Surprise Part(l)y

Today is Christopher’s birthday so his wonderful boyfriend Kevin plotted a surprise party for him. This apparently took a lot of effort. Chris is smart so it took serious subterfuge on Kevin’s part. A couple of weeks ago we all got separate emails letting us know about the party tonight at Bamboo 52 but also to help “accidentally” suggest there was a surprise party on Thursday. This would throw Christopher off the scent. I told Kevin tonight that if he really wanted to surprise Christopher he should also go ahead with the surprise party tomorrow night too. Nothing like a double fake out.

I did my part in keeping the secret although I nearly helped Kevin botch it all. Two weeks ago we were all at their apartment playing Buzz on the PS3 and one of the answers was the Blondie song “Atomic” and no one had heard of it. Not the boys. Not Michelle from BestWeekEver.TV. Not even Jonathan who seems to know everything I know. So I told them I would email the song to them later. So a few days ago, I sent the song and a short email. I was going to include Christopher on the email with a “See you on Thursday” coda but then thought better of the idea. Maybe that wasn’t a subtle enough accident. So I just emailed Kevin, Michelle and Jonathan and said at the end “See you on Wednesday.” Well, Kevin didn’t read the whole email before starting to read it aloud to Christopher and when he got to the end he suddenly heard himself saying “See you on wen- wasn’t that nice of Derek to send us that.” As close a call as you want when plotting a big surprise.

After the show, I raced down to Bamboo 52 to make sure I was sequestered in back with the rest of the gang before Christopher left the Broadway theatre where he is performing in Shrek The Musical. He steals the show, by the way, in case anyone was wondering. While waiting I ran into dreamy Steven DeLuca’s boyfriend Carl who by chance was there having dinner with friends. I told him to join us back there when he was finished and then headed for a banquette in the corner. I recognized a few people from my two trips to Kevin and Christopher’s island but by and large we don’t have a lot of friends in common.

Christopher was dutifully surprised when he walked in and soon the room was buzzing with cocktail chatter and clever Broadway bon mots. I felt like I was in All About Eve but everything was in color and there was a fight on to be Margo Channing. Kevin complained to me about how loud it was. I assured him that it is because half the people can’t hear anymore and the other half demand to be heard no matter what. “It’s all loud from here.” I told him referring to the domino effect of our birthdays: Kevin, then Christopher, then me, but in retrospect, I think that might make a good book title. Hmmm. I will store that idea away for later.

My pal Eddie from LA was there but left quickly for Florida. Then Adam Jay flew in direct from London with barely a moment to shake the dust of the West End off himself. Suddenly, Steven DeLuca popped into the room, no doubt encouraged by Carl who was still out in the restaurant talking at the sushi bar. Steven and I caught up, and when we spent a few moments with Christopher, he reminded him of when they met so many years ago while Christopher was doing a show in his theatre called “Avow.” Names of shows and actors and directors flew between them and past me like a newspaper headline montage in a 1930s movie. I gave it my best Joan Blondell perplexed and tried to keep my mouth clamped around fists full of sushi as much as possible. When I am in a crowd of strangers, I eat like Shelley Winters and Dom Deluise fighting over the last piece of chicken in the bucket. And tonight was no exception.

I hate surprises myself. And it’s a good thing too because I don’t think anyone could effectively throw a surprise party for me. Maybe I keep it this way, but I am the only person who knows everyone I know. It would probably take four or five of my friends who don’t even know each other well to actually piece together the guest list. And as lazy as my friends are, that isn’t happening anytime soon. But I do have a big birthday coming up this year, so I suppose I will have to do it up right. I have been thinking of a birthday in NYC and one in LA. Why not? And as for surprises, well I promise you that no one will be as surprised as me that I am turning as old as I am. In any event, I hope by then that I have had so much Botox that I will look surprised no matter what.

Revolve!

Once upon a time, there was a gay bar in West Hollywood called Revolver. Through it’s signature revolving front door were the matte black walls that became the cave of my nocturnal existence for much of the 1990s. So many nights spent lusting after a now dead bartender with too many cats, watching a drag queen named Diva and hanging out with my best friend Paul. I laughed in a shower of napkins to “Zip” from Pal Joey, got robbed at gunpoint out front, went home with a few regrettable characters, and night after night after night, happily floated down a long river a booze.

I was reminded once again of Revolver tonight as I watched Matty spin happily around in the revolving door of a swank apartment building on Seventh Avenue. The doorman was not amused, but I was. Watching the happy Matty spirit I know so well warmed me on a cold winter night. Earlier, I joined him at a terrific restaurant called Il Bordello down on 23rd at Tenth. He was having dinner with Gray and Greg and two women (code names: Short Stuff and The Quiet One). Matt was supposed to join me at Ronnie's birthday party at Splash, and he asked me to come to the restaurant to scoop him up on my way over. However, once there, Gray treated us to a wonderful meal of appetizers and cool cocktails and the staff plied us with tasty raspberry shots. Suddenly, we were in for the long haul.

After a truly marvelous time at Il Bordello, we all piled into taxis and headed for another party somewhere on Seventh Avenue "on the way." The boys got into one cab and I joined the girls in the second. Not knowing the address of the party, I just told the driver to "Follow that car." Short Stuff was giddy. "Just like in the movies!" She was even more elated moments later when I insisted on paying for the short cab right. "You are ladies. My mother would reach across the continent to kill me if I let you pay." Apparently chivalry as far as they had known was quite dead.

The Seventh Avenue party was in a beautiful apartment filled with gay guys I had never seen before. Aside from Joe who was there and already quite drunk when we arrived, I didn't know a soul. Even Gray seemed not to know anyone, well almost anyone. The party was equipped with two hunky shirtless bartenders, one blond, one brunet (something for everyone!) with true swim bodies (long arms, long torsos, long necks) who were as straight as their perfectly formed spines. The blond one had apparently tended many gay parties over the last year or so and over time Gray had struck up something of a friendship with him.

As nice as the apartment was, the decor didn't make any sense to me at all. The art was impeccable, including two Bruce Weber Chop Suey prints of an Israeli soldier on one wall facing a pretty Nazi soldier on the other (very Pinkie and Blue Boy), but the furniture was awful. It all looked like it had been thrown together over years of moves from one place to another. A leather sofa from his first apartment, a fabric armchair from his parents, an armoire from his last house, a faded oriental rug his grandmother left him and a glass coffee table from the Z Gallerie circa 1993. Gray pointed out a six foot folding table in the corner set up for an abandoned attempt at a second bar. "That is an art installation" I tried to assure him, refusing to believe someone in this nice of an apartment would have so tacky a piece of furniture.

Running short of time, I dragged Matty out of the party and down to Splash. Once there, I expected Ronnie to be in the small VIP room above the DJ booth, but instead they set up a segregated space off the dance floor for him in full view of everyone. I felt like I was an animal in a zoo, with people peering in at me minding my own business inside the monkey house. This was the price of fame I have always been unwilling to pay. It was reality TV, without the TV. Ronnie was dancing and having a good time, and Matty ran into Itay Hod, who I last saw last year briefly in a car ride to a party. At the time I was distracted by Gary and other things, and it was hardly the kind of encounter to build a lifetime of friendship on, so I didn't bother to say anything. In any event, it didn't matter because almost as soon as I was saying hello, I was saying good bye.

Matty accompanied me out onto the street outside Splash, where I hurriedly hailed a cab to take me back to the train station. Just past where I left David in the capable hands of Steven that fateful night so long ago. Matty hates it when I end my blog postings all wistful and looking up at the stars. He would really hate some kind of crappy extended metaphor right here about revolving doors and people coming in and out of lives and things constantly moving in a circle but never changing. So instead I will go back to that moment when we emerged from the revolving door on Seventh Avenue on our way to Ronnie's party. The real point at which this story began. The door was spinning and Matty was struck by inspiration. "Revolve!" Matty declared triumphantly. "That's your blog right there." He rubbed his hands together excitedly in that way that he does, knowing that he had the right answer. And he did.

Posh Slice

I hadn’t seen Steven DeLuca since my birthday party back in November. He is one of my oldest friends here in the city and as always our encounters are infrequent. I love Steven. He is one of my favorite people. He invited me recently to the opening of a new play that he and his boyfriend are producing and I reacted in horror. “Why would you invite me? Do you want it to close?” Suddenly, Steven was reminded that I am, in fact, the famous Kiss of Death for all live theatrical productions.

When he was a theater manager and he grew tired of the show that was running, he could send me an email assuring me that there would be two tickets on the aisle for me and sure enough within hours of my attendance, the show would close. He played the card one too many times and even the theater closed. I even invested in an off-Broadway show. It was great. It had a terrific theatre in a great location. The New York Times gave it an unqualified rave. I lost every penny I put into it. Steven met me out tonight at Posh alone. He had invited his boyfriend Carl, who decided to stay in. But Carl did have a message for me. “Don’t come to our show.”

I had planned for us to spend a quiet evening together, catching up just the two of us. But before we could get deeply into the weeds of our daily lives, I got a text message from the original Jonathan. He was, naturally, in the neighborhood and anxious to get together. I blew him off this weekend, preferring to stay cloistered in my Desperate Housewives practical, and had promised him that I would go out with him this week. I just didn’t plan on it being tonight.

Jonathan was there at Posh with his friend Mark, who didn’t stay long. Mark was dressed in a crisp white button down shirt that said he cared about how he looked. He was all wrong for me. Anyway, he is just out of a long term relationship so I don’t think he was looking for anything longer than an episode of Criminal Minds but just about as sordid. He left quickly to walk his dog which is sweet in a way, but it just reminded me that having a dog in Manhattan is cruel for the dog and frankly having a baby at home is less of a chore.

Jonathan was a bundle of enthusiasm, although not about his recent appearance in my blog. “You said I am a whore.” I am certain I didn’t use that term. Then he insisted I implied it by saying that he was out at the bar looking for sex. Except that he was out at the bar looking to get laid and that was simple reporting. Whore is judgment, and I am not one to judge like that. Anyone who knows me knows that if I think you are a whore, I will just say it to your face. So I guess Jonathan now joins the long list of people who for one reason (giving “massages” under another name) or another (in the closet) have reacted badly to their portrayal in my blog. Tough.

The three of us quickly grew weary of the Posh life. There was a somewhat large black man, twirling around like a drag queen though the empress had no clothes. He tried to entreat me to dance with him at the urging of his friend who was giving me the eye from across the bar. But I insisted to him that I have a wooden leg and was afraid it would fall off. He didn’t take Heather Mills for an answer easily and before he came back around on another ecstasy-fueled pass, we closed out our check and headed for Vlada.

Earlier on my way into Posh, I had run into Josh Rosenzweig on the corner. When I told him I was going in to meet a friend, he told me to drag my friend over to Vlada instead. They had had a screening thing earlier he proffered evasively, and then everyone had decamped to my favorite vodka bar. Later at Posh, I suggested the party at Vlada to Steven and Jonathan, but both of them already knew about it, having been invited much earlier than I had. So much for being a HERE subscriber and a national radio show host! I hadn’t been back to Vlada since that last disastrous night with roommate, the other Jonathan, Ben Harvey, Dave Rubin, and the ever notorious Clay Lee, which was just too fucked up and personal a night for me to blog about the next day. But here I was back again, and so was Ben Harvey and Dave Rubin, who didn’t even tell me they were going to be there. I gave Ben Harvey a steaming heap of shit about emailing with me all day and not even mentioning it. I was joking and he knew I was joking, but still he had a bemused look of panic on his face. It might have been the free alcohol.

Chris van Cleef was there too, as cute as always, and hammered. Like take me home and violate me hammered. Fortunately he was on his way out to eat which was a good thing because he was a jagger shot away from an anonymous gang bang in the bathroom. One of the downsides of working in a gay office, like I do, and the HERE folks, you get to know so much more about your co-workers than would ever be legally permissible in a straight environment. And at a certain point, you just kind of get used to behavior that otherwise would raise eyebrows.

I couldn’t stay long at Vlada. I had a train to catch, as always. And not drinking the signature infused vodka, there is no charm to that place. Besides, my primary reason for going out (catching up with Steven) was lost in the shuffle. I left him at the base of the staircase with Josh and JC, whom he has known even longer than he has known me. Even original Jonathan knew JC from an ill-fated date that started at the gym and then never went anywhere. So I am sure the four of them had plenty to talk about.

But on my way out, I made a pair of promises. And if there is one thing I like to think I am, it is someone who keeps promises. I am not perfect mostly because I am self-centered and have a terrible memory, but I really do try to keep my promises. First, I promised to call Steven and hang out with him again within the next two weeks. That will be easy. Then, in saying good bye to a very drunk and clingy Ben Harvey, I promised not to say anything really bad about him in my blog, of which he is the most frequently mentioned player. But then he reversed his position. He wanted me to say things about him because he wanted to be the “bad boy” of my blog. So be it. Who am I to stand in the way of a dream?