Post Natal Trip

Yesterday was my birthday and with my roommate's encouragement, I hastily arranged some happy hour fun at Therapy Bar in midtown. I had a nice turnout, a good cross-section of people I know and mostly never get to see. As any gay party invariably does, it divided quickly into two groups: those asking who my hot friend was and the hot friend in question. Granted, there is always a fair amount of overlap in those situations (hot people asking about other hot people), which is commonly known as a hook-up. Although I don’t think there were any successful hook-ups at my birthday this year. You know me, always keeping the sexual temperature somewhere near a faint simmer.

Me and Adam Sank. Turning up the sexual heat!

Birthday parties are the worst kinds of parties because most of the time you go but the only person you know is the object of the party. And the same is true for everyone else there. So mostly you all spend the evening standing around not talking to the one person you came to talk to and milling around among a cluster of other people with the same mixture of irritation and disappointment on their faces.  Not fun.

Disc Jocular

Turning thirty is a big deal when you're gay. I should know. I've done it enough times.

Tonight was the eve of Stephen Bauer's birthday and he celebrated it by working. Times are tough for Millennials. And the city is lousy with them, like third class passengers swarming the deck of the Titanic now that all the boats are away. You can't stand still for a minute or twice as many will take your seat for half the money.

Lately he has been DJing on Friday nights at Vlada, a familiar vodka repository in Hell's Kitchen. On my most recent visits, the bar has felt less like a gay hot spot and more like a well-kept secret. Uh, me too! Let me tell you: nothing feels better than having the hollow echo of an empty bar mirror your own existence. But in Stephen’s defense, this is my first time there on a night he was working and the crowd was squeezed as tightly around him as the sleeves of his joyously clingy t-shirt.

The Boiling Point

It was a busy Friday, which is a problem for someone like me who doesn’t especially love to be busy. On the other hand, it is nice to feel wanted. Woke up at the crack of Noon as usual, poured myself a cup of ambition and headed into the city. First stop: Studio 2 to interview self-proclaimed “Hollywood trophy wife” Candy Spelling. Delicious Candy has been in a tasty battle with her daughter Tori for years and now Candy has a book of her own,“sTORIes From Candyland,” which has all the cardboard depth of the board game you loved with none of the plot twists. A loose thread of shallow Hollywood adventures, heart-clogging recipes and mind-boggling home inventories that attempt to bring some ordered understanding to a decidedly disordered mind are wrapped around anecdotes proclaiming the normalcy of her life amid hoarded mountains of evidence to the contrary.

Candy herself was very, for lack of a better word, sweet. It is clear that the key to success for her is gliding as effortlessly through life as an ice skater sailing through the vacuum of space. She looked good too. So many Hollywood wives are pulled overly tight or try to maintain the appearance of a youth that is but a dim memory. But Candy looks respectable, aging if not gracefully, than ever as slowly as her vast wealth will allow. I did manage to illicit a human emotion out of her when, in our anticipated discussion of her daughter, I brought up the Time Magazine piece on Tori during her terrific turn in “The House of Yes” where she was quite believably a haggard donut shop girl out of her element. Time Magazine, in the midst of a flat out frame-it-and-put-it-on-the-wall rave about Tori couldn’t resist tearing her down to a size zero by referring to her as the “shovel-faced” daughter of Aaron Spelling. Candy’s eyes actually welled up when she described what it was like to be a mother when someone says that about their daughter.

The real story worth crying about was waiting for us after the interview down at a diner in Chelsea when we ran off to see the devil on two sticks himself. Our old board op Ben Dover was waiting there for us on crutches. It was very Vanessa Redgrave in Julia and his story was filled with almost as much intrigue. A few weeks ago crossing the street, a car slammed into him, landing him on the hood like an ornament before sliding off into the street, his leg broken. While he told us this terrible story, I methodically made my way through a banana split the size of my own head. Ben told Romaine later that he had never seen anything like it before, but Romaine casually waved him off. “He eats like that all the time,” she deadpanned, failing to mention that restrictive diet I have been on for two months that allowed me to shed fifteen pounds at the drop of a hat by eating nothing that resembled food.

I ditched Romaine and Hop Along Cassidy and walked up to the world headquarters of Fabulis.com, aka a very nice apartment in Chelsea with a view of the Statue of Liberty, so you were instantly aware you were in the nosebleed section of wealth. Walking in, I knew I could only stay for a half an hour and still get back to the studio in time to do the night’s show and I stuck to my schedule. I amused Young Bradford and the few assembled guests who arrived early by announcing myself as “Number Five,” my local NYC ranking that day on the preview site (or as I like to call it Friendster 2010). I sipped my way through a quick cocktail while chatting with Richard Socarides, lately quite the busy TV pundit. It was nice to dish Obama Administration policy and performance with someone who had actually worked in a White House before. I also spent some time coveting the Capresso machine, so very sad that our Krups fancy coffee machine at home crapped out on us after less than six months. You’d think they won the war!

After the show, I headed downtown, way downtown, for Chris’s birthday party. Chris wanted to celebrate at The Boiler Room, which I hadn’t been to since the last birthday party I attended there. I suppose it was just last summer but it feels like a whole lifetime ago. And it was. The bar was jam packed but that didn’t stop two of the fattest men I have ever seen in a gay bar attempt a round of pool, waving their cues menacingly at all the skinny East Village gays who in their minds had no doubt shunned them one too many times. Passive aggressive is my least favorite gay flavor.

The short-lived pool game was obnoxious but the friends were lovely. I met lots of new guys in the group but I remember none of their names. Why bother? So-and-so was the boyfriend of this one and this guy was the college roommate of that one. I was too busy in my own head making one of those wall maps with string and newspaper clippings that crazy people are always doing in TV shows and movies to show you that they are insane. Guilty as charged, crazy!

My roommate was there and even though grungy east side boys are right in his wheelhouse, he didn’t have a very good time. He didn’t know anyone there and even I only really knew the birthday boy and his boyfriend Cub, so I was no help in introducing him around. Although he did have an amusing obnoxious encounter at the bar while waiting to get a drink. One of the skinny grunge gays turned to another skinny grunge gay and threw his arm up in the air. “Brooklyn?!” came the haughty squeal, “They are so pretentious there!” Takes one to know one.

Charlie showed up and Mike brightened considerably. He had a question about the way Tribal Council is run on Survivor and Charlie, being a former contestant was able to answer. Not only did he know, but he was very anxious to delve into about the nerdiest conversation you ever heard about how Tribal Council works. Mike was happy to get the scoop but Charlie was in heaven. “If you ever want to know more, call me! I love talking about this stuff!” Charlie assured him as we were leaving and I know he meant it.

I ran into Martin on the way out and hadn’t seen him in a while, so that was nice. In fact the whole evening was nice. Of course, then we got to the subway which was closed going the way we wanted and as usual that was a whole ordeal so we just hopped into a cab. “I always say I should come downtown more often,” my roommate opined, “But then I get here and I remember why I never come down here. It’s a pain in the ass.” And so pretentious! The cab whisked us off to Grand Central Station with an ease that no doubt would have made Candy Spelling feel right at home.

Maybe it was the four cups of coffee or the cocktails or the banana split talking, but I was in a good mood. I was so upbeat and loving with Ben Harvey at the bar, it might have scared him, but I don’t care. Who cares? It was a good day. And while I may not have a 56,000 square foot house with two wrapping rooms in it, I am not rambling around in a giant mansion wondering why my daughter never calls and telling my butlers how down to earth and normal I am. My personality is no asset but at least I am not on crutches. So while I can normally be counted on to meltdown in a major way, I won’t be reaching my boiling point tonight. I’m happy for a change and I don’t care who knows it.

Fruit On The Vine

I almost walked up to Sherry Vine tonight and told her, “I thought I smelled Gonorrhea.” Then I remembered that we’ve never met.

Two weeks ago, I ran into Adam Sank out at Therapy when we were there for Mike’s birthday. He did not recognize me. I guess I have the opposite problem. I believe I know people that I have never met. Lynn and Alex from the Amazing Race? Mistook them for listeners outside The Round Up in Dallas and gave them my full “thanks for recognizing me as the movie star I am” treatment. It’s not pretty being me, and not just in the morning or bathed in fluorescent lighting.

But I did know David Young, who is in town, and he joined me for a post show drink at Therapy. I also dragged Erik off down there too to drown his sorrows. Drag queen karaoke is the best place to forget your troubles, mostly because you can’t hear your own thoughts over the caterwauling. Sherry Vine did a few numbers, probably a few lines in the kitchen, and then succumbed to the temptation of playing her Lady Gaga parody video that was last year’s youtube.com sensation. I don’t know about you but I love a greatest hit tour.

After the talent portion of the evening, the music started playing and I noticed that my adorable friend Keo Nozari was DJing. So nice to see him again since RockIt served me with that restraining order last year. Apparently, the Fashion Police have stronger powers of enforcement now under the USA Patriot Act. No big deal. I think the Kuge still likes it there, but I think I have aged out of bars with names that sound like trying-to-pass-for-butch catchphrases. When the former Roxy reopens with “Lady, please” Wednesdays, I will be first in line with my John Blair gold card, a glow stick in a bottle of water, and a mysterious rash inside my Calvin Klein white briefs. The fruit of the loom indeed.

We are in the eye of a “snowicane” as the always cautious weathermen have termed it, and tomorrow will be another blanket of icy powder, even worse they say than the one yesterday. I am done digging out. I just want to wait for the thaw. I guess I feel the same way about the nightlife. Scanning through the bar there wasn’t a single man I wanted to talk to or even look at. Perhaps the grapes are just not tender enough for me. The coat check guy only charged me a dollar for both my bag and my coat, making a big show of fanning out the money in front of me and giving me a knowing look. He probably just wanted a fancy tip but instead of seeing the gesture as a sign of possible blow jobs to come, I was just happy to have the extra dollar. I think my social life is also suffering through the Great Recession.

So then I come back to Sherry Vine, valiantly fighting irrelevance in a bar filled with Grindr gays more interested in what they can put in their own ass than what is coming out of Sherry’s mouth. Even though, in some cases, it might be the same thing. Those stage gigs inside a bar are hard work and a sense of calm washed over me as I thought how much better it is that it is her up there instead of me. A drag queen lip synced to a version of Man of La Mancha sung by a woman. It was so meta, I wondered if Salvador Dali was off in a corner painting us. It reminded me of the gay boys mouthing along to Beyonce’s “If I Were A Boy” on a dance floor. Yes, sweetie, we all wonder what that would be like.

After a few minutes talking about our various troubles, David made a suggestion. “If this is going to get heavy, we should get a drink first.”

“No one says heavy anymore, David.”

He turned to me. “Then what do people say?”

“How should I know?” I shrugged. All I know is the gays are skinnier than ever and are serving up ties and V-neck sweaters like Clark Gable in It Happened One Night, and no one is saying “serving up” anymore either. Sherry Vine has three million hits on You Tube. Maybe she knows the answer. I’ll add her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter and imagine tomorrow when I am snowbound that I am Don Quixote but singing my own parody of the Song of Solomon. I am here to spoil you Sherry Vine, for you have tender grapes. And possibly gonorrhea.

A Head In Search Of A Hairstyle

New York City itself is an act of faith. I know that sneering Fox News pundits (New York residents all, by the way) love to deride the People’s Republic of Manhattan as a Godless island floating in a sea of filth, but I would argue that its very daily existence is based on faith. I am reminded of the story of the tourist approaching a New Yorker waiting on a subway platform. “When does the train arrive?”

“Eventually.”

The tourist is incredulous. “But what if it never comes?”

“It always comes eventually.” And it does.

As the title suggests, I am a head in search of a hairstyle. For several months now, I have been growing my hair out with the idea that I will finally break down and have a real hairstyle. Tom Ford’s A Single Man was luscious and inspired me to get Nick Hoult’s dreamy shag bangs though it would require me to flat iron my luxuriously thick hair to duplicate it. Lately, I have been leaning toward keeping it long like Matt Bomer’s hair on “White Collar.” But maybe I just want Matt Bomer or Nick Hoult and not so much their hair.

But as my hair grows out, I resemble more and more a mad scientist when I struggle out of bed in the afternoon. It is not pretty or as my roommate suggested the other day: “Whatever it is you are doing with your hair, it isn’t working.” And today, it really, really wasn’t working. I briefly tried to split it down the middle and deliver a straight up early 80s feathered center part that would have looked very comfortable on a ride along with Larry Wilcox on CHiPs. When that collapsed in disaster, I doused it and the idea of it with cold water and pulled the bangs up and away from my face in what I hoped would be a romantic wave and ended up being more sea foam than a surfer’s dream curl.

As much as I would have liked to have used my hair as an excuse not to go out to Brooklyn, today is Ben Harvey's birthday. And so, like the good friend I pretend to be, I trotted down to Dumbo intent on only staying for thirty minutes. “I will drop my coat at coat check, buy Ben Harvey a drink (didn’t happen), and then pick up my coat and go.” I tell myself the sweetest lies. Not only did I not buy Ben a drink on his birthday, I stayed much longer than thirty minutes. And I didn’t even get to say hello to Dave Rubin. But I did get to spend plenty of quality time with Matty, who dragged me away to sign a birthday card. As a writer, nothing fills me with more panic than trying to be witty in a birthday card. Signing my book to people is just as creatively paralyzing. “The best of the best,” I scribbled incomprehensibly, in every sense, and then signed just my first name.

“You have to put your last name,” Matty was adamant. “No one can tell what you wrote. You can’t even see the D in your name.”

I traced in the D as best I could and wrote my last name in my best doctor’s handwriting and Matty ran off, leaving me standing next to Chris and Cub. Chris and Cub, you may have noticed are never really separated in my blog because they are never really separated in real life. They are the only couple I know who always stand together at parties. I am pleased that I know them now well enough to know their unspoken signals. While I was rambling on about something that Cub was very excited about, Chris gently ran his hand up the small of Cub’s back. I knew what that meant. “Figure skating. Get your coat.” He might have actually run his finger in a figure eight for all I know, but Cub was blocking my view.

But before they left, Cub ran to the bathroom and Chris passed me off like a tray of appetizers to Adam, originally from DC who was nearby. Adam had been talking to Ben when we walked over and since Ben was saying good bye to Chris I made what I thought was cute small talk with Adam about us being in an alphabetical circle. “Adam, Ben, Chris, Derek,” I said pointing around. “Now all we need is an Eric and a Fred. Although knowing the gays we will just get two more guys named Chris” Well, I thought it was cute. But Adam responded “Or Cub.” I guess he missed my joke. Or maybe, as my ex-boyfriend Curtis pointed out, “Sometimes when Derek is talking, he has no idea who he is talking to.”

Adam looks like an actor whose name escapes me at the moment. At first, I thought I knew him. I wonder who he chose for doppelganger week on Facebook. Maybe that will help me figure it out. I suppose it is possible that we have met before. We do all run in the same concentric circles. And after a while, all gay men look alike. The factory just keeps churning them out. Only the hair and the clothes change.

Even though Matty told me tonight that I look younger and thinner than ever, we all suffer the fate of the law of diminishing returns. Seeing the same gay guys over and over again can give you a repetitive stress disorder. Trying to figure out what to do with my hair has been a forty year journey, I could just as soon do without. And speaking of forty, Andrew, who it should be noted is 22 years old, told me tonight that he doesn’t worry at all about turning forty. “I don’t fear death, why should I fear forty?”

I gently put my hand on his young, firm shoulder and gazed into his eyes through those patented Nick Hoult dreamy shag bangs of his and said, “The difference between forty and death is simple. Death is like losing your keys somewhere in your house. You know they are there somewhere and you’ll find them when you least expect it. Forty is losing your keys in the toilet. You know exactly where they are and how much it’s going to suck retrieving them.”

Adam left without saying good bye. Even though when he told me he used to teach at Georgetown, I said, “I’ve heard of that school. It comes up a lot on Jeopardy. Mostly on college week.” And my personal best, “I’ve been to every continent except South America.” To which he replied, as I hoped he would, “What about Antarctica?” I smiled, “I was there for the white party three years ago. Everyone in white parkas. It was amazing.” It made me happy that he knew Antarctica was a continent, but more importantly, I think the white party joke would have been awkward if he had said Africa, don’t you? Of course I still would have told it. But maybe it was all awkward and only in my head was I both hilarious and charming with beautiful luxurious hair.

“Go after him!” Matty demanded but I stayed put. New York City is about faith, after all. Even though Adam misheard my name as “Pierre” when I met him, if he wants to find me again, he will. Just like my hair. I will figure out a style for it one of these days. And in the meantime, it will just keep growing anyway. I don’t have to do a thing. After I left the party, I hurried down to the subway platform, just to watch the F train depart for Manhattan without me. I was worried about the time because I didn’t leave myself much of a margin of error to get to Grand Central Station for the final leg of my journey home. But I thought about the tourist and the New Yorker on the platform and I realized the train would come when it comes. And just like that, there was a New York miracle. A second F train right behind the first. All you need is a little faith in this town and everything works out the way it should.

Eventually.

The Nearest Thing To Heaven

(This is an unfinished blog entry. Explanation at the end. But, as fate would have it, I was about to write about my adventures tonight inside an existing document I write in on my laptop before I post it all online and I didn't think I had put it up. Turns out that I hadn't. And it seemed too good to me to just throw away, even if it is half-thought, unedited, and incomplete. See what you think.)

Sunday, June 28, 2009 2:31am

Sure, I had heard of gay billionaires before. After all, I used to live in Los Angeles. There were always stories of someone or other throwing an amazing party with hot guys twirling around a swimming pool in the highest altitudes of the “swish alps,” the gentle mountain range that separates West Hollywood from the dreaded Valley. I was even invited to one such party in the late 1990s and sure enough boys in tiny bathing suits danced around a kidney pool, swilling cocktails and enjoying the largesse of an unseen benefactor. I am pretty sure a certain MTV personality dragged a friend of mine into the bathroom with him, did an enormous amount of coke next to the sink and then whisked him off to a wild night out in Hollywood which ended with them getting thrown out of the after-hours party at the Coconut Teaser on Sunset for sneaking in a beer. I thought I had left such shenanigans behind on the left coast. But then I was invited to a party in the sky in the apartment of a gay billionaire in Manhattan and my life was changed forever.

At the risk of lobbing another cannon shot into the battle of class warfare in America, I will just say this: rich people live better than you. Much, much better. Years ago in the Egyptian Theatre at the OutFest premiere of “Get Bruce” the terrific documentary on Bruce Vilanch, a much vaunted and moneyed Hollywood figure with an equal love of hot young men and plastic surgery occupied the row right behind me. He had not one but two insanely beautiful men with him, flanking him on either side, one of them infused with such fragile, farm-fresh dewiness that I wanted to slip him a bus ticket back to Kansas before it was all too late and the L.A. machine consumed him. Maybe I was fueled by jealousy or the inherent wastefulness of having two whores when clearly one would have been more then sufficient.

But as reclusive billionaire John Hurt assured us in “Contact,” why have one when you can have two at twice the price? I suppose at a certain point, “money is no object” isn’t just a casual expression it represents an actual mental omission. Price tags and receipts fall into a gentle grey area of the wealthy brain inaccessible at all times, rendering them a financial amensiac with no interest in remembering what reality is for other people. And thus the billionaire journeys through life unfettered by what things cost, buying jets in every color they come in. Laughing annoyingly, as Louise Brooks once wrote of her own mother, like one with a happily corrected blind spot.

This is conjecture on my part. I don’t know what kind of lives billionaires really have. After all, I live like a squatter in an abandoned downtown warehouse. If it wasn’t for my roommate Mike’s constant stares of blank disapproval, I would devolve into full-tilt Grey Gardens in a matter of hours. From the outside looking in (like Stella Dallas longing for a life filled with problems never to be had) there seem to be two kinds of billionaires. I suppose if you are someone like, say, Oprah, who grew up desperately poor with an outhouse and earned your billions the hard way, you know where every penny is at all times. But if you invest Daddy’s money and it hits like the lottery, you may not have the same sense about dollars and cents that someone else might have.

The billionaire apartment I went to seemed to fall more in the category of the latter. Famous works of art abounded askew from a thousand drunken love taps from the partygoers, a tiny Cartier clock sat helpless and unprotected in a shelf in the guest bathroom. The library was filled with boxes of the same book, no doubt a favorite, soon-to-be thoughtful gift to everyone from the doorman to a liked, though not well-liked uncle. The paroramic views from every window, including the bathroom, seemed merely to be a natural extension of the already lavish embarassment of riches strewn careful amount the penthouse.

It was pride weekend. The 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. Naturally, I was at the IMAX Theater near Lincoln Center watching the Transformers sequel with my friend Clayton. I knew that my other friend Clay was in town for the weekend, in from Texas, and Jeff and Bond had driven down from Boston. That’s the nice thing about pride weekend. Everyone is there. The only real question is where to go to party. Plenty of people have parties but you want to go to THE party. I only know a handful of important and/or connected people so for me, this time of year is a delicate dance.

Clay told me that he had been invited to a party on the East side, in the Bloomberg building. The sexy party promoter Michael Warner had invited him and he offered that Clayton and I could join him on the list. Once I heard that Warner was working that party, I knew that Jeff and Bond would be there too. And I suspected some of the rest of my usual NYC people would be there too, like Matty Kelleher.

(This is the end of the unfinished entry, and there it stayed forgotten for nearly six months, although I explained why it was unfinished in an entry titled "The End" back in August, which includes more details about the party for the deeply curious.)

Hollywon't

Los Angeles is a cruel episode of The Twilight Zone. I spent several days out there this week for my birthday and as usual, it did not disappoint. I have a rule about visiting LA that I have to go for a minimum of three days. In the first two days, it is easy to fall back in love with the wonderful weather and the hot men around every corner. At the end of day two, you start debating in your head if you are cool enough to live in Los Feliz or such an alcoholic that only West Hollywood makes any practical sense. And then on day three, the shit hits the fan.

In my case, it was the $280 parking ticket I got around the corner from The Waffle, a fabulous 70s themed diner with a Brady Bunch staircase and brown and orange décor. “Did you park on a baby?!” was the incredulous response from a friend of mine. Oh no. Just a poorly marked bus zone in a bankrupt city in a bankrupt state desperate for cash.

On Tuesday night, I went to dinner with Mike, who was with me on the trip, Cyd and Dan recently relocated to the LA cast and Jason. We went to Vermont, a new restaurant on Vermont where my friend Brandon works, which several years too late picked up the generic restaurant name trend that haunted Manhattan in the 90s (I’m looking at you Food Bar, Cafeteria, et al). It is a companion place to Rockwell, the outdoor venue next door that my friend Jeremy tried to convince me to have an LA-based birthday party at. After our dinner, I am relieved that I was too lazy to pull something together there.

Turns out the bad service at Vermont was genetic since the place is owned by the same people who brought you my personal LA hell restaurant Mark’s on La Cienega. The last time I ate there I waited an hour and a half to be seated inside a dumpster because my biceps weren’t big enough and I wasn’t sufficiently famous. We sat inside at Vermont but under a strangely placed tree, which combining the horrible waiter with my nasty cold, made me long for a noose. I don’t understand how LA, a city populated entirely by waiters, past and present, can have a single restaurant with a middle aged server who can’t get a single aspect of your order right. By Wednesday morning, I couldn’t get on the plane back to New York fast enough.

It is disheartening to think that the city I lived in for fifteen years can now cause a near allergic reaction. Part of me really wants to move back, to take up with my old friends. To spend more time with my family. To get off work at 7pm and have a real life like a real human being. Plus, the new Pavilions in West Hollywood is amazing. If I moved back, I would want to have my mail forwarded to the produce section. But as I collapsed with some relief in my window seat on the flight home, I knew that as much as LA has to offer, it just doesn’t offer enough. It’s a bad ex-boyfriend you still love who is really sorry for everything but you know in your heart will never change. And I am better off without him.

Pyramid Scheme

They say that what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas but I am pretty sure that was a notion invented by straight guys for whom nothing ever happens but they want it to see like it does. That way, you can brag without substantiating your claims in any real way. Gays do not have this problem. Shit goes down for them all the time. Also they are notorious gossips and braggarts. So no, what happens in Vegas doesn’t stay there, it goes global. Case in point: my weekend at The Luxor.

I got invited out for the weekend by the Luxor Las Vegas as part of a deal with the radio show. Who wants to say no to a free weekend out of town? Not a cheap ass like me. Plus, I have connections in Vegas. And even though I can do nothing for them in return, they are still happy to help me out. Suddenly, thanks to my friend Ryan, I was busy every night I was there. And I made the most of it.

Roommate came with me and my friend David flew in from Los Angeles to hang out with us too. Of all the people I knew in my fifteen year prison sentence in that exotic hell hole, David is the one I have remained the most in contact with. He does prefer long distance situations, so in a way, my moving out of town was the perfect excuse for us to hang out more. And when we hang out, we drink. A lot.

Friday night, we went to see Wolverine, which was a terrible movie, only made better by the fact that we had consumed a delicious tapas meal just before. After the movie, Roommate was dead beat tired from all the travelling and drinking that had already taken place. So he sacked out early while David and I headed down to Piranha to hang out with Ryan and the host there: Hot Chocolate. Piranha was like a dream come true. When I arrived, everyone made a giant fuss over me. I felt like a celebrity, ushered past the velvet rope in a blurry haze and then escorted up to a private room overlooking the dance floor with my friend Roman Heart twirling on a box below.

The VIP room was isolating from the rest of the bar which was a little frustrating but the party really came to us. Reichen came by, beyond blind drunk, mumbled something sweet and wandered off with a muttered but later unfulfilled promise to return. The drinks kept coming though as did two dancers from Zumanity who then enacted part of their act for us. Then Brent Everett came in and we all took pictures with him in various stages of undress. He didn’t know who any of us were but he went along for the ride. He’s a good sport. Then suddenly it was past four am (seven am my time) and really way past time to go home!



Saturday morning I had some work obligations, including some morning activities. Running on a lack of sleep and not able to nap, I made effect use of the jacuzzi tub in my suite at The Luxor to compensate. It worked pretty well and by Saturday night I was really for more marathon adventures. Our first stop was the Chippendales show. My friend Michael is the publicist and has had several of the dancers up to the show in the past. They ushered us in, plied us with drinks and we had an incredible time. It was really a ton of fun. A quick trip through IN N Out and it was off to a late show of Zumanity. Back to back shows was draining but we still had enough energy to pull another four am non-stop party at Krave afterward.

Krave had some kind of contest going with Janice Dickinson and designer Andrew Christian. There was a nominal emcee but I don’t think Janice thought she was sufficiently loud and proceeded to take over hosting duties from a chair on the side of the stage. The main attraction was really just hot guys parading around in Andrew’s underwear and after that was done, the twirlers returned to twirling on the dance floor, the music cranked up, and Janice returned to the relative safety and security of her VIP banquette packed, PACKED with gays. My friend Ryan asked me if I wanted to meet Janice. She had been a guest on our show once(over the phone) and I ran into her in 2005 at the White Party in Miami, but I knew she wouldn’t recognize me.

Ryan made the introductions and Janice pulled me down into the banquette into a seat right next to her deep inside the horseshoe. She told me I looked familiar and I mentioned the White Party. “How fucked up was I?” I tried to demur, but she pressed. “It was early,” I offered though that answer didn’t seem to please her. She was excited to do my radio show to promote her upcoming appearance on “I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here” and help her raise money to fight AIDS. “It’s for the gays. I only do gay charities.” I let that pass. Then she told me about her recent experience hosting the notorious gay porn awards, the GayVNs in San Francisco. I told her that I had hosted it the year before. “Oh, then you know. I don’t know what it was like for you but it was eye opening for me.” Her face turned serious in the moment. “You know, I’m a soccer mom.”

What does one do when the world’s first supermodel describes herself as a soccer mom? Not to diminish the many soccer games that I have no doubt that she attended for her son and daughter, but soccer mom is not the first moniker I would have used to describe someone who vivacious and dynamic. But I guess we all see ourselves in our own way. Suddenly, she leaped up. “I love this song. I want to dance.” She jumped out of the banquette and started to dance with some gays near by. This was my exit. It was never going to get better and this was the perfect moment to slip away unnoticed. I made my polite good byes to her gays and headed out.

“Soccer mom, huh?” I thought to myself as I headed out into the predawn strip. “Maybe some things are better left in Las Vegas.”

In One Year And Out The Other

I have spent a lot of time at The Park lately, now that it is Matty’s new haunt. He hosts a monthly party which is a nice excuse for me to get out of the house every once in a while and update my semi-annual blog. I feel a lot of pressure to go out just so I can have something to write about, especially as I see a particularly empty month sitting lonely and forlorn in the blog archives. That is the funny thing about the passing of time. You don’t really notice it until it’s already done.

So it’s been another year since Matty’s last birthday. As I recall, I haven’t been around for many of them. Thanks to timing I am usually off at some pride event somewhere on the same weekend that he chooses to celebrate. For the last five years it has been the same routine. Matty gets excited telling me that his party is coming up and I dash his hopes by not being around. It’s not that he doesn’t have a zillion other friends, after all he was able to launch a popular club night right out of his iPhone contacts. That’s all fine for any run of the mill Thursday but when it is a special occasion you want all of your favorite people around.

Last night at The Park, there were so many gay men that I knew there that it would probably be easier to just list the four gay men I know that weren’t there. I invited Matt Kugelman to join me, speaking of people who have plenty of other friends, and we cabbed it down after the show. I have been trying to keep my strongest yenta urges under wraps and play it cool on my feverish desire to marry him off to someone. However, as primer, I casually dropped subtle questions like “so, is there anything wrong with you?” to see if I could get a better idea of what kind of guy to eventually lock him in a small closet with to see what develops. The problem with someone like Kugie is that he is something of a universal donor. He would be the perfect boyfriend for almost anyone, which makes it hard to distinguish who he would actually be good for. You can’t tell if you are reacting to genuine chemistry with him, or feeling the effects of the same magnetism that draws everyone else to him too.

We walked into the upstairs lounge and headed off to get drinks, though I was instantly way laid by the crowd. Everyone I knew was there! Kugelman gentled chided me about my fame and popularity but it is really Matty’s popularity and my proximity. Big difference. John Saldivar had joined up with Roommate for dinner first (aka margaritas) and they were already there, drinks in hand, when we walked in. Young Bradford was the night’s DJ, working twice as hard as usual, assaying both Samantha Ronson and Lindsay Lohan, all while perching frantically in front of a large aquarium. Ben Harvey and Dennis Hensley were talking while Gray walked behind them like Hamlet’s ghost. Every time I turned my head someone else was right there. My former boss’s old assistant from 2001! Corey Johnson! That guy I accidentally slept with last year and his resentful boyfriend! Then suddenly I realized I had lost Matt in the deep end of the gay ocean!

I ventured further into the lounge, shoving through the crush of bodies with my usual mantra “lady with a baby!” Sometimes if I am really in a hurry, I yell “Is that Madonna?” which might have incited a fire in a crowded theater style riot in the early 90s but these days hardly warrants the energy it takes to lift a heavy eye lid. Along the way I found the birthday boy and Hanno, visiting once again from Austria. Also standing with them was long distance runner Andrew, him of the crisp button down plaid shirts and zero body fat. I hugged them all profusely but left just as quickly as I arrived to find Kugie and my coke. Finally he texted me wondering where I was, worried perhaps that I had invited him to a bar just to ditch him the moment someone better came along. I sent him a message back to meet me at the aquarium, and reveled in how much better life is now that we can so easily rendezvous in crowded public places thanks to our modern conveniences. It was a God-send later at the bar when I needed to get Roommate a beer and his favorite wasn’t on the list. A short txt message later and a substitute “Heiny” was on its way.

At the aquarium, we chatted up Bradford, who snapped a photo of us while we stood on what felt like a very rickety futon. Apparently deprived as a child of furniture to jump on, Matt seemed to delight in bouncing on the couch that I was certain might give way underneath us at any moment. Brian Babst was there and I grilled him quickly about the terrible Star Magazine photo swirling around Facebook that morning of his real estate client Rupert Everett. “Just make-up” he sighed of the photo on the set of Martha Stewart’s show that a plastic surgeon “expert” insisted looked like $25,000 of work done badly. I noted that Brian’s shoulders were a solid mass of muscle when I hugged him and put my head lovingly on his neck like I always do. Memorial Day weekend must be nearer than I thought. I suppose it is time to get ourselves into order.

More and more people kept pouring in. Kenneth In The (212) blogger Ken wandered by on his way to meet up with Misadventures In The (213) author Dennis. Chuck finally arrived after a series of frantic “are you sure you are going to be there” text messages. Ben Harvey and ADD Jeff and on and on. My head was spinning from all the familiar faces. A guy I didn’t know and I don’t remember meeting before came up to me and grilled me about my blog. I think he was hoping for a spontaneous mention, but I didn’t even get his name and now he would be impossible to find. Sorry you. Apparently I also met a hot guy named Andrew but didn’t remember it when he tried to add me later on Facebook. After I sent him my standard form letter denying FB friendship and directing him to my fan page he turned belligerent. “We met on Thursday… you’re a douche.” Both grammatically and factually accurate. I can’t argue with logic like that.

Maybe this blog is more trouble than it’s worth. The more people I meet, the harder it is to remember all of their names and keep them all straight. Who did I miss from this blog entry? Who will be upset? Who will be relieved? It’s exhausting. And after nine years of FantasyMan Island and several years of this chronicle, I have to ask when will the remembrance of things past end? Matty is the one a year older but I am the one feeling the miles trying to keep all these cocktail glasses in the air. I was never a party animal and though we have all been dumped into the same gay aquarium, swimming around feverishly gets exhausting after a while. A few laps around the bar and I was ready to go back to my ceramic castle. At what point do you surrender and just float belly up to the surface of the water, waiting for someone to scoop you up and take you away from it all? The big flush is coming! Enjoy the bubbles while you can.

Mexican Jumping Scenes

You may not know this about me but I am something of an amateur biogenetic engineer. As hobbies go, this may seem like a pretty strange one, but then again, what about me isn’t pretty strange? I am not making super crops hydroponically in my basement or trying to cross a dog with a cat. My work is in a more social realm, trying to bring disparate peoples together, often to disastrous results.

For a long time, I have been a notorious matchmaker. Without rhyme or reason, I am constantly trying to get people together. It is a horrible habit. And after many decades, I have only one moderate success under my belt. Undeterred by reality, I charge ahead. After all, when you meet a perfect gay specimen of man like Matt Kugelman, it naturally causes the fingers in your brain to start twirling the old mental rolodex. But my social bioengineering is not limited to love. In fact my primary work is in friend bonding. I have been saving up for years for a portable fission machine and until then, I will have to continue to do it the old fashioned way: over dinner at Arriba Arriba.

When I lived in Los Angeles, my friend Paul used to hate my habit of inviting him out to dinner and then in the intervening days or even hours, ballooning the intimate meal for two into a ragtag fugitive fleet of random strangers. B Listers as Paul used to call them. As in, “what B Listers will be there?” Despite his recent woeful claim that he himself has dropped somewhere below C level, I am certain that if I invited him out his first question would be “who else is coming?”

Falling into an old rut, I did some rapid-fire inviting and suddenly I had filled the round table of Arriba Arriba, out back by the bathrooms and emergency exit. I had been wanting to see Ben Harvey forever and as usual invited him to a social setting where any hope of an intimate conversation would be impossible. He was hanging out that night with Dennis Hensley at a screening, so it was a perfect opportunity to see Dennis too. On a whim, I invited Kevin and Christopher, who because of their own nighttime schedules take for granted that people eat dinner at 10:30pm. I threw in two new people (the aforementioned Matt and John Saldivar) into the mix to really stir things up, and asked my roommate, even though he hates going out late on a school night. However, I think the guest list wooed him since it was many of his favorite people too, and no B Listers!

Christopher finished his show early and was starving, and didn’t know other people were coming, so told me to meet him after my show at the bar at Vynl, across the street from Arriba x2 (or as Matt calls it Arriba Squared). Chris was in good spirits despite the literally back breaking new schedule for Shrek The Musical, through which he performs and dances eight shows a week on his knees. We were happily chatting away and I (as I can do) lost all track of time and disregarded the other five people waiting at the restaurant. But moments later, we were there and it turns out I had nothing really to worry about. They were all busy chatting and enjoying margaritas at the bar. And no one was a complete stranger. John knew Mike who knew Dennis who knew Ben who knew Matt. A thin tangential thread but a connection nonetheless. Gay society has thrived on less for far longer.

We all sat down, waiting to order food until Kevin arrived but not hesitating on rounds of margaritas. I pulled a standard Agatha Christie opener “I am sure you are all wondering why I brought you here.” Everyone laughed but there was a grain of truth to it. After all, it was a table full of people whose sole real connection was me. And that isn’t narcissistic at all. Maybe that is the problem I have. The only thing I care about in my social experiments is bringing together the elements I care about, without regard to how they will mix. I am pretty sure that’s how my Uncle blew his finger off in high school. This dinner didn’t blow up in my face and in fact, turned out to be quite a success. And my Uncle had mixed those chemicals before without incident. I guess, we all have our share of successes and even when it all goes badly you can still find a silver lining. That finger in a jar of formaldehyde years later made a killer show and tell item for his daughter. After all, any bad interaction can still leave a juicy story behind.

The Maritime Of My Life

Getting a bunch of gays together in one place is no easy task. The expression “herding kittens” comes to mind. As our major LGBT lobbying organizations long ago learned, our community is no monolith and it is never more evident than on a Friday night when competing personalities have different ideas of what makes a fun night out on the town.

Michael Bond is visiting this weekend from Boston. He started assaulting my Facebook Wall more than a week ago with demands for an audience and the opportunity to play a little “Gay Chicken.” Bond is adorable, as everyone knows, so a quick Friday night make out session never seems like a bad idea. Unfortunately, Bond has a terrible habit of coming to town, getting blind drunk and then becoming very difficult to pin down (in both location and at the shoulders up against a wall). I knew that if I wanted to win at Gay Chicken, it was going to take a little extra effort on my part.

Several weeks ago, Matty and I were at a party (you remember, the one with the awful furniture and good art) and while we were in the ad hoc coat check area in the hall outside a cute gay approached us and invited Matty (and by default, me) to his birthday party on the 13th. So I knew there was a party somewhere, but that was all I knew. Earlier this week when I grilled Matty about it, he remembered the encounter but not whose party it was. Then Thursday night, out at Matty’s Park party, Joe let me know that it was Micah, who I was so hostile to some weeks ago at The Ritz. Fortunately, on our second encounter, he was too drunk at both to connect the dots. This small mercy is what keeps me afloat in Manhattan gay social circles.

As my show wound down on Friday night, Roommate texted me and let me know he was hanging out around the corner at Barrage, our original Manhattan staple when I lived on 42nd Street back at the beginning of my NYC adventures at the start of the century. I tried to convince him to go down to Chelsea, or worse, south of Houston for Micah’s party, but he was adamant. After going to bed at 5:30am the night before and working all day, he was only in the mood for a quick beer and then an express train to slumberland. I headed down to Barrage to try to convince him in person, while texting with Bond to see where he was. Bond planned to join Michael Warner’s bar crawl and in the interim was pre-cocktailing at a friend’s apartment in the heart of Chelsea.

To no one’s surprise, Roommate finished his Blue Moon and headed for the 11:10pm train. I hopped on the E Train, bound for Chelsea, while Matty texted me from Micah’s party way downtown wondering where I was and when we were coming. Still hopeful that I could pull Bond out of the pending bar crawl, I joined him at his friend’s tastefully standard Chelsea apartment for a surprisingly delicious vodka cranberry. There was some smooching, some hand-holding, and at one point, he even licked my face. “Should I have one more? I don’t want to get too drunk.” He asked as I wiped the saliva off my face. I told him to have two. He was already over the line, what difference did it make if he had two or two hundred?

More gays arrived at the apartment and all of them looked like they were churned out of the Play-Doh Chelsea Boy Maker by Hasbro! All trim plaid shirts, smooth haircuts and zero body fat. Apparently we each took a jump on the super accurate scale in the bathroom, though I was the only one there with the shock of recognition on his face when he came out moments later. After a group photo destined for Facebook glory, we all decamped around the corner to Ate Ave (which I think used to be Food Bar). Michael Warner was climbing into a modified luxury SUV, on his way to Splash, which as usual, only sounded appealing to Bond and the other gays visiting from Boston. Inside, I ran into HX photog Jeff Eason, Ben Andrews in full porn star mode (razored haircut and no Clark Kent glasses), and Amanda Lepore, more and more a Japanese robot fuck doll every day.

While still debating a trip much further downtown than I ever like going, I got a single word text from Matty: Maritime. Glory be! A bar around the corner. I tried once again to convince Bond to join me and Matty at Maritime but now his drunken heart was set on Splash. We made our way through the chaotic mess at Ate Ave and made our sloppy good byes outside. Moments later, I was in the familiar throes of Maritime with Matty, Joe and our returning champion Andrew. I discovered that part of the secret to Andrew’s insanely narrow physique was his recent adventures in marathons and, slightly more to my liking, half marathons. “What are you running to or from?” I queried to Joe’s delight and no answer from Andrew. He was in a contemplative mood, but as it turns out, not very self-reflective.

My time at Maritime was terribly short. Too short. But I did have to commend myself on a job well done. It isn’t easy seeing three different people in four different locations in only three hours. And even though it was a week of pure junk food (chicken fingers at Moonstruck, the most amazing onion rings at NY Burger Co., Valentine’s Day cupcakes, a package of Twizzlers, Michael Bond), I rewarded myself at Grand Central with a hot dog smothered in sauerkraut and mustard. And on my walk to the train, I hung my own “Mission Accomplished” banner over my head. True, I wasn’t able to bring everyone together, but I did get a little piece of each of them, and that made my evening complete.

Twice Told Tales

Last night was my second sojourn to Matty’s sensational new party night Thursday at The Park. It also happened to be Roommate’s birthday and after I surprised him earlier at his office with an Oreo cake and presents, I was the surprised one when I spotted him waiting downstairs at The Park. Despite it being his birthday, he had had to work late so he figured he might as well have some fun. We were soon joined by John, whom ADD Jeff had convinced to come out as well. Earlier John and I had been talking about how Facebook had so deftly revealed the myriad friends of friends we had in common, who in turn did not know each other. Well, it was a night of connected connections when Ron showed up a few minutes later. I met Ron last summer on the R Family cruise up to Canada and he came in from Long Island for a planned meet up with his friend Jeff, who it turned out, was friends with and had invited my neighbor Clayton. Soon ADD Jeff appeared to bring us all upstairs and the party really began.

Much of the usual insanely beautiful crew was there. Chris (no slouch himself mind you) was mingling with his breathtakingly hot new boyfriend. Charlie, dark rimmed glasses denoting a more serious tone, passed through briefly before making an early night of it. Joe was revelling in not being the drunkest person at the party, which was already in full raucous and debaucherous swing. Brian was anxious to be home watching Liz Lemon display her trademark angst on the Valentine’s Day episode of 30 Rock and was showing a heretofore unknown soft, gooey interior over his LA-based low carb love muffin. And Matty was encouraging all of us to help make Andrew, the newest addition to the collective, feel welcome. Andrew, tall and trim in the way people used to be before McDonald’s became the shop around the corner and WalMart ate` the world, very politely and quietly got hammered. I found Andrew’s youthful calm endearing and his slight frame said he isn’t quite done growing yet. Maybe the alcohol will help speed things along.

Soon Clayton arrived, followed by Ron’s friend Jeff, and our group was complete. The DJ continued to do that thing I first encountered at the Maritime, where they only play 30 seconds of every hit you have ever heard. “In my day, we had eight minute dance mixes and we liked it!” I heard myself saying, the words echoing in a cavernous Tunnel long since razed into memory. Matty was a little perturbed. “I asked the DJ to play some Cher and Deborah Cox and it’s been more than an hour now. I don’t think he is going to play it!” We feared he might not play it because he didn’t have it, but Matty dismissed that old-fashioned argument in a hand wave through the murky party cloud, exposing our technowonder present. “He can download anything he wants in a second. He just doesn’t want to!” At one point, Ron thought he spotted an Ecstasy tablet on the floor. A guy nearby picked it up and inspected it. “It’s a Centrum” he responded blandly. Later as Ron recounted the story, Roommate panicked for a moment. “I hope it wasn’t a Centrum Silver.” We change with the times, but sometimes the times change with us.

That was never more evident than when I spied my former neighbor Nick Scotti sitting in a quiet nook with his pals. Years ago living on a quaint three block stretch of West Hollywood West called Dorrington Avenue, I had Jenny McCarthy, Oscar winner Linda Hunt, my pal Jeanetta Arnette from Head Of The Class, and hunky Nick Scotti as neighbors. Nick used to walk his dog without a shirt right in front of my house prompting my friend Eric to insist that I call him the moment it happened because he could “be there from anywhere in LA in under five minutes.” I reminded Nick of our old street and his face brightened with recognition. “Wow. Dorrington. I haven’t thought of that in forever.” Nick has since settled back home in NYC, and while over the years we have all travelled more than the 3000 miles from West Hollywood to Chelsea, I am sure no one around him will mind when dog walking weather returns in the next few weeks.

The party was great fun and finally wound down around 2am. Our group decamped around the corner to the Moonstruck diner. Like any good diner should be, the menu was overwhelmingly massive and when people are drunk or have been awake for almost 24 hours, it is tough to get them to make a clearheaded choice. But isn’t that most of the fun of a pre-dawn raid of the local owl wagon? Years ago, Mike and I had another late night awkward meal at that very same table with Patches and his ex-boyfriend Chris. This time was personally less tense, although a few drinks in ADD Jeff produced some graphic bon mots about cum swallowing while the waiter was standing there that made me seriously rethink my rice pudding order (and dramatically increased the tip we ended up leaving that poor man). But that is what happens when you get a disparate group together. Parties big and small are about pulling together the right elements and letting things take their wild and unpredictable course. It amazes me that someone like Matty who is so naturally a gifted party organizer would wait so long to start club promoting. But like a stack of golden pancakes or a platter of fried mozzarella sticks at 3am on a windy winter night, it was worth the wait.

The Gilt Age

My laziness is legendary. So you can imagine my delight when Joe invited me to his birthday party at a bar mere steps from my office. Even closer than my beloved haunt Vlada, The Gilt Bar at the New York Palace is dangerously close to SIRIUS and conveniently almost on the way to the train at Grand Central. The invite implored attendees to wear shirts and “the shirt should have sleeves.” Now, unless it’s a tank top or a muscle tee, all shirts have sleeves. I assumed he meant a shirt with buttons, but that isn’t what he said. And after I looked like a carb-induced monster in the button-down shirt I threw on before I left for work, I opted at the last minute for a well-worn baseball tee instead. After all, a three-quarter sleeve is better than no sleeve at all.

The New York Palace is a turn of the century (turn of that other century?!) gilt gem on Madison Avenue that for a moment as I walked up to it, I mistook for legendary Manhattan eatery Le Cirque. Well it might as well have been because it was just as insanely fancy inside, though without the delicately spun circus animals out front. However, inside I was not shunned by the wait staff as I tumbled in with my giant backpack and ski parka, a welcome relief from the usual New York attitude that attends such places. I found Joe and the usual crowd of suspects, all in crisp button-down shirts, and most in ties and/or vests lounging around the oval-shaped bar.

Charlie was there looking exactly as he always does in a crisp v-neck sweater and button down shirt, as predictably and flawlessly turned out as a figure at Madame Tussauds. Joe was leaned against the bar trying to order another glass of wine, while familiar faces (Gray, Mario, Greg, etc.) lingered in the background like dress extras. Joe had visited The Gilt Bar once before and loved it so much that he endeavored to have his next birthday party there. Some few short months later, there we all were, enveloped in our corner by the unnecessary abstract honeycomb structure that dominates the Northeast corner of the room, enjoying expensive cocktails among the high priced call girls waiting somewhat impatiently for an upturned smile in a downward economy.

I chatted for a few minutes with Joe’s friend Justin, who was very polite and blond. As an interior designer he had much to say about the hotel extension in the next room, where the original horseshoe townhouse structure had been expanded to include a modern high rise hotel. To me it just looked like the lobby of some awful Steve Wynn creation in Vegas. All that was missing, we agreed, were some slot machines and fat women in stretch pants to make the authentic look complete. Justin was hoping to piggyback on Joe’s next smoke break outside, but Joe was so intently involved in his pursuit of another glass of Merlot that Justin’s desire seemed like a far away dream.

Mike arrived and I joined him on the other side of the bar next to Martin, who I met over the summer at Ben Harvey’s rooftop party. Martin wanted me to alert all ten of the readers of my blog to his abnormally large penis, explaining that “Martin” and “penis” are two of the three most commonly searched words online, though he failed to reveal the third. Martin is a lawyer, but don’t hold that against him, he is really a fun-loving guy. He also has a stare that feels like flirting, but I think I have determined definitively now in our second meeting that it is just a signature stare.

Come to think of it, there were a lot of lawyers there tonight. Charlie introduced me to Greg, referring to him as the NYHGL (New York’s Hottest Gay Lawyer). When I quizzed Charlie, who is also a lawyer, if he had given up the title himself, Gray suggested that Charlie was in fact the NYHGLSC (New York’s Hottest Gay Lawyer Survivor Contestant). That seemed like a long and complicated answer to me, but when you work in a profession that bills by the tenth of the hour, the longer and more complicated the answer the better. Especially in this economy.

As I was leaving, Joe implored me to blog about the evening and insisted that I reference his female friends too. “I promise,” I purred.”Even the one who looks just like Jenna Maroney from 30 Rock.” This caused the other female posse members to roar. “Oh no! She hates that!” Well, it wouldn’t be the first time I wrote something in my blog that upset someone. On a completely unrelated note: Ben Harvey and Matthew Kelleher were also in attendance.

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.

Life With(Out) Matty

Before the evening began, it had all the hallmarks of a night of a thousand gay stars. Every once in a while, the planets line up and all sorts of people who are difficult to wrangle suddenly start to coalesce. Even my roommate Mike, who hates going out in general, but even more hates going out to the kinds of places I end up in, agreed to go. And so it went, and within hours, a magical night took form. Tonight was the night and its ground zero looked like the cabanas at The Maritime.

I went to the cabanas last Friday with Matty and Hanno for Zoe's birthday party and expected the same crowd of narrow ties and wide smiles we experienced last time. But more importantly, I expected Matty and Hanno. After all, we had talked about it the night before at Rob and Erik's pretty boy bacchanal, and they had even dutifully RSVP'd on Facebook to Will Wikle's birthday invite. But as I left the show, I noticed they had changed their Facebook status to include a reference to the movie Doubt. Okay, I thought, so after a few hours of the luminous Meryl chewing scenery, they will make their grand entrance up the stairs.

After the show, I walked out with Romaine, passed The Amazing Race's Nick Spangler leaving The Fantasticks, and then headed on the 1 train down to Chelsea. Roommate was still at his office birthday party so I had some time to kill and joined Cyd and Dan for one of their last remaining nights at their tasteful sublet before they make the big move to Los Angeles later this month. They were cocktailing with a couple, both named Matt, which made it so much easier to remember both of their names, even after the white cranberry juice and vodka cocktail that Cyd made for me. Despite not having a solid penny to my name, I impressed them with my theoretical investment strategies. Must have been the alcohol. For all I really know about making money, I might as well have declared at the end that I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

Mike arrived at the cabanas so I gave Cyd and Dan a long quick hug good bye and headed a few blocks down to the Maritime. By now it was almost 11:30 and I expected a line. However, there was no one waiting outside and the coat check was a sea of empty hangers. This was a bad sign. Upstairs the party was small but the music was loud. I found Mike quickly, wearing a cute zip neck pullover and a tie. He looked like all the other cute, preppy gays at the party! I felt so alone in my v-neck Otter Fashion shirt, though I have created an empowering take on my outsider fashion lately where I imagine myself a misunderstood trendsetter who is just too far ahead on the curve for people to even see around it yet.

Suddenly, it seemed like I was surrounded by everyone I knew exclusively through Matty. First, it was Brian Babst who demanded my cell phone number. "I wanted to text you the other day," he started, but I finished his sentence for him with "but you realized you didn't have my number." He plugged every detail of my personal life into his Blackberry, even scheduling a time slot later this week to send me his fabulous new holiday card, which I have to say was a very sweet touch. I was flattered.

Then I ran into Young Bradford (and later Ben appeared to complete the Benford set), who was rocking lederhosen. I thought it was an homage to Hanno, but he yelled "Swiss Miss" over the music and after some coordinated Alpine dance moves, we left it at that. Moments later, an outrageously tall and old drag queen wandered into us, her ill-fitting wig a sneeze away from resting inside her champagne flute. "Elaine Stritch in drag!" I declared but Bradford shook his head. "No. No. That's definitely Melanie Griffith." As she neared even nearer, I said, "Hello Melanie" and she went off on me in a drunken rage, alternately sloshing her drink and tugging on her errant wig. "Have some of my roofie" she smiled as she poured some of her drink into my cocktail before trotting away, one broken heel in front of the other.

Ben Harvey was there, fresh from his trip to London, along with his kissing cousin Christian and Christian's main squeeze Jimmie. Dave Rubin was with them, his square-jawed sexiness firmly in place. I coaxed Mike against his will into being social and hanging out with them and it all went swimmingly. I was still expecting Matty, but when he finally texted me back, it was to say that he and the Austrian were cuddling back at his place. So, to show him what he was missing, I decided to run around the cabanas and take pictures with all the people there that he knew. After all, why should Michael Musto, as always lurking in the shadows of joy, have all the fun?

I dashed around the increasingly packed bar and implored strangers to snap my photo. There was Ryan Newman, so much more fun without his boyfriend. In my attempt to get a photo with birthday boy Will Wikle, I ran smack into that hot slice of man Matt Kugelman. There is something wrong with him because he gets better looking every time I see him. It's a problem. Will was busy twirling up a storm to Get Me Bodied followed IMMEDIATELY by Single Ladies, so I gave his sweaty hunched back a hug as he down pointed his way across the dance floor. As much fun as imagining him in a black leotard is, I can't miss my train and had to make a run for it. Though I did take a second at the top of the stairs to lead the just arrived hot gay comic Shawn Hollenbach in the general direction of Dave Rubin. Always happy to help a boy scout across the street!

It will be sad to think of Manhattan without Cyd and Dan in it, even though I can add them to the growing list of people I don't have time to see on my annual short weekends in Los Angeles. And I have seen so much of Matty this year, more than I have seen him in all the years I have lived here, that I suppose having a single night off won't kill me. True, not having the friends you love around you is hard sometimes. But as the windows steamed up inside the cabanas and the $12 cocktails flowed, the party continues anyway, and we can all still have a good time.

Unwanted Attention

"This would be a great place for a party." I said in the Rouge Room in the basement of Paris Commune, a chic eatery in lower Manhattan. It would have been a bold suggestion if we weren't already there attending someone else's party. A self-centered asshole like me takes the unspoken "for me" at the end of every statement like that as a given but to casual listeners like Ben Harvey and Navy Man Joe it just came off as a little daft. Sadly, when it comes to words, I work in a volume business and that means the finer points get lost in the rush, which is something of a problem.

Things started out well enough at Rocking Horse, a cozy restaurant in Chelsea where Matty and I finally were able to corner Ronnie and plot his future. I am, by nature, a meddlesome and nosy person, which drives Roommate to distraction as I dissect the personal lives of our neighbors while driving down the street with comments like "I wish Jennifer would sell that house of hers" and "I love her yard. She can't possibly hold down a job and spend so much time landscaping." Matty, as I have often posted, is the most connected person I know. Working in tandem we are like Wonder Twins, swooping down into the lives of the unsuspecting and molding their future like so much modeling clay. In Ronnie, we see a modern day Galatea, already armed with ambition, just waiting to be thrust in the right direction.

Ronnie swilled coffee like an overnight truck driver, worn out from his long and productive weekend in DC with the NGLCC, joining us for dinner direct from the airport, overnight bag in hand. Matty's handsome boyfriend Hanno and Ben Harvey rounded out our fivesome and we had a great time over margaritas and barely recognizable "Mexican" food. "What did you order?" asked Matty, gazing down at what appeared to be a very unappetizing pile of diarrhea in front of me. It was what turned out to be a very delicious hunk of pork on a bed of mashed plantains, but I must confess it did look suspiciously like something a plumber would pull out of a clogged drain.

After dinner, Ronnie raced home to his bed for what I assume was 12 hours of uninterrupted sleep, and Matty piped us down to the West Village for the birthday party of a friend whose name I instantly forgot. The friend was very sweet and fun, and all of his gay friends were pretty and diverse, like the Justice Department forcing A&F to acquire the United Colors of Benetton. Since they hadn't finished eating at the long Captain's table in the basement wine bar, we settled into polite conversation at a quiet table in the corner, and not so long after was joined by Joe, last seen stumbling home from Halloween.

In a self-referential move that would make Charlie Kaufman proud, talk quickly turned to this blog and the damage it has wrought since I started it almost two years ago. "Every time you write in your blog, someone gets hurt!" Matty chided me, not amused that his name and "ass eating" ended up in the same sentence last time, even though Bradford's blog is the first Google search result that comes up when you type them in together (should any weirdo ever want to make such a search). Joe was perfectly happy with his entry and his friends, upon discovering it, expressed their joy at sudden blog infamy, but Matty is right. My blog, despite my intentions to only portray things the way I see them and paint myself in a worse light than anyone else, often backfires. I have inadvertently outed people that I assumed were out and no doubt have made untold enemies along the way. I wouldn't have written about election night at all except that Hanno mentioned that night that his friends back in Osterreich liked the first entry he was in. Apparently, it is true that no good deed goes unpunished, or in this case, misinterpreted.

After a round of intense picture taking, Matty and Hanno headed home, and Ben and I left as well with every intention (emphasis added) to head straight home ourselves. We left Joe behind with a full glass of wine, and half-empty birthday party as well as charge over Matty's forgotten umbrella. Walking up eighth avenue, Ben suddenly got a text from Martin, whom he had forgotten he told to join us at Paris Commune. Martin said he was on his way there and in a moment of guilty panic we both decided not to snub Martin and meet him for a quick single drink at Barracuda. Immediately we thought we should invite Joe since we so hastily retreated from the last party but neither of us had his number. A modern gay Kobayashi Maru if ever there was one.

Barracuda smelled like the quite literal bowels of Hell but it was packed to the rafters anyway. Adorable Ryan Newman was there, showing off his sensational new short haircut. I wanted to go catch up with him, but while waiting for Martin to arrive, Ben mistakenly made casual eye contact with a deranged stranger in a houndstooth jacket. For the rest of my time there, we actively pivoted away from him only to have him counter our every move. Check. Check. Check. Then after Martin joined us and headed up to the bar to get a drink, it was Checkmate when he cornered Martin who was waiting helplessly for his cocktail. That was the end of the line for me. I had only stayed long enough to protect Ben from the clutches of this dubious letch, having failed at that, the drunk train awaited.

There is so much left unsaid out of an evening on the town. I leave many of the best scraps on the floor and sweep them out of my memory because I like my friends and I don't want to engender even more resentment. I am already someone that can be difficult to like and as Curtis once observed, "Sometimes when Derek is talking, it seems like he has no idea who he is talking to." In the case of this blog, the only person I am really talking to is myself. True, other people are able to listen, and I try to be mindful of that. But life is what it is. Sometimes it isn't pretty. And when you only have a few paragraphs to work with, you can see clearly that the Reader's Digest version of my life strips a lot of cartilage off the bone. And that can lead to some very painful moments as we move through everyday life.

Live Blogging Hurricane Gustav

For years, I have been trying to convince my friends in gay media to join my call for all gay people to go to New Orleans and support the local economy. Gays do one thing well: travel and spend lots of money. It's just what a down on its heels tourist destination needs. And each year over Labor Day weekend, there is Southern Decadence (sort of gay Mardi Gras), which was blamed by certain bloated TV preachers for Hurricane Katrina. Never mind that very un-gay friendly Mississippi got much worse out of that storm. So each year since then I have traveled down to New Orleans for Southern Decadence to show my support and this year has been no different.

Wednesday, August 27th

8:40pm Tropical storm Gustav begins to appear to be strengthening and heading for New Orleans. Expected landfall: Labor Day. Mike and I decide to see how things are shaping up before deciding to cancel our trip.

Thursday, August 28th

9:10pm Gustav looks headed for hurricane status. I dine with Cyd and Dan and Mike at Rocking Horse in Chelsea. Mike is still firm on going to New Orleans. I decide to see if they announce an evacuation on Friday morning.

Friday, August 29th

8:31am Travel companion Clayton backs out of the trip, even though Jet Blue steadfastly refuses to refund or change the ticket without a fee.

10:00am Clay Lee decides he isn't flying in from Texas after all. "If I come, we will be evacuated. If I stay home, the weather will be great and nothing will happen."

10:45am Mike and I decide to make a go of it (along with the other Mike who is meeting us at the airport) and continue packing for our 2:50pm flight. I go online to the airport's official website to see if there is any info. It's url flymsy.com (flimsy?) doesn't instill much confidence.

2:45pm "This is the Captain speaking. Welcome to flight 119 to New Orleans. The weather is beautiful there now. I can't say it will stay that way. Why are all of you going to New Orleans today? Shouldn't you be headed the other way?"

5:30pm Deplaning, I notice that the guy in my row is wearing a Red Cross name badge. The guy in the row in front of me is wearing a Weather Channel baseball cap and carrying a television camera. As I watch the Red Cross organizers meet in a huddle outside our gate upon landing, I start thinking this might be a short trip.

7:05pm I arrive at the Decadent Ducks cocktail party, for which I have been made a guest of honor. I forget that I am still wearing the red v-neck shirt that says "OTTER" on it as I wander into a room filled with hundreds of bears. I am a big hit for all the wrong reasons.

9:18pm Mike and Mike and I wrap up dinner at the my favorite New Orleans restaurant, The Gumbo Shop. I tell the waitress that we come back each year to support New Orleans because of Hurricane Katrina. She hugs us. We leave her a big tip.

11:37pm The Bourbon Pub is so packed you would hardly know there was a hurricane coming. The rest of the French Quarter is even quieter than usual, but the gay part is in full swing. David my favorite bartender watches as a dozen or so listener ask him where I am and then come up to take pictures with me. "I guess a few people know you are here" he smiles as he gives us a mind eraser to share. I am coy. "One or two."

Saturday, August 30th

3:23am A long day of flying and drinking has caught up with me. I want to go to bed and I am worried about a possible early morning evacuation. Listeners Josh and Nick assure me at the Bourbon Pub that no mandatory evacuation will happen.

4:30am I arrive at my hotel to find notices posted everywhere and under my door announcing a voluntary evacuation starting at 8am, and directing people to buses at the Sheraton to get to the airport. I call Jet Blue to change my canceled flight. I am rebooked for the 5:45pm flight on Sunday, meaning I could spend as much as 36 hours at the airport before leaving. I set my alarm for 9:30am and try to get some sleep.

9:27am Banging at my door by a hotel employee. She demands I leave the hotel by 10am. I argue with her and slam the door. I hate being woken up in the morning but especially moments before my alarm is set to go off.

9:56am A phone call from Dave, the hotel manager at the Hilton Garden Inn. I tell him my flight has been changed to Sunday evening. There is no mandatory evacuation yet. I can stay until there is one. Fine. He gives me his cell phone so I can reach him if I need anything. I go back to sleep. I have a nightmare about a large drag queen maid trying to get into my room to clean up.

1:00pm Automated phone call from Jet Blue. My flight on Sunday has also been canceled. I am connected immediately to an agent who books me on the just created red eye flight out that night at 11:50pm. Mike and Mike are on that flight too. We plan to head off to the Praline Connection for lunch and fried pickles.

2:32pm Praline Connection is closed so we go to Port Of Call for a sensational cheeseburger and a baked potato drenched in the works. Thought about going to the Chartres House but they were boarding up the windows with the patrons still inside. Scary!

3:45pm Walk down Bourbon Street. The Quarter is largely quiet and boarded up. The gay area is still in full swing. Gays are pouring into the streets with to-go cups in hand. My old friend Allen is working the bar at Bourbon. I say good bye and head for the hotel to pack up, watch some TV and get on the shuttle bus to the airport.

4:48pm Ray Nagin urges the tourists to get out of town now while they still can. I try to call down to the desk at my hotel but there is no answer. I go down in person and there is one guy there hanging out watching the hurricane coverage on the news. It is Dave the hotel manager. "You must be in 1621." I am the last hotel guest, though four journalists are staying in the hotel through the storm. He and one other woman are the only staff left. "We can open the bar for you if you want one last drink before you go" he offers. I check out of the hotel and head for the city shuttles from the Sheraton.

5:23pm Mike and Mike are already waiting at the Sheraton. The city shuttle buses spontaneously stopped running an hour earlier much to the anguish of the few tourists left and trying to leave. Mike secures a taxi to take us to the airport. Traffic being a concern we leave 3 hours for the trip since it was reportedly taking that long in the morning. Cab driver knows all sorts of short cuts. There are lots of hot National Guardsmen lingering next to Humvees along the way. We get there in 35 minutes.

7:07pm Sitting on the floor in the middle of the terminal, eating my supplies of beef jerky and nutter butters that I secured at the corner market before I left in case the airport didn't have anything open. Everyone in the city is in surprisingly good spirits given that a potential Category 5 hurricane is headed straight for them. I had a fun adventure though I am sad the weekend is ending early. Should be home at the crack of dawn to start another adventure, preferably aside Clayton's pool.