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.

The In N Out Urge

I have spent more time in downtown Manhattan in the past few months than I have in all seven years I have lived in New York City. Part of this is Jonathan, who lives deep in the thick of the trademarked real New York experience I never had. I had wanted to live in Manhattan for my whole life. My mother’s tales of living there as a child and later visiting her grandfather and Aunt Caroline, turned it into a magical storied place of excitement and wonder. Living here has not disappointed. It really is more like the movie Enchanted than you could possibly imagine. However, I always knew it was expensive and endeavored to not make the leap until I was able to live in grand style. Fatefully at the end of the last century, my wish was granted and I packed up my hopes and dreams and moved alone into a gorgeous apartment building on 42nd Street and the West Side Highway.

My palace in the sky was a brand new two bedroom corner apartment on the 26th floor with beautiful views of New Jersey across the Hudson River. In the evenings, the cruise ships that docked just North of me would sail past my window, flashbulbs ablaze on the deck as hundreds of passengers took my picture simultaneously. I would throw myself on the mercy of the divan in my living room as Ella Fitzgerald sang “Manhattan” and wondered how little me ended up in such a delicious tub of butter. The fourteen months I lived there were, without a doubt, the nearest thing to heaven. Of course it was very lonely in heaven, thousands of miles from my family and friends, with no boyfriend to share it all with. But it was hard to ask for the moon when I had the stars.

When I first got to the city, I was averse to taking the subway. I would walk or take cabs everywhere. This limited my movements to primarily just the center of Manhattan. I joked that I never went South of Houston unless I was fucking a celebrity, and I have yet to fuck a celebrity. But lately, I have been veering closer and closer to star sex land, and I have even grown to love the subway. It is desperately efficient, and not just because the smelly underground platforms have the uncanny ability to retain both all the heat in the summer and all the cold of the winter. A subway ride is an extension of the general magic of the city. The wonder you experience at turning a corner and accidentally encountering a street festival is extended to a subway car when you unexpectedly ride for eighty blocks with a mariachi band. Tonight on my subway ride downtown there was a man playing the saxophone, first on the platform and then later actually in my subway car. He was doing a rendition of My Favorite Things which I am certain he thought was the Birth of Cool when in fact it was the Cesarean of Suck. It is magic here, just not always top quality magic.

I was heading downtown tonight to join Josh in his final fling in the city before he heads to West Hollywood. He showed me, quite casually mind you, his new apartment using Google Earth on his iPhone, his arms flexing in his tight t-shirt as he worked the numbers. Something tells me he is going to fit right in there in my old stomping grounds. When I arrived at Urge, drag queen Gusty Winds was perched, legs akimbo, on a stool on stage preparing the first round of drag queen bingo. I have been trying not to drink of late and from her first riff on the joys of Oprah’s Big Give, I knew this night would be the ultimate test. Josh was joined by his friend Dann, and two straight girls, but I don’t remember their names and no one is reading my blog to see links to the Connexion pages of women. No offense. Barton joined us midway through the first round, although I could tell by the look on his face that he could have lived his whole life without being there.

The first game required players to get “two lines.” I muttered to Dann that I was wish I had done two lines before I got there. Dann guffawed loudly, and never hearing such a thing before while performing, Gusty Winds seized on his laughter like she was having an aneurysm. “Someone is laughing,” she half-asked, which frankly is not a flattering reaction to give when you are performing on stage. Dann and Barton much enjoyed my antics from our banquette, while Josh and his female friends earnestly played the first round of bingo. The girl closest to me won and handed the card to Josh, who collected the $30 prize. This money went directly to the charitable fund that supplies drinks to needy alcoholic New Yorkers, primarily those in and around a small banquette inside the bar Urge.

In the second round, you needed to get a plus sign. I was half paying attention, mostly tossing bon mots at Barton, and reacting with both real and mock horror that in all his 36 years, he had never seen the lesbian episode of The Golden Girls where Dorothy’s friend falls in love with Rose. It was especially painful because he didn’t know who Danny Thomas was and I tried to use Blanche’s reaction to the news that Jean was a lesbian to remind him of who he was. Since he runs a non-profit, the pop culture touchstone that wedged his memory free was St. Jude’s Hospital. I wish I had been paying closer attention to the game and hadn’t tried to find the bathroom during the calling of numbers because I ended up one number away from a win without knowing if the last number I needed had already been called. As it turns out, Barton won that round, splitting it with another guy, and leaving the $12.50 in winnings back in the needy drunks fund at the center of the table.

His insistence that he is a “good guy” was tested moments later when he won the third round all by himself, and somewhat reluctantly, dropped the $65 into the center of the table. It was only fair since Josh was the one buying everyone their bingo cards all night. But still, I felt his pain at parting with all that delicious money. After all $65 can actually get you pretty far in this town, though primarily from Manhattan to JFK Airport. Maybe even Newark if the traffic is light.

I guess the lesson here is that life in the big city is fueled by money. The more money you have, the better your life can be. You can have apartments too big for one person to live in, and cars that take you anywhere you want to go. But in the end, it doesn't matter where you live or how big your apartment is, what matters most in Manhattan are the little moments. It's a song on a lazy afternoon, the laughter of friends, sunset along the river. Yes, the $65 could have been very helpful in hailing a cab out of Urge and off to an apartment for him and the train home for me, but then we would have missed that delightful walk up Second Avenue on a quiet cool evening in New York City.