#FallowFridays

Elmore Leonard is dead. 

That is the kind of spare opener he would have enjoyed. Obviously, I have a very different writing style. But when famous writers die these days, the internet briefly fills with anecdotes and life lessons in a really lovely sort of communal wake. And so it has been the case with Elmore Leonard this week and through that I have picked up a few writing tips that I both never follow and will savagely paraphrase here. My apologies to him on both counts.

Elmore Leonard said never open with the weather, but I don't think he ever had a Friday night like the one we experienced tonight in Manhattan. The air was crisp and clear, with only the barest hint of diaper.  As the immortal bard Taylor Swift once opined, "It feels like a perfect night." And it does.  Normally, in blazing winter and bitter summer, I am a reluctant adventurer. But when the temperature and humidity are just right, like dry bath water, I am not just encouraged to go out but I become the encourager. 

Moon Stuck

So there is a super moon going on right now. This means the moon is full and at its closest point so it looks a lot larger and brighter than usual. This also means everyone is batshit crazy. What a perfect night for Broadway Bares at the Roseland Ballroom.

For those of you who aren't from NYC and think Smash is a wild night at the theatre, hold on to your aisle seats because you ain't seen nothin' yet. Twenty-three years ago, Broadway Bares started as a fundraiser where Broadway dancers would do a burlesque show to raise money to fight HIV/AIDS. The event has grown and tonight raised more than $1.5 million and had over 200 dancers peeling it all off for charity (including my pal Christopher Sieber in a wild leather thong and chains!). You weren't there so here is a glimpse of the show:

Card Again

The doorman waved me into Vlada with a smooth gesture, “Go right in. I know your face.” He was as unknown to me as Jupiter. I know your old face he meant as he didn't bother to ask for my ID. I remember being offended when I would get carded at the door even though a baby could have been born since then who is old enough now to not be carded himself. Things just aren't as they used to be.

This was at Vlada but it was the second time in the evening that I wasn't carded. The first time was at Therapy where I went to meet Brent, who is visiting from San Francisco. Brent has been a long time listener of the show and I first met him when he was a nineteen year old college student seeing New York City. But that was eight years ago and Brent is all grown up now with a real job and boyfriend and everything.

Brent suggested Therapy (the only bar in the city he could remember) and the last time I was there, it was something of a ghost town since Hell’s Kitchen fell under the spell of Industry across the way. But tonight the bar was packed, to the rafters, with many young people and a few bewildered old people like myself who wondered what happened to their quiet old haunt. It turned out not to be a place to have a catch-up conversation but it was a place to run into Philip.

Downtown Shabby

“I love Kathy Griffith.”

Dear gays,

If you are going to express your devotion for some famous lady, be it on Facebook or talking on your cell phone next to the 14^th Street entrance to the 1 train, please get the name right. I am a man of many pet peeves but this one ranks near the top. Don’t post that you are someone’s biggest fan and then misspell their name. And who doesn’t know that the red headed loudmouth with no loyalty is Kathy Griffin? Not Griffith. Everyone knows that.

I was downtown for practically five seconds, so I guess I shouldn’t have been all that surprised that someone had already annoyed me. Downtown is awful. People in New York complain about neighborhoods the way other people talk about the weather. It is just something we do. So, I'll say it. I hate being downtown. As a snob who hates snobs, it is the worst place on earth. While waiting for my Army pal Josh to arrive in town tonight, I sent a text message to Matt Kugelman to find out if he was out and about so I could kill some time with him in the interim. Matt is a delight and more importantly, he is nearly always out somewhere when my show ends. So when I am in the mood for a drink or well that’s pretty much all we do is drink, so whenever I am in the mood for a drink, that Matt Kugelman is pretty handy to have around!

Tsuris Season

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

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

One Missed Fall

The easiest way to get me to write about you is to say something interesting, or do something memorable. Or you could be like Matty and just flat out demand it. “I want to be prominent. In bold.” This is a welcome change from some people at Industry tonight who apparently didn’t like that I wrote about them in the past. And who knows what all the new men I met tonight will feel about it. I guess if it is really important, they will tell me. But tonight, Matty wanted to tell me what he thought about what I wrote about myself.

“I read every page,” he declared adamantly of my latest narcissistic page turner When Nightlife Falls. “It was edited! Your life was missing from it. It wasn’t in there.” This was a bit of a surprise, especially given the conversation I had with ADD Jeff earlier as we left the show. He just finished the book too. “I really feel like I know you now as a person, not just as someone on the radio,” he told me. I suppose the truth lies somewhere in between.

Cross Gown Rivals

Madonna has a new Kraft single out. To say that it is terrible would be purely out of spite. After all, American Life is truly terrible and to be fair, Madonna has been slowly clawing her way back up to musical relevance steadily ever since that creative low point. Her latest is not bad, it just isn’t age appropriate. It sounds like Avril Lavigne covering Debbie Gibson covering The Shirelles. And Madonna still rhymes like a second grader, which aside from close-up shots of her hands, is the worst thing about her.

She is also on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar, another relic of another century. I saw a shot of her standing behind another woman with her arm poised around the lady’s neck. First thought: she is a vampire who will suck the essence out of you! Remember when she kissed Britney Spears and then Britney’s career collapsed and they finally reluctantly replaced Brit with a Japanese sex robot? Maybe almost none of that actually happened but sometimes, in that drowsy part of waking where dreams still seem so real around you, it feels true.

Plus None

Here is a really good party tip from someone who doesn’t go to a lot of parties: If you are invited to an event and you only know the host, make sure you bring a plus one with you. It doesn’t matter how many times I get invited to a party where I only know one person, I always fail to bring someone with me. I suppose it is because I don’t have a reliable standby plus one. This is where having a straight female friend comes in handy. In fact this seems to be the primary motivation for most of these symbiotic relationships. Mental note: make new friend, attend party together.

Last week, I got a text message from Reichen inviting me to the bar Industry for the launch of his new fragrance. It is also called Reichen, so for the purposes of clarity from now on, I will just refer to it as the fragrance. That way, when I tell you some Reichen got sprayed in my eye, you won’t think the evening took a decidedly sexual turn between us. But more on the spritzing later.

My new life strategy is to say yes to everything. I will in fact now attend the opening of an envelope, both literally and figuratively. Just ask! As I have plunged headlong into midlife, I have discovered the reason you don’t see forty-something gay men anywhere: It just becomes easier to stay home. You reach a point in life where you have everything, and have been everywhere. There is nothing waiting for you out at Industry that isn’t either already at hand, or can’t be managed with your own hand. But my career dictates a certain level of sociability. I am not so famous that I can afford to hide at home and wait for the residual checks to roll in. In fact, I am not so famous anything.  I need to work, not just at an office, but also a room, a bar, or launch party for a fragrance.

As I point out in my fantastic new book, When NightlifeFalls (available now on Amazon, for Kindle, and the Nook), I have known Reichen for some time, although not extremely well. He is the quintessence of a celebrifriend. That is a celebrity who I am on friendly terms with but with whom my only contact is in full view of the public.  Truth be told, Chris Rice is my favorite celebrifriend because it feels all literary and classy and he is such a good sport about the whole thing. But Reichen is guaranteed to get attention, anywhere, anytime, and tonight was no exception.

I like Reichen. He is pretty, ridiculously so. And most people stop there. But the more time I spend with him, the more I see only his character. He is honestly and genuinely earnest. If I were pressed and told to describe him in one word, earnest is the word I would choose. Unfortunately, earnest is the gay community’s least popular descriptor, right behind sweet or blousy.  Being earnest gets you into trouble, especially in the big city, because it can so easily read as disingenuous or condescending. I am not at all earnest. I’m blunt and crass. That, for better or worse, is never taken the wrong way. I am like a hostage taker and Reichen is like the negotiator they send in to defuse the tension.

Reichen had the launch party tonight at Industry, one of the newer hot spots in midtown (and about which my feelings are already well established). The party was scheduled to end at ten, which is also when my show ends. So I told him I would be there after the show and he gave me a private password so I would be able to get a gift bag at the event. Since I hate meeting new people, scoring a gift bag became suddenly a primary motivator for attending, mostly out of curiosity as to what might be in it. As I walked out of the studio tonight after the show, I ran into Ben and Dave, making notes ahead of the recording of their latest podcast. I told them where I was headed and joked that since I would be the fattest person at the party, I was going as both me and my own plus one.

Arriving at Industry, I opened the outer door and was immediately greeted by a giant poster informing me that entering was my consent to be filmed. I hoped that by coming late, I could avoid the filming of The A List and as it turned out, while I was waiting to talk to Reichen, some very nice production people shoved me out of the way to cart out the equipment. I’ve never been so happy to be pushed aside in a bar in my life! I don’t know how Reichen puts up with that reality TV nonsense, but then again, people wonder how I talk for four hours every night. I guess it is something you just get used to doing after a while.

Reichen seemed genuinely surprised and happy to see me, but then suddenly blurted out: “You missed the gift bags! I’m sorry. I really wanted you to have one.” Oh well, I thought to myself, it is just a gift bag. But then, noticing an unattended gift bag on a stool, he said, “I wonder who left this here. Doesn’t matter. It’s yours now!” Reichen stole a gift bag for me at his own party! I felt like a star and a criminal at the same time.  That’s a good feeling, in case you were wondering. Intoxicating.

“We’re leaving,” Reichen told me, “Come with us to Le Bain!” Uh. I really had only planned to drop in fast as the white hot party burned down to an ember, so I could quickly nab a gift bag, say hi to Reichen, gather enough intel for a blog entry and still make it to the 11pm train. But I say yes to everything now, so I said yes to Reichen and his after-party adventure! And then just as suddenly I was filled with dread. Tom and Lorenzo had warned us all about the overly dramatic after parties on The A List. Was I leaving the bar just to end up as an extra in some high anxiety wine throwing melee with that horrible hairdresser, the tanorexic bitch with my name and the fat model I’d still fuck even though he got TV fat?

Before I could gather my thoughts, Reichen was introducing me to his friend Zach. “I don’t shake hands!” Zach yelled, simultaneously pushing my outstretched hand away and pouring half his cocktail down my arm, “I like to hug! I love Derek!” I would like to say this was the last time he got alcohol on me, but that instead of love, turned out to be the running theme of the evening with him. 

We all went outside to hail cabs to get downtown to Le Bain, which it turned out is a bar at The Standard. I had never been there before, and I worried about getting past a velvet rope in shorts. I figured I should try to get into a cab with Zach since he was also in shorts and was the only other person I knew, but he and three skinny girls in shiny dresses climbed into a cab behind Reichen’s cab. So, being unusually bold, I waved a heretofore unknown fun black girl and a strapping gay lad into a third cab headed downtown. No doorman in NYC could resist me if I am part of this threesome! I sat in the hump between Farrin, a recruiter visiting from Dallas and Ryan, who said he was an NYU grad student recently relocated from Beijing. They were both a total blast and my favorite part of the evening.

“How did you get a gift bag?” Ryan asked me in the cab ride to The Standard. “There were only like seven of them or something.” Suddenly, I realized that I didn’t see anyone else with a gift bag. Zach didn’t have one. None of the girls in sparkly dresses. Not even Ryan and fabulous Farrin. “Reichen gave it to me.” I offered up but even as I said it, I wondered how I ended up with it too. When pressed about how I knew Reichen, I told them about my radio show. “Oh, like Ben and Dave.” Ryan offered, then suddenly something clicked. “Wait a minute. Weren’t you on their show a couple of weeks ago? I thought I recognized your voice.” True story, I was recognized from someone else’s show in the back of a cab. Only in New York, kids. Only in New York.

Our cab was the first to arrive at The Standard. The three of us waited briefly downstairs to get our ID checked and our hands stamped before we jumped into a packed elevator to the top. The bar itself was not very crowded at all and the view south to ground zero was lovely. Ryan suggested we all go upstairs and that was the revelation. Le Bain is an outdoor rooftop bar and it was spectacular. The night air was crisp and breezy. There was a hint of fall about it but it felt refreshing instead of chilly. Ryan was cold but Reichen agreed with me later that the night air was perfect. It turned out that this was his favorite place in the city and spending only a few minutes up there it was clear why.

Le Bain wasn’t very busy when we arrived but the crowd began to thicken fast. It was a funny crowd too. There were mostly young guys there, mid twenties. There were some older guys in bow ties and button down shirts tucked into shorts. That is trying too hard even when a twenty-something urban hipster does it. A blond guy across the crowd in a tight red t-shirt caught my eye. I smiled at him and he winked back. That was nice. But the best was that none of the other A Listers were there and no one was filming anything. So in all, I had a really good time. In fact, I was surprised. Plus none and non-plussed, you might say.

As the evening started to wind down, I went to say good night to Reichen. Zach was there with a tester bottle of the fragrance. Zach was even drunker at this point, so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when he sprayed me with cologne and then two seconds later forgot that he already had and sprayed me again. At one point, he sprayed it directly into my eyes. “It’s all organic!” Reichen assured me as I struggled to see. The cologne has a nice clean scent to it but I barked at Zach to stop spraying me. “If I get any more cologne on me, they won’t let me on the train!”

He looked at me funny. “What train is that?” Obviously I couldn’t mean the NYC subway, where if you aren’t shitting into your own hand you get a good conduct medal from the city. When I told him, I lived in Westchester, he dismissed me. “Oh, you have no power.” And there it was, I thought, the cruelty of not being a Manhattanite anymore. You live in the suburbs and you are worthless. I asked him what he meant, ready to get into a terrible name droppy fight about how close I live to Martha Stewart and own instead of rent but then in his drunken haze he suddenly made it clear he thought we were all still without electricity since the hurricane last weekend.

I guess that is the lesson of the night, and a fitting lesson when dealing with Reichen. People so quickly assume he is one thing when he is something completely different. I thought I would end up in a horrible reality show but instead I landed in a calm oasis high above the city in the welcoming night air. I thought the rooftop bar at The Standard would be a drag but it was friendly and nice. I met new people and they turned out to be a lot of fun. And even though I was awash in cologne, the conductors still let me on the train back home. Gift bag and all.

Industrious Fellows

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

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