shortcomings and foibles of others. I make the most callous observations of friends and strangers without regard to feelings or fallout. I even sent Conor on a mission tonight to get more information on the pretty guy I have seen the last two times I was at the bar. The one I suggested looked like he was made out of cream cheese just at the expiration date. Conor recognized him from his gym. “His name is Daniel and he is from the UK.” Not quite enough for me to find him on Facebook. It makes me long for the days of Friendster, when that would have been everything I needed to unveil his life story.

I live in the world of the disturbing but possible. That is the bread and butter of the gay male existence. Earlier Matty and Mario had been talking about a mutual friend who claimed to have calmed down but was living as wild and on the edge as ever. That’s who we are. I know it’s who I am. Believing in my head one thing, and living a life completely contrary to that vision. I am sure Erik learned a lot about what it means to be a gay man in New York City tonight, but perhaps the lessons learned weren’t the best we could offer as a community. The problem is that I am just not a very good teacher because the only lesson I teach is how to be me. And that is a terrible lesson.

Forever, For Now

Nothing really stays the same. And this is frustrating, though hardly a surprise in a city like NYC. Manhattan is changing constantly, sometimes right before your very eyes. I really hate change. I like life to be a long stretch of moments frozen in time, like tiny raindrops caught in one of those cool moments in the Matrix where the camera is moving but the action is still.

In 2003, Sean and I joined Scollay and Mickey in Florence and one day we were sailing through the Uffizi museum. It was near closing time and Sean and I happened upon Venus on the half shell, as she is more casually known. And there was a small bench for the oldsters to sit and gaze up. So we just sat there and in the last few minutes the museum was open, we just sat somewhat quietly and beheld the Venus, unobstructed by other tourists and writ large on the facing wall. The experience lasted for just a few moments but in the endless loop of my mind, I am forever there, witnessing the birth of Venus.

Tom was on the show tonight and he is so handsome and brilliant and marvelous, it always puts me in an introspective, just-what-am-I-doing-with-my-life kind of mood. For me, Tom is like Geena Davis at the end of Thelma & Louise. “Let’s just keep going,” he seems to call out to me and just spending a few minutes with him makes me want to slam the gas pedal down in that Thunderbird and take flight.

After the show, we met up with Erik and the three of us trudged downtown to The Park. Erik was with me there last week, but Tom had never been before. He loved the space, but thought the whole thing was too dimly lit. “How are you supposed to see who you want to go home with?” he asked, perplexed, and then more seriously, “How are they supposed to see if they want to go home with you?” I had to agree with Tom that the lighting was especially dim, though punctuated frequently by the sudden glow of ultra bright iPhone screens as text messages were checked and sent. I suggested that anyone using a new iPad in there would have the unpleasant effect of switching on a searchlight.

Erik, who last week was dressed like a Dockers ad for some kind of casual Friday celebration that never seems to end, heeded my advice and went more relaxed this time with a nice polo shirt. Why anyone would take fashion advice from me is a mystery but he was so buttoned-down last week, it made me nervous, like at any moment we might be audited or asked to give a PowerPoint presentation. Erik told me that he too felt better dressing more casually, so at least in this instance, it wasn’t a total disaster.

I like to spend a fair amount of my time out at gay bars inspecting what everyone else is wearing. This is a good way to spot trends and check to see if people are still wearing any of the same things you own. I am slow to retire items from my wardrobe and it helps to decide what to toss when I look around a room of attractive gay men and see that none of them own anything like what I have in my closet. But tonight, the crowd was strange, and I don’t just mean the two guys with the Flock of Seagulls hair and what appeared to be homemade capes and caftans fashioned hastily from bed linens.

There just wasn’t anything even approaching a fashion through line to hang your spring wardrobe on. Tattoo muscle arms in a 2xist tank top, scrawny hippie in a simple wife beater, polo shirts and jeans, button down shirts tucked into pressed shorts, even some guys huddled together in the back in suits. Maybe this is finally the fashion trickle down of the bad economy. Without money left for new things, they are just throwing together whatever is left, like when you are hungry and you make dinner out of whatever the last three cans are in the pantry. This makes life for a fashion victim like me completely without hope.

Perhaps we can all learn a bit from Venus. When you have the clams, you buy whatever you want. But when you are down to your last clam, just come as you are. My mind wanders back to the Uffizi. It was drizzling there in Florence, just as it is now in Manhattan. But the Hudson is a poor substitute for the charms of the reflected glory of the Arno. Erik agreed with me that the crowd was not as attractive tonight as it had been last week at The Park. Oh well. I guess nothing is perfect even in its moment nearest to perfection and nothing lasts forever. We can keep the memories we cherish the most suspended in time, but the rest of life swirls away from the wheels of time into a dusty cloud of eternity.

And the Thunderbird just keeps going.

The Fox Trot

The lighted spire of the Empire State Building is robin’s egg blue. The yellow daffodils are in bloom parading up and down the sidewalks on every Manhattan avenue. The trees along 34th street are exploding with white blossoms as if punctuated with clumps of snowy cotton balls. There are many wonderful times of year in the city, but I think none is more spectacular than that first real flush of spring, when everywhere you turn there is a welcome splash of color and freshness. When a city known more for its grey hue and jet black fashion sheds its heavy winter coat of snowy blah and reveals a kaleidoscope of bright colors that wipe away the months of misery the first of the year can bring. Time once again to shake out my own mothballs and return to the beating pulse of New York nightlife. Spring is here, I hear.

Just in time for the high season of club activity, Josh Wood has launched a new weekly party at The Park called Fox Thursdays. Matty promoted a party in the same space last year and it was always filled with all the gays of our lives. So I naturally assumed since I heard Matty was there the last two Thursdays that he would be there again. The fact that my text messages beforehand alerting him to my anticipated appearance went unheeded worried me not in the least. No matter. There were plenty of other fun and fabulous people to keep me going.

As soon as I walked in the door, I was pleasantly surprised to run into Jordan, who I hadn’t seen since I did a mercy run down to a birthday party at Pieces and returned the gloves he had left in the studio during an interview. I was so surprised to see him that I didn’t hear the names of any of his friends. Naturally once that happened and we had been talking for a half an hour, I couldn’t very well go and ask them again. I mean, I suppose I could, but I probably would have just offended them and then still not remembered their names anyway. I’m just like that.

We lingered in the front bar for a bit and then ventured into the main floor back bar. The Park is a large space and like the water-tight compartments on the Titanic, as one space fills up, it spills over into the next. The whole thing is ready to sink under its own weight when the massive crowd pours upstairs to the patio party space there, and within an hour of my arriving, it was so crowded there, you were literally drowning in a sea of hot gay men. This is not necessarily a complaint, mind you.

Newly gay Erik joined us there with his friend Jon from college. Since Erik is new to being gay, I knew it would be virtually impossible for him to find me in such a gigantic space, so I went back to the front bar to find him. By the time we three made our way back into the beating heart of The Park, I had lost Jordan and his friends in the crowd. For the rest of the evening, we continued to pass each other, like two ships in the night, but never spoke again. I didn’t even get to say good-bye.

Chatting upstairs by the bar, we bumped into my fashionable friend Sam, who was very happy I was there. “I never see you anymore.” Sam told me, "Thank God for Facebook so I at least can keep up with what you are doing.” Apparently both of us took much of the winter off from going out and like that famous groundhog finally poked our heads out to see who might shadow us. Sam was busy taking pictures of some of the gays in the bar who had the nerve to be wearing trucker hats. “Is it 2002 already?” I asked innocently.

We all decided to wander around with our drinks to see who else was there and in the back of the upstairs patio, I ran into Henry and Dan. Tonight for the first time I noticed something I should have realized quite some time ago: that Henry has a fondness for bowties and Dan, like me, likes polo shirts. I now realize that I have noticed them dressed like that on more than one occasion and yet never put it together like it was a thing. Their humpy friend Adam was also there and did not remember meeting me at Chris’ birthday party last week at The Boiler Room. Fair is fair, I didn’t remember his name. He was one of the guys who went to college with one of the other guys, in this case I think Henry. In any event, the important part of the encounter was that Henry was sniffing Adam quite intensely.

“He smells really, really good!” Henry’s boyfriend Dan didn’t even blink he was so unfazed by Henry sniffing Adam’s head like a bloodhound. I will admit, curiosity got the better of me and I smelled him myself. He did in fact smell delicious, a wonderfully soapy fresh clean smell. But I think Henry was in some kind of a gregarious mood because as I was leaving he informed me he was going to hug me until I felt uncomfortable. While he did hug me for an excessively long period of time, I think Henry is just too marvelous to ever grow uncomfortable or even tired of hugging, even under the watchful if passive gaze of his boyfriend.

Down at the basement-level coat check, waiting in the long line to get my backpack, a group of attractive fit thirty-something guys came down the stairs to carouse in the ancient bathroom. One of them, in a white printed t-shirt and poured on jeans that left nothing to the imagination waited outside next to me for all of his also hot friends to finish up inside. He was so beautiful, it was really something. And clearly the best looking of his crew. Without a doubt, the most beautiful man I had seen since the hot guy working the Mr. Softee truck up on Broadway and 50th street. The one who smiled when he saw my giddy charge across the street to get my vanilla cone in my short trot from the radio studio to the subway down to The Park tonight.

“I saw you from across the street,” he smiled a winning smile, leaning out the service window on his impressive party arms. “I had a feeling you were coming here.”

“This is the best thing about spring,” I told him, “When the weather turns and Mr. Softee arrives on the corner.”

He smiled even wider. “Aw thanks. That’s nice to hear.”

I wish I could have gotten the hot guy next to coat check to smile like that but after a quick glance back and forth he suddenly became very interested in his cell phone. The body and face were perfect as if sculpted from velvety rich cream cheese, even if the whole package was up against its printed expiration date. While still so very, very good-looking, he was definitely about to turn that corner to older gay guy. I thought to myself as I grabbed my backpack and headed up the stairs to the ground floor how difficult it will be for him to get old, to lose all that firmness and beauty that has carried him through so many Fire Island summers and to where? What was his final destination to be? After many a Fire Island summer, dies the gay swan.

Now normally this is the point where I could bring the whole evening full circle making some kind of statement about the bloom of spring and things fading almost before they begin to blossom. Or, about how the cream cheese is still edible even if it is a bit dry and crusty on the edges. But I don’t even have time to form the thoughts in my head before I see a familiar hulking figure looming at the top of the stairs.

“You mother fucker!” I yell, my horrid voice echoing out through the bar as I spy notorious porn hunk Erik Rhodes waiting for me on the landing. He looks suddenly sheepish like a child caught ditching school.

“Uh oh. Was I supposed to do the show and I flaked on you?” He looks a little panic-stricken. “I am suddenly having flashbacks about that.”

Erik Rhodes has been MIA for weeks now. He was supposed to do the show and then we never heard from him again. And then his phone stopped working. He hadn’t updated his blog in months. I suppose somewhere in the back of my mind I just assumed he was finally dead. Moving to Staten Island is like faking your own death, but after a while, people will just take it as the real thing.

Turns out that Erik’s boyfriend replaced his phone on him (without asking or telling) which is why he had a new number and didn’t have my number anymore. Moments before arriving at The Park, Erik had just gotten into some kind of verbal argument with an overweight woman at Gray’s Papaya, whom he constantly referred to as “Precious.”

“She even told me she was pregnant. Like I give a shit.”

Despite his instance that he had really calmed down, and to be fair, he did seem more relaxed and normal than I had seen him in a while, he was clearly riled up by a variety of outside forces. “There’s that Alan Cumming. Didn’t he put out a cologne called ‘Cumming.’ That’s disgusting.” This from the man who has told such brain blanching tales on our show gay men have complained that they crossed a line. But, on the good side, he was very happy with his new career behind the camera directing at Falcon. “I love it. I tell the models when they look like shit. They don’t like that very much but I don’t care.” He hasn’t lost an inch of his massive muscle mass or brutish honesty so while I have no doubt the models don’t like it when he says they are in an unflattering position, I doubt any of them challenge him.

It was nice to see Erik again, even if he ended up making me miss the train I had intended to take home. That kind of detour was worth it. He always makes me laugh and if the three hugs good-bye are any indication, he missed me too. Spring is full of wonderful surprises and you never know what fox you might find on any given Thursday at The Park.

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.