Since Last We Matt

 "Did I tell you that I was kidnapped?"

I have many friends who could say these words to me at a party in lower Manhattan and I would be forced to respond, "Which time?" Over the decades I have collected more than my fair share of loose characters and have long suspected that the reason some people stay friends with me is that I am the kind of person who you can call from jail at 3am and will not only answer the phone without judgment but also be able to arrange bail before dawn. 

Matt Kugelman is not one of those people. He is a good person. A nice person! And yet this was his opening salvo at Matty Kelleher's #MattGala birthday party. Kugie is so thoroughly midwestern that the worst thing I have ever heard him say is, "Hmmm... I'm not sure that will work out that way." For Kugelman, as brutal a takedown as there ever is. And yet, inexplicably, he has been punched in the face, doxxed, revenge porned and yes even kidnapped. 

While waiting at the bar, a woman insisted Kugie looked like some movie or TV star, she just couldn't put her finger on which one. "I get that a lot," he insisted even though while genuinely possessing movie star good looks, he literally looks like no specific movie or TV actor I can name. "It must be nice," I assured him coolly, briefly channeling Barry Humphries from the great beyond "to be in Manhattan where you look like a movie star, as opposed to Chicago where you look like literally everyone else in Chicago." Midwestern nice I am not. 

But maybe that is why Matty Kelleher has kept me around all this time too. Like me, he has assembled his own distinctive band of loose characters and many of them descended tonight in a torrent of rain and fabulosity, in near equal measures for a costume party to celebrate a milestone birthday of his which you can guess based on my answer to the persistent party question, "how do you know Matt?"

"I met him when he was working at Barnes & Noble. No. Not at a store. They had a website. BN.com. They sold books." Finally weary of trying to explain what a book used to be, I settled on, "We went to elementary school together. He was my third grade teacher." If only the party hadn't featured projected photos covering decades of adventures that belied my lie. I told Jeremy Blacklow it was the Wall of Incriminating Evidence. The photos were in semi chronological order and at a certain point, my already infrequent appearances ended. "I'm coming up to haunt your pool one day this summer," I told Matty to his patented hand-clapped squeal of delight, "But I won't stay over. Just come up one afternoon, take a lap around the deck and head home." I want to be in some new photos but I don't want to be a nuisance about it. 

"Work's been kinda slow since cartoons went to color."

Seeing so many of the old faces again brought back of a flood of memories. Meeting Blacklow for the first time at Bowery Bar when he oh so casually showed up to see Matty fresh from kickboxing class, his sweaty shirt clinging, his hands taped up, the entire bar transfixed by his hotness. Another B-Bar night,  rescuing Kugie from standing on the metal trapdoor out front. "Samantha fell through one of those on Sex And The City," Jeremy's boyfriend declared. "My number one fear" all New Yorkers responded in unison with Carrie Bradshaw. 

Robbie Hammond regaled us with the time we were in Provincetown, when I was newly ejected from gay Los Angeles and Matty tried unsuccessfully to introduce me into impolite New York society. Despite our happy times balancing cock rings on our noses in PTown that weekend, I am not fun and fabulous and all of top tier gay Manhattan eventually nodded in approval when I was again ejected, this time to the suburbs and I never looked back for fear of turning into a pillar of saltiness. "I've never been to Provincetown, "Mario Palumbo sniffed dismissively as photos of him outside the Crown & Anchor scrolled behind him on the ever-looming Wall of Incriminating Evidence. 

"Time is a flat circle. Everything we have done or 

will do over and over and over again... forever"

Brian Babst was there, and we were both in jovial spirits although Babst was not fully remembering the last time we saw each other. But speaking of incriminating evidence, that is what my blog is for! No use crying over spilt wine, or in the case of this blog, voluminous decades of tea. My writing truly serves no other purpose than to tickle Matty relentlessly and infuriate nearly everyone else. Young Bradford was there as an internally youthful vampire swathed in a cummerbund while Lina Bradford (no relation but let's see how the evening goes) worked the DJ booth before an eager and packed dance floor. 

My original costume idea was to come as me circa 2007. I pulled out a Digg.com hoodie, my Fab.com tee shirt, a pair of cargo shorts and some shiny metallic Nikes I owned but knew I could never pull off. I was all set to twist my hair into a faux hawk when Matty's boyfriend Austin sent along a "helpful" Pinterest look book filled with costume suggestions that can best be described as Grace Jones on a horse at Studio 54. End of list. "I was so stressed out!" one partygoer confided. Uh. Me too! 

Groove is in the heart

I knew I had to step my game up so I was going to wear same said cargo shorts, a Polo shirt (from Matty's stint at Ralph Lauren, after the books and before the search engine thing) and then craft an oversized Polo logo so big I would have a face hole cut into it. Unfortunately for the fleet of Lauren family copyright lawyers looking for billable hours, I am not crafty enough to pull that off either, so I decided to get a Jedi costume to go with my ridiculously expensive lightsaber that was otherwise collecting dust. 

I wasn't sure the Jedi thing would be good enough but as it turned out, it was a generational hit. And whipping out the lightsaber and lighting it up a few times during the party ended up being the kind of crowd pleasing prop comedy I don't usually get to pull off, personally or professionally, much to my chagrin. There was a drag show in the middle of the party and at one point, during a fantastic performance one of the queens came over to dance up on me, I assume because like a third grade teacher, she saw me not paying attention talking to Kugie and decided to make herself known. I lit the lightsaber and she improv'd all over it and that was my gag of the evening. 

"You look like Ewan McGregor. I guess that's the idea, right?" one partygoer said to me. "If I kept my hair natural, I'd look a lot more like Alec Guinness." Thank god even at my advanced age, I still can't grow a goatee. Later in line for the bathroom, a fabulous woman was waiting before me but the fabulousness was starting to get to her. "My back hurts from these heels." she confessed. The hunk of a man behind me squinted at the basket of toiletries across from him and then waved them away. "Without my glasses I can't see a thing." Thank God Matty is still Matty. I can handle anyone in the world getting old but him. 

TWINKle TWINKle forever our little star

Creaking knees aside, the costumes were great, the people were fun and it was an incredible party though I was grateful for the midnight end time. It felt good to be out with the old gang but not feel like when I rushed off to the drunk train at the stroke of twelve like Cinderella past her prime and pressed for time, that the party was just getting started. The Wall of Incriminating Evidence isn't the only thing moving in chronological order and even as we add more photos to it, ain't none of us needs to scroll as hard as we used to. But still, it's fun to play dress up and twirl around once more. It may not yet be the Last Days Of Disco but there is no denying there aren't as many nights left in this Donna Summer as some of us would like.  

Not pictured: Gray Hudkins. 

The (Lack Of) Rhythm Is Gonna Get You

 For more than a year, my social life has consisted almost entirely of mouthing "thank you!" and waving through a window at delivery people leaving near daily Amazon care packages on the front steps. As human contact goes, it is extremely unsatisfying  but then again, every day is in the manner of Christmas morning. Let's face it. In some ways, pandemic living is literally the gift we give ourselves. 

So it's some shit that after staring at a social calendar as empty as the calories in my diet I had two things to do on one night. First, a Zoom pride party for the show and then a birthday party for old friends. The Zoom was planned weeks ago when life was still more shut down. An opportunity to have a virtual celebration for those who didn't have anywhere in-person to celebrate. But now everyone is very "pandemic who?" and by the time Friday rolled around, it felt like the last Zoom ever. It's possible we turned the lights off by request as we were the last to exit. 

Code switching from virtual to IRL, I dashed a few blocks away to a gorgeous apartment in Hell's Kitchen where the birthday party was to be held. That I was instantly flummoxed and incapacitated by the intricacies of the auto entry system should have been my first warning of what was to come. In my defense, it told me to enter the apartment number into the keypad but I was going to the numberless penthouse! Fortunately, two nice, possibly already somewhat intoxicated people, Michael and Brandy, arrived right behind me and Michael, not taking my body blocking of the keypad for an answer was already on the phone to the host demanding in his best Albert Finney that the door be opened. 

"Open That Penthouse!"

Normally for me, circles one through seven of Hell are all the same: attending a birthday party where the celebrant is the only person you know. But in this case, it wasn't just Matt Kugelman and his side by side birthday pal Roy Haylock (aka Bianca del Rio) that I knew. It turned out to be a pleasant surprise that as I made my way through the party, every few minutes someone would call out my name and I would be instantly reconnected with someone I hadn't seen in years. Michael Lee! Even Chris Crisco, our former intern, who I thought was still down in Mexico. But I guess now, like the swallows returning to Capistrano, their gay counterparts have made their way back to midtown. 

The stars only come out at night

I spent some time checking in again and again with Matt's mom, who is a very sweet woman I have met numerous times on her many visits to the city and whose best gay party trick is her ability to tell you everything she is thinking after a single glass of Chardonnay. But she was largely tended to by Bobby of Denver who I trust was Good People, because that was printed on his tee shirt and you know how susceptible I am to advertising. 

But the good people I spent the most time talking to was Chris, who was handsome and looked familiar. At first I thought I had just met him before which in gay circles is always possible. But later I realized that it is infinitely more likely that I saw him recently on television. Because TV is more real to me than real life, I frequently see people out and about and think we went to high school together and it turns out to be Ryan Gosling getting a double shot at Starbucks. 

Chris and I were having a great conversation. Nothing like two people who interview others for a living to keep the banter going. We covered all my best subjects from Room Rater to eating at Wendy's to falling down a ski slope. I felt like a Jeopardy champion confidently clearing categories. But then I realized I was getting short on time. The trains stop running at a certain point and as usual I have no sense of time passing so I unforgivably rudely pulled out my phone to check the time. Ten to Midnight, like the awful Charles Bronson movie with the hot naked serial killer in it. Time to go. 

I made my abrupt, nearly mid-sentence good byes to Chris and dashed off into the party to find Roy and Matt to tell them I was leaving. When I had arrived earlier Roy joked that we had to take a picture fast because I would be leaving in twenty minutes. This is a running gag for us after years of me hanging out after my show at one of Roy's bar nights and then leaving the moment that he said he was about to hit the stage. But in my defense, his show would always start at 1am and my last train leaves at 1:50am. I can't alter time. Or can I?

Running into Michael and Brandy to create bookends for the evening, I explained I had to go and then made a big show of checking the train times on my phone. After all, the MTA has a habit of changing schedules around in unusual circumstances like pandemics and I didn't want to be off by thirty minutes. But when I opened the train time app, the schedule was blank. No more trains tonight. I had missed the last train! When I told Roy he rightly howled with laughter. After so many years of choosing the train over the party, I finally chose the party and missed the train. 

Matt made a very kind gesture offering that I could stay with him, even though his entire family was already splayed out Walton Mountain style on air mattresses in every nook and cranny of his new apartment. No No, Good Night Matt Boy, I insisted, I will just stay at my office and catch an early train back. But then after I left I realized I didn't want to catch the side eye from our building super who is very nosy about these things and decided to just check into a hotel instead. 

So roomy I could almost extend both my arms

So there I was, after 1am, no luggage, checking into the Club Quarters Times Square. No one to blame but myself I thought. The world has changed and as usual I refused to double check reality. It's been 20 years since I left LA, and I still never check the weather before I leave the house. So as I settled into my room, I decided to check what time the first trains would be leaving in the morning, so I could get back ASAP. My town doesn't allow overnight parking in the lots so I didn't want to add a parking ticket or tow to my already luxurious hotel bill. 

Open the train time app and there it is. Next train: 1:50am. 

It was 1:45am. I was stripped down to my underwear in a prepaid, non-refundable hotel room, more than five minutes but not much more than five minutes away from Grand Central Terminal. I had screwed myself. The train time app lists all trains by date so when I looked at the app at 11:50pm there were no more trains for Friday but if I had thought to look at Saturday which it technically was ten minutes later or had looked at the app at 12:01am instead, I would have seen I still had two trains to go. Just like always.

So it was my own dumb fault but in my defense, aren't we all a little out of sync? The world has changed, but also stayed the same, and how are we supposed to know which is which. I thought the most difficult thing would be the part where I had to talk to strangers, up close and in person. But instead, I was totally confident and at ease around people again, not just like nothing had happened, but like the after scenes in an anxiety medication commercial. "Look at me, full of life at this party now that all the medication in this ad has made me normal!" But I am clearly not normal. What a mess. Just when I think I have it all together, it all falls apart in my hands. 

The more things change, the more I stay exactly the same. 

Ready! Reset! Go!

 I think we can all agree: it's been a crazy few years. 

My radio show was canceled, but then we successfully relaunched ourselves and have grown into a podcast network with our own smartphone app. A reality star and tabloid fixture decimated a generation of establishment Republicans and ended a 25 year Clinton dynasty before embarking on what can only be described as a turbulent and tumultuous rollercoaster of chaos. Inexplicably I wrote a movie that was actually produced, fulfilling a lifelong dream but then earlier this year all my personal plans for the future were shattered in an instant when the love of my life suddenly died. 

So when X Files creator Chris Carter reminds everyone that there is a nutty conspiracy theory floating around that the relaunch of the Hadron collider in Cern in 2015 sent us into an alternate reality Hellscape, you start looking back on the shocking number of relevant pop culture figures who died in 2016 and think, "Sure. Why not?" After all, to quote George W. Bush at the Trump inaugural, the last few years have been "fucking weird."  

Me thinking about the last six years

But now we have a new old president and a vaccine that is powerfully ending an 18 month pandemic as isolating as a dunce corner timeout. It's summer and the sun is shining and things feel really truly optimistic for the first time in a really long time. Maybe it's too much to hope for that the rollercoaster is finally pulling into the station and we can transfer to a different ride more to our liking. Or maybe it is just the calm before the next series of last gasp loops and turns. 

I started to write about the city opening up a few weeks ago. I walked through Bryant Park and it was full of happy people. For the first time since March 2020, I was annoyed by how many people were in my way on the sidewalk. It felt good. The old New York was back and just as obnoxious as it ever was. And me too, I guess. But then I got busy at work and didn't actually do anything more than walk through a crowded park so without stronger literary inspiration I let it go. But tonight, I am going to a party and that in and of itself should be cause for celebration. 

As the fallow nature of my blog can attest, I haven't been nearly as social in the last few years as I once was. My blog has transitioned from a mixed emotions accounting of various nightlife adventures to quite literally a morgue. Though I confess pride that one of my only true talents as a writer is to capture the essence of another person with pinpoint accuracy, that Eric' husband liberally quoted what I wrote at his international Zoom memorial was bittersweet at best. I may not know myself but at least I have some sense of the people I love. Shame it only comes into focus after they are gone. But I think it is too soon to hang up my hat as a social animal and relegate myself to the grim task of high quality obituaries. So tonight, I'm off to a party. 

In the past year and a half, Matt Kugelman is the only person I have seen socially. Last summer, he coaxed me out to dinner on the streets of Hell's Kitchen. I was wary, but Matt was tested daily at work and I had been a literal and figurative homebound hermit, my only source of entertainment a series of increasingly ill-advised self haircuts that only confirmed that staying home was the best plan. But Matt is social and friendly like a golden retriever with a squeaky ball in his mouth, so I was persuaded to join him for what turned out to be a totally safe and perfectly fun meal outside in a Manhattan gutter. 

Today Facebook served up a photo of us together at a party in 2009. I joked that I would be wearing the exact same outfit tonight, to which Matt replied with a Romy and Michelle "Me Too!" meme. That would be hilarious if I didn't still own and wear that $9 Gap polo. Matt and I don't have everything in common but I realized today seeing that photo that our strongest bond is probably that both of us established a casual look that we will never deviate from, for better or for worse. Take any random photo of either of us, together or apart in the last decade and I dare you to guess the year. Good luck, 

But life is about change, right? Going to new places, seeing new people. But is that really what we all want now?  After the year we've had just seeing the same old people in the same old shirts is more than good enough, and probably exactly what the doctor ordered. This timeline sucks and anything that looks like Earth One these days looks pretty good to me. So tonight I am off to Matt's birthday party, as I have done year after year after year after year. In this case, familiarity doesn't bred contempt, it engenders relief. It's the shiny golden promise of the same comfortable old thing again and, well, as William Mulholland said at the opening of the Los Angeles aqueduct, "Here it is. Take it." And thank you very much, I think I will. 

I just need a minute to dust off this outfit first. It's been a while. 

Partying Ways

All this talk about the 1% and the 99% percent has finally piqued my curiosity. It is time to see how the other half lives. Unfortunately, I haven’t been invited into the home of a billionaire since that pride weekend party where Lance Bass’ boyfriend mistook me for a bartender and the highlight of my adventure was buttoning the front of Michael Holtz’s denim shorts. Those were the days. But in that spirit I journeyed a few blocks away from my radio studio to the penthouse birthday party of Penthouse pet Krista Ayne.

Krista has been a frequent guest on our show over the years. Romaine might be so captivated that a photo of her hangs in Romaine’s dressing area so she can gaze upon her naked form while naked herself. That’s devotion. I like Krista, but as a friend, who wears clothes. And has birthday parties in fancy bars in midtown.

Guy Society

There is never anything I want to do more on a Friday night after the show than go home. But my world has been shattered since the death of James last week and it has created a certain fever pitch of impetuosity on my part. I thought about the last time I saw him, sweating like a whore in church at XL a few months ago. And maybe it was the magical thinking that if I just went out to every bar in town, eventually I would see his hulking frame lumbering through the space like an elephant moving slowly through the jungle, a catastrophe of casual destruction in his wake.  Like the months after 9/11 when I would gaze down Seventh Avenue at Times Square hoping to catch a glimpse of the twin towers, I think I will forever be looking over my shoulder with a sense of maybe.

In my grief, I sent a flurry of messages to my local friends that I had been remiss in seeing these past few weeks. I guess the arrival of spring had made me anxious to wring every second of delight out of my house that I can and my friendships, long on nightlife support, finally faded away. Ryan White and I planned to get together this week and then never did, but MattKugelman and I shared a delightful late meal at Vinyl on Monday. My friend Erik and I made plans to venture down to The Park on Thursday but fearing the zit on my nose would get worse, I pawned him off to a Friday party in SoHo.

The City By The Gay

Just for the record, when I first moved to New York City, I was hired at a company that worked on the redevelopment strategy turning The Nashville Network into Spike TV. And in between, it was our beautiful missing link The National Network (aka The New TNN). And there, I toiled away writing hilarious puns about Pamela Anderson on Baywatch (“Double Vision”) and Star Trek: The Next Generation (“Set Your Phasers On Fun”) that populated the website. So I would like to take credit for the current passion for puns in everything from The Daily Show to Morning Joe, even though a pun is truly the lowest form of comedy. So don’t think for a minute that my pun headlines are a riff on current popular culture. I am just reusing bits I did eleven years ago. And they were no fresher then than they are now, my friend.

On the subject of the good old days, my ex-boyfriend Curtis is in town. Years and years and years ago, I spied him across Revolver and bravely gave him my number as he was leaving and then he didn’t call. For three years. But eventually he was moving a desk and found my number which had fallen behind it and finally picked up the phone. As it happens, the number I gave him was for my friend Paul's apartment where I had been staying temporarily at that time and purely by happenstance was back there, sitting waiting for Paul to get out of the shower, the night Curtis deigned to call me back and I happened to answer the phone. Please note: if I am close friends with someone, I will wash their dishes if bored, answer their phone when they are in the shower, or sort through their mail even if they are standing right there, so if you value your privacy or personal space, it is probably not a good idea to be my close friend.

The Boyfriend Racket

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Tress This Mess

My hair is a fair weather friend. It does not do well in the elements. I have long been jealous of my grandmother Doris and her sassy wig and I live for the day when I can just give up on hair altogether and don a wig. It must be genetic. Besides, under certain circumstances, like tonight, the mop on top takes on a certain plastic wig-like quality anyway, so it isn’t like synthetic would be some kind of step down from normal.

Since we are on the subject of wigs, it is probably most appropriate that I journeyed down to XL tonight for Hot Mess featuring two of the hottest messes in Manhattan: Bianca del Rio and Lady Bunny.  It is day two of Josh’s first ever visit to New York City and I am determined to make sure he has the most amazing time anyone has ever had in our city ever. If only I approached fitness with the same zeal.

I figured if anyone could put on a show that once seen can’t be unseen, it is Bianca and Bunny. And that is the kind of unshakable memory of America I want Josh to take back to Afghanistan. While he is on leave from his deployment, he needs to see two people who are on leave from their senses. He needs to know what he is fighting for: the right to tell racist jokes in between subpar dance numbers. In this regard, they did not disappoint.

Downtown Shabby

“I love Kathy Griffith.”

Dear gays,

If you are going to express your devotion for some famous lady, be it on Facebook or talking on your cell phone next to the 14^th Street entrance to the 1 train, please get the name right. I am a man of many pet peeves but this one ranks near the top. Don’t post that you are someone’s biggest fan and then misspell their name. And who doesn’t know that the red headed loudmouth with no loyalty is Kathy Griffin? Not Griffith. Everyone knows that.

I was downtown for practically five seconds, so I guess I shouldn’t have been all that surprised that someone had already annoyed me. Downtown is awful. People in New York complain about neighborhoods the way other people talk about the weather. It is just something we do. So, I'll say it. I hate being downtown. As a snob who hates snobs, it is the worst place on earth. While waiting for my Army pal Josh to arrive in town tonight, I sent a text message to Matt Kugelman to find out if he was out and about so I could kill some time with him in the interim. Matt is a delight and more importantly, he is nearly always out somewhere when my show ends. So when I am in the mood for a drink or well that’s pretty much all we do is drink, so whenever I am in the mood for a drink, that Matt Kugelman is pretty handy to have around!

Craze The Titanic

When I bought my house five years ago, I did it because I loved New York City but I wanted some quiet so I could sleep in on the weekends. There is just something not so restful about someone screaming “White Jesus” outside your window every Sunday morning. I don’t know why. But the unintended consequence of moving upstate has been not so much peace and quiet as a flat line where my social life used to be.

I am derisive toward anyone who posts too many photos online of their baby and heaven help them if their baby is a cat named Emily Dickinson or even, as a random example, a camera hog of a pug. But lately I have found myself white knuckling it everywhere I go, desperate to show people the photos of my newly remodeled bathroom I keep on my phone. Yes. It happened. I turned into one of those people I hate. So when ADD Jeff wanted to go out tonight after the show, and I found myself explaining to him that I couldn’t stay out late because I had to get up early to take things to the city dump. Even I could hear the dull thud as the words fell out of my mouth. That was it. I needed to go out.

The New Tron Dance

I’ve never walked into a bar that smelled new before. Not just clean, but actually brand, spanking new. The whole experience reminded me of the old lady from Titanic describing the famous ship, “I can still smell the fresh paint. The china had never been used. The sheets had never been slept in. Titanic was called the ship of dreams, and it was. It really was.” Well, tonight I went to the all new XL bar in Manhattan to smell the fresh paint. The plastic cups had never been used. The stalls hadn’t had any drugs done in them yet. I suppose it could be the club of dreams if your dream is to see other gay men prancing around like always. And if that is your dream, then it was. It really was! I'm oversimplifying of course but what are gay men in a club if not overly simple?

I was excited to see XL since everyone has been talking about it for months now. And like the Titanic, the maiden voyage of this truly new bar for a new generation would either sail into glory or go down sensationally. I asked my friend and trusty nightlife pal Matt Kugelman to join me and he was more than game for the adventure.

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.

Unsupported Assertions

The Empire State Building took my breath away tonight. I was walking up Sixth Avenue, between 27th and 28th, on the West side of the street, and I looked up and there it was. At that angle, it was muscular, unyielding, and intimidating. And in our world of disposable diapers and casual encounters, that presence is as reliable as the Farmer’s Almanac. As I have been many times before, and not even for the first time tonight, I was left in awe by the wonders of New York.

Some people may think of living in New York as some kind of abusive relationship that is constantly excused away. Every insufferable subway platform (searing heat in summer, glacial tundra in winter), every 1am garbage truck seemingly backing repeatedly over a dumpster under your window, every muttering maniac in a dirty coat, every Wall Street douche screaming into his earpiece, they are all just another doorknob walked into, another encounter he is really sorry about and promises will never happen again. But New York is more complex than that.

To me, to love New York is to know true unconditional love. In fact, I think if you can’t love New York, you can never fully love another person, or even yourself. It is a million flaws, writ large. It is bold, italics, and underline. All caps and all encompassing. It is everything, all at once, all in one place, open all night. The dirt, the temperature, the claustrophobic closets sold as apartments, the speed, the noise. It is an assault on every sense and through multiple dimensions. It seeps into your bones and invades your dreams. Its density is so great that it creates its own gravity. How can you not love something so powerful? So majestic? A rollercoaster forever shy of cresting that first great peak.

And then, one night, you go over that peak.

“Be nice,” Chip had quietly entreated, “but tell the truth.”

New York is about truth. It is truth. Because there isn’t the space or time for lies. And this is the truth of what happened tonight at Matt and Roy’s birthday party.

After the show, I wandered down to a bar called Black Door on 26th street. Don’t worry. I had never heard of it either. It is very nice and way in the back, the birthday party was whirling at full tilt as I arrived. The first person I saw and knew was Chip. He was standing near the door, surveying the fun.

Roy, who is often known as the notorious and outrageous Bianca del Rio, was out of drag but still in fine spirits. He and Matt had found matching tuxedos with blue ruffled front shirts in Chicago and they made quite the duo in them tonight. Roy kept up Bianca’s horrifying banter out of drag, so naturally I was forced to say something. “You know, when Bianca says shocking things, it is appalling and fun, but out of drag, you just sound like a racist.” Roy had to admit that you can get away with a lot when you’re a man in a dress.

On Monday night at Bianca’s show, Matt had arranged for a little person in drag to pop out of a present and molest her. Not to be outdone, Roy secretly arranged for a little surprise of his own. “You know the naked cowgirl, right?” He asked me. We had her on the show, so I nodded enthusiastically. “I have arranged for her to come and give Kugie a lap dance! But it is a secret so don’t say anything!” Why I, the person least likely to keep any secret, am the first to be confided in is a mystery I will never solve.

As it turns out, it wasn’t the official Naked Cowgirl, who had visited our studio, but instead the other Naked Cowgirl, Sandy Kane. Sandy was a bit older, in a blue wig and came ready to party. After she spent about ten minutes getting situated and removing her shorts, the music kicked in and she started lip syncing (quite badly I might add) to some kind of parody song about flatulence. No better or worse than Lady Bunny, but at least the Bunster (usually) knows her own lyrics. Then the bra came off and there she was, with just some star pasties over her breasts. The songs and the shaking continued, soon with a candy cane striped dildo of no significant length or girth tossed into the mix. At the end of the third song, I wondered aloud to Patrick, the cute guy next to me, how quickly it would turn from mildly amusing to sad. And then the impossible happened.

As the fourth and final song kicked up, the pasties disappeared and out came a box of safety matches. And then before all of our eyes (and camera phones), she took two matches and stuck them into the holes in each of her nipples. The matches jutting out of her pendulous breasts, she then struck a third match, lit the two sticking out of her nipples and told Matt to blow them out. Happy. Birthday.

Well, that is New York for you. It is towering achievements of concrete and steel. It is baby boomers with flaming nipples. It is everything, all at once, all in one place, open all night. And I love it. Unconditionally.

The Light Of Darkness

It has happened of late that I have fallen into the acquaintance of Ben Roussel. I have also been reading the Autobiography of Mark Twain, so if my syntax shifts wildly in tone for no reason you’ll know why. Ben added me on Facebook some time ago and even though I didn’t know him personally, I did add him to my modest friend archive. It was during a period when, for instance, if the editor of a national gay magazine who I heretofore had never met added me, I would accept their friendship. I believed that by doing so I wasn’t just being dumped into some vast repository of their own ego but instead was building the kind of good will that would lead to articles about me that would further my career. None such articles materialized and it has happened of late that I have started to delete all of those people. But not Ben Roussel.

Some months ago when I escaped the glass terrarium I work in and headed to one of Fab.com’s happy hour parties, I was finally introduced to him in person. Naturally, in my warm and welcoming way, I cornered him on the stool where he had been shackled to pass out raffle tickets and demanded to know why he had the audacity to add me, the quintessence of the perfect stranger, on Facebook. Ben told me that he liked my writing and I seemed like the kind of person he would want to know. Never let it be said that I can’t be flattered instantly out of my most deeply held core beliefs no matter how weak the tea is that’s being served.

Night Light

David Young emailed me today after he read my last blog with some measure of concern. “You sound depressed. You should talk to your doctor about getting on Lexipro.” Let me be clear about something: I am not depressed. I am in love with someone who doesn’t want to be with me and my entire world has collapsed in around me like a mine explosion. But I am not depressed! My social life on the other hand is coding and unresponsive. So even if I can’t have the man of my darkest fever dreams, I can at least get back to having fun. After all, this is Manhattan. If you don’t party, you will notice what a hell hole it is and want to head out of town on the first thing smoking.

So after resorting last week to blogging about quite literally nothing just to fill the Internet with my babble in an effort to dispel the rumor that I had died, I sent Matt Kugelman an urgent text message last night demanding that we hang out tonight. Eminently likeable, I met Matt two years ago while waiting in line at Bowery Bar and it has been friend kismet ever since. What I like about Matt is that I can have a serious deep friend conversation with him or I can have a mindless spin on the town, or both at the same time. After all, why choose?

Some Greater Than Zero

Growing up, I was always reasonably good at math until we started getting into really advanced stuff and then they started to lose me. By the time I got to college, I was cast completely adrift. It is probably for the best that I dropped out. I guess Barbie was right. Math is hard! However, I was always really drawn to the idea of the asymptote. According to Wikipedia, “an asymptote of a curve is a line such that the distance between the curve and the line approaches zero as they tend to infinity.” In essence, it is a line that draws closer and closer to zero but never actually reaches it.

For me, so much of life is an asymptote. I can always get close to whatever it is that I want, sometimes insanely close, but then never actually reach it. It is maddening enough to face life as a restless character out of a Tennessee Williams play, so much bigger on the inside than can safely be housed in your own body that you forever feel the need to claw your way out of your own skin. Sometimes it feels like the very fabric of reality can’t hold me and if I could only punch hard enough, I could get out of it, making the kind of improbable escape from my own being that no less than Houdini was always looking for.

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.

All The News That's Fit To Prince

“It’s 1999 all over again!”

Bradford was gleeful when I discovered him holding court in the 2-4-1 room downstairs at The Park with Matty and Andrew. There were other men there at the table and standing around: unassuming gay white men in unassuming gay white v-neck t-shirts. It is all furniture to me now: hot, handsome, muscled furniture. Bradford in his signature tight red was a Fabulis splash of color in more ways than one. The room was hot, stifling. No air but for half price drinks, gay men will put up with almost anything, even each other.

There was a cute young thing standing near us, alone and lonely, in a button down shirt tucked into belted shorts. I know this is what people are wearing these days but to me he looks like the nerds that got teased in the 80s. Bradford is younger than I am so when he parties like it is 1999, he actually means 1999, not 1984, like me. But with the clothes as they are nowadays, it is easy for someone like me to get confused.

Over Easy

I think it might be the end of Bowery Bar as we know it.

It is not exactly with the heaviest of hearts that I report the long threatened demise of NYC’s most durable club night. For years, I have visited (though not thoroughly enjoyed) my regular Tuesday nights at the famed watering hole. I went there again tonight, the first real night of spring, for what I expected would be the usual gay fanfare. But it had all the charm of the Bates Motel after they moved the highway. They kept lighting the lights but I don’t think anyone is coming anymore.

Classic doorman Derek was positioned outside the entrance but the usual long line of long-legged gays never materialized. Not only did I see him letting in women, a Tuesday night rarity, but he was welcoming them with an enthusiastic smile and at one point, the slightest of bows. The scales of power had definitely tipped. Inside, the attendant gays dripped with the usual unnecessary attitude but it was even more unnecessary than usual in the half capacity crowd. The staff aggressively hustled people away from lingering near the exits but maybe they were just trying to discourage them from leaving.

Adam was waiting for me when I arrived, patiently lurking just inside near the hostess stand. He looks as handsome as ever, and was a little hungry. There wasn’t really anyone there yet, so we got a small table and ordered some food. Near us, a banquette with a wealthy homo stationed inside it swarmed with firm young men in tight new clothes like it was some notorious gay beehive. That was to be expected. But elsewhere the bloom was off the rose and the bees were not buzzing with their usual enthusiasm.

Corey Johnson circled our table three times like a tired dog looking for a place to lay down. He must have found it because we never saw him again. After dinner, we walked around a bit and then ended up at the back bar where we each ordered a drink. Adam and I wandered out to the patio and set up camp near the wall watching the gays pass us by.

“The last time I stood in this part of the bar,” Adam told me, “[A former porn star] suddenly turned and said, ‘I wish someone would just pound my ass right now.’” A startling announcement to be sure even from a porn star, but perhaps it was more startling that none of the men standing around when he said it took him up on the offer. But those were the glory days of Beige, when hot porn stars were just standing around demanding that you have sex with them. Now I am pretty sure they would say that just to have an excuse to leave.

I suppose it was bound to happen. We thought it was all going to come to an end in 2001 but then Britney and Justin showed up and suddenly it all came roaring back in the days following 9/11 when everyone in the city yearned for a return to the comfortable normalcy of the 90s. And in past years, I have tripped over actors and singers and models galore as I snaked my way through the pit. Just four days ago, The Park had porn star Erik Rhodes and fashion designer Marc Jacobs and actor Alan Cumming, which is the kind of star sightings I would have expected at Bowery Bar. But the most notable guy I saw all night was the cream cheesy hunk I spied by the basement coat check line at The Park last week. Hardly something to write home about, though he did look as attractive as ever. And by ever, I mean, since Thursday.

Matt Kugelman had been enthusiastic about joining me tonight, but he and his friend Constantino ended up swinging through G first and arriving much later at B-Bar. Matt was buzzed when he finally got there and I don’t just mean his hair. I had trouble hearing but there was something about margaritas and a party. In retrospect, I probably didn’t need to hear the story to surmise exactly what happened. When it comes to the gays, you don’t exactly have to be Jessica Fletcher to put all the pieces together.

While we were standing there, Bobby popped up out of nowhere. I haven’t seen him in a while. Initially I thought it was at the fancy pride party in the sky I had so much trouble writing about, but he seemed to think it was more recently. Anyway, it was nice to see him, even if it wasn’t for very long. He and his friend, whose name I once again didn’t hear or remember, left almost as soon as they arrived. And even the sudden appearance of Keo Nozari wasn’t enough to keep me there much longer.

“I think Bianca is coming.” Matt said encouragingly, looking up from his phone but that was my cue to go. “I have to leave. You know how I live to miss Bianca’s show.” But in this case, it had nothing to do with Bianca. I could tell Adam was ready to escape the place like it was on fire and I too couldn’t wait to run out of there myself. Perhaps the pulse quickened after I left, but I will never know. As far as I am concerned, it is no longer the beating heart of midweek Manhattan gay life. It's time to call it. Time of death: Tuesday, April 6, 2010.

The Cult of Celebrity

Monday. 11:15pm. Nighttime at The Ritz and the half empty bar is waiting for half in the bag Bianca del Rio to take the stage, such as it is. It seems like a million years ago that I dragged Bobby there and, primarily for my own amusement, encouraged him to enter Bianca’s drunken dance off contest, which he mistook for some genuine opportunity to win cash and fame. But that was just October of last year and about forty tons of snow ago. Not seeing the place through Bobby’s fresh eyes on his first ever trip to NYC, the walls did not vibrate with the same excitement as before but Bianca’s aggressive bray rattled the glassware enough to break the reverie for me.

Kugie and I had finished up a bland meal of Mexican at the nondescript place up the street from Arriba x2, which was “closed for cleaning” (although the appliances sealed in plastic said otherwise) and naturally wandered down to The Ritz to cheer on Bianca. The two of them are just back from Mardi Gras and while Bianca had her game face and enough make-up for six other game faces on, you could tell they were both still a little rough around the edges. Bianca practiced material on us, old and new, and at one point I think was making a subtle dig at me, which is rare for Bianca since her digs are never subtle.

“Oops! I think you dropped a name.” she called out, bending down to pick up an invisible celebrity moniker. “That’s a good bit, but I guess it probably wouldn’t work so well on the radio.” And then she looked straight into my heart.

For the most part, I confine my name dropping to my writing because when you drop them on a page, they tend to stay put. Names dropped in the ether of radio tend to float away, untethered and disconnected, and fade off into the shadows of memory. But print lives forever, more or less (my apologies to shuttered newspapers everywhere), and rarely more vividly than in Michael Musto’s column for the Village Voice. Barely twenty-four hours after abandoning Matt and Bianca at The Ritz, her words were fresh in my mind as I attended Musto's 25th anniversary party in a swanky Fifth Avenue penthouse on the fringes of Chelsea.

Everyone laments that NYC nightlife is just not what it used to be. We traded a cleaned up city and safer streets for evenings as dull as a butter knife. The last mayor erased the sex from the place and our current mayor monetized it. They turned the peep shows into Disney stores and the hustlers into baristas, working at the Starbucks on the corner instead of working the corner itself. Even Musto’s wonderful party was the ghost of Studio 54 past. There were silver balloons and flashing lights and loud middle-aged women flashing their tits, but the gays were encased in tight sweaters with Reagan era precision, while bartenders in button-downs dispensed coke in a glass instead of on a glass table.

As I arrived, two hours after the early 8:30pm starting time, I was met with a rush of fabulousness flooding out of the building. “Well, I’ve missed all the fun.” I thought to myself, already wary of going to a party where the only person I definitely might know was working the door. But upstairs, a familiar face lurked around every facelift. It started with a drunken Jesse Archer rushing me in the dark, aggressively manhandling me in a welcome way. Moments later, I almost walked past Zach, who was seconds away from being furious about it. But as I explained to filmmaker Brian Sloan who was standing with them and later adorable comedian Shawn Hollenbach, when I am in a loud bar, the noise dulls my vision somehow and, mixed with the darkness, makes it impossible to recognize anyone I know.

Frank and Jim and Mike were there from work. And the eternally lean Ken. And Enrique from the Face 2 Face spa. But most importantly, Chris and Cub were there. Chris was working, quizzing people on their favorite and least favorite thing about Michael Musto for a feature I assume he was writing about the party. "He never writes about me," was my quick answer for either one of the questions posed. I felt bad that Chris told me he was interviewing “notable people at the party” while I was standing right next to indie movie star Jesse Archer, since that is usually the kind of thing that happens to me. But moments later, a pushy photographer was shoving me out of the way to get a picture of Michael Urie and two people I had never seen before, so the universe corrected itself very quickly.

Mike and I wandered upstairs to see the roof garden which it didn’t occur to me until that moment was actually outside. But Tony Phillips pointed it out when we met halfway on the stairs like one of those mother daughter confrontation scenes that is a classic movie staple. At the top of the stairs there was a rack of identical red robes and people were donning them before heading outside. I had no idea until that moment that the cult of celebrity had actual cult robes. I wondered if there was going to be some kind of secret ritual outside that we would witness. Perhaps this is how Tara Reid and Mischa Barton lost their careers, penthouse garden religious gay sacrifices in exchange for Lady Gaga at Radio City Music Hall or Tom Ford directing “A Single Man.” Fair trades all.

While chatting on deck with Chris and Cub and lean Ken, that sexy Mark came up behind me and started groping me, a move I pulled later on an unsuspecting Shawn Hollenbach. When it comes to inappropriate touching, the gays love to pay it forward. Mike came by again, raving about the view we couldn’t yet see but I was a disbeliever. Mark and I agreed: we have seen the Manhattan skyline before. But then curiosity overtook us and I shoved past some drag twinks and sixty-something hags only missing a cauldron to huddle around to get to the upper deck for a look of my own.

Suddenly, the Empire State Building loomed before us, towering over the center of midtown like a beautiful middle finger telling the rest of the world to fuck off. But you know, in a really glittering and spectacular way. To the side was my beloved Chrysler building, a fabulous gay pinkie jutting out for spite. You can forget in the city, caught up in dodging filthy puddles and erratic taxis that as annoying as it is, the tourists have the right idea when they just stop and look up for a while. The view however is better from a penthouse, even if the party and the city isn’t what it used to be.

After trying to take a crappy iPhone photo, the chill of the night air overcame us and Mark and I stepped down off the upper balcony. We had reached the heights we were going to reach and it was time to head home. It is easy to romanticize something you never saw, or perhaps never was. Studio 54 was a shitty movie and I am sure the club itself had an off night or two. In 25 years of reporting on nightlife in NYC, I am sure Michael Musto saw his share of duds. Not everyone is a star, not every party is a legend in the making. In our new austere century, all we may have left is the hangover of remembrances of flings past, but you have to keep putting your game face on. Seeing the Empire State Building reminded me that even as the rest of the city changes and changes again, some things are eternal. And spectacular.