Terry A. Goldman: Our Ter Bear

A Cute Guy On The Cruise, Derek and Terry - March 2002

We were friends for 23 years or as Terry would say “at least twenty-five.” He was always counting because it counts, but also always overestimating how long it had been. Perhaps it's the arduous nature of being my friend, that it always feels longer than it is. Or perhaps it was because of the winding road we traveled along together: across a nation and time, bridging two centuries like a wishbone. A journey that has now so abruptly ended. 

Maybe it is fitting that we met as friends so long ago in a way that no longer exists, on a BBS, a bulletin board service called Delos. It was barely the internet, just a local number to connect computer modems. Virtually no one had photos in the dark ages of dial-up and as we talked, we both agreed it was a strange way to meet anyone. But filled with trepidation, we did meet as people did then, at The Abbey among the old terracotta statues and stale pastries. And then, so simply, we were friends. 

I remember 1994, the bare wood floors of his new apartment, the light through the large windows. His myriad complaints about the unreliability of the service workers he hired and wrangled at Universal Studios. And how much fun we had through the rest of the 90s, hanging out together with our mutual friends on endless nights at the movies or house parties or Revolver. 

As a kid, I thought it was ludicrous that Laverne and Shirley would move to Los Angeles and everyone from the Pizza Bowl in Milwaukee would somehow join them. But just as Dennis Hensley joked when he visited me in Manhattan, we did improbably have our own spin off of sorts in the big apple when Terry moved there a couple of years after I did. And in between we had a raucous and memorable mess of a cruise to Mexico where the ship hypnotist turned Terry into a local celebrity and the thin wall between our adjoining cabins was an endless topic of conversation. 

When I think about Terry, I think about how truly good he was. I gave a toast at his wedding but what I remember most was driving Terry and Doug back to the hotel after it was over because he had thought of everyone else’s transportation out of the park but his own. 

Suited Up For Terry 2012

I rehearsed my speech relentlessly and especially the ending. I wanted the toast to be lovely and funny because our friendship was always full of laughter, but I knew the range limitations of my own reed thin voice and I wanted everyone listening to know when the tone shifted, how much Terry meant to me as my friend, my dear friend, for all these years. 

My mom had me when she was young and she likes to say that we grew up together. That's how I think of my time with Terry. We were so young when we met and we really became adults together. Our jobs grew in importance, we grew as people, our lives changed and moved around, but the fun never ended. So many bad movies, so much joy. 

I wish I was writing another toast and hearing Terry’s generous laugh. I hate writing these things, not just because I have already written too many, but because it can never be enough to replicate who someone is. A hug from Terry was a wonder that words can’t convey. How do you talk about someone who was relentlessly full of life when that life lives only in your memory?

Terry hugs Paul - Mexico March 2002

After the cruise, our friend Paul had made a memories DVD for all of us who had been there, and a few years ago, Terry asked me for mine after his no longer played. “I’ll make you a copy!” he promised, but now like Terry himself, it lives only in my mind. On the cruise, the hypnotist had convinced Terry that he had a small precious bird in his hands. In true Terry fashion, he loved and protected the invisible bird with all his heart. And for all of us who knew Terry, we felt the same of him. But then, in the time it takes to snap your fingers, we opened our eyes and he was gone.  

Together in 2008

"16 years. That's how long we've known each other. I think you are the only person I have in my life (besides family) that's been around that long. Thanks BBS! I hope you have an amazing birthday, I love you!!!" - Terry Goldman, on my Facebook wall, Oct 28, 2008. 

Fall Back Disposition

New York City has several recurring themes, most built around notions of high highs and low lows. The city has never been lovelier than it is right now. A perfect summer fading into a truly luscious autumn. More trees and green space than have been seen in centuries, harking back to early industrial times when the city was mostly farmland. A recent panicky shark sighting off Long Island turned out to be a huge pod of dolphins, and whales are so numerous in the harbors that a marine biologist has hailed this "the new Cape Cod." But then my friend Adam Jay, minding his business on his way to our friend Terry's party on Friday night spotted some man making business on the sidewalk.

"I wanted to post about it on Facebook," he told me later, "But had to look up the spelling of defecate to make sure I got it right."

That's New York City for you. The more things change in this city that never stops changing, the more it can't completely shake the vestiges of the past. There is something about this place. You are forced by circumstances to always be moving forward and yet the city makes it so difficult to let go of everything that has come before. Naturally I mean this both in the sense that memories made here can be hard to shake and that you could literally be stuck with the same couch for decades solely because it is impossible (read: too expensive) to get rid of.

Lounging on a chaise lounge in 2001 that, for some reason, I still have. 

I have been writing about New York City since before I arrived and my love of the city hasn't changed (even if I don't write about it as much as I used to). This place is magical. Period. But it is a cruel dark magic, like Ariel trading her voice for legs. You give up so much just to have the most basic necessities. No wonder people who live everywhere else think we are insane. But loving New York City is a form of Stockholm Syndrome. You're a prisoner but where else can you get a bagel like this?

Adam lives in Los Angeles now and while it has many fine qualities (eternal sunshine, air you can see and taste), it's no Manhattan. LA too often can feel like those commercials for depression medication where a sad lady is standing alone in the middle of a party filled with happy, laughing people. "I can't feel my life." Carrie Fisher wrote in Postcards From The Edge and that is LA. You can definitely feel your life in New York City but mostly because it has cut you and you're bleeding.

I realized at Terry's party that it has literally been forever (March) since I wrote about the city. It isn't that I haven't gone out, it is just that my desire to write has. Jimmy made some remark about his long absence from my blog, but it is the blog itself that is long absent. "I think it might be over," I declared, saying out loud what I had been thinking for a long, long time. But here I am again.

Cub and Chris got married this weekend and it reminded me that it has been a long time since I saw them. A quick dash through my blog and I relived quite probably every single interaction we have ever had. A brief, sporadic friendship was writ large, no moment lost to the ravages of time. In that moment, I realized that even as my writing has annoyed and exasperated those closest to me for years, the truth is also that it has documented all of those small moments, good and bad, that make us New Yorkers.

Meeting Cub and Chris at Ben Harvey's birthday brunch in 2009, as New Yorkers do.

We can lose institutions, from Joan Rivers to Roseland, that we thought would stand forever.  Memories can dim and pictures can fade but words are eternal. And if the man relieving himself against the wall of a Broadway theater on my way home after the party is any indication, so is public urination.

Only in New York, kids. Only in New York.

Club Step

Providence is not only humanity's cruel scorekeeper but also a dark chalet on West 57th Street filled with a complex labyrinth of stairs and levels. It's like a Hamburger Hamlet designed by M.C. Escher. Not the kind of dimly lit establishment where drunk and clumsy people can find peace of mind.

If you get lost inside Providence, here's a handy map.

I turned to Donny, still recovering from a broken hip, and issued a dark warning:

"One of us is going to fall down and the other one is going to die from laughter."

Since Donny fell last time, undone by an icy pathway outside his apartment as 2014 began, I decided to tread carefully through the club. Karma, being what it is, I was more than past due for a hard tumble of my own.

We came to Providence for their new Friday night party Berlin. On line for coat check, I met a nice young man visiting from Germany, who sensed providence in the name and came based solely on that.

"Is this one of the big clubs in New York City?" he asked in flawless if heavily accented English.

I just shrugged. This was my first time too. But I was drawn by Brian Gianelli's suggestion and the prompt 11pm show by local drag pathogen Bianca del Rio. I should have known before we arrived that everything would fall apart, this being the endless winter of our discontent and all, but I tried to ignore the warning signs and instead enjoy a night on the town during one of the first moderately decent nights of the year.

This winter has been unrelenting, like trying repeatedly to squeeze a size 14 into a tuna can. Back in December, I mocked my friend Terry Goldman when he wore a short-sleeved shirt to dinner on the single day that month where the temperature threatened to touch sixty. In retrospect, if I had known about the three months of polar vortex ahead I would have appeared in little more than a bathing suit.

So since it was only just in the thirties tonight, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to pull myself out of hibernation and drag Donny out on the town for the first time since we skied through the Aspen Social Club as winter began. Ryan Hahn was organizing a mini-reunion from his holiday party with Griffin Parsons and Jennifer Cheng in tow, but for one reason or another, they all dropped out at the last minute, almost literally as Brian’s plane was making its final descent into madness.

How bad could it be? Bianca. Bunny. No cover charge!

In addition to the chance to spend some time with Brian, I was lured to Providence by a flyer Bianca del Rio posted on Facebook promising both no cover charge and Lady Bunny. The evening had neither. But Bianca, a giant black cotton ball perched on her wig, made the most of it with her usual warm blend of racism and anti-Semitism. The crowd ate it up. After the show, the crowd swarmed, temporarily overwhelming Bianca with photo requests. I was only half-joking when I suggested to Donny that I should organize them into a line and charge five dollars. Between the $30 in cover at the door and $12 at the coat check, recouping our losses was high on my list.

"That'll be five dollars, please. Insults cost extra."

The club was filled with lots of young men and some of them weren't bad looking either. While waiting for the coat check, however, we landed behind a man in a striped jumpsuit (Donny kept calling it a "onesie") that had a glittery owl on the back.

Stop staring at me! It's freaking me out!

It was so quaint when Donny expressed shock that anyone would buy such a thing. “You know he rolled out an old McCall’s pattern and made that himself down at F.I.T.!” I screeched before suggesting a variety of potential Tim Gunn critiques. Later when we were upstairs, Donny spotted him again and yelled, "Ugh. It's back!"

"The front sucks too." I offered.

Look, if you are going to be a man in a skin tight jumpsuit, you better have the body of death not a dead body. I don't know anything about fashion but even I know that’s the truth.

Unfortunately in the midst of all of our gay shenanigans, we lost Brian and his cute friend Andrew in the crowd. It was the second time tonight that it happened and with the drunk train pending, I did not have time for the third time to be a charm. I texted him one last time and headed for the exits.

On our way down to the coat check, I bumped into a collection of cute guys on their way in and one of them was a Grant Goodeve-looking mother fucker. All sorts of hipsters were floating around in plaid tonight but he was the only one that made it work.

In this case, eight would be enough for anyone.

I suppose the hipster thing is like any movement in fashion. Many will try it but most will fail. In his case, the red plaid tucked into his jeans effectively transported me back to my adolescence. Others just looked like sloppy messes for whom an unkempt beard and ill-fitting tank top was statement enough.

Life is full of potential pitfalls. If it isn't bad fashion, it’s a treacherous staircase. One minute you're a nice Asian woman looking for the ladies room and the next Bianca del Rio is dragging you on stage and forcing you to play the role of manicurist. I think monsters lead such interesting lives, don’t you? Even in party palaces where the stairs climb on forever to nowhere. 

Disc Jocular

Turning thirty is a big deal when you're gay. I should know. I've done it enough times.

Tonight was the eve of Stephen Bauer's birthday and he celebrated it by working. Times are tough for Millennials. And the city is lousy with them, like third class passengers swarming the deck of the Titanic now that all the boats are away. You can't stand still for a minute or twice as many will take your seat for half the money.

Lately he has been DJing on Friday nights at Vlada, a familiar vodka repository in Hell's Kitchen. On my most recent visits, the bar has felt less like a gay hot spot and more like a well-kept secret. Uh, me too! Let me tell you: nothing feels better than having the hollow echo of an empty bar mirror your own existence. But in Stephen’s defense, this is my first time there on a night he was working and the crowd was squeezed as tightly around him as the sleeves of his joyously clingy t-shirt.

Card Again

The doorman waved me into Vlada with a smooth gesture, “Go right in. I know your face.” He was as unknown to me as Jupiter. I know your old face he meant as he didn't bother to ask for my ID. I remember being offended when I would get carded at the door even though a baby could have been born since then who is old enough now to not be carded himself. Things just aren't as they used to be.

This was at Vlada but it was the second time in the evening that I wasn't carded. The first time was at Therapy where I went to meet Brent, who is visiting from San Francisco. Brent has been a long time listener of the show and I first met him when he was a nineteen year old college student seeing New York City. But that was eight years ago and Brent is all grown up now with a real job and boyfriend and everything.

Brent suggested Therapy (the only bar in the city he could remember) and the last time I was there, it was something of a ghost town since Hell’s Kitchen fell under the spell of Industry across the way. But tonight the bar was packed, to the rafters, with many young people and a few bewildered old people like myself who wondered what happened to their quiet old haunt. It turned out not to be a place to have a catch-up conversation but it was a place to run into Philip.

The More Things

O. Henry once famously said of New York “It’ll be a great place, if they ever finish it.” More than 100 years later, the place still isn’t done changing. I suppose that is both the best and the worst part about the city. On the one hand there is always something new and exciting going on. On the other hand, there is the constant inconvenience of scaffolding or being awakened to the sound of jackhammers.

For me the hardest change is when good friends leave the city. As hilarious as The Onion article about everyone deciding to the abandon the city simultaneously was (and it really, really was), the truth is that once you live in New York, it is really hard to imagine living anywhere else. It's the city of more. Everything happens here. When Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada dresses down her frumpy assistant, chronicling the genesis of her sweater from a kernel of an idea in Manhattan to a dusty sale bin in a discount store, she isn’t just talking about fashion, she is talking about the whole world. Everyone comes here because this is where things start. The people here make the decisions that alter the course of humanity and that is no small thing. Even with the shackles of winter, the noise, the near constant smell of urine, the inconvenience, expense and a million other vicious slices that make the death of a thousand cuts look like child’s play, the decision to walk away from it all is not an easy one.

The End

This has been coming for a while and I suppose it isn’t a surprise now that the day has arrived. I’ve been writing about my adventures out on the town for a few years now, so long in fact that I started with links to the Friendster.com profiles of total strangers. In the process, I have annoyed good friends and created near-enemies out of casual acquaintances. That isn’t to say that some people haven't enjoyed what I have written, it’s just that at a certain point the vehicle in any adventure simply runs out of steam.

I went to an amazing party in an apartment in the sky back in June. My friend Bobby who invited me has been impatiently waiting for me to write it up for months. And there was so much grist too. I flirted with an extremely drunk guy who no doubt has no recollection of either said flirting, nor my Herculean efforts buttoning his tiny cutoff shorts back up for him. There were friends in from out of town (Clay Lee!), adorable Matty K and party doll Will Wikle. It even had Lance Bass and party-crashing paparazzi, and Lance’s boyfriend mistaking me for a bartender and trying to order drinks from me. This is an important detail since the bartenders at the party were as hot as the panoramic city views and if anything, the way I am dressed, I am usually mistaken for a bike messenger.

But it has been two months and pertinent names have already faded into the distance. For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out why I hadn't written it all up. At first I told myself that I didn’t want to annoy the billionaire apartment owner upon whose largess I would hope to impose further in the future. Then, I told myself in between repeated viewings of Mad Men that I was just too busy. In reality I am just tired. Tired of facing down the inevitable ire of people I genuinely care about and fighting with doormen to hold onto a nightlife that has been on life support for some time. And for what? So I have something to write on the internet? Enough.

So this will be my final posting in this form, at least for a while. Maybe if the spirit really moves me, I will post another epic long story. In the meantime, my blog will take a different tack, closer to daily and in a pop culture form, and the reluctant personal life I am so reluctant to reveal will slip once again behind the veil.

Fitting then that there was an ending of another sort tonight as Jonathan held his goodbye party at Vintage in Hell’s Kitchen. He is moving to Los Angeles for his own exciting adventures out west. Maybe he will write a blog about it and you can follow that for a while. I was the first to arrive and we sat for a few moments in the back of the bar on paired red velvet sofas like talk show guests forced to interview each other. While he told me about his recent work off in Nevada, I tried to remember the last time I was at Vintage. I think it was with Terry, who showed up a few minutes later with his boyfriend Doug. The place looked so familiar even though I think then it was wintertime and I feel like John Tartaglia was there but I don’t remember how many years ago it was (2004?) or why I was there.

Normally I wear a blue polo when heading out to a gay bar, letting my icy eyes blend like camouflage into the color creating a matching accessory. But Jonathan also has blue eyes and since we can often be found dressing alike, among other alike things, I figured I would play it safe and wear a yellow Otter polo, a color I never wear and I suspect he wouldn’t wear either. After all, it is his party. No need to pull focus.

The other guests started to trickle in and I settled down on the couch with Terry, who has been my friend for 14 years. Like always, he overestimated the years, this time to a whopping seventeen. He always does that! I guess he just goes by how long it feels. “The years stretch as you get older,” Margo Channing warned us in All About Eve and she wasn’t kidding. Since both Terry and I lived in LA once (we met there), we both took turns torturing Jonathan with stories of West Hollywood life. Naturally, all of them revolved around sex.

Being in your mid-twenties and gay in West Hollywood is a bit like locking a kid in a candy store, only the store doesn’t open again until you are thirty-something, bloated and filled with regret. Jonathan had considered moving into an apartment on Palm Avenue, which coincidentally was the first street I lived on in West Hollywood. This set us off on a war of remembrances of tricks past, most residing in the notorious Mediterranean apartment complex at the foot of that hill.

“It’s a labyrinth,” I warned Jonathan. “You won’t even know you are in it until you are already inside. You are guaranteed to sleep with at least one person who lives there.” Terry nodded vigorously behind me.

After Jonathan went off to attend to the other guests and escape our dusty war stories, Terry turned to me with sudden seriousness. “That was a whole lifetime ago.” I am going through my old writing preparing a book to go out this fall that chronicles my life then so I know exactly what he means. Reading again what I wrote then and it feels like it all happened to someone else. A long time ago, in a sunny sex galaxy far, far away… filled with cheap food at Baja Buds, smoothies at Jamba Juice and late night noshing first at Canter’s and then when we had more money, the Jerry’s Famous across from Cedars.

Terry and his boyfriend Doug left and I tried talking to some new people. And they were nice enough. But my heart wasn’t in it. I hate saying good bye to Jonathan but I know that LA is the right place at the right time for him. And what’s next for me is right here in New York. His other friends didn’t see the finality in his jump to the left coast but I do. I know what it is like to be 27 and in West Hollywood with the whole wide world in front of you. Why would you want to carry groceries eight blocks in the snow or wait endlessly on a sweltering subway platform when there’s paradise in a beat up convertible sailing up the Pacific Coast Highway at sunset?

So off to LA for Jonathan. And for me here, something new. Maybe I will write about people I don’t know for a change. Matty has a boyfriend and I don’t see him so much anymore. Kugie is off in Chicago visiting and while he is a good sport about the blog, we can’t just hang out for the sake of entertainment. We gave at the office. And even though I am not going anywhere, I am ready for a change too. This blog has been like an infection in Manhattan: raised temperatures, broke out in a rash, and then ran its course. And now that the center of gravity is shifting to Brooklyn, with all its expanding waistlines and hipster edginess, I feel as arcane as Carrie Bradshaw. Even I don't live in Manhattan anymore. The time has come everybody. Hang up the Manolos already.

On my way to the train, and the inevitable final blog written on the Hudson line north heading off to my Don and Betsy Draper dream world, I dropped by the terrible Starbucks near my office. The guy behind the counter kind of flirted a bit and charged me an iced coffee instead of my iced venti soy chai. I left the two dollar difference in the tip jar, smiled and waited for my drink. That attention felt good, in a color I don’t like to wear and under such harsh lighting. But maybe he was just being nice, one New Yorker to another. It’s like that when you live here. Maybe that is something Jonathan will miss. No one who has ever lived here likes feeling like an outsider when they come back. Or worse, a tourist. NYC gets in your blood and it never leaves. For a while I had switched to vanilla lattes and even dropped soy altogether from my diet, but now I am firmly back in the old routine. I guess it’s true what they say: the more things change, the more they stay the same.

So even though I am saying goodbye, maybe you should stay tuned. Life has a funny way of surprising you. You never know what might be waiting next.

Park And Fly

On any given Thursday, there are few places in the world more exciting than New York City. I woke up this morning expecting that the most exciting thing to happen all day would be attending Matty’s inaugural party as club promoter: Sexy Back Thursdays at The Park. But then Sam jumped up from her desk next to me yelling “A plane just crashed outside our office!” and the day briefly took an entirely different turn.

A US Airways flight glided down in the Hudson river a few blocks from my office and quite literally outside the window of my old River Place apartment off the West Side Highway. All of the passengers and crew lived which allowed everyone to start with the gallows humor immediately without fear of much reproach. My favorite comeback being: “If we stop flying, the geese have won.” As it was, the landing and rescue were so quick and uneventful I have to assume that some of the NYC-based passengers merely stepped off the rescue boat, hailed a cab outside the Circle Line Tour and headed back to their respective apartments. After all, they didn’t have much time to change out of their wet shoes and head downtown to Matty’s fabulous new party, and New Yorkers are, if nothing else, a resilient bunch.

I do love The Park. It reminds me of my childhood fantasy of opening a kitschy indoor restaurant designed to look outdoors. I would call it Picnic and everyone would eat fried chicken and hot dogs at wooden picnic tables with red checkerboard tablecloths under a bright kleig light sun. The Park, with its indoor/outdoor motif and heavy doses of camp (what’s with all those Hitchcockian stuffed birds around the back bar mirror?), serves up heaping helpings of broken Asian doll along with expensive cocktails and high-end entrees. It is the restaurant of my childhood dreams if I had grown up in the West Village instead of Utah.

Suffice it to say, Matty’s party was a huge success. And why not? All the usual suspects were there. Gray in black. Mike without Ryan. Charlie in a v-neck sweater. JD and Clayton canoodling while Terry looked on at his handiwork approvingly. Even Brian Babst appeared at the front bar, already armed with lines from tonight’s 30 Rock. He insisted he wasn’t staying long but more than an hour later, I found him upstairs in the Penthouse crush looking determined. Meanwhile, Matty swirled around us all, a social Sonja Henie, skating effortlessly through the scene, smiling for the camera. Chris and Josh were skating too, though their routine was off and I think the judges noticed.

And in the center of it all: me. Poorly dressed as usual, long underwear hidden under my free American Idol shirt, surrounded by Gossip Gays in tiny preppy suits and nerd glasses. They made me want to shove them down the concrete stairs, turning the base of the steps into just a pile of mangled cashmere sweaters and shattered spines. I was inappropriate as usual, pushing my way through the crowd with zero regard for anyone’s safety, including my own. Even creating a short cut by walking across a pair of couches until I nearly stepped on a handsome stranger and his fag hag. “That’s not good for the furniture” I said to him as I climbed back down. He smiled back in a way that said he was charmed now, but sober and in daylight, he would not be so thrilled with me. Story of my life.

Maybe it was the cold but Los Angeles was a hot topic of conversation at Matty’s soiree. Brian deadpanned a story to me about gays in LA stocking up on tonic water like the end times are coming because “it doesn’t have any calories.” JD lamented the shallowness of the LA boys and worried aloud that “the plastics” had followed him to The Park. He seemed amused when I told him that my attitude problem practically got me run out of West Hollywood on a rail. The locals insisted that perhaps I would fit in better in New York, though when I arrived in Manhattan, all anyone ever asked for the first two years was if I was from LA. Perhaps I belong somewhere in between.

Later at the coat check as I bundled up inside my ski parka (an angry lesbian fashion shot fired across a sea of fitted wool coats) a different handsome man came down the stairs and smiled at me. “You look warm,” he cooed, but my only thought was making my train. I muttered “I certainly hope so!” as I pushed past him. After all, why look so out of place if I can’t at least prevent frostbite on my way home. And all apologizes to him and Kathleen Turner but body heat is not how I plan to ride out the winter.

Oh what a night, as the songwriter wrote. The coldest night of the year, of many years even. A plane crash down the street. Only in New York, kids. Only in New York. But as I said before, we New Yorkers are a resilient bunch. I probably didn’t do much to bring sexy back to Thursdays, The Park or the parka for that matter, but at least I was there. And, more importantly, despite my continued surly attitude, I did have a good time.

Wring Out The Old

I have known Terry Goldman for a long time, more than a decade but not quite a decade and a half. I was the first person he ever met online (though certainly not the last) and to show you how long ago it was, online then was a BBS in Los Angeles. And if you don’t know what a BBS is, you are probably too young to read this. Terry is a wonderful friend that I have hung out with in sunshine and now snow, in the desert and on the high seas. It’s been a grand adventure that continued on Saturday night in Chelsea.

Back in December after a long dry spell of not seeing each other, we went to see The Day The Earth Stood Still in IMAX and promised to become regular movie buddies in 2009. Last weekend, we had a gorgeous fatty meal at Outback followed by a bucket of popcorn at Gran Torino. Clearly, feeling on a roll, he suggested dinner, a movie and subsequent boozing this weekend. “We can see Bride Wars or The Unborn,” he suggested. Ugh. Is it January already?! Mercifully, we were spared a two hour sentence in wintry cinematic prison and opted instead for a huge dinner at ELMO, a popular eatery in the heart of gay Manhattan.

With house guests Ryan James and Andy in tow, along with Roommate, I was suddenly four in his ever growing dinner group, which eventually swelled to ten with even my neighbor Clayton thrown in to the mix. For some inexplicable reason, Terry invited only men who had the first letter J in their name: Jacob, Joe, Jeremy and JD. I kid you not that Jimmy and Jonathan were also invited at one point but for one reason or another were not there. For someone like me with so much trouble remembering names, this is mental suicide.

Jacob, Clayton and Terry were there waiting when I arrived, snuggled up close to the flirty DJ, and sandwiched between the plate glass front window and erstwhile party girl Zoe Murphy, her main gay, and what I suspect was her own mother, cooling their heels at the bar. I hadn’t seen Clayton since before the holidays so we had a lot of catching up to do. In short order, Joe arrived, followed by roommates Jeremy and JD. As I often do in these situations, when Terry told me that one of the people coming was on the Bravo series WorkOut, I for some reason thought it was Joe and assiduously avoided him, opting instead to sit next to JD, who it turns out was the reality show participant in question. The best laid plans of Mice and me.

It turned out that even our waiter was also a reality TV veteran, with three different shows to his credit. I am starting to think that reality shows are the new herpes. “Be careful going home with him. I hear he’s got a case of the MTV!!!” Waiter was very nice with a taut frame and the kind of ass you look forward to seeing in your face while he is waiting on the table next to you. But his TV exposure had apparently caused an outbreak that even infected his own apartment. When Terry asked him if he knew Davis from The Real World Denver, he became lovingly agitated. “He’s staying with me! He came for a couple of days and it’s weeks later and he is still there. I love him, but he has to go sometime!”

Despite having a reservation and waiting almost a full hour for our table, ELMO ended up splitting us up and putting us at two separate tables right next to each other. Clayton, Roommate, Andy and Ryan James squeezed into the booth across from us and I joined Terry and the J men at the table for six. Dinner went very smoothly but I started to sweat bullets when the check came. Looking around the table, I feared one of those situations where the check passes around and comes back seventy dollars short and everyone starts getting indignant about how they didn’t want to pay for an appetizer they only got one bite of while ignoring the three cocktails they consumed. We ended up only three dollars short and not wanting a fuss, I quietly threw in an extra five, grabbed my coat and started heading for the door.

Since Andy is underage, he and Ryan James went to the only 18 and over club in Manhattan, while the rest of us braved the cold two block journey to Barracuda for even more cocktails. As soon as we walked in, Terry informed me that Charlie was there, which was something of a relief. After a long meal of chit chat, it was nice to have someone else in the mix to talk to. Clayton and JD got cozy and Charlie became fascinated by Mike. “I love your roommate!” he gushed, ever the optimist, though he wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know. Meanwhile, Terry and I bounced around from person to person trying to keep all of the plates spinning properly, occasionally meeting up in the middle to strategize and relive the good old days.

At one point, while standing at the bar waiting to order more drinks, Mike and I gazed over at the hot bartender in the muscle shirt I have lusted after quietly since moving to NYC eight years ago. It made me a little sad. He is getting older. That means I am getting older too. You always notice your own age in other people before you see it in yourself, no matter how intense your daily wrinkle checks in the mirror may be. And it is always sadder. But as Terry and I stood in the noisy throng, discussing our friends and laughing at nothing, no time at all had passed for me. We were kids again, having fun at The Abbey, back when they still served just coffee and stale pie. I guess that is what keeps old friends together. No matter how old you are, they never get old for you.

Ritz Krieg

"You are so rude to people. How do you ever get boyfriends?" Charlie asks me as two Survivor fans who had been accosting him outside the coat check line at The Ritz wander away. I have trouble seeing the connection, knowing how much young gay men (and straight women) gravitate sexually toward those who ignore them. Charlie's eternal optimism, while very appealing, is not contagious to me, but it does set the old hamster wheel spinning in my head for the rest of the evening as we crush through the crowd at this Hell's Kitchen hotspot.

Earlier, I enjoyed two hours of hilarious racism at a showing of Gran Torino, the story of an old man coming to terms with a younger generation he doesn't understand , only later to find myself surrounded by a sea of unshaven men in skinny ties that I do not understand. Well, maybe that is putting too fine a point on it. Maybe I understand them all too well, in a lather, rinse, repeat sort of way. The beards and the tie/vest combos, a direct rebellion to the clean-shaven, casual Friday 90s, proliferate like the dirty hair and muted plaids of the early 90s that followed the Reagan red tie and shoulder pad suit severity of the 80s. And on it goes.

At JP and Duke's New Year's Eve party, Duke pointed across the way to the windows of a fashionable new apartment building. "Floor after floor of mid-century," Duke commented amid his own 1950s flourishes. When the gays find something they love, they don't so much run with it as sprint at a fevered pace until their hearts explode. I suppose we are all Mad Men in our own way. Later this month on the mall for the inaugural, I have no doubt my mind will wander back to the sea of jean shorts and white Don't Panic t-shirts that remain my sharpest memory of the 1993 March on Washington. It is nice to see that kind of optimism in activism again in our new Obama era, even if I can't transport that same emotion all night to The Ritz like Charlie, awash in the current generation's uniform of change.

After wandering around a bit downstairs with Matty and Joe, waiting for Ben Harvey to arrive, I finally settled in briefly on one of the couches with Charlie, whose snuggle up mode persisted from earlier at Joe's apartment. As we sat together with our arms around each other, Charlie waved across the room to a reasonably attractive man with the kind of severe overbite one only notices while sober or quizzically the next morning when you roll over in bed after a drunken night out on the town. "That's called the 'hi-sies'" Charlie says of his friendly wave. "That's how you meet people." The thought of a blow job from those chompers caused the blood to drain out of my face, and other places. I am all for meeting people, but I still think my more cautious nature is the way to go, especially if you are intoxicated.

However, meeting new people is a volume business. And in the end, Charlie is right, friendly works better than hostile. That was brought home later after Ben Harvey arrived with bandleader Zach. While standing with them Joe's friend Micah, who I only shook hands with earlier in Joe's apartment, made the big approach and tried to start a conversation with me. "You look so familiar," he offered, which I had also initially thought about him, though I chalked it up to his passing resemblance with the charming and upright Brian Ellner, who didn't like me so much anymore after our cab ride together where I refused to wear my seatbelt.

"Fire Island?" Micah asked causing the first in a series of responses that made the moment more and more awkward and less and less sexual. "Oh no. I don't believe in Fire Island. Not like it's a mythical place. I just think it's awful." To say that things went downhill from here is to understate the avalanche nature of the conversation. Micah was a perfectly nice investment banker ("Of course you are") who lives in Chelsea ("Naturally!") and was just trying to be kind and get to know someone. His first mistake was making that someone me.

In an effort to not portray myself as completely rotten, I think I had some nice moments with Chris and Josh, who I met at their Halloween party. Chris and I shared a few laughs at Rob Banning's holiday pretty boy bacchanal and last night at The Ritz, Josh and I had a moment making faces of mock embarrassment at two mid-century gays grinding so intensely on the dance floor I worried their crotches might become fire hazards. I even realized on the train home that Josh and I had met before his Halloween party on the R Family cruise to Canada in July where he was one of Rosie's Broadway Boys and I was the guy at the all-you-can-eat buffet every four hours. So I do have the capacity to make nice to people even with my appalling personality. Though I am fairly certain I kissed Joe's neck six times last night in front of the guy I am pretty sure he was on a date with, and then asked the guy to take our picture together. Eh. Nobody is perfect.

As I was making my good byes and heading for the door, I found Charlie who had left our group to pee, again surrounded by a small cluster of Survivor fans, being asked about Marcus and demanding photos, mere feet from the bathroom door. I rushed up like one of the gang. "I am a huge fan. Can I get a picture with you too?" Charlie laughed at my meanness, but as I tried to hand my camera to one of the real fans, the fan retorted, "We're not done with him yet!" I got that quick picture with him anyway and left him to be devoured by strangers. In moments like that, I relish my anonymity, my lack of politeness and my ability to go to the bathroom whenever I want.

Earlier, I had dinner at the Outback Steakhouse in Chelsea with Terry Goldman and his friend Romeo, in the back where the other gays were secretly eating in white trash heaven. We were talking about the choices gay men make, choosing the wrong men, or breaking up with good guys in favor of worse circumstances. "It reminds me of the old story," I told them, "about the cop walking down the sidewalk at night. He sees a man on his hands and knees under a lamppost looking around. 'Did you lose something?' the policeman asks. 'Yes. My keys.' says the man. So the policeman asks where he lost them and the man points further away to a darkened part of the sidewalk. 'If you lost the keys over there, then why are you looking here?' he asks the man, to which the man replies, 'The light is better over here.'" You can find all sorts of things where the light is bright and cheerful, just not necessarily what you are really looking for. In this circumstance, I prefer to be the cop, and just shake my head and keep walking.

People You May Know

Facebook has a box (recently co-opted by MySpace and others) called People You May Know, which shows the profiles of others connected to you through multiple friends on the service. This would be useful if people only connected to their nearest and dearest but since generally these seem to be the sites of endlessly intensive popularity contests, that is not the case. However, the party I attended down at Le Lupanar tonight was like the living embodiment of People You May Know.

I was invited by adorable Rob Banning, who works with me by way of the Martha Stewart cult. Rob endured a particularly amusing and exhausting trip with me to the Olive Garden some weeks back with a very drunken Michelle Collins and her equally drunk gay who was at that intoxicating level of inebriation where he could no longer tell how incredibly loud he was when he talked. Despite (are perhaps because of) that, we have developed a fast friendship. Rob was also at the Cabanas last Friday though I failed to blog about him. Rob has a gorgeous amount of style, a tasteful retro 80s preppiness without the trashy flash, all quaint bowties and catalog-ready long woolen scarves.

Tonight Rob greeted me at the door in a sleek red cardigan and that winning Sphinx smile of his that gives away nothing. The party was a sea of dark colors, save for Rob and me in my red tank shirt from Otter Fashion. For just a moment I didn’t feel so alone. The party was the whitest cream cheesy smooth collection of J. Crew boys I had ever seen, mixed with a smattering of Asians, a few chic young women and three impossibly handsome black men (aka argyle sweater, Club Monaco pullover, and tight green Polo). If it hadn’t been so dimly lit and filled with Beyonce songs, I would have sworn I was at a Harvard MBA mixer. Everyone had the kind of feckless smooth skin usually reserved for after photos in a Proactive infomercial. I’ve never felt so “ethnic” before in my life, awash in my glaring bohemia. That I met at least three men named Blake should come as no surprise to anyone.

Almost immediately, I ran into Hooper from work. Hooper, no stranger himself to this post-post gay narrow tie and vest set, always manages to be a relaxing figure for me in these environs. Maybe because we spend occasional quiet time in the flat unforgiving light of the office, when I make the arduous journey across the building from the sloppy “creative” side to the otherworldly quiet corporate side that is for most of the on-air personalities at SIRIUS as unknown to them personally as the land of Oz. I spent some time with Hooper upstairs before he decided to see what the heretofore unseen basement had to offer.

I decided to wait upstairs, still expecting to see Terry Goldman, who I had invited to join me at the party. Terry never made it, but while waiting, a parade of familiar faces came through the door. It turned out, there were people I did know, mixed in with the people I may know. Corey Johnson was first, and like most of the guests, also in a suit. As usual, he was flitting around bridging the gap between the moneyed A gays who hovered around the edges and the pretty boys who were up and coming in the centers of the rooms. Conor bounded in from the rainy night, embracing me in his warm loveliness. Moments later, almost as if on cue, Matty arrived with Hanno. Upon seeing Matty I knew the night would be fun.

After Matty and Hanno ditched their coats, we pushed through the crowd of familiar faces, recognized from a million Facebook Fire Island photo galleries and fundraiser party pix and headed for the basement. Hooper had since gone upstairs to throw himself on the mercy of a white U-shaped couch. But Chris was there, last seen in his apartment throwing a party of Shay, and we all had a round of drinks together. The basement was just like the upstairs but slightly less crowded and slightly hotter with a more accessible bar and longer bathroom line.

I had a nice chat with Chris and the usual laughs with Matty, but I was anxious the whole time. Something about the party had me on edge and I had a hard time shaking it. Maybe it was the waiting for Terry, or the juggling of Conor and Matty so they were never within drink throwing distance. Whatever it was, something felt not right, and then it went haywire because I think a guy started hitting on me. It’s hard to say.

After our first round of drinks, we all headed back upstairs, and while standing near the edge of the bar, a guy came up to me and started talking. We had met briefly at the front door when he first arrived, and in the jumble of last names as first names that wafted through the entryway like a stiff winter breeze as usual I did not immediately retain his name. (Finley, is that you?) He was handsome, intense of eye, looking without seeing in that way that denotes a still functional yet high level of intoxication. I made a reference to Douglas Sirk that I am quite certain he didn’t get. Then, in discussing his neighborhood, he said “It’s Chinatown” in a sly way that made me think he was quoting Robert Towne’s screenplay but moments later he continued his discussion of the neighborhood in a way that made me think he might not even have seen the movie.

We talked a bit about New York City, and how nice it is when it first snows and the city is covered in that white blanket that calms everything and covers all the grime…for fifteen minutes. That’s the trouble with Manhattan, I told him, nothing good here lasts. You have to enjoy it in the time you have it because you never know when it might be gone. We were rueful about it for a moment, but later as I walked to the venerable Grand Central on my way home; I looked up at the Chrysler Building and smiled. Chrysler itself may be gone soon enough, but the building remains. Nothing in New York City is permanent, but some things are the nearest thing to forever that we have. And in that moment, looking up at the glistening white lights in the hazy night sky, I savored it. Maybe things went right after all.

Phoenix Rising

It is so hard for me sometimes to know what to write here. I try to at least mention my adventures out on the town. Being something of a hermit, going to a bar is as close to an event as my life has these days. Well, yesterday a deer wandered right up to the bay window in the front of the house and was giving a disapproving glance at my Christmas tree when I spotted her from the kitchen. I really felt for a moment like I was in a Douglas Sirk movie, and not just because light was coming in from every direction at once. But when I went to get my camera, Mike scared the poor animal away. This is what passes for excitement and high drama at my house, so you will understand why a trip to a grungy watering hole is what I choose to write about in my semi-annual blog.

I wonder if grungy is really the right word for the Phoenix, an alt-boy neighborhood bar in the East Village. Seedy doesn't seem appropriate because I never worry about losing my wallet. And it isn't disgusting like The Cock, which in its past location had a bathroom so filthy I preferred instead to urinate outside against a wrought iron fence. That dump really knew how to put the anus in tetanus. Now that the Cock is by some necessity in the Hole (that, as they say, fits), I haven't been there since it moved. I'll just wait for the Health Inspector's final report and a booster shot.

The director Richard Brooks told a great story about making "The Blackboard Jungle" at MGM and how he wanted it to be "gritty" so, for instance, he had them make the walls near the light switches dirty, like in a real life high school. But every night, the old craftsmen of MGM would dutifully paint everything back to a pristine white because that was the MGM way. Most Manhattan gay bars are sophisticated and pristine, like an old MGM movie as are the fussy young queens who go to them. But the Phoenix is gritty, yes that's the word I want, but in just the same manufactured way the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland is dangerous. There is graffiti on the bathroom walls, but it's all very clever and occasionally political or deeply thought. There is a gruff bear of a man in the basement, but he is polite and runs the coat check. So the gay boys can have their sense of life in an old fashioned road house, but still order a fancy mixed drink without getting punched in the face.

The Christmas holiday is right around the corner and that means everyone is escaping the island of Manhattan like it's Paris 1940 and the Nazis are about to march in. And in much the same way, the gays like to have one last drink before they fly off to fly over places where mind-numbing conversations will take place in living rooms crowded with knick knacks and oppressive memories, and the last gay person they will see for a week will be a weary flight attendant more interested in his own frosted tips than your safety in the air.

Mike had just said good bye to his mother, who visited us for a week instead of the other way around, and was certainly in the mood for a night of East Village boys, his favorite kind. I invited him along even though I had really invited myself along. Terry and Jonathan had hatched a plan to hang out there together, but since they hatched the plan on my own Facebook Wall, I felt no compunction about inviting myself and a few friends along as well. As it turns out, that was the right move, as a little rain earlier had caused Cinderella to meet her midnight a little earlier than planned and Terry bailed on the whole thing. That would have left Jonathan alone to hunt his neighborhood haunt, and we can't let that happen, can we? Not right before Christmas!

I invited Zach to come along who insisted he would stay away from the gin and tonic this time around. He brought along his very newly single friend Jon, who looked very familiar to us all, but mostly looked like Zach in five years. The conversation spun easily between the five of us into a roundelay, layering over and over again in its series of recurring themes (the pending election, gay life, 30 Rock, Britney, Manhattan), while past acquaintances of Jonathan's made blatant overtures for rematches that he oh so coyly moved to the txt realm or rebuffed entirely. Meanwhile, Mike was struck by Zach's powerful and rigid stoicism, more than a match for his own blank visage. Jon was bored, and I passed the time waiting to see who I would run into at the bar.

I don't know many people in New York City, and I infrequently go to the Phoenix. But it never fails that someone I know is in that bar! This time around it was Michael, Melissa's contortionist of a roommate, who had shaved his head and packed on easily thirty pounds of muscle. If I were living back in Los Angeles, I would assume that he got a part in a movie and had altered himself for a character role, but in New York, even though he might well be an actor preparing for his Broadway debut, it seemed more likely that he just was tired of the old Michael and decided to make a drastic change. Having worn the same hair style for twenty years now, it is a notion I don't easily understand.

In the end, it turns out that everything else with me was still exactly the same. Outside the coat check, a drunken Jonathan confronted me about my electric blue polo shirt. "I know why you wear blue all the time," he smiled as though revealing a surprising secret. But it was no secret to either of the blue-eyed people in the conversation, whose own vanity led them to the matching color. We got into a competition about the blueness of each other's eyes and I insisted on one-upping him by telling him that my eyes change color with the color around them. Then with great effect, I zipped up my pale grey jacket and Jonathan watched my blue eyes turn pale grey. "I hate you," he said as he turned on his heel and stumbled up the stairs.

It is true that I am often an enormously unlikeable person. I don't know why anyone listens to our radio show. I tell Romaine all the time that we are two of the most unlikeable people ever and then we just laugh about how silly it all is. Maybe people like us together because we are both so horrible that we deserve each other. Out in the real world, my terrible personality keeps my number of close friends conveniently small and my desire to leave the house even smaller. But as long as I have a blog to write and a radio show to do, I will continue to burn my way through modern gay life, rise from the ashes once more, and do it all again the next week.

After all, it is Winter, and we have to keep warm somehow.

See Or Be Scene It

Jonathan invited me to a party in his apartment tonight. His sister is in town (the one whose face he appears to be licking in one of his Facebook photos) and since she is under 21, he decided staying in to party would be a much better idea. Since it is well-established that we like all of the same things, he felt it was safe to invite me to a Harry Potter-themed party in which we would play Scene It (the Muggles edition) and other fun board games. Since I will take any excuse to hang out with Jonathan and I am highly competitive when it comes to games of all kinds, I was happy to sign on for the adventure. I even dragged Roommate along because I didn't want to him to feel left out or spend the evening home alone on a Saturday night.

We sojourned down to the city and descended on Jonathan's apartment with a regifted bottle of champagne (I have FIVE of them in my house and no one will ever drink them) and a plastic container of 23 store-bought bakery sugar cookies with holiday sprinkles on them (one of them accidentally fell into my mouth while bored in traffic on the West Side Highway). The cookies were a big hit and I am sure Jonathan will find a good home for the champagne this holiday season.

If I may veer off on a non sequitor for a moment... I just don't understand champagne. I have never really been wild about the taste of it (although I am also not a wine person so I am probably not the best judge). It seems fine in mimosas, but a mimosa isn't the kind of drink you can have six of. Really you just have one. The problem with champagne is that it is a commitment issue. Once you open the bottle, you have to finish the whole thing. You can't just put a cap in it again and file it away for later, like a trusty bottle of gin. And given that it is an alcohol that can only be sipped and not chugged or downed in shots, you really need to have something of an enthusiastic crowd to even bother to open the damn thing. For all these reasons, I hate champagne. It is the devil. I hope Jonathan likes it, or passes it along because I am certain now that champagne has become the 21st century version of the Christmas fruitcake.

Jonathan was already half in the bag when we arrived, which is just how I like a man. We are so alike, I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised when I discovered he also throws a party in the same way I do: unnecessarily intensely. Like Robert DeNiro sweeping dirt into a dustpan. So much anxiety over nothing. I wasn't there five minutes before he said, "Are you going to sit down? You just standing there is making me nervous." I felt like I was having an out of body experience. It's a dull cliche but he literally took the words right out of my mouth.

We settled in fairly quickly to a deeply nerdy game of Scene It devoted entirely to Harry Potter. I think I would enjoy (and would win handily) in a regulation game of Scene It, but although I liked the films, I only saw them once, and really couldn't remember any salient details that might have helped me out in this immediate circumstance. In between, there were plenty of jazzy conversational bits about other pop culture phenomenons and I was right in the mix with all of those. A discussion about an upcoming version of the Veggie Tales on the big screen led to my best line of the night:

"I thought after the Terri Schiavo case, the Christians were done with Veggie Tales."

It got a mixed reaction from the crowd. Maybe it was too soon. After all, my comparison a few moments later of Courtney on Survivor to a Holocaust victim went over like classic Don Rickles in Vegas, so it was definitely a group that appreciated more daring material. Jonathan laughed heartily at all my jokes which is all I really ask for in life.

Terry was there as well, although he was anxious to escape the house party at a reasonable hour and hit the bars. Roommate sat out the Harry Potter game and tried to enjoy whatever was happening on the TV screen while also desiring to join Terry in his planned escape from the fun. Unfortunately, Terry wanted to go to Barracuda, which I have previously established is a cluster fuck nightmare now that I am just too old to deal with anymore. I am convinced that one of these nights, just like the mythical rat king on 30 rock, a knot of gays will become so entangled in their own egos and drama that they will be unable to pull away and will just have to fight each other to the death to escape.

The Harry Potter portion of the evening over, Terry Goldman bailed to meet up with people who were still interested in getting laid on a Saturday night. The gaming at Jonathan's then turned to something much more up my alley: Namesake. Jonathan had raved about this game before when he first invited me over for the party. He had played it in the past and loved it so much, he found one on eBay (it is out of circulation) and bought it. In the game, much like the early scene in the movie Go where the checkers battle each other to name a famous person who's name starts with X to decide who will work the cash register, players must name famous people in a series of categories with particular first names. Jonathan's entire pop culture canon can be perfectly summed up in his illuminating examples for the name "Ethel": Ethel Mertz, Ethel Merman, or Ethel Rosenberg." Namesake could be the new gay version of the Rorschach test. I'll tell you a first name, and you tell me the first famous person that comes to mind.

I loved the game because it was right up my alley. My brain is like a dusty attic filled with old, broken pieces of pop culture just waiting to be brushed off and sat on the front lawn for strangers to bid on in a mixture of shock and wonderment. Roommate on the other hand was in a new circle of hell. It was all the things he hated most in life: socializing with people and being put on the spot about pop culture. Plus, the TV was tuned to endless episodes of "I Love New York," a show that represents everything he can't stand about the darkest low points of his beloved TV programming universe.

Unfortunately, the structure of the game play and general intoxication made the experience last for hours longer than necessary. It is always a bad idea to play board games with drunk people. They have no sense of time passing, which is always a problem, and their slowed reaction times can make something as simple as picking up and reading a card off the board take ten minutes. At two am, perilously close to the end of the game anyway, there was a general movement to call it quits and head home. It was getting late, and my earlier off-hand suggestion of Taco Bell was looking more and more necessary. Jonathan was also in the mood for making a run to the border, so he closed up his party and joined us on our fourth meal adventure.

The Taco Bell on 14th street is open until 5am on Saturday nights and by 2:30 when we arrived, the scene was in full swing. The crowd was almost entirely straight, and a mix between drunk twenty-somethings needing a greasy bite and teenagers with nowhere else to go. I suggested to Roommate that it would make a perfect video podcast. Fourth Meal: A Late Night Soap Opera. So much drama was played out between bites of chalupas that you wouldn't need to do much more than set up a camera and start shooting. Jonathan and I engaged in a deep conversation about the shared sitcom structures of I Love Lucy and the Golden Girls (did you know they both shot on the same sound stage? True!) while, to paraphrase The Remains of the Day, Roommate put his thoughts elsewhere while we prattled on endlessly.

And then, just as soon as it began, it was time to call it a night. We dropped Jonathan off and made our way back out of the city. Okay, so Roommate didn't have the best time but tonight was just the way I like it. And it was nice for a change to be at a party and not spend the whole evening worrying if everyone had enough to eat or drink. Jonathan said once that he thought he would be me in a few years. Having seen how he throws a party, I think he is already me in far too many ways. But I don't mind it, if he doesn't.

Meeting Face To Facebook

I have been spending a lot of time on Facebook.com lately. So, MySpace.com, if you are reading this, you know where I have been most nights these past few weeks. I hope you won't be mad. It's not you. It's me.

My first online social love was Friendster.com in 2003 and it was a glorious adventure. Friendster is a dream for stalking people, which is why I link to it so liberally in my blog. It's always the first and easiest place to find anyone you casually bump into at a party or meet at Bowery Bar. I was one of the first gay adopters of Friendster in NYC (Hell, one of the first adopters period -- user number 2876 thank you very much) so I like to think I personally turned it into the server crashing nightmare it was when most everyone I know abandoned it a few months later. I still keep my Friendster profile up and, to a certain degree, running, but it is a little bit like colonial Williamsburg now. A functioning place trapped in the past.

I dabbled a bit in Connexion.org land. The nice thing about Connexion: no straight people! If you saw a cute guy, he was a homo. The downside was that he was probably a Denver homo, but a homo just the same. Connexion seemed mostly to be a quickie Friendster knockoff with a political edge to it. It can also be useful for online stalking, but functionally much less interesting than Friendster. Connexion is basically Friendster's slutty kid sister. Different, younger, faster, but still sharing a LOT of the same DNA.

After the radio show launched, music artists kept raving about MySpace.com. I resisted because it seemed like something for the kids. But guests on the show kept talking about what a great organizing tool it was and how useful in informing fans of upcoming events and new developments. So as a show, we jumped in feet first. We each made profiles and we even created a show profile. When I launched my video podcast, it got a page too! Soon, MySpace became the space for me to wallow in during all my free time. True, I was lax in updating my top eight friends, and any new changes there just caused grumblings from those who got dropped or never were included.

I don't know why MySpace became the rock that everyone's ego shattered on, but such was the case when people didn't rank where they thought they should. I have no patience for this. I was only on there for the show, so why would I highlight friends and family who have no connection to the show at all? It is a skewed perspective on what my life is. A public profile for a public life. But private people didn't always see it that way.

More recently, the invites to join Facebook started coming in droves. As soon as it opened up outside its college core, I had to start avoiding the requests like they were calls from creditors. If MySpace was for the kids, Facebook (in my mind) was for the babies. There was no way in hell I was joining a primarily college network. The offers kept coming and serious friends tried to assure me that it was a place for grown-ups. I wasn't buying it. But then everything changed at the Gay Life Expo.

There was much chatter from Terry Goldman and friends about Facebook. Cast in the Doubting Thomas role, I threw myself into the part body and soul. But Jonathan made me see the light. During the course of our brief conversation I determined that we liked the same TV shows and he was even reading "The Nine," which like the Alexander Hamilton Exhibit at the Natural History Museum in 2005, I had been meaning to check out for weeks but had not gotten around to it. So, with his credibility firmly in place, he persuaded me with the final, crucial piece of information that changed my mind: you can play Scrabble on Facebook.

Now my waking hours are spent cramming QI into triple word scores on Scrabulous and battling Australian high school students on Bogglific. I am practically untouchable at Boggle so it is nice to have an outlet for that since Games.com got so sketchy after 9/11. Scrabble is another matter and I remain ever vulnerable to endless defeat as my romantic side is always lured to the fancy word over the high point score. Story of my life. Go for the joke or the bit instead of the money or ambition. Since Jonathan is the reason I joined Facebook, I spend an enormous amount of time being beaten by him at Scrabulous. Not only does he have a fancy education (you know Johns Hopkins is a good school because they throw in that extra S to confuse and thus weed out the idiots), but he is smarter than I am. He does the Sunday Times Crossword in ink, which I would likely only attempt after a pitcher of mimosas and no will to live.

However, I like to think my quick wit has the upper hand. In between rounds of Scrabble, I spend a lot of time leafing through his many photos looking for snappy photo caption opportunties. A photo of Jonathan smiling from inside an apple tree gets "Lot of fruit in that tree" while a strict rectangular pattern of flowers in a garden is declared "The Tomb of the Unknown Florist." He has a strange habit of being photographed with weird blank expressions where his mouth is hanging open which has led to an unfortunate string of captions related to short buses and the Special Olympics. This is probably all just passive-aggressive misery on my part at being bested constantly on the Scrabble board, but mostly I just amuse myself endlessly. He seems enormously patient while I commit this travesty on his treasured photo memories and I apreciate that.

With all of the applications on Facebook, it is easy to kill thousands of hours in a single day without even noticing. Yes, some of them are mildly irritating (do we really need more than one travelled world map application?) while others are downright bizarre (nevermind, the obvious gay angle to my profile, why does Compare People keep asking me if I would rather marry my sister or my sister-in-law? What kind of choice is that?). My friend Alex Kang just keeps lashing out in all directions on Facebook with status updates that started casually enough ("Alex is thinking he still don't "get" Facebook. What do people do on here besides send vampire bites to one another? Do we not have any thing better to do?"), progressed a bit ("Alex is so bored with this site. And he doesn't want to be bitten by vampires, or given eggs to hatch, or the millions of other pointless stuff on this site.") and now borders on mutiny ("Alex is tired of comparing people, stripper naming and defining himself. Is this ALL there is to Facebook?").

Personally I am willing to judge this Facebook by it's cover. It's a game of modern socialism. A website for people with tons of time of their hands (i.e. college students and adult gay men with high powered careers). None of us have kids of our own, so why not just play in the sandbox a little while longer. Lighten up, Alex. Maybe a few rounds of Scrabble will help balance out your Qi.

See? I am learning something! Johns Hopkins here I come!

Gay Life Exposed

Yes, I am possibly the gayest person alive. But for me, being gay is something of a hobby. I enjoy it, but I like to think I can’t make a full time occupation out of it. Then again, it’s a little bit like being a die-hard Yankees fan. It doesn’t matter what career you may pursue, everyone assumes that most of your waking thoughts are about baseball. I wish there was a way to leave the unfinished puzzle of my gay life on a game table in the living room and run some errands unrelated and unfettered by the lack of resolution. After all, it will still be there when I get back. But as gay people, we are vertically integrated by not just our love of sex with men but also a desire to arrange flowers, listen to Judy Garland or declare someone too fat for that outfit. As much as you may want to quit, hide or sideline it, gay can pour from your pores like the smell of gin from a notorious alcoholic.

Apparently, for some people, gay isn’t just a hobby, it’s a way of life. And for them we have the Gay Life Expo. These kinds of expos are like speed dating between gay consumers and mainstream corporations. In each case, they are hoping to find perfection. But just like most speed dating rounds, what actually stands in front of you can often be very disappointing. For the gays: disappointment in the quality and diversity of the companies that bothered to show up. For the companies: wonder as to the location of these high end consumers demographers have been promising them for years. And if you ever want to dispel the myth of gays as fashion forward, articulate trendsetters, this is the weekend adventure for you! Other myths, such as gays being indiscriminant whoring drunks and lesbians being aggressively cheap and demanding of free items, remain woefully intact.

I wanted to go because I think it’s important for our company to crack into the NYC gay market in a substantial way. And a trade show seven weeks before Christmas is as good a place as any to plant the holiday gift seed. It was also a chance to spend some time hanging out with co-workers that I like (Jeremy Hovies, Keith Price) without the embarrassment of needing to be nice to the ones I don’t like, which I will have to do soon enough at the annual holiday party.

I had a short segment on the stage that I originally thought was just an opportunity to wave to the crowd and throw some free t-shirts to the lesbians. But when I was at the office thirty minutes before the show printing out the information, I noticed that I would instead be an emcee and be introducing some of the performers. This was not good news. Emceeing at a pride event is hard enough, but at least the crowd is drunk and excited. Performing at a trade show is like trying to sell real estate to death row inmates. The chairs are usually filled with people too lazy to walk the length of a convention center without needing to rest an hour for every ten booths they passed. I tried to encourage them to enter to win the free radio we were giving away, not more than ten feet from the closest chair but most of them preferred to stay in their seats and stare dead-eyed ahead. I don’t need a TV show now. I already know what it feels like when people watch you on TV, from the perspective of the television set itself.

The lowest form of degradation came at the end of my set when Scott Nevins launched into his “game show” with the OutQ personalities playing along with “real people” from the audience. Scott, with his Groucho brows and pancake make-up projecting like Ethel Merman to the third balcony, took to the stage like a rat diving into a sewer. For the purposes of the game and a chance at some playful nastiness in my direction, he paired me with a genetic male cross of Ab Fab’s Edina Monsoon and Jodie Foster in Nell. He was wearing X-Ray goggles from the back of a 1970s comic book and a puffy white jacket with the entire NYC subway map printed on it, his native language that of Leeloo from The Fifth Element. It seemed from his insistent waving of a gay bar rag in my face that he was in the current issue of HX Magazine, photographed for Halloween in what I can only assume is his normal attire, and captioned as “Bee Bitch.” So the other hosts had actual contestants and I was paired with a lump of mashed potatoes. As I should have learned from the Faggot Feud with Richie Rich in 2004, never walk on a stage where someone else is controlling the mike. Point taken.

After the event, I decamped with the folks at HERE TV for dinner. Cutie pie Chris was there again, although in retrospect, I realize he was the only actual HERE person at the restaurant. At the Expo, I saw Josh, but he opted to head home after the long weekend and crash. Earlier from the stage, I saw Peter Stickles walking around, but he left before I was unshackled from the umpteenth just-so Judy impression emanating from little Scotty Nevins. I hope Peter didn’t see me, but as a performer, I am certain he would have sympathized with my plight. Lady in a cage!

So it was Chris for dinner and my friend Terry from Los Angeles. The other two were flirty Jimmy with sad eyes and a boyfriend in the steam room (unrelated) and adorable newcomer Jonathan, who was too young to appreciate my dusty early 80s references. Hey, did you know that Vic Morrow was named Rotary Club Man of the Year?

What? Too soon?

We went to Ariba Ariba, which in the absence of real Mexican food, will do in a pinch. Jonathan and I bonded over our mutual hatred of the sexy yet slow homos who were occupying our future table. Besides, we were in a hurry. I noticed in the midst of the football game playing on the TV over the bar that the Amazing Race was starting that night and I was fairly certain it wasn’t in the DVR at home. There were 3:34 minutes left in the third quarter which I gay-estimated was about an hour left in the game. With an hour of 60 Minutes sandwiched in between, I knew I had to leave as soon as the game ended to be home in time to not miss the start of the show.

It turns out Jonathan is as plugged in to politics as I am, and he is in the midst of reading The Nine, which I have been dying to pick up. I am such a Supreme Court junkie, I would call in sick to work just to watch a televised confirmation hearing. Then again, I would call in sick to eat a container of ice cream, so the threshold there is pretty low. And I was enjoying all of our banter until I looked up and noticed the football players touching each other inappropriately and CBS announcing the Play of the Day. In my head I heard the stopwatch ticking and Leslie Stahl, with her whipped cotton candy hair and dulcet tones, laying out her segment about famine in Africa, Lindsay Lohan or both, and I knew it was time to go.

As I raced home through the wooded splendor of the Saw Mill Parkway, the concrete monoliths of Manhattan in the rearview mirror, I took stock in the level of gay in my own gay life. Years ago, I left the ghetto behind. I loved my time in West Hollywood, but a body can only take so much abuse, and really that kind of stress testing is for the young. My existence now is suburban, surrounded on all sides by the known markers of heterosexual existence: soccer moms and RVs. And in the middle of it all, my little Cape Cod house, with the bay window and stocked bar in the basement. It’s as gay as a picnic basket, even without the bags of flower bulbs waiting on the window seat to be planted, carefully arranged by blooming season and chosen to resist the voracious dietary habits of the deer that cruise my yard like it’s The Ramble. In looking over the goods presented at the Gay Life Expo, I don’t think my life, as defined by their terms, is gay. Yes, I am fussy about my few precious elegant things, but I think that is borne more out of a desire for strict traditionalism and less about homosexuality. I’m old-fashioned, and I don’t mind it, as the song says. But given how unlike the rest of my family that is, I suppose I can lock that final piece in my gay life puzzle and consider it solved.