Tsuris Season

Tonight, I saw a baby in a stroller being pushed out of a restaurant by Santa Claus, but I didn’t have time to stop. Manhattan is a busy place and if you stopped for every crazy thing you saw, you’d never get anywhere. The other day, I was rushing to the train and I passed a homeless man noisily humping the pole of some scaffolding while shouting aggressively at his reflection in the building. I suppose I could have stopped to find out what that was all about but, like Santa and his baby stroller, it is almost better when you don’t get the whole story.

It is Friday and (as usual) the show was a freight train barreling out of control. We had so many calls in the first hour, our producer Amber didn’t even want to answer the phone anymore. Whenever the lights on the phone would flash, she recoiled in horror. It was pretty much like that all night. ADD Jeff was there and the first thing he did when he walked in was whip out a bottle of Stoli Vanilla. I was already worried about all the visitors we would have dropping by and when I saw Jeff plunk the bottle down on the counter, I knew it would be trouble.

Rockit Splashdown

The doorman doesn’t like me. Again. I had told Matt Kugelman this earlier when he suggested Rockit, but he assured me that there was a new doorman now. It turns out the new doorman doesn’t like me anymore than the old one did. “Uhhhh” he sighed miserably to the security guard holding the rope in place, “they are… okay.” His okay was not at all okay, but instead dripping with nastiness. As in, if I were stranded on a deserted island for a decade, I guess, if I was facing certain death and there was oxygen in his dick, it would be…. just okay.

While we were waiting, a friend of the doorman strolled up in a mesh t-shirt and camo cargo shorts. Not what I would call a style icon, unless you consider the International Male catalog the height of fashion. Moments later, the doorman was chiding me for wearing cargo shorts. “I don’t normally like cargo shorts. Can you wear something else next time?” Really? Because I am pretty sure a pair of ratty cargo shorts just rolled all up in this shit five seconds ago. Even as the words were coming out of his mouth, he knew what a hypocritical douche he came off as. Whatever, Matt really had to pee or I would have made the kind of “don’t you know who I am” scene that would have ended with me being happily banned from what is, frankly, a subpar bar experience. We only keep going because it is close to my office and Matt’s apartment and we are lazy drunks.

This is my fourth or fifth adventure at Rockit and it is still a mystery to me why this is supposed to be a hot place. Yes they have open bar from ten to eleven, but it’s almost turpentine what they serve. The crowd is nice but hardly crazy attractive. Right now, in the throes of summer everyone who is anyone is out on Fire Island, or the Hamptons or Provincetown. You would think they would be grateful to have ANYONE in their bar. Even a broken down mid-century radio show host like myself. The doormen act like its Studio 54 circa 1979. Honey, it isn’t even Studio 54 now.

Originally I planned to go to a birthday party tonight but didn’t get the location until 9:45pm. With only fifteen minutes left to the show and facing the end of a long week, I was already thinking about just heading home. Once I heard that the party was at Sugarland (which a quick Google search informed me was in Brooklyn), I knew I was going to pass. Not that the 30+ minute trip out on two subways wouldn’t have been fun, but the prospect of trying to find my way back to Manhattan after Midnight to catch the train home seemed frankly just this side of impossible. So, it was back to the old standby: Matt Kugelman and Rockit.

Once inside, we enjoyed our mutual friend Keo Nozari spinning tunes upstairs and I even ran into my adorable pal Rob Banning, who was just making a quick circle through the place before jetting away. A steady stream of admirers paraded up to Matt, undaunted by my presence. Unfortunately, the only steady stream I was enjoying came from all of the drinks being splashed on me. Must have been the open bar because these drunks tonight were messy. And when a drink is free, you don’t mind spilling some of it along the way. It seemed I couldn’t turn around in that place without getting a half glass of vodka tonic sloshed on me. I was trying to text with Ryan Raz up in Boston, but I started to worry that my iPhone wasn’t waterproof. Is there some kind of windshield wiper app for the iPhone I can download?

Neither of us wanted to make a late night of it, so we cut out pretty early. A couple of drinks was plenty and once again the doorman’s attitude did not put me in a party mood. As we left, his back was to us and I was glad. There he was, not particularly good looking, in his preppy button down shirt, open enough for open heart surgery, tucked into a painful pinch in high-waisted ticking stripe shorts. Yes, shorts! Even though his were ill-fitting and atrocious, my cargo shorts were cause for alarm. Oh enough. I can’t hear myself think over the sound of my own eyes rolling into the back of my head. Besides, I know I have no fashion sense. What is his excuse?

I love you Keo, but I won't be back.

Fashion Victim

My inability to dress myself is well known. Look. I know I am not a fashion plate. No one is ever going to hire me again as a model. (Editor’s note: my one modeling assignment in Genre Magazine in the early 90s was not a fashion spread but instead a background shot for an article on gays on college campuses). When I try to wear fashionable clothes, I look ridiculous. It just isn’t who I am. Yes I can pass off a suit at a wedding, but as every homo with an online profile can tell you, that doesn’t make you special.

So I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised when my outfit got me into trouble last night at Rockit. It was a rainy night and everyone looked a bit bedraggled. I was in my usual cargo shorts and t-shirt with a damp hoodie thrown over my head. Yes, I looked somewhere between a homeless man and a pile of discarded dishrags, but still, it wasn’t any worse than usual, or even the last time I ran into Derek the doorman. The difference of course was that this time I was alone.

Derek is a reasonably famous doorman in NYC and I believe I mentioned him in yesterday’s blog entry. (You don’t suppose he read it do you? Impossible!) I don’t really understand the need to have a who’s in/who’s out doorman in gay clubs. The power is in the mailing list. If you know enough hot and well known people, the right mix makes a successful party. The notion of a selective doorman worked for Studio 54 because it was world famous and all sorts of nobodies were trying to get in. This is not the case with Rockit Fridays. Studio 54 welcomed royalty (Princess Grace!) and children (Drew Barrymore! Anderson Cooper) and every sexy thing in between. In today’s NYC a nightclub that let a nine year old drink wouldn’t be celebrated, it would be razed to the ground.

“Is this how we dress to go to a nightclub in midtown Manhattan?” Derek queried me, rhetorically.

“This is how I dress.” I shot back.

His gaze narrowed in irritation. “Well, step it up for me next week, will you?”

Next week?! I thought to myself, as I descended (in every sense of the word) into the club. There won’t be a next week. For me, or maybe even for your party. You are running a Friday night party in the summertime in a town where everyone is away on Fridays at much better weekend places. The only people who are going to be at your party this summer are people like me, who don’t go to Fire Island or the Hamptons or Paris. You know, the unfabulous people you are so desperate to keep out.

Besides, next Friday, I will be the main attraction somewhere off the map. And the next Friday too. The Friday after that is Pride weekend and you can bet no one will be coming to your party when there are 100s of better places to be, no offense to your turpentine-laden open bar from 10-11pm. And then after that, it’s July 4th, guaranteed to empty gay Manhattan faster than fluorescent lighting. Suddenly it is more than a month later and before you can say “What’s Rockit?” the tastemakers will have moved on to greener, fresher pastures.

But most importantly Derek, you might think letting in weird drag queens and curious characters in pajamas makes you hip and interesting, but the one most essential thing that you don’t understand that separates your midtown Manhattan party from Studio 54 is publicity. Rona Barrett may have been a 100 year old midget, even in the 1970s, but they knew then that good publicity is important. The doorman knew who was whom and could separate out the Jersey trash washing up on our teeming shores from the badly dressed radio show host with the blog all of your friends read. So how about you step it up for me next week, will you?