#FallowFridays

Elmore Leonard is dead. 

That is the kind of spare opener he would have enjoyed. Obviously, I have a very different writing style. But when famous writers die these days, the internet briefly fills with anecdotes and life lessons in a really lovely sort of communal wake. And so it has been the case with Elmore Leonard this week and through that I have picked up a few writing tips that I both never follow and will savagely paraphrase here. My apologies to him on both counts.

Elmore Leonard said never open with the weather, but I don't think he ever had a Friday night like the one we experienced tonight in Manhattan. The air was crisp and clear, with only the barest hint of diaper.  As the immortal bard Taylor Swift once opined, "It feels like a perfect night." And it does.  Normally, in blazing winter and bitter summer, I am a reluctant adventurer. But when the temperature and humidity are just right, like dry bath water, I am not just encouraged to go out but I become the encourager. 

Guy Society

There is never anything I want to do more on a Friday night after the show than go home. But my world has been shattered since the death of James last week and it has created a certain fever pitch of impetuosity on my part. I thought about the last time I saw him, sweating like a whore in church at XL a few months ago. And maybe it was the magical thinking that if I just went out to every bar in town, eventually I would see his hulking frame lumbering through the space like an elephant moving slowly through the jungle, a catastrophe of casual destruction in his wake.  Like the months after 9/11 when I would gaze down Seventh Avenue at Times Square hoping to catch a glimpse of the twin towers, I think I will forever be looking over my shoulder with a sense of maybe.

In my grief, I sent a flurry of messages to my local friends that I had been remiss in seeing these past few weeks. I guess the arrival of spring had made me anxious to wring every second of delight out of my house that I can and my friendships, long on nightlife support, finally faded away. Ryan White and I planned to get together this week and then never did, but MattKugelman and I shared a delightful late meal at Vinyl on Monday. My friend Erik and I made plans to venture down to The Park on Thursday but fearing the zit on my nose would get worse, I pawned him off to a Friday party in SoHo.

My Tart Will Go On

This is my fourth night in a row out on the town, but only the second adventure I have written about. Thursday night I went to Matty and Andrew’s apartment for a quiet birthday celebration for Matty to which I was (as usual) the last to arrive. I was insistent that I wouldn’t write about the evening because it was private, even though Matty didn’t seem to mind either way. But since the two highlights of the evening for me were Matty reading my last post about him out loud to the mortified left standing and the dozen cookies I ate, there really wasn’t much left to say. I love them. That is all.

Friday night I went to Therapy after the show with ADDJeff, our producer Katie and Jim the Sound Guy. Jim and I spent most of the evening talking about work while Jeff and Katie frowned at us for being so insular (with good reason on their part). Because we are practically neighbors now, Jim took my same train home so I didn’t have my usual time to write up the adventure. Even still, I talked to no one else and nothing else happened so consider the evening dutifully reported.

But today, Mike went into the city to attend a party with his boyfriend and that left me free to join Ryan White and all his friends at The Ritz. First however, I needed to satisfy my Titanic fever by catching the 6:15pm showing at Kips Bay in IMAX 3D. Even though their screen is what Mike has not so lovely described as “FauxMax” because it is just a regular theater modified slightly that charges the same elevated price, I had a good time anyway. ADD Jeff joined me at the last minute for this trip back in time and it was worth it.

Fable For Two

Once Upon A Time… I woke up two days ago to find Reichen had sent me a text message while I was sleeping. For some reason, when my phone is next to the bed, I sleep through everything, but when it is across the room, even on vibrate, any activity wakes me. In this case, the phone was on the nightstand and I pleasantly slumbered through his message. He wanted to invite me to another viewing party of his VH-1 show “Couples Therapy” at a bar I had never heard of before called Fairy Tale Lounge. Even though I instantly assumed it was on the other side of the world (read: Brooklyn), I knew I had to go after the sign off moniker he used was “The Irish Setter.”

You see, the last time I went to a viewing party Reichen invited me to, I described him here as being like “an Irish Setter whose only interest is in setting.” This gave me great pause. It is rare that I hesitate before I hit the old PUBLISH button, as evidenced by the invariable typos and spelling errors I spend the next two days correcting. But as accurate a description of his personality as that may be, I was still comparing one of the more handsome members of our community to a dog. So I wasn’t sure how he would accept that. Naturally, he took it with his usual equanimity and it turns out I am not the first person to see a personality resemblance between him and this particular breed.

The Sweet Smell Of Excess

You know you are in the bathroom of a very fancy apartment when you are halfway through peeing and you realize you don’t know how to flush the toilet. This is why we can’t have nice things. I am out of my element all the time in Manhattan, but never more than when I am hanging out with Reichen. It isn’t Reichen, just to be clear. He is in every way a very earnest and accepting fellow, like an Irish Setter whose only interest is setting. But like a magnet he attracts the who’s who of this and that. If it isn't always A-List, it is frequently at least, an act of becoming, huddled masses on the teeming shores of fabulous with me, the tempest tossed.

Reichen invited me to a private party for his new VH-1 show. Last I heard, he was on that LOGO show which is in every way the afterbirth of Andy Cohen’s very demon spawn. I adore Reichen, but I am not a fan of that particular version of reality. Actually the last I heard of Reichen was his fragrance launch party at Industry, which I had a delightful time at. And since I met my most marvelous new friend Ryan White there, I thought it only fitting that he join me as my plus one for this latest Reichen launch event.

I met Ryan outside a rather nondescript building on the outskirt steak of Chelsea. At first I thought we had the wrong address but Ryan assured me he went to a holiday party in the same building and it was quite fabulous. What the building lacks in curb appeal, it makes up for in soaring twenty foot ceilings and private car elevators so you can literally drive right into your apartment.  “But,” Blair hastily added with a mock sniff. “It’s only a one car garage.” And who can live like that!

Birthday Preppers

Life is really unexpected. You just never know what is going to happen. This is why my new obsession is Doomsday Preppers, the show where ordinary people hoard a decade’s worth of food in their basement in the unlikely event of a water landing. Even today, I was crossing Sixth Avenue at 48^th Street and an SUV was driving the wrong way toward me, right past the cops permanently stationed by their cars outside Fox News. Always ready to channel Albert Finney in The Dresser, a movie I have never seen, I stood in front of her car and simply lifted my hand. She slowed to a stop and gave me a funny look and I showed her the error of her ways by merely gesturing back past her. Seconds later, she was completing a U-Turn and we were both on our merry way. The cops didn’t even bother getting in their cars and chasing her. That’s New York. And if you are going to freak out at every little thing, don’t come here.

I was making a rare Saturday night appearance in the city for back to back birthday celebrations. It is also Mike’s birthday on Sunday but he doesn’t feel like celebrating this year even though now that we have our glorious new coffee station in the kitchen, amazing new bathroom and showstopping fireplace, there is every reason to rejoice! I even upgraded the shelves in the closets so our own doomsday prepping won’t look as sloppy as that girl in Houston who plans to shoot her kittens in the head when we run out of oil.

First stop was The Tenth Rail down on 10^th Avenue and 33^rd Street. The neighborhood is so sketchy, the highlight is the well-traveled drive through McDonald’s next door from which the pernicious glare of the fluorescent lighting is a vision direct from the worst nightmares of the Dowager Countess, minus the gaiety. Perhaps they should rename the place The Seventh Circle, although we were really only there for the Third. As the strangers streamed into the empty bar from the street, each entered with a bewildered look on their face. “I took the M-11 bus!” one woman declared incredulously. I would have been less surprised (or concerned for her safety) if she had said she took an M-16. 

Craze The Titanic

When I bought my house five years ago, I did it because I loved New York City but I wanted some quiet so I could sleep in on the weekends. There is just something not so restful about someone screaming “White Jesus” outside your window every Sunday morning. I don’t know why. But the unintended consequence of moving upstate has been not so much peace and quiet as a flat line where my social life used to be.

I am derisive toward anyone who posts too many photos online of their baby and heaven help them if their baby is a cat named Emily Dickinson or even, as a random example, a camera hog of a pug. But lately I have found myself white knuckling it everywhere I go, desperate to show people the photos of my newly remodeled bathroom I keep on my phone. Yes. It happened. I turned into one of those people I hate. So when ADD Jeff wanted to go out tonight after the show, and I found myself explaining to him that I couldn’t stay out late because I had to get up early to take things to the city dump. Even I could hear the dull thud as the words fell out of my mouth. That was it. I needed to go out.

Candy Everybody Flaunts

Fittingly enough, It’s A Small World began as a ride at the New York World’s Fair. Because when you are in New York, you notice how truly small the world is. In a small town, the world feels small, because you can reach out your arms and turn in a slow circle and touch it all. But it looks like there is more world out there, beyond the moon, behind the rain. But when you finally get to the big city and do a slow turn, you realize it isn’t as big as it once seemed.

“Was this really worth getting off at 9:40pm?” Ryan White asked, half-joking, his sly smile betraying the half-serious side of the question. He didn’t mean my hanging out with him. That is always worth escaping the studio a few minutes early for. We have only known each other a few weeks since our first fateful meeting in the back of a taxi, but Ryan is a delightful fast friend. He is good company and he knows it.

Tonight we met out at Therapy, which I used to love but the bloom is off the rose since the place became infested with lackluster stage shows on that tiny elevation in front of the fireplace on the second floor. What had once been a charming getaway to meet friends after work or contract mono from a stranger over communal nachos, has lately become that casual meeting with friends spontaneously interrupted by someone loud and wholly unwelcome collapsing on your table.

I thought at first that we had escaped unscathed. Ryan and I spent our first half hour or so engaged in polite conversation, our ears unmolested by shrieking comedians or bad amateur singing contests. But then while I was at the bar picking up a fresh vodka soda for Ryan, I realized suddenly that I was not on line at Zabar’s and the tiny woman in the bad wig waiting for her mocktail was, in fact, the night’s entertainment.

We had already been talking about the psychological power of drag and the grip over which it holds the gay community. And then this woman appeared, dressed literally in drag, to host a stripper contest. Well, at least I think that is what it was supposed to be. It started with her singing a couple of songs very badly and then encouraging some audience members to also get up and sing badly. This I thought (beyond the obvious) was a bad idea. Are you trying to get strippers or singers? Or singers who strip? People are drunk, lady. If you aren’t clear in your instructions, you are in for a very messy ride.

The area near the fireplace started to take on the kind of frenzied chaos less reminiscent of Broadway's Miss Saigon than Saigon's actual fall. This woman "performer" stripped layers off and warbled and berated the audience for understandably ignoring her. Honey, if you are on stage, and you aren’t more compelling than whatever pops up on someone’s cell phone during your show, that’s on you.

Right on cue, Jeffrey strolled in with his handsome friend Christopher. Christopher, it turns out, works across the street from me and his cousin I think works with Julie James in my office. How small world is that? Pretty damned small. I am pretty sure we have met before but I can't for the life of me remember where or when. Doesn't matter. We've met now.

Jeffrey asked me if I had any Twizzlers on me, recalling fondly our first meeting downtown where I did have candy in my pocket and I was happy to see him. Of course, since Halloween, I have Twizzlers all over my house and office like a hoarder, and could have kicked myself for not having them with me at Therapy (but I don’t have that kind of flexibility). In my own defense, I didn’t know he was coming.

As the karaoke go-go strip show rapidly cascaded downhill nearby, I spotted my Ukrainian pal Vitaliy, on a NYC layover between Utah and London, in the audience. He is all muscle-packed like Jeffrey but shorter. And I noticed he liked hovering near the equally ripped wait staff, including the shot boy who was either wearing a horrible duck-tailed wig or hasn’t been out of a cowboy hat since Brokeback Mountain. I guess since Vitaliy is visiting from out of town, it isn’t a problem for him to (as Ryan so vividly put it tonight) shit where he eats. I entreated Vitaliy to jump on the stage, remove his shirt and win the $100 prize but he giggled shyly and backed away. I don’t understand working out like crazy and then not dropping your clothes at a moment’s notice. It’s like getting a face lift and then always wearing a veil. If you want to wander aimlessly through life in a bulky sweater, just go ahead and get fat like everyone else. You can start by eating a pack of Twizzlers. They're 240 carb-loading calories in the blink of an eye.

In the future, I will always walk around with a pack of Twizzlers in my pocket. I do owe Jeffrey some after all and it is well known that I don’t care what people think of me. Obviously no one on the stage cared what anyone thought of them either, especially the loud screeching host lady with the terrible Rona Barrett wig. Maybe if she had Twizzlers in her pocket, the audience would have cared what she had to say. Besides, as accessories go, Twizzlers, like strippers and drag queens, are candy everybody wants, just not always at the same time.

Persistence

Usually my drunk train home is boisterous and noisy. As I write about my evening, it is with my head down, desperately trying to block out the heterosexual melee going on around me. The same cannot be said for the NYC subway at night. After midnight, the subway takes on a quiet, filthy reverence. Little eye contact is made, conversations are non-existent. And waiting for the train is even less eventful. The platforms are empty, preventing the usual entertainment watching people can bring. There is no phone service, nor Internet connection. It is just you alone with your thoughts for as long as it takes for the next train to finally arrive.

There is such a late night scene in an early chapter of my new book, When Nightlife Falls. It is me, alone on the platform waiting for the 2 Train home to Harlem, getting emotional after a night of drinking out at Vlada with Ben Harvey. That night on my iPod the song of choice was the k.d. lang cover of the theme from Valley of the Dolls. Tonight, years later in the future, as I waited for the 2 Train to take me up to Times Square, I flipped through my iPhone for Amy Winehouse’s Tears Dry On Their Own. She is gone now, as is Nick Ashford who co-wrote the song, as is my iPod and even the reason I am emotional all over again. But tonight it is just nostalgia, for a time and a place that maybe was never really there.

I guess it is a function of being young that you see time as a linear function. This happened and then that happened and then this happened. It is lazy writing, like the story plotting (plodding?) on The A List or any of those other excruciating reality shows that take place excrementally. As you get older, time starts to crisscross a bit. People you knew leave and then come back. But it is beyond that grid now and I see for the first time so clearly why the clock is melting in Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory. Time is like cutting a cake, if you slice it but never remove the pieces. At first the cuts are smooth, but the more you cut, the messier it gets and as you cut and cut and cut again, eventually the integrity of the cake itself is gone and the whole thing falls away into a sloppy unrecognizable mess. And as you peer down into the pile of frosting and layers, you alone can still see the cake as it used to be, staring back at you. The original promise is gone, but the taste lingers.

Ben Harvey was hosting Gekko, his usual last Wednesday of the month party down at Gild Hall. It is hard to believe that Ben and I met more than four years ago. It doesn’t seem possible. But as we talked about the good times and caught up on current events, it reminded me of the conversations I was always desperate to have with him back in 2007. Our friendship that started with our mutual careers in radio and our shared love of Rosie on The View came flooding back to me anew as we talked about our shows and the eminent return to TV of Rosie this fall. Everything old was shiny and new again.

Writing my latest book brought back all those early memories of Ben, and all the other things of that time, both good and bad but mostly bad. New York City is a hard place to be if you don’t want to remember the past. It changes constantly but the persistence of your memory is hard to shake. I suppose it is like a living embodiment of what Alzheimer’s must feel like. You walk down the street and you swear there used to be a Circuit City right there or was it an Office Max, a Fotomat, Gimbel’s or Woolworth. The new buildings around you melt away before your very eyes and you can see, right in front of you, what used to be there, almost as if it never left. But it did.

This time of year the city is awash in newness. Recent college graduates have all started their new jobs in the city, like Tommy who stumbled over to talk to us tonight. Or new students at Columbia or NYU are getting settled and starting classes, like my new friend Ryan, the object of Tommy’s brazen drunken move in our direction. So I embrace the new and enjoy it, even as the past draws in and out all around us like labored breathing or waves on a shore.

“Have you been to Provincetown?” Ryan asks me, looking for tips before he heads there himself this weekend. Yes, I was there, almost exactly ten years ago. It is all in my first book. Hooking up with the guy from Naked Boys Singing, the terrifying flight on Cape Air, how tiny the Statue of Liberty looked when we flew back into Newark Airport. I can’t escape it as keywords randomly access those parts of my memory.

Tommy amused me very much tonight because he was the perfect stranger to write about. This should have been all about him. He was not tall, maybe 5’9”. His hair was short and he was decidedly unshaven, which is the fashion for 22 year olds like him. He was in jeans and a white polo shirt. This was old school preppy but with a few hints of Brooklyn hipster about it. Just the barest minimum his new corporate career in midtown allows. He lives around the corner from the bar, something he repeated so often, it couldn’t have been anything but an open invitation to drop by.

He expressed a lot of concerns about his new career and fitting in there. Both Ryan and I tried to explain to him that all he needed to do was act confident and pretend like he knew what he was doing. That’s 90% of success in business anyway. Few people are Warren Buffett or Jack Welch, men who see the forest of the trees. The rest are all just good at repeating what they heard once or have a casual grace about them when ordering drinks that cleverly masks everything else. It seemed that most of his insecurity grew out of the large shadow cast by his older brother, who also lives nearby. “He’s prettier than me,” Tommy told us, puffing up his shoulders as if to indicate that he believes the only thing that really matters in the looks department is big arms, which, if you are gay, is truth.

But the most important thing about Tommy, aside from the fact that he was the second person of the evening with a Y at the end of their name, was that he was so very drunk. It was clear he hadn’t been in Manhattan long because he was the kind of drunk that happens here when you are young and haven’t yet learned that only you can prevent forest fires. When bars stay open until 4am on a school night and you don’t ever need to think about driving home, the only thing stopping your liver from dropping out of your body from sheer exhaustion is your own ability to say no. I wager it takes at least six months for the average person in New York to discover when to say when, but the younger you are, the longer that lesson will take to learn. Tommy has not yet learned that lesson.

As the DJ played pre-Glittered Mariah Carey, we all got funky on the dance floor remembering a simpler time before terrorism and the Kardashians changed America. Tommy kept circling back around trying to get Ryan to go home with him, but no reasonable person would have gone back there with someone so blind drunk. I suppose if he was still able to work his phone when he got up to that no doubt tiny apartment that made his arms looks bigger, he probably ordered someone off Grindr, delivered in thirty minutes or less. Manhattan is nothing if not convenient.

I can’t drink like Tommy anymore, and it isn’t just because I have lived here longer and I know better. Walking up the stairs from the subway onto 41st Street at Seventh Avenue, I could feel the two drinks I had and the lateness of the hour in the heaviness of my legs. But then suddenly, there I was staring up at my first office building in the city: 1440 Broadway. The street has changed so much since 2001, the smell of pot and WiFi is everywhere in the new walking promenade outside the building. I guess we have all changed a lot since then.

But I am done thinking about the past, now that I have emerged from the ethereal stench of the subway. The future is ahead of me. And there is no point in waxing nostalgic about meeting Dan by the lions in front of the New York Public Library or any of the other millions of memories that melt and rise around me as I trot past block after block.

The ghosts are everywhere but if all you do is look at them you won’t see the real living people around you. Ben Harvey isn’t a fading memory of a drunken night long past, he is a current event, a drunken night happening right now. And Ryan is a fun new friend, who braved the advice of a stranger and headed downtown for his own fresh adventure. That’s New York for you: the past and the present, side by side, melting together as one. There is something interesting waiting around every corner, even if you don’t always remember what used to be there.

Plus None

Here is a really good party tip from someone who doesn’t go to a lot of parties: If you are invited to an event and you only know the host, make sure you bring a plus one with you. It doesn’t matter how many times I get invited to a party where I only know one person, I always fail to bring someone with me. I suppose it is because I don’t have a reliable standby plus one. This is where having a straight female friend comes in handy. In fact this seems to be the primary motivation for most of these symbiotic relationships. Mental note: make new friend, attend party together.

Last week, I got a text message from Reichen inviting me to the bar Industry for the launch of his new fragrance. It is also called Reichen, so for the purposes of clarity from now on, I will just refer to it as the fragrance. That way, when I tell you some Reichen got sprayed in my eye, you won’t think the evening took a decidedly sexual turn between us. But more on the spritzing later.

My new life strategy is to say yes to everything. I will in fact now attend the opening of an envelope, both literally and figuratively. Just ask! As I have plunged headlong into midlife, I have discovered the reason you don’t see forty-something gay men anywhere: It just becomes easier to stay home. You reach a point in life where you have everything, and have been everywhere. There is nothing waiting for you out at Industry that isn’t either already at hand, or can’t be managed with your own hand. But my career dictates a certain level of sociability. I am not so famous that I can afford to hide at home and wait for the residual checks to roll in. In fact, I am not so famous anything.  I need to work, not just at an office, but also a room, a bar, or launch party for a fragrance.

As I point out in my fantastic new book, When NightlifeFalls (available now on Amazon, for Kindle, and the Nook), I have known Reichen for some time, although not extremely well. He is the quintessence of a celebrifriend. That is a celebrity who I am on friendly terms with but with whom my only contact is in full view of the public.  Truth be told, Chris Rice is my favorite celebrifriend because it feels all literary and classy and he is such a good sport about the whole thing. But Reichen is guaranteed to get attention, anywhere, anytime, and tonight was no exception.

I like Reichen. He is pretty, ridiculously so. And most people stop there. But the more time I spend with him, the more I see only his character. He is honestly and genuinely earnest. If I were pressed and told to describe him in one word, earnest is the word I would choose. Unfortunately, earnest is the gay community’s least popular descriptor, right behind sweet or blousy.  Being earnest gets you into trouble, especially in the big city, because it can so easily read as disingenuous or condescending. I am not at all earnest. I’m blunt and crass. That, for better or worse, is never taken the wrong way. I am like a hostage taker and Reichen is like the negotiator they send in to defuse the tension.

Reichen had the launch party tonight at Industry, one of the newer hot spots in midtown (and about which my feelings are already well established). The party was scheduled to end at ten, which is also when my show ends. So I told him I would be there after the show and he gave me a private password so I would be able to get a gift bag at the event. Since I hate meeting new people, scoring a gift bag became suddenly a primary motivator for attending, mostly out of curiosity as to what might be in it. As I walked out of the studio tonight after the show, I ran into Ben and Dave, making notes ahead of the recording of their latest podcast. I told them where I was headed and joked that since I would be the fattest person at the party, I was going as both me and my own plus one.

Arriving at Industry, I opened the outer door and was immediately greeted by a giant poster informing me that entering was my consent to be filmed. I hoped that by coming late, I could avoid the filming of The A List and as it turned out, while I was waiting to talk to Reichen, some very nice production people shoved me out of the way to cart out the equipment. I’ve never been so happy to be pushed aside in a bar in my life! I don’t know how Reichen puts up with that reality TV nonsense, but then again, people wonder how I talk for four hours every night. I guess it is something you just get used to doing after a while.

Reichen seemed genuinely surprised and happy to see me, but then suddenly blurted out: “You missed the gift bags! I’m sorry. I really wanted you to have one.” Oh well, I thought to myself, it is just a gift bag. But then, noticing an unattended gift bag on a stool, he said, “I wonder who left this here. Doesn’t matter. It’s yours now!” Reichen stole a gift bag for me at his own party! I felt like a star and a criminal at the same time.  That’s a good feeling, in case you were wondering. Intoxicating.

“We’re leaving,” Reichen told me, “Come with us to Le Bain!” Uh. I really had only planned to drop in fast as the white hot party burned down to an ember, so I could quickly nab a gift bag, say hi to Reichen, gather enough intel for a blog entry and still make it to the 11pm train. But I say yes to everything now, so I said yes to Reichen and his after-party adventure! And then just as suddenly I was filled with dread. Tom and Lorenzo had warned us all about the overly dramatic after parties on The A List. Was I leaving the bar just to end up as an extra in some high anxiety wine throwing melee with that horrible hairdresser, the tanorexic bitch with my name and the fat model I’d still fuck even though he got TV fat?

Before I could gather my thoughts, Reichen was introducing me to his friend Zach. “I don’t shake hands!” Zach yelled, simultaneously pushing my outstretched hand away and pouring half his cocktail down my arm, “I like to hug! I love Derek!” I would like to say this was the last time he got alcohol on me, but that instead of love, turned out to be the running theme of the evening with him. 

We all went outside to hail cabs to get downtown to Le Bain, which it turned out is a bar at The Standard. I had never been there before, and I worried about getting past a velvet rope in shorts. I figured I should try to get into a cab with Zach since he was also in shorts and was the only other person I knew, but he and three skinny girls in shiny dresses climbed into a cab behind Reichen’s cab. So, being unusually bold, I waved a heretofore unknown fun black girl and a strapping gay lad into a third cab headed downtown. No doorman in NYC could resist me if I am part of this threesome! I sat in the hump between Farrin, a recruiter visiting from Dallas and Ryan, who said he was an NYU grad student recently relocated from Beijing. They were both a total blast and my favorite part of the evening.

“How did you get a gift bag?” Ryan asked me in the cab ride to The Standard. “There were only like seven of them or something.” Suddenly, I realized that I didn’t see anyone else with a gift bag. Zach didn’t have one. None of the girls in sparkly dresses. Not even Ryan and fabulous Farrin. “Reichen gave it to me.” I offered up but even as I said it, I wondered how I ended up with it too. When pressed about how I knew Reichen, I told them about my radio show. “Oh, like Ben and Dave.” Ryan offered, then suddenly something clicked. “Wait a minute. Weren’t you on their show a couple of weeks ago? I thought I recognized your voice.” True story, I was recognized from someone else’s show in the back of a cab. Only in New York, kids. Only in New York.

Our cab was the first to arrive at The Standard. The three of us waited briefly downstairs to get our ID checked and our hands stamped before we jumped into a packed elevator to the top. The bar itself was not very crowded at all and the view south to ground zero was lovely. Ryan suggested we all go upstairs and that was the revelation. Le Bain is an outdoor rooftop bar and it was spectacular. The night air was crisp and breezy. There was a hint of fall about it but it felt refreshing instead of chilly. Ryan was cold but Reichen agreed with me later that the night air was perfect. It turned out that this was his favorite place in the city and spending only a few minutes up there it was clear why.

Le Bain wasn’t very busy when we arrived but the crowd began to thicken fast. It was a funny crowd too. There were mostly young guys there, mid twenties. There were some older guys in bow ties and button down shirts tucked into shorts. That is trying too hard even when a twenty-something urban hipster does it. A blond guy across the crowd in a tight red t-shirt caught my eye. I smiled at him and he winked back. That was nice. But the best was that none of the other A Listers were there and no one was filming anything. So in all, I had a really good time. In fact, I was surprised. Plus none and non-plussed, you might say.

As the evening started to wind down, I went to say good night to Reichen. Zach was there with a tester bottle of the fragrance. Zach was even drunker at this point, so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when he sprayed me with cologne and then two seconds later forgot that he already had and sprayed me again. At one point, he sprayed it directly into my eyes. “It’s all organic!” Reichen assured me as I struggled to see. The cologne has a nice clean scent to it but I barked at Zach to stop spraying me. “If I get any more cologne on me, they won’t let me on the train!”

He looked at me funny. “What train is that?” Obviously I couldn’t mean the NYC subway, where if you aren’t shitting into your own hand you get a good conduct medal from the city. When I told him, I lived in Westchester, he dismissed me. “Oh, you have no power.” And there it was, I thought, the cruelty of not being a Manhattanite anymore. You live in the suburbs and you are worthless. I asked him what he meant, ready to get into a terrible name droppy fight about how close I live to Martha Stewart and own instead of rent but then in his drunken haze he suddenly made it clear he thought we were all still without electricity since the hurricane last weekend.

I guess that is the lesson of the night, and a fitting lesson when dealing with Reichen. People so quickly assume he is one thing when he is something completely different. I thought I would end up in a horrible reality show but instead I landed in a calm oasis high above the city in the welcoming night air. I thought the rooftop bar at The Standard would be a drag but it was friendly and nice. I met new people and they turned out to be a lot of fun. And even though I was awash in cologne, the conductors still let me on the train back home. Gift bag and all.