Holidays and Nights

“Will you have enough to write about tonight?” Matty asked as we positioned ourselves dangerously close to a table filled with cookies. We were both back in Chris Stadler’s cozy elegant apartment in the West Village and it felt good to be back. It is the holiday season in New York and even though the tourists are everywhere, like cockroaches with strollers, it is a wonderful time of year. In fact, it is truly the best time of year to be in Manhattan.

Yes, that first flush of spring is amazing, after a long dark winter, when the tulips and daffodils spread along the avenues like a beautiful infection. Easter this year was as pristine and delightful as any classic MGM musical. And when the air turns crisp in the fall and you finally get to unearth your favorite sweaters and watch the pumpkins sprout along 34th street, there is a certain palpable excitement. But the gaudy fabulous storefronts of Fifth Avenue and the oversized Christmas decorations on Sixth Avenue and the rush of merry holiday parties can’t be beat. We know we are all in for a hell of a winter but at least we are all in it together. That togetherness in the face of near constant adversity is the beating heart of New York life. Plus there is always plenty of vodka to keep us warm.

It is Shay’s birthday so throwing a combination holiday party is in order every year. I went to the party with Matty and Andrew, and brought Pittsburgh Chris along since he is still in town. We started with a pre-cocktail in their apartment, under the blazing lights of their newly erected Christmas tree while, for our collective amusement, Matty opened my book to a random page and read aloud the opening paragraphs of the chapter about his own dog’s first birthday party. During the story, Parker stood by expectantly with a plush toy shaped like a carrot in her mouth.

The whole scene in Matty’s apartment was like an ad for a high end retailer, and the catalog fantasy life continued minutes later as we burst into Chris’ apartment, where we were greeted immediately by his cheerful boyfriend Brent, dressed sharply with a holiday bowtie. He and Chris had coordinating looks, similar but different, like the paintings of sailboats that adorn the front hall. Chris’ hunk of a roommate (and former upstairs neighbor) Mike was packed tightly in a dress shirt and tie, although his tie clip spent the entire evening trying to escape his ensemble, clinging to every sweater it was pressed against in the increasingly crowded apartment.

Chris, Brent and Mike took turns in the kitchen working as bartenders to keep a sense of order, which is very important in a party like this. Most of the food was positioned not far from the alcohol in the kitchen. And combined with using the bed in the bedroom behind the kitchen as the final resting place of the mounting stack of coats created a chaotic traffic jam of laughter, spilled drinks and thwarted ambitions for those who wished to pass. While in the thick of this mess one drunk was a second away from accusing me of trying to put something in his drink, when I was merely trying to right the damned thing before it filled my entire shoe with gin.

I expected to see Gray, who is in town, although he ended up not making it to the party. That worked out well for me because I wouldn’t have been able to write about him anyway. Also there was Erik, who was unhappy with what I wrote last time I saw him, even though, like Gray, he wasn't upset about what I said about him, he was upset about the rest of the content of the entry. Oh well. Par for the course I guess. Matty observed that my blog does have the habit of upsetting people, but I have no qualms about that because what I write is true and I don’t try to portray myself as a nice person along the way because I’m not.

While Gray and Erik have not been happy with being written about, I have no way of knowing how Daniel feels about it. Like Charlie before him, Daniel has been the source of long distance observation for some time now, always in the confines of The Park on Thursday nights. But then suddenly there he was in Chris’ apartment, looking as handsome as ever. We were in close quarters a few times, but never actually spoke. Maybe he didn’t know it was me. I hope so. The party was so much fun, the last thing I wanted was to be confronted by a stranger, even if it was totally justified.

It was an evening filled with pleasant surprises. Hermit Matt, a radio show caller from Arizona who earlier this year I encouraged to take a job in NYC and then snubbed horribly in person at Therapy bar a few short days later, made his appearance on the scene with his hot roommate Trey. I did my best to be my most charming and gregarious self to make up for actually being the real me last time. Aside from Pittsburgh Chris, he wasn’t the only listener at the party. It turned out that a cute blond named Kevin, in the city from New Jersey with another gay named Nathan, recognized me from the sound of my voice. That is a problem. I need to work on a new in-person voice to keep my relative anonymity intact.

After dismembering a gingerbread man with my savage teeth like a character in a Saw movie, I looked up and saw a familiar face making his way into the kitchen. There was Conor blowing kisses to me across a crowded room, his regulation black NY coat still on over his fashionable shawl collar sweater. And standing behind him was his pal Andrew, who is my favorite inconsequential flirt. In a town full of men I flirt with without intent, he is the best at it.

I hated to say good bye mere moments after saying hello, especially with Andrew so handsy, but we had already been at the party for three hours, even if it had blinked by in a flurry of baked brie and Christmas sweaters. I pushed my way through the crowd to the bedroom and joined some others in the vain attempt at finding our coats in the melee on the bed. It all looked like a bin at the Barney’s Warehouse Sale, with a dozen hands circled around clawing and tossing for just the right thing. For an instant, I worried that my beloved grey wool coat had been purloined, as happened to me at Robbie’s party eight years ago. But suddenly, as I voiced my concerns out loud to the disbelieving crowd, I fished it forth from the debris and triumphantly raised it over my head to thunderous cheers.

By now, Conor had made his escape to the living room. As I hugged him good bye, he pulled me close and whispered in my ear, “Tell me everything that is happening with you in thirty seconds.” I caught him up on all the sudden fame in my life: my walk-on role on Days of our Lives, being in the OUT 100 this year. And then I started to tell him a story about a mutual acquaintance. He stopped me short. “I hate [him]!” he declared emphatically. While I don’t share the strength of his disapproval, I too disapprove just the same. One not nice person to another, [he] is just no good.

As I journeyed out of the apartment with Matty and Andrew, we passed Chris and Mike separately on the stairs. Mike was now without his tie. “Did you take off your tie or did the tie clip finally succeed in attaching itself to someone’s sweater on its own?” I asked as he walked by. “Finally!” he called out cryptically and then was gone. Down on the street we ran into Grant and a female friend who was smoking and didn’t seem to mind at all the brisk night air. It turns out that Grant will also be in Utah in the post Christmas frame, along with Matty and Andrew and me. I couldn’t have been happier. December 27th, we hit the slopes in Park City and it will be grand! As much as I love New York, it is ultimately won or lost on the strength of the friendships you make there. And if you can take them with you, out on the town or even all the way to the Rockies, all the better.

Glitter And Be Gray

It never occurred to me that this post would end up being about Gray. After all, I hardly know him. And in most of my blog entries, he is a secondary figure, mostly lurking in the shadows. I have made fleeting references here and there but he has never been the subject. Not even a featured player really. If anything, a dress extra. We aren’t even Facebook friends! But suddenly the episode has turned out all about him, even in his own fleeting way.

Last night started out as usual. My annual Spring ritual of returning to Bowery Bar on the first decent Tuesday evening of the year. I try to make it downtown at least twice a year. Once in the Spring and finally on what appears to be the last good Indian Summer night of the Fall. The latter is much harder to time. As I have written before, Beige, like the gay men who attend, is a fair weather friend. You don’t want to rely on it for anything important. It is just there to be fun and pretty and forgotten quickly when things turn dark.

I wanted to spend the evening with Matt Kugelman since Bowery Bar is where we met last year. I was out with Clayton and we rescued poor innocent Matt from standing on one of those sidewalk gratings out front. This began a quick but frankly awesome friendship. And he was there, already drunk when I arrived, with his friend Chip. But they didn’t last long. Moments later, I turned around and they were gone. Later I got some text messages from Matt about a raunchy burp and tequila. Enough said!

Fortunately, I ran into Chris and Cub, who were standing with that hot bartender Aaron who loves my show. One of the few gay men in NYC that has heard it and he is hot too! What a bonus. I first met Chris and Cub at Ben Harvey’s alliterative birthday brunch and spoke more with Chris than with Cub. This time around, Cub and I got into deep far-reaching conversations about the role of academia in the ongoing collapse of the American Empire. He thought they should change from majors to interests to better match the world at large while I wondered if they could even change fast enough with our rapidly evolving times. And I wondered if Americans were adept enough to adapt to a world changing so quickly around them now that they have no skills. Kind of deep for a bar that serves up nearly as many cocktails on a Tuesday night as it does new cases of syphilis.

Well all of that didn’t last long because they had to run out of there, dodging some crazy drunk mess like a creditor. That left me standing alone in the bar once again. Earlier I had spotted Gray and walking in right behind him, Matty. I knew they were still in the bar somewhere. But where? I sent Matty some text messages. No response. A few laps and I was about to throw in the towel. Finally, I found them, hiding in the SE corner of the bar, down where I never go because that outside bar doesn’t stock peach schnapps so I can never get a sex on the beach there.

Matty and Gray were huddled in a deep conversation of their own, too deep for me to want to wade into. So I hung back with trim marathon runner Andrew. His eyes looked especially blue but he also seemed a little weary of the whole bar thing. Beige can do that to you. He was standing with a guy I have met before but didn’t remember the name of. The guy said I was cute but then got annoyed that I lived upstate, basically implying that I was cruelly waving goods in front of people like they were available only to snatch them out of grasp seconds later. It turns out that he was quite drunk, like all the men that flirt with me are, and as soon as Matty and Gray finished their huddle, they dispatched him quickly to the nearest exit, and one assumes rehab facility.

We all wandered a bit and ended up hanging out with Jared who does the Sexy Back Thursdays @ The Park party with Matty. I had never met him before, but Matty took a snazzy photo of him in front of the Bowery Bar sign. I talked a bit with Andrew and give him my theory about why I thought Bowery Bar was still a success after all these years. “It’s the tables,” I told him. “They leave them out and it makes it impossible to get around. But that also makes everyone easy to see but hard to attain. A challenge. So the place always feels packed and the guys are always just a little out of your reach.” He liked my theory and I have to say, it was pretty good. Better than my academic musings with Cub where I, as a lowly college dropout, was way out of my league. My major in college? Sleeping in and skipping my morning classes.

Andrew wasn’t drinking and was feeling a lot of pressure to be drunk like everyone else. Bowery Bar is a peer pressure kind of place, as Cub pointed out earlier referencing his own flip flops in a sea of trendy Converse shoes. I always seem to be swimming against the tide on points like this, even if Babst has accused me in the past about caring more about fitting in than I like to let on. As for sobriety however, I have to admit, I was on Andrew’s side on this one. Being around drunk gays is no fun if you are sober. They are so annoying and messy and obvious. Which oddly enough brings me back to Gray.

I love the movie “Defending Your Life” and in it Buck Henry has a short scene as Albert Brooks’ fill-in attorney: Dick Stanley. “He’s a good man. Quiet but effective.” That’s Gray. He plays it all very close to the vest. He is like the polar opposite of me. My emotions are like weather patterns moving across a Doppler radar map. If severe thunderstorms are on the horizon, you know it! But Gray gives you nothing. He is probably an excellent poker player. When he wants to give you blank, that’s what you get. He is the master of the expressionless expression. And what a contrast to Matty and his whirling dervish of vitality. Gray fascinates me because he is like a neatly wrapped present that you can’t quite pull the bow off of. You want to know what is inside but you can’t get past the beautifully constructed exterior.

And then he was gone. A lovely soft kiss good bye and then a blur into the hazy crowd of gay chattering. Matty was dragging Andrew out of there too, though he was more than willing to make a run for it on his own. I piled into a cab and headed uptown to my waiting car in the parking garage around the corner from my office. My long drives back to the suburbs always give me time to reflect. It made me wish for a moment that I was an international man of mystery like Gray. But then I realized, in my twice yearly appearances at Bowery Bar in my wrong shoes and nine dollar shirts, I already am. So maybe in one small way, Gray and I have something in common. And I don’t mind that at all.