SSShhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh........

   

       Stand clllllllllllllllllear of the cllllllllllosing doors plllllllllllease. For anyone who consistently rides the number one train on an unlimited metro card in New York City, you know who you are and exactly who I'm talking about. There's a subway conductor on the red line who tortures me probably three to four times a week (almost exactly at 10:25pm) with his extremely hard R's and over enunciated L's! I hate this guy's voice more than my thumbs could ever express to you on a touch screen or key board! He loves making these horrible speeches in a state of extended arduous slow motion. His R's are so intense in fact, and so inappropriate that they would give a speech therapist either a heart attack or a three hour Cialis boner. He has no idea that his verbal masturbation lines directly up with my work schedule and my nightly train ride home from the bar four nights a week. He'll never know how uncomfortable he makes everyone within earshot of his overly articulated mandatory announcements that every other subway conductor lets slide. I estimated that this fool makes alternating announcements every single stop instead of hearing maybe two to four the entire ride. I mean how many times can you stomach an announcement that reminds you that every brown package you see could possibly tare your face off at any moment with a nail bomb; all before nine AM? Good morning New York! Or that the very subway car you are sitting in could explode into a ball of fire, peeling the metal car apart from angry extremist retaliation and making you a bloody Jackson Pollock-Jihad art instillation! I wonder where my stress comes from? The conductor, who I shall refer to as the home school serial killer guy, should audition to replace Tim Gunn on Project Runway when he spontaneously burstssssss into a cloud of pink glitter and tool when Heidi finally whips out and reveals her huge German penis. His phrasing is more of a roller-coaster dip than a lilt and the sheer grating nature of this guy's voice would make one want to lay down in front of the train instead of get on it. Or perhaps write a blog which is what I did. He couldn't be more available to slowly draw out the 'Unlawful sexual conduct on a crowded train' speech or the dangerous IMax-like spin he puts on phrases like "SSSsussspicccioussss packageZZZZ"(insert the haunted house theme). And let's not forget his famous twist on why we are being held at 137th st. for no other reason than to maintain an even spacing between trains. He is a weekly reminder of why I need to get away a little more often from this city's quirks and urban circus freaks that rub me so dangerously thin. Random and interrupted New York City personalities have blurred the lines of all things sane for me and my fear of turning into that crazy guy that talks to himself on the train slowly but surely melts me into exactly that. And here I am, giggling to myself in the corner of the train like the dude I'm usually secretly judging. Oh...wait....another important announcement! "If you see something....say something!" He takes that finger nails dragging across a chalk board comparison to new heights for me and I'll never recover. He has the audacity to pick me up every single night and live with himself. I mean what are the chances that this one super annoying subway driver picks me up every day out of hundreds. Could it be that there is a system and a method to all the MTA's madness, much less and actual schedule? I have a lesson to learn here but I'm not sure what. I just barely missed the train tonight and thought to myself "Oh god I hope crazy voice was driving the train I just missed by mere seconds!" But wouldn't you know he was certainly driving the very next train that came pulling up? Why is my fuse so short I wonder? And why can't I escape this one city detail? It's not his fault that I'm so unstable. He can't help the fact that the tone and timber of his pitch makes me completely postal while people around me are openly discussing this dude's verbal intonations every time he opens his mouth. Osama Binladen was officially killed and dumped at sea along with my hope that he will realize that he's the only one that wants to hear himself speak. It's the little things New York. Like the one train stopping for fifteen minutes just one stop before my stop......so close yet so fucking far. I'm gonna get home and Harley's questioning brown eyes will burn a hole into my soul as if to say "eight hours...really?!" Daddies got to pay for all those surgeries to remove all the fucking three inch needles you swallow little lady! Emergency surgeries aren't free folks. There is a price on love and emotional assistance therapy and in fact it's unbelievably high.

A Snowflake on the Sun

     I need a miracle on 34th street today. You see I've tried desperately hard not to become a raging, fearful gay man that's immune to joy and bitter towards human interaction in general. I wonder if I've failed my quest to be a happy person? I find myself standing atop the Empire State Building cracking up at all the ridiculous tourists packed excitedly into elevator lines like beakless chickens crammed into a tight pen. It's a congregation of cuddles I'm not interested in as a person showing all the symptoms of clinical Agoraphobia. I'm a thirteen year veteran but I thought it was time to become a tourist myself in my own city and do all the things I forgot to do all these years I was too busy to care. In fact I purposely avoided tourist traps like this like the plague. Could I potentially revive my fading love affair with the city by hitting up all the famous land marks? It's worth a shot. It was just that in fact.....a passionate love affair way back when I thought I was going to be starring in Rent by twenty. But even now my goals are shaky and my financial fears leave me breathless and on a total economic freeze.

      Little traveling couples fuss around the binocular quarter machines while fisting hot dogs and pretzels into their fat mouths. A dad buys a little yellow plastic taxi toy car and a stuffed statue of liberty doll for the two kids at home while mom is snapping and clicking away, capturing blurry images from high above the busyness and chaos that she'll never really understand. It's a first hand account of the absolute worst mid town has to offer. This is the city of dreams as far as they know. The country bumpkins from god knows where remind me of that small town softness that I grew up with where people don't care what they look like and don't dress to impress for anyone. I like that lack of pressure to perfect a personal image and its easy to feel good about yourself if you try even just a little bit. Nasty little key chains and snowball paper weights with fake 3D sky lines fill the sketchy gift shop that could use an HGTV Devine Design makeover with Candice Olson as soon as possible. All the high busted suburban families wearing matching pastel Walmart T-shirts (to help keep track of one another I suppose) branch out and get fancy with the dinner plans and decide to eat I-talian at the Olive garden instead of the usual Applebee's or TGIFridays. It's usually followed by either mezzanine seats at Mary Poppins or the Lion King I'd almost bet. Unlimited soup and salad never fails a Midwestern family of six if you know what I mean?

    "Why do they need fences and nets over the edges daddy?" says a little girl noticing the emergency safety nets bracing the high rise outer ledges. "I think..............I think it's for all the cell phones people drop sweety?" dad fumbles to answer. I giggle because I know the real answer little lady. But do you need to know so soon is the real question? What these rolly polly mid westerners don't realize is that these huge nets are there to catch the stressed out suicidal bodies of desperate New Yorkers who just can't take one more god damned minute in this fucking town or planet.  There's no stopping somebody who's completely given up from flinging him or herself to a very nasty, public death. But I can think of gentler ways of leaving this world than decorating the sidewalk with my exploding brains and tear stained eyeballs. That's some seriously unnecessary drama. Thankfully these situations are avoided because of the strong efforts of a realistic insurance press-team for what is probably the most famous building in the entire city's history. They most certainly have a plan B, C, and D, with nets under nets under more nets just to be sure.

     The Brits whisper politely and sip on Cinnamon tea. Three foot tall identical Asian businessmen are bordering on smackable as they huddle in a little cluster shouting about how to change the battery in their matching cameras. This place is like a Benetton add from hell itself. Pretty red headed corn fed boys from Iowa gaze out onto my city with beautifully naive eyes having no idea the steel you have to be made of to last more than a month here. I may enjoy a good blog bitching session now and then but I wont be doing a cannon ball onto 34th street anytime soon that's for damn sure! I would consider something along the lines of relocating to a peaceful environment or immersing myself in self help clinics and Omega retreats before I would take the dirty leap. Can you imagine nailing one of those Big Apple Tour buses on your way down and the sheer photo opp that would present itself for the traumatized passengers? Genius! They could say that they had the ultimate New York experience upon returning home to Columbus Ohio stunned with years of nightmares to work through with a psychotherapist. The sun is setting over Manhattan in a soft pinkish blue that would be virtually impossible to capture on a canvas or some flashless (any)G IPhone snap shot. I'm choked by the uncertainty of things but I've always prevailed and I guess I will continue to do so.

    

         When should one leave Manhattan is the latest question among my generation of New York show biz professional VIPs? Is it when you start talking to yourself on the subway like a crazy person (or your dog)? Maybe it's when you see a young woman doing the all too familiar subway surfing dance unsuccessfully. She can barely hang on to the metal straps while teetering and toppling over in her fierce stilettos, spilling her seven dollar late all over her pink IPad cover. I could easily give her my seat but I wait. Then I wait a little more until the Southern boy in me can't take it anymore and hops up and gives in. It's the questioning like this that makes me think I need therapy basically immediately. I will usually give up a seat for a woman regardless of the spectrum of age but it's the hesitation that brings my manners into check because my mother wouldn't be proud. I also have a serious weak spot for the feeble, injured, or elderly in a city of stairs and walk up prewar apartments. If you break your foot in this town you are shit out of luck in my opinion. My stark attitude and heel spurs contribute to the blinders I have up to others in equal or greater need. I want to scream at the inner city kids that wouldn't bat an eyelash to the preggers patrol forced to stand right in front of them totally uncomfortable and ignored. I'll break my busted 32 year old back to hoist a baby stroller up two flights of stairs because the visual of a tiny Mexican mama killing herself to drag a huge stroller and tiny illegal baby up the stairs is more than I can bare. I don't know how these little women do it all alone in a city where elevators are as scarce in the train stations as actual trains. Days must be strategically planned around physical convenience.
         
     Schlepping uptown...downtown....uptown....year after year swiping my unlimited metro card makes me completely dizzy. The MTA owns you if you swipe with abandon like I do basically every day all day long. People actually become Chinese dividers standing motionless in the way as you frantically try and scramble through Times Square to get to the Actor's Equity building before it closes the sign up for yet another six month required call of Mamma fucking Mia. Instead, these blob-like suburban soccer moms are transfixed with their own image being projected on a gigantic LED billboard through reflective cameras. These proud PTA members stand frozen like Kabuki statues creating the obstacle coarse of doom and gloom. My patience is tested in every way in that part of town unless I'm en route to a Broadway theatre to go to work which is.....well.... never. Big juicy ladies wearing pajama jeans and fanny packs become a wash as I pass through them like clumsy lightning perpetually fifteen minutes late for everything I try to do in that immediate zip code. Spacial awareness is a joke around the TKTS booth for discounted Broadway shows and quick choices are crucial in navigating the streets like Captain Kirk through a sudden asteroid field. Fleshy gunts spill out of spandex stirrup pants reminding me that I have to add 'the people of Walmart.com' to my favorites list when I get home. When you start referring to your fellow brothers and sisters in life as a waste of your precious space it might be time for a perspective intervention stat! I'm on high alert and I wanna keep things light and sweet like my coffee because it's a very slippery slope to jaded.

Cuntvertising

   

     A woman on the train this morning was wearing a hand made cardboard sign that says "You have Aids. You look like retarded trash with Aids. You look like a fucken transvestite. You suck dick you Sissy and you Prostitute!"....all this before nine thirty in the early am! The pure hatred that can fill a human heart is a scary thing and even more so is the need to advertise your anger issues and bigoted broken down bullshit on a cut out sign made from stray garbage and green ribbon. The puzzled looks from the little children that got on the train and read her sign make for quite the universal response. It starts with a widening of the eyes when the thought begins to register and sink in, the eyebrows crinkle followed by a questioning tug on daddy's shirt... to which he instructs the kid to "look away sweetie...look away!"

    We all have our little secret discriminations locked away somewhere deep inside our subconscious closet. But to snap and loose all sense of reality and think that our little demons are in fact fact is where the true danger lies. I need to get to the bottom of my shady brain functionality and squelch any and all inequality slightly separating me from the flawed human race that I'm also a part of. The second people create a tiering system of better or worse is when the seed gets planted that you are somehow more special than everybody else.

Limes Disease

      First day back in the gay bar and my spirit is flattened and humbled beyond all recognition, hands already dry and cracking. The small taste of glamour that was my most recent tour is now a fleeting memory and reality is setting in hard and fast. The DJ plays his predictably predictable continuous round of hits for the unenthused unhappy hour crowd that resembles more of a scene from the Town House, the old man gay bar on the East Side. He loops Britney, Rihanna, and Katy Perry over and over and over and over and over and over and over again in a sickening, unending circle of songs that intrude themselves past the barriers of my subconscious and into my sacred dreams. Get out of me California Girl....GET OUT!!!  If I was faced with either listening to miss Perry sing Firework on the Oprah show or trying to shove a huge orange traffic cone up my ass I'd choose the later! These pop star princesses sing digitally enhanced robot lullabies that remind me of better times as the one actually on stage. I love a seven-thirty half hour and no more than three strong hours of work every day followed by drinks and a late dinner. I like sleeping in forever with the hotel blackout curtains drawn as tightly as possible with no peep of light sneaking through till I say so. I will duct tape a bitch shut like an insomniac vampire watch me! I have light sensitivity issues when sleeping. I love an evening show call and eating late. Thoughts of shiny blinding stage lights and weekly paychecks automatically deposited into my checking account have me daydreaming and foaming a the mouth. And just like that, and with a quickness, I'm jolted back into the unhappy hour shift of doom and gloom where vodka glasses pile up like small leaning towers faster than I can wash them. I am the "help" in Hell's Kitchen and my dignity is in check when I avoid a particular table of boys I know (sipping peach n' sodas and tequila sunrissssssesssssss with a twissssssssssst). I've been either working along side of or auditioning with some of these boys since I moved here in '98. I face down the panic of yet another and another congratulatory hello and the old "I didn't know you were in That!" The frigid ice skater hugs that follow give me flashbacks of my former world of insincere athletic competitors. I thank god I don't work Mondays anymore because all the Broadway theatres are dark and all those faggots come marching right into my bar for happy hour seemingly just to remind me of what ended up not being the most dazzling story of a young man getting discovered here in the big city. I'll drink to that!

       An" A-list" reality TV star is here promoting his new fragrance that is quickly making the entire bar smell like a french whore house in the hot summertime. My stomach is churned into knots and a Tums would be like a snowflake on the sun. Safety jobs have a tendency to become a black hole of sorts but I do love the instant cash in hand at the end of the night. Boozing homosexuals can be....well.....torture but occasionally forgivable. It kind of kills the joy of going out and meeting my friends basically anywhere ever. The bar smells and intrusive sounds are as familiar as the underlying nervousness that comes from just five minutes in the big apple much less 13 years later yo!

show dog

Balloons and Baseball

     

     Balloons and Puertorican mini flags line the baseball fields down at Riverside drive where teams of tiny screaming kids are about to have a little-little-really-little league game. They are squeaking and squealing like pigs in shit with excitement bursting out of their eyeballs and throats. The cuteness of such a sight on this sunny Tuesday tops the charts here in Spanish Harlem today. The freaky empanada carts are out throughout the summer and the mamcitas are cooking up something amazing on their self made grills down by the river front. It looks like a Dominican day parade down here by the water near my house and garbage has been discarded and piled up so high that it is truly unbelievable!

We are talking third world amounts of litter here. But aside from the littery aftermath the smells of supremely delicious weekend barbecue chicken makes my mouth water like a lion as I wait for Harley to destroy her fifteen dollar pink puppy Frisbee that Kong swears up and down is indestructible. They haven't met "my" little dog-toy-disintegrator yet! Trios of tiny Mexican guys harmonize and play guitars and accordions while singing hilariously rehearsed songs in Spanish. And there's always the designated amigo, the size of a small child, that walks around with his outstretched cowboy hat turned upside in hopes of scoring some loose change from our pockets and unthawing our New York hearts from last winter.

                                                                    I'm trying to exhaust my dog before I go to work and this Harlem fiesta party crew is free to stay and do as much nothing as they can stand today. The tents and banners are up for this Latin circus of nightmares and it's a perfectly warm day for cheering and sipping lemonade and eating and drinking heavily. If only these people would consider picking up some of their trash i wouldn't be so bitter about their joy.

 I'm available to take on the Brazilian approach to life where life is actually beautiful through all the bullshit. I seem to forget this simple fact basically every single day until one of the two hot Brazilian bartender boys I work with come into the bar singing something off key that I can't understand, freshly pumped and juicy from the Hell's Kitchen gym. A double cheek kiss and a whiff of sexy Molton Brown cologne (my favorite) and I'm instantly cured from all my New York City jade....well......until tomorrow.

How could you dump trash here?!

 

Harley's eye line

(of course a dead body dragged from the Hudson...discovered on a lovely walk with my dog)

The End

The Monster Snowball

            Riverside is hazy and hot with the heat of a fading summer and Harley looks like she's about to have a sun stroke and drop. Its a very fine line between a happy, heavy panting session and a wheezing death rattle. You get a full ear to ear smile when the heat begins to swelter to a dangerous degree and a severe and total collapse is not an option because there is no grey area when the vet bill comes trust me. Does a tired panting puppy equal a dehydrated, dying puppy I wonder? To the web.

        The coats are gone and all my scarves and gloves are rolled and tucked away for good. Sunburns, dog parks, rollerblading, gay bars, and grass stains on my straight-boy cargo shorts is basically the summer theme way up here on the upper upper upper best side. I may or may not have f*d my back up like I do every year trying to single handily muscle my huge industrial sized air conditioner into a better position while cleaning the dirty windows. It's pretty hot if even "I" am willing to part with the clean lines and candle-light possibilities of a gay man's uncluttered window sill for a bulky, loud, hiccuping monster that operates at more than a light hum. The light sleeper that I am occasionally sticks ear plugs in at night just to justify the loud buzzing growl of the chilly summertime beast. I've traded in silence in order to achieve the roaring rush of cold air and the necessary Arctic temperature that I require in my golden lair of sleepy dreaming. If I left that baby on high for a while you would start to see your breath in about fifteen minutes and you would consider ice skating on the frosty layers that start to form on every hard surface in about twenty. If I cranked that baby into high gear little Harley would be frozen in no time like a woolly mammoth stuck in a lost glacier ....a 1,600$ ice cube if you will. It's a rusty, shaky collection of screws and bolts that soothes my broken skeleton and muscles with her frigid breath and saves me every year around this time when the heat is actually visible as it rises from the hot asphalt in layered waves. Sweat stings my eyes and drips from my forehead onto my touch screen while I'm tap taping away with my thumbs as I write this. This IPhone is literally salty with hope and remains the direct gateway to my every recorded thought...T2's memoirs...a piecing together of an interrupted chorus boy's doubtful personal demons. The second floor of my house feels like a hot oven in the New York summer heat and my room upstairs would make a Bikrim yoga teacher pass out or start crawling and scratching for the front door.

         I'm obviously too proud to ask one of my million room mates for a helping hand with the over sized AC and the consequences are dire for the lower back and above. And speaking of back spasms and doom, tonight i have to tuck my tail under and barback(no e) in a busy, crowded gay bar in Hell's Kitchen. It's not for the physically weak or faint of heart because we're talking about cleaning actual explosive shit spatter off the bathroom walls and moving cumbersome buckets of ice and kegs around and anything involving extreme heaviness and horribly foul smells. Cocaine does terrible wonders to the innards of the wasted gay guys that come into the bar and the result can be epic for the poor maid which turns out to be..........well...........me! The only solace for me is that I know that this particularly unglamorous gig will come to an end at some point and I will move on (I hope). I miss flying out to be a part of something creative and huge like Guys and Dolls felt. It was a huge dose of theatrical fierceness that reminded me that daddies still got it and that it may not be the appropriate time just yet to hang up the leg warmers and large M. Stevenson. Whacking my face is definitely still in the cards come the first day if my next unknown rehearsal. Patti Colombo is genius and the high Lord of any and all dance and once a choreographic storm of that level comes blasting into Ripley Grier at 10am you better be ready because there's no stopping the thunder. I can still smell and feel the Ultra Ben Gay searing my skin and nostrils like a hot iron. Run my sweet little vertebrae, run while you can! The angel tosses...Russian splits...Lindy swings...knee work...lady lifting...face kicking...fire bird-shoulder destroying....neck breaking...whiplash spectacular awaits somewhere in the caverns of the exclusive casting offices in mid town. One day. Le sigh......So......how's tomorrow universe?!  I'm reminded that I'm not 22 anymore and that basically everything hurts so........

Every day is the Tony Awards for Tavid Dankersley and It's time to sink my teeth in and tare New York to shreds like a vulture, hit it hard and unleash the raging Phoenix that is T2 today.

A Picture is Worth..........

Need I say more?