Manchattan

The Sexterview

2010-09-29T22:13:00.003-04:00

Back to my old ways (had I ever left them?) I recently “met” a guy on Manhunt. He had a hot profile - cute face, great body, and his “about me” basically described him as a bottom who liked sex. I had actually noticed his profile about a year ago. I wrote him then, he wrote back, then he disappeared. He popped up a few months later - we exchanged quick emails, then again he disappeared. The third time we emailed, we actually traded phone numbers, I assumed with the intention to text each other. But we never did.

Until yesterday, when once again I saw him online, and typed a Manhunt-mail asking when we were finally hanging out. I pressed send, and was totally unprepared for what happened 2 minutes later. My phone started to ring. Sure enough, up popped his name, in my phone from 3 months ago.

 What? He’s calling?! I panicked. “DECLINE”.

The ringing stopped, and a minute later I had a voicemail. “Hey, it’s ManhuntBoy, just seeing what you’re up to this afternoon. Give me a call.”

I pondered. He sounded normal, if a bit stoned. But nice enough. Maybe I should call him back. It went against my better instincts, but what was so bad? Sure, I’ve never been much for phone chatting, but I thought: maybe he just wants to hear that I sound normal, and maybe we’ll make a date.

I decided to go for it. I pressed the Call Back button. Little did I know I was about to embark on the Sexterview.

As soon as I identified myself, he started asking questions. Where do you live? Where do you work?

I played along, trying to keep the conversation light with my own questions, like Whats up? Hows it going?

He gave one word answers, and immediately went back to questions of his own. Do you workout? How tall are you? Are you an exhibitionist?

I answered, and then again tried to bring it to the conversational: What are you up to? Lazy Sunday?

He avoided my questions, and dove into his serious list.

Do you like to cuddle? You’re more a top? Do you like to suck cock?

I sighed, wishing I had stuck with my impulse. DECLINE. But it was too late now. I answered: Sometimes. Yes. Of course.

He continued, and I imagined him holding a clipboard and checking off boxes.

What gym do you go to? Do you live alone? Are you safe?

I gave up. I decided there was nothing to do but wait until the sexterview was over and the questions finally ceased. I answered, and the barrage continued.

Do you do groups? Where do you like to cum?

And then he got to the truly perverse.

“How old are you?”

“How old are you?!” I shot back, outraged.

“23.”

I sighed, and I swear I heard him flip a page. “So,” he continued, “You definitely like to cuddle, right?”

From now on, I’m sticking to texts.

One Taboo Over the Cuckoo Ex

2010-07-29T23:15:00.007-04:00

One Saturday morning I dragged myself out of bed to make the trip with AuntPharm to the Brooklyn IKEA. As we navigated the maze of trendy swedish imports with his friend Decibella, (who at various points would bellow “I think I like this... GAAAAYS!! OPINION!!”) we began discussing dating.

“So,” AuntPharm told me, “now suddenly EverybodyLovesAden isn’t talking to me.”

“Why?”

“Because I went on one date with this guy that he’d been on a couple dates with. But I asked him first if it was ok!”

“And what did he say?”

“Well, he didn’t seem to mind too much... at first...”

“Clearly,” I dead-panned, “he minds.”

“I know,” said AuntPharm. “It's totally taboo to date your friends' exes.”

I was immediately resistant. “Why?!”

“Be-CUASE!” Decibella boomed, “It’s your EX!!”

“Thanks, that clears it right up,” I sarcastically quipped. She threw a sofa cushion at my head.

“Well,” asked AuntPharm, “Would you want someone dating XJosh?”

“Someone is,” I replied.

“I mean a friend of yours.”

I paused for a second to consider. Then I said, “but that’s totally different. He and I dated for like 2 years. Aden only dated that kid for what - a month? Three, maybe four dates?”

“Exactly,” agreed AuntPharm, “that’s why I think it’s OK that I go on a date with him.”

I nodded. “It depends on the relationship.”

“Was that EVEN a RELATIONSHIP!?” cried Decibilla. Neither of us answered. “GAYS!!! OPINION!!!”

“It was not,” declared Aunt Pharm. But I kept pushing.

“Maybe the real question,” I said, “is What defines a relationship?”

That remained unanswered for the rest of the day, and I decided to do a little informal research.

A few days later, I was out on the town with some friends, and as we were in a cab hopping from bar to bar, I threw out the question. “When you’re dating someone, at what point is it considered a Relationship?”

“If you had unprotected sex, it's a relationship!”

We all laughed at the absurdity of MinnieSoda’s response.

“Guess that explains why you’ve had so many boyfriends!” I quipped.

“Shut up!” he cried. Then, “Ok, seriously... three dates. After you’ve gone on three dates with someone, that’s a relationship.”

That satisfied the rest of the cab-full, but seemed a little cut-and-dry for me.

A week later, the subject emerged again when I met up with J-Blo at Vlada.

“How’ve you been?” I asked as the server presented 2 Absolute Madras, J-Blo's drink of choice.

“Well, Bazooka and I broke up,” he replied.

“Aw, I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it - I knew that J-Blo really liked him.

“Yeah,” he said. The he looked me in the eye. “All I ask... is that you don’t sleep with him.”

“WHAT?! Why would I... I wasn’t going to... I would never...”

“I didn’t mind,” he continued, “when you slept with Shirley Temple.”

“Wooooah!” I exclaimed, suddenly so far on the defensive I didn’t even gulp my cocktail before rebutting. “First of all, I didn't just ‘sleep with him.’ That was a full-fledged Summer Fling. Gay Pride to Labor Day. That’s the closest I’ve been to a relationship since... well, never mind. And speaking of relationships, you and he were not exactly...”

“It was a relationship!” J-Blo exclaimed.

“It was a threesome,” I reminded him, “that turned into some kind of crazy thrupple, that then went on to...”

“To become a relationship.”

I sighed. And downed my drink. Clearly J-Blo had defined that relationship. And clearly friends' exes were off limits.

It shouldn't have come as a shock to me. It wasn’t even 2 months prior that I’d hooked up with a cute twink, who had recently broken up with another twink, my cute-trick-turned-friend Kenny. For some reason, I thought that Kenny either wouldn’t find out, or wouldn’t care that I’d slept with his ex. And for a while, he didn’t find out. Then one night at 3am the chiming of my iPhone woke me up. It was a text from Kenny. “You fucked my ex boyfriend!?! We’re very mad.”

My first thought was: who’s We? I almost replied, but made the wise decision to leave it unanswered. In the months that followed, Kenny never brought it up, so I assumed he’d let it go... but his feeling at the time was very clear.

I was almost ready to report back to AuntPharm with the results of my research, when I found myself out one night in a group with a rare manifestation: two gay brothers. Both were very smart, very charming, and very attractive. Of course, they were also very popular with all the gays, wherever we went. As the night of drinking went on, I couldn’t help but take the opportunity to question one, in between my flirting with him.

“So,” I asked, as innocently as possible, “do you two ever fight over guys?”

“Yeah, we occasionally cross with the same guys,” replied Tweddle Cute. “There’s a rule.”

Jackpot.

“The rule is, as long as one of us hasn't had sex with him, its ok. The other can... whatever. But if a guy has had sex with one of us, he's off limits to the other.”

I should have known. As in so many cases, it all came down to sex.

I told AuntPharm all my findings, ranging from three dates to wacky relationship to just sex.

“Overall,” I said, “You were right. Dating a friend’s ex is totally taboo.”

He nodded solemnly. Then he said, “Two gay brothers?”

“Mmm hmm.”

“Hot brothers?”

“Mmmm Hmmmmmm.”

“Just sex?”

“Just sex. If someone has sex with one, he’s totally off-limits to the other.”

“Wow,” mused AuntPharm. “Imagine if you had that rule - anyone you’d had sex with was off limits to all your friends. We’d all have to turn straight just to get laid.”

Judge Snooty

2010-03-27T18:16:00.004-04:00

On a typical Saturday night of bar-hopping in New York City, a friend’s birthday brought a few buddies and I to Evolve. Formerly know as O.W. or Oscar Wilde bar, Evolve is located on the Upper East Side, a section of Manhattan which is rarely gay and rarely frequented, a least by us.

“Oh my God, look at that go-go boy,” a friend exclaimed.

“Hideous!”

“He’s so ... old.”

“And just not cute.”

“Is he flexing his pecs to the beat?!”

“EWWWWW!” we all chorused. We couldn’t stop looking at the train wreck on the make-shift stage.

"He’s really not a go-go BOY," I pointed out.

My friends jumped in with, “Go-go man?”

“Go-go guy?”

“Go-go home.”

We soon did, or at least off to another bar, but I left wondering: are we too judgmental?

It reminded me of the night in January when Martinifun and I went out in Miami before leaving on the gay cruise the next morning. We went to Twist, one of the larger and more popular gay bars in South Beach. One room in the back was full of rotating go-go’s who may or may not have done a little more than dance, if the right amount of cash were offered. But as we looked at them, we couldn’t believe anyone would pay them for private time. There wasn't one we found attractive. We reached that agreement just as a host announced over a microphone: "Welcome to Twist! Hope you’re enjoying the dancers - we got some of the hottest guys in the United States!”

We gave each other wide-eyed looks, and gulped our margaritas.

Back in New York, a new gay bar opened in Hell’s Kitchen.

“Have you been to Bartini?” asked GarrettJuice, as we sipped grape vodka at The Ritz.

“That’s that name of it?” I exclaimed with disgust. “Awful!”

“It’s a cute space,” he replied. “It’s the crowd that’s the problem.”

“Not cute?” I asked.

“Oh they’re all cute,” he replied. “They’re just all bottoms. I look around the room like Cute? Bottom. Cute? Bottom. Cute? Bottom. It's Bottomtini.”

I slammed my empty glass on the table. “We’re going immediately.”

Bartini did turn out to be a cute space, and on a Saturday night was indeed filled with lots of cute boys. We stood at the bar, looking around.

“That bartender is hot,” GarrettJuice said. “Do you think he's good in bed?”

“No,” I replied after watching him for a moment. “See how he shakes that martini?”

“Lazy?” Garrett observed, as the bartender listlessly waved the shaker back and forth.

“Exactly. He's lazy in bed.”

“Probably just lays there,” added Madambien.

Just then, one of their friends who was visiting from out of town walked up.

“What are you talking about?” he asked. We explained our theory about the bartender.

“Y’all are crazy!” he exclaimed. “That bartender is hot, and I bet he’s great in bed. You New Yorkers - y’all are just too judgmental!”

“Shut up,” replied Madambien, “you’re crazy!”

“Yeah,” added Garrett, “You’re from the South, you don’t know anything!”

I just shrugged.

Singled Out

2010-03-15T20:56:00.006-04:00

A couple months ago, I wrote a blog post about the number of men my friends and I sleep with, and whether it’s too many. After posting it, I didn’t think the subject would be resurrected so quickly.

Last month, Time Out New York published their “Calling All Singes” issue. “Meet 104 eligible New Yorkers inside!” the cover exclaimed. I quickly paged to the main article, anxious to look at the gays (TONY always features some gays when publishing an issue like this one.) I began scrutinizing the tiny headshots, paying close attention to the males who’s pictures had the little blue man symbol in the corner: men who liked men. I had only covered about half a page when my eye settled on a cute boy.

Hey! I thought. I know him. Actually, I’d slept with him not too long ago. How funny - someone I hooked up with is famous! Well, has a one-inch-by-one-inch photo in Time Out, anyway.

I continued browsing, noticing a couple cute boys on each page of the article. Then I noticed another smiling face.

Hey! I Know him, too! Actually, I’d slept with him, too. This one was a while ago, years in fact, but nevertheless, I’d had sex with 2 out of the hundred and four New Yorkers in Time Out.

Really?

I frantically scanned the article for the next ten minutes, to be certain that it was only two. It was. I put the magazine down, and laughed. It was funny, right? I decided it was, and Twittered about it.

Not long after, I sat down to dinner with my friend and colleague, AccidentallB. She’d seen my Twitter post.

“You’ve slept with TWO guys in Time Out?!” she exclaimed.

“So what?” I laughed. “You’ve slept with more than two people.”

“NOT the same,” she scolded. “How many singles were in that magazine?”

“A hundred and four.”

“And half were men,” she said. I nodded. “And,” she continued, “how many were gay men?”

I shrugged. As if I hadn’t counted. “Eleven.”

She smiled smugly. “Eleven. Two out of eleven.”

“So what?” I asked, for the second time, though slightly less confidently.

“So,” AccidentallB replied, “that's a random sampling of gay men in New York City. Do the math. You've slept with 15 percent of all the gay men in Manhattan.”

I opened my mouth to reply ... and then closed it. A second later, I tried again. “That’s not... Are you... How could I...”

She looked back at me, cocked an eyebrow, and said nothing.

“Huh.” I sighed. “I really need to move.”

EV phOne hOme

2010-02-26T20:58:00.003-05:00

I was with a work colleague when I found a cell phone in the back of a cab.

“Should I give it to the driver?” she asked.

“No,” I sighed. “I’ll take it. I’ll do my good deed for the month.” I figured I could use some good karma.

I went back to my office and started looking through the phone - contacts, incoming calls, recently dialed numbers. Many were Italian names, with numbers that clearly dialed outside the U.S. Finally, I settled on the recently dialed number for Josie Cell, which also appreard in the contacts next to Josie Home and Josie Country.

“Hello?” a voice answered after four rings. I explained that I had found the phone in a taxi, and was trying to find its owners.

“Well that’s very nice of you,” she said. “Do you know who’s it is?”

“Um, no...” I replied. “Unless maybe it came up on your phone?”

“Oh! Well, the number did! It’s...” she proceeded to tell me the number. Useless.

“Well, I’m still not sure who’s it is,” I replied.

“Well, maybe if you read me some names in it,” she suggested.

“Sure,” I replied, trying to figure out how to set it on speaker phone and view the Contact List simultaneously. Who owns a Motorola Razr anymore?

Eventually, I figured it out and began reading her some contacts, no doubt butchering the names, which were mostly European. After only 5 or 6, she interrupted.

“Oh! It’s my mother’s phone! Or my father’s. Those are their people.”

I thought, “Their name didn’t come up on your caller ID?” but said nothing.

“Oh they’re probably in hysterics over it being missing. You’d never know it, but they are 85 and 92! They’re crazy artists who live in tribeca.”

“... Oh.”

“Thank you so much!” she went on. She gave me their exact address, which I wrote down though I had no intention of visiting. I was going for good karma, not sainthood. Then she gave me their home phone number, and their names. “Just call them at home,” she said, “and tell them you have the phone. They’ll send a messenger or something. Thank you so much!”

I disconnected, curious about these “crazy artists” who lived in what was probably a very nice loft in TriBeCa, judging from the address. Maybe I should deliver the phone in person.

“Hello?” a male voice answered when I dialed the home number. I once again explained I’d found a phone in the back of a taxi, this time adding that I’d gotten their home number from their daughter, and I thought the phone was theirs.

“Oh, thank you so much!” exclaimed the father. “That’s a very nice thing you’re doing. Where are you?”

I told him I was in the Times Square area, and he said to someone else in the room with him, “Can you go to Times Square?” After a beat, he said to me, “Talk to Christie, she’ll arrange to pick it up. And thank you!”

A second later, a female voice got on the line. Younger, definitely not the mother - a personal assistant? A Nurse?

“Thank you so much!” she said. “Tell me where you are, I’m happy to come up to you.”

I gave her the address, and she agreed to meet me within an hour. Then just as she was about to hang up, someone, presumably the mother, said something to her. She listened, then repeated it to me.

“Do you like olive oil?” she asked.

“Um... well, yes,” I replied, which was true. “I like it very much.”

“Well,” she said,”Mr. and Mrs. LostPhone make their own olive oil. They live half the year in Italy. They want to know if you’d like a bottle?”

SCORE!

“That’s so nice of them,” I replied. “I would love a bottle.”

“Great, see you soon!” she said, and hung up.

“HOMEMADE OLIVE OIL ON THE WAY!” I shouted to my colleagues as I hung up the phone.

“What??”

I told them the story.

“Crazy artists?”

“Half the year in Italy??”

“Homemade olive oil!?”

“You got it,” I laughed.

45 minutes later, we were dipping bread into some of the most amazing olive oil I’ve ever tasted.

“This is incredible!” cried a co-worker, licking her fingers. “It’s like crack in a bottle!”

“Better,” I said. “It’s Karma in a bottle.”

Ba-rror Stories

2010-02-02T20:50:00.005-05:00

I bumped into The Sexican at a house party in Chelsea, and as we sipped our cocktails the conversation immediately turned to our dating lives.

“Oh just the other night I met this really hot guy,” he was telling me. “We met at a bar, and he bought me a drink, then I bought him one... we were talking, flirting, touching - it was going really well!”

“Mmmm hmmm,” I prompted, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“And he was hot - soooo hot. Just SEXY.”

“So?”

“So, we finish our drinks, and we go outside, and he has a motorcycle! Sexy!”

I laughed a little, but nodded in agreement.

“And THEN,” the Sexican says, dramatically holding his drink in the air, “he gives me his CARD.”

“What!?” I exclaimed.

“I know.”

“His business card??”

“I KNOW.”

“A guy with a motorcycle shouldn’t even HAVE a card!”

“I KNOW!” He took a huge gulp of his vodka. “I wasted all night on this guy! I was sure I was getting laid! And he gives me his card!?”

“I guess that’s one of the risks of meeting a stranger in a bar,” I said. “You just don’t know what they’re thinking.”

“There’s a lot about them you don’t know,” he replied.

Really, he was right. It reminded me of a conversation I’d had months earlier, when MuppetDinnerTheater and I decided to go out for a cocktail, and for some reason chose Cleo’s. Now officially named Ninth Avenue Saloon, Cleo’s was the first gay bar in Hell’s Kitchen, established years before HK became gay and trendy. And in 20 years, nothing has changed except the removal of “Cleo’s” from the sign, leaving just Ninth Avenue Saloon. The decor, the bartenders and the crowd are all exactly the same. No one knows what happened to Cleo.

MuppetDinnerTheater and I took two stools at the dark bar, ignored the toothless old men eyeing us from either side, and ordered two drinks.

“Why did we come here again?” I asked.

“Because the drinks are cheap, and strong,” he replied.

“Cheers.”

He was right, on both counts. But after a few sips, I couldn’t help looking around. We brought the average age down to about 57. He saw the look of distaste on my face as I scanned the crowd.

“It’s not so bad,” he said.

“C’mon, you could never meet anyone here,” I replied.

“Oh, I have.”

I waited.

“The last time I was here I was flirting with this guy. He was sitting right here when I came in!” MuppetDinnerTheater said, then started to laugh.

“And?”

“And he was cute...” he went on, “and he was buying me drinks...”

“And?” I asked again.

He started laughing, hard, knowing the absurdity of what he was about to tell me. “And he only had one leg.”

“What?!”

“I mean, he was cute...from the waist up.”

“Did he have a peg-leg? Was he a pirate?” I asked, now also laughing.

“No! Well, not exactly...”

“Oh my God. Did you sleep with the Peg-Leg Pirate?!”

MuppetDinnerTheater shot me a dirty look. I’m still not sure if that signified a yes or a no.

Either way, for quite a while that topped the list of my friends’ Crazy Guys I Met In A Bar stories. Until last week.

I was having Thai food in Chelsea with two friends, one of whom lives outside the city and always drives in. I’m always fascinated by people who drive their cars around Manhattan, as the concept is so foreign to me. We were discussing sex of course, and the topic of older men came up. AutHoMobile jumped in with a story.

“I just met this older guy at a bar the other night,” he told us. “He was 49. Which is definitely older, but not crazy-old.”

We nodded.

“Plus, he was hot. So, I was totally fine, we’re having drinks, things are going great, we decide to leave the bar. So we go to my car, and totally start hooking up. Big time.”

“Big time?” I asked. “In your car?”

“Of course,” said AutHoMobile. “So, things are hot, pants are off, he’s blowing me, and everything is totally great ... until he starts really getting into it and suddenly goes: ‘Oh yeah, finger my tight forty-nine-year-old ass!’”

I almost sprayed vodka soda across the table.

“He did not!!”

“Dead. Serious.”

Five minutes later, when my hysterical laughter subsided, I managed to say, “Wow. From now on I’m only meeting men online, where people are normal.”

Someone To Watch O.R. Me

2009-12-21T13:48:00.004-05:00

Rare are the times when I wish I had a boyfriend. Usually, I’m perfectly happy being single, especially in New York City. But there are exceptions.

A couple weeks ago, I left work early. I was feeling awful – sore throat, headache, chills. As I walked home, for a moment I thought how great it would be to leave work at 1:00 every day. I could spend the afternoon finding hot boys to have sex with! But at that moment, I had no interest in sex whatsoever. The only thing I wanted a hot boy to do was to bring me soup, wrap me in blankets, and cuddle with me.

Cuddle?! I was definitely sick.

Last week, I had to have minor surgery on my hand. I somehow developed a ‘retinacular cyst’ under the skin of my right palm, and removing it required surgery. Though it was minor, it was full-blown surgery: arrival at the hospital Friday morning at 5:45 am (!), made to wear nothing but the loose – fitting hospital gown with my butt hanging out in the back (they wouldn’t let me keep it, I asked), and full anesthesia while they sliced open my hand in the O.R. to remove the alien cyst. Because of the anesthesia, I was required to have someone accompany me home.

My friend the Photographer generously agreed to be my escort. Because I didn’t want him to get up at 5am or sit in a waiting room for 3 hours, I told him to arrive around 9am, which the hospital said was OK. But as I was sitting in the sterile, curtained off pre-treatment area, clutching the thin gown around me and looking nervously at the IV equipment, I couldn’t help but feel very alone. I pride myself on being independent and self-sufficient, but at that moment I really wanted someone to sit with me, and make me smile, and tell me everything would be fine. I wanted a boyfriend.

After the surgery, I was overjoyed to see the Photographer, giddy in fact, and greeted him with a huge, dopey grin. The anesthesia clearly hadn’t worn off. He got me in a cab, stopped with me at Duane Reade to fill my Percocet prescription (good stuff), and took me home.

The next 48 hours were a blur, filled mostly with drugs, sleep and Domino’s pizza. There were, of course, times that I again wished I had someone to take care of me (suddenly not having use of your right hand makes the simplest tasks insanely difficult), but overall I managed pretty well. Until Monday.

My instructions were that on Monday, three days after the surgery, I could remove the mountain of bandages wrapped around my hand, and begin simply covering the incision area with band-aids. Monday night I sat on my bed, took a deep breath, and began to unwrap the sticky ace bandages. It wasn’t the pain that concerned me (it had mostly stopped hurting by then), it was the fact that I am somewhat squeamish about things like cuts, blood, and general bodily grossness. And by “somewhat squeamish” I mean I’m a huge baby.

I managed to get the outer layer of ace bandages entirely off, and then remove the two larger gauze pads. Then I saw what was left: a small square of thin gauze, which was discolored from dried blood. Another deep breath and I began to peel it back. It stuck to the skin.

“Ahhh!” I cried. I realized I was being foolish. “Stop being a baby,” I told myself. “You’re an adult, it’s just a little dried blood, and it probably won’t even hurt. Just do it!”

Once again I began to peel back the gauze, forcing myself to keep pulling as it slowly separated from the skin. I grinded my teeth and kept peeling... until I saw the first of the stitches. They had used black stitches, and the way the ends stuck out from the purplish wound make it look like a big dead bug on my hand.

“AHHHHH!”

I grabbed my cellphone.

XJosh answered on the 2nd ring. “Hello?”

“Are you home???” I cried.

“Uh... yes...” my ex-boyfriend answered cautiously.

“I’m coming over!” I exclaimed. XJosh and his current boyfriend, Marabou, had recently moved to a new apartment in Hells Kitchen, just 2 blocks from my place.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because!” I raced through an explanation in one breath, “Friday I had my hand surgery and today I’m supposed to take off the bandages and I took off the bandages but now there’s a piece of gauze and it’s stuck to my hand and I think it’s from dried blood and it’s stuck to the skin and I looked underneath and I can see the stitches and they’re grosssssssss, and I’m afraid to rip it off cause what if it starts bleeding again and what if it hurts and I need some help and ... and your sister’s a nurse!!”

XJosh signed, knowing full well my ridiculous inability to deal with anything icky. “We’re finishing dinner. Give us 20 minutes.”

Nineteen minutes later, I was pressing the buzzer to his apartment.

“Everything you need is in there,” I said dramatically, handing my messenger bag to XJosh as he opened the door.

Marabou opened my bag and began inventorying the items. “Band-Aids … and vodka?”

“Start with that,” I ordered as he pulled out the half-empty bottle I’d brought.

“What do you want it with?”

“Ice.”

After I downed half my drink, I let XJosh examine my hand.

“Can you get it wet?” he asked.

“Yes, they said that’s OK today.”

For the next ten minutes, XJosh tended to my hand, carefully dripping warm water on the gauze and lightly peeling it back, then gently applying several band-aids, all while Marabou tried to distract me with the video game he was playing.

“There,” XJosh announced, proud of his work. “All done. Didn’t even hurt, did it?”

“Thanks,” I said. Then I handed him my empty glass. “I’ll have another.”

We hung out for another hour, and then I went home, leaving the rest of the vodka as a thank-you. Walking home, I reflected that going there was probably a little ridiculous. But sometimes you literally need a helping hand. Still, it was the third time in as many weeks that the idea of having a boyfriend seemed less appalling and more appealing.

A few days ago, one of my colleagues came in to work very upset. When I saw her crying at her desk, we went to the supply room to chat.

“My boyfriend and I broke up last night,” she told me, new tears coming to her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I said, trying to comfort her. I listened for a while as she let out her I-can’t-believe-I’m-single-agains, and her I-really-thought-he-was-The-Ones. I handed her tissues, and patted her arm.

Then she exhaled a long sigh, looked at me and asked, “Why are relationships SO HARD?”

I shrugged and shook my head – I certainly didn’t have the answer to that one.

“Don’t ask me,” I replied. “I’m perpetually single.”

“Well right now,” she said, laughing through her tears, “I’m thinking that’s not such a bad thing!”

Queer in the World is Bar Men and the Gay Ho’s

2009-12-07T09:32:00.004-05:00

Of course we were talking about sex. It was Thanksgiving weekend, which always seems to be a big party weekend for the gays. MartiniFun was visiting from Chicago, and we were out at Therapy with a few friends. No one ever remembers how these conversations start, but we were talking about sleeping with boys, their friends, or friends of their friends.

“Does sleeping with a friend of a friend put you 2 degrees away from sleeping directly with that friend?” I asked.

“I'd be hard pressed to be 2 degrees from any of you,” AuntPharm said.

“Hell, 1 would be rough,” I replied, noticing that I’ve actually slept with most of my friends at some point. “In fact,” I went on, “I could probably go up to any stranger in this bar, and say ‘I've slept with one of your friends.’ And it would probably be true.”

“And how does that make you feel?” AuntPharm asked, laughing.

“Like it’s time to leave New York?” I quipped sarcastically.

But it did get me thinking about how many men I’ve actually slept with in my decade in New York. Was my number too high? Or was I just a typical New York gay?

I was immediately reminded of a conversation that took place, of course, on Fire Island. There, it seems, all conversations are about sex. That night in July I walked into the kitchen was no exception.

“So he was blowing me on the roof of his house,” one of my housemates was saying. “Everything was going was going great until he looked up at me just as I happened to be checking my watch...”

Everyone laughed.

“Do straight guys have this much sex?” TastyCake suddenly asked.

“What guys?”

“Straight-huh?”

“Who cares?”

“No, seriously,” TastyCake went on. “Ok, so there was this hot guy at the gym, and we were cruising each other, and we hooked up in the steam room. And he kinda looked familiar, but I couldn't remember him. So later on that day, I suddenly get a text from him. He knew me, he had my number, and... his number and name were in my phone! Can you believe I didn't remember him!?”

“Hello!” D2 cried, rolling his eyes. “This afternoon you introduced me to someone on the ferry that I slept with 5 years ago, and I just realized it now! I mean, sometimes I see a guy and I'm like, ‘I think I had sex with that person, but I’m not really sure...”

“Well,” TastyCake said, “how many guys have you slept with?”

“Oh, no!” I scolded. “We’re not getting into that game!”

“C’mon,” he replied. “100?”

“Easily,” I admitted.

“Totally.” added D2.

“This month,” chimed in Madambien, as everyone laughed.

TastyCake continued, “I can't wrap my mind around that number. Straight guys would say 5.”

“But,” I replied, “you can’t compare that. Straight guys live in a totally different world.”

Maybe, I realized, that was the key. It isn’t about being a Fire Island gay, or a New York gay – it’s just about being gay. It is a totally different world. But then I wondered, do all gay men live in that world? Or just the men I know?

Earlier this year, I went on a date with a very cute boy that was actually a set-up through a mutual girl friend of ours. He was sweet, smart, and funny – but I could tell right away we were very different people. The dissimilarities started when we were arranging our meeting. He worked very close to Hells Kitchen, so I suggested gay bars where we could meet. Vlada, Barrage, Ritz... He hadn’t heard of any of them. I was shocked. He’d lived in New York for 5 years, he was a gay man... how could he not know any Hells Kitchen gay bars?

Our separation became more evident as we chatted over drinks. We were discussing recent vacations, and he spoke of a camping trip where he’d spent a week in the woods with bears, snakes, and 4 straight girl friends. I spoke of the gay cruise, where I’d spent a week on a boat with bears, twinks, and 3000 gay boy friends.

“Well,” he announced, “we both slept in a cabin!”

I laughed. And then, I asked him point blank the question on my mind. “You’re just not... in the Gay World, are you?”

He smiled. “Not most of the time,” he admitted. “I like the gay world. I do! I just can’t handle it on a daily basis. But when I visit, it’s great fun. It’s like a big costume party! And who doesn’t love a costume party?”

I know I do.

No York Pity - Part 3

2009-11-24T10:32:00.005-05:00

The story of one New Yorker's first visit to Los Angeles. Part One here. Part Two here. And now the final chapter:

We actually set an alarm for Saturday morning, but we didn’t need it. One good thing about being on New York time in L.A. is that your body can sleep til noon, but you’re still awake by 9. It was Tourist Day, and I had quite a list. First stop: Enterprise.

They handed us the keys to our PT Cruiser – I looked longingly at the convertible, but we decided against the $150 upgrade. By 10:15 we were cruising down Sunset Boulevard toward Santa Monica.

We had coffee and breakfast on the Santa Monica promenade, and then headed to the Pier. We walked the length of Santa Monica Pier, and I took it all in. The homeless people, the pigeons, the strange men gutting fish...

“Santa Monica Pier – check!” I announced.

We hopped back in the car and headed for our next destination: The Getty Museum.

I put the address into Google maps, and handed my iPhone to TightLips.

“Just follow the purple line,” I explained. “The blinking blue dot is us. It has GPS.”

Soon, we were winding through narrow streets, going up steep hills with beautiful houses on either side.

“These houses are ridiculous,” I observed. “They must cost millions.”

I watched as the road narrowed, and the curves became sharper.

“This can’t be right,” I said.

“It is!” Tightlips replied, scrutinizing the iPhone.

Soon were had slowed to about 20 miles per hour, going around curves so sharp that mirrors had been nailed to the trees so that you could see if a vehicle was approaching from the other side. And we always seemed to be moving uphill.

“This CAN’T be right,” I insisted.

“We are exactly on the line!” he said adamantly.

Then we went up another steep incline, around one final U-shaped curve, and suddenly were facing a huge metal fence with a locked gate that went right across the road.

“What the??” I stopped the car.

I looked to the right, and saw nailed to a tree a black box that looked like a mailbox. On it was a large printed sign: DIRECTIONS TO GETTY MUSEUM. Your GPS is Wrong.

* * *

30 minutes later we were out of the hills, on highway 405, and then pulling into the parking lot of the Getty Center. We didn’t really know what to expect, and the surprises started with the tram that takes guests up the mountain side from the parking lot to the museum. We felt like we were entering Jurassic Park. The Center turned out to be a campus of buildings with stunning architecture, beautiful gardens and fountains, and extraordinary views, even on an overcast day. We saw some of the exhibits, including a great photography display by Irving Penn called The Worker, and then strolled though the stunningly landscaped gardens.

“Getty Museum – check!”

We got back to the hotel around four, and changed into our Saturday-Night-Out-In-L.A. Outfits. A client of mine was hosting an event at the Grammy Museum in downtown LA, and had invited us to attend. We left early, as we had a few stops to make on the way.

The first stop was In-N-Out burger. Tightlips was salivating as we pulled in to the parking lot. I looked over the menu, which only listed four items, and ordered a double cheeseburger and fries. The burger was pretty fantastic. The fries, however, were a little soggy – I didn’t really like them.

“Maybe you’d like them better Animal Style,” said TightLips, pointing to a woman near us whose fries were covered with chili, cheese and who knows what else.

“That’s not on the menu!” I said to him.

“You just have to know,” he replied.

“That’s fucking ridiculous,” I exclaimed. “It’s a fast-food chain, not the Skull and Bones Society.”

He shrugged. I handed him the rest of my fries, which he gladly started eating. I made the obligatory fat joke.

“Hey,” he replied, “You’re lucky I didn’t order a four-by-four.”

Again I looked at the menu, then back at him questioningly, as of course no such thing was listed.

“You just have to know.”

“Secret Society of the In-N-Out Burger – check!” I said sarcastically, and we were off to Hollywood Blvd.

We covered the Walk Of Fame, scratching the rest of our Must-Sees off the Tourist list: Grauman's Chinese Theatre, the Kodak Theater, the Hollywood sign. We decided to each pick our favorite Star and take a picture. TightLips immediately chose Paula Abdul, and after only 20 minutes of searching, we found her. Mine was more difficult.

“I don’t really have a favorite star,” I told him. “I’m not the celebrity type.”

“You’ll find one,” he replied. We walked both sides of the boulevard, just as I was getting annoyed with the tourists in front of the Kodak Theater, TightLips pointed at the ground.

“Look!”

I gasped. “Absolut Vodka has a Star?!”

Hollywood Walk Of Fame – check.

The event was at the new Grammy Museum in downtown L.A. Although I was still mostly loving the city, I got to experience one of L.A.’s infamous downsides: traffic. After driving an hour for a distance that should have taken 20 minutes, we finally arrived at the museum, which was located in the same complex as the Staples Center.

I thought the Grammy Museum was pretty cool. TightLips was like Charlie in the Chocolate Factory. He ran around, gasping, pointing, screeching.. and when he saw the display of Beyonce’s grammy dress I swear he orgasmed – I was worried he would try to shatter the display case so he could try it on.

The centerpiece of the event was a private performance by Lang Lang, an amazing pianist who, among hundreds of other noteworthy appearances, performed at the opening ceremonies of the Bejing Olympics, where he was watched by over 5 million people. We got to watch him in a room of about 150 people, and he was absolutely stunning.

Following the performance, there was a cocktail reception on the roof of the museum. The space was nice – well decorated with cocktail tables and of course a full rooftop bar. And once again I loved that we were at an outdoor event in the middle of November. But I was underwhelmed by the views. Looking at the few paltry high-rises of downtown LA, I found myself missing the magnificent skyline of New York City.

We left the event and headed back to West Hollywood for our final night out in L.A. We again found ourselves fighting traffic.

“God, it’s 10:30,” I said, “is there ALWAYS traffic here?”

“Pretty much.”

When we finally arrived, we dealt with the next drama: parking. I was definitely missing the ease of public transit in Manhattan.

The club, however, for the second night in a row outshone NYC. We went to Cherry Pop at Ultra Suede, which was a great space with modern-looking décor and bars, as well as a pretty large dance floor. Around the dance floor were three raised stages, which featured rotating go-go dancers. At first I was critical of all three of them: the white guy with Mohawk, the black guy with the crazy outfit (Is that a wrestling belt, underwear, knee-high boots and a jacket that only reaches from shoulders to nipples? Yes, yes it is.) And the girl. A girl go-go boy? But soon they all won me over, ever her, especially when at random points in the middle of songs they would suddenly break into perfectly matched choreography – but only for about 10 seconds. A neat trick.

The music was great, and the crowd was very cute. There were a couple boys I thought about talking to, but that “foreign city” confidence I’d had the last couple nights seemed to be gone. It might have had something to do with the fact that I wasn’t drinking. It was strange not being able to jump on the subway or in a cab. I wondered, did people in LA not drink as much, or did they always have a designated driver, or did they just drive home drunk? All of those options seemed crazy to me, but I added it to my growing list of things in L.A. that just didn’t make sense.

The next morning, we returned the car and walked to Santa Monica one last time for brunch. We considered Hamburger Mary’s, but for some reason they don’t open at 10:30am so we chose Hugo’s, which had a sizable crowd waiting for tables. The GayCities iPhone app described it as “Healthy food to the stars.”

“Do you see any stars?” I asked TightLips as we were being shown to our table.

“That kind of looks like Phillip Seymour Hoffman,” he said, pointing at a man with white hair who looked nothing like Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

“And the woman he’s with looks like Tabitha from that Bravo hair-styling show,” I said.

“Perfect!” he cheered. “For purposes of story-selling, we had brunch with Phillip and Tabitha.”

The food was delicious, and it was another gorgeous sunny day. As we sat in the taxi to the airport, I posted to Twitter that I was very unhappy to leave L.A. and would be back soon. It was true, there was a lot about the city I really enjoyed. But there was also a lot about it I just didn’t get. And when our plane touched down at JFK eight hours later, I had a thought I often have when returning home from a trip: I’m glad to be back in New York, where things make sense.

No York Pity - Part 2

2009-11-16T13:29:00.005-05:00

The story of one New Yorker's first visit to Los Angeles. Part One here.

Friday morning I woke up, not surprisingly, with a terrible hangover. But the sunshine peeping through the curtain of our room at The Standard West Hollywood motivated me to get out of bed fairly early. After all, how difficult could it be for this New Yorker to spend a November day laying poolside in the sun?

TightLips and I decided that coffee and breakfast were first priorities, so we again rebuked the L.A. norm and walked, not drove, in search of nourishment. Of course we went back to Santa Monica Blvd, obviously the main gay drag (no pun) of West Hollywood. Thursday night we’d had dinner at Marix, and now found ourselves next door at Basix. Immediately, there was a lot I liked about it.

One, we were seated outside on the large patio. Two, the extra-frothy double cappuccino that the cute server quickly brought me was exactly what I needed. Three, the California-Health-Savvy menu made it easy for me to order something filling enough to quash my hangover but nutritious enough to feel beach-body-ready. And four, even though it was a Friday morning in November, we were sitting outside and cute boys were walking, strolling or jogging by.

“I’m loving L.A.!” I announced, taking a bite of my Egg White Power Omelet as a hot boy in a tank top and mesh shorts ran past us.

TightLips rolled his eyes – he was already tiring of my constant L.A. praise. But I didn’t care, and was still raving 2 hours later as we soaked up the sun on the pool deck. He was splashing around in the pool on a pink innertube as I sipped an iced tea in a lounge chair.

“I could get used to this!”

He ignored me and pointed out the group of female models who had taken a table near the building. A couple of them were playfully posing near the fence, giving their favorite sexy-model-poses to the camera.

“I could be friends with them,” he said wistfully. I shrugged. Another Friday afternoon at the Standard West Hollywood.

By 3 o’clock we were fried, and I decided it was time to start working my way through the Tourist List. We put on our Shopping Outfits, and grabbed a cab to Rodeo Drive. We strolled through Dolce and Gabbana, glanced at Gucci, and tried on jeans at Prada.

“Rodeo Drive – check!” I announced, and it was off to happy hour.

TightLips had some friends who lived in the area, a college friend and her sister, and they agreed to meet up with us for cocktails. After some madcap antics trying to find and pick us up on the streets of Beverly Hills, we squeezed in their Camaro and soon arrived at The Abbey, one of West Hollywood’s best-known gay bars. It was huge, with several rooms and lots of outdoor seating.

Unfortunately the L.A. weather tricked me, and I wasn’t prepared for the sudden temperature drop as soon as the sun began to set. Wearing just our sunny-afternoon-jeans-and-t-shirts, sitting outside wouldn’t work. Fortunately inside, there was a huge fireplace with a three-level fire. We settled down in front of it with our fancy cocktails and a plate of hummus.

As we chatted, I was also texting ByeByeCostal, who wanted to meet us for dinner around nine. I agreed, thinking that gave us plenty of time to go back to the hotel and change before going out for the night. It was then that I noticed three cute boys sit down at the bar and order drinks.

“Hmmmm,” I said thoughtfully, and the girls turned to see what had caught my attention. TightLips didn’t have to.

“I saw them when they walked in,” TightLips said. “They’re totally your type. You may as well go.”

I paused. Could I really just walk up to three cute strangers at a bar? In New York I would not. I would assume they’d be pretentious, or bitchy, or just not interested (and 2 out of 3 would probably be correct in New York) and I’d chicken out. But again that weird and wonderful confidence of being in a strange city came over me, and I excused myself from our group and walked up to the bar.

“Hey guys, where’s a good place to go out tonight?”

A lie of course – I didn’t need the information, as I had ByeByeCostal taking us out. But it worked brilliantly. They all gave their answers, and from there came introductions. I settled into the seat next to them, thinking ‘I’m sitting at a bar with THREE cute boys. Does it get better than this?”

It did. They were cheerleaders.

“Cheerleaders? Like, you get thrown up in the air?” I asked, slightly directing my question toward the blond one, who I thought was the cutest (but only barely.)

“Oh yeah, that’s my favorite part!” Blondie replied.

“So who’s the catcher?”

They smiled, and told me that they were going to Palm Springs for the weekend, as it was Gay Pride Weekend there, and they were performing in the parade on Sunday. They were killing time now waiting for 5 or 6 cheerleader friends, and then they were all going to drive together to the house they had rented with the 4 bedrooms, pool, and Jacuzzi. Full of gay cheerleaders.

“It’s going to be an amazing weekend!” said one.

“You should come!” said another, smiling coyly.

“Totally,” agreed Blondie, as he reached over to squeeze my arm. “You should definitely come.”

It’s a good thing that I’d only had one drink, or I undoubtedly would have raced over to TightLips, screamed “We’re going to Palm Springs!!” and dragged him out of the bar and to the nearest car rental. Instead, I replied truthfully, “I wish I could,” and ordered another round of cocktails with them.

Before long, Blondie (who fortunately was not going to be the one driving) was pretty buzzed. He took a sip of his Lemon Drop Martini, and suddenly made a painful face.

“Ow!!” he exclaimed.

“What?”

“It huths my tahng!” Blondie slurred while holding his tongue with his fingers. “Its an exploded taste bud.”

We looked at him incredulously.

“An exploded taste bud!” he exclaimed, insistent. “My friend told me it can happen when you have too much citrus!”

“I’ve... never heard of that...” I said, trying to be sensitive. His friends were not so tactful.

“That’s fucking crazy!”

“You’re so stupid!”

“What?!” Blondie cried. “It’s an exploded taste bud! Haven’t you ever had an exploded taste bud??? Too much citrus!”

Perhaps it was better that I wasn’t going to Palm Springs.

I hung out with them for a few more drinks, until TightLips and I realized that it was almost 9, and there was no way we were going back to the hotel . But it had gotten pretty cold, and I decided I couldn’t walk around in just a t-shirt. So, at 8:55, I exchanged numbers with the cheerleaders, wished them luck in Palm Springs, and walked into American Apparel. It was five minutes before closing time. There was no one in the store but me and the sales clerk. He was young, thin, and very cute.

“Hi,” I said. “Sorry, I know you’re about to close. I just need to get a sweatshirt or something. I wasn’t prepared for it to get this cold tonight. I’m from New York.”

I had uttered the magic words.

“Ohmigod I LOVE New York! I totally want to move there! Where do you live? How long have you been there? What do you do?”

I wasn’t sure how it happened, but suddenly it was raining men in California, and the cumulo-boy-us cloud was right over my head. I’d just left three gay cheerleaders, I was on my way to have dinner with my old trick ByeByeCostal, and here was a hot twinky sales boy who seemed quite into me.

Granted, I could hear the scolding voice of my friend MartiniFun as if he were right there talking in my ear: “My mother always says – don’t date the help!” But after all, I was on vacation – I wasn’t looking for a relationship.

I quickly learned that when he wasn’t working at American Apparel, ClerkKent did party promotion for some of the bars here in West Hollywood, and that he hoped to move to New York and get into event planning. Of course.

“I do event planning in New York,” I admitted. We exchanged phone numbers and email addresses, and he promised to let me know as soon as he made it to the big apple. I bought a lavender long-sleeve v-neck and said goodnight.

TightLips and I met up with ByeByeCostal, who took us to a cute little café down the street from the Abbey. It was nothing fancy, but I was glad to try somewhere popular with the locals. After dinner, we stopped for over-priced coffee on Santa Monica, and then strolled into a sex store to kill time. After 15 minutes of gasping at 3-foot-long dildos and being scared to stick our fingers into the sample FleshJacks, ByeByeCostal announced that it was time to hit the club.

The club was called Factory, the party was called Popstarz. It was a giant, multi-level space with abundant lighting and sound, a huge main dance floor and a couple separate lounges. The crowd was cute, and everyone was having fun, because they were playing fun music. Pop songs of course, the kind that everyone loves to dance and sing along to.

ByeByeCostal introduced us to a couple of his friends, and we drank and danced with them for a while. Occasionally while we were dancing my hands would innocently wander down to squeeze ByeByeCostal’s very muscular butt, and occasionally he would turn and grind that same cute butt up against me. I starting thinking about whether TightLips would be OK getting himself back to the hotel alone, as it was looking like I would spend the night somewhere else.

I got another cocktail, went back to the dance floor, and thought about how much I was loving L.A. The weather, the night life, and the boys! In the last 5 hours, I’d met 4 cute boys, gotten 3 phone numbers, gone dancing with 2 more boys, and was about to go home with 1 of them. Right on cue, there was ByeByeCostal crossing the dance floor in my direction. As he approached I smiled, listening to the thumping music. Tonight was gonna be a good night!

“I gotta go,” he said.

I stared. “Huh?”

“Have fun!” he said, and before I could even gather my thoughts, I was watching his cute butt walk right out the door.

“Bye Bye...”

I turned to TightLips, and he read my ‘what the hell?’ expression. He shrugged. We danced to another Britney song, but soon after decided to call it a night. We still hadn’t quite adjusted to the time in L.A., and it wasn’t just that. Hollywood suddenly wasn’t making any sense at all.

No York Pity - Part 1

2009-11-13T12:06:00.004-05:00

“I can’t believe we’re lying by a pool – in November. 75 degrees! Is this normal?”

“Actually, it’s been known to be warmer,” TightLips replied.

I sighed contentedly, dipped a plantain into the fresh guacamole, and glanced around the pool deck of The Standard West Hollywood. “I could get used to this.”

24 hours earlier, we met up at gate 42 in JFK. It was 1pm on Thursday. I hadn’t seen TightLips in a while, and as we settled into 31A and B, we caught up on gossip like 13-year-old girls.

“I can’t believe he said that!”

“Were you on that email chain??”

“He’s such a bitch!”

Since we were in catty-chatty mode, I asked him, “So what’s going on with your love life?”

Typical TightLips, he immediately clammed up. “Nothing! I don’t know. Nothing!”

I knew that he was seeing someone who lived halfway across the country, but I didn’t know the details. I decided to press a little bit.

“Long distance relationships are rough,” I said.

“I am NOT in a relationship!” he exclaimed. “I’m in a … Situation.”

I laughed, and decide to leave it at that, knowing I would get no more out of him. I cracked open my new James Patterson paperback.

The flight, amazingly, was drama-free. No delays, no turbulence, no screaming babies.

We had decided to only rent a car for one day of our four-day weekend, and like characteristic New Yorkers took a cab from the airport to the hotel. I was immediately happy with The Standard, with its signature blue Astroturf pool deck and over-sized metallic silver beanbag chair in the room. TightLips was immediately happy the cable TV had Bravo.

He started to settle into the Real Housewives of Atlanta Reunion, but I grabbed the remote away and dragged him down to the pool deck for our first LA cocktail. Soon he was sipping a Raspberry Bluejob, while I was enjoying a Basil-Lime Vodka Gimlet and the weather.

“There’s no way anyone is New York is sitting outside having their cocktails tonight,” I observed.

“Feel bad for them?” he asked.

“Not in the least. Cheers!”

After our drinks, we decided to walk the 2 blocks to Santa Monica Blvd in search of a fun restaurant for dinner. TightLips wanted Mexican food. I wanted eye candy. I had downloaded, much to his horror, the GayCities app to my iphone, and it showed plenty of gay bars and restaurants on Santa Monica, near the hotel. We soon arrived at Marix, a Mexican restaurant over-flowing with gay boys. It was West Hollywood’s Arriba Arriba.

I texted ByeByeCostal, a trick I had met in New York years ago, but had kept in touch with as he seemed to fly to Manhattan a lot, even though he lived and worked in L.A. He promised to meet us the next night, but suggested we check out Obar and FUBAR. Such creative names in LA.

After our tex-mex meal, TightLips and I walked to Obar, conveniently a few blocks away. It was a very crowded, well decorated, fairly upscale lounge. I enjoyed it right away, and happily sat down at the bar. TightLips however, between the poolside cocktail, the dinner and the jet lag, was exhausted. I sent him back to the hotel, assuring him I would be fine.

I sat for a few minutes sipping a vodka redbull, taking in the L.A. scene. Before long, a pretty Asian girl ordering next to me said, “Hello Beautiful.” I liked her immediately. We chatted while she ordered, her name was Emily, and the whole time I was thinking, ‘I met an L.A. fag hag!’

She left with her drinks, and I sat for a few more minutes, listening to the bartender call everyone Baby. He also had the terrible habit of over-garnishing every drink, as a sign of affection to the patron, once even going as far as dropping 3 cherries into a drink announcing, “Kisses!”

I turned away from him, and suddenly saw kisses indeed – there was my Asian fag hag... making out with a hot blonde girl! When they came up for air, they walked back over and Emily introduced me to Mary. I said hello, the whole time thinking, ‘I met two L.A. lesbians! This is so L-WORD!’ Then suddenly Emily introduced me to someone else.

“This is Deeno. He wants to buy us shots!”

Deeno was slightly older, very drunk, and very into me. “Hellllllllllo!” he slurred, immediately grabbing my ass. “You need a shot!”

The truth was, I didn’t. I’d had the gimlet, a double margarita at dinner, and the vodka here. I was getting drunk. But I always say, never turn down free alcohol. Plus, I was alone at a bar in a strange city, and they were being nice to me. I needed to be polite.

“Ok, thank you!” I said, politely. “What shall we have?”

“What we’re having,” Deeno slurred, “is either Lemon Drops, or Jaeger shots.”

“What?! Jaeger shots!” I cried in disbelief. “What is this, a fucking frat party?? Who the fuck does Jaeger shots?!”

Emily and Mary stared at me. Deeno seemed too gone to notice my outburst.

“Um, Lemon Drops would be lovely,” I said with my sweetest smile.

Baby the Bartender served us four huge shots in lowball glasses with sugar-covered rims. It took me 3 gulps to drink it.

As soon as we’d finished, the lesbians started making out again, and a minute later they announced, “We’re leaving!”

“What!?” I cried. “It’s 10:30! Where are you going??”

Mary leaned in close to me and whispered, “someplace better!” and then grabbed Emily’s ass with both hands. I got the message. They were going home to scissor.

I was worried I’d be stuck with drunk Deeno, but fortunately he was stumbling around the bar, a bit lost. I seized the opportunity to escape. When you’re in a new city, you somehow develop courage you don’t seem to have at home. I looked around, saw a group of 4 guys (2 of them attractive) and immediately went up and started talking to them.

“OK guys, I have a question. When someone buys you a drink, how long do you have to talk to him?”

There was a split-second, ‘who-is-this-weirdo-talking-to-us’ pause, but then the answers started flying.

“Ten minutes?” said one.

“However long it takes you to drink it,” said another, a philosophy I personally agree with.

“Not if he’s ugly!” cried the third. The conversation continued, and I soon learned all of their names – none of which I even pretended to remember, as the force of the triple-size shot on top of all the other drinks was really starting to hit me. I was just considering ordering a bottle of water when...

An unbelievably loud whistle blast! One long high-pitched whistle, louder than all the conversation and music.

“What the fu...” I started, but was cut off by one of my new friends.

“Order!!” he shouted.

“What??”

“Drinks!” exclaimed another, pushing me toward the bar, which I happened to be closest to. “They’re free!”

I noticed two things – a crowd of people swarming toward the bar, and the projection of a huge digital clock on the wall, counting down from 4 minutes.

“Drinks are free for four minutes?” I asked.

“Yes!!” they shouted. “Vodka cran! Vodka soda! Rum and diet!!”

It was all happening too fast, especially in my drunken state. Which should have been my first indication that I did not need another drink. But I always say, don’t turn down free...

Another loud whistle blast! Just as I was about to order, the clock hit zero. But fortunately, Baby the Bartender remembered me from the time I’d spent sitting alone at his bar. “What’ll it be? I gotcha, Baby.”

I tipped him handsomely, and delivered the free drinks to my new friends. I was rewarded with an invite to their next destination.

“You should come,” they said. “It’s Arab night.”

“Huh?” I asked, confused. All I could picture was flying carpets, genies, and Aladdin. “Arabian Nights?”

“Arab night! Like, Arab guys!”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, where is it?”

“It’s like 12, 15 blocks from here.”

“Oh,” I said. “So we can walk.”

“We’re totally driving.”

I shook my head. “I’m just gonna go to this FUBAR place,” I said. “But thanks for the invite!”

As they headed off to Arabia, I stumbled another few blocks to FUBAR. It was not like Obar at all. Dark, sweaty, loud. A step up from a dive bar. I pushed my way in, looking around and trying to judge the crowd. The next thing I noticed was the go-go boys. Scratch that. Go-go men? Go-go line-backers? The one standing on the front bar had thighs the size of my head. I wouldn’t say he was fat... but it was definitely not all muscle. “Beefy” might be a good word.

I was getting tired. It was almost 1:30 – 4:30am New York Time. But what if I missed something? What if this was THE place to meet guys? I looked around again, and finally decided that FUBAR reminded me of Urge in the East Village, while Obar reminded me of The Park in Chelsea. I leaned against a wall to Twitter that thought, and as I did I noticed someone right next to me, typing on his phone as well. I stole a glance at his screen. Grindr. The gay hookup iphone app. Apparently, this wasn’t THE place to meet guys, if someone was standing here trying to meet guys online.

I took it as a sign, and left the bar, stumbling back to the hotel. I still had 2 more L.A. days ahead of me.

Pole Position

2009-10-30T15:34:00.005-04:00

Tuesday night at XES for a friend’s birthday turned out to be sort of a Fire Island reunion. As one frequent guest of our house remarked, “It’s so weird to see you all in clothes.”

The Sexican and I were chatting about, of course, sex, when a housemate who shall remain nameless announced that he had recently slept with a 19-year-old. I shrugged, having made the same admission once or twice in the past. But Sexican, a little tipsy, acted horrified.

“Oh my gawd!! Nineteen???”

A sheepish nod.

“Wait. Did you BOTTOM with a nineteen-year-old?!”

Another sheepish nod, followed by a dash to the bar for more alcohol.

“I can’t believe it!” exclaimed Sexican.

“What?” I asked. “He’s a bottom.”

“I never bottom for someone younger than me!” Sexican cried. “That’s the Rule!”

“It IS?”

I had never heard such a thing, though perhaps I’d been following it inadvertently all these years. I usually tend to top, at least during one-night-stands, which I’ve had a lot of. And I’ve always tended to sleep with younger guys, which I’ve had a lot of. But was there a correlation? It seemed ridiculous that something as silly as age could determine what sexual position someone prefers on any given night, in any given encounter. But, it certainly seemed to resonate with some people...

As I thought about it, I recalled something that In Bocca Di Lucas had written once on his blog, Top To Bottom. Some quick research found me the post, Now Step I Forth to Whip Hypocrisy. He wrote about a partner of his that wanted him to bottom, apparently a request he gets fairly often, the reason being his looks. The point of his post seemed summed up when he, at height 5’4”, wrote: “I have just as much of a right as any other guy to like it better on top...just like all these 6'4" bottoms I've been meeting have a right to take it up the ass.” However, just one line before that, he himself admitted: “I am fully aware of the fact that I look like a bottom. I'm short, slim, boyish, and I have a killer ass.”

(Sounds good to me!)

So some people, I reasoned, determine position preference based on body type, which is purely physical. Others clearly rely on age, which encompasses both the physical and the emotional. And I soon realized that other people associate it with the totally emotional quality of personality.

I was walking in Chelsea with Travelocigay, after we had finished dinner at Tia Pol, an amazing tapas restaurant on Tenth Avenue. He wanted us to meet up with some friends, and pulled out his cell phone to call one of them. I listened to his end of the conversation:

“Hi... Where are you? ... Walking on Tenth... Tia Pol... Where are you? ... Ohhhh... Where is that? ... Ohhhh... Yeah, we should meet up... Ummmm... How long will you be? ... Um...”

Finally I could no longer take the indecisive babble.

“Where are they!?” I demanded.

“Nisos,” he replied.

“When are they done?” I questioned, already mapping Chelsea in my head.

“They’re on dessert,” he said.

“Ok, were going to G. It’s a block away, tell them to walk over whenever they’re done.”

Travelocigay relayed my message and hung up. Then he turned to me and said, “I love that you’re a top!”

Who can say whether being a top or a bottom is determined by age, or height, or attitude. Maybe it’s a combination. Maybe it’s a spur-of-the-moment decision. Or maybe it doesn’t matter, and once they’re at that point, boys just wanna have fun.

David's Hassle-Offer

2009-10-22T21:56:00.004-04:00

I recently got an invitation to a Bar-B-Q at Chef BoysForPay’s house in Brooklyn on a Friday night. Brooklyn? On a Friday night? Chef BoysForPay’s cooking is undeniably amazing, but my impulse wasn’t to accept immediately. I thought, what if something better comes along? It’s a Friday night in New York City, what if I agree to spend the night in the outer boroughs, and miss something fabulous? My Borough Hesitation suddenly reminded me of last October.

Halloween 2008, I had my sexy Tarzan costume all ready to go. Halloween falling on a Friday, there were LOTS of options – everyone was headed somewhere. The week leading up to the holiday, as the gay boys began puttting their less-is-more costumes together, emails arrived in my inbox. Some from friends, suggesting plans. Many from the different clubs and bars, announcing their parties. Finally I got an email from TightLips. He, XJosh, and EverybodyLovesAden were going to meet at their place in Astoria, and proceed into Manhattan for a few stops around town.

I immediately rejected the idea of going to Astoria just to come back to Manhattan, and decided to meet up with them later. For the earlier part of the night, I decided to join an acquaintance, whom I Rarely See, but who had also emailed his intention to hit 2 Manhattan parties and invited others to join him.

At 9pm I texted RarelySee. He replied that he had decided to take a nap and skip the first party.

I tried not to be annoyed (the event planner in me hates disorganization and last-minute changes) and I reasoned that 9 was too early to go out anyway. I sat around my apartment for an hour, then another half hour, waiting for him to text. Finally at 10:40 I texted him again: “What’s up?”

He replied: “Getting more mixers, I’ll be right back.”

So he was already at the second party? Did he think I was there? Was he Drunk? Confused?

I typed: “Where are you?”

Reply: “Fixxed Joe subway messege”

He was clearly drunk and confused, and I was annoyed and decided I was done with him. I texted TightLips, who said they were at a bar on 14thStreet. I thought, Fine, I’ll go meet them. I threw my costume in a bag (even though it was Halloween, I didn’t want to walk around alone in just a leopard print skirt) and walked out the door.

I quickly discovered that at 10:45 on Halloween Friday there are no available cabs anywhere in Hells Kitchen. I walked 20 blocks looking for one, and texted Tightlips again. He then replied that they’d be leaving that bar in about 45 miutes, heading to Chelsea.

I was more annoyed. My choices were to take a subway to the east village, where I would arrive just in time for my friends to leave, or wait for them in Chelsea, where I had walked to. Normally I wouldn’t have minded sitting alone in a bar for one drink – but it was Halloween. And at 11pm, every bar was packed with people, most of them drunk, all of them in costumes. I could not just sit, alone, un-costumed, looking like a total loser. Disgusted with all my options, I walked home.

As I spent Halloween night alone in my apartment, I realized that you can’t spend your life waiting for a better offer. Chances are, not only will you not be missing anything, but you might end up with nothing at all.

Last month when my friend Mattitude emailed that he was leaving New York City, I was disappointed and also a little dumbfounded - who leaves New York? Of course I planned to attend his going-away party, but when the invite appeared on Facebook, I hesitated for a split-second. A Friday night? At a straight bar in the village?

ATTENDING, I clicked, not only because he is a good friend, but because I was finally done with worrying something better would come along.

Sure enough, it was a great time. We had excellent cocktails in a cute little lounge called The Dove Parlour on Thompson Street, then wandered the village for a bit in search of sustenance.

We stopped at NY Coffee & Hot Dogs, where the following exchange took place:

Me: Small latte please.

Server-Girl: Skim milk, right?

Me: Did she just call me Fat?!?!

Then we ended the night at Pieces – always tragic, but in a fun-with-enough-booze kinda way.

While we were at the Dove, XJosh, Marabou, TightLips and I discussed costumes for Halloween. We came up with some great ideas, including what may be my Naked-est Costume Ever. But most importantly, I’ll be spending this Halloween with my friends, not home alone waiting for a better offer.

March in Like a Lion and be Out Hand-n-Hand

2009-10-17T17:25:00.005-04:00

The weekend of October 10/11 2009, I attended the National Equality March in Washington, D.C. It was a fun, moving, crazy, amazing, drunken, special weekend, and I had no idea how I would ever write about it. Until I realized that I’d been writing about it the whole time – via my endless Twitter and Facebook updates.

Sat at 10:40am
David is on the Bolt Bus headed to DC for the National Equality March. Weekend of updates to follow!

Sat at 12:15pm
David is somewhere in south jersey. Made friends with a cute lesbian couple. No children on the bus thank god - nice and quiet.

Sat at 1:42pm
David’s gay bus to DC is at a rest stop outside Charleston, DE. I wonder if this update will get flagged for "gay" & "rest stop".

Sat at 3:04pm
David has arrived in DC and is heading for the Ritz Carlton Pentagon City. Ya gotta have connections, people.

Sat at 6:09pm
David is relaxing at the Ritz before a night out in DC, and kinda laughing at all the boys taking those 6am buses tomorrow.

Sat at 9:04pm
David is having cocktails and dinner with the gang at SETTE in Dupont Circle. March tomorrow!

Sat at 11:37pm
David is standing in line to get into Town, apparently the hottest party in DC since the Democrats.

Sun at 1:20am
David is DISGUSTED that DC clubs still have black lights. Is it 1993??

Sun at 9:28am
David is hungover and annoyed at B**** for throwing open the hotel curtains, but glad it's not 6am. Suns out in DC!

Sun at 10:22am
David cut himself shaving. On March day! I'm sure by the end of the day I'll have given blood, sweat and tears for Equality.

Sun at 11:15am
David is at the holding area for the march. Amazing energy! And lots of cute boys.

Sun at 12:04pm
David just realized we are at the very front of the march. And we're off!

Sun at 12:17pm
David: March is off to a slow start - it's more of a Stroll For Equality so far.

Sun at 12:20pm
David: Actual rainbow in the sky above the march! Crowd goes crazy!!

Sun at 1:40pm
David is closing in on the Capitol. Not sure what it is about this stretch, but there's cute boys EVERYWHERE.

Sun at 2:00pm
David is at the rally. Lady GaGa just passed by getting escorted to the stage.

Sun at 3:46pm
David: Lady GaGa on stage at the Equality Rally! Crowd goes crazy.

Sun at 8:47pm
David: Phone died, no surprise. I was seen on cspan! Proud of all those NYers who made the day trip but glad I hoteled. Goin out!

Sun at 10:34pm
David is heading out in Dupont Circle. Where is everyone? What's the DC hot spot tonight?

Sun at 11:46pm
David is sitting with the boys in the "VIP" section at Cobalt. We look like we're judging American Idol.

Monday at 10:19am
David is on Cspan at the Equality March. Clearly seen in the video on YouTube.

Tuesday at 12:09pm
David is wondering what to have for lunch. Wow, updates are so much less interesting when I'm not in the middle of a March for Gay Equality.

Twink Rapt

2009-09-24T09:08:00.003-04:00

"I think my tastes are changing," I told VeryVogue and D2, my Fire Island housemates, while we were sipping cocktails poolside."I'm starting to appreciate guys who are a little older."

"Oh, so it's finally OK if they're old enough to drink?" asked VeryVogue.

I gave him a dirty look and sipped my Vodka Crystal Light.

I have somewhat of an obsession with twinks. Guys who are young, usually thin, boyish, often with little body hair and little earthy cares just seem to do it for me, and always have. However, along with their young bodies and carefree attitudes come a whole host of problems, ranging from immaturity to insecurity.

I was discussing it with a friend I ran into earlier this summer at Rockit, a Friday night party in Hells Kitchen . I lustfully pointed out a gorgeous boy walking by who couldn’t have been a day over 21.

“You remind me a straight girl friend of mine,” my friend said. “She keeps dating these, like, 21-year-old models. And she is never satisfied.”

“But they’re so hot!” I whined.

He shook his head. “You two could commiserate. You both know that what you want in the moment is what you really don’t want in the long term.”

“Damn twinks!” I cried. “They’re bad for you, but they're so good! They're like carbs.”

After my hangover subsided, I thought about the conversation, and wondered why I was so helplessly attracted to twinks. I knew full well that they were almost always undateable, being either too young, too unemployed, too unstable... Was it just because they look so good?

I do have a probably unhealthy fascination with youth – skin before it starts to wrinkle, hair before it starts to gray. So when I see a cute gay boy, showing off his pert little ass with not a hint of a sag, how can I not want to get him in bed?

But then I realized – even getting them in bed is often a letdown.

I recently got invited to a twink orgy. I’d come home from the gym, made dinner, and popped on to Manhunt, with truly no intention of doing anything more than browsing. Until I got a message from a boy who was 23 but looked about 19, with a thin yet curvy body and not a wisp of hair below his eyebrows. He wrote that he was staying in a hotel in midtown, and that a few of his friend were there with him. Did I want to come “hang out”? Of course I asked about the friends, and was instantly given 2 more screennames. I was somewhat shocked when both profiles showed cute boys, ages 19 and 21. Ten minutes later I was out the door.

A twink orgy! Hot young naked bodies everywhere! Crazy unforgettable acrobat sex!!

Not quite. True, the 3 young guys were there when I arrived. And a fourth joined soon after. True, they were cute, though some more than others. And true, eventually everyone was fooling around. I’ve definitely had worse nights.

But the overwhelming feeling was ... awkward. One guy was self-conscious about his body, one guy wanted to bottom but it hurt too much, one guy didn’t’ understand the concept of not using teeth... Overall, though the experience was fun, the sex was decidedly mediocre.

I left wondering: if you can’t get good sex at a twink orgy, where can you find it?

“How are things with Shirley Temple,” asked TightLips over margaritas one night. I’d been seeing Shirley Temple, the adorable non-drinking actor, pretty regularly for most of the summer.

“Good,” I replied. “He’s fun, we have a good time. And the sex is fantastic!”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah,” I continued, “It’s like, he really knows what he’s doing! I wonder ... I wonder if it’s because he’s older... you know, he’s had more practice. I mean, he is almost 30.”

“Really? Really. You’re really just figuring this out.”

“What – that he’s almost 30?” I asked.

“You’re really just figuring out that guys who are older have more experience and are therefore better in bed? That’s just dawning on you? Hello! Get out of TwinkyTown!”

I started thinking that maybe he was on to something. Maybe I’d been missing out all along on great sex, because I was obsessed with twinks who couldn’t fuck their way out of a Barney’s bag. Sure, Shirley Temple’s ass was a little furrier than the ideal smooth boy butt I’d like, but he looked great naked, and was great at naked fun!

I made a decision. Thoroughly set on giving up twinks and sticking with amazing sex, I went out with Shirley on a Thursday night. We checked out Key Klub, which boasted a cute space and an OK crowd, but was ultimately not worth a trip to the almost-East Side. From there, we decided to swing by Splash, since our mutual friend J-Blo was promoting the party that night. It was Campus Thursdays.

For the first ten minutes I was fine. Then I started noticing the go-go boys. Thin. Young. Smooth. Nearly Naked. Dancing - no, writhing - on cubes and on bars to Katy and Kelly and Britney. Perfect, little tight butts bouncing to the beats...

I realized that Shirley had grabbed me by the wrist and was dragging me around the side of the dance floor. With my eyes somewhat unfocused, I didn’t understand where he was heading until we were standing right next to VeryVogue and D2, my Fire Island housemates. They greeted Shirley warmly. They rolled their eyes at me.

“Of course you’re HERE,” D2 said.

I thought about pointing out that they, too, were here, but got distracted by one of the go-go boys taking position on the bar right above us.

“I thought that your tastes were changing!” said VeryVogue.

Again, I opened my mouth to reply ... but hesitated. The go-go boy had taken off his shorts, and was wearing some kind of black mesh underwear that was completely see-through. His entire perfect tiny round ass was visible gyrating atop the bar.

“They are!” I replied.

Totally.

Straight Show with David's Othermen

2009-08-17T13:48:00.003-04:00

My life is pretty gay. I hang out with gay people, I go to gay bars, I go on gay vacations ... I even eat gay food. (If you doubt that last one, you should have been at Bay Bar on Fire Island when the gay sitting next to me announced, as the artichoke margherita ricotta pizza he'd ordered was set down in front of him, "This is the gayest pizza ever.")

So, it always comes as a shock to the system when I hang out with The Straight Friends. It's true, I have very few, and most are co-workers. But this group is special - these are 4 friends who I have known since high school. Four straight guys, all from northern New Jersey, who basically grew up together. Somehow, we manage to get together once or twice a year, and we always have a great time.

It shouldn't really be a shock. It's just like hanging out with the gays: lots of crass drunken talk about sex and dating. Except certain words get substituted in conversation: 'Tits' gets used where I'd usually expect to hear 'pecs.' 'Pussy' where 'ass' would usually be (unless they are really lucky.) And perhaps most jarring: 'beer' instead of 'cosmopolitan'.

The thing about my friends is: they're really, really funny.

M: Dude, I dunno. We've been dating for a couple years, and we've gotten into the Boring Sex Phase.

S: Ohhhhhh! I HATE the Boring Sex Phase.

J: Totally sucks.

M: I know.

S: When it happened to me, that was it. I started getting sex somewhere else.

M: Dude. I wouldn't cheat on her.

J: Wow. You're the hero of my Victorian novel.

I nearly spit my vodka soda all over the bar from laughing so hard. Somehow, 10 minutes later, it got better.

S: Germany was awesome. The architecture was like, seriously cool, the food was good, and we had a rockin time at the clubs!

J: Dude. Did you get laid?

S: Fuck yea! Holy shit you guys. This German girl - beautiful. Like unbelievable. And then I get her NAKED... she had the most beautifully trimmed pussy I've ever seen in my life. I mean, I went to museums... But this. This was Art.

Again I laughed hysterically. I wanted to roll my eyes, but it would have been hypocritical. I've probably had a very similar conversation on Fire Island.

Lunch Meet

2009-08-14T10:53:00.002-04:00

“I’m off to meet a friend for lunch,” I said.

“Oh RIGHT!” snapped one of the catty gay men in my office.

“We know where YOU’RE off to!” chimed another catty gay in my office. There are quite a few of them. (OK, us.)

“Are you meeting a trick at the Marriott, or the W?” they asked.

“Yeah, right.” I replied. “I would never.”

Ok, the truth is, I would. And I have – just not in a couple years…

The first time it ever happened was probably 5 years ago. I’d met a British tourist at Therapy, and we’d hooked up. Later that week, he emailed me in the middle of the work day. It turned out his hotel was just a few blocks from my office. It didn’t take much negotiating for him to convince me to leave work for an hour and come find him in his room, waiting naked on the bed.

A couple years later at a different job, I was bored enough at work one day to log on to a popular hookup website. Sure enough, I found someone who not only worked less than 10 blocks away, but who lived in the neighborhood as well. Heading out to “lunch,” I went to his place, found him waiting in a jockstrap, and we had a fast, furious, sweaty, sticky fun time. A quick shower and I was back to the office in just under an hour.

Not long after, while I was still working at that same place, I had an old trick unexpectedly text me one night that he was in the neighborhood of my apartment. I invited him over and he arrived quickly, very drunk. We of course continued to drink, and while we did have some fun naked-time, he eventually realized that he’d had too much to drink, and decided to go home. The next morning while I was at work he texted me, apologizing that he’d left. I told him to forget it, but he insisted on “finishing what we started.” His apartment was a 10-minute walk from my office, and again it didn’t take much convincing. I soon found myself in the middle of my third-ever Lunchtime Trist.

* * *

“Did you have fuuuun?” chorused the gays as I walked back into my office after lunch with my friend Adam that was truly just that – a lunch.

“You have a little something right here,” said another, tapping the side of his mouth.

I rolled my eyes, but suddenly had a thought. If everyone in my office thinks I’m off having sex at lunch, then I probably should be. The fact is that my current job is in the heart of Times Square, and my apartment is in Hells Kitchen, just a few blocks away. I could easily have a boy meet me at home, spend 30 minutes with his legs to Jesus, and be back at my desk freshly showered with time to spare for a grilled chicken salad.

Now all I have to do is find some slutty boys in Midtown at lunchtime. I hear there’s an app for that.

Rum, Rum Away

2009-08-10T10:07:00.003-04:00

The latest OUT magazine party was at the Ace Hotel, a new boutique hotel in Chelsea with a fabulously designed lobby. It was hard to appreciate the design, as the space was packed full of cute and trendy homos, as the OUT parties usually are, due in no small part to their open bars.

I brought Shirley Temple as my date (bringing a non-drinker to an Open Bar event means double the drinks for you) and we arrived a fashionable 30 minutes late. As we turned the corner, we saw the gays.

"A line?" he asked with some disgust, which made me smile. I was thinking the same thing. I was about to suggest we cruise the line to see if I knew anyone, when suddenly he was talking to a hot boy in a baseball cap. Who had just left work. At the hotel.

"You work there?" I asked, in Full Flirt Mode.

"Yep," he nodded.

"So, is there like a secret back door you can sneak us in?" I was batting my eyelashes so hard I thought his cap might blow off, but somehow (probably because of Shirley Temple) it worked. He led us around the side of the building, nodded at a security gueard, through a locked door, past *another* security guard, and suddenly we were in.

"Have fun!" he said, and dissapeared.

"Well that was easy!" I smiled. "Let's hope the rest of the night works out that well!"

As if on cue, a cocktail server approached us holding a tray with fruity-looking beverags.

"Would you like a complimentary rum drink?" she asked.

Normally, rum isn't my liquor of choice, so I asked if it was a full open bar.

"Nope, just these," she replied.

"Thanks!" I said, taking one. As she walked away, I took a sip. Fortunately, I'd been to more than my share of open bar events, and I knew that often the liquor was either donated by a sometimes questionable brand, or else very cheap. Still, nothing could have prepared me fully.

"Vlargh!" I exclaimed, almost actually spitting it out. "That's disgusting!"

"What is it?" Shirley asked.

I looked at it, assesing the murky purplish color. Then, fueled by curiosity, I reasoned that maybe I just wasn't used to rum, and the second sip would be better. I tried another.

"Eweeew-et!" I muttered, barely swallowing it. "I think it's a combination of really bad rum and bad mixers, maybe pomegranite and pineapple?"

He winced. Even a non-drinker appreciates the horror of a poorly-made cocktail.

We began to move through the lobby, a sea of gay men. Inevitably, I started bumping into people I knew.

"Hi Sweetie," one friend greeted me with a kiss on each cheek.

"How are you?" I asked.

"Great except for this drink!" he exclaimed. "It's awful!"

I nodded, and noticed another friend.

"Hi!" I said.

"Hey," he said smiling. Then he noticed my still-full glass. "Don't drink that! It's gross!"

"True that."

A minute later, another cute gay friend, this time with his boyfriend.

"Hi Boys," I greeted them. "Cheers!"

"Don't toast with that, it's horrible!"

"Tragic," the boyfriend agreed.

As we moved on, Shirley Temple laughed about the terrible drink being the running joke of the party. "The thing is," he pointed out, "everybody has one!"

"That's cause they're free!"

Then my friend SirDrinksAlot approached us, also carrying the dreaded concoction. It didn't surprise me though, as he'll drink anything. He'd suck the alcohol out of a bottle of after-shave.

"THIS," he announced dramatically, without so much as a Hello, "is the Worst Thing Ever." I didn't need to ask what he was referring to.

"It's bad," I agreed.

"NO. No, no. THIS ... is UN-DRINKABLE!" And with a grand arc of his arm he placed the full glass down on a table.

I was shocked. I'd never seen him turn down alcohol, especially free alcohol. I took it as a sign, a followed his example.

We left the party soon after, and I think most other people did as well. I wondered if it was actually possible that a bad drink ruined an entire party. (As an Event Planner, I think about these things.) Or worse, could it have ruined OUT Magazine's party reputation, and effect the attendance at their future parties? Or would people just forget all about the awful concoction after two sips of their next decent drink?

The following Monday, I received a Facebook notification that someone, who I didn't know, had commented on a photo of me. I clicked thorugh to arrive at the page of a friend who had posted a picture from the OUT party. It showed my friend, his date, Shirley Temple and me. We were holding the free cocktials. Underneath was the date's comment: "Worst Drink Ever."

Dear Fiery

2009-07-25T20:58:00.004-04:00

I pulled open the sliding glass door and was instantly hit with bright Fire Island sunshine and Beyonce blasting from the iPod.

“Heeey!” chorused a couple of my housemates. I did a “share” for the first time ever this summer – went in with 6 other guys on a four-bedroom house, for 6 various weeks throughout the summer.

Three of them were already up, one walking around the pool in a pair of clear high-heeled shoes we’d found left in the house from last week’s share.

“There’s coffee,” said TastyCake, who was my roommate for the summer.

“And vodka!” announced GarrettJuice.

“It’s ten a.m.,” I mumbled, still waking up.

He looked at me. “So?” Though he was definitely the house mother of the summer, I’m not sure I’d ever seen GarrettJuice not sauced. He pushed a pitcher of what looked vaguely like lemonade in my direction.

“What IS that?” I asked dubiously.

“Vodka and Crystal Light!” he replied proudly. “We have to watch our carbs!”

I shook my head and headed back inside to the kitchen, opting for the coffee and the uneaten half of my sandwich from last night. When I returned to the deck, Britney was blaring and the boys were in a discussion about women.

“They’re all just so annoying,” TastyCake was saying, “every single one of them!”

“I totally agree,” called Madambien from across the pool, as he danced around in the high heels to Toxic without spilling a drop of Crystal Light Vodka from his plastic martini glass.

“Aren’t you generalizing a little?” I asked TastyCake.

“Nope,” he replied, “I really hate women. I barely like my mother and my sister. And they're lucky they're blood.”

I laughed, and took a huge bite of my sandwich. Madambien was circling the pool, strutting her stuff back in our direction. As I went to take another bite, he plucked the sandwich out of my hands.

“That’s enough of that,” he said, and without pausing took the sandwich back into the house.
I stared down at my now-empty hands, and then looked up at TastyCake.

“Were you just put on a diet?” he asked.

I shook my head in disbelief.

“I told you, carbs!” scolded GarrettJuice, clearly taking the sand-burglar’s side. “Do you know that house 2 down from us? The whole thing is filled with models. All of them! A house full of models! It’s disgusting.”

Despite being miffed about my missing meal, GarrettJuice had reminded me of a story my friend AllWorkNoGay had told me before I left for the island. I shared it with the boys.

Several years ago, AllWorkNoGay was visiting Fire Island, and met a boy at High Tea. This boy was gorgeous – adorable face, beautiful body – perfection. It turned out, he was a model for a famous fashion designer, and in fact staying at the designer’s huge house on the island.

“Would you like to come back to the house with me?” ModelBoy asked AllWorkNoGay.

“Of course!” AllWorkNoGay was funny, charming and great to hang out with, but knew that he was no super-model, and couldn’t figure out what the boy saw in him. Still, he wasn’t passing up the opportunity. When he got to the house, which seemed more like a mansion, he realized this boy wasn’t the only one the designer had invited to stay. It was an entire house full of stunning male models.

At first AllWorkNoGay thought he was in heaven, but he soon began to feel like the odd man out. He was definitely suspicious that he was the butt of their jokes when they kept offering him food, saying “Eat, Eat!” when none of them ingested so much as a celery stalk.

Finally, he pulled ModelBoy aside and flat out asked him, “Why are you with me?”

ModelBoy, without a hint of sarcasm in his beautiful honest eyes, replied, “I like the simple people.”

My housemates all laughed along with me.

“That poor guy,” said TastyCake.

Suddenly, the sliding door flew open and D2 burst out onto the deck.

“I'm so stressed out you guys! One of my tricks might live with one of my other tricks!”

TastyCake gave him a confused look, while GarrettJuice immediately began pouring him a cocktail.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“O.K.,” said D2, sitting at the patio table and reaching for the drink. “I met this guy at Low Tea last night, and he was from Queens, and he was all about me, and we traded numbers, but then he disappeared, right? So then later at High Tea, I met this OTHER guy, who was also from Queens, but I thought, you know, whatever, there’s tons of people from Queens!”

He took a large gulp of his drink and went on. “So, I end up going home with the second guy, and we have crazy sex, and I’m there til like 4 a.m. And NOW, I just got a text from the FIRST guy, saying he’s lying in bed naked and inviting me over.”

“Slut.”

“Whore.”

“I’m so jealous.”

“Wait!” D2 cried. “So the first guy just texted me his address, and it’s the same house that I went to last night to hook up with the second guy! They’re both from Queens. Oh my god, they are housemates!!”

Although he may have expected sympathy, all D2 got was a big round of laughter. I finished my coffee and announced, “I think I’m ready for a cocktail now.”

Crack In A Flash

2009-07-14T00:02:00.001-04:00

It was a perfect summer Saturday in New York City. I was walking through Hell’s Kitchen with a cute boy, who I’ll call Shirley Temple, as he was an adorable actor who doesn’t drink. We’d just finished an early dinner at Arriba Arriba, and were deciding where the night would take us. I’m not sure if I was craving a second margarita, or if I just wanted to sit outside, but we found ourselves at Blockheads in Worldwide Plaza.

Blockheads had been one of my favorite summer locations for several years, because of the rare combination of outdoor seating and cheap drinks. It was also great for people watching: not only was it in the middle of uber-gay Hells Kitchen, but on one side of Worldwide Plaza is a Bally’s gym, so hot boys wearing gym shorts and tank tops are always walking in and out. Unfortunately, this summer it seemed that the secret of Blockheads had gotten out, and that night, like the last couple times I’d been there, the crowd was looking very straight.

I automatically scanned the area for cute boys, something I normally wouldn’t do while on a date, but we’d been playing a game of “Who Will See The Most People They Know In Hells Kitchen,” and I was determined to win.

I saw a cute-ish boy, who was indeed wearing gym shorts, with a t-shirt and baseball cap. I only looked at him long enough to determine that I didn’t know him, but that apparently was long enough to catch his interest. As we stopped in the middle of the plaza next to the fountain, the boy walked by and continued checked us out. A lot. He was obvious about it, and we both noticed.

"He was totally undressing you with his eyes," said Shirley Temple.

"Ha. Yeah, it was a little much," I agreed.

"And," ST continued, "he’s walking back."

Sure enough the boy had stopped, began talking to a girlfriend, and was now walking back toward us with the girl at his side. Then it got interesting.

He passed us, and as he walked by he began "adjusting" his t-shirt and waistband, such that his shorts "accidentally" slid farther and farther down his ass. He wasn’t wearing underwear. For a good 15 seconds, half his ass was totally exposed, right there in front of Blockheads.

"And now," ST continued deadpan, "he's undressing himself. "

I was dumbfounded. I’ve been flirting with boys a long time, and will admit to getting cruised by some very forward boys in some very interesting places. But flashing your ass in the middle of Worldwide Plaza? Seriously?

"We have to go." I said. "This place is way too straight."

When Fools Russian

2009-07-07T21:45:00.003-04:00

My friend The Photographer and I were walking down Ninth Avenue in SoPA (South of Port Authority) to get dinner at Market Café. Out of the blue, around 39th street, we were stopped. He was a young guy with a cute face and what looked like a nice body.

“Excuse me guys,” he said, with what sounded vaguely like a Russian accent, even though he looked more Israeli, “Can I ask you question?”

We waited, half expecting a plea for money. After all, it was SoPA.

“Can you tell me – where is gay bar?”

I was uncharacteristically speechless. Really? Just like that, no hesitation, or anything?

Photog recovered first, but not really. “He would know,” he said, gesturing toward me. Sell out.

The truth is, I know the Hells Kitchen gay bars in my sleep. I can name them north to south, alphabetically or by drag queen headliner. I was, for some reason, dumbfounded. “Uhhh... Well, there are lots in Hells Kitchen,” I blurted, vaguely gesturing north.

“I need magazine, yes?”

“Uh, yes!” I said. “HX, or Next. You can find them at any bar. The closest one is ... uh...”

Finally, Photog broke in “Ritz?”

“Yes!” I exclaimed. “Ritz.” In actuality, I was skipping over HK, but that was technically a restaurant, and only a gay dance party on the weekends. And also skipping over Cleo’s, technically called Ninth Avenue Saloon, and always called tragic. “Ritz is on 46th street,” I went on, anxious to recover. “This is 38. Just keep walking up Ninth until 46, and make a right. It says “Ritz” with a blue awning.”

“Forty-six,” he repeated in his ambiguously Russian, sexier-by-the-minute accent. “I see rainbow flag?”

“Uh, no...” I stammered yet again, “No rainbow flag...”

Photog jumped in with “It’s decorated like a ship!” and made gestures with his hands like he was helming a pirate vessel.

I struggled to say something else, but nothing came. What was wrong with me? Where were the obvious lines that should have flown out of my mouth: What’s your name? Where are you from? How long are you in town? And of course: Gay bars are all dead on a Monday, but my apartment is alive and well!

With his typical ambiguous-Russian directness, he took his leave. “Thanks guys,” he said, and headed north.

We were silent for a moment, and then Photog blurted, “What was that?!”

“I have no idea. But I suddenly need some vodka.”

Fit for a Queen

2009-06-23T23:41:00.003-04:00

I broke my own rule, and went directly to the apartment of a trick I met on Manhunt without meeting him for drinks first.

He was cute when he opened the door, and looked just like he did in his pictures. I breathed a sigh of relief. Then I entered the apartment.

Dresses. Bright, glittery, gaudy dresses, strewn everywhere. A make up table, overflowing with cosmetics. A huge mirror. High heel shoes. Wigs.

“Oh, sorry,” he said, catching my stare, “I live with a drag queen.”

My immediate thought was: That’s like saying ‘I’m just holding this porn for a friend.’

My next thought was: Am I about to hook up with a drag queen?

“This is a lot of stuff,” I said.

“Yeah, she’s at a show tonight,” he said. “I design her costumes.”

Skeptically, I began to investigate further, trying to be subtle. There were indeed two bedrooms. QueenysLittleHelper was leading me, presumably, to his. Entering, there was a similar mess, but it was slightly different. Less dresses, more... fabric. The same marabou, silks and satins, but they were parts rather than dresses. Fortunately my good friend MartiniFun is a costume designer, and I recognized the typical tools of the trade. Fabric scissors, measuring tapes, little boxes of pins. And standing in the corner were two dress forms.

As he began to put his hands on me, I once again sighed in relief. I wasn’t about to sleep with a drag queen.

I may as well have.

As soon as I laid on the bad I felt little bits and pieces sticking to my back and arms.

“What the...?” Sequins. Beads. “Are these rhinestones?”

Instead of apologizing, he just kissed me. We had sex, but it seemed that every time things got hotter and heavier, so did the costume nightmare. With every thrust, there was an explosion of sequins, tinsel, and false eyelashes. Bedazzled fabric was flying through the air. Boa feathers drifted about. Glitter rained down.

When it was over we showered, but I was still flicking mirrored bits of sequin and tinsel off my clothes as I walked home. And those tiny persistent flecks of glitter stuck around for days. What a drag.

When In Foam

2009-06-01T23:37:00.004-04:00

As I pack my skimpy bathing suits and search for lube that comes in airline-approved 3-oz bottles, I can’t help thinking about the first year I attended Gay Days at Disney World.

My friend Mattitude had gone to college in Florida, so having him as my roommate that first year came with a distinct advantage: he knew all the locals. Even though Gay Days is a huge Circuit Party destination and attracts gays from all over the country, it’s also a huge draw for all the Florida gay boys living anywhere within 2 hours of Orlando. The locals are a tight clique, but being there with Mattitude was like having the key to the city – once you had an in, all the doors opened.

Friday night we went to the Beach Ball party, which takes place at Typhoon Lagoon, Disney’s water park. Though not the biggest, this is debatably the most popular party of the weekend, with good reason – hundreds and hundreds of gay boys, running around a water park, wearing next to nothing, with full access to all the rafts, pools, and slides. To make the formula for a perfect night complete, remove the few elements that usually ruin an amusement park (lines and children) and add in a massive dance floor, a DJ, and copious amounts of alcohol .

Saturday night the big circuit party was at MGM Studios. However, because of the high ticket price some of the local boys decided to skip the madness and hit a neighborhood bar called Parliament House. I had no idea what I was getting into, but looking at the number of cute Florida boys who were going, I quickly agreed. It turned out Parliament House was no little local bar. That night there were live performances by Kimberly Locke (who gave a surprisingly good show) and Bananarama. And as much as I love a cruel summer, what really put me over the edge was the disclosure that there was a Foam Party.

I had wanted to attend a Foam Party for years, but they rarely exist, especially in New York. It requires a room (or in this case a large, sort of fenced-in area in the back yard) that gets filled with what is basically soap suds. Everyone jumps in to dance and gets covered in the foam, and it becomes playfully sexual pretty quickly, because everyone is soaped up and slippery, and because usually the foam is at least waist-high and no one can see what’s happening underneath.

I was shocked to hear that the majority of the group wanted nothing to do with the foam.

“Are you kidding?!” I cried. “It’s amazing! It’s fabulous! It’s foam!”

“It’s disgusting.” They replied. “It’s gross.” “It’s slimey” “You may as well lather yourself with STD.”

Undaunted, I announced that I was going in. One guy in the group, a cute Russian boy with reddish brown hair and pale skin, seemed less reluctant than the others. I honed in on my target, certain I could convince him. It didn’t take much.

“Hey,” I flirted, “We’re wearing the same bathing suit!”

“Almost,” he said, looking at the stripes down the side. “The stripes are different colors.”

“Close enough!” I said. “I bet if we switched, no one would even notice.”

He laughed. “You’re probably right.”

“We should go in the foam and try it,” I winked.

3 minutes later, CzarsAndStripes and I were waist deep in bubbles, while the rest of the group headed back to Bananarama. It was entirely as fun as I expected. We danced, we flirted, we groped inappropriately. Despite the general consensus that the foam was gross, the pit was pretty full of soaped-up gay boys. Most of them were having the same innocent fun that we were.

But every once in a while, we heard a scream.

“AHHHH!”

We both looked, but it was hard to see through the sudsy cloud. A few minutes later, it happened again, this time from another direction, the scream from a different mouth. And then, a minute later, another. Sometimes the screams were followed by laughter, other times by cries of “What the fuck!?” or “What in gay hell was that?!”

Curiosity finally got the better of me and I reluctantly took my hands off CzarsAndStripe’s soapy bottom and moved toward the source of the screaming. For a moment it was quiet. And then out of the corner of my eye I noticed something moving. I turned just in time to see a figure, completely covered in suds, rise up from out of the foam, look around, and slowly sink back to the ground until he was completely submerged. Although I was loving the foam, even I thought it was a little gross to put one’s face completely under it. Plus, how did he breathe under there?

My thoughts were interrupted when, 10 feet from where I’d just seen the figure appear and then submerge like some creature from the gay lagoon, a blonde twinky boy screamed.

“AHHHHH! What bitch just grabbed my ass!?!”

I couldn’t help but laugh. This guy was actually crawling around under the foam, sneaking up on unsuspecting boys, and helping himself to a handful. I didn’t know whether to be appalled or to applaud.

“Maybe it’s time to go,” said CzarsAndStripes.

Part of me wanted to stay, but I agreed, thinking: there’s always next year.

Inter-Office Homo

2009-05-25T13:01:00.002-04:00

The other day I had sex with a fuck buddy in his office overlooking Rockefeller center.

It was my favorite kind of sex: just plain fun. A blowjob is a blowjob, but when it happens sitting in an office chair or leaning against a desk full of work papers, it’s just somehow more enjoyable.

I’ve had office sex a few other times over the years, and stripping down with Rocka Fella reminded me of those experiences. Some were good, some were not.

Once, years ago, I met a guy online on gay.com. Though I usually meet guys in public before just going to hook up with them, I made an exception with this one because he wanted me to come have sex in his office, something I’d never done. Besides, I figured, an office is pretty public. At least, during the day.

I arrived at 10PM and met the guy, who of course was not as cute as his pictures. His face looked a bit worn, haggard for his age, which supposedly was 25. He led me through the large workplace, and after several twists and turns we ended up at his office, more of a cubicle but with 6 foot walls that gave it a private feel. Regardless, the building was empty. We chatted a bit, then started fooling around, but in the middle something happened. He opened a drawer, and pulled out cocaine.

“Look what I’ve got!”

I was surprised, confused and a little taken aback. Having never actually done coke, I didn’t recognize it or know at first exactly what he was doing. As he spread a line across the edge of his desk it dawned on me, and I felt a little uneasy, and then a little annoyed. I may not know much about drug culture, but is it normal to stop and do lines in the middle of sex? Finally, I realized the one thing I was most feeling: turned off. The whole experience, from first discovering he didn’t look like his pictures (worn haggard look no longer a mystery) to the unannounced appearance of the nose candy, had me totally unaroused.

“Hey you know what, I gotta go,” I said.

“What’s the matter, man, don’t you want some happy dust?”

“No thanks. That wasn’t the blow I had in mind tonight.”

The next time I had office sex, it was much better, though the title “Office Sex” is debatable. I was working for a free-lance theatre producer, who was just getting started and therefore running his business out of his apartment. He had gotten a big project, so he hired me, under the table of course, and every day I went to his apartment for a few hours to work. The work frequently consisted of me filling out forms and paperwork, while IWannaBeAProducer cruised on Manhunt, often commenting “Look at this one!”

At least it was a gay-friendly work place.

He hired a few other people on and off, one of whom was a cute blue-eyed boy with a smooth, solid body. One day BlueEyes was there, having just delivered some tickets, when IWannaBeAProducer announced that he had to run some errand for a few hours. He told me that he’d see me later, and told BueEyes that he would call when he needed him again. Twenty minutes after he walked out the door, BlueEyes and I were naked on the couch in the living room. Technically we were in an apartment, but it was also an office. And because neither of us lived there and because we could have been interrupted by the boss if he’d randomly came back early, I qualify it as Office Sex.

I did have one other experience in an office, which was fantastic. Several years ago I was briefly seeing a guy who was kind of a hipster back before everyone was trying to be a hipster. Tall and skinny, with long wavy hair and glasses, he was a laid back, Seattle-Grunge meets California-Surfer meets East-Village Art Fag. Cute and fun. MyFirstHipster worked for an advertising agency, and one night brought me to his office, an amazing loft on the edge of TriBeCa. It was total New York new-money chic: enormous open space, taking up half a city block. Hardwood floors, lots of floor-to-ceiling glass walls, trendy modern furniture. In the huge lobby area was a full size pool table, and near the door were leaning six silver scooters.

“C’mon, I’ll show you around,” he said, grabbing one of the scooters.

I looked at him blankly.

“What? We ride around the office on scooters!” He pushed off and glided down the hallway.

Office Sex with MyFirstHipster was really entertaining. We fooled around on his desk, in the kitchen, and in the lobby. And then we had sex on the pool table. It was really hot, but also the kind of fun, relaxed sex that you can laugh through. We did, the whole time making puns about sticks, balls, holes, felt, “in the pocket”, “breaking” him in, and things happening “right on cue.”

Last week, unfortunately, Rocka Fella did not have a pool table in his office. But we still had a great time.

When it was over, Rocka Fella walked me out of the building. As we parted ways on Fifth Avenue, he said, “You better not blog about this!”

I would never.

Revealing Fascination

2009-05-11T16:07:00.003-04:00

I was chatting with my friend Travelocigay as we enjoyed dinner outside at HK. We were having one of those deep intellectual conversations that only trendy gay New Yorkers can have.

“So you like your Blackberry?” he asked me.

“Eh, it’s OK,” I replied, “I’m thinking about switching to the iPhone. Either way I hate AT&T.”

“By the way, have you seen the Facebook app for Blackberry?”

“Yes,” I said. “I downloaded it, tried it for about 15 minutes, found it stupid and annoying, and deleted it.”

“Oh, nooo,” he countered. “It’s fascinating!”

“Fascinating?” I mocked, sharpening my wits to ridicule his Mr. Wizard choice of word.

“Yes!” he insisted, before I could say more. “Listen to this. Once you download it, if you do the permissions and settings and whatever, it will scan all the contacts in your phonebook while it searches for friends.”

“So?”

“So,” he continued, “think of how many guys you have saved in your phone as... Guy from Splash or Hot Bartender or...”

I nodded, recalling that through the years I’d amassed several dozen contacts like Chris MH or Matt MH or Steve MH - their last names the same not because they are brothers, but because they are all part of the brotherhood of Manhunt.

Traveocigay went on excitedly, “So it scans all those numbers, and then matches the numbers with Facebook profiles. Because lots of people actually fill in their phone number on Facebook.”

“Wait,” I said struggling to put it all together, “but I’m not Facebook friends with those people.”

“No, but what it comes back with is information that you probably don’t know – like their full name, and often their main profile picture!”

I stared at him. “That IS fascinating!” I exclaimed.

“Watch,” he said, taking out his own Blackberry and searching for my name in his Contacts. He held up the screen, and there next to my name was the picture I had just uploaded to Facebook days prior.

“It continually updates them?” I asked, shocked.

“Yep,” he replied. “And look, it lists your work as well – I never would have put that in. It’s from Facebook.”

“It’s true,” I replied in awe. “I don’t list a lot of personal info, but I do have my company name listed as public. Amazing...”

“So now when I scroll to the trick I just saved as Big Cock Carl... wah lah! His full name, a thumbnail of his face pic, and look! He went to the same college as I did, and he’s a doctor!”

I said nothing, processing exactly how life-changing this could be for my social life.

“You’re downloading it immediately, aren’t you,” he said smugly.

“Immediately. Fascinating.”

Crumburglar

2009-05-04T09:54:00.006-04:00

New York is a cupcake city. And of the dozens of stores and bakeries that offer their own delicious versions, my all time favorite is Crumbs. Imagine my surprise when one day, returning to my apartment at 5:15pm, I spotted a basket wrapped in clear cellophane sitting in the hallway outside my apartment door. Looking inside, I could see 6 huge Crumbs cupcakes, along with a sleeve of cookies and an envelope. On the envelope were written only 2 words: To Orlando.

I picked up the basket and looked for an apartment number, a delivery slip, anything with a clue to its correct intended owner. Nothing. I brought the basket inside. My first thought as I set it down was, “ I can’t eat all these cupcakes, I’ll get fat.” My second thought was, “I can’t eat all these cupcakes, they don’t belong to me.” I debated what to do as I searched the package again for any indication of its intended recipient. Nothing at all but the envelope which was inside the basket, wrapped in the cellophane, To Orlando.

As much as I wanted to jump right to the conclusion that fate had left the delicious morsels for me outside my door, conscience took over and I decided to do the right thing. I googled the number for Crumbs New York, and dialed. As it rang, I thought that I would simply tell them the building it was delivered to, and they would know the correct apartment number. I’d deliver the basket myself, and the true recipient might be so thrilled that they would reward me with one of the 6 heavenly cakes.

I thought this all out as the phone rang. And rang. And rang. Finally, a voicemail. : “Crumbs is currently closed. Our hours of operation are….” I eyed the cupcakes hungrily. “If you’d like to speak to the operator at our main branch, press 1.” I pressed. It rang. And Rang. And Rang. “Thank you for calling Crumbs. Currently we are closed. If you’d like to leave a message…” I hung up, thinking, Well, I tried.

I left the basket on the counter and headed to the gym. When I returned 2 hours later, my roommate, MuppetDinnerTheater, was home. He was sitting on the couch, eyeing the basket.

“Who’s Orlando?” I asked as I walked in the door.

“I don’t know, but I love Crumbs,” he said.

“Ok, I’ll have you know that I tried to do the right thing,” I said, and told him about calling the store.

“Well,” he replied, “I’ll have you know that I came home at 11am, and the basket was already outside our door.”

“What?”

“And since it obviously wasn’t for us, I left it, figuring that somebody would figure out the mistake.”

“So,” I said, adding things up, “the basket sat there from 11am til 5:30pm. Nobody claimed it, and whoever left it didn’t realize or wasn’t informed of their mistake. Then, we tried calling Crumbs, and they are closed.”

MuppetDinnerTheater nodded, hungrily.

“So now,” I went on, “It is 7:30pm. We tried leaving the basket, we tried calling the store. We don’t know who Orlando is. What else can we do?”

“Well, I guess we can just leave them til tomorrow. Then either we can try calling again, or probably whoever sent them will eventually call when they realize they weren’t delivered.”

“Yes,” I said, “but here’s the thing. Clearly it was Crumbs' screw-up. Why would they just leave them in front of a random door? But more importantly, even if they get told their mistake – what will they do? Will they really come here tomorrow, get these cupcakes that will then have sat in the hallway and our apartment for 24 hours, and re-deliver them? Absolutely not. They already screwed up, they won’t correct it by sending day-old cupcakes. They’ll just send Orlando a new batch.”

“So...”

“So...” We looked at each other.

“WE SHOULD EAT THE CUPCAKES!”

We tore through clear cellophane and inhaled the delicious scent of the sugary frosting. There were 6 different flavors, one more delicious-looking then the next. We finally decided to choose 2, cut them in half, and each sample two different cake-icing combinations. We each took our first bite, and had that euphoric moment of tasting a truly delicious dessert.

“Mmmmmm.”

“Amaaaaazing.”

“Soooooo goooood.”

Our mouths were filled with the moist cake and creamy frosting. In minutes we were on a sugar high. As he stuffed another bite of cake and glob of frosting into his mouth, MupperDinnerTheater said, “Hey! Read the card!”

I reached for the mysterious envelope, leaving a smudge of chocolate frosting over the “To Orlando” as I tore it open. Inside was a simple white card. I opened it, and almost spit a mouthful of cupcake across the room as I read the 4 handwritten lines.

Hi Orlando,

Hope you are feeling better and the surgery went well. Get well Soon!

Best, Joanna

MuppetDinnerTheater stopped chewing, and stared at me, half-eaten cupcake in his hand. I stared back, and for a moment we were silent. Then he said, “We are going to hell.”

“Totally.”

Another minute of silence passed. Finally, he spoke again. “Do you want another?”

“Totally.”

Threelationship Advice

2009-04-28T09:29:00.004-04:00

I know plenty of hot boys, but ThoroughlyMuscledMilli is seriously up there on the list. He’s pretty much my ideal body type, the perfect mix of skinny twink with lean muscle. A couple months ago, my jaw dropped when I read his facebook info page saying he was in a Thruple– a three-way relationship. Already enthused by his physique, the thought of him having a crazy menage a trios every night of the week almost sent me over the edge. I played it cool and didn’t let on my titillation, but the next time I saw him, out at a club, I couldn’t help bring it up.

He was with one of his two boyfriends, and after saying hello, I asked about the other one.

“Oh he rarely comes out,” ThoroughlyMuscledMilli told me. “He’s more of a home body.”

“I’m sure he’s a nice body to come home to,” I replied.

He just smiled, so I pushed a little further.

“That must be a crazy apartment,” I said. “Like a gay Playboy mansion!”

“Actually, we’re pretty boring at home,” he told me. “Usually we just cook dinner, watch TV, and go to bed.”

I shot him a ‘C’mon, you’re kidding’ look.

“I mean, it gets interesting once in a while,” he admitted, referring to what I imagined were mind-blowing, life-altering, porn-star sex sessions. “But really, it’s usually pretty dull.”

I had a hard time believing him, maybe because I didn’t want to spoil my own fantasy, but eventually I thought perhaps I might be getting carried away. I knew that regular couples, even the crazy-hot-super-model types, eventually settle into a routine that, the longer they are together, rarely includes wild monkey sex on a nightly basis.

Still, the idea of a thruple fascinated me. It seemed like such a foreign concept, until I remembered that my good friend J-Blo had been in one only a couple years prior. With burning questions fresh in my mind, I called him to get the scoop.

“So you were in a Thruple, right?” I asked.

“A thruple? Is that what they’re calling them these days?” he laughed. “Yes, I was in a three-way relationship. It was hot. Lots of really fun sex.”

“I knew it!” I cried. “So it IS like being on the set of a Chi Chi La Rue film!”

“Well, once in a while. But it was also nutty as we all lived together in a tiny studio apartment.”

“That doesn’t sound too fantastic.”

“And of course, as anyone NOT involved could easily have predicted, it eventually all fell apart.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Just lots of dis-trust, lots of suspicion, lots of jealousy.”

“Sounds dramatic.”

“It was,” he admitted. “But we’re all great friends now!”

I was dubious.

The abnormally warm weather this past weekend found me rollerblading with XJosh and Marabou when the topic came up again.

“Thruples are the new black!” announced Marabou.

“Really?” I said skeptically. “I only know of one right now.” I referenced ThoroughlyMuscledMilli.

“There’s also Albert and Armand,” XJosh informed me.

“They’re in a Thruple now?!” I replied. They were a couple that XJosh and I had met back when we were dating, almost 4 years ago. Both were actors.

“Yep,” he replied. “With another actor.”

“I’m sure that’s not dramatic” I said sarcastically. “But I guess I’m not surprised. They had a regular third fuck buddy for a while, it was almost a thruple.”

“Apparently they still have a guest star now and then,” said XJosh. A fourth!? My gay porn fantasies immediately sparked anew.

“Yeah, but we hear there’s all kind of rules now,” chimed in Mariboo.

“Rules?”

“Like if they bring someone in, everyone has to agree on the boy,” he explained.

“So it’s like a panel?” I asked. “With three judges?”

“Yup, like American Idol.”

“More like American I’d do.” They rolled their eyes. I suddenly made a decision. “I need to be in a Thruple!” I declared.

“Ha,” remarked XJosh. “Let us know how that works out for you.”

“What!” I replied. “Just because I can’t even find a single – with whom to be a couple – doesn’t mean I can’t jump right to thruple. I’m sure it will work out brilliantly.”

He groaned. “I’m sure it will.”

For Pet Me Not

2009-04-21T12:47:00.002-04:00

This weekend I was enjoying the first truly beautiful New York day of 09 on the 44th street pier. I was standing with a group of gays, just talking, chatting, hanging out, when up walked a friend of ours with his dog. Suddenly, all conversation stopped, and it was all about the little monster. No chatting could continue, as it was constantly interrupted by shouts of “Condom, Stop it! Condom, sit! Condom, don’t eat that! Condom, what’s in your mouth! Condom, why can’t you be good?!”

Much like a small child, when a dog is present it immediately commands all attention, regardless of how many people are there, who they are, or what they’d rather be talking about.

There is a guy I’ve known for several years, an artist who lives downtown. I’ve always found him gorgeous, and over the years we’ve had a complicated relationship that skirted the lines between acquaintances, friends-with-benefits, a couple attempts at dates, and just friends. Through it all, he’s owned a dog. And through it all, the dog ruled the relationship.

Multiple times I went to his apartment for dinner, or drinks, or to “catch up,” all of which I saw as possibly opportunities for naked time. I liked going to his place as I have a roommate, and he has always lived alone. Every single time I’d go there however, the conversation was always about the dog. “Isn’t Poochie cute? Isn’t Poochie sweet? Oh I spent the day with Poochie.” Or worse, rather than talking to me, he would talk to the dog. “What are you doing Poochie? Do you want to go out? Do you want a snack? Are you being a good boy?”

HELLO! I’m sitting here, I’m drinking a bottle of wine with you, I’M being a good boy – why don’t you come over here and rub MY underside? I always found it infuriating, and even though I would try to hook up with him a few times a year, I think the dog was a serious part of the reason our relationship never progressed further.

It wasn’t just the artist though; almost all dog owners I know are the same way. And cat owners are no better. In fact, sometimes they are worse.

A couple months ago I hooked up with an adorable boy I met online, we’ll call him Puss ‘N Booty. I went to his apartment, again because he lived alone, and discovered he had a kitten. Cute as a button and annoying as shit. (The cat, not the boy. Well, in a way, both.) Needless to say, the cat jumped all over the apartment, all over him, all over the bed – and of course he lived in a studio so there was nowhere else for the cat to be. Again, it was all about the pet, though this time was a bit different, because the cat was annoying Puss ‘N Booty as well, especially as we were trying to hook up and the cat kept jumping on the bed.

“Pussy, get out of here! Pussy, go away! Pussy, stop being bad!” He would grab the cat and lightly toss it off the bed – it of course landed on its feet, looked around for a minute, and jumped right back up. Because it was a kitten and not yet spayed or declawed, it was full of energy and just wanted to scratch things. Several times, while we were having sex, the cat would jump on the bed and on top of one of us. Puss ‘N Booty would act annoyed and throw it off, I would actually BE annoyed, and eventually I started to do whatever I could to just speed things along and get it over with.

When we were finished, laying there still naked, the cat jumped on the bed, and landed right around my knees. It looked right at me. I stared back. Some survival instinct automatically moved my hand to cover my exposed crotch.. just at the cat lunged, claws tearing my fingers.

“Ouch!” That bitch just tried to scratch my balls off! Puss ‘n Booty grabbed the evil creature for the millionth time and threw him of the bed, which was lucky because if I had grabbed the thing and threw it like I wanted too, it wouldn’t have landed on its feet. But instead of taking out my annoyance on the boy’s pussy, I just got dressed and left. He was hot, but I refuse to go back.

But for all my bad experiences with pet owners, by far the worst (or best) story happened to my friend MartiniFun. We were on vacation together in Atlanta, and one night while we were out we both met guys and went home with them. The next afternoon, we caught up over Bloody Marys.

“OK, so we make out for a while on the dance floor, and then he drives us back to his place,” MartiniFun told me. “We walk into his apartment, it’s cute, and up runs this dog, all excited to see him. Then, I see that he has a second dog, also trotting up. Ok fine. So we go into his kitchen, and I see that he also has a cat. I’m like ‘Oh you have a cat too?’ and he says ‘I have three.’”

“Jesus it’s like a zoo in there!” I exclaimed.

“Just wait,” he continues. “So we start making out again, and after a few minutes he drags me to the bedroom. He opens the door, and I see like four fish tanks.”

“Fish?!”

“Not just fish. Fish, frogs, turtles... and then I hear this squawking – and see behind the bed is a cage with two birds in it.”

My jaw dropped. MartiniFun just nodded, and said, “Oh yeah. It was Noah and the fucking arc in there.”

“What did you do??” I cried.

“What do you think – we had sex! But wait. So it starts out ok, we’re fooling around, and then we start going at it, but as we get more into it, he starts moaning and groaning, and when he does that the dogs start barking. And at first he tries to ignore them, and then he yells at them to stop, but nothing works. So finally we stop, he gets up, puts both dogs outside the bedroom, and closes the door.”

“They were in the room?” I asked.

“Oh yes,” he replied, “and so were the cats. They still are at this point. So he gets back in bed, and we start going at it again, and now it starts getting really intense and he starts morning and groaning, and so outside the door the dogs start barking. But we ignore them, and keep going, and soon we’re really going at it, and he’s getting louder and louder, and as he does the dogs are barking louder and louder, and soon they’re fully howling outside the door. And he’s screaming ‘Ignore them! Faster! Harder!’ Ok, so now we’re going crazy, and the bed starts shaking and banging against the wall, and somehow it must have also been hitting against the birdcage... because the next thing I know the door of the birdcage is somehow open, and the two birds are out of the cage and flying around the ceiling.”

“What?!” I shouted.

“Seriously. And then the cats, who have been on the floor, jump onto the bed, and are leaping in the air trying to catch the birds. And he’s ignoring the whole thing, screaming ‘I’m close! I’M CLOSE!’ So I just ... kept going. He’s screaming, birds are flying, cats are leaping, dogs are howling, turtles are snapping ... I had sex on Animal fucking Planet.”

“Wow,” I said, stunned.

“I’m making a new Rule!” MartiniFun announced. He loved to make rules. “From now on, no sex with men who have pets!”

I raised my glass. “No dogs, just doggie style.”

“Cheers.”

Lose The Boss

2009-04-16T10:05:00.003-04:00

My boss is a charming 60-year old gay man. He's fun, witty, treats his employees well, and he adores me. I love my boss. Most of the time. But once in a while, things get a bit out of hand.

One day Bossy came into the office and told me he had met someone at his gym. Lonni is the lead singer of a new gay pop rock group called Whore's Mascara.

"We're friends now," Bossy told me excitedly, "Lonni wants me to come to one of his shows. You should come with me, I'll introduce you – he's veeeery cute!"

Bossy's partner, who I’ll call Partner, also works in the office. He rolled his eyes at Bossy's match-making, and also at the idea that Bossy would ever go to a Whore's Mascara show – Bossy is strictly the early-to-bed, early-to-rise type, asleep by 10pm and at the gym by 7am. Then one Friday morning Bossy tells me that Whore's Mascara is performing at The Ritz at 10pm on Sunday night.

"That's not so late," he said.

I laughed. "The Ritz is right in my neighborhood," I told him. "If you go, I'll go."

"Maybe I will," he replied.

That Sunday evening found me in the West Village, celebrating a friend's birthday at one of the worse venue choices ever – Marie's Crisis piano bar. As I winced while hordes of insipid queens screeched out agonizing renditions of bad showtunes, my cell phone vibrated. A text message. From Bossy.

You goin to whores?

I was shocked. He was actually going to leave his apartment at 9:30 on a Sunday night to go to a bar? He was my boss, so I couldn't really say no. But going to a bar with him might be awkward. As I paused to consider my options, someone dragged their nails down a near-by chalkboard. No, it was just some flaming gay man trying to hit a high note intended for a soprano. I texted him back.

I'll meet you there in 30 minutes!

"I can't believe I'm here!" Bossy announced after I walked into The Ritz. "I haven't been out this late in years!"

"I'm proud of you!" I replied. He smiled. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad.

"Partner didn't know what to think when I left," Bossy told me. "He thought for sure I was going out to have an affair!"

"Uh-huh." I said, looking for a cocktail. And starting to feel a bit awkward.

"I told him – I'm just going out with David!"

"Oh good," I smiled again.

"So now, he thinks WE'RE having an affair! HA!"

Awkward feeling continuing.

We got our drinks and found some seats. Just then Lonni walked by. Bossy jumped up.

"Hi!" Apparently they did know each other, as Lonni, who turned out to be a boyish-looking guy in his mid 20's, greeted him warmly. Bossy introduced us.

"This is my friend David."

Heeeeeey," said Lonni, with a laid-back, California-surfer, too-many-drugs kinda dwawl, "nice to meeeeet yoooooou. You just just relaaaaaax. We'll get started sooooon. Til then: get luuuuuu-bricated."

He waved and drifted away, leaving Bossy and I staring at each other, pondering exactly how to get lubricated.

Awkward feeling intensifying.

We decided to sit and wait for the show to start. We chatted a bit, talking about where Bossy used to go out, what bars were still open in New York, etc. I made the mistake of once again letting down my guard, thinking this wasn't so bad. As if he had a sixth sense, Bossy abruptly changed the subject.

"So what's going on with Michael’s ass?!" he asked. Referring to one of my co-workers, his employee.

"Uhhhhh... I... uhhhh... dunno..."

"It is getting FAT!" he announced.

In an attempt to close my dropped jaw, I pulled my drink to my mouth. And finished it.

"I think I'll go to the bar," I said cheerily.

"No! Sit down. I'll go. What are you drinking?"

"Are you sure..."

"WHAT ARE YOU DRINKING???"

"Citron and soda," I replied. "Thanks!" And he was off.

He returned a few minutes later. Mercifully, before the conversation hit another landmine, the performance began. Surely, I thought, we were safe now. We'd watch the show for an hour, and then both head home. Whore's Mascara is a fun time. Their music is sort of edgy-pop with dirty lyrics. Very dirty lyrics. Which would be great... if I weren't sitting with my boss.

"Don't be so full of yourself. Be full of me."

Ok, it's innuendo. Maybe he doesn't even get it.

"There's a dance party up your butt! I'm gonna Come! Come! Come! Come!"

Intense awkwardness.

Finally I decided to just focus on the visuals. The group is 3 singers, 2 guys and a girl. Though that night, they had a second girl. She was a skinny little dancer, dressed in a tight tank top and teeny-tiny little short shorts. She didn't dance as much as stand on a box and gyrate, and stretch, and bend over. Which would have been fine. Until she sat on the box and went into a very wide split ... and we could clearly see her maxi-pad sticking out of either side of her crotch under the shorts!

I tried not to look at Bossy. I tried to entirely eliminate my peripheral vision. It was useless. He was laughing, and leaned over to me. And the pinnacle of awkwardness was reached.

"I think they could cut that dancer from the act. She seems to be… unnecessary. She's sticking out."

Cleanliness Is Next To His Harness

2009-04-09T09:54:00.005-04:00

“I’ve worn a harness before.”

Most of my friends looked a little shocked. Especially the straight ones. In fact, a couple of the straight ones didn’t even know what I meant.

“You know, it’s like leather straps, and usually it crosses over your chest, and you usually see them with some kind of metal studs or spikes on them,” I tried to explain.

“Why the hell were you wearing that?!” someone asked.

“For fun?” I replied. “It’s actually a funny story.” I sipped my drink and began the tale.

It was about 5 or 6 years ago, and I was cruising profiles on some website or another. I saw a picture of a boy, mid-twenties, good body, wearing a harness. I started chatting with him, and asked him about it. He told me he loved them, that he owned several. I was intrigued. I’d never worn one before, and didn’t really understand the point of them. Also , I’d always thought they were for hairy leather daddies in clubs like The Eagle, but here was a this young, smooth guy wearing them in several pictures, and looking pretty good.

Finally HarnessBoy said “You should come over and try one of mine on!”

“Maybe we should meet for a drink first,” I replied.

A few days later we met for a drink at Pastis. I was surprised to find that in person he was even cuter then he looked in his online pictures, and more surprised when we started to hit it off. Soon we were connecting on a very deep level.

Me: I love hot food.

Harnessboy: Me too! If it’s meant to be hot, I want it piping hot!

Me: Exactly! Right out of the oven. And, if something is meant to be cold...

HarnessBoy: Ice cold!

Me: Totally.

HarnessBoy: Sometimes, when I’m drinking one of those 20 ounce bottles of coke, I get almost to the end but I don’t even finish it because those last few sips have gotten too warm.

I was thrilled. This was clearly a match made in heaven. In fact, I was so taken by this boy, that after our drinks I agreed to go back to his place. In Brooklyn.

Let me explain something: I don’t do boroughs. Call me a Manhattan Snob, call me crazy, I’ve just learned that bad things happen when I cross a river. Actually, that night may have been part of that lesson, among many others.

2 subways, 10 walked blocks and an hour later, we arrived at his place. It was nice, but I didn’t get much of a tour. He led me right to his bedroom. He opened the door, and immediately I saw it.

His bed was against a wall, and above it was a long, low shelf. At first I almost smiled, when on that shelf I saw a 20 ounce bottle of coke, unfinished, with a few sips left in the bottom of the bottle. But then I looked down the length of the shelf, and was horrified. Covering it, from one end to the other, were no less than 35 open, 20 ounce bottles of coca-cola, each with a few sips of warm liquid in the bottom. Quick math (which I hate to be forced into using) told me that even if he drank a whopping 5 bottles a day, some of those had been sitting there for over a week. My guess was many had been there longer.

I looked at him, with so many thoughts jumping to mind: I understand not finishing the bottle, I even understand if you’re drinking it in bed and go to sleep, and leave it on the shelf til morning, or even forgetting about it and going to work. But 35 bottles?! Over a week’s worth of disgusting warm backwash? Good god! Throw them out!

My next thought was: I need to leave. I need to just make up some excuse, tell him I’m not feeling well, and high-tail it out of the warm-coke-backwash collector’s apartment. Then I remembered. I was in Brooklyn.

I looked back at the wall of backwash. I looked at the boy. I looked back at the shelf. Finally, I sighed and said, “So where’s this harness?”

Excited, he quickly brought out two of them. The learning continued – I learned that they were heavy, cold, and could be very complicated to get into. HarnessBoy helped me, strapping the outfit around me, under my arms, around my waist. Finally, I looked in the mirror. Surprisingly it was kinda hot – I looked like a skinny, gay He-man. Then he put on his own. He looked at me expectantly.

I think he was hoping that putting on the harness would turn me into some crazy dominant master. That as soon as he strapped me in, I’d transform from Prince Adam to He-Man himself, throw him on the bed, and mount him like Battle Cat.

I’ve always been more of a Man-At-Arms. I really did think we looked cute in our costumes, it felt like Halloween. I asked, “Should we take pictures for myspace?”

He didn’t like that suggestion. So, he pushed me back on to the bed (Ow! What’s that buckle poking into my back!?) and laid down on top of me. Which was fine, until one of us tried to move. The metal rivets on his harness got caught in the metal buckles on my harness, and everything stated pulling and pinching and scraping. It was like teenagers with braces trying to kiss.

I was annoyed. Sex is supposed to be fun, and I wasn’t having fun at all. I got up, and made him take the harness off me. As he went through the arduous process of unbuckling and unstrapping me, I couldn’t help but look back at the shelf of grossness that I was trying to ignore. I realized with a sigh that it was really time for me to leave. And so I did.

After we had sex.

“WHAAAAAT?!” The straight friends I was telling the story to reacted with what seemed like horror, as they’d reacted to much of the story. “After all that, you still had sex with him?!?!”

“C’mon,” I replied sarcastically. “I was in Brooklyn!”

Holding Out For A Clear Owe

2009-04-06T10:14:00.005-04:00

“If someone at a bar buys you a drink, you owe them conversation until the drink they bought you is finished.”

We were sitting at Phoenix when a friend who was visiting from Philadelphia told me his policy. I wasn’t completely sold on it at first.

“What if you don’t like him?” I asked. “What if he’s horrible, or hideous?”

“If you take the drink, you owe him a conversation,” Philly explained. “That’s the rule.”

“And of course you’d never turn down the drink.”

“Say no to free alcohol? Are you crazy!?”

At first, I thought he was the crazy one. But as I thought about it over the next week, the idea made some sense . If you accept a drink from a stranger, clearly you owe them at least a thank you, and perhaps some polite conversation. If you can’t muster that, shouldn’t you just refuse the cocktail?

The following week, I was flipping through HX and landed on the horoscope page. I automatically glanced to my sign.

Sagittarius

It’s easy to forget that a good time doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. Stick to your budget, queen! Hit up some open bars and never turn your nose up at someone who offers to buy you a drink – no matter how fugly!

It seemed even the stars agreed that turning down free booze was bad form. And the more I thought about it, the more I agreed with Philly’s theory.

Saturday afternoon I sat down for brunch at Philip Marie in the West Village with J-Blo, TightLips, and EverybodyLovesAden. I brought the subject up as we sipped our Unlimited Mimosas.

“If someone buys you a drink at a bar, do you owe them anything?” I asked.

“No!” exclaimed J-Blo adamantly.

“I have to sleep with someone just because they buy me a drink?” asked EveryBodyLoves Aden.

“What if you want to sleep with him?” asked TightLips.

“OK wait,” I said. “Of course if you are attracted to them and want to talk to them, then it’s not like owing them – it’s something you want to do. But let’s assume it’s someone you are not particularly attracted to. You just walk away – you don’t even say thank you?” I directed the last question at J-Blo, in response to his initial refusal.

“Well of course you say thank you,” J-Blo conceded.

“And then you walk away?” I followed up. “Or do you chat with them for a minute or two?”

“Well, I’d talk to him,” J-Blo admitted, “but I talk to anyone. That’s how I roll.”

“I wouldn’t take the drink,” said EverybodyLovesAden.

“Me either,” agreed TightLips. “Not if he was ugly.”

“You’d turn down a free drink?” I asked. “Just because you didn’t want to talk to someone for 5 minutes?”

“Yep,” said TightLips.

“Not me,” chimed in J-Blo, “I’d take the drink for sure.”

I told them Philly’s rule. “If someone buys you a drink, you owe them conversation until you finish the drink they bought you.”

EverybodyLovesAden replied, “Fine. I’ll just have them buy me a shot.”

I gave him a sarcastic look. Just then, two servers approached the table at the same time. “Let’s ask them!” said EverybodyLovesAden. He posed the question to the two girls, and seeing them chatting with us, a third server walked up to us as well. I started keeping score.

Two of servers believed you owe the drink-buyer nothing. One said you owe them conversation. I noticed the results were similar to our table, where two of my friends would refuse the drink, and only one would accept and then converse with the buyer. Chatting with a generous stranger was clearly an unpopular choice.

EverybodyLovesAden, always the comedian, chimed in with another theory. “The other thing you could do is take the drink and talk to the guy, but say things to make him really uncomfortable. Like: ‘I just love shitting on a corpse and then fucking it.’”

“AHHHHHH!” we all exclaimed, horrified. Sometimes, I wonder why Everybody Loves Aden.

Much later that night, the three of us arrived at Irving Plaza in Union Square, the site of a new monthly party called 7 Deadly Sins. The night’s theme was Greed. After dancing for a while, I left the boys on the dance floor and wandered up to the balcony. I spotted a very attractive guy, and after looking at him for a minute, I realized I’d met him in January on the gay cruise. He was visiting from Seattle.

I said hello, and he was surprisingly thrilled to see me: gave me a huge hug, all smiles, asking how I’d been. We went to the bar, chatting. I decided to buy him a drink.

As we walked back to the railing over-looking the dance floor with our cocktails, he took out his cell phone. I watched as he began reading and responding to texts. I waited patiently, through one, then a second full song. Finally I interrupted him.

“So, how long are you in town?” I asked.

He didn’t respond for a moment, then replied, “Til tomorrow night.” And resumed texting.

I stood for another long minute, looking at him. Finally, he closed his phone. Then he looked around, picked up his drink, sipped it, put it back down. And then he opened his phone again.

I was shocked. Again I interrupted as his fingers tapped across the tiny keyboard.

“So did you do anything last night? Go out anywhere?”

This time he waited even longer to respond. Finally, just as I was about to repeat the question thinking he didn’t hear me, he looked up from his phone and at me and replied, “No.”

And he went back to texting.

Although I was stunned at his sudden 180 flip to cold behavior, I knew how to take a hint. He was hot, but I don’t waste my time pining after boys who are clearly not interested in me. Even when I do believe they owe me some conversation.

“I have to say hello to someone,” I muttered, and walked away. As I did, I couldn’t help but glance back at his glass. His drink was far from finished.

Extra Small Talk

2009-04-02T13:13:00.003-04:00

There are days when I wake up, think about my behavior the night before, and roll my eyes at myself.

On a recent Tuesday night, I found myself at the HX Mixer at XES.Not 10 minutes in, I bumped into an ex-trick, who promptly introduced me to a very cute redhead. Anyone who knows me will tell you: I love redheads.

Things got better when I found out that Red worked for another gay magazine, and better still, worked in the department that handled invites to their frequent New York parties. As we chatted, he and I headed to the bar.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“Vanilla vodka and ginger ale.”

“You’re not gay, are you?” I asked with a smirk. He didn’t seem to mind being made fun of. A good sign. A minute later, I handed him his cocktail.

“How much do I owe you?” he asked.

“How about this,” I suggested with a smile, “I’ll give you my email address, you put me on the party mailing list, and we’ll call it even.”

He laughed. “Are you sure? I would do that anyway.”

“I’m sure,” I replied with a smile. Anyone who knows me will tell you: I love to be invited to parties.

Suddenly, it was time for the raffle. On the way in to the party the staff had asked everyone for a business card. I was sad to discover that I didn’t have any on me. As Peppermint, the night’s drag queen host took the stage, I was even more disappointed, when she announced what the prizes would be.

“Firrrrrrrrst,” she growled, “we have some Aaaaaaaaaandew Christian underwear!” Damnit. I love underwear, especially when it’s free. “Theeeeeeeen, we have some gift certificates, aaaaaaaaaaand... a trip to Brazil!”

I was pissed. Of course the chances I would have won were slim to none, but knowing that my card wasn’t in the bowl just made me bitter. Something had to be done.

Red and I found ourselves standing very close to the stage, right near Peppermint. As she drew the first three cards and began calling names of the underwear winners, I noticed her assistant, a boy from the HX staff, who was handing out the prizes. He was a young gay, cute in a dorky sort of way. He had an arm full of underwear, more than enough for the winners. As soon as he finished handing underwear to the first round of winners, I went up to him as Peppermint prattled on about the trip to Brazil.

“Hi,” I said, smiling.

“Um, hi,” he said, smiling back.

“So, if you have any extra pairs of underwear, I could give them a good home.” After I said it, I was slightly appalled that a line so cheesy escaped my lips, but in a crowded bar with the music pumping and a drag queen screaming, it seemed to work. Sort of.

“Well...” he said, looking at me, then looking at the 4 remaining packages of briefs in his hands, “Can you fit into an extra-small?”

The truth was, I couldn’t. Sure, they’d probably be ok around the waist, but really too tight in the crotch. But that wasn’t the point. It had become a game. And anyone who knows me will tell you: I LOVE to win games. I went into full Drama Queen mode.

“Huuuuuh!” I gasped dramatically, “are you calling me FAT?!?!?” And with that I grabbed his free hand and placed it on my hips, nudging it just slightly toward my ass. Shameless.

“Oh!” he gasped, “Um, I guess you can, um, of course!” And with that, he handed me a free pair of red extra-small Andrew Christian hip-cut underwear. Which I would probably never wear. I was thrilled.

“Thank you Sweetie,” I cooed. I may even have winked at him. Despicable. “I’ll let you get back to your job.”

I left the bar that night with the cute redhead’s phone number and a cute red hip-cut number. My dignity was nowhere to be found.

Unfit To Be Tied

2009-03-30T23:25:00.004-04:00

"If you meet your next boyfriend on Manhunt, I will eat a necktie."

I stared back at this pompous, cocky person who was mocking me right to my face. He happened to be one of my best friends, who I'll call MartiniFun.

"You're on!" I exclaimed.

"It will NEVER happen," he replied. "Manhunt.com is for fucking. That's it. You find someone to have sex with, and you never talk to them again. The site's tagline is 'Get On, Get Off'!"

I pinched the stem of my maraschino cherry and swirled it around my manhattan. "Some people on manhunt might want a boyfriend. Look - this profile says 'Not looking for hook-ups, looking to date.'"

"Really?" MartiniFun exclaimed, with sarcastic disbelief, "Which profile is that, the guy laying spread-eagle on the coffee table, or the one dipping his balls in the cool whip container?"

I sipped my cocktail and decided right then that I would prove him wrong, and serve him a hot plate of Necktie, no matter how long it took.

The first suitor who I thought could potentially fulfill my quest was Personal Chef. He was cute, charming and crazy in bed. It was all going well until I invited him as my plus one to a dinner party. It was at that point he revealed himself to be crazy out of bed as well. Drunk, immature and a big crazy mess. By the end of that night I had 86ed him.

Then came ChelseaRon. When I first met him, and we went on a couple dates, I thought he really had potential.

"I'm going on my third date with this one," I told MartiniFun one night. "But don't worry. I'm perfectly willing to let you chop up the necktie, and bake it into a pie. Or maybe turn it into a nice stew."

"I'm not worried," he replied arrogantly. "It won't last."

Once again, he was right.

It's not like I was actively searching for a boyfriend on Manhunt - far from it. But I'm always up for a date, or at least a drink, before jumping into bed with someone. And if that date leads to a second, or a third, or even to a (gasp) relationship, I am open to that . And if I can be open to it, yet occasionally browsing Manhunt, then why can't someone else with a similar mindset be browsing as well? Is it so wrong to suppress my cynicism for a few nano-seconds and think that two such browsers might meet in cyberspace?

Last night I texted MartiniFun.

D: I've met someone. He's tall, cute and sporty.

MF: Like Sporty Spice?

D: No, like he plays soccer, runs, all that stuff.

MF: Sounds hot. Where did you meet him?

D: Necktie Soup!

MF: Riiiiight. We'll see.

Yes we will.

Me Tarzan, Few Abstain

2009-03-26T11:34:00.006-04:00

It’s easy to get laid on a gay cruise.

The second night of the Atlantis Freedom 2009 Caribbean cruise, the party theme was Brazil. Everyone always dresses up for all the themes, some wearing crazy, over-the-top outrageous costumes, most wearing something that suggests the theme but shows a lot of skin. It just so happened that my costume last Halloween was Tarzan, so when I read about the Brazil theme, I threw my loin-cloth-skirt-thing into the suitcase and was ready to go.

I was only on the pool deck that night for about 10 minutes, cocktail barely begun, when I spotted a young, twinky, half-naked boy with sandy blonde hair. Wearing a Tarzan costume. It was almost too easy.

I walked over, said hello, and made some comment about too many Tarzans. He laughed, smiled, touched my arm. We chatted, drank, found excuses to touch some more.

“What’s under your skirt?”

“What’s under yours??”

We danced face to face, hiding growing excitement. In less than 2 drinks, TarzanBoy and I decided to leave the dance floor.

On an Atlantis cruise, everyone shares a stateroom with a roommate. TarzanBoy seemed certain his roommate was still up on the dance floor, so we headed to his room. Sure enough, it was empty. At first. We were in there for a good 15 minutes, long enough to lose both Tarzan costumes, but not quite enough to get into too compromising a position. Which was lucky, as of course we heard the keycard in the lock, and in walked the roommate.

He took in the scene rather quickly, muttered drunkenly “Don’t mind me, nothing I haven’t seen before!” and stumbled directly to his bed and pulled the covers over his head. He may not have minded, but it had been too long since I’d been in a dorm-room-with-roommate-in-the-next-bed-pretending-not-to-listen situation. Fortunately Tarzan felt the same.

“I’m sorry,” he mouthed silently. “Your room?”

I nodded. As we pulled on our loin cloths for the starboard journey, I wondered about my own roommate. I had left him up on the pool deck at the dance, and I hoped he was still there. We arrived at my stateroom and I slid the keycard into the lock. Darkness.

Again we lost the costumes. Again we jumped on the bed. Again, after 15 minutes, we were interrupted by the door. My roommate. But this time – it was a knock.

Two days earlier, knowing that there would be a slight possibility that I might have the opportunity for a nautical trist while on a week-long cruise with 3,700 gay men, I’d come up with a plan. When we first got onboard, my roommate and I decided that if either of us brought someone back to the room, we’d simply put up the Do Not Disturb sign. Of course it wasn’t fair to kick the other out of his own room for hours, so if you were to come back and see the sign, you would simply knock, and come back 15 minutes later.

It was a brilliant system… except that I felt a bit guilty as it was the second time my roommate had been made to knock. That day. So, I jumped up, grabbed a towel, and answered the door.

“Hey I just need my wallet,” Roomie said. “I’m going to the casino. I’ll be gone a couple hours.”

Music to my ears. After Roomie left with his wallet, TarzanBoy and I had a lovely, uninterrupted 2 hours of fun. We were just getting out of the shower when there was another knock. I let Roomie back in, and TarzanBoy left a few minutes later.

“Wow,” said Roomie when the door closed, “I can’t believe he was here all that time.”

I looked at him. “It was only 2 hours. You do KNOW what we were doing, right?”

“Duh. But I dunno, 2 hours? After like 45 minutes I just get bored.”

I rolled my eyes, thinking ‘45 minutes? Me Tarzan, you lame.’

To Thine Own Cell Be True

2009-03-23T13:11:00.003-04:00

On a recent Friday in New York City, the evening began with cocktails upstairs at the Duplex on Christopher Street. TightLips and XJosh brought their whole crew from Astoria, and we began drinking, chatting, and gossiping. It didn't take long for the conversation to get interesting.

"How the hell do I reply to this guys text?" asked EverybodyLovesAden, snapping his phone closed.

"What's the problem?" asked XJosh.

"Well," explained EverybodyLovesAden, "He's just this guy that my fuck buddy knows. And the other night we had a threesome, and now this guy is texting me. He like, I dunno, wants to hang out or something?"

We all laughed.

"Well, what's the problem?" I asked. "So hang out with him – wasn't he hot?"

"Yeah, he was hot," said EverybodyLovesAden, "but I don't know anything about him. I barely know his name. Ron."

I immediately thought of a boy I knew named Ron, who I had been on about 4 dates with. The last date had actually been fairly recently. The sex was fun and he was pretty hot, unfortunately our personalities didn't quite click, so I didn’t see it going anywhere serious. Still, I thought about hanging out with him again. That is, until EverybodyLovesAden’s story gave me a strange uneasy feeling.

"Ron huh," I said to EverybodyLovesAden, "I know someone named Ron. I wonder if it's the same guy."

He chuckled, and so did TightLips.

"Like there's only 1 gay Ron in New York," TightLips laughed.

"I dunno," I replied, "where does he live?"

"I told you I don't know anything about him," said EverybodyLovesAden, "but my fuck buddy lives in Chelsea, so probably around there."

My Ron also lived in Chelsea. Of course, so did half of gay New York.

"Is he cute?" I asked.

"Duh," said EverybodyLovesAden.

"Ok, how tall is he? On the shorter side?"

"Ummmm," EverybodyLovesAden considered this. "Maybe, but I wouldn't say short…"

"How about his body," I asked, now somewhat obsessed. "Toned? With very little body hair?"

"Oh my god," said EverybodyLovesAden, rolling his eyes, "You've just described nine-tenths of Chelsea."

Despite his brushing me off as being silly, I had a sinking feeling that I was right. I just needed a way to prove it. I took a long sip of my cocktail.

"I wonder if it's David's guy," giggled TightLips. "That would be amazing!" I shot him a dirty look.

"So how are you going to reply to the text?" Asked XJosh.

"AH HA!" I shouted.

They all looked at me like I was crazy.

"The TEXT." I emphasized.

They didn't change their expressions.

"He texted you," I explained, like I was talking to a room of first-graders, "so that means you have his number in your phone. I have MY guy's number in MY phone, so all we have to do is COMPARE, to know if it's the same guy!"

TightLips kept giggling, while XJosh said "Ohhhh, good idea." EverybodyLovesAden pulled out his cell phone.

As I began scrolling through my contacts to the R's, I suddenly felt a bit nervous. Of course I wanted to be right, because I love nothing more than being right. But at the same time, part of me was hoping it wasn't the same guy. It was completely irrational of me: I had no ties to this person, I'd certainly slept with other people and I’m sure he had too, and certainly through the years I'd slept with some of the same boys as EverybodyLovesAden. But somehow as his number appeared on my screen, I felt really nervous.

"OK," said EverybodyLovesAden, waiting for me to read the number.

"I…" I hesitated. "I'm afraid to look!"

"Oh give it to me," exclaimed XJosh, who was sitting between us. "I'll look."

I sighed, and handed him my phone. EverybodyLovesAden did the same. He looked for a second at mine, then looked at EverybodyLovesAden's. He looked up. "It's the same guy."

"BWA HA HA!" TightLips burst into hysterics. "That's amazing!!"

"I knew it," I mumbled, shaking my head.

"Wow," said EverybodyLovesAden. "Sorry?"

He looked at me. I looked at him. Then we both started laughing too. What else was there to do?

A Week Drink

2009-03-20T14:12:00.005-04:00

My mother thinks that I drink too much. When she accuses me of this, I purport to have no idea what she’s talking about. But I guess to be fair, I should take an un-biased look at a random week of my life. Let's take this week.

Sunday night – Work event, followed by a couple drinks.

Monday morning – tired, slightly hungover.

Monday night – Drip pool party at the Grace hotel. Super fun party with lots of hot boys (and girls) dancing, splashing and wearing nearly nothing.

Tuesday morning – exhausted, hungover, totally worth it.

Tuesday night – Last-minute invite from XJosh to see Rock of Ages with him, TightLips and EverybodyLovesAden. After that show, cocktails were REQUIRED. A drink at Barrage.

Wednesday morning – tired, no hangover.

Wednesday night – Cocktails at a work event, which impaired my judgment enough that afterward I agree to meet JBlo at The Ritz for the Rewind party. SO FUN – great mix of “retro music”, everything from the 70’s through the 90’s. Danced til 1am.

Thursday morning – exhausted, hungover.

Thursday night – work event, followed by a drink at Barrage.

Friday morning – Today. Tired, no hangover.

Friday night - The plan is a friend's birthday in the east village, which means drinks. The plan is also to not have too many, as Saturday morning I have to work.

Saturday morning - no doubt tired, hopefully not hungover.

Saturday night - friends are coming in from Philly. Must show them a rockin good time. No doubt involving lots and lots of cocktails.

Sunday morning - SLEEP IN (I deserve it.)

Sunday night - The Premiere Party of "Jonathan, Just Because" an internet short film by friends including Josh & Josh. I helped plan the party, which will be fabulous - and involve lots of cocktails.

So that is my week. Looking at this evidence, in a un-biased way, factoring in mathematical equations, deductive logic, and cute-boy-to-cocktail ratios, what is our conclusion? Is my mother right - do I drink too much? The verdict, of course, is no: I'm not an alcoholic. I'm a New Yorker.

Corona Thugs-N-Hosery

2009-03-17T16:53:00.007-04:00

Friday night I went to The Hose to check out the Amateur Strip Contest and general debauchery. The Hose is the newest gay dive bar in the East Village, and is trying to build a reputation for sleazy fun. TightLips, J-Blo and I wandered Avenue B for a bit before discovering the unmarked door that led up a steep staircase to the party’s main room. It was very crowded, with a mix of east village hipsters, grungesters, and handlebar moustache-ers, to the endless amusement of my friends. The “strip contest” was a disorganized 15-minute mess of guys awkwardly dropping their pants while the mentally unstable whack-job of a host shouted insults at them. Unique, anyway.

There were a few cute guys there, and after the tragedy of the contest (which no one seemd to ‘win’) I chatted with one of the cute ones, who turned out to be an actor/singer/dancer. Of course.

“That strip contest was awful,” said TripleThreat.

“They don’t make em like they used to,” I agreed.

“Remember Boysroom?” he asked.

“Yes!” I cried. “Now that place was FUN. They knew how to have a strip contest.”

“Oh I know,” replied TripleThreat. “I was in it once.”

I could sense a good story was coming.

“So I was out with friends, drunk, and they convince me to join the contest,” he said. “I must have done well, because it came down to just me and one other guy. Now, this other guy... was like my opposite. I’m your little gay white-boy dancer, and he’s this big black muscle guy dressed like... well, a thug. So they call us back on stage for the final round, and I go first. And I dance my ass off (while flashing my ass to everybody), doing splits, leg over my head, I mean all out. I finish, the crowd loves it, and I’m thinking I’ve got this in the bag. So Thug comes up, and he’s just kinda standing there, all attitude, drinking his Corona. For like half the song he seriously just stands there drinking his beer. Then finally, he puts the beer bottle down on the stage, turns around, drops his pants ... and sits on the bottle. Then he stands up, with the Corona in his ass, and starts thrusting the bottle in and out of his hole. I just turned around and started to walk out. And my friends stopped me, thinking I might still win! One was like, ‘Do you want a Corona?’”

“Wow,” I sighed. “I miss that place.”

Oh My God You Filled Kenny or How To Sleep With Twinks - A Guide

2009-03-16T13:47:00.005-04:00

“How do you do it? How do you sleep with so many hot twinks and make it look so easy?”

Well, I don’t think I really sleep with THAT many young skinny gay boys... but ok, it happens once in a while. Still, I firmly believe that if I can do it, YOU can do it. Just follow the steps.

Recently I had sex with an extremely attractive 21-year old. Here’s how it happened.

Step One: Don’t be afraid to try when you’ve got nothing to lose (and usually, you’ve got nothing to lose.)

I met Kenny several weeks ago at a party hosted by my friend J-Blo (that's short for Justin The Blogger. He wanted a nickname - and he's got one!). Kenny was one of, if not the cutest boy in the room, so I immediately asked J-Blo to introduce us. He did, I flirted for a while, bought Kenny one drink, flirted a bit more. He seemed mildly interested, but clearly was not really into me, and certainly not going home with me that night. Having lost nothing (except maybe 1 drink) I moved on. (If the boy you re pursuing shows immediate interest, skip to Step Three.)

Step Two: If at first you don’t succeed, try *once* again.

I was browsing online profiles on a popular website a few weeks after the party, and there was Kenny. In most of his photos he was shirtless, which I enjoyed. I decided to try once more. This step is open to interpretation – if he had clearly blown me off at the party, I would not have contacted him again. But because he was mildly interested, I jumped back to step 1 – nothing to lose.

I complimented his pictures. Within minutes, he wrote back. Sometimes, a 2nd try is all it takes.

Step Three: Once you have their attention, be fun and conversational, but be direct.

I complimented his photos, made a joke about dating websites, and commented on the freezing weather. He thanked me, lol’ed at the joke, and agreed about the weather, saying he was so cold in his dorm (!) at that moment. I told him he had an open invitation to warm up at my place with a cup of tea. He found the idea of afternoon tea so charming that 3 emails later he was on his way to my apartment.

The next step risks making me sound like a psycho killer, or more like someone who should be featured on “To Catch A Predator.” But really, think about where the vast majority of dates take place: bars. Why? Because alcohol is a social lubricant. Everyone is happier, easier to get along with, and a little bit more fun when they’re drinking.

Step Four: Add booze.

If following these instructions while at a bar, this is where you would simply buy your boy a drink. In the case of Kenny, I adapted. He arrived at my apartment for afternoon tea, announcing, “I brought scones!” (Super cute – major points for him.)

I asked, “Would you like to add some whiskey to our tea, and turn them into Hot Toddies?”

He readily agreed. We spent the next hour drinking, chatting, drinking, giggling, and drinking.

Step Five: Find an excuse to get him to the bedroom.

Had we been in a bar, this would be Find an excuse to get him to your place. I find that keeping a somewhat stocked home bar always helps, as in “How about we go to my place for a free drink next?” usually works well. In this case, already in my apartment, I suggested he look at the pictures from my recent cruise on the laptop on my bedroom. He didn’t once suggest I bring the laptop to the living room.

Step Six: Get him naked.

Depending on the boy, this step may be unnecessary – some are stripping down the moment they enter the door. In Kenny’s case it required a bit more finessing. While looking at pictures on my screen, we went back to discussing his online profile pictures, which I insisted needed to include some pictures of his cute butt. He tried arguing that it wasn’t cute, and so while he was laying on his stomach on my bed, I grabbed my camera and snapped a few quick shots. He looked at the digital screen.

“Hey, those are pretty good,” he admitted.

“They’ll be even better without your jeans,” I replied.

He paused, and I could sense this was the moment of truth. The he said: “Well, I am wearing really cute underwear.”

He slid his jeans off and went back to lying on this stomach and looking at my laptop, while I took some more shots of his ass in his tiny boy briefs. Then, knowing he was past the point of protest, I slid the briefs down to expose he pert little butt, and snapped a few more. I showed him the camera. He approved. Then, I straddled him, sitting on his thighs and spanking his bare behind.

Step Seven: If you are sitting on top of a boy who is wearing no pants and slapping his bare ass, and you still need instructions on how to get laid, clip off your balls, place them in a martini glass above your television, and spend the rest of your days watching re-runs of The Golden Girls on Lifetime.

Sex with Kenny happened. It was good. His ass was great, and I took lots of pictures of it. When we were done, we lay there, and he took the camera and started scrolling through the digital pictures. “That one’s good. That one’s good. Ew, no! Bad, That one’s OK, that one’s good...”

“I’ll email them all to you,” I said, reaching for the camera, “you can choose the best ones and put them on your profile.”

“Wait wait,” he said, still pushing buttons on the camera. Suddenly, the camera made a sound I’d never heard before, three loud tones in quick succession: BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

“What did you do??” I cried.

“I erased them,” he replied, with the hint of a satisfied smile. “All.”

I was dumbfounded. “You whaa... I didn’t even know my camera could do that!” It was true – I would never think to erase the memory card before downloading the pictures, so I’d never even checked to see if it was possible. Apparently, it was. “Why?????”

“I don’t like the idea of you having naked pictures of me. Sorry.”

Step Eight: Always expect the unexpected. Right up until the bitter end, no matter how well things are going, always be ready to be caught off guard.

Kenny had beaten me at my own game. The pictures were gone, his pants were back on. Ok, so it wasn’t a total loss – I did have an afternoon of fun drunk sex with a hot twinky boy. But I still somehow felt like I’d been beaten, and I *really* hate to lose. I guess no matter how good you think you are, or how many times you do this, there’s always something to be learned.

D2 and See Pee Pee Oh!

2009-03-12T22:57:00.000-04:00

I was at a party recently, and met a really hot boy. He was insanely cute – sparkling blue eyes, baby face – nice body. He’d lifted up his shirt and shown off the hottest little pert nipples... I so wanted him. Unfortunately my friend D2 so had him. (He’s another David, hence D2). They were laughing, flirting, touching... I knew where it was going. I tried in vain to insert myself into the conversation, to laugh along, to flirt a little – no avail. 15 minutes later they were making out next to the window. 5 minutes after that they were saying their goodbyes. They left the party together. I’d lost, and I hate to lose.

Two weeks later I’m having drinks with the boys. Of course the talk turns to recent tricks. Of course no one is holding back, least of all D2. Of course Nipple Boy comes up.

“Remember him?” D2 was asking “You might have met him at the party...”

Oh I remembered.

“We went home together...”

I braced myself. Ready to hear details like “He had the MOST amazing ass!” or “He did things I didn’t know were possible!” or “He was the greatest lay I’ve ever had!”

D2 took a swig of his drink and looked at us. “He pissed in my bed.”

My jaw dropped. “What???”

“Oh you heard me,” he replied.

“Wait,” I said trying to clear my head, “did you have sex?”

“Oh, sure we had sex, drunken sex but it was fine, then we fell asleep. And it was all good til the next morning, when I woke up, and put my arm around him, and felt something wet. Like, a lot of wet. His whole side of the bed was wet.” I just shook my head, as D2 continued. “I said to him, ‘Why is this wet?’ and he looked all confused, and he got up, and I was like ‘Did you spill water?’ and he was all ‘Um, maybe...’ and then suddenly he had to go, and got dressed and ran out, and when I took off the sheets, there was a big yellow stain on my mattress. He totally pissed my bed.”

The other boys laughed. I did too, but all I could think was: if I’d “won;” if I’d gone home with him that night like I’d wanted to, it would be MY mattress with the yellow stain. I guess I didn’t lose after all.

Buddy List

2009-03-08T23:43:00.000-04:00

“I can’t believe YOU don’t have a Fuck Buddy!”

We were sitting in Starbucks in Union Square, caffinating before hitting the bars in Chelsea. The surprised exclamation was directed at me.

“I dunno,” I shrugged, “I like having sex with new people.”

“But don’t you have any regulars?” asked Justin, one of the friends I was out with that night.

“I guess I have semi-regulars,” I said slowly, thinking out loud. “But it’s more like people I’ll call up after a really long time, and hook up with again … and then not see again for another really long time. There’s nothing regular about it.”

“Having a regular is great,” chinmed in SeattlesBest, a cute friend of Justin’s who was in town for the weekend. “You get to know them, know their bodies, know how to pleasure them more.”

“Yeah, then comes the other problem,” I replied, “They fall in love with me.”

“PFFFFT!” Justin exclaimed, almost spraying his latte. “You’re just THAT good, huh?”

“Damn right.” I smiled.

“That’s why you just have to be straightforward with them up front,” said SeattlesBest. “If you don’t want a relationship, make it clear it’s about sex and nothing else.”

I sipped my coffee, considering all this. “So you all have fuck buddies?”

“Yep.” “Definitely.” “Several.”

I spent the next couple of days thinking a lot about the F.B. concept. Of course the idea was nothing new – everyone’s known about fuck buddies since season two of Sex and the City. But did everyone really have one? What really surprised me was that there were so many people out there willing to BE an F.B. Having one is one thing, but isn’t being a F.B. a title most people would find unappealing… kind of like being “The Other Woman”? Of course I realized – if you have an F. B., then by default you are an F. B.

On Saturday I sat down with a Bloody Mary and my friend Mattitude for brunch at Vynl.

“I have this guy who’s been my fuck buddy for years,” he told me. “He’s a little older, and even though I know it’s stupid, I feel like that’s a reason I can’t date him. Well that, and he told me from the very beginning he didn’t want another relationship. So, we’ve just had a lot of sex.”

“Is he your only one?” I asked.

“No, there’s one or two others.”

I started to think that maybe I really had been missing the boat on this one. Fuck Buddies were the latest trend! How could the whole world, or at least all my friends, have F.B.s, and how could I not have know about it? Had I just never asked, or was everyone keeping their F.B. a big secret? Most of my friends aren’t the secret-keeping types, especially about their sex lives. With one exception, a friend I’ll call TightLips, who has the infuriating quality of refusing to answer any questions about his personal life. By pure coincidence, I found myself at TightLips’s apartment in Astoria that very same night.

“People find it surprising that I don’t have a regular fuck buddy,” I told him.

“YOU don’t have a fuck buddy?” he exclaimed.

I rolled my eyes. “Well,” I replied, “Do YOU?”

TightLips shrugged, averted his eyes, and muttered “I don’t know,” in his infuriating way.

“C’mon!” I shouted. “You don’t have to give me his name, or address, or his Manhunt ID.” He shot me a dirty look. I continued, “Just tell me, cause I know you’re not dating anyone, if you have a regular guy that you’re sleeping with.”

“Wellllllll…” he replied coyly, “There are a few people…”

I was shocked. TightLips had a FEW people?? That was the last straw. The whole world had gone fuck buddy crazy, and I had missed the memo. I decided I needed to rectify the situation, starting immediately. I scanned through the contacts in my cell phone, weighing my options. I landed on the name of a 21-year-old actor I’d met online several weeks before. I paused to consider. We had hooked up twice, and both times the sex had been surprisingly hot. He was a 21-year-old actor, so clearly there was absolutely no potential for a relationship of any kind. And as I thought about it, I recalled that we actually did have a conversation about neither of us looking for a relationship. I typed out a text message.

Hey hottie, what are you up to?

He replied almost immediately. Goin out with friends later, but not for a few hours.

Me: Sounds like enough time for some fun – want to come to my place?

Him: I can be there in 30.

And just like that, my list of fuck buddies had begun.

ID My Ass

2009-03-07T18:10:00.000-05:00

"Go to the downstairs bartender – he's wearing nothing but an apron and you can see his cock!"

How could I resist? When you hear a sentence like that, uttered by one of your friends as you walk into a bar, auto-pilot takes over. RMatt and I pushed through the crowd, headed for the back staircase. Logic should have won out. The simple fact that we were at Splash, one of my least favorite bars in New York City, should have made me know better than to descend the stairs. But sometimes it's just out of your control.

He was actually wearing less than an apron. It was a rectangular piece of fabric, about the size of ½ a piece of paper. The head of his penis was actually visible dangling below the cloth. The fabric was tied around his waist with a piece of string. In theory, this could have been hot. But we were at Splash, so it wasn’t. He was short and stout – not quite fat, but not exactly muscular either. Beefy is a good term. It also became apparent rather quickly that he was very loud, and very straight.

"Yo!" He shouted at us in a thick Staten Island accent while we were still 6 feet away from the bar, "Yous guys want drinks!?"

We approached the bar in a car-crash trance, reluctant but unable to stop ourselves.

"Yo guys! What's goin ON!" Clearly straight, but trying to play the Flirt-with-the-homos-while-working-the-gay-bar game. Badly.

"Uh, Hi."

"YOU!" he pointed at my face. "You look too young tuh be drinkin here! Lemme see some ID!"

I was momentarily flattered, but R Matt guffawed at the ridiculousness of the thought. I realized, reluctantly, that he was right – this guy had to be joking.

"She scanned my ID at the door on the way in," I told him.

"Yo Baby-face, gimme duh license – I'M gonna scan it right NOW! C'MON!"

Unsure what else to do, I pulled out my license and handed it to him. He spun around, giving us a full view of his bare, thick ass. Then he slid my ID from the top of his crack down deep between his cheeks. When it was almost invisible at the bottom, he let go. Needless to say, it stuck.

"Uh…." I muttered, somewhat disgusted. "Approved?"

"You BET it's approved Babyface – now take it OUT!" He bent forward, sticking his ass toward me at the bar. Once again, I felt I had no choice. I gingerly leaned over the bar and, trying to touch as little flesh as possible, pulled my license from between his sweaty butt cheeks.

"Ohhhh YEAH. NOW – Whadda yous WANT!?"

"A can of Lysol and my therapist," I mumbled.

"WHUT??"

"Uh, a Corona and a Ruby Red and Soda," I said.

"No Problem!" he replied, and went to the cooler. He returned with RMatt's Corona. "Ruby Red with whut?"

"Soda," I reminded him.

He turned back toward the bar, and in doing so saw someone else at the far end. He lumbered over, greeted the guy, took an order. Turned back toward the bar. Came back over to us. "Ruby red with whut?"

I stared at him. "So.Da."

Finally, he filled my glass and placed it on the bar, taking my money.

"Yo, I just got one question for yous guys." RMatt and I braced ourselves. As it turned out, no preparation would have been enough. "Yous guys like my outfit like this, or…" he spun the string around his waist, moving the tiny piece of fabric to the back to fully reveal his flaccid penis. Which was of average size, but looked smaller next to his thick, fleshy thighs. "Or like THIS!!!"

"Uhhhh…"

"HA HA HA – I'm just kiddin with yous guys!" he cried, putting the cloth back in place. Then he performed perhaps the most shocking maneuver – he reached across the bar extending his hand. "I'm Vincent!"

We reluctantly each shook his hand, introducing ourselves.

"Yous guys know it's two fuh one right now," he said, handing me a receipt. "Come back when yuh finish those and I'll give yous your free ones!"

We nodded, and gratefully took our escape, with no plans to come back when we finished those, or ever.

Because I'd paid, R Matt said," I owe you a drink."

I stared at him blankly, my eyes still glazed over from the traumatic experience at the bar. "There's not enough alcohol in the state of New York…."