I'm Justin Luke, Co-Director and Lead Promoter of gay New York City nightlife event company, BoiParty.com. This blog is where I take on our big, gay, sexy, silly, crazy world every day.
Well, Mein Damen und Herren, it has certainly been a fabulous week for me, and I have definitely enjoyed sharing you with Justin over the past five days. Being Justin's Plus One this week has been an invigorating experience, and I thank you graciously for reading my ruminations that have run from sex, to relationships, to social networking, and back again to sex.
If you'd care to keep in touch you're more than welcome in the salon over at my blog, The Curious Affairs Of Atherton Bartelby; we've a lovely crowd of rather fine gentlefolk over there just waiting to make you feel at home. Or, if you prefer your Atherton Bartelby in smaller, more manageable, does, you're also welcome to join me on Twitter, or on my Tumblr, The Curious Addenda.
Until our paths cross again, Bisous, Atherton Bartelby
Occasionally I stumble across items I find on the internet that make me engage in what I've come to refer to as "epic eye rolls," i.e., items that annoy me so much that I roll my eyes so violently that I threaten said eyes with spontaneous retinal detachments due to the vehemence of the eye roll. This happened to me twice yesterday.
The first item came in the form of an internal AIG memo leaked to the media, concerning AIG Corporate Security's Tips for, as Gawker so elegantly termed it, "Surviving An Angry Mob." As someone who himself worked for ten years in an office of a similar global insurance consulting firm, I am no stranger to these types of security memos that are issued to staff during times of negative media / public scrutiny. AIG's memo read exactly like the ones I had read during my employ with my old firm (in fact, my old firm's Risk Control Consultants likely wrote AIG's for them). So I rolled my eyes epically at precisely the same items yesterday as I did when I first read them at my own former firm the last time PETA launched an international protest of all of our offices because our London office underwrote coverage for a company that tested on animals. (My co-designer and I wore furs to work during that entire week, by the way, just for the lulz).
Avoid wearing any AIG apparel (bags, shirts, umbrellas, etc.) with the company insignia. Now I have never been one to give my employer free advertising by walking around with logofied promotional items anyway, even if my company wasn't in dire straits in the media and the eyes of the American public. I look at it like not wearing garishly large designer logos: as long as I know it's Armani, nobody else has to, you know?
Ensure any badges with the AIG insignia are not readily visible when exiting the office. This is kind of similar to the first item but in a different way because it speaks to those people who wear their company identification badges and security access cards like jewelry, of which I have never been one. I dislike jewelry in general and certainly do not need to be seen in public, even in my office, wearing my cards as expandable bracelets / lanyard necklaces. Not only is it unwise to do so in times of a public relations nightmare, it is also, at all times, highly unfashionable.
Avoid public conversations involving AIG and do not engage any media personnel regarding the company. Here is where the list of admonitions begins to become increasingly eye-roll-inducing, because we are getting into an area that is less about "special emergency situations" but really should be about "everyday common sense." It's unwise for anyone to be discussing work / clients in such a way that would identify your employer at any time, I think; and when it comes to media, hello! Doesn't everyone know by now to refer media to your company's flacks? *facepalm*
Do not give out personal information over the phone or via email. And yeah, here is where it gets embarrassingly didactic in a kindergartenish way, so I'll stop now.
My point is that, nearly all of these behaviors should be common sense all the time, and not require a moment of international crisis to be instituted via a company memo.
The second, and perhaps far more egregious item, comes via the Brand Flakes For Breakfast blog, which yesterday linked this story about a lucky job applicant who tweeted: "Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work."
Wait. WHAT?!
Are you kidding me?!
Not only does the individual have the audacity to be unappreciative of a job offer with a major company in this economic climate, but they are also idiotic enough to tweet about it?!
Tim Levad, a channel partner advocate for Cisco, saw the individual's tweet and replied: "Who is the hiring manager? I'm sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web." After which the user in question quickly made their Twitter account private.
One can only hope that Cisco found out who the individual was and rescinded their job offer immediately.
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P.S. And speaking of epic eye roll inducing things, has anyone else ever noticed that those birds in the fail whale graphic are not all flying in the same direction? WTF?!
Never heard of it? I wouldn't be surprised, since Blogger is telling me I spelled it wrong (i didn't!)
First of all, I didn't make it up (oh man I wish I did.) No, emetophobia is pretty real (and it sucks!)
Emetophobia is an intense, irrational fear or anxiety pertaining to vomiting. This specific phobia can also include subcategories of what causes the anxiety, including a fear of vomiting in public, a fear of seeing vomit,a fear of watching the action of vomiting or fear of being nauseated. [1] Emetophobia is clinically considered an “elusive predicament” because limited research has been done pertaining to it.
So yes, there you have it. I am petrified of throwing up. Irrationally so. When I tell people this, I get one of two reactions:
1) Are you serious?
2) Oh yeah, puking sucks... wait... are you serious?
Yes! I am serious. Another hard to believe fact I will share with those I admit this to: I have not vomited since Preschool. Not kidding. And yes, this means I've never gotten food poisoning, never had a stomach virus, never been bulimic (which would have been SO much easier in college, rather than all the effort I put into being anorexic). Nothing.
Why haven't I thrown up in all this time? I think it's because of the fear. Or a fantastic heavenly body that is protecting me from this horrid action.
I think it's mostly a physical thing. Because, I believe, vomiting, in the end, is a conscious decision. Now if you're some sort of scientist reading this post, first of all, why are you wasting time reading something so non-educational as this blog? Second of all, if I'm wrong and it's not a conscious decision, you tell me why I haven't thrown up in over 23 years!
All I know is that I don't even get nauseous these days. BUT back when I did, well, I would do something different from most people. When a NORMAL person feels nauseous, they often induce pukery.
A normal person follows this formula:
Vomit = End of nausea
To an emetophobe it is this:
Nausea = Possible precursor to vomiting, BEWARE!
So an emetophobe will stay nauseous until the feeling passes. For hours and hours and hours. A normal person will be nauseous and throw up to feel better. In other words, emetophobia sucks.
Now, why am I an emetophobe? Well, I don't really know. In the many years I've had to think on this I've come down to a fear of loss of control (but I've disproven this since I started getting drunk) and also the fact that it's just been so long since I've done it that I don't know what it will be like.
And, like I said, I don't enjoy being an emetophobe. It means I don't go on roller coasters. It means I'll be careful with what I eat (i often choose vegetarian options at strange restaurants and weddings). If a friend or loved one says they feel like they're going to throw up, I literally bolt in the opposite direction. If I'm at a party and someone says they don't feel well, I immediately scan my brain to remember if we ate the same thing.
(But really, isn't everyone? They're the only other mammal that has sex for pleasure... and who wants to be raped by a dolphin?)
(Thanks to Matt for the Tyra and penny tip)
Either way, there you have it! Overshare number 2. And I have to say, I am comforted recently because, as I grow older and meet more people, I encounter other emetophobes. It's wonderful to know that I am not the only crazy afraid of something so silly as vomiting.
My name is Justin and I am an emetophobic.
Don't throw up near me. Don't expect me to ride Kingda Ka with you. And if I ever get quiet and weird, it's because I'm afraid the pizza we both ate might be making you sick.
Oh, but despite all of that... I still think this clip is FUNNY SHIT:
"Your updates have been really...interesting...this evening."
"Well. It's so late it's actually 'morning' now, but thanks."
"In fact, your updates have kind of been turning me on."
"!!!???"
"What? Did I write something wrong?"
"Well. Um. No. Not exactly. Perhaps I didn't read you correctly. Did you just tell me that my updates are turning you on?"
"Yes. Totally."
"The messages about gay anal sex and me being a power bottom. Those messages are turning you on?"
"God! Yes."
"Wait a minute. I thought you were married. To a woman. With like four kids?!"
"I am. Is there some law somewhere that says I can't be curious? I'll stop flirting if it makes you uncomfortable."
"Hey man, I don't care at all. So what sorts of things do you fantasize about...?"
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No, this was not an exchange in a private chat window on Gay.com (Do people even still use Gay.com? I am embarrassingly out-of-the-loop when it concerns online homo dating / hooking-up sites.) This was an exchange via direct messages on Twitter. And it was not a conversation with someone whose profile listed no photo or an obviously obfuscated self-portrait and listed the man as closeted and, in fact, married with children. It was someone I had previously communicated with only as a peer, a fellow professional, for purely professional reasons. So to be suddenly provided this very personal (and very unexpected!) information understandably caught me off guard, if only momentarily, no matter how open I am about sex and individual sexuality.
Also, may I mention that this exact same scenario has happened to me no less than ten times on Twitter, throughout the past nine months?
Now, I am no stranger to this type of exchange with other men online. Years ago, when I lived in Honolulu and when I was still a quite permanent resident of Gay.com, I cannot even count how many men I "met" who were closeted, had been closeted all of their lives, were married, had children, and yet desired other men so much that they would resort to finding them on the internet for clandestine hook-ups. But I am quite new to meeting them on social networks that are not marketed as / known for being dating sites. And frankly, when you've been chatting with someone on Twitter about primarily professional topics for quite awhile, it's a bit disconcerting to suddenly read from these people, via direct message, "OMG you're making me so hard right now."
Really? I am? That's cool, man. But what would your wife and little Sally and Tommy think about that, you dirty boy, you?!
Even five years ago, being presented with this kind of behavior would have sent me into an irrational, offended, self-righteous rage. "How dare he?! What, he thinks that just because I'm gay and talk about boys and fucking that it's perfectly acceptable for him to assume that he can get off with me and not his wife?!BASTARD!"
Luckily for myself and for everyone I encounter now, however, age has chilled me out quite a bit, so I'm much more like, "All right, OK, let's see where this goes," now, and infinitely less generally judgmental and more accepting than I used to be. Whereas I once bridled in prim and prissy horror when my long-term boyfriend at the time even remotely suggested we pick someone up for a threesome, now I've absolutely no problem being bound and suspended from a ceiling while eight other guys have their ways with me, nor do I see anything so wrong with entertaining the fantasies of someone who's curious about experiences he has never had but fantasizes about; experiences his wife and his four children will certainly never be able to give him.
Call me a sexual relativist, but I am all about the phrase, "If it feels good, do it!"
So I am always curious to learn how open to sexual relativism other people are. If you, as a gay man, were in my position, would you be as accepting, as open to entertaining the experience, as discreet (because, well, hello, I may be blogging about them, but I've divulged no identifying characteristics whatsoever) as I am? Would you be offended, like I would have been five years ago? Would you be so open and liberal in terms of your sexuality (and others' sexuality) that the mantra, "If it feels good, do it!" would extend to these types of potential, er, "arrangements," as well?
Just a little sexual-philosophical discussion and reflection to get the weekend started on an..."enlivened" note.
Justin's fabulous post earlier today, "Tilt-Shift-Wow," in which he featured the truly awesome video of tilt-shift photography images captured during this year's Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, reminded me of two films I had recently discovered online myself, so I thought I would post them here. Despite their respective rapidly-growing status as viral videos, not only do they each employ unique methods throughout their production, but the stories the films themselves tell are really quite beautiful to watch.
NOTTE SENTO
"Notte Sento," another stop motion animated film, linked today via PSFK and NOTCOT, is similar to the production methods employed for the Mardi Gras film that Justin posted earlier.
"A girl misses her train to Milan and is set to wait overnight in Rome until dawn. However, a chance encounter with a guy changes her plans and the night lights of the capital turn into the background to a tender love story. An extraordinary chemistry made of knowing glances and small gestures fills the few instants that separate them both from the sunrise."
The film was produced using 4,500 still photographs that were all captured with a Canon EOS 30D camera. I've embedded the video, with English subtitles, below. (Should you actually speak Italian, that version is located here.)
Of "World Builder," Salon wrote, "a beautiful European town square seems to materialize from thin air and the builder's glowing user interface; visually it compares favorably to scenes from The Matrix and Minority Report. But like the $400 Escape from City 17, it's another example of what's possible with low budgets and a high degree of inventiveness. In an email interview, filmmaker Bruce Branit estimated that he spent just a little more than $2,000 of his own money for the stage, the equipment, and the camera. His brother, a cinematographer, called in favors for the live action elements, which were shot in a single day. (The cast and crew worked for free.) Branit finished the rest in the Lightwave 3-D graphics platform, working on it in between paying gigs over a couple years."
The film is gorgeously produced, and the story is nearly heartbreakingly poignant.
Both films are excellent examples of "pushing the envelope" of creative filmmaking, and feature innovative methods of storytelling that I thought would fit right in here at Justin Plus One on this day that has been full of stories...of all kinds.
2. After a brief moment of being really pissed off, I realized that we are living in MY apartment. -Sweet!! As such, your key fob will no longer open any of the outer doors to my building. Your parking pass has been deactivated and security will not let you past the front desk. Furthermore, your access card allowing the elevator to go my apartment has been deactivated. Also, the door locks have been changed.
3. I have ceased all automatic monthly payments to your bills. You no longer have access to any of my accounts. Perhaps the French guy will take up your student loans. He does know your poor, right?
4. Your belongings are gone. Since I am a reasonable man, I have moved them into a Self Storage unit. The unit is paid up for a month so you’ll have ample time to get them. The address and combination to the unit have been left with the security guard at the front desk. I couldn’t remember if the stuffed panda was yours or mine so I threw it in with the rest of your stuff just in case. I’m not sure how long the plants will last though.
10. I’m keeping the dog. Even though you picked him out, I paid for him. He likes me more anyway.
I mean WOW. Talk about a boner deflator, right? There's Cheaty McPoorBastardson, naked and wrapped around Jean Valschlong, trolling Craigslist for their next amorous third... only to find this post.
Can you imagine THAT conversation?
"Oooh this looks like an interesting guy and... wait. Oh. Shit. Well I can. No... Um. Well my Mom can... NOT THE PANDA!"
"Sacrebleu!"
So much for that sex. I almost feel bad for the guy, he thinks he's getting fucked. And then he does... but not like how he was thinking. I feel like we should take up a Paypal account to help him pay down those student loans he now needs to take care of.
So I sent this post around to everyone I knew. IMed it. Emailed it to those without IMs at work. Facebooked it for the rest. And among the many things I read, the majority of opinions were along the lines of "WOW!" "Way to go!" "AMAZING!"
Of course I completely concur.
Because, really, if you are being completely and totally financially supported by someone, and you decide to start regularly cheating on him with a French guy with whom you troll Cragislist personals looking for thirds... well, you deserve to have your entire life fall out from under you.
And it leads me to wonder: why do we Internet people revel in these public displays of breaking up? Why did I feel the need to send it on to everyone I knew, and why did they, in turn, send it on to everyone they knew?
Well, part of it, I think, is that many of us don't believe it's real. This is such an excellently choreographed breakup - from the changing of locks to notifying of door men and guards to the shipping of all the guy's possessions to a self-storage unit. It's something a Hollywood screenwriter wouldn't even be able to come up with. Okay, maybe Plus OneAlum X would... but no one else.
Second, it's just such an extraordinary situation laid before us. I know I've never been a part of a breakup this buttoned up and clean. I know I've never heard tales of breakups like this either.
Breakups, from my personal and learned experience, are often full of blood, feathers, teeth and nails. It's like in Looney Tunes when two characters get into a fight. And not even Hollywood's most talented foley artist can create the right amount of smashing glass, banging pans, and werewolf howls required to replicate the event.
There is crying. Days of it. Lots of messy "we need to meet up again because I left the tarragon in the pantry."
"Can't you buy another thing of tarragon?"
"YOU DON'T COOK!"
"I'll see you at 5PM."
Yes, this is a very dramatic breakup, but it seems like the nameless poster has all of his bases covered. Except, of course, on the street. Perhaps he should have added a:
13. I have hired a personal security detail. They know karate. Stay the fuck away.
Has anyone ever had a breakup this total and complete? Lord knows I am friends with any of the exes that will still have me as a friend. If you have had an evil supervillain ending-monlogue-esque break up like this one, I'd love to hear it. Even if you've only heard the story from a friend smarter and more put together to you. Or even if you just make it up for shits and giggles.
In the end, there is a lesson we can all take from this debacle:
How lucky for me that a co-worker sent around a link to a post on Towleroad featuring a tilt-shift time lapse video of this year's Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, shot from a perch over Oxford and Flinders Streets last week.
For those of you not aware, Tilt-Shift photography consists of taking photos with a tilt-shift lens, which makes objects in the photos appear miniature - almost like toys.
Recently I have been looking at the gay world through a strictly carnal lens. Sex sex sex. And I know that I would look at a huge gay parade (hoo boy, Pride is coming, ain't it?) as much the same thing. But this tilt-shift time lapse video turns the parade into something beautiful. Turning hours into minutes. Making everything look so quaint. So insignificant. Gorgeous.
It makes you remember how small we all are. How all our troubles that may seem so cataclysmic, so life-ending, so never-ending... well, they're all just so god damned tiny, if you look at them from far enough away, and with the appropriate lens.
So do yourself a favor and take a break from your stressful/fantastic/worrisome/unemployed/fearful/joyous day, and give yourself a 3 minute and 14 second shot of pure, miniature wonder. Remember you're insignificant. So small. Let go and relax, and enjoy.
Oh, and do yourself a favor and blow it up to full screen and turn up the volume. Ironically enough, it's not half as breathtaking in a miniature screen.
If you fell in love with that song as much as I did, it's called "Thrown In Shadows at the Wall" by Shawn Lee from his album Soul Visa. And yes, you can get it on iTunes.
"What makes good erotica?" my best friend AV Flox inquired of me a few evenings ago, during a sort of mini-interview for her latest BlogHer article on whether or not gender determines how good your erotica is.
It took me only a drag from my Marlboro Red to reply to her query. "Well, obviously being a good writer, and using language well," I said. "Also being able to fully explore all elements of fantasy. Also I think that old fiction workshop saying of 'write what you know' is doubly true for erotica. Write what you know, or, write what you fantasize about, and I think if you do, it becomes a much better piece, more involved, more engaging."
But I couldn't help but continue to wonder, long after our mini-interview was concluded, what does make good erotica? Simply being a good writer does not always mean that one's turns of literary phrases can successfully produce a tumescent cock or a wet cunt. In fact, upon reflection, I realized that quite a lot of the really amazingly hot erotica I had read throughout my life was written by non-writers.
My introduction to erotica came at what for some would be an embarrassingly early age, but I love that I discovered it at age eleven, while fetching my mother's painkillers from one of her night tables during one of her migraines. Thankfully, my mother was a discriminating woman of letters, so the anthologies of erotica that I found were amazing, and I spirited them away to read in our attic while my mother was sleeping on a chaise lounge in our parlor. They were fabulous, these explorations of desire and pleasure, by women named Erica Jong and even Grace Zabriskie, full of lush descriptions and...well, far more erotic to me than the V.C. Andrews sex scenes with which I had heretofore been obsessed! And the pieces I liked the best, the pieces that turned me on the most, even though I was only eleven and wouldn't experience anything close to what I was reading for, oh, at least another year, all seemed to share one thing.
They pushed the envelope.
They weren't stories that were just about staccato breathing, baritone moaning, and cocks in cunts. They were stories that were about sex, yes, but bizarre, almost other-worldly, definitely full of inventive fantasy. They, as all good literature should, erotic or not, told stories, and told them well, pulling their readers out of themselves and into the minds, into the flesh, of their characters. I remembered them well when, several years and many occasions of group sex in a Swiss boarding school later, I picked up my first anthology of gay erotica, in the Rizzoli on 57th Street. Curious to see if gay erotica was any different from the straight erotica I had read years before, I bought it, read it, and was astonishingly disappointed nearly from the very beginning. Surely, I thought to myself, these writers can formulate sex stories that involve more than cocks in mouths and asses in filthy roadside rest stop men's rooms? (Although that story, in hindsight, actually was kind of hot, now that I think about it more.) None of the stories seemed to pull me in, to communicate their fantasies in a way that would sufficiently engage me enough so that I wanted to be in their characters' flesh.
Until "Blue Light."
About halfway through the anthology, I stumbled across Aaron Travis' "Blue Light": a paranormal, nearly epic erotic tale of submission, domination, and sexual witchcraft. I was breathless nearly the entire way through it, as the story built, as the psychologies of its main characters became more clearly defined and pulled me into them, and, of course, as the epic evening of sex unfolded in a Texas attic between two muscular doms, as one forces the other to submit to him with a variety of...arguably quite disturbing tricks. It was, and is, precisely what I think good erotica is, i.e., a story that not only makes its readers turned on, want to masturbate, and come, but, through its evocative use of language and seductive creation of fantasy, of pushing that fantasy to its very limits, that's what good erotica is.
In a recent piece published on her personal blog, Laura Roberts, founder of (and my editor at) Black Heart Magazine, a web magazine of "the dirtiest minds in literature," pondered the question, "Is erotica dead?" Her piece concludes with the following insightful, and, I think, rather true, thoughts.
We need more than pumping and thrusting. We desire more than mere male-takes-female fucks. We are interested as much in our lovers' brains as we are in their genitalia, and making their naughty bits tingle with frenzied longing. We want to caress our lover's brains as much as their parts. It is at least as much the anticipation that turns us on as the act itself. And the waiting is the most delicious part of any game. Don't you think?
And I think that pretty much fills out and completes my definition of what makes good erotica.
It's not just about sucking cock. It's about fucking the mind, as well.
There are many body types in this world: average, slender, skinny, athletic, heavyset, toned, etc.
There is one that I have always coveted: the gay oracle better known as the Swimmer's Build. You know what I'm talking about. This body type makes up half of the member photos on Connexion (btw: has anyone besides me noticed that the average height of a Connexion user is about 6'3oooo" ?).
What I love most about this body type (besides, yanno, the smooth rippling 8 pack abs, the tight, toned pecs, the perfectly hewn leg and arm muscles... oh goodness, my laptop just lifted a bit...)
ANYWAY what I love MOST about the body type is that it tells you, right in its name, just what you have to do to obtain it. And that is skydive. Psych!
Today I would call my body "athletic." Mostly because I've seen what people call "average" and, well, they're pretty goddamned fat. I have some tone to me. I look pretty good in a tight shirt. I would say I have a NICE build. But, of course, considering the type of guys I go after... well, that simply will not do.
Unfortunately, being a denizen of the Big Gay Apple, I have encountered a dilemma - pools are more rare than a drink that costs less than 7 dollars. Back in my shameful hometown of Bellmore, NY (on the shamefully Long Island that is too unoriginal to come up with a better name for itself) pools were everywhere. My cousin had one. My friends had them. There were four pools IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD.
Of course, when they were readily available, I wasn't looking for a swimmer's build. I was looking to climb to the top of the diving board, fully suited up in my noseplugs and goggles, looking like James Bond about to go deep sea diving for terrorist lairs, only to chicken out and descend in shame as friends and foes laughed at my cowardice.
And now that I am READY to get that beloved Swimmer's Frame, I find my efforts thwarted.
The other week I was SUDDENLY re-enthused to pursue my holy gay grail. And then I remembered - I live on the Upper East Side! This means two things:
1. I live in the most boring place in the world, where frat boys and trust fund teens go to die (or dine, there ARE some good brunch places - Alice's Tea Cup, I'm looking in your direction!)
So online I went, to the web site for that very Y. I began to click around and discovered the following hard-to-swallow truth: The 92nd Street Y does NOT want me to be able to take off my shirt this summer.
Why? Because it is IMPOSSIBLE to find the price for a pool membership. I looked at the site and FOUND the pool - a glorious web page where they told me all of the wonderful aspects of the pool (it has water, it is both long and wide, octagenrians aquacize in it on Thursday afternoons)
BUT IT WON'T TELL ME HOW MUCH I HAVE TO PAY FOR THE POOL!
Come on, Man! I clicked everywhere! And no matter where I clicked, not once did I find a price for the chance to use their water hole.
Why? Is the price so horrid that they need the ability to conference in a grief counselor when they tell me? Will uttering it aloud bring Voldemort back? Do they keep it in a treasure chest guarded by a Roc ?
It is odd that I need to say this in an economic recession but Hey! 92nd Street Y! Let me give you my money! Please! I have it here, counted out and ready to spend! Please let me give it to you!
I realize that I can call to find this information out, but I am a child of the Internet, phone calls to strangers unnerve me. Especially because there's a 3 in 5 chance that the person on the other end of the line will accidentally call me "Miss", forcing me to raise my voice an octave and call myself Justina when they take my name, to avoid an awkward situation when they discover my true gender.
Okay, of course I will call the Y. And hopefully the pool will be open for me to use it late at night. Because man, I can swim for hours. It's a wonderful experience that feels like I'm flying, except for the fact that I'm really swimming.
And, really, if I want to have a swimmer's body, I'll need to work for it. Why should obtaining said body be easy at any point of the process?
However, if my attempts are thwarted further by the Demon 92nd Street Y, I can always take classes from this vixen:
In the vein of Atherton's overshare post, I have decided that I, too, will give you a bit more information than most of you know about me. Relax, it's not disgusting, or spooky, or creepy. It is, however, quite embarrassing to me.
I am a HUGE cry baby. There. I said it. I don't often admit it. In fact, as a broad-shouldered Capricorn with no fashion sense, people just assume I'm a brick wall of a man. One with no emotions, no feelings, anything. Luckily, this is not the case.
However, you'll be hard-pressed to find me bawling at anything that happens to me in real life. I can thank my emotion-fearing father for teaching me to swallow my feelings. For many years, in fact, my mom would say she worried I'd end up like him - swallowing my feelings until they did me in.
LUCKILY I found an easy out that lets me get my bitter tears out - media. I am able to cry my FUCKING EYES OUT like a LITTLE GIRL (or an emotionally healthy male, WHATEVES!) when watching movies, TV shows, cartoons, musicals and plays. I still have never been brought to tears by a book, but hopefully those are not far behind.
Trust me, I do it all the time. It elicits one of two reactions: either deeply touching whomever I'm with, because they see that this big lug has a huge soft spot inside of him, or deeply embarrassing my friends, who will never go with me to see Wicked again.
Here are a few of my biggest cry releasers, maybe they get you too. Or maybe I'm just a big ole baby...
Charlotte's Web This tale of a pig and his best friend the female spider gets me every time. The songs especially. And when Charlotte perishes I'm practically snivelling where I sit. This may have something to do with the fact that I was a very, very fat boy who also tried to do backflips. And maybe I'm jealous of Wilbur because at least he had a friend who called him Famous and Some Pig. I never got that. Asshole.
A Christmas Story Now before you call me a total lamewad let me add the caveat that THIS WHOLE MOVIE doesn't make me cry (like stupid Charlotte's Web does!) No, rather, the ONLY part of this movie that makes me cry is right here (I kid you not, I audibly weeped while reviewing the clip). Why you ask? Because I've discovered that any sort of mothering or family-related trials in movies cut right to my gut.
When Ralphie loses his shit and beats the crapzo out of the stupid jerk bully it is SCARY. Then his mom comes and he breaks down. He cries.... and I'm about to cry. Time to move on!
An American Tale Again - one song! Oh Fieval. God bless you, you little fucking adorable rodent. The tears you bring to my eyes flow so hard and fast. Who cares about AIG bonuses and the recession? You are clearly the true threat to Americans everywhere.
Oh, and PS: I did NOT cry when he went out West. Okay, I did... but only because I thought it was such a dumb place for him to go.
RENT Oh man this thing is like a 16-hit super combo (still thinking of Atherton's overshare!) I cry so many times during this musical, you would think they have an electrode hooked up to the "visualize your family perishing before you" nodes in my brain.
When Angel and Collins sing "Cover You." When Angel dies. When Collins sings about Angel dying. When Mimi almost dies. Every. God. Damned. Time. I am done for.
Brothers and Sisters Okay, I had to stop watching this goddamn show. Crying every Sunday night for one hour had gotten to be too much for me.
Plus, the power of actor association was so terribly potent that I found myself getting choked up watching Boniva commercials.
Cloverfield I know, I know. You're thinking: WTF!? And no, I didn't cry because some mystery reptilian FUCK MONSTER was destroying the city I call my home. No, in the movie there is one moment where I lost my shit - when the protagonist has to call his mother and tell him that his brother was killed by the FUCK MONSTER. And he realizes what he's saying, and I'm imagining the mother's reaction, and I'm seeing his, and I'm done for.
Note: this makes a far better story when my cousin and Plus One Alum Kristin tells guys I'm trying to pick up that I "cried during Cloverfield."
Under the Same Moon Have you seen this movie? Well, everyone should. And not just for the brief cameo by America Ferrera. The story of this little boy who travels across the border illegally to meet up with his mother in California is not so much a movie as it is a Cry Colonic.
When I saw this movie in the theater, I cried from beginning to end (and actually, before the movie started, because they were out of popcorn and I was STARVING).
There are tons more to add to this list, I'm sure. Slumdog Millionaire got me a number of times. So did when Bill died two weeks ago in 24. So did that episode of Gossip Girl where... ahhhh I'm fucking kidding on that one.
I could go on and on, but I think I've overshared enough. Now please be nice, or I might start bawling.
As we make our ways through the middle of the week, I thought it would be fun to engage in a little of what my own blog used to be famous (infamous?) for in the past: oversharing. Oversharing can (and usually does, in my case) mean sharing anything that probably should not be divulged publicly, much less on the internet, for one reason or another. But today I am going about it in the sense that what I am about to share is not necessarily scandalous, but is perhaps nevertheless something that probably does not fit the "image" of myself that I have worked diligently to cultivate online. But I figured that since Justin is rather shameless in terms of admitting this about himself, I was in the right place to divest myself of this information.
I am a closet gamer.
Not "gamer" as in one who owns every version of every possible gaming console dating back to Sega (or, no! Intellivision! Atari, even!), nor one who constantly frequents online forums and buys twenty new games every month the moment they are released. In summary, I am essentially a wanna-be gamer who used to love games and who was probably always "doin it rong," but was nevertheless deeply entertained by and to this day nostalgic about each favorite game at any given time. (Um, even though I have now "hidden" that "gaming" tag over on my own blog so that those embarrassing entries are no longer so easily accessible. LOL!)
So, because I am nice, and feeling a bit self-deprecating this week, I thought I would share some scenes from some of my favorite games of the past right here, to further embarrass myself in front of all of Justin's readers and the internet at large.
FINAL FANTASY X
I cut my adult gaming teeth, so to speak, nearly six years ago, when I was (*GASP!*) 30, on "Final Fantasy X." My lover at the time introduced me to it, and guided me through playing the entire thing over a period of a month. Even after the lover with whom I had come to associate the game left me, my love for this game remained strong, and to this day I keep several different versions of the game saved at specific, favorite parts so that I can play them again when I'm feeling in the mood. One of my favorite cut movies comes in the "Macalania Woods" portion of the game, in which two of the main characters, Tidus and Yuna, kiss and embrace to the tune of Rikki and Nobuo Uematsu's "Suketi da ne." (I know, this was back during my epic-eye-roll-inducing romantic days.)
BALDUR'S GATE
I was introduced to the RPG "Baldur's Gate" by the same lover who introduced me to "Final Fantasy X," but the game for me held no romantic overtones whatsoever. It was purely a game whose dark story arc and even darker graphics lulled me into relaxation after any stressful / soul-destroying day in my office. I realize that the term "relaxation" may read oddly, since the game is all about violence, but allow me to assure you that after one of my soul-destroying days the prospect of killing a bunch of characters rather violently on-screen promised a tremendous amount of relaxation.
GOD OF WAR II
Several years ago I and my BFF at the time became hooked on playing PS2 games together, and the first installment of "God Of War" was actually the game we played that I liked the best, but the video quality for the second game in the series was far better on YouTube. We would return to his house after (again!) soul-destroying days in our respective offices, drink copiously, and play this also very violent game; one of us playing, the other reading from an online "game guide." Because we did drink so much during game play, I can now no longer remember if we even finished the game, but it was definitely one of my favorites because I have always been a fan of games that feature a Greek mythological story line, Tom of Finland-esque muscular protagonists, and random hidden sex scenes throughout the game.
INDIGO PROPHECY
I think the game I loved the best, though, was one I discovered completely on my own, at the insistence of my old online friend @malackey: "Indigo Prophecy." Written and directed by Quantic Dream founder David Cage, the game play was new for me in that you had to play three different characters at different times throughout the game, and the decisions you made for each of them affected the outcome of the game as a whole. There were three different possible endings to the game. I sat, in complete darkness, for three whole days by myself, over a long rainy weekend in my studio in Honolulu, before I beat the entire game and saw all three possible endings, I was that obsessed with it.
I'm pretty sure that I have the best memories of "Indigo Prophecy" because it really was, in every sense of the word, one of my most cherished, and most fondly recalled, "Secret Gamer Behavior."
Late yesterday afternoon, my fabulous host here at Justin Plus One coined the term "eExhibitionist" to describe those people who are exhibitionists across the internet and social networking sites. I was so taken with the new term that I immediately added it to the bio on my Twitter profile, and suggested to Justin that we do our best to get the word inserted into the more popular internet vernacular. As someone who has been a digital resident of the internet since 1994, an early denizen of Hotmail and GeoCities and the then-brand-new Gay.com, I've a long history of being an eExhibitionist, and it is something about which I am deeply proud.
So I get a little ticked off when I read or see something online that seems to critique the practice of eExhibitionism.
While strolling through my Google Reader this morning after successfully warding off the panic attack that always threatens when the unread items in my feeds are nearing 1,000, I happened across this Flavorwire piece published late yesterday morning, "The Trouble with Current's The Twouble with Twitters." I'll spare you the definition of Twitter, which I happen to think if you still don't know then you probably have no business playing on the internet in the first place, and skip right to the point of the Flavorwire piece. Current TV, the Al Gore-backed global television network, released a promo for its season premiere of SuperNews! entitled "Twouble with Twitters," in which numerous critiques are leveled at the users of the microblogging platform, ultimately insinuating that the reason Twitter users are so addicted to the service is because they have no friends. (This summons, in one of the more humorous segments of the video, the Twitter Fail Whale, who proceeds to eat the helpless Twitter victims.)
It's difficult to tell if the promo is seriously criticizing Twitter's users, or if it is merely leveling its sarcastic jabs at Twitter users in order to attract viewers to "SuperNews!" One would hope that, as another social online service that hugely benefited from its affiliation with Twitter and Twitter's loyal, hardcore users throughout the recent United States election, Current TV would not seriously be critiquing the Twitter demographic. On the other hand, with all of the snark prevalent online these days, one never really knows anymore.
Not quite an early adopter of Twitter, I signed up with the service and published my first tweet on May 07, 2007. In those days I used Twitter for a few news and blog feeds, and to communicate with an elite circle of my friends regarding where we were at the moment, which parties we were headed to later in the evening, etc. I'm even shocked to remember that at that time I still received text message notifications from everyone I followed, something I can't imagine being able to handle today. In the nearly two years of my Twitter experience, I've seen it grow into a valuable and indispensable service to disseminate and receive information. Sure, with the recent explosion of new Twitter users who all seem to want to either sell you something or tell you how to write your SEO (because, duh, that is so hard OMG!), the intelligent user has to filter the noise to get to the good stuff. But the fact remains that, like them or not, like their users or not, social networking sites are here to stay, and are playing and will continue to play formidable roles in the exchange of information.
I won't defend the entirety of Twitter's eExhibitionist user base, because the stereotypes portrayed in Current TV's promo video most definitely do exist, and in their most base forms are highly annoying and angina-inducing. But the value of eExhibitionists in general should never be criticized. We're a pretty impressive group of intelligent, net-savvy people that should never be taken for granted, simply because of the two types of power that we wield: the talent of communicating important (or not) information to hundreds of thousands of people in under 140 characters; and the network of those who follow us.
They may not all be friends, no. But that does not mean they are not useful.
In honor of the closing day of SXSW 2009 Interactive, those holiest of holy days when geeks and digital celebrities alike descend upon Austin, Texas for a festival of panels, parties, and prostitution of the latest gadgets and online tools, I thought I'd give my own personalized report of some finds involving tech and the interwebs. I was initially scheduled to attend the conference myself, but in a rather sudden personal drama of Tolstoyian proportions, found myself sans Platinum Badge and safely ensconced in New York, far removed from the excitement and drunken pandemonium of Austin's Sixth Street. (NO, I am NOT bitter!) Anyway, this does not mean, however, that I did not keep tabs on new products and web tools being daily unveiled; attend numerous non-SXSW networking events via the #NotAtSXSW hashtag on Twitter; and meet tons of fabulous people who were also Not At SXSW, including the amazing Todd Sanders, whose second "imagication" provided the most LULZ of anything during the festival.
I've compiled just a few things that are new in my own little corner of the internet for your amusement, not all of which debuted in Texas over the last five days. [Full disclosure: Although I am a contributing guest writer at Mashable, it does not pay me to pimp their stories; I simply prefer its tech writers to other sites'.]
Since business cards are so 2007, and since people don't lose text messages the morning after, contxts enables professionals to share their contact information and more via SMS. The site stores a short message of up to 140 characters that includes all of your contact information associated with a single key word of your choice, and anyone with text messaging capabilities may then receive your digital business card by texting your key word to "50500". No trees destroyed. No paper to lose.
DAYTUM
Still currently in private beta and therefore not introduced at SXSW, Daytum is a home for collecting and communicating your daily data. Begin tracking anything you can quantify and display the results immediately, or just look around and see what other members are recording. The brainchild of interactive designer Ryan Case and graphic designer Nicholas Felton (whose personal annual reports prove that he is a fan of personal data collection), it is a beautifully-designed, minimalist site that promises much as it nears its public launch.
Now, I never watched Sex and the City. My longterm ex-boyfriend (who will come into play later in this post) did. A lot. But I never really caught on with the program. So I had to do some research on this Lexi Featherston lady:
And you know what? I'd give each of us a bit more credit than comparing either you or I to Lexi Featherston. (Though I LOVE her swansong monologue - I even just made it into my iChat away message). For one, neither of us are callous or so damned loud. And, surely, you're smart enough to stay inside of 18th story windows - Manolo heels or not.
I understand you say it's your age and your friends all pairing up... but keep in mind that in the greater gay world, your committed friends are a minority. And I'll spare you my cynicism (okay i won't, but I'm not wishing ill on them!) But coming from one of ten million divorced families, coupling is hardly the end of the line for anyone.
Yes, I'm coming from a younger generation, but still. I know more single people than not-single. Also - you're not that brash, loud, or annoying. I don't care how "cool" Lexi was, I would have slapped that cunt in the face and thrown her out the window before she had a chance to open it.
But I digress.
I have a motto (which I put in a comment in your post) that I go by ever since my most recent breakup:
"I'm not afraid of commitment, I just know I'm terrible at it."
This was the answer I gave to a guy who was trying to get me to be his boyfriend... right after I broke up with my most recent one. I was drinking at the time (one of my favorite activities when single).
I shook my head and said "no, I'm not looking for anything serious right now. I just got out of a six-month relationship."
"Why not? Are you afraid of commitment?"
It didn't take me half a second to respond to him with the above motto before turning on my heels and heading off to get another Madras (note: an Astoria bartender informed me last weekend there's another name for the drink - a Cranberry Toad... I shit you not.)
And really, I know that I am not afraid of commitment. Because I went face-to-face with it for over 5 years with my ex-boyfriend (now great friend) Paul. Sure, at one point that monogamous coupling became a monogamous/polygamous throuple. But even then - it was almost a year of further commitment... there was love there. There was care there. And it also might be why my inner thermostat ain't poppin' as much these days.
I was speaking with Paul the other day, about my recent... proclivity and sexual adventures. About all the guys I'm meeting and spending time with. He mentioned that it seemed like a complete 180 from "who I was" when I was with him. I countered with "it's not who I was, it was who you inspired me to be."
Further proof that I am not afraid of commitment, or even opposed to it, if the guy is right and gives me what I need and lets me give him what he needs. That's a very small amount of words to describe one of the most complicated requirements in the world.
No, I am not afraid of commitment. But maybe, right now, I'm just not ready for it again. After five years in something that didn't work out, am I ready to jump right back in again? Absolutely not. Not when I'm this close to 30. Another 5 year relationship has the potential to drop me off at single on the other side of 30.
So no. Nuh uh. No way. Not while I still have my looks. Not when I can still go out and party every night til 1 or 2 or 3 in the morning, wake up feeling as fresh as a daisy and go to work and do it all over again. I don't want to get into a relationship, see it end, and realize that I shat away the rest of my twenties chasing a serious relationship that I didn't actually want.
No. Not right now.
And yes, I realize that I am annoying to certain friends - friends who would KILL to be coupled. They don't understand how I can choose to be single, how I can turn down perfectly fantastic individuals who want to take the next step to something serious, something committed, something potentially eternal. How I can go out, meet boys, kiss boys, go home with boys, and then continue on with my life, often befriending said boys and never looking back.
But I don't have an answer for them. I can speak in a winding way for hours and hours should they so desire (very much how this post is turning out).
All I know is that when I settle down with someone, I turn into a person I don't like. I stay in more. I eat all the time. I become tunnel-visioned and fat. I look at 10PM as a bedtime, versus the timestamp on the receipt for my first drink of the night. I stop thinking of me and only think of them. I slice my life in half and start living for my other half.
That's what happened with me this past relationship (the six-month one that so many people thought was this big deal. Come on man, it was 6 months! What is that in the face of 5+ years?)
One day I just - woke up - and realized I was living with my boyfriend - literally living with him. We were together every night. I wasn't going out. I wasn't seeing friends. I hadn't had a drink in weeks. I had gained 15 pounds and I was right where I was in my last relationship... except it had all happened in a fast-tracked 4 months versus 4 years.
And I ran. (I ran so far away! sorry... couldn't help it.)
With little to no warning, I high-tailed it. And I haven't regretted it one bit. I love being single. I know I love being single because I have (and will continue to) turn down opportunities to un-single myself. I have a lot on my plate that I need to focus on. And a committed Plus One of the romantic variety is not the thing for me. (I mean, I can't even keep a co-blogger for more than a week! wakka wakka).
And now I'll turn this around and say the same for you. Being single is the ultimate spa treatment. It is a license to focus on you - to perfect everything about you from brains and brawn to manners and mentality. If you look at your single life as a time for self-reflection and hard work, not a moment is wasted. I'm glad you realized this, because the Atherton Bartelby in the original post was obviously in a very emo place (please tell me you were wearing nylons on your arms while typing that first go-round post).
I'm glad to see that you and I are in the same place - happily single and living life for us. Because let us not forget that Sex and the City is fiction. It is television. We can party and party and have a blast of our lives for many years to come.
Any way. This time, I mean it. No serious dating til 30.
Okay, clearly I don't mean that. Let me rephrase: I'm not LOOKING for it until then. If someone comes and offers to buy me a lychee-tini and take me to see the Eiffel Tower in Paris, if he has money and passion and drive, if he has humor and smarts and a nice body to boot. Well... if he's out there, and decides to buy me a drink sometime, I won't turn down his offer, or his number.
Until then, I'll just go out and have a great time doing what I do best - living for me.
"The Secret Life Of Lexi Featherston" is one of the top ten visited pieces of all time in my blog's archives. This is largely unsurprising, given that it borrows heavily from the "Splat!" episode of the final season of "Sex And The City." It appears to be a favorite destination via Google for fans of the HBO series who are up late having girls' nights in, drinking too many Cosmopolitans although they're now considered gauche, eating pints of Ben & Jerry's Chubby Hubby after ordering in Chinese (again!), or, you know, listening to Sade's "By Your Side" on repeat and crying at their laptops because they're depressed / they've been dumped / they feel they will be alone forever, etc. (Not that I've ever done any of those things!) Sometimes I roll my eyes when I check my site stats for the week and see 23 additional hits for this entry and feel pity for whomever was searching for quotes from that episode. Sometimes, however, my curiosity is piqued, and I click through to revisit my own ruminations on the fictional notorious, bed-hopping, Page-Six-featured party girl.
I did that this morning.
One of the great things about guest blogging is that you are constantly looking at your material, or considering your content, through the eyes of a new audience, so that even if you have written about, say, relationships, before, you gain a new perspective from writing about that topic for people who have never before read your ruminations on such. This kind of attention to your content (well, you know, if you're me) also inspires you to take a fearless inventory of self. It's what I did yesterday, and all last evening, and all this morning, following publishing my inaugural post here at Justin Plus One.
Bothered by the fact that I could not place an analogy for the "scorched dick" phenom I wrote about yesterday, that I was sure I had read somewhere before, I pondered and searched both my brain and the internet until it struck me, and quite literally took my breath away. The analogy appears in the final paragraph of Elizabeth McNeill's novella, Nine and a Half Weeks: A Memoir of a Love Affair. For those unfamiliar with the work, it is the book upon which the 1986 film "9 1/2 Weeks," directed by Adrian Lyne and starring Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke, was based. Far better and infinitely more emotionally and psychologically compelling than the film, the book chronicles the female protagonist's descent into a sadomasochistic relationship with a man, by the end of which she has relinquished all control over her body and her mind.
When my skin had gone back to its even tone I slept with another man and discovered, my hands lying awkwardly on the sheet at either side of me, that I had forgotten what to do with them. I'm responsible and an adult again, full time. What remains is that my sensation thermostat has been thrown out of whack: it's been years and sometimes I wonder whether my body will ever again register above lukewarm. - Elizabeth McNeill, Nine and a Half Weeks: A Memoir of a Love Affair
Upon further reflection on this passage, and also on a comment in response to Justin's thoughts on my "Scorched Dick" entry, in which I had, with no reservations whatsoever, proclaimed that I think monogamy in any sense is antithetical to human nature, I began to wonder to myself, around midnight (which is usually when these thoughts begin), is my sensation thermostat out of whack? Am I so damaged by my previous failed relationships that my capacity to love someone, to be in a relationship, will never again register above lukewarm?
A four in the morning phone call from one of my oldest and dearest friends in San Francisco, during which he told me of his own new and promising relationship, representing the last of my closest friends potentially hooking up and seriously settling down, did little to comfort me. "I am," I thought, borrowing a line from still another episode of "Sex And The City," "going to be that sad old spinster who dies alone in his apartment and becomes food for his eight cats because he is all alone!"
Then I checked my site stats, and chose, just shortly before beginning this piece, at around six this morning, to revisit Lexi Featherston.
At nearly four years old, it's a dated piece, in terms of both personal and cultural references. But it speaks to who I was at the time: a lonely, semi-whorish homosexual who claimed to everyone who would listen and the internet that he adored being single...but secretly wanted to be with someone else.
I have lived Lexi’s life, and I have loved it, embraced it, clung to it, carrying it with me, flailing behind me, from one lounge, from one man, from one bed (public or private), to another. But the events of the past weeks, and particularly of last evening, have made me yearn for something else, and have made me realize just how much…just how much I purport to love being single.
And how so much of that is simply empty bravado.
Suddenly, right there at my desk, I furrowed my brow, smiled a wry smile, and thought to myself, in shock, "Huh. That's actually not simply empty bravado anymore. I actually do love being single."
And just like that, I remembered why I loved Lexi Featherston.
My worries about my maybe-out-of-whack sensation thermostat vanished. Because who can say if my capacity to love someone else, to be in a relationship, as I once did, will ever again register above lukewarm? And who cares? When what's really important is my unabashed happiness for my close friends who are pairing off. My memories of all of us partying at Tunnel when we were, like, five. Manolo stilettos. Living in the most exciting city in the world. And yes, smoking, next to a fucking open window.
My God I am such a fucking moron. All this time I've been sitting on a GOLD MINE. I welcome a new Plus One every week, we have a blast co-blogging, and then they disappear into the woodwork until they return to blog again. As if they stop living.
The truth is that the people who Plus One with me become rather close friends as a result of the arduous J+1 experience. So, naturally I follow their comings and goings.
(Note: I like to say that I've either slept or blogged with every person I know... sounds bad but I like it.)
ANYWAY... here is the birth of a new series on J+1: Plus Ones: Where Are They Now!?
Because, I'm proud to say, that my Plus One alums are all doing FANTASTIC things... so I need to share it here. Read on and see what your favorite Plus Ones are doing these days!
Remember Plus One Becky? Well she just put out an ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS video on FunnyOrDie as a part of her Upright Citizen Brigade improv troupe out in LA.
It deals with one of the most mysterious/horrifying things in existence today: The Disney Vault.
How about Plus One Adam Lehman? This hilarious gay standup comic has turned the doldrums of unemployment into lemonade (note: doldrums are far sweeter than lemons).
Adam is starring in an indie 15-minute film called "Jonathan, Just Because" which premieres this coming Sunday at Therapy in Hell's Kitchen (you KNOW I'll be there... bitch, I'm on the VIP list!)
Anyway, as if that wasn't awesome enough, Adam was also featured TODAY in the New York Times! Check out the article here, and learn about what him and his equally unemployed (note: no longer unemployed - Times, issue a correction!) roomie do when sitting at home.
And then there's Plus One (and best friend/ cousin) Kristin... Kristin has just recently launched a very successful online vintage clothing store.
Known as Glammunition, the store sells classy curated vintage threads for ladies on a budget. Seriously, this is like someone handing you a shotgun and letting you into a preserve to take a shot at some near-extinct species.
Okay, she might not like me associating the killing of endangered animals with buying her product.
So just go check out Glammunition - there's even a super sexy FREE bag raffle going on. It'll be perfect to use to store the endangered pelts and... okay, okay, I'll stop!
Oh, and one more for the helluvit.
Remember Plus One Austin? Well this coming Sunday is his birthday! Feliz (almost) Cumpleanos, buddy!
And what's a better way to celebrate than acting in an off-off Broadway play? That's right, ladies and gents... Austin is making his star turn in Motor Skills, three one-act plays about relationships, sex, love, and manipulation. If you're in NYC, be sure to go and check it out.
Well that was fun. Expect more of these posts as my Plus One alums continue to do exciting/awesome things in their lives. Why lose touch with them just because they're not running the J+1 weekly gamut with me?
