Top Ten Ways Two Gay Men Prepare for Irene.

Apparently we are in the path of what weather forecasters are calling the storm of the century. Now I realize that I’m a poster child for “skepticism” and I have been known to “pooh” these forecasts, but JUST in case, there are a few things Daryl and I need to do in preparation…

1. Check supplies of batteries. What the heck for? To put in a radio? We haven’t seen a “radio” since the seventies. (For the record, we have a DuraCell credit card)

2. Check for flashlight? Hrmpff. We’ll use our battery operated candles. It’s all about ambience.

3. Fill the bathtub with water. Um… we’ve done things in that tub that make us SURE to not use tub water for ANYthing.

4. Check bottled water. Do mixers count?

5. Get bread, eggs and milk. Oh wait… it’s NOT a snowstorm.

6. Check vodka supply. LOL. Like we’d forget that.

7. Check vodka supply, again.

8. Stay tuned to TV for up to the minute emergency coverage of the storm. Um… we have Comcast for cable and AT&T for our iphones. We’re screwed and will most likely watch a DVD of Mrs. Doubtfire.

9. Stay inside; drink plenty of fluids and rest. Wait… I think that’s if you’re sick.

10. Basically, Irene is considered an extreme blow job. Fortunately for us, we’ve got THAT one covered.

Stonewall.

my photo of "Stonewall"

Daryl and I were here in April of this year. It was a much more subdued visit than what transpired at this same location yesterday.

It was a chilly, rainy early afternoon as we searched the winding, uneven streets of New York’s west village for a little bar called the Stonewall Inn. Daryl and some wonderful lesbian friends of ours jumping the clogged drain puddles and dodging the vicious splashes of speeding taxicabs with umbrellas in hand as we came upon this tiny brick place in a city of tall, thick concrete. A glowing orange neon sign greeted us into the day.

It was much smaller than I expected. I remember the first time I saw the “Cheers” bar in Boston I was underwhelmed at its small size. I expected it to be larger than life itself… filled with those folks from the TV show singing songs while Sam and Diane argued flirtatiously in a corner. I was disappointed then, but not today.

The Stonewall Inn was barely open this early afternoon. “The gays” typically don’t begin bar hopping until much later in the early evening, so the bar was deserted, except for a short little fire plug bartender named typically, Joe. He welcomed us in immediately as if desperate for company on this miserable Saturday afternoon. Folding our dripping umbrellas and leaving them by the front door, I looked around. You could smell the age and the mustiness of this dark and dingy place. A thick painted tin ceiling and dark poster filled walls hugged us as small tables were tossed about a small elevated “stage” hardly protected by a single red velvet rope. Black and white photos of the now famous “Stonewall Riots” were haphazardly placed around on the deep paneled walls of this establishment. Framed newspaper and magazine clippings of history were draped behind the bar. Somehow the light of day made this bar look like me when I wake up in the morning. Raw and exposed. Pale and puffy. Vulnerable yet somehow as cozy as the thick fleece robe I throw on to ward off the early morning chill.

“What’ll it be?” Joe smiled, as we pulled our heavily shellacked bar stools across the old wooden floor making a wood on wood scraping echo that empty bars tend to make. We looked like a bunch of drowned rats as Joe hooked us up with clean-glassed beverages. He continued shuffling around the place acting as though he had to get ready for some large crowd, punctuated with a chuckle or two about a drag show here a few nights before.

My group of friends sat and listened to Joe’s ipod music playing loud enough over the bar’s worn speaker system to get a foot tapping from Janet Jackson’s “Control.” I continued walking around the bar’s interior, studying the photos on the walls of the Riots of 1969 trying to imagine a world where gays and lesbians had to hide so much of themselves, even in the progressiveness and toleration of New York City. To have to fear for your livelihood, your reputation and in some cases, your life must have been unimaginable to deal with on a daily basis.

Daryl and I attempted to play a game of pool on the Stonewalls well worn and uneven table, its dulled orange felt dusty with cigarette ashes and a cocktail straw. I smiled as I thought that gay men typically aren’t playing the game as a sport anyway, but as more of a way to connect to someone else if only for a moment… or possibly to start a conversation with a future life partner. The pool table eventually ate our cue ball, refused to spit it back out and our game was done. Joe didn’t have the key or the means to fix it.

We chatted and joked with each other and with Joe for another hour or so while finishing up a couple of rounds of cocktails. Daryl purchased two souvenir tee shirts for his sister and Mom, and we moved on. The rain had let up a bit as we headed out into the streets of the Village as the ghosts of men and women past smiled as we all left giggling hand in hand not realizing that in a few months there would be throngs here celebrating another milestone, another victory.

Thank you for your tiring fight, people of this tiny little place called Stonewall. Thank you for your beginning to bring the right of marriage to ALL people to the sidewalks and streets of this city… this state and eventually this country.

homo backwash and other peeves.

 “That bottle of lube on your nightstand is my-en (mine),” I said to Daryl the other day as I was cleaning off my nightstand in our bedroom. He looked at me with a smirky smirk and asked “Who makes the word mine into a two-syllable word anyway?” as he flipped the slippery bottle in my direction. I missed. “It’s like your family was from the south,” he muttered under his breath. “I HEARD that, Mr. Grammar,” I snorted, ” and my family IS from the south of West Chester, beee-och.” I have a peeve of not liking to be corrected.

Surprisingly, there are other peeves.

We drink lots of bottled water. At any given moment there are approximately fifteen to twenty plastic bottles strewn around the condo in various stages of fullness or emptiness depending upon your outlook on life I suppose. It drives me crazy! They’re on the cocktail table, in the kitchen, by the bathroom sink and on our nightstands with the lube (see above). We apparently lose track of whose water bottle is whose (or is it whoms?).  Anyway, why would that even BE a problem considering the fact that we’ve shared every body part and every bodily fluid that two homosexuals could. We’ll open one bottle, then forget about it, and open another one and before you know it the condo looks like the reject room of the factory at Poland Springs.

We USED to put the partially filled bottles back in the fridge to use in the cat’s water dish, until I got pissed one day when I looked in the fridge and saw approximately 26 bottles with about an inch of water in each. Not to mention, I started feeling a little guilty that the cat was living on the backwash of two homos. So now, my list of growing day off chores actually INCLUDES a task called “dump water from water bottles before recycling them.” It takes nearly a half hour as I dump enough water equivalent to a small tsunami (is it politically correct to use the word tsunami yet?).

More suprisingly, my peeves continue.

I work odd hours. I’m in retail. Enough said. I have an assigned parking space for my condo. I protect it like that space that you dig out of the snow after a blizzard and throw a kitchen chair into so no one reaps the benefits of your labor.

Last Memorial weekend after working three million hours on my feet, I came home to some pretentious gas-guzzling white Escalade with a McCain-Palin bumper sticker in my numbered spot. As if that wasn’t bad enough, I had to park three whole spaces away and began walking the extra distance on throbbing stumps for feet.

Daryl came to my rescue running from the condo with a piece of high quality onion skin paper that he had typed up on the computer and printed. It read: We hope you had a pleasant visit. We just wanted you to know that you are parked in a numbered space which has been assigned to a resident of G____ V____ Condominiums. If you use this space again and cannot locate your vehicle at the end of your visit, contact ______ Towing and Storage. Have a nice day!  I’m thinking he typed it as opposed to handwriting it so it could not be traced back to the two guys who have the patio that looks like Longwood Gardens and fight like girls, as if the paper quality and scripty font wouldn’t give it away. He placed the note gently under the windshield wiper of the offending and offensive automobile.

Daryl is my knight in shining armor. Well… almost.

I’m not sure this qualifies as a peeve really but last night I came home to Daryl cleaning up the remaining shards of glass from one of my favorite Pyrex dishes. I had emptied the dishwasher before I went to work yesterday and I put the few pans, lids and a Pyrex dish on top of the stove instead of putting them away because I was running late. While I was at work last night, Daryl wanted to cook himself a little fish for dinner so he turned on what he THOUGHT was a back burner. Lo and behold while he was in the living room he heard a crack and crash louder than an old episode of Bobby Brown and Whitney. The Pyrex dish had exploded all over the kitchen. It went on the stove, the floor and even in the cat’s bowl of stagnant homosexual backwash. It was a disaster.

In my constant insensitivity to NOT be able to filter my words, I told Daryl that he was stupid for leaving ANYthing on the stove while turning it on. He told me that he hopes the missed shard of glass waiting for MY bare foot doesn’t send me to the ER.

My final peeve for today is the iphone4.

Don’t get me wrong, we LOVE our iphones. They’re great for internet access, music, texting, games and the occasional phone call. As a matter of fact we have them in our hands more often than our own d*cks, but WHY must Daryl insist on trying to beat my score in Bejeweled Blitz on his iphone immediately after sex?

Shee-it.

you named your network WHAT?

I have always been wary of typing ANYthing without a proper dosage of caffeine, so I’d normally begin this rant with a disclaimer, but frankly I’m too sleepy…

Apparently, my iphone settings are such that it will search the area that I am currently in, for a network with which to connect to for (I guess) better internet service. First of all, I’m quite satisfied with my “standard” I think they call it “GS” service. It’s not like I’m downloading “Tom’s Dick is Hairy” from PornHub while chatting with my Mom about her latest driving at night excursion at the same time, so WHY would I NEED such superior service anyway right?

That being said – a “list” of available professionally AND personally named networks will pop up on my phone’s screen every time I activate it. If I happen to be in Panera Bread Cafe for lunch, I’ll see the name “Panera One,” or “Panera Network” listed. No big deal, however, one day last week I was at a strip mall in Delaware County and I got a list of options that included “CindyBitch,” “69_4me,” and “JDNCoke” all within the same networking radius.

PEOPLE: Do you not realize that these network names are public? Granted, one cannot access these privately owned networks because they are usually password protected (God only knows what the passwords are!), but is it really necessary that I blush every time I turn on my phone?

Maybe I’m just jealous because as I was having mine set up last year by a cute little Italian gentleman from my cable company, he smiled at me with teeth whiter than a bottle of bleach and an eye that had a built in wink while he asked what name I would like for OUR network I managed to blurt “just call it [Williams] please.”

phone EDDY-quette.

I’m typically not what I would consider a phone person.

I don’t enjoy talking on them, I don’t care for idle chit chat and I don’t like the dead space of silence during a phone conversation. My philosophy for the phone is akin to the “ManHunt” gay website… get on, then get off.

I wasn’t always this way. I remember as a teenager on the phone the conversations would last for HOURS. I remember falling in love at least three times via a big black plastic wall phone in the rec room of my house growing up. It had a very long cord that could be wrapped at least three times around my thin frame with no problem. Dialing took minutes as I waited for the dial to return from the number “9.”

I’m thrilled that phones today have FINALLY become an incredible tool to use as more than just a phone, however, now I can’t be without my phone (even in the bathroom). I can’t put my phone down (except to type this blog). I use it for Face Book status updates. I type mine and read my friends. You’ve seen my blog rants on this before.

Bejeweled Blitz on my iphone is a competition (although I have FINALLY learned to TOTALLY ignore Adam Albright on the score board with his insane high scores. ALWAYS in the number ONE spot, I SWEAR he was abducted by aliens and probed in ways that included three jewels in a row) that I just can’t seem to kick. Did I say competition? I meant obsession. Between “Scrabble,” “Angry Birds,” and “Plants vs. Zombies” it’s a wonder I EVER put the damn thing down.

A built in camera allows for on the fly stills and video in an instant. Daryl and I have recorded birthday greetings and, on occasion, a drunken video or two using our phones. Recording notes and conversations are now passé. Listening to the latest music and downloading immediately what you hear is just a click and a password away.

I have apps on my phone that can not only give me the weather here in West Chester, but can give me meteorological specifics anywhere in the world. I have apps that give me directions, and restaurant locations and reviews; I can buy movie tickets in advance. I can even scan bar codes of any products and instantly get the item’s best sale location within a ten mile radius.

I can do my banking and pay bills on my phone. I can change the channel or record from my TV from any location (and I HAVE actually changed the channel from work to the religious channel when I know Daryl is at home watching “Survivor.”).

I can only imagine what the future holds for “smart phones.” I’m sure someday, they will be able to plug into your vehicle and automatically drive it home for you while pre-ordering takeout food on the way.

For now, the BEST feature of my iphone that I can’t live without is when I get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night; it becomes my “flashlight” so I don’t trip over the cat or pee on the floor.