Okay, finally, New York

Keeping a secret comes naturally to my family, and I am a true member of my family. When my friend Connie called me up a few months ago and invited me to go to New York as a surprise for her boyfriend Jasons Birthday, I couldn't resist. Going to NY would be fun and surprising Jason would be a feat. For two months we kept the secret, making plans over IM's online and making sure not to mention anything about the trip. He knew that he and Connie were going, along with two other friends, Jamey and Phillip. He didn't know I would be attending, nor that his sister (who recently announced her pregnancy) or her husband would be coming along.

Two nights before we were scheduled to leave Jason showed up In New Orleans. I had already been telling people that I was going to NY, not expecting him to show up and run the risk of somebody saying something in front of him. Luckily no-one did, and even then Connie and I both came close to blowing the surprise the night before. At long last the moment arrived and I knocked on their hotel room door unexpectedly. Jason answered the door and I said "Hey, I was bored at home, can I go to NY with you guys?" He seemed rather stunned but happy and off we went to the airport! Jason still didn't know that his sister and brother in law would be meeting up with us once we got to the hotel. The flight was good, non-stop, and I sat next to an older grey haired man who was quiet most of the trip...Until we were over the city and suddenly schlomo the wonder Jew came alive and told me about EVERY bridge we flew over.

There was almost a mishap at the airport. Jenny and Mike had arrived before our late arriving flight's luggage had cleared and we found a livery car to take us into Manhattan. We thought that Jason might see them in the airport but we rushed to a car and were off on Mister Toads Wild Ride into the city. Which brings us to the stereotypical things that we'll just get out of the way right now so I don't have to mention them constantly.

• Cabs/Livery cars are almost always frightening as traffic is horrendous and the drivers last jobs were obviously careening flatboats down the Tigris-Euphrates avoiding missiles.
• Everybody has their hand out for a tip.
• Everything is expensive.
• 9 times out of 10, bartenders are rude, rude, rude.

Okay...Thursday. We checked into the hotel and waited for Jenny and Mike to arrive which they did in short order. Everybody freshened up and we headed off to dinner at Sardi's. It's one of those old New York tourist trap kind of places, caricatures of stars on all the walls. I was half expecting Suzanne Pleshette to come in dragging a fur coat behind her. Alas, she didn't. After dinner we went for a walk around the times square area, through the theater district to fifth avenue and then up to Rockefeller Center. Along the way we passed the theater where Denzel Washington had just opened in "Julius Ceaser." I can't figure out that casting, but hey, who am I? The show was over and Denzel was out front signing autographs and having his picture taken with fans. After we walked to Rockefeller Center we discovered their bar was closed (well I managed to get a drink but everybody else was SOL.) My friend David called about then and invited us to meet him at a bar called Barracuda for a drag show. We jumped in a cab and had the most frightening ( I know I said I wasn't going to mention it every time, but this one was particularly harrowing) cab ride of my life. Jamey and Connie and I were thrashing around in the back seat and I was convinced that we were going to die before reaching our destination. Barracuda was alright that night, the bartenders nice and Connie made friends with a crew of Israelis. David was late getting there but it was great to see him. We hadn't seen each other since he last visited NO at Mardi Gras time. My group left after the show but Jason and Jamey returned. We took off to Stonewall Inn for their "Detention" night. Basically this means over 18 night. We walked in and let me tell you, it was straight out hooker night. Little baby NY hooker children. We didn't stay long, but long enough for me to have a couple SoCo lime shots and be very drunk. Jamey went home but Jason and I walked to White Castle! Yes, White Castle. It had been so long since I had been to one and this one was a doozy. Big, and I mean BIG black girls in house slippers and tight clothes were our companions as we waited and waited for food. We ate in the lobby and passed out in our rooms, only to get up a few hours later....

Day Two, Friday. I slept later than everyone else but met up with Jason pretty quickly. We were heading to Macy's to go shopping but Connie called to say everyone else was at this Irish pub having lunch so we should go join them. Finding the place was an adventure as we couldn't get Ahab to understand the address, that or we didn't understand, but either way, we ended up taking a cab ride about a block and a half. After lunch it was off to Macy's Herald Square, nine floors and a city block of shopping! I only bought shoes and Jason bought some new shirts, but we spent several hours looking around, trying things on, having fun until it was time to go get ready for our dinner cruise that night. Just in case you were wondering, it was incredibly HOT while we were visiting. It was even hotter once you put on a long sleeve shirt and a jacket and then waited 25 minutes trying to find 2 cabs at 6:15 pm on a Friday night to go ten blocks to the pier. We finally abandoned the idea and walked, walked and walked through some pretty crappy areas and finally arrived, sweat soaked for our cruise. Once aboard I was immediately taken by how sickening the boat was as it bumped back and forth into the pier. Once we got going though, my illness faded and we were off for a beautiful cruise around the southern tip of Manhattan. On the way back they take you to the statue of Liberty and it's really a stupendous moment. According to Jason and Connie they play very patriotic music at this point but luckily they don't play it outside so I avoided hearing the wretched Lee Greenwood tune "Proud to be an American." No matter what they play though, seeing the Statue in line with both Ellis Island and the Manhattan skyline is a very emotional moment and you can't help but feel a bit patriotic, maybe even tear up a little bit. Dinner onboard was good but it took forever to get and Connie and Jamey consumed two bottles of wine in the process. They were both pretty loopy by the time we jumped into a limo and headed back to the hotel. We went for a little walk around the area, but everybody else went back to the hotel. I jumped in a cab and headed to the village to meet up with David at his favorite restaurant, Shag. After a few drinks we took off on a bar tour. We went to a couple places whose names I don't recall..We were only in them for a walk through before we cabbed over to BoysRoom. Like most clubs, it was small, though this one was two floors. The upstairs was dominated by a stage with dancing boys, and the crowd seemed pretty entertained by the two boys making out, one of them with an erection. Given that I can see that by looking up at work, I wasn't that impressed. Downstairs one of David's friends was DJing, boys were dancing and the bartender struck a resemblance to Ryan Phillipe (albeit a more gay looking version if that's possible.) After that it was off to The Cock at 11th and A, a bar that came recommended but described as sleazy. I wasn't looking for a backroom but a little sleaze never hurt anybody. It was a great bar, one long room, packed, hot and normally everything I would hate, but the bar had an incredible energy. You could smoke in this bar and though I nearly got into a shoving match/fight with a nelly boy who insisted that swing dancing was in order with his girlfriend (the only girl I saw), I had a great time. It was kind of like the pub upstairs during decadence...Or the way it used to be anyway. A little sex over in the quarter, a quartet of on-lookers and eyes going everywhere, watching all the action. Sadly they closed just as I was hitting my stride and with no-where else to go, I headed back to the hotel.

Day Three, Saturday. Most everyone else went to see "Mama Mia" that day, so I headed out to spend the day with David. I took the subway uptown to W 96th and saw David's place, but headed back downtown to eat at another of his favorite places, Elmo. After we spent the rest of the day walking around from the west village to the east, through the NYU campus where we encountered the India Festival. We only went in because we saw the Hare Khrisna Youth Ministry bus and wanted to see the hot young Krishna boys. Only one surfaced but what I couldn't believe was the food being passed around. Clearly the NY health department wasn't involved in the sanitary process of this festival. I told David there was absolutely going to be an outbreak of chronic diarrhea and the next corner we rounded we found a man sitting in the passenger side of his car cleaning off the exact same problem from his naked 8 or 9 year old son. It was disgusting. I had to get going back to the hotel and meet everyone for dinner which was at "Lipps," a drag restaurant. It was very similar to the old Lucky Chengs in New Orleans, and there is actually another Chengs in NY, probably the original one. The food was good, our server, Melinda, was fun and cheerful. The MC of the show took a shine to Phillip and before it was over had him shirtless in the middle of the restaurant. Saturday was Mikes, the brother in law, birthday so we had to get him up and embarrass him for his special day. The problem was that the air conditioning was broken and it was un-godly hot in the restaurant. I was happy when we finished and headed back to the hotel on the subway. Well most of us did. From the minute we arrived Phillip spent most of his time at one of NY's bathhouses. That night he had taken a bottle of lube and some condoms in my pocket but the bottle had spilled open and run down the back of his pants. Not daunted, Phillip jumped off the train at 23rd street and headed back to his little paradise. The rest of us went to the hotel and then off bar hopping again. This time it was just Jason and I so we went to Posh first, a nice little bar, not too busy. Then we went to Therapy which was probably the most beautiful gay bar I have ever seen. There is a big staircase that goes up the center of the room and I can only imagine the number of sleepless nights that were spent by some of the gay boys fretting over their decision of which way to walk up or down the stairs. It was a stunning bar, the bartenders were actually mostly friendly but it was very stand and model....I was feeling a bit dizzy so we decided to leave but hit one more bar before we went home...SBNY, which used to be called Splash. Now I had been to this bar before and absolutely hated it, very snobbish, very tourist, very expensive and annoying. Add to this that the cab driver refused to understand the street address and tried to drop us off at the Hustler club three different times. We finally arrived, paid our (gasp) $15 cover fee and proceeded to be treated rudely and pay a fortune for drinks. The one bright spot was the beautiful dancers. Unlike BoysRoom and the pub, every one of the dancers was hot...lots of jockstraps, baseball hats (not caps, hard plastic hats) and beautiful bodies. We didn't stick around long and headed in a cab back to the hotel. I cut out early and went back to stonewall where I was disappointed to find out not only was it Latin night, there were only about 5 people in the place. Now let me say something else about this place. For those that don't know about the Stonewall Riots, read here. For those that do know, it's sad that a place that is such a pivotal part of gay history would be reduced to being such a sad bar that has been through a ton of metamorphosis only to be a sad place that survives on selling t-shirts, cashing in on their place in history. The bartender and another patron guided me to G-Lounge, a place a few blocks away which was fantastic. Loaded with cute boys, great music and a decent drink, it was definitely one of my favorite places. I met a young man named Kevin and he convinced me to go with him to "Spirit," which is housed in the former "Twilo." Admission was unbelievably expensive, $ 25 bucks, bringing my total to $ 50 in covers for the night. Were it packed with people Spirit would probably be amazing, but it was fun enough (though I am not sure it was 25 dollars fun) and we danced and danced. The music was really good and I met several new people. Kevin abandoned me around 4:30 (after a search for ecstasy came up empty, but I was thinking, how can you not find ecstasy in a place like this?) I stayed until about 5:30 or 6 but headed home, walking my sweat soaked, club shirt wearing self down the seemingly quiet streets to get a few hours rest. Connie and Jason and the crew were leaving that morning and I was going to have to check out of the hotel and move my luggage to Davids for the remainder of my stay. Luckily they let me check out late so I was able to sleep while the rest of the crew made their way to LaGuardia to head back to New Orleans.

Okay, I'm going to cut for here, I had no idea I would write this much about three days of my life, but details are the key to any story.