Starting Early, Or, Rather, Late.

Dear Sweet Jesus.

Last night, my friends decided to take me out for my birthday, since most of them are going to be out of town for the actual date.  And just to torture them, I insisted that they take me to a gay bar.  So Doug, Kenny, the Lagemæ, Wayne Schroeder, Kathy Gilmore and Mitch all took me to Barracuda in Chelsea.  The idea was that we would have a few drinks there and maybe move on somewhere else, but as it turns out we spent the entire evening there.  The straights cut out somewhere around midnight, I think, but my friends Daniel and MJ [notice how I'm omitting last names to save them the embarrassment) and I stayed at the bar 'til close to 3 a.m.

I had a marvelous time... and boy, did they ply me with alcohol!  I lost track of the number of apple martinis I imbibed.  And damn it, I missed out on more than one opportunity to meet a really cute guy 'cuz I thought it would be pretty cheesy to ditch my friends.

There was one guy I swear was some sort of character actor that I recognized from somewhere, but I'll be damned if I can figure out where.  He was cute, though.  And then outta nowhere his friend decided they should leave and that was that.

And afterward, Mo and I were walking to the subway when we passed "The Blue Store," an "adult" video store on 8th Avenue which just happens to have, um, video booths.  And when we say video booths, we mean booths where gay men who've just cruised each other in the store go to... not watch videos.

Anyway, I remarked as we passed by the place that I'd never been in such a den of iniquity before, so MJ promptly dragged me in, and we started wandering around the place, checking out the porn at first -- there's an astounding array of that crap, by the way -- and wandering back to check out what these booths really look like.  They aren't all that exciting when you're not getting any action, by the way.

After we'd satisfied our curiosity, we went back to perusing the porn, and it was at that point that I noticed an incredibly cute pocket gay also cruising, uh, perusing the porn.  I made goo goo eyes at him until MJ shoved me in his direction, and I chatted him up for a moment or two.  I thought things were going pretty well, but then again, I was drunk.  He eventually made his way to the checkout counter, and MJ and I left.  Alas, another missed opportunity.  I'm giving myself credit for having chatted the guy up, though.  I'm not, apparently, the paralyzingly shy boob I've always been.

It's gonna take turning 40 to change that?