This is my second attempt at today’s blog post. It will not be as cool as the one I just lost. God damn it.

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Aimee and I walked to Little India and had amazing Indian food at a kosher, vegetarian Indian restaurant. It was fantastic and delicious.

After that, we shopped a little – didn’t buy anything – and then navigated the New York subway system sans guide to Central Park where she hit the deli she’d wanted to go to, Cafe La Fortuna, where she bought Kevin a t-shirt and a couple of cannolis. We did not end up in Queens, which is an accomplishment in itself considering how little attention we’d paid to any of our previous guided forays into the world of public transportation here.

We made it back to Penn Station and from there walked to Steven’s apartment. Steven had to work from two until eight, the poor dear, so we hung out here with JoLynn a little bit, then I walked ten blocks to 8th and 21st to meet up with Deb and Jimmy at Bright’s Food. They ate dinner and I had a pomegranite juice-based cocktail.

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The gay boys in Chelsea are so fucking cute, you would not believe it.

Gay boy-watching is a totally different sport than straight boy-watching; it has a whole different set of criteria. It’s sort of like the kind of looking you might do at high school kids. You look because they’re eye candy, but you don’t mean it because, well, they’re kids. With the gay boys you don’t mean it because they’re gay. You look because they’re pretty, not because you want to fuck them.

Gay boys have their own aesthetic, and around here they’re so pretty and stylish, walking around smiling and holding hands, with their little outfits and their high-end hair products and their obviously too-obsessive workout and diet routines and their own highly specific and stylized expression of masculine beauty and sex appeal. The cult-of-the-body problem is tragically overrepresented in this population, sad to say, but they’re astonishingly easy to look at.

I lived in San Francisco once. The boys here are way cuter.

Steven has told me twice since I’ve been here that I have the fag hag gene. “Gay men love you, and you love them. You have the gene.” I’ve always associated the phrase ‘fag hag’ with those sad fat chicks who fall tragically in love with homosexual men and try fruitlessly to ‘convert’ them, but I think he meant it in a nice way. The men around here are just really open and sweet, and it’s a nice trait to see in a male population. It’s not that I think straight men should act like women, but it’s nice to see certain quasi-feminine qualities so overtly expressed in males.

“Stanley asked me once on my blog when I’d ‘turned into such a fag hag’,” I replied to Steven.

“Yeah, when did you?”

“I guess I’ve always been one. Even my roommate in junior college was queer. But there are only two out fags in Fairfield so I guess my membership expired from lack of proximity. You can call me and whine on my voice mail every so often to keep me in the loop.”

He laughed.

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After dinner, Debbie & Jimmy and I walked up to and around the Village. I saw The Blue Note, I saw a tattoo parlour I wanted to give money to, I saw cute hippy skirts I wanted to buy. It’s a cute area, but the locals aren’t kidding when they say the grid system breaks down there – the streets are all curvy and some intersections boast three or more roads all trying to cross each other.

We found a bar and sat and had a couple of cocktails and socialized. I told them to join us in Telluride next year; I think Jimmy’s considering it. I complained about wanting to stay longer, and they offered me their couch. I seriously considered it until I realized that changing my ticket would take up much of my remaining cash and that I wouldn’t be able to stay and eat too. Plus I should probably return to work on Tuesday so I can, you know, like, keep my job and stuff.

We walked through Washington Park and Jimmy hailed me a cab and I came back to Steven and JoLynn’s.

Now I’m sitting on the balcony with a bottle of water and an ashtray, and New York is being New York and it’s loud and wonderful and I can’t believe I’ll be back in my old farmhouse tomorrow afternoon. We’re leaving here at nine, taking the subway and the skytrain to Newark, then flying to Chicago, then flying to Des Moines (woe are my ears with all those pressure changes), and then putting oil in the jeep and driving back to Faifield where I will drop of Aimee, pick up Shiva and Stella (and probably something to eat), then a side trip through Libertyville to pick up Miss Bindu, and then home… where I will probably sleep for twenty hours.
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