Singapore/KL Bangkok Stuttgart Washington DC Toronto Colorado Springs San Francisco

Tonight we went to a local bar where a friend hosts a trivia night on Mondays. I was the only person in the bar who knew the name of the actor who played Chewbacca in all the Star Wars movies. I'm not sure what that says about me, but it's probably nothing good.

(by the way...it was Peter Mayhew)

Good weekend. Yesterday I had coffee with Kiat, someone I'd met online months ago while we were in Colorado but hadn't met yet. We got together and talked for about an hour and I must say, he's a sweetie. Of course, I like anyone who flashes me his nipples while walking down the street. Well, not ANYone. But pretty damned close.

This morning we went out for brunch with Angelo and Josh and Ethan, giving our new friend a chance to meet some new folks of his own. I'm afraid he might get bored if we're his only gay friends so I'm trying to broaden his circle.

Angelo and Josh came over later to go swimming then returned for dinner wiith the roommate Justin, a fabulous dinner courtsey of Adrian (as all his dinners are fabulous). This does NOT mark the return of the Sunday night dinners, but it was a nice evening.

Last night I took our friend Ethan out for his first time at a dance club. He had never been to one so this was an eye-opening (and smile-widening) experience. We went to Apex, which has remodeled since we lived here before (when it was called Badlands) and of course Dancin' Mike bartends there Friday nights.

I wasn't sure how much he'd like it...well, neither was he, for that matter. He really wasn't sure what to expect and I think he would have felt a little more comfortable if Adrian had gone too, but my sweetie hadn't gotten much sleep this week and had to work today, so he passed out around 8pm. Anyway, we got there and despite the fact the air conditioning wasn't working he had a great time!! He stood off to the side while having a drink, watching me on the dance floor, but then as soon as he was done he was right out there with me and was obviously having a good time. Okay, there WAS that point where some guy was all rubbing up against his backside and he didn't look too thrilled about that, but hey, it's all part of the experience. At one point we ran into Justin, who is a roommate of some friends of mine, and chatted with him for a bit -- I was glad he had someone to talk to besides me, I don't want to bore him! We stayed until about 3 and I can tell he wants to go back. Much fun was had and I'm proud of him for jumping out and trying something new.

I'm going through a Futurama phase again. This happens every couple of years. I'll get an urge to watch an episode so I'll set the DVR to catch one at 2am on Cartoon Network and then before you know it I'm recording two each night and having Futurama orgies a few times a week. And by "Futurama orgies" I just mean I'm watching a bunch of them in a row, not that I'm having sex with multiple people while it's on. Though that's an intriguing idea...

Having dinner tonight with Ethan we started comparing Asian names (what, you mean YOU don't?) and in the process of some discussion and a phone call we determined that Adrian's brother-in-law is Ethan's friend's cousin.

Later, we heard that his friend thinks she knows Adrian, but from the description we're pretty sure it's Khamla that she knows.

Actually, this happens more often than you'd think.

Last weekend was our housewarming party with Adrian's family; this weekend was the one for our friends. We had a bunch of folks over last night, the last ones leaving around 2am for an hour-long drive home. We are so, so lucky to know so many great people; how we got this lucky I'll never know.

It was interesting to see two different "camps" develop -- inside, on the couch and chairs, is where the folks I've known since the early 90s gathered (folks I used to work with and friends I've since met through them). Outside, on the balcony, is where you'd find the folks I met the last time I lived here, and these are also the people Adrian tends to know a little better. A number of people commented on this, so I know it wasn't just me.

One of the downsides to hosting is that, in talking with everyone, you don't get to spend as much time as you'd like talking with any one person. Everyone always understands that, of course, and it just means we have to take more time to see our friends one-on-one. It's tough sometimes, especially with the folks in relationships (more schedules to plan around) or those who live way outside the Beltway. And let's face it, during the week people are often too tired or wrapped up in daily tasks to get together. But dammit, we were so social when we were here before, and after a few years with a couple really good friends but without the strong circle of friends we've always enjoyed before, we have some lost time to make up for.

I've always been careful not to let myself stagnate, to try to keep meeting new people and learning about the world through them. So it was great that a number of people brought new friends for us to meet. Alabama Michael brought a friend we've seen at a couple parties, Dancin' Mike brought his friend Aaron, Arlington Michael brought the guy he's dating -- coincidentally enough, also named Michael (and I must say, he's definitely the cutest guy Michael's dated since...well, you figure it out) -- and Josh brought his friend Melvin who'd just moved here the day before (so really, this party was a "Welcome to DC"-fest for him).

You know, about a year or so after we left, after I'd returned for my dissertation defense and Adrian was back for Christmas and then we returned for my graduation and then I was here on business, I remember Arlington Michael saying "would you guys just leave already!" OK, he was kidding (I think) but it's nice to know that we've managed to maintain some pretty great friendships over the years we were gone, and we're still meeting wonderful new people. I guess that's what comes from having such amazing friends.

Tonight was the night I finally got to see Step Up. We haven't been getting out to the movies that much the last couple years but I needed to see this one because Dancin' Mike performed in it, which was very cool to see. In all the years I've known him I've only seen him dance twice, and both times have come within the last month. That's too bad because he's incredible and considering he was the inspiration for my own attempts at hip-hop earlier this year (and with any luck, I'll talk him into teaching me this fall) you'd think I would have seen him dance sooner. Nope. But finally I got the chance. And I even managed to go see it with Mike, which was pretty special since this was the fourth time he'd seen it in the week since it came out (everyone wants to see it with him, naturally).

The movie was cute though there should have been more dancing in it. It was funny at times and sad at others (two little girls next to me started crying at one point) and most of all it was a nice little escape from work. The dancing was great and once again I got a pick into why Mike takes such joy in it. Of course, it's totally disillusioning for me, since I see him and think "OK, I'll never be THAT good," but hey, that's what happens when you start something 20 years too late.

I think Mike would like to continue dancing professionally but he's getting all kinds of conflicting influences (some of it internal, I think, but mostly from friends and family). He should do what makes him happy but you know, it's not always that easy to know what that is. Then again, he's only 24; he's got plenty of time. Those of us who are a tiny bit older, however, need to get on it.

A few years ago I signed onto something called Fridae.com, figuring I'd chat with people around the world but probably never meet them. Well, it's through Fridae that we have now met K.K. (formerly of DC, now in San Francisco), Ben (who moved to Denver from New York), and of course, Raberd in Bangkok who went out with us there a few times last summer and who is one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet. And who also works for MTV-Thailand, which I think is very cool.

Now we can add Ethan to the list, and that makes me very happy!!! Ethan was going to the same school where I got my PhD, though we didn't know each other at the time. We had managed to confuse each other so we thought we lived 30-45 minutes from each other, when in fact it's more like 7 or 8. As a result of that confusion we've been talking about meeting up but hadn't made it happen yet...we corrected that problem last night when the three of us went out for sushi then came back here and killed a bottle of wine. He plays tennis (like us) and likes wine (like us) and enjoys Asian food (like us) and goes camping (not exactly like us) and is an all-around super-sweet guy. He's been hoping to meet more gay friends here and we wanted to meet some nice new people so our paths have all crossed at the right time. We're looking forward to getting to know him as he seems like a great guy, and we're VERY happy to have met him!

So yay for Fridae.com, too.

Saturday night was Housewarming Part I: Adrian's family. (Part Deux, with our friends, comes next weekend) I wasn't sure how many people were going to be here (actually, I didn't really care...I just wondered how many screaming kids were going to be here. Answer: 5). We rented the party room in the basement of our building so the little kids could have a place to scream and the older kids and adults could mostly hang upstairs. Good thing, too, as we have an 18-th floor balcony, and while I doubt any of the kids would have fallen off accidentally, there was always the possibility they might accidentally get picked up and tossed over. Accidentally.

The kids really aren't bad, just a couple go really crazy but they lead the others. Adrian's 12-year old nephew, Charlie, is a very cool young man and he's not into the whole hanging-out-with-little-kids thing so he and I chilled and talked. His 17-year old niece, Sandy, was here with her boyfriend and her best friend and somehow our bottle of Absolut Vanilla was emptied while they were here. Hmmmm. Sandy is cool, she just has typical teenage girl angst, and we all know how much that sucks. Well, about 50% of us do.

Khamla is now officially dating Josh, the guy he's been seeing for the last couple of months. Josh is a nice guy and I've never seen Khamla acting like such a giddy little schoolgirl before. I've seen him dress like one, but never act like one. Anyway, they came, and Khamla got very drunk, and then they went to a friend's birthday in Baltimore and today I got a call and drove up toward that way to pick him up so he could come get the car he'd (wisely) left here.

BTW, Khamla graduated from cosmetology school last week, the same one Adrian attended. It should be obvious that I'm VERY proud of him. Plus, he helped give me a great haircut a couple weeks ago, so I can personally attest to his skill.

I've always felt accepted by Khamla and by Nikki, Adrian's lesbian sister, but I'm really feeling more and more accepted by the rest of his siblings. And even a little by his parents, who unfortunately couldn't come last night. Only took 5 1/2 years...

We've been getting the place ready for Saturday night's housewarming party for Adrian's family, and since the place is in good shape but without full accessorization (or, for that matter, without full removal of the boxes yet) we have some work to do. However, we'd agreed last Friday that THIS Friday we'd go to Apex (the club that used to be Badlands when we lived here before). I'd heard they'd renovated, plus Dancin' Mike bartends there on Friday night and I haven't seen him in a while, and finally, I just needed to do some dancing because I hadn't been out since Velvet Nation closed.

Adrian was pretty tired though, and so I went by myself, which is OK to do every now and then but I don't want to make a habit of it. Most of our friends don't go dancing (though Angelo and Josh do visit Apex sometimes, but they were being all domestic last night) so it's not like I'm going to go out and have friends there that I can meet up with.

Anyway, I got there and the dancing was great, and the drinks were exactly what I needed after this week, and the boys were, shall we say, hot. Well, lots of them, but not all. I was getting a little bit of attention, just enough to keep my ego happy, and had danced with a couple guys before this one shirtless hottie came up and got all up in my business and that was ok, because he was, well, shirtless. Hmmmm. Anyway, he was actually starting to hit on me pretty hard, and then he said he had to go to the bathroom and asked if I wanted to go with him. At that point this became a little more "Errrrr" then "Hmmmm" and I declined, saying I needed some water. I went back to where Mike was bartending and said, "Could I get a bottle of water please, oh, and I may need you to pretend to be my boyfriend for a few minutes." Hey, what can I say, the guy seemed nice and if I had to turn him down I didn't want to hurt his feelings and since my partner wasn't there I wanted a backup boyfriend to point to. Fortunately Mike was on the scene and had my back and gave me the whole "seductive looks and licking the lips" routine just in case, but the guy had apparently faded away and we didn't have to implement the whole plan.

Nice to know Mike's got my back, though. If anyone needs a pretend boyfriend, I recommend him highly. If anyone needs a real one, I recommend him even more.

Once again, I have succeeded in making pho that will water your eyes (because it's so tasty you will cry, not because it's too spicy and turns your insides to jelly). Khamla came over last night (actually, we hit the Asian market together first, and I know they thought we were a couple, and I just wanted to say, "no, I'm actually sleeping with his brother.") and when he called me at 6 and asked what I was making and I didn't really have any idea I knew pho would be a good standby. And now we're at the point where he's telling sisters how good it is and I don't know if that's a good idea because I don't want them to look at me as kitchen competition. Seriously, if there's one thing I've learned in these last few years it's that you don't want a bunch of Lao women mad at you. So if I disappear all of a sudden, start your search there.

Actually, I'm going to get with a couple of the sisters and learn some cooking, I think. They just don't know that yet.

Speaking of women and markets, Adrian and I were at a market in a Vietnamese shopping center nearby last weekend and as he walked ahead of me through the parking lot these two Vietnamese teenaged girls leaned out there window and yelled "hey cutie!" at him, then turned and saw me coming along and I think realized they'd just flirted with my boyfriend. heh heh giggle giggle tee hee Too bad for you, babe. Anyway, I told Adrian he needs to be careful, in an area like that he's liable to find himself married off to some young lady before we've gotten the case of coconut milk or noodles or whatever we've come for.

And yes, Mister CR of Dallas, I owe you a pho recipe. :-)

I got a "peer review" today regarding a book on Iraq to which I'm contributing a chapter. The review is done anonymously by two people in our field, and they recommend to the publisher whether or not they should go with our book. (it's not a big deal at this point as we're going with a different publisher, but we thought it would be good to see the reviews anyway).

One reviewer said my chapter was horrible and should be dropped. The other said it's the best one in the book. I'm going to split the difference and assume it's average. I figure if I'm getting both extremes I must have landed somewhere in the middle.

Quiet weekend. Saturday was a day for seeing people. The morning included Breakfast With Tracy, which isn't a TV show but which should be. He'd had some adventures in the woods since the last time I saw him so we had to get caught up. Saturday afternoon I met up with Alex, a local guy who recently turned 20 who'd spotted me on MySpace back when we were in Colorado and who had wanted to meet up once we moved back here. He's actually getting ready to move so odds are we won't hang out again. I kinda felt like this was a good chance to step back into "mentoring" mode but he really has some issues at home that are far beyond my limited powers. At least he's finally met a gay man who isn't into fucking teenage boys wearing panties. Good lord, he's met some losers. Poor guy. But LA should be fun, something of a clean slate.

Saturday night was a "surprise" (he already knew about it) birthday party for Sean, wherein we met up with some people I'd known waaayyyyyyy back, the first time I lived in Colorado (that's where I met Sean, 13 years ago), and even Kevin, who is one of my oldest friends from Wyoming. Adrian was mistaken for our friend Angelo, which of course makes perfect sense considering both are Asian (Adrian's Laotian, Angelo's half-Filipino...an easy mistake, I'm sure). Angelo's partner Josh had his straight college roommate with him, who was in town for a job interview. Hope he gets it, he's nice.

Sunday was "go have brunch at the Carlyle Grand and reconnect with the waitress who probably thinks we moved away again because we haven't been there in a month" day. So yeah, it's all about people. Oh, and crab cakes.

Friday was tennis day for us. Earlier in the week Adrian scored tickets to (what turned out to be the sold-out) quarterfinals of the Legg Mason Tennis Classic here in DC. We saw Marat Safin win a 7-6, 7-6 match, then watched the Bryan brothers take on another American team in the doubles quarterfinals. Very fun, and one more reason I'm glad we moved back here. They don't have ATP Tennis in Denver. or in Alabama. Go figure.

Aaaaaannnnndddddd...we managed to get tickets to Arthur Ashe Stadium for Round 4 of the US Open on Labor Day!!!! We are headed up there with some friends and planning to do General Admisison on Saturday the 2nd (though we'll have to wait in line for tickets...much as I did 5 years ago, to Adrian's surprise). Our friends are returning to DC on Monday but we planned to stay and go back to the Open, figuring we'd do General Admission again since that day's been pretty much sold out for the last two months, but I decided to look on Cragslist just out of curiosity, and someone had posted the ad for those tickets -- at face value, mind you -- only an hour earlier. Yeah, we snatched those right up. So be sure to watch for us on TV, we'll be the guys waaayyyyyyyy in the top of the stadium. But at least we'll be there.

I love Craigslist. We've found a house and US Open tickets on it so far. Not bad.

INTERIOR SHOT: Condominium Gym

TIME: Mid-morning, the sun is bright

Adrian, a tall, thin, very cute Asian man, is working out on the weight machines, moving from one to the next, wearing white t-shirt and blue sweatpants.

Old Man, possibly old enough to be Adrian's grandfather, enters the room, wearing shorts and a t-shirt.

(Begin dialogue)

OLD MAN: Hi

ADRIAN: Good morning.

OLD MAN: You're working out pretty hard.

ADRIAN: Yeah, just trying to get some definition.

OLD MAN; Well, you're a very attractive man.

******************

OK, what the hell was THAT? Do I need to put up a sign (in big letters so the senior citizens can read it) saying "Stay Away From My Man!!!"?