November 12, 2006

It's Your Birthday

A while back I met this guy off of gay.com.

Gay.com is a site where people go to chat and 90% of the time they're there to find casual sex partners. So, if you say that you met someone from gay.com, most people think that you met them to have sex. If you say someone is just your friend and you met them from gay.com, people think you met them, had sex, and now you're not having sex any more, or if you are, you're not dating, so it's just a free sex thing.

I'm in the 10% of people who, when I'm on gay.com, my objective is not to find sexual partners. My objective is to find decent people to talk to and with whom I could perhaps be friends. I'm not opposed to dating them if they turn out to be very cool, but that's not my starting goal.

So, I met this guy and he's nice enough. We hang out now and then and it's fun, yadda yadda yadda. Not best friends or anything, but a nice person to know.

It was his birthday last night and I think it pretty much sucked, but I think he had a good time.

First, he told me to meet him and his friends at a bar on the lower east side called Motor City something. It was actually a pretty cool bar, but the clientel was kind of wierd. Hipsterish, but not. I don't know.

Anyway, after an hour of dealing with the orange trains, I finally got there and he wasn't around. I called his cell phone but there was no answer. I went in and got a beer and text messaged him asking where they were. No answer.

I sat there for 30 minutes nursing that beer before I decided I would call some other folks and see what they're up to. I didn't know where the party was going to be, so I figured he'd just have to have a happy birthday without me. But I couldn't reach one other person and I decided to try to call him again.

The connection was bad, so I had to try a couple of times and finally he answered. I was like, "Where are you guys?"

And he was like, "We're ordering dinner. Where are you?"

And I said, "Well, I was at the bar you told me to meet you at, but now I'm walking toward Houston; I'm near Katz's."

He was apologetic and told me to meet them around the corner at this over-styled pizza joint called Pala. There's an accent over the second A.

The place is nice. Don't get me wrong. It's very cool. But for a place that serves mostly just pizza, it's too nice. I'll probably recommend it to some people.

Anyway, I get there and the restaurant allegedly has no more chairs. After standing for about 5 minutes and causing a huge commotion in the dining room, they miraculously found me a chair from another table.

I joined my friend, one of his coworkers (this adorable straight guy), one of the straight guy's friends (She was like Morgan Fairchild, but with dark hair. Very posh, pretentious, and prone to absolutely vicious gossip. Not to mention loud, opinionated, and foolish.) and one of my friend's gay friends who 1) has an absolutely incredible body and 2) was my friend's chaperone for the evening to make sure he got home OK.

That guy's body was the best thing from the entire evening. He was wearing jeans that fit him well and a tiny, almost transparent, printed Tee. You could almost smell Chelsea on the man, that's how he was. And he had an oddly high-pitched voice. I have a high-pitched voice, I think, but his was REALLY high and he sounded like he was using baby talk much of the time. Whatever, he was a complete gym rat and had awesome arms, great chest, perfect back... the whole deal. When I got bored with all the people or whatever was going on, I would just remember him going up the stairs ahead of me or something.

Once seated and having placed my order, we began chatting and the question of how we met came up. I said, "On gay.com. We met just as frien--" but before I could even finish, I was interrupted. The conversation was chaotic to begin with, but the Birthday Boy was clearly uncomfortable with that line of talk. I expressed my confusion to him in an aside. He said, "It's complicated."

If people think I'm having sex with him, so what? It seems to me like he should be pleased to have people think that. I'm attractive, smart, successful. If you're banging me, you must be doing something right. And I don't care who his friends think I'm having sex with.

But he would have none of it. He insisted that I tell people that I met him through work. He and I work in similar industries, so it's plausible.

I'm not a good liar, but at his request, I was willing to misdirect people. Here's how it goes:

"So, how do you know Birthday Boy?"
"I work for an interactive marketing agency."
"Ohhh..."

And if they don't get it, I say, "Birthday Boy works in marketing strategy at XYZ company and I work for an interactive marketing agency. We specialize in online marketing strategy and execution."

And that puts it to rest. Usually people aren't too keen to demand more precision in their casual conversations, so it works.

So, we sat at the pizza place for a while and I asked, "How far is your party from here? I didn't write it down or anything because I was coming to meet you guys."

It was revealed that no one, not even the birthday boy, knew where the party was to be. Fortunately, we did reach someone by cell phone who did, but not before making a couple of laps back and forth along Houston.

That kind of poor planning irritates me to death. I got the impression that one or two other people in the small group were bothered by it, too.

Did I mention that the birthday boy was sober this whole time? He wasn't flighty because he was impaired. He's just flighty.

So, we find the party and we have to tell the bouncer what party we're with so we can get a wristband.

*sigh*

Birthday boy is nice, but he always wants to go to these places with bouncers who want to see if you're on the list and all that. What difference does it make if I'm on a list or not?

Whatever.

So, it turns out that I know no one at this party. His friends that I did know, didn't show up for two hours. So, I spent two hours standing around misleading people about how I know the Birthday Boy for reasons that aren't clear to me. And when I would try to talk to the gym bunny, he was just awkward and strange, so I went to talk to some of the ladies.

Ladies love me.

Someone brought their mom and I talked to her for a while. Strange.

One of the lady bartenders gave me a free drink, too. That was cool. I don't know why she did it; we didn't spend any time talking or anything. When I went up to order another round she just said, "It's on me." I said, "Thanks" and left her $4.

Anyway, that part of the evening went on for a long time and then I realized that we were actually stalling. There had been rumors that we were going to go to another club to hang out, but for some reason we weren't leaving. There was a lot of stalling and more rounds of drinks... yadda yadda yadda.

Eventually, I guess the person who needed to leave, left, and the Birthday Boy, the Gym Bunny, and a new, random guy and I left the bar.

Then, we fought with some stupid chicks over a cab. And we met this other girl that Birthday Boy knew whose birthday was last night, too.

Oh! Get this bit of insipid drama: So, this girl has the same birthday, but Birthday Boy invited her to his party. She declined his invitation on Evite saying, "Sorry I can't come! It's my birthday, too, and I'm having a party, too!" Actually, it was probably like, "Srry, cnt come. My bday 2 & having a party 2!" or some such garbage. Well! It turns out that she also sent out an invite to Birthday Boy and he replied with something similar, but she DELETED his comment. Birthday Boy thinks she did it because she didn't want him advertising his party on HER invitation.

Let that sink in before you read the next part.

And that girl and some of her friends (not the ones we fought with over a cab) were trying to catch a cab. We got one first and Birthday Boy called out to them as we passed, "I love you, Birthday Girl!" Apparently, this was for the purpose of bragging that we got a cab first.

Yeah. Ridiculous.

So, we're in a cad headed over to the west side now. 28th and 10th, actually. I HATE the bars/clubs over there. The neighborhood is seedy and the clubs suck and the crowd is annoying. There are cops everywhere, and they even block off some of the blocks and put up huge flood lights. I don't know why, exactly, but probably so the cops can see the drug deals or rapes happening and intervene before someone gets too pregnant or high.

But we go.

We're supposed to meet some people in ReTox. We can't get in, though, because there's a bouncer with a list.

It's 3:30 and I am on the verge of calling it a night, but a couple of these clubs have decent dancing, so I thought it might be worth it ti hang for a bit.

Birthday Boy is blowing up everyone's cell phone who might know the guy who promotes that club and had invited us down to check it out. Whatever. We couldn't get in.

So, then we walk down to another bar, The Pink Elephant, maybe. We can't get in.

We walk down to Home or Bed or something and we can't get in.

We walk to Crobar and we can't get in.

We walked to four or five different places, but since it was 4 AM at that point, the doors of most places were closed. Besides, you can't get in unless you know people anyway.

Get this: some people would come out of the club, ostensibly to chat on their cell phones, buy some more drugs, smoke a cigarette, or something, but I think they were there just to show off that they could come and go from the club as they please.

The crowd in that area is always strange to me. Very smarmy, pretentious, insincere, and seething with some sort of barely contained anger about something. I always think I'm about to see a fight.

After walking back and forth and up and down and all over the place and trying to call people, we snag a flier from some dude for the club Pasha. Danny Tenaglia was DJing there last night. I have some remixes by him, so I knew the name. I still didn't think it was important.

So, we get in the cab and everyone is like, "40th and 10th!" The cabby doesn't know where the hell we're trying to get. I take the flier and I'm like, "This says 46th," and the cabby says, "Oh yes! That's between 11th and 12th."

Off we go.

We get there. We have to stand in line. Thank goodness there's no cover. All these stupid places usually charge $20 cover just to get into their loud, dark, sweaty den of noise.

We get in and a man pats me down. At one point, he actually pushes his hand against my perenium. That's the place between my testicals and my anus. I didn't even get a thank you.

And then Gym Bunny gets stopped by the pat down guy. They went through his pockets in great detail. It is 4:15 am and I am ready to go. I actually had said I was leaving earlier during the walking and not getting anywhere, but Birthday Boy begged me to stay out a little longer. So, I did, hoping I would get to hear some good dance music soon.

Not a chance.

Danny Tenaglia was there. I saw him in the booth. But...

Pasha is too dark. The music is ENTIRELY too loud. It's so loud that I really wanted to leave immediately because I was afraid my hearing would be damaged. It was so loud that the bass actually interfered with my balance.

I was sober by this point, my last whisky and coke having been about 3 hours ago, so my patience for the crowd was thin.

The music was TERRIBLE.

Oh and they would spray the room with fog. So much fog that I could not see my hand in front of my face. That's not a cliche. I put my hand in front of my face and I couldn't see it even though it was almost touching my nose. And the fog wasn't made of air I could breathe, either. I think it was CO2. I wasn't going to suffocate, but the suddenly decreases in oxygen content made me gasp.

The music was TERRIBLE. I think I mentioned it. It was repetitious. It mostly consisted of a beat and some random noises. It was awful awful awful. It was also undanceable.

But the crowd seemed to love it. The crowd also seemed to be in an altered mental state.

At 5, I was like, "Happy Birthday, Birthday Boy. I gotta go."

And I walked back to my apartment.

I hope he had a good time. I didn't think it was worth it. I could have had a better time sitting at home watching Cartoon Network or the Sci FI channel.

Sorry for the long post of whining about how I wasted a good night's sleep of my own volition. I could have told you more stuff about it, but I think I got it out of my system.

Posted by Flibbertigibbet at November 12, 2006 01:25 PM | TrackBack
Comments

Sometimes I read your blog and can't help but visualize you as this guy.

Posted by: Matt Chancellor at November 13, 2006 09:26 AM

Why do you hate me so much?

Posted by: Flibby at November 13, 2006 01:23 PM
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