My Tart Will Go On

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

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

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

In The He Of The Night

I stepped out onto the street and the air hit me like wet cotton, hot and sticky. The second day of summer and already the air is so thick you can taste it. This is the reason that New Yorkers have for decades abandoned the city during the summer. But like that poor guy in The Seven Year Itch, I have to work, so I am not going anywhere. And neither is the humidity.

Callous In Wonderland

There are always hot guys around. This is the world I live in. Well, it is the world I work in, which sometimes feels like real life, even when it isn’t. I exist on a plane with blurry players dancing on the blurry lines between fantasy and reality. Who can say what is real and what isn’t?

The whole show tonight was the subject at hand. We spent an hour talking to the two finalists and the winner of the current season of Project Runway. But I was less interested in talking to Seth Aaron about his leggings than I was confronting him about my lack of an invitation to Laura Bennett’s finale viewing party. After all, I thought Laura and I made a connection when she joined us in studio recently to plug her delightfully breezy parenting guide “Didn’t I Feed You Yesterday?” In my head, I imagined I would be her new gay boyfriend and even though I know less than nothing about fashion, we would pal around over spiked coffee and she would try to marry me off to her gay manny. But I emailed her more than a week ago to no reply and then I see pictures from her party posted by the gay bloggers she did invite. Suddenly the reality is that I am Stella Dallas, outside looking in.

We rounded out the show with our usual Friday Night Dance Party, our excuse to not talk much in the last hour of the show while a famous DJ plays their favorite tunes. Tracy Young the sexy lady who spins at all the hot gay boy events was in studio for this round, looking as adorable as ever. Her first song was her mix of “Tardy For The Party,” the freshman musical effort of one Kim Zolciak, who puts the real in The Real Housewives of Atlanta. Kim called into the show and was exhaustingly vague about their relationship, while Tracy just sat there politely minding her own business. Now I know why reality TV requires so much editing. Some stories demand scissors and tape to make sense of.

Moments before Tracy bounced into our lives, adorable singer and actor Chris Salvatore popped into the studio. Ever since his film Eating Out 3: All You Can Eat hit the home video market, the gay community has memorized every detail of his naked body in freely distributed screen caps. Yes, we got him to reluctantly take his shirt off in the studio. It was very Coco from Fame without the creepy campiness. But he really wanted to discuss his music, especially his appropriately titled single “Dirty Love.” While he was leaving, he asked for my phone number so he and his manager (my friend Ryan) could meet up with me after the show.

I admit it. I thought he was attractive. After my silly flirtation with Drew Cutler a few weeks ago, I should have thought better of another in-studio showmance, but flirting is fun and it’s even more fun when the flirt comes back to you. So I met up with Chris and Ryan after the show at the apartment of some friend of theirs that is apparently so popular (aka whorish) that it appears on foursquare.com as a destination. (Normally a line like that would be me trying to be clever, but in this case it is in fact true.) My plan was to just spend a few flirty minutes with him before heading off to Brooklyn for a special Friday night edition of Ben Harvey’s GUMBO.

There were about eight gay men in the apartment and each one was more attractive than the last. They kept exploding out of nooks and corners, arms bulging from tight t-shirts, winning smiles shimmering in the night. I have to assume they all share a very popular house on Fire Island in the summertime, although I honestly didn’t want to know more. No sooner had I tried to remember some (any) of their names than a titsy blond woman wandered into the scene demanding acknowledgement that she wasn’t a fag hag because fag hags have no hope of ever getting laid and then blurted out, “You know what I hate about the gay community?”

“Everything?” was one response. “Gay men?” was the one with universal agreement among the men.

These of course were our reasons for hating the gay community. She hated it because when she went out to a gay club, she had the least chance of getting laid. She said this of course while a gay man was running his hand over her left breast and I pointed out to her that she already had gotten more action at the party than any of the gay men standing there. Let’s just say between her ridiculous stance against the gays (if all you want is to get laid, hang out with straight men you idiot) and her monologues delivered at full screech (“I just don’t understand lesbians. The whole thing doesn’t make sense. I am hungry for cock in my stomach!”), my dinner was ready to leave before I was, and I was beyond ready to go.

After Chris was prodded into singing a bit of one of his tunes a cappella in the bedroom, the three of us decamped to The Ritz. I had planned to ditch them at the door on my way to a quick turnaround in Brooklyn, but then Chris had nuzzled up to me while we were walking over after he found out I was single. As I tried to leave, he grabbed me a bit on the arm, “You aren’t leaving now, are you? You’ll come in for one drink, right?” Cut to me standing there with Ryan watching Chris do a shot out of an ice sculpture shaped like a man’s ass. “I thought it was a vagina!” he yelled with a smile, wiping his chin with the back of his hand. A bit later, I was leaving to try to make the 1am train when I ran into Rob on his way in with his notorious roommate Erik Bottcher, who I had never really met (or have I?) and who is connected to me on Facebook through about 120 of the hottest men you have ever seen.

Tardy Erik, for whom the party was just getting started, grinned at me and it was wicked, “Oh you aren’t leaving right now, are you? You can join us for a minute right?” I can’t say no to a handsome man and back into the breach I went. It was nice to see Rob again since we used to work together and he keeps trying to get together with me and I never make it happen. We swirled around a bit downstairs, perplexed by the bartender who was half wearing a shirt. I watched Erik and Rob do shots out of test tubes served by a weary drag queen. A not-so attractive man followed Rob out of the bathroom and tried to make something happen between them but the reality was that was never, ever going to happen.

Naturally, Rob and Erik wanted to go upstairs and moments later I was back where I had started. Erik knew all of Chris and Ryan’s hot friends from that tiny apartment located on the corner of Manhunt and used condoms. Of course they did. Hot men are like migrating birds. Their way in life is easier when they all group together and head in the same direction. Suddenly it was Chris and Rob side by side doing shots, Chris out of an ice penis and Rob’s lips pressed against that frozen ass from before. It was time for me to go, again. For real this time.

The first time I said good bye to Chris, I dirty danced with him for a few minutes before walking out the door, but this time, I gave him just a quick hug and a kiss good night. The slow dance had felt hot and passionate, like the real thing. But what is the real thing anyway? Earlier on the show, he said people liked his performance in Eating Out but he was essentially just playing himself. He is an actor and creating a moment and making it seem true is what he does for a living. Besides, didn’t I think I had the real thing before only to have it explode into a horrible ball of hatred that left only mutually assured destruction? Perhaps showmance is real enough for now. After all, it always feels good and there is never any bitter after taste.

Kim was so maddeningly vague but when you are a real person in a Real world, there is probably a lot to sort out. I know the feeling. What do any of us know for certain about anything? My mother used to say that my grandmother Laura “never believed in anything she couldn’t put her fist through” and maybe that is the right idea. So much of life is show and unlike a movie where they turn up the lights or a play where the actors bow, the show of life doesn’t have the kind of definitive delineation that makes separating truth from illusion easy. Without the comfort of a proscenium arch, none of it is particularly real and reality is just what we make of it. If pressing up against Chris and running my hand through his hair and down his chest felt real then I guess it was real. Or at least, real enough for tonight.

The Big Chill

It’s cold. And I know that no one moves to New York for the weather. But still. It is worth mentioning that it is cold. Yesterday, it snowed. In the middle of October. My carefully drawn cotton cobwebs decorating my Douglas Sirk-inspired Cape Cod were laced with real live snowflakes, two weeks before Halloween. It’s most frustrating because we didn’t even have a summer this year. It was just one long rainy spring with five warm days in August, and now this.

In the elevator tonight after the show, Father Dave gently chided me that my fabulous grey wool fall coat wasn’t equal to the weather. It is one of my few possessions that I would actually put into the fashion category. Normally, that coat, with its family von Trapp precision cut, lasts me well into December when I replace it with a bulky snow parka, shades of Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club. I don’t even know where my leather gloves are. Father Dave is right. I have been caught unawares by the weather.

Not that I have any great love for Bowery Bar and the Stepford gays that swirl around inside it like lost guppies, but I do have an annual tradition of visiting on the last bearable Tuesday evening of autumn. Now I fear I have already missed my window. Where will the gays go, now that Fire Island was a soggy, damp huddle around a firepit and their only viral infection this summer was Miley Cyrus’ “Party In The U.S.A.?” Frost has already descended on the Central Park ramble and they will soon, I have no doubt, open the Highline for ice skating.

Monday night I ran down to The Ritz to see Bianca’s show and hang out with Matt Kugelman, the only good thing that has ever happened to me at Bowery Bar aside from that accidental blow job I got a couple of years ago. I don’t know what happened. Matt and I had a good rhythm going of partying down, pulling it together and then partying down a few days later. I blame the self-imposed end of my blog. The unexamined nightlife is not worth living, I guess.

I told Bianca to put Bobby in the show and he was definitely a crowd pleaser. I wish I had taken some pictures. It was fun, but even The Ritz, usually a reliable screeching twink explosion was down to a dull roar. Then again, it was a Monday night, so I suppose they can be forgiven for lacking their usual Saturday night specialness. After all, how can I complain about a slow evening as the nightcap to a weekend where I hung out with more hung porn stars than you can shake a dick at and slept with one of them?

But as I turn around in bar after restaurant after bar in this town, I am starting to think I am not the only one whose party persona is as worn and threadbare as the fashionably unemployed men that populate the grainy/fabulous black and white images of 1930s Manhattan, fedoras pulled low over unshaven grim faces, suit collars turned up against a chilly economy. Perhaps I have been underestimating the financial deathblow our country has been blown. Or maybe I am not the only one craving a solid night of rest in the city that never sleeps.

Five Second Rule

Standing outside Katwalk on a not particularly windy summer night in Manhattan, Listerine breath strips flutter out of their green plastic coffin onto the sidewalk. A spritely young gay leaps after them declaring the tried but not so true rule about putting things in your mouth that have hit the ground. My mind races to the gallons of urine, vomit and dog shit that have washed over 35th Street in the last century and I stop him in his tracks. After all, as important as fresh breath is, it doesn’t supersede the need to not place your tongue on a NYC sidewalk.

It was going to be that kind of night, where bad ideas seemed promising, as I stepped into the joint birthday bash for Matt Kugelman and the Roy boy known as Bianca del Rio. Kugie is well known to my blog and Bianca is widely known as a foul-mouth insult queen from New Orleans whose love of offensive racial humor and abortion jokes is well documented, mostly by the Kuge himself. For Roy’s birthday, Matt put together a “tribute” video featuring other notable drag queens, personalities and me. Never one to pass up the opportunity to be seen publicly or insult someone I hardly know, I jumped at the chance. And if you can do both and eat cake and drink, well it might as well be Christmas!

Generally I don’t like going anywhere that I don’t know people. I do know Matt but it was his birthday, so I knew he was going to be the center of attention and therefore hard to monopolize. But I did see Terron, drunk and clicking away with Matt’s camera. And TJ, who I remembered from our last encounter some weeks ago at Rockit when I scooped his drunk ass over to the Stage Deli in the wee hours of the morning and when I say we ate a side of bacon together, I mean in all literal butcher terms a side of bacon. Matt’s co-worker Chip was there and I chatted with him for a while along with a 22 year old CBS page, who as innocently as Kenneth of 30 Rock, assumed we were roughly the same age. God bless the child.

The video was a big hit with the crowd, perhaps because of the content, or maybe because it temporarily wiped the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue video and a baseball game off the large screens. The place was awash in gays and aside from the very straight manager, no one seemed to notice the scantily clad women on display or the latest run score for the Yankees. Then again, with young gays around, all they notice are each other, and notice they did. My friend Shaun McCarron was in town and he came by with his friend William though they missed my scathing video appearance.

Shaun looked as hot as always and he was in town for another big gay party night of some kind. It is pride weekend after all. He will drop by the show on Friday and I have no doubt havoc will be wrought with guest host Erik Rhodes, after their last adventure in which Erik ate out some woman who wasn’t wearing panties at the gay bar. We talked for a bit and then settled close to the birthday cakes. Against my better judgment, I had two slices of the one with the blue frosting, while Shaun went to talk to Bianca who as he confided to me was his favorite drag queen when he was a kid. Naturally I didn’t miss my opportunity to repeat that to her face and here in the blog.

After they left, I chatted a bit with Chris an aspiring musical theater star and spent more time with classically trained actor TJ. Chris and I discussed musicals which I confess is my worst subject. As a gay man I can talk a reasonably good game with the average Musical Mondays bar homo but when it is a theater queen, I am definitely out of my element. In all though, we had fun, including pointing out to Matt’s roommate that despite the wax number candles on top of his cake, Roy and Matt do not have a combined age of 52. Next time, I told him, just put a one in front of whatever number you come up with and it will be twice as funny. His inability to do quick math infuriated him and he stormed away in frustration much to my amusement.

The party would down rapidly. Roy and Kugie decided to head to The Ritz for JUST ONE DRINK but I decided to end the evening there. With a mouth full of the cake Matt’s roommate made and numbers swirling around in my head, I made my impolite good byes and headed uptown to my car. I suppose I could have joined them at a second location for five seconds, but as a rule, it’s never that short and usually not healthy either.

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.

Hawaii: Go West (Not So) Young Man

Even though I plan to blog about my Hawaiian adventure this week, the first entry will be devoted to just the trip there. After all, with our three hour layover in Denver, it was fourteen hours of the first day of my vacation. Factor in travel time to and from the airport and of course a full night of sleep and the next thing you know, it is the entire day.

For this trip, I cashed in 150,000 miles on United so Mike and I could fly First Class. I had been saving my miles for a return to Japan or perhaps even a trip to Australia. But the realities of hosting a radio show made me realize that I won't be taking any long trips half way around the world anytime soon. We could have gone to Europe, which I really wanted to do, but with the exchange rate such as it is, we could get there but then we would be homeless and begging in the streets. True, my years in Manhattan observing any number of panhandlers at close range, has given me some solid strategies for raising money, but this really isn't how I want to spend a vacation.

My Dad rented a condo for two months in Kona and said it would be empty, so it was decided that we would go to Hawaii. Mike was stationed here when he was in the army, and by the end of his tour was pretty sick of it. But that was seven years ago. Plenty of time for the old animosities to fade away and only happy memories bubble to the surface. And after six grueling months of winter, we both thought a few days in tropical splendor would be just the thing.

Kona is less-densely packed and cosmopolitan than Honolulu so we knew going in that our contact with the gay community would be at a minimum. So we planned to fly in and out of Honolulu and spend Saturday night there on our way in and Friday night there on our way out. That way, we could get a couple of nights in at the gay bars and perhaps run into some actual gay people. Then, in between, we could relax by the pool, take in the sights, and hope for at least some nice reasonably naked surfer eye candy.

The night before our 6am flight, we decided to just stay in the city all evening and sleep somewhat on the plane. We went to dinner at Arriba, Arriba first, which was a great way to start things off. Our server was the same server we have seen there for seven years and Mike observed that it might be time for him to change his status from Aspiring Actor to Career Waiter. Though his acting skills have come in handy since he still manages to be friendly and solicitous without actually flirting. Be that as it may, the food and accompanying margarita were delicious.

Unfortunately, a heavy meal of Mexican food and tequila might not have been the best plan for two people who wanted to stay awake after a long work week. We headed to Therapy where the already thin crowd headed for the doors as soon as we walked in. "What is it about us that always clears a bar?" Mike wondered. Our energy was flagging. We walked down to The Ritz, where there was a massive line (aka everyone who had escaped Therapy), and immediately turned tail and headed to Vlada. Vlada had some kind of a crowd, but the enchiladas suizas and the late hour were weighing heavily on me. We went back to our respective offices to pick up our bags and head to the airport. So far our exciting adventure was off to a sleepy and dull start.

We met up outside Mike's office and hopped in a cab to La Guardia. At 4am on a Saturday, the trip took maybe ten minutes. I think we stopped for one red light. At the airport, we got our tickets and then headed for airport security, which wasn't even open yet. We were woefully early. I went to the bathroom and there was a toilet malfunctioning, gushing torrents of water. Being so close to Earth Day, I went to the man slowly dusting the elevator door outside the bathroom and told him. He informed me I had to tell the guy who cleans the bathroom. "I just need a maintenance person to come." He shook his head. "I don't work in the bathroom." There was a helpful hotline number on the bathroom to call if there are problems. So I went to the pay phone and dialed *37 and got a recording that someone would be in the office to help at 7am on Monday. By then, a lake could be drained with the water flushing away, but I gave up caring. I did what I could and all I got in the end was a need to wash my hands a second time after touching that pay phone. No good deed goes unpunished.

On the plane, we settled into our First Class seats and I have to say, though not in a Naomi Campbell cell phone/spitting rage sort of way, that I was disappointed. Air travel has fallen into such disrepair that now First or Business is just passable travel accommodation. It is a reasonably roomy seat with some leg room and a decent recline, plus a meal and a strong chance (not a guarantee) for a pillow and blanket. And that is it. Frankly, this is what air travel should already be. That shouldn't be the definition of luxury. Luxury is a sleeping compartment, manicures, gourmet meals, an in-flight entertainment system with movies and music on demand. In irritation and sheer exhaustion, I just went to sleep.

The second leg from Denver to Honolulu was an improvement in service (tons of food and attentive care by the middle aged straight male cabin crew) and there were even power outlets at the seats for our laptops. But still, First wasn't what I remembered it to be. And it just served to remind me of how miserable air travel is today. I wonder if another industry went so far out of its way to make its customers this unhappy if they would be able to stay in business too. For me it is like your own tree house being taken over by the school bully. Where are we supposed to go now?

Finally, we landed in Honolulu. We grabbed our bags, dashed onto the shuttle and away we went to our hotel in Waikiki. The hotel was a typical tourist mill, but my room was on the ocean edge and had the best view of the ocean available. But in the end, it didn't matter. What was important was that we were in Hawaii. And the great thing about Hawaii is that it looks just like Hawaii here! After months of never really feeling warm, it was just great to feel the sun on my skin and even at night, not notice a chill in the air. Maybe this vacation thing won't be so bad after all.

Puttin' On The Ritz

I am a hermit. But I look like the party planner from Sears compared to my roommate Mike. Mike never likes to leave the house, nor does he like to meet new people. Two weeks ago, when D-A-N tried to engage him in conversation he did his best impression of a cigar store Indian and D-A-N beat it on the lam. I don’t think his boyish charm is used to such a stoic rebuff. So when Mike announced earlier this week that he had been invited to a party, I campaigned like Tracy Flick for him to attend.

Apparently some of the guys from work were having a “So Bad It’s Good” holiday movie party. Being the forceful encourager, I naturally had to attend the party as well, thus guaranteeing Mike would go. Plus, ever since we stopped working together, whenever Mike talks about life at the office, I feel like he is describing a favorite TV show on a channel my cable company doesn’t offer anymore (Seriously FiOS, why no MSNBC????). Unfortunately, median ages dropped like an anvil in a Tex Avery cartoon since I left the company four years ago, and I walked into the youngest group of people I have seen since a high school class toured through SIRIUS last month.

It was a straight party, which was for the best. It is bad enough looking across the room and seeing a cute guy, it’s worse to think he is precisely half your age. At least in a room full of straight people, I could just concentrate on the bad movies at hand and not worry about my libido. We walked in during the finale of Jack Frost, a cheesy horror flick about a serial killer whose DNA accidentally bonds with snow and turns him into a murderous snowman. The effects were about on the level of a third grade play at a very nice public school. Once the film was over, we watched 60 minutes of classic TV show intros as an intermission before the next feature, along with some remodeled intros from a heavenly site called FatalFarm.com (The Facts of Life is my favorite, followed by Cheers, but honestly they are all pretty terrific).

In many ways, it was like attending a party in the future. The house had computers hooked up to the TVs and everything ran off the Xbox 360. It was Hollywood’s worst nightmare of copyright infringements gone amok, but I have to say, it was all so delightfully easy. The second feature was “Silent Night, Deadly Night” about a sweet boy named Billy who becomes convinced that Santa Claus is a killer doling out death to the naughty. Later, he grows up to be a sexy, troubled teen, who went forced to play Santa in a wildly overstaffed corner toy store, assumes the identity himself and goes on a murderous rampage. Along the way, we learn that no one owns a bra and nuns are pretty useless. Hilarity, as they say, ensues.

The film stars Robert Brian Wilson as the sexy deranged teen, an actor last seen in an episode of Jake and the Fat Man. His shirtless moments refocused my libido away from the sexy teens at the party and his wilderness of a hairy ass in his one complete nude scene reminded us instantly that this was 1984, no matter how futuristic the party was otherwise. The movie wasn’t that bad, although the filmmakers clearly had a massive hard-on for Psycho and borrowed liberally from the plot and shot list. The budget of the movie however was so low that at one point a woman refrains from breaking a storefront window to escape because they clearly couldn’t afford the replacement cost.

After the party, Mike and I left to find Jonathan who had been in Brooklyn but by then was partying it up at The Ritz. I had never heard of the bar, but it has only been open for six months, which is fast for me to discover a hip new place. We walked in to the familiar strains of Salt N Pepa doing “Push It” while an early twenty-something crowd giggled with oldies hits delight. At the bar, a fifty year old balding man in a fuzzy short fur coat and rings on each finger clutched a glass of red wine while ogling the bartender’s exposed torso. “That’s me in five years.” I whispered in Mike’s ear, although his askance glance told me it was closer than I thought. From across the bar, I spotted the back of Jonathan’s head moving toward the upstairs. I pushed through the twinks and made my way up the narrow staircase and greeted him in the calmer oasis of the second floor lounge.

Jonathan had already been drinking all night and his “Frak Me” t-shirt seemed less a come on than a declaration of sheer exhaustion. We chatted once again about all of our favorite shows, which is easy to do since we love all the same shows. In fact, I have yet to find anything that we don’t agree on. He is even excited about my Friday night murder ladies (aka ABC’s Women’s Murder Club). The show has been called Sex and the City in a morgue but it’s more like the episode of the Golden Girls where Dorothy solves the murder mystery, but with expensive shoes and a winter color palette. I implored Jonathan to search YouTube for stray clips of my childhood love “Partners In Crime” and sealed the deal with an anecdote about stars Loni Anderson and Lynda Carter wandering into a San Francisco theater and being mistaken for drag queens. We laughed. We shared a Coke and the belief that Diet Coke makes you fat.

It turns out that Jonathan lives mere steps away from the straight party we had attended earlier in the evening. And even though it was out of the way, since we were parked right outside The Ritz, I assured him it would be no trouble to give him a ride home. It is freezing outside now after all. And the journey back downtown allowed Mike and I to be once again in the vicinity of the Taco Bell on 14th Street. Unlikely earlier in the evening when ye just joked about abandoning hope and all entering here, at 2am we did just that. Along with Battlestar Galactica, Veronica Mars, and Arrested Development, Jonathan also shares our love of the bell and a pair of grilled stuft burritos and a soft taco later, we were back on our way downtown.

Jonathan safely dropped off, and our greasiest cravings sated, Mike and I headed back up into suburbia. Okay, so maybe the party didn’t help either of our social skills. We could have stared at a bad movie just as easily at home and skipped the BBQ chips they served. But we did visit a new gay bar. True, Jonathan is already over it, citing its inconsistent DJing, capped by a 30 minute long version of Gimme More. But we ventured out of our comfort zone and down into the secret world of social people. So that has to count for something. Besides, it was the last night before the snow comes, and there will be time enough for hibernating now that winter is officially here.