Play Ball

I get so torn about my life in moments like this. On the one hand, I relish my anonymity and all the trappings of "real life." At the same time, I have frequent urges to be in the center of the action. These are the two pulls in my life, tearing me constantly in opposite directions at the same time. Earlier today I was enjoying my Sunday political shows (who knew McLaughlin was such a raving FDR devotee!) and then winterizing my house. It's a quiet existence where I am more concerned with what to watch on TV than who is watching me. But then later, I headed down to the city for dinner with Ben Harvey and a debaucherous turn at the Hustlaball.

It was a gorgeous fall day. Crisp, as we like to say. And the leaves were just starting to turn and drop, even as the sun shown warmly through the thinning branches. On days like this, I love the long walks the city affords and made the trek from Grand Central to Union Square on foot. Ben was waiting for me in the bar of Republic looking as handsome as ever. Has it really been so many months since I saw him last?

Republic is one of my favorite places in the city. It is communist dining at its finest: inexpensive, fast, spare and they serve thai ice tea and green tea ice cream, two of my greatest rare pleasures in life. It was all new to Ben so he stuck with the reliable pad thai while I indulged in spicy duck noodle broth. We gossiped about work, caught up on love (or lack thereof), shared chicken skewers. Aside from my total domination of the conversation, it was a perfect evening.

I regret to say that, in my usual fashion, I turned to Ben as we got our ice cream and said, "And now in our last five minutes, tell me all about you." Believe me when I say this was not the worst of my conversational crimes. I managed to weave a depressing zinger about our depressed economy as the punchline to nearly every sentence no matter the subject matter. Through it all, Ben was a terrific sport about the whole thing.

From there, I jetted down to the Hustlaball. Last year, I attended under the guise of being Chi Chi LaRue's assistant. This year, I was (thanks to Howard at FabScout) a bona fide invited guest. In many ways, I loved being mistaken for Chi Chi's minion. No one wanted anything from me save access to the terminally accessible and personable star herself. This year, still no one wanted anything from me, though ever the publicist, Howard made sure everyone knew who the hell I was. Though, the one person who had heard of OutQ mistook my show for another, accusing me of an appalling bit about selling a used condom full of cum at 9:30am! "That's our morning show," I assured him, finally with a sense of relief at not having to defend the lurid content of my own show for a change.

Barrett Long was there, looking dapper as we sat together in the VIP lounge. He was anxious to rehash our good times last year when his then roommate Rod Barry picked a drunken fight on the patio. Suddenly, sensing the moment, he stood up and started to unzip his pants. "I've seen it!" I said, but he was persistent. "Yes but you haven't sucked on it." I dodged the inevitable hand on the back of the head and stood up, firm in my conviction to not experience his mammoth eleven inch cock first hand. "I still have my tonsils, Barrett, and this is not how I want them taken out."

Ben Andrews was there early on doing his Clark Kent shtick, but I spent most of the evening with Jackson Wild and Ryan Raz. The two of them were still rattled from some unpleasantness the night before at Octoberfist, another adjunct Hustlaball event. Jackson was drinking up a storm, even charming me into a lemon drop shot I didn't want to do, while Ryan stuck dutifully to water knowing he had a scene to do in the morning with the aforementioned Barrett Long. I didn't envy his future soreness one bit, especially after Barrett told me that once it was in he wanted Ryan to spin on it.

Jackson was excited about the eminent arrival of his boyfriend Jim. After the show on Friday prepping for my last blog entry, I did some recon on the boys and read all about Jim on Jackson's MySpace page. Jackson's love for the hunky stranger seemed worthy to me and the two of us got along great. Good thing since we spent the better part of the evening together while the boys were working the red carpet and dancing on stage. In the interim, I coaxed Jim to take his shirt off and the two of us turned the VIP lounge into our own private dance party.

Events like the Hustlaball are dicey propositions, especially in the VIP room where the crowd is made up of porn stars and the men who love them. Many of the stars are reluctant participants and the admirers are too busy staring to have much fun. That leaves it up to in-betweeners like us to actually bring the party. As an invited guest, I did my best to shore up the proceedings, short of sucking Barrett Long. After all, when all is said and done, I am still just a civilian here, having fun but always with an eye on the door that leads out to the real world where I truly belong.

Prix de Beaute

Life divides people into two very subjective categories: fuckable and not fuckable. Of course who falls into which category is purely in the eye of the beholder. However, whole industries have sprung up dependent on the notion of fuckability. Tonight I experienced two of them up close: porn and underwear.

Howard Andrew of FabScout is in town for the Hustlaball. To kick things off, he dropped by the studio with three of his fuckable models. The most outgoing and flirtatious was Jackson Wild, whom I nicknamed Jackson Hole because it seems his ass is also a rugged destination. Howard barely knows me but his keen sense led him to believe (correctly) that I would be most attracted to Ryan Raz, a tan dirty blond with glacier blue eyes and jutting ears. Though the third, a quiet reserved Southern boy named Colton Steele, slight and furry, was probably the most compatible with me sexually.

After the show, they headed for The Eagle for the Hustlaball kick off party and I ventured down to Splash to watch Ronnie emcee an underwear model search for Instinct Magazine. Having pulled this kind of duty before, my sympathies were with Ronnie during the slapdash prolonged proceedings as they dragged on into the night. The event was poorly executed, with the models fully dressed for the overwhelming majority of the show. Even Ronnie was demurely attired much to the chagrin of the salivating crowd. Dan and his friend Patrick who was visiting from out of town joined me against their will at the bar, but we were all in agreement about the show. The bar was half empty and most of the bartenders looked more like underwear models than the contestants, but in every case, they were all quite fuckable.

After the judges declared the audience's least favorite the winner, the show was quickly over. I waited forever to say good bye to Ronnie who still had a bunch of signings and poses for pictures to do. He hugged me and after earlier admiring my new short hair whispered in his calm, even Midwest tone, "You look so beautiful." I might dine emotionally on that for as long as Bob Morris calling me "good looking" in the New York Times.

I decamped from Splash and headed to The Eagle, a purposefully dank playpen now around the corner from the priciest and most ludicrous straight clubs in the city. I found Howard and the boys upstairs. Brian had called my haircut a "Saturday night at The Eagle game changer" at Eric's party last month. Though perhaps because it was Friday the game hadn't seemed to change for me.

Jackson greeted me with the same wild "Let's do it RIGHT NOW!!!!" look that seems to be permanently in his eyes. Ryan was sweet and longing to be nuzzled in a rough and ready roundhouse ready for something else. Finally, appropriate to the venue and occasion, Colton appeared in nothing but a jockstrap. Apparently the alcohol had set in. Howard naturally took it all in with his usual sense of bemusement.

I admire how people I know in porn like Howard take it all in stride. They are plugged in to how fleeting it all is. You have to stay in the moment or the whole thing will consume you. The shelf life of a model is short, but it's even shorter for a porn star. So even though I will never be as fuckable as these porn pups or contestants in an underwear contest, I hope whatever beauty I do have is enough to carry me long term through all the many adventures yet to come.