In One Year And Out The Other

I have spent a lot of time at The Park lately, now that it is Matty’s new haunt. He hosts a monthly party which is a nice excuse for me to get out of the house every once in a while and update my semi-annual blog. I feel a lot of pressure to go out just so I can have something to write about, especially as I see a particularly empty month sitting lonely and forlorn in the blog archives. That is the funny thing about the passing of time. You don’t really notice it until it’s already done.

So it’s been another year since Matty’s last birthday. As I recall, I haven’t been around for many of them. Thanks to timing I am usually off at some pride event somewhere on the same weekend that he chooses to celebrate. For the last five years it has been the same routine. Matty gets excited telling me that his party is coming up and I dash his hopes by not being around. It’s not that he doesn’t have a zillion other friends, after all he was able to launch a popular club night right out of his iPhone contacts. That’s all fine for any run of the mill Thursday but when it is a special occasion you want all of your favorite people around.

Last night at The Park, there were so many gay men that I knew there that it would probably be easier to just list the four gay men I know that weren’t there. I invited Matt Kugelman to join me, speaking of people who have plenty of other friends, and we cabbed it down after the show. I have been trying to keep my strongest yenta urges under wraps and play it cool on my feverish desire to marry him off to someone. However, as primer, I casually dropped subtle questions like “so, is there anything wrong with you?” to see if I could get a better idea of what kind of guy to eventually lock him in a small closet with to see what develops. The problem with someone like Kugie is that he is something of a universal donor. He would be the perfect boyfriend for almost anyone, which makes it hard to distinguish who he would actually be good for. You can’t tell if you are reacting to genuine chemistry with him, or feeling the effects of the same magnetism that draws everyone else to him too.

We walked into the upstairs lounge and headed off to get drinks, though I was instantly way laid by the crowd. Everyone I knew was there! Kugelman gentled chided me about my fame and popularity but it is really Matty’s popularity and my proximity. Big difference. John Saldivar had joined up with Roommate for dinner first (aka margaritas) and they were already there, drinks in hand, when we walked in. Young Bradford was the night’s DJ, working twice as hard as usual, assaying both Samantha Ronson and Lindsay Lohan, all while perching frantically in front of a large aquarium. Ben Harvey and Dennis Hensley were talking while Gray walked behind them like Hamlet’s ghost. Every time I turned my head someone else was right there. My former boss’s old assistant from 2001! Corey Johnson! That guy I accidentally slept with last year and his resentful boyfriend! Then suddenly I realized I had lost Matt in the deep end of the gay ocean!

I ventured further into the lounge, shoving through the crush of bodies with my usual mantra “lady with a baby!” Sometimes if I am really in a hurry, I yell “Is that Madonna?” which might have incited a fire in a crowded theater style riot in the early 90s but these days hardly warrants the energy it takes to lift a heavy eye lid. Along the way I found the birthday boy and Hanno, visiting once again from Austria. Also standing with them was long distance runner Andrew, him of the crisp button down plaid shirts and zero body fat. I hugged them all profusely but left just as quickly as I arrived to find Kugie and my coke. Finally he texted me wondering where I was, worried perhaps that I had invited him to a bar just to ditch him the moment someone better came along. I sent him a message back to meet me at the aquarium, and reveled in how much better life is now that we can so easily rendezvous in crowded public places thanks to our modern conveniences. It was a God-send later at the bar when I needed to get Roommate a beer and his favorite wasn’t on the list. A short txt message later and a substitute “Heiny” was on its way.

At the aquarium, we chatted up Bradford, who snapped a photo of us while we stood on what felt like a very rickety futon. Apparently deprived as a child of furniture to jump on, Matt seemed to delight in bouncing on the couch that I was certain might give way underneath us at any moment. Brian Babst was there and I grilled him quickly about the terrible Star Magazine photo swirling around Facebook that morning of his real estate client Rupert Everett. “Just make-up” he sighed of the photo on the set of Martha Stewart’s show that a plastic surgeon “expert” insisted looked like $25,000 of work done badly. I noted that Brian’s shoulders were a solid mass of muscle when I hugged him and put my head lovingly on his neck like I always do. Memorial Day weekend must be nearer than I thought. I suppose it is time to get ourselves into order.

More and more people kept pouring in. Kenneth In The (212) blogger Ken wandered by on his way to meet up with Misadventures In The (213) author Dennis. Chuck finally arrived after a series of frantic “are you sure you are going to be there” text messages. Ben Harvey and ADD Jeff and on and on. My head was spinning from all the familiar faces. A guy I didn’t know and I don’t remember meeting before came up to me and grilled me about my blog. I think he was hoping for a spontaneous mention, but I didn’t even get his name and now he would be impossible to find. Sorry you. Apparently I also met a hot guy named Andrew but didn’t remember it when he tried to add me later on Facebook. After I sent him my standard form letter denying FB friendship and directing him to my fan page he turned belligerent. “We met on Thursday… you’re a douche.” Both grammatically and factually accurate. I can’t argue with logic like that.

Maybe this blog is more trouble than it’s worth. The more people I meet, the harder it is to remember all of their names and keep them all straight. Who did I miss from this blog entry? Who will be upset? Who will be relieved? It’s exhausting. And after nine years of FantasyMan Island and several years of this chronicle, I have to ask when will the remembrance of things past end? Matty is the one a year older but I am the one feeling the miles trying to keep all these cocktail glasses in the air. I was never a party animal and though we have all been dumped into the same gay aquarium, swimming around feverishly gets exhausting after a while. A few laps around the bar and I was ready to go back to my ceramic castle. At what point do you surrender and just float belly up to the surface of the water, waiting for someone to scoop you up and take you away from it all? The big flush is coming! Enjoy the bubbles while you can.

Life With(Out) Matty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

People You May Know

Facebook has a box (recently co-opted by MySpace and others) called People You May Know, which shows the profiles of others connected to you through multiple friends on the service. This would be useful if people only connected to their nearest and dearest but since generally these seem to be the sites of endlessly intensive popularity contests, that is not the case. However, the party I attended down at Le Lupanar tonight was like the living embodiment of People You May Know.

I was invited by adorable Rob Banning, who works with me by way of the Martha Stewart cult. Rob endured a particularly amusing and exhausting trip with me to the Olive Garden some weeks back with a very drunken Michelle Collins and her equally drunk gay who was at that intoxicating level of inebriation where he could no longer tell how incredibly loud he was when he talked. Despite (are perhaps because of) that, we have developed a fast friendship. Rob was also at the Cabanas last Friday though I failed to blog about him. Rob has a gorgeous amount of style, a tasteful retro 80s preppiness without the trashy flash, all quaint bowties and catalog-ready long woolen scarves.

Tonight Rob greeted me at the door in a sleek red cardigan and that winning Sphinx smile of his that gives away nothing. The party was a sea of dark colors, save for Rob and me in my red tank shirt from Otter Fashion. For just a moment I didn’t feel so alone. The party was the whitest cream cheesy smooth collection of J. Crew boys I had ever seen, mixed with a smattering of Asians, a few chic young women and three impossibly handsome black men (aka argyle sweater, Club Monaco pullover, and tight green Polo). If it hadn’t been so dimly lit and filled with Beyonce songs, I would have sworn I was at a Harvard MBA mixer. Everyone had the kind of feckless smooth skin usually reserved for after photos in a Proactive infomercial. I’ve never felt so “ethnic” before in my life, awash in my glaring bohemia. That I met at least three men named Blake should come as no surprise to anyone.

Almost immediately, I ran into Hooper from work. Hooper, no stranger himself to this post-post gay narrow tie and vest set, always manages to be a relaxing figure for me in these environs. Maybe because we spend occasional quiet time in the flat unforgiving light of the office, when I make the arduous journey across the building from the sloppy “creative” side to the otherworldly quiet corporate side that is for most of the on-air personalities at SIRIUS as unknown to them personally as the land of Oz. I spent some time with Hooper upstairs before he decided to see what the heretofore unseen basement had to offer.

I decided to wait upstairs, still expecting to see Terry Goldman, who I had invited to join me at the party. Terry never made it, but while waiting, a parade of familiar faces came through the door. It turned out, there were people I did know, mixed in with the people I may know. Corey Johnson was first, and like most of the guests, also in a suit. As usual, he was flitting around bridging the gap between the moneyed A gays who hovered around the edges and the pretty boys who were up and coming in the centers of the rooms. Conor bounded in from the rainy night, embracing me in his warm loveliness. Moments later, almost as if on cue, Matty arrived with Hanno. Upon seeing Matty I knew the night would be fun.

After Matty and Hanno ditched their coats, we pushed through the crowd of familiar faces, recognized from a million Facebook Fire Island photo galleries and fundraiser party pix and headed for the basement. Hooper had since gone upstairs to throw himself on the mercy of a white U-shaped couch. But Chris was there, last seen in his apartment throwing a party of Shay, and we all had a round of drinks together. The basement was just like the upstairs but slightly less crowded and slightly hotter with a more accessible bar and longer bathroom line.

I had a nice chat with Chris and the usual laughs with Matty, but I was anxious the whole time. Something about the party had me on edge and I had a hard time shaking it. Maybe it was the waiting for Terry, or the juggling of Conor and Matty so they were never within drink throwing distance. Whatever it was, something felt not right, and then it went haywire because I think a guy started hitting on me. It’s hard to say.

After our first round of drinks, we all headed back upstairs, and while standing near the edge of the bar, a guy came up to me and started talking. We had met briefly at the front door when he first arrived, and in the jumble of last names as first names that wafted through the entryway like a stiff winter breeze as usual I did not immediately retain his name. (Finley, is that you?) He was handsome, intense of eye, looking without seeing in that way that denotes a still functional yet high level of intoxication. I made a reference to Douglas Sirk that I am quite certain he didn’t get. Then, in discussing his neighborhood, he said “It’s Chinatown” in a sly way that made me think he was quoting Robert Towne’s screenplay but moments later he continued his discussion of the neighborhood in a way that made me think he might not even have seen the movie.

We talked a bit about New York City, and how nice it is when it first snows and the city is covered in that white blanket that calms everything and covers all the grime…for fifteen minutes. That’s the trouble with Manhattan, I told him, nothing good here lasts. You have to enjoy it in the time you have it because you never know when it might be gone. We were rueful about it for a moment, but later as I walked to the venerable Grand Central on my way home; I looked up at the Chrysler Building and smiled. Chrysler itself may be gone soon enough, but the building remains. Nothing in New York City is permanent, but some things are the nearest thing to forever that we have. And in that moment, looking up at the glistening white lights in the hazy night sky, I savored it. Maybe things went right after all.

Blogged And Tagged

This Sunday marks the finale of another season of my beloved Amazing Race. Even now as I blog from a taxi speeding across a deserted Manhattan in the predawn hours on my way to JFK, I can imagine that I am on the race. As it was, my night out on the town was in its own way a series of challenges, each task completed with the same level of happy satisfaction one would imagine I would employ on CBS primetime. The final challenge being a simple choice: Blogged or Tagged. In this Detour, contestants choose between blogging their adventure out on the town or taking a series of photos to be uploaded and tagged on Facebook. As expected, I chose blogging while Matty’s team went for tagging.

It all started innocently enough at Vlada with Original Jonathan. Initially we were going to have a drink and a snack at Vynl, but that hot slab of a bartender Aaron wasn’t working so we switched to old reliable Vlada around the corner. Jonathan is at something of a crossroads in his life and career in Manhattan and we were long overdue for some one-on-one time to discuss it. In the meantime, some guy named Mark recognized me from who can even say how many years ago. I am sure he knew me because he said, “I thought it was you but then wasn’t sure because you weren’t in shorts.” I was correctly identified but Jonathan was not so lucky, planting a cheek kiss on a guy named Chance, who as it turns out, was not his former co-worker Spencer.

Our drink and discussion at an end, we headed for the coat check, to retrieve our jackets and our next clue. It was there that I ran into Joe, who was just on his way in, but upon seeing me, realized it was already time to leave… with me! Jonathan went back to his apartment and Joe and I hopped into a cab to head down to the Village for a small party at Chris’ apartment, the scene of my notorious Halloween blog entry. Matty would be waiting there for us with his charming Austrian boyfriend Hanno. This time instead of hot shirtless men, the party was jammed with cleavage-heaving young women… and adorable Ryan Newman.

Ryan was there with his new boyfriend who, like me, is from Westchester. Although I own. They must be very happy together because the moment I arrived, Ryan flew into his arms like a long separated lover and was never more than a fingertip away the rest of the evening. Matty, ever the publicist, bragged on Ryan’s Britney Spears dance moves and prodded me to encourage an encore. However, the new boyfriend, in full Footloose-era John Lithgow fashion had banned the dancing. This only encouraged my worst instincts and I relentlessly goaded Ryan to dance, in or out of his underwear, at the soonest possible moment.

Despite my warm small talk about the cookies he had made, the new boyfriend was unbowed in his banned stance. However, before we made our hasty retreat to the Maritime Hotel for our next challenge, I am quite certain that I spied Ryan busting a move or two in the corner. Perhaps he was ginned up by the excessively controlled Vanity Fair cover photo posing that I deftly avoided by ducking under a plate of half eaten chocolate cupcakes, though Matty happily flung himself in despite his less-desirable placement on the third fold next to the perfume ad.

I had thought we would end up at Corey Craig’s CD release party further across town at the Chelsea Hotel, but instead we landed at the new hot gay party in the winterized cabanas off the upper patio of the lovely Maritime Hotel. A birthday party was being thrown for a woman named Zoe, who by all accounts is the woman of the moment in the gay community. The party was a weird mix of young gays in purposefully hetero gear (a self-ripped sleeveless t-shirt… really?), even younger gays in collar and tie and 90s leftovers who don’t realize they are in their 30s now and wearing ANF days after the company posted a steep double digit decline in sales on Black Friday (the final nail in their pop culture coffin) while still clinging to an ecstasy fueled Palladium fantasy that even for them is but a dim memory. For everyone else at the party, that look evokes an era near the end of the last century best described as “middle school.”

Also there seemed to be a lot of vests out tonight. I know I am not exactly the cutting edge of fashion. Earlier while comparing Polo shirts at Chris’ party, a co-worker of Matty’s gave my Ralph Lauren shirt a quizzical look and then smiled a smooth knowing smile. “Ah. Factory. No wonder I didn’t recognize it.” That being said, these boys in their vests just looked like out of work valets. I had to resist the urge to hand them my car keys. I guess it is all part of this ADD generation. Everything is so sped up, they don’t even have time for sleeves! Even the DJ got into the act and spun 28 seconds of all my favorite songs. It was like walking through a low rent carnival game row that didn’t want to pay music royalties. It made me long for the days of exhaustive ten to fifteen minute dance mixes that seemed all too short while dancing under the watchful spin of Junior. I am sure the thirty-something in the Abercrombie tee sipping on a cosmo thought the exact same thing.

Conor was there in a gently worn hoodie that undoubtedly had been tirelessly and expensively distressed to appear so casually at ends on a chilly winter night. He and Matty spotted each other and sparred at a distance though it didn’t have any of the venom I expected. Whatever intense animus there once was between them has apparently since been replaced by the kind of playful sniping that usually ended with Krystal and Alexis plunging into a fountain during sweeps. The ever winning smile of Brian Babst was on hand as well, ready the second he spotted me with lines from last night’s 30 Rock, all perfectly memorized. “I watch each episode twice,” he confided. “Once the night of when I am drunk and again in the morning when I am sober.” It was a tactic that clearly was paying off.

The evening ended as suddenly as it began. Joe was fondling his coat check ticket while lamenting all the photos Matty was taking, and when I returned from the bathroom, he was gone. In a flash, Zoe, the birthday lady in red, was gone from her own party too and it was like the air was let out of the balloon. In the end, some friend of Matty tried to coax us to join them at 3am at Brandon Voss' apartment, but we just stood in stunned horror as they (Conor included) swirled out of the nightclub into the street like the dancers from Fame, screeching and mobbing taxis in a mad clamour to reach the next destination. Matty, Hanno and I slipped away quietly uptown toward Chelsea, where I left them happily on the corner on their way home. For them the adventure was coming to an end, but for me it was just beginning. An hour later, bag in hand, I was in that cab on my way to the airport. For me, the race continues.

Unwanted Attention

"This would be a great place for a party." I said in the Rouge Room in the basement of Paris Commune, a chic eatery in lower Manhattan. It would have been a bold suggestion if we weren't already there attending someone else's party. A self-centered asshole like me takes the unspoken "for me" at the end of every statement like that as a given but to casual listeners like Ben Harvey and Navy Man Joe it just came off as a little daft. Sadly, when it comes to words, I work in a volume business and that means the finer points get lost in the rush, which is something of a problem.

Things started out well enough at Rocking Horse, a cozy restaurant in Chelsea where Matty and I finally were able to corner Ronnie and plot his future. I am, by nature, a meddlesome and nosy person, which drives Roommate to distraction as I dissect the personal lives of our neighbors while driving down the street with comments like "I wish Jennifer would sell that house of hers" and "I love her yard. She can't possibly hold down a job and spend so much time landscaping." Matty, as I have often posted, is the most connected person I know. Working in tandem we are like Wonder Twins, swooping down into the lives of the unsuspecting and molding their future like so much modeling clay. In Ronnie, we see a modern day Galatea, already armed with ambition, just waiting to be thrust in the right direction.

Ronnie swilled coffee like an overnight truck driver, worn out from his long and productive weekend in DC with the NGLCC, joining us for dinner direct from the airport, overnight bag in hand. Matty's handsome boyfriend Hanno and Ben Harvey rounded out our fivesome and we had a great time over margaritas and barely recognizable "Mexican" food. "What did you order?" asked Matty, gazing down at what appeared to be a very unappetizing pile of diarrhea in front of me. It was what turned out to be a very delicious hunk of pork on a bed of mashed plantains, but I must confess it did look suspiciously like something a plumber would pull out of a clogged drain.

After dinner, Ronnie raced home to his bed for what I assume was 12 hours of uninterrupted sleep, and Matty piped us down to the West Village for the birthday party of a friend whose name I instantly forgot. The friend was very sweet and fun, and all of his gay friends were pretty and diverse, like the Justice Department forcing A&F to acquire the United Colors of Benetton. Since they hadn't finished eating at the long Captain's table in the basement wine bar, we settled into polite conversation at a quiet table in the corner, and not so long after was joined by Joe, last seen stumbling home from Halloween.

In a self-referential move that would make Charlie Kaufman proud, talk quickly turned to this blog and the damage it has wrought since I started it almost two years ago. "Every time you write in your blog, someone gets hurt!" Matty chided me, not amused that his name and "ass eating" ended up in the same sentence last time, even though Bradford's blog is the first Google search result that comes up when you type them in together (should any weirdo ever want to make such a search). Joe was perfectly happy with his entry and his friends, upon discovering it, expressed their joy at sudden blog infamy, but Matty is right. My blog, despite my intentions to only portray things the way I see them and paint myself in a worse light than anyone else, often backfires. I have inadvertently outed people that I assumed were out and no doubt have made untold enemies along the way. I wouldn't have written about election night at all except that Hanno mentioned that night that his friends back in Osterreich liked the first entry he was in. Apparently, it is true that no good deed goes unpunished, or in this case, misinterpreted.

After a round of intense picture taking, Matty and Hanno headed home, and Ben and I left as well with every intention (emphasis added) to head straight home ourselves. We left Joe behind with a full glass of wine, and half-empty birthday party as well as charge over Matty's forgotten umbrella. Walking up eighth avenue, Ben suddenly got a text from Martin, whom he had forgotten he told to join us at Paris Commune. Martin said he was on his way there and in a moment of guilty panic we both decided not to snub Martin and meet him for a quick single drink at Barracuda. Immediately we thought we should invite Joe since we so hastily retreated from the last party but neither of us had his number. A modern gay Kobayashi Maru if ever there was one.

Barracuda smelled like the quite literal bowels of Hell but it was packed to the rafters anyway. Adorable Ryan Newman was there, showing off his sensational new short haircut. I wanted to go catch up with him, but while waiting for Martin to arrive, Ben mistakenly made casual eye contact with a deranged stranger in a houndstooth jacket. For the rest of my time there, we actively pivoted away from him only to have him counter our every move. Check. Check. Check. Then after Martin joined us and headed up to the bar to get a drink, it was Checkmate when he cornered Martin who was waiting helplessly for his cocktail. That was the end of the line for me. I had only stayed long enough to protect Ben from the clutches of this dubious letch, having failed at that, the drunk train awaited.

There is so much left unsaid out of an evening on the town. I leave many of the best scraps on the floor and sweep them out of my memory because I like my friends and I don't want to engender even more resentment. I am already someone that can be difficult to like and as Curtis once observed, "Sometimes when Derek is talking, it seems like he has no idea who he is talking to." In the case of this blog, the only person I am really talking to is myself. True, other people are able to listen, and I try to be mindful of that. But life is what it is. Sometimes it isn't pretty. And when you only have a few paragraphs to work with, you can see clearly that the Reader's Digest version of my life strips a lot of cartilage off the bone. And that can lead to some very painful moments as we move through everyday life.

Elevate!

Have I mentioned that Matty works in marketing? I should amend that. Matty is marketing. The living embodiment of presentation as commodity, promotion the coin of the realm. To say that I depend on Matt to connect me to gay life as we know it, I mean it like I depend on my lungs to breathe. And in the world of Matty's social largess, I am the fat welfare queen of Reagan's deepest recession-era nightmares.

As the club promoter of nothing less than the gay scene of Manhattan, clipboard guest list and critical judgment firmly in hand, I am his most pitiful charity case. I am a hopeless Eliza Doolittle in the fair hands of a very impatient Henry Higgins. Even as my public profile has risen, my game is hopelessly stalled in neutral. Even tonight when I assured him on my way out of Barracuda at the end of the evening that I would "step it up" he stamped me with his new idiom "Elevate!"

After the show, I joined Matty at Adam's apartment for an Obama victory party straight out of gay central casting. Adam and all of his subtly hunky friends were J. Crew catalog delicious (Gay Crew catalog, anyone?) and the elegant simplicity of his Chelsea apartment, courtesy the recent interior artistic stylings of Hanno, was the perfect background. It was the kind of cozy clean scene that convinces moderate Republican women that maybe the gays aren't so bad after all.

I always feel hopelessly out of place in environs like these, too thin in the arms, too thick around the middle and always too old. To assuage these and a million other feelings, I like to settle in with the friendliest person I can find or someone I already know. Charlie was there and the way he called out to me from across the spare living room, dotted with snappy gay couples locked together like freshly scrubbed Tetris pieces, said he was looking for the same thing. But maybe he just wanted another blog mention. Either way, mission accomplished. We watched Obama's stellar acceptance speech together while sharing the perfectly made cape cod that Matty had mixed for me in a red plastic party cup in Adam's airmail stamp of a kitchen.

The moment the speech ended was like 12:01am on New Year's Day and the place cleared out faster than the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. I found Matty in Adam's bedroom on the computer with party guest Gray, trying to use Facebook to find the phone number of a faint yet mutual acquaintance to no avail. All our futuristic technological endeavors should be like ideal children: well-behaved, passing through our lives almost unnoticed, and largely confined to the home where when things go wrong they can cause the least amount of trouble and anxiety in front of strangers. At a dead end for the next post-election party, everyone decided to decamp to the old reliable (Sarah) Barracuda for a cocktail.

There was high excitement as we headed down toward the bar and Matty suggested we cartwheel across Seventh Avenue. I was mortified at the thought of my hands touching the urine encrusted thoroughfare. "The street is filthy!" Matty turned to me and deadpanned, "Have you eaten an ass lately? I rest my case." I wasn't sure if the evening was blog-worthy until Matty released that pearl and sealed the deal. Then Gray insisted that I refer to him only as "Will" but since he never explained why, that isn't happening. Besides, Gray is a much better name, evocative, and it's why I instantly remembered him when we first met earlier because of his frequent appearance along with Matty in any number of Facebook photo galleries.

Once at Barracuda, Matty spied a hot young guy in a heather grey t-shirt walking behind me and then tried to shove my lumbering carcass into him. I shot him a dirty look. "You need to get laid!" he screamed at me, the word "laid" lingering in his open mouth for several seconds, which I assume was either to drown out the horrible singing contest in the backroom or to encourage lonely suitors in my vicinity to give me a second, yet scornful look. This started a brief exchange that ended with his immortal insistence that I "elevate!"

Matty is probably right. There is no point in my showing up in public if I am not even going to make an effort to publicize myself. There is no point in putting the goods on the shelf if your primary intention is to discourage the customers from buying. For a moment, I really thought he was on to something, but then that same hot young guy walked by and this time Matty shoved another friend of his into him. I turned to the friend who seemed as equally stunned as I had been and said, "I think Matty just wants us to sleep with the guys that he can't sleep with now that he is in a relationship."

He smiled, a broad knowing smile. "I think you are right."

Eh. In a way, I think we are both right.

Mistaken Identities

Halloween night in NYC is just terrific. I don't know why I never noticed before. I suppose it is because I have pretty much skipped active participation in the downtown scene since I moved here from Los Angeles. Halloween in West Hollywood used to be fun, but then it became overwhelmed by people in plain clothes gawking and no one dressed up so much anymore. I blame my dear friend (and long-standing addiction) television for turning us into a nation of lookers instead of doers.

I was most looking forward to Halloween night at my house in the suburbs. We took the night off from the show and finally I had a house in a neighborhood where I could decorate the yard and pass out candy to little kids in cute costumes. I sat there in my cowboy outfit for three hours waiting for a little more than a dozen kids to show up. I had been concerned I wouldn't have enough candy but after I waited an hour for the next batch of kids to come, I instituted a mandatory "take as much as you want" policy lest I get stuck eating my weight in Reese's peanut butter cups and fun size Kit Kat bars. As it was, I powered through at least ten pieces while waiting for the doorbell to ring.

At 8pm I said so long to suburbia and packed up my cowboy hat and duster and headed down to New York City. The train was filled with locals in costume and when it pulled into Grand Central Station suddenly it was like I had arrived at the party. Maybe it was because it was so unseasonably warm or because the holiday landed on a Friday or because the economy is so bad that everyone was desperate for something to take their minds off the misery, but it felt like the entire city had gone all out for the occasion.

I joined Matty and his adorable boyfriend Hanno at Joe's apartment, where the ex-Navy man managed to outfit the cute couple as well as himself and straight girl counterpart Erica in his leftover gear. Matty in a trim khaki suit, Hanno in fatigues, Joe in crisp dress blues and Erica in his dress shirt belted with black leggings. I told her she looked like a stripper. "I look like Pamela Anderson when she married Tommy Lee," she replied. I assured her that that was what I meant.

We cooled our heels at Joe's for a while, consuming champagne, and waiting for others to show up so we could move on to Josh and Chris' party a few blocks away. Finally two girls showed up dressed as an Olsen twin and Amy Winehouse and we ran off into the night. As we sojourned from Chelsea to the West Village, the streets were clogged with revelers, all dressed up with somewhere to go. The Maritime hotel overflowed with Asian flappers and the sidewalks were jammed with all manner of pop culture touchstone.

Outside of the party we ran into playwright Robert Harling who was just leaving, as well as a cute guy dressed as a riff on the woman who claimed someone carved a B in her face, although he had an MJ on his face which had to be laboriously explained to everyone who wasn't dyslexic. This is the trouble with a clever costume. Half the time no one knows what it is, and the other half think it is something else entirely. At Best Week Ever today, Michelle Collins showed up with a crazy wig dressed as Peg Bundy but was instantly mistaken for The Real Housewives Of Atlanta. It's an even bigger problem working in a pop culture crucible because your references have to be so of the moment they are practically predictions of the future.

Inside, it was a very typical gay party. There were four extremely hot shirtless guys in tight football pants dry humping each other, sloppy drunken dancing in the living room to Britney's "Womanizer" and the kitchen was so densely packed it's a wonder the more waifish guests weren't spontaneously expelled from the room like champagne corks every few minutes due to the mounting pressures. Josh and Chris were terrific and welcoming hosts though I spent most of the evening with Joe's girls, not knowing anyone else and being self conscious about what my cowboy hat had done to my hair.

I had really wanted to go to Ronnie's Halloween benefit or even the party that Brian Babst ran off to figuring that me in a cowboy costume might finally be the nudge he needs to make out with me in public. But by the time we got settled it was already too late for me to make it to a third location before the drunk train home. So I settled in to a steady diet of candy corn and cupcakes while trying to avoid all human contact. I danced a little. We escaped briefly upstairs to Mike's apartment (which we called the VIP room). And even capped off the evening on the rooftop deck. The night was cool and still fifty feet above the West Village and if a very drunk and tall Marilyn hadn't stumbled out to smoke, you might almost forget it was Halloween.

I left Matty and Hanno at the party and walked Joe back to his place. Joe's girls had long since departed for a straight bar because quite frankly they hadn't all dressed so slutty and frozen their asses off all night just to go home alone. Joe was so drunk he barely made it down the stairs to the street, let alone the ten blocks back to his place. Earlier at his apartment he had reminded me that we met some weeks ago at Eric's party but in typical fashion I had forgotten. My mind was on other things and another person that night. I tried to look at him there on the street, passing Ugly Betties and a Sarah Palin eating a hot dog, to see if I could conjure a hint of recognition.

As I passed a long sea of sexy kittens and naughty nurses, I thought about how difficult it would be to get my swollen feet out of my boots later after walking all the way back to Grand Central. They may have been made for walking but probably not for a mile or two over concrete. True, my very authentic cowboy drag (happily bought in Dallas, sadly made in China) did get a few catcalls from women and a nice "you look so Brokeback, I love it" from Matty, but it was hardly my only costume of the night. I have been in the same masquerade for months now, putting a happy mask over the man with the broken heart. And as fun as this holiday is, it just isn't the same alone.