Back Splash

I don’t know how I keep ending up back at Splash Bar. It is definitely not one of my favorite places. If I was on FourSquare.com, I don’t even think I would check in from that destination. It’s too embarrassing. I hardly have a reputation to protect, but what tattered remains there are can barely survive such an admission. But it was a run of the mill Friday night and there I was, once again, this time in the company of no longer a porn star Ryan Raz.

It has been two years since The Raz first wandered into my radio studio, fresh off the porn world’s version of the turnip truck. Repped by my pal Howard from FabScout and accompanied by two other fresh new young performers, his was the star that ended up burning the longest and the brightest. Last December, he announced his retirement and yet, he seems to be as busy as ever: travelling so constantly that when he returned to the show yesterday, he had to remind me that he still lives in New York City. Really? How can you tell?

Ryan was on the show to promote the Hustlaball, which makes its triumphant annual return to Club Rebel this Sunday, like a stinking bulb sprouting each fall from the sexual manure of Manhattan. I have always had a good, if strange time at the Hustlaball. I don’t have a scene, as the kids used to say, but if I did, this would definitely not be it. And in a fire versus frying pan move to which my life has oddly become accustomed, the party before the party was last night at Splash. I am pretty sure the gays invented the pre-party party and even if they didn’t, they should take credit for it, because it sure feels like their greatest contribution to humanity up to this point. It’s not jazz, but it’s something.

After the show, Ryan and I hopped on a subway down to Chelsea. I suppose the event at Splash was really designed to be a promotion for the main event two days later. The Hustlaball tends to attract a lot of people from out of town and Splash is the Manhattan bar most beloved by those from everywhere that isn’t named Manhattan. I am one of those in that guilty party myself. Before I moved to the city in 2001, it was the first place I wanted to go, no matter how many times Matty rolled his eyes about it. But being a good friend, he always indulged my tourist whims at least once each trip and in that spirit, I joined Ryan at the bar last night.

I don’t know what I was expecting from it but it was less than I thought it would be. Maybe it was because we arrived so early but there were just two other guys there in Hustlaball t-shirts and no one else seemed to be working the event, as it were. They were both very hot and after circulating through the crowd for a bit, they would circle back to us again at the base camp we made at the front bar. I don’t remember their names and I don’t think they even heard mine. It didn’t matter, on either count.

To amuse myself, I checked my bag at coat check with my usual brand of terrible humor reserved for those who deign to work counters. At the movies, I like to order concessions with a southern-fried accent that fools no one. Last night, I made endless wisecracks about how deserted coat check was (“I hope you can find my bag later!”) to the wan smiles of the adorable guy who likely is able to maintain his perfect abs because he is starving to death living on minimum wage and meager tips. What can I say? I find myself hilarious in the face of total adversity.

I stayed just long enough for Ryan’s other friends to start to arrive. Being a good friend means not leaving someone alone if they don’t want to be alone. This kind of retail marketing is a solitary business and there is safety in numbers. I love The Raz and always want to hang out with him more, but context is king. Perhaps Sunday at Hustlaball will be just that context. And once again, the rigid train schedule was more savior than burden.

On the train home, I usually write about my evening. But instead while walking up Sixth Avenue to Grand Central, I got an idea for a little gay movie with a cute working title like “The Project” where a woman who works as an employment recruiter starts dating a hot guy with a gay best friend and decides to make it her rabid mission to use her considerable job skills to fix him up and in the process ends up sabotaging her own relationship. The cuteness of the movie playing in my head, as formulaic as any romantic comedy that ever existed, crowded out the narrative of the evening.

So at creative loggerheads, I decided spontaneously to churn that creative energy elsewhere and leap onto a dangerous third rail and start a Twitter feed. I have railed against and complained about Twitter for months, even as people have begged me to start one. The notion of cramming my thoughts into 140 character haikus was uninteresting to me. But, I realized, going to Splash was uninteresting to me and I did it anyway. This is the year of trying new things and nothing will signal the end of Twitter as a cultural force faster than me joining in. And so this unholy alliance was joined. After all, Twitter.com/wastesyourtime and now so do I.

Rockit Splashdown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So Strange, Yet Familiar

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Skinny And Sweet

My friend Danny Dias sent me a message last week saying he was bartending now at a new club night called "The Skinny." I assume the name is a reference to the old colloquial expression more than the weight of the intended patrons, but when I finally dropped by tonight, "The Skimpy" might be a more apt title. Having already experienced seeing some friends naked in porn (always surprising, no matter how many times THAT happens), you would think I would take seeing one of them in their underwear in stride. But there was Danny in all his adorable buffness, stripped down to a tiny pair of black briefs, a scene I was not expecting.

I had only planned to stay for a half hour max. Yesterday I was on death's door with a nasty cold, but this afternoon when I woke up, I was already feeling one thousand times better. Still, you shouldn't rush these things. So in the spirit of taking things easy and not causing the kind of relapse that might ruin my weekend, I endeavored to turn the evening into a quick post-work "hello" before driving back upstate to my nice warm flannel sheets. Besides, Matt Kugelman had said he would be bringing his skinny self to "The Skinny" too, so I could see both of them in short order and still watch Survivor and maybe even 30 Rock before bed.

Matt decided to hit Barrage first before storming "The Skinny" so I thought I might miss him altogether. The bar was somewhat deserted when I arrived, so I did my level best to keep Danny company while trying not to keep him so distracted that he missed what few tips might come his way. When you are friends with a bartender, it is always best to know when to slip quietly away from the bar for a bit so they can work and actually make some money. At the same time, I was anxious to catch up since we haven't seen each other in months and we have had a lot to talk about since then.

The bar started to fill a bit and then just as I was about to walk out, Matt Kugelman stumbled in. Suddenly, it was like playing Mystery Date and opening the door and finding the hunky beach date waiting for you. As Meryn Cadell so aptly sang in The Sweater, "You're looking for the boy of your dreams, who is the same boy in the dreams of all of your friends." That is Matt Kugelman. I can't wait to have him make an appearance at my Cinco de Mayo party just so I can watch all my single gay friends fight and fume and scowl over him all night.

I will admit that I didn't know Matt all that well before tonight. He is someone I run into a lot about town and he is always a lot of fun, not to mention easy on the eyes. And he laughs at my jokes and appreciates my obnoxious posts on his Facebook page and assorted photos. He has such a relaxed demeanor, though I admit some of that might have been brought on by the enormous amount of alcohol he had consumed. In retrospect, I don't know that I have ever seen him sober. He confided that he used to play dumb in high school so that he could get tutor time after school as a means to escape swim practice. And apparently his paint wasn't mixed properly but you will have to get him drunk on your own to see that part for yourself.

He was surrounded by a bunch of his friends, some I had met before (Chip) and others I had not. A few of them had recently joined the swelling ranks of the unemployed so he was taking them out for drinks. One of them, a confident blond 21 year old proudly drank a glass of straight vodka in front of us like water. "He'll be dead in a year," I offered. Two hours later, he was sitting nearby in a pale stupor, an untouched vodka cranberry resting in his crotch. On my way out for the evening, I fixed the collar of his shirt, which had become askew. He didn't seem to notice or care. "Maybe six months." I thought.

For a fleeting moment, I saw Ryan Raz, who had apparently been there for more than an hour, but I caught him as he was running out. We just had dinner on Tuesday night after the show at our usual hangout Vynl, but it is always nice to see him again. Having already gotten the skinny on Danny and on Matt, I realized too that it was time to head home. Danny was busy at the bar dealing with a variety of drunken characters. Matt was consoling his friends and trying to convince Danny to toss cherries into his mouth. My work here was done. I swung through McDonald's on my way to the parking garage for a nice ten piece McNugget meal to go. Granted, a meal like that won't get me to skinny personally, but I had already had my fill of skinny for one night.

Play Ball

I get so torn about my life in moments like this. On the one hand, I relish my anonymity and all the trappings of "real life." At the same time, I have frequent urges to be in the center of the action. These are the two pulls in my life, tearing me constantly in opposite directions at the same time. Earlier today I was enjoying my Sunday political shows (who knew McLaughlin was such a raving FDR devotee!) and then winterizing my house. It's a quiet existence where I am more concerned with what to watch on TV than who is watching me. But then later, I headed down to the city for dinner with Ben Harvey and a debaucherous turn at the Hustlaball.

It was a gorgeous fall day. Crisp, as we like to say. And the leaves were just starting to turn and drop, even as the sun shown warmly through the thinning branches. On days like this, I love the long walks the city affords and made the trek from Grand Central to Union Square on foot. Ben was waiting for me in the bar of Republic looking as handsome as ever. Has it really been so many months since I saw him last?

Republic is one of my favorite places in the city. It is communist dining at its finest: inexpensive, fast, spare and they serve thai ice tea and green tea ice cream, two of my greatest rare pleasures in life. It was all new to Ben so he stuck with the reliable pad thai while I indulged in spicy duck noodle broth. We gossiped about work, caught up on love (or lack thereof), shared chicken skewers. Aside from my total domination of the conversation, it was a perfect evening.

I regret to say that, in my usual fashion, I turned to Ben as we got our ice cream and said, "And now in our last five minutes, tell me all about you." Believe me when I say this was not the worst of my conversational crimes. I managed to weave a depressing zinger about our depressed economy as the punchline to nearly every sentence no matter the subject matter. Through it all, Ben was a terrific sport about the whole thing.

From there, I jetted down to the Hustlaball. Last year, I attended under the guise of being Chi Chi LaRue's assistant. This year, I was (thanks to Howard at FabScout) a bona fide invited guest. In many ways, I loved being mistaken for Chi Chi's minion. No one wanted anything from me save access to the terminally accessible and personable star herself. This year, still no one wanted anything from me, though ever the publicist, Howard made sure everyone knew who the hell I was. Though, the one person who had heard of OutQ mistook my show for another, accusing me of an appalling bit about selling a used condom full of cum at 9:30am! "That's our morning show," I assured him, finally with a sense of relief at not having to defend the lurid content of my own show for a change.

Barrett Long was there, looking dapper as we sat together in the VIP lounge. He was anxious to rehash our good times last year when his then roommate Rod Barry picked a drunken fight on the patio. Suddenly, sensing the moment, he stood up and started to unzip his pants. "I've seen it!" I said, but he was persistent. "Yes but you haven't sucked on it." I dodged the inevitable hand on the back of the head and stood up, firm in my conviction to not experience his mammoth eleven inch cock first hand. "I still have my tonsils, Barrett, and this is not how I want them taken out."

Ben Andrews was there early on doing his Clark Kent shtick, but I spent most of the evening with Jackson Wild and Ryan Raz. The two of them were still rattled from some unpleasantness the night before at Octoberfist, another adjunct Hustlaball event. Jackson was drinking up a storm, even charming me into a lemon drop shot I didn't want to do, while Ryan stuck dutifully to water knowing he had a scene to do in the morning with the aforementioned Barrett Long. I didn't envy his future soreness one bit, especially after Barrett told me that once it was in he wanted Ryan to spin on it.

Jackson was excited about the eminent arrival of his boyfriend Jim. After the show on Friday prepping for my last blog entry, I did some recon on the boys and read all about Jim on Jackson's MySpace page. Jackson's love for the hunky stranger seemed worthy to me and the two of us got along great. Good thing since we spent the better part of the evening together while the boys were working the red carpet and dancing on stage. In the interim, I coaxed Jim to take his shirt off and the two of us turned the VIP lounge into our own private dance party.

Events like the Hustlaball are dicey propositions, especially in the VIP room where the crowd is made up of porn stars and the men who love them. Many of the stars are reluctant participants and the admirers are too busy staring to have much fun. That leaves it up to in-betweeners like us to actually bring the party. As an invited guest, I did my best to shore up the proceedings, short of sucking Barrett Long. After all, when all is said and done, I am still just a civilian here, having fun but always with an eye on the door that leads out to the real world where I truly belong.

Prix de Beaute

Life divides people into two very subjective categories: fuckable and not fuckable. Of course who falls into which category is purely in the eye of the beholder. However, whole industries have sprung up dependent on the notion of fuckability. Tonight I experienced two of them up close: porn and underwear.

Howard Andrew of FabScout is in town for the Hustlaball. To kick things off, he dropped by the studio with three of his fuckable models. The most outgoing and flirtatious was Jackson Wild, whom I nicknamed Jackson Hole because it seems his ass is also a rugged destination. Howard barely knows me but his keen sense led him to believe (correctly) that I would be most attracted to Ryan Raz, a tan dirty blond with glacier blue eyes and jutting ears. Though the third, a quiet reserved Southern boy named Colton Steele, slight and furry, was probably the most compatible with me sexually.

After the show, they headed for The Eagle for the Hustlaball kick off party and I ventured down to Splash to watch Ronnie emcee an underwear model search for Instinct Magazine. Having pulled this kind of duty before, my sympathies were with Ronnie during the slapdash prolonged proceedings as they dragged on into the night. The event was poorly executed, with the models fully dressed for the overwhelming majority of the show. Even Ronnie was demurely attired much to the chagrin of the salivating crowd. Dan and his friend Patrick who was visiting from out of town joined me against their will at the bar, but we were all in agreement about the show. The bar was half empty and most of the bartenders looked more like underwear models than the contestants, but in every case, they were all quite fuckable.

After the judges declared the audience's least favorite the winner, the show was quickly over. I waited forever to say good bye to Ronnie who still had a bunch of signings and poses for pictures to do. He hugged me and after earlier admiring my new short hair whispered in his calm, even Midwest tone, "You look so beautiful." I might dine emotionally on that for as long as Bob Morris calling me "good looking" in the New York Times.

I decamped from Splash and headed to The Eagle, a purposefully dank playpen now around the corner from the priciest and most ludicrous straight clubs in the city. I found Howard and the boys upstairs. Brian had called my haircut a "Saturday night at The Eagle game changer" at Eric's party last month. Though perhaps because it was Friday the game hadn't seemed to change for me.

Jackson greeted me with the same wild "Let's do it RIGHT NOW!!!!" look that seems to be permanently in his eyes. Ryan was sweet and longing to be nuzzled in a rough and ready roundhouse ready for something else. Finally, appropriate to the venue and occasion, Colton appeared in nothing but a jockstrap. Apparently the alcohol had set in. Howard naturally took it all in with his usual sense of bemusement.

I admire how people I know in porn like Howard take it all in stride. They are plugged in to how fleeting it all is. You have to stay in the moment or the whole thing will consume you. The shelf life of a model is short, but it's even shorter for a porn star. So even though I will never be as fuckable as these porn pups or contestants in an underwear contest, I hope whatever beauty I do have is enough to carry me long term through all the many adventures yet to come.