The Tippling Point

I still wasn’t feeling 100% after last night, but nothing but nothing was going to keep me away from Henry and Dan’s Beer and Nuts Party tonight. As I noted when I attended their Halloween bash last year, Henry lives in a castle. A castle! The living room is in a turret and behind a rendering of Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are, a flat screen TV is secreted. It’s like San Simeon with Henry cast as Marion Davies when knighthood was in flower.

Romaine stayed home from the show tonight to take care of her sick three year old who was projectile vomiting like she was auditioning for a role in The Exorcist. So, I said that ADD Jeff could hang out in the studio, since it is Friday and I knew he would get all nerdy with the guest DJ during the Friday Night Dance Party. And if things got slow, I could always tease him about his sexual habits and his protestations and outrage could easily fill all four hours. But when I encountered him waiting on the subway platform after the show, I considered it fate and invited him to join me at the party.

Birth Of Elation

Birthday parties are for kids young enough to still count their years in fractions and the super elderly where each passing year is nothing short of a miracle. For the rest of us, birthdays should be politely ignored. I was slow to come to this realization, like all people do. When I was in my twenties, I didn’t mind having birthday parties at all. I mean, what’s not to love about a room full of people who are there solely for you? But now, birthdays just seem like a rote chore made more unbearable by constant reminders on social networks that every day is some birthday.

Tonight, I took my friend Adam down to the ACE Hotel for Corey Johnson’s 28th birthday party. Adam is visiting from Phoenix this weekend and I was much surprised on Wednesday night when I came home and discovered him propped up in the guest room bed reading his kindle. He is in town this weekend for my annual Cinco de Mayo party which for some reason in that moment I thought was next weekend and not three days from now. It is this kind of constant surprise about my own life that keeps my roommate Mike in a persistent state of agitation.

As soon as we arrived at the ACE on 29th street, we headed downstairs into the basement party room and waited on line at coat check. A nice young lady was working the table and a copy of “The Actor’s Art and Craft” was tossed casually on her chair. An actor prepares… to check your coat. We dropped our bags and started to head in when suddenly I ran right into that guy who insisted that I stop writing about him. I thought he was in Los Angeles! When I asked him if he was leaving already, he looked past me with solid black shark eyes, gave a negative response in a negative way and moved beyond me in every sense of the word. It was a chilly reception with frosty on top.

Inside, the party was jumping and the boys were hot. As I looked around for Corey, Adam asked if the crowd was here just for his birthday or if this was normally a bar. Adam was dutifully impressed when I said they were all just for Corey. “I could fill a room like this too if I wanted,” I said confidently, but that was a lie. I’m that guy still haunted by the accurate portrayal of his childhood in Little Man Tate, where he is cast as the brainy kid with that kind of dyky warrior princess mom (before Xena made it fashionable) and who had a birthday party that no one came to. To this day, every time I throw a party, I believe that no one will come. The moment that invitation goes out I start dreading the whole decision and the misery doesn’t end until the last person goes home. But I keep throwing parties because little kid fears are no excuse for a life half lived.

I didn’t see Corey right away but I did see Andy Towle. Andy is so adorable and I never see him out. He is not a party animal and with his fabulous apartment and smoking hot boyfriend, why would he ever want to go out for anything more than the morning paper and a fresh bagel? Andy was so sweet to me as I gushed about his blog, towleroad.com, which is a twice daily must-read for me, first in the late morning when I wake up and then right before the show for updates and breaking news.

Wandering off to get a drink at the bar we ran into Corey, twirling through the place with a tiara on his head. He was beyond drunk and everyone was grabbing at him like a pair of twenty dollar Ben Sherman jeans at the Barney’s Warehouse Sale. And then in an instant he was gone so we continued on our journey. Near the bar we settled in with Chris (sans Cub) and Henry. I gently ribbed Henry about the recent photos of him on Facebook paying dodge ball. Chris was missing Cub, who was down in Atlantic City headlining a bachelor party weekend for a straight friend.

I fell in love with Cub all over again when Chris told me that Cub is very down on the whole Fire Island business that, as it launches each spring, grips the Manhattan gay scene annually like a toxin. I just don’t understand the notion of going from the island of Manhattan to Long Island by train, transferring once along the way. Then taking a cab to a boat dock where a ferry takes you to an overpriced, deer tick riddled island filled with all the gays you see all week long back in Manhattan. Of course out on Fire Island, you get to see them in unflattering direct sunlight and ill-fitting Speedos while they rant about their housemate who never does dishes and used all their lube without asking.

It was then that Chris got a happy text from Cub that he had located eternal FM radio personality Delilah on his drive down and my love for him faded away. Delilah and her maudlin love songs and dedications from women who pine away for male co-workers who don’t know they exist and prisoners reaching out to touch in a new way those they have stalked is the quintessence of everything I hate about terrestrial radio. Oh well. I guess no one is perfect.

Then again, I started developing my own weird music obsession recently myself. I noticed a few weeks ago that the music at the supermarket was better than it used to be and then I realized, it wasn’t better, I was just older and the music was targeted to me. And then it hit me. That is how everything is now. Everything is made and sold by people my age, so everything in life is now pitched perfectly for me to experience. It is almost like the whole world is created personally for you, which makes all of life feel like Disneyland to a five year old. So growing uglier sucks and suddenly feeling pain in places you never felt before is always a bad omen of things to come, but all of that is masked nicely by the warm comfort of knowing you are the target demo of modern life.

Even though they have longed for an invite to my house, Cub is in Atlantic City and Chris is using the weekend to go down to DC and neither of them will be at my party. Henry is listed on my Facebook invite as a Maybe but I am certain he isn’t coming. I didn’t even bother asking him. Although his boyfriend Dan did tell me tonight how excited he was when he went to fabulis.com and saw me in the top ten. “You’re number five in the world! I can’t believe I know someone ranked so high,” he beamed even though I never got higher than eight. “I’ve slid since then.” I assured him, my rank now hovering at a still impressive 32 though long since overwhelmed by obsessed college kids with nothing to do in their permanent state of unemployment but vote each other up on the list.

However artificial a popularity contest like the Fabulis list is, it does feel good to have so many votes. Sure it isn’t the same as having a house full of people, hearing your favorite song in the cereal aisle or filling a club on your birthday, but these days you have to take your kudos where you can get them.

The Fox Trot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On The Eve Of The Eve

Manhattan is a magical place. There is a reason they made a movie called “Miracle on 34^th Street” and, despite the miracle mile moniker, didn’t set it on Wilshire in Los Angeles. LA is where you go to wish for a miracle and Manhattan is where you go to actually experience them. Where LA’s streets are littered with parking fines and moving violations, I found actual cash, $120, on the sidewalk in New York. After several days in glamorous broken down Hollywood, I was ready for the full treatment in Manhattan and the little island delivered.

In honor of robust sales of my new book, I decided to splurge on a new espresso machine for the house. But now having fancy coffee, we needed something to serve it in. The night before Halloween, I was coming into town anyway for Henry and Dan’s party and to have dinner with Matt Kugelman. So I got there a little early and raced to the Crate and Barrel on 60^th. But no! It closed at 8pm, not 9pm like I thought. The security guard assured me that the location on 14^th street was still open, but I told him I had dinner plans and couldn’t possibly make it down there in time and I did come all the way from Westchester.

“Just this once.” He said as he let me, even though the store had closed moments earlier. A Manhattan miracle! $80 and five minutes later, I raced out of there with espresso cups and latte mugs galore, my joy in the city instantly reconfirmed. After dropping my packages in my car at the garage, I wandered down to meet Matt for a little Mexican food. We had a wonderful dinner and I tried to get him to come to the party but he had other people he needed to meet at Rockit at eleven. So since it was only ten, we split the baby and I joined him for a drink at Barrage to keep him company until his thing at 11pm. We parted and I hopped onto the subway uptown.

Henry and Dan threw an amazing New Year’s Eve party two years ago and I was anxious to attend another of their parties. At the time they had been living in an incredible building with views of the Hudson River but the invite for their Halloween Housewarming alerted me to the Central Park West location of their new digs.

I got off the subway and walked two blocks looking for the address. Along the way, I passed a castle with a large courtyard out front overlooking Central Park. “That can’t be it,” I thought to myself as I kept walking. “They can’t possibly live in a castle.” But of course they do. And the second floor ballroom in the turret? Not a day room for all the residents but instead, their elegantly appointed living room.

The party was insane. Filled with room after incredible room of hot hunks in hot costumes. The 1920s styling was intact throughout and the apartment wove its away around the entire floor of the building. I ran into Chris and Cub there, who like me, were not wearing costumes and I have never been so relieved to see two people in my life. In the elevator, I had ridden up with two guys who took one look at me and asked, “This is a costume party right?”

“Costumes were optional,” I told them, “Don’t worry. I didn’t dress up either."

They gave me a funny look. “I’m Rocky Balboa,” one of them said while the other donned sunglasses and assured me he was Donnie Brasco. Well, I wasn’t looking to make any new friends in the elevator anyway.

Also at the party, I ran into Ryan, who looked ready to be defiled in an ancient way in his toga while his friend Mike ran around dressed as a tight end, no doubt looking for someone to throw long and go deep with. Henry and Dan were busy hosting and having a fun time, although Henry kept herding people out of crowded nooks into less crowded ones after some real firemen showed up to inspect the size and density of the party crowd. “Into the library!” he called to me as Cub and I tried to leave the kitchen and return to Chris in the living room. I felt like a game piece on a Clue board.

The apartment made me feel bad about myself but in a laughable, nonsense way. My friends live in a castle! That’s ridiculous. No one lives in a castle. LA makes you feel like a failure all the time because nothing there is every good enough, young enough, shiny enough or new enough. But NYC is an impossible place filled with impossible things. On the news they said that the mayor was the richest man in New York City and I just thought, “How can that be? How can anyone be the richest anything here?” It’s all too much. The heights are so high in Manhattan that they are literally impossible to scale so no one has to feel bad that they didn’t make it. So while you can live in a castle, no one expects you to. Here in New York, you are a hero just for finding a decent one bedroom apartment for under $1500 a month. And there are small miracles inside latte mugs.

A Tale Of Two Sissies

I love a mystery but you know, the kind of mystery that Jessica Fletcher solves when the tea kettle blows and it reminds her of something crucial. There was a mystery of sorts in my blog last fall when I wrote about a bunch of queens bursting out of the Cabanas and heading to Brandon Voss’s apartment. Now I know Brandon, the erstwhile former editor of HX Magazine, and tagged him as such in my blog. But then Brandon wrote to me and insisted it wasn’t him, that he wasn’t even in town that weekend. “That’s the other Brandon Voss” he insisted, but come on. That seemed ridiculous. How could there be two gay men named Brandon Voss in the gay club scene of Manhattan. It seemed impossible. That is until two weeks ago when the other Brandon Voss tried to friend me on Facebook.

I wrote him back, told him the story and how I had believed he was a myth. At first he disowned the queens but on further prodding agreed that they may have headed to his apartment but that didn’t mean he invited them. Fair enough. His reason for adding me was that he thought I looked familiar and he was inviting all the hot guys he knew to a new party he had started called Rockit Fridays. Always open to the sincerest faux flattery available online and looking for new places to blog about, I assured him I would be there on my first free Friday, which it turns out, was tonight.

Conveniently located in midtown near my office and Matt Kugelman’s apartment, we agreed to rendezvous there and get the lay of the land. At first we were dumped into a basement segment of Amalia on 55th Street that had no coat check or cell phone reception. The lack of coat check was a bigger problem since the sudden transition from winter to summer meant plenty of people brought jackets thinking it would be cold only to be jammed into a sweaty dutch oven with nothing to do with their heavy outerwear. As it was, we enjoyed the early 90s tunes, with heaping helpings of En Vogue to make you forget your troubles.

Soon the upstairs opened and as it did I thought I spotted Henry on the stairs. I wasn’t sure it was him until I spotted his boyfriend Dan standing next to him. We caught up with them at the top of the stairs and there we stayed under the watchful eye of DJ Keo Nozari for the rest of the evening. While Henry was busy proving to everyone that White Men Can’t Dance, Dan and I commiserated about life in straight bars that only go gay one night a week.

I am annoyed by cocktail waitresses and the vain attempt at bottle service, an outrage that gays will enjoy for free as VIPs but would never, ever pay for with actual money. He hated the bathroom attendants handing you towels and I had to agree. In a gay bar, if a guy hands you a towel in the bathroom, it’s because you just had sex with him. Our talk was prompted by a bouncer trying to shove us out from our perch at the top of the stairs and keep the walkway clear. That’s crazy. How are you supposed to meet people if you don’t stand at the top of the stairs so you can see everyone who comes and goes? After all, if gay bars didn’t have pinch points, I don’t think gay men would even know how to get laid in person. G lounge in Chelsea was designed with an oval bar that creates a virtual Tailhook Convention around it almost instantly, the only 360 degree pinch point in all of Manhattan! Guaranteed sex.

Ben Harvey soon arrived, having just attended a taping of the new season of The Big Gay Sketch Show. He was blond and trim as ever and I realized later on my walk back to my office to get my backpack that I haven’t had a real quiet moment with Ben since his birthday brunch, and even then we weren’t exactly alone. It seems we are destined to only ever be seen in public together. I also saw Matty’s friend Tyler who swung through at the most inopportune moment while Dan was telling a story about meeting Beyonce and he couldn’t even stay for a split second for the story to end for a proper hello. MUST. KEEP. TWIRLING. And he was gone.

Later I saw Conor standing on the landing near the DJ. I tried to get his attention at first by throwing ice at him, but then I just kept throwing ice at him because it amused me. He was clearly annoyed until he finally saw that it was me, which registered zero surprise on his face. After all, who has worse manners than I? No one! Conor was there with his friend Andrew who once again I did not remember meeting, until he called me a douche and I realized he was the guy from Facebook who tried to add me and became so irritated by my form response denying access. I wrote about him last week. This time Andrew and I spent more time horsing around and I discovered that, like me, he is a birthday deleter on Facebook. This is a genius move, by the way. When someone’s birthday comes up, you check to see how well you know them. If they aren’t vital, that is the moment you delete them. They will be so wrapped up in Happy Birthday posts on their Wall that they won’t notice you are gone for weeks, maybe months.

I really didn’t want to stay all night. Fridays are a tired night for me and all I want to do is get home after a long exhausting part-time week of talking. Plus, I had a stone patio to finish putting together in the backyard and Manhattan gays on the prowl don’t understand what a productive weekend day is unless you count spot checks at the free clinic on your way to the gym to party pump for Saturday night. As I headed for the door, I ran into Ben Dixon, who was on his way in. I wish I could have stayed longer to chat but I did have a train to catch. He has a house upstate so at least he understood the need to get an early start on the weekend and get something done. Pretty doesn’t just happen you know. Maybe in your twenties you can just Rockit and get away with rockin’ it but for the rest of us, weekends wait for no man.

Messcapade

As gay as I am, there are some things I am just not gay enough for. For instance, this underwear I have on. It’s a pair of Ginch Gonch boxer briefs. I wear them when I am at the end of the line with clean underwear. They have a blue floral pattern on them with white detailing and I would bet the farm that I got them in a gift bag at some gay event somewhere. In fact, I have an additional four pair of extra small Ginch Gonch briefs which have HereTV stamped on them so I know exactly where they came from should I ever lose forty pounds and my nut sack and decide to wear them someday.

My favorite price point for clothing? Free. The cute purple shirt that Otter Fashion sent me, that I wear all the time, was a big hit tonight at David Coleman’s party. But the same could not be said for these damn boxer briefs. They have some kind of stitch nexus point right underneath my right ball that chafes my thigh like it hates me and my whole family. It bugged me all day in the city and it was a not so gentle reminder that even though I am gay, I am not always a full time player in the gay community. It seemed appropriate to wear them though because it is pride weekend. I should wear my gayest underwear on the gayest weekend of the year. And since it is day two of three days of parties, I figured I should keep escalating the gay until it reaches some kind of bizarre crescendo around 4pm on Sunday.

I was really on a roll earlier today working on the house, and if Clay hadn’t been in town for the weekend, I would have skipped the city altogether. After all, the gutters aren’t going to clean and cover themselves, and Roommate is right, they are so overgrown with foliage they look like a small planter box surrounding the eaves. Even though the gutter guards are basically worthless, I got up on my death trap of a ladder, scooped them out with my hands and then jammed the guards in as best I could. I did this shirtless since I will be in a bathing suit on the 4th and I don’t want to blind strangers with my iridescent paleness. “Really?” my roommate chided me as I climbed high enough for the entire street to see my back fat, “Shirtless?” I guess I am plenty gay after all.

Later at David’s party, surrounded by a sea of worked out torsos, I returned to feeling not gay enough. It was a bit of a welcome back party for the adorable Josh, who moved to Los Angeles four months ago to pursue a new dream in a new city. I was looking forward to going because I knew it was a crowd Clay’s own massive arms would like and I have been looking for a reason to spar, Hepburn/Tracy-style with the dashing Barton Brooks. It was Mr. Brooks himself who came up with the catchphrase of the night “messcapade” to describe my last appearance there, making out in the most shameless fashion with Gary, a perky blond college boy. That night, Gary, who I brought with me, replaced the party iPod with his iPod and proceeded to entertain everyone with the entire Britney canon, of which he was dutifully obsessed. Eerily, Jonathan, one of the people I invited to the party this time, replaced the party iPod with his iPhone and entertained everyone with the entire Madonna canon, of which he is dutifully obsessed. I fear my party invites, rare as they are, might quickly dry up.

Then again, the parties themselves may dry up, oh but that is a story for later. First, you need to hear about the other parade of hot men at the party. Clay chatted up Josh whom he met before he met me, and even expressed surprise at how many people they both knew in common, though independently. “When you have big arms, Manhattan is a very small town,” I assured him, an instantly classic truism met enthusiastically by Josh. As if to prove my point, Conor arrived on cue, muscles bulging yet looking as soulfully wistful as ever. Even Erik Bottcher was there, taller than I would have expected, and second only to Shawn Hollenbach as my most frequently spotted one-degree-away internet connection.

Later I got cornered quite happily in the kitchen by the endlessly handsome Henry who was downing Absolut New Orleans and club soda like he had somewhere to be in a hurry and he wanted to make sure he couldn’t make it. His sweet boyfriend Dan made frequent circles around checking up on the whereabouts of my hands and later when I insisted I was coming back to their apartment for New Year’s Eve whether they were having a party again this year or not, he smiled at me like he had already filed for a restraining order.

Eventually I settled on the couch with Barton for some classic sparring. We talked about his pending good will trip around the world, helping people in more than thirty countries over a one year period. I compared it to a cross between the Amazing Race and Oprah’s Big Give, though obviously without the Ugly American racism of one and the massive ego of the other. Barton is a good person with good arms who makes me feel bad about myself because I am not such a good person, as opposed to just a person with not such good arms. Meanwhile, Steven and his nice arms arrived to encircle Clay in his charms but mostly I saw him across the room having a good time.

The giant arms continued to pour in and the party swelled to dangerous proportions, prompting me to ask one of the guests “how soon until the floor collapses?” It didn’t. On the other hand, I did continue to collapse my underdeveloped carcass on the couch, waiting with Barton for the occasional a/c breezes that would waft over the sea of tight t-shirts and blue plastic cups filled with vodka. Soon, adorable Mark, the massage therapist I met at a previous party joined me on the couch and we had a grand time discussing the crowd and his own obsession: the musical version of The Visit with Chita Rivera.

Even though the party was supposed to end at eleven, it was still in full swing as the clock across Union Square threatened to strike twelve. Suddenly, as if Cinderella herself were running the show and didn’t want to lose a good shoe, the lights went on full, the iPod stopped and David announced, like Ingrid Bergman in Notorious, that the party was over. The gays were slow to leave, most of them unfamiliar with the concept of a to-go cup, so some polite shoving began after about ten minutes. I was going to stick around and help Mark clean up, but Clay and Steven got ushered out and I didn’t want to get separated from my charges.

The hallway was filled with gays waiting for the elevators, and only one of the cars seemed to be working. Some, like Clay, opted to take the stairs, but most chose to remain behind to wait for the next car. I got into one car, but Steven got left behind. Stopping on the tenth floor, Clay got on with a gaggle of gays who couldn’t make it all the way to the lobby until their own power. Clay and I waited in the lobby with Taylor, who was hot to trot in his City Boy t-shirt and didn’t care who he went home with as long as it was Clay or Steven. Eventually, Steven arrived, though when he did, the elevator stopped about six inches below the floor. Not a good sign.

We decamped to Therapy, which had a huge line. So we all peed at Bamboo 52 and then started over for Vlada. Along the way we ran into three gays who recognized us from the party. “We just got out!” they told us, “The elevator got stuck and firemen had to open it and pull us all out. It was crazy!” Poor David. What a messcapade! And what a way for fourteen gay men to learn a valuable physics lesson that muscle really is heavier than fat. There was a line at Vlada too but it was much shorter and faster than Therapy, so I left the boys there and headed for the train home.

On my walk to the train, I passed a woman slumped down on the corner of a building, blind drunk, trying with no luck to send a text message. I asked her if she needed any help but she just waved me on. At Grand Central, a guy was throwing up outside while his friends looked on. “Better here than on the train,” I told his female friend as she looked on annoyed. Inside, Grand Central quite literally smelled like vomit, something I had never experienced before. I didn’t relish the heterosexual disaster the train would be but I did welcome the journey home. As much as I need the gays for regular sex, fun parties, and laughter at their expense, the only messcapade I am interested in these days is the one awaiting me in my gutters at home.

Show People

An occupational hazard of my job: I know a lot of people from reality TV.

This is a complicated situation for me because I already have a lot of trouble distinguishing the difference between reality and fantasy as it is. Just today, a listener sent me the Derek doll, lead vocalist from the short-lived Barbie and the Rockers (circa 1985), and even some people at work had trouble believing it wasn't an elaborate trick. We look so much alike, and even share the same name. It begs the question: Am I, with my unchanging hairstyle and sparkling blue eyes, the living promise fulfilled of a hunk of Mattel plastic or am I in actual fact the basis for it?

In much the same way, Reality TV is the ultimate blurring of life imitating art imitating life, and sometimes I wonder if the people who appear on television even know what to do with the resulting by product. In some ways I assume it is like when someone tells you about a dream they had where you played a prominent role. Obviously they recognized you quite vividly in it, though you may feel the portrayal is entirely subjective and personally unfamiliar.

Tonight on the show, our guest host was Shaun McCarron from the Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency, a guilty pleasure of late-middle age histrionics blended smoothly with ample supple human flesh. I shamelessly admit that I am a fan, mostly for the flesh parts. Shaun and his equally well-constructed boyfriend Paul are underwear-clad favorites and two of the few openly gay models on the show. I met them both some months ago when they joined the show as guests and since then have struck up a friendly rapport. They have SIRIUS so I often get random text messages from Shaun about the content of the show while he drives to and from the gym. What I like about Shaun is that he is a smart guy (Master’s Degree!) with a relaxed, comfortable Southern demeanor who understands completely the time and place he exists in and uses it as fully to his advantage as possible. Also he looks amazing in his underwear.

Knowing that he would be in town and would want to go out, when another reality TV veteran (Clay from The Apprentice) wondered aloud how to spend his birthday weekend, I happily suggested New York City. Even though I will be busy painting my kitchen and dining room this weekend, I figured I was still hearty enough to juggle both social obligations with visiting hotties and reconstructing suburban domestic bliss at the same time. To help, I enlisted the ultimate Manhattan party figure: Matt. Our previous Friday and Saturday adventures had been successful enough, even though Gary lost his camera and I was sick for four days. Clay and Matt were already friends so I knew he would be on board for another exciting set of adventures.

The evening started earlier for Matt, who joined Charlie at his apartment for pre-cocktails before heading to Chris’ birthday party at Kelley and Peng down in the Bowery, while Shaun and I were still in Rockefeller Center wrapping up the last few minutes of the radio show. Shaun had just found out before we went on the air that fellow Modeling Agency alum J.P. Calderon was in town as well, headlining an Instinct Magazine party at SPLASH. I met J.P. at Gay Days in October and he might have been on the show once, but for the life of me I can’t remember a single word that has ever come out of his mouth. But since that party didn’t start until after 11pm, we endeavored to head to the Bowery first and then see how things went.

Chris’ birthday party had a nice mix of cute, laidback guys and adorable preppy guys, prompting me to send an enthusiastic text message to my roommate to encourage him to join us. Matt was already there with Charlie and Brian. Brian’s friend Warren, a tightly built South African who is an arched eyebrow taller than Matt, was also there, along with Matt’s friend Will who I have met several times before, yet always greets me with the same spreadable cream cheese expression of blissful and totally willful ignorance. We all had a drink and settled into polite cocktail chatter.

Matt was in a particularly sparky mood, greeting me with open arms and legs, and constantly poking me with excited jabs. He also displayed again his enthusiastic applause mixed with excited laughter, a signature move for him which Brian referred to as his persistent clap (then added, “and I don’t mean that recurring case of Chlamydia either”). After Matt playfully punched him a little too hard in the sternum, Brian’s own enjoyment levels plunged woefully and desperately out of kilter with his own. I reconnected a bit with Charlie who I hadn't seen since his last appearance in my blog in November. When I brought up my blog, which previously had so tickled him to be mentioned in, he waved it off with the haute faux maturity of a fourteen year old girl who insists quite calmly and matter-of-factly that she is now a woman, then asked where Ben Harvey (the reigning king of blog mentions) was. For the record, he is out of town.

Already a fairly low key guy, especially when compared to his vibrant peacock boyfriend Paul, Shaun had settled into a glum trance of text messages and cocktails off to the side of my friend hopping. I don’t think he was having a very good time, but it was hard for me to check in on him and chat up roommate and grasp bits of conversation with Brian and Matt just so I would have something to blog about later. I was jumping around from person to person as if they were all plates that needed to be kept spinning in mid-air at all times. Perhaps I was over my head trying to have it all.

We decided to decamp from the party, with Matt leading the march toward the basement of the Chelsea Hotel, the site of my last public humiliation some weeks ago. On our way out, I charged over to a familiar looking blond man with a scruffy face and no visible ass in his baggy slung jeans. “Haven’t we met sixteen times before?” I asked, to which he replied with hand outstretched, “Yes sixteen.”

Turns out his name is Henry and we met through Cyd Zeigler and the gay football league. Suddenly I remembered where I first saw him (though not where I last saw him): doing his best (worst?) chocolate covered Kimmie impression at a karaoke bar in Harlem. Quite possibly the worst singer I have ever seen belt it in public and yet the bar was filled with adoring admirers by the time he had brutalized his last note. He was there tonight with his friend Patrick, who looked like a younger, slighter version of Jeff in Boston, and another guy whose name I don’t recall because I maxed out the number of names I could remember for the evening. Just then, Will swept into the conversation and when Henry started to introduce us, the continued blankness of his stare made me think he had already, in just thirty minutes, forgotten again that we had already met. It was time to leave.

I grabbed my bag and searched for Shaun who had since disappeared while Matt and Brian went downstairs. Moments later, Mike and I went downstairs only to find Shaun was there, but Matt and Brian were nowhere to be found. Shaun told me that they had already left for the Chelsea so the three of us hopped into a cab. I spotted Charlie on our way out, so I assume he decided to stay at the birthday party, which in retrospect turned out to be the right choice. After the world’s slowest cab ride, we arrived at the Chelsea Hotel to find Matt already inside and a hefty line outside. Matt’s cell phone having died at Chris’ birthday party, there was no way to contact him.

Since it was already Midnight, Mike refused to stand in the line at the bar and opted instead to just make an early trip to the 1am train we had planned to take home anyway. Shaun and I braved the line for fifteen minutes as a series of people he knew wandered up to us in line. It turns out he knows more people in New York City than I do. With time running short and the line just getting longer, Shaun left with his friends to go to G, also in retrospect an excellent idea, while I stood alone in line at the Chelsea Hotel.

While waiting, Corey Johnson arrived with Andy Towle and for a moment, I thought I had been rescued from the line. Unfortunately, moments later, they were in line behind me. I don't know what was more surprising to me: that they couldn't get in either or that Corey had somehow coaxed the reclusive Andy out of his apartment. “Aren’t you someone?” I asked the former high school football captain.

“Not anymore.” He assured me.

“What about him?” I asked, gesturing to blogger Andy Towle, who reaches more gay men in America than Out or the Advocate. Corey just shook his head, then offered politely. “You’re someone.” But clearly that was a reality that only exists inside my own fantasy world.

After waiting forty-five minutes, I was finally ushered in. This left me only enough time to tell Matt that I had to leave to go home. I was furious. Of course I found him and Brian, dancing in place in front of my friend Corey Craig, the DJ for the evening. I immediately swatted Matt in the back of the head. I recapped my horrible experience in line and put all the blame on him for blithely leaving us at the other party. More importantly, after his phone died, he put me in charge of keeping tabs on Clay’s arrival (his plane was much delayed from Texas) then made no effort to stay close to me. At that point, Clay was on his way over but I was out of time to wait for him to pass him off to Matt.

“He is on his way now! Go upstairs and get him!” I yelled at Matt and then as payback for Brian’s sore sternum and my own irritation, punched him in the stomach. Matt looked hurt, but not from the sock in the gut. Matt and Brian both entreated me to stay, and then stay over for the night in the city. But that was an impossibility. I was trying to have it all, and in the process, was watching all of it unravel before my eyes in a fit of bad timing. If I left, I was a quitter in the party scene of fun, leaving three handsome men and who knows what else behind. If I stayed, I would just be proving myself and my roommate right that I can't stay focused to and finish anything that I say is really important to me. So I left, Matt and his hurt feelings, Clay who hadn't even arrived yet, sexy Brian and all his promise, and walked up the stairs to the sidewalk.

"That was the best minute and a half I ever spent in a bar." I yelled sarcastically to the appreciative door staff as I crossed the sidewalk to hail a cab. It was a short ride to Grand Central but it didn't take me long to realize I had made the right decision. In the choice between fantasy and reality, as tough as it is for me to face sometimes, I really do need to choose reality more often. It is just that time.