The Single Life...Hits the Road

The Benefits of Being Single on Valentine's Day

2012-02-14T13:19:00.002-05:00

I’ve never really had a Valentine. My first boyfriend, Sebastian broke up with me days before Valentine’s in 2002. In an effort to not look like a complete douche bag, he took me to see a show in which I was so stoned and drunk, I could barely pay attention to a fucking thing that was going. Subsequently, it was the most romantic V-Day I’ve ever had. I used to get annoyed about being single on the most quixotic (get that SAT word) day of the year, but now I embrace it. Here’s why:

1. I don’t have to fake interest in some “romantic gesture”. Let’s face it; Valentine’s Day is one of the only days of the year where people go out of their way to make some grand statement about their love for another person. However, those grand, overly romantic gestures are usually just clichéd outings that someone stole from a movie. Carriage rides in Central Park in below zero temperatures and a ride on the Staten Island Ferry when you can barely feel your feet are cute in the movies but may not get you laid. I know, I’ve done both several times and it ended with me having blue balls and being in Staten Island. I’m not sure which was worse.

2. I don’t have to partake in that “last ditch effort to save a relationship”. Many use Valentine’s Day as a way to save a relationship from the brink of destruction. For those of you who are paired with someone who may not be “the one” but you want to try to salvage the time and money you’ve wasted over the past few months, or even worse, years, you will go to extreme measures to overly compensate the fact that you were never really a great boyfriend to begin with. Then your partner is forced to fake an interest in the huge teddy bear filled with candy or tasteless assortment of chocolates that they never wanted in the first place and will most likely have no use for after February 15.

3. You save money. Not having a Valentine means not having to spend money on useless crap or an overly expensive meal that would probably cost you a lot less tomorrow.

4. You can save the acting lessons for something more important. How many times (and this includes birthdays, anniversaries, etc.) have you had to pretend to like something that someone else gave to you? When you’re single on Valentine’s Day you don’t have to psych yourself up to be disappointed by the fact that your boyfriend shit the bed with a horrible gift or lackluster gesture. Now you can simply sit at home with your cat and thank fucking Christ for the fact that the cat doesn’t talk back like every fucking guy you’ve ever dated.

5. You can get hammered. Now, you all know that I don’t drink anymore, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t (unless you have a problem with it of course). Valentine’s Day is one of the best night’s to go out with your friends – get completely shit faced drunk and pray to God that when you wake up the next morning you remember the stranger’s name who is in your bed.

6. It’s a great day to have anonymous sex. Seriously – it is. All single’s will go out tonight and try to have sex with WHOEVER they can so if you’re homely or a total loser like I am, take advantage of today. This is your night to shine in front of every other poor single person who is looking to feel good about themselves because they’re alone too.

Happy Valentine’s Day mother fuckers. Fate has stuck me in the middle of Oklahoma for this blessed day and the only person around me who is even fuckable is my trusty sidekick Jeffrey. How romantic.

The Single Life: Phoenix

2012-02-05T15:01:00.003-05:00

“Oh shit, border patrol,” I said as Jeffrey and I were driving toward Phoenix from San Diego.

“What are you worried about?” Jeffrey said as we stopped our car in the middle of the highway.

“I don’t know. We have a car full of 250 copies of “Blackouts and Breakdowns”, what if they confiscate them?”

“They won’t,” he replied.

I stopped the car and rolled down my window to speak to the border patrolman.

“Where are you all going?” he asked.

“Phoenix,” I replied.

“How many people are traveling with you?” he then asked.

“Two,” I replied, “Three, if you count Susan Lucci.”

The border patrolman looked confused. Then he looked in the backseat of our car and saw our Flat Stanley Susan Lucci poking her head up form a pile of books.

He shrugged his shoulders and let us pass.

And we’re off to Arizona. Arizona, from what I have heard is one of the more backwards ass states in the country. Their governor is a lunatic and everywhere you go, including grocery stores there are signs that say: “Please don’t bring your firearms inside.” Luckily, I left my firearms in New York City, so this wasn’t a problem for me. As Jeffrey and I drove toward the city of Phoenix, the two of us couldn’t help but wonder, where the hell the city of Phoenix was exactly.

“Where is this place?” Jeffrey asked.

“IDK girl, it looks like one long strip mall,” I replied.

We arrived at our hotel and took a look around. From the looks of it, it seemed as though someone had died in the hotel pool a la “Melrose Place”. Our accommodations in Phoenix were certainly nowhere near the quality of San Diego. But I didn’t let that get me down. We are on a cross-country road trip; two dumb blonde sluts, hair blowing in the breeze and prostituting ourselves around to sell books. Little did we know that Phoenix would be our best stop yet.

“Wait…what time is it?” I asked Jeffrey when we got to the hotel.

“It’s 6:30,” he replied.

“Holy fuck!” I said, “Was there a time change that I was not informed about?”

“I guess so,” Jeffrey said.

Apparently when you leave California, the time changes. Shockingly enough, my dumb ass didn’t realize that was the case until we were in Phoenix and a half hour away from an event.

“We gotta go!” I yelled. Jeffrey grabbed twenty to thirty copies of “Blackouts and Breakdowns” an enema for later and off we went to our first stop on our rainbow tour of Phoenix.

Our first event was a casual gathering at a wine shop called Duck and Decanter. It was a beautiful store and we were greeted by several locals who were all wonderful in their own unique ways. We had a wonderful time and got to know the people we were speaking to.

The whole purpose of the “Blackouts and Breakdowns” book tour is to go to each city and get to know the people who are in them so that we can promote but also get to know what makes our readers tick. We met some amazing people at Duck and Decanter and the following day, we were off to host a bar crawl all across Phoenix.

For the bar crawl, I was followed around by a camera crew that was filming every event we had in Phoenix for their show. I felt like a local hero/celebrity. The only other time that a film crew had followed me around was back when “Blackouts” came out two years ago, but they ended up getting hammered and gave up filming quickly thereafter. When the bus for the bar crawl pulled up, I was a bit confused. It looked like something that you would transport thirty Mexicans into the country illegally in. However, when you walked inside the bus, it was pimped out. Pimped out. On the inside, there were couches and chairs, lights everywhere and a stripper pole. I was home.

My Phoenix entourage and I hoped from bar to bar exploring the nightlife that the city had to offer which included a bar that served half price drinks if you showed up in your underwear, a country line dancing bar and a drag bar. When I showed up to the country line-dancing bar, camera crew in tow, I began asking the patrons if they wanted to hear a book reading. Which went over well at 11:30 at night.

“Hey there,” I said to a gay at the bar, “I’m here in Phoenix on book tour. Would you like to hear something from my book?”

“I don’t want to be on camera,” he replied looking around to see that a camera crew was following me.

“Oh, you won’t be, I promise. They are just filming my book reading,” I replied.

“I really don’t want to be on camera though,” he said again.

“Roger that. I copied the first time,” I said. Being on the road, I speak in trucker talk now.

“I just have this thing about being on camera,” he said.

“Listen buddy, this isn’t about you. It’s about me. You won’t be on camera. I promise.”

“Ok,” he replied, “but I don’t really like to read.”

“Excuse me?” I replied.

“I don’t like to read. It’s boring.”

Let me describe this character to you: he was about six feet tall, with glasses (don’t let them fool you, he was a complete retard) a belly and possible cross eyes, but I will have to fact check that for you. And he lived in Arizona. No offense kid, but you really have some nerve to be throwing such shade with me.

“So let me get this straight,” I replied, “you don’t know how to read?”

“No, I know how to read, I just don’t like to read.”

This is the problem with gay people these days. God help them. Why bother creating a world within their own imagination when they could be watching “The Jersey Shore”.

Being on the road, especially being in California for a week and a half, made Mark a much warmer, much nicer person. Suddenly, bitchy, New York Mark came roaring back like a bat out of hell.

“I think you’re an idiot. And because of that, I am going to give you a copy of my book for free so that you can learn how to read, you fucking moron,” I said.

“Seriously?” he said.

“Yes,” I replied, “it’s a book about drinking and having sex, two things, I am fairly certain you have done more than once. Well, the drinking part at least. I’m sure you’ll be able to relate.”

“I will totally read it,” he said.

“So now that it’s free, you’ll read it? God I hate you,” I said, “but follow me in Twitter.”

With that, I walked away and back onto my pimped out party bus, did a couple laps on the stripper pole and was quickly spirited away to a drag bar where I did a reading under heat lamps for about thirty people who clung to my every word. That’s the thing about drag queens, they always manage to surprise you.

As we were about to leave, I was approached by the head drag queen, Pandora. She was about six feet tall (seven including her hair) wore a corset, fishnet stockings and was pretty much everything I’ve ever wanted out of a drag queen.

“You said you were from D.C. originally, right?” Pandy asked.

“Yep,” I replied.

“Me too,” she yelled as she slapped me on the back. “Look at us, two cultured girls from Chocolate City in the middle of the fucking desert.”

I laughed. She continued to tell me that she moved to Phoenix with her former husband twenty years ago, in the middle of the summer and proceeded to smoke crystal meth for three months straight.

“Let me tell you,” she continued, “it is so God damned hot here in the summer. I would smoke crystal in my air conditioned house, run to my air conditioned car, buy more crystal in an air conditioned apartment and then go back to my house and smoke more crystal in my air conditioning.”

“Oh my god, that’s amazing,” I replied. “I only smoked crystal once. It made me lose my appetite and I love to eat so I never did it again.”

“Phoenix is like the home of crystal meth,” Pandy said.

“So I’ve heard,” I replied, “The Chamber of Congress in Phoenix boycotted my coming here because they ‘didn’t like the content of my book’. I think it’s because they were probably smoking crystal meth.”

Pandora laughed as if the devil was inside of her: “Those old fools have nothing better to do. I simply adore you. Will you come back here tomorrow night and do a reading in our showroom?”

“You had me at showroom,” I replied.

Jeffrey and I went back to our hotel room. Following a night of drag queens, being followed around by a camera crew, stupid gay drunk guys and working a stripper pole, I was pooped. Jeffrey on the other hand had other things in mind.

“I’m going to meet up with a friend,” he said upon entering the hotel room.

“What friend?” I asked.

“You know,” he continued, “a friend!”

“Oh, you’re going to hook up?” I said.

“Yea,” he said and walked out of the hotel room.

I find it very odd that I am the one of book tour and Jeffrey is the only one who is getting any this trip. This is the third “friend” Jeffrey has met along our journey. So if you’re counting its Jeffrey: 3. Mark: 0. Unbelievable. At least someone is taking this seriously.

The following day, we were off to Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, which is a town down the street from Phoenix and also pretty much one long strip mall. Changing Hands invited us to come to their store and we couldn’t pass the opportunity up. It was voted the number one bookstore in the country and is absolutely beautiful inside. Upon getting there, I was more than surprised at our audience. Instead of the usual crowd of drunk gay guys and stupid girls, it was a room filled with middle aged women.

I did a few readings from my book and it was followed by a question and answer portion. I was surprised at the response from these people. Apparently, someone had put an APB out to all the mother’s of alcoholic gay children in the area. Each and every one of them came up to me afterwards and said: “you remind me of my son. Unfortunately, he is still drinking. Could you please sign my copy and make it out to him?”

It is always lovely to have an affect on people and this was the first time in our travels that I felt that affect. A man in this seventies came up to me afterwards and said:

“I have thirty-six days sober.”

“That’s amazing,” I replied.

“Well, it’s nothing compared to you. I can’t believe that someone at such a young age has managed to stay sober for this long.”

“It’s not easy,” I replied, “but thirty-six days is something to be very proud of.”

“I’ve had thirty-six days before. Many times. I just can’t seem to keep sober.”

“Every day is a good day when you’re not drinking,” I replied, “just keep at it. Follow me on twitter.”

He looked confused.

“Better yet,” I said, “Just call me if you need to talk.”

I wrote my number in the old man’s copy of “Blackouts and Breakdowns” and told him to keep in constant contact. Changing Hands was an amazing experience and one I will certainly never forget.

The next morning as Jeffrey and I were getting ready to leave, I heard on the news:

“Two feet of snow are coming to Denver and the city has shut down.”

“Fuck, what are we going to do? Denver is our next stop!” Jeffrey said.

“What people who are in our situation have done for years. We’re going to New Mexico!”

I left Phoenix feeling like I had made a new family in the Southwest. Originally, we weren’t even supposed to go there on tour and little did I know, it would be one of my favorite stops along our way.

“Do you need your passport to get to New Mexico?” my mother asked over the phone our way there.

“No dear,” I replied, “it’s in the continental United States.”

The Single Life: San Diego

2012-02-05T13:09:00.002-05:00

I have to admit, it was very hard to leave Los Angeles. After five whirlwind days in the City of Angeles, some amazing events and hanging out with Boa and my sisters, it was so hard to say goodbye to yesterday. But alas, duty calls and it called us to America’s Finest City and my favorite place in the country: San Diego.

Jeffrey and I picked up our car and were off to sunny San Diego. The drive from L.A. to S.D. is only two hours but it’s a beautiful drive down the California coast and gave me time to think, reflect and listen to “Anytime” by Kelly Clarkson 498 times. Jeffrey and I quickly realized the best way for us to travel together was to ignore each other for a majority of the trip, I with my headphones on, while he listens to music from the early 1990’s. God love that kid, but if there’s a song that came out post 1998, he doesn’t like it. When I asked him why he was so interested in music from the 1990’s, he told me it was because he was: “an old soul.” Such an old soul that after one of our events in Los Angeles, he was so drunk that he left that bar we were at a drink still in hand. I love my little big haired mess.

We made it to San Diego in no time but quickly realized that neither one of us had one clean article of clothing. The lady at the hotel we were staying in recommended that we go to the Laundromat down the street to wash our clothes. Upon entering, I noticed that the only other people who were actually doing laundry there were homeless.

“Watch our shit like life your life depends upon it. I’ll go get detergent,” I told the little one. I went to the store connected to the Laundromat to get supplies. Upon entering the aisle that sold detergent and fabric softener, I was surprised to find that all of the products that they sold were Japanese.

“Hello?” I asked the man at the counter. “What the hell is it?” I said as I showed him that packaging of the detergent.

“It’s laundry detergent,” the man replied.

“Why is it written in Japanese?” I asked.

“Because that’s what we sell here.”

“Now, I would understand it if were written in Spanish, given our close proximity to Mexico and that these could be contraband products that ‘fell of a truck’ but Japanese, really?” I questioned.

“Sorry about it,” he replied.

I bought the products and returned to Jeffrey who was watching over our things.

“What the hell is this?” Jeffrey asked as he looked at the box of fabric softener.

“Uh, allegedly, it’s fabric softener,” I told him.

“Why are there Care Bears on it?” he asked.

“Because that’s all they had.”

God love the kid, but he sees something shiny and wonders off for hours at a time. I ask you, how is it possible, that I not only ended up doing my own laundry but my assistant’s as well? So to add to the list of things he is unable to do we have, making copies, following directions on a map and now laundry.

That night, Jeffrey and I met up with my friend Patrick for dinner, who I had gone to San Diego to see exactly one year earlier. If you’ll recall, at this time last year, I spirited myself away to California for a wild week of fun that ended up with my getting into a near fist fight with Cinderella at Disneyland. I adore Patrick. He’s the nicest guy and we always have a wonderful time together. We met up at a Mexican restaurant and the commiserating began.

Apparently, right after I left Patrick last year, he began dating someone immediately following.

“Everything was great,” Patrick said, “then right before Christmas, he told me he didn’t want to date me anymore, because he wanted to be single.”

“That’s bullshit,” I said. I probably should have been smoking a cigarette while this conversation was taking place but I was not. “Everyone wants to date. That’s what separates us from the animals, our need to mate and procreate. I’m so fucking sick of this ‘I don’t want to date anyone’ nonsense. If he didn’t want to date you, he wouldn’t have begun dating you in the first place.” I yelled.

I was making a small scene, as only I can.

“Pent up anger, much?” Jeffrey said.

“Uh, I hate everyone,” I replied.

Which actually isn’t true. I think that leaving New York made me realize that I don’t hate everyone. I just hate everyone in New York. There’s a difference.

“I just don’t understand,” Patrick said.

Patrick, the nicest guy in the world, was clearly not happy about his current situation. Luckily, my sister runs a dating service so I provided him with her information and told him that if he wanted to find the love of this life, to contact her immediately. The irony in all of this: she’s never set me up on a date. I guess she knows better.

We parted ways with Patrick and I got a text message from someone from my past, someone who had made a big impact on my life while I was in San Diego last year. We made plans to see each other the following day.

Jeffrey and I got back to our hotel room in downtown San Diego. We were fortunate enough to get a suite at a really great deal, which meant, we each had our own room. I told Jeffrey he needed to sleep in the other room, and when he insisted he slept in mine, I kicked him out. Mother needs a break form her children every once and a while and I wasn’t lactating at the time, so breast-feeding was out of the question. I can understand why he wouldn't want to sleep alone. The poor thing had the worst night tremors when we were in Seattle.

The following day, I made plans to meet up with John the Sailor. If you’ll recall, the last time I was in San Diego, John and I spent a whirlwind five magical days together and I hadn’t seen him since. We’ve kept in pretty close contact over the past year. He would console me after every disastrous break-up I had with a little “I told you so” grin on his face via SKYPE. I must admit, that I was pretty excited to see him. He still is, to this day, the only man I have ever met who made me feel like a lady and who made that lady feel like a complete prostitute.

I approached him on the street and walked up to him with a huge grin on my face.

“John!” I yelled. I had hoped we would have done a slow motion run into each other’s arms like they did in old movies, but it was, unfortunately a lot less dramatic than that.

“Mark!” John yelled in return.

We hugged. It was so good to see him. Regardless of the fact that we live clear across the country from each other, John made a very big impact on my life last year. He showed me that not everyone has an agenda and that there are good people still out there.

We sat down and grabbed a quick bite. We chatted as if no time had passed between us. Nothing had changed with him, he was still the caring, compassionate and understanding guy that he was a year ago. We laughed about how big of a fucking mess my love life had been over the past year and that he had begun dating someone who had completely fallen off the face of the earth. Shocker.

John and I had a quick lunch because he had to go back to work (he’s no longer a sailor, but that does not decrease his hotness) and as I watched him walk away, I remembered all of the amazing times that we had together last year. It’s a shame I was literally only in town for forty-eight hours or else perhaps we could have recreated our week of romance that we had last year.

After two amazing events that night, it was time for little Jeffrey and I to say goodbye to America’s Finest City. Unfortunately, we were there so quickly, it didn’t give us the opportunity to enjoy the city as much as I did the last time I was there. We did, however, get a chance to go to The Melting Pot that was in our hotel because Jeffrey had never had chocolate fondue. And as far as I am concerned, “you haven’t lived until you’ve eaten at the Melting Pot.”

Five Reasons Why I Love Los Angeles

2012-01-29T21:07:00.004-05:00

Before this whole book tour fiasco started, I had planned to move to Los Angeles as of December 1 of last year. My roommate was done living in New York, and quite frankly, so was I. Having lived in the Big Apple for over twelve years, I thought it was time for a change of pace and Los Angeles, seemed to be the place to go. However, a once in a lifetime opportunity presented itself and I had to take a risk and go on book tour. Lucky for me, our forth stop on the rainbow tour was the City of Angels. Upon getting off the plane from San Francisco and taking off all of my clothes, I was reminded in a mere twelve seconds why I love this town in the first place.

1. Everyone is a star. So you made a cameo on a short-lived reality TV series? Or better yet, you’re a hairdresser to the stars. Perhaps you’re a go-go dancer who parades around West Hollywood every weeknight dressed in nothing but a g-string and a dream. Welcome to L.A. because here – you’re a star. I quite honestly could not believe that literally everyone has an absurd story to tell and because of that, everyone here is a celebrity. When I arrived in L.A., the man who arranged our events here, schlepped me around town as if I had just starred in the new Oliver Stone vehicle. Everywhere we went he asked people: “Don’t you know Mark? He’s a writer. He’s fabulous! He’s everything!” and, like clockwork, everyone responded: “Of course, we do! We love him.” What people don’t know here, won’t hurt them and everyone hates to be left out what they think someone will be the next best thing. Not only that, I haven’t had to pay for a Goddamn thing since we’ve been here. I was outfitted for my book reading on Thursday night and got to keep the clothes and when I went to lay out with Boa on the roof of his hotel yesterday, he told the hotel manager that I was on book tour and the manager insisted that everything we spent on food and drinks while on the roof be complimentary. Meanwhile, I wasn’t even staying at the hotel, I was staying in my lesbian sister’s girlfriend’s one bedroom apartment on an air mattress. God I love it here.

2. Everyone is gorgeous and everyone is a moron. If you ever want to feel bad about yourself, visit a gym in West Hollywood, California. Everyone is gorgeous. And why wouldn’t they be? Los Angeles, is, after all, the entertainment capital of the world so everyone needs to make sure that bodies be looking right. It doesn’t end there. There’s the Botox, the teeth whitening and the tanning (which even I find ridiculous and you know I love to tan. There are no less than ten tanning salons on Santa Monica Boulevard alone and it’s perpetually sunny and seventy degrees outside). Everyone always looks amazing, however everyone, for the most part is dumber than a box of hair. Trying to have conversations with people is tedious because everyone spends so much time trying to look good that they’ve forgotten to pick up a book to learn anything. This benefits myself for several reasons. 1. I was pretty much able to manipulate every situation I was in to profit myself. 2. No one was listening to a fucking thing I was saying so I was able to basically make fun of people directly to their faces without them ever knowing it and 3. If I did move here, I would probably be running this town by month’s end. No one actually works here so my drive paired with the fact that everyone here is so unbelievably lazy would allow me to shoot straight to the top. My favorite stupid person moment was when a friend introduced me to one of his friends by saying: “This is Greg. He has a disease. He gets dumber every year.” What a bunch of hot bitches.

3. The nightlife is amazing. Sorry New York, but you’ve shot yourself in the foot with this one. I know I am dating myself, but when I moved to New York City, eleven years ago, there was no better place in the world to go out and party. There was an endless amount of clubs, parties everyday and people were generally more fun. I love seeing the kids these days that move to New York with their hair four feet in the air and a giant stick up their ass, sipping gin and tonic’s in the corner of the Ritz, thinking they’ve made it to the Motherland. Listen up children: when I was your age, I was face down in a toilet in a club that was hallowed out church and when I finally rallied, I was doing blow with two to four drag queens until ten the next morning. That was fun. Industry is retarded. In Los Angeles, it’s a party every day of the week. It’s what New York USED to be and what it should be again. While walking down Santa Monica Boulevard at eight in the evening, there are people crowding the no less than twelve clubs within a three-block radius. The clubs are crowded with good-looking people, go-go boys, strippers and all of the debauchery you could ever think of. And you’ll never have to buy a Rihanna album ever again. Just walk down the street and you’ll hear her whole catalog in a matter of three minutes. I am not a huge fan of go-go boys, because I am not a dirty old man (yet) but these kids fucking work it. I can’t remember the last time I even saw a go-go boy in New York (aside from going to Splash – yuck) but I have to say they do certainly bring a little something extra to the party. And get this: you don’t have to wear everything you own in order to make it to the bars. Throw on a t-shirt and jeans and you’re in! It’s always seventy and sunny in Los Angeles. New York: you’ve become too squeaky clean. I appease you: please bring back to hookers and drug dealers and make yourself fun again. Bring that sleaze back! New York isn’t boring to me because I’ve stopped drinking – I have never taken a sip of booze while in L.A. and it’s always been a blast.

4. People are friendly. This is also because they are stupid and because of the endless amounts of sunlight (which raises your Vitamin D levels and makes you a happier person), but they’re friendly nonetheless. One thing New York has going for it is its realness. You always know where you stand with pretty much everyone in your life there. In Los Angeles, everyone is so self-conscious and always thinking the person they are speaking with can help them get ahead that they aim to please. Granted, I made coffee plans with nearly twenty people this week and they all flaked out because literally everyone is a flake here, I didn’t mind. The exchanges I had with people were effortless, easy and enjoyable. Marijuana is also legal here, so that may have something to do with it as well. I love New York, but when I get my coffee in the morning, I prefer having it served to me with a smile and not a dirty look.

5. Everyone in L.A. is full of shit. And I mean everyone including myself while I was here. It’s unbelievable to me the things that come hurling out of people’s mouths. “OMG, I had lunch with Lindsay Lohan the other day.” No you didn’t. “I heard that Kyle from the ‘Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’ had dinner here the other day and got into a fist fight with Lisa.” No she didn’t. “I think I just saw Michael Jackson’s ghost walking down Sunset with Blanket.” Shut the fuck up. Little do the residents of Los Angeles know that no one is more full of shit than yours truly, hence why I love it here so much. People will literally say anything to get you to pay attention to them and no one appreciates that more than the man who wrote the book on it!

You all know I am a New Yorker through and through (I will be back and living on 57^th St. before you know it), but I will be God damned if I don’t love me some L.A. Our five days here have been amazingly fun and our book events were out of control with full houses and people sitting on the floor because we had run out of chairs – you all made me feel like a superstar and I will love you forever for it. If anyone had told me that going on book tour was going to be this much fun, I would have called them a fucking liar. This is of course before I go to Arkansas, Alabama and Tennessee, but it’s been a pretty wild ride nonetheless. Next stop: my favorite city in the country: San Diego.

The Single Life: San Francisco

2012-01-24T20:06:00.002-05:00

“You know what San Francisco reminds me of?” I asked Jeffrey as we walked down Van Ness Street, in the heart of town.

“What’s that?” he replied.

“'Sister Act,’” I replied, “And ‘Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit’ while we’re at it.”

And…we’ve arrived.

“You know,” Jeffrey said, “I’ve always preferred ‘Sister Act 2, if I’m being honest.”

“Me too,” I replied, “I had a meeting with the producers of ‘Sister Act: the musical’ in New York a few months ago and I told them that I thought it would be a good idea if they did ‘Sister Act’ and ‘Sister Act 2’ as musicals together in repertory. They told me to fuck off.”

“Oh well, valiant effort,” Jeffrey replied.

Jeffrey and I walked down to the Castro District of town, the place where gaydom was born and decided to eat at a lovely little restaurant called Chow. Upon our arrival, I checked us in on Facebook and we took a seat ready to eat dinner.

We ordered dinner and Jeffrey began rambling on about Buffalo (I swear to God one of these days the kid is going to take a shit that reminds him of Buffalo and twet me a picture of it) and I decided to use the lavatory because I had been holding in a day’s worth of pee. Traveling is fun and all, but when you are going from city to city, day after day, it becomes exhausting and dehydrating. For whatever reason, ever since I’ve left New York, it’s almost as if I have been chewing on an imaginary salt lick for the past week and a half. I excused myself and went to pee.

The line for the bathroom was about three deep and I couldn’t help but notice that the only people in line were Asian girls. Suddenly, I flashed back to one of my last night’s in New York City and one of my most Asian friends, Boa. Boa used to live in San Francisco and all I could do was think about how much fun he’d be having if he were here. It’s a town full of Asians and gay people, he’d naturally fit right in.

I went back to the table and was thankful that our food had arrived upon my return. As I began to eat, I looked up and saw a familiar, yet unexpected face.

“Oh my God!” I yelled.

“What?” Jeffrey questioned.

“OH MY GOD!” I leapt up from the table and was greeted by Boa who was grinning from ear to ear.

“Surprise, bitch!” Boa said.

“OH MY GOD!” I yelled again.

“I was going to surprise you at your book reading tomorrow night, but I saw that you checked in on Facebook here and I was like, ‘eh, fuck it’,” he said.

I hugged Boa for about forty-five minutes, stuck my tongue down his throat then smacked him on the ass. If you’ll recall, I wasn’t one hundred per cent sure when I’d see my most Asian friend again, because when we left New York, his plans were very much up in the air. I almost cried upon seeing him. He’s such a good friend.

After dinner, Jeffrey and I met up with Boa and his band of misfit Asians and misfit Asian wannabes. Luckily for me, nothing has changed with our dear Boa.

“God, I hate everybody,” Boa said as we met him at the Lookout, a hotspot among the local San Francisco gays.

“No surprises there,” I replied.

“And, I am hammered!” he then said.

“Seriously Boa? It’s like 8:30.”

“Yea, I know,” he replied, “we’ve been drinking all day. AND I HATE EVERYONE!” he screamed.

“Ok, I got it,” I replied.

The Lookout is a bar near the Castro that literally looks out onto the street and is raised above ground so you can see everyone walking below you. After I told Boa of my most recent heartbreak, that took place a few weeks back in New York, he proceeded to then yell at everyone below us.

“God I hate gay people,” he said, “I cannot believe this happened to you AGAIN. What the fuck is wrong with everyone?”

“I don’t know,” he replied.

“I HATE GAY PEOPLE!” Boa yelled to the pedestrians on the street.

“It’s OK girl,” I said as I rubbed his back. “It’s OK.”

“I HATE EVERYONE!” He yelled again as one of the people walking down the street then looked up at us.

“Oh honey, he’s not talking about you,” I yelled down to the street to the man who must have thought he had walked by an insane asylum.

“Why is everyone so stupid?” Boa asked.

“I don’t know girl,” I replied, “it may have something to do with the seventeen drinks you’ve had tonight, just saying.”

“Ugh,” Boa sighed.

God love my girl Boa, she has been through it the past few months. I am pretty sure that he has dated every asshole that I haven’t in the New York Metro Area as well as parts of California.

Boa, Jeffrey and I went to another bar, but Boa’s co-worker was date rape drug wasted so he had to take him back to their hotel and Jeffrey and I went back to ours where I then proceeded to snuggle up with my Flat Stanley Susan Lucci.

We were fortunate enough to spend a full five days in San Francisco so I decided I would do my part and spend a day volunteering at some of the local AA Meetings and Sober Houses in the area. As many know, I am a huge advocate for gays and lesbians or anyone for that matter in helping in other people’s efforts in getting sober and staying sober. When I lived in New York, I spent a lot of my time at the detox center at a local hospital and continue to help people whenever I can. Early last week, I was featured in The Advocate Magazine, which was an amazing honor and I spoke about my book, my tour and my sobriety. Unfortunately, because so many people are so short sided, there were tons of comments about the gay community having dealt with their alcohol and drug problems and many people who read the article did not think that it was an issue anymore with the community. Having written a mother fucking book about it, I can tell you, with one hundred per cent certainty that it is. In fact, it’s an even bigger problem than it was when I began writing “Blackouts and Breakdowns”. Now a reported thirty-three per cent (that’s one third) of the LGBT community struggles with drug and alcohol addiction. So to everyone who felt the need to comment about what I was doing without having researched the hard facts I respond to you: Please go suck a black dick, if you already aren’t. You clearly have no idea what the fuck you are talking about and too much time on your hands.

Anyway, upon my tour of the AA meetings of San Francisco, I met some very wonderful people. There is a sober house on Castro Street called the Castro Country Club, which I highly recommend every AA to visit while they are in town, because it is one of the only places of it’s kind and is run by a group of truly amazing people.

Enough with the sober talk! Our adventures in San Francisco were truly amazing. This city is filled with unbelievable people and it’s one of the only cities outside of New York that I have felt the presence of an actual gay “community”. There is also another community here that rivals anything New York has ever seen.

“So…” Jeffrey said as we left a book event on Monday night. “Can we walk down a street other than rape alley?”

“Rape alley?” I asked.

“Yea, rape alley,” he responded, “the corner of Market and Van Ness streets. I call it rape alley. There are like fifteen homeless people that just hang out there and every time I walk by, I feel like I may be raped.”

As we were having this conversation, a homeless man walked by.

“Can I have a cigarette?” the homeless man asked me.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I am out,” I responded.

“WHAT?!?!?!?!” the homeless man said.

I quickly looked over to Jeffrey who had a face a sheer horror.

“YOU NEVER DO ANYTHING FOR ME!!!!” the homeless man yelled.

“Excuse me?” I questioned.

“YOU NEVER DO ANYTHING FOR ME!!!!” he yelled again.

“But we just met,” I responded.

“YOU NEVER DO ANYTHING FOR ME!!!!” the man was clearly off his rocker, if not for the fact that he was yelling at me for absolutely no reason, but for the fact that he was walking down the street with his shoes in his hand.

“What are you talking about?” Jeffrey chimed in. “He gave you a blowjob last night! Go away!”

And with that, the homeless man fled. Good old Jeffrey coming through in the clutch.

“The homeless people in San Francisco have got nothing on the homeless people in New York. It’s unbelievable.”

As I was saying this, a homeless woman walked up to me.

“Do you have a light?” she asked me.

“Sure,” I responded as I gave her a lighter.

Her face lit up: “OH MY GOD THANK YOU SO MUCH!” she yelled.

Here we go again.

The homeless woman then proceeded to hug me for five minutes straight until she saw something shiny and continued on down the street.

“Jesus!” I said.

“Can we please go back to the hotel?” Jeffrey asked.

Without even realizing it, we had walked down rape alley anyway. We held each other for comfort and made it back to the hotel in one piece.

We have loved our journey to the City by the Bay. Our events were awesome, our new friends were awesome and we learned a lot. Now it’s time for Jeffrey, Susan Lucci and I to head to the City of Angles for quite possibly our biggest event for the book tour – and thank God – Boa will be there waiting for us.

The Single Life: Portland

2012-01-22T16:52:00.002-05:00

“So let me get this straight,” I said to Jeffrey. “You don’t know how to make copies, you don’t know how to use your iPhone and now you are telling me that you don’t know how to use directions on a map?” I asked as we got into the car from Seattle, ready to drive to Portland.

Best. Assistant. Ever.

For the trip down, we had to drive through six inches of snow (the newspapers in Seattle dubbed it the “storm of the century”) and just my luck we had about six hours to drive in that shit to get to our next destination, Portland, Oregon. Considering the fact that the one and only reason we picked Seattle for the first stop on our rainbow tour was because it “never snows” and no one in the state of Washington owns a God damn snow plow, the odds were stacked against us. Feeling particularly annoyed, Jeffrey and I made a bet. The day we drove to Portland, Jeffrey was not allowed to talk about Buffalo and I was not allowed to talk about working out. I love working out, it’s one of my favorite things to do and one of the only thing that continues to keep me sober. However, Jeffrey LOVES Buffalo. It’s one of the only things he ever talks about. I swear, Jeffrey could witness someone getting shot in a gang war right before his very eyes and instead of offering to help, he would quip about how the events that he had just seen reminded him about something that took place in Buffalo, circa 2001.

As we drove, in the storm of the century, Jeffrey chimed in with his segues. He loves to chat and loves to make himself laugh even more.

“Thank God for windshield wipers,” he said, “I bet you don’t know where they were invented.”

“If you say Buffalo, I am going to have to punch you in the face,” I replied.

He didn’t respond.

Upon arriving in Portland, we quickly found out that we were not actually staying in Portland, but a suburb called Beaverton. Hahaha, beaver. Like a lesbian. Anyway, we dropped out stuff off and headed to venue where we were to have our book reading.

My face was all the fuck over Portland and thankfully so. It’s about time that the Rose City knew about “Blackouts and Breakdowns” and we were thrilled when the hot ass gay Mayor of the city tweeted about our arrival. When we got to the venue, we were greeted by some wonderful people, including, thankfully a handful of lesbians. Now, you all know, I love my gays. But I will be God damned if I don’t love my lesbians ever more. Gay guys in big cities have horrible attitudes (like me!) especially when the attention is on anyone but them. Lesbians, on the other hand fucking love me. I don’t know what it is. Perhaps, my Tin Tin hairdo that reminds them of someone they once had a tryst with back in the day, but when I roll into town, they all take notice. Thank God for lesbians.

After the event, I noticed that Jeffrey was talking to someone who had come to the reading and I eavesdropped on their conversation, because I am a nosy piece of shit.

“So yea,” Jeffrey said, “back in Buff—“

“HA!” I yelled, “You can’t even go twenty-four hours without talking about Buffalo. We need to find you a new topic to talk about, like, I don’t know, how about BLACKOUTS AND BREAKDOWNS? I am sure something in that book reminds you of your hometown.”

“I have actually been talking about Buffalo the whole time I was just trying to keep my volume low so you couldn’t hear me.”

Jeffrey and I had an awesome night out and the following day we went downtown to explore Portland, check out some of the bookstores that are selling “Blackouts” and take a picture of our Flat Stanley Susan Lucci in front of a landmark.

“Please make sure Susan doesn’t get wet,” I asked Jeffrey.

“I can’t be responsible for Susan,” he replied.

“Her hair will frizz,” I said, “and considering you barely know how to send an email, I think asking you to cart Susan around town is not asking a lot.”

“Touche,” Jeffrey replied.

We walked up to the Portland Opera House to get Susan’s picture, but my publisher called and I had to take it - a call that lasted twenty minutes. When I turned around, Jeffrey was in a hot convo with a middle aged homeless woman, speaking most likely about Buffalo. When I rejoined Jeffrey, I asked:

“So what were you and your new best friend talking about? The Buffalo Bills?”

“No,” Jeffrey replied, “we were talking about you.”

“Finally!” I responded jokingly.

“Yea,” he replied, “she said that she saw your book at Powell’s Books.”

“Did she buy it?” I asked.

“She’s homeless.”

“Right,” I replied, “hence why you need to shift your grassroots marketing efforts back to Grindr. At least the gays on there have enough money to buy an iPhone, so they can therefore afford a book.”

“God Mark!” Jeffrey said, “She was really nice. She said she saw your book so I started talking to her. She is an addict and now she is sober.”

“Sweet,” I said, “I love a survival story.”

“She said she would buy your book next time she had money,” Jeffrey said.

“Well, I think he money would be better spent somewhere else than on that garbage.”

Had I had a copy on me, I would have given her one for free, but I unfortunately did not. Afterwards, Jeffrey and I took a picture of Susan Lucci in front of the opera house which took approximately twenty minutes that included me yelling: “JEFFREY MAKE SURE SUSAN DOESN’T GET WET!” Anyone walking by must have thought we were retarded morons.

That night, Jeffrey and I hit the town. Besides the hourly torrential downpours that would drive me to suicide had I lived there, Portland is a very cute, very liberal town. I actually preferred it to Seattle. Everyone was super nice and bodies be all right. As Jeffrey and I prepared to leave, a young man walked up to us.

“Excuse me,” he said to me, “are you Mark?”

“Yes,” I replied.

I had figured through our grassroots marketing efforts via Grindr, the person approaching me was a local who we had tried to wrangle to a book reading.

“I am such a huge fan of yours,” he then said.

“Seriously?” I asked, thinking he was joking.

“Yes, I’ve read everything you’ve ever wrote.”

Holy crap, an actual fan. Instead of being rude, like I usually am and asking where the hell he was when I had my book reading the previous night, we took a picture and tweeted it. Good old twitter.

The next morning, Jeffrey, Susan Lucci and I were up at four am and off to the airport headed to our next stop: San Francisco. On our way there, we looked for the Oregon trail, but all we found were a bunch of trainnies.

“I hear there are gay people there,” Jeffrey said on the way to the aiport.

“Yea,” I replied, “I’m pretty sure it’s were gaydom was born.”

The Single Life: Seattle

2012-01-18T23:18:00.003-05:00

On Monday, my journey to the first stop of my epic rainbow tour of the country began at six o’clock in the morning when I arrived at LaGuardia Airport in New York City prepared to board my flight to Seattle. As I entered the airport, I turned around to gaze at the city that has brought me so much joy and so much pain for the past eleven years and looked at the Manhattan skyline from afar one last time.

“You crazy bitch!” I said as I glanced at the sun coming up over the city. “God I hate you. But, I’m going to miss you so Goddamn much.”

“Excuse me?” an elderly woman said, as she was about to enter the airport.

“Oh,” I paused, “I wasn’t speaking to you, I was having a moment.”

She looked at me with a blank face.

“I WAS HAVING A MOMENT!” I yelled and the woman scurried away.

After paying ninety dollars to check my luggage, which by the way clocked in at sixty-four and a half pounds (because I am like ‘Maria Full of Grace’ smuggling fucking books across the country like a Goddamn drug mule as Jeffrey likes to say) I boarded the place beside a crying child and in front of another crying child and off to Seattle I went.

Well, Seattle by way of Denver of course. I had planned my flight to coincide with the arrival of my assistant Jeffrey’s from Los Angeles to Seattle so I bit the bullet and took a longer flight so that the both of us would arrive at the same time. When I got to the airport I waited about ten minutes until Jeffrey text messaged me from the plane and told me he had landed. I was so excited to see my little nugget; I could have pooped. We hadn’t seen each other in over two months, since he came to New York for his epic visit and I was so happy to see him I could have stuck my dick in him right there in the middle of the tarmac.

When Jeffrey came down to baggage claim, I heard “Run to You” by Whitney Houston playing in the background. I was having a full on “Bodyguard” moment then and there.

We caught up briefly and then whisked ourselves off the pick up our rental car where we were greeted by a very friendly Hispanic looking man who was ready to give us our car.

“It’s pretty bad out there,” the man at the rental car agency said.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“It snowed about two inches last night,” he said in a Southern accent.

“Why do you have a Southern accent? Where are you from?” I asked.

“Right here in Washington,” he said.

“Then why do you have a Southern accent?” I questioned.

He ignored me and continued: “It snowed two inches last night so we are going to upgrade you to an SUV at no charge.”

“Two inches?” Jeffrey questioned.

“Yea,” he replied.

“Big deal. I’m from Buffalo. I’ve dealt with worse,” Jeffrey said. Jeffrey originally hails form Buffalo, New York and will literally talk about his hometown every chance he gets. It’s a fun little factette that he loves to share…with anyone who will listen.

Having slept about forty-five minutes the night before, I was ready to get our car and get the hell to our hotel as soon as humanly possible. Jeffrey and I got into our rental car and began making our way to the hotel.

“Did you think the guy who gave us our car was cute?” Jeffrey asked.

“I wasn’t paying attention. I still don’t understand why he had a Southern accent thought, especially since he was from like, down the street,” I replied.

“I thought he was cute,” Jeffrey said.

“Then why don’t you go back there and regale him with stories about Buffalo. I’m sure he’d love to hear all about it.”

I think Jeffrey must have rolled his eyes but I was driving so I wasn’t paying attention. Anyway, we made our way to our hotel, checked in and went out to the gay neighborhood with the intent to rape the citizens of Seattle and let them know damn well that the “Blackouts and Breakdowns” book tour was here. Before we did anything, we needed to eat so we stopped into a fabulous Mexican restaurant and were greeted by our fabulous waitress.

Before we could even order beverages, our waitress had told us the following: she hailed from San Jose, California, dated a guy who was severely bi-polar and was now dating his non-bi-polar brother and was half Puerto Rican and half Irish. Sometimes, I feel like Lucy from the Peanuts comics. It’s almost as if I am sitting there in a cardboard box asking people to hire me as their therapist, but I have no words of wisdom to share, just offensive comments about their loved ones so I ordered enchiladas and got down to business.

“Jeffrey, we need to talk shop,” I told him as we waited for our food.

“Ok,” he replied.

“We are grassroots marketing the shit out of this book tour so one thing I am going to need you to do is get on Grindr and tell everyone in town that we are here and I will do the same.”

“Ummm…ok,” he replied.

“Seriously though, I am not above pimping you out to sell books. We’ve spoken about this before, at length.”

“I wanted to become more sexually promiscuous so we may as well sell some books in the process.”

“Glad we’re on the same page.”

Jeffrey and I laughed and caught up. Following dinner, we went to a bar in Seattle called Purr and chatted with the locals. Turns out, when you leave New York, people are like really nice. So nice that the bartender at Purr literally drew us a map of where to go in town.

“Everyone here is so nice,” I told the bartender.

“Really?” he asked.

“Yea,” I replied.

“I think Seattleites are really passive aggressive,” he said.

“That’s because you guys are so close to Canada and it’s rubbed off on you,” I stuttered. And we all know how I feel about Canadians – I love them.

“This place reminds me of Buffalo,” Jeffrey said. God love the kid, he certainly loves his hometown. I swear to God he could witness a back alley abortion take place in front of his very eyes and be reminded of some significant occasion that took place in Buffalo circa 1992.

“Well ToTo, we’re certainly not in Hells Kitchen anymore, that’s for sure,” I said.

We got to know the locals, passed out postcards, booty dropped with a few lesbians and were off to bed.

The following evening, it was time for our big event at Lobby Bar, Seattle’s hottest gay spot. I still couldn’t get over how friendly and polite everyone in the Emerald City was. People smiled at you, opened doors for you, most likely didn’t stab you in the back to get what you want (we didn’t get that far into the underbelly of how the city operates so I can’t be certain) but everyone here is great. When we got the venue, we were greeted by Curtis, the owner of the bar.

“I hope there’s a good turn out,” he said, “with the snow coming and all.”

“What snow?” I questioned.

“Well, it snowed two inches two nights ago. That’s a big deal for us in Seattle,” Curtis said.

“Well in Buffalo, it snows…” Jeffrey began to say.

“Enough, Jeffrey,” I interrupted. “But there is no snow currently on the ground, so I don’t really understand what all the hubbub is about.” And yes, I use the word hubbub daily.

“Right,” Curtis continued, “but the potential of snow drives the citizens of Seattle into a tizzy.”

“Wonderful,” I replied. The only reason this stupid book tour started in Seattle was because of the fact that it NEVER snows here. And wouldn’t ya know, we’re here for a “record breaking snow storm”. Because, why wouldn’t we be?

Luckily, through my quick wit, using Grindr as a marketing tool and ability to get people to do pretty much whatever I tell them, we had an awesome turnout for the event and it went off flawlessly. It was the first time I had done a book reading in front of a room of complete strangers and it felt great to get a new fan base of complete strangers all the way over on the west coast. Mainly because most of the people who came were lesbians, and you all know the lesbians fucking love me. Another new fan (who we picked up on Grindr) also loved the reading but I was shocked when he pulled out his hand to shake mine and he was missing a thumb. In a rare moment of keeping my shit together, I didn’t say a word. However, once we left I pointed it out to Jeffrey, who hadn’t noticed because he was too busy talking about Buffalo.

Afterwards, Jeffrey and I had quite possibly the best subs we had ever eaten.

“There’s a place in Buffalo like this sandwich shop,” he said.

“I’m sure there is kiddo, I’m sure there is.”

We spent our Golden day of not traveling and not performing roaming around the city with our cardboard cutout Susan Lucci Falt Stanley taking pictures and eating calzones the size of the city of Buffalo. And wouldn’t you know, it snowed a full six inches and the city has since been sent into a tailspin. However, Jeffrey told me that he only wanted to be referred to as “Meredith Gay” for the duration of our trip in Seattle.

Tomorrow Jeffrey, Susan and I venture off to Portland, Oregon. We’ve sent already sent out a GAY-P-B. They know we’re coming, in fact the gay Mayor tweeted about “Blackouts and Breakdowns” last night. We had an absolute blast in Seattle but we are definitely looking forward to picking up some trannies along the Oregon Trail.

Lies Gay Guys Have Told Me

2012-01-17T18:29:00.004-05:00

1. “I’m just not interested in a relationship right now”

My response: “So why did you go on four dates with me and why am I pretty certain that you are dating 4-6 other people right now. Facebook never lies.”

2. “I’m just on Grindr looking for friends”

My response: “Then why are you only showing a picture of your torso? Are you headless? Are you looking for other headless friends? Are you trying to start a headless kickball team?”

3. “I’m not really a slut”

My response: “Then why did we meet on Manhunt? And why do you have a sling in your closet?”

4. “I’m clean. I just got tested for everything last month.”

My response: “That ‘cold sore’ on your mouth says otherwise.”

5. “I’ll leave my wife for you and everything will be OK. I promise.”

My response: “Oh, OK. That’s normal.” SEE: “Blackouts and Breakdowns”

6. “I don’t party that much.”

My response: “Then does every picture of you on Facebook show you passed out in a bar? Facebook never lies.”

7. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to date you anymore, but I think we’d be better off as friends.”

My response: “Hello? That was two months ago. Where have you gone? Were you abducted by aliens?”

8. “Oh, I work for my ex-boyfriend. I’m his assistant.”

My response: “Blowing someone for cigarette money does not an assistant make. You’re a glorified prostitute.”

9. “I was molested as a teenager at summer camp.”

My response: “If by summer camp, you mean the bath house and if by teenager you mean last week, this means you’re a whore...and a liar”

The Happy Birthday Hooker

2012-01-17T00:22:00.003-05:00

Get the picture? It's TJ Hooker. Hahaha.

“I’m going to get you a hooker for your birthday,” my buddy Tom text messaged me.

“Alrighty,” I replied.

A few moments later, he called. “Listen,” he said into the phone, “you can’t drink, you can’t do drugs, you get screwed every year because your birthday is right between Christmas and New Years. It’s YOUR day. Let your hair down and do something crazy.”

“When you put it that way…” I replied.

To be honest, I had never really thought about getting a hooker until that very moment. For one thing, it has been kind of a slow couple of weeks. With planning this fucking book tour and the second book coming out, things have been quite hectic. Which translates into me having nothing to write about so hanging out with a hooker for a night would at least give me an endless supply of material if nothing else.

Tom sent me a website to look over the various hookers to chose from. There really is something to that old saying: “there is something for everyone.” Looking over the website that Tom sent I saw so many varieties of men, most of whom I wouldn’t have sex with for free, but I guess everyone has a type. I narrowed my search down to two eligible hookers and sent them to Tom. One was named Tomas (I’ve changed his name to protect the innocent – his name was really Tommy. Woops) and the other was named Peter, who goes to my gym. Upon seeing him, I literally yelled out, “Oh my God, HE’S a hooker?” in the middle of Starbucks and the people surrounding me looked at me in disgust. Eh, fuck them.

Tom told me he would take care of the logistics, i.e., he would pay for it, figure out where I needed to go and then relay the information back to me. Now, technically I was not paying for a hooker personally, so the fact that this was a gift made the whole situation a little better to stomach. Within minutes, Tom got back to me with details.

“OK,” he said, “get this. The hooker lives in my building.”

“What?” I asked.

“Yea,” he replied, “He lives on the 41^st floor. How crazy is that?”

“That’s great. I can come and gossip before I head to his place.”

“I know right?” Tom said, “And after, cause I know your sorry ass is gonna have story. Anyway, I’ve taken care of everything so all you have to do is come over here beforehand, pick up the money and then…” he laughed, “wait for it…go upstairs. How fucking crazy is that?”

“Seriously crazy,” I laughed.

Then I thought to myself, I had picked the wrong vocation. Tom lives in possibly the nicest building in the city and his rent has got to be at least five thousand dollars a month. If a hooker could afford that kind of rent, I needed to start thinking about changing careers. I have always thought I would have made a great whore, (I mean I may as well get paid for it at this point) and seeing first hand the literal lap of luxury they live in furthered my interest in becoming a high-class escort.

The only problem with Tom’s brilliant plan was that I was seeing someone at the time. Note how he has never been mentioned once in this blog until now so you know what that must mean…it went south. Right after Thanksgiving I met a boy named Evan who reached out to me via facebook because he had seen me at a bar with a few mutual friends a few nights before and added me as a friend. He was the tallest person I had ever met and we had this whole Paul Bunyon/Thumbalina thing going on and I liked it. Throughout the following weeks, we became close, or so I thought and went to a show, out for dinner and finally hooked up a few days before Christmas the night before he was to leave to go home for the holidays. All along, I am thinking to myself: “I am about to go on book tour for three months, this couldn’t possibly work out. But how amazing would it be if it DID? How amazing would it be to have someone on my side while I took this amazing, life altering adventure?” Evan knew from day one that our time together was fleeting, but just because someone is leaving town for a few months (which in the grand scheme of life is not long at all) doesn’t mean that you cannot continue to develop a relationship. So, in an effort to make sure that we could continue getting to know each other, I invited Evan to come to San Francisco for a few days while I would be there. He thought that idea was fun and the next day (the day after my birthday) called to tell me that he couldn’t do the long distance thing. In all honesty, the most we would have gone without seeing each other would have been three weeks between my coming back to New York for obligations I had before the book tour started and flying him to various cities using my points. The thing that kills me, is that he knew all along that I was leaving so my question is: “Why bother?” I am twenty-nine years old, I don’t need any more friends (you know my old saying, I barely like the ones I have now, why the fuck would I want any more?) and if that’s all he wanted, why was he sleeping naked in my bed but a week before this conversation took place. I think was just another of God’s little reminders to get the fuck out of New York while I’m ahead.

My feelings were very hurt, yet again because this all seemed so out of the blue. It’s not like I woke up one day and told Evan: “you know what? I think I am going to leave for three months.” Anyway, feeling particularly low and severely annoyed, I decided to take Tom up on his offer.

The next night, I went to Tom’s apartment to pick up the envelope full of money that I was to give to my hooker, who lived upstairs. I got back into the elevators of Tom’s building and went up to the 41^st floor. I knocked on my hooker’s door and briefly wondered if I should refer to Tomas as “Vivian”, since we had this whole “Pretty Woman thing going on.”

“Hello,” Tomas said, opening the door.

“Hi!” I said as I entered.

I took my coat off and looked around his apartment. Everything in his apartment was Versace. The mirrors, the rugs on the floor, the couch, literally everything had to Versace logo on it.

“Jesus Christ,” I said.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

What I wanted to say was: “this whole writing business is for the birds and where do I sign up to become a hooker?” but I instead replied: “Oh nothing, your apartment is just very nice, that’s all.”

“Oh,” he said.

“So,” I began, “What do you do?” I asked.

He gave me a look that said: “Are you kidding me?”

“Oh, right,” I retorted. “I mean do you do anything else? Like other activities, you know, like a book club. Because if you do, I know this really great book…”

“Nope,” he interrupted.

“Oh.”

“Shall we?” he said as we gestured toward his bedroom.

“Oh ok,” I said. Apparently we were skipping the small talk all together and just going for it. This hooker really needed to work on his hospitality. I wasn’t even offered coffee or cake.

Once entering the bedroom, I noticed that the hooker had leather sheets on his bed. I almost lost it.

“What is it?” Tomas asked.

“Oh, nothing,” I replied.

Tomas began taking his clothes off and got on the bed. I was still standing there, fully clothed and ready to ask one thousand questions because I am a nosy ass piece of shit.

“So, like, do you get a lot of old guys?” I asked.

“Sometimes,” he replied, “but sometimes not.”

Tomas was a man of few words.

“So am I one of the better looking guys that has been here?” Here I am ALWAYS fishing for a mother-fucking compliment, like…well…a whore. “Because I would have never done this if my friend hadn’t bought you for me for my birthday.”

He looked at me with a funny face. How awkward this hooker must have felt to have someone say “my friend bought you for me…” but it didn’t seem to faze him for long.

“This isn’t a Grindr hook-up, dude,” he uttered. “You can cut the small talk shit and we can just do what you came here to do.”

“I know,” I replied. “I just feel weird getting right to it.”

Then the hooker came and kissed me. I kissed him back but couldn’t help but notice for someone whose profession is to service and pleasure others; he was pretty terrible at kissing. I pushed him off of me.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Oh nothing,” I said as I turned away and looked out of his window to his amazing view of Manhattan. All I could do was think: “I cannot believe that a. I am leaving all of this for three months and b. I am in a hookers apartment.” I turned and looked back at him.

“So where are you from?” I asked.

“Long Island,” he replied. I had figured as much from the accent.

“Nice.”

Silence.

The hooker rolled his eyes again, “Where are you from?” he sighed.

“DC,” I replied.

“So what exactly is it that you want to do?”

“I honestly don’t know,” I replied, “I’m kind of scared to be here as it is. I’ve never done anything like this before in my life. So you’ll have to bare with me.”

“It’s OK. I just don’t like chatting too much. I mean, some people think I am like, their fucking physiatrist and just sit here and talk forever.”

“I get that you’re not a therapist. If you were, you’d be way overpriced and most likely not covered in my health care package.”

Still, didn’t get a laugh out of him. This was a stone cold, serious hooker. He meant business and was quickly tiring of my smart ass segues into conversations about our hometowns.

“So, what do you like to do in bed?” I asked.

“Again,” he replied, “this is not a Grindr hook-up. It’s all about what YOU want.”

“Seriously?” I asked as I suddenly realized why people got hookers in the first place. I could just lay back and do nothing and get off. This was better than a Grindr hook-up and probably better than having a boyfriend. I stood there and looked into my hookers eyes and realized that if I didn’t have sex with him, I would not only be wasting Tom’s money but Tomas would be running off with 250 dollars of someone else’s money without doing anything for it and that is simply just not the American way. I mean, I wouldn’t go all the way to Mount Everest without attempting to climb it so I could get at least get a fucking bumper sticker so I decided that yes, I should sleep with a hooker tonight.

So I had sex with a hooker. And to be honest, I’ve had better and I didn’t have to pay for it. I love sex as much as the next guy, but when someone is yelling things like “fill up my hole” and “take that dick”, etc. it’s less so much less of an enjoyable sexual experience and more of a bad, low-budget porn come to life.

Two days later, I went to Tom’s apartment because I needed some help getting materials together for my book tour when who should get on the elevator with me but my hooker from two nights before. I smiled at him but he looked down. When I waved, he turned away. Apparently even when paid to sleep with me, the people I have canoodled with refuse to acknowledge my presence upon seeing me. God I hate everyone. Looks like 2012 is off to a banging start…in more ways then one.

One Life to Live

2012-01-15T22:27:00.003-05:00

When I was applying for college, my college essay was called “My Life As A Soap Opera”. At the tender age of seventeen, I had been through more than most seniors in high school had even imagined. My father was on his third marriage to a lunatic masquerading as a hard-nosed lawyer, my parents barely spoke to each other and I was still pretending to be straight. The above basically coincided with what was happening on my favorite show of all time “One Life to Live”. Having watched the show for years at this point, I realized that my soap opera pathos and crazy ass family could pay off for me big time and pay off they did when I was accepted to almost every school I applied for and subsequently wrote a tell all book about our crazy ass adventures together (see: “Eating My Feelings” in stores April 19).

One of my very first memories as a child was watching that red headed little minx Tina Lord go plunging down the Iguazu Falls only to be rescued by a bunch of friendly natives dressed as stereotypical Indians. At six years old, I was absolutely fascinated by the events that took place in this fictional town called Llanview. I was hooked immediately and pretty much everything I’ve ever needed to know in life I learned from soap operas. I learned what exactly the hostile takeover of a major corporation entailed and that it can be done from a town in the middle of Pennsylvania that no one has ever heard of. I learned the you can fall through a skylight and recover in about two to four days. I learned how to switch a paternity test, and in the late 90’s, a DNA test. Once you know these things – you’re pretty much set for life.

I am a firm believer that every life is peppered with monumental events that shape the people that we eventually become. Weddings, births, the reveal of an evil twin brother you never knew you had – these things are defining moments, or as I like to call them “season finale moments.” Over the years, I have acquired several season finale moments of my own. I stopped drinking against all odds. I have been through a messy break-up or two. I threw a lawyer out of a window. Oh, wait, that wasn’t me - that was Blair from “One Life to Live”. Anyway, as I am about to embark on the biggest season finale moment of my life – “One Life to Live” won’t be waiting there for me on Monday so that we can work out our problems together as a family.

When the news that “One Life to Live” was cancelled broke, it took me about four weeks to not only get out of bed, but to realize that the friends that I had made over the last twenty-three years were leaving me forever. It was like someone had come in and shot each and every member of my family one by one in a massacre that resembled the Maldavian massacre back on “Dynasty” in the late 80’s. I had grown up with these people and suddenly they were taken away from me. My friends were gone. In fact, I would have preferred if someone had taken my actual friends and left me with my stories.

As we all know, tomorrow I leave on my forty-two-city book tour to promote “Blackouts and Breakdowns”. It has been a long road getting here. First of all, writing a book that people will enjoy is hard work. Getting that book published is even harder. Planning a book tour – possibly the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. There’s finding a venue, making sure the press is aware you are coming to their town, finding lodging, traveling every other day and getting butts into seats is my full time job for the next three months. Basically, I am taking a leap of faith and going out into the unknown while risking everything in the process. Everything in my life has been affected by this book tour. I have gotten rid of my fabulous apartment, I have put every nickel I have into this and saying that leaving town has strained relationships is the understatement of the century. The next three months are going to be a journey – and whether it be a good or bad one – it’s going to be a life lesson (as if I really need another one of those) and I am certain when I return to New York City in April, I will have changed in more ways than one. But that’s not the only thing that will have changed.

When I leave town tomorrow, it will be the first Monday in forty-three years that “One Life to Live” won’t be on at two in the afternoon. I am having the biggest season finale moment of my life and I won’t have the pleasure of going back to Llanfair and watching Viki pot a plant while she talks to Jessica about their multiple personalities. Blair won’t be there to push Tea out of a window…and visa versa. No one will be shot. No one will be come back from the dead. No one’s estranged child will come back to interrupt their long lost parent’s wedding. WHAT THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO DO? The assholes at ABC have taken away the one and only thing that has brought me consistent pleasure for the past twenty years.

On Friday, I sat down and watched the final episode of the show and cried. As you all know, I rarely cry but my heart facsimile was overwhelmed with emotions because I realized when Viki and Clint sat down on the chez at Llanfair, that would be the last time I would ever see them again.

Thank you “One Life to Live” for keeping me entertained for so long. You are the best friend I have ever had. In keeping the spirit alive, I have a little surprise for the residents of each city we visit. Be sure to follow me on twitter to find out what exactly I am talking about. Tomorrow I board a flight to Seattle, the first stop on our rainbow tour, but little do the citizens know, Jeffrey and I are traveling with another person – and she’s famous. Find out whom this week!

Sexy Secret Santa

2012-01-10T21:49:00.002-05:00

Last month, the sisterhood and I decided to go ahead and do a secret Santa gift exchange. The four of us were sitting at dinner, looking at our calendars on our iPhones and decided that the Tuesday before Christmas, we would exchange gifts for the person whose name we drew out of a hat. But that evening in early December was met with a rather ominous tone.

“So…” I said, “I am leaving on book tour in like a month. This gift exchange dinner may be the last time we see each other for a long time.”

“Why don’t we see where we can all get together and come and meet you while you’re on tour,” Stressica said.

“Oklahoma City would be nice,” I replied.

“I’m not coming to Oklahoma City,” Sing-Sing replied. “Let’s do somewhere fun.”

“I know, I just have a feeling I may be bored there,” I replied.

After a few minutes of trying to figure out where in the country the four of us could meet, we realized that it would be best for us to simply reconvene in New York when I returned. That’s the thing about trying to wrangle up four busy homosexuals. Unless there is a sex party involved, it’s pretty much impossible.

“There’s a problem,” Boa said. “I’ve been meaning to tell you, a New York reunion is impossible in April.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I wanted to tell you guys while we were all together, but I am moving to San Francisco for work in February,” Boa stated.

I almost started crying.

“What?” I asked.

“I’m done with New York,” Boa said, “it’s time for me to move on and I was offered a fabulous position on the west coast so I decided to take it.” Boa has been through a lot in the past few months both personally and professionally and decided it was time for a change.

“So the next time we all get together will be the last time we all get together?”

“You’re leaving me with Sing-Sing?” Stressica asked. “Mark and Boa are leaving and all I have is Sing-Sing?”

“What’s wrong with that?” Sing-Sing asked.

“Oh,” Stressica sighed, “nothing.”

“It’s the end of an era ladies,” I said, “this is it.”

And so, four friends laughed and ate and spent one fabulous night together. This past weekend, it was time for our secret Santa gift exchange. The rules were as follows: no one was to spend more than fifty dollars and the gifts exchanged were all to be either sex toys or involving sex in some round about way. I walked up to the restaurant this past Friday and saw Boa and Sing-Sing waiting outside with gift bags in their hands.

“Oh my God,” I said, “this is a very Carrie Bradshaw goes to Paris moment.”

“We’re not the “Sex and the City” girls, we’re the Sisterhood of the traveling booty shorts,” Boa said as he kissed me on the cheek. “And don’t you forget it.”

“Where is Stressica?” I asked.

“He’s running late,” Sing-Sing said as he grabbed his phone. “I’m getting a text message.” He looked at his phone and made a face. “Fucking Stressica is running late but still has time to check us all in on Facebook and he’s not even here yet.”

“Idiot,” I said under my breath.

The three of us caught up and once Stressica arrived, we were escorted to a private table in the back of the restaurant. I guess the maitre d heard our loud mouths coming from a mile away and knew it would be best if were sat in the back and away from other patrons so they would not be offended by whatever racist comments came hurling out of our mouths that evening.

After sitting down and ordering it was time for the gift exchange. I was lucky enough to pick Stressica’s name out of the hat last month. I handed him a bag that said “ho” all over it and he opened the card.

“You’re always telling everyone to such a black dick,” I wrote, “now it’s time for you to put your money where your mouth is.”

Stressica opened the bag to find a huge black dildo in it.

“This is just what I wanted,” he replied. After scanning the package more carefully, he blurted out: “Oh my God it vibrates!” he said with glee.

“I knew you’d like it,” I said with a smile.

“You always know just what I need,” Stress said.

“Alright, my turn,” Boa said as he handed me my gift. I opened the package and pulled out a huge book. “It’s the 3-D Penis book!” Boa laughed.

“Oh my God, you are such a moron,” I replied. There was something else at the bottom of the bag and I pulled that out as well. “And 80’s porn!” I yelled. “Thank God.”

“I thought you’d like it,” Boa said, “I found the 3-D Penis Book online and was looking at it for like 45 minutes. It’s pretty interesting. The penises just pop right out at you.”

“The wonders of technology,” I said.

“My turn!” Stressica said as he handed his gift to Sing-Sing. Sing may have been a bit hammered at this point so Stressica handed him the gifts that were in the bag, one by one.

“Here,” Stressica said as he handed Sing-Sing a package.

“What is this?” Sing-Sing asked as he searched the package.

“It’s a dental dam,” Stressica said, “to prevent you from getting Hepatitis C, the next time, you know…”

“Oooooooh,” Sing-Sing replied, “gotcha.” Gotta love Stressica. His gifts are not only amazing, but practical as well. Stressica pulled something else out of the bag. It was a prostate massager.

“What does that even do?” I asked.

“It massages your prostate, you fucking retard,” Boa said.

“Oh,” I replied. “I don’t know. I’ve never owned a sex toy.”

“Seriously?” Stressica asked.

“Yea, seriously,” I replied. “I was hoping to get one tonight, but I guess I was wrong.”

“You got the 3-D Penis Book. That gift is invaluable,” Boa said.

“True,” I replied, “but with all of the air travel I will be doing over the next few months, it would have been amazing to have had a dildo in my suitcase. For entertainment value, you know?”

Finally, Sing-Sing gave Boa his gift, which included a jock strap and a butt plug, which is something you apparently stick up your ass and leave there for an indefinite amount of time. That not only sounds uncomfortable but impractical as well.

After dinner, the four of us went outside and prepared to leave each other. This dinner would be the last time the four of us were together for God only knows how long and there was sadness in the air.

“I love you guys,” I said to my friends. “I wouldn’t be here without you.” The four of us have been through so much together. Bad relationships, work troubles and family fights but no matter what, we have always been there for each other regardless of the circumstances. Boa, Stressica and Sing-Sing are the best group of friends anyone could ever ask for in a million years. The four of us then proceeded to hug in a circle for a full five minutes like the fucking lesbians that we are.

“Excuse me?” an Asian girl asked. “Do one of you have a light?”

“Hello!” Boa yelled. “Can you not see that we are having a moment here?”

“I love you guys so much. You are the best,” I said, trying not to cry.

I walked away from my three friends and realized that a very important chapter in my life was closing, but something amazing was about to happen for all of us. Boa is about to change coasts and start a new and exciting position in another city. Stressica has finally started dating again and putting himself out there and may even be beginning to like his job a little bit more, or is at least complaining about it a lot less. Sing-Sing is so creative and amazingly talented that it’s only a matter of time before someone snatches him up and puts him on the Great White Way. As for me, I am about to embark on the most ridiculous journey of my entire life for the next three months. Suddenly, my departure from New York became really real. I know it’s not forever, but with Boa moving to San Fran, things will never be the same. These three ARE my New York. You are the best people anyone could ever be privileged enough to have in their lives and I love you so very much.

Book Tour Venues

2011-12-23T16:34:00.014-05:00

The following is a list of exact venues that that BLACKOUTS AND BREAKDOWNS Book Tour will be visiting. All dates and times are subject to change and you'll notice that some cities are listed as "TBD". That's because we're finalizing with venue owners about specifics. If there is somewhere you'd like us to go - contact Jeffrey and he'll set it up. See you all soon! Check back as we will be updating this list weekly.

Jan 17: SEATTLE - Lobby Bar @ 5pm.

Jan 19: PORTLAND - Local Lounge @ 5pm

Jan 22: SAN FRANCISCO - Rebel @ 7pm

Jan 23: SAN FRANCISCO - Martuni's @ 6:30pm

Jan 24: SAN FRANCISCO - LGBT Community Center @ 6:30pm

Jan 26: LOS ANGELES - PAR: La @ 7pm

Jan 26: LOS ANGELES - Forbidden Bar @ 10:30pm

Jan 28: SAN DEIGO - Bourbon Street - TIME TBD

Jan 31: SAN DIEGO - Eden @ 5pm

Jan 31: SAN DIEGO - GOSSIP GRILLE @ 9:30pm

Feb 1: PHOENIX - Duck & Decanter @ 7pm

Feb 2: PHOENIX - Bar Crawl starting at COBALT @ 7pm

Feb 3: TEMPE - Changing Hands Bookstore @ 7pm

Feb 5: DENVER - EDEN @ 1pm

Feb 8: AUSTIN - Halcyon - @ 7pm

Feb 11: DALLAS - Opening Bell Coffeehouse @ 2pm

Feb 12: HOUSTON - John Palmer Art Gallery - 5pm

Feb 13: TULSA - Book Smart Tulsa @ The Dennis R. Neill Equality Center - 7pm

Feb 15: OKLAHOMA CITY - Full Circle Books - 6:30pm

Feb 16: FAYETTEVILLE, AR - Speakeasy @ 9pm

Feb 17: LITTLE ROCK, AR - Six Ten Center Street Bar @ 7pm

Feb 23: JONESBORO, AR - Arkansas State University @ 7pm

Feb 24-26: MEMPHIS - TBD

Feb 27-29: BIRMINGHAM - TBD

March 3: ATLANTA: Rush Center - 5:30pm

March 2-5: SAVANNAH - TBD

March 5-7: CHARLESTON - TBD

March 8-10: RALEIGH/ASHEVILLE - TBD

March 11: RICHMOND, VA - Virginia Commonwealth University - Time TBD

March 13: WASHINGTON, DC - Duplex @ 6:30pm

March 15: BALTIMORE - The Book Escape @ 5pm

March 19: PHILADELPHIA - Stir @ 7pm

March 21: HARTFORD - TBD

March 22-23: PROVIDENCE - TBD

March 25: BOSTON - Club Cafe @ 6:30pm

March 27: ITHACA - TBD

March 28: BUFFALO - Fugazi @ 7pm

March 29: BUFFALO - Cansius College @ 7pm

March 31-April 2: COLUMBUS - TBD

April 3: CHICAGO - The Center on Halstead @ 7pm

April 6: MADISON - TBD

April 7: MILWAUKEE - Outword Books - TIME TBD

April 9: DES MOINES - TBD

April 10-11: IOWA CITY - TBD

April 12: LINCOLN - University of Nebraska - TIME TBD

April 13: OMAHA - The Max @ 7pm

April 14-15: KANSAS CITY - TBD

April 16-17: ST. LOUIS -TBD

A Year in Dates: 2011

2011-12-19T22:31:00.002-05:00

What a year it’s been. Professionally, I feel like I have hit an amazing stride. As I prepare for a forty-city book tour and for the release of my second book, I feel like my career is right where it belongs. Having “Blackouts” named as a critic’s pick by Time Out New York Magazine last week, was just the icing on an already delicious cake. My personal life, on the other hand, has been an epic disaster that rivals, well…2010. Here’s a look back on the many loves and losses that peppered this past year and made it one I will never forget.

JANUARY: 2011 started with a bang. I had the good sense to take a little trip to California after a disastrous winter in New York. Remember now, at the end of last year, I had my heart ripped out by the 23-year old, stomped into a million pieces by his then-ex-boyfriend, my mother was ill and my Barnes and Noble book tour was postponed indefinitely. What does one do in a situation like that? They flee. And flee I did on a whirlwind tour of Los Angeles and San Diego where I met my prince charming, John the sailor who wined and dined me like the high class escort I’ve always longed to be. Nothing lasts forever, I’m afraid and we parted ways when I left Southern California but have remained very good friends ever since.

FEBRUARY 2011: Upon my return to New York, I decided to hit the ground running and get my life back on track. I planned an epic preview reading of my second book and got an agent out of it. However, at this point I was six months into my pathetic sabbatical from sex and when I decided I was ready to get back on that proverbial horse, I realized that no one wanted to fuck Mark.

MARCH 2011: After attempting to date again and winding up going out with a waiter who slept in my bed, didn’t fuck me and then got caught rummaging through my refrigerator by my roommate and was never heard from again, then going out with a man who claimed to be 35 but was actually 43 (the only thing we had in common was a mutual love of eggs) I began to reminisce about my ex-boyfriends and even went as far as liaising the courtship of my super ex-boyfriend Sebastian and his new beau. This is when I realized I had way too much fucking time on my hands.

APRIL 2011: Good old Stressica came to the rescue once again and planned an epic trip for us to…wait for it…wait for it…Providence, Rhode Island. Two single girls in our great nation’s smallest state meant epic shenanigans but did not result in either one of us finding the loves of our lives. So, I stooped to even greater lows by trying to date two different men in two different cities. When I stopped hearing from both of them for no reason whatsoever, I realized we had officially entered pathetic territory as an unexpected person from my past resurfaced and a shit storm of epic proportions made it’s way back to New York.

MAY 2011: On a night I will remember for the rest of my life, the 23-year old sashayed his way back into my life, claiming to have been carrying a torch for me since we last saw each other in September of 2010. Apparently at this point, I had the self-esteem of a teenage rape victim and believed every word he said. However, when he steamrolled his way back into town, he was singing a different tune and when I realized his evil ex was still in the picture, I sent him on his merry way. My nine-month streak of celibacy finally ended when I hooked up with Clint, who seemed to be quite the catch. That is, until I found out he was in a six-year relationship and had children. Not to mention, he and his partner owned a condo together. My mother always said: “when there’s property involved, steer clear.” It was around this time that I realized that every man I had ever dated was a fucking loser; as if I needed a stock ticker in Times Square to tell me that.

JUNE 2011: My heartbreak over the machinations of the 23 year-old were quelled when Boa moved back to town and the Sisterhood of the Traveling Booty Shorts were reunited for the first time in nine months. Still reeling from the events of the previous months, I was delighted when I thought I had met the perfect man who wore a red shirt. Turns out that perfect man had horrible sexual issues that led him to; instead of talking things over with me, dumping me via text message. It was around this point when I decided that I not only understood why people opened fire onto unsuspecting crowds, I was beginning to sympathize with them as well.

JULY 2011: I tracked down the man in the red shirt, determined to get the answers to the questions I so desperately wanted. I had, at one point, thought our relationship was meant to be then suddenly it was all over in the blink of a text message. In a confrontation that rivaled the “Real Housewives of New York”, I faced him, offended Katie Couric then ran off for a date with another man. I figured I shouldn’t waste my entire night on a fight with the man in the red shirt (that’s called multi-tasking). Little did I know, the man I was about to meet was pretty Super.

AUGUST 2011: I started dating Superman and quickly introduced him to the gang. Things were clicking along and I thought I had found the perfect man, yet again, but history has an eerie of repeating itself. Meanwhile, Stressica always down for impromptu trip, booked us flights to…wait for it…wait for it…Fayetteville, Arkansas. However, our flights were cancelled and we ended up in D.C. where we scared the shit out of my mother, which was priceless. After my mother stuck her tongue down Stressica’s throat, we were back in New York and I found myself in another compromising position and suddenly broken up with by Superman.

SEPTEMBER 2011: After Superman’s sudden break-up, I decided it was time to get to the bottom of the mystery of the man in the red shirt. Because apparently, I hadn’t had enough heartbreak in 2011. After a dinner with red shirt, I suddenly realized that I had it right all along and he was, in fact, crazy. After a confrontation with Superman about my blog, I decided that dating was a terrible idea and that I should just start sleeping with people randomly. After an encounter with a 23-year old of a different breed, I met the love of my life in the middle of Time Square…but he lived 5,000 miles away. Why does that always happen? (See: January)

OCTOBER 2011: I celebrated three years of sobriety by trying to get a fuck buddy to no avail. Nothing that interesting happened this month except a hilarious text messaging exchange between my buddy Tristan and the 23-year old (when will you go away already?)

NOVEMBER 2011: Jeffrey Hartinger breezed into my life around this time and I realized what beauty of having an intern (that I didn’t sleep with) and preparations for the 2012 “Blackouts and Breakdowns” Book Tour began. It was also around this time that I decided that I was going to marry a Canadian because they’re so passive aggressive, what’s not to love. After downloading Grindr on my phone once more, I suddenly realized that the single men in New York City breeze in and out of my life as effortlessly as Kim Kardashian gets married. It was around Thanksgiving when I realized the unplanned sleepovers and random encounters with guys had to come to an end and fast.

DECEMBER 2011: Because my life isn’t one constant retrospective after another, I bumped into everyone I had ever blogged about and realized now was the best time for me to escape Manhattan for a few months and self promote my wears like the gypsy we all know I am. Looking back, I would have to say that my favorite daters from 2011 were The South African, John the Sailor and Superman. My least favorite: the 23-year old (for the second year in a row!) and the man in the red shirt. What do you think?

So there you have it: The Single Life summed up in twelve slutty months. What was your favorite blog of 2011? Leave a comment and let me know. In the meantime: here are our favorite jams from 2011. Illegally download these so you can be just like the sisterhood!

10: “Super Bass” – Nicki Minaj

9: “Fool For You” - Cee Lo Green and Melanie Fiona

8: “Countdown” – Beyonce

7: “Shake It Out” – Florence + the Machine

6: “Dedication to My Ex (Miss That)” – Floyd

5: “S&M Remix” – Rihanna & Britney Spears

4: “Domino” – Jessie J

3: “I’ll Be Waiting” – Adele

2: “Born This Way” & “Black Jesus + Amen Fashion” – Lady GaGa

1: “Don’t Keep Me Waiting” & “I Wanna Go” – Britney Spears

What Goes Around...Comes Around

2011-12-11T21:59:00.002-05:00

A few nights ago, I had the worst nightmare I’ve ever had. My new best friend Kirsten Dunst and I had decided to move in together. We were roaming the streets of Los Angeles when all of the sudden we came across the most perfect house that had a huge “for sale” sign on it. We entered the house, and when we began looking around, I started to realize that this house was eerily familiar.

“There are Tiffany chandeliers,” Kirsten Dunst said.

“They’re lovely,” I replied.

“And look at this woodworking,” she said as she noticed the crown molding.

“Looks like the handy work of a crafty lesbian or two,” I replied.

“I think we should move here,” she said.

And I agreed. Apparently we had moved in at warp speed because the next thing I knew, KiKi and I were all settled into our new abode. I’m not exactly sure what my profession was but apparently I made good money because this house was huge. For a property as large as that, I am assuming my dream profession was corporate lawyer, but my subconscious did not get into any specific details. Either that or it was out of my price range and my new best friend Kirsten Dunst blackmailed me into moving in with her. After a few days in our new place, I went down into the basement to inspect what the situation was down there. The basement was unlike the rest of the house. It was eerie, cold and unfinished. As I made my way down, I began to hear a cry and wonder what was going on. A flash of Jessica Lange came whizzing by and suddenly I realized Kirsten Dunst and I had moved into the house from “American Horror Story”. I began to get scared and ran back up the stairs to the door the led back to the rest of the house but when I got to the top of the stairs, the door was sealed shut. I was stuck in the Goddamn basement.

“KIKI!!!!” I yelled. “KIKI DUNST! Where are you? Come and save me! Pretty sure I’m going to die down here – I’ve seen the show!” Now did I not only have that horrible movie “Dick” to blame her for, now I was probably going to die because of her as well.

There was no response – I was trapped. I made my way back down the stairs and when I got to the bottom, there were five small elephants all whom I am assuming had some sort of magical powers, but because this was a dream, we again, didn’t get that far into specifics. Before I could tell what was going on, the five supposedly magical elephants turned into grown men, all whom had weapons. I saw my life flash before my eyes as all five men approached me slowly. The men were coming after me. I yelled for help.

“KIKI!!! HELP ME!” I screamed. She must have been in on this. I know from past experiences never to trust actors and don’t know what I must have been thinking that Kirsten fucking Dunst would have been the exception to the rule.

The men continued to approach me with murder in their eyes when suddenly, I woke up.

“Fuck you Kirsten Dunst!” I cried, panicked, realizing it had all been a dream.

Little did I know that this dream was going to be a metaphor for the events that took place last week.

It’s so upsetting to me that five weeks away from leaving to go on a three-month book tour is when I decide that I like living in New York again. I have made an effort to be more social and have ended up meeting some really great new people and even though I am working like an Asian running a human trafficking ring, I am managing have fun and go out. Being more social means seeing more people, and not always the ones you necessarily want to bump into. As I was walking to work a few days back, I spied with my little gay eye, someone who looked eerily familiar walking across the street. As the figure got closer, I was surprised at who I saw. In an effort to not cause I scene, I walked the other direction, missing this person completely. However, after arriving at work, I decided that ignoring this person was childish, so I reached out to say hello. It had, after all, been months since we’d spoken so I figured it couldn’t hurt.

“I saw you walking across the street. I wanted to say hello, but didn’t. Next time, I will just yell your name so you can hear me and possibly make a small scene.” I texted. The person I had seen from across the street was Clint. You remember him, right? The guy I hung out with a few times, had sex with and later found out that he was not only in a six year relationship but had children as well?

“Who is this?” he replied.

Ouch.

“It’s Mark, the writer,” I responded.

“Hi,” he replied, “Sorry. I did some house cleaning with the iPhone contacts last week.”

We caught up and Clint told me that the reason he had not contacted me again (besides the husband and children) was because when he had read about what had happened in the blog, he realized he wasn’t making the right choices and decided to make a change for the better. Either that or his husband found out what he was doing and got pissed. One-way or the other, it didn’t make a difference to me. I had finally gotten closure for something I honestly hadn’t thought about in months, but something that had pissed me off in the past. We exchanged “it’s all water under the bridge” text messages and that was the end of that. It was pleasant to finally close a chapter of something that was pretty messy for the both of us.

As I was leaving work that day, I was walking down the street and saw, yet another familiar face. I would like to point out that I work in the middle of Times Square. Millions of people tread those streets everyday so that fact that I was seeing another familiar face that may or may have not been inside of me at one point or another made me begin to think that Jesus was playing some sort of cruel trick on me. As the familiar face got closer, I yelled:

“Superman!”

What are the odds that within the time span of eight hours, I bump into two people I have slept with in literally the busiest intersection in the world. I swear I am not a slut.

“Hi Mark,” Superman said as he gave me a hug.

Not for nothing, I really have no hard feelings toward Superman. We crossed paths at a very difficult point in my life and it just didn’t work out. In the end, it was no one’s fault – it was just the way it was.

Superman and I chatted for a bit and it was very lovely. We hadn’t spoken in months and even though neither one of us apologized to the other, there was the unspoken agreement that whatever war we had waged against each other was over. He also told me that he had moved two blocks away from my apartment. Of course the first thing that pops into my lazy ass head is how convenient it would be to date him again because he lives so close. Then I realized I gave up my lease last week. We hugged and parted ways. It was then that I decided that I needed to start wearing a Carmen San Diego style hat around Manhattan to hide my face and avoid encounters like this from taking place ever again.

There is one person I am always happy to see and that person is Stressica. Last night, we decided that since the rest of the sisterhood was out of town, we would go out and cause a scene as only the two of us can do. We went out to show off a few new dance moves when suddenly I spied with my little gay eye a gay giving me the once over. He was a little on the heavier side so I wasn’t sure if he thought I was a rotisserie chicken or if he was checking me out. I stared back at him, not because I was particularly interested but because I like to stare at people and always wonder why instead of walking up to say hello to someone, people will stare at you for four hours before making actual contact. The guy stopped staring at me and then walked over to greet the friends, I assumed he had been waiting for. When he walked up to one of the guys, I couldn’t help but notice he too looked familiar. Instead of greeting this person with a hug or a kiss on the cheek as he had with his other friends, he greeted him a big old French kiss.

“Oh my God,” I said as I grabbed Stressica.

“What?” he asked.

“It’s the lawyer!” I replied.

My hefty new staring contest buddy was apparently the lawyer’s new boyfriend. You all remember him, right? He was the guy that totally broke my heart about two years ago.

“Oh, God,” Stressica replied, “at least he’s not wearing that awful glittering shirt with the flag of the United Kingdom on it again.”

“True that,” I replied.

I watched as the lawyer and the chubby kid continued to make out.

“Should I go over and say –“

“NO!” Stressica interrupted. “You don’t need to say hello. He already knows you’re better than him, there’s no need to rub it in his face. His boyfriend is fat. You’re not. You win.”

“Yea, I guess you’re right.”

“We should go,” Stressica said.

“We don’t need to leave because the lawyer is here. I honestly don’t care anymore,” I replied.

“We aren’t leaving because the lawyer is here, we are leaving because if one more Asian touches my ass, I will be taken to jail for murder.”

Stressica and I exited the bar and went to the bar directly across the street from where we just were. We opened the door and I was shocked at the first person we saw upon entering.

“MARK!” a voice said to me.

“Jesus Christ, you have got to be kidding me,” I said under my breath.

“Oh my God, Mark, how are you?” The Super Jew said.

I swear to God, I am not a slut, but moments after spotting the lawyer; we bumped into another person I had canoodled with. This time, it was the Super Jew. The guy I hung out with at the beginning of the summer who provided me with literally the worst sexual experience of my entire life.

“Oh my God,” Stressica said.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing, just keep walking, keep walking NOW!” Stressica said as he pushed me into the bar. But the Super Jew stopped me.

“How are you?” he asked.

“I’m good. I am leaving in a few weeks to go on tour. Very busy, but good.” I said.

Stressica made a beeline into the bar grabbing my hand and pulling me in as well.

“How do you know him? Stressica asked me.

“That’s the Super Jew,” I replied.

“THAT’s the Super Jew?” he questioned.

“Yes.”

“Oh my God, I had no idea.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I had sex with him too.”

Well kids, it was bound to happen eventually. Stressica and I have officially shared a man.

Stressica continued: “And it was…”

“The worst sex I’ve ever had,” we said in unison.

Then I started laughing. I laughed so hard that I nearly fell over into a somersault.

“I cannot believe that we have shared a man,” I said, “I feel sorry for us. I was legit thinking about filing my taxes the whole time we were having sex.”

“Yea, he’s terrible in bed,” Stressica said, “and I stupidly went back for seconds.”

I looked at Stressica as if he had just killed my parents.

“What?” he said. “I was horny.”

As I continued laughing, I turned my head and saw yet, another familiar face. It was as if THE SINGLE LIFE was coming to life this week. After all, what night out would be complete without an awkward run in with the man in the red shirt?

I looked up, and as if I was talking to God, I mouthed the words: “You have got to be fucking kidding me with this right now.”

I grabbed Stressica.

“Ouch, what is wrong with you?” he yelled.

“Red shirt alert!” I said.

But the man in the red shirt was not alone. He had brought a buddy with him. A buddy who looked like he had recently arrived by way of Kuwait and did not have a work visa on him. He was overweight, poorly dressed and impoverished looking.

“Hello red shirt,” I said as I gave him a hug.

He kissed me on the cheek.

“We don’t have to hang out if you don’t want to,” red shirt’s friend said.

“We shared a cab up from Chelsea,” the man in the red shirt said as if he were trying to make an excuse for why he was with this guy.

“OK,” I replied, wondering if he couldn’t have afforded a cab of his own.

The three of us stared at each other for about forty-five seconds and I replied: “alright, well I don’t want to interrupt you.”

Then I ran. I ran as fast as someone could in a bar filled with a bunch of drunken gay men could. I ran back to Stressica.

“God,” I said, “Red shit has the unique way of making every situation so unnecessarily uncomfortable. I honestly don’t know how he manages it.”

“Who cares?” Stressica said, “Red shirt is so 2011.”

“True,” I paused. A full two minutes had passed and we hadn’t seen someone I had either slept with or dated. Were we in the clear? I gave Stressica a stank face.

“Did you fart?” he asked.

“No.” I paused again. “I am wondering where the 23 year old is.”

“Gross. Why?” Stressica replied. Meanwhile, I was also wondering why I hadn't started wearing that Carmen San Diego hat yet.

“Because he is the only person that I have dated in the past two years that we HAVEN’T seen tonight.”

“He’s probably off with his creepster boyfriend stealing people’s essences in the night.”

“True. That,” I replied. “Can we talk about how we both slept with the Super Jew, because that is quite possibly the funniest thing that has ever happened.”

“Please don’t write a blog about it,” Stressica replied.

We ended the night, the way we used to end every night: with a heaping plate of disco-fries. It was just like old times, except I was beginning to realize that these moments were fleeting.

“This is all Kirsten Dunst’s fault,” I said as I bit into a mozzarella stick.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Stressica barked.

“I told you about that dream I had the other night. This is all KiKi’s fault. I think the men in the basement represented of the “American Horror Story” house represented all of them I just saw. Perhaps if I hadn’t had that dream, none of this would have ever happened so I am blaming La Dunst for all of this bullshit,” I stated.

“Are you smoking crack?” Stressica said.

“It makes perfect sense, the five elephants represent the five guys I saw in the past two days,” I continued.

“No matter which way you swing this story, it has nothing to do with your stupid dream. I think this is just the baby Jesus’ way of coming down, lightly patting you on the shoulder and telling you, it’s time to leave New York for a bit.”

“Maybe you’re right,” I replied, “But Kirsten –“

Stressica interrupted once more: “Enough with Kirsten fucking Dunst. This is a good old case of what goes around, comes around. Think of it like this: if your life were a soap opera, this is the episode we lie up loose ends. Like when we found out who shot J.R.”

"What lose ends?" I questioned.

"I don't fucking know, I'm hammered, I'm just trying to shed light on the situation," Stressica said, "Eh, fuck it."

Suddenly, I realized, I’m not a whore. I just have trifling taste in men.

“Can we please discuss how we both fucked Super Jew, because I am still reeling from this,” I said.

“Fuck off.”

Another epic night on the town, indeed.

True Life: I'm Addicted to Spray Tans

2011-12-08T09:45:00.002-05:00

I’ve found something more addictive than booze, more addictive then cigarettes and more addictive than pills to add to my ever-expanding arsenal of indulgences.

It all started around Halloween. I had decided that once again, I was going to don the gold booty shorts and rock out Halloween in Hells Kitchen as Rocky from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” I had all but perfected my costume. I of course, already owned the gold shorts, gold body paint and as usual, body was looking especially right. But one thing was missing. Since it was October, my complexion was less that of Rocky and more of that of a former junkie who hadn’t had a coke fix in months. I was pale as hell and had no idea what to do. My healthy African glow from the summer had all but worn off and I knew if I went tanning in the tanning beds, that I would burn because it had been so very long since my skin had seen the light of day. I decided to take a leap of faith and try spray tanning.

For whatever reason, I had never done it before so when I went to the tanning salon, I needed to have the process explained to me a good three times before I even went in the booth.

“So there are different tones you can get,” the girl at the tanning salon explained. “Caribbean Sunrise, Mohegan Sands, Tropical Breeze or Hawaiian Mist.”

I looked her dead in the eyes and replied: “I honest to God, have no idea what the fuck any of those words mean.”

“Those are the levels of tan we can spray you with,” she replied.

“Which one is going to make me black?” I asked.

“What?” she questioned.

“Which one is going to make me look black?” I said again, “Or Puerto Rican. I could do Puerto Rican as well.”

“Well, we do have Egyptian Rainfall – but we don’t recommend that…”

I interrupted her, “I’ll take that one. Egypt is in Africa and I want to look as dark as possible. I want people thinking I just got back from a vacation in Tahiti with George Hamilton where the only thing we did was talk smack about Joan Collins and lay out all day.”

The girl looked dumbfounded.

“Just give it to me!” I yelled.

Shortly after my altercation with the girl at the tanning salon, I was ready to change nationalities in the tanning bed. In the summer, I pride myself on my glorious tan. There is nothing I love more than rolling into work in the summer months looking like I just got back from a fourteen day cruise to Saint Bart’s. You know how dark I like to get. Remember when Stressica and I went to D.C. and got so dark we turned presidential blurpal (the color of Obama’s lips?) Cause I do!

Anyway, I entered the spray tan booth and within a matter of seconds I had gone from pasty ass white to gloriously bronze. When I exited the spray tan booth and looked at myself in the mirror, I was so pleased with what I saw in the mirror, that I immediately wanted to go back into the spray tan booth for another round. Suddenly, I had a new addiction. One that could be worse than anything I ever ingested or snorted. One that could single handedly bring me to financial ruin. I was officially addicted to spray tanning.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I frequented the spray tan booth. I was so pleased that even in the middle of the fall, I could look like I had just come from the beach, without ever leaving the city. Every time I left the spray tan booth, I couldn’t wait to go back. It’s kind of like this magical place and I’ve never felt more at home than in a spray tan booth. I can’t explain the rush. It’s honestly better than coke.

This past Monday, I went to get my weekly spray tan and after disrobing, I was shocked to find out that the spray tan booth was broken. I felt like every junkie who needed a fix: I quickly panicked and ran to my dealer (aka the receptionist at the salon) for help.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” what do I do?” I yelled as I stood in the lobby of the tanning salon in nothing but my underwear.

“Relax,” the girl said. She had dealt with junkies like me before. After inspecting the booth, she told me that it was, in fact, broken.

I was panicked and sweating. “Oh my God, what are we going to do?”

I was straight up acting as if a family member had died.

“Don’t worry. I will just airbrush tan you,” she replied.

“Air brush tan?” I asked.

“Yea, it will take no time at all.”

Now, I had heard of the illusive airbrush tanning before, but thought if I were to ever try it, I would officially go past the point of no return with my new addiction. But we had no other options. If I were to reach my full tanning ability that day, there were no other choices. It was either airbrush tanning or looking pale and I decided, there, in my underwear and in front of four strangers that I needed to airbrush tan.

The salon attendant and I made our way back to the booth where she then proceeded to literally spray me tan with an airbrush. As I watched her doing this, I suddenly realized that I was not only addicted to spray tan, but now I was addicted to airbrush tanning as well. I watched in the mirror as she continued to spray me and literally saw my body changing colors before my very eyes. I not only loved my new look, but loved the girl who had introduced me to this new tanning phenomenon. I loved her so much, that we almost went to second.

When I was finished, I asked the girl how much it would have cost me to airbrush tan if I had actually paid for it.

“It’s $99,” she said.

“WHAT?!?!” I cried.

“It’s $99,” she said again.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Nope.”

I quickly calculated that if I were to airbrush tan twice a week, it would officially be more expensive than my former weekly coke habit.

Upon leaving the spray tan salon, I text messaged my friend Eric.

“OMG, Eric,” I texted, “I just airbrush tanned. I am so black right now, I love it.”

He responded: “Don’t take a shower tonight and when you wake up tomorrow you will be straight up African.”

“Perfect!”

“But be careful,” Eric said, “airbrush tanning is addictive. Once you start, you can’t stop.”

That evening, I had an event to go to with Stressica. It was a dance charity thing or something (I honestly don’t know what it was but I was told to go and in rare moment of doing what I was told, I showed up).

“So, did you adopt a child on your trip to Africa or what?” Stressica asked.

“What are you talking about?” I replied.

“You are SO tan right now,” he said.

“Oh, I airbrush tanned,” I retorted.

“You look great. Like the big black woman, I always knew you were.”

“Thanks.”

After the dancers were done with their performance, the guests of the show were invited to take to the floor and dance as well. I wasn’t planning on having a dance off on a Monday, but figured what the hell. I could one-up those professional dancers with a body roll or two. That, and they played Donna Summer’s “Bad Girls” and anyone who isn’t tempted to dance when that song comes on has no soul.

As we began dancing, I noticed a brown spot on my white shirt. I figured that it must have been makeup from one of the girls we were with, but as we continued dancing and subsequently sweating, the spot began getting bigger and bigger until finally, my white shirt became a brown shirt.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Stressica asked.

“IDK girl,” I replied, “It must be the airbrush tan,” I said.

“You’re sweating through your tan like a god damned wildebeest!”

“Shit!” I yelled, “Eric told me not to shower so I would look black tomorrow morning. That’s probably why the tan is coming off.”

“Well,” Stressica said, “If worse comes to worse you can just tell people that your shirt is one of those patterned shirts from H&M.”

“H&M?” I gave him a dirty look. “Seriously?”

I ran to the bathroom and quickly inspected the situation. When Donna Summer is on, all bets are off so my dancing was pretty much amazing which resulted in my spray tan coming off on my clothes and dripping down the side of my face. I still looked like a straight up Puerto Rican, however, so I was still happy.

Stressica and I hoped into a cab to go home. I was pretty embarrassed that my spray tan was coming off then realized far more embarrassing things had happened to me that week alone (I was two seconds away from sharting at work last week and ran away as if the Devil himself possessed me).

Once home, Stressica asked: “Do you ever think you’ll spray tan again?”

I gave him a look that read: “Is the Pope Catholic?”

He got the point. As I sit here typing away on my laptop, Puerto Rican glow wearing off, I cannot wait for my next trip to the tanning salon. Part of me wonders if I shouldn’t start drinking again. Lord knows, it would be a hell of a lot cheaper than tanning ever five days.

The Sleep Over

2011-11-30T08:46:00.002-05:00

Being single these days can be a huge pain in the ass, and not the good kind that I am used to. A few weeks back, I met a guy named Matt. He was super cute, super nice and we clicked immediately. Matt was a writer as well and his first book comes out in August. On our first date, we were literally talking for so long that we closed the restaurant. It was a magical evening, made ever better by the fact that on my way to the subway, he shoved his tongue down my throat. Had he paid for dinner, it would have been the best first date ever. Anyway, about a week later, we got together again for dinner and it was just as pleasant as it was the first time around, however at the end of our date we ended up back at his place and I nearly made him have an orgasm while his pants were still on (a talent that is listed under the special skills section of my resume). We made plans to get together again and when I text messaged him the following day to say hey, he replied:

“Had a great time last night too. We’ll talk soon.”

Talk soon? What the hell does that mean? I expect contact after a hand job at least forty-eight hours of our last encounter. Because, homey no longer plays that, I decided I was going to wait to hear back from Matt. I am so fucking tired of flaky ass gay guys who you never hear back from when they say they’ll be in contact. Quite frankly, him not getting back in touch with me was a disservice on his part given the events that took place in his bedroom. Anyway, I waited. And waited. And waited and ten days later, Matt resurfaced.

“Hey stranger! Sorry I’ve been MIA. I was out of town. How are you?” Matt text messaged.

“Fine. Let me know if you want to get together at some point over the next few days.”

I liked this kid and wanted to get to know him better. Oh, who the hell am I kidding? I wanted to go to second.

“Rain check? I am really busy this week and blah blah blah…” he replied.

I told myself after all of the shit that went down this summer I was no longer chasing after anyone, friends or otherwise to make plans and responded as much. Shockingly enough, I haven’t heard back since. First off, people can start going out of their way to see me. Secondly, I am leaving town for three months and I no longer give a fuck. I give so little of a fuck that a few days after this correspondence, I reached out to Jeff…or Jake…or John…no, it was Jeremy. I reached out to Jeremy, whom I had been speaking to frequently but never met, to see if he wanted to get together. For whatever reason, I’ve never been able to commit this kids name to memory and continue to refer to him as different characters from “Blackouts and Breakdowns”. Anyway, I asked Jeremy if he wanted to get together sometime and he said: “yes”.

“Would you like to go for a walk in the park this weekend?” he asked.

Not the kind of get together I was shooting for, but I replied, “That sounds fun.”

“God,” he then said, “the people in the apartment upstairs from me are so fucking loud. I’m never going to be able to sleep tonight.”

“Come over here and we can have a sleep over,” My Tourettes was acting up again, “We can braid each other’s hair and talk about boys.” I was clearly joking, because a) Jeremy has a shaved head and b) I don’t talk about boys, I blog about boys.

“What would we do?” he asked.

“See above,” I said, “we can do each other’s nails too if you want.”

“What’s your address?” he then asked.

Wait…what? I was totally kidding, but it had been a pretty low couple of months. Besides the over the pants HJ I had given to Matt (a favor to which he did not return) I hadn’t gotten any loving since my trip to South Africa months before. I figured, “what the hell?” and gave Jeremy my address to come over. I alerted my roommate that a stranger was coming to our place and quickly got myself together.

Jeremy came over and we quickly got to making out which led to other things, of course, because I am, inherently a whore. It was a pretty good hook-up, however over the phone, Jeremy kept telling me “what a good kisser” he was but he wasn’t. His mouth kind of felt like sand paper and every time I tried to get him open it further, he pushed me away. There are some gays, who “don’t like to make out” while they are hooking up with other guys because they think it’s too intimate, but will proceed to go down on you, so go figure where the logic in all of that lays.

Here’s a little thing about me: when I am hooking up with a guy, it usually doesn’t take me a long time to have an orgasm because, it happens so rarely that when I am in the company of another man, I can pretty much get off by someone simply looking at me. Jeremy, on the other hand, liked to take his time, which is more than OK. However, when I feel like it’s time for me to go, I always give my partner a little heads up by saying: “Hey dude, I am about to have an orgasm.” This is a little disclaimer to give my partner a bit of a heads up because when I am done, you need to be done as well or close to it. I will help you in any way I can to get you there, but once that flight has landed, I deplane smoke a ciggy butt and go to bed. I gave Jeremy my obligatory heads up, polished myself off and rolled over, but Jeremy wasn’t done. I tried to help for the next twenty minutes, but he told me he’d rather go at it alone. Thirty minutes later, I lay there and wondered how early was too early to file my tax return as Jeremy continued his effort to have an orgasm. Thirty-five minutes later, I wondered where Stressica was and what he was doing. Forty minutes later, I began to wonder what made me think going brunette was a good idea and thanked my lucky stars that my hair was so God damned blonde that my color had already changed back. Fifty minutes later, I began to prioritize my Christmas list and realized that a cardboard cut out of Susan Lucci was exactly what I need to take on book tour with me. An hour later, I heard Jeremy make some sort of groaning noise and assumed he had successfully polished himself off.

“Now, I become to little spoon,” he said as he rolled over, pulled the covers over his head and went to bed.

“What?” I asked. I got no response.

“Hello?” I asked as I smacked him on the head.

“Heeeeeelllllllloooooooooo!!!!” I yelled.

Jeremy had passed out seconds after he had an orgasm and was lying right in the middle of my bed with my security blanket, which I cannot sleep without, right under his head. I pulled my blanket out from under in an attempt to wake him up, but it didn’t work. I was completely joking when I told him I wanted to have a sleep over. I don’t sleep well with other people unless that other person is Stressica and we are sleeping under the stars in Providence, Rhode Island.

I tried to push Jeremy over to the other side of the bed, but he wouldn’t budge. He just lay there like a lump in the center of my bed. It was now three in the morning so I curled up in a ball and slept at the foot of my own bed. I had nowhere else to go.

The next morning Jeremy woke up for round two. I wanted to tell him that he had no business falling asleep in my apartment, but figured, that would be pretty rude, especially considering it was Thanksgiving morning.

Again, as I was about to climax, I gave Jeremy a heads up and told him what the deal was, but he was apparently not listening because once I had an orgasm, he was still high and dry. After about twenty minutes of waiting for Jeremy to finish himself off, figuring out what I was going to wear to watch the final episode of “One Life to Live” and what racist comment I was going to text Boa that day, Jeremy leaned over and said:

“You know what, it’s Thanksgiving, I should probably go.”

Had he not said that I would have missed dinner waiting for him to cum.

Jeremy left my apartment that morning and suddenly, I felt like a complete asshole. All I do is complain about how much I hate everyone and all gay men and then I completely turned into what I hate most: a selfish gay man. Here was this perfectly nice guy; all he wanted to do was take forever to get himself off and cuddle and here I am acting like an asshole. He never called me back, either because I hustled him out of my apartment or because he’s actually an asshole in good guy’s clothing, but I felt horrible nonetheless.

The lesson that we learned here is; Ah, fuck it, I don’t even know anymore.

ICONS

2011-11-28T21:27:00.009-05:00

Since I am pretty much Oprah to most of you, I decided that it was high time that I told you what some of my favorite things are. As most of you know, like Oprah, I enjoy hiking my fat black ass up flights of stairs in front of millions. I also enjoy my “non-sexual life partner” Stressica (however, unlike Ops and Gail, we’ve never fucked). I also enjoy the theatre and this past weekend; my gay wet dream came to life when ICONS, a Provincetown staple made it’s way to Times Square.

Two years back, I drove up to Provincetown, Massachusetts for a little fun in the sun, hair tossing and bikini snapping. The single life gets rough and I needed a break. My world was completely turned upside down when a male gay approached me on the street and handed me a postcard for something, but I wasn’t sure what. Now, this was right around the time that “Blackouts and Breakdowns” had come out and since PTown is the gay Mecca of the eastern seaboard, I figured, he was asking for an autograph. I was wrong, he was handing me a postcard for a show called ICONS that was to take place a mere five minutes from when this conversation was taking place.

“Go, see the show,” the male gay said to me, “it’s fabulous.”

“Fabulous, huh?” I replied, “That word gets thrown around a lot these days. Especially by people who shouldn’t be throwing it around. Mrs. Obama, I’m looking at you.”

The male gay looked at me with confusion: “What?”

“Eh, never mind,” I said as I made my way up the stairs to see this ICONS show.

Upon entering the theatre, I realized, what I had just paid for was a drag show. I have a long, sorted history with drag queens. I honestly, don’t like them very much. They creep me out a bit and the fact that I hooked up with one sophomore year of college when I was very, very drunk (and haven't lived it down since) has left a bad taste in my mouth as far as female impersonators are concerned, literally. However, when the lights went down and the show began, my outlook on drag queens changed forever.

The first thing that happened was an overly dramatic film projection of different images of some of my favorite divas. Not only do I love my divas (Hello, Britney, Hello GaGa) I love overly dramatic film projections as well. Bet you didn’t know, I am an avid viewer of French films from the 1950’s, did you? “One Life to Live” counts as one of those, right?

After the very short film, the one and only Tina Turner came onto the stage and began singing “Proud Mary”. Granted, the show had only been going on for twenty seconds at this point, I turned to the woman sitting next to me, grabbed her arm and said: “this is the greatest show, I have ever seen in my life, and I have seen A LOT of shows.” She told me to stop touching her. Not only did the drag queen on stage give me a full on Tina impersonation to the letter, she also gave me choreo. Fierce ass choreography; that I have been trying to recreate ever since, to no avail. You all know, I love me some Tina Turner (I used to drive around in high-school yelling at my brother, who did not appreciate her as much as I did screaming “YOU WILL LISTEN TO TINA!” at the top of my lungs as I sang “Thunderdome”) but Tina was soon joined onstage by the one and only Cher. Or Chair, as the Asians call her.

I was not only amazed at how much these divas reflected the actual icons they portrayed; I was amazed at the talent on the stage. The drag queens themselves, were legendary, there was no doubt about that. As if that wasn’t enough they were joined onstage by two back-up dancers and when I tell you the saying “bodies be right” does those boys no justice whatsoever, I am not lying.

Saying my head almost exploded with joy and confetti after the opening number of Tina and Cher is the understatement of the century. Ten minutes in, and this little drag show on Cape Cod was pretty much already better than anything I had ever seen on Broadway. But it just got better after that. Madonna was next with a kick-ass “Open Your Heart/Vogue” medley and just when I thought they weren’t going to do the original choreography from the video, Madonna and the hot ass back-up dancers bust out with the vogue hands.

I got a semi when Janet Jackson came out next. Here’s where the black one really got to shine. She gave my full on “If” video choreography like I had only ever seen Janet herself do. I’ve never felt so at home in a theatre before. Meanwhile, much to my surprise; the cast of ICONS only consists of TWO drag queens. When watching it the first time, I thought there must have been three or four, but no: it’s simply two hard working little dancers parading around on stage in costume after costume, dancing for their lives and having the best God damn time I have ever seen anyone have on stage.

I would go on to tell you the rest, but I wouldn’t want to ruin it for you. I will tell you this: ICONS has the recipe for what makes a good show: rip-away costumes, sexy ass back-up dancers and a balloon drop. What more do you need from a theatrical experience? The answer: nothing. Except, maybe Goldie Hawn, if she were to make another rare appearance on the Great White Way, but I’m not holding my breath for that.

A few weeks back, I was prancing around Times Square when a male gay walked up and handed me a postcard. Having thought he heard about my epic book tour, I prepared to sign it, when I saw it was a postcard for ICONS.

“OMG, my favorite show is coming to NYC?” I asked.

“Yes,” the male gay replied, “And get this, they’ve added a full on Britney medley.”

I double queefed. I was so excited about this news; “Do they do ‘I’m A Slave For You’?” I asked.

The male gay with the postcard looked at me with a look that said: “Is the Pope Catholic?” When he gave me that look, I realized, he looked eerily familiar, as if he were some sort of male gay ghost who had come to me once before at some point. Either that, or he looked like a co-worker, I can’t quite recall.

“Where do I get tickets?” I asked.

“Go to the theatre, you lazy piece of shit,” he replied, and with that he was gone.

As if kismet, ICONS is now playing at the Snapple Theatre in Times Square. If you were lucky enough to get coned into coming to my book launch party, then you’d know that I’ve performed on that stage. Now my favorite drag queens, my favorite beverage and my favorite theatre have untied as one unstoppable feather boaed force to be reckoned with.

I just saw ICONS again this weekend, and I am happy to report that they have successfully transferred the show to Times Square and get this: there are now FOUR hot ass back up dancers. You all need to see this show if for nothing else than the body be rights. I highly encourage everyone to see this truly amazing show, and in the spirit of the holidays and keeping in tradition with Oprah, everyone who reads this blog before December 25, gets a free pair of tickets to see ICONS on me.

Just kidding, you cheap assholes! But to purchase tickets to ICONS (a show produced by a man named D’Angora, who sounds amazing, wish I knew him) click on this link (they’re very reasonably priced for a show in New York) and if you happen to be in NYC on a Friday or Saturday night before I leave for book tour, I will see you there!

Straight For A Day - A Short Story

2011-11-18T23:35:00.002-05:00

Since being gay is a choice, I decided that today, I would be straight. Here’s what happened.

8am: I wake up. My alarm clock is blaring “Toxic” by Britney Spears and I quickly turn it off. Yesterday, when I was a homosexual, I most likely would have enjoyed such music, but today I’d prefer fucking Britney Spears than actually listening to anything she has to say or sing.

8:15am: I pour myself a cup of coffee and go into my bathroom to prepare for my day. I take a peep around the medicine cabinet and notice that there seems to be an endless amount of hair products, body lotion, fragrances and a big bottle of something called “gun oil”. I have no idea what to do with any of these products so I splash some water on my face, run my fingers through my hair and I am ready to go.

8:23am: After conquering the bathroom, I walk into my kitchen to find something to eat for breakfast. I search the refrigerator for something edible but all I can find is non-fat yogurt, egg whites and whole-wheat English muffins. I skip breakfast; grab my gym bag and head out the door.

8:46am: On the subway, I thumb through the Daily News to see what’s going on in the world. Apparently, the mother from “Life Goes On” and the guy from “Criminal Minds” are doing some sort of musical revue on Broadway. This probably would have piqued my interest yesterday, when I was sleeping with guys, but today I am simply confused by it. I flip to the sports pages and instead of finding out what won the big game last night, I find out that basketball has been canceled all year and several coaches from different college basketball teams have been accused of touching little boys private parts. It’s a tough to be a straight guy these days.

9:04am: I grab a donut and head into my office. As I walk by my co-workers, they stare at me as if I had come to work drunk. They’re probably confused because today I am straight so I am not wearing a flashy tie or a pocket square. Instead, I am wearing the beat up suit I wore to my college graduation, socks that don’t match and a shirt that had some sort of pink stain on it (possibly from my ill-fated attempt at making homemade blueberry muffins the other day, when I was gay.)

10:52am: My lesbian sister calls. She asks why I am straight today and I ask her why she continues to think that homosexuality is genetic.

12:09pm: My alleged “best bud” at work, a flaming homosexual named Pete comes into my office and asks if I want to have lunch at some place called “The Hole”. I opt not to and instead go to a sports bar. I eat a lunch that consists of chicken fingers and French fries. The bartender brings me a Diet Coke and I nearly lose my shit. Suddenly, I have lost the taste for artificial sweetener and almost lose my lunch. I try to find some highlight show to watch on TV but my favorite football team has lost nearly every game they’ve played this season and nothing else is going on except college basketball and why I may be straight today, even that bores the shit out of me.

1:23pm: I’m back in my office and Pete comes in looking disheveled. When I ask him what happened in the past hour, he proceeds to tell me that we need to have “girl talk” later and exits my office. I wonder why two grown men would be speaking like girls and ignore Pete altogether.

2:32pm: I start to notice the receptionist is a little bit more and go over to speak to her. Apparently her name is Robin and when I ask her out on a date she asks me if we will be having flirtinis and going on a manhunt like the last time we went out. Apparently, I am going to have to change jobs if I am going to be straight because all of the women in the office and I seem to be lifelong friends and are not interested in me sexually.

5:01pm: I head to the gym after work. Upon entering; I hear loud techno music and the only people I see around me are extremely well toned men. I begin to wonder if this gym serves champagne because I feel like I am in a club.

5:46pm: As I am doing squats at the gym, a little Mexican kid named Tito comes over to me and asks me why I never called him back the other day. I tell him that I am straight today and he laughs in my face. He smacks my ass when he walks away and says something about how I was a firecracker in the bedroom. I feel alone and scared.

6:47pm: I decide that since I am straight now, I will go to a singles bar to see if I can pick up a girl. I order a beer and stand in the corner and look around the room but all I see are couples – everywhere. I ask the bartender if I am actually at a singles bar and he tells me that yes, I am but I have come late because happy hour is over in thirteen minutes and everyone has already paired up for the evening.

8:26pm: I get home and decide to watch some TV, but the only things I have saved on my DVR are taped episodes of Gossip Girl, Glee and The View. Apparently straight me and gay me have very different taste in television so I opt to watch reruns of Dragnet because it’s the only thing on my television that seems remotely manly.

10:09pm: I brush my teeth and while I am, I notice the anti-wrinkle cream in my cabinet. I wonder why I would ever need that and close the vanity after I am done washing up.

10:15pm: I lie in my bed and pray that when I wake up tomorrow, I will want to be gay again. Being straight is a pain in the ass and not in the good way that being gay is.

Hold On - I'm Comin'!

2011-11-14T18:57:00.004-05:00

As many of you know by now, I am taking to the road. Beginning January 16, 2012, my sorry ass will be hustling across this great land of ours promoting my book Blackouts and Breakdowns as well as my upcoming book "Eating My Feelings" due out April 19, 2012. After careful consideration and loads of research my team and I are finally ready to announce the full list of cities we will be visiting.

Most of our stops are already booked or in the process of being finalized but we want to hear from you to find out what the hot spots are in each city and what venues are not to be missed. Check out the list below and contact either myself or Jeffrey and let us know where YOU want US to go in your town.

Jan 16-18 Seattle, WA

Jan 19-20 Portland, OR

Jan 21-24 San Francisco, CA/Oakland, CA/Santa Cruz, CA

Jan 25-27 Los Angeles, CA/Santa Barbara, CA/Anaheim, CA/Long Beach, CA. This section is called "the raping of California"

Jan 28-31 San Diego, CA

Feb 1-2 Phoenix, AZ

Feb 3 Tempe, AZ

Feb 4-6 Denver, CO/Boulder, CO

The raping of the Lone Star State begins...

Feb 7-9 Austin, TX

Feb 10-11 Dallas, TX

Feb 12-13 Houston, TX

Feb 14-15 Tulsa, OK

The raping of Mark and Jeffrey begins in some not-so-gay-friendly states...

Feb 16-17 Fayetteville, AR/Little Rock, AR

Feb 18-21 New Orleans, LA/Mobile, AL

Feb 22-23 Jonesboro, AR

Feb 24-26 Memphis, TN

Feb 27-29 Birmingham, AL

Mar 1-3 Atlanta, GA

Mar 3-5 Savannah, GA

Mar 5-7 Charleston, SC

Mar 8-11 Raleigh, NC/Asheville, NC

Mar 11-17 Washington, D.C./Baltimore, MD

Mar 18-20 Philadelphia, PA

Mar 21 Hartford, CT

Mar 21-23 Providence, RI

Mar 24-26 Boston, MA

Mar 27-28 Ithaca, NY

Mar 28-30 Buffalo, NY

At this point I will have gotten four people pregnant in various cities...

Mar 21-Apr 2 Columbus, OH/Cleveland, OH/Pittsburgh, PA

Apr 2-5 Chicago, IL

Apr 6-8 Madison, WI/Milwaukee, WI

Apr 9-11 Des Moines, IO/Iowa City, IO

Apr 12-13 Lincoln, NE

Apr 14-16 Kansas City, MO

Apr 17-18 St. Louis, MO

All dates are subject to change, but for the most part this is our master list. So have at it kids. Let’s us know where you want to see us and we will be there. We are learning so much about each city as we continue booking venues (I now have a new respect for the citizens of Milwaukee, WI but that’s a whole other story) but want you to tell us more. We want to meet all of you while we are on the road. Who is ready to BLACKOUT in 2012???

Nancy Drew and the Search for the Imaginary Friends

2011-11-13T22:40:00.003-05:00

Looks like it’s time to put my Nancy Drew hat back on. People have gone missing and I can’t help but wonder where they’ve gone.

I love channeling Nancy Drew. I often wonder what she would do if she were in the situations that I have currently put myself in. Such as, if Nancy had fucked a publicist from Random House whom she had met at the gym, she probably would have followed through with her plan to get said publicist to assist her if she had been going on book tour, but that is the difference between Nancy and I. She is known for her follow through and I am not.

Anyway, I have been wondering what has happened to certain people I have established relationships with who seemed to have disappeared without a trace. In a city as big as New York, it’s not uncommon for people to come and go without warning, but quite frankly, I have tired of it. It is exhausting getting to know people, pretending to give a shit about what they do then trying, in vain to fuck them and never hearing from them again. It’s time consuming, especially when I could be doing something important like blowing out my hair or watching reruns of “Solid Gold”.

We all know that a few months back, I reached out to the man in the red shirt to try and be his friend. I had invited him to several book readings I had in New York because, if we were friends he would certainly want to see me in action. Coincidentally enough, every time I have had a book reading, red shirt had been miraculously out of town.

“Sorry, I won’t be able to make your third book reading this month, I will be out of town,” an email from red shirt said.

“Funny how every time I have one of these, you’re nowhere to be found,” I replied.

“My father is sick so I keep going back and forth to Illinois to help my mother take care of him.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help,” I replied.

I never heard back from him until last week when I reached out once more. I know at this point that we will never be together and don’t even think of him romantically anymore, but he was an important part of my life for a time and I wanted to make sure that everything was legit with his father.

“He’s doing OK,” red shirt said in response to my email asking how he was doing. “I’m doing OK. How are you?”

I responded by telling red shirt that I was doing very well, was very busy planning a book tour, starting a production company, getting ready for another book to come out and working forty-five hours a week on top of that. But apparently not busy enough for stupid as conversations such as this apparently.

I never heard back from red shirt, most likely because my response email to him had nothing to do with his favorite subject: him and figured I would just stop trying because I really didn’t give a crap anyway, I was just trying to be nice. I wasn’t going to reach out to red shirt again until I found him on Grindr later that week. The man who is afraid of having sex is on Grindr. Does anyone see the irony in this? What could he possibly doing on that sight? Networking? Please.

“Pretty ironic that you’re on Grindr? Huh?” I asked him and never heard back. Considering that whole “no sex” thing and all. Looks like my efforts in being the bigger person have been thwarted, yet again. Being the bigger person is violently overrated anyway.

After this encounter and in an effort to save time and my sanity, I’ve recently deleted Grindr from my iPhone. I was having a particularly low Thursday when a man named Aaron reached out to me:

“Hello,” he said.

He seemed cute, aside from his receding hairline that could be seen, via telescope from Guam. He was also thirty-six, which meant he was an adult…right?

“Hi, what’s up?” I replied.

“Oh, nothing, I am about to go out,” he said.

Great, I thought. Would you like a cookie?

“With a friend?” I replied.

“Hopefully more,” he replied.

“Then why the fuck are you bothering me?” I asked.

And I never heard back. What a fucking idiot. If you’re about to go out on a date with someone you hope will be more than a friend, why in God’s name are you bothering me? If I’m on Grindr, I am most likely looking for a ten-minute blowjo b, not someone to sit around and talk about boys with while we braid each other’s hair.

The following day, I was outside of my old residence grabbing my fifteenth iced coffee for the day. I looked down at my phone, as I had just received a text message and when I looked up I saw Eric walking into my old building. Eric is a man with whom I have now exchanged 4523490 messages with on Grindr and have had face time with as he lives in my old building and I used to see him on the regular. When I looked up from my phone I saw Eric stop and stare at me.

“Hello?” I said with my iced coffee in one hand and my phone in the other.

He continued to stare at me without saying a word.

“HELLO?” I yelled. Perhaps he could not hear me.

Eric continued to stare.

“HEEEELLLLLLOOOOOOO!!!!!” I yelled once again.

Eric turned and walked into the building as if, days earlier he had not told me that I could walk into his unlocked apartment where he would be waiting for me, naked and on all fours and have my way with him. NOW he’s decided to play coy? Really?

I took my phone, which was still in my hand opened up my Grindr application and deleted it. What a waste of my God damn time. Dating in this city has officially turned into creating a world of imaginary friends with whom you could speak with endlessly online, however when it comes to face-to-face time, they disappear without a trace. Instead of shitting, gay men in this city simply get off the pot with no explanation whatsoever. Even the ones you’ve made human-to-human contact with come and go with the greatest of ease. We have created a world in which it is so effortless to simply come and go from someone’s life as if you never existed at all. If someone says something you don’t like on a dating sight after you’ve corresponded with them for weeks, you can simply delete them as if they were never a thought in your mind in the first place.

It leads to me to the ultimate question: What Would Nancy Do? Because I know when the haggard old guard keeper at the old boarding house told her there was nothing to see inside, even when she knew better, that little bitch kept on going because she knew that what she found inside would lead her to solve the mystery of who stole the money from the Girl Scout cookie collection. If Nancy were in my situation would she keep looking for these idiots who had led her on for weeks, or months or would she simply put her flashlight away and called it a day? I am pretty sure she’d never be caught on Grindr, so it’s probably not an issue, but it does make me wonder what the hell happens to all of these people who lead others on and are never heard from again. The only logical explanation I can think of is that they all get horrible STDs and are confined to a life of squalor because of it.

Most Eligible: Dallas

2011-11-09T22:59:00.004-05:00

I often wonder what factors have led to my current dating situation: single. I wonder if it's me (couldn't be) or if it's New York. Sometimes, I find it helpful to look to others to see what insight they have on dating, mating and finding your one true love. I recently reached out to Laura, a 39 year old fierce ass woman who lives in Texas, whom I've never met in person but correspond with frequently via twitter. And when I say "correspond" I mean, I will post a blog about a horrible break-up and she will respond by saying "Oh girl! Have I been there before!" I recently interviewed Laura to see if douche bags guys who broke up with their partners via text message were exclusive to New York gays or if that was pretty much a universal way of dealing with people...and I loved what I found out. Also, I love blogs like these because I had to put little to no effort into this because Laura is funny as hell.

1. Where do you presently live?

After 20 years in Dallas, TX, I decided to move back to East Texas where I grew up. The city where I currently live has a population of 998 people. Suffice to say, there is no one that I would want to date. So I still date people in Dallas. And Houston. And Austin. And any place but East Texas. As my dad once said to me, "I don't care what

you do, but don't do it here."

2. I'm in love with your father. Moving on, what is the most embarrassing way you've ever been broken up with?

I was dating this successful doctor from Dallas named Richard and all signs pointed to a relationship. On our third date, he surprised me with a long weekend trip to Napa for food, fun and wine-tasting. He had great manners and an awesome sense of humor. We had an amazing time, and after we got back to Dallas, we had a few weeks of blissful
fun. However, his best friend Wayne hated me. He and I had gone out for about six weeks earlier that summer, and it had not ended well. One morning Richard told me that he and Wayne were going to San Francisco for the weekend, and that he would be back late Sunday night. Friday morning, as I booted up my computer, I saw an email from
my boss which was an email forward from Richard. He and Wayne were in San Fran and he had decided that after speaking with Wayne, we needed to break up. My boss came in my office with the "you're so sad and
pathetic" look on her face and said, "So...did you check your email? Richard just dumped you. I'm sorry. You can take the day off."

3. I don't understand how it's possible you were dating someone who was best friends with someone you had already dating. The dating pool in Texas can't be that small, however this is coming from someone who galavanted with his ex's ex-boyfriend for the entirety of the fall of 2010 so no judgements here. What is the worst date you've ever been on?

"I met you the other night at your brother's concert. I'd love to come to Dallas and take you to dinner," said the voicemail. "Call me back and we'll set something up for this weekend, if you don't have plans." A few phone calls later, I had a date with Michael for the next weekend. He and I had met a few weeks before, and after a few cocktails, I gave him my telephone number. "Make a reservation anywhere you want," he said. Always being a considerate person, I made a reservation at my neighborhood, moderately-priced sushi restaurant for that following Saturday night and called my mom to tell her I had a date. "Make sure you look pretty," said the former Texas Beauty Queen. "As opposed to every day when I'm not pretty? I'll make a special effort, Mom." Saturday night rolled around, and he called from downstairs to let me know he was there to pick me up. I went down and as the elevator doors opened, I saw him, and it was not pretty. When he and I met, he was wearing a suit and tie and looked cute. That night he was wearing a vest, work boots, and a bolo tie with a gigantic longhorn on it, "Oh God", I thought. "This is never, ever going to work. And more importantly, I can't let anyone I know see me with this freak." "Are you ready?" he said, and then we went out to his car, which had a gigantic bottle of Jack Daniels in the front seat that was half-way finished. "I stopped halfway and went to the liquor store because I needed a drink." "So you were drinking and driving all the way to Dallas?" At that moment, I knew that this was going to be the worst date of my life. As we arrived at the sushi restaurant, I sent him to the bar to continue his night of binge-drinking and trotted over to the hostess desk to check on our reservation. "Hi Laura! You're table will be ready in about 30 minutes, so just go wait at the bar." "Listen," I said in a quiet, yet firm voice. "I'm on a first date, he's drunker than Cooter Brown, and he's wearing a bolo tie. You have got to get me in and out as soon as possible. And make sure you put me in the corner just in case I run into anyone I know." "I'm on it," she said, and started moving other people's reservations around. When I sat back down at the bar, I noticed he was on his third double Jack and Coke. Our hostess came over and hurried us to a dark table in the corner. "I've never had sushi before," he said, so I'm probably just going to have cocktails." I ordered a few sushi rolls and took off to the bathroom to call my girlfriend Jenn. "Where are you? You have got to come out and save me. This is like the worst date in the history of the world. He's drunk already and wearing a fucking bolo tie." "Oh God, I just got home from work. Let me change clothes and I'll meet you in 45 at the L Bar. Our gay army is there so this should be great." I quickly ate, he paid the bill, and asked where we were going next. "We're meeting my best friends at a bar down the street. Let's go." It was a pretty straight shot to the bar, so I luckily didn't die in his car, which was a purple Mustang. As we walked into the L Bar, I realized that Jenn had already warned everyone and they were ready to pounce. When you run with a bunch of awesome gay guys in your posse, you know that an evening no matter how horrific it starts, can only get better once you meet up with them. "My date is drunk and wearing a bolo. I'm going to go to the bathroom to hide for a bit. Please terrorize him as much as possible so he leaves." As I walked away, I heard my friend Shayne say,"I love your bolo." I grabbed Jenn and pulled her into the ladies room. "What were you thinking? Have you gone absolutely insane? He's wearing a bolo tie!" "I called and told you about the bolo tie. Don't think I haven't noticed it. We must get rid of him." As Jenn and I motored back out into the bar, we ran into Will he shoulted "Your date is outside smoking. Also, he's so drunk that he fell down and is rolling in the street. We'll get him out of here." About 20 minutes later, Will and Shayne came back in, where Shayne delighted in telling me that as they were pouring Michael into a cab they had called for him, he showed them a box of Magnum condoms that he had bought for our date. "You're not allowed to date anymore," said Jenn. "Let's get out of here and go get drunk at the Vine." Michael kept texting every five minutes to tell me he hated me and that I was a terrible date. I didn't answer any of his texts, because really, what was the point?

4. What the fuck is a bolo tie? Who cares? Your gays sound amazing and I expect to meet all of them when I am there in February. Have you ever gone on a date with someone you didn't want to date but had no other options and how did that date go?

I had decided that after what could be considered one of the worst break-ups of my life, I was ready to date again. "My high school boyfriend is awesome. I really think that you guys would hit it off", said my girlfriend Shelley. "Fine," I sighed. "Set it up, but an hour is all I will give him. But you have to be there. I'm not going by myself." "Great! I'll ask Dr. Greg to join us. He's always up for a fun night." Dr. Greg is my sometimes therapist, and is gay and hot. I

figured, why not bring your therapist on your date? He can critique your dating style and he'll tell you if he's a keeper or not. "Listen you two...if I take my ring off of my right hand and put it on my left, that means it's time to go. Are we all on the same page?" As we sat at the bar, I knew he Bob was not a keeper. I realize that he and Shelley dated more than 20 years ago, but the guy was a dork. "I love your bowling shirt," I said as I met him. "It's so Charlie Sheen." I look over at Dr. Greg who has the "I'm trying not to laugh, but this is going to be awesome" look. An hour later, after Mr. High School had had ragged on his ex-wife and talked non-stop about their terrible divorce, I moved my ring over to the other hand. I was done... I mean, there are just some first date topic that should be avoided, and these include other women and how much they screwed you over. Shelley and I left and hit another bar, where we drank Mambo Taxis with our girlfriends and talked about men and how much they suck.

5. Again, what the fuck is a Mambo Taxi? Do you Texans have some sort of secret language down there? What do your girlfriends think about your current relationship status?

When you are 39, you are either married with kids or have pretty much dated yourself to death. Your girlfriends that are in relationships REALLY want you to be in one, too. They will fix you up with pretty much anything with a penis. A good number of my friends are single, and essentially we are all in the same boat. So we all have the same relationship status - we call it "what the fuck?". We like to share our stories with each other, because sometimes they are simply too unbelievable to be true. I once went out with a guy who's aunt pulled a pistol on me and made me slow-dance to the Righteous Brothers' "Unchained Melody" in her living room while she clapped and sang along. Another date asked me right off the bat if I was into three-ways, and if I wasn't, our date was immediately over. Another date neglected to tell me that he was married and his wife was currently pregnant with their third child. One of my best girlfriends went out with a guy that showed up for their date stoned and eating chips. My girlfriends and I look at our dating experiences and think that sometimes we'd rather be single.

6. Slowing dancing at gun point is a new one even for me. What's the most embarrassing thing YOU'VE ever done on a date? Cause Lord knows I have done more than my fair share of bullshit on dates.

I was on a first date with an awesome guy. It was one of those rare night is Dallas when it's cool and there is an awesome breeze - pretty rare in Texas. We were sitting outside on the patio drinking wine, and wine, and more wine. As I pushed back my chair to go to the bathroom, my chair fell off of the curb and I rolled into traffic. Also, the top of my dress came down, and pretty much everyone saw my boobs. When I popped up, I was covered in street filth and I pretty much wanted to die right there on the spot.

7. I accidentally peed on my own face on a first date (long story) so I'll see your boobs and raise you a face full of piss. Anyway, What's your advice to daters?

Keep dating even though sometimes it can be such a nightmare. You're never going to meet anyone sitting at home, alone, drinking wine on your couch. I have the utmost confidence that one day I will find the perfect guy for me, or I will become the crazy lady at the end of the hall with 12 cats and no husband. Only time will tell. My parents just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in March, and my brother and sister-in-law their 20th anniversary. Let's be honest - dating is a bitch sometimes. It can be a total beatdown. But you have to do it - you have to put yourself out there because you never know who you are going to hit it off with. If someone asks you out, by all means go. Because he may not be the right person for you, but you may meet someone else while you are out with him. Or he may be perfect for one of your single friends.. And when all else fails, grab all your girlfriends and your gay army and go dance your ass off.

Apparently readers, it's not just me, it's not just New York. It's everyone - everywhere. Dating sucks but we pretty much have to do it or else we'll all die alone and no one wants that. Follow Laura on TWITTER. And for you three single straight guys who read this, if you're in Dallas, Austin, Houston or anywhere in Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, or really pretty much anywhere in the continental United States, reach out to Laura. She's an awesome girl.

The Anatomy of A Sisterhood

2011-11-08T22:36:00.002-05:00

So many people have been asking me how The Sisterhood of the Traveling Booty Shorts came to be. Many have called this blog a “gay ‘Sex and the City’” (which is the biggest oxymoron anyone could ever come up with) but I like to think of this as a sluttier, raunchier version of “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants”. I am here to put all of your questions to rest once and for all and reveal how it is we met. Because we aren’t actually sisters, I mean I didn’t come out of the same vag as an Asian, hello, that’s genetically impossible as I am white. We’ve been gallivanting around town for over a year and a half, but how exactly did we come to be?

Me (the dumb blonde slut): I would go as far as saying I am the ringleader of this band of slutty misfits. Many of you know me from my epic book, others from twitter; others have slept with me and have somehow found their way to this dumbass blog.

Stressica (the Greek loving slut): Stressica and I met on Valentine’s Day of 2006 when two of our mutual friends decided to have us meet at a V Day dinner and it was love at first sight…but not the sort of love our mutual friends were hoping for. Stressica and I became fast friends over the next few years and while we fake tongue kiss and smack each other around as if we were in an actual relationship, we are in fact just friends. Stressica and I have seen each other through thick and thin and I love that little bitch as if he were, in fact my sister. We even lived together briefly back in 2009 and many a song about crystal meth was sung. He’s a great travel companion, as well.

Boa (the ethnic slut): Boa I actually met in D.C. a few years back when he was dating a friend of mine who lives down there. Last summer, I bumped into him in the middle of Times Square and after sticking my tongue down his throat and making a scene in front of hundreds of unsuspecting tourists, because I was so excited to see him, the two of us decided to take a random trip to Fire Island and proceeded to have brunch every Sunday for the rest of that summer. Boa comes and goes because of his job (high class escort) but when he is in town the booty dropping quickly commences and shots of Grenadine flow effortlessly. I honestly don’t know what I would do without him either.

Sing-Sing (the “General Hospital” slut): Sing-Sing got stuck being Amber Tamblin AKA “The General Hospital” slut because we didn’t know what else to do with him. But hey, she has gone on to have a very fruitful career so it’s not a bad sister to be. Sing-Sing I met last summer, also in the middle of Times Square when he was wandering around looking for theatre tickets and I yelled: “HEY BLUE BAG!” because that was the only point of reference I had for him. He had a blue bag from Diesel that I really liked and I wanted to see if he would give it to me, preferably for free. When that didn’t happen, we got to talking and quickly hit it off. Afterwards, when I friended him on Facebook, I found that we had a mutual friend: Boa. Apparently, weeks earlier, Boa had grabbed Sing-Sing’s ass at a bar or a club or an ice-cream shop, I honestly don’t recall and we all bonded over our mutual Asian friend (hey, you know what I always say: “everyone needs a token Asian around”). Sing-Sing is an amazingly talented performer and a great friend and I am so glad that I tried to steal his bag in Times Square that fateful August day or else I would have never met him.

So there you have it: The Anatomy of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Booty Shorts. As I prepare to put on the booty shorts to travel across the country selling my wears like the whore that I am, I begin to wonder which sister will visit me in which city and when. Perhaps Boa will pop into Tulsa, Oklahoma the weekend I am there and start a bar fight with a gay cowboy or even better, gay cowgirl (you how he hates cowgirls). Perhaps Sing-Sing will pop by when I am in Lincoln, Nebraska and throw things at unsuspecting school children on their way home from a long days work. As for Stressica, I have five words for you: see you in Fayetteville, Arkansas! It’s about time we finally made our dream of raping the Natural State a reality. I’ll miss my sister when I am on the road, but from now until January, we will dance and make horribly offensive racist comments wherever we go.

True Life: I Want to Marry A Canadian

2011-11-06T23:04:00.003-05:00

Except, not a French Canadian

After countless hours and research and compiling data from the leading dating researchers (i.e. watching reruns of “The Millionaire Matchmaker”) I have decided what I have been looking for all along was right in front of me. I need to marry a Canadian. With my efforts to find a Jewish husband thwarted, I have turned to our neighbors to the north in an effort to wife myself up. So if you’re reading this and you’re Canadian, take note. There’s a moderately good-looking, alcoholic with abandonment issues to the south of you who is waiting for you to put a ring on it.

Here’s why I believe I Canada is the new frontier for dating.

There’s no language barrier. True, if I were to start dating a Canadian I would technically be dating a foreigner, but I would be dating someone who spoke the same language as me. So, you have the appeal of dating someone from another country with none of the hassle of having to learn another language. And you all know how lazy I am; learning a new language at this stage of my life is completely off the table. However, it would be lovely if our Arctic friends could learn how to pronounce vowels. It’s aboUt not abOOt.

No one loves fucking tourists more than I do. If I were to meet a Canadian in say…the middle of Times Square looking for a Broadway show, I could quickly fall in love and do the long distance thing and not have to travel that far. Unless they live near the North Pole. Santa lives in Canada, right?

Santa may live in Canada. I’d be closer to presents if I were to move.

Free health care. If I were to marry a Canadian and move to Canada I could get free health care. If I were date one long distance, I could get free prescription drugs smuggled to me from up north to take care of my undiagnosed adult ADD, my undiagnosed multiple personality disorder and the gout I will no doubt eventually acquire because I am a seventy-five year old Jewish woman trapped in a well toned twenty-eight year old gay man’s body.

They’re passive aggressive. I could pretty much boss my Canadian boyfriend around with little to no retaliation on his part. Isn’t that what the US government does to Canada anyway?

They have disco fries…everywhere. Apparently, disco fries were not invented in New Jersey, as I had once thought. Disco fries are actually a dish the Canadians like to call “poontang” or something to that affect. There are culinary wonders to behold beneath the maple leafs.

My favorite people are Canadian. My roommate and lesbian life partner is from Canada. And he has lived with me and put up with my shit for over two years now with little to no complaining at all. Boa is also a Canadian. Asian, but Canadian nonetheless. And while both have refused sexual advances from me at numerous times, they’ve stuck around through thick and thin regardless of my borderline retarded behavior.

I could get into hockey if the price was right. There is something particularly sexy about grown men kicking the shit out of each other.

Their friendly and don’t talk shit behind your back like myself and the rest of us dumb Americans do.

Feeding the retarded child I will sooner or later get my hands on with maple syrup and Canadian bacon is so much better than the gross ass cereal I had to eat as a child.

So if you’re there God, it’s me, Mark. Please send a hot ass Canadian across the border to rescue me from all of the horrible American men who have done nothing but provide me with blog material.

The Intern

2011-11-06T21:16:00.005-05:00

“So…I am going on book tour,” I said upon entering Stressica’s apartment.

“Oh my God, that’s amazing,” he replied.

“Yea, I know, I will be traveling to thirty-five cities, peddling my wares like the fucking gypsy we all know I am.”

“Holy shit!” Stressica said, “How are you going to manage that?”

“IDK, I think I am going to have to hire help.” I paused and quickly got the best idea I’ve ever had. “Why don’t you come on book tour with me? You have vacation time, right?”

“Of course, but not three months worth,” he replied.

“Come on, it will be fun!” I cried. No two people travel better together than Stressica and I and you know that shit is true. “You’ll have to take a hundred per cent pay cut, as your pay will be the experience naturally, but think of the fun we will have.”

“Have you been smoking crystal meth?” Stressica asked. “You’re out of your mind.”

“I just assumed you’d want to go with me. This is the biggest leap forward my career has gotten since my ill-fated attempt at writing “Don’t Give Me Your AIDS” my AIDS awareness musical. I’ve finally hit the big time!”

“Hire an intern, you idiot,” he quipped.

“Intern?” I questioned.

“Yes, find a college kid to help you and come on book tour with you. They’ll receive college credit for it and you won’t have to pay them.”

“Won’t have to pay them? Perfect! Will I get to boss them around and embarrass them in public?”

“Of course, that’s what intern are for!”

And so my quest to find the perfect intern began. I prowled around a few college campuses in search for the perfect intern and after being physically escorted away by campus security, my lazy ass began to think that finding help was going to take actual effort, something I have little time or patience for. At the suggestion of my lesbian matchmaking sister’s lesbian matchmaking girlfriend, I reached out to Jeffrey Hartinger, a former employee of The Advocate magazine. Jeffery had met the lesbian dream-team on one of their trips to Los Angeles a few weeks back and my sister thought he would be the perfect candidate for the role of my new slave.

I reached out to Jeffrey and told him what the deal was. A thirty-five city book tour promoting my book BLACKOUTS AND BREAKDOWNS as well as my upcoming book EATING MY FEELINGS on college campuses, gay bars and bookstores all across the US. It took about fifty seconds to convince my new pal to come on an all expenses paid trip across the country but I promised him the work would be rigorous.

“Like, if we hit a city and things are slow I may need you to stand on the corner in your underwear and tell people to come buy my book,” I said over the phone.

“I’m ok with that,” he replied.

I already loved his “go-get-em” attitude. “How do you feel about sandwich boards? If I make a sandwich board, will you stand on a corner in Tulsa, Oklahoma and sell books.” I paused, “Wait a second, you’re the intern, you can make yourself a God damn sandwich board and stand on the corner.”

I chose Jeffrey to come with me for several reasons. First of all, he is a very talented writer. I suggest you all begin to familiarize yourselves with him, as he is now a member of the family. Secondly, he has the drive and passion that I would have had at age twenty-two had I not been blackout drunk all the time. Finally, he’s cute. No one wants a fat intern. Your intern is the face of a company such as mine and if worse comes to worse, we all learned long ago from the Clinton’s that sleeping with your intern isn’t as politically incorrect as we may have once thought it was.

The only problem is that Jeffrey lives 2500 miles away. In a stroke of genius, I decided to fly the little one in this past weekend, to see if the two of us could cohabitate. He will be the only familiar face I see for ninety days so I concluded that a trip to New York City for Jeffrey was exactly what we needed to get this book tour off to a magnanimous start. Little did I know exactly how well we would hit it off.

“Do you think I will get Stockholm Syndrome and fall in love with you like Patty Hearst?” he asked upon arriving.

“I hope so, nothing like a little drama to add a certain something else to the book tour,” I replied.

Jeffrey has a strange obsession with Patty Hearst, anything that happened in or around the 1990’s and flannel.

Falling in love with his kidnapper aside, the similarities between the two of us are unbounded. He’s bringing a little something else to the “Blackouts and Breakdowns” book tour.

He rolls with the punches. Not only did he and Stressica hit it off flawlessly, but he fit in effortlessly with the rest of my friends as well. When a girlfriend of mine stated that she didn’t understand why gay men hated vaginas as much as they did because they were “like assholes but on the opposite side of your body,” he laughed and proceeded to carry on with the conversation as if it wasn’t the most ridiculous thing anyone had ever said to him.

He has grassroots marketing ideas. “What if we kidnap a child in one city, take with us to our next stop and replace it with another child and continue the cycle wherever we go? That will garner some much needed buzz for the book tour," he asked. Genius! You all know how much I want to adopt anyway.

He likes to drink. This is crucial because you all know I do not. We are going to bars all across the country and I need a liaison with me to take that obligatory congratulatory shot upon doing a job well done at each venue. After watching him drink this weekend, I am pretty sure he can handle it.

He’s young. I am old and have absolutely nothing in common with college kids these days expect for the unexplained desire to use the word “quad” at least four times a day. Having just graduated college he has his finger on the pulse of what is going on with the younger generation these days. And he gave my blog a much needed facelift. Adding visual aids and links to other things have proved extremely beneficial.

He’s a hard worker. He needs to call and email hundreds of people a day. In an effort to gear him up for this daunting task, we role played. In my kitchen we rehearsed mock phone calls to people where I was the random owner of a gay bar and he was “Claire” my assistant. When I asked him what he was wearing, he fake hung up on me.

He said “I’m obsessed with…” and “Oh my god, I hate everyone” approximately 45204 times during his trip to NYC. Hello, mini-me.

He laughs and snorts at his own jokes. Hello, mini-me.

Not only am I thrilled to be going on book tour but, after our weekend together, I honestly can’t imagine doing it with anyone else. Not only do I have the world’s best intern but, I believe I have made a lifelong friend in the process. I am so looking forward to this next exciting chapter in my life and I am thrilled to have Jeffrey as the Bonnie to my Clyde. Hoping no one gets shot, of course.

When Jeffrey left this morning, I was certainly sad to see him go, but he wasn’t gone for long. When I opened the vanity in my bathroom, I found a picture of Jeffrey in a pink boa holding up a sign that said “Rockstar” on it. I laughed out loud. When I went to get my hair gel out of my cosmetic bag, there he was again, pink boa and all. Later when I went to get vitamins from the cabinet, there was Jeffrey. He’s left little pictures of himself with in a pink boa all over my apartment. I just found another one in my gym bag. What a little asshole – god I love that kid.

I texted him: “Oh my god, those pictures are hilarious. Now that you’re gone, I feel like I am the one with Stockholm Syndrome.”

He replied: “Well, you influenced me. I blacked out and broke down this weekend.”

“You sure did kiddo, you sure did.”

Get to know this hilarious writer right now. Follow Jeffrey on twitter and facebook and be sure to check out his blog. He’s going to be around for a while kids so you better get used to him.

Here’s our pre-book tour megamix!

“3 AM” by Matchbox Twenty, “Stop” by The Spice Girls, “Piece of Me” by Britney Spears, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana, “Morningside” by Sara Barielles, “Up the Ladder to the Roof” by the Supremes, “Plush” by STP, “I’m A Slave For You” by Britney Spears.

Grindr: For Dummies: Reloaded

2011-10-27T23:10:00.004-04:00

Back in June, I posted a blog about how to use Grindr, the application on iPhones that allows gay men to find the closest person to fuck using GPS navigation. It was kind of like a filthy version of QuickBooks: For Dummies and I thought I may have caught Hep-C just from writing it, but alas I am still STD free…for the moment at least. Thousands of you read the Grindr blog and it quickly became, by far, my most popular blog this year. But many of you still had some unanswered questions about the ins and outs of Grindr and I am here to put your qualms to rest once and for all and tackle the hard-hitting questions I’ve received from fans from the last few months. Welcome to Grindr: for Dummies: Reloaded.

Q: “I always practice safe sex, but I know a lot of the filthy sluts on Grindr do not. Is there a way I can make sure that the person I am about to sleep with is STD free?” – Todd, Trenton, NJ.

A: First of Todd, get it in Trenton. I love a Jersey slut. Anyway, there is no way to figure out whether or not the person you are about to have sex with is STD free besides taking his sorry ass to the clinic and getting certified papers that he’s clean, but there are a few tips to making sure you don’t get anything. First off, if they have the letters BB in their profile description, don’t sleep with him. BB is an acronym for bareback sex, which means unprotected sex. I learned this the hard way, when corresponding with a fellow a few months ago and wrote: “I love bubble baths too.” He was naturally confused by my retardation, but once I figured out what that meant, I quickly deleted him. Again, a few weeks ago someone who said they were into “BB” contacted me but insisted they were clean. I responded: “Someone who has unprotected sex with multiple partners is never clean, I don’t care what you say!” Even if they don’t have AIDS, they probably have Chlamydia or something awful like that. Also if you’re locking down a deal always ask the question: “Do you have condoms?” If they say things like: “Why would we need condoms?,” “I don’t like the way condoms feel” or “I don’t use condoms” – abort that mission ASAP. Good luck to you Todd.

Q: “I don’t like to sleep with poor people. Are the certain questions I can ask to avoid this?” – Paul from Lexington, KY

A: No one likes to sleep with poor people, Paul believe me. A good way to avoid sleeping with the lower class would be to move out of Kentucky, but if you can’t do that, I have a few helpful hints for you. A great question to ask is: “What type of devise are you contacting me from?” If the answer isn’t iPad or iPhone, the person you’re about to sleep with is probably not poor. For whatever reason (probably because Jesus hates the gays) people with Blackberrys and Androids can now use Grindr. If you’re not as ballsy as I, ask questions like: “I love my new IPhone 4, isn’t it great?” and if they respond: “IDK, I have a Blackberry from like four years ago,” head for the hills. Remember it’s not a bad thing to be poor, some people are just lazy and can’t help it, but it is a bad thing to willingly associate yourself with the impoverished if you don’t have to.

Q: “I met this guy on Grindr and he’s great. The only problem is that he’s an actor and he bounces around from town to town on tour with a show. I want to trust him, but having met on Grindr, I don’t know how I can. What should I do?” – Sid from Santa Monica, CA

A: First off, Sid, this isn’t a dating advice column. Secondly, never trust an actor…or a man in a red shirt for that matter. We’ve established this in numerous blogs. For one reason or another, actors are all the fuck over Grindr (especially in New York and in your area, I’m assuming since you’re from California) because they have nothing better to do. If you’re an actor on Grindr all the time, you’re not a good actor because you don’t have a job. If you did, you wouldn’t be bothering everyone in the tri-state all damn daylong. However, if you really want to figure out whether or not your new Grindr beau is cheating on you, you can highjack your iPhone to make your GPS seem as thought your in whatever town he’s in. Please contact me directly, as I now know how to do this thanks to my old pal Boa.

Q: “I’m confused. I’ve been talking to this guy for like a month and we still haven’t met up. What’s the deal with that?” – Aaron from Takoma, Washington.

A: Well Aaron, I hate to break it to you, but several things come into play here. When using Grindr you need to keep a few things in mind. A) Gay guys LOVE attention. Apparently, we were all dropped on our heads as children and need that extra consideration but, if you’re a gay man you thrive off of the attention of others, whether it be in person or online. B) Are you sure you’re not talking to an actor? Again, they love attention as well. (SEE ABOVE) C) Cross check a few things. Are you sure he’s single and not in a boring relationship that prevents him from meeting up with you but it doesn’t hinder whether or not he can waste your time online? Maybe he has an STD – just ask, it’s OK, we all get them eventually (remember my last blog post?) D) I’m going out on a limb here, but he’s probably an actor, just sayin’.

Q: OMG, Grindr sounds like so much fun, LOL. Do they have it for us girls?” – Stacy from Arlington, VA.

A: Stacy you sound like an idiot, but yes they do! It’s called BLENDER. Now straight people can waste their time at work as well! The same rules apply so take note. I can only imagine how this will work out for straight people, but I’m guessing not well, so proceed with caution.

I hope this reloaded edition of Grindr: For Dummies has helped answer any questions you may have. As far as I am concerned all Grindr exchanges should be as simple as the following.

Guy 1: “Hi.”
Guy 2: “Hey.”
Guy 1: “Wanna do it?”
Guy 2: “Sure, sent more pics.”
Guy 1: “Ok, you too.”
Guy 1: “Where are your pics?”
Guy 1: “OK, got them. Come over. Here is my address.”
Guy 2: “I have the condoms!”

Remember, you’re not looking for lifelong friendships or someone to braid your hair every night and bake cookies with; you’re looking for a fuck. Keep it simple and to the point and the results will be worthwhile for all involved.

STDs for You and Me

2011-10-23T23:40:00.003-04:00

It’s a funny thing: phobias. Many people are afraid of normal everyday things like the dark, spiders or snakes. Then there are those fucking weirdoes like yours truly who are scared of the most moronic shit than most people would never think twice about. Things such as threesomes; I’m petrified of having sex with more than one person at a time. I can barely concentrate when I have one other person in my bed let alone two to four other people. I’m also afraid of being traded into white slavery. It happened once on “Falcon Crest” and I remember as a child being mortified when poor Vicki Giobertti was sent off to some nameless Asian country to do hard labor. And then it happened again on “Models Inc.” thus deepening my fear even further. I must admit, however that the thing I am most afraid of in life is probably STDs.

Now I know what you all thinking: “How can a whore like you be afraid of STDs?” First off, I’m not a whore, well, not as big of a whore as you may think. If you wrote a blog about every man you’ve ever dated, kissed or had sex with, you’d probably look like a whore as well. Secondly, for someone who parades around town singing songs about AIDS, I must really be one to talk. Those songs are about AIDS awareness and prevention, as a matter of fact. “Don’t Give Me Your AIDS” (to the tune of the 70’s disco hit “Don’t Leave Me This Way”) is a cautionary tale and I plan on taking my musical collection to the good people at BC/EFA to help them raise money for AIDS awareness, I assure you. Lastly, you all must certainly remember my multiple bouts of celibacy. Remember from September of last year until May of this year when I didn’t have sex at all and was so boring that I wrote a blog about how much I loved “Only You” starring Marissa Tomei? Not really award winning material, if you ask me, but still a damn good movie. I digress.

I have been thinking about STDs recently and the affect that they have had on my life. I recently thought about my first AIDS test back in 2000, when I was a freshman in college. This was before you were told immediately whether or not you were HIV positive and had to wait for two weeks before getting your results. I walked into the free clinic in Chelsea, probably coming down off of one or multiple drugs and looking like a pre-op transsexual with a hangover and a Dennis the Menace haircut. I had recently hooked up with the second guy I had ever had relations with and convinced myself that I had every STD under the sun. Meanwhile, I was still a virgin.

“How many men have you been with?” the nurse asked as I sat down on a stool in the doctor’s office still shaking from the previous evenings shenanigans.

“Two,” I replied.

The nurse looked confused, “Two?”

“Yep,” I replied, “I know, it’s a lot!” I was so naïve.

She rolled her eyes. Meanwhile, two is nothing compared the to number I’ve since racked up.

“Have you ever given a blowjob?” she asked.

“No,” I replied.

“Really?” she asked, surprised. Given my appearance, I must have looked to the nurse like someone who gave blowjobs all the time.

“I don’t know where those things have been. Blowjobs are given to me.”

“Have you ever been penetrated or penetrated another man?” the nurse asked.

“No,”

“Seriously?” the nurse asked, “Then why are you here?”

“Because,” I began to say, “I hooked up with a guy last night and I am really scared that I may have gotten something.”

“You can’t immaculately concept an STD. And to be honest, it’s very hard to get an STD if a blowjob is given to you. The other way around, maybe, but I hardly doubt you have anything.”

“Just test me for everything, just to be sure,” I replied. Remember, I am a child of the 90’s where every gay movie aside from “The Birdcage” involved a man dying horrifically of AIDS, and it was always the one who least expected it.

I anxiously awaited my HIV test to return and two weeks later, was pleased to find out that I did not have the HIV. I did, meanwhile, get scabies from the first guy I hooked up with a few weeks prior and found out after I had been to the clinic. Turns out, I was scared about the wrong STD and you CAN get an STD from someone giving YOU a blowjob, if that someone has scabies or crabs. Lesson learned but apparently not retained. Confused? See: Blackouts and Breakdowns.

A few years later, I drunkenly left a friend’s party to meet up with another friend who I was interested in hooking up with. At this point in my life, I was a little less concerned about what STDs were out there for me to obtain. I was always safe, even at my drunkest and didn’t think much about it. I met the guy I wanted to hook up with at a roof party then proceeded to hook up with him on the roof of a strangers apartment in Hells Kitchen. Because even back then, I had a certain level of class unmet by any of my peers.

The next morning I woke up, prepared to die.

“Help me,” I said into the phone. I had called a friend from school in a panic. “I think I have GRID.”

“What’s that?” my friend asked.

“It’s 80’s AIDS. It’s AIDS before there was AIDS. I think I have it. I’ve never felt so horrible.”

“Are you hung-over?” she asked.

“Yes, but this is different. I feel like I can’t swallow.” I then proceeded to dramatically attempt to swallow about forty-five times to no avail. “Pretty sure, I’m on my deathbed and still pretty sure it’s GRID.”

“It’s not GRID you moron,” my friend replied.

She picked me up and took me to DOCS, which is this shady ass walk-in doctors office that, thankfully no longer exists. I waited for a doctor to show face for about twenty minutes when this sixteen-year old looking bottle blonde entered the room.

“Mark?” the doctor asked.

“Yes!” I popped up from my chair. I was ready for the news - any news. I had honestly never felt so sick before in my life and needed to know my fate immediately.

I walked into the doctor’s office and told her what my symptoms were.

“Hmmm…,” she said, “sounds to me like…”

“Oh my God, what is it?” I cried.

“Sounds to me like you could have AIDS,” she said.

“Seriously?” I put my head in my hands. I knew a blowjob on an abandoned rooftop was going to what finally did me in.

“I don’t know,” she replied, “I mean you could have AIDS. I don’t know. Could be AIDS, could be a couple of different things.”

This woman really needed to get a handle on her bedside manner.

“Are you kidding me right now?” I asked. “Did you get your degree, like, yesterday?”

She had to think about it.

“No,” she finally replied.

The bobble headed doctor ran a bunch of tests and prescribed a Z-Pack for me in the meantime. Two weeks later, I received a message on my cell from the dumb bitch.

“Turns out you don’t have,” she began to say, “AIDS,” she replied in a whisper. “But you did have gonorrhea of the throat. The Z-pack should have taken care of that.” Then she went on to teach me the importance of putting condoms on people before you blow them and I deleted the message before she could finish. What…a dumb bitch.

In response to my unholy liaison that resulted in my getting gonorrhea of the throat, something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, my friend later stated: “That’s what you get for leaving my party early.”

My final AIDS scare happened a few years ago after I stopped drinking. For whatever reason, I had convinced myself that I once again had conceived HIV, but there was nothing logical to back up this allegation I created in my head. When I stopped drinking, I literally stopped having any sort of relations with anyone for over a year, but was pretty certain for whatever reason that I had AIDS.

I went to a clinic in Washington D.C. (during a visit to the family – I ever so enjoy killing two birds with one stone) and again was met a friendly nurse who began asking me a series of questions. It was 2009 now so we had made drastic advancements as far as HIV testing was concerned. I would find out within fifteen minutes, instead of waiting for two weeks or getting told over the phone by some dumb bitch doctor that I didn’t have AIDS. If I had it, I would know then and there and could then proceed to ruining everyone’s Thanksgiving with my horrible news.

“When is the last time you had intercourse?” the nurse asked me.

“Over a year ago,” I said.

“Oooooook,” he replied.

“What was your last sexual partner?” the nurse asked.

“My ex-boyfriend. We had STD tests when we were together, so I am pretty sure I didn’t get anything from him.”

“He was clean?” the nurse asked.

“Yes,” I replied.

“So, let me get this straight,” the nurse cleared his throat. “Your last sexual partner was your ex-boyfriend who didn’t have any STDs and you haven’t had sex since?”

“Correct.”

“Alright,” he said as he swabbed my mouth with a Q-Tip.

“Ugh,” I shuttered, “I’m so nervous.”

“Don’t be,” he replied, “I usually say that to everyone but this time I actually mean it.”

“Why?”

“There’s really no way you could have anything at all.”

“I’ve been freaking out about this for a year. I finally brought myself to bite the bullet and get an AIDS test and now you’re telling me I have nothing to worry about. Great!”

“Mark,” the nurse said as he put the Q-Tip into a vial, “The AIDS virus is not airborne. You must have sexual contact with another person who has it in order to get it and you haven’t.”

He left the room and I stared at the wall. Probably because I was zoning out again, but perhaps I had been thinking that he was right. I had gotten myself so worked up about nothing. My phobia of getting an STD was completely unwarranted and I had gotten myself into a tizzy for no reason at all.

When the doctor returned with my negative test results, I left the clinic after he laughed in my face for a being a retard.

The moral of the story here kids is while I may be promiscuous, I always know to wrap it before I tap it and get that shit checked up on regularly. And you should too. How’s the for a public service announcement? Now that I’ve done my good deed for the day, I’m going to yell at the homeless man on my corner who always asks me for a quarter while talking on his fucking iPhone.

The Fuck Buddy

2011-10-19T10:51:00.002-04:00

Finding a boyfriend in this city is a pain in the ass – literally. Need proof? Read ANY of my previous blogs. Recently, I’ve decided to switch focus. Who the hell needs a boyfriend anyway? Boyfriends in the past have done nothing but cause trouble for me because I have never been able to find the right one and it has always led to disappointment, hence why I am still single. I’m slowly realizing that a fuck buddy on the other hand, may be the way to go.

Whenever anyone has asked me in the past why I have wanted to be in a relationship, my stock answer has always been: “Because I want to get laid on the regular.” Well guess what, you don’t need to be in a full blow relationship for that: you need a fuck buddy. Fuck buddies are great for several reasons:

- Conversation can be easy breezy. Who needs to have long discussions about feelings or financial problems when the only reason you’re in this relationship in the first place is for the sex?
- You don’t have to deal with your partners annoying work friends or asshole parents.
- Pretending to give a shit can be time consuming and exhausting. When you have a fuck buddy, your conversation is kept at a minimum so you only have to give a little bit of a shit - as it pertains to you and in a time sensitive manner.
- All of the bullshit of being in a relationship is gone and you can simply have fun and throw caution to the wind.
- As the sex continues, you can stop trying to impress just as if you’re in a relationship. Showing up in a moo-moo and flip-flops is OK on the fourth or fifth encounter. After all, you’re just there to fuck and you look the same with your clothes off today as you did the day before.

Back in 2005, I had a regular fuck buddy. He was a lovely young chap named Michael who I had met at a gay pride party on the roof of a theatre in Times Square. He was claiming to be gay but after a quick and dirty round of spin the bottle after this bottle landed on me, he was singing a different tune. Sound familiar? We’re rehashing shit from “Blackouts and Breakdowns”. In case you haven’t read it by now, and really you’re an asshole if you haven’t, I shall recap quickly. Michael and I struck up a fast friendship based on sex. I was still in college, “42nd Street” was still on Broadway and Destiny’s Child was still together – it was a better time for us all. I wasn’t looking for a relationship and Michael was still in the closet so our arrangement worked out perfectly. He would come over, we’d mess around and that was the end of it. That is, until four months later when Michael decided he was straight again and left me to go fuck girls again. I can’t say that I was heartbroken when Michael left me for vagina again, but I did miss him.

I have been thinking about Michael a lot lately and how carefree I was a young girl. Life is so much more complicated when you have a full time job, responsibilities and commitments. Add of attempting to find the love of your life and you’ve got a lot on your plate. All of this nostalgia has led me to one conclusion: it’s time to put a fuck buddy back on the payroll.

My search began late last week while I was thumbing through a few thumbnails of a few torsos on Grindr. Certainly there must be someone within a one-mile radius that would want to sleep with me on the regular. (Side note for all of your straights: most but not all gay men are whores who prefer would rather sleep with everyone over just one person. I find the hunt for such activities exhausting so in keeping in my tradition of being the lazy piece of shit that I am, I am looking for the one) I narrowed it down to a few possible candidates, each with their own pros and cons.

Possible Fuck Buddy 1: Jason. Jason actually found me on Grindr upon asking me if I was a wrestler because he thought that I had a wrestler’s body (flattery, by the way will get you everywhere with me). We got to chatting and it seemed as though Jason was looking for a fuck buddy as well. His had left town and had left him feeling alone and blue bally. We chatted and discussed the importance of a permanent fuck buddy and how we could mutually benefit from each other. I haven’t heard back from him since.

Possible Fuck Buddy 2: Gerald. Gerald conveniently lives around the corner for me and when I asked him what he was looking for, his simply responded: “A top”. I enjoyed Gerald’s to the point attitude and forwardness so I asked him if he wanted to come over, but told him that I didn’t have condoms and he needed to bring some over. His response of “Why would we need condoms?” got him quickly tossed aside. I may go around singing songs about smoking crystal meth and AIDS but neither are things I would like to partake in any time soon. Wrap it before you tap it Gerald. Wrap it before you tap it.

Possible Fuck Buddy 3: I never got his name. Last week a hot ass piece of body be all kinds of right told me that he thought I was hot and that he wanted to take me out to dinner. I could have done without the dinner but responded anyway because he was gorgeous. Haven’t heard back from him since.

Possible Fuck Buddy 4: Jeremy. As I was starting to run out of options, as I had now contacted almost everyone on my block to have sex at this point, I thought about reaching out to Jeremy. Then I remembered that I wrote a blog about him last week, a blog that I am certain he had probably read because we are friends on Facebook so I opted out of that as well.

Possible Fuck Buddy 5: My stalker. It seems as though your favorite blogger/author/go-go dancer has a new stalker. I didn’t realize it but someone had been contacting me and not revealing their face because he went to my gym and apparently had ogled me from afar. Yesterday, he walks up to me and literally introduced himself as “my stalker”. I burst into a fit of laughter, but noticed my stalker had a body be right. He was a bit older, but I’ve always found that older men always know how to treat a lady in the boudoir. Meanwhile, I was more than pleased to find out he too lives right around the corner from me. Looks like we have a winner.

Turns out, that finding a fuck buddy is just as difficult, if not more so, than finding a boyfriend. Here’s hoping that I don’t fuck this one up by screaming out “I love you” accidentally during sex, like I did that time back in ’03 with that pedophile who shall remain nameless. Meanwhile, I am so god damned ADD right now, my focus will probably shift by week’s end to figuring out how to repot plants or revisiting “Dallas” and throwing myself back into the mystery of “Who Shot J.R.?” Here’s hoping I find Mr. Right Now sooner rather than later.

A Class Act

2011-10-16T22:37:00.006-04:00

Recently I’ve been thinking about class; something I have very little of. Webster’s Dictionary defines the word classy as having or showing class as reflecting high standards of personal behavior. For someone who goes around singing songs about AIDS, whores around town like a high-class escort and wrote a tell-all book of his drunken debacles pre-sobriety, I’m not one who can really judge other people’s class regarding their own personal behavior. I can shed light upon others misgivings or comment on what others do, but deep down inside, I know my flaws and will be the first person to point them out in front of a group of my peers and did so in a published book.

The reason I’ve been thinking about class is because I got a very interesting text message the other day from my dear friend Tristan. You remember Tristan, right? He dated both Max and the 23-year old while I was entangled romantically with them in tandem and met me completely coincidently a few months following my fall out with the dream team – and he lives across the street from me! What luck! Tristan told me that he had accidentally text messaged the 23-year old while he was drunk (believe me, I know how that goes) and the 23-year old responded by questioning him on why Tristan had defriended him on Facebook. When Tristan, probably realizing the error in text messaging him in the first place did not respond, the 23-year old text messaged again saying that he thought my interacting with Tristan was “very classy” (in a sarcastic way of course) and that he knew everything that had gone between the two of us on because he had read the blog.

God love the 23-year old. He keeps popping up like a cockroach after an A-Bomb has gone off. He literally won’t go away. I haven’t really thought about him much recently because I have a lot going on and while I would love to put forth a ton of effort into hating him, I really just feel bad for him because he is clearly living in his own delusion. However, when I heard that the 23-year old thought that my friendship with Tristan lacked a certain level of class (Why? Because we had sat around and compared notes on how HE played US both and then moved on to have a meaningful friendship with each other? I don’t understand what’s classless about that. Perhaps the fact that Tristan and I neglected to fuck each other confused the 23-year old. After all, that was all he was ever good for) I began to think of all of his crimes and misdemeanors and quickly realized he wouldn’t know the meaning of the word class if someone stuck it inside him from behind. To recap this is a person who:

- Told me that he loved me, slept with me and didn’t respond to a text for ten days because he was “busy”.
- Was so starved for attention that he literally dated someone that he hadn’t met in person for five months while dating me.
- Brought his then ex-boyfriend to a show that I got him tickets for.
- Told me upon entering my life once more that he wanted to “see where things went romantically between the two of us,” a line he used not only on myself but Tristan and Max as well and at the same time.
- Has literally dated and slept with so many people that someone I have never met reached out to me via twitter asking me about his true identity and it took that person about fifty seconds to figure out who I was talking about. Your reputation proceeds you when you have a nickname like “The Bicycle of Ninth Avenue”.

I am not sure what the 23-year old defines as classy behavior but I am certain that Emily Post doesn’t have a chapter in her etiquette book entitled “How to Manipulate Everyone You’ve Ever Met to Get What You Want.” Tristan, one of the funniest and coolest guys I have met in this town did nothing wrong in this situation. It’s not his fault that the 23-year old has dated so many people in this city that one of his former lovers happens to live directly across the street from another. That’s what happens when you’re a whore.

Moreover, I was more than surprised to find out that the 23-year old still subscribes to THE SINGLE LIFE blog. Certainly he has better things to do with his free time the read about his previous machinations time and time again. But then again, he is so starved for attention so why wouldn’t he? Why wouldn’t he make me the villain in his sociopathic melodrama? He can say whatever he wants about me because if this were “Melrose Place”, I would totally be Amanda Woodward and he would be Alison Parker. Amanda’s mini-skirts were always shorter and her comebacks were always ten-times more venomous. Besides, no one fucks with Heather Lockier. Nevertheless, he can run back to his boyfriend Max with his halitosis breath and skinny girl arms and be reminded that in their world, everything will be OK, because they are never wrong about anything they do and are perpetually the victims in very scenario they’re in.

In the spirit of giving the 23-year old all of the attention he can handle, below is a link to a YouTube clip of my last book reading where I read a chapter from my new book “Eating My Feelings” (in stores April 19, 2012) It describes an occasion where I was dating someone who was simultaneously dating someone they had never met in person, but corresponded with frequently on Facebook. Sound familiar? Looks like a certain someone will forever be immortalized for the rest of his life. For someone who likes the attention so much, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind a room full of people laughing at his expense

Perhaps it’s time that we all take a minute and remember what the definition of classy really means. Because some of us, who seem to think they have all the class in the world, are simply the opposite of classy, they’re trash.

Lost in Translation

2011-10-13T23:38:00.003-04:00

Lately I’ve been thinking about Jeremy. Yes, Jeremy. His name is Jeremy and I’m not changing it because I don’t give a fuck. Jeremy is a child who lives on my block who, back in May I had sexual intercourse with twice in the same night. It was a particularly low, particularly chilly May evening when Jeremy and I met. We had corresponded on the Grindr months earlier but, in a fit of rebellion, I had deleted the STD riddled application from my phone for several months and when I re-downloaded it, I had about five messages from Jeremy.

“Hey,” a message from March 26 read.

“Wanna grab lunch?” a message from April 1 read.

“Hey,” a message from April 14 read.

“We live down the street from each other, we should hang,” a message from April 21 read.

“Hey,” a message from May 2 read.

The thing about Grindr is that when you delete the application from your phone and reinstall it after you’ve either been dumped or your blue balls are the size of your head, it remembers all of your personal information. Grindr is never done with you – it remembers everything about you and never goes away. It’s like AIDS – once you have it, it aint going anywhere.

Anyway, having received five messages from Jeremy, I reached out to him and invited him over and within a few hours, he was at my apartment. Jeremy was pretty cute. He kind of looked like James Franco if James Franco had been chilling in Somalia for about six to eight months. He was a skinny little thing, but this was back when I hadn’t had sex in about nine months so Gene Wilder would have looked like Brad Pitt if he had strolled into my apartment that evening. Jeremy was short with the conversation (and I really didn’t need to get too involved in the details of his life. He came over to have sex, we weren’t starting a book club, therefore the less I knew, the better) and we ended up having sex twice that night. Upon leaving my apartment, Jeremy told me that he would be in touch. He did, after all, live on my block so we certainly would be seeing each other again. I mean, if nothing else, he could pop by if he was feeling horny or if he needed a cup of sugar or lube.

A few weeks later, I text messaged Jeremy:

“Hey, you want to hang out sometime?” I asked.

“Sure,” he replied.

“When is good for you?” I asked, “Monday?”

Then – nothing. Weeks passed again and I reached out to Jeremy once more. Since we’re calling a spade a spade, I was really only trying to get laid once more. I wasn’t trying to strike up a best friendship or even worse - a relationship - I was trying to hook up.

“Hey, you want to hang out sometime?” I asked.

“Sure,” Jeremy replied.

“When is good for you?” I asked.

“I am in New Jersey now, maybe when I get back?” he replied.

“New Jersey? Gross!” I thought but kept said thought to myself.

“OK,” I replied, “Monday?”

Then – nothing. I never heard back from Jeremy. Now, I ask, what the hell is wrong with gay people? Is there something in our genetics that prevents us from ever being genuine with other human beings? Why, if you don’t want to speak to someone do you continue to go out of your way to not only response to that person and attempt to make plans with them and then never follow through with them? We live in New York; surely there are better ways to waste time than to waste mine.

A few weeks ago, I bumped into Jeremy on the street.

“JEREMY!” I yelled.

I love letting people know that I see them on the street and love letting everyone else know, I see my friend as well. Some people call that obnoxious, I call it networking.

“Oh, hey,” Jeremy said.

He looked surprised to see me, as if he had blacked out and forgotten we lived doors down from me. That’s what happens when you fuck your neighbor.

“What have you been up to?” I asked smartly. I knew what he was up to because he had stupidly added me as a friend on facebook. It was then that I realized we had fifteen mutual friends. Of course.

“Oh, just busy working,” he replied.

“Where have you been?” I asked. Don’t fuck with me. I knew he had just been ignoring me and I was hell bent on getting to the bottom of it. You see, I have no problem with a quick fuck and run. What I do have a problem with is when people who tell you they want to see you again and then string you along for months.

“Busy. Working, you know,” he said.

I stared into his eyes and as I was about to bombard him with insults, I stopped myself. First of all, I would look completely psychotic for bitching someone out on the street six months after we had had sex. Secondly, I came to a realization. Gay guys in New York are morons. I honestly don’t think that Jeremy was purposely avoiding me, I think one of two things happened. One: either he had simply forgotten about me or, the more likely answer is, his own stupidity hindered him from responding. He probably thought that I was really interested in him (because we all have such high self esteem in this town) when in reality, I was simply trying to get laid and since I’m lazy and he lived down the street, this seemed like a reasonable expectation.

I left Jeremy and went back to my apartment and turned on facebook. I quickly deleted Jeremy, but soon saw my old friend GQ’s status update. Remember GQ? He was the hot ass body be right who I slept with back in September who insisted that he was over his ex-boyfriend who never wanted to fuck him, fucked me, and then when I asked him if he and his ex were back together after they went to the Adirondacks together (what are they? Lesbians?) and he never responded. Caught up? Great. His status update was a picture of him and his no-so-ex-boyfriend at a restaurant. I wasn’t annoyed that they were back together, but more so annoyed by the fact that he was too big of a pussy to tell me. To make sure he knew that I knew exactly what was going on, I commented under the picture:

“Enjoy your blue balls!”

I don’t think there was room for anything to be lost in translation in that message. Letting Jeremy off the hook was my good deed for the day. Defiling GQ’s facebook was my cunty outburst of the day. I try to do something nice and something nasty each day to not only keep myself in check but to keep a nice balance to my life.

I’ve been saying this for ages, but can we all please just say what we mean moving forward? This continuous merry-go-round of bullshit spouting from our mouths is exhausting. Say what you mean and be done with it, and if it’s not what someone else wants to hear, than that’s their problem, not yours.

Three Year Queer

2011-10-11T08:29:00.000-04:00

October 11, 2011 marks the three-year anniversary of my sobriety. Honestly, I cannot believe I have made it this far. After years and drinking and running amok up and down the east coast, I took a giant leap of faith and decided to quit drinking once and for all. And what a giant leap that was. After three years of continuous sobriety, I am pleased to say that I have never felt better or been in a better position in my entire life.

The third year of my sobriety was met with many hurtles to overcome both personally and professionally. In November of last year, there was a time, due to circumstances beyond my control, that I thought that a life of sobriety was no longer for me. However, with the help of good friends and a hell of a lot of willpower, I managed to overcome my personal demons and move forward because drinking was never the answer.

Now, you all know I am not that annoying alcoholic who doesn’t go to bars or refuses to go to dinners where alcohol is severed. In fact, I encourage my friends to drink as much as like or even get bobble-head wasted drunk if they feel so inclined. But for me, sobriety has been the best thing I have ever done for myself.

Whenever October 11 rolls around, I cannot help but look at the year that has passed in sobriety and look at the triumphs and tribulations that have taken place of the span of 365 days - and Lord knows I have had my fair share of tribulations. Apparently, in my third year of sobriety, I had to learn the same lesson I had learned in my second year of sobriety all over again. I let people back into my life who didn’t deserve to be in it and the old saying “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me,” never hit closer to home than in May when our old friend the 23-year-old bulldozed his way in and subsequently right out of my life once again. The loves and losses have never been more prevalent than in year three of sobriety. The man in the red shirt, Superman, all of those Jews I dated back in December, all left me with a ton of lessons learned (I’m still wondering what some of those lessons were) and an arsenal of shit talking to do. For some time, it seemed as though, my direction had been misplaced and I was focusing all of my attention of finding love in literally, every wrong place you could ever look for it.

But as I look to the future, and what my next continuous year of sobriety holds, I am so amazed at the possibilities that lie ahead. For the past few weeks, I have completely shifted focus back on my career and what I can do for myself to advance not only myself, but the ones that I love around me – the ones who actually deserve all of the happiness in the world. I have started my own publicly traded production company, I have another book coming out next year and one more big surprise that is going to change the game of what I am doing for the rest of my life. This year is going to be different. This year, I am going to take care of myself and have a fucking blast while doing it.

Many of you have reached out to me regarding the lack of blogs lately, and I totally apologize for that. It delights me that so many people enjoy this shit-show and I hate to disappoint, so have no fear, I’ll be back very soon with tons of new stories and hopefully even better news to report in year four of sobriety.

Thanks to everyone who reads THE SINGLE LIFE - those who comment about it, tweet about it, make fun of it and for those few who take something very special away from it, well, you guys rock! You all keep me going and make what I do so much fun! Here’s to another year of being sober, talking shit and breaking hearts!

Thank God It's Thursday!

2011-09-27T13:15:00.002-04:00

This weekend climaxed for me on Thursday. Literally.

This past Monday I spied with my little eye a body be right wandering around Times Square looking particularly clueless, but sexy as hell nonetheless. I tried to stop to ask him a question, pretending to be a friendly New Yorker, but alas, he whizzed by me without saying a word. As luck would have it, I bumped into him again on Wednesday. He was still looking a little lost, but we locked eyes, and I asked him: “Are you looking for something?”

“Oh, no,” he said. He spoke English. Things were already looking up, “Well, I guess I am. I really want to see “Naked Boys Singing”,” DING DING DING! We have a homo on our hands, “but my brother wants to see “Spiderman”. Since we saw what I wanted to see the other day, I guess I have to appease him.”

“Your brother has horrible taste,” I said. Remembering that I was trying to be a Good Samaritan that day I stopped myself from saying anything further. “Well, what did you see the other night?”

“Priscilla: Queen of the Desert,” he replied. Yep, definitely gay. He had the hint of an accent, but I could not place from his dialect where he was from.

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“South Africa,” he replied.

Get It.

“Well, I guess we are off to “Spiderman”,” he replied as he walked away. This one was way too hot for me to let slip away. I encounter, literally thousands of people on a day-to-day basis. 99 per cent of whom, I could give two shits about, but, for whatever reason, my new friend from South Africa seemed a bit special to me. I followed him as he walked up to the window to buy theatre tickets.

“So what else are you doing while you’re in New York?” I asked.

“I’m trying to go out, but I don’t know where to go. Last night we went to the Ritz,” he replied.

“Ew, gross,” I replied, “The Ritz is only good if you’re trying to get an STD or have a fetish for Mexicans who live in New Jersey. Here,” I said as I whipped out a business card, “Call me, and I will show you a fun night out.” With that, I walked away.

I’m getting pretty ballsy in my old age. I honestly don’t know what has gotten into me the past few weeks. A wise woman once said: “soap opera says, you’ve got one life to live, who’s right? Who’s wrong?” Which makes sense unless you’re actually on “One Life to Live” in which case, you can come back from the dead multiple times with little to no explanation. But it’s true, though I had never given my card to a stranger on the street, what difference did it make? If he called me, we could go out and have a nice night. If not, I would, due to my undiagnosed adult ADD forget that I had even given someone my number in the first place.

And forget I did, until the following day when I received a text message from my handsome South African. It took me a few seconds to remember that we had even shared an exchange (see above), but after reading it, I was delighted that he had gotten in touch with me for several reasons. 1. I need to expand my fan base to Africa. Black people love me. 2. My South African was hotter than hell. He was about three inches taller than me, with a shaved head, a nice set of teeth and gorgeous eyes. Oh, and he was white. I know when my racist readers hear the words: “South Africa” they automatically think black. Well, think again. 3. Once in a blue moon, when Stressica and the rest of the sisterhood aren’t around, I do like to converse with strangers. 4. Americans have been pissing me off lately with their stupid, selfish behavior. Might as well throw a South African into the mix.

I met my South African in front of Therapy last Thursday night around ten, which is about two hours past my normal bedtime on a typical Thursday night. When I approached the bar, I saw him standing against a lamppost looking fine as hell. I walked up to say hello.

“Hi!” I said as I gave him a hug. Would you look at me? Somehow I have turned into a fucking one-man welcome wagon for all hot tourists who have lost their way in life.

“I didn’t think you were going to show up,” he replied.

“Of course I'd show up. I wouldn’t miss this,” I replied, "but I'm sorry I don't remember your name."

“My name is the South African,” he said.

“Oh,” I replied, “Glad we cleared that up.”

We walked into the bar and grabbed a few drinks. A vodka for him and a Diet Coke for me.

“So, you don’t drink?” the South African asked.

“No,” I replied.

“Is that by choice or did you used to drink?”

“I used to,” I replied, “but haven’t in almost three years.”

Apparently the South African liked to drink. A lot. Which is fine by me because I enjoy going to bars and watching other people get hammered. It’s basically every Saturday night for me. We continued to chat and I quickly found out that the South African had a very good sense of humor. Actually, he was fucking hilarious. No one has made me laugh, nay cackle, like that in a long, long time. The wonderful part about his jokes was that he told them with a hot accent. And while English was not his native language (he spoke some weird language that I not only did not understand but no longer remember what it’s called. There are just certain things I seriously cannot commit to memory. He did however, teach me how to say “fuck”, “cock” and “vagina” in his mysterious language. That much, I remember.) his comic delivery rivaled...well, mine.

As the South African continued to drink, we decided that when I made my way to visit him, I would come with four African children in tow. They would all be black (one of which would hopefully be a retard) and we would raise them together until I either got bored and left or the children grew up and went to college.

“Would you ever come to South Africa to visit?” he asked.

“Fuck yea, I would,” I replied, “I’d have to find my passport first. I think my mother stole it from me. She fears my leaving the country will result in my death, and really, I can’t blame her.”

“I was scared to come to New York,” SA replied.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because,” he stated, “South Africans stay in South Africa, we don’t really like to travel because we’re afraid of exploring.”

“Not us Americans,” I replied. “We like to explore places. Then take them over, kill their indigenous people and claim their land as our own. It’s the American way.” I almost made a comment about how America once conquered South African at one point then quickly realized that I was not Dutch.

SA and I went to our next venue to have a dance-off. It was going to be America versus South Africa in a winner take all – dance extravaganza.

“I’ll have to take it easy with the dancing actually,” the South African said, “I hurt my knee playing rugby so I can’t get too crazy.” I stopped in my tracks.

“So…wait a second,” I replied, “You’re hot. You have an accent. You play rugby. I just got a semi.” In that moment, I realized that sometimes, Jesus loves the gays. What are the fucking odds that this hot man would simply fall into my lap? Literally.

We danced the night away and had an absolute blast. My night on the town with the South African was quite possibly the most fun nights I have had out in the last three years. It was definitely the most fun I’ve ever had on a Thursday. As the night progressed, I began to get tired and was just about to call it quits until, like another little nugget from God, “Piece of Me” by Britney Spears began blasting from above. Now, anyone who knows me knows that song is my anthem. It’s a favorite of mine because it’s Britney’s little “fuck you” to everyone who’s ever said anything negative about her and I have listened to it about nine hundred times on my IPod. Whenever this song comes on, the spirit of Britney takes over and all bets are off.

I began dancing with the South African to my most favorite Britney tune and before I knew it, he was laying on one me. Gotta love that Britney, always coming through in the clutch. He was such a good kisser and I knew where things were headed so I invited him back to my apartment. I text messaged my roommate on the way: “There’s a South African rugby player coming home with me. I’ll explain in the morning. Oh, and he’s white.”

I won’t get into details (because a lady never kisses and tells, which is total bullshit because you know I always do, but in this case, my lips are sealed) but what I will say is, I have a new appreciation for the country of South Africa. He left my apartment promising to get together the next day, but unfortunately, it didn’t work out. He ended up getting tickets to “Wicked” and seeing that instead. Because what’s more fun than another night out with me? A woman painted in green and screaming her face off as she’s lifted up by a cherry picker.

I have kept in contact with my new buddy since he’s left the states. Upon leaving, he told me our night out was the highlight of his trip and to be honest, it was definitely a highlight of this year for me. We still plan on having those four black kids (three normal, one retarded of course), but Lord only knows when I’ll be seeing him again, if ever. In a moment of being the natural born entrepreneur that I am, I’m beginning to think of ways to open some sort of gay tourist center in Times Square to not only help gay tourists but, get myself laid in the process. Sleeping with tourists from other countries is kind of like being a slutty Cinderella in a way. You can go to the ball and have all the fun you want, but there’s a time limit on that shit so enjoy yourself. Because when the clock strikes midnight and your new lover is spirited back to his motherland, you’re left all alone dreaming of your South African prince charming while pounding Diet Cokes and watching reruns of “Petticoat Junction” in solitude.

The Bad Guy

2011-09-19T10:36:00.002-04:00

When a relationship breaks up, you can take on one of two roles. You can either be the good guy or you can be the bad guy. However there are those times when the bad guy tries to make himself out to be the good guy, resulting in the bad guy looking like an even bigger douche bag than he did to begin with.

We are all well aware of the untimely demise of my relationship with Superman last month. I invited him over for a steak dinner and was promptly dumped before I could even butter my pan. In all honestly, I did not see this one coming (I mean, I bought steaks for Christ’s sake, when we all know my usual dinner consists of a Marie Calendar’s chicken potpie) and I was very hurt by what happened. As this was not the first time I had been broken up with, I decided that instead of crying and watching “Beaches” on rotation for three days straight, I would take it in stride and move on. However, recent events have made me more pissed than I was after actually getting broken up with.

When Superman broke up with me, he told me that he thought our relationship was headed toward a more “friend territory” and that for whatever reason, when I expressed any emotion toward him he “didn’t appreciate it coming from someone who cared about him and that it meant more coming from a stranger.” I’m no shrink but I smell self esteem issues. Anyway, when Superman told me that he wanted to be friends, I decided that he was going to be the one ex that I was to remain friends with. I was going to make this a long lasting friendship. I was going to call his bluff, because he was too big of a pussy to just tell me that he didn’t want to date me anymore, so in an attempt to look like a good guy, he wanted to be “friends”.

Shortly after I posted the blog about our break-up I got a text message from Superman telling me that he had made a reservation for my latest book reading. I am assuming that he did this because he had read about how I viewed our break-up so now in attempt to save face, he was reaching out to be a friend. I was, in all actuality, very excited that Superman was coming to my book reading. It meant a lot to me that he was coming to see me in action, taking interest in my career and I was just excited to see him in general. We may have broken up, but my feelings for him hadn’t gone away and I never ever thought he was a bad person.

The night before my book reading last week, I reached out to Superman to say hello and to see if he would still be joining me and the divas for a night or singing and shit talking.

“Will I be seeing you at this shit-fest tomorrow night?” I asked. I was reaching out to him, mainly because deep down inside I knew he wasn’t going to show up and I wanted to get my disappointment out of the way so that I wouldn’t be upset on my big night.

About thirty minutes later, Superman responded: “Well, I made a reservation, but cancelled it because I didn’t like some of the things I had read in your blog about our break-up.”

Turns out, even after breaking up with me, Superman was still a fan of The Single Life. And really, who the hell can blame him? My retardation is on display for the world to see and it’s nothing if not hilarious.

Apparently, Superman was not happy with the way that I had handled things after he left (i.e. reaching out to the man in the red shirt) and thought that I had considered him as a “rebound”. I ask you, what “rebound” relationship lasts for two fucking months? I reached out to the man in the red shirt, as I said in the blog about it, because I thought I may have still had feelings for him and those feelings may have resulted in my relationship with Superman not working out. But they didn’t. I didn’t have lingering feelings for red shirt and the reason my relationship with Superman didn’t work out was because of Superman. See how that worked itself right out?

Superman and I exchanged an unpleasant correspondence via text message, of course, that led nowhere. Superman told me that I really needed to watch what I wrote about because the things that I say may hurt people’s feelings. On the flip, I take one hundred per cent responsibility for everything I write and say for that matter and if it hurts someone’s feelings it’s most likely a result of something they did and didn’t want everyone to know about or me just not giving a fuck anymore because the person I am writing about is, in fact, a fucking loser. But, this was, after all, coming from someone who told me that they weren’t in a position to be in a relationship because at the age of thirty-five, he prefers the attention of strangers over people who genuinely care about him. Thought I would just remind you of the person we are dealing with here.
When you get involved with me, you know what I do for a living so it should be no surprise that if you piss me off - you end up in a blog. I may need to watch what I say at times, but he broke up with me. Was I supposed to throw myself a parade because I was so happy about it? Of course not, I was upset…and I write a blog…about dating…come on…what did you expect? I also find it funny that I was being told to watch what I say by someone who told me that they wanted to be friends and had barely been heard from in weeks. When you break up with someone and don’t want to look like the bad guy, it’s probably best to just say what you need to say and get out. There is no need to pepper the conversation with bullshit about how you and your now ex will someday go apple picking together because chances are – you won’t.

What I find hilarious about all of this is how Superman made it very clear that he did not want to be villainized in this situation. This was the person who, had I not reached out to him would have simply not been seen at my book reading without as much as a text message letting me know he wasn’t coming after making a big deal about showing up. Sounds like a real stand up guy to me, how about you, readers? Early on in our relationship, Superman told me that he was friendly with the lawyer that I dated last spring. The lawyer and I dated for almost two months until he revealed that he was dating nine other people at the same time as me. Shortly after, we decided we were going to be friends and I invited him to my book launch party. He said he was coming, didn’t show up and hasn’t been heard from since. All of this sounds so familiar, but I can’t exactly put my finger on why. Oh, that’s right, because it’s basically the exact same thing that happened with Superman.

It seems to me that I keep dating the same variations of men over and over again. All of these people do whatever they want and say whatever they want but don’t want to be that bad guy any situation. However, their words and actions upon trying to be the good guy result in them looking worse had they not just kept their mouths shut in the first place. I propose that all break-ups moving forward should consist of just the following:

“I don’t want to date you anymore. I don’t want to see you ever again or have any communication with you moving forward.” It may be a tough pill to swallow at first, but it saves so much fucking time down the line.

Close Encounters of the (twenty) Third Kind

2011-09-14T10:39:00.003-04:00

Gotta love Grindr. Ever since I’ve been back on the market, my favorite time waste has been back on the old I-Phone and entertaining me on the daily. Last week I was thrilled when I received the following message:

“Do you go to Gold’s Gym?” the message read

Upon further inspection of the picture that popped up along with the message, I was pleasantly surprised to see that person sending the message was my gym boyfriend. You know what I mean – that guy you see at the gym all the time who is so hot that instead of talking to him you just stare and drool for hours in lieu of doing the squats you had intended on doing before the ten minute sex fantasy going on in your head started. Or am I the only one who does that?

“I do,” I replied.

Immediately he responded: “YOU’RE HOT!”

Wait…what? My gym boyfriend thinks I’m hot? How did this happen? Instead of replying something cute or sexy, I, in my usual fashion of being a complete moron replied: “Too bad we’re too chicken shit to talk to each other at the gym.”

That’s the thing about guys in New York, they have no problem telling you that they think you’re hot over the internet, but when it comes to face-to-face encounters, we’re all at a loss. Believe me, I am completely guilty of it as well.

The following day, as I was about to leave work, a man whom I had not seen in a coon’s age walked up to me:

“Hey Mark,” the man said.

As I looked closer at the person who stood before me, I could not believe my eyes. For those of you who are new to the blog, about a year and a half ago, I put a personal trainer on the payroll. His name was Ricky and he was the most racist, loud-mouthed piece of shit I had ever met in my entire life. Needless to say, I adored every second spent with him but as our time together came to an end, Ricky tried to set me up on a date with a guy who shared a last name with a very famous crooner from the 50’s. Because we both happened to be gay and Ricky was bored that day he thought it’d be a good idea to set us up. Now, a year and a half later after not hearing from this person, he approached me with a ticket in his hand.

“Oh my God,” I replied, “GQ!” I replied. My old almost-date from a year and a half ago looked like a GQ model. He’s 23 years old, has long dark hair and looks like he literally stepped out of a department store catalogue.

“I have an extra ticket to see “Follies” and I can’t get rid of it. Would you like to join me?” GQ asked.

“Oh, I can’t I replied,” I said as my co-workers swarmed like gay moths to a flamer.

“Are you sure?” he asked, “It’s free.”

“Yes, thank you though. Enjoy the show, it was very nice to see you,” I said as he walked away.

Jaws dropped, my co-workers approached me.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” one asked.

“What?” I replied.

“A hot guy asks you to see a show and you pass it up? What the fuck Mark?”

“Ummm…” I stuttered.

“Go!” he yelled, “Go find that hot guy! See the show and have sex with him after. Go now!”

“How do you know he was even interested in me?” I questioned.

“Because of the way he looked at you,” my co-worker replied, “Besides, no one likes Bernadette Peters more than you so it’s win-win.”

You know me; someone literally needs to stick their dick in me in order for me to know they’re interested. Thank God my co-workers had been there or I would have spent the night eating Lean Cuisines and watching reruns of “Petticoat Junction” alone. Hesitant, I breezed over to the theatre about two seconds before the show was about to start and there was GQ standing all alone. I took a good look at him and realized, body…be…right. In fact, everything was right. This boy was hot as hell. I walked up to him, grabbed his arm and said:

“I couldn’t let you see the show alone tonight,” and we walked into the theatre. The last time I went to see “Follies”, I saw THE 23 year old out of the corner of my eye. This time, I was willingly strolling into the theatre with a hotter 23-year-old on my arm. What is it about Bernadette Peters being on Broadway that always causes so much drama? Remember the “A Little Night Music” debacle of 2010? No? Go back to August 2010 for reference.

At intermission, I was curious to know why I hadn’t heard from GQ in a year and a half.

“Well,” GQ said, “I have been in a relationship for the past year and a half. Shortly after I met you, I started dating someone else so that’s why I never got back to you. We broke up about two weeks ago, though.”

My eyes lit up and with a grin as big as a Cheshire cat’s I replied: “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Yes,” GQ said, “It sucks but he never wanted to have sex.”

“What?” I asked.

“He wasn’t a sexual person.”

“Oh. My. God,” I replied, “That happened to me earlier this summer. Everything was totally cool with this guy that I was dating but he never wanted to have sex. What is going on with the gays in this town? For a group of people who are so sexually ambiguous, I have personally found two in the past three months who don’t like to fuck. There must be a pandemic going on. We must notify Out Magazine. Something has to be done.” Meanwhile I am quickly becoming a Norma Rae for all of those lonely gay boys whose partners no longer want to sleep with them.

GQ and I enjoyed the second act of the show and parted ways shortly after, planning to get together the following Sunday. When I got home, I realized that I had made plans to meet my gym boyfriend for dinner that Sunday as well. Could I possibly go on two dates with two different guys on the same night and NOT fuck it up? The answer: probably not.

Sunday rolled around and conveniently enough, GQ asked to meet at eleven o’clock at night. He’s a concierge at a hotel so he wouldn’t get off until then. Normally, being the seventy-year old Jewish woman at heart that I am, I would have told him to fuck off, but at seven-thirty, I was meeting my gym boyfriend for dinner so that would give me plenty of time for both dates.

I met up with my gym boyfriend at a Sushi restaurant in Hells Kitchen after work last Sunday.

When I sat down, I was in absolute awe of his beauty. My gym boyfriend was hot as hell. He was about my height, had short brown hair, had some scruff on his face and body was so right, there aren’t words to describe.

“It’s so nice to meet you,” I said, “it’s a shame we had to communicate over Grindr to finally get together in person.”

My gym boyfriend laughed, “I know.”

We sat and talked for a while and I quickly found out that my gym boyfriend was an editor at a book publishing company, an author himself and his interests included writing, reading and going to the gym. If you had added sleeping and taking showers to his list of interests, you would have had my list of interests. We were a total match and I had a really nice time. For the first time in a long time, I felt as if I had connected with someone on all levels. The only thing that threw me off was the fact that his ex-boyfriend was a fifty-year-old ex porn star who now played the piano for song drag show somewhere in GayTown, USA. Sorry to be sketchy with details, but you know how I zone in and out with details when they don’t involve me.

I left my gym boyfriend and went to meet GQ at his hotel. When he greeted me, with his long brown hair blowing in the wind as if he had just finished a photo shoot for some overpriced fragrance.

“Hey Mark,” he said, “Do you mind making a pit stop at my apartment, I have to walk my dog?”

“Of course not,” I replied.

We walked back to GQ’s Hells Kitchen apartment and after we walked his dog, he made us smoothies and asked if I wouldn’t mind looking over the manuscript of his book and ask me approximately 7,000 questions about publishing, finding an agent and marketing yourself as a writer. Listen, my words of wisdom are usually below par after midnight but he was hot and I liked hanging out with him so I thought I’d offer a few pearls of wisdom to help the kid.

After giving a thirty-minute tutorial on the ins and outs of the publishing in New York, my nosy ass decided to bring up his ex. I am fascinated by gay guy’s who don’t like to have sex. It’s like a lunar eclipse – you don’t come across one everyday.

“So you never had sex?” I asked.

“Well,” GQ responded, “We had sex like four times.”

“And you dated for a year and a half, correct?”

“Yes,” he responded.

“Was he abused as a child or something?”

“No, I asked and he said ‘no.’”

“Did he have some sort of sexual dysfunction?”

“No, it was business as usual in that department as well.”

“Raped at one point?” I asked.

“No,” GQ replied, “he said he just didn’t like having sex.”

“Fascinating!”

Turns out this had been a problem for GQ and he and his ex had broken up and gotten back together four times over the past year and a half. Each time they broke up, GQ slept with four to six people, got it out of his system and went back to his ex. Looking back on all of this, I probably should have just left, but instead I stuck around, had sex with GQ about four times and spent the night. You have to love those 23-year-olds, they’re nothing if not up for a few good rounds of slap and tickle just when you need them to be. And the stamina on that kid! Afterwards, GQ and I made plans for the following week.

The next morning, I did a walk of shame that rivaled anything I did when I was drinking. Not only was I walking crooked ladder for four blocks, I stopped for gelato and hashed out a ten-minute conversation with an old friend I hadn’t spoken to in ages. Let’s talk multi-tasking!

The following day, I asked my gym boyfriend if he was interested in grabbing dinner and he responded: “Mark, I think you’re really cute, really smart and really nice but I just don’t think we will work out romantically.”

I responded: “So you like ugly, dumb, mean guys?” And didn’t get a response. I must have been on a different date than my gym boyfriend was on. I had a blast, but apparently, I was the only one. No need to “let me down easy” gym boyfriend, I’ve been through worse, this month in fact, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to solider on with little to no problem but thanks for your well wishes. I look forward to the awkward “hellos” we will inevitably be sharing over the course of the next six months. That is, before I just start going to the gym in the middle of the night in an effort to avoid everyone I’ve ever met.

Later that day, I reached out to GQ to see what he was up to. Two days later, I got a response that he had been camping in the Adirondacks with his possibly-not-so-ex-boyfriend.

“Are you guys back together?” I asked.

Four days later and I still don’t have a response. I’m assuming his lack of a response is a “yes”. My response to that is: “Have fun with the blue balls you’ll have for the next six to twelve months before you and your boyfriend inevitably break up again and you go on yet another sex spree.”

Having gotten between a 23-year-old and his ex in the past, I know it’s best for me to steer clear of any of that. However, the thing the kids need to learn these days is to just call sex what it is and not keep in touch with or make plans with a person they have no interest in seeing again. That’s called: being an adult.

As The Revolving Door of Men Turns

2011-09-01T22:24:00.002-04:00

It’s amazing to me how you can go for a long period of time without seeing someone and the second they reenter your life; you’re so quickly reminded of why you liked them in the first place.

As many of you know, last week I contacted the man in the red shirt after Superman dumped me. My intentions as to why I reached out to him in the first place are still unclear, even to me, but for one reason or another he was the first person that popped into my head after Superman left my apartment. You may also know that my relationship with the man in the red shirt was rather tumultuous and did not end on the best of terms.

After a summer that has been filling with dates, heartbreak and a relentless effort on my part to try and make things work with several different suitors, I felt duty bound to reach out to the man in the red shirt to clear a few things up on my part and to find out once and for all what the fuck exactly happened. He has been on the back of my mind for months – how could something that seemed so very perfect turn into such a nightmare and why on earth after a full summer, can I not move past what happened months ago?

We decided to meet, post hurricane this week for a quick bite after work. When I walked up to the restaurant where we were meeting, I noticed that I was five minutes late and that red shirt was nowhere to be found. When I turned around, I saw the man in the red shirt looking at me with a face that said: “at least I’m not forty-five minutes late like the last time we got together.” Everything I remembered that I liked about him was still present. His quirky disposition, his good looks and his wit and charm. I saw all of that without him even opening his mouth.

“Sorry,” the man in the red shirt said as he approached me. He was, of course, wearing a red shirt.

“It’s fine, I just got here,” I replied.

“I’m getting better though,” he laughed, “five minutes is not that bad.”

I laughed. What else was there to do?

“No, not at all,” I replied, “and you’re wearing a red shirt. How appropriate.”

He winked at me.

We sat down at our table and the man in the red shirt began shooting his mouth off as if we were best gal pals who hadn’t seen each other in decades, torn apart by war, or whatever best gals pals are torn apart by these days. The second he took a breath, I interjected:

“I’m very glad that you agreed to meet me,” I said.

“Oh my god,” the man in the red shirt said, “I haven’t shut up since we got here, have I? I am totally hogging the conversation.”

You said it not me buddy.

“But I have to tell you,” he continued to say as if he had not heard his own previous sentence, “the scale at the gym told me I had gained twenty pounds in the past four days.”

“Huh?”

“Well,” the man in the red shirt said, “four days ago I was twenty pounds less than I am today. I asked the attendant at the gym if it was possible to gain that much weight in four days and he told me that he thought it was probably water weight.”

“Did charter a plane to the Evian plant and drink everything inside?” I asked.

“No. Weird right?”

“Yes,” I paused, changing subjects abruptly, “Anyway, I really wanted to talk to you,” I said, “but I’m still unsure why.”

“What do you mean?” he replied.

“Normally,” I began to say, “if someone had broken up with me via text message, there would be no further conversation to have because I would have killed them, but for whatever reason, this is different. I kind of missed you.”

The man in the red shirt looked at me. He knew things were going to get deep and probably didn’t like it.

“To that end,” I said, “You fucked up. However, I should not have pushed the situation of not having sex.” For those of you who don’t recall, the man in the red shirt kept pushing me away when it came to having sex. I left his apartment one night with every intention of returning the next day only to get broken up with via text message the next evening. There, you’re caught up? Need more info? Go back to the blogs from June. “My pushing you was not right. When I left your apartment that night, I wasn’t leaving forever. You know that, right?”

“No, I didn’t,” the man in the red shirt said.

“I would have never left and not come back.”

“But, everyone in the past has so why would you be any different?” he said.

“Have we met?” I said, “What makes you think I’m like everyone else?”

He smiled.

“I was always planning on coming back, but sometimes, I need my space to process and think about things.”

“But, I didn’t know that,” the man in the red shirt said.

“OK,” I replied, “Suffice to say, when I asked you to get together the following week, it was not for the confrontation that actually took place. It took at a lot of courage for me to come and meet you and when you showed up forty-five minutes late, I took the defensive because it seemed so disrespectful of you to have no regard for my time whatsoever.”

“You’re right,” he said, “meeting you that late was disrespectful and I am sorry.”

Wow, not what I was expecting at all. It would have meant a lot more coming from him two months ago, but beggars can’t be choosers at this point.

“Anyway, I have thought a lot about you since then and about our time together. It meant a lot to me. I know that it was brief but you left quite an impression on me.”

“You as well,” red shirt replied, “You are still one of the only people in this city that I feel like I can be one-hundred per cent honest with and be myself around.”

Again: where the hell have you been for the past two months? It amazes me how men in this city will continue to say whatever the fuck they want and do the exact opposite as if I was too busy tweeting to pay attention. If we had such a connection, why haven’t I heard from you until I reached out to you? It’s time the guys in this city start putting their money where their big flapping mouths are.

“There must be a reason that all of this happened that I cannot seem to wrap my head around,” I said.

“Life is just funny like that,” he said, “you have your ups and downs with people and sometimes they go away for a while and they may or may not come back. You have to find that level ground in order to make things work and we just didn’t at the time. It happens.”

I looked at the man in the red shirt in the face. He wasn’t saying anything I hadn’t heard before, but for some reason what he said struck a chord. I have got to get over shit and move on. I have got to stop trying to make things work with people who either don’t deserve my time or clearly have no interest in moving forward with anything other than sex or the casual date here and there. This isn’t fucking brain surgery, it’s dating; it should be fun and easy not painstaking.

“I guess you’re right,” I replied, “ I think we have a very special connection, and I really think that we should at least try to be friends.”

Never, and I repeat never, have I actually said that to someone I’ve dated and meant it until then.

“Yes, we should,” the man in the red shirt replied, “you are a special person.”

A special person who apparently, no one wants to date or even fuck at this point.

“I was signing books the other day for my upcoming reading and all I could think about was how I signed the book I gave you: ‘I hope you’ll still speak to me after you’re finished reading this’ and you’re not!” I laughed out loud, but got no response from the man in the red shirt.

“I never finished it,” he said.

“Why?” I asked.

“It was sad,” he replied.

“OK, it’s not intended to be, so please explain.”

“The things that you have been through are not funny. I know that’s how you deal with problems [by making them funny] but I don’t get it.”

“Oh, OK,” I replied.

“Writing for you is cathartic,” he paused, “you’re like, and you’re going to kill me for saying this; Carrie Bradshaw.”

Correction: I am Blake Lively from “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants”. Why won’t people stop comparing my life to “Sex and the City”?

“You are looking for something Mark,” he continued, “and you’re putting the leg work into it, and it’s certainly not easy. Writing seems to be how to vent but while you do that, you teach people valuable lessons. Whether I think it’s funny or not is not important, you’re still good at it.”

The man in the red shirt got me thinking about my summer and what exactly had been accomplished in the past three months and what lessons we have learned here. The summer began with the 23-year old breezing back into my life. Time and time again, he came in and out of my life shitting all over it in the process and I allowed him to do that again until our last hurrah in May. Then there was that epic two-week rendezvous with Clint, a man who was not only already in a relationship when he met me but had children on the opposite coast. Immediately following Clint was the man in the red shirt and right after him was Superman. It’s as if this summer was literally a revolving door of men coming in and out of my life. I honestly wish there was a lesson I could say I learned but I honestly don’t know what that lesson could be.

“I think we are looking for the same thing,” the man in the red shirt said, “I’m just not sure either one of us are going to find it in New York.”

It’s almost as if everyone in my life is telling me to move. Maybe it is New York. Maybe New York is the problem. In a town filled with eight million people, all of whom think they are the most important person on the face of this earth, it does make dating quite a challenge.

Red shirt and I parted ways. Maybe I needed this outing to realize that the two of us will never be together and that I should move on. While the man in the red shirt has his qualities, of which there are many, they come with a mountain full of obstacles, none of which I am prepared to take on at this current juncture. I don’t know whether or not we’ll ever get together again socially but I do know, it’s time for me to start refocusing on what’s important in my life and the flings and affairs are not it. It’s time for me to go back to my roots, to channel the sisterhood and sleep my way to the top of the New York Times Best Seller List.

The Storm of Change

2011-08-28T23:46:00.003-04:00

In the winter of 2002, a storm of change blew through Llanview sending all of my favorite characters from “One Life to Live” into a tailspin. Lives were ruined, people came back from the dead and Mitch Lawrence tried to rip Natalie’s heart from her chest in order to give it to a dying Victor Lord, whom everyone had thought dead for the past twenty years up until that point in time. What does this have to do with my life? Absolutely nothing, besides the fact that “hurricane” that New York news reporters hailed as an “historical weather event” was blowing into town this past weekend that promised to bring horrible weather and devastating rainfall and winds to the area. I decided I was going to call said hurricane the storm of change.

“Fuck this shit,” I yelled into the phone, “let’s go out!”

“And do what exactly?” Sing-Sing asked.

“Dance. Tonight we shall dance as if the world ends tomorrow,” I said, “The way the news is blowing up this hurricane you’d think it was.”

“Alright, meet you at ten,” he said.

None of this actually took place on the phone because we all know that I hate communicating human to human so this was all done via text message, but I thought adding “I said” as if we had spoken on the phone would enhanced dramatic effect. I had hoped that a week that began with me getting dumped by Superman would end with an epic night out with the sisterhood of the traveling booty shorts but unfortunately, Boa was out of town for work and Stressica was on his fifteenth weekend getaway for the summer. So, I was left with just Sing-Sing to parade around midtown with that evening yelling racial slurs all the way. Not for nothing, Sing-Sing is a good friend and I love him to death, but out of all of the sisters, he is unfortunately the one I see the least. He works a lot and I think he has undiagnosed adult ADD and forgets that myself and the rest of the sisters even exist at certain points.

Before I met up with Sing-Sing I took a backward glance at the events that took place this summer. I had worked a ton and had gotten a good amount done in making strides in furthering my career. I still have a book on the shelves of stores that for one reason or another continues to sell and entertains people. I have this blog that at least ten people think is the word of God and a fabulous group of friends, if whom I didn’t have I wouldn’t exist. Then I thought about my love life. This summer began with the 23-year old bulldozing back into my life like a cyclone from hell, continued with Clint the guy with the kids in California and the now infamous man in the red shirt and ending with Superman. It would be only fitting that a hurricane would strike New York on one of the last official days of summer after having dealt with all of that.

That night I met up with Sing-Sing at Industry a very popular bar in Hells Kitchen.

“Oh girl,” I said upon greeting him, “have we got to catch up or what?”

“What’s going on?” he said.

“Superman is out,” I stated.

“Wow, that was quick,” Sing-Sing said.

“Yes, two weeks after deciding we were going to be exclusive, he decided that we were heading in more of a quote friends direction.”

“What does that even mean?” I said.

“I don’t fucking know,” I replied.

“God, I hate everyone,” Sing-Sing said.

“Ditto,” I replied as we entered the bar. We walked into Industry and as the doors closed behind us, we saw hundreds of gay men out and about as if they had either hadn’t heard there was a major hurricane coming the next day or they were too blacked out at the time to give a shit.

“Wow, looks like everyone had the same idea as we did,” I said.

“Apparently so,” Sing-Sing replied.

“Gotta love those gays, they are nothing if not resilient,” I said, “But, I must tell you that after Superman left my apartment on Tuesday night, I reached out to someone I never thought I would speak to again.”

“Oh Lord,” he said, “Please don’t tell me it was the 23 year old. I will murder right here and now.”

“God no,” I said.

Then, as if on cue, the doors behind us opened and the lights from the entranceway glared down on the person entering the bar as if we were in some horrible teen movie from the late 90’s.

“Oh my God,” I said.

“What?” Sing-Sing asked.

“Oh my God,” I said again.

The doors to the entranceway closed and the lights were gone. I looked at the person who had entered the bar and almost couldn’t believe my eyes. We had literally just been talking about him and here he was: the person whom I had reached out to earlier in the week.

“Well, Well, Well,” I said.

“Hello, Mark,” the man in the red shirt said.

“Well, I wasn’t expecting to see you until later this weekend, but apparently there is a hurricane coming so it looks as if we’re going to have to change plans.”

“Yes, I guess we will,” the man in the red shirt said.

“This is Sing-Sing,” I said. Sing-Sing and red shirt exchanged pleasantries although I am pretty sure that the two of them had met before but had forgotten because they were hammered at the time.

Sing-Sing gave me a look that said either “I know what you did last Tuesday” or “I’m about to shit my pants.”

“I’m going to run to the restroom,” Sing-Sing said.

I guess it was the ladder.

“Thank you so much for getting back to me the other night,” I said to the man in the red shirt.

“It’s no problem,” he replied, “I told you I would always be there for you if you needed me to be.”

“Thanks,” I said, “I just,” I stopped myself. “I just feel bad about the way that things ended between the two of us.”

“It’s OK,” the man in the red shirt replied. “At least we got to see Katie Couric while all of this went down, so that was kind of exciting.”

I laughed, “Yes, yes it was.” I hardly doubt that Katie had heard the word “pussy” used in a sentence that many times in one evening but for a woman who let American see the inside of her colon, I assume she’s not really one to judge at this point.

“Anyway, I just wanted to speak to you. It’s not life or death so it can wait until after the hurricane.”

“Of course, its no problem,” the man in the red shirt said, “I’d really like that.”

Sing-Sing returned and the man in the red shirt excused himself.

“So you reached out to red shirt?” Sing-Sing asked.

“You know what,” I said, “people underestimate you Sing-Sing, you’re quicker than you look.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he replied.

“You’re an idiot.”

Sing-Sing and I proceeded to try and dance and have a good time but the fact that red shirt was in the room hindered my dancing capabilities. I wasn’t prepared to see him in fact; I had scripted out an epic monologue for my meeting with him and was not anticipating seeing him that night. I could not booty drop that night to my full potential and it was pissing me off so I told Sing-Sing we had to go to another bar at once.

“Should I say goodbye?” I asked Sing-Sing.

“Well,” he said, “you always claim to be such bitch Mark, but I know you’re not. You threaten to punch people in the face all the time but never do.”

“Just give me time,” I said, “and an encounter with the right person and maybe I will. Where are you going with this?”

“You’ll say goodbye to red shirt because you’re a nice person so go ahead and do that so we can have some real fun.”

It didn’t take me long to find the man in the red shirt. He was standing away from the crowd nursing the drink he had bought right after he walked in the door.

“Hey,” I said, “Sing-Sing and I are going to head out but I wanted to say goodbye. I’ll text you this week and hopefully you’ll have a free day after work when we can get together.”

“I definitely will and I look forward to it.”

The lights that had shined so brightly on the man in the red shirt upon entering the bar were harsh on my eyes as I walked back onto the street. Sing-Sing quickly followed suit.

We began walking down the street.

“So why did you get in touch with red shirt in the first place and why are you so surprised when you bump into people you had no intention of seeing? It happens all the fucking time now,” Sing-Sing said, “mainly because the list of people you don’t want to see grows exponentially on a week-to-week basis.”

“I know!” I replied, “And it’s exhausting.”

“So?”

“I reached out to red shirt for several reasons. One, I want to know why I continue to get broken up with. I am trying here and it seems as though every time I try with different people, the result is the same. Secondly, I kind of sort of want to know if there isn’t something still there.”

“Why? He broke up with you over text message.”

“I’m a Masochist,” I joked but Sing-Sing didn’t find it funny. “When I met red shirt, I was convinced that he was different from every other man that I had ever met. There must be a reason why this happened. And the fact that I badgered him about having sex like a horny teenaged boy wasn’t a hundred per cent fair on my part either.”

“I don’t know Mark, you’re headed down a path you’ve gone down before and the results were not pleasant,” Sing-Sing added. Hello 23.

Sing-Sing and I decided to go to a bar we normally don’t frequent and the dancing commenced. We had such a blast and it was as if we didn’t have a care in the world and that there wasn’t an epic hurricane coming the following day. I suddenly realized that this is what my life had been missing all summer. When I go out with the sisterhood, it is the most fun thing I can imagine doing. It’s certainly a hell of a lot more fun than an awkward first date or getting broken up with on my sofa. That night, with a hurricane looming, I decided it was time to change my prospective and go back to focusing on what I do best and the people I care about most. I have wasted so much time chasing after men who don’t deserve me and looking for love to no avail. It’s time to go back to the basics; the fun times and events with the people who have always been there for me no matter what. It’s time to channel the sisterhood and make this upcoming fall one for the record books. As the seasons begin to change, so is my outlook on life and this time it’s for the better.

Sing-Sing and I danced that night and after hearing “S&M” three times decided it we would have been better off and a hell of a lot richer if we had been strippers.

As we were getting ready to leave: “Keep in contact tomorrow with the hurricane,” Sing-Sing said.

“This hurricane is bullshit and New Yorkers are acting like straight up retards right now,” I said, “Because for a city that has survived terrorist attacks and the wrath of Mark Brennan Rosenberg for the last eleven years, the residents of New York are certainly a bunch of pussy’s when it comes to a little rain.”

And with that, I hopped in my cab and went home, alone. I can feel big changes and an even worse attitude problem coming my way and I am so excited for them!

Kryptonite

2011-08-24T23:12:00.003-04:00

What a week it’s been. Between going to Arkansas then not going to Arkansas and ending up in D.C., upon my return to New York, there was one person I could not wait to see and his name was Superman.

As many of you may have read a few weeks back, Superman and I decided to make our relationship exclusive. We were no longer dating other people and decided to see where things went with each other. When I returned from my whirlwind raping of the east coast, I contacted Superman and we decided to have dinner at my place. I had bought a few steaks in honor of our blessed reunion and was really looking forward to catching up and shooting the shit with Sups.

As we made our way back to my place, I got a headache like I had not experienced since my days of coming off of long binges of cocaine. In lieu of cooking, we decided it would be best if I sat and rested for a second before cooking.

“You know,” I said as I lay on Superman’s chest, “I missed you while I was gone.”

For someone that literally hates ninety per cent of the people around him at all times, that’s a pretty big statement coming from me.

“Really?” Superman asked as if I had just told him I was pregnant...with twins.

Now, when saying something like “I missed you,” one would hope that the response back from the person they are dating would be “I missed you too,” but I didn’t get that.

“I’m sorry,” Superman then said, “I just have this weird thing. When people I care about say nice things to me, it doesn’t mean as much as if some stranger were to tell me that they thought I was hot or missed me. I know, it’s weird, but it’s something that I have to deal with.”

I didn’t understand. Between the headache and the nonsense coming from Superman I was more confused than ever. What I wanted to say was: “So let me get this straight, a random tweaked out gay boy at some dive bar gives you the time of day and you throw a parade over it, but I, the guy you’re dating says he missed you and you could not care less? Please explain.” But in a rare moment of biting my tongue, I said nothing.

“Did you hook up with someone else this weekend?” I asked.

“No,” he responded, “Why?”

“Because I have this weird trust thing. Everyone I have ever dated has cheated on me so you’ll have to bare with for the first couple months of our relationship.”

“So you don’t trust me?” Superman asked.

“No, I do, it’s just, hard to explain,” I said.

“I didn’t sleep with anyone else this weekend,” he said.

“I believe you,” I responded, “I just have this weird thing, it’s hard to put into words.”

Then suddenly out of nowhere Superman asked:

“Where do you think this relationship is going?”

“I have no idea. I’m having fun hanging out with you. It’s easy-breezy and effortless and always lovely,” I responded.

“Because I think we’re headed more toward a friend territory.”

Interesting, as two weeks earlier we decided to be exclusive. #didntseethatonecoming.

“Ok,” I responded.

“I like you and I like hanging out with you. I think you are a great guy, but I just don’t see where this is headed. I just don’t have that overwhelming urge to be with you.”

“Yes,” I responded, “I understand what you’re saying. But every time I have had that overwhelming urge to see someone, it ends up in complete and utter chaos.” For reference, please refer back to my relationship with the 23 year old, the man in the red shirt, the lawyer, Dr. Jake and pretty much everyone I’ve ever associated myself with romantically. “So the fact that I wasn’t going crazy over all of this seemed to be a good sign to me.”

“I don’t know. I just have so much up in the air as far as my life is concerned I just don’t know what I want. And the fact that I haven’t wanted to be sexual in the past few weeks isn’t helping.” Here we go with another gay guy who doesn’t want to be sexual. Remember what happened with that the last time? (HELLO RED SHIRT!) For a group of people who are so sexually ambivalent, it’s a wonder how I keep getting stuck with the gay guys who have the libido of a ninety-six year old Jewish woman who plays baccarat in Boca every day with her girlfriends and reminisces of days when things were easier, you know, like before the second world war.

“You seem to be misplaced. You never seem to know what you want out of life so I understand why you aren’t tripping over yourself to be in a relationship.”

For someone who is as quick witted and fast on their toes as I am when it comes to stuff like this, that was the best I could do.

“I don’t want to look like the bad guy here, but I guess there is no way around it,” Superman said.

No, there isn’t.

“It’s OK,” I replied.

“And, I know you say you’re never friends with people you’ve dated, but I would like to try and be friends with you,” he replied.

“Listen, I think you’re a great guy, I really do,” I said, “We can try to be friends.”

Superman got up from the couch and gathered his things to leave. There’s nothing like getting broken up with in your own living room. At least I didn’t have to curse about it all the way home, because I was already home and could curse in the privacy of my own abode. He is nothing if not a gentleman. At least I wasn’t where he lived: Queens. Then I’d really be pissed.

“I hope your book reading goes well,” he said.

My next book reading is two and a half weeks away. If we were going to be friends, as he suggested, wouldn’t we be speaking before then?

“You should come,” I said.

“I don’t think I want to be your next target,” he said.

“Ummm…these books have already been written. I haven plenty of material without having to throw you into the mix,” I uttered.

“I’ll see,” he replied.

Looks like our friendship is off to a fantastic start. Seems as though Superman isn't that super after all.

After Superman left, I tried desperately to be angry but could not muster up the energy. I had reservations about getting into this relationship from the get-go but after a while, I felt as if I had made the right decision. I couldn’t understand why we had decided to make our relationship exclusive if he was going to be done with my in less than two weeks and why waste my time when I could have been doing something else? Like knitting a sweater for my roommate’s dog? It further proves my point that it’s not me…it’s everyone else. However, he didn’t do anything wrong other than express his feelings and I appreciate him doing that now rather than months down the line when I had made a further investment. However, I have been down this road so many times at this point, that I could teach a class at the Learning Annex on how to deal with a breakup. I understand that I have a right to be upset because, yet another relationship didn’t work out but it’s kind of become old hat at this point. Not that I am trying to be more cynical than I already am, but how many times can I cry over a guy before people simply stop listening? It’s really the same story over and over again but with a different cast of characters.

I went back to my computer and in a moment of desperation and sheer curiosity, I reached out to a person that I never thought I would speak to again and made plans to meet with him this weekend.

True Life: I Never Made it to Arkansas

2011-08-24T09:55:00.003-04:00

To recap: Stressica and I were off for a whirlwind tour of the Natural State when all of the sudden, our plans were turned upside down, flights were cancelled, I farted and it smelled like a horses vagina and we ended up back at the White Plains train station witnessing two black crack heads fight about whom belonged to who’s baby daddy when suddenly I realized what Stressica and I could do with our suddenly free weekend. Confused? Read the blog immediately following this.

“I know where we can go!” I yelled.

“Where?” Stressica asked.

“Watching those two crack heads gave me a thought. We can go to D.C. for the weekend.”

“Why?”

“Whenever I see crack heads, I think of D.C.,” I replied.

“I know that,” Stressica said, “but why would be go to D.C.?”

“Because it’s not New York,” I said.

That was reason enough for Stressica to bust out his iphone once again and book us two tickets to D.C. for the next morning.

“Thank God for technology,” I said, “if only I knew how to fucking use it!”

The next morning, Stressica and I got on the eight a.m. train headed toward our nation’s crapital. Before leaving, I threw something out in a trashcan in front of Penn Station and like Wonder Bread to pigeons, the homeless people started to swarm.

“Get me the fuck out of New York!” I shrieked.

Stressica had booked us on business class going down to D.C. in an effort to make himself: “feel good about himself.” The best part was: we were literally the only people on the train, so we could be as loud and obnoxious as we liked.

Anyone who has read “Blackouts and Breakdowns” (Seriously? You haven’t? Visit www.blackoutandbreakdowns.com immediately) or knows me personally knows that I am from D.C. and we have a love/hate relationship. Little known fact about Stressica is that he went to school down in D.C. and we ran in the same circle of friends, but at different times so we have a lot of mutual friends in Washington. God I love him. Anyway, when we arrived, Stressica put out a GAY-P-B and got in touch with our old friend Kimmy Gibbler and told him that we were in town that night and we would be dancing the dance of the red shoes that evening.

Stressica and I decided not to let anyone else that we were in town. For all anyone knew, we were safely in Arkansas, corrupting the co-eds at U of A and making a spectacle of ourselves, as only Stressica and I know how to do. This was the perfect opportunity to shut our phones off and stop talking to everyone.

“You know, I really am beginning to hate everyone,” I said, “I think it’s the residual affects of not smoking and I’m not happy about it.”

“It has nothing to do with you not smoking,” Stressica said as we lay by the pool, “you hated everyone while you smoked. In fact, I’m quite sure you could be meditating in the Tibetan Mountains with the fucking Dali Lama and you’d still hate everyone.”

“True,” I replied as I took a sip of my Shirley Temple and basked in the sun. “Is the Dali Lama related to Lorenzo Llamas?”

“I hate you,” Stressica replied.

Stressica and I lay in the sun until we both got a nice healthy Presidential Blurpal tan. Presidential Blurpal is the shade of skin that Stressica and I strive to get every time we lay out. It’s kind of a mix of black and purple. Confused? Google a picture Obama’s lips for a visual aide.

After getting a nice tan; faze two of our escape to D.C. came into play: find and scare the shit out of my mother.

“Mom!” I yelled into the phone.

“What’s up Mark?” my mother asked.

“Oh nothing,” I replied, “Stressica and I are in Arkansas. There are a lot of fat people here and it’s hotter than hell.”

Stressica began to laugh. Or queef. I’m not sure.

“Are you guys having fun?” she asked.

“Yea,” I replied, “it’s orientation weekend here in Fayetteville, so Stressica and I are trying to find some co-eds to fuck with. Nothing exciting.” My lies were so detailed and elaborate that she had no idea that we were right down the street from her house.

“Well,” my mother said, “have fun. And please don’t get arrested. Or hate crimed.”

She hung up.

“She has no idea we’re in D.C.,” I told Stressica.

“She’s so cute,” he replied, “I can’t wait to see her.”

Stressica and my mother are as thick as thieves. I sometimes think that the only reason my mother still talks to me is to know what’s going on in Stressica’s life. As we drove toward my mother’s house all I could do was sing Madonna’s “This Used to Be My Playground” because…well...it used to be my playground.

As we approached my mother’s house, I got so excited. Aside from Stressica, the woman really is my best girlfriend. We drove the car around the side so she wouldn’t see us pull up and I whipped out my phone again.

“Mom!” I yelled into the phone.

“What the hell do you want now?” she asked.

“I’m bored, I wanted to say hi. What are you doing?” I asked.

As I had my mother on the phone, Stressica knocked on her door.

“Oh,” she said over the phone, “someone is at the door.”

Stressica and I giggled like two schoolgirls who had just gotten their period for the first time. Why that would be something to giggle over is news to me, but we laughed nonetheless. Stressica held his finger over the peephole so that my mother couldn’t see who was calling.

“Who’s at the door mom?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she replied, “and I’m not answering it because I can’t see who it is so it probably means it’s someone I don’t want to see. Like your sister.”

“Are you sure you aren’t going to answer the door?” I asked.

“Yea,” she replied, “I’m already back in my chair.”

“What the fuck is she doing?” Stressica whispered.

“Mom!” I yelled into the phone. “Open the door!”

“Why?” she asked. “Why are you so concerned with who’s at the door?”

“Because I have to pee! Open the door. Jesus! You have a very unique way of ruining every surprise ever.”

My mother opened the door to see Stressica and I greeting her on the other end.

“Stressica!” she said as she embraced him. “It’s so good to see you! Come in!”

“Hello?” I said.

“How have you been?” she asked Stressica.

“Hello?” I said.

“We haven’t seen you since Mark’s book reading in March. It’s been way too long. Thank God for texts, huh?” she said.

“Hello?” I said.

“Oh,” my mother said, “Hi Mark!”

We all sat down and caught up as my mother practically tongue kissed Stressica. It’s a wonder she didn’t actually give birth to the man.

“So what are your plans while you’re here?” my mother asked, secretly hoping Stressica’s reply was: “sleep at the foot of your bed.”

“We’re going out. Hard,” Stressica replied.

“Don’t the two of you go out enough in New York?” my mother asked.

“Actually,” I replied, “we haven’t gone out in two months. We figured going out in D.C. would be a nice change of pace.”

“At least here we won’t bump into every person we never wanted to see again,” Stressica said.

“Speak for yourself,” I interjected.

We kissed my mother goodbye and went back to our hotel room where we met up with our old friend Kimmy Gibbler. Now, I hadn’t seen Kims in a hot second, so we caught up, discussed how we hated everything and each other and made our way to Cobalt, a hot spot for the gays in D.C.

When we got to Cobalt, it was hard not to notice the fact that the line outside consisted solely of woman.

“Ummm…,” I uttered, “I thought this was a gay bar.”

“I think these woman, and I use the term loosely, are lesbians,” Stressica said.

“Exactly, where are the gays?” I asked.

“I think lesbians are considered gay too. Aren’t they?” Stressica asked.

“I’m so annoyed that I wore flannel,” Kimmy said, “I’m going to blend in with everyone else. I hope no one thinks I’m a lesbian.”

“Are you sure we shouldn’t go out somewhere else?” I asked. “Should our one and only night out all summer be spent with lesbians?”

“I don’t know where else to go,” Stressica said.

Before we could say “woodworking” Stressica, Kimmy Gibbler and I were in the lesbian bar. Randomly enough, (well, maybe not so random as my sister is a huge lesbian and the empress of Gay D.C.) I have a rather large lesbian fan base in D.C. so I saw a ton of familiar faces. Going back to Cobalt was like reliving my early college years when I would go back to D.C. for the holidays and get blackout drunk wasted with my sisters. Or as I liked to call it: “quality family time”.

Stressica, Kimmy and I made our way to the dance floor thus becoming needles in a proverbial lesbian haystack.

“I’m scared,” Stressica said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because, I keep thinking I am seeing hot guys, but then I look closer and they’re really woman. Woman who look like nineteen-year old boys. Does that make me a pedophile or a lesbian?”

“Neither,” I replied, “that just makes you an idiot.”

“It’s pretty mixed here though, don’t you think?” Kimmy Gibbler asked.

“No Kimmy,” I said, “you just think you’re seeing gay boys. What you’re really seeing are manish looking woman. Don’t confuse yourself.”

Not for nothing, the lesbians have impeccable taste in music. We danced the night away, and even though a bunch of lamp rewiring, carpet munching woman all sporting a Justin Bieber haircut circa 2010 surrounded us, we had the time of our lives. I even came up with a new song about crystal meth, to the tune of Britney Spears’ “I Wanna Go” and it goes a little something like this: “I-I-I-WANNA-SMOKE-SMOKE-SMOKE-CRYSTAL-METH-METH-METH” All and all, it was a productive evening. My very crystal Christmas album will be in stores this December.

It is a ritual in New York to eat our feelings after dancing the night away and just because we were in a different town did not mean that our ceremonial evening closer would be any different. As we were walking down the street, a brick shithouse of a body be right of man looked my way. I looked back, thinking I had shit on my forehead and he continued to look at me.

“Hey blondie!” he yelled.

I love getting catcalled on the street like the common whore I am. Then and there I had a new respect for the citizens of D.C.

The next day Stressica and I were on our way back to D.C. It wasn’t the weekend we had intended it to be, but when is it ever with the two of us?

I find it incredibly amusing that a day after Stressica and I left D.C., a 5.2 magnitude earthquake hit the area. I always joke about leaving a trail of scorched earth behind me when I leave D.C. but I didn’t mean it!

True Life: I'm Going to Arkansas

2011-08-22T09:44:00.003-04:00

“Guess what,” Stressica said.

“What?” I asked as I sat down at his table ready to eat the feast of Mexican food that sat before us.

“I’m going to Arkansas in three weeks.”

“Is that in the continental United States or will you need a passport to get there?”

“Not sure,” Stressica said, “I’ve been telling everyone that the reason I am going down is because Evelyn is playing Sheila in “A Chorus Line” but the real reason is because Evelyn is booking a tour there and it’s their first stop. I thought it would be fun to see their first show.”

“That’s really sweet,” I said, “God only knows what the fuck you’re going to do in Arkansas.”
“I don’t know,” Stressica replied, “see the sights.”

“What sights?” I asked. “Where in Arkansas are you going anyway?”

“Fayetteville.”

“IDK where that is,” I replied.

“You know what would be funny?” Stressica asked.

“What?”

“It would be so funny if you came to Arkansas with me and surprised the shit out of Evelyn. She would be so happy to see you.”

“I don’t know Stress,” I said as he began to play with his phone.

Then silence. Sometimes when Stressica and I are together, and we are together so frequently, we simply stop speaking to each other. Lord knows I continuously have at least seventy-six words with friends games going on at all times and Stressica basically runs a whorehouse from his iphone so there are significant lapses in conversation where neither one of us will speak to the other because we’re on our damn phones.

“Hello?” I asked as I stood before him.

“You’re coming to Arkansas with me,” Stressica said.

“What?”

“You’re coming to Arkansas with me,” he said again, “I just booked your ticket on my phone.”

“You can do that from your phone?” I asked.

“I know you’ve had your iphone for a year and I’m hesitant to ask, but do you even know how to use the fucking thing?”

I didn’t answer.

“God, you’re a fucking idiot,” Stressica said, “but yes, to answer your earlier question, you are coming to Arkansas with me.”

“How wonderful!” I replied. “I have no idea what I am going to do in Arkansas, but that’s going to be so much fun.”

“I know, right? I think there is a pool at the hotel we’re staying at so we can do that. We’re staying at the Cosmopolitan Hotel.”

“The Cosmopolitan Hotel in Arkansas? That’s the biggest oxymoron I’ve ever heard,” I said, “Meanwhile, I should plan a book reading there. I am huge in Arkansas!”

Stressica thought I was fucking with him.

“No, seriously, I am,” I replied, “I have a ton of fans at the University of Arkansas, I’ll see if I can have a reading there. They’ve been asking me to for a like a year, so why not?”

“Sounds good to me,” Stressica replied, “I’m sure the professors at the University of Arkansas will appreciate you coming to town and teaching their students about giving blowjobs and how to make terrible life choices.”

“I know, me too!”

That night I sent out an email to a friend of mine who is on staff at the school and he told me that he would be more than happy to have me and my rag tag group of misfits at his school. He had asked me to come down last fall, but I think I was in a self induced K-Hole at the time and neglected to respond to his email. However, since Stressica, Evelyn and I already had plane tickets and he was willing to host me, this whole thing seemed win-win.

The following day, Stressica forwarded an email from Evelyn to me saying that she was no longer working on the show that they were going down there to see therefore she would no longer be joining us. We were pissed that Evelyn was not coming along for the ride but it had been so long since Stressica and I had traveled together (PLEASE SEE THE SINGLE LIFE: PROVIDENCE BLOG), I figured we would be fine.

“First Delaware, then Rhode Island and now Arkansas,” I said, “we really know how to find the hot spots,” I said a week before our trip.

“I am just flat out pretending that Fayetteville, Arkansas is a new place to see and be seen if you’re gay. Every time I tell someone I am going there, they get a stank face so instead of telling everyone that I am going to see Evelyn in “A Chorus Line”, I’m now telling everything that I am going to buy real estate in Arkansas. It’s the new up and coming gay vacation spot!”

“Seriously?” I asked.

“No, you moron,” Stressica replied, “I’m just saying all of this to make myself feel better about going to Arkansas,” he stopped.

“Well, this is all Evelyn’s fault,” I replied, “but at least now we’re doing a book reading so that will be fun.”

“Yea, but that’s going to be an hour long. What the fuck are we going to do after that?”

“Perhaps there’s a day-spa,” I said, immediately remembering where we were going and quickly figuring that was about as likely as Casey Anthony having not actually killed her child.

I had to get to the bottom of this. There had to be something to do in Arkansas so I began to dig for fun excursions for the misses and I. First, Stressica and I found out that there was a water park near the Ozarks, which was only about an hour away from Fayetteville. Faster than you could say “Rue McClanahan!” Stress and I were geared to go until we did some further digging only to find out that the water park that we wanted to go to had never actually be built, leaving the residents of Arkansas, angry, irregular and yearning for the water park they were promised but never got. I felt their pain.

The internet had forsaken me so I asked myself, “What would the Doobie Brothers do in a situation like this?” The answer: they’d take it to the streets and take it to the streets I did. I began to ask random tourists in Times Square what to do in Arkansas and came up with the ultimate answer.

“The best thing to do in Arkansas, apparently is to leave Arkansas,” I told Stressica over the phone.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“In Tulsa, Oklahoma, just a hop, skip and a jump from Fayetteville there’s a Hard Rock.”

“There’s a Hard Rock in Times Square,” he replied.

“Casino,” I yelled, “A Hard Rock Casino. Gambling is legal in Oklahoma, so I just figured out what were are doing for the remaining twenty-three hours we will be in Arkansas: not be in Arkansas.”

“Perfect, I’ll rent a car,” he said.

“Great, this way we can see America,” I replied.

“See America?” Stressica replied, “I can’t believe I’m going anywhere with someone who says shit like ‘see America’. Anyway, I found out that there’s a gay bar in Fayetteville. It’s called Tangerines.”

“Actually,” I replied, “I have been talking to some of the locals there and it’s called Tangerine. Don’t try to pluralize it, Stressica. There is only one tangerine. Not multiple tangerines.” I was suddenly an Arkansas aficionado and quickly wondered if Stressica and I should open a travel agency down in the heartland.

While I was doing this, Stressica hung up on me.

Buzz about our trip to Arkansas spread like wildfire, mainly because I told anyone who would listen because I honestly have the biggest mouth of anyone I’ve ever known. To be honest, I was really excited about going to Arkansas and there was no one I would rather be going there with.

As the big day approached, Stressica and I were ready to go. The day we left, I bumped into Boa who was also on his way to the airport en route to Cabo. When I reminded him I was going to Fayetteville, he told me there was “no fairness in that sentence.” Meanwhile, in getting there, were we taking a page right out of “Planes, Trains and mother fucking Automobiles.” We needed to take a train to a cab that was going to take us to the plane in Westchester to another plane in Atlanta to a car in Fayetteville. The whole trip was to take about six hours. As Stressica and I got into the cab that was taking us to the airport in Westchester, Stressica got an email from Delta telling him that our flight to Atlanta was going to be delayed four hours and that we would miss our connecting flight to Arkansas in the process.

“Great,” I replied, “what the fuck are we supposed to do?”

“Delta will fix this when we get to the airport,” Stressica said, “they said that we can exchange it for another flight.”

There were no flights that would get us to Arkansas in time for the book reading, however. The flight to Atlanta was so late that we would not be able to get to Arkansas in time the next morning to make the reading. When I suggested that we take a train from Atlanta to Fayetteville, Stressica punched me in the throat.

The silver lining in all of this was that Delta would exchange our tickets because it was their fuck up.

“Fuck this shit,” I said, “we’re going to Florida!”

When we arrived at the airport to exchange our tickets, we quickly realized that we were in Westchester and our only options other than Atlanta to fly to were Detroit and Orlando. God willing, we’d be in the Sunshine State by sundown, I thought. We got in line to exchange our tickets and in front of us was a very cute couple in their early twenties, but no attendant at the desk.

“So, did anyone at Delta come to work today or are they all taking a break?” Stressica asked.

“We’ve been waiting here for twenty minutes,” the guy in front of us said.

“What are you in for?” I asked.

“My mother booked my flight to Atlanta but booked it from LaGuardia and told me that the flight left from Westchester so now I’m all fucked up and need to make sure that I can get out of this airport asap because my cousin is getting married in Atlanta tonight.”

“Sounds like your mother is a fucking idiot,” I said.

“Yea,” he replied, “meanwhile, I didn’t even know there was an airport in Westchester until like two hours ago.”

“Me either. Are you not going with him?” I asked the girl who was with him.

“No, I just drove him here,” she replied.

“That’s sweet,” I replied, “are you two dating?”

In the next ten minutes, I found out that the guy went to school in Boston and left his girlfriend back in Jersey, who then cheated on him and they were currently trying to work out there problems. Didn’t catch their names, but made sure to get their full back-stories and of course throw my two cents in when no one in the room had even thought of asking for my opinion. It’s a wonder why anyone tells me anything. Ever.

Finally, the attendant came back only to tell us that we had to fucking call Delta to change our flight. Stressica, heated from standing in line for an hour for no reason and still reeling from the news that the girl we had known for ten minutes had cheated on the guy we had known for ten minutes, called Delta. I had told Stressica that this would be an amazing opportunity for us to go somewhere…I don’t know...desirable, since there was no way we’d make it to Arkansas. Then I invited the girl we had just met to go to Florida with us.

After bartering with the airline for what felt like another hour, Stressica found out that it would literally cost us thousands of dollars to go anywhere except for, you guessed it, fucking Detroit. No one likes the Motor City anymore apparently.

Stressica and I went up to the restaurant in the airport and dined on a healthy meal of chicken tenders, mozzarella sticks and potato skins.

“I guess we can just go home and stay in New York for the weekend,” I said.

“I really wanted to get the fuck out of the city. For like a day at least. And you never go anywhere,” Stressica said, “It would have been so nice to have left.”

“I know, but what are you going to do?” I said. “Delta fucking sucks.”

We grabbed our bags and went down to wait for our cab. As we were waiting a cab, an over friendly policeman approached us.

“Are you guys together?” he asked.

If one more person asks if Stressica is my boyfriend, I swear.

“Uh, no, why? Are we in trouble?” I asked.

“Of course not,” the policeman said giving me the once over.

“I just figured you guys were gay.”

I briefly wondered if we were getting hit on or if we were about to get hate crimed. I mean, we hadn’t made it to Arkansas, so it would only be fitting if taking a bottle to the back of the head would be how this evening ended.

“Did the jean shorts give it away?” Stressica asked.

“My sister was gay,” the policeman said.

What is this fucking story time with the bored policeman at the Westchester Airport?

“She died,” he continued, “after running a marathon. She had a heart attack.”

“Uh, ok,” I said.

“But she and her partner stayed together forever and were just waiting for gay marriage to pass. Aren’t you guys excited about it?”

“Well,” Stressica said, “I’d probably be more excited about it we had someone to potentially marry.”

“Where do you guys live?” the policeman asked.

“The Upper West Side,” I replied. Then the policeman looked me up and down.

“Ok then,” he said, “I think I may be venturing into uncharted territory here.”

Stressica and I looked at each other with a look that read: “what exactly is going on right now?”

The policeman ambled for a bit more before leaving. When our cab pulled up, we put our bags in the trunk and I fried up a rotten egg omelet in my pants, that I thought I had left outside but apparently brought into the cab with me.

“So…”Stressica began to say to me, “Oh my…” he covered his nose. “Oh my…” I thought he was going to throw up.

The cab driver turned around.

“Did someone fart?” he asked in a broken Indian accent.

I began to laugh as if the devil were inside of me.

“You need to go to the bathroom!” the cab driver said again.

My fart smelled like a mix of horse vagina and regurgitated quiche that had been left out for months. The kicker: it began to pour rain so we were literally hot boxed in a cab with my fart. I laughed the whole way back to the train station that I began to cry. In the heat of the moment, Stressica found time to tell me that had I not been there, he would have slept with the ambiguous cop.

When we got to the train station some crack head woman was yelling at this four hundred pound man who had allegedly gotten her sister pregnant earlier in the week. She wasn’t upset enough, however, to not take a phone call in the middle of this exchange. Seeing these unsavory characters get into a fight in the middle of a train station and yelling the words “baby momma” over and over again gave me the best idea I’ve ever had.

“I know where we can go!” I yelled.

“Where?” Stressica asked.

“A place I vowed never to go to again for as long as I lived…”

The Mating Game

2011-08-16T09:33:00.002-04:00

So it’s official. Superman and I have decided to date each other exclusively. Just so you all don’t get your panties in a twist, I will clarify. We have decided that we are seeing each other and no one else, but are not officially “boyfriends”. All of this is fine by me for several reasons. First off, Superman is a great. He’s kind, charming, smart and hot as hell. Secondly, there is no rush to jump into anything. Given my track record (please refer back to “Blackouts and Breakdowns” or any number of blogs) I am a bit more cautious about moving forward. We’re having fun getting to know each other better and hanging out. However, it’s been a hot three years since I have dated someone exclusively so I have needed to brush up on what it actually means to be someone’s mate.

1. You can only sleep with that person from now until you are no longer dating. This is great for several reasons, the first being if you’re only sleeping with one person so the risk you take of getting an STD goes down dramatically and you all know how frightened I am of getting the HIV. Secondly, according to Superman, it’s OK to look at other guys, as long as you don’t have sex with them. This is great because that’s pretty much what I do at work all day. I stand on the street and bark at guys as if I am some sort of soap opera loving, Britney Spears adoring construction worker. If I was not able to ogle hot guys, the only thing I would be left to do at work would be…work and that’s fun for no one. So I can look but not touch. On the flip, being in a partnership means you have someone there to have sex with all of the time and since I no longer smoke or drink, all I can think about these days is having sex and gambling. As long as one of my vices gets some attention at least twice a week, this will be smooth sailing moving forward.

2. Having a mate means having to take some else’s feelings into consideration besides your own. This is a hard one because as many of you know, I am a selfish piece of shit. However, this also means that someone, for a change, will be taking my feelings into consideration and worrying about me. My life long fear has been that some dirty Asians will find me and trade me into white slavery somewhere off the coast of Thailand. Don’t front – if it can happen to Claire Danes, it can happen to the rest of us. But now, if that were to actually happen, I would have someone ready to send out a search party and spirit me back to America, not because they needed me to work, or because I owed them money that they desperately needed back, but because they cared about me and wanted me home. These are the idiotic things I think about on a day to day basis.

3. Now I will be required to make time for someone else thus lessening my changes of dying alone as a recluse at the age of thirty with a cat having eaten half of my face off. Many of you know I like Mark time, which recently has become all of my time. I like to write. I like to go to the gym. I like to run many, many miles. I like to watch my soap operas. All of these things do not require someone else being with me. Now, because I am dating someone, I am forced to not only have a social life, but experience things that I would normally not want to do because I would rather be spending the weekend with Erica Kane. Having thought over the pros and cons of actually making an effort for someone, I concluded that Superman was worth making the effort for because I not only like him, but he gets that I like to be left alone a lot and I am pretty sure that he will refuse to get hooked on my ABC soaps so he knows when I need my space.

4. Dating someone exclusively means I get to put the word “we” back into my vocabulary. Instead of saying “I spent the weekend alone in my bedroom drinking coffee and watching the rain hit the pavement,” I can now say “We spent the weekend together drinking coffee and watching the rain hit the pavement” and can sound like a fucking lesbian like the rest of my friends.

5. I now have a built in date to EVERY family function, wedding, book reading, theatre opening, Bar/Bat Mitzvah, Bris, funeral, anniversary party, highway dedication, doggie birthday party, picnic’s celebrating someone’s social security coming into affect, one man show, sobriety party where everyone gets hammered but me, couple’s pottery making class, spin art seminar, Learning Annex class where Bethanny Frankel speaks for six hours, happy hour, work event, pizza party and ice cream social. I now have a built in date for all of the above. Two, if you include Stressica.

6. My niece and nephews will now have a new uncle. And that’s exactly what they need considering they have five grandmothers.

7. I no longer have to answer the question, “why are you still single?” because it’s not a valid question anymore. The new question being asked will be “how he is dumb enough to want to associate himself with you?”

8. A really nice part about dating someone who’s a nice and as hot as Superman is rubbing it in your exes and enemies faces. Not that I am ever one to throw my success in another’s direction. I am way too classy for that.

9. I get to sleep in the same bed with another person. For a full year and a half I did not do that. I know that Superman has passed the ultimate test because the two of us can sleep in the same bed together and I don’t inadvertently punch him in the face or render him unconscious in the middle of the night, which has happened on several occasions with other people. I sleep soundly with no interruptions.

10. Finally, being someone’s mate means getting to hang out with a cool guy who isn’t going to judge me for farting or making jokes about shit. I have found my intellectual equal in Superman because he could talk about bowel movements until the cows come home and thank God, because that’s my favorite conversation topic.

Reading that list over again, makes me realize how I have been missing for the past few years. Again, I do not have a boyfriend, but I am only sleeping with one person, while looking at every hot guy that walks by and talking a lot of shit. Literally.

The Single Life Follies

2011-08-15T10:59:00.003-04:00

The other day at work, I heard someone from behind me ask a question. In my usual fashion of not paying attention or, simply zoning out for a few seconds, I did not turn around.

“Should I go and see ‘Follies’ or ‘Spiderman,’” the voice said with a British accent.

I turned around to see a man in a pink shirt, with blonde hair and a body be right like I’ve not seen in a hot second.

“You!” he said to me.

“Yes?” I asked.

“You!” he said again, “Five years ago, you told me to see ‘Grey Gardens’ the last time I was here and it was awful.”

“Well, it’s not my fault you have no fucking taste,” I replied.

And with that, he was gone. A few moments later, the man in the pink shirt approached me again.

“I got tickets to go and see ‘Follies,’” he said.

“Good,” I replied, “there really is no choice when it comes to seeing it. You know what my mother always says, when Bernadette Peters is on Broadway, you go! Besides, musicals about superheroes are ridiculous. Unless it's Superman of course."

He laughed.

“I’ll be there tonight,” I said, “you should look for me.”

Pink shirt gave me the once over and replied: “I will.”

And with that, the man in the pink shirt left. Bad taste in theatre aside, the man in the pink shirt was very good looking. He looked like he could have very well been a soap star in the U.K., but I wasn’t quite sure. When I went to the theatre that evening, I quickly cased the joint to see if I could find the man in the pink shirt. The only familiar face that I saw in the audience that night was that of the 23 year old, looking as smug and entitled as ever. I guess living off of your slimy stage manager boyfriend and blowing him for cigarettes leaves you with a little stank face. Anyway, I took my seat and began to watch “Follies”, a musical about a group of people so desperate to recapture their youth, that it literally drives them insane. No one loves a good pick my up like that, quite like yours truly, so following the show, I was in the best mood ever. And god love me some Bernadette. She always brings her A-game to the stage.

I had all but forgotten about the man in the pink shirt until I was making my way to the subway and saw him passing through the turn-style.

“PINK SHIRT!” I yelled, “WAIT UP!”

“Mark?” he said as he turned around. “My goodness. I just looked for your everywhere. At intermission I went down to get a coffee and couldn’t find you. I was afraid I wouldn’t get a chance to thank you for recommending such a brilliant show.”

“I’m glad you liked it,” I replied. Maybe my British friend in the pink shirt didn’t have terrible taste after all.

We got on the subway together and got to chatting.

“So where is fun to go on a Wednesday night?” he asked.

“Oh,” I replied, “I honestly have no idea. I haven’t been out on a Wednesday night in like, a decade. I’m old. In fact, it’s past my bedtime right now,” I said as I looked down at my watch to find that it was five after eleven in the evening.

“Oh, come on!” he said. Gotta love the Brits and they’re enthusiasm. Especially when it comes to getting hammered.

“What?” I replied.

“It’s five after eleven,” he said, “it’s early!”

“It’s Wednesday,” I replied, “and I have rehearsal in the morning.”

“You’re an actor?”

“No, a writer,” I replied. “I’m doing musical book readings next month, and we have our first rehearsal tomorrow morning. I need to be fresh.”

“Are you singing?” he asked.

“Hell no. I will be standing there, throwing in my two cents in while three girls sing the shit out of ‘It’s Raining Men.’”

“Then why do you need a good night’s sleep?” he asked.

“Because I’m elderly and I like to sleep,” I replied, “and I have ten million things to do tomorrow.”

“Just come out,” the Brit said, “it will be fun. Give my your number and I will text message when where I am going and you’ll come and meet me.”

I gave him my number and before I could protest he was out the subway door in a flash. I figured I wouldn’t hear from him so I went to the Duane Reade to buy some razors and make out with the big black check out girl who always tells me I look like David Beckham. I always think she is high on crystal meth but a girl has got to take the compliments where she can get them. When I got home I received a text message from an international number saying: “Hey, friend me on facebook, then we can chat on there without it costing you a fortune.”

I facebook friended my new best friend and he told me that he and his friends were going to Vynl on Ninth Avenue and to meet him there. It was pushing midnight and I had inadvertently put a moo-moo and flips on in anticipation of relaxing and watching four episodes of “All My Children” before bed. Erica Kane is currently in big trouble. Should I find out what happened with her or take a journey back downtown and hang out with a man who I had no only known for but five minutes but also earlier in the day had basically told to go fuck himself. I figured, what the hell? I’ll go back downtown and meet up with pink shirt.

I put on my sluttiest black dress and ran out the door in anticipation of meeting back up with pink shirt. While in the cab, all I could think about was Superman. He had been gone for over a week, visiting his parents down in Georgia and I wondered what he was up to. Knowing him, he was probably asleep as it was now past midnight. But I missed him and briefly wondered why the hell I was even bothering with pink shirt. When I got out of the cab, I walked up to the place where pink shirt had told me to meet him, but it was closed. I facebook messaged him, but my phone was about to die due to the fact that I have been playing an upwards of twenty-five games of scrabble every day and it drains my phone battery. So, I stood on the corner, like the whore that I am and waited to hear back from pink shirt.

After about twenty minutes of standing on the corner and not hearing back from him, I decided it was time to go. I told myself I would wait ten more minutes and then leave, when suddenly I was approached by a big black man who had no teeth.

“Hey!” he yelled, “You want some Lindsay Lohan?” he asked.

“What?”

“Lindsay Lohan??? You want some Lindsay Lohan?”

“Lindsay Lohan circa ‘The Parent Trap’ or Lindsay Lohan from ‘Mean Girls’?”

The man looked confused.

“What?” he asked, “Coke. I have coke! Do you want some coke?”

“Heaven’s no!” I shrieked. I didn’t say that, but you know I like to pretend I am Viki from “One Life to Live” so I’ll just go ahead and take some artistic liberties with that one.

“If this were five years ago, I would have been all up on that, but I don't touch the stuff anymore. Besides, when did the kids start calling cocaine Lindsay Lohan?” I asked the drug dealer. “Back in my day we called it Patsy. You people have no respect for the classics anymore, do you?”

And with that, I hoped in a cab, leaving the drug dealer scratching his head on the street. What a waste of time, I thought. It was now past one in the morning and I decided that I was too fucking old to be running around midtown looking for man I had known for but five minutes.

I went to bed that night and dreamt of Superman. I woke up the next morning with that feeling you get when you haven’t slept nearly enough. It’s almost like a hangover but not quiet severe. I went to rehearsal and watched my divas sing their faces off and as they were going crazy belting out “It’s Raining Men,” I got a message from pink shirt.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry I missed you last night,” it read. “I lost Wi-Fi connection so when I did not get a text back, I figured you had gone to bed. Let me take you to lunch to make up for it.”

No one likes a free lunch more than this Jew so I responded, “Ok.”

That afternoon I met up with the man in the pink shirt.

“I’m so sorry about last night,” he said.

“It’s OK,” I replied.

“It’s a shame we can’t text. Stupid international phones.”

“Yea.”

“Did you try texting back?” he asked.

“No,”

“Why not?”

“I figured it wouldn’t work.”

“So you didn’t even try?” he asked.

“No.”

“Hmmm… Probably would have helped it you had tried.”

“Right.”

“You’re a little bit of a moron, huh?”

The British are not known for their warmth, but calling me out on my usual bullshit right out of the gate was a new one even for me.

“Yes,” I replied, “yes I am.”

The man in the pink shirt and I began walking around Chelsea searching for a place to eat lunch until we stumbled upon a new restaurant in an old haunt of mine. Anyone who has read “Blackouts and Breakdowns” knows that back in the day, my favorite place to party was a place called Limelight. It was a club in an old hallowed out church where me and my band of misfits would do drugs and party until the sun came out. When the man in the pink shirt and I walked by it, we were surprised to find out that it was now a Todd English restaurant.

“We’re eating here,” I told him, “I’m reliving my youth this afternoon.”

We sat down at the restaurant and I had flashbacks of rolling on ecstasy and being rubbed by five to seven strangers.

“So…” pink shirt asked. “Are you dating anyone? I miss my boyfriend so much, I can’t wait to see him when I get home.”

Boyfriend? I thought. Why the hell are you bothering with me if you have a boyfriend? And aren't I dating someone right now? Why was I even at this lunch? I had four episodes of "All My Children" at home that weren't going to watch themselves.

I jumped back into the conversation after veering off track again, “Yes, yes I am. His name is Superman and he is lovely.”

“That’s nice. My boyfriend is a soap star in the UK so we’re kind of on the down low.”

“Soap star?” I shrieked. “My dream in life is to date a soap star.”

“He’s lovely,” pink shirt said. “He’s got a great body.”

“We call that a body be right,” I replied, “Please take that back to the UK with you. I want everyone saying ‘body be right’ by the time I make my way over there.”

He laughed, “Ok.”

We talked about everything from the respective guys that we were dating to travel and what we liked to do for fun. I really enjoyed the man in the pink shirt’s company but began to think about Superman and where we were headed with our relationship. We had been dating for over a month and I was a little tired of tip-toeing around the subject. I really like Superman and thought it was time for us to have “the talk”. Apparently a chance encounter with a random British guy was exactly the kick in the ass I needed to move forward.

The man in the pink shirt and I parted ways and I sent him on his way back to London, but not before I told him that he was the best non-date-date I had ever had and that when I come to London next, we are going to pretend we are twins from America filming a reality TV show. Thank God he was on board with my idea.

That day I decided it was time to confront Superman about where we were headed with our relationship. The follies of the single life were getting to me and I was tired of dancing around the subject…