Monthly Archives: June 2003

Last night, my friend HK and I were searching for a bar on the Upper West Side. This seems like an easy task, but for some reason, I haven’t found just the place to hang and get a cocktail, nor the place to get a pint of beer. I do know one decent pub, but they don’t have a lot of room to sit, and they no longer have my favorite beer (Newcastle) on tap.

So HK and I poke our heads into a few places and reject them, and then wade through the crowd of smokers outside The Racoon Lodge and walk two steps into the bar, at which point the bartender shouts out from waaaaay across the room: “I need to see some IDs, ladies!”.

Of course, everyone in the bar turns to look at us, and we have already determined the place is WAY too much of a dive for our mood, but its too late—we can no longer leave without appearing to be guilty under-age Columbia students.

You see where this is heading, right? HK and I are about to be susceptible to negative inferences about our age from this obnoxious, drunk bartender. See, if she had said, “Welcome, come have a drink!” we would have turned and exited immediately. But be rude, obnoxious and totally wasted and suggest we don’t have a right to be there? We’ll prove it, damnit! We’ll drink two rounds, in fact! Who cares that we’ve wound up in a bar far worse than the other ones we have rejected, paying $5 each for a bottle of Heineken (this, of course, is the problem with going to a dive bar on the UWS—its not even cheap!).

Even better, when we go up for our second round, she IDs us again (once obviously not being enough to convince her we are 27, not 20). I’m suprised we didn’t stay for a third round, just to prove ourselves one last time.

So if anyone has any UWS bar reccomendations, I am obviously wide open to suggestions.

This weekend I am attending my five year college reunion. From this event, so many psychological issues arise (not to mention the financial ones—no college party, open bar or not, is worth $85—I will be dead due to alcohol poisoning if I actually drink my fair share), and in the midst of this plethora of potential neuroses, for some reason I am focusing on a scheduling conflict.

See, they have these “mini-reunions”, so you can get together with people with whom you actually share a common interest or experience (other than a diploma, that is). I have two potential mini-reunions, both of which are (of course) at the exact same time. I guess the lesson to be learned from this is that one should have only one social affiliation.

The particular decision I must make, therefore, is whether I am a theatre person or a lesbian. I am leaning towards the theatre person reunion. It’s closer to where I am staying, and I was actually friends with other theatre people in college. On the other hand, I think I have some secret fantasy that some really hot straight woman I knew in college will have since come out of the closet, and will show up at the gay and lesbian mini-reunion. In reality, a more likely scenario will be that no women, formerly-closeted or out-and-proud, will show up, and I will be surrounded by gay men taking pity on me and chatting me up so that the lesbian feels welcome.

Although the more I think about it, I am not sure the decision even matters, since whichever mini-reunion I choose, I will be the only lesbian among musical theatre queens.

Starting tomorrow, we here at the Search for Love in Manhattan (by which I mean I here at the Search for Love, etc.) will be trying an experiment. I go into rehearsal tomorrow for a reading on Monday of the Holocaust musical I’ve been writing for the last nine months. Since to attempt to do the rewrites that will become necessary the instant we start rehearsal while also keeping up with my blog would cause my head to explode, I’m going to have a guest blogger, as I have at various points in the past when I’ve been unable to keep up.

Here’s the catch: the guest blogger is a lesbian.

But don’t worry. She’s just as neurotic as I am. You’ll be in good hands.

My ultimate goal in life is to find myself in a situation in which I can appropriately use the following line, spoken by Mr. Bennet to Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice.

“I have not the pleasure of understanding you. Of what are you talking?”

Then I can die a happy man.

N.B.: Yesterday, I posted three times. Today I’m back to my regular one.

In my junior year of high school, I threw a birthday party and invited my whole class. Unfortunately for me, Matthew Gibson—one of the few decent people in the class—happened accidentally to be throwing a party the same night, so everybody went to his party and three people came to mine. All four of us sat around and pretended nothing was wrong.

When I walked into homeroom at school the next day, Mary Beth Crawford turned around, saw me, and said, “Hey, Faustus, I heard you had a really bitchin’ party last night!”

This was thirteen years ago and I still have dreams about rending her flesh into a thousand tiny pieces.