Standing outside Katwalk on a not particularly windy summer night in Manhattan, Listerine breath strips flutter out of their green plastic coffin onto the sidewalk. A spritely young gay leaps after them declaring the tried but not so true rule about putting things in your mouth that have hit the ground. My mind races to the gallons of urine, vomit and dog shit that have washed over 35th Street in the last century and I stop him in his tracks. After all, as important as fresh breath is, it doesn’t supersede the need to not place your tongue on a NYC sidewalk.
It was going to be that kind of night, where bad ideas seemed promising, as I stepped into the joint birthday bash for Matt Kugelman and the Roy boy known as Bianca del Rio. Kugie is well known to my blog and Bianca is widely known as a foul-mouth insult queen from New Orleans whose love of offensive racial humor and abortion jokes is well documented, mostly by the Kuge himself. For Roy’s birthday, Matt put together a “tribute” video featuring other notable drag queens, personalities and me. Never one to pass up the opportunity to be seen publicly or insult someone I hardly know, I jumped at the chance. And if you can do both and eat cake and drink, well it might as well be Christmas!
Generally I don’t like going anywhere that I don’t know people. I do know Matt but it was his birthday, so I knew he was going to be the center of attention and therefore hard to monopolize. But I did see Terron, drunk and clicking away with Matt’s camera. And TJ, who I remembered from our last encounter some weeks ago at Rockit when I scooped his drunk ass over to the Stage Deli in the wee hours of the morning and when I say we ate a side of bacon together, I mean in all literal butcher terms a side of bacon. Matt’s co-worker Chip was there and I chatted with him for a while along with a 22 year old CBS page, who as innocently as Kenneth of 30 Rock, assumed we were roughly the same age. God bless the child.
The video was a big hit with the crowd, perhaps because of the content, or maybe because it temporarily wiped the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue video and a baseball game off the large screens. The place was awash in gays and aside from the very straight manager, no one seemed to notice the scantily clad women on display or the latest run score for the Yankees. Then again, with young gays around, all they notice are each other, and notice they did. My friend Shaun McCarron was in town and he came by with his friend William though they missed my scathing video appearance.
Shaun looked as hot as always and he was in town for another big gay party night of some kind. It is pride weekend after all. He will drop by the show on Friday and I have no doubt havoc will be wrought with guest host Erik Rhodes, after their last adventure in which Erik ate out some woman who wasn’t wearing panties at the gay bar. We talked for a bit and then settled close to the birthday cakes. Against my better judgment, I had two slices of the one with the blue frosting, while Shaun went to talk to Bianca who as he confided to me was his favorite drag queen when he was a kid. Naturally I didn’t miss my opportunity to repeat that to her face and here in the blog.
After they left, I chatted a bit with Chris an aspiring musical theater star and spent more time with classically trained actor TJ. Chris and I discussed musicals which I confess is my worst subject. As a gay man I can talk a reasonably good game with the average Musical Mondays bar homo but when it is a theater queen, I am definitely out of my element. In all though, we had fun, including pointing out to Matt’s roommate that despite the wax number candles on top of his cake, Roy and Matt do not have a combined age of 52. Next time, I told him, just put a one in front of whatever number you come up with and it will be twice as funny. His inability to do quick math infuriated him and he stormed away in frustration much to my amusement.
The party would down rapidly. Roy and Kugie decided to head to The Ritz for JUST ONE DRINK but I decided to end the evening there. With a mouth full of the cake Matt’s roommate made and numbers swirling around in my head, I made my impolite good byes and headed uptown to my car. I suppose I could have joined them at a second location for five seconds, but as a rule, it’s never that short and usually not healthy either.
Showing posts with label Shaun. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shaun. Show all posts
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Blood Orange Crush
My body has been in full revolt for a week, since that ill-advised sandwich in Dallas that gave me food poisoning last Friday. Since then I have gone from queasy to sniffly with barely a moment's feeling of real wellness in between. I told myself that if I didn't feel better by today, I would skip doing the show and have a restful three-day weekend. But then I was feeling a bit better and Romaine beat me to the punch with her own sickness, leaving me alone to do the show tonight (with quick pinch hitter Cyd Zeigler from OutSports.com).
Of course I had to come in anyway no matter what since Shaun McCarron was flying up from Florida to do the show and I couldn't cancel on him. Ironically enough, bad weather kept him from the show with a delayed flight and I didn't see him until hours later when he joined me at Eric Kuhn's party downtown. With Shaun coming up to Manhattan, I had sent Matty a text earlier in the day to alert him, and he suggested we join him at his friend Eric's place. Generally I hate going to the homes of strangers because it increases the likelihood that I will feel alienated and alone in a room of unknowns but for some mad reason I am still trying to do new things.
Original Jonathan joined me for the trip downtown after the show. It's been a while since our last adventure and I thought the fresh air of the subway would do him good. On the train, a homeless guy with two bass guitar cases did a bit of performance art/impromptu retail sales in front of us, though the slow dragging around of large black cases on the subway by a deranged, mumbling loner just brought out the Fringe paranoia in me and I became transfixed at the notion of the freaky, unexplained Hi-Def death that awaited us inside.
Emerging at the Broadway-Lafayette station, I could have sworn I saw J.'s friend James walking up the stairs in front of us. Impossible, I thought, since he lives in Baltimore and J moved to Brooklyn. I thought about calling out his name but fear that I was right made me turn in the opposite direction and dash to Eric's party. If it was James, J. was certain to be close at hand and I knew I wasn't ready to see him again now.
Eric is a gorgeous man with a truly beautiful apartment. The moment I saw his outrageous and stylish building, I knew this was not the party for me. His living room with its soaring ceilings and full length suicide windows had the sweeping cleanliness of Page 28 of a West Elm catalog. The whole railroad-style floor plan looked like the set of a hot new sitcom about New Yorkers who live in an apartment that might at first glance be mistaken for the lobby of a W Hotel. Not funny, per se, but I found his lack of a nightstand (his clock radio rested unceremoniously on the otherwise uncluttered floor) oddly charming. Also I couldn't place it at the time, but now in retrospect I realize that he looks a lot like D-A-N.
Matty was as adorable as ever, sweeping us into the kitchen and plying us with a truly staggering array of vodka choices. The mixers were all pale, down to the white cranberry juice, a fancy touch I greatly admired for its attempt at a stain-free party. Matty is an indefatigable publicist on my behalf which is always appreciated. "Derek is famous!" he would cry to any big-armed stranger there who would listen, never minding that insisting someone is famous is always guaranteed proof that they aren't. Though I can't fault him for trying.
Soon Matty's friend Brian joined in the fun and I was delighted to see him. Of all the people he knows, Brian is my favorite to flirt with. I have such a little boy crush on him, almost pre-sexual in it's middle school way. I just want to hold hands with him and make out a little and then be home by ten. Brian always seems very confused about how to handle me. We are similar in a way that we both insist that other people don't know what we are really like on the inside, but then we quickly squirt ink in the water and swim away if they make any attempt to get genuinely close. Maybe we are both afraid of getting hurt. And then my reason to be afraid walked in to the party.
J. arrived with James, who was in fact on the subway with us earlier, and two other friends that I vaguely met when they were quite drunk at J.'s birthday party some months ago but who really remember me only through the Facebook photos we inadvertently ended up together in. My stomach that was finally calm after a week of turmoil was churning again. We hadn't spoken in weeks or seen each other in even longer, though in the last couple of days J. has been inexplicably in the forefront of my mind. Maybe it was the impending Presidential debate or the new season of our shared love The Amazing Race. But whatever the reason, there he was.
I tried to do the fake small talk thing a bit, but he knew it was fake and rightly steered clear. What is there to say? Every minute without him in my life is like a living hell, and I will love him every day until the day I die. It is what I should have said the last time we talked but instead I just turned sullen and defeated about the whole thing and insisted I was fine when it was obvious I wasn't and that was that. And what difference does it make now? He saw my new super short haircut which I knew he would like but there was no smug satisfaction there for me. Only loneliness.
I wish I had his powers of compartmentalization. When it comes to emotions, he is like Martha Stewart organizing a junk drawer, all neat rows and P-touch labels, and I am the fool who pulls the drawer too quickly out of the wall causing everything to come crashing down on the floor. This is why flirting with Brian is so much better, and easier. I know each of our own insecurities and issues will keep us politely at bay, like a nice Oscar Wilde play, filled with witty banter and, that great 19th century expression: intrigues!
But what I feel for J. is just too real and dangerous, our fourth wall permanently shattered. He hugged me good bye and I held my breath. I didn't want the moment to linger for fear that I would hold on to it too much in my heart and I never wanted it to end. Didn't want to breathe in and risk the wonderful musk of Axe body spray he occasionally wears that always makes me think of him and hoped for a moment that he was wearing it so I could smell it all one last time. My gaze found the sidewalk as we said good night. All evening I couldn't look directly at him, like a solar eclipse, for fear of catching his eye, and then, all too quickly, he was across the street and gone.
Earlier Brian told me of a drink he had concocted with crushed ice, vodka and a splash of champagne. "I call it 'Blood Orange Crush'" he told me, named for the signature citrus added to the mix. The cocktail sounded light and summery and delicious, like my meaningless crush on him, even if the name of it had a ring of darkness about it. The darkness for me is the real crush of my love for J., an inescapable weight on us both, coursing through my veins, and forever on the rocks.
Of course I had to come in anyway no matter what since Shaun McCarron was flying up from Florida to do the show and I couldn't cancel on him. Ironically enough, bad weather kept him from the show with a delayed flight and I didn't see him until hours later when he joined me at Eric Kuhn's party downtown. With Shaun coming up to Manhattan, I had sent Matty a text earlier in the day to alert him, and he suggested we join him at his friend Eric's place. Generally I hate going to the homes of strangers because it increases the likelihood that I will feel alienated and alone in a room of unknowns but for some mad reason I am still trying to do new things.
Original Jonathan joined me for the trip downtown after the show. It's been a while since our last adventure and I thought the fresh air of the subway would do him good. On the train, a homeless guy with two bass guitar cases did a bit of performance art/impromptu retail sales in front of us, though the slow dragging around of large black cases on the subway by a deranged, mumbling loner just brought out the Fringe paranoia in me and I became transfixed at the notion of the freaky, unexplained Hi-Def death that awaited us inside.
Emerging at the Broadway-Lafayette station, I could have sworn I saw J.'s friend James walking up the stairs in front of us. Impossible, I thought, since he lives in Baltimore and J moved to Brooklyn. I thought about calling out his name but fear that I was right made me turn in the opposite direction and dash to Eric's party. If it was James, J. was certain to be close at hand and I knew I wasn't ready to see him again now.
Eric is a gorgeous man with a truly beautiful apartment. The moment I saw his outrageous and stylish building, I knew this was not the party for me. His living room with its soaring ceilings and full length suicide windows had the sweeping cleanliness of Page 28 of a West Elm catalog. The whole railroad-style floor plan looked like the set of a hot new sitcom about New Yorkers who live in an apartment that might at first glance be mistaken for the lobby of a W Hotel. Not funny, per se, but I found his lack of a nightstand (his clock radio rested unceremoniously on the otherwise uncluttered floor) oddly charming. Also I couldn't place it at the time, but now in retrospect I realize that he looks a lot like D-A-N.
Matty was as adorable as ever, sweeping us into the kitchen and plying us with a truly staggering array of vodka choices. The mixers were all pale, down to the white cranberry juice, a fancy touch I greatly admired for its attempt at a stain-free party. Matty is an indefatigable publicist on my behalf which is always appreciated. "Derek is famous!" he would cry to any big-armed stranger there who would listen, never minding that insisting someone is famous is always guaranteed proof that they aren't. Though I can't fault him for trying.
Soon Matty's friend Brian joined in the fun and I was delighted to see him. Of all the people he knows, Brian is my favorite to flirt with. I have such a little boy crush on him, almost pre-sexual in it's middle school way. I just want to hold hands with him and make out a little and then be home by ten. Brian always seems very confused about how to handle me. We are similar in a way that we both insist that other people don't know what we are really like on the inside, but then we quickly squirt ink in the water and swim away if they make any attempt to get genuinely close. Maybe we are both afraid of getting hurt. And then my reason to be afraid walked in to the party.
J. arrived with James, who was in fact on the subway with us earlier, and two other friends that I vaguely met when they were quite drunk at J.'s birthday party some months ago but who really remember me only through the Facebook photos we inadvertently ended up together in. My stomach that was finally calm after a week of turmoil was churning again. We hadn't spoken in weeks or seen each other in even longer, though in the last couple of days J. has been inexplicably in the forefront of my mind. Maybe it was the impending Presidential debate or the new season of our shared love The Amazing Race. But whatever the reason, there he was.
I tried to do the fake small talk thing a bit, but he knew it was fake and rightly steered clear. What is there to say? Every minute without him in my life is like a living hell, and I will love him every day until the day I die. It is what I should have said the last time we talked but instead I just turned sullen and defeated about the whole thing and insisted I was fine when it was obvious I wasn't and that was that. And what difference does it make now? He saw my new super short haircut which I knew he would like but there was no smug satisfaction there for me. Only loneliness.
I wish I had his powers of compartmentalization. When it comes to emotions, he is like Martha Stewart organizing a junk drawer, all neat rows and P-touch labels, and I am the fool who pulls the drawer too quickly out of the wall causing everything to come crashing down on the floor. This is why flirting with Brian is so much better, and easier. I know each of our own insecurities and issues will keep us politely at bay, like a nice Oscar Wilde play, filled with witty banter and, that great 19th century expression: intrigues!
But what I feel for J. is just too real and dangerous, our fourth wall permanently shattered. He hugged me good bye and I held my breath. I didn't want the moment to linger for fear that I would hold on to it too much in my heart and I never wanted it to end. Didn't want to breathe in and risk the wonderful musk of Axe body spray he occasionally wears that always makes me think of him and hoped for a moment that he was wearing it so I could smell it all one last time. My gaze found the sidewalk as we said good night. All evening I couldn't look directly at him, like a solar eclipse, for fear of catching his eye, and then, all too quickly, he was across the street and gone.
Earlier Brian told me of a drink he had concocted with crushed ice, vodka and a splash of champagne. "I call it 'Blood Orange Crush'" he told me, named for the signature citrus added to the mix. The cocktail sounded light and summery and delicious, like my meaningless crush on him, even if the name of it had a ring of darkness about it. The darkness for me is the real crush of my love for J., an inescapable weight on us both, coursing through my veins, and forever on the rocks.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
I Am A Camera
I bring my camera out with me on nights on the town like this because I always intend to take photos to better commemorate the evening. After talking to Gary today about his lost camera and the contents of our first fun night together, I am a little sad that my blog and my own memories are all we have left of it. It helps that I was spending tonight with two of the most photogenic and photographed friends I have.
Shaun McCarron, along with his boyfriend Paul, is a model, most recently featured on the Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency. I think the show is a fine diversion thanks to its ample mixture of hunky horseflesh and outlandishly phony drama. It isn’t going to win a Peabody Award anytime soon but it’s always good for a late night zip through on TiVo, scanning from underwear photo shoot to brief moments of mild tension teased and slo-mo played ad nauseum. It really fills the time.
After being on the show Friday and Monday, I told Erik Rhodes that even though we don’t like the same food, go to the same places or have any friends in common, we really should hang out more. He heartily agreed and we decided to go to Bowery Bar tonight, and drag Shaun along with us. So I slipped my camera into the pocket of my cargo shorts and headed downtown. I wore a cute shirt from Old Navy that cost me $6 when I bought it in Utah back in January. It is the perfect thing to wear to a place like BBar, I thought as I passed the French Connection store around the corner, because I am guaranteed to be the only gay there in it. True enough, while someone at the bar was wearing my favorite Club Monaco shirt, I was the only one there in Old Navy.
There was an insane line outside. So long that if I wasn’t meeting several people at the bar, I would have turned and walked away. This is Roommate’s biggest pet peeve with me. He doesn’t understand the point of having a national radio show if it can’t get me to the front of lines at trendy places. But I relish my anonymity in the city and part of me thinks that if I don’t start pressing doormen for favors, I can still hold onto that feeling, even as the phone numbers of the callers creep closer and closer to home. My friend Dan who agreed to meet me out was the first to arrive and he had the same reaction to the line I had. “Don’t worry,” I assured him. “As soon as Erik Rhodes gets here, we won’t be in this line any longer.” Sure as shooting, Erik arrived and hurriedly whisked us to the minor mob of impatient gays in tight t-shirts waiting at the main door.
“This is where all the fags who think they deserve to be inside already stand and wait.” His dismissive attitude of the pretentious boys at the door made me love him even more. Going to a gay bar with Erik Rhodes is like going to the prom with the captain of the football team, and where he thinks the whole high school thing is one big joke. It’s twice the delicious. Naturally, we were swept into the bar faster than you can say tank top weather.
I was glad to be out of the line. Not just because it is humiliating to stand in a long line outside of a virtually empty bar. But also because I was in the line for all of one minute before the homos behind me started the worst conversation I ever had to hear with the opening line, “How was Fire?” The kid meant Fire Island, but after I told occasional Fire Island share veteran Dan that story we both agreed that no one calls Fire Island “Fire.” In one word, they managed to take something that was already obscenely obnoxious and shoot it off into a whole new orbit. I don’t exaggerate when I say they should be stoned to death in the streets.
As much as we trash “the scene” at Bowery Bar, the guys who go there, fueled by the patented blend of drugs, liquor, desperation and sardine-like proximity that has kept it a downtown staple for more than a decade, are surprisingly chatty and friendly. Most gay bars in New York, no one wants to talk to anyone, with the exception of happy hour at Therapy which is so spontaneously kissy at times that it constantly threatens to make mono Manhattan’s most common communicable disease (second only to rudeness to tourists). On my first trip outside to rescue Shaun from the long line, a guy tapped me on the shoulder and told me I had a nice body. I stared at him blankly, asked him where it was, and then kept going. Later a guy walked up to me and said, “Someone put a roofie in my drink. Can you believe it? Come see me later. I’ll be over here.” I am certain I would not get this reaction if I went to Bowery Bar often. It is only because I make an annual pilgrimage that I am greeted as fresh meat.
The same cannot be said for Erik. He could go to that bar every single night and still be a hot property. First he ran into his friend Phil, who threw a birthday party for him two years ago. Phil is a photography student and a “prodigy” according to Erik. I was tempted to do that thing where you pretend like you don’t know someone is a famous photographer and ask them to take a picture of you and your friend in front of something. My camera was in my pocket and I did want a picture of me and Erik since there isn’t one that I can recall, but I got shy and thought better of it. Even Shaun ran into people he knew at the bar. So did Dan and later so did I when the DJ Keo Nozari swept in with his ultra low key cool vibe and sweet smile.
The place was also awash in reality show people. Erik Rhodes of course made a famous splash on My Life On The D List last year when Kathy Griffin ever so patiently stripped him of nine layers of clothing at the GayVN Awards. Shaun was on last season of Janice Dickinson, his ass so delightfully cupped into tiny underwear like two ripe peaches wrapped up in a very expensive napkin. Keo ran into his friend Ronnie who had been one of the contestants on Manhunt, the Bravo male model series (not to be confused, as Keo initially was when I asked him if Ronnie was from Manhunt, with the dirty hook up website). I even saw Project Runway reject Milan sitting at a table, not looking rejected so much as tired and in need of one of those five minute face lifts they are always advertising on late night TV.
I suppose it is too bad that I only took one photo all night. Waiting for the train in Times Square to go down to the bar, I snapped a photo of some funny graffiti scribbled on an ad that I will put in my ongoing New York photo project that I not-so-ironically call “Advertorial.” So this will have to be the only record of the event. The sight of Erik Rhodes putting his head on my shoulder so sweetly, the bags under Milan’s eyes, and the Long Island gay Guido poser who tried to blend in between Shaun and Erik who were oblivious to his presence will live on only in my mind. Maybe Christopher Isherwood was on to something. We are our own cameras, viewing life, shutters open, through our own lenses and filters, and recording. But I am thinking, about the antics we see from our single perspectives, and knowing that we view only what we want to see.
Shaun McCarron, along with his boyfriend Paul, is a model, most recently featured on the Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency. I think the show is a fine diversion thanks to its ample mixture of hunky horseflesh and outlandishly phony drama. It isn’t going to win a Peabody Award anytime soon but it’s always good for a late night zip through on TiVo, scanning from underwear photo shoot to brief moments of mild tension teased and slo-mo played ad nauseum. It really fills the time.
After being on the show Friday and Monday, I told Erik Rhodes that even though we don’t like the same food, go to the same places or have any friends in common, we really should hang out more. He heartily agreed and we decided to go to Bowery Bar tonight, and drag Shaun along with us. So I slipped my camera into the pocket of my cargo shorts and headed downtown. I wore a cute shirt from Old Navy that cost me $6 when I bought it in Utah back in January. It is the perfect thing to wear to a place like BBar, I thought as I passed the French Connection store around the corner, because I am guaranteed to be the only gay there in it. True enough, while someone at the bar was wearing my favorite Club Monaco shirt, I was the only one there in Old Navy.
There was an insane line outside. So long that if I wasn’t meeting several people at the bar, I would have turned and walked away. This is Roommate’s biggest pet peeve with me. He doesn’t understand the point of having a national radio show if it can’t get me to the front of lines at trendy places. But I relish my anonymity in the city and part of me thinks that if I don’t start pressing doormen for favors, I can still hold onto that feeling, even as the phone numbers of the callers creep closer and closer to home. My friend Dan who agreed to meet me out was the first to arrive and he had the same reaction to the line I had. “Don’t worry,” I assured him. “As soon as Erik Rhodes gets here, we won’t be in this line any longer.” Sure as shooting, Erik arrived and hurriedly whisked us to the minor mob of impatient gays in tight t-shirts waiting at the main door.
“This is where all the fags who think they deserve to be inside already stand and wait.” His dismissive attitude of the pretentious boys at the door made me love him even more. Going to a gay bar with Erik Rhodes is like going to the prom with the captain of the football team, and where he thinks the whole high school thing is one big joke. It’s twice the delicious. Naturally, we were swept into the bar faster than you can say tank top weather.
I was glad to be out of the line. Not just because it is humiliating to stand in a long line outside of a virtually empty bar. But also because I was in the line for all of one minute before the homos behind me started the worst conversation I ever had to hear with the opening line, “How was Fire?” The kid meant Fire Island, but after I told occasional Fire Island share veteran Dan that story we both agreed that no one calls Fire Island “Fire.” In one word, they managed to take something that was already obscenely obnoxious and shoot it off into a whole new orbit. I don’t exaggerate when I say they should be stoned to death in the streets.
As much as we trash “the scene” at Bowery Bar, the guys who go there, fueled by the patented blend of drugs, liquor, desperation and sardine-like proximity that has kept it a downtown staple for more than a decade, are surprisingly chatty and friendly. Most gay bars in New York, no one wants to talk to anyone, with the exception of happy hour at Therapy which is so spontaneously kissy at times that it constantly threatens to make mono Manhattan’s most common communicable disease (second only to rudeness to tourists). On my first trip outside to rescue Shaun from the long line, a guy tapped me on the shoulder and told me I had a nice body. I stared at him blankly, asked him where it was, and then kept going. Later a guy walked up to me and said, “Someone put a roofie in my drink. Can you believe it? Come see me later. I’ll be over here.” I am certain I would not get this reaction if I went to Bowery Bar often. It is only because I make an annual pilgrimage that I am greeted as fresh meat.
The same cannot be said for Erik. He could go to that bar every single night and still be a hot property. First he ran into his friend Phil, who threw a birthday party for him two years ago. Phil is a photography student and a “prodigy” according to Erik. I was tempted to do that thing where you pretend like you don’t know someone is a famous photographer and ask them to take a picture of you and your friend in front of something. My camera was in my pocket and I did want a picture of me and Erik since there isn’t one that I can recall, but I got shy and thought better of it. Even Shaun ran into people he knew at the bar. So did Dan and later so did I when the DJ Keo Nozari swept in with his ultra low key cool vibe and sweet smile.
The place was also awash in reality show people. Erik Rhodes of course made a famous splash on My Life On The D List last year when Kathy Griffin ever so patiently stripped him of nine layers of clothing at the GayVN Awards. Shaun was on last season of Janice Dickinson, his ass so delightfully cupped into tiny underwear like two ripe peaches wrapped up in a very expensive napkin. Keo ran into his friend Ronnie who had been one of the contestants on Manhunt, the Bravo male model series (not to be confused, as Keo initially was when I asked him if Ronnie was from Manhunt, with the dirty hook up website). I even saw Project Runway reject Milan sitting at a table, not looking rejected so much as tired and in need of one of those five minute face lifts they are always advertising on late night TV.
I suppose it is too bad that I only took one photo all night. Waiting for the train in Times Square to go down to the bar, I snapped a photo of some funny graffiti scribbled on an ad that I will put in my ongoing New York photo project that I not-so-ironically call “Advertorial.” So this will have to be the only record of the event. The sight of Erik Rhodes putting his head on my shoulder so sweetly, the bags under Milan’s eyes, and the Long Island gay Guido poser who tried to blend in between Shaun and Erik who were oblivious to his presence will live on only in my mind. Maybe Christopher Isherwood was on to something. We are our own cameras, viewing life, shutters open, through our own lenses and filters, and recording. But I am thinking, about the antics we see from our single perspectives, and knowing that we view only what we want to see.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Show People
An occupational hazard of my job: I know a lot of people from reality TV.
This is a complicated situation for me because I already have a lot of trouble distinguishing the difference between reality and fantasy as it is. Just today, a listener sent me the Derek doll, lead vocalist from the short-lived Barbie and the Rockers (circa 1985), and even some people at work had trouble believing it wasn't an elaborate trick. We look so much alike, and even share the same name. It begs the question: Am I, with my unchanging hairstyle and sparkling blue eyes, the living promise fulfilled of a hunk of Mattel plastic or am I in actual fact the basis for it?
In much the same way, Reality TV is the ultimate blurring of life imitating art imitating life, and sometimes I wonder if the people who appear on television even know what to do with the resulting by product. In some ways I assume it is like when someone tells you about a dream they had where you played a prominent role. Obviously they recognized you quite vividly in it, though you may feel the portrayal is entirely subjective and personally unfamiliar.
Tonight on the show, our guest host was Shaun McCarron from the Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency, a guilty pleasure of late-middle age histrionics blended smoothly with ample supple human flesh. I shamelessly admit that I am a fan, mostly for the flesh parts. Shaun and his equally well-constructed boyfriend Paul are underwear-clad favorites and two of the few openly gay models on the show. I met them both some months ago when they joined the show as guests and since then have struck up a friendly rapport. They have SIRIUS so I often get random text messages from Shaun about the content of the show while he drives to and from the gym. What I like about Shaun is that he is a smart guy (Master’s Degree!) with a relaxed, comfortable Southern demeanor who understands completely the time and place he exists in and uses it as fully to his advantage as possible. Also he looks amazing in his underwear.
Knowing that he would be in town and would want to go out, when another reality TV veteran (Clay from The Apprentice) wondered aloud how to spend his birthday weekend, I happily suggested New York City. Even though I will be busy painting my kitchen and dining room this weekend, I figured I was still hearty enough to juggle both social obligations with visiting hotties and reconstructing suburban domestic bliss at the same time. To help, I enlisted the ultimate Manhattan party figure: Matt. Our previous Friday and Saturday adventures had been successful enough, even though Gary lost his camera and I was sick for four days. Clay and Matt were already friends so I knew he would be on board for another exciting set of adventures.
The evening started earlier for Matt, who joined Charlie at his apartment for pre-cocktails before heading to Chris’ birthday party at Kelley and Peng down in the Bowery, while Shaun and I were still in Rockefeller Center wrapping up the last few minutes of the radio show. Shaun had just found out before we went on the air that fellow Modeling Agency alum J.P. Calderon was in town as well, headlining an Instinct Magazine party at SPLASH. I met J.P. at Gay Days in October and he might have been on the show once, but for the life of me I can’t remember a single word that has ever come out of his mouth. But since that party didn’t start until after 11pm, we endeavored to head to the Bowery first and then see how things went.
Chris’ birthday party had a nice mix of cute, laidback guys and adorable preppy guys, prompting me to send an enthusiastic text message to my roommate to encourage him to join us. Matt was already there with Charlie and Brian. Brian’s friend Warren, a tightly built South African who is an arched eyebrow taller than Matt, was also there, along with Matt’s friend Will who I have met several times before, yet always greets me with the same spreadable cream cheese expression of blissful and totally willful ignorance. We all had a drink and settled into polite cocktail chatter.
Matt was in a particularly sparky mood, greeting me with open arms and legs, and constantly poking me with excited jabs. He also displayed again his enthusiastic applause mixed with excited laughter, a signature move for him which Brian referred to as his persistent clap (then added, “and I don’t mean that recurring case of Chlamydia either”). After Matt playfully punched him a little too hard in the sternum, Brian’s own enjoyment levels plunged woefully and desperately out of kilter with his own. I reconnected a bit with Charlie who I hadn't seen since his last appearance in my blog in November. When I brought up my blog, which previously had so tickled him to be mentioned in, he waved it off with the haute faux maturity of a fourteen year old girl who insists quite calmly and matter-of-factly that she is now a woman, then asked where Ben Harvey (the reigning king of blog mentions) was. For the record, he is out of town.
Already a fairly low key guy, especially when compared to his vibrant peacock boyfriend Paul, Shaun had settled into a glum trance of text messages and cocktails off to the side of my friend hopping. I don’t think he was having a very good time, but it was hard for me to check in on him and chat up roommate and grasp bits of conversation with Brian and Matt just so I would have something to blog about later. I was jumping around from person to person as if they were all plates that needed to be kept spinning in mid-air at all times. Perhaps I was over my head trying to have it all.
We decided to decamp from the party, with Matt leading the march toward the basement of the Chelsea Hotel, the site of my last public humiliation some weeks ago. On our way out, I charged over to a familiar looking blond man with a scruffy face and no visible ass in his baggy slung jeans. “Haven’t we met sixteen times before?” I asked, to which he replied with hand outstretched, “Yes sixteen.”
Turns out his name is Henry and we met through Cyd Zeigler and the gay football league. Suddenly I remembered where I first saw him (though not where I last saw him): doing his best (worst?) chocolate covered Kimmie impression at a karaoke bar in Harlem. Quite possibly the worst singer I have ever seen belt it in public and yet the bar was filled with adoring admirers by the time he had brutalized his last note. He was there tonight with his friend Patrick, who looked like a younger, slighter version of Jeff in Boston, and another guy whose name I don’t recall because I maxed out the number of names I could remember for the evening. Just then, Will swept into the conversation and when Henry started to introduce us, the continued blankness of his stare made me think he had already, in just thirty minutes, forgotten again that we had already met. It was time to leave.
I grabbed my bag and searched for Shaun who had since disappeared while Matt and Brian went downstairs. Moments later, Mike and I went downstairs only to find Shaun was there, but Matt and Brian were nowhere to be found. Shaun told me that they had already left for the Chelsea so the three of us hopped into a cab. I spotted Charlie on our way out, so I assume he decided to stay at the birthday party, which in retrospect turned out to be the right choice. After the world’s slowest cab ride, we arrived at the Chelsea Hotel to find Matt already inside and a hefty line outside. Matt’s cell phone having died at Chris’ birthday party, there was no way to contact him.
Since it was already Midnight, Mike refused to stand in the line at the bar and opted instead to just make an early trip to the 1am train we had planned to take home anyway. Shaun and I braved the line for fifteen minutes as a series of people he knew wandered up to us in line. It turns out he knows more people in New York City than I do. With time running short and the line just getting longer, Shaun left with his friends to go to G, also in retrospect an excellent idea, while I stood alone in line at the Chelsea Hotel.
While waiting, Corey Johnson arrived with Andy Towle and for a moment, I thought I had been rescued from the line. Unfortunately, moments later, they were in line behind me. I don't know what was more surprising to me: that they couldn't get in either or that Corey had somehow coaxed the reclusive Andy out of his apartment. “Aren’t you someone?” I asked the former high school football captain.
“Not anymore.” He assured me.
“What about him?” I asked, gesturing to blogger Andy Towle, who reaches more gay men in America than Out or the Advocate. Corey just shook his head, then offered politely. “You’re someone.” But clearly that was a reality that only exists inside my own fantasy world.
After waiting forty-five minutes, I was finally ushered in. This left me only enough time to tell Matt that I had to leave to go home. I was furious. Of course I found him and Brian, dancing in place in front of my friend Corey Craig, the DJ for the evening. I immediately swatted Matt in the back of the head. I recapped my horrible experience in line and put all the blame on him for blithely leaving us at the other party. More importantly, after his phone died, he put me in charge of keeping tabs on Clay’s arrival (his plane was much delayed from Texas) then made no effort to stay close to me. At that point, Clay was on his way over but I was out of time to wait for him to pass him off to Matt.
“He is on his way now! Go upstairs and get him!” I yelled at Matt and then as payback for Brian’s sore sternum and my own irritation, punched him in the stomach. Matt looked hurt, but not from the sock in the gut. Matt and Brian both entreated me to stay, and then stay over for the night in the city. But that was an impossibility. I was trying to have it all, and in the process, was watching all of it unravel before my eyes in a fit of bad timing. If I left, I was a quitter in the party scene of fun, leaving three handsome men and who knows what else behind. If I stayed, I would just be proving myself and my roommate right that I can't stay focused to and finish anything that I say is really important to me. So I left, Matt and his hurt feelings, Clay who hadn't even arrived yet, sexy Brian and all his promise, and walked up the stairs to the sidewalk.
"That was the best minute and a half I ever spent in a bar." I yelled sarcastically to the appreciative door staff as I crossed the sidewalk to hail a cab. It was a short ride to Grand Central but it didn't take me long to realize I had made the right decision. In the choice between fantasy and reality, as tough as it is for me to face sometimes, I really do need to choose reality more often. It is just that time.
This is a complicated situation for me because I already have a lot of trouble distinguishing the difference between reality and fantasy as it is. Just today, a listener sent me the Derek doll, lead vocalist from the short-lived Barbie and the Rockers (circa 1985), and even some people at work had trouble believing it wasn't an elaborate trick. We look so much alike, and even share the same name. It begs the question: Am I, with my unchanging hairstyle and sparkling blue eyes, the living promise fulfilled of a hunk of Mattel plastic or am I in actual fact the basis for it?
In much the same way, Reality TV is the ultimate blurring of life imitating art imitating life, and sometimes I wonder if the people who appear on television even know what to do with the resulting by product. In some ways I assume it is like when someone tells you about a dream they had where you played a prominent role. Obviously they recognized you quite vividly in it, though you may feel the portrayal is entirely subjective and personally unfamiliar.
Tonight on the show, our guest host was Shaun McCarron from the Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency, a guilty pleasure of late-middle age histrionics blended smoothly with ample supple human flesh. I shamelessly admit that I am a fan, mostly for the flesh parts. Shaun and his equally well-constructed boyfriend Paul are underwear-clad favorites and two of the few openly gay models on the show. I met them both some months ago when they joined the show as guests and since then have struck up a friendly rapport. They have SIRIUS so I often get random text messages from Shaun about the content of the show while he drives to and from the gym. What I like about Shaun is that he is a smart guy (Master’s Degree!) with a relaxed, comfortable Southern demeanor who understands completely the time and place he exists in and uses it as fully to his advantage as possible. Also he looks amazing in his underwear.
Knowing that he would be in town and would want to go out, when another reality TV veteran (Clay from The Apprentice) wondered aloud how to spend his birthday weekend, I happily suggested New York City. Even though I will be busy painting my kitchen and dining room this weekend, I figured I was still hearty enough to juggle both social obligations with visiting hotties and reconstructing suburban domestic bliss at the same time. To help, I enlisted the ultimate Manhattan party figure: Matt. Our previous Friday and Saturday adventures had been successful enough, even though Gary lost his camera and I was sick for four days. Clay and Matt were already friends so I knew he would be on board for another exciting set of adventures.
The evening started earlier for Matt, who joined Charlie at his apartment for pre-cocktails before heading to Chris’ birthday party at Kelley and Peng down in the Bowery, while Shaun and I were still in Rockefeller Center wrapping up the last few minutes of the radio show. Shaun had just found out before we went on the air that fellow Modeling Agency alum J.P. Calderon was in town as well, headlining an Instinct Magazine party at SPLASH. I met J.P. at Gay Days in October and he might have been on the show once, but for the life of me I can’t remember a single word that has ever come out of his mouth. But since that party didn’t start until after 11pm, we endeavored to head to the Bowery first and then see how things went.
Chris’ birthday party had a nice mix of cute, laidback guys and adorable preppy guys, prompting me to send an enthusiastic text message to my roommate to encourage him to join us. Matt was already there with Charlie and Brian. Brian’s friend Warren, a tightly built South African who is an arched eyebrow taller than Matt, was also there, along with Matt’s friend Will who I have met several times before, yet always greets me with the same spreadable cream cheese expression of blissful and totally willful ignorance. We all had a drink and settled into polite cocktail chatter.
Matt was in a particularly sparky mood, greeting me with open arms and legs, and constantly poking me with excited jabs. He also displayed again his enthusiastic applause mixed with excited laughter, a signature move for him which Brian referred to as his persistent clap (then added, “and I don’t mean that recurring case of Chlamydia either”). After Matt playfully punched him a little too hard in the sternum, Brian’s own enjoyment levels plunged woefully and desperately out of kilter with his own. I reconnected a bit with Charlie who I hadn't seen since his last appearance in my blog in November. When I brought up my blog, which previously had so tickled him to be mentioned in, he waved it off with the haute faux maturity of a fourteen year old girl who insists quite calmly and matter-of-factly that she is now a woman, then asked where Ben Harvey (the reigning king of blog mentions) was. For the record, he is out of town.
Already a fairly low key guy, especially when compared to his vibrant peacock boyfriend Paul, Shaun had settled into a glum trance of text messages and cocktails off to the side of my friend hopping. I don’t think he was having a very good time, but it was hard for me to check in on him and chat up roommate and grasp bits of conversation with Brian and Matt just so I would have something to blog about later. I was jumping around from person to person as if they were all plates that needed to be kept spinning in mid-air at all times. Perhaps I was over my head trying to have it all.
We decided to decamp from the party, with Matt leading the march toward the basement of the Chelsea Hotel, the site of my last public humiliation some weeks ago. On our way out, I charged over to a familiar looking blond man with a scruffy face and no visible ass in his baggy slung jeans. “Haven’t we met sixteen times before?” I asked, to which he replied with hand outstretched, “Yes sixteen.”
Turns out his name is Henry and we met through Cyd Zeigler and the gay football league. Suddenly I remembered where I first saw him (though not where I last saw him): doing his best (worst?) chocolate covered Kimmie impression at a karaoke bar in Harlem. Quite possibly the worst singer I have ever seen belt it in public and yet the bar was filled with adoring admirers by the time he had brutalized his last note. He was there tonight with his friend Patrick, who looked like a younger, slighter version of Jeff in Boston, and another guy whose name I don’t recall because I maxed out the number of names I could remember for the evening. Just then, Will swept into the conversation and when Henry started to introduce us, the continued blankness of his stare made me think he had already, in just thirty minutes, forgotten again that we had already met. It was time to leave.
I grabbed my bag and searched for Shaun who had since disappeared while Matt and Brian went downstairs. Moments later, Mike and I went downstairs only to find Shaun was there, but Matt and Brian were nowhere to be found. Shaun told me that they had already left for the Chelsea so the three of us hopped into a cab. I spotted Charlie on our way out, so I assume he decided to stay at the birthday party, which in retrospect turned out to be the right choice. After the world’s slowest cab ride, we arrived at the Chelsea Hotel to find Matt already inside and a hefty line outside. Matt’s cell phone having died at Chris’ birthday party, there was no way to contact him.
Since it was already Midnight, Mike refused to stand in the line at the bar and opted instead to just make an early trip to the 1am train we had planned to take home anyway. Shaun and I braved the line for fifteen minutes as a series of people he knew wandered up to us in line. It turns out he knows more people in New York City than I do. With time running short and the line just getting longer, Shaun left with his friends to go to G, also in retrospect an excellent idea, while I stood alone in line at the Chelsea Hotel.
While waiting, Corey Johnson arrived with Andy Towle and for a moment, I thought I had been rescued from the line. Unfortunately, moments later, they were in line behind me. I don't know what was more surprising to me: that they couldn't get in either or that Corey had somehow coaxed the reclusive Andy out of his apartment. “Aren’t you someone?” I asked the former high school football captain.
“Not anymore.” He assured me.
“What about him?” I asked, gesturing to blogger Andy Towle, who reaches more gay men in America than Out or the Advocate. Corey just shook his head, then offered politely. “You’re someone.” But clearly that was a reality that only exists inside my own fantasy world.
After waiting forty-five minutes, I was finally ushered in. This left me only enough time to tell Matt that I had to leave to go home. I was furious. Of course I found him and Brian, dancing in place in front of my friend Corey Craig, the DJ for the evening. I immediately swatted Matt in the back of the head. I recapped my horrible experience in line and put all the blame on him for blithely leaving us at the other party. More importantly, after his phone died, he put me in charge of keeping tabs on Clay’s arrival (his plane was much delayed from Texas) then made no effort to stay close to me. At that point, Clay was on his way over but I was out of time to wait for him to pass him off to Matt.
“He is on his way now! Go upstairs and get him!” I yelled at Matt and then as payback for Brian’s sore sternum and my own irritation, punched him in the stomach. Matt looked hurt, but not from the sock in the gut. Matt and Brian both entreated me to stay, and then stay over for the night in the city. But that was an impossibility. I was trying to have it all, and in the process, was watching all of it unravel before my eyes in a fit of bad timing. If I left, I was a quitter in the party scene of fun, leaving three handsome men and who knows what else behind. If I stayed, I would just be proving myself and my roommate right that I can't stay focused to and finish anything that I say is really important to me. So I left, Matt and his hurt feelings, Clay who hadn't even arrived yet, sexy Brian and all his promise, and walked up the stairs to the sidewalk.
"That was the best minute and a half I ever spent in a bar." I yelled sarcastically to the appreciative door staff as I crossed the sidewalk to hail a cab. It was a short ride to Grand Central but it didn't take me long to realize I had made the right decision. In the choice between fantasy and reality, as tough as it is for me to face sometimes, I really do need to choose reality more often. It is just that time.
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