Same Shit, Different Gay

Everybody usually has a type. Some people are into tall blonds. Some people are looking for the class clown. Others want the nerd. Bill Gates is somebody’s type. Colin Farrell is EVERYBODYS type and he knows it.
My type is closeted gay men.
I don’t know how it happens but I’m becoming the Margaret Cho of the Lower East Side. I attract closeted gay men like no other. If you’re looking for a hetero-experiment, you’re probably looking for me.
Saturday night, I went out on a date with A, a nice guy I had met at a bar the week before. He didn’t seem gay when I met him, but I guess alcohol really does dull the senses. I did get my suspicions when he called me to tell me where he made reservations and told me, “I asked my boss where I should take this nice young lady I met last week to dinner.” Nice young lady? Really?
I got there early and had a glass of wine at the bar, watching the thunder storm that had just opened up on New York. He arrived. I noticed his eyebrows were more nicely manicured than my own.
We sat down and looked at the menus. The restaurant was really nice and the menu was interesting. “Feel free to have whatever you want,” he tells me. That makes me cringe. I’m a young professional with a decent paycheck. Honestly, I could buy you dinner. I hear that and I feel like it’s a sign of false generosity. Pet peeve, but he’s nice, he’s just a little awkward. Let it go.
“Are you really hungry? Do you want an appetizer?” He asks a few seconds later.
“Do you want to split something?” I ask. I’m more concerned with wasting food than wasting his money.
“Oh my god! I was just going to ask you the same thing!” He squeals. Squeals. The hint of a familiar accent creeps in.
We order, he excuses himself to go to the bathroom. While he’s away, I make friends with the couple sitting next to me, a married couple in their 40s with two toddlers who are thoroughly enjoying the fact that their dinner does not come with a toy and you cannot color on these menus. A comes back. The date resumes. I think I hear that same familiar accent when our appetizer comes and he offers to make me a “little plate.”
We had a good time. We didn’t run out of things to say. But a lot of that is because it is rare that I ever run out of things to say. If I’m not talking, I’m sick or really, really tired. It’s also a good way to tell if I’ve had too much to drink (basically because I get sleepy, then I shut up). He’s not doing a lot of the talking. But that’s okay. I’ve had enough wine where I’m fun, gregarious drunk.
There’s just certain things about the conversation that make me think “girlfriend” instead of “boyfriend,” which is troubling when you’re out on a date. This is the pitfall of dating in New York. On average, every New York girl winds up dating a guy who comes to the realization that he’s gay. I just happen to date more of my share, to maintain the average that would otherwise be thrown off by the girls who avoid this New York dating pothole. It’s just with the whole metrosexual trend, it’s hard to determine who is and who isn’t. It used to be easy. If he’s got more Kehil’s products in his bathroom than you do, that was a good sign. If he gets manicures, that was another one. Now, that’s basic New York maintenance. The modern New York couple gets their mani/pedis together.
He excuses himself to the bathroom again (the bladder a size of a pea!). The woman next to me has now had a few drinks in her and she sees this as her moment of opportunity.
“Honey, I’m looking at you and I just, I just think you’re great. You’re beautiful and dynamic and you’re talking and you have a lot going on. I think you can do better.”
Honey, I’m thinking the same thing.

Bad (S)Ex

People always say that you can’t be friends with your ex. If things were so great, you’d still be together. But you have to be the one to prove them wrong, don’t you? You want to show that you are a more evolved person and, although you can’t figure out a Rubix Cube, you have neatly sorted out the more complex puzzle of the former lover. How do I know you so well? I AM you.
My ex and I have an interesting relationship. We live down the street from each other (when we first met he had just signed a lease for an apartment down the street from mine). Our hours are different enough that we don’t really bump into each other. But we profess to be those more evolved people. We make appointments to bump into each other. We grab lunch every now and then. We get coffee. We hang out and grab drinks. Whatever. We’re neighbors. It’s cool.
So you could have knocked me over with a feather when we went out to lunch to celebrate the fact that I found an apartment and we wound up sleeping together. It was supposed to be innocent, but I was in a good mood, we were having a good time, next thing you know, we’re making out and one thing led to another and there you go.
When it was over, I fled the apartment like it was on fire.
Once you’re in a relationship with someone and the feelings have petered out, it’s nearly impossible to re-define your relationship outside those sexual boundaries. Try as you might, you’re always going to go back to the relationship you know and are comfortable with. That relationship’s dead. But you get a little comfortable, a little lazy, a little less vigilant than you should, and next thing you know, you’re playing those rolls again. You weren’t friends in the first place, now you’re trying to be friends and you’re pushing the old relationship under the carpet. It never works.
So why do we try?
It’s hard to admit that a relationship has failed. It’s a letdown and it also means that a person who was so important in your life at one point is now no longer in your life at all. It’s not just that his position has changed. His position simply doesn’t exist anymore. So you take this person and you try to cram him into your life in another way. It doesn’t fit. You don’t care. Your friends can’t believe that you still talk to this person that hurt you/cheated on you/let you down etc. You don’t care. You are convinced that you are more evolved than your friends. You’re going to make it work and show them all. Keep twisting the Rubix Cube. You’re never going to get the colors to line up the way you want to.
The ex and I are still pretending to be friends. He emailed me the next morning to try to talk me down and we’ve exchanged voicemails. But I see myself falling right back into those same rolls again and again. Today, I had a problem and he was my first phone call. And he calmed me down and solved it. He’s falling into those same rolls, too. Now I feel even more determined to show that we can have a non-sexual relationship, despite the fact that, intellectually, I know better. My competitive side is coming out and I’m going to beat the odds dammit!
Still twisting the Rubix cube.

The Hunt

If you want to live in New York, you have to find a place to live. This is where the weak are weeded out. It is Darwinism at its best. It is hell.
If you think I’m exaggerating, just take a stroll through the real estate pages from a New York City paper. You will be amazed, I guarantee. In most major cities, $900/month will get you a nice apartment. Do you know what you get for $900/month in New York? Nothing. There is nothing you can find for $900/month. You can’t get a cardboard box on the street for $900 a night. Not in a good neighborhood, anyway.
It’s also such a tightrope walk. You can’t start too early, because you’ll see something you love and by the time you’re ready to move, it’ll be gone. But start too late, and you’ll be looking at a $900 a month cardboard box in a bad neighborhood. It’s the most stressful two months.
I started in May. I had until the end of June. I figured that was enough time. I made an appointment to see a studio in Hell’s Kitchen. Hell’s Kitchen is “up-and-coming.” That means still crappy enough to be affordable. A lot of my friends live there, because they are also poor. It would make it easier and I could save money on cab fare back to my “up-and-coming” neighborhood. I would like to stay in my neighborhood, but people got wise to the up and comingness of my hood and moved in and now it’s evolved to trendy/gritty. In New York, trendy/gritty means pricy. Who ever thought gritty would mean pricy? Shabby chic killed all us poor people.
But I digress. I’m sitting on a Sunday afternoon, waiting for an agent to come and show me a bunch of apartments, including the one in Hell’s Kitchen. I get there. The agent I talked to is not there (he’s also not an agent, I come to find out, just the guy who answers the phone. But he has a dream, dammit). I talk to a woman named Lee. Lee reminds me of a math teacher in middle school that I hated. I’m already suspicious. She hands me a form to ask for my financial information. One of the questions on the form is “What will you do if you can’t find a place by your move-out date?” I am tempted to answer “Cry.”
Lee starts in with what I have come to find out is the NY real estate agent philosophy: PANIC NOW!!!! I feel like I started too late, I’m starting too early, I’m broke, I’m unworthy, what am I even doing in this office? When I truly feel like shit about myself, they finally let me see an apartment.
It’s not the apartment I went to see, though. There’s a problem with that. The landlord’s not in/the apartment is only showing in open-houses/the apartment doesn’t really exist. Something like that. The bait-and-switch is part of the PANIC NOW!!! Philosophy. They finally take me to see an apartment. A studio they say is “tiny,” about 300 square feet. The introduce me to the “shower.” A “shower” is a young kid who needs a day job while they’re waiting for their big acting/recording/songwriting break comes through. They get a cut of the fee, but not a big cut.
My shower looks like he’s about two red blood cells this side of albino. He is the palest human being I’ve ever seen. EVER. This is when I called M, who lives in the neighborhood. I was not getting eaten by night of the living dead over here. I mean, I want to stay in the city, but some things are not worth your life.
“Is he creepy?” M asks.
“So you said to meet you on 58th and 8th?” I responded.
“Guess that’s a yes. Meet you in 10.”
We walk over to the apartment, which is behind Lincoln Center. And when I say behind, I mean almost in Jersey. We finally get to the building and walk in. M walks in first and snorts.
The room is about the size of most closets. And I’m not talking big walk-ins. You could fit a twin bed on a metal frame and a folding chair. It’s 9x9. The last time I checked, that was 81 square feet, not 300. The shower offers to show me the kitchen. It’s a good thing he pointed it out. I would have missed it otherwise. It’s a mini-fridge with two burners on it. No oven. No cabinets. You would have to have talent to make Ramen in this kitchen.
“Would you like to see the closet?” Lurch asks.
“I thought we were in the closet,” M says.
“Does it contain the other 200 square feet that are supposed to be in this apartment?” I ask.
He opens the door. It does not.
The landlord’s there. He’s actually showing this place with a straight face. I keep looking at him, waiting for him to crack up and go, “Just Kidding. The real apartment is upstairs. This is a supply closet.” That would be OK. I can appreciate a good joke.
Instead he says, “You’re paying for the neighborhood.”
Excuse me? Unless I’m paying for the neighborhood’s groceries, I can’t see where my $1200 a month (oh, that’s right, it’s $1200 a month, plus a 15% of the annual rent fee to the broker. And Lurch. I’m sure he gets a cut. Although what he spends it on, I have no idea. It’s nothing with iron in it) is going.
But this is what you have to deal with when you live in New York. Buying, renting, it’s all the same. And it’s all bad. Jail cells are bigger than some apartments you see. And you don’t have to pay for jail cells. And they have tuition reimbursement in jail. I bet Lurch won’t cut me a check for early registration.
My parents think I’m crazy. My relatives think I’m insane. This has very little to do with the fact that I pay so much for rent. But it plays a factor. It’s hard for me to believe, myself. But I went out to look at an apartment in Queens and I almost cried. It was $1000/month. It was huge. The landlord was nice. But it was QUEENS. Nobody’s going to visit me in Queens. The apartment was almost IN LaGuardia Airport. People could stop by on their way to vacation.
Living in New York is like a drug. It’s an expensive, it’s bad for your wallet, it’s bad for your health, it makes your skin look bad, you don’t eat as well as you would in the suburbs because all your money’s going to feed your habit, you get your apartment from a sketch dealer in a bad neighborhood, you could die. But I’m addicted. As soon as I could, I jumped a train to my pipe and got back on-line, looking for an overpriced closet I could live in.