PREF: Broken Hearted, NYC

PREF issue 18, now available in better magazine shops all over NYC. The Universal News Cafe on 23rd between Fifth and Sixth Ave. has it, I saw it myself! Go purchase it and you'll be able to see all the French hotness. Here's the original English version of this issue's piece.

WHAT TO DO WITH A BROKEN HEART IN NEW YORK

Do Not: Answer the phone.
Andy calls from Portland and says he isn’t thinking about moving to New York anymore. He says there’s someone else, someone who’s breaking his heart. And I think, My god, you’re breaking mine.

I hang up and that’s when I start to panic. But it’s a calm sort of panic, like panicking in slow motion. Suddenly I have all this nervous energy and I don’t know what to do with myself. I start wandering around my apartment aimlessly, opening closets and cabinets not really looking for anything. I turn off the TV. I don’t want to hear anything. But the quiet isn’t peaceful; it’s oppressive, it’s suffocating. I look around and my apartment seems too big and too small, all at the same time. It seems too big for me to manage, to control, to keep in order, but also so small, so claustrophobic I can’t breath.

It’s almost 1 a.m. when I decide to leave my apartment.

Do: Get out of the house.
The subway ride down to West 4th Street feels longer than normal. The dark, fluorescent/aluminum/plastic environment inside the train is just as hopeless and annoying as my apartment. A surly looking dude in baggy jeans and a baseball cap gets on at 42nd Street and starts eating Chinese take-out from a carton, filling the train with the smell of greasy brown lo mein. At 23rd Street, a couple gets on, so drunk it takes them two whole stops to realize they’re on the wrong train. I’m beginning to think going out wasn’t such a good idea.

But once I’m aboveground everything changes. It’s a warm, early fall evening, and the whole city seems to be wandering around the Village. The fratty NYU kids. The bratty underage New Jersey ghetto gays. The girls in pretty dresses on their way to or from fabulous parties. The aging fags smoking outside the piano bars. There’s something amazing about wondering around in New York, especially like this, in the middle of the night, when everyone should be in bed. It’s like the lost boys and girls have been let loose in an amusement park, long after all the children and parents and normal people have gone home.

Wandering around alone amongst all these people, I feel invisible, inconsequential, a secret eye watching everything. I’m anonymous. I don’t have to be broken hearted or brave or anything. It’s incredibly sustaining.

Do: Go to a bar.
It’s a gay bar, of course. I would have preferred a quiet, dimly lit hotel bar, the bartender in a vest and bowtie, someplace old and austere, someplace where people don’t go to hang out, someplace where people don’t go at all.

Instead, I end up at New York’s version of a gay dive bar. It’s not someplace where I usually hang out. It’s a little bit under the radar, a little bit off my beaten path, and, no, I’m not going to mention its name. A boy has to keep some secrets.

I plant myself on a stool at the bar and order a dirty martini.

“You look depressed,” says the bartender (t-shirt, Puerto Rican accent, no vest, no bowtie), “You want a shot?”

I tell him no. Shots are for fun, shots mean it’s a party. I want to get drunk, but I want to get drunk slowly. I kinda need to feel this, sink into it, let it wash over me, and then slip away from it.

In the movie version of my life – or, I don’t know, the hour-long primetime TV drama of my life – the bartender would stick around, ask me about my troubles. He’d listen, and then dole out his surprisingly poignant brand of no-nonsense wisdom. “Listen, kid,” he’d say, “I’ve heard just about everything working behind this bar, and here’s what I think…” But he doesn’t say that. He just pours my drink and moves on to the next customer. It’s a busy Friday night, after all, and I suspect that type of benevolently wise bartender doesn’t really exist.

Do: Think about him when you masturbate.
It’s early morning. The sun is streaming in through my bedroom windows. I woke up with an erection. A warm, comforting, eager morning erection. I kick the sheets back and take hold of my cock, gently at first, moving my hand up and down slowly, just feeling things out, waking up the flesh.

And then I’m thinking of Andy. Thinking of his skin, his smell, the last time I had his cock in my mouth. It was in the shower, in my apartment. He hadn’t been in the mood to get it on, but when he saw me getting into the shower he decided he needed to get in with me. I knelt down, like we were in some lame porno, and he slipped his cock into my mouth. It was smooth and silky, and I could feel him flexing. When he was done, I stood up and he pulled me close to him. “Thank you,” he said, and he kissed me.

Now, that’s all I can think of. Kneeling in my shower. His cock. His smooth, slight muscles. His eyes closed. His pouty lips slightly parted. That’s the image I hold as I stroke myself. And when I come, it’s short and shallow and not particularly comforting.

Do Not: Tell people you were in love with him.
“I wasn’t in love with him.”

“You said you were in love with him.”

“Yeah, I know what I said. I was wrong.”

I’m trying to explain the Andy situation to my friends. For months I’ve been telling them how intensely I felt about him, and how he felt about me. I needed to impress upon them how different this was from every other relationship before it. He was going to move to New York. I was going to wait for him. This felt like it would last forever. This was real. This was something that would change my life forever.

These are words I have lived to regret.

A word to the wise: Never, ever tell people you are in love with someone. It’s a fundamentally insipid sentiment that can neither be proven nor disproved, even to yourself. That’s not cynicism, it’s just common sense.

“Ok, so you weren’t in love. Then what’s with all the drama?”

Actually, nobody asks that question. But I can tell they want to. The thing is, when you tell people you’re in love, and then nothing comes of it, you look like a fool. All that hoping and planning, all those breathless conversations about your man and the life you think you’ll have together; it all seems stupid in retrospect. It all sounds so melodramatic. The only way to avoid being the silly boy, who gets all worked up about minor romantic follies is to never tell anyone that you’re in love. Deny deny deny. That’s my policy.

So, no, I don’t think I was in love with Andy.

Or maybe I was. I don’t know.

The New Sad

In college, my best friend told me that she thought I’d be a lot happier if I didn’t listen to such depressing music. Moping around the dorm listening to PJ Harvey and Tori Amos and Fiona Apple was no way to live one’s life, she said. She prescribed a regimen of quirky pop-punk (Pain), endearingly bizarre shock rock (Mindless Self Indulgence), upbeat emo (pre-OC Phantom Planet), and all manner of ska. I listened to a lot of good music, but I can’t say that it worked. I still went back to what she called “sad bastard music.”

To be honest, sometimes it’s kind of nice to be sad. It’s a sort of cocooning, familiar feeling, just letting go and allowing yourself to feel not-ok. I’m a little bit sad at the moment, and these are the songs I’m listening to. They’re self-indulgent and self-pitying, and really really beautiful. And they’re sort of the only thing keeping me on my feet.

“9 Crimes” – Damien Rice
I think this is probably the saddest song I know at the moment. It sounds like the end of the world, the sort of thing you’d hear amidst the looted, burned out, crumbling ruins of, I don’t know, your heart, once all the fighting has stopped, in the quiet aftermath, once the dust settles. It sounds helpless and hopeless.

“Don’t Forget Me” – Way Out West
Leave it to the Grey’s Anatomy soundtrack to introduce an electro tinged tearjerker like this. It kind of makes me imagine my life as one long gray winter day where I’m leaving something behind, letting it go, it’s out of my hands. Maybe it’s snowing and it’s all in slow-motion.

“Grey” and “Welcome To” – Ani Difranco
Ani Difranco does sad in a way that not many other people do. It’s not about a break-up. It’s not about a broken heart. Sadness, Ani style, is about a broken spirit. It’s about exhaustion and ennui and self-pity and the persistence of such things, beyond the circumstantial. Nothing makes it better, “no amount of stoned makes you feel ok.” It’s a sadness that lives in your bones and never ever leaves, no matter how good things get. Listening to these two songs, in my opinion the saddest in her vast catalogue, it’s hard not to mourn. Not for something lost, but for something never found.

“Love Too Soon” – PJ Harvey
This one’s just unapologetically melodramatic. Very woe is me! Very soap opera. Very tongue in cheek. Still, it’s kind of a lovely song, and in the right mood it gets me more than a little misty-eyed.

“Colorblind” – Counting Crows
Remember Counting Crows? The goofy overweight white dude with the dreads? I barely do. But “Colorblind” is a little masterpiece, if you ask me. Utterly devastating, and the imagery is stunning. “Coffee black and egg white…taffy stuck and tongue tied/stutter shook and uptight.” It makes me think of ghosts and abandoned people.

“Language” – Scott Matthew
When it’s quiet, “Language” wraps around you like a blanket. It’s a lullaby. Gently plucking guitar and Scott Matthew’s velvety soft voice sort of ease the endlessly spinning thoughts in your head. And you just drift off to sleep.

“Half Boyfriend” – Jay Brannan
“Are you ok?” he asks.

“Yeah, why?”

“Well, I listened to the song on your MySpace page.”

It’s funny when you find a song that so closely mirrors what you’re feeling, even down to the specific circumstances that made you feel that way. That’s the type of song you put on your MySpace page to subtly, maybe a little passive aggressively, let someone know that he’s broken your heart. Well, maybe not broken it. Hairline fractured it. But if we’re talking about failed romance here, I have to say that at a certain point, if there’s someone who cannot, for whatever reason, just let you love him, well, you can love this song instead.

Divas '07

"Here’s a groundbreaking revelation: Gay boys love divas. Give us a crazy bitch with a drug habit – talent optional – and we’ll worship her for life. Or until she overdoses..."

Cybersocket had me write about the up-and-coming "divas" of 2007, including my new favorite, Regina Spektor. (Although why they had me write about Bianca Ryan and Taylor Hicks I'll never understand.)

Read it: The Diva List 2007

"Jerk-Off Story"

Some erotica I wrote for a job I didn't get. They wanted "a jerk-off story."

I first spotted Serge the day my realtor showed me the apartment I live in now. We’d been all over the city that day, in the stifling mid-August heat, seeing cozy brownstones, stylish lofts, condos with all the amenities - mostly out of my price range. This, our last stop, was pretty under-whelming: a studio, 300 square feet, fifth floor walk-up, modern kitchen, recently remodeled bathroom, the smell of grease and fried food wafting up from the Chinese take-out place downstairs.

The realtor – Danielle, I think her name was – had to take a call, leaving me alone in the stuffy little apartment. I walked over to one of the three windows facing out over the alley. There was only eight, maybe nine feet of airshaft between my building and the one next door. I pressed my forehead against the glass, feeling frustrated, exhausted.

And that’s when I saw him: a pale, dark haired slip of a boy asleep on a red sofa in the apartment across the airshaft from mine. He was naked, lying on his stomach, one leg dangling off the sofa, smooth, round little ass on display. It reminded me of the way house cats stretch out in the sun, all lazy, aloof sensuality. I could feel my tightening, tender flesh pressing softly against fabric. Why doesn’t he close the curtains? I thought. And then, I hope he never does.

I heard Danielle’s cell phone snap shut behind me as she re-entered from the hall. “So what do you think?” she asked skeptically, as if to say, Yeah, I know it’s kinda a dump.

“It’s...actually…” The boy across the airshaft shifted in his sleep, rolling over onto his back. His uncut dick nestled in a thick tuft of black pubic hair, his full pink lips slightly parted. “It’s actually just what I’ve been looking for.”

* * * *
His name’s not really Serge, that’s just what I call him. Although, it might be. I don’t know his real name, so I guess I don’t know that it’s not Serge. It would be pretty weird if it was. He looks vaguely Eastern European, so Serge it is.

I’ve lived in this apartment for almost a year now. Serge renewed his lease six months ago. I watched him sign it at the coffee table in front of his red sofa, fold it up, slip one copy into an envelope which he licked with his perfect, strawberry red tongue. I’ve seen him do other things with his tongue. He’s constantly bringing other guys home to fool around. Usually they head to the bedroom, where I can’t see them. But every now and then they’ll stay in the main room, on the red sofa. Serge loves to suck cock, from what I can tell, anyway. He’ll push the guys down on the sofa and unbutton their flies. They’re usually hard before he even pulls it out of their boxers or tighty whities, pre-cum oozing out of the tip. He’ll wrap his hand around it, mouth open, and look up and the guy, blinking. He’ll flash a wicked smile and, without breaking eye contact, he’ll slip that cock into his mouth and down his throat. I don’t know if it’s something they talk about before, something he tells them he likes, but the guys usually end up grabbing Serge’s head with both hands, grasping his dirty shaggy hair and fucking his face. They pull out and cum all over those pretty cherry lips. It happens almost every time.

But most of the time I just watch Serge at home, all on his own. During the summer he’s naked more often than not. And he’s constantly masturbating. I guess that’s because he’s young, 18, maybe 19, in his sexual prime. Today, he’s home early from class (Intro to Sociology; I watched him study last night). He drops his messenger bag at the door, pulls his white t-shirt over his head, kicks off his Chuck Taylors. He falls onto the sofa in his faded jeans and studded leather belt, starts rubbing his crotch. He unbuckles the belt, slides his jeans off.

And then he looks right at me.

I freeze. A deer in headlights. I duck behind my curtains, wait, then slowly peek back around them. Serge is smirking at me, still naked, holding his belt in one hand, the other on his freshly shaven cock. He winks at me and puts the belt around his cock and balls, pulling them up. He slides the belt between his legs and rubs himself on it, letting the rough leather slip between his ass cheeks. He’s getting hard. His cock quivers and stands up all on its own. He bounces it for me. He tosses the belt aside and leans back on the sofa, stroking his cock with one hand, the two fingers of the other in his mouth. He lifts his thighs and shifts in my direction, so that I can see his pink asshole. He takes the two fingers from his mouth and rubs the little puckered button. He slips one inside, slowly, and then the other. He’s playing with himself, lips parted, eyes closed. If I could hear him, I know he’d be making soft whimpering sounds. His skin is flushed a deeper pink than usual. He starts bucking his hips into his own hands, fingers sliding over his cock, in and out of his ass. He’s wide open, his mouth a gaping, trembling O, the sound a long deep moan as he comes all over himself.

Serge stands up, licks some of the cum off his hand and blows me a kiss.

The next day, the curtains are drawn over Serge’s windows.