#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. 

Guy Society

There is never anything I want to do more on a Friday night after the show than go home. But my world has been shattered since the death of James last week and it has created a certain fever pitch of impetuosity on my part. I thought about the last time I saw him, sweating like a whore in church at XL a few months ago. And maybe it was the magical thinking that if I just went out to every bar in town, eventually I would see his hulking frame lumbering through the space like an elephant moving slowly through the jungle, a catastrophe of casual destruction in his wake.  Like the months after 9/11 when I would gaze down Seventh Avenue at Times Square hoping to catch a glimpse of the twin towers, I think I will forever be looking over my shoulder with a sense of maybe.

In my grief, I sent a flurry of messages to my local friends that I had been remiss in seeing these past few weeks. I guess the arrival of spring had made me anxious to wring every second of delight out of my house that I can and my friendships, long on nightlife support, finally faded away. Ryan White and I planned to get together this week and then never did, but MattKugelman and I shared a delightful late meal at Vinyl on Monday. My friend Erik and I made plans to venture down to The Park on Thursday but fearing the zit on my nose would get worse, I pawned him off to a Friday party in SoHo.

My Tart Will Go On

This is my fourth night in a row out on the town, but only the second adventure I have written about. Thursday night I went to Matty and Andrew’s apartment for a quiet birthday celebration for Matty to which I was (as usual) the last to arrive. I was insistent that I wouldn’t write about the evening because it was private, even though Matty didn’t seem to mind either way. But since the two highlights of the evening for me were Matty reading my last post about him out loud to the mortified left standing and the dozen cookies I ate, there really wasn’t much left to say. I love them. That is all.

Friday night I went to Therapy after the show with ADDJeff, our producer Katie and Jim the Sound Guy. Jim and I spent most of the evening talking about work while Jeff and Katie frowned at us for being so insular (with good reason on their part). Because we are practically neighbors now, Jim took my same train home so I didn’t have my usual time to write up the adventure. Even still, I talked to no one else and nothing else happened so consider the evening dutifully reported.

But today, Mike went into the city to attend a party with his boyfriend and that left me free to join Ryan White and all his friends at The Ritz. First however, I needed to satisfy my Titanic fever by catching the 6:15pm showing at Kips Bay in IMAX 3D. Even though their screen is what Mike has not so lovely described as “FauxMax” because it is just a regular theater modified slightly that charges the same elevated price, I had a good time anyway. ADD Jeff joined me at the last minute for this trip back in time and it was worth it.

Birthday Preppers

Life is really unexpected. You just never know what is going to happen. This is why my new obsession is Doomsday Preppers, the show where ordinary people hoard a decade’s worth of food in their basement in the unlikely event of a water landing. Even today, I was crossing Sixth Avenue at 48^th Street and an SUV was driving the wrong way toward me, right past the cops permanently stationed by their cars outside Fox News. Always ready to channel Albert Finney in The Dresser, a movie I have never seen, I stood in front of her car and simply lifted my hand. She slowed to a stop and gave me a funny look and I showed her the error of her ways by merely gesturing back past her. Seconds later, she was completing a U-Turn and we were both on our merry way. The cops didn’t even bother getting in their cars and chasing her. That’s New York. And if you are going to freak out at every little thing, don’t come here.

I was making a rare Saturday night appearance in the city for back to back birthday celebrations. It is also Mike’s birthday on Sunday but he doesn’t feel like celebrating this year even though now that we have our glorious new coffee station in the kitchen, amazing new bathroom and showstopping fireplace, there is every reason to rejoice! I even upgraded the shelves in the closets so our own doomsday prepping won’t look as sloppy as that girl in Houston who plans to shoot her kittens in the head when we run out of oil.

First stop was The Tenth Rail down on 10^th Avenue and 33^rd Street. The neighborhood is so sketchy, the highlight is the well-traveled drive through McDonald’s next door from which the pernicious glare of the fluorescent lighting is a vision direct from the worst nightmares of the Dowager Countess, minus the gaiety. Perhaps they should rename the place The Seventh Circle, although we were really only there for the Third. As the strangers streamed into the empty bar from the street, each entered with a bewildered look on their face. “I took the M-11 bus!” one woman declared incredulously. I would have been less surprised (or concerned for her safety) if she had said she took an M-16. 

Craze The Titanic

When I bought my house five years ago, I did it because I loved New York City but I wanted some quiet so I could sleep in on the weekends. There is just something not so restful about someone screaming “White Jesus” outside your window every Sunday morning. I don’t know why. But the unintended consequence of moving upstate has been not so much peace and quiet as a flat line where my social life used to be.

I am derisive toward anyone who posts too many photos online of their baby and heaven help them if their baby is a cat named Emily Dickinson or even, as a random example, a camera hog of a pug. But lately I have found myself white knuckling it everywhere I go, desperate to show people the photos of my newly remodeled bathroom I keep on my phone. Yes. It happened. I turned into one of those people I hate. So when ADD Jeff wanted to go out tonight after the show, and I found myself explaining to him that I couldn’t stay out late because I had to get up early to take things to the city dump. Even I could hear the dull thud as the words fell out of my mouth. That was it. I needed to go out.

Candy Everybody Flaunts

Fittingly enough, It’s A Small World began as a ride at the New York World’s Fair. Because when you are in New York, you notice how truly small the world is. In a small town, the world feels small, because you can reach out your arms and turn in a slow circle and touch it all. But it looks like there is more world out there, beyond the moon, behind the rain. But when you finally get to the big city and do a slow turn, you realize it isn’t as big as it once seemed.

“Was this really worth getting off at 9:40pm?” Ryan White asked, half-joking, his sly smile betraying the half-serious side of the question. He didn’t mean my hanging out with him. That is always worth escaping the studio a few minutes early for. We have only known each other a few weeks since our first fateful meeting in the back of a taxi, but Ryan is a delightful fast friend. He is good company and he knows it.

Tonight we met out at Therapy, which I used to love but the bloom is off the rose since the place became infested with lackluster stage shows on that tiny elevation in front of the fireplace on the second floor. What had once been a charming getaway to meet friends after work or contract mono from a stranger over communal nachos, has lately become that casual meeting with friends spontaneously interrupted by someone loud and wholly unwelcome collapsing on your table.

I thought at first that we had escaped unscathed. Ryan and I spent our first half hour or so engaged in polite conversation, our ears unmolested by shrieking comedians or bad amateur singing contests. But then while I was at the bar picking up a fresh vodka soda for Ryan, I realized suddenly that I was not on line at Zabar’s and the tiny woman in the bad wig waiting for her mocktail was, in fact, the night’s entertainment.

We had already been talking about the psychological power of drag and the grip over which it holds the gay community. And then this woman appeared, dressed literally in drag, to host a stripper contest. Well, at least I think that is what it was supposed to be. It started with her singing a couple of songs very badly and then encouraging some audience members to also get up and sing badly. This I thought (beyond the obvious) was a bad idea. Are you trying to get strippers or singers? Or singers who strip? People are drunk, lady. If you aren’t clear in your instructions, you are in for a very messy ride.

The area near the fireplace started to take on the kind of frenzied chaos less reminiscent of Broadway's Miss Saigon than Saigon's actual fall. This woman "performer" stripped layers off and warbled and berated the audience for understandably ignoring her. Honey, if you are on stage, and you aren’t more compelling than whatever pops up on someone’s cell phone during your show, that’s on you.

Right on cue, Jeffrey strolled in with his handsome friend Christopher. Christopher, it turns out, works across the street from me and his cousin I think works with Julie James in my office. How small world is that? Pretty damned small. I am pretty sure we have met before but I can't for the life of me remember where or when. Doesn't matter. We've met now.

Jeffrey asked me if I had any Twizzlers on me, recalling fondly our first meeting downtown where I did have candy in my pocket and I was happy to see him. Of course, since Halloween, I have Twizzlers all over my house and office like a hoarder, and could have kicked myself for not having them with me at Therapy (but I don’t have that kind of flexibility). In my own defense, I didn’t know he was coming.

As the karaoke go-go strip show rapidly cascaded downhill nearby, I spotted my Ukrainian pal Vitaliy, on a NYC layover between Utah and London, in the audience. He is all muscle-packed like Jeffrey but shorter. And I noticed he liked hovering near the equally ripped wait staff, including the shot boy who was either wearing a horrible duck-tailed wig or hasn’t been out of a cowboy hat since Brokeback Mountain. I guess since Vitaliy is visiting from out of town, it isn’t a problem for him to (as Ryan so vividly put it tonight) shit where he eats. I entreated Vitaliy to jump on the stage, remove his shirt and win the $100 prize but he giggled shyly and backed away. I don’t understand working out like crazy and then not dropping your clothes at a moment’s notice. It’s like getting a face lift and then always wearing a veil. If you want to wander aimlessly through life in a bulky sweater, just go ahead and get fat like everyone else. You can start by eating a pack of Twizzlers. They're 240 carb-loading calories in the blink of an eye.

In the future, I will always walk around with a pack of Twizzlers in my pocket. I do owe Jeffrey some after all and it is well known that I don’t care what people think of me. Obviously no one on the stage cared what anyone thought of them either, especially the loud screeching host lady with the terrible Rona Barrett wig. Maybe if she had Twizzlers in her pocket, the audience would have cared what she had to say. Besides, as accessories go, Twizzlers, like strippers and drag queens, are candy everybody wants, just not always at the same time.