Club Step

Providence is not only humanity's cruel scorekeeper but also a dark chalet on West 57th Street filled with a complex labyrinth of stairs and levels. It's like a Hamburger Hamlet designed by M.C. Escher. Not the kind of dimly lit establishment where drunk and clumsy people can find peace of mind.

If you get lost inside Providence, here's a handy map.

I turned to Donny, still recovering from a broken hip, and issued a dark warning:

"One of us is going to fall down and the other one is going to die from laughter."

Since Donny fell last time, undone by an icy pathway outside his apartment as 2014 began, I decided to tread carefully through the club. Karma, being what it is, I was more than past due for a hard tumble of my own.

We came to Providence for their new Friday night party Berlin. On line for coat check, I met a nice young man visiting from Germany, who sensed providence in the name and came based solely on that.

"Is this one of the big clubs in New York City?" he asked in flawless if heavily accented English.

I just shrugged. This was my first time too. But I was drawn by Brian Gianelli's suggestion and the prompt 11pm show by local drag pathogen Bianca del Rio. I should have known before we arrived that everything would fall apart, this being the endless winter of our discontent and all, but I tried to ignore the warning signs and instead enjoy a night on the town during one of the first moderately decent nights of the year.

This winter has been unrelenting, like trying repeatedly to squeeze a size 14 into a tuna can. Back in December, I mocked my friend Terry Goldman when he wore a short-sleeved shirt to dinner on the single day that month where the temperature threatened to touch sixty. In retrospect, if I had known about the three months of polar vortex ahead I would have appeared in little more than a bathing suit.

So since it was only just in the thirties tonight, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to pull myself out of hibernation and drag Donny out on the town for the first time since we skied through the Aspen Social Club as winter began. Ryan Hahn was organizing a mini-reunion from his holiday party with Griffin Parsons and Jennifer Cheng in tow, but for one reason or another, they all dropped out at the last minute, almost literally as Brian’s plane was making its final descent into madness.

How bad could it be? Bianca. Bunny. No cover charge!

In addition to the chance to spend some time with Brian, I was lured to Providence by a flyer Bianca del Rio posted on Facebook promising both no cover charge and Lady Bunny. The evening had neither. But Bianca, a giant black cotton ball perched on her wig, made the most of it with her usual warm blend of racism and anti-Semitism. The crowd ate it up. After the show, the crowd swarmed, temporarily overwhelming Bianca with photo requests. I was only half-joking when I suggested to Donny that I should organize them into a line and charge five dollars. Between the $30 in cover at the door and $12 at the coat check, recouping our losses was high on my list.

"That'll be five dollars, please. Insults cost extra."

The club was filled with lots of young men and some of them weren't bad looking either. While waiting for the coat check, however, we landed behind a man in a striped jumpsuit (Donny kept calling it a "onesie") that had a glittery owl on the back.

Stop staring at me! It's freaking me out!

It was so quaint when Donny expressed shock that anyone would buy such a thing. “You know he rolled out an old McCall’s pattern and made that himself down at F.I.T.!” I screeched before suggesting a variety of potential Tim Gunn critiques. Later when we were upstairs, Donny spotted him again and yelled, "Ugh. It's back!"

"The front sucks too." I offered.

Look, if you are going to be a man in a skin tight jumpsuit, you better have the body of death not a dead body. I don't know anything about fashion but even I know that’s the truth.

Unfortunately in the midst of all of our gay shenanigans, we lost Brian and his cute friend Andrew in the crowd. It was the second time tonight that it happened and with the drunk train pending, I did not have time for the third time to be a charm. I texted him one last time and headed for the exits.

On our way down to the coat check, I bumped into a collection of cute guys on their way in and one of them was a Grant Goodeve-looking mother fucker. All sorts of hipsters were floating around in plaid tonight but he was the only one that made it work.

In this case, eight would be enough for anyone.

I suppose the hipster thing is like any movement in fashion. Many will try it but most will fail. In his case, the red plaid tucked into his jeans effectively transported me back to my adolescence. Others just looked like sloppy messes for whom an unkempt beard and ill-fitting tank top was statement enough.

Life is full of potential pitfalls. If it isn't bad fashion, it’s a treacherous staircase. One minute you're a nice Asian woman looking for the ladies room and the next Bianca del Rio is dragging you on stage and forcing you to play the role of manicurist. I think monsters lead such interesting lives, don’t you? Even in party palaces where the stairs climb on forever to nowhere. 

Tress This Mess

My hair is a fair weather friend. It does not do well in the elements. I have long been jealous of my grandmother Doris and her sassy wig and I live for the day when I can just give up on hair altogether and don a wig. It must be genetic. Besides, under certain circumstances, like tonight, the mop on top takes on a certain plastic wig-like quality anyway, so it isn’t like synthetic would be some kind of step down from normal.

Since we are on the subject of wigs, it is probably most appropriate that I journeyed down to XL tonight for Hot Mess featuring two of the hottest messes in Manhattan: Bianca del Rio and Lady Bunny.  It is day two of Josh’s first ever visit to New York City and I am determined to make sure he has the most amazing time anyone has ever had in our city ever. If only I approached fitness with the same zeal.

I figured if anyone could put on a show that once seen can’t be unseen, it is Bianca and Bunny. And that is the kind of unshakable memory of America I want Josh to take back to Afghanistan. While he is on leave from his deployment, he needs to see two people who are on leave from their senses. He needs to know what he is fighting for: the right to tell racist jokes in between subpar dance numbers. In this regard, they did not disappoint.

Craze The Titanic

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

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

The New Tron Dance

I’ve never walked into a bar that smelled new before. Not just clean, but actually brand, spanking new. The whole experience reminded me of the old lady from Titanic describing the famous ship, “I can still smell the fresh paint. The china had never been used. The sheets had never been slept in. Titanic was called the ship of dreams, and it was. It really was.” Well, tonight I went to the all new XL bar in Manhattan to smell the fresh paint. The plastic cups had never been used. The stalls hadn’t had any drugs done in them yet. I suppose it could be the club of dreams if your dream is to see other gay men prancing around like always. And if that is your dream, then it was. It really was! I'm oversimplifying of course but what are gay men in a club if not overly simple?

I was excited to see XL since everyone has been talking about it for months now. And like the Titanic, the maiden voyage of this truly new bar for a new generation would either sail into glory or go down sensationally. I asked my friend and trusty nightlife pal Matt Kugelman to join me and he was more than game for the adventure.

Cross Gown Rivals

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

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

Stuck In Park

Thursday night at The Park has been a thing for a while now. Last year, Matty was promoting a night there. This year, it has been Josh Woods’ turn. Certainly over the last few months, the Fox party has been the most consistent night out for me. So I suppose it was no surprise that on my first Thursday out in a while, The Park was on the agenda, even if we only planned to stay for a short bit. Erik didn’t mind going again, but the drinks are kind of pricey ($13 for a tiny glass of ice with a heavy pour of vodka on top). So we made a plan to stop by for the first hour when the drinks are two for one and then head on up to Hell’s Kitchen.

ADD Jeff sent me a text message during the show to see if I was going out tonight. As fate would have it, I was. So when the show ended, he was waiting downstairs on the plaza outside our building with his muscled pal Eddie. Eddie is the kind of walking slab of beef that should either be hanging in a meat locker or punching the beef in one. Together we hopped on the subway and headed down to The Park to begin our evening.

The GayVN Awards

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To Live And Dine In LA

I almost died yesterday in New Orleans.

I used to take my anti-aging vitamins two at a time until my Grandmother snapped, “Oh for crying out loud, open your throat and swallow them all at once.” So for the last year and a half, not wanting to seem like a pussy in front of her, that is how I have done it. A fistful of pills thrown down my throat, which had been a fine system until yesterday when life once again imitated the art of 30 Rock and the vitamins got lodged in my throat. Moments later, I was coughing and puking in the sink until three of them came back up. That was enough clearing for me to swallow some large swigs of water to get the rest of them down. But standing there alone in my underwear in the hotel room, my face red and puffy from the hacking, just served to remind me of the running theme of the weekend: we are just too old for this.

Nevermind that it was anti-aging vitamins I was choking on, the whole weekend was an endurance test for the liver, kidneys, stomach and feet. Each day began at the crack of one, with a sumptuous lunch that left us incapacitated and in need of a nap. We’d regroup at 8pm for another massive meal and then head to the Bourbon Pub for a night of intense intoxication. For three days, I battled nausea from overeating, overdrinking, and rapid changes in temperature moving from air conditioned interiors to searing humid exteriors. The combination of humid heat and a basket of fried pickles I refused to abandon even when beyond stuffed nearly caused my gastric demise on a street corner on Sunday afternoon.


Out at the bars, everyone was too old for their outfit, me included. I understand the gay desire to never get any older, but I just don’t know if an ANF muscle tee, cargo shorts and a sideways baseball cap are appropriate on a charter member of the AARP. To paraphrase Helen Gurley Brown, “I will wear shorts until I die”, but that doesn’t mean it will be pretty. I suppose the most important thing is that everyone was having fun, and when you are on the shady side of fifty, really how many more days of fun are left?

I spent a lot of time this weekend in the VIP room at the Bourbon Pub, thanks in large part to my friendship with Chi Chi La Rue. Listeners of my radio show and my disgruntled roommate may think I am famous, but I am largely unknown even in the gay community. It is a situation I continue to relish even as it keeps me standing in lines and denied access to free cocktails. My anonymity is worth the trade off. Although to be fair to the Bourbon, Jonathan knows me but his staff doesn't. And instead of making one of those dreadful "don't you know who I am" scenes, I just opted to ride in on the La Rue train.

Friday night Chi Chi La Rue was holding court on the third floor at the Bourbon Pub with Lady Bunny, who had just finished her set. Chi Chi had been DJing all afternoon long and was clearly ready for a drink or five by the time I arrived upstairs. Lady Bunny was in her own movie, primarily Valley of the Dolls although she did slip in and out of Bette Davis when the occasion called for it. Chi Chi’s hot phrase of the evening was “I’d love to do it, but I can’t brisket.” My love of a good pun knows no bounds and the next day at the Old Chartres House, I just had to order the BBQ brisket po-boy sandwich in honor of it.

As the night wore on, Bunny’s wig got progressively scarier and scarier. The combination of the late night and the humidity took its toll on that wiry heap of plastic yarn that looked like the Lady had scalped a Barbie beauty head circa 1972. “Tell everything! Include diagrams!” Chi Chi urged in between briskets, but I can’t really draw. Chi Chi demanded that Lady Bunny show me her brown stained pantyhose, which she insisted was from Bunny shitting herself. Bunny claimed it was a gumbo mishap but two hours later she was still in those same messy hose. The only thing dirtier than Bunny’s legs was the carpet. I dubbed it the night of 1000 spilled drinks, although I only managed to spill one of them.

At one point, some cutie boys insisted that their friend come up and audition for Chi Chi. This happens quite regularly since I witnessed it myself in Minneapolis with a dirty boy dancing on a box while Chi Chi was spinning, the more Chi Chi looked past him, the harder he started grinding. Back at the Bourbon, Chi Chi told a great story while we were waiting about two men getting it on right next to her on a pool table while she was trying to just sit and enjoy her cocktail. And the more she ignored them, the more aggressive they got, to the point where they were fully engaged with their legs thrown across Chi Chi’s lap. The hunk finally arrived upstairs and he was a handsome thirty-something with a tight body. Chi Chi asked to see his cock. “But I’m not hard,” he whined.

“I didn’t ask for a story. I asked to see your cock.”

He whipped it out and even soft, it was quite big and thick. Chi Chi clutched me like a new car winner on The Price Is Right. “Oh my God! Did you see that? It’s huge!” It sort of surprised me that Chi Chi, after all these years in porn, could still get excited about seeing a new cock. I guess that is a lesson for us all when we are feeling old. A weekend in New Orleans may play out like a heartburn commercial when you are thirty-something (or older), but that doesn’t mean it’s too late to enjoy it anyway.