Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Julia Robert's toothy grin and that of a boy singing at a gay bar in the West Village

The weather was beautiful last night and I was in good spirits and in the West Village and I wanted to linger in this weather, stay out in it longer before heading home, so I called Joe to see if he was around and lucky me, he was just a few blocks away, and so together we explored gay cultures of New York that I normally don’t inhabit. The West Village gay scene is refreshing and I feel good there. There are lots of black and Latino gay youths roaming down Christopher Street, kids looking really happy, making me really happy by their being so.

We started out at Monster, which was really fun, and a really mixed bar racially and age and even gender wise (downstairs, at least). Going out in the West Village, you realize (or I did) how specific a scene it is you and I normally occupy. The bars of the East Village and Williamsburg all filled with twenty something white boys. Little boxes made of ticky tacky. Despite not even being drunk yet, I found myself dancing around to disco songs down in the basement, really loving this music, this bar. I did get a little tired though toward the end of what felt like a never-ending version of Diana Ross’ “Love Hangover.”

From there, we went to Ty’s, which supposedly was a leather bar. It wasn’t too crowded and there wasn’t so much leather, just lots of plaid. It was pretty boring, but I was sort of excited to be far and away, the most femme person at a gay bar. From there, we went to Pieces, which was cheesy in a totally different way. It was a bunch of twenty something toothy white boys in polo shirts and baseball caps, so many baseball caps, all tipped just so. And it was karaoke night, which made the bar even more of a train wreck, a fascinating spectacle that neither Joe nor I could turn away from. This bar made me feel so cool because I thought everyone was such a loser.

To escape this scene, to get to some place we were more comfortable in, we headed to the Cock. More disco! It was pretty disappointing, after paying the cover and making it inside to see so few people just sort of standing at the bar and sitting on the benches. But I will not let a lack of a crowd and low energy prevent me from dancing like a maniac to old disco songs, and so Joe and I danced and at some point the bar started to fill up with people, and occasionally even other people would dance. There were some muscley go-go boys showing their junk and I was a little drunk by this point and sort of in love with these muscle men, despite my normal aversion to them, and I touched two go-go boy’s cocks. The DJ came over to Joe and I to talk to us and to thank us for dancing and gave us drink tickets and that felt pretty good, almost as good as this ass of this really pretty go-go boy.

I started to talk to this German boy, Rico, who was only here for a week or so and was here to see Julia Roberts on Broadway. He was pretty fascinating and I made out with him, but didn’t take him home because Adele had a friend sleeping on the couch last night and I have a glass door through which all sound carries and I thought it would have been pretty rude, and so I made plans to hang out with him today and to show him around Williamsburg. I was so excited about this boy last night, totally having some Before Sunrise delusions of having a brief fling with this guy who is just here for a short time.

I got home a little after four and a little after that got a call from Ethan who was totally smashed and didn’t want to take the long train ride back to Crown Heights and so I let him in and talked to him and he slept over and so I didn’t get much sleep because I can never sleep well with other people in my bed and I woke up at a fairly early hour this morning and felt energized and was looking forward to my date at one.

I met up with Rico outside of Kellog’s and he wasn’t as cute as I had remembered and conversation did not come as easily as it did last night. There wasn’t a soundtrack to fill our silences and I was no longer fueled by however many beers I had had at the point I met him last night. We hung out in McCarren Park and my hangover finally caught up with me and I totally crashed and started to feel like shit, tired and irritable and sort of found myself wondering how I could extricate myself from this situation, since last night I had excitedly offered to spend the day with him, telling him I would accompany him as he explored Brooklyn and walked over the Brooklyn Bridge. Now I didn’t want to spend another minute with him, was realizing that this was not where I wanted to be and did not see an easy way out.

First, before the escape, I talked to him about his Julia Roberts obsession and it is the most fascinating aspect about him. It is a nonironic obsession. He came to New York just to see her play on Broadway. In a couple of days, he is going to meet all these other members of the Julia Roberts Forum (an online discussion group), who came from all over the world to see her on Broadway, to see her in person. I really wanted to understand this and so he told me that he grew up in East Germany and that they didn’t get American films there, and after the wall came down, one of the first movies he saw was Pretty Woman, and so Julia symbolized all sorts of things, her smile did. He loves her smile, he said. This, I found so terribly fascinating, an amazing short story. Too bad, it wasn’t plot enough for a novel because you can’t talk about this for hours and I started to get bored though, not having much to talk about, and while walking around, I told him that I had to go pick up boxes of contacts (which is true, but which had I liked the boy, could have easily waited) and that I was going to get on the train here and I asked him where he was going, what was he going to do, sort of making it clear that we should go separate ways. I felt a little bad about this but he didn’t seem to mind at all. I think he could also sense that I was bored and itching to get away.

And so no meeting the love of my life while he was on a brief holiday out of his country. Richard Linklater couldn’t make it to the set today. I picked up my contacts, and then picked up a steak and cheese sandwich, ate it, and then passed out in my bed, taking a nap, so happy to have the bed all to myself, to be able to sleep easily.

No comments:

Post a Comment