As both a local and a champion of completely inappropriate broad humor, I would be remiss not to mention that New Line Cinema has announced September 24th as the release date for John Waters’ A Dirty Shame. Check out the trailer on the homepage.

Seadragon and I have decided to meet for Sushi at Minato on Charles Street on Tuesday, July 20th. Although this is not intended to be a formal blogger meetup, as we know not everyone loves sushi, we would like any blogger who is interested to please join in (a larger, more formal meetup is in the works, and it looks like I've been stuck with the responsibility. Yea!). The more the merrier. But please RSVP by phoneemail or comments to either me or Seadragon on Tuesday by 7pm so we know what size table to ask for.

Tuesday, July 20th
7PM
Minato
800 North Charles Street

My phone number: email me

As I briefly mentioned in my previous post, a friend of mine is ill with AIDS, and over the past few months has taken a serious turn for the worst. I saw him over the weekend and he was in very bad shape. Now, I’m not going to pretend that he is an incredibly close friend as I’ve only known him for about a year. Nor am I going to wax all sad and drippy about the tragedy of it all (so please, no Chicken Soup for the Soul type comments). He is a guy whose company I’ve enjoyed greatly, and I would like to honor him in the way God intended my half-Mic drunk ass to do so ... with a drinking story!

Eight month ago, during the Christmas season, a friend and I decided to go up to Manhattan to visit J for a few days. Most of the visit involved walking around, visiting museums and other assorted touristy crap. On the last night, I had plans to visit some fellow straight people. C, my traveling companion, and J planed to go out and do the gay scene. At the last minute, my plans fell through, and it looked like I was going to spend the last night in the hotel room, drinking whisky from a bottle and watching television. C and J were preparing to go out and took pity on my straight ass and invited me to come along. I initially declined, but they assured me that the bar they were going to was not “that” gay and that I would have a good time. I decided “what the hell”, gayed myself up and went along (I wonder if my relatives still read this page?).

Already tipsy from the whiskey I had already started, we headed down to the Chelsea for some not too gay clean fun. J was our navigator, but had forgotten where exactly the patroller bar was. We spent the nearly an hour walking around the Chelsea everyone in sight how to get to this particular bar. Once we finally found it, my bladder was ready to explode. When we went inside, I was so cross-eyed delirious with bladder pain, I barely noticed that the place was, well, to be frank, the gayest place in the entire universe. We had discoeddiscovered (damn spellcheck) the Homosexual Hellmouth and I was the only non-Vamp in the crowd with no Buffy to protect me (Yes, I know, Buffy references are like, so gay). Shirtless teenage twinke cocktail waiters were running all over the place serving drinks. There was burlesque gameshow revue on stage complete with men in red thong underwear.

None of this really mattered to me. All I cared about was finding a bathroom. I asked J where the facilities were and made a b-line for the closest toilet. Once I was in the bathroom, all the urinals were taken so I jumped into a stall, unzipped and transcended into a state of nirvana as the pressure in my abdomen was released. In midstream, I felt a tap on my shoulder, turned around and saw some stranger standing in the stall behind me with a big idiotic grin on his face. Shocked, I the middle of my peeing, with one hand still devoted to aiming, I was flailing with my other other hand, trying to push the guy out of the stall, all the while screaming “Get the hell out of here! Get the hell out of here!”

When I got out of the stall, I went over to the sink to wash my hands and everyone in the bathroom was staring at me like I was the worlds biggest idiot for not wanting company in the bathroom stall.

I left the bathroom, found my friends at the table, told them what happened. They just laughed and explained to me that an open stall door in a gay bar is actually Gayeze for “Come on in and help me out.”

“Oh” I said, “so it’s not the same rules as at the baseball stadium?”

We actually stayed for a few more hours. Gay or straight, a bar is a bar, and alcohol is pretty much the same at all bars. The show, aside from the dudes in thong underwear, was actually pretty entertaining. After understanding the rules, I even used the bathroom a few more times, but with the stall door firmly latched shut.

a few remaining pictures from the Area 405 Surplus Artist Reception. click images to enlarge: