Ah limbo! Yes, the Catholic Church abolished it years ago but that doesn’t mean it no longer exists in the world of celebrity. If anything, it is thriving there. Tonight we did a live broadcast from backstage at the New Now Next awards, which will air on LOGO on June 7th. It was a perfect limbo opportunity for us, not really press per se nor celebrity, we got to exist in the nether regions of the media room shuttled off in a dark corner of the MTV studios. We weren’t the only ones in limbo. As I pointed out with my previous GLAAD adventure, there are tiers of celebrity, and once again, we were on the bottom rung.
This is not uncommon for us and it is a fair trade off for the life we get to lead. On the one hand, we are reasonably well known in the rest of America (I was just named Grand Marshall of Indy Pride 2008!), but in New York City, we aren’t even a blip. The upside of this is that we can walk the streets of Manhattan unmolested by fans. The downside of course is that all of the glamorous trappings that would normally come with celebrity (namely invites to fun parties filled with free liquor and other celebrities) constantly elude us. However, in this case, we were able to be reasonably unknown and hang out with celebrities and drink free booze.
The awards themselves I will leave largely shrouded in mystery, lest I give away any winners accidentally. Suffice it to say, it was eerily reminiscent of past MTV events, such as the MTV Movie Awards, which should add a level of familiarity and comfort to viewers even if many of the presenters and winners are as yet unknown to them. This I think is the idea though. It is called New Now Next, with the emphasis on introducing new talent as opposed to rehashing past stars and straight allies, a cornerstone of the high end GLAAD awards for years. I applaud the effort even as I worry the outcome.
Many of my favorite people were there, including the lovely Andy Towle, whose blog I am hopelessly devoted to. We even got him to spend a few minutes on our show, which is a little bit like get later years Howard Hughes to trim his fingernails. Jack Mackenroth was there, along with Kevin Christiana and Christian Siriano from Project Runway. Jack is a ray of bitchy sunshine and pound for muscular pound the best cocktail chatter partner money can buy. I only wish any sliver of our conversation could be repeated in print, but rest assured if Disney’s Lady and the Tramp ever comes to Broadway we could play the Siamese cats, only drunk and real cunty.
Things really moved into high gear once we hit the after party. This is where the other bank of celebrities existed, the bank we would have been with if we hadn’t been live on the radio. LOGO invited two sets of guests: those who would be on the TV show and do that press line and those who would watch from the after party room and do a different press line. Here we found lovely friends like Josh Zuckerman and Keo Nozari, patiently waiting out the evening for everyone else to join them. They spent three hours with the who’s that of New York gay society swilling cocktails and eating pigs in a blanket and mini grilled cheese sandwiches (the hot Hollywood hors d‘oeuvre du jour ten years ago). Later after the on-air celebrities appeared, sushi was thrown into the mix to remind everyone that better people had arrived. There were even two sets of gift bags. Segregation may have been outlawed in the public sphere fifty years ago but it is beloved in entertainment circles.
As the other stars drifted upstairs I finally got some alone time with the fabulous God-des and She, who looked great and were sad that they missed my cinco de mayo party. Michael Carbonaro was there, auditioning for a comic relief role on Mad Men while Peter Stickles stood by, serene and beautiful. His skin was so perfect I wanted to scrape off a sample and send it to a lab to be cloned and then grafted onto my own face. Caroline Rhea who earlier had done the show, still couldn’t get over how much I looked like her gay high school boyfriend. She kept touching me wistfully and then running away.
I thought that would be the weirdest part of the evening until Junior Vasquez’s mega Madonna mix sent a set of avant-garde performers into a frenzy of spontaneous nudity on the stage. At this point, I was standing with Jensen Atwood, who did the show while I was out in Los Angeles two years ago when our mutual friend Ben Patrick Johnson was co-hosting with me. “This is too arty for me.” I said, conscious of my eyes rolling back in my head. “I guess it’s what the kids like.” In my mind, I was already at coat check picking up my bag and backpack.
Security seemed to have the same idea as they sauntered up onto the stage to encourage them to put their clothes back on. But by then it was one a.m., the lights were coming up anyway and the bar was closed. The minute the clothes had come off, the party was definitely over. This may have been LOGO’s hot new edgy award show, a big gay coming out party filled with the gritty vim and verve of downtown Manhattan (aka Amanda Lepore’s fully functioning vagina), but the powers that be didn’t want us to forget for a moment that mama MTV is actively chaperoning this gay adolescent who still has a little more growing up to do.
Showing posts with label GLAAD. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GLAAD. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Monday, April 14, 2008
Inside Outsider
As I mentioned in my last post, I am having a lot of trouble distinguishing reality from fantasy these days. It isn't so much that I don't know the difference between the two. It is just that lately the lines between the two have gotten increasingly blurry, the colors melting into one another, with the lines that had been around them obscured. (See also: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). This weekend in South Florida took an already troubling situation and threw it right down the rabbit hole, and me along with it.
Friday officially kicked off my season of pride events. Each year, I spend my sunny weekends on the road, emceeing pride events, to help promote my radio show. Since these trips tend to include all of my least favorite activities (leaving the house, dealing with airport security, meeting strangers, public speaking, etc.) it is honestly hard for me to have a genuinely good time. As it is true in life in general, happiness is not a sustained state of being, it is merely flashing moments, highlighting the otherwise dull and painful patches. So I can't say I didn't have any fun, the strobe flickered many times, but in the end, I am glad to be back home. At least in my house, I can manage the dull patches a little more effectively.
The organizers of Pride South Florida (in particular Mike Cruz) are lovely people, who fly me down, put me up at a nice place, and send cars to cart me around. It is one of the few events we do each year where I feel like a genuine celebrity. Most of the time, it is me and Romaine piling into a rental car and navigating our way to whatever cheap dump I booked us into, with a stop at the Waffle House along the way. This year, Mike sent a stand-up limo van for me, that was bigger inside than my own bedroom, and nicer too. The limo took me to my hotel for the weekend, a gay resort called The Grand. And Grand it was.
I am not much for B&Bs because I like my anonymity. Give me a big impersonal chain hotel with at least 300 rooms and I am all set. I don't even like maid service if I am staying for only one or two days. I can use a towel twice and I don't need my bed made every day. It feels like such a waste. A gay guesthouse is a decent middle point. I can still have a little anonymity (no surprise wake-up visits by the owner with a cup of coffee in hand) while also not feeling like I am sleeping in a lifeless mattress ad. The Grand lived up to its name and I did enjoy my quiet room way in the back.
Of course, my room was just past the "nature walk" (aka late night cruising zone) and the clothing optional jacuzzi. Each time I walked past the hot tub area, day and night, I was cat called and wolf whistled, which I guess is flattering, but on Friday night, rushing through with a warm plate of Greek food on my way in to watch the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica, I was in no mood for it. Even though I left the "Do Not Disturb" sign on my room all day Saturday, the sneaky maid managed to come in and organize everything anyway, including hiding my iPod in a decorative candy dish which while pretty when I found it, did cause my heart to panic for a moment when I thought it might have been stolen.
The pride event itself was quiet on Saturday. A decent but not spectacular turnout, with a shy spot of rain in the early afternoon which made the heat moist and the ground too wet to sit on, though otherwise did nothing to dampen the event. I left early to attend the GLAAD Awards, which happened to be going on at the Hard Rock the same evening. Earlier last month when Neil Guiliano, the President of GLAAD was on the radio show, I mentioned that I was going to be down there at the same time, and to my surprise a few days later, I got an email from a GLAAD staffer saying that Neil requested that I be his guest at the South Florida event.
In my nascent celebrity, this is something of a big deal. It was an opportunity to attend an A-gay event, walk the red carpet to get my picture taken and hang out in the VIP area with the other celebrities, board members and big donors. I felt like Cinderella but in a grey Barneys suit that I picked up for a song last year at the Warehouse Sale. So off I went to the red carpet and for a moment, it was magical. The photographers all wanted my photo and I posed and posed and posed in my marked down suit with the four year old tie, nine year old shoes, borrowed socks, and a dress shirt from the early 90s that if I took off my jacket gave me the distinct air of a gay pirate. All of the film crews, save the folks from Bravo, were Spanish speaking and had zero interest in me. I got asked one question by Bravo, which I answered very badly, and was sent on my merry way. Flickering moments of happiness, long stretches of sad reality.
Once inside the door, I realized that I was there completely alone. My original invite had mentioned a personal talent escort which I assumed would be with me all night so I would at least have a GLAAD volunteer to talk to all night. But at the event I discovered that there were two kinds of celebrities: white folder and black folder. I had a white folder which meant, I was on my own, while the black folder celebrities who were winning or presenting, had a cute young person dressed all in black with a headset who waited on them hand and food. I turned slowly around in a circle not knowing what to do next and then mercifully ran into my best frenemy Dan Renzi. He saved my life.
Dan and I have a long, complicated, non-sexual history which mercifully he remembers little of. However, over the last year or so we have been reasonably chummy and in 2007 he even appeared, quite deliciously, in my video podcast The So Real Life. I couldn't ask for a better person to shove me over a pile of garbage than Dan. It was kismet, as was our meeting at the GLAAD Awards. We palled around, we made jokes, we compared white folders, and when we left the VIP reception to go down for the dinner, even though we were at separate tables, we sat in chairs next to each other so we could dish all night long.
Unfortunately, the only dish I was able to do was the one my food was on because instead of being placed at some out of the way non-table like I thought, I was at THE table. I was seated between Neil Guiliano and his hilarious brother John. Apparently it was a very personal invitation to the awards I had accepted. Also at the table, the night's big honoree Wilson Cruz and his parents, and Denise Williams, the mother of Simmie Williams, a young gay man murdered in Florida earlier this year. Oh yes and me! What the hell was I doing there? I started sweating I was so nervous but knew I couldn't take off my jacket for fear of a parrot settling on my shoulder.
Being South Florida, the show and presenters were very Latin focused and much of the proceedings were in Spanish. I missed a lot flipping through my phrasebook but the gay storyline clips from the telenovelas were the highlight of the evening for me until I saw 500 gay men sing along to Deborah Cox's sensational closing performance. In moments like that I thought, "I wish Jonathan was here. He would love this." but thoughts like that only served to pull me out of the moment and remind me how alone I tend to feel in a room filled with hundreds of people. But then the alternate reality I was living in would lure me back with another amazing flash. For instance, the big drama of the evening happened at our table, when Wilson Cruz (allergic to shellfish) bit into the chicken only to discover it was stuffed with shrimp. He was fine but I leaned into John and cracked, "Maybe next time your brother should consider not poisoning the guest of honor right before he goes on stage."
The whole thing was so surreal to me. On the one hand, I was treated like a celebrity, but inside I just felt like me, in an ugly shirt and painful shoes. It felt so fraudulent. Wilson is from TV and then there he was sitting at the table with me. On my way into dinner I ran into my friend Brandon's ex-boyfriend Cliff who I know from Arizona and who was recently embroiled in a gay public scandal of sorts, adding another dimension to the otherworldliness of it all. It all happened so fast, I never really had a moment to take it all in. Back at the dinner, I looked up and there was Neil, who just moments earlier had been making small talk with me at the table, now up on stage, projected onto the big screen TVs all over the auditorium, talking about Denise, who was sitting next to me, while photographers and cameramen rushed around me to capture the moment. As we stood for Denise's ovation, I instinctively felt the cameras at my back and leaded over ever so slightly to my left so they could get a better shot of her. I was participant and observer, and neither of them felt real to me.
After the awards Matt from Fab Scout picked me up and took me out of the surreal frying pan and into the fire: Boardwalk. The notorious South Florida stripper bar has turned into ground zero for me when I am in town, thanks to my friendship with Howard of Fab Scout, and it is where I spent Friday night as well. Howard wasn't there, but Jason Crew from Big Rig and Barrett Long were there, along with two new porn pups, annoyingly in love with each other and themselves, and Cort Donovan who charmed me in a way porn stars aren't normally charming to me. Jason remembered me from Big Rig and other run-ins and I reminded Barrett of our last meeting, at the HustlaBall in New York were I pawned Rod Barry off on him after Rod got too violently drunk for me to handle. Our Friday night adventure had ended with Jason telling me that I was "so squeezable" and then drunkenly asking me on the ride home if he and Barrett could gang bang me later in their hotel room. As tempting as 24 inches of cock may be for some people, I politely passed, ran past the nude men in the jacuzzi with their siren song and locked myself alone in my room.
Back at Boardwalk on Saturday making a second run at it and this time in a suit, I stood out like a sore, but wealthy thumb. The solicitous strippers were even more solicitous than usual. While waiting for the porn boys to do their show, so I could poke gentle fun at them later, into the bar walked the most perfect physical manifestation of my "type" that I have ever seen. As if things couldn't get any worse/better. He was blond, with Cory's hunk o' granite forehead, a cute button nose and bee stung Angelina Jolie lips that he kept in a pugnacious snarl at all times. If he had been four inches taller (say 6'2"), I would have kidnapped him and kept him in a dungeon somewhere. His name is "Brock" (may not actually be his real name) and he is apparently a "notorious bottom" and an escort. I was also told he was a complete mess, and when I met him, he was already if not blind drunk, then at least visually impaired intoxicated. He admired my light wool suit, then leaned in to make out with me, and when I tried to have small talk with him, asked me, "Are you going to take me home now?" Ugh! I am only human here.
His friend, who earlier had been nice to me, and bragged about his long friendship with Barrett Long, suddenly grabbed Brock and pulled him close. I heard him hiss in Brock's ear, "You aren't leaving this bar. He only wants to take advantage of you!" I was so offended. I didn't even have a car to take him home in, even if I really really really wanted to. And while I did want to take advantage of him, I certainly didn't mean it in a bad way! People can be so judgmental. He is an escort after all. So I am a bad person for wanting a free throw? I thought I was a celebrity. Didn't my VIP tickets include an open bar, a gift bag and a blow job? I guess he wasn't what GLAAD meant when they mentioned a talent escort for the evening.
Me in a suit, making out with a hot stranger. It just isn't me. Walking red carpets and mingling with people I heretofore have only known in the abstract. Just plain strange. I was still completely beside myself on Sunday when a pair of Broadway actors who listen to the show and happened to be in South Florida at the same time, dropped by pride to meet me. I was still queasy and tired from the night before, and my emcee gig had definitely taken a desperate shticky turn for the worst as they arrived. I couldn't have been at a lower ebb for what I had been looking forward to as the highlight of my weekend.
Kevin plays Scrabulous with me endlessly on Facebook and emails with me regularly, but we had never met before, so our encounter had the happy, excited feel of meeting a junior high school pen pal. But that comparison may be apt only because my tongue was nuclear green from the lollipop I consumed earlier to mask the Munchos aftertaste in my mouth. His boyfriend Chris I knew a little more about because I had read about him and saw him on TV a few times, but virtually all of my interaction up to this point had been with Kevin who I knew less about but somehow knew better, so meeting Chris was weirder for me.
This is difficult to explain in words. I meet people all the time from TV shows or movies or what have you because of my job, but rarely do I meet someone from that world who also listens to the show. Usually, we interview someone who doesn't know anything about us, but we know all about them, in much the same way that listeners meet us at events and know all about our lives but we don't know anything about theirs. So here we were two people who knew each other's resumes basically, and a little more perhaps, but meeting for the first time. It was like a real life version of the old Spy Magazine section Logrolling In Our Time. It was all too much for me.
I know you. You know me. We don't know each other. Maybe it was the heat and humidity after a long cold winter. Maybe it was the 48 surreal hours that had gone before. Real names hidden under porn names. White folder celebrity versus black folder celebrity. Untoward sexual advances from hot strangers. By the time Kevin and Chris arrived, I was mentally throwing in the towel. All I wanted to do was flee to the airport. Being in a strange city, meeting new people, I felt like an astronaut in space who becomes untethered from the ship, and then ever so slowly but quite desperately floats away.
I wanted my boring life back. I just wanted the security that comes with sleeping in my own bed in my house built to withstand a nuclear war with the furniture too heavy to move. When I landed at La Guardia and walked into the parking structure, I was never so happy to see my little beat up old red convertible. And parked right next to it, another little red convertible with a tiny SIRIUS antenna stuck on the trunk, just like mine. It made me happy in that instant because for the first time in three days, I felt like I belonged. Not as someone who talks on the radio, but as just another person in this city that listens. And then I drove home and climbed into bed. And for perhaps a little longer than usual, I was happy.
Friday officially kicked off my season of pride events. Each year, I spend my sunny weekends on the road, emceeing pride events, to help promote my radio show. Since these trips tend to include all of my least favorite activities (leaving the house, dealing with airport security, meeting strangers, public speaking, etc.) it is honestly hard for me to have a genuinely good time. As it is true in life in general, happiness is not a sustained state of being, it is merely flashing moments, highlighting the otherwise dull and painful patches. So I can't say I didn't have any fun, the strobe flickered many times, but in the end, I am glad to be back home. At least in my house, I can manage the dull patches a little more effectively.
The organizers of Pride South Florida (in particular Mike Cruz) are lovely people, who fly me down, put me up at a nice place, and send cars to cart me around. It is one of the few events we do each year where I feel like a genuine celebrity. Most of the time, it is me and Romaine piling into a rental car and navigating our way to whatever cheap dump I booked us into, with a stop at the Waffle House along the way. This year, Mike sent a stand-up limo van for me, that was bigger inside than my own bedroom, and nicer too. The limo took me to my hotel for the weekend, a gay resort called The Grand. And Grand it was.
I am not much for B&Bs because I like my anonymity. Give me a big impersonal chain hotel with at least 300 rooms and I am all set. I don't even like maid service if I am staying for only one or two days. I can use a towel twice and I don't need my bed made every day. It feels like such a waste. A gay guesthouse is a decent middle point. I can still have a little anonymity (no surprise wake-up visits by the owner with a cup of coffee in hand) while also not feeling like I am sleeping in a lifeless mattress ad. The Grand lived up to its name and I did enjoy my quiet room way in the back.
Of course, my room was just past the "nature walk" (aka late night cruising zone) and the clothing optional jacuzzi. Each time I walked past the hot tub area, day and night, I was cat called and wolf whistled, which I guess is flattering, but on Friday night, rushing through with a warm plate of Greek food on my way in to watch the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica, I was in no mood for it. Even though I left the "Do Not Disturb" sign on my room all day Saturday, the sneaky maid managed to come in and organize everything anyway, including hiding my iPod in a decorative candy dish which while pretty when I found it, did cause my heart to panic for a moment when I thought it might have been stolen.
The pride event itself was quiet on Saturday. A decent but not spectacular turnout, with a shy spot of rain in the early afternoon which made the heat moist and the ground too wet to sit on, though otherwise did nothing to dampen the event. I left early to attend the GLAAD Awards, which happened to be going on at the Hard Rock the same evening. Earlier last month when Neil Guiliano, the President of GLAAD was on the radio show, I mentioned that I was going to be down there at the same time, and to my surprise a few days later, I got an email from a GLAAD staffer saying that Neil requested that I be his guest at the South Florida event.
In my nascent celebrity, this is something of a big deal. It was an opportunity to attend an A-gay event, walk the red carpet to get my picture taken and hang out in the VIP area with the other celebrities, board members and big donors. I felt like Cinderella but in a grey Barneys suit that I picked up for a song last year at the Warehouse Sale. So off I went to the red carpet and for a moment, it was magical. The photographers all wanted my photo and I posed and posed and posed in my marked down suit with the four year old tie, nine year old shoes, borrowed socks, and a dress shirt from the early 90s that if I took off my jacket gave me the distinct air of a gay pirate. All of the film crews, save the folks from Bravo, were Spanish speaking and had zero interest in me. I got asked one question by Bravo, which I answered very badly, and was sent on my merry way. Flickering moments of happiness, long stretches of sad reality.
Once inside the door, I realized that I was there completely alone. My original invite had mentioned a personal talent escort which I assumed would be with me all night so I would at least have a GLAAD volunteer to talk to all night. But at the event I discovered that there were two kinds of celebrities: white folder and black folder. I had a white folder which meant, I was on my own, while the black folder celebrities who were winning or presenting, had a cute young person dressed all in black with a headset who waited on them hand and food. I turned slowly around in a circle not knowing what to do next and then mercifully ran into my best frenemy Dan Renzi. He saved my life.
Dan and I have a long, complicated, non-sexual history which mercifully he remembers little of. However, over the last year or so we have been reasonably chummy and in 2007 he even appeared, quite deliciously, in my video podcast The So Real Life. I couldn't ask for a better person to shove me over a pile of garbage than Dan. It was kismet, as was our meeting at the GLAAD Awards. We palled around, we made jokes, we compared white folders, and when we left the VIP reception to go down for the dinner, even though we were at separate tables, we sat in chairs next to each other so we could dish all night long.
Unfortunately, the only dish I was able to do was the one my food was on because instead of being placed at some out of the way non-table like I thought, I was at THE table. I was seated between Neil Guiliano and his hilarious brother John. Apparently it was a very personal invitation to the awards I had accepted. Also at the table, the night's big honoree Wilson Cruz and his parents, and Denise Williams, the mother of Simmie Williams, a young gay man murdered in Florida earlier this year. Oh yes and me! What the hell was I doing there? I started sweating I was so nervous but knew I couldn't take off my jacket for fear of a parrot settling on my shoulder.
Being South Florida, the show and presenters were very Latin focused and much of the proceedings were in Spanish. I missed a lot flipping through my phrasebook but the gay storyline clips from the telenovelas were the highlight of the evening for me until I saw 500 gay men sing along to Deborah Cox's sensational closing performance. In moments like that I thought, "I wish Jonathan was here. He would love this." but thoughts like that only served to pull me out of the moment and remind me how alone I tend to feel in a room filled with hundreds of people. But then the alternate reality I was living in would lure me back with another amazing flash. For instance, the big drama of the evening happened at our table, when Wilson Cruz (allergic to shellfish) bit into the chicken only to discover it was stuffed with shrimp. He was fine but I leaned into John and cracked, "Maybe next time your brother should consider not poisoning the guest of honor right before he goes on stage."
The whole thing was so surreal to me. On the one hand, I was treated like a celebrity, but inside I just felt like me, in an ugly shirt and painful shoes. It felt so fraudulent. Wilson is from TV and then there he was sitting at the table with me. On my way into dinner I ran into my friend Brandon's ex-boyfriend Cliff who I know from Arizona and who was recently embroiled in a gay public scandal of sorts, adding another dimension to the otherworldliness of it all. It all happened so fast, I never really had a moment to take it all in. Back at the dinner, I looked up and there was Neil, who just moments earlier had been making small talk with me at the table, now up on stage, projected onto the big screen TVs all over the auditorium, talking about Denise, who was sitting next to me, while photographers and cameramen rushed around me to capture the moment. As we stood for Denise's ovation, I instinctively felt the cameras at my back and leaded over ever so slightly to my left so they could get a better shot of her. I was participant and observer, and neither of them felt real to me.
After the awards Matt from Fab Scout picked me up and took me out of the surreal frying pan and into the fire: Boardwalk. The notorious South Florida stripper bar has turned into ground zero for me when I am in town, thanks to my friendship with Howard of Fab Scout, and it is where I spent Friday night as well. Howard wasn't there, but Jason Crew from Big Rig and Barrett Long were there, along with two new porn pups, annoyingly in love with each other and themselves, and Cort Donovan who charmed me in a way porn stars aren't normally charming to me. Jason remembered me from Big Rig and other run-ins and I reminded Barrett of our last meeting, at the HustlaBall in New York were I pawned Rod Barry off on him after Rod got too violently drunk for me to handle. Our Friday night adventure had ended with Jason telling me that I was "so squeezable" and then drunkenly asking me on the ride home if he and Barrett could gang bang me later in their hotel room. As tempting as 24 inches of cock may be for some people, I politely passed, ran past the nude men in the jacuzzi with their siren song and locked myself alone in my room.
Back at Boardwalk on Saturday making a second run at it and this time in a suit, I stood out like a sore, but wealthy thumb. The solicitous strippers were even more solicitous than usual. While waiting for the porn boys to do their show, so I could poke gentle fun at them later, into the bar walked the most perfect physical manifestation of my "type" that I have ever seen. As if things couldn't get any worse/better. He was blond, with Cory's hunk o' granite forehead, a cute button nose and bee stung Angelina Jolie lips that he kept in a pugnacious snarl at all times. If he had been four inches taller (say 6'2"), I would have kidnapped him and kept him in a dungeon somewhere. His name is "Brock" (may not actually be his real name) and he is apparently a "notorious bottom" and an escort. I was also told he was a complete mess, and when I met him, he was already if not blind drunk, then at least visually impaired intoxicated. He admired my light wool suit, then leaned in to make out with me, and when I tried to have small talk with him, asked me, "Are you going to take me home now?" Ugh! I am only human here.
His friend, who earlier had been nice to me, and bragged about his long friendship with Barrett Long, suddenly grabbed Brock and pulled him close. I heard him hiss in Brock's ear, "You aren't leaving this bar. He only wants to take advantage of you!" I was so offended. I didn't even have a car to take him home in, even if I really really really wanted to. And while I did want to take advantage of him, I certainly didn't mean it in a bad way! People can be so judgmental. He is an escort after all. So I am a bad person for wanting a free throw? I thought I was a celebrity. Didn't my VIP tickets include an open bar, a gift bag and a blow job? I guess he wasn't what GLAAD meant when they mentioned a talent escort for the evening.
Me in a suit, making out with a hot stranger. It just isn't me. Walking red carpets and mingling with people I heretofore have only known in the abstract. Just plain strange. I was still completely beside myself on Sunday when a pair of Broadway actors who listen to the show and happened to be in South Florida at the same time, dropped by pride to meet me. I was still queasy and tired from the night before, and my emcee gig had definitely taken a desperate shticky turn for the worst as they arrived. I couldn't have been at a lower ebb for what I had been looking forward to as the highlight of my weekend.
Kevin plays Scrabulous with me endlessly on Facebook and emails with me regularly, but we had never met before, so our encounter had the happy, excited feel of meeting a junior high school pen pal. But that comparison may be apt only because my tongue was nuclear green from the lollipop I consumed earlier to mask the Munchos aftertaste in my mouth. His boyfriend Chris I knew a little more about because I had read about him and saw him on TV a few times, but virtually all of my interaction up to this point had been with Kevin who I knew less about but somehow knew better, so meeting Chris was weirder for me.
This is difficult to explain in words. I meet people all the time from TV shows or movies or what have you because of my job, but rarely do I meet someone from that world who also listens to the show. Usually, we interview someone who doesn't know anything about us, but we know all about them, in much the same way that listeners meet us at events and know all about our lives but we don't know anything about theirs. So here we were two people who knew each other's resumes basically, and a little more perhaps, but meeting for the first time. It was like a real life version of the old Spy Magazine section Logrolling In Our Time. It was all too much for me.
I know you. You know me. We don't know each other. Maybe it was the heat and humidity after a long cold winter. Maybe it was the 48 surreal hours that had gone before. Real names hidden under porn names. White folder celebrity versus black folder celebrity. Untoward sexual advances from hot strangers. By the time Kevin and Chris arrived, I was mentally throwing in the towel. All I wanted to do was flee to the airport. Being in a strange city, meeting new people, I felt like an astronaut in space who becomes untethered from the ship, and then ever so slowly but quite desperately floats away.
I wanted my boring life back. I just wanted the security that comes with sleeping in my own bed in my house built to withstand a nuclear war with the furniture too heavy to move. When I landed at La Guardia and walked into the parking structure, I was never so happy to see my little beat up old red convertible. And parked right next to it, another little red convertible with a tiny SIRIUS antenna stuck on the trunk, just like mine. It made me happy in that instant because for the first time in three days, I felt like I belonged. Not as someone who talks on the radio, but as just another person in this city that listens. And then I drove home and climbed into bed. And for perhaps a little longer than usual, I was happy.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Sundance With Me
If you are gay, the first Sunday of the Sundance Film Festival is THE day to go. For my money, it is the only day to go. There is plenty of gay stuff that goes on at the festival, harkening back to the early 1990s when gay films won both best documentary and best feature in the same year. It was the birth of modern queer cinema and Sundance has had a healthy gay sheen to it ever since. But at this point, for the casual observer, the big gay parties on Sunday are the reason to come to town.
The fun started yesterday with the Queer Brunch. It is sponsored by HERE! TV so there is usually a nice smattering of HERE! stars there (this year Reichen!) mixed with current and past queer filmmakers, journalists and cute local Utah boys looking for a free meal and sex with an out-of-towner. For me it is a chance to see all the gay people I need to know, but never see because they live in Los Angeles or San Francisco. I dragged my Utah friend Jasey with me because I hate wandering through these things alone.
I saw Reichen of course. He was in good spirits and had even been skiing, so he was having a well-rounded adventure weekend in Park City. Honey Laborador was there, and I hadn't seen her since she filled in for Romaine one week this past summer. Harrison was there, competing with Reichen to be the most tan gay person in town (Harrison won,but Reichen pulls it off better). I ran into Jeremy, actor/indie producer and boyfriend of Chad Allen. The only downside of the big gay Sunday at Sundance is that it is a little bit like a gay cruise. You keep seeing the same people over and over again. So I assured Jeremy that I would see him nine times yesterday. And each time we spotted each other across a knot of homos, I would hold up a number of fingers representing how many times it had been at that point.
All my usual HERE! friends were at the brunch especially Chris and Josh (Ben Harvey is of course enroute to Borneo so he couldn't make it) who were working and spent most of the morning looking frazzled and irritated. Having worked this same party planning job at a movie studio, I know that everyone has fun at the party but you. And party guests take the whole thing WAAAAAAAY too seriously. It's just a room full of people, some free cocktails and a gift bag. No one but you cares that your free Ginch Gonch underwear isn't in your size or match your eye color.
From the Queer Brunch, Jasey and I had some time to kill so we met my dad for lunch at a szechwan place in Park City. Still missing Panda Express (always), I ordered the orange-flavored chicken. It was okay, but not the same. Like the bbq patty at Subway just isn't a McRib (which is back in Utah and I might have ordered two on Friday and will have another two today and, if my heart doesn't stop, two tomorrow on my way to the airport). Then it was off to the Queer Lounge for the GLAAD "And The Nominees Are..." party (thanks Ross for the shout out).
Romaine and I have an interesting relationship with GLAAD. She used to work there and when the Advocate went to town on them a couple of years ago, Romaine happily threw in her two cents on record. Last year, our show joined the folks at HERE! in condemning the old rules for getting a GLAAD award (The L Word, a show about gay people created by a gay person and appearing on a Viacom network was eligible, but Noah's Arc, a show about gay people created by a gay person and appearing on a Viacom network was ineligible). However, GLAAD has since changed the rules, for the better I might add, to reflect 21st century media and I am pleased with the change. But when I finally met the head of GLAAD Neil Giuliano (who is a lovely and handsome man, by the way) there was a sudden glimmer of recognition in his face as I was talking and all of our past transgressions as a show flashed before his eyes. That being said, Damon Romine, who works at GLAAD listens to and loves our show and he assured me I was on the list for the party this year.
Jasey and I waited patiently outside for the GLAAD party and when the doors opened up, it turns out I wasn't on the list after all. Fortunately, Damon Romine was within earshot and cascaded down the stairs in his best Hostest With The Mostest mode and whisked us past security right to the (much to my surprise) photo line! Last year no one took my photo at the event, but this year I was ushered into the press room like an actual celebrity and posed for a photo with Neil Giuliano! I felt like a star! What can I say? I am easily pleased and impressed and true to my previous assertion, Sundance is the place where a C list celebrity goes to be treated like an A list celebrity. Although in my case, it is a place where a nobody can be treated like a C list celebrity, which is good enough for me!
I spotted Jeremy for the seventh and last time at the GLAAD party. I was certain I would see him later at my fourth and last party of the night but I guess he got tired of my mug and called it quits. Rex Lee from Entourage was there to announce the nominees and I didn't get to say hi. He is a sweet guy and never misses an opportunity to harass Romaine on our show about her continued refusal to see his show. My old HERE! friends (plus new HERE! friends Billy and Ross) were happy to see that they had been nominated this year. Later, Damon wandered over to our group of three and said "congratulations on all of you being nominated this year" and then he turned to me. I pretended to burst into tears because of course everyone was nominated in the group but me. "We don't have a radio category," Damon offered, "but maybe next year." Whatever. Just getting into the party filled with free booze was award enough for me. Plus, there was a giftbag, and on our way out, they gave us each two of them!
After the GLAAD party, things started to get really weird. At the event, we met a couple of guys named Don and Mike. Mike was soooo cute and very flirty. They were both corporate lawyers which would normally mean lame, but they were actually really fun. So Jasey and I went with them to the Turning Leaf lounge, along with Josh from HERE, who had some time to kill before his dinner with Paris Hilton. Turning Leaf has the best scam in town. It is a party where you pay a dollar to get in and you get up to six free glasses of Turning Leaf wine or Stella Artois beer, as determined by hash marks on your wristband. But if you are a dedicated alcoholic, you can just rip off your wristband, pay another dollar, walk in off the street and start the process again. We all got good and boozed up at the event. Jasey met some rappers in super awesome fur coats who thought he was great and wanted him to fly with them to Vegas in their private jet for the night. I was sober enough to realize that this was a very bad idea. What if he accidentally got separated from them and was stranded in Vegas. It was all very shady but exhilarating.
Josh left us at the party and from there the four of us went off to a premiere party for a movie called Portland that was up in The Yurt, a tent-like structure up in the middle of nowhere that required a van ride and a Snowcat to get to. While waiting at the Yarrow for the vans to take us to the Snowcat, I winnowed down my four GLAAD giftbags that I had been carrying all night, down to one big gift bag filled with the stuff I cared about. The other three, I abandoned like orphans in the lobby of the hotel. We piled into the van and then from there climbed into a giant sixteen person Snowcat for a harrowing ride through the snowy wilderness. It was a night fraught with danger and excitement and our intense intoxication only made it more heightened.
Once at The Yurt we were greeted by a large empty room with a bartender, an open bar, and a chock-filled chocolate fondue station. The four of us chatted aimiably and flirted a bit with the other three homos (Craig, Craig and Craig) who had joined us on our journey to the middle of nowhere. All of us wanted to get to the final party of the night for Paris Hilton's new movie "Hottie Or Nottie" but the Snowcat only came once every 20 minutes so timing was everything. I traipsed out into the snow to find the heated portapotty and along the way was creeped out by a lone radio speaker near an abandoned ski lift playing music to an empty area. In my head I thought, "if this was a horror movie, this is the point where the deranged killer with the axe would come out of nowhere and hack me up just outside of earshot of my friends partying in The Yurt."
Instead of serial killers, we were instead greeted by more alcohol and a few other stragglers who came in on the Snowcat. Don and Mike joined Jasey and I out on the abandoned ski lift where we all took a series of outrageous drunken photos. Moments later, the Snowcat arrived and we all tried to make our escape. The three Craigs joined us in a van headed down the hill, but Mike and Don somehow got lost in the shuffle and were last seen boozing it up in the warmth of The Yurt. In the van on the way down the hill, while lamenting the loss of Mike and Don, I realized I also left my GLAAD giftbag behind as well. Three hours of lugging that crap around only to leave it in a yurt.
We arrived at the Paris Hilton party just before 11pm. Chris from HERE! had said the party would start between ten and ten-thirty, so eleven was the perfect time to get there. And then we waited. An hour! In the freezing cold and snow. My toes froze solid. But we waited patiently in the guest list line, all the while watching people who didn't wait patiently, get ushered into the party. Finally, we got up to the front and lo and behold for the third time that day (including the Queer Brunch), I wasn't on the list again. Finally I spotted Josh out on the balcony and begged him to come down and rescue us from the relative obscurity of the gutter we were told to wait in.
Once inside, we warmed up, but were still pretty cranky about the whole thing. The party was in full swing and Paris was still there. Jasey really wanted a photo with her but I had a feeling that was going to be pretty impossible. She was in a private area and only emerged briefly to leave. She strode out of the area into the heart of the party with her arms in the air, giant grin on her face, and a determined strut out of the party. I must say, it was a high quality exit. Jasey did get his photo with Reichen, which was a fair substitute. And by the time they threw us out at 1:30am, I was all partied out. After fourteen hours straight with the same gay people, I was really ready to go home.
Overall, it was a very successful day at Sundance. I met plenty of fun and cute people. Had a few drinks. And even though I was allowed to feel like a celebrity for a few fleeting moments. I was repeatedly reminded that I wasn't all that famous after all. In the end, I don't mind. I much prefer being an ordinary citizen to being famous. Paris may have had a good time at her own party, but she didn't get to meet anyone new or interesting or just hang out in a corner and have a conversation about why the gays prefer Hillary to Barack. But I suppose that is the difference between us. That and millions of dollars and hotness.
The fun started yesterday with the Queer Brunch. It is sponsored by HERE! TV so there is usually a nice smattering of HERE! stars there (this year Reichen!) mixed with current and past queer filmmakers, journalists and cute local Utah boys looking for a free meal and sex with an out-of-towner. For me it is a chance to see all the gay people I need to know, but never see because they live in Los Angeles or San Francisco. I dragged my Utah friend Jasey with me because I hate wandering through these things alone.
I saw Reichen of course. He was in good spirits and had even been skiing, so he was having a well-rounded adventure weekend in Park City. Honey Laborador was there, and I hadn't seen her since she filled in for Romaine one week this past summer. Harrison was there, competing with Reichen to be the most tan gay person in town (Harrison won,but Reichen pulls it off better). I ran into Jeremy, actor/indie producer and boyfriend of Chad Allen. The only downside of the big gay Sunday at Sundance is that it is a little bit like a gay cruise. You keep seeing the same people over and over again. So I assured Jeremy that I would see him nine times yesterday. And each time we spotted each other across a knot of homos, I would hold up a number of fingers representing how many times it had been at that point.
All my usual HERE! friends were at the brunch especially Chris and Josh (Ben Harvey is of course enroute to Borneo so he couldn't make it) who were working and spent most of the morning looking frazzled and irritated. Having worked this same party planning job at a movie studio, I know that everyone has fun at the party but you. And party guests take the whole thing WAAAAAAAY too seriously. It's just a room full of people, some free cocktails and a gift bag. No one but you cares that your free Ginch Gonch underwear isn't in your size or match your eye color.
From the Queer Brunch, Jasey and I had some time to kill so we met my dad for lunch at a szechwan place in Park City. Still missing Panda Express (always), I ordered the orange-flavored chicken. It was okay, but not the same. Like the bbq patty at Subway just isn't a McRib (which is back in Utah and I might have ordered two on Friday and will have another two today and, if my heart doesn't stop, two tomorrow on my way to the airport). Then it was off to the Queer Lounge for the GLAAD "And The Nominees Are..." party (thanks Ross for the shout out).
Romaine and I have an interesting relationship with GLAAD. She used to work there and when the Advocate went to town on them a couple of years ago, Romaine happily threw in her two cents on record. Last year, our show joined the folks at HERE! in condemning the old rules for getting a GLAAD award (The L Word, a show about gay people created by a gay person and appearing on a Viacom network was eligible, but Noah's Arc, a show about gay people created by a gay person and appearing on a Viacom network was ineligible). However, GLAAD has since changed the rules, for the better I might add, to reflect 21st century media and I am pleased with the change. But when I finally met the head of GLAAD Neil Giuliano (who is a lovely and handsome man, by the way) there was a sudden glimmer of recognition in his face as I was talking and all of our past transgressions as a show flashed before his eyes. That being said, Damon Romine, who works at GLAAD listens to and loves our show and he assured me I was on the list for the party this year.
Jasey and I waited patiently outside for the GLAAD party and when the doors opened up, it turns out I wasn't on the list after all. Fortunately, Damon Romine was within earshot and cascaded down the stairs in his best Hostest With The Mostest mode and whisked us past security right to the (much to my surprise) photo line! Last year no one took my photo at the event, but this year I was ushered into the press room like an actual celebrity and posed for a photo with Neil Giuliano! I felt like a star! What can I say? I am easily pleased and impressed and true to my previous assertion, Sundance is the place where a C list celebrity goes to be treated like an A list celebrity. Although in my case, it is a place where a nobody can be treated like a C list celebrity, which is good enough for me!
I spotted Jeremy for the seventh and last time at the GLAAD party. I was certain I would see him later at my fourth and last party of the night but I guess he got tired of my mug and called it quits. Rex Lee from Entourage was there to announce the nominees and I didn't get to say hi. He is a sweet guy and never misses an opportunity to harass Romaine on our show about her continued refusal to see his show. My old HERE! friends (plus new HERE! friends Billy and Ross) were happy to see that they had been nominated this year. Later, Damon wandered over to our group of three and said "congratulations on all of you being nominated this year" and then he turned to me. I pretended to burst into tears because of course everyone was nominated in the group but me. "We don't have a radio category," Damon offered, "but maybe next year." Whatever. Just getting into the party filled with free booze was award enough for me. Plus, there was a giftbag, and on our way out, they gave us each two of them!
After the GLAAD party, things started to get really weird. At the event, we met a couple of guys named Don and Mike. Mike was soooo cute and very flirty. They were both corporate lawyers which would normally mean lame, but they were actually really fun. So Jasey and I went with them to the Turning Leaf lounge, along with Josh from HERE, who had some time to kill before his dinner with Paris Hilton. Turning Leaf has the best scam in town. It is a party where you pay a dollar to get in and you get up to six free glasses of Turning Leaf wine or Stella Artois beer, as determined by hash marks on your wristband. But if you are a dedicated alcoholic, you can just rip off your wristband, pay another dollar, walk in off the street and start the process again. We all got good and boozed up at the event. Jasey met some rappers in super awesome fur coats who thought he was great and wanted him to fly with them to Vegas in their private jet for the night. I was sober enough to realize that this was a very bad idea. What if he accidentally got separated from them and was stranded in Vegas. It was all very shady but exhilarating.
Josh left us at the party and from there the four of us went off to a premiere party for a movie called Portland that was up in The Yurt, a tent-like structure up in the middle of nowhere that required a van ride and a Snowcat to get to. While waiting at the Yarrow for the vans to take us to the Snowcat, I winnowed down my four GLAAD giftbags that I had been carrying all night, down to one big gift bag filled with the stuff I cared about. The other three, I abandoned like orphans in the lobby of the hotel. We piled into the van and then from there climbed into a giant sixteen person Snowcat for a harrowing ride through the snowy wilderness. It was a night fraught with danger and excitement and our intense intoxication only made it more heightened.
Once at The Yurt we were greeted by a large empty room with a bartender, an open bar, and a chock-filled chocolate fondue station. The four of us chatted aimiably and flirted a bit with the other three homos (Craig, Craig and Craig) who had joined us on our journey to the middle of nowhere. All of us wanted to get to the final party of the night for Paris Hilton's new movie "Hottie Or Nottie" but the Snowcat only came once every 20 minutes so timing was everything. I traipsed out into the snow to find the heated portapotty and along the way was creeped out by a lone radio speaker near an abandoned ski lift playing music to an empty area. In my head I thought, "if this was a horror movie, this is the point where the deranged killer with the axe would come out of nowhere and hack me up just outside of earshot of my friends partying in The Yurt."
Instead of serial killers, we were instead greeted by more alcohol and a few other stragglers who came in on the Snowcat. Don and Mike joined Jasey and I out on the abandoned ski lift where we all took a series of outrageous drunken photos. Moments later, the Snowcat arrived and we all tried to make our escape. The three Craigs joined us in a van headed down the hill, but Mike and Don somehow got lost in the shuffle and were last seen boozing it up in the warmth of The Yurt. In the van on the way down the hill, while lamenting the loss of Mike and Don, I realized I also left my GLAAD giftbag behind as well. Three hours of lugging that crap around only to leave it in a yurt.
We arrived at the Paris Hilton party just before 11pm. Chris from HERE! had said the party would start between ten and ten-thirty, so eleven was the perfect time to get there. And then we waited. An hour! In the freezing cold and snow. My toes froze solid. But we waited patiently in the guest list line, all the while watching people who didn't wait patiently, get ushered into the party. Finally, we got up to the front and lo and behold for the third time that day (including the Queer Brunch), I wasn't on the list again. Finally I spotted Josh out on the balcony and begged him to come down and rescue us from the relative obscurity of the gutter we were told to wait in.
Once inside, we warmed up, but were still pretty cranky about the whole thing. The party was in full swing and Paris was still there. Jasey really wanted a photo with her but I had a feeling that was going to be pretty impossible. She was in a private area and only emerged briefly to leave. She strode out of the area into the heart of the party with her arms in the air, giant grin on her face, and a determined strut out of the party. I must say, it was a high quality exit. Jasey did get his photo with Reichen, which was a fair substitute. And by the time they threw us out at 1:30am, I was all partied out. After fourteen hours straight with the same gay people, I was really ready to go home.
Overall, it was a very successful day at Sundance. I met plenty of fun and cute people. Had a few drinks. And even though I was allowed to feel like a celebrity for a few fleeting moments. I was repeatedly reminded that I wasn't all that famous after all. In the end, I don't mind. I much prefer being an ordinary citizen to being famous. Paris may have had a good time at her own party, but she didn't get to meet anyone new or interesting or just hang out in a corner and have a conversation about why the gays prefer Hillary to Barack. But I suppose that is the difference between us. That and millions of dollars and hotness.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)