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.