04.27.06
Today’s IM Zen Moment: Germans
Brian: haha mmm germans
Brian: berlin’s like a twink bar
Brian: except that the disco balls have been replaced by street lights
03.05.06
Foot fetishes, and what not to say if you want to date me
Tags: AIM, dating, fetish, fetishes, gay, hotornot, online, romance
02.23.06
Just us boys
I’ve been spending a lot of time with gay people lately. One on one, in groups — I think I’ve met more gay guys since moving to the Bay Area than I’ve met in my entire life. My new life in California seems to have drawn out my homojo (a word shamelessly taken from the title of a Will & Grace episode), if you will.
When Mark and I were together, we never really had any gay friends. Keeping away from the “scene” was his way of keeping all the drama as far away as possible. Needless to say, since he and I met when I was 19, I couldn’t help but think that I might have been missing out on something during my early twenties — and it turns out that I was — but it wasn’t what I thought. Having seen Queer as Folk, I figured that I had only missed out on drug-enhanced sex orgies in the back rooms of steamy night clubs. While I’m happy to say that I did miss that (assuming that it even exists somewhere), I was also missing an opportunity for comradery.
I’ve been so social over the past few weeks that I’ve surprised myself. I’ve gone to karaoke twice, been bowling, met new people from online, gone to brunch, had a mini-cocktail party, and gone out to dinner numerous times, all in the direct company of gay men. Rather than it being a source of stress and drama, it’s been really nice to be able to relate to male friends on a personal level. All my friends have always been girls. I’ll now pause for a moment for the crowd to smirk at the stereotype I’ve effortlessly perpetuated. Now, the girls’ names that have been so much a part of my daily vocabulary — Ami, Jen, Roopa, Jessica, Kelsie — have been augmented, or almost replaced, with guys — Ernie, Andy, Josh, Dominic.
Now, I finally find myself being able to relate to people who are like me in a lot of ways. I’m thinking that this is a product of life in Northern California. I feel like one of the Sneetches with a star on its belly, happily frolicking with my own kind, and that feeling is very freeing to me. My entire life, I’ve really enjoyed being different, and I usually found myself drawn to the “weird” kids. My mother always used to tell me that I’m a “weirdo magnet” because I managed to befriend the opera-singing vampire wiccan lesbians. Now, rather than being one of a crowd of misfits, I feel right at home with others cut from the same mold as me.
Still, with all this newfound “belonging” comes a bit of apprehension. Because I haven’t had many gay male friends, it’s sometimes hard to know how to fit in just right. I find myself doing absurd things, like buying a new outfit to go out on a totally random Friday night, simply because Andy and I will be bar-hopping in the Castro. I ponder whether or not I own enough different pairs of shoes for different occasions. I’ve never really been “one of the crowd” and I’ve generally had very small groups of friends, so going out with people who recognize (and stop to hug) every third guy we see on the street is a very strange experience for me.
I suppose what I’m learning is that at 24, I don’t really need to know exactly who I am or where I do or don’t fit in. But I’ll be damned sure to keep trying. 
02.03.06
Me. Karaoke. Video. You know you want to see!
Last night I went with Jenny and Josh to King of Clubs in Mountain View for the first time to enjoy a lively night of karaoke. I’ve never actually been able to get anyone to go to a karaoke bar with me, because all of my friends back on the east coast were a little bit too… polished… to be caught dead in one of those places.
Thankfully, out here, it seems that people are a little more shameless. Case in point: a lovely anonymous drag queen that decided to wow us with her rendition of Superstar, by the Carpenters. Can you see her uncanny resemblance to Karen Carpenter?
Of course, it would not be fair for me to embarrass some poor drag queen on my blog if I didn’t take a little bit of time to embarrass myself. Josh sang Maybe This Time, by the lovely Liza Minnelli, but I was warned by Josh that if I were to place the video on my blog, he would never speak to me again. Hardly seems worth the risk.
So now, for your uncomfortable viewing pleasure, here is my karaoke performance of Hold On, by Wilson Phillips. This is a lovely motivational song, but for some reason the karaoke video features Jesus and the crucifix and the Virgin Mary. If there is some sort of religious undercurrent in what I thought to be a secular pop song, I would love to hear more about it. Anyway, feel free to leave your best Simon Cowell American Idol comments on my blog. Here we go!
Tags: american idol, drag, drag queens, gay, jenny, josh, karaoke, karen carpenter, king of clubs, mountain view, simon cowell, the carpenters, wilson phillips
02.01.06
You know your employer is progressive when…
I’m excited that Yahoo! is going to be offering a free employee screening of Brokeback Mountain on Thursday in our company cafeteria. I imagine that they’ll roll out the big screen, and that the chances of getting my feet stuck to the floor on my way to my seat are extremely decreased.
The cost of the movie ticket? $0.
The cost of the snacks? $0.
Seeing which coworker cries first during a gay cowboy movie? Priceless.
01.30.06
Tell me, do you want to see me do the shimmy again?
One of my favorite bar trends is the ever-so-tasty Internet jukebox, which allows bar patrons to choose songs from pre-selected tracks, or download tracks from a library of 140,000 songs. This obviously can be a blessing or a curse because it makes the musical experience at the bar completely hit or miss. There are certain expectations that gay men have when it comes to nightlife and its accompanying soundtrack. Classics like Vogue and It’s Raining Men fall into the acceptable category, but the freedom that the Internet jukebox introduces to the evening means that at some point the evening is likely to be interrupted with Enya or Barry Manilow.
On Saturday evening, my friend Andy and I took a trip to a local San Francisco bar, where I dropped $10 in the jukebox (with my debit card, naturally) and proceeded to manipulate the evening’s music. I’m used to having to wait for over an hour for my songs to come up, but that particular evening I was incredibly lucky, since I was barely through one cocktail when my first song came up.
The highlight of the evening was when Private Dancer played (Andy’s choice) and a lovely overweight drag queen straight out of a John Waters film, with bushels of chest hair overflowing from her natural cleavage, proceeded to perform a stunning lip sync routine to the song. A gaggle of queens sauntered into the bar mouthing the words and quietly singing to themselves and Andy looked at them with a sparkle of self-satisfaction in his eyes, feeling personally responsible for creating this moment of magic.
Because I’m a control freak, the opportunity to force everyone else to endure my selections of Cyndi Lauper, Erasure and the Pet Shop Boys almost guaranteed that I would stay at the bar long enough to hear all 14 songs that my $10 bought. The only thing more intoxicating than my vodka and lime on the rocks was the thrill of controlling the bar’s playlist. It’s obvious that in the wrong hands, the jukebox could easily send an evening into chaos. One moment we could be dancing to Madonna, and the next moment we could be deafened by the shrill, banshee-like moans of Yoko Ono.
This, however, is the risk we take for having the opportunity to play DJ, if only for a night. How else can you get that special feeling that can only come from seeing an overweight middle-aged man in a blonde wig tapping his hairy, happy feet to your song of choice? Who says the American dream is dead?
Tags: andy, drag queens, gay, music, nightlife, san francisco