Ready! Reset! Go!

 I think we can all agree: it's been a crazy few years. 

My radio show was canceled, but then we successfully relaunched ourselves and have grown into a podcast network with our own smartphone app. A reality star and tabloid fixture decimated a generation of establishment Republicans and ended a 25 year Clinton dynasty before embarking on what can only be described as a turbulent and tumultuous rollercoaster of chaos. Inexplicably I wrote a movie that was actually produced, fulfilling a lifelong dream but then earlier this year all my personal plans for the future were shattered in an instant when the love of my life suddenly died. 

So when X Files creator Chris Carter reminds everyone that there is a nutty conspiracy theory floating around that the relaunch of the Hadron collider in Cern in 2015 sent us into an alternate reality Hellscape, you start looking back on the shocking number of relevant pop culture figures who died in 2016 and think, "Sure. Why not?" After all, to quote George W. Bush at the Trump inaugural, the last few years have been "fucking weird."  

Me thinking about the last six years

But now we have a new old president and a vaccine that is powerfully ending an 18 month pandemic as isolating as a dunce corner timeout. It's summer and the sun is shining and things feel really truly optimistic for the first time in a really long time. Maybe it's too much to hope for that the rollercoaster is finally pulling into the station and we can transfer to a different ride more to our liking. Or maybe it is just the calm before the next series of last gasp loops and turns. 

I started to write about the city opening up a few weeks ago. I walked through Bryant Park and it was full of happy people. For the first time since March 2020, I was annoyed by how many people were in my way on the sidewalk. It felt good. The old New York was back and just as obnoxious as it ever was. And me too, I guess. But then I got busy at work and didn't actually do anything more than walk through a crowded park so without stronger literary inspiration I let it go. But tonight, I am going to a party and that in and of itself should be cause for celebration. 

As the fallow nature of my blog can attest, I haven't been nearly as social in the last few years as I once was. My blog has transitioned from a mixed emotions accounting of various nightlife adventures to quite literally a morgue. Though I confess pride that one of my only true talents as a writer is to capture the essence of another person with pinpoint accuracy, that Eric' husband liberally quoted what I wrote at his international Zoom memorial was bittersweet at best. I may not know myself but at least I have some sense of the people I love. Shame it only comes into focus after they are gone. But I think it is too soon to hang up my hat as a social animal and relegate myself to the grim task of high quality obituaries. So tonight, I'm off to a party. 

In the past year and a half, Matt Kugelman is the only person I have seen socially. Last summer, he coaxed me out to dinner on the streets of Hell's Kitchen. I was wary, but Matt was tested daily at work and I had been a literal and figurative homebound hermit, my only source of entertainment a series of increasingly ill-advised self haircuts that only confirmed that staying home was the best plan. But Matt is social and friendly like a golden retriever with a squeaky ball in his mouth, so I was persuaded to join him for what turned out to be a totally safe and perfectly fun meal outside in a Manhattan gutter. 

Today Facebook served up a photo of us together at a party in 2009. I joked that I would be wearing the exact same outfit tonight, to which Matt replied with a Romy and Michelle "Me Too!" meme. That would be hilarious if I didn't still own and wear that $9 Gap polo. Matt and I don't have everything in common but I realized today seeing that photo that our strongest bond is probably that both of us established a casual look that we will never deviate from, for better or for worse. Take any random photo of either of us, together or apart in the last decade and I dare you to guess the year. Good luck, 

But life is about change, right? Going to new places, seeing new people. But is that really what we all want now?  After the year we've had just seeing the same old people in the same old shirts is more than good enough, and probably exactly what the doctor ordered. This timeline sucks and anything that looks like Earth One these days looks pretty good to me. So tonight I am off to Matt's birthday party, as I have done year after year after year after year. In this case, familiarity doesn't bred contempt, it engenders relief. It's the shiny golden promise of the same comfortable old thing again and, well, as William Mulholland said at the opening of the Los Angeles aqueduct, "Here it is. Take it." And thank you very much, I think I will. 

I just need a minute to dust off this outfit first. It's been a while. 

The End

This has been coming for a while and I suppose it isn’t a surprise now that the day has arrived. I’ve been writing about my adventures out on the town for a few years now, so long in fact that I started with links to the Friendster.com profiles of total strangers. In the process, I have annoyed good friends and created near-enemies out of casual acquaintances. That isn’t to say that some people haven't enjoyed what I have written, it’s just that at a certain point the vehicle in any adventure simply runs out of steam.

I went to an amazing party in an apartment in the sky back in June. My friend Bobby who invited me has been impatiently waiting for me to write it up for months. And there was so much grist too. I flirted with an extremely drunk guy who no doubt has no recollection of either said flirting, nor my Herculean efforts buttoning his tiny cutoff shorts back up for him. There were friends in from out of town (Clay Lee!), adorable Matty K and party doll Will Wikle. It even had Lance Bass and party-crashing paparazzi, and Lance’s boyfriend mistaking me for a bartender and trying to order drinks from me. This is an important detail since the bartenders at the party were as hot as the panoramic city views and if anything, the way I am dressed, I am usually mistaken for a bike messenger.

But it has been two months and pertinent names have already faded into the distance. For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out why I hadn't written it all up. At first I told myself that I didn’t want to annoy the billionaire apartment owner upon whose largess I would hope to impose further in the future. Then, I told myself in between repeated viewings of Mad Men that I was just too busy. In reality I am just tired. Tired of facing down the inevitable ire of people I genuinely care about and fighting with doormen to hold onto a nightlife that has been on life support for some time. And for what? So I have something to write on the internet? Enough.

So this will be my final posting in this form, at least for a while. Maybe if the spirit really moves me, I will post another epic long story. In the meantime, my blog will take a different tack, closer to daily and in a pop culture form, and the reluctant personal life I am so reluctant to reveal will slip once again behind the veil.

Fitting then that there was an ending of another sort tonight as Jonathan held his goodbye party at Vintage in Hell’s Kitchen. He is moving to Los Angeles for his own exciting adventures out west. Maybe he will write a blog about it and you can follow that for a while. I was the first to arrive and we sat for a few moments in the back of the bar on paired red velvet sofas like talk show guests forced to interview each other. While he told me about his recent work off in Nevada, I tried to remember the last time I was at Vintage. I think it was with Terry, who showed up a few minutes later with his boyfriend Doug. The place looked so familiar even though I think then it was wintertime and I feel like John Tartaglia was there but I don’t remember how many years ago it was (2004?) or why I was there.

Normally I wear a blue polo when heading out to a gay bar, letting my icy eyes blend like camouflage into the color creating a matching accessory. But Jonathan also has blue eyes and since we can often be found dressing alike, among other alike things, I figured I would play it safe and wear a yellow Otter polo, a color I never wear and I suspect he wouldn’t wear either. After all, it is his party. No need to pull focus.

The other guests started to trickle in and I settled down on the couch with Terry, who has been my friend for 14 years. Like always, he overestimated the years, this time to a whopping seventeen. He always does that! I guess he just goes by how long it feels. “The years stretch as you get older,” Margo Channing warned us in All About Eve and she wasn’t kidding. Since both Terry and I lived in LA once (we met there), we both took turns torturing Jonathan with stories of West Hollywood life. Naturally, all of them revolved around sex.

Being in your mid-twenties and gay in West Hollywood is a bit like locking a kid in a candy store, only the store doesn’t open again until you are thirty-something, bloated and filled with regret. Jonathan had considered moving into an apartment on Palm Avenue, which coincidentally was the first street I lived on in West Hollywood. This set us off on a war of remembrances of tricks past, most residing in the notorious Mediterranean apartment complex at the foot of that hill.

“It’s a labyrinth,” I warned Jonathan. “You won’t even know you are in it until you are already inside. You are guaranteed to sleep with at least one person who lives there.” Terry nodded vigorously behind me.

After Jonathan went off to attend to the other guests and escape our dusty war stories, Terry turned to me with sudden seriousness. “That was a whole lifetime ago.” I am going through my old writing preparing a book to go out this fall that chronicles my life then so I know exactly what he means. Reading again what I wrote then and it feels like it all happened to someone else. A long time ago, in a sunny sex galaxy far, far away… filled with cheap food at Baja Buds, smoothies at Jamba Juice and late night noshing first at Canter’s and then when we had more money, the Jerry’s Famous across from Cedars.

Terry and his boyfriend Doug left and I tried talking to some new people. And they were nice enough. But my heart wasn’t in it. I hate saying good bye to Jonathan but I know that LA is the right place at the right time for him. And what’s next for me is right here in New York. His other friends didn’t see the finality in his jump to the left coast but I do. I know what it is like to be 27 and in West Hollywood with the whole wide world in front of you. Why would you want to carry groceries eight blocks in the snow or wait endlessly on a sweltering subway platform when there’s paradise in a beat up convertible sailing up the Pacific Coast Highway at sunset?

So off to LA for Jonathan. And for me here, something new. Maybe I will write about people I don’t know for a change. Matty has a boyfriend and I don’t see him so much anymore. Kugie is off in Chicago visiting and while he is a good sport about the blog, we can’t just hang out for the sake of entertainment. We gave at the office. And even though I am not going anywhere, I am ready for a change too. This blog has been like an infection in Manhattan: raised temperatures, broke out in a rash, and then ran its course. And now that the center of gravity is shifting to Brooklyn, with all its expanding waistlines and hipster edginess, I feel as arcane as Carrie Bradshaw. Even I don't live in Manhattan anymore. The time has come everybody. Hang up the Manolos already.

On my way to the train, and the inevitable final blog written on the Hudson line north heading off to my Don and Betsy Draper dream world, I dropped by the terrible Starbucks near my office. The guy behind the counter kind of flirted a bit and charged me an iced coffee instead of my iced venti soy chai. I left the two dollar difference in the tip jar, smiled and waited for my drink. That attention felt good, in a color I don’t like to wear and under such harsh lighting. But maybe he was just being nice, one New Yorker to another. It’s like that when you live here. Maybe that is something Jonathan will miss. No one who has ever lived here likes feeling like an outsider when they come back. Or worse, a tourist. NYC gets in your blood and it never leaves. For a while I had switched to vanilla lattes and even dropped soy altogether from my diet, but now I am firmly back in the old routine. I guess it’s true what they say: the more things change, the more they stay the same.

So even though I am saying goodbye, maybe you should stay tuned. Life has a funny way of surprising you. You never know what might be waiting next.

Surprise Part(l)y

Today is Christopher’s birthday so his wonderful boyfriend Kevin plotted a surprise party for him. This apparently took a lot of effort. Chris is smart so it took serious subterfuge on Kevin’s part. A couple of weeks ago we all got separate emails letting us know about the party tonight at Bamboo 52 but also to help “accidentally” suggest there was a surprise party on Thursday. This would throw Christopher off the scent. I told Kevin tonight that if he really wanted to surprise Christopher he should also go ahead with the surprise party tomorrow night too. Nothing like a double fake out.

I did my part in keeping the secret although I nearly helped Kevin botch it all. Two weeks ago we were all at their apartment playing Buzz on the PS3 and one of the answers was the Blondie song “Atomic” and no one had heard of it. Not the boys. Not Michelle from BestWeekEver.TV. Not even Jonathan who seems to know everything I know. So I told them I would email the song to them later. So a few days ago, I sent the song and a short email. I was going to include Christopher on the email with a “See you on Thursday” coda but then thought better of the idea. Maybe that wasn’t a subtle enough accident. So I just emailed Kevin, Michelle and Jonathan and said at the end “See you on Wednesday.” Well, Kevin didn’t read the whole email before starting to read it aloud to Christopher and when he got to the end he suddenly heard himself saying “See you on wen- wasn’t that nice of Derek to send us that.” As close a call as you want when plotting a big surprise.

After the show, I raced down to Bamboo 52 to make sure I was sequestered in back with the rest of the gang before Christopher left the Broadway theatre where he is performing in Shrek The Musical. He steals the show, by the way, in case anyone was wondering. While waiting I ran into dreamy Steven DeLuca’s boyfriend Carl who by chance was there having dinner with friends. I told him to join us back there when he was finished and then headed for a banquette in the corner. I recognized a few people from my two trips to Kevin and Christopher’s island but by and large we don’t have a lot of friends in common.

Christopher was dutifully surprised when he walked in and soon the room was buzzing with cocktail chatter and clever Broadway bon mots. I felt like I was in All About Eve but everything was in color and there was a fight on to be Margo Channing. Kevin complained to me about how loud it was. I assured him that it is because half the people can’t hear anymore and the other half demand to be heard no matter what. “It’s all loud from here.” I told him referring to the domino effect of our birthdays: Kevin, then Christopher, then me, but in retrospect, I think that might make a good book title. Hmmm. I will store that idea away for later.

My pal Eddie from LA was there but left quickly for Florida. Then Adam Jay flew in direct from London with barely a moment to shake the dust of the West End off himself. Suddenly, Steven DeLuca popped into the room, no doubt encouraged by Carl who was still out in the restaurant talking at the sushi bar. Steven and I caught up, and when we spent a few moments with Christopher, he reminded him of when they met so many years ago while Christopher was doing a show in his theatre called “Avow.” Names of shows and actors and directors flew between them and past me like a newspaper headline montage in a 1930s movie. I gave it my best Joan Blondell perplexed and tried to keep my mouth clamped around fists full of sushi as much as possible. When I am in a crowd of strangers, I eat like Shelley Winters and Dom Deluise fighting over the last piece of chicken in the bucket. And tonight was no exception.

I hate surprises myself. And it’s a good thing too because I don’t think anyone could effectively throw a surprise party for me. Maybe I keep it this way, but I am the only person who knows everyone I know. It would probably take four or five of my friends who don’t even know each other well to actually piece together the guest list. And as lazy as my friends are, that isn’t happening anytime soon. But I do have a big birthday coming up this year, so I suppose I will have to do it up right. I have been thinking of a birthday in NYC and one in LA. Why not? And as for surprises, well I promise you that no one will be as surprised as me that I am turning as old as I am. In any event, I hope by then that I have had so much Botox that I will look surprised no matter what.

Misbegotten

I met Steven Clark last summer at Ben Harvey's farewell to Manhattan party. Ben was giving up his beautiful apartment for new frontiers in the outer boroughs. Things were tense with Jonathan. And it was my first pride where I wasn’t working outside the city in half a decade. What should have been a time for celebration just felt difficult and strained, as if we had all arrived at the building just at the moment of sheer exhaustion. But I put on my happy face and scaled the heights to his party. While there, standing among the stand up comedians, I met Steven, visiting from Kansas. He recognized my voice instantly as the braying nightmare from inside his rental cars on a million and one business trips around the country. Always one to be flattered by an attractive fan, we became fast friends.

Flash forward and Steven is in town this weekend with his two girlfriends, a last hurrah in the big apple before they all go back to their tamely lurid hot tub fueled drunken shenanigans back home among the cows and corn. The ladies seemed intent on fulfilling a Sex And The City-laced fantasy, replete with stilettos and exhaustively flawless blond hair. We met up, along with ADD Jeff at ELMO, as reliable a gay eatery as there is in Chelsea. The ladies were tickled to note that ELMO had been the site of several scenes in the current edition of the Real World, despite Chelsea’s nodding acquaintance with real world Brooklyn. That one of the waiters at the restaurant was also an MTV reality veteran surprised no one.

Originally, I had hoped that Mikey and his boyfriend Mark would join us during Mikey’s birthday weekend trip to the city. But they took a wrong turn near the city and somehow ended up in Connecticut and our dinner reservation made a quick cut from eight to six. Damian was also supposed to be there, a long promised reunion since I last ran into him at DC Pride two years ago, but he was beset by a sudden friend emergency and that dropped us from six to five. So instead of the long banquet table they arranged for us in the center of the place, I insisted they move us to a quieter and smaller round table near the front to better suit our incredible shrinking dinner party.

Dinner was wonderful and we all made great conversation. I tried to be as witty as possible, to give the ladies the full SATC experience. Also, I had to assume Steven had filled their heads beforehand with glowing reviews of my spontaneous hilarity so I was certain that I had big shoes to fill (my own) no matter how fictitious they may be. I did get off one good line when we were discussing how much younger guys like dating older guys and how unflattering their innocent expressions like “grey hair is sexy” and "I love wrinkles!" are. “Do you know doesn’t like dating older guys?” I asked, “Older guys!” As annoying as the pups are, they can help you forget yourself for a while, which is a nice middle-aged game to play in preparation for full onset dementia later in life. After all, practice forgetting everything you know about yourself is perfect.
I had told John that we would be there and since ELMO is a frequent haunt of his frequent Friday friends, he said he might swing by the table and say hi if we were still there. I had completely forgotten our previous exchange earlier in the day until he was standing over the table with that adorable grin of his and a twinkle in his eye. One of the ladies looked up from her bottle of white wine and declared his striking resemblance to Colin Farrell. This was apparently a problem as he was, as it turns out, just too good looking to actually look at and she preferred he take his intense attractiveness elsewhere. As it was, he didn’t stay long. I am fairly certain that my ravenous encounter with a banana split at the end of the meal hastened his departure. And why not.

After ELMO, we dashed across the street to Duane Reade so one of the ladies could get a gel sole insert for her stilettos since her feet were killing her. I tried to explain that only women in movies and TV shows actually wear those shoes in Manhattan because, between the subway grates and the cobblestones, those shoes are, at minimum, a broken leg waiting to happen. (Note: Certain horse-faced actresses should take heed that prize thoroughbreds with broken legs are often shot and they should watch their steps!)

Then it was on to Barracuda to wrap up our evening. While lingering in the back area two guys tried to use the wing maneuver of talking to the hags to get to the fags. Steven and Jeff and I saw it coming a mile away but I think the ladies were just happy to have someone other than us pay attention to them, compliment their hair and try to motorboat their breasts. As much as I wanted to see how far things got, it was time for us all to go. The ladies had done their gay duty and Steven needed to lead them downtown to some straight parties and hopefully the waiting hungry penises of heterosexual men. And me, I went on to Grand Central Station and its underground passages draped with endless promotional posters for the musical sensation Wicked. “Now Leaving OZ” the green banner above my head waved as I headed for the train. It’s a long way from Kansas to the Emerald City, and back again after the stilettos have clicked their last, I thought. Even though I too make my temporary way in and out of the city, I am glad I get to stay among the magic for a while longer than most.

Wring Out The Old

I have known Terry Goldman for a long time, more than a decade but not quite a decade and a half. I was the first person he ever met online (though certainly not the last) and to show you how long ago it was, online then was a BBS in Los Angeles. And if you don’t know what a BBS is, you are probably too young to read this. Terry is a wonderful friend that I have hung out with in sunshine and now snow, in the desert and on the high seas. It’s been a grand adventure that continued on Saturday night in Chelsea.

Back in December after a long dry spell of not seeing each other, we went to see The Day The Earth Stood Still in IMAX and promised to become regular movie buddies in 2009. Last weekend, we had a gorgeous fatty meal at Outback followed by a bucket of popcorn at Gran Torino. Clearly, feeling on a roll, he suggested dinner, a movie and subsequent boozing this weekend. “We can see Bride Wars or The Unborn,” he suggested. Ugh. Is it January already?! Mercifully, we were spared a two hour sentence in wintry cinematic prison and opted instead for a huge dinner at ELMO, a popular eatery in the heart of gay Manhattan.

With house guests Ryan James and Andy in tow, along with Roommate, I was suddenly four in his ever growing dinner group, which eventually swelled to ten with even my neighbor Clayton thrown in to the mix. For some inexplicable reason, Terry invited only men who had the first letter J in their name: Jacob, Joe, Jeremy and JD. I kid you not that Jimmy and Jonathan were also invited at one point but for one reason or another were not there. For someone like me with so much trouble remembering names, this is mental suicide.

Jacob, Clayton and Terry were there waiting when I arrived, snuggled up close to the flirty DJ, and sandwiched between the plate glass front window and erstwhile party girl Zoe Murphy, her main gay, and what I suspect was her own mother, cooling their heels at the bar. I hadn’t seen Clayton since before the holidays so we had a lot of catching up to do. In short order, Joe arrived, followed by roommates Jeremy and JD. As I often do in these situations, when Terry told me that one of the people coming was on the Bravo series WorkOut, I for some reason thought it was Joe and assiduously avoided him, opting instead to sit next to JD, who it turns out was the reality show participant in question. The best laid plans of Mice and me.

It turned out that even our waiter was also a reality TV veteran, with three different shows to his credit. I am starting to think that reality shows are the new herpes. “Be careful going home with him. I hear he’s got a case of the MTV!!!” Waiter was very nice with a taut frame and the kind of ass you look forward to seeing in your face while he is waiting on the table next to you. But his TV exposure had apparently caused an outbreak that even infected his own apartment. When Terry asked him if he knew Davis from The Real World Denver, he became lovingly agitated. “He’s staying with me! He came for a couple of days and it’s weeks later and he is still there. I love him, but he has to go sometime!”

Despite having a reservation and waiting almost a full hour for our table, ELMO ended up splitting us up and putting us at two separate tables right next to each other. Clayton, Roommate, Andy and Ryan James squeezed into the booth across from us and I joined Terry and the J men at the table for six. Dinner went very smoothly but I started to sweat bullets when the check came. Looking around the table, I feared one of those situations where the check passes around and comes back seventy dollars short and everyone starts getting indignant about how they didn’t want to pay for an appetizer they only got one bite of while ignoring the three cocktails they consumed. We ended up only three dollars short and not wanting a fuss, I quietly threw in an extra five, grabbed my coat and started heading for the door.

Since Andy is underage, he and Ryan James went to the only 18 and over club in Manhattan, while the rest of us braved the cold two block journey to Barracuda for even more cocktails. As soon as we walked in, Terry informed me that Charlie was there, which was something of a relief. After a long meal of chit chat, it was nice to have someone else in the mix to talk to. Clayton and JD got cozy and Charlie became fascinated by Mike. “I love your roommate!” he gushed, ever the optimist, though he wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know. Meanwhile, Terry and I bounced around from person to person trying to keep all of the plates spinning properly, occasionally meeting up in the middle to strategize and relive the good old days.

At one point, while standing at the bar waiting to order more drinks, Mike and I gazed over at the hot bartender in the muscle shirt I have lusted after quietly since moving to NYC eight years ago. It made me a little sad. He is getting older. That means I am getting older too. You always notice your own age in other people before you see it in yourself, no matter how intense your daily wrinkle checks in the mirror may be. And it is always sadder. But as Terry and I stood in the noisy throng, discussing our friends and laughing at nothing, no time at all had passed for me. We were kids again, having fun at The Abbey, back when they still served just coffee and stale pie. I guess that is what keeps old friends together. No matter how old you are, they never get old for you.

Layer Cake

Some places have so many memories in them; it practically chokes you to be near them. Manhattan is getting like this for me. I’ve been in the city for seven and a half years now and the island is awash in memories and flashes from the past. Tonight I headed downtown after the show to Comix to see Michelle Collins on her birthday, and the journey ended up being more like a trip back through time.

I first met Michelle after she blew the doors off PS122, a performance space downtown where Michelle did stand up in something called the WYSIWYG Talent Show, where bloggers get up and read from their blogs. I ended up doing the Talent Show twice myself, once doing a set of truly libelous celebrity stories in front of three people that killed and then later true tales of extreme drunkenness which ended up as the “live” season finale of my video podcast “The So Real Life” as well as the unofficial end of the WYSIWYG Talent Show. But Michelle endures, adding hilarity to our radio show, trips to the Olive Garden and most recently July 4th on Kevin and Christopher’s island.

I love Michelle so it was a given that I would abandon my usual early train home for a not-so quiet drink with her in Chelsea. I took the subway down and now that I live upstate and no longer take the subway, the experience was a revelation for me. I had forgotten the evil efficiency of the subway platform to retain all the cold of winter and all the heat of summer. The train deposited me on 13th Street at 7th Avenue and I walked across 13th toward the comedy club. Along the way I passed the Gay Center, where I ran into Cory out front when I was there to cheer Chip Arndt on when the AIDS Ride returned last fall. Cory, so full of Iowa goodness, who unwittingly helped me through my darkest hour two summers ago with a simple greeting at Therapy. Then it was on past the triangle shaped park that Dan and I walked around endlessly one sunny afternoon while very politely breaking up during the Pride Garden Party, June 2001.

Happily, I had never been to Comix so the ghosts of hot gay men past could not follow me in. True, Hell’s heavy gate was just around the corner, but not close enough to get me this time. Michelle looked beautiful, made up for the stage and wound up like a top. A whirling dervish, she spun fluidly from social friends to college friends to work friends, stopping only long enough to get a genuinely tasty margarita at the bar. As one of her friends pointed out, “The best five dollar drink in town.” I hate margaritas generally but on this one I am forced to agree.

While Michelle bounced back and forth, introducing me with unrealistically lavish praise, from friend “Red Eye” to comic “hilarious” to spouse “MoveOn.org,” my eye kept wandering over to the devastated pile of cake sitting in the middle of the center table. It looked like one of those houses that recently floated down the Mississippi out of Iowa and got stuck up against a metal train bridge. Every time Michelle left me alone for a split second, my fingers dove into the cake for another tiny wedge. “That was my last piece” I kept telling myself while simultaneously reaching in for just one more. I think I might be an addict. But the cake was very good. As usual, the frosting was just too sweet and much for me, but the cake was the real deal.

I couldn’t stay long. I wanted to take the midnight train home and I knew there would be a pile of other memories waiting for me along the way. The pizza place on 14th street where I tried to get a slice for Chi Chi La Rue and failed. Up near Times Square, my old Starbucks near my office at 1440 Broadway, where Tim and I finally made our peace, such as it is. The Mr. Softee truck by Bryant Park where I had to stop for a cone, like I always do. And finally the steps of the New York Public Library, where Dan and I first met, that warm spring day. I was just new to New York and in those glorious months before 9/11 the city was filled with all of the promise of a Sex And The City episode. And there under the watchful eye of the Chrysler Building, leaned up against the stone lion, my first Manhattan crush.

My cone finished, and my journey nearly ended, I wandered into Grand Central Station, as I have a 1000 times before. I used to walk through Grand Central on my way to work, thrilling to the sounds of that woman with the haunting voice who used to sing “Summertime” echoing through the hall. I still get a chill thinking about it. But there is also sadness for me there too. I can’t go down the West corridor without thinking of the horrible dark night Jonathan broke his cell phone. So many memories, rushing around me there, like the magical moment of dancing in The Fisher King.

And then the train home. I wish it was an escape, a way to wash clean those old memories in the calm waters of the Hudson River and start anew in the morning. But the memories, while triggered by places, don’t reside there. Good and bad, you can’t escape them, because they live inside you. And every day in the city is filled with the promise of new memories just waiting to be made. The memories layer, like Michelle’s collapsing birthday cake, mushing into each other, flavors you like on top of ones you don’t. Together a complete taste and experience, and sometimes, just a little too much.

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.

Transitions

New York City is in a constant state of flux. O Henry once aptly predicted that “It will be a great place if they ever finish it.” Living here, it is the kind of thing you get used to. Buildings get torn down. People move away. Even the seasons, when they end, do so with such a brutal finality it borders on intolerable cruelty. The most frequent NYC transition involves a change of address. Even though it seems like a lease (like any bad relationship) will never end, eventually it does and people move up, on, down, or out. Ben Harvey decided to use his last weekend in his old Chelsea apartment to celebrate the end of an era for himself and, since it was Dave Rubin’s birthday yesterday, the end of a year for Dave as well.

Ben’s apartment was a cozy L-shaped studio in a modern building with modern furnishings. It is the kind of apartment tower that has flourished in the city over the past decade like dandelions, at once adorable and annoyingly ubiquitous. Since he is moments from moving out, the place is pretty cleaned out, save for a few leftover pieces of furniture and (thanks largely to the guests) a refrigerator chock full of liquor. It felt like the endless parade of hot twenty-somethings all arrived carrying a bottle of vodka with them. Maybe they do that so that their bicep is flexed and huge as they walk through the door, or maybe they are just being thoughtful guests. Worried about neither the size of my upper arms or being nice, I came empty-handed.

Some of the usual suspects were there (like Jonathan and Ben’s rascally cousin Christian), but mostly it was filled with people I don’t know. This is my least favorite kind of party since I hate meeting new people. However, one of the first people I met was the delightful Anne (aka Lesbi-Anne), a stand-up comedian with surprisingly nice taste in clothes for a comic and/or lesbian. Ben’s friend Zach, anxious for a blog mention apparently, was also there, and much calmer than my first encounter with him at Ben’s new apartment three months ago. Unfortunately, he was so calm, nothing much happened between us and I have nothing really to say about him other than he was there and he was tall.

My friend Clay joined the party too. He came in town for pride weekend and was instantly dejected by the fashion at the party. The locals were all dressed in various shades of blue, Manhattan’s summer version of basic black. Upbeat and chipper in a bright green shirt, Clay stuck out in a good way in a sea of drab. “What is wrong with everyone? It’s Spring!” he declared, less than a week into Summer. But point taken. New York gays love a man in uniform, even if the uniform is expensive denim jeans and a blue, grey or black t-shirt.

Bucking the drab shirt trend was new arrival Steven, in town from Kansas City, where everything’s up to date. Steven was visiting his friend Marty and joined in the fun in Ben’s apartment, in a clingy white t-shirt that left little to the imagination. Fortunately gay men don’t like to use their imaginations, so he was a big hit. For me, the big excitement was finally meeting the notorious Shawn Hollenbach. I have never met him in person, but his photo has haunted me from Friendster to MySpace to Facebook and beyond. We probably have the most friends in common of two people who had, before tonight, never met. It this regard, the party felt like mission accomplished.

The party moved from inside Ben’s apartment to the roof deck and back, as guests refilled their glasses and then returned to the breathtaking view and perfectly cool summer night. The south view off the roof was really something to see, and there is just something great about the canyons of high rises in Manhattan. They are majestic from every angle, though nothing beats the view from on high. Eventually, building security (as Ben had predicted they would) kicked everyone out of the roof deck and the drunks poured back into the apartment like wet cement, chunky slow and in fear of drying out too quickly. A bunch of us settled onto the couch for a series of photos I am certain to never see again, outside of a tagging frenzy on Facebook. This is fine since I generally hate all photos of myself, so I am happy to see the vast majority of them vanish into thin air.

As always happens, the drunk train was calling so I had to dash while everything was still in full swing. Clay offered for me to stay with him at the W since they upgraded him to a massive suite. “Who needs three walk in closets in a hotel room?” he asked from inside an apartment roughly the size of three walk in closets. Maybe tomorrow night, Clay. Christian, who wasn’t wearing any underwear (no surprise) and kept showing off his tramp stamp tattoo, which looked something like a folded out Rubik’s cube if you made one with origami, also offered me to stay with him. “You don’t mind cats do you?” That wasn’t the pussy I had in mind, so I figured I best stick with the train.

On the walk to Grand Central, I spied another New York landmark. It is almost impossible not to see at least one of them and I purposefully walked up Fifth Avenue just to catch a glimpse. And suddenly there it was, the nearest thing to heaven we have in New York City: the Empire State Building. The lights were off because it was after midnight, with just a UFO-like ring of lights around the top of the tower, but even in the dark, it is as beautiful as ever. The city around it can change all that it wants, but that building always stays the same. Elegant and cool, it is living proof in the heart of Manhattan that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Carry On

New York City is a place of adventure. When you live here, it is easy to forget that. You get caught up in the routine of it all, or distracted by a smelly homeless guy pushing a shopping cart, and the magic spell can fade. And then, just as suddenly as it began, you rediscover your love of the city, and it is alive with adventure and the wonderment is fresh again. This is what happened to me.

Tonight started as a fairly run-of-the-mill trip out to Gym Bar. Hottie Zach has been out of town for weeks on various errands and I have been adrift in a sea of pride events across the country. I have been pressing him to reconnect and finally tonight we managed to get together. He asked if Roommate was coming along too, so I sent him a text message to join us and after my second one, he agreed to be there after the show.

I was the first to arrive at the bar, which happens sometimes. I have a reputation for being tardy, so when I actually show up on time somewhere I am invariably alone. As it happens, I lucked out with the One Train and arrived five minutes early. The sports bar was packed with the usual crowd of scruffy thirty-something men just beginning to blossom into bear-hood. I made my way through the place, casually looking around for the friends I knew wouldn’t be there yet while actually searching for an open corner to hide in until they arrived. Unfortunately, busy gay bars rarely have unoccupied nooks and I had to make do with a slot sandwiched in between three guys and an empty bar chair.

While waiting, the tallest of the three men introduced himself. He was Lucas, recently relocated to New York City by way of Chicago and before that Houston. Lucas asked lots of questions about the bar, how often I was there, and if Wednesday was my usual night. It turns out that he and his two roommates were all flight attendants for Continental. “International!” he insisted, which I guess is more high end. I fly all the time so the ability to open a Coke can 50,000 feet over open water doesn’t have the kind of magical allure to me that it must have for others Lucas has engaged over the years. Or perhaps it has never worked and he has yet to realize that the swinging 60s are over and his Boeing Boeing existence is not filled with the jet set glamour and intrigue it once held. An alternate theory might be built around the fact that despite being a SIRIUS subscriber, he had never heard of my show, didn’t know SIRIUS had a gay channel, and only ever listened to The Beat.

Our conversation quickly fell to long patches of silence and his friends made very little effort to engage us either. Lucas must have been after me and not roping for his shy friend in the t-shirt with the kitty surrounded by writing on it that more than implied that his pussy belonged to Daddy. That is probably for the best, since for someone to realistically be his Daddy, he would need to be on the sunny side of sixty. As soon as Zach arrived moments later, Lucas and company took one look at his velvety soft brown eyes, cream cheese smooth skin and muscle-packed torso in his simultaneously loose and tight fitting t-shirt, folded their weak hands and walked away from the table. I barely had time to introduce him before they zeroed in on other prey by the dart board. Roommate arrived seconds after Zach, a beer firmly in his hands (“You know I always keep one in my backpack just in case,” he joked), but already the flight attendants were a dim memory.

Zach was as pretty as ever, if a little forlorn. The magic spirit of Manhattan has left him and he hasn’t even gotten to the miseries of August yet. I think his expectations for the city might have been too high when he moved here last fall. In any event, he needs something dramatic to shake things up and make this the city of his dreams. He asked me who I thought might be the secret surprise guest at the Pier Dance on Sunday. I decided on the spot that it must be Madonna. She was just photographed at a baseball game here in the city and her tours usually coincide with gay pride, except this year. I find it hard to believe, with a new album and tour to promote, that she would miss out on the free publicity boost such a surprise appearance would make. Also, I heard that the surprise performance disappointed last year and the organizers are probably anxious to make an extra big splash this year, and nothing would top Madonna. Nothing.

We mused on the weekend pride plans since they both are joining me at the parade viewing party on Sunday. They consumed several beers. I peed in the men’s room even though it smelled like a dead homeless guy. Zach confided that he lost seven pounds on a low carb diet while I wondered what pounds he could possibly have had to lose. The hands spun around the clock over our heads and before long it was time to catch a cab to get the 12:12 train home. The only problem: no cabs! Suddenly, it was a taxi shortage. There were groups of people waiting on every corner, and Eighth Avenue, usually the sight of dozens of free cabs, looked like a scene from I Am Legend, except without tall weeds growing up through the pavement. Leaving Zach and facing the realities of an almost certainly missed train, Roommate and I ducked into XES for one more drink before walking to the station to catch the 1:00am train.

XES is a cozy nook of a neighborhood bar that was the site of a horrible nightcap with Roommate and Jonathan after the Dolly Parton concert in May. That night an excruciating drag queen attempted suicide with a microphone and a series of shot glasses, almost dragging the rest of the patrons down with her. Tonight it was karaoke, but as Roommate pointed out, it was still better than that drag queen. I ordered him a Blue Moon and we discussed at length how perfect the bartender was for Roommate. Meanwhile, bartender sat in the corner wolfing down a salad from Hale & Hearty like he hadn’t eaten in a month, which his tight, toned body seemed to confirm.

After XES, we walked up Sixth Avenue to Grand Central. By now the weird taxi shortage had ended and the streets were an embarrassment of yellow, lighted riches. The city was filled with the sounds of New York (aka a woman yelling “Fuck you bitch!”) and I was starting to feel the magic of adventure again. At Bryant Park, I spied a Mr. Softee truck and decided to indulge my permanent craving for a vanilla soft serve cone. “I’ll have a large please.” I told Mr. Softee, a reasonably hot, twenty-something Chris Noth clone with a shaved head and relaxed demeanor. Without words he held up a giant waffle cone. “This?” I was horrified. I already had to pee again so bad I considered jumping into the bushes in the park. There was no way even I with my legendary love of ice cream could finish all that in four blocks. “A small then.” He smiled, having been down this road before.

As I walked down 42nd Street with my cone, I was happy. Mr. Softee was filled with the snarky kindness that is a hallmark of Manhattan life. It is almost as if our borough motto is: I don’t care if you live or die, but I am going to tell you something for your own good anyway. I guess you need that kind of world weary wisdom to dish ice cream out of the back of a truck at one in the morning to drunk people. And to live in this city. Some people see it as rude, or brusque, but I see it as basic equipment. This is a practical town. When there isn’t a car, you walk. When you want something, get just enough. We all have the ability to fly away, but sometimes it makes more sense to take what you are given and just make it work for you.

Rocking Horses Can't Be Broken

It was a night for exceedingly attractive people.

Jeremy Blacklow was in town and even dropped by the show for a bit. Romaine was in a foul mood tonight and had no patience for our gay shenanigans. No matter. I knew there would be plenty of that after the show. Jeremy is a dreamboat whom I first met some years ago at Bowery Bar when he appeared as if by magic from kickboxing class, his arms glistening with sweat, his hands still taped up. It was the kind of entrance not easily forgotten.

Of course I met Jeremy through Matty Kelleher, who is the Kevin Bacon of gay life in New York (Dennis Hensley is the Kevin Bacon of gay life in Los Angeles). If you know Matty, you are never more than six degrees away from any other gay man in Manhattan. Matty is insanely adorable and likable and winning. And he really does know everyone. His inner circle is extremely small (and hates me because I am loud and undignified), but the outer rings extend across continents.

Originally, we all planned to go to Bowery Bar tonight. It was where Matty met Jeremy and I met Jeremy, and where I met Zach. And even though "every asshole is there" as Jonathan so aptly put it tonight as he decamped to the cheap and empty confines of the Boiler Room, it is still after more than a decade, the beating heart of midweek gay life, even if the arteries are a bit clogged with nasty cholesterol.

But after the show, Matty was having a change of heart. They had just seen Cry Baby (awful) and wanted to eat, so they ran off to Rocking Horse, a restaurant down in Chelsea, with no intention of going to Beige after all. Unfortunately, Hottie Zach was planning to be there, as was DJ Ben Harvey. I could easily make new plans myself but I hate being the unreliable guy who switches everyone else's plans. As it turns out, all was fine. Zach met me at the Horse where we had some drinks while Jeremy and Matty finished their meals. The three of us told dusty stories of the good old days while Zach politely nursed a pair of Citron and lemonades.

Soon I convinced Jeremy, who then convinced Matty, that we should all go to Bowery Bar to see Ben Harvey after all. Moments later, we piled into a taxi and zipped across town. The dusty stories continued in the cab, mostly concerning who does and does not warrant a mention in my blog, and the ever meta topic of wondering aloud what part of the current evening I will blog about later.

Finally at Bowery Bar, we bypassed the line, the best part of going out on the town with Matty. He just doesn't believe in standing in line for anything, a conviction I firmly stand behind. Once inside, we saw all the usual suspects. The assholes were out in force. Spring makes them flourish like weeds although the weather was not quite warm enough yet for their worst tank top instincts. Ben was there with Dave Rubin and Dave's friend Yuki, who I apparently met the last time I was at Beige. I didn't remember meeting him but he sure remembered me.

"You have lost a lot of weight since I last saw you." was his greeting. My weight has not changed an ounce but for some reason people always remember me as fatter than I am. After leaving LA for a couple of years I came back to visit and someone said, "You've lost an enormous amount of weight." Enormous. Really? How fat did they think I was before? I promise my weight hasn't fluctuated more than twenty pounds in either direction since puberty. And yet, I am fondly remembered as the fat guy at the party I guess.

In the end, the best part of the night was spending a few quiet moments with Ben. We never get to talk and I really like talking with him. I feel (even though we haven't known each other for a long time) like we understand each other. There is a reason he is my most frequent blog character. I really like hanging out with him. He climbed into a cab and sped home while I decided it was a nice enough night for a walk uptown to the drunk train. On my way, he sent me a text message: "Sketchy gay cab driver! Asked where my bf (you) lived!" I was triumphant. It was outside the bar but finally someone at Bowery Bar was asking after me. As demented as it is, a little attention does make you feel better. Maybe not everyone at that dump is an asshole after all.

I'm kidding. Of course they are.

Release Me

"How are you going to blog this one?"

I don't have a good answer. Peter Stickles is standing next to me, looking up blankly at the stage. I am transfixed by a bedazzled dragon on his neck. I should have taken a picture of that instead of the bowls of dime store candy on the table next to me. It is ten minutes before Madonna's new album Hard Candy is due to be released and Peter is waiting next to me in the basement of the Virgin Megastore in Times Square. His neck is the most interesting thing I have seen in the last two hours.

Originally, Jonathan had wanted me to join him at the midnight release so that we could pick up the new album and he could try to win tickets to see her free concert at Roseland on Wednesday night. But then he had to go out of town at the last minute and asked me to still go so I could pick him up a poster or something other cool giveaway stuff. So after the show tonight, I bundled myself off to Virgin and waiting for the excitement to happen. The excitement that never came.

When I arrived just after ten, drag queen and part time Tyra Banks enthusiast Shequida was presiding over the "talent" show that was supposed to constitute entry to win tickets. Everyone had 30 seconds to wow the panel of judges, none of whom I recognized immediately. The talent most often displayed was a gushing insistence of urgent homosexuality followed by the certainty of impending doom if somehow begging alone wasn't enough to get into the show. Ten minutes of this and I was certain that my idea of stringing together 30 seconds worth of Madonna lyrics from two dozen hits into a plea for tickets would have been a guaranteed winner.

I tried to take video and pictures of the event with my phone and send them immediately to Jonathan in Florida but my phone was not cooperating. So I went back to my office and picked up my camera and backpack and headed in for round two. Immediately upon arriving, I ran into DJ Corey Craig, one of the judges. I asked him how it was going and he just rolled his eyes in disgust. Apparently the talent had not improved during my thirty minute break. I stationed myself behind him at the judging table where I snapped some quick photos of him texting his friends, the other judges looking at anything but the contestants, and the sad bowls of candy.

Moments later, I noticed Peter standing nearby. He looked as cute as always. His skin is like that was a baby. I know he is older than sixteen but he doesn't look it. Tonight was Michael Carbonaro's birthday and I asked why Peter wasn't there helping celebrate. "I slipped out for this." His expression remained blank but I couldn't imagine he wasn't regretting the decision.

Shequida called the finalists to the stage. Only four minutes left to save us from this world of misery. It is hot and I want to go home. There is nothing here to get for Jonathan. What a waste of two hours of my life. The tickets are given out. One of the guys seems to have won solely on his looks. Good for him. The appointed hour arrives and everyone rushes upstairs to line up for CDs. I head for the door.

Well, I figure as I head outside into the cool night air, I will email Jonathan the photos and video so he will know that he didn't miss anything. I had considered standing in line to get a CD but the line was insanely long and after yesterday's fourteen hour flight home, all I want to do is go home and go to bed. I can get the CD tomorrow when it won't be an hour long wait in line. I feel bad that I am leaving empty-handed but at least I know for certain that Jonathan didn't miss anything by not being there. My text messages to him all evening have made the point clear, but the photographic evidence will seal the deal later, CSI style.

On the train home, I upload the photos and video and start my blog. Peter was right. What could I possibly say that would be interesting? Then I get a simple and final text from Jonathan "ps Peter got me a poster." Suddenly I am incensed! Where? WHERE???? There were no posters. There was NOTHING. My mind scans through mental images of the crowd at Virgin, coming up empty again and again. They must have been selling them with the CDs at the end of the endless line I refused to stand in. So now it's the worst possible outcome for the evening. Not only did I waste two hours of my life, but I didn't even get the one thing I was sent there to get. And someone else did. Now I am a douche. I could have had the same outcome just going home on time. I guess it is true that no good deed goes unpunished.

But at least now, Peter, I have something to blog about.

Inside Outsider

As I mentioned in my last post, I am having a lot of trouble distinguishing reality from fantasy these days. It isn't so much that I don't know the difference between the two. It is just that lately the lines between the two have gotten increasingly blurry, the colors melting into one another, with the lines that had been around them obscured. (See also: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). This weekend in South Florida took an already troubling situation and threw it right down the rabbit hole, and me along with it.

Friday officially kicked off my season of pride events. Each year, I spend my sunny weekends on the road, emceeing pride events, to help promote my radio show. Since these trips tend to include all of my least favorite activities (leaving the house, dealing with airport security, meeting strangers, public speaking, etc.) it is honestly hard for me to have a genuinely good time. As it is true in life in general, happiness is not a sustained state of being, it is merely flashing moments, highlighting the otherwise dull and painful patches. So I can't say I didn't have any fun, the strobe flickered many times, but in the end, I am glad to be back home. At least in my house, I can manage the dull patches a little more effectively.

The organizers of Pride South Florida (in particular Mike Cruz) are lovely people, who fly me down, put me up at a nice place, and send cars to cart me around. It is one of the few events we do each year where I feel like a genuine celebrity. Most of the time, it is me and Romaine piling into a rental car and navigating our way to whatever cheap dump I booked us into, with a stop at the Waffle House along the way. This year, Mike sent a stand-up limo van for me, that was bigger inside than my own bedroom, and nicer too. The limo took me to my hotel for the weekend, a gay resort called The Grand. And Grand it was.

I am not much for B&Bs because I like my anonymity. Give me a big impersonal chain hotel with at least 300 rooms and I am all set. I don't even like maid service if I am staying for only one or two days. I can use a towel twice and I don't need my bed made every day. It feels like such a waste. A gay guesthouse is a decent middle point. I can still have a little anonymity (no surprise wake-up visits by the owner with a cup of coffee in hand) while also not feeling like I am sleeping in a lifeless mattress ad. The Grand lived up to its name and I did enjoy my quiet room way in the back.

Of course, my room was just past the "nature walk" (aka late night cruising zone) and the clothing optional jacuzzi. Each time I walked past the hot tub area, day and night, I was cat called and wolf whistled, which I guess is flattering, but on Friday night, rushing through with a warm plate of Greek food on my way in to watch the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica, I was in no mood for it. Even though I left the "Do Not Disturb" sign on my room all day Saturday, the sneaky maid managed to come in and organize everything anyway, including hiding my iPod in a decorative candy dish which while pretty when I found it, did cause my heart to panic for a moment when I thought it might have been stolen.

The pride event itself was quiet on Saturday. A decent but not spectacular turnout, with a shy spot of rain in the early afternoon which made the heat moist and the ground too wet to sit on, though otherwise did nothing to dampen the event. I left early to attend the GLAAD Awards, which happened to be going on at the Hard Rock the same evening. Earlier last month when Neil Guiliano, the President of GLAAD was on the radio show, I mentioned that I was going to be down there at the same time, and to my surprise a few days later, I got an email from a GLAAD staffer saying that Neil requested that I be his guest at the South Florida event.

In my nascent celebrity, this is something of a big deal. It was an opportunity to attend an A-gay event, walk the red carpet to get my picture taken and hang out in the VIP area with the other celebrities, board members and big donors. I felt like Cinderella but in a grey Barneys suit that I picked up for a song last year at the Warehouse Sale. So off I went to the red carpet and for a moment, it was magical. The photographers all wanted my photo and I posed and posed and posed in my marked down suit with the four year old tie, nine year old shoes, borrowed socks, and a dress shirt from the early 90s that if I took off my jacket gave me the distinct air of a gay pirate. All of the film crews, save the folks from Bravo, were Spanish speaking and had zero interest in me. I got asked one question by Bravo, which I answered very badly, and was sent on my merry way. Flickering moments of happiness, long stretches of sad reality.

Once inside the door, I realized that I was there completely alone. My original invite had mentioned a personal talent escort which I assumed would be with me all night so I would at least have a GLAAD volunteer to talk to all night. But at the event I discovered that there were two kinds of celebrities: white folder and black folder. I had a white folder which meant, I was on my own, while the black folder celebrities who were winning or presenting, had a cute young person dressed all in black with a headset who waited on them hand and food. I turned slowly around in a circle not knowing what to do next and then mercifully ran into my best frenemy Dan Renzi. He saved my life.

Dan and I have a long, complicated, non-sexual history which mercifully he remembers little of. However, over the last year or so we have been reasonably chummy and in 2007 he even appeared, quite deliciously, in my video podcast The So Real Life. I couldn't ask for a better person to shove me over a pile of garbage than Dan. It was kismet, as was our meeting at the GLAAD Awards. We palled around, we made jokes, we compared white folders, and when we left the VIP reception to go down for the dinner, even though we were at separate tables, we sat in chairs next to each other so we could dish all night long.

Unfortunately, the only dish I was able to do was the one my food was on because instead of being placed at some out of the way non-table like I thought, I was at THE table. I was seated between Neil Guiliano and his hilarious brother John. Apparently it was a very personal invitation to the awards I had accepted. Also at the table, the night's big honoree Wilson Cruz and his parents, and Denise Williams, the mother of Simmie Williams, a young gay man murdered in Florida earlier this year. Oh yes and me! What the hell was I doing there? I started sweating I was so nervous but knew I couldn't take off my jacket for fear of a parrot settling on my shoulder.

Being South Florida, the show and presenters were very Latin focused and much of the proceedings were in Spanish. I missed a lot flipping through my phrasebook but the gay storyline clips from the telenovelas were the highlight of the evening for me until I saw 500 gay men sing along to Deborah Cox's sensational closing performance. In moments like that I thought, "I wish Jonathan was here. He would love this." but thoughts like that only served to pull me out of the moment and remind me how alone I tend to feel in a room filled with hundreds of people. But then the alternate reality I was living in would lure me back with another amazing flash. For instance, the big drama of the evening happened at our table, when Wilson Cruz (allergic to shellfish) bit into the chicken only to discover it was stuffed with shrimp. He was fine but I leaned into John and cracked, "Maybe next time your brother should consider not poisoning the guest of honor right before he goes on stage."

The whole thing was so surreal to me. On the one hand, I was treated like a celebrity, but inside I just felt like me, in an ugly shirt and painful shoes. It felt so fraudulent. Wilson is from TV and then there he was sitting at the table with me. On my way into dinner I ran into my friend Brandon's ex-boyfriend Cliff who I know from Arizona and who was recently embroiled in a gay public scandal of sorts, adding another dimension to the otherworldliness of it all. It all happened so fast, I never really had a moment to take it all in. Back at the dinner, I looked up and there was Neil, who just moments earlier had been making small talk with me at the table, now up on stage, projected onto the big screen TVs all over the auditorium, talking about Denise, who was sitting next to me, while photographers and cameramen rushed around me to capture the moment. As we stood for Denise's ovation, I instinctively felt the cameras at my back and leaded over ever so slightly to my left so they could get a better shot of her. I was participant and observer, and neither of them felt real to me.

After the awards Matt from Fab Scout picked me up and took me out of the surreal frying pan and into the fire: Boardwalk. The notorious South Florida stripper bar has turned into ground zero for me when I am in town, thanks to my friendship with Howard of Fab Scout, and it is where I spent Friday night as well. Howard wasn't there, but Jason Crew from Big Rig and Barrett Long were there, along with two new porn pups, annoyingly in love with each other and themselves, and Cort Donovan who charmed me in a way porn stars aren't normally charming to me. Jason remembered me from Big Rig and other run-ins and I reminded Barrett of our last meeting, at the HustlaBall in New York were I pawned Rod Barry off on him after Rod got too violently drunk for me to handle. Our Friday night adventure had ended with Jason telling me that I was "so squeezable" and then drunkenly asking me on the ride home if he and Barrett could gang bang me later in their hotel room. As tempting as 24 inches of cock may be for some people, I politely passed, ran past the nude men in the jacuzzi with their siren song and locked myself alone in my room.

Back at Boardwalk on Saturday making a second run at it and this time in a suit, I stood out like a sore, but wealthy thumb. The solicitous strippers were even more solicitous than usual. While waiting for the porn boys to do their show, so I could poke gentle fun at them later, into the bar walked the most perfect physical manifestation of my "type" that I have ever seen. As if things couldn't get any worse/better. He was blond, with Cory's hunk o' granite forehead, a cute button nose and bee stung Angelina Jolie lips that he kept in a pugnacious snarl at all times. If he had been four inches taller (say 6'2"), I would have kidnapped him and kept him in a dungeon somewhere. His name is "Brock" (may not actually be his real name) and he is apparently a "notorious bottom" and an escort. I was also told he was a complete mess, and when I met him, he was already if not blind drunk, then at least visually impaired intoxicated. He admired my light wool suit, then leaned in to make out with me, and when I tried to have small talk with him, asked me, "Are you going to take me home now?" Ugh! I am only human here.

His friend, who earlier had been nice to me, and bragged about his long friendship with Barrett Long, suddenly grabbed Brock and pulled him close. I heard him hiss in Brock's ear, "You aren't leaving this bar. He only wants to take advantage of you!" I was so offended. I didn't even have a car to take him home in, even if I really really really wanted to. And while I did want to take advantage of him, I certainly didn't mean it in a bad way! People can be so judgmental. He is an escort after all. So I am a bad person for wanting a free throw? I thought I was a celebrity. Didn't my VIP tickets include an open bar, a gift bag and a blow job? I guess he wasn't what GLAAD meant when they mentioned a talent escort for the evening.

Me in a suit, making out with a hot stranger. It just isn't me. Walking red carpets and mingling with people I heretofore have only known in the abstract. Just plain strange. I was still completely beside myself on Sunday when a pair of Broadway actors who listen to the show and happened to be in South Florida at the same time, dropped by pride to meet me. I was still queasy and tired from the night before, and my emcee gig had definitely taken a desperate shticky turn for the worst as they arrived. I couldn't have been at a lower ebb for what I had been looking forward to as the highlight of my weekend.

Kevin plays Scrabulous with me endlessly on Facebook and emails with me regularly, but we had never met before, so our encounter had the happy, excited feel of meeting a junior high school pen pal. But that comparison may be apt only because my tongue was nuclear green from the lollipop I consumed earlier to mask the Munchos aftertaste in my mouth. His boyfriend Chris I knew a little more about because I had read about him and saw him on TV a few times, but virtually all of my interaction up to this point had been with Kevin who I knew less about but somehow knew better, so meeting Chris was weirder for me.

This is difficult to explain in words. I meet people all the time from TV shows or movies or what have you because of my job, but rarely do I meet someone from that world who also listens to the show. Usually, we interview someone who doesn't know anything about us, but we know all about them, in much the same way that listeners meet us at events and know all about our lives but we don't know anything about theirs. So here we were two people who knew each other's resumes basically, and a little more perhaps, but meeting for the first time. It was like a real life version of the old Spy Magazine section Logrolling In Our Time. It was all too much for me.

I know you. You know me. We don't know each other. Maybe it was the heat and humidity after a long cold winter. Maybe it was the 48 surreal hours that had gone before. Real names hidden under porn names. White folder celebrity versus black folder celebrity. Untoward sexual advances from hot strangers. By the time Kevin and Chris arrived, I was mentally throwing in the towel. All I wanted to do was flee to the airport. Being in a strange city, meeting new people, I felt like an astronaut in space who becomes untethered from the ship, and then ever so slowly but quite desperately floats away.

I wanted my boring life back. I just wanted the security that comes with sleeping in my own bed in my house built to withstand a nuclear war with the furniture too heavy to move. When I landed at La Guardia and walked into the parking structure, I was never so happy to see my little beat up old red convertible. And parked right next to it, another little red convertible with a tiny SIRIUS antenna stuck on the trunk, just like mine. It made me happy in that instant because for the first time in three days, I felt like I belonged. Not as someone who talks on the radio, but as just another person in this city that listens. And then I drove home and climbed into bed. And for perhaps a little longer than usual, I was happy.

Matt and Ben

This blog is primarily dedicated to my adventures out on the town, which might lead some people to believe I am a raging alcoholic. Everyone that is except my grandmother who insists that I don't drink enough. While it is true that many of my nights out happen in dank bars, over the last couple of years I have severely cut back on my drinking. Yes, I still go out, but instead of eight to ten drinks, I am down to one or two. More recently, I went a solid six weeks or so without a single cocktail. That ended last night when I didn't so much fall off the wagon as throw myself onto the Oregon Trail and allow an entire wagon train to roll over me.

Much of this new found sobriety has been necessitated by my move to the suburbs. Invariably I need to drive home at the end of the evening, leaving me at a serious drunken disadvantage to other New Yorkers. More of it has to do with getting older. To paraphrase Catherine Deneuve, at a certain point you have to choose between saving face and saving your ass. To continue drinking heavily means choosing your ass over your face and that is something I have just never been willing to do. Mornings are unpretty enough with your face memorizing every pillow crease from the night before without the telling boozy puffiness lending it a helping hand.

But last night was Ben Harvey's party celebrating his much-heralded TV show debut on HERE TV. I absolutely had to go to support him. And since it has been a while since I had a few cocktails and I knew I didn't need to drive home later, it was the perfect opportunity to enjoy a rare liquor-fueled night on the town. When I arrived, Ben offered to make me a cocktail and while waiting I threw myself on the mercy of his tastefully modern sofa with Cyd and Dan, sitting close together like a comedy team. It was nice spending time with them since I don't ever get enough time to see them. Dan listens to the show on his commute home quite regularly so he usually knows what is going on in my life, but the one-sidedness of it leaves me a little wanting.

Matt Kelleher finally arrived a few minutes later with his adorable blond charge. Gary is a Notre Dame (Matt's alma mater) senior in town looking for jobs and fun before his May graduation. If Roommate had been at the party he would have known immediately that Gary was just my type: tall, blond, sweet with a naturally perfect body and just a hint of chest hair. Matt was busy instructing him in the ways of New York and helping to prepare him for life in the outside world, by way of parties filled with gorgeous gay men and enough liquor to explode ten livers.

Ben arrived in our circle with drinks for the two of them and I held out my hand expectantly. At first Ben was confused but then he realized that he completely forgot to bring me my drink. "What were you waiting for?" he cried. "That was half an hour ago!" It was the very same conversation I had with Jonathan two days earlier. I suppose I am a fool for expecting people to keep their word even in intensely trivial matters, but if seven years in New York City has taught me anything, it is that reliability is essential to keep life running smoothly (as everyone who stands on subway platforms knows all too well). Or maybe I am just spoiled by the military-instilled precision of my parents, later reinforced by the even greater efficiency of Roommate.

Ben finally made good on his promise but unfortunately, my body had completely forgotten what alcohol was and two drinks later, I was flying like Sally Field in a perfectly symmetrical habit. Chris Van Cleef was there and my last blog entry was the talk of the party and the halls of HERE TV. One of his friends even quoted it in his Facebook Wall, citing my blog as "honest and trustworthy." I felt so famous! But Chris was tickled by the blog entry and insisted that he was stone sober when I saw him, which means I guess we can chalk up his willing sexual personality to nothing more complex than a willing sexual personality.

The party was fun, but Matty had another party to go to and I had one eye on the clock for the drunk trains home and the other eye on his blond companion. On our way out, outside the bathroom Sara of the Josh and Sara podcast made the feisty demand "You better not put me in your blog!" which naturally guaranteed she would make it in. (As a side note while I am on the subject of the bathroom, I fell madly in love with the art over Ben's toilet which as I dimly recall was a series of faux mid-century comic panels that started with one of the characters saying in effect: It rains here two out of three days, and during the rainy season, it snows like a bitch! That caused me to laugh so hard, I actually doubled over. So yes I was quite drunk at that point.) Ben's cousin Christian arrived late, almost simultaneously with us leaving so I barely got to say hi. And the presence of Dave Rubin's boyfriend made dry humping his leg even more embarrassing and inappropriate, though I did it anyway.

Matt, Gary and I decamped from Ben's fabulous party to another fabulous party, back in Union Square at David Coleman's place. I tried to tell a very drunk Gary about the remarkable view of Grand Central Station and why the Chrysler Building is my favorite in all of New York but he was instantly obsessed with playing Britney Spears on David's iPod-driven music system. He even went so far as to replace the iPod with his own iPhone and proceeded to turn himself into impromptu DJ. Moments later, egged on by Ryan Newman, he engaged in and narrowly lost a dance off. I felt like I was in a scene out of a gay rip-off of She's All That.

Conor was there, his collie eyes obscured by eyeglasses, reminding me once again of my preference for Clark Kent over Superman. Ben was there too, making a rare public appearance without Bradford. I also ran into Barton who was sexy and lovely as always, and who sat by with a bland expression while I dirty danced with Gary to Radar. In my state, I tried to convince him (unsuccessfully) that I am not the kind of person who does this sort of thing, but he just looked back with an expression lacking both moral judgment and belief. Moments later, the party broke up with most of us headed over to the Chelsea Hotel. And then things got interesting.

It was a night of firsts for me, though none I would recommend. The first first came on the dance floor in the basement bar of the Chelsea when Gary took his shirt off and then insisted I take mine off. I have never been shirtless in a gay club in my life and the only other time I was shirtless in a gay social setting was August of 2001 and we all remember how that ended! Later another clubgoer tapped my bare shoulder and sniffed, "Have you noticed you are the only two people in here with your shirts off? This isn't that kind of place you know." In that moment, I just hoped that he thought we were both too young to know better as opposed to one of us being too young and the other one being definitely old enough to know better. My shirtlessness also got an askance glance from Barton on his way out, again with his trademarked judgment-free judgment which to me is as unrealistic and suspicious as sugar-free, fat-free Cool Whip.

Gary ran into Matt's friend Ian, whom he had met when he met Matt down in South Florida last week. Ian and other friends at the Chelsea who were not at the party pulled the three of us out of the Chelsea and off to another house party. Ian's driver Joe pulled his Bentley up to the curb, graciously took my tacky backpack and ten dollar coat from the Barney's Warehouse Sale and laid them in the trunk with the kind of care usually reserved for fragile antique crystal. I squeezed myself into the backseat with Ian, Gary and to my right, Itay Hod from LOGO News who is just as sexy in person if not more so, while Matt rode in the front seat. Joe drove us to the elegant apartment of Tim who thoughtfully hosted a passel of gay men well into the wee hours of the morning.

Tim worked overtime as a host, entreating smokers not to toss their butts over the side of his balcony onto the neighboring balcony below, filling drinks and otherwise making sure everyone had a good time. Gary settled in on the floor next to the music system, and once again, replaced Tim's music with his own iPhone and set about on another three hour musical journey dedicated almost entirely to the Britney canon with a reverential devotion usually reserved for patron saints and Madonna. By this time, I was just too drunk to keep up the pace and switched to water to keep me from shriveling up like a prune before morning. Gary once again took his shirt off and convinced me to do the same, which lead to first number two: being photographed in public with my shirt off. I had always said I would never, NEVER do that, and yet, here I was, shirtless and grinning like an idiot for the camera.

An hour later, I experienced my third and final first. Gary and I were canoodling on a lovely leather armchair and suddenly, drunk and shirtless in a strange apartment, dawn nearly breaking through the window like a runaway freight train, I felt lost. But how could I be so terribly unhappy? Here I was, in the arms of an adorable guy at a fun party and yet not having J.G. in my life made me feel as lost as a rudderless ship at sea. If I still had his number in my phone, I would have sent him an ill-advised "I am lost without you in my life" text message at six a.m. I was coloring outside the lines and it just wasn't for me. And yet being so fiercely self-reliant as I am, needing someone like this has never been me either. There I was, left between the devil and the deep blue sea, not knowing where to go next or what to do. But true to form for me in moments like this, I mustered my strength and emanated fun without actually having fun until the feeling passed.

A while later, Matt was ready to go and we all put on our shoes and coats and headed out into the soft, lush opening notes of dawn, quickly hailing a cab and heading to Matt's apartment. I thought about just going directly to Grand Central to head home, but realized that a couple of hours sleep would probably be better than just heading home cold. "We'll sleep until ten and then all go to brunch!" Matt offered brightly, still in full cruise director mode, and then seconds later he was fast asleep. I woke up at 11:30am and Gary and Matt were still dead to the world. I put a mirror under each of their noses to make sure they were alive, patted Parker pug on the head and stumbled out the door. It was a great night, to be sure, and probably one of the last all-nighters I will ever have. Hanging out with Matt is always a reliable treat, and there is so much comfort and trust in spending time with someone you have known for more than a decade. In the end, it turns out there are some things, I know I can rely on: old friends, pillow face and always myself.