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.

The Two Night Show

Well if you were wondering if it is summer in New York yet. It’s fucking summer. After struggling last weekend to resist the urge to turn the heat back on after the nighttime temperature plunged back down into the 40s, this week has been a parallel struggle to not install the air conditioners. It has been 90 degrees every day for the last three days and now we are supposed to be grateful that this horrible storm from the Midwest (that dropped enough twisters to get Dorothy a dozen round trips between Kansas and OZ) will be the thing that breaks the hot and humid spell that has fallen over the city.

But I can’t complain about the heat (even though that is exactly what this sounds like) because our winter was so arduously long this year that anything, even 90 degree highs, are an improvement. I was commiserating tonight with another New Yorker at a party about the temperature swing but more importantly, the long winter that made everyone I know question our decision to live in this urine soaked wonderland.

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.

Cross Gown Rivals

Madonna has a new Kraft single out. To say that it is terrible would be purely out of spite. After all, American Life is truly terrible and to be fair, Madonna has been slowly clawing her way back up to musical relevance steadily ever since that creative low point. Her latest is not bad, it just isn’t age appropriate. It sounds like Avril Lavigne covering Debbie Gibson covering The Shirelles. And Madonna still rhymes like a second grader, which aside from close-up shots of her hands, is the worst thing about her.

She is also on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar, another relic of another century. I saw a shot of her standing behind another woman with her arm poised around the lady’s neck. First thought: she is a vampire who will suck the essence out of you! Remember when she kissed Britney Spears and then Britney’s career collapsed and they finally reluctantly replaced Brit with a Japanese sex robot? Maybe almost none of that actually happened but sometimes, in that drowsy part of waking where dreams still seem so real around you, it feels true.

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.

Icon Nicht Anders

I really like Erik Rhodes. I think he is a decidedly misunderstood figure in the world of gay porn. To me, he has the most clear-eyed view of any performer I know. His blog is like Martin Luther posting his grievances on the door of the Catholic Church. Some people think it is all an act, which leaves me incredulous. It’s like the fag-haters who think people choose to be gay because they like being alienated from their families and fired for no reason.

He guest hosted on the show tonight while Romaine is in Denver, visiting her family and emceeing PrideFest. As usual he was filled with truly amazing stories from deep inside the porn world, starting with rimming a straight guy in Las Vegas on camera who thought cleaning his ass meant spritzing it with Polo Sport to closing out the show with a shocking revelation about accidentally shitting himself inside his apartment. His candor is at once alive and heartbreaking and altogether real. A refreshing change from the familiar false notes the gays are always trying to hit in their quest to be accepted and adored.

After the show, we went to Vinyl for dinner. I have been there a few times and mostly I like it because I am addicted to thai iced tea and it is virtually impossible to find. If they sold a mix at the supermarket, I would drink it by the gallon. Erik was starving, downing four energy drinks during the course of the show, and ready for a juicy steak. Like most gay places, the food is fine but the atmosphere and crowd is what you really come for. There was something weird stuck to my knife and I think our waiter was understudying in Avenue Q around the corner in between popping by our table, but you can pee to Viva Las Vegas in the Elvis-themed bathroom and frankly that always gets my juices flowing.

At dinner, I got a text message from the original Jonathan wondering what I was up to. As it turns out, he was in the restaurant, heard a laugh that sounded like mine (it was mine) and then started to wonder what I was doing tonight. He was dining with some skinny friend of his whose name I forgot the moment I heard it. No matter, he was struggling to the point of exhaustion to act nonchalant at the sight of Erik Rhodes. I almost offered him a chair and a cold compress. They ran off after I promised to call them later to join for a drink.

As anyone who reads his blog knows, Erik has had some relationship trouble of late. This has made me very sad because I knew and really liked his now ex-boyfriend. I thought those crazy kids made a fun couple, but then again, I didn’t have to live with them, so I have no idea what life at home was really like. Great couples are always a mystery to outsiders but lousy couples are easy to dissect. I don’t envy Erik out on the dating scene. His massive Godlike frame is intimidating, made even more hulking in the presence of the lithe gays who swirl their way through the Manhattan cocktail scene. Being a world famous porn star doesn't help either. And even though he hates going to gay bars and being with the gays even more than I do, I managed to coax him into joining me and Jonathan for one drink at Vlada.

The Bolsheviks were revolting in my favorite vodka haunt. For some reason, Erik insisted on walking in behind me, leaving me to shove and fight my way through the crowd. When you are out with Erik, honestly he should be the one bulldozing through the crowd. The gays are far more likely to move out of the way and cower in fear when he plows through. Instead, sharp elbows akimbo, I jabbed my way through the downstairs and then made my way up to the second floor. The stairs were a brief respite before we returned to the crowded fray by the upstairs bar.

Jonathan’s favorite bartender (aka the one who gives him free drinks) was working, much to his delight. He didn’t have the ingredients to make the drink I wanted but he made Jonathan happy so that is all that matters. Jonathan was feeling sensitive all night after he asked me at Vinyl if I liked the new thing he was doing with his hair and before I could stop myself and pretend for a moment I was a human being, I tossed out a terse no. He tugged at his hair self-consciously for the rest of the night and laboriously explained that it was in an awkward in between stage before it could finally become the tussled surfer mess he was going for. After my initial rudeness, I attentively engaged him in a much too lengthy conversation about his hair, hoping he would relax for five seconds and stop thinking about the top of his skull.

As promised, we finished our one drink and headed out of the bar. It was a nice cool summer night and Erik and I walked to Grand Central Station, where I boarded my usual drunk train home and he hailed a taxi back to his apartment. As I always do when I see him, I asked him what his post porn plans are. After all, he is the one who told me that no one should stay in porn too long because “once they have seen your pussy, what else do you have?” His post porn plans seem as limited as his dating prospects. He is so iconic in his porn life it is almost impossible to imagine him in any other context. I looked up at the Chrysler Building from 42nd Street and wondered what it must be like to be an icon. In some ways it must be great to be such a gorgeous shining individual, towering majestically over everyone, though it probably gets pretty lonely up there, shimmering in the night sky.

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.

Posh Slice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rebirth

I had a dream last weekend that it was 70 degrees outside. After a week of temperatures in the 50s, I started to think that winter was in its last throes. New grass was growing in the backyard and there were green buds on the trees. The wishful thinking side of my brain was in full gear, gazing hopefully at an imaginary thermometer. Today, winter returned in full force, perhaps one last offensive before a final surrender. Who can say? It was a delicate powdered sugar dream at my house as I walked down the hill to the train station today, but in Manhattan, it was an ugly mix of snow and wind-swept rain covering the sidewalks in a brown sugar slush. Yes, it is definitely still winter.

Today is my roommate Mike’s birthday. The number is unimportant when compared to the timing: two days before Valentine’s Day. In retrospect, I guess I am fortunate that my birthday is three days before Halloween. As much eye-rolling as my mother’s insistence that if I had been born seventy-two hours later, she would have named me Jack O’Lantern Hartley has caused (“I would have just said your middle initial was O. No one would have known!”), it still beats a birth near Valentine’s Day or Christmas. My mother’s birthday always falls near the floating weekend of Mother’s Day, which meant no matter what happened, we never had a good reason to miss either one.

Of course we went to a bar tonight to celebrate. It was somewhat impromptu. Mike hates going out and being social, and at a certain point in a gay man’s life, a birthday stops being something worth celebrating. But I just couldn’t bear us not doing SOMETHING, given what couch potatoes we already are. And snowy winter days only brings out your worse hermit instincts. I haven’t been blogging recently about my bar adventures, but not because I haven’t been having them. Friday night at Vlada was a drunken brouhaha for example, but by the time I had time to actually blog about it, it was days later and the spirit of the spirits was gone. I try to be as timely as possible, and lately I just haven’t been able to get to Blogger fast enough to commit my boozy adventures to memory. In a way, they are like dreams. So vivid in the moment, but they dissipate just as rapidly as they come upon you.

Lately I have been spending more free time with the original Jonathan (and hottie Zach for that matter). After years of having no regular circle of friends to hang out with, I have suddenly started to develop it with those two. It is probably because they are both recent transplants to the city. They don’t have set routines yet, so it is much easier to fall into one with them. My friends who have lived here for the better part of a decade I see less often than my family on the west coast. Manhattan is a town of regiment and routine. It is so complex, it has to run with the efficiency of an assembly line, right down to the friends you hang out with. Add a step to the process, like a new friend, and it throws the whole machine out of alignment. It is better most times to stick with things just as they are.

Jonathan joined in tonight, but Zach bowed out of the last minute journey to Therapy. Mike’s regular friends were there: George, Duke, JP, and the other Mike. That is the core. I got so used to seeing them every Friday night in our apartment for Sci Fi Fridays that when it moved to Sundays and we moved out of town, it was like the end of an era. Now when I see them it almost feels like a college reunion. The drinks flowed aplenty but when they announced the stage show was about to begin, we bolted from Therapy like it was on fire. Moments later, most of us were stationed against the icy bar at Vlada, sucking down the infused vodka cocktails that had been our downfall last Friday. In an email today on his way to Los Angeles, Ben Harvey swore them off forever after they caused a forty-eight hour hangover on Friday that no VH-1 marathon could assuage. Knowing that I would have to drive Mike home later, I just stuck with a series of cokes, which only made me long for a nice spicy bloody mary all the more.

The crowd at both bars was the same as always. It is amazing to me how alike the gays are, falling so neatly into archetypes. I caught hell on the air for comparing homosexuality to Down’s Syndrome, but I am sorry, there are just too many similarities. Besides, you can’t argue for a genetic cause for your gayness and then complain when it is compared favorably to another genetic issue. When Sean and I went to Zurich in 2003, we went to his first gay bar. “How does this compare to gay bars in America?” he asked.

Paraphrasing Tolstoy badly I deadpanned that “every gay bar is unhappy in the same way.” The bar in Zurich was indistinguishable from any old bar in America. There was the one guy dancing alone on the dance floor, too drunk or high too early. There was a knot of twinks in the corner, giggling and cruising, although with a drinking age of sixteen, the twinks were even more twinky than usual. The regulars sat around the bar nursing their drinks and personal insecurities while the older patrons lingered in the darker fringes of the room. Aside from my difficulty in ordering a Malibu and pineapple with my rusty high school German, it was as perfect a copy as any country in Epcot’s world pavilion.

Back at Vlada surrounded by the smell of vodka, my thoughts turned to Ninotchka, which I had watched earlier in the day on the train to work, while Jonathan cruised a Brokeback Mountaineer in a plaid shirt. The country boy was clearly on a date, but Jonathan was still intrigued. He was cute, but also standard issue clean cut Midwestern gay straight out of central casting. Meanwhile, a crazy drunk guy was running around taking digital photos of guys he thought were hot, I suppose so he could masturbate to their visage later. That was a bit of a twist on the usual, I thought, but not enough to make the night really noteworthy.

I was reluctant to leave the vodka bar and head out into the wintery night. It was like the worst stories of Siberia out there, but then again, inside wasn’t actually springtime in Paris, Comrade! I wish all the time that life could be as simple as an old movie, and I guess in some ways it really is. When you spend an evening in a gay bar, it is just as formulaic as any studio era classic. Well, certainly less polished than a grand MGM flick, more knockdown like a Warner Brothers film really. But the story always feels the same. It is as predictable as the weather, which I suppose is the silver lining in all of this. True, it may be winter now, but soon enough it will be spring. The bar tonight didn’t hold any promise for you, but that doesn’t mean promise isn’t right around the corner. And one day, seventy degree weather won’t be wishful thinking in a dream; it will be a pleasant reality worth celebrating with a little orchestral fanfare as the words THE END flash onto the screen. It, like everything, just takes a little time.

Vlada Vignettes

2:30am. 96th Street Subway platform. iPod on shuffle. Tears well up in my eyes. Oh no. Bruce Vilanch is right. At a certain point, you do start breaking down all the time for no reason, like an old Buick.

Why am I crying? And it’s not even crying. It’s movie crying. A welling of tears, a trickle out of one eye. That’s how I know it’s not real. But why the tears? Was it something someone said at the bar tonight?

“You are forty, so who cares what you think.” That can't possibly be it. That was hilarious.
I click to the next song. kd lang singing Big Boned Gal. I am already welling up. I might as well go full tilt boogie. I search kd for Three Cigarettes In An Ashtray.

“Two cigarettes in an ashtray. My love and I in a small café. Then a stranger came along. Everything went wrong. Now there’s three cigarettes in the ashtray.”

I saw kd lang sing this as the encore at her concert in Reno last year. Next to seeing Ella Fitzgerald in her final concert at the Hollywood Bowl before they cut off her legs, this is my most treasured concert memory. Suddenly, I am my own grandmother, welling up at Johnny Hodges. My mind turns to the call with my home insurance lady Mary Anne today. We spent an hour on the phone talking about my new house to determine my coverage and when the questioning turned to possessions, I got very depressed. First item: jewelry. I don’t own any and I’m a man and who cares. But then as we went down the list, I realized I don’t have anything of value. Some sentimental things, but nothing worth keeping when I am gone. I am the only thing I have of value.

Damn, now the song is over. Need to start it again if I am going to maintain this dramatically somber mood.

“I watched him take her from me. Now his love is no longer my own. Now they have gone. I sit alone. And watch one cigarette burn away.”

This is good but it doesn’t really match the mood I am in. True, I was at a bar tonight with Ben Harvey but Vlada hardly counts as a “small café.” And true, someone did horn in on us, but so what? We were just talking.

I switch to kd lang’s cover of the Valley of the Dolls theme song. I have a remix of it in my iPod that is a better match to the late hour otherworldliness of the subway platform. And earlier our conversation was straight out of the movie (and probably the book, although like most books I can discuss in casual conversation, I have never read it).

Normally, I look for Charlie at Vlada, but this time, Charlie’s friend Ben Harvey was there. I need to use his full name because he can’t be Ben because Ben is Ben. Some people just sound better with their whole names. Like Dan Renzi. And I link to his Friendster profile because it tickles him when I do that in my blog and I know he is reading this.

Ben Harvey and I have been emailing for weeks now, since we finally met at the Godawful Gay Expo, which I think should be their official name. I think he was reluctant to meet me at the event for some reason, but in some ways he seems like a reluctant person. I am also reluctant and I sensed that we are alike, although I know someone who always says to me “guys like us” which invariably is a comparison of how we look and I think I am much cuter than he is. So at the risk of seeming like THAT guy, Ben Harvey and I are alike I think.

Heavenly development though, he got hit on tonight and I was completely ignored. That was delightful. Some people who like being the center of attention (like me), like it all the time. I only like it part time. So when I am not in the mood, I am delighted to retreat into the shadows. Tonight, Ben Harvey was the shimmering light of blond deliciousness and I was the fat friend in the shadows, drinking down the remnants of my thirties like so much melted ice in a cocktail glass.

I made no effort today. I spent hours dealing with the new house. I cooked dinner at 1pm and socked it away in the fridge for later enjoyment. I barely brushed my hair and wore an eight year old Gap shirt that every gay man in the world owns, just like always. I rolled into work with my winter parka and an air of resignation an hour before the show. Typical. I was all set for a night of TV viewing at home. Lost, Top Design, Top Model. Top ass sitting in a recliner in front of a 50 inch TV. But Ben Harvey sent me a text message (txt to the kids out there) but then followed with an email in case I was too old to be a text messenger. Eh. He’s right. I am on the cusp.

In the bathroom at Vlada wondering why gay men don’t know how to flush a urinal, trying to do something with my hair in the mirror. I catch eyes with the gay at the sink next to me.

“It looks good.”

Is he talking about my hair or referring to me as a third person object? Either way, it’s enough to propel my carcass out of the men’s room and return to the gay fray. Ben Harvey and I have long entwined discussions about gay media, radio, dating, and relationships. A few laughs here and there, the biggest when I talk about going to Starbucks the next morning after drinking in gay bars all night and pulling a dirty wad of ones out of my wallet, change from the various twenties I tossed out the night before. “I have to stop stripping.” I say as I hand the money to the cashier. It’s a good line. Maybe I will use it at pride this weekend, although in most parts of the country, you get fives and tens back when you pay for a drink with a twenty. It might not work outside this moment in time.

Ben Harvey goes to the bathroom for the 70th time. A man walks past, but then stops. He has a variation on the worst line in bar history.

“Why aren’t you smiling?”

So many good answers. “Because you didn’t keep walking.” Or “Because you are talking to me right now.” I choose “Because I am an alcoholic and my glass is empty.” He moves on. I have too much baggage for him.

Another man walks over. Will my empty glass and I get no peace tonight?

“I am in town from Texas. I have been in New York for four weeks. In all the time I have been here you are the most masculine I guy I have seen.”

I stifle a girlish giggle. “You are kidding right?”

“No I mean it. You are so masculine. What do you say?”

“Leave now.”

He whines. “Most guys at least say ‘thank you’ when you compliment them.”

“Sorry. I meant, you should leave now before I say or do anything so you might still believe that. To be honest, I am just too old and too tired at this hour to wave my hands about wildly.”

And then there was JT and of course Jonathan. The third cigarette in the ashtray.

Ben Harvey and I were having a perfectly nice time at Vlada. First we are standing downstairs but Ben Harvey is fragile and needed to sit down. We move upstairs, but then Edie, who is talented but loud, starts in on her show and a couple of homos who work in radio can’t hear each other talk because they are both varying degrees of deaf now. It comes with the job.

We move to the seats downstairs and continue our conversation. Suddenly, exuberant and crazy in love, JT gallops into our conversation. He is nice enough. 26 and full of enough energy for us both to think he might be taking drugs. But what? Through his succession of ridiculously hot friends, we learn he is a dancer or maybe choreographer. I hear a connection to Britney Spears mentioned but since she shaved her head and beat a parked car with an umbrella she hardly seems like the kind of reference you want printed in bold on your resume.

JT introduces us to his “famous” best friend Jonathan. Jonathan is a cutie 25 year old who is as comatose as JT is gregarious. It is almost as though JT is actually sucking the life out of him in the middle of the bar, right before our eyes. Ben Harvey and Jonathan hit it off, but Gay Commandment #1: Thou shalt not covet thy homos best friend if thy homo hit on you first, even if thy homos best friend is way hotter than thy homo and totes into you.

In my good ear, I half hear Ben Harvey tell JT that I am his boyfriend. Happy to run easy interference I play my role to the hilt. Of course, I also use this as an opportunity to tease Ben Harvey mercilessly. “My boyfriend LOVES it when guys hit on him. He loves the attention!” Well the attention from JT goes on too long and too dramatically and Ben Harvey wants to leave and even I start longing for a nap. Earlier JT didn't believe I was really 37, but now he is annoyed enough to use it against me. "You are forty, so who cares what you think.” His flounce is especially pronounced as he dismisses me like a school bell. Hmmmm... maybe I am the most masculine guy in New York City.

Jonathan, who isn’t “famous” at all but instead, is a very attractive dog washer at Biscuits and Bath, leaves. JT invites us to someone’s apartment for a party, but I am far too old to be attending impromptu parties at strange apartments on a Wednesday night. Ben Harvey is right. It is time to call it a night. So I leave Ben Harvey on the corner of 8th Avenue with a promise to blog our evening for posterity. And then decide to take the subway home. I could take a cab, but I want the extra time to really work over the details in my drunken head.

This endless post later, I am ready to climb into bed. Tomorrow I will get up early and watch a sea of TV before heading into work. I probably should have stayed home and watched TV tonight but that’s what an old person would do. I have decades of that ahead of me, in my house filled with sentimental favorites and nothing of real value, listening to kd lang and thinking about the good old days when I saw her in concert and what life was like with record players and before the internet. But tonight I am the only thing I have of value and I choose to release my asset (such as it is) from the vault, to put my cigarette in the ashtray and experience life in the small café.

Just this once.