A Sentimental Feeling

There was a medieval celebration (I think it is called “The Feast of Fools”) in which commoners dress up as hierarchy and saints, making a saucy procession through their hamlet, delivering an outrageous and ribald send up of sacred chant, ritual and ceremony.

“Gay church” on Christmas Eve at the Broward Center for The Performing Arts in downtown Fort Lauderdale felt like that. A crowd of almost two thousand gay men and lesbians, dressed in the full spectrum of holiday wear from black leather chaps to red sequined tops, filled most of the three-tiered hall, ready to pray, gawk, carole or cruise.

I had been cajoled into accompanying my friends B and P who had attended this Do last year, and had promised me the spectacle of an altar dropping down from the “heavens” onto the stage, a transsexual nun and various other visual delights. From the advantage of box seats that allowed me to inspect the crowd as well as the stage, I was glad to see a good number of hot doable men in attendance, for I am of the opinion that gay church mostly attracts the homely, who, having failed at other more physically demanding venues, grace the thresholds of religion where “the lame shall enter first”. This may actually make sense if you really examine the basic recipe set in place by Jesus for his church, establishing it as a receptacle exclusively for lost sheep. There are bars, baths, internet profiles, circuit parties and tea dances for handsome and healthy sheep who can keep up with the flock. For the rest, there is religion.

Smoke from the incense (a decent ambergris mixture) got off to a fine start. A 39 piece orchestra began the powerfully good delivery of traditional Christmas songs that extended throughout the service and ultimately made the evening worthwhile. A forty-five voice choir armed with some good arrangements kept pace with the instruments. Things were revving up perhaps a bit to televangelically seamlessly, but not yet offensive. The entrance procession took care of that. A rag tag compilation of local church leaders and courtiers and various hangers-on, some carrying banners and standards and such, made their way to the stage from the rear of the aula with much pomp and to the singing of a high octane “Oh Come All Ye Faithful”. P and B called my attention to the transsexual nun who simply looked like an aged nun walking with a cane. She was to have no real part in the ceremony, and unlike Amanda Lepore who is willing to enlist her physical parts for the purposes of top-billing, this nun showed us nothing that might betray her little secret. Either you knew it or you didn’t. There was also a man dressed up as Sir Thomas More via the Holbein portrait of him. I got the impression that his was a durable costume trotted out also for secular holidays such as Halloween. There was an appropriately dalmaticed deacon and subdeacon, one of which actually remembered to turn up the edge of the main celebrant’s cope before he incensed the altar. That’s more than can be said for most American Roman Catholic deacons who wouldn’t even know which end of a dalmatic is up. Bringing up the rear was the obese pastor of the Sunshine Church who had assembled a mismatched costume of cast off Roman Catholic vestments including a cope, miter and crosier. A faux-bishop worthy of a suburban high school play, this pastor was followed by a man who sheltered him with a gaudy fringed umbrella. Each verse of the hymn increased in majesty as the happy procession streamed the aisles and took the stairs up onto the stage. Taking their places around the altar, this clerical kaleidoscope beamed and waved as the whole place shook to one final trumpet-laden refrain. I roared with delight, jumping up out of my seat and screaming “Brava!” If only I had brought roses for the throwing. These folks practice instinctively every aspect of celebration that has been ditched or forgotten by the sad Judeo-Christian leaders of the past fifty years.

I get a text message from Michael (see the blogroll for Michael Flynn) whom I was eager to meet. He was in the reserved orchestra seats with his mother and sister. He says he doesn’t know my name. Not surprising, as “one of the farmboyz” was not bestowed at Baptism. We spy each other, scanning the crowd for someone with cell phone up to ear. After the service, we meet at the reception and make plans to dine after Christmas.

A few nights later we are in one of the “gliding” tables at Alibi eating salad and sliding cryptic plastic disks at the waiter who supplies us with muscular drinks. Michael is very young and very handsome and very sharp and my time with him was entirely enjoyable. I wish I could read what is written upon the stars for him. (Michael, I hope we can do this again a year from now on the feast of St. Stephen, and that you will still be easily brought to laughter.)

I want to jump back to Christmas day for a moment. When one is battling a cold, or possibly a flu, or possibly bronchitis, one appreciates fivefold the efforts of friends offering comfort. B and P had me over for brunch (P’s hash and eggs – this one the best ever) and then suggested I lounge by the pool or on the beach while they readied dinner. I was in no condition to argue. Five minutes later, the pool boy was handing me a sumptuous yellow towel and I was asleep under a warming sun, opening an eye every so often to inspect the purple flowering hedge that has returned to life after having been cut down by Wilma, and to dangle a foot into the submerged first step of the Mediterranean tiled pool. I am rejuvenated. Up on the 23rd floor, the turkey is done, Mike G and his new boyfriend, Jose, have arrived. I dress and ascend and join them for what will be a convivial and delicious dinner. The whirring sound of the blender in which P makes his deceptively silky concoctions grows fuzzy, and somehow the sun has set, and we are at The Ramrod where I am being pleasantly mauled by a hot short guy with dark wavy hair. I reach over his shoulder to check out his firm butt and I notice the expensive hieroglyphics on the pocket. I put out of my mind the fact that he has acquired denim for three hundred dollars and that he has worn these to the Ramrod. He is named Rocco. He takes me out to his car for the smoking of something. He points out the burl wood encrusted dash board, telling me that these appointments were finished recently. Oddly, his dealer gets into the back seat. He is a lanky fellow with a short brown beard, and a black leather car coat that I suspect holds product. I reach back from the front passenger seat and sample his long right calf. He seems to be unaware of my touch as he leans forward to tell Rocco “That was a single you gave me, not a twenty”
“Bullshit. I gave you a fucking twenty.”
“No, man, it was a single.”
Rocco looks at me as he hands another twenty over his shoulder and says to me “He does this to me every night.”
We all pass something around, and Rocco confides to me that he is a multi-millionaire. I tell him that I am more taken with his looks, but this oddly does not lead to sex. Instead, we all leave the car and re-enter the bar, where I find P making out with a sturdy daddy who is one of The Ramrod’s owners. I somehow find myself wedged between two hot muscle numbers from St. Augustine. I agree to follow them back to their hotel. I find my car and it drives itself over the bridge to the barrier island, onto A1A, and taking a right on Windamar (one of the sequence of “Mary” streets, such as Vistamar, Riomar and Terramar), it manages an astounding feat of parallel parking in front of the Windamar Hotel. The taller one tosses a baggy full of pot onto the bed. Oh yeah. That’s just what I need. Some sort of small wooden thing is prepared and without C to tell me which end to which I ought to apply the lighter, I figure I’ve got a fifty fifty chance of getting this right. Much bouncing about on the bed. They are inspired and my voice takes on a sort of gravely brush-fired quality. I play with the silvery clamp that the tall one has applied to his crotch. It is a fascinating sort of half-round with a double bar cross piece that latches over his dick and balls. This and the perplexing pipe make me feel like I am the host of a naked version of Antiques Roadshow and that they are sharing heirloom curios with me. They both groan their way to a big photo-finish, and I am fitted with a long terry cloth robe and escorted outside to the hot tub by the pool. After a few minutes of real estate conversation, one of them returns to the room and I have enough sense left in my head to remember that my clothes are on the floor of that room, and since I don’t really know these guys, I should probably wonder if my pockets are being searched. I throw on the robe and return to their room. I get dressed and express much satisfaction as I write out the address of this blog and toss it on their desk as I leave. (Guys, I think you had a good time and if it seemed that I was on the verge of becoming Linda Blair, you will know not to break out the pot if we meet again. I am your classic lightweight.)

Later in the week, C and are back in NYC getting massages and facials at the Nickel Spa for Men on 14th St. It is New Year’s Eve, and we meet up with Eddie (see my blogroll for CircleinaSquare) and with K who sings with Mystery Date. We four pile into a Greek restaurant and join JB who had once, in his childhood, served as my altar boy at a Mass I said in Italian for the victims of the earthquake in Friuli. K and JB are surprisingly newly single, having shed boyfriends who seemed highly suitable. They chose this restaurant because of a shared admiration for a particular waiter. Also present was a lady whose husband, Omar was mysteriously absent. I begin to miss whole chunks of the conversation while stroking C’s cheek made ultra-smooth by the Spa treatments.

Later, Eddie, C and I head to the opposite side of 14th St, to a bar called Nowhere for the ushering in of the new year. They are having an event called Double Headed Disco, with a retro seventies tinge. I don’t know why we are here, but I find myself introduced to a hot couple composed of Clickboo (see the obvious on my blogroll) from DC and his boyfriend from Long Island. There are many lesbians among the mauve and silver balloons. C and I play Ms Pac Man, just as we did twenty-three years ago on the night we met. The price of a game has quadrupled since then. We are supplied with champagne by the hot Long Islander as the moment arrives. We are in bed by 1:30AM and I am reading a sweet collection of David Sedaris acerbia about Christmas that C had stuffed into my stocking, while he is reading a Cole Porter bio the dust cover of which is the same color as our quilt, a Christmas gift stitched by my brother’s ex-wife many years ago. La mia vita, la novella che non finisce mai.

On New Year’s Day, we go to Jackson Heights which is exactly 13 minutes and 44 seconds from midtown, by means of the E train. The neighborhood is tempting and affordable. We could garden there. We speculate. By 7PM we are at the Dugout with Eddie, and I am braying like a red-necked backwoods Georgian to Super Daddy Mark, “You got Miss Brenda Lee inside that there juke box?” With a level of control only rivaled by the Fed’s clamp on interest rates, Mark (whom you will also find on the adjacent Blogroll)guards that box. When Eddie sees him punch in a Brenda Lee song, he gushes in my ear “You don’t know the great honor you have just been accorded”. But I do know it, for in a room like that, the Comptroller of the Music is omnipotent and must be vigilant. (Thanks, Mark.)

The crowd tosses the face of JB up into our group and we do wishes and kisses for the new year. He has in tow a brand new boyfriend, but he seems woe begotten, and I suspect this new acquisition will not see the light of day. We are surprised to bump into a dear friend from the Wretched Little City, an English cottage style garden designer blissfully accompanied by a new boyfriend. Last year, his lover of many years, a cable installer, came home and announced they were finished – for no particular reason. Eddie pronounces our friend to be the hottest man in the world and is chagrined to be introduced to the boyfriend. Meanwhile, C encounters a cute short reddish-blonde fellow whom he remembered from Montreal. He says that we both did him at the 456, Canada’s biggest bath house. I don’t recall him, but I also find it difficult to know whether I am wearing any shoes. His name is Daniel and he is the art director for Diesel (not Vin, but the retailer). The three of us make a scene that attracts an inordinate amount of attention. We continue to drink American beer out of plastic cups. Where is it coming from? Who do I thank? An Irish fellow inserts himself into our threesome. We extricate ourselves and run for the privacy of the bathroom. It is outfitted with four miniature urinals, each one eighteen inches apart. Oddly, the men of the Dugout actually urinate into the urinals, unlike the men of the Eagle who stand before the urinals but pee on each other, or make braids of the dicks to their left and right while those waiting in line to pee are reduced to using the sinks.

It is decided that the three of us will go back to Daniel’s place, but at the door, I balk. “Wait! What about Brenda Lee? We gotta stay till we hear “Rockin Around the Christmas Tree”. I then confide to a stranger near the door the fact that I cannot abide Christmas music until the holiday is actually over. C and Daniel hustle me out the door and I recall being on my back on a bed as my left shoulder and chest receive a stereo shellacing. I am humming what’s been running through my head all week. You will get a sentimental feeling in your heart. Come on baby let’s get jolly. Deck the halls with boughs of holly.