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I've been told in the past by Ivan that when i go a few days without posting he gets worried, but I think I'm getting to the point where a week between posts is becoming common so no one's worried about it. Anyway, I find myself up late at night either catching up on e-mails or working on another project and this blog has gotten lost in the dust. Alas.

But even though it's Wednesday, I had such a good weekend that i want to share it.

First, on Friday, i got to celebrate Linh's birthday with him. We went downtown for a nice dinner and he even got to rise in the Bug for the first time, which I'm sure was the highlight of his weekend. He'll be leaving for the summer soon, but we're going to overlap in Bangkok for a couple days when I'm there in June (he's there all summer for an internship...lucky bitch) so that will be fun.

Saturday I drove down to Charlottesville with Stan, who's considering going to the University of Virginia for grad school. It was his first time there and I'm pretty sure he was in awe and probably came three times just looking at the place. He didn't buy a t-shirt but I think I'll get him one for Christmas (Stan went to the University of North Carolina -- BIG rival school -- and would probably be beaten with a large stick for even considering UVA). Oh, and we had Gusburgers for lunch, which is a hamburger with a fried egg on it.

That night after we got home we went our separate ways to get beautiful (well, I needed a few hours to get ready...Stan just took a nap) and then we headed out dancing, the first time I've been clubbing in DC in 2 months. Angelo and Josh joined us and a fun time was had by all. Stan convinced me to flirt and dance with this one really cute guy who was all booty-rubbin' against me and stuff, and then when we were leaving and I said goodnight he asked, "what's your friend's name?" Yeah, he was using me to get to Stan. Ah, such is life.

Sunday I wandered downtown for a photo shoot with a couple dragon boat teammates for a local gay mag. If I make it into the shot (the photographer was shooting at an angle and I, the only white guy, most likely got cut out) I'll post it up. Afterwards the four of us went out for dim sum and ran into a bunch of other friends...good food, good time, bad service, but hey. I wandered down town for coffee and writing and then that night fixed a little dinner for Adrian, Stan and I while we watched Return of the Jedi, thus completing their introduction to the original Star Wars trilogy...it amazed me that educated people like them had never seen these. What are we teaching in our schools???

I realized this week that I'm a tired bitch now.

Labels: Bars, Friends

Last week I was too busy having a life to blog about it.

Tuesday night I was thinking I'd go out but ended up just running errands instead. But then a friend called around 10pm and wanted to go for coffee, so off I went. Hey, it's not as if I had to get up and go to work the next day. Oh, wait a sec...

Wednesday night I dealt with DC traffic for an hour then met up with Stan to go to an art opening. It was a photo show by The Sartorialist who, in addition to being a photographer of random fashion, is also a monthly fashion columnist in GQ. He had a great show, though the photos started at $1200, so they were a little out of my league. He was in attendance, and Stan thought he was hot, so the night was a success.

We went out for Indian food after that, which was very yummy, and very filling...Stan ordered chicken and I'm pretty sure he got a whole chicken. After getting him home I headed out to meet danny around 11pm, after he got off work...and naturally, he was hungry, so off we went to IHOP. He had a big omelette, I had decaf, and we both had a bad waitress. We talked for 2 hours, much of it about AQUA...because of my background Danny occasionally bounces ideas off of me about how to manage the group...then i think he does the opposite, I'm not sure. (ok, truthfully, he has done some things I suggested and they've actually worked out well).

Thursday I was a tired bitch and was an hour late to work. But since I don't like my job, I wasn't too worried about it. I was determined, though, that Thursday night would be a quiet night here, and indeed it was. So yay that. Oh, and I had lunch downtown with Linh, and we did some good catching-up.

Friday night I went to a birthday party for a friend. It was at a straight place (where he works) that tries to gay-it-up about once a month...but this time the straight people really outnumbered us. I encouraged Linh, Danny, Justin, Hai, and Khamla to go, and they all did, which was good since together we comprised about half the gay boys there. We had a nice time, it's fun to get my various friends together in one place.

Saturday Stan and I did some shopping...hooray for H&M! But the week was starting to catch up with me. That night a group of us got together to celebrate Vu and Troy's 10th anniversary, and I had fun but knew I couldn't stay too late...fading fast...

Sunday...oh yeah, I slept in. Until 10am, which was about 9 hours of sleep, and yes, I needed every minute of it. I was determined, though, that this would be the day for my 9-mile run. In two weeks I'll be running in a 10-mile race, and I haven't run that far before, AND I'm out of town next weekend. so this week was my chance to see if I could handle something like the race distance. The weather was great so it was a really good chance to get out there. I was feeling like I had a pretty good pace until a cute young guy passed me about 2 miles into it. He had a cute ass so I stayed with him, until he stoped by the side of the trail to puke. heh heh I finished my run in either 75 or 85 minutes...I thought it was 75, but that seems fast...could I have misread the clock when I started, and maybe it was actually 85? Either way, it's good enough for the race...the main thng is, I know I can finish a distance like that, because I wasn't totally dead when I came in to the finish.

Sunday night, of course, was the new Futurama...Stan and Khamla both came over for pizza and Chinese buns (food, not Stan's) and Bender. Yay for Bender!!

So now it's Monday night, and I've packed, and am headed to San Francisco tomorrow for the rest of the week. What the hell, I'll have plenty of time to sleep when I'm dead.

Labels: Bars, Friends, Stuff

Went out with my former student yesterday after arriving, and that was very cool. We grabbed a couple beers and got caught up on all we've done since we last saw each other nearly 2 years ago. I came back to the hotel and did some work while he ran errands, then we got together with his girlfriend for dinner...after that the three of us met up with some of his friends and we went to shoot pool and have some excellent Portland beers. A good time was had by all, especially by me when his friends thought I was a student, too. heh heh heh

This morning I had a minor problem with my alarm clock...somehow it was turned off, I don't know if I did that or not. Anyway, I woke up 10 minutes before my first meeting. I'm proud to report I made it on time AND i looked sharp!

Labels: Bars, Friends, Work

Last night Stan and I went to a discussion at a major think tank. We heard an author discussing a new book about changing relationships in Asia, about the nature of agreements between countries there, about the role of the United States and China in Southeast Asia, how India and Russia fit into all this. Very interesting stuff that ties in nicely with a research study I'm currently doing. The audience, as is common in Washington DC, was made up of professors, retired diplomats, senior government officials, and some other very smart people.

Afterwards, we went to a bar where, if you take your shirt off, you get free drinks.

Labels: Bars, Friends, Life, Work

The day after a Lunar New Year dinner and some clubbing with AQUA.

Asian Friend: There was a second guy at the club last night who looked a lot like Doctor Erick.

Me: What was he wearing?

AF: A blue t-shirt.

Me: ...

AF: ...

Me: That was Doctor Erick.

AF: It was? But I thought Doctor Erick was wearing a white shirt and vest?

Me: No, that was Lin.

AF: Oh. Well, truthfully, we all look alike to each other, too.

Labels: Bars, Friends

I spent this past weekend in New York, one of my favorite cities anywhere. For fun -- and to save money -- I took one of the Chinatown buses, going from DC Chinatown to NYC Chinatown. Kinda like my bus trip 2 weeks ago, it was...interesting. After we'd made a stop in another city I didn't expect, and as I listened to the stupid college girl sitting in front of me talk about nothing for a few hours and to the driver screaming into his cell phone (in Chinese, of course) I just kept telling myself "this is a lot cheaper than the train, this is a lot cheaper than the train..." In any case, it left me with extra money to buy gifts if I wanted to.

I went up to see my friend Scott (aka Scooter, who is going to be upset with me about one of the photos on his page, and I'll change it, I swear!), a Filipino-Chinese friend from Canada who now lives in New York...could you follow all of that? I met Scott online 8 years ago through his blog and we've been good friends ever since, but the last time I saw Scott was here in DC last May just before I went to Afghanistan. He and I had a lot of catching up to do, and we haven't had any one-on-one time with just the two of us in almost 6 years, so I was glad we were able to talk. We went dancing Friday night after I got in, heading out to The Web (of course I'm going to go there!) and it was Scooter's first time. We got there around 1 and ran into Paul and Son, two of my friends from here who were also spending the weekend in New York. Scott and I danced a lot and drank a bit and stuffed a few dollar bills into go-go boys' pants (well, OK, I did that) and basically stayed until after 4am when they looked ready to close down. I had a cute Japanese guy flirt with me but he was VERY drunk, and I was afraid he might throw up on me.

Saturday I got up after 5 hours of sleep and took the train to Scott's neighborhood in Jersey City, about a 15-minute train ride across the river. He has a great apartment with a deck and a view of the city. We had a long brunch at a nearby French place that is BYOB...you bring your bottle and they will mix your drinks, so we got a bottle of champagne and ordered orange juice and had mimosas. A LOT of mimosas. After wards we hung out at his place for a couple hours, waiting for the champagne to wear off, then headed back into the city. We hot some shops in SoHo and yes, I got clothes at Uniqlo (new pants that make my ass look good and were on sale...VELVET pants!) and Scott got a nice sweater. We also visited CB2, a spinoff of Crate and Barrel, and fantasized about home furnishings. We went out for sushi later and ate way too much! We had been out really late Friday night, so Saturday night I was tired, and I think Scott was dragging a bit, though he seemed more alive than I. We decided to call it an early night, and I was back to my hotel by 11:30. I laid down to take a nap for an hour and then think about going out dancing, but when the alarm went off an hour later all I did was reset it and go back to sleep!

I got up Sunday, with about 8 hours sleep so feeling much better, and did some walking around town, but it was COLD, it was below freezing, and the wind was blowing...brrrr. I visited a leather store in the Village (and I don't mean leather jackets!) and I went to a store called Pearl River Market that is full of Chinese stuff. Scott met me at his favorite dim sum restaurant (yay for Dim Sum GoGo...but there were no go-go boys) and we had a very nice meal, then we had about 3 hours left before my bus home which was not enough time to do much, and we didn't want to walk around outside, so we just found a café and had coffee and talked...we talked SO MUCH this weekend, and it felt really good. Anyway, i caught my bus home, and despite the driver taking a smoke break while fueling the bus (!) we got home OK, in only about 5 hours (for what is normally a 4-hour trip).

Whenever I go there I think about my friend Eddie's (in Malaysia) parents. They've have been living in the US for 12 years, in NYC Chinatown. I often go to Chinatown, like when we went for dim sum, and I always wonder...am I sitting at a table next to them? I mean, it could happen, and I wouldn't even know it. I always feel like maybe I should check on them for him, but I don't know what I would say. "Hi, Mister and Missus Chen, your son is really cute," yeah, THAT would go over well. But it would be fun to tell them about what an amazing guy he is, how he is so smart and so nice, how he has grown into a wonderful young man they can be very proud of. Maybe I should just walk around Chinatown showing people his picture and say "are you his parents?"

So, it was a good weekend. I'm not sure I want to live there...I'd have to be making a lot more than I am now to have a fun life like I'd like to have...I can do more as an occasional visitor than I can as a permanent resident, I think. But regardless of how much time I spend there, I'll always enjoy it.

Labels: Bars, Friends, Travel

All right, before I get into this story, a quick tale from last night...

So I go to a club and the guy checking IDs looks at me a couple times and says, "No way can you be this old." And I said yeah, I am, and in fact, "in two days I'll be even older."

A reference to my birthday, naturally. But of course, in two days, we'll ALL be older. By two days.

I'm stupid sometimes.

Anyway, this week I did some modeling. There's a photographer from Minneapolis whom I'd talked with last year after seeing some of his work. He had me send him some photos and then told me he'd like to use me as a model sometime...he travels a lot and had been in DC just a couple weeks earlier and thought he'd be back in 2008, so he said we could do it here or I could come to Minneapolis where he has his full studio. I thought about doing that, but as it turned out he had a last minute trip here this week and called to see if I'd be available. For that, I'm definitely available.

Anyway, he had me bring a bunch of different outfits (I had a backpack full!) and accessories and such. Some of the pics were thoughtful and serene, others were sexy, all of them were fun. We shot for about 2 hours and I saw some of the photos afterwards...nice! He will do some editing on them, working with PhotoShop or something more advanced, and I can't wait to see the final products! I know he won't use very many of them and I'm curious to see what he picks.

This is the first time anyone's asked me to do this. A year ago I don't think it would have happened...in fact, I would never have even considered it. I was pretty unhappy with my body and would not have exposed it to a camera. So yes, I'm very excited! It makes me feel good to have someone else think he can use me and show me and make something that people want to see.

A friend of mine is doing a shoot with me in a couple weeks, the same friend who did the Asian men calendar for this year. But that's a little different, he knows me...this was out of the blue, someone whom I'd never met.

A note to all my photographer friends: I am ALWAYS available to you (well, when we're in the same country) for something like this if you ever need a model or want to practice with one!

Labels: Age, Bars, Stuff

We headed off to a potluck at a friend's, planning to eat, drink, and be merry, countdown to midnight, then head out to a dance club. Adrian didn't read the invite very carefully, though, so in addition to inviting a friend at the last minute to the potluck, he invited one of his straight clients to meet us at the club at 11pm. While I wasn't in the mood to leave the dinner early, I realized this guy lived 40 miles away and was coming up there just to meet us (or so I thought...turns out he met other friends first) and would be a straight boy alone in a gay club for the first time. Not good. Anyway, Adrian didn't pay attention to the time, so we ended up not leaving the dinner until about 11:15pm...unfortunate, considering we had to drive to the Metro, take the train into the city, then walk a couple blocks to the club. And when we got there -- despite having called in advance and being told they were still letting people in -- it seems that during our 45 minutes of travel the club had reached its capacity and they weren't letting anyone else inside. Adrian not having his client's mobile number, we turned and headed back to another bar a block away, arriving outside the bar as the clock struck midnight, watching the revelers inside through the windows.

Fortunately, soon after getting inside Adrian's client sent him a text...turns out he was also late and couldn't get inside either. Adrian found him and brought him back with us, and the four of us -- me, Adrian, his client, and his last-minute-invite friend -- hung out for an hour and a half until it was time to catch the last train home. It's unfortunate that instead of just getting to spend the evening with my friends, I spent them it with one of Adrian's clients and one of his friends, and at midnight I was on the outside looking in while others had fun. I have felt very disconnected from friends in the past few years, and my friendships here have taken a beating in the last 16 months. That ends in 2008. Watch and see.

(ps: who called me on New Year's Eve, right around midnight KL/SG/HK time? I had a bad signal and tried to move to a better spot but lost the call, and the number didn't register on my new phone, which doesn't have all my numbers loaded yet, so I couldn't call back)

Labels: Bars, Friends, Stuff

Christmas Eve at my parents' house. They finally have broadband, and I have spent much of the last 36 hours setting up their new computer, so yay for all of that. Drove down here Sunday and have been lazy ever since. Except for wrapping Christmas presents and setting up the new Dell, I've pretty much been letting Mom take care of me, and that's nice...I've done a lot the last couple weeks, between baking, shopping, a small party, oh, and working sometimes too, I suppose. It's nice to take a break.

Had a very fun weekend, especially Saturday night. A friend works at a local Asian bistro and they've been recently started running a Saturday night party there until 2am, with a DJ and small dance floor. They decided that, to increase the crowd, they wanted to encourage "the gays" to come out. And we did. Only about 12-15 of us, but it was plenty. The place was packed with starigt (mostly Asian) people, and though at first us fab boys were just chatting and having to drinks and getting to know each other (I only knew my friend, Adrian actually knew one other guy from Fridae), we soon hit the dance floor. Some of us were REALLY out and proud, some were just super sexy, and some were...well, we just were. I'm not sure what the straight people thought...some seemed a little uncomfortable with us dancing all up on each other (yeah, by the end of the night, we got to know each other very well). I think most of the women thought it was great, some of the guys semed a little less sure, some obviously were cool with it, and some looked like they wanted to join us (but their girlfriends might be upset). Even though we were in the minority, no one looked like they would bother us...I think if you have two guys dancing together in a straight club they might have trouble, but when you have 10 or 12 (and a couple of the guys were totalley buffed) nobody wants to challenge you because they might have a dozen guys jump them, and not in the good way. I think my Gaylaysian friends have discovered this, since when I saw them out in a crowd (and from party pics I've recently seen) they don't hide stuff but aren't too worried about it.

Best line of the night: as we're leaving the club around 2:30am, in a crowd of a dozen of us, mostly Latino, black, or Asian, we are making a bit of noise. One of the guys says "quiet, we don't want cops coming after us, there are lots of white people living here!" The he turns to me: "Oh, hey, no offense."

heh heh None taken.

So yeah, lots of fun was had, I have found some new folks who will be fun to hang out with, and yeah, some of them are VERY cute, giving me all sorts of naughty thoughts to last me during my time at my parents' house (notice how I came full circle there?).

Tomorrow is Christmas and that will be a nice family day here. I'll head back to DC Tuesday afternoon (I'm working Wednesday) and Adrian and I will have Christmas Tuesday night. Hope he likes his gifts!

I've tried to send cards, or at least e-mails, to folks, but I know there are some I've missed. I don't have access to my regular e-mail here, and I'm out of cell phone range so text/SMS doesn't work. So for anyone I've missed (and this especially goes out to you, Eddie) MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

Labels: Bars, Flirting, Friends, Life

Because someone (a different someone this time) asked for it, here are two more pics. But seriously, that's it.





On a less gratuitous note, Adrian and I had a long talk last night, a couple hours' worth. A lot of things that had been building up during the last few weeks finally came out, things I'd been thinking about, things underneath (and often hidden by) the bad emotions that had been simmering. Last night seemed to be a turning point, but then, there have been a few of those during the past year, and I've been disappointed each time, so I'm trying not to get my hopes up TOO much. But at least we talked about these issues and Adrian agreed on the need to do some things, so there is a faint glimmering of hope. One thing I've realized, if we are able to come back together, our relationship will be a bit different from what it was before. Part of that is because whatever we had before led to a breakup, and that's not good. And part of it is, considering this has dragged on now for over a year, we've both changed during that time...whatever we had is gone because those two people are gone. But that's not necessarily a bad thing...maybe this is just a way for relationships to naturally evolve.

Hmmm, that's getting a bit heavy. My advice: just go back and look at those pictures again.

Labels: Bars, Friends, Relationships

I'm at the Hong Kong airport starting my journey home. It is 8:15am. 3 hours ago, I left Propaganda, the big gay dance club here in HK. I walked back to my hotel, showered, tossed my club clothes into my bag, put on my new clothes, and checked out. I haven't done that in...come to think of it, I've never done that.

Oh, and what is it with toilets? First in KL, now in HK...as I was getting ready to leave the club a cute but drunk guy started dancing with me, holding onto me so he wouldn't fall, I think. Anyway, he tried to get me to go into a stall inthe toilet with him. I said I needed to catch a plane. I'm not sure he believed me.

I'll have more about KL and HK once I get home. That should be in about 23 hours.

Labels: Bars, Travel

Friday night a good time was had by all. My brother Chuck came into town for a Saturday conference and since we hadn't seen each other in something like 2 1/2 years we figured it might be a good idea to meet up, seeing as he was only about 7 miles away.

We headed out to Cafe Asia, my third time there in a week so yay for that. It occurred to me just how much Chuck looks like our dad. One difference, of course, is that Chuck eats a lot more sushi than our dad does, especially when it's happy hour at the restaurant and, frankly, it would be a crime not to. He's to be doing very well, he and his wife are both professors at a big university and it seems to be working out well for both of them. This is what they've wanted and they have a good idea how to manage the tenure track for the next few years. More importantly, I think, is the fact that they get to live together full-time now, which during the course of their marriage hasn't been the norm due to various career opportunities and requirements.

During dinner he told me that he'd realized the night before that Friday night there was a dinner for the conference speakers, but since we'd already made plans he e-mailed the organizer and bailed out. Anyway, after a couple hours at the restaurant we wanted to go hang out somewhere else to chat, and rather than drive back to the condo we just walked down the block to his hotel and hung out in the lounge. Of course, it turns out this was right outside the room where the dinner was being held, so about 45 minutes later his fellow speakers emerged to see him sitting in the lounge, having obviously blown off the dinner. Oops. Some of them decided to join us and before I knew it I was at a table with 4 economists, and even though I was an Econ major as an undergrad -- or, perhaps, BECAUSE I was an Econ major -- that was an excess supply of economists. Plus, I was going clubbing later. So off I went to get home and change. Good times, and I'm very glad Chuck popped into town.

Headed out to Apex later for the first time in a while. Picked up Justin and Richmond Michael and off we went. I needed to get out dancing with some friends so this was much fun. We all ran into people we know, Michael more so than Justin and I combined. At one point Michael came back onto the dance floor and I said, "Quick, pretend to be my boyfriend!," and he proceeded to dance up on me and generally look slutty. Then he asked, "so, who was hitting on you that you wanted to scare off?," and I said "no one, I just wanted you to pretend to be my boyfriend."

I'm bad.

Labels: Bars, Friends

I've been blogging for over 6 years so I'm sure I've discussed this before, but I'm too tired to go looking for it (the switch to Daylight Savings Time always messes me up for a couple days) so I'll just write about it now.

Straight people are fantastic. If it weren't for straight people we wouldn't have any gay people (think about that for a second). But, straight bars? I don't like 'em.

Friday night we went to a birthday party where some folks had rented out a bar in the early evening for their friend. It was a nice place, but when the end of the rental time came and the regular crowd started coming in we realized it was a straight bar. Bear in mind this is on P Street in the Dupont Circle area of DC, about the gayest place you can find here.

Afterwards we were meeting up with Kenneth, an old friend from "The Before Time" (actually, the guy who introduced me to Adrian) and he suggested we meet at this beer place around the corner that was full of very straight, very just-out-of-university-or-maybe-in-their-last-year looking people. The reason for this was obvious when Kenneth arrived and the friend with him was straight. The wait for a table promised to be long so we convinced them to go across the street to a gay bar, even though Kenneth's friend was a little nervous about it.

I guess I didn't think about it until Kenneth asked him, "do you mind going to a gay bar?," and I thought, "no one asked if we mind going to a straight bar."

I mentioned the whole straight bar theme of the evening later to Kenneth and he said, "that's an issue for you, huh?" and he got me to thinking. Yeah, I guess it is. Part of it is the idea that it's "natural" for straights to be uncomfortable in a gay bar but not the other way around. And part of it is that far too often I've found straight people in bars get a little too drunkenly loud, in an exaggerated happiness kind of way, almost like they're putting on a show, which frankly they probably are, in the hopes they can get laid. Us gay folk don't always put on the same loud show...we just grab someone's ass. Gay clubs are full of posturing and attitude and all that sort of stuff, but it tends to be kept a bit quiet, done in more subtle ways. Straight clubs, especially with a younger crowd, tend to have lots of obnoxious loud people. And I'm not into that.

Niche clubs would be different, I think...I still want to go to a goth club, and that will be mostly straight, and going to hear live music is different, too. It's just the "sit around and drink" bars, I think.

Maybe part of the issue for me is that, given my job, I pretty much have to be "straight" all day, so I have no desire to be pressured into a closet when I'm out for fun.

Of course, any place can be a gay place if we go in big enough numbers, but the reality is we're outnumbered something like 9-to-1. So we can try to take over, or at least have an obvious presence. But we can also get the snot beaten out of us if some people don't like it. And yeah, that does still happen here.

By the way, apropos of nothing, I've decided I really REALLY like gummy bears.

Labels: Bars