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(For the record, I’m in Colorado on a quick business trip. Sitting here, I can’t say I really miss it. But at least our old house is still standing. There was some question about that due to a fire alarm a couple weeks ago. Apparently the alarm company is still notifying me of such things even though I told them to stop.)

Monday night after dinner I ended up back at The Web. It was “Men Without Pants Get A Free Drink” night and I figured that could be interesting. I wasn’t sure about the whole “going without pants” thing but I was prepared just in case (I wore some nice undies that make my butt look good). Once I got to the club I realized my preparations were in vain – the only pantsless guys among the 15 or so scary people there were some old white guys (I should mention here that The Web is a predominantly gay Asian club). So my jeans stayed on and I paid for my drinks. Some creepy guy was cruising me heavy, following me around the bar and standing close to me while staring. I talked to a couple of the go-go boys, one of whom is starting art school in a couple weeks and we talked about what got him to that point and how he prepped for it, as I have a friend who’s thinking of design school but is afraid he doesn’t have the background. Another go-go boy gave me some good advice on where a guy should go to go dancing on a Monday night, so about 1:30am I found myself at Splash, a club I hadn’t been to since Adrian and I were there three years ago.

I grabbed a quick drink from the muscle boy behind the bar and staked out the dance floor. It was a pretty light crowd by this point but one cutie caught my eye and I caught his (I also had another creepy guy start hitting on me but he got the hint and moved on). His name was Ernesto and we danced a bit, then he headed off to the restroom and seemed offended that I didn’t follow. I didn’t see him again, but I did see this one hottie dancing with two lady friends. He was a great dancer, so naturally I wanted to be near him – it nothing to do with his looks, nothing at all. No, really. Anyway, this trio moved closer to me and hottie and one lady went outside to smoke while the other lady stayed and danced with me. Since one good way to get to meet someone is to make a good impression on his friends, I naturally turned on the charm. Fortunately, she was pretty cool in her own right, having just come to a gay club for the first time. The other two were her friend Rex and his cousin Zee. Zee lived in Jersey and Rex was visiting for a week. We went out, met up with them, then headed back inside to dance and dance and dance.

Stepping back outside for another smoke and some communing with the local queens from Queens, Zee announced that they needed to be back at the ferry at 3am. Problem: it was now 3:10am. And we were at 17th St and 6th Ave, while the ferry was at 29th St and 11th Ave. Uh oh.

They took off walking and I offered to go with them for safety in numbers, and also so that if they missed the ferry they’d have a place to crash, that is to say, my hotel room. Let’s be honest here, Rex was hot and seeing him without his shirt would not have been a bad thing. Plus, they seemed unsure about where they were, and even though I’m not really a New York expert, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have an extra person along, as the area they were headed to was not the best part of town.

Around the time we hit 9th Ave Zee decided to call the ferry station and see if they were still open. She called Directory Information and finally got a number but got no answer when she called. Uh oh. Last ferry’s probably gone and now they’re stuck in Manhattan. But wait! She remembered that the busses from Penn Station go right buy her house so she tried to get the number for Penn Station. When she had trouble getting through I asked “are you sure you don’t mean Port Authority Bus Terminal?” Uh, yeah. So we decided to just jump in a cab and go there, and since it was 3 blocks from my hotel, we still had that as a backup.

They were ready to jump out of the cab while I went home (I think Rex might have started to get the idea I wouldn’t mind see him shirtless and was probably as nervous about that as I was about the creepy guys earlier in the evening) but I didn’t want to leave them stuck there, as it was almost 4am and the folks hanging out at the bus station then aren’t on society’s “A”-List. They found that the last bus before dawn had left at 2:30, so I stepped aside while they talked and they decided to take me up on the hotel room.

We got there at 4 and ended up never sleeping. We just talked for the next 2 hours, they were both really interesting with some cool backgrounds. I won’t get into all that, of course, as it’s not right to discuss other people’s private lives, but I will say they have some cute tattoos. As the clock rolled around to 6am they wanted to head outside and smoke, and I suggested that they might want to catch an early bus, as they’d have better luck during rush hour. So we went out front, they smoked while the sun came up over 8th Avenue (hidden behind buildings, but still…), then I got hugs and kisses (yay!) and off they went. I know they made it home OK because we traded MySpace info and I got a hit from Zee two hours later.

I, of course, went back to bed for about 3 hours, as we were going to do some shopping that day before taking the train back to DC. The night could have been a total loss, but I got to meet a couple cool folks and have an adventure on the Lower West Side, and that’s always good. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sunrise in New York, so I can add that to the list.

You may be wondering where Adrian was in all of this. Well, that’s another story for another time.