One Singular Sensation

            I was in New York City last week for the first time as a tourist since 2000.  And I forgot just how exciting it can be.  Central Park, museums, Broadway, sexy men.  They’re all there.  I also forgot just how exciting it is to live there.  I had only been away for two months, but absence does indeed make the heart grow fonder.  It brought up a lot of memories.  A lot of firsts.

            Like the first time I ever visited Manhattan.  It was August 1997.  I went with my friend Lindsy who was more traveled than I.  So basically when we walked out of Penn Station, I hid behind her.  Overwhelming was an understatement.  But I slowly gained my footing, and we had a trip of a lifetime.  I was young, naïve, and in the closet.  I had already done a little research and learned that the heart of gay life was in a place called Greenwich Village.  I pored through her travel guide and found a mixed piano bar called the Duplex.  We walked up to the bar and some flaming queen sashayed up beside us and looked at the bartender.

            “Can I have a COCK-tail?” he cooed.

            Lindsy dropped her drink, and I almost dropped my teeth. 

            We hit all the fantastic and trendy restaurants.  Hard Rock Café, TGI Friday’s, Planet Hollywood.  We were so culturally diverse that we chose to eat at the Motown Café.  I even got a chance to meet a Broadway dancer that I had seen on the Rosie O’Donnell Show.  He was in the same piano bar as we were one night.  I was standing on line for the restroom, and he walked out.

            “It’s all yours gorgeous,” he grinned.

            I was over the moon.  So my first trip to New York was also the first time I stalked a Broadway dancer.

            The first time I moved to New York City.  April 2001.  I had no job, nothing lined up, and didn’t know a soul.  I answered an ad on Rainbow Roommates and found myself living on the Upper West Side with a gay guy and a straight gal.  Mark and Valerie.  Mark and I butted heads immediately.  Basically, according to Valerie, because he wanted to sleep with me, but I didn’t return the feelings.  Valerie and I, however, got along like Will and Grace.  I think we bonded because, at the time, we were both wrecks.  She was going through a painful breakup, and I was looking for a job in a city I knew not a lot about.  I was emotionally unprepared for Manhattan and was terribly homesick.  I came home from a disastrous job interview one day around noon to find Valerie sitting in her nightgown on the couch drinking Corona.  The sun was shining brightly, so I naturally put on my banana-yellow swimming trunks, popped a Corona, and got drunk with Valerie on the fire escape. 

            The first guy I met was a cutie named Fernando.  He really was into me, but I was still a wreck.  I was drinking every night which gave me the blues everyday.  I spent the night with him at his apartment in Queens one night and found myself on the subway for my first rush hour the next morning.  It was hot and crowded and I was fighting nausea because of the liquor from the previous night.  I walked into our apartment, Valerie was still in her nightgown on the couch, the steam heat was on full blast, and I hurled in the bathroom.  I stopped seeing Fernando after he kept trying to hold my hand.  Gays don’t hold hands in public in the South.

            Two months later, with no job prospects and doing stupid things like going to see two Broadway shows a weekend, I threw in the towel and moved back to Alabama.

            The first time I moved to New York City and stayed.  August 2004.  My first year in Manhattan, I lived in an extended stay hotel where I had a transvestite neighbor named Jack.  I lived in Valerie’s vacant studio in Midtown where the young, cute doorman surprised me one night when I dragged my ass home around three in the morning.

            “Let me escort you to the elevator,” he offered.

            I was suspect.  No other doorman made such an offer.  We entered the elevator, and he turned to me.

            “I think you’re very attractive.”

            And with that, he dropped to his knees and blew me all the way up to the penthouse and all the way back down to the lobby and all the way back up to the penthouse and all the way back down to my floor.

            “Don’t think that’s going to happen every time I see you,” he smirked.

            “We’ll see,” I smirked back, just as the elevator door closed.

            It happened again every other Saturday.

            After Valerie’s studio, I lived in the basement of an octogenarian’s apartment.  Her name was Betty Davis, and I was crazy about her.  She always ate Lean Cuisines and made a mean whiskey stinger.  I was with her for about a month and then moved on.  Basically in my first year in New York, I moved six times before settling down with my friend Russell where I would live for the next five years.

            The first guy I dated in New York.  His name was Bruce.  He was the executive chef at the Museum of Natural History on the Upper West Side.  We met at a quaint little bar called The Cock.  I was with my friend Bailey who was visiting from Birmingham.  The crowd was so tight and so randy at the Cock, it’s a wonder we didn’t get pregnant.  Bruce couldn’t make up his mind which one of us he wanted so he kept feeling our crotches.  Lucky for me, he mistook Bailey’s tiny asthma inhaler for his dick so I got the prize!  He had an old dog named Agnes who was knocking on death’s door.  Every time we had sex, Agnes would limp over to the bed and fart.  Ah romance. 

My first time at a full-on sex party.  Sponsored by party promoter, Daniel Nardicio, it was held at a darkened duplex apartment with a spiral staircase.  Mandatory clothes check, complimentary vodka.  After one too many complimentary vodkas and after stepping on a packet of lube, I went sailing down the spiral staircase on my ass and landed with a very loud thud.  I was mortified until a certain bandleader from a certain daytime talk show came over and offered me a hand.  So to speak.

            The first time I made friends in New York.  A group of quirky queens with very different and distinct personalities.  It took awhile to be fully integrated into their group.  And sometimes, the disconnect could be a little painful.  My first summer in the city, they all went to Provincetown for a week.  They planned the entire trip right in front of me, but I did get a consolation prize.  I got to feed one of their cats!  Eventually, they accepted me, their “miracle from Alabama” as one called me.  And eventually, I was asked to join their vacations.  The group isn’t as tight as it used to be, but lucky for me, I’m still friends with all of them.  And they have been with me on all my other firsts in New York.

           The first time a date peed on my shoes.  The first time I dropped a dildo out of my suitcase on 8^th Avenue in Chelsea.  The first time I got dumped via email.  The first time I got a shitty job and had to answer to an uneducated Puerto Rican hag.  The first time someone broke my heart.

            And better firsts.  The first time I fell in love.  The first time I went to Lincoln Center.  The first time I could afford…truly afford…a Broadway ticket.  The first time I went to Brooklyn.  The first time I went to Fire Island.  The first time New York felt like home.   My first Gay Pride.  My first solo apartment.  The first time I had sex with a porn star.  My first writing class.  My first acting class.  The first time I had sex with a porn star….it bears repeating.

            I just found summer housing here in Provincetown, so it looks like I’ll be here until September.  But I’ll be back.  Back to a city where firsts are around every corner, down every alley, in every Broadway theatre, every bar, every park.  And I’ll be ready with an open mind and an open heart.  Who knows?  Maybe the stars will align, and I’ll have that perfect job, that perfect apartment, and that perfect man.  All at the same time. 

            Doubtful.  But there’s a first time for everything.

Losing My Mind

           I just got back from a short trip to New York City.  A much needed short trip to New York City.  Because I had cabin fever.  Actually, it was more than cabin fever.  It was more akin to what mental patients must feel like when they are in solitary confinement at Bellevue.  The only difference is that I didn’t answer my own questions out loud.  But I did do a lot of pacing about.  I’m a big city kind of gal.  I like the lights, the glamour, the sexy investment bankers.  I knew the winter here would be very quiet.  I just didn’t know it was going to be silent.  I was alright the first couple of months.  But the last few weeks started to weigh heavily.  There was not a lot to do.  There was so little to do that I actually spent up to an hour and a half daily at the gym.  Let me reiterate.  An hour and a half.  Once more…an hour.  And a half.  For someone who basically gets his exercise by walking to McDonald’s or a bar, that is quite a feat.  And I only had sex once in the sauna.  Well, three times.  But they were only hand jobs that took three minutes tops. 

            The rest of my time has been spent writing…not as much as I would have liked but still.  So I have been writingish.   I have worked part-timeish at the hotel.  And I’ve drank.  Not ish.  I’ve drank.  Other cities have their own winter sports.  In Provincetown, at the end of the world, the winter sport is to belly up at the bar.  Any bar will do.  One just needs a sturdy grip and a friendly bartender with a liberal pour.  And usually in other cities, the nuts come out in the heat.  Here they are on full display in the freezing cold.  One guy walks up and down Commercial Street all day.  All damn day.  And every time I pass him (no, I don’t walk up and down the street all day…just part of the day), he asks me for a cigarette.  Another guy in town looks like he hasn’t bathed since last winter and has a laugh that would make a hyena cower. 

            Luckily, I have a certain cast of characters that keep me sane.  Ish.  There’s Peter, my friend and roommate from last summer.  We both have ample party skills.  Our first night as roommates, I fell through the door, and he fell through a window.  So compared to last summer, he has been quite subdued this winter.  Oh he’s had an occasional shirtless night at the dance club, but who hasn’t?  There’s Charles, a Southern gent who loves to talk about art and the theatre.  He also loves to talk religion and politics.  At a bar.  Which, unfortunately for some crazy queen, crescendoed into Charles throwing his very loud and very ugly wig into the parking lot.  There’s Mrs. A.  It was weeks before I knew his real name.  I just knew him as Mrs. A.  And still do.  He never wears long pants, always wears hip and oversized glasses, and smells like expensive cologne.  He also always wears orange and has calves that could crack walnuts.  There’s Dante, who is legally blind but can still spot a hot young buck from twenty paces. 

            All of us met basically at the “Cheers” of Provincetown, Bayside Betsy’s.  Which brings me to my two favorite bartenders.  There’s George, or Gladys as he’s called in some circles.  Beating around the bush is not his forte.  Just this past weekend, I walked in there with Magic Mike, a topic of a previous essay.  We sat down, he gave us our menus and said “So are you guys just friends or are you fucking?”  Magic Mike almost fell out of his chair.  Then there’s the grande dame of the bar, Nicholas.  Never one to mince words and never one to miss a beat, Nicholas has us all pegged.  And his one-liners are to die for.  I was talking about a romantic tryst one night.  Nick overheard.

            “I just want a fat guy to come over and make me pizza.”

            A customer playfully asked Nick’s ex one night what his issue was.  Nick overheard.

            “Have you got a pen and piece of paper?”

            Never misses a beat.

            This barnyard of characters is overseen by Bayside Betsy herself.  She runs her business with the savvy of a New York businessman, yet opens her restaurant up to local charities and wakes for local citizens.  So she’s basically like Donald Trump with a heart but no comb over. 

            So I’m getting by.  I got out of town last week for a trip to New York and came back to a different town.  The sun is out, the skies are blue, and more businesses are open.  There are people on the streets, this past weekend was packed, and there is light at the end of the tunnel.  I also found out this past weekend that my summer rental options have fallen through.  So now I’m forced to look for a place to live.  If you had told me this two weeks ago, I would have packed up and left immediately.  But a quick trip to New York and the awakening of spring in Provincetown made me realize I’m not done yet.  I want another amazing summer where I meet really interesting people and see amazing performances.  A summer where I work my ass off in a tight little bathing suit.  A summer where anything can happen.  That’s the thing about Provincetown.  It’s like a big old insane asylum. 

            It’s easy to get in.  But it’s hell to get out.