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.

Gay Life Exposed

Yes, I am possibly the gayest person alive. But for me, being gay is something of a hobby. I enjoy it, but I like to think I can’t make a full time occupation out of it. Then again, it’s a little bit like being a die-hard Yankees fan. It doesn’t matter what career you may pursue, everyone assumes that most of your waking thoughts are about baseball. I wish there was a way to leave the unfinished puzzle of my gay life on a game table in the living room and run some errands unrelated and unfettered by the lack of resolution. After all, it will still be there when I get back. But as gay people, we are vertically integrated by not just our love of sex with men but also a desire to arrange flowers, listen to Judy Garland or declare someone too fat for that outfit. As much as you may want to quit, hide or sideline it, gay can pour from your pores like the smell of gin from a notorious alcoholic.

Apparently, for some people, gay isn’t just a hobby, it’s a way of life. And for them we have the Gay Life Expo. These kinds of expos are like speed dating between gay consumers and mainstream corporations. In each case, they are hoping to find perfection. But just like most speed dating rounds, what actually stands in front of you can often be very disappointing. For the gays: disappointment in the quality and diversity of the companies that bothered to show up. For the companies: wonder as to the location of these high end consumers demographers have been promising them for years. And if you ever want to dispel the myth of gays as fashion forward, articulate trendsetters, this is the weekend adventure for you! Other myths, such as gays being indiscriminant whoring drunks and lesbians being aggressively cheap and demanding of free items, remain woefully intact.

I wanted to go because I think it’s important for our company to crack into the NYC gay market in a substantial way. And a trade show seven weeks before Christmas is as good a place as any to plant the holiday gift seed. It was also a chance to spend some time hanging out with co-workers that I like (Jeremy Hovies, Keith Price) without the embarrassment of needing to be nice to the ones I don’t like, which I will have to do soon enough at the annual holiday party.

I had a short segment on the stage that I originally thought was just an opportunity to wave to the crowd and throw some free t-shirts to the lesbians. But when I was at the office thirty minutes before the show printing out the information, I noticed that I would instead be an emcee and be introducing some of the performers. This was not good news. Emceeing at a pride event is hard enough, but at least the crowd is drunk and excited. Performing at a trade show is like trying to sell real estate to death row inmates. The chairs are usually filled with people too lazy to walk the length of a convention center without needing to rest an hour for every ten booths they passed. I tried to encourage them to enter to win the free radio we were giving away, not more than ten feet from the closest chair but most of them preferred to stay in their seats and stare dead-eyed ahead. I don’t need a TV show now. I already know what it feels like when people watch you on TV, from the perspective of the television set itself.

The lowest form of degradation came at the end of my set when Scott Nevins launched into his “game show” with the OutQ personalities playing along with “real people” from the audience. Scott, with his Groucho brows and pancake make-up projecting like Ethel Merman to the third balcony, took to the stage like a rat diving into a sewer. For the purposes of the game and a chance at some playful nastiness in my direction, he paired me with a genetic male cross of Ab Fab’s Edina Monsoon and Jodie Foster in Nell. He was wearing X-Ray goggles from the back of a 1970s comic book and a puffy white jacket with the entire NYC subway map printed on it, his native language that of Leeloo from The Fifth Element. It seemed from his insistent waving of a gay bar rag in my face that he was in the current issue of HX Magazine, photographed for Halloween in what I can only assume is his normal attire, and captioned as “Bee Bitch.” So the other hosts had actual contestants and I was paired with a lump of mashed potatoes. As I should have learned from the Faggot Feud with Richie Rich in 2004, never walk on a stage where someone else is controlling the mike. Point taken.

After the event, I decamped with the folks at HERE TV for dinner. Cutie pie Chris was there again, although in retrospect, I realize he was the only actual HERE person at the restaurant. At the Expo, I saw Josh, but he opted to head home after the long weekend and crash. Earlier from the stage, I saw Peter Stickles walking around, but he left before I was unshackled from the umpteenth just-so Judy impression emanating from little Scotty Nevins. I hope Peter didn’t see me, but as a performer, I am certain he would have sympathized with my plight. Lady in a cage!

So it was Chris for dinner and my friend Terry from Los Angeles. The other two were flirty Jimmy with sad eyes and a boyfriend in the steam room (unrelated) and adorable newcomer Jonathan, who was too young to appreciate my dusty early 80s references. Hey, did you know that Vic Morrow was named Rotary Club Man of the Year?

What? Too soon?

We went to Ariba Ariba, which in the absence of real Mexican food, will do in a pinch. Jonathan and I bonded over our mutual hatred of the sexy yet slow homos who were occupying our future table. Besides, we were in a hurry. I noticed in the midst of the football game playing on the TV over the bar that the Amazing Race was starting that night and I was fairly certain it wasn’t in the DVR at home. There were 3:34 minutes left in the third quarter which I gay-estimated was about an hour left in the game. With an hour of 60 Minutes sandwiched in between, I knew I had to leave as soon as the game ended to be home in time to not miss the start of the show.

It turns out Jonathan is as plugged in to politics as I am, and he is in the midst of reading The Nine, which I have been dying to pick up. I am such a Supreme Court junkie, I would call in sick to work just to watch a televised confirmation hearing. Then again, I would call in sick to eat a container of ice cream, so the threshold there is pretty low. And I was enjoying all of our banter until I looked up and noticed the football players touching each other inappropriately and CBS announcing the Play of the Day. In my head I heard the stopwatch ticking and Leslie Stahl, with her whipped cotton candy hair and dulcet tones, laying out her segment about famine in Africa, Lindsay Lohan or both, and I knew it was time to go.

As I raced home through the wooded splendor of the Saw Mill Parkway, the concrete monoliths of Manhattan in the rearview mirror, I took stock in the level of gay in my own gay life. Years ago, I left the ghetto behind. I loved my time in West Hollywood, but a body can only take so much abuse, and really that kind of stress testing is for the young. My existence now is suburban, surrounded on all sides by the known markers of heterosexual existence: soccer moms and RVs. And in the middle of it all, my little Cape Cod house, with the bay window and stocked bar in the basement. It’s as gay as a picnic basket, even without the bags of flower bulbs waiting on the window seat to be planted, carefully arranged by blooming season and chosen to resist the voracious dietary habits of the deer that cruise my yard like it’s The Ramble. In looking over the goods presented at the Gay Life Expo, I don’t think my life, as defined by their terms, is gay. Yes, I am fussy about my few precious elegant things, but I think that is borne more out of a desire for strict traditionalism and less about homosexuality. I’m old-fashioned, and I don’t mind it, as the song says. But given how unlike the rest of my family that is, I suppose I can lock that final piece in my gay life puzzle and consider it solved.

Lotus Entertain You

Ben Harvey was back on the show tonight for Tabloid Tuesday. I always like having Ben on because he really tries to stay focused. He came prepared with notes about celebrities and print outs from PerezHilton.com. I came with a bag of carrots and celery and no mood to talk. We prattled on about the history of our show and Ben’s recent dust-up with Wade Williams, which I would give about a 1.3 on the Andy Richter scale of celebrity feuds. Ben feels things deeply so he took the Wade thing personally but every time it gets mentioned, five minutes later I can’t even remember it anymore.

Ben and I have been anxious to spend some more quality time together, but every time we meet out at a bar there are too many distractions (D-A-N, Conor, etc.) and never enough quiet corners to process like the lesbians we are. So since Ben was on the show tonight, we endeavored to hit the town afterward. Once the show started he sent me a text message about going to Lotus instead of our usual Halloween haunt Bowery Bar. At this point, Beige is as colorless as its name so I am happy to take any other Tuesday night suggestion offered.

It turns out that our quality time was spent on the subway down to 14th Street because once we got into Lotus, it was the usual slew of distractions and loud music. At first, I didn’t think I had ever been to Lotus, but once inside the drunken memories of the Sirius party celebrating one million members came flooding back. My HR pal Calliope had broken her leg and stationed herself with drink in hand in the banquet near the door, passing out car vouchers to the myriad drunk employees so plastered they couldn’t even hail a cab. Chinese food was served with chopsticks that had Sirius printed on them. I squirreled several away in my coat and I still have them at home in my eBay box. The biggest souvenir of the night was not the chopsticks, but the heretofore hot straight male co-worker that made out with me by the bathroom. He too was given one of the coveted car passes from Calliope, who even in per prone state, had already heard about the antics before his tongue was out of my throat.

There was no such straight man-on-gay action at Lotus tonight. The usual Here TV posse was there, encouraged to stop in by The Lair star Peter Stickles who was filling in for a sick friend. Peter looked so sexy in his crisp black shirt and pants, pulled together so smoothly he seemed to be made entirely of cream cheese. Peter is smart and knows he can get a lot of smiles per gallon with that devilish grin of his and a well-placed wink. Chris and Josh were also there from Here and immediately Ben was sucked into the kind of work conversation I know all too well from hanging out with co-workers at bars. I let them have their office gossip while I chatted with my friend Terry and his new young squeeze. Occasionally Chris would swing through with some titty-twisters from hell, that I was fortunately spared. My nipples are for show only, and any attention, even just looking at them, causes nothing but pain. I was ready to shatter a glass on the edge of the bar to prevent Chris’ hand from coming anywhere near my chest.

At one point I started talking to Hunter, a product placement expert, who strategically placed himself in the dead center of the bar for maximum exposure. He looked so familiar and I was fairly certain I have seen him before on Connexion (although hours later I realize he just looks like Brandon’s ex-boyfriend Cliff). We talked for all of two minutes before someone took the stage and announced the beginning of the burlesque show. That was my cue to leave. I could barely hear Peter over the dance mix of Heat Wave a few minutes earlier, so I knew I didn’t have a chance during a live performance. A topless girl twirled glittery fiddle-covered nipples to “The Devil Went Down To Georgia” as I left for the midnight train to suburbia. At least Ben Harvey and I had a few minutes to talk about our lives before I grabbed my old PlanetOut backpack from coat check and headed for a cab. Maybe next time we’ll just have lunch instead. The lighting is harsher but at least you can get a word in edgewise.

And for the most part, people keep their nipples to themselves.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

It feels like all I ever do is go to Bowery Bar and then write about it in my blog. Ugh! I don't even like that bar and yet it feels like I am there all the time!

I’ll admit it. I don’t have much of a social life. My days generally consist of:
- me sleeping until almost noon
- eating a bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats while watching The View
- wandering through my new house annoyed by the disrepair but too lazy to address it
- Fucking around on Towleroad.com, Yahoo News and MySpace
- Realizing how late I am from sitting on the internet
- Hopping in the shower
- Driving to the train
- showing up minutes before my show
- Doing four hours of radio which leaves me with no interest in humanity
- Dashing out of the studio to catch the first train home
- Heating up something to eat while watching Robot Chicken
- Fucking around on the internet until I realize it’s 4am and then going to bed
- Lather, rinse, repeat

This has left me with all sorts of problems. I have a house that needs some TLC. I have no desire to go anywhere or do anything. I have a radio show and a video podcast begging for content (not to mention a blog), and no compelling interest in existing outside of a four square foot area radiating out from my own bed. If I could get away with a bed pan that I emptied out my bedroom window and using a mini-fridge as a nightstand, my dream life would be complete. As a kid I couldn’t understand why people like Howard Hughes ended their lives in a single room, but now I wonder at what age I could get away with it without it being totally creepy and crazy. Is forty too young?

One of our few ridiculously hot listeners was in town this week with his boyfriend so I agreed to give them a studio tour and a drink out on the town. He is fresh out of the Air Force and I like to do what I can to support the troops. It’s my own version of the gay USO. So I took Zach to Bowery Bar since he is relocating to New York City. He needs to know where to find and converse with the other ridiculously hot people in the city once he gets here, and that location on Tuesday nights is still, eternally Bowery Bar. It was also a good excuse to finally see DJ Ben Harvey who has been something of a hermit while packing and unpacking from his move to DUMBO (not the Disney movie, although that would be kind of cool). The stars continued to align with roommate working late and Chip Arndt being in town for the AIDS Ride (please donate money to support Chip. He is a good guy and he is trying to raise a lot of money). I even sent a text message to D-A-N who happened also to be going to Bowery Bar tonight (although I suspect he is always out on Tuesday night and it is not casual coincidence that keeps us running into each other).

Zach only stayed for one drink, but it was long enough for him to swap military tales with roommate. He had a very early flight and a hot boyfriend waiting for him at the Hilton, so he was excused. Ben Harvey was as adorable as ever, and we almost got three sentences spoken between us before the usual suspects began parading through the door like it was a red carpet premiere. First, Peter Stickles, late of HereTV’s The Lair showed up, this time minus his good friend Michael Carbonaro. Apparently Michael couldn’t pull his enthusiasm for going out tonight from a hat, so he opted to stay home. Since he is 15 years younger than I am (at least), that wasn’t excuse enough for me. Then D-A-N arrived in a red muscle tee and playfully tussled hair. His pupils were like two giant black holes from which no light or tall, strapping lad could escape. Draw your own conclusions. I last saw him downing an orange juice like his throat was on fire and talking with Lance, the formerly straight waiter who abandoned his pussy hound ways to chase men. His resume seemed to intrigue D-A-N when I told him, so when I saw them exchanging numbers on my way out for the evening, I wasn’t surprised. Oh and Lance Bass was there and I meant to talk to him because we got offered an interview with him at 11am and I like Lance and NSync and all, but there is no reason for me to reorder my world (i.e. sleeping until noon, Mini-Wheats, etc) just to talk to him on the radio. I was about to go over but they were leaving and I just thought, “Eh. The publicists will work this out, or they won’t.”

I was wearing my shiny PlanetOut backpack from 1998 because it is easy for others to find me that way and I am trying to bolster their miserable stock price by reminding the who’s gay of Bowery Bar that they still exist. This caused me to be spotted by a PlanetOut executive who wondered where I got it then realized that he knew me from FantasyMan Island, my long defunct column. While talking to him, Chip Arndt bounded up to me like a hungry lion with his friend Greg. Greg is everything gay men and straight women aspire to be: tall, thin, and put together just right. He is the gay guy straight girls are always trying to set up with any gay stranger they meet at a party because they can’t fuck him themselves. Chip is sexy and wonderful and I wish he was running for something so I could vote for him. I admire him because when he and Reichen broke up, he let Reichen keep all the fame they accumulated in their relationship. Chip kept his dignity and I suppose a set of dishes, possibly some stemware.

Speaking of dishes and stemware, Wade Williams wandered in and I didn’t even know he was in town. I razzed him about not calling me and insisted that we were now even from when I came to LA and didn’t call him, but he insisted it wasn’t the same thing. Whatever. I feel even. Conor was also there, complaining about an upset stomach, which caused Ben Harvey to also feel unsettled. I think the two of them make each other queasy. That was the last exchange I had with either one of them. Ben slipped away into the crowd, as did Conor at some point. Finally, I realized that it was late and I had to catch the train home. So I bundled up roommate, kissed Peter good bye at the door and sailed away in a cab.

Usually I like to have some kind of 360 degree connection to round out the story but I don’t have a lesson tonight. That would make this blog posting about life out at ye old gay bar outside my normal cookie cutter structure. Maybe the lesson is that I am in a rut. It’s not a bad rut. In fact, I like it very much. I’ll have plenty of time to catch up with Ben Harvey at my housewarming party on Saturday and I’ll see more of Chip on Sunday when he returns home from the AIDS Ride. However, it did feel like a wasted night at Bowery Bar, even down to this blog in search of an ending. I saw most of the same faces. Had the same drink I always have. Hated the same pretentious gays I have always hated. And then came home to eat something fried and watch some TV. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

I may not be living in one room yet, but in my head I am getting pretty close. And honestly, I don’t mind.

Heal, Conor, Heal

I relish my anonymity, such as it is. Of course I have a radio show, which has an audience. But the audience is far away from where I live. So it’s easy to forget if the phone doesn’t ring during the show or after work at a bar, that I have even the smallest measure of fame. Even this blog, with entry after commentless entry, I feel virtually unknown. It’s nice.

The only times I have ever been recognized in the city were in bars and the first time was at Barracuda some months ago. I returned to the scene of the crime last night with my roommate to meet up with Ben Harvey. We have a lovely friendship that is more about the fame of other people than our own. However, Ben gets concerned sometimes that if an evening isn’t interesting enough, I will fail to blog about it, committing our banal existences to the obscurity they truly deserve. However, as I assured him with my last posting, there is no sow’s ear so paper thin that I couldn’t stitch a silk purse out of it. He isn’t the only one. I estimate about ten people read my blog and virtually all of them visit to see if they are back in it again when it updates semi-annually. Sorry Charlie! No mentions today.

It wasn’t my intention to go out, just like last night. But I was reading Ben’s email early yesterday morning(or hours too late depending). I read my mail obsessively but I do have a secret email address now and I forget to read it all the time. Derek@derekhartley.com and my office email are checked obsessively all day. Even MySpace is never left for more than a few minutes at a time during waking hours. But my secret email address known by even fewer than this posting is occasionally forgotten for days. No one writes me there. So it is just too depressing to visit it day after day to see that nothing has changed. Really only Ben and Jennifer actively email me there, and Jennifer is on vacation this week so I have been especially lax.

But Ben had emailed me after midnight last night saying that he was going out to Barracuda TOMORROW (his emphasis) and I remembered him commenting on my funny insistence on carefully using the word tomorrow in my emails because I usually write them at 3am, making the word ambiguous to most earnest observers or those who also are awake and checking email in the middle of the night (like Ben). So I sent him a text message during the show just to make sure that he meant Friday and not Thursday and of course TOMORROW was tonight, and always anxious to see him again, I agreed to dash off for a quick drink before heading home to pack, make breakfast for my visiting Dad and fly off to New Orleans for a long weekend of booze, beignets and boys at Southern Decadence.

At Barracuda, Ben arrived again with Harvard Ryan in tow, along with assorted actorly characters. His friend Dave, the “Al Roker of Australia” who is in fact, hot and thin. Eric Michael, an actual actor who is loathe to say he is an actor for fear of people thinking he is primarily a waiter. “Working actor” I told him, “That’s what you need to say.” Especially if you don’t want to be confused with the homeless. As usual, I could only get two new names so the guy from The Lair and the guy who looks like Josh but with even more intense eyebrows will have to go nameless for this entry. There might have even been another guy floating around there too, but there was just too much gay in our circle to keep an easy focus. I wasn’t the only one having trouble. It was too many people for Ben to juggle at once, and it felt a little like he was trying to manage a party in his own apartment. It is easier to host the Malaria virus than to try to host a gathering inside a gay bar. Too many working parts. And Peter Stickles swirling around in the air like Tinkerbell the whole time, flashing and flinging pixie dust, and my roommate camouflaged in the corner to blend in with the wall did not help Ben in his herding efforts at all.

Finally Conor arrived, his intense, yet oddly reassuring gaze as soothing as a border collie’s. Conor makes me laugh which doesn’t happen very often for me, making it all the harder to cut the evening short to catch the 12:10am train to suburbia. I like funny people because, despite all outward appearances, I don’t like being the center of attention. I am always drawn to people who are more famous, more loud, better grammarians or prettier than I am so that I can enjoy being in the audience. It is more fun for me to not have to work all the time, and being with the crowd, instead of in front of it, is my natural state of being.

Starry, Starry Night

I didn’t want to go to Bowery Bar tonight, but when the stars align, there is little you can do to stem the gravitational pull. Perhaps it was the weird lunar eclipse. Maybe I shouldn’t look up to the sky for simple answers here on earth.

D-A-N sent me a text message tonight during the show. “Hey. Going to Beige tonight?” No in fact, I planned a rather boring night of heading home and going to bed at a reasonable hour and waking up insanely early (read: 9:00am) to have breakfast with my Dad, who is visiting from Utah. I am already living my life a day late after my car unexpectedly broke down in Virginia on Sunday and I didn’t get home until a full 24 hours after I had expected to be there. Now I feel like I am stuck in an alternate universe where Monday is really Tuesday and nothing I had wanted to get done is actually done. So I decided to leave my bar going decision up to fate and asked guest host Wade Williams “Are we going to Bowery Bar tonight?”

“Yes! How did you know?”

So after the show ended, Wade and I decamped to his hotel to drop off his bag and gaze at the lobby swimming pool with the swim up bar. All straight people frolicking in the water but at least the one guy was reasonably attractive in his bathing suit. You really can’t ask for more in life. From the hotel, we journeyed down to B-Bar with the chattiest cab driver this side of Taxi Cab Confessions. He lives up near Columbia (111th and Broadway) while his girlfriend lives next to B-Bar (Bowery and 4th). Apparently, he was fresh out of the Army where he spent the last 20 years creating tactical scenarios for the NSA. Good thing our nation doesn’t depend on his discretion any longer since he leaks like a colander.

Turns out D-A-N was at Pieces for karaoke with his friends, so Wade and I settled at a table with drinks in hand. So much for that rendezvous. In the meantime, Ari Gold was at the next table, ready to gently chide me about our “diva” dust-up on the air two weeks ago. “See. I am not so diva-like that I wouldn’t come over to say hello,” he purred, although it was I who walked over to him. Charlie wandered in, still carrying that same old book. Charlie is a recent law school grad who is enjoying reading for pleasure again, although he is making extremely slow work of his current tome. I tried to impress him with my dim theory about the connection between gay marriage and kosher food but he was more interested in my church-state discussion about Christmas trees at City Halls. And here I thought I could just be boring at home.

Ben Harvey finally arrived just in time for Charlie to beat a hasty exit. “I am just not feeling it tonight” he had told me as he collapsed into the wrought iron patio chair less than thirty minutes earlier. True to his word, Travels With Charlie closed another chapter, even before Ben could wend his way through the tightly packed crowd.

Ben was as cute as ever, with his Harvard friend Ryan in tow. Ever since David Bianco tortured me during my one year syndication deal, I am wary of gays with Ivy League educations. Then again, David is straight now, last I heard, although I suspect no less annoying to those of us who use the English language like a fly swatter. Ryan seemed nice, but as usual, I was more interested in Ben than in his friends. Ben caught the eye of a cutie in a red polo shirt, and I even forcefully prodded him to make the first move. Although I don’t think anything came of it. I’ll have to ask him next time I see him what happened. Maybe it will make it into his personal blog or his work blog.

Just as I was ready to leave, everything kicked into high gear. After no word from D-A-N in two hours, I sent him a “heading home” text message that revealed a quick response that he was, in fact, now at the bar. Much searching found gay nightlife fixture Corey Johnson casually orbiting one sexy hunk after another, although D-A-N was more difficult to spot. To be fair, I had only seen him that one time before and despite perfect vision, gay bars are too filled with music, lights and pretty for me to effectively search for anything or anyone amidst the sensory overload. Finally found him on the dance floor with a cluster of friends. Still cute, with a winning smile, Clark Kent hair and solid arms. Polite chat about karaoke (he sang a song from Les Miserables) and houseguests staying too long (four day weekend fine, anything longer too long), but nothing worth sacrificing sleep or writing a blog entry over. Moments later, he was gone.

The real excitement came after he left when Wade introduced me to not-out actor on hit TV show recently signed to star in hit movie franchise sequel. I wonder if Michael Musto, who was there, saw him too? I tried to play it cool by not mentioning his TV show and then later realized that I should have mentioned that we had the creator of his show on our radio show. Wade insisted he would want to be a guest on our show, but I wouldn’t hold my openly gay breath on that one.

Then Ben Harvey was found standing with Peter Stickles and Michael Carbanaro. Michael is too adorable for words and like all magicians; he knows keenly where his hands are at all times. Unfortunately, I will have to experience his particular brand of magic on another day. As always, the drunk train beckons and I can’t miss my last ride home for the night. Next time it will be one-on-one with Ben. Just the two of us in the quiet corner of a bar with no Charlie to observe or simple names of hunky accountants to spell. I caught Michael’s eye and waved a final good bye as Wade and I headed for a taxi. The driver was quiet this time, which was just what the doctor ordered after such a busy environment. No national security secrets to divulge. Just a seamless ride up third avenue in the middle of the night. Perfect.

See. Sometimes the stars do line up.