Last Night On Earth

I live in two worlds. In one of them, I am an erstwhile homeowner, less handy than I think I am, toiling away at an ever growing stack of chores nestled in a quiet picture postcard version of suburbia. In the other world, I swirl in the heights of Manhattan gay social circles, hobnobbing with the sexiest and most famous members of the modern homo set. It would be an exaggeration to say that I have any real comfort in either one, but they both shares dueling sides of my personality. One assumes the quiet side will win out in the end, but in the meantime, the rowdy crowd is putting up a game fight.

I spent Saturday lifting sixty pound bags of gravel and sand, Ethel Merman blaring the opening lines of “Hostess with the Mostest” permanently looping through my head. I am building a patio in my backyard after watching a two minute video on About.com that made it look surprisingly easy. It isn’t hard, per se, but laying 108 tiles evenly and accurately is a duty I don’t have the constitutional aptitude for. I had hoped that roommate would help me out, but he threw his shoulder out and that is only half of his excuse. I think he is tired of my endless folly of half-finished home projects and it amuses him to see me struggle in a perpetual episode of I Love Lucy during the season they lived in Connecticut. If only Tallulah Bankhead was my neighbor! She wouldn’t be any help either, but at least she would be hilarious.

In the late afternoon, I ditched the soil and toil and hopped on a train down to Manhattan. I agreed to arrange a meeting between Ronnie, late of Make Me A Supermodel, and my friend Matthew Kelleher, arguably the most connected gay man in New York City, which frankly means the most connected gay man in the world. For some reason, Matty was in a sensitive mood on Saturday and when I would say compliments like that, he took it to mean I was implying he was a slut. It’s not OurChart.com, Matt! Matty was waiting for me outside the David Barton Gym where Ronnie was working out before our dinner. Matt and I debated the pros and cons of exercising at the most notorious gym in a most notorious neighborhood; while a parade of just stunning men stumbled in and out of the building.

While waiting, Erik Rhodes and former boyfriend Danny Dias walked down the street toward us. I had earlier sent Erik a text message inviting him to dinner, but he was already eating when he got it. They had just been working out themselves beforehand and joined our discussion about the perils of David Barton. They waited around wanting to meet Ronnie, but he was taking his sweet time and they ended up moving on to whatever else they were doing before Danny headed down to the Village to bartend. Finally Ronnie emerged and the three of us took off down the street looking for a dinner place. While we walked, Matt explained this day was the only day each year where the sunset could be seen directly down Manhattan cross streets and it was a perfect sunset for it too, casting a magical mood over the city as the light of the day dimmed across 23rd Street.

After walking down 8th Avenue through a sea of Matty devotees and Ronnie watchers, we settled into a cozy dinner at a French place that opened onto the street. Dinner was charming and Ronnie and Matty got along great. Ronnie actually seemed to enjoy us telling all the dusty old stories about how we know each other and the outrageous antics we got into in the intervening years. After dinner and looking for a place to cocktail, we eventually ended up on the patio of the Maritime Hotel. It was a warm night and the patio, upbeat with happy straight patrons and dotted with Chinese lanterns, ended up being the perfect nightcap to our low-key evening.

Ben Harvey joined us, along with the ever elusive Ryan, and then later, Hottie Zach dropped by. I tried to get Roommate to come since he was in the city too, but he begged off and headed home. It was too bad because it was finally an evening he would have enjoyed. Our tiny café table with six chairs jammed around it was a beehive of cheerful gay laughter and witty banter. It was just heaven for me. Shiny, happy people. Matty was wrecked about not having an iPhone, having accidentally dropped his into the sink at his gym the day before the new ones went on sale and crushing lines wound around the block day and night. Saturday was day two of the melee and day three without a phone with no hope of getting one in the foreseeable future. He was jonesing like Courtney Love and Amy Winehouse going cold turkey together on a dare. But otherwise he was having a good time.

The Maritime was magic but nothing is forever. We headed out with Ben Harvey and Ryan opting to head to the East Village to the bar that Danny Dias was working. “Tell Danny you know us!” we urged them with the hope of scoring a free drink by proxy. Ronnie pulled me, Matty and Zach off to someone’s apartment. The apartment was in the heart of Chelsea, across from ELMO, and no doubt an outrageous fortune despite its postage stamp qualities. The party quickly moved to the roof, which was spectacular. The four of us threw ourselves on the mercy of a giant outdoor canopy bed, like Stevie Nicks in an old Fleetwood Mac video. More drunken laughter ensued until once again, I made my hasty departure back to my other world.

I love fabulous rooftop parties in Manhattan, and pretty reality show contestants, and cocktails on hotel patios, but for me, it is like going to an amusement park. The rides and food are fun, but I couldn’t do it every day. I need quiet and simplicity. I need to feel the earth in my hands and the sun on my face, and the sense of accomplishment that can only come from building something solid. Connecting Matty to Ronnie and Ronnie to Zach is easy for me. It’s a great skill I have, and there is satisfaction there. But it is as satisfying as a funnel cake and a rollercoaster. A thrill, but if I did it every day, it would lose its appeal, the wonderment of it. So back I go to laying tiles. To gravel and sand. To reality, my other home.

(2nd to the) Last Night On Earth

These posts are often about going out. I suppose I could write about other things, but I am lazy. Since I don’t leave the house very often, it is the perfect compromise. I don’t have to write much, since I don’t go out much. I went out on the town on Friday night and Saturday night, and it was ill-advised since I had a million things to do before I embarked on the R Family Cruise up the coast of New England to Canada on Sunday morning. But Ronnie was in town, and I promised to hang out with him, so duty to friendship won out over bland puttering around the old Cape Cod.

As it turns out, Ronnie was working on a movie and couldn’t get out early enough on Friday night to do the show or hang out with us. I had promised some time before to hang out with Ryan and Ben Harvey on Friday when Ryan was in town, and promptly forgot until Ben Harvey and I were talking about our Friday night plans. So I trekked down after the show to Chelsea to meet Ben Harvey and his cousin Christian at the bar “G.” In the mid-90s as a NYC tourist, I was mad about “G” and its bold oval bar shape and hunky fun patrons. Now, I regard the nearly round walkway as a misery akin to attending the Tailhook Convention in a mini-skirt. But “G” after waning in the early years of the Bush Presidency is, like the Democratic Party in general, making something of a comeback, though I am similarly ambivalent that neither has changed much in the intervening years to deserve it.

I arrived first, my humongous Amazing Race style backpack making me as unwelcome in the slim environs as an elephant in a narrow corridor. But the best thing about being in your 30s is you don’t care who you piss off as long as you get where you are going. So even though two short muscle boys thought they would get my deference as they tried to pass in bar, I instead effortlessly swiveled around and slammed by backpack into their faces as I walked by. That made me feel good for the remaining two minutes until Ben Harvey arrived with Christian and Christian’s new friend, Aaron, a closeted construction worker from upstate.

We decamped almost immediately from “G” to try to find Ryan at ELMO where he had been having dinner with another radio professional. Once at ELMO, however, he had already moved on to someone’s apartment for a party or something, I stopped listening when we arrived at the second location and found our quarry missing. This is very bad form. Trying to connect clusters of gays already in motion is my least favorite activity in the world, especially in bar settings, because no one has any sense of time passing when they are in a club and after two drinks, any gay can be convinced to go anywhere with anyone. Jeffrey Dahmer made a career of that.

In searching for Ryan at ELMO, we wandered into the downstairs bar, which some years ago had been the site of Perez Hilton’s birthday party. On Friday, it was a shocking display of heterosexuality. This is always annoying. I like straight people as much as the next, but straight people who cluster in otherwise gay areas to party are nothing but trouble. The freedom and sassiness that gays display liberates them to dangerous levels and gets transferred into otherwise inappropriate straight behavior and the next thing you know someone is getting stabbed. Sweet, young closeted Aaron didn’t believe me that it was a straight party.
“Maybe there are just a lot of girls.” He suggested.

I assured him it was a straight party because there were only men dancing with women, and no men dancing with other men. Going around to Ben Harvey and Christian, they in quick succession agreed it was straight because the men all had tucked in, button down shirts and by the way, did you see those shoes? The lack of fashion sense was not enough to convince Aaron, who retorted, “Derek is badly dressed and he is obviously not straight.” But a lack of fashion is my thing. It is what separates me from the rest of the maddening crowd. Though at this point, Aaron was the only maddening one.

I liked him a lot and Christian assured me he had an amazing body underneath his ill-fitting shirt, but his youth and inexperience at all things gay was apparent. For instance, he insisted that being out at work wasn’t important and he never planned to be openly gay in the workplace. True he works in construction, so that does make things dicey, but the idea that he works in a sexuality-free environment is to take for granted the background noise of girlfriends and wives that is miraculously excluded from any notion of sexual behavior. I am certain that in a few years he will feel differently.

Just then, Dave Rubin came sweeping in and happily changed the dynamic entirely. With Ben Harvey still texting Ryan trying to find a meet spot, my eye was on the clock and the door. After another round of drinks, everyone bolted for the Chelsea Hotel. I made my good-byes on the corner. Even though I was assured Ryan would be at the Chelsea (at least eventually), my role in L’Aventura had come to an end. With any luck, I could get home early enough to get a good night’s sleep, get some packing done for my trip and still have time to work on the house. Life after all is a balancing act. One of these days, Ryan will see that maintaining that balance means learning to end something when the time is right and move on to the next thing. And perhaps Aaron will learn that there is a time and a place for everything, and sometimes the more you hold back, the less you have.