Settin' Pretty

              Way down in the tunnel underneath riverside and 155th street two guys are permanently residing with shopping carts full of eclectic, miscellaneous "junk" and sporting homeless-chic casual couture. Their baggy attire could almost be mistaken for a number in the latest Balenciaga line and probably pulled off flawlessly by some Asian girl wearing over-sized brunch glasses at F.I.T. And as far as spacious living in New York is concerned, for the square footage and price, it's a great deal in a city where twenty dollar bills are hemorrhaged with every breath you take. Walking under the overpass is the only way to get down to Riverside park but it feels like an intrusion or invasion of privacy to stroll through their living room with my dog and Frisbee in tote. To think about how I'm always one to two months rent away from being roofless myself is like a punch in the stomach. And no Tums or holistic anxiety pill will settle the feeling that comes from the financial lows I've seen in thirteen years of being an actor in and out of employment in Manhattan. The great American musical is on the decline as Broadway is being replaced my 3D movies and Disney. It's a slippery slope from laying on your Bloomingdale's duvet while scrolling through the movies On Demand and petting your King Charles Cavalier.....to warming your hands by a busted trash can fire in the freezing cold. Casting Notice...."stable guy" wanted.

            

 The number one detail that sticks out in my mind the most in this sad picture of unfortunate circumstance was a beautiful, royal Cocker Spaniel that followed these guys around like their closest shadow. This dog could've easily been tailing any king's heels through the velvet courts of the past but instead is living outdoors whilst completely domesticated. Would this dog starve right next her owner out of loyalty? Companionship at that desperate, basic level runs deeper than we probably know and I couldn't help but write about it. I know I would probably follow my dog off a bridge at this point because life without her is not an option. Two and half years makes the connection soulful and epic enough to fully realize your love and I don't know who saved who honestly. I was just home in Tennessee visiting my parents for a couple of days and I decided to spread out under my favorite tree in their beautiful back yard on a soft yellow blanket of dreams. Sweet tea and Frisbee in hand I relaxed into my first afternoon back home in two years. Sleepy from the Benedryl I had taken hours ago in the "silver bullet" mini van I had pianos tied to my eyelids and I couldn't fight the drug haze that came over me and I passed out cold in the honeysuckle scented air. I was gone leaving Harley absolutely free to roam and play and wonder all over the three plus acres. She could've run away or gotten hit by a car and I never would've known. Suddenly my mom shouts from the porch "Wake Up! Wake Up! There's a hawk circling Harley in the yard.....go grab her!" I stumbled to my feet absolutely terrorized into consciousness and ran like the wind to save my little baby that was busy trying to destroy a Kong Frisbee totally unaware of the horrific danger of such a fate. Thank you mom for saving my emotional assistance service dog! I thank you. In the city I've got red lasers on her every move as we do a careful dance though Manhattan's matrix of street cleaners, pot holes, broken glass, angry rabies-ridden rats, and cars cutting the corner so tight that they actually roll up onto the curb inches from where I told Harley to sit. Her world is a world of dirty puddles, honking cars, and chicken bones. The fresh air takes my dog to places unknown and her inherent wild beast takes over. She rolls around on dead things, scratches and scrapes and sniffs with wild abandon and even occasionally barks at the unfamiliar horses and cows in the neighboring yard. White paws become muddy and the smile on her face is undeniable. We are both on the same page when it comes to the Tennessee open air and prime ball throwing acreage. The homeless Cocker Spaniel reminds me how tried and true our little furry companions can be and the emotional therapy I receive on a daily basis does have a price.....and it's really really really high....but worth it.

T1 + T2 = Free

      There's something to be said about a clean slate. Possibility. Freedom. When you've lived in one place for long enough time you start to not see the little nuances and jems of your immediate environment. Things quickly blurr and fade together into the background making your day very much about the destination and not the journey. Before you know it you're leaving for work knowing that when your shift ends the sun will be down already and the day will be gone...rolling into the impending dawn if you're ready for it or not. And this loop will go round and round throughout the work week until shit goes numb and you can no longer see clearly or remember what day it is. It's a shockingly hopeless perspective and a dangerous one to lock into. Fight the fight people. Don't see life through my eyes. It's a dangerously sarcastic approach to things laced with humor. Dark humor. Beware. How many folks feel a little nauseous come Sunday afternoon when they think about the early Monday alarm? Gazillions perhaps? And how many people have found a way to make a living doing something that brings them undeniable happiness? I wonder about those statistics. All this in the name of money for movement and ultimate survival. Saving money in this honeycomb metropolis is tricky and I am failing miserably. My parents are both about sixty and are just now talking about leaving the country for the first time in their lives. They have been pedaling pointlessly around in the American hamster wheel of doom that comes with two busted weeks a year to call a vacation where they pretend to relax. Usually those days are broken up and being used for emergencies like attending to ailing parents out of state anyway. The company my father has worked for for over thirty-one years gave him a disposable camera for his three decades of hard labor and service and a coupon for half-off at the Copper Cellar restaurant on the UT strip. My father's arm is presently dangling in a sling with nine months of recovery ahead of him. How can the company's workman's comp division deny an poor guy who's bicep muscle was just bolted and drilled into his arm bone in hopes that he will one day be able to reach above his head and pull his shirt off or put deodorant on again without assistance? Time to move to Canada. Booo to the blue collar rape and nonexistent appreciation for labors lost on assholes. Booo to the fuckers that give my sweet little mom a hard time as she struggles to take messages and act as slave and secretary to the grown up frat boys of Knoxville's transportation and roads department.  I will kill them for belittling a sixty year old woman that has already had two kids and two surgeries for carpel tunnel injuries in both her wrists. It's time to be kind.

 

        I just landed at Newark airport and made the horrible mistake of arranging a Blue Bus Line shuttle to my apartment to save some money. It was torture and unbelievably unorganized but I ended  up sitting next to a young painter from Warsaw who had never been here before and was bubbling over with excitement as we approached the city at a glacial creeping pace. I shocked even myself as I started answering some of her questions layered in years of jade. She said a few things that resonated deeply and called my ass out in a polite foreign kind of way. She said, "Maybe you need a new attitude?" It was a harsh translation but indeed it was true. Then I went on to talk about how easy it is to get distracted with surviving in a city like New York and she abruptly interrupted me with an intense "NO!.....No excuses for loosing sight of your personal artistic journey...none. I do not understand this!"  BAM!  I immediately tapped out and realized that I had something to learn from this person right then and there. She then handed me a card that had a self portrait....in the nude....wearing only Michael Jackson's red leather jacket with her contact info on it. And she wonders why I want to run from the suburban hills and set my dancebelt on fire.

           
              My brother is presently rolling his way down to the tippy tip of South America on a 1970 something motorcycle, unchaining his Phoenix, and creating the meat that will subtly feed him with sweet memories of the spontaneous adventures of his youth. These will be the images he will savour throughout his old age like a precious personal collection of private flashbacks, images fierce and tumbling and as rocky as a Tennessee country road. These priceless jems will stay frozen in his mind like it was yesterday and only he will have access to these secret adventure files. Life through my brother's eyes is a world in 3D, something to be touched and tasted. IMAX wishes it could capture and recreate Jason's perspective on the big screen. One day he will be able to say "There was this one time I ran into a barbed wire fence while running from a gang in Nicaragua " or, "Once I couldn't leave my tree cabana because there was a big ass snake wrapped around the ladder." Stories of Dreams! The tip of Tankersley's ice burg is more interesting than Kim Kardashian's latest black weenier or Tori and Dean's latest downsy moment. He is alive and burning, pushing onward at whatever mile per hour into an exciting world of simple choices and unlimited possibility, staying in South American "hotels" for the whopping price of $2.25 a night and probably eating like a homeless Wolfgang Puck off the grill he has welded to the back of his motorcycle. He will never regret, nor will he ever wonder what if he made that cross county (excuse me) trans-continental trip of dreams more than once. I'm hungry for grilled motorcycle insta-steaks and the wind burning my cheeks and forehead while bugs splat hard and frequently on my plastic helmet mask. Word to the wise: keep your mouth shut! The next time I own a bike I will either be able to afford a garage or have a private one. No more moving it back and forth for super early alternate street cleaning and worrying about dealing with pissy jaded cops writing tickets as easily as they dip doughnuts. Trips like the one T1 and Mike are on is nothing but god-like and it gets my blood pumping in a different kinda way. I think if folks never take trips and travel they start to forget that the world exists beyond their immediate bubble like a 212 zip code. I wanna go further than the NYC subway can take me and I want a sweet break from all of the desperate urban characters that daily make up my dirty little Manhattan play. The grass always seems to be greener in South America doesn't it?

                  

Say It Like You Mean It

  I've very recently had a huge realization when it comes to my flaky New York friends. A conformation is exactly the same thing as a cancellation in these here parts and I find that no matter the occasion, be it a birthday dinner or a sensible coffee, people's true colors come out when the stakes aren't high. Out of town? No problem. East Harlem? Go kill yourself! My girl Steph showed up drenched in the pouring rain from a long exhausting day of teaching pillates and yoga with probably a dance class or twenty thrown in there somewhere. In between eating cotton balls dipped in Splenda and walking her albino chihuahua of dreams, this little dancer-dancer runs a minute to minute marathon of modern dance rehearsal...yoga....styling band photo shoots....and just plain radiating pure goodness out into the universe 24/7. She's the busiest bitch I've ever known but nonetheless she showed up completely soaked, disheveled, and wearing (or faking through the exhaustion) a huge smile from ear to ear with a desert trey in hand. It was my birthday and she was the ultimate trooper hailing all the way from the ass crack of Brooklyn itself, proving to me that love trumps laziness any day. I'm guilty of it myself, the ol' city flake out. But you never really know how bailing on something seemingly insignificant (such as some body's big day) might forever alter how they view you when it's time for the second round of invites to go out.

    And around it goes...the sickening game of getting guilted to death for not making more of an effort to be part of someone's life. We all know the type; the person who upon seeing you enter a bar or restaurant instantly unleashes a guilt trip of the likes you haven't seen since the last time you saw that particular person. In my opinion this approach ironically makes me want to put even more time and space between me and guilt trip Mcgee. Don't confirm attendance to my special day then never even bother to show, much less cancel, because realistic cooking requires some loving consideration. Though I did truly enjoy the intimate company of my select VIPs that consisted of lovely ladies from Paris, Austria, Tennessee, and the outer boroughs of Brooklyn! These divas would've showed up if they had to thumb a ride from Mars and wild horses could not hold back my extreme gratitude that I was guided through my thirty two year transition with such grace at my side. Love is Michaela and Elodie schlepping over 12 hours on a shady bus from Tennessee just for me. Brooklyn = Tokyo as far as I'm concerned on a dirty, rainy Wednesday night. And them riding a charter bus for that long was salvation for me. It was Charlie and his literal angels sipping wine into the night and savoring the Tankersley not-so-secret Cajun shrimp enchiladas recipe until we almost burst open like gluttonous, giggling pinatas.

             I'm completely at fault for putting too much pressure on my friends to appear like Houdini just in time for the little desert trey of mini cakes, creme brules, and of course my favorite fat girl weakness...tiramisu, that Miss Sutherland lugged through the sludgy Harlem puddles and ghetto down pour of doom. These girls are the shining example of what a true friend is made of. The disappointment of the no-shows has been stewing in me long enough to string together a blog about it. I thought I could be bigger than this but alas, I'm just a pissed off homosexual with anger management issues that strangely enough considers his friends a family. I've found that to be a dangerous crutch and a huge mistake. Any person you hold up to an unreachable standard will fall short eventually. That is the case with myself most of the time. These friends are plagued with the same inconsistencies and flaws that put me into that category as well. I want my actor friends to at least have the creativity to feign an illness or concoct some semi believable story. Just because you have a million or so friends on Facebook doesn't remove you from the hermit list either. In fact it puts you at the head of that homeschool line and inches you dangerously close to becoming an out of control Hoarder of blue and white china and old, unread, dusty piles of New York Times. It's a slippery, scary slope to one day waking up to realize you've become an isolated cat lady in NoHa that spends her days sending little green patches and farmville requests. Booooo. Try engaging the human race a little more than what you bark at your local barrista. All these social networks are good for is one thing: to stalk eachother privately. New York is a swarm of strange people bumping and "Grinding" my sanity down to a smooth stone. Before you know it you're talking to yourself on the subway and stealing cabs from pregnant ladies. What I'm trying to say with all this is that your word should mean somthing sometimes. That's what I'm going to do and how I'm going to try and live and hopefully I will turn myself into the man I want to meet one day in the process.

I love you guys.

Go Ahead...Make my F%#&N Day

         Sometimes the city energy scares me and I feel that even holding this phone to write is a huge risk. My hands tremble and my thumbs misfire and fumble to type because just as the subway doors opened a horribly unstable man tumbled onto the train car then began frantically pacing back and forth in front of me. He has an evil eye full of hatred and disorientation and a mouth spouting angry gibberish with the occasionally clear curse word that I recognize from middle school. I’m a fool for not putting this phone away right now but it keeps me from looking up and showing fear. Disappearing into your smart phone is the equivalent of playing dead when you’re frozen underground and feeling threatened. I’m afraid for the first time in a long time even though I’m a grown ass man. Eye contact is not an option sometimes but I’m ready for anything. I have enough pent up gay rage to tare down a homeless bigoted gladiator if he so much as dares to use the f* word! New York keeps me on my broken toes and mercy is rarely granted even to the worthy. I’ve become all too comfortable blurring my eyes to the clear and present danger of the suppressed street energy of guys like this when they bubble over and pop like a chemistry experiment that’s gotten way, way out of control. People that are born in this town are of a different breed all together and most New Yorkers aren’t even from New York at all. It’s a city filled with more and more little gay boys moving here every day with a dance belt, a Queens sublet, and a dream of hitting it big on Broadway.

          

       The out of town weekenders don’t count though. Soccer moms live it up in the big apple squealing like suburban pigs in bustling, sparkling Manhattan shit. They ride around Central Park in those awkward little pedi-cabs(pedaled by those smokin’ hot European guys that we secretly all wanna fuck!) sporting tourist sun visors, laminated maps, TGIFridays to-go bags, and rocking a sensible PTA stretch jean and Walmart-scrunchy. But the boys and girls that are born within the 212 have an extra edge even if the only thing that makes them stand apart is the numbness to all the crazy. It’s an unfortunate jadedness that clouds young city eyes giving them no way to measure how cool things really are here when compared to the small town vibe that gives me the creeps. Manhattan childhood is a bubble where nannies and after school skating teachers like myself become key in filling every moment of every single day. No time = no trouble. The spectrum of urban kiddies is wide and spans to opposite extremes with everything in between. It’s a grey area as varying and diverse as anything on this earth. And the prescription pill-popping mothers that trot around SoHo and weekend in South Hampton scare me in a different way but also inspire the most jealousy. If you come from East side money your private school reality keeps you busy and away from all things real and scary hopefully. 

Those kiddies are harmless, trying to quickly sneak into Central Park to smoke a quick j. or rub a little coke on their gums before algebra class. These are the future white collar criminals of America that pose no immediate threat. But the fire cracker energy that scares me the most is the inner city underprivileged boys that have nowhere to put all their pent up city machismo and gangster dicks. No apartment can be big enough to keep these boys off the front stoop of every building in my neighborHood making cat calls and cackling like deranged hyenas every time a pretty girl comes walking by talking on her cell phone or texting. Hot women in Harlem are like filet mignon in a piranha pit or a piping hot pizza pie in a stoner frat house. My sexy Rockettes and beautiful show girlfriends don’t stand a chance in the uptown world of gross guys sitting on their front stoops all day drooling and foaming at the mouth over every semi attractive female that walks by, much less the dancer/singer/model/goddesses that are in my contact list of dreams! Acting like fools and hungry pit bulls fighting over a boiled ham bone has never really worked at actually bagging some hot tail has it? Lines like “Ooohh mommie….you look like you got a little Dominican in you? If not, do you waaant some ?”, don’t really inspire a girl to look back twice. I’ve never seen that particular quote in the Hallmark isle either. I must say that if I could get the grown ass stoop sitters that act like stupid little boys to take a seminar (that I teach) on how to score a Radio City Rockette or smoking hot chorus girl, I could be a very rich man.

             The scary wasted man that was losing it earlier (and inspired this blog) is now not only subdued and calm but he just took his shoes off, put them under his head, stretched out over four seats and slipped into a deep snoring, drunken coma. The lion is now a lamb and I can relax into the unnerving theme of under stimulated, percolating adrenaline that makes up the city youth of any and all the New York boroughs. Sometimes my adult zip code of choice has the serene and peaceful feeling of a quaint little town known to some as…………New Orleans, where trouble is around every single corner and you have to keep one eye over your shoulder at all times.

Too many Hurricanes or Hand Grenades will result in losing your shoes and dignity before the sun even comes up. It’s a dirty denial. Life in the French Quarter is overrun with countless gypsy impostors that will kindly offer to tell your fortune and life expectancy for a not so modest price. But what they don’t tell you in their original sales pitch is that if you refuse their services and keep on walking that they will curse, harass, follow you for blocks, and probably stab you in the gut for your indifference. They conveniently leave that part out of the free teaser they give you on the street. To live in any big city or metropolis you have to be somewhat made of a mixture of steel and jade or else you will easily be eaten up and taken advantage of by any number of shady characters that thrive on your vulnerability and occasional kindness. All the fears and worries your mama had/still has for you are completely justified and legit when you find yourself faced with scenarios like jilted, aggressive “psychics” that will cut you as surely as they will promise you long life, a beautiful wife, and many, many children…..even if you tell them you are gay and hate kids.

             Question: Can you legally carry a tazer in this or any state? I wish I had a cell phone sized mini-tazer that you could possibly get online in a variety of colors and sizes. I would get several hand held pink rhinestone-bedazzled tazers for all my lovely lady friends as Christmas gifts and stocking stuffers in hopes that they could feel a little safer walking in a short skirt from the 157th street subway stop to my house. Or maybe it’s best that I in particular don’t have that privilege because with my short temper and lack of patience I’d be casually tazing all the annoying street performers that demanded change for their out of tune services or the Spanish senoritas that purposely cut me in line at the deli! I will taze a bitch! Loud and obnoxious dogs would also be at the top of my zap list including all the people with boom boxes that scream in other languages outside my window past three am. I can imagine that I might be a little quick on the trigger should I be allowed that luxury. If those little weapons were allowed to the stressed out New York public it would be a blood bath of epic proportions and rich white ladies with Burberry baby strollers would be zapping every black man that innocently asked for directions. I could foresee countless statistics of unnecessary drastic action but I love the idea of a potential robber thinking twice and being legitimately afraid for his safety when he considers mugging an old lady that’s packing some serious voltage in her 1920’s clutch. Would crime go up or down I wonder? Who knows? I was never in favor of people being allowed to have fire arms in their homes until hurricane Katrina showed me, and anyone who watches CNN, that the Wild West is still alive lying just underneath the surface of a potential natural disaster that makes the dangerous folks even more crazed and freakishly bold. We are the cowboys of 2011 and there will be no white flag for me anytime soon. 

Hot n' Cold

    Boys in NYC can be hot as hell fire yet their icy demeanor can feel alot like getting your bare weenier stuck on a frozen flag pole. Hell's Kitchen, also known as "the Dance Belt", breeds a certain kind of dude worth a blog all on it's own. These guys are practically suffocating as they stroll up and down ninth avenue in pairs, chests out and stomachs sucked in as tight as possible, plooming out their feathers for maximum sexy effect.  Holding your breath is a full time job in this particular neighborhood as it is in Fire Island. In fact, the ten or so blocks that make up this cunty part of town are so ridiculously gay that it's now starting to be known as Hellsea! BLAH! I cringe when I hear it fall out of a gay boys mouth along with MePa.....the meat packing district. I'm fascinated by all of the obnoxious names that people have come up with for their own little New York micro-neighborhoods. Only the worst separatist snobs participate in taking lazy to that level. At the end of this blog you'll find a nauseating list of some of the nicknames I've come across in my thirteen years here in the big city. Ninth ave. might as well be gated off and turned into one giant gay night club as far as I'm concerned. Dorothy reigns when even the emergency flashlights that we use at work are permanently set to a blinking strobe, if that tells you anything about the level of extreme homosexualness 'round these here parts! Can a guy not use the employee flashlight whilst fumbling around in a dark closet without even that becoming a raving disco party? Nst...nst...nst....Would you take a cop seriously that shined a bright flashing strobe in your face or would you secretly want to break into what I have created and termed the cross/cross/reveal, classic raver stuff so....     I know boys that occasionally (if not every single day) will pull a small Mac makeup compact out of their cargo shorts to touch up a glossy forehead and blend their already gorgeous and commercial worthy skin tone every couple of hours just like a woman. I admit that I myself cover up a tiny scar on my left cheek before I leave the house in the morning so I can't exactly judge now can I? Butch has been replaced by beauty paranoia and reality with vein denial. I probably see more shooting stars than I do actual sincere smiles as I walk down 8th avenue below 23rd st. A semi healthy flirt without all the ruffled peacock feathers and blingtastic faggotry is a welcome sight to these weary eyes.

       I work with the hottest, sweetest ginger in the known universe and he has single handily redefined the Hellsea way of thinking and looking at the dating scene here in the millenia of social networks and same sex-honing IPhone Apps. He tortures guys like me with cuddling dates and getting to know each other on a deeper level. It's a fascinating concept for Manhattan gay life in 2012 and I respect it to the core. Even though I view the approach to traditional values and a slow dating process like I would a rare and endangered species behind protective glass. The valiant red topped prince of coctailing and courting couldn't be more refreshing to me and I'm thrilled that our paths crossed at all. I could use more friends with different kinds of benefits. Now everything seems to have been reduced to Grinder profile pics, Scruff hook ups, and OK Cupid disasters and it all leaves me kind of mystified as to how one is supposed to cast a net intended on catching mr. right without also reeling in all the phony baloney posers and cyber freaks that come along with contemporary counter culture. Facebook is a poke. Scruff is a woof. Jesus Christ what about a simple hello? Not that I need a prince to come riding up on a shiny silver subway car with roses, and open heart, and a black Visa platinum card, but I'm certainly available for some butterflies now and then. "What's your favorite color?", "How big is your dick?", and "Are you a top or a bottom?" don't make for a good conversation in my book. In fact  these forced one on ones at Starbucks or Blockheads seem to stop time itself and a dinner or quick coffee can feel like a bloody eternity if there's no chemistry. Usually gay men's dates happen in reverse. A sensible date in the dance belt usually starts with lube and poppers for the appetizer. Then you move on to the main course which consists of the carnal, non-spoken, getting to know you bump and grind part that Christians wait for till marriage. And if there's some spark beyond the big bang (and you don't want to grab your pants and cell phone and run for the hills before he asks you when you're free again) you then go to dinner and grab some frozen cosmos at Barrage and try and muster up some post-post-coidle conversation while desperately trying not to yawn in his face and worry about if your dog needs to go out for a Harlem tinkle. You finish the meal with some subtle glances at your watch and secretly try to formulate an escape excuse that would sound convincing enough not to offend. Not that I'm speaking from personal experience or anything. No thank you Cupid boy. As my buddy Aaron says, "It's better to wait for fillet mignon" than to settle for the drama of high maintenance faggots that eventually slip through the gold sifter anyway as you strain your eyes and patience to pick out the real gems. I'm tired of guys being cheap and not pitching in for the cab uptown or much less...offering to go Dutch on dinner. I'm also pissed at the twenty something twinks that consider you too old by 26! I'll hold those little age-aphobic faglets under water with my 32 year old cracked hands until the bubbles stop!

     Super hot boys are also not always the best lovers either. Because you are a smokin' hot babe doesn't mean you can just lay there like a fish and be, making me do all the work. You can never really tell the ones that are gonna be fire crackers in bed because of the home school facade from the stiff sexy ones that expect you to worship their bodies as much as they do five times a week in the Golds Gym free weight mirrors. Someone that doesn't bother to rub my magic lamp or make my genie appear leaves me underwhelmed and no Broadway Bares body or gym bunny wabbit that shoots steroids into his ass and pectorals can hold a candle to someone who really tries to make it about you. Most Hellsea fruits are size queens about bank accounts, arms, and cocks like I am umbrellas.We all know 'em. Some of the boys I work with are so jacked up on muscle enhancing stimulants and five hour energy shots that I'm absolutely sure that they're not even going make to their thirtieth birthday. Our DJ TJ alone drinks at least six to ten Red Bulls every happy hour shift six days a week and quite often works a double! Where are his wings I wonder?
        It's easy to feel somewhat derailed in your life then pop stars like Lady Gaga come along and give you a song that rebels against all the bullshit and acts as a bump of inspirational cocaine to ease the angst. I'm not looking for a love of pure convenience but free dinners now and then pale in comparison to a guy that will occasionally make the effort to take the train uptown to NoHa to sleep in my beautifully comfortable bed of dreams. I can't exclusively do all the East side schlepping can I? I guess that makes me a call boy without the big pay off. Tummy butterflies are an endangered species in the matrix that is gay Manhattan.
         Most of my closest friends haven't read a single word of this blog since I started. I know this to be fact and it stings but you have to be prepared for that to happen when you start stringing words together in free form and hitting NEW POST. Laying my thoughts down on virtual paper is a personal therapy for me but I don't want this site to become some poor me verbal vomit.com. Writing about your life's situations and having a sassy take on things doesn't compare at all to the screeching halt you come to when reading a masturbatory blog entry about how that person's particular work out was extra tough that day or how good their cardio spinning class was at David Barton. What a snooze fest! Who fucking cares about someones private journal entry that weighs heavily with that slit-your-wrists inspirational tone that's no different from any adolescent, preteen paragraph of doom and lunchroom melancholy. Once you write something and hit post it's out there for the world to love, judge, skim, not skim, and totally ignore. I thought that this personal forum would've made me a reality TV star by now or perhaps have been transformed into a scratchy Sundance film with monotone voice overs of a boy reading a heavy script....ala Submarine...the movie.  I'm pretty sure my New York friends will never take me and my hobby seriously, at least until I nail down a short column in some fabulous weekly NY magazine or paper like Dan Savage in the Village Voice! So I continue to type with abandon with the understanding that whatever I say probably won't come full circle to bite me in the ass until much much later. That is of course until my sweet little country Tennessee mother discovers that her oldest son can't stop expressing himself through a public venue, bringing all his dark truths to light. If she only knew the shady tales of tails I've chased over the last thirteen years. I can and will continue to weave a personal history through this notebook application with a vengeance as though I'm going to the electric chair tomorrow. I eat my feelings the same way. Should she ever stumble upon Chorus Boy Interrupted a scandal of epic proportions would lay before me of the likes I have never seen before. My mother's disapproving silence would be like the scary calm that comes right before a huge twister yanks your Kansas house up and into a splintery oblivion. I don't wanna hurt my mom but wild horses couldn't hold back the flood of sarcasm in my soul that's dryer than any scorching desert. I must continue if not for my own personal sanity. I think we've got to laugh and bitch and praise and break down the ugly details of our Manhattan daily life just to fully appreciate surviving the more than bumpy road we choose to keep traveling year after year. It's a journey that requires a little more than an Excedrin packet and a prayer. Mine is that of a blurry urban circumstance and my compus is indefinitely and most certainly broken.

And as promised, and index of every stupid and horrible New York nickname I could find:

WeVar - west of Varick
FiDi - financial district
NoHa - north Harlem where I live
UHH (pronounced Ughhh...this is my own creation!) upper Hamilton Heights
NoLita - north little Italy
LoHo - lower Houston
NoMad - north of Madison Square Park
EHA - east Harlem
SoHell - south of Hell's Ketchen
DuGo - down under the Gowanis bridge
CeHa - central Harlem
SpaHa - spanish Harlem
NoMas - north of Madison Square Garden
SoHo - south Houston
Gramerray - Gramercy park and Murray Hill
RAMBO! right after the Manhattan bridge overpass
BoHo - Bowery below Houston
WeHa - west Harlem
SoHa - south Harlem
TriBeCa - triangle below Canal st.
SoBro - south Bronx
NoHo - north Harlem
DUMBO - down under the Manhattan bridge overpass
And last but certainly not least ladies and gentlemen, the three most unacceptable nicknames in the history of the world itself..........drum roll please....................................................
BoCoCa! - the Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, Carol Gardens grey area in Brooklyn
ProCro - the Prospect Park/Crown Heights overlap
and finally.....GoCaGa.......for Gowanus and Carroll Garden. You're welcome.

Pergolas, Ponds, and Pipes

       I love the rich country, Hudson-chic gay men in their forties and beyond. And it feels so right to be treated to a sweet light lunch on an amazing terrace with red cherries, orchard tuna salads on French baguettes, and the fine red wine I can never afford. The disposable incomes numb things a bit and the mortgages in Aspen, Florida, the Bronx, and Claverack NY are just too much to juggle sometimes I can imagine. I'm so far form owning a place it's unreal. I am a renter to the core. Good taste is key and the row of high end antique stores owned by gay guys and successful lesbians lines Waren street where we get lost for hours and hours, each store making you feel more poor than the one before it. It's an interior designer's wet dream but an unemployed budget does come into play pour moi. I'm more of a window shopper and a dreamer when it comes to 4,500 dollar artsy wooden cutlery (one set!) and tufted sued headboards that cost 18,000 dollars for a full sized bed, not even a queen. Who can afford this shit? Only the childless, college tuition free gays that's who. These sexy electric floating fire places and Grecian pillars are way way out of my financial reach.

          My finances are unsteady and about as solid as one of those old air conditioners, improperly installed, dangling and teetering from the shaky windows over our New York heads all day and night, perhaps propped up with tea cups or blue and white china. I looked into air conditioner related deaths and injuries on the web and they are few and far between, but nonetheless the occasional falling AC incident is always a serious event of epic proportions that I'll leave to the imagination. Homos with money to burn and half a million dollar log cabins that are tucked away deep in the woods of Pennsylvania (with a jacuzzi and the priceless original Dorothy blue dress from the Wizard of OZ movie - encased behind protective glass) make me realize how far from a cash flow enterprise I really am. I thought twenty-seven would be something altogether different financially...much less thirty-two. I mean I have my little victories here and there but I'll be damned if these men aren't living the god damned dream with their HGTV show room worthy third and fourth homes and spotless BMW convertibles that they drive all over the country side of Ghent  spilling their lattes everywhere.

      Who can I marry? Who can I  #@%$! to ease the burden that is my New York overhead? "Head for Overhead?" my Craig's List ad might read. At the risk of sounding horribly sexist, I have to wonder how many soccer moms out there aren't in love with their husbands at all and are stuck in a sexless, loveless, stale marriage that plateaued five minutes after the I-Dos were said and the champeign buzz wore off? And the only reason these country concubines continue to stay is for the stability and familiarity of it all right? Probably more ladies than you might think are slave to the norm and are basically nothing more than non paid, kid popping, rural hookers under the ruse of PTA power moms jacked up on five hour super energy shots and Xanax. The tight skirts, six-pack stomachs, and occasional STDs are replaced with extra large stretch discount mom jeans from Target and alternating car-pooling days with Billy's mom. I'm sure when a man promises himself for life to his high school sweetheart he never really foresees the post third-child body that's in store! And when Mindy (we shall call her) starts to let it all hang out while shopping bulk in the Piggly Wiggly the ugly truth is revealed and that's when the seed to daddy's porn addiction begins to take root. I mean there is a type for everyone. Every single person alive is someone else's type, be it size...ethnicity....bank account. Someone out there is touching it right now thinking about an extra large, bulbous body bouncing in action and a stomach and ass that test the very limits of the Spandex he/she so loves wearing. We've all seen her. The woman standing in line a Walmart with a hundred ratty kids in tow (some actually tied together like livestock) that takes fashion to new lows with tights so strained that they could never girdle the tsunami of a gunt (gut/cunt) that spillith over towards the floor. The statistics must be staggering. I never want to find myself in a relationship where I don't feel the need to impress my significant other anymore with a good body, flattering clothes, and a proper date now and then. A rockin Saturday night in bum-fuck Wisconsin probably feels shockingly no different than my boring Tuesday in the city. I'm truly happy to fall into the other category altogether. I'd happily trade a night casually walking through the West Village or SOHO eating pomegranate Pinkberry over a family mini-van schlep to the Lowe's Cinema to see Toy Story 30 followed by an appetizer platter from the local Applebee's. I love New York.................................sometimes.

Welcome to New York

Subway trains

herb-fried brains

funny funny faggots
and sodomy stains
Village attitudes
rainbow ingratitude

pretty Chinese baby strollers

over-priced Whole Foods
Sexy hairy Eagle playmates
closeted Javit's disciple dates
Aging cougars, lip injections
augmentation, strange infections
5th Ave. poodles
Ramen noodles
Broadway fake books
and Parson doodles
bulging Chelsea homos

anorexic C. K. promos

fun with guns and S&M
"Fifteen Dolla Polos!!"
Pennsylvania station
black Israelite relations
MTV, roller blades
a great midtown location
super shady smoking spots
bored and bloated Astoria cops
screening the East Village power bottoms
stalking the West Village freaky tops

something called the Yankees

masochistic spankings

46th street swing clubs

and stupid Jesus beatings

welcome to New York

   

   gay South Hampton vacas

   Jersey tunnel delays

   Harlem homes of hommies

   and Conney Island sick days

   twentieth century cyber freaks

   eyebrow piercings, flaky sheets

  Janis Joplin's greatest hits

  Jungle fever, Trojan leeks

mucho masturbation
abusive situations

Broadway baby breast implants

Wall street stock inflation

The Village Voice

Lessies, pro choice

Tori, Sarah, Dido, Jewel

barebacking Twilo boys

new year countdown kissing

every appointment missing

3AM radio fiestas

random sidewalk pissing

artsy school portfolios

kinky west side dirty hos

some lovin' for some validation

quick five dollar blows

welcome to New York

illegal Turkish hallal vending

bitchy Gucci platinum spending

green cards, yellow, gypsy cabs

track construction, church pretending

the Pumpkins, Stones

twisted ballet bones

Express and Gap

neon 4G cell phones

a fight for passion

the Ave. of Fashion

crazy urban rent heads                                         
caffeine crashin'
                                                                                              sardine shelters
                                                                                              Ragtime belters
                                                                                              fish-net gothic club kids

             Macy's Santa helpers
             16 bars of fame
             loosing the pride game
             super sexy Pimpernels
             mopping floors without shame
             Greenwich queens
             mobster kings
             leopard platforms
             unstable things



                                                                                            


the jungle fight
Kerfew-70's night
sweating underground
500 dollar Mizrahi sight
coffee stains

unforgiving Brooklyn rains
race track cabbie bumper cars
Nonexistent express trains

creating hope

pinching dope

missing old lovers

staying broke

shopping thrift for Christmas gifts

kissing ass 

botched facial lifts

fighting back

extremist attacks

vocal lessons

free metro maps

holdin' on

I'm holdin' on

lost and found shut eye

still holdin' on

ignoring the pain

returning again

living my life here

and returning again

this is my New York