Cruising

Last night wound up being uneventful. I met up with my friend, whom I’ll call Arch, and his boyfriend, whom I’ll call Carrot. Arch is a black guy with glasses, about 5’8, and Carrot is a fair-skinned, red-haired white guy, about 6’4. I wouldn’t peg them as a couple if I saw them together, but then again, everyone’s the same in bed, right? It’s a Benetton world.

On the way over to meet them at Barracuda, I ran into UrbanPlanner and his boyfriend. UrbanPlanner and I will be seeing the Beaux Arts Trio on Sunday for $6.50 — not a bad price for a legendary chamber music group.

I got to Barracuda, and Arch and Carrot arrived a few minutes later. It was strangely uncrowded. Too uncrowded. So we walked through Chelsea, down Eighth Avenue, and over to the new place — which was not Heaven, as I’d thought, but rather another new place called XL. There was a line outside, a long line of identical tight-shirted buzz-cut Chelsea boys. No thanks, we said, so finally we wound up at g.

While Barracuda had been desolate, g was packed. g has a circular bar, and to get anywhere, you have to move along the donut-shaped path that runs between the bar and the wall. We squeezed ourselves along like toothpaste. Arch and I each got a Corona, and the three of us stood there and talked and looked at the boys. I’d decided to wear the same outfit that had made me feel so good last weekend — tight black gay-boy t-shirt, jeans — but I didn’t feel as good as last time. g has so much New York attitude and smugness, and we remarked that there didn’t seem to be much cruising going on. Perhaps, like me, everyone was too afraid to cruise. Or maybe it was too crowded to cruise. Or maybe I just didn’t look glamorous enough. Whatever. Take me back to the East Village.

We didn’t stay for very long, so we left and wandered around, and Carrot felt like going home to Queens, and I felt like going home to sleep, so we split up less than two hours after we’d met up.

Morals:

1) I don’t like Chelsea. I always forget this. Chelsea is the Los Angeles of New York City. Everyone and everything looks the same, and it’s just too intimidating; everyone is trying too hard to impress. But I can’t hang out in the same places all the time, and it’s nice to have a change every so often. It just makes me appreciate my preferred hangouts that much more.

2) I can’t cruise. This I’ve known. I’ve written about it here before. I just can’t do it. I have a mental block. Maybe it’s Chelsea; what average guy could cruise in a place like g? It seems a little less threatening in the East Village, and a little easier. Arch told me that he thinks the East Village bars are probably more my style. But really, I think cruising just isn’t for me, at least not now. Other than the sheer fun of it, the reasons for cruising are:

Reason #1:To find romance. But I seriously doubt I’m going to find the love of my life in a bar — yes, I know I shouldn’t say that; why close off potential opportunities? But really. The possibility that the random guy over there will not only be attractive, but will also turn out to be totally compatible with my soul and my personality and my desires to boot — it just doesn’t seem likely. There has to be some sort of filtering process. In the last few months I’ve decided that the way to get a boyfriend is by having your friends introduce you to other people. That’s one of the best filtering processes: if you share a friend in common, then there’s a better chance you’ll have some common interests as well. There’s no better recommendation than that of a friend.

Reason #2: To find sex. I can’t cruise in public for sex, though. If I’m going to find a hookup for the night, I go online. It feels lame and antisocial and furtive to write that, but I think I have a hangup about anonymous sex, as fun as it is. It’s something I try to get out of my system, something I tend to do more impulsively than not, something I prefer to do from behind the comfort of my own computer screen. I think I need to become more comfortable with my sexual desires, let them out in the open a bit more, be more comfortable publicly advertising a desire to get laid.

But my biggest barrier to cruising is that I’m just plain shy. If I see a cute guy at a bar or club, and we make eye contact, I get nervous. I look away. Oh, if there’s an initial hello, that’s different. Get me into a conversation and I’m fine. And I can talk to people at parties, where it’s less goal-oriented and more enjoyable. But starting up a conversation with an anonymous person at a bar — that’s harder. It’s this barrier that I can’t seem to get past.

Whenever I hear about someone who regularly jacks off three times a day, I worry that there’s something wrong with me. First thing in the morning? Forget it. I’m usually too tired. So I was relieved to read that there are others, like me, who will sometimes go several days without killing it.

The Ivory Beast

First things first: I need to address the big elephant sitting on my blog right now. (Hello, elephant? Would you mind moving your trunk off my keyboard? Thanks.) As cool as it’s been to have all these new eyeballs passing through since yesterday evening — and believe me, it’s been very cool — it’s made me even more self-conscious than I usually am. I’ve found it hard to write about personal things today. I mean, the Tin Man writing about Survivor? Come on. In all honesty, I do find the endgame of Survivor to be more exciting than most television, and also, I did feel like my blog needed a break from all the doom and gloom lately. So, in the eerily prescient words of Bob Dole in 1996, “I can be another Ronald Reagan if that’s what you want.” But if I start being so self-conscious about what I’m writing that I drive myself mad with writer’s block, that won’t be much fun. So I guess all I can do is acknowledge that this is a little weird for me right now and move on.

A friend of mine was supposed to be introducing me to this friend of his tonight — “I think you’ll like him,” he wrote. But it turns out the guy has someone visiting for the weekend. He could meet tomorrow night, but tomorrow night I have other plans, so I guess we’ll be introduced at a later date. Meanwhile, I’m still going out with the same friend and some other people tonight; we’re starting off at Barracuda, and then the plan is to go to this new place. I assume the new place is Heaven, which recently opened in Chelsea. There’s already a bar called Hell, so why not? Being gay can be equal mixtures of both. Maybe they should open a bar called Purgatory so we won’t have to make up our minds.

As for those other plans I have tomorrow night, I’m psyched! I can’t wait to go to the party at RJ‘s place. And the bonus, I learned today, is that Sparky will be there! Sparky intrigues me, and I’m really curious to see what he’s like in person. He has no idea what I look like, while I’ve seen those nice photos on his website, so RJ may have to do a little introducin’. I’m looking forward to it.