Journal

Today was just incredible. Woke up feeling great, it was a warm night and I still have all the windows wide open. It got up into the 80s today. Little on the cloudy side, but hey, it’s Rochester!

There are seven stoplights on the way to work, and I hit every one of them on green. Traffic was light, but I stayed in the slow lane and cruised at 55, sunroof out, windows down, NSYNC cranking out of the Blaupunkts. (Note to Chrysler: Maybe it’s not a good idea to put the speakers in the door right next to the mirrors!) Of course my hair was still kinda wet so I had this crazed windblown look when I got to work, (boy I’ll tell ya, that gray has a mind of it’s own!) Hence the haircut tonight, which I was really lucky to get right away. Dina’s usually booked weeks in advance.

Anyway, work went swimmingly today. And at this afternoon’s meeting, the boss announced he wants to do our own intranet site separate from the rest of the Technology Department. Guess who’s gonna be on the development team? Meeting tomorrow morning at 9!

The contract house called this afternoon and they’re taking me out to lunch on Thursday. Free food is cool. Jimmy Ray cranking out of the Blaupunkts on the way home, and when I get here, a reply to the F*** Buddy ad I placed on gaypersonals.com last November.

Gotta dash!

Every place along the Ave had their tables out on the sidewalk, so the scenery was nice along the way. And that really cute guy was making subs tonight. Tall, curly dark hair, cute as a button. It was busy, (go figure!) so I got to watch for a while. As luck would have it, they just happened to have a fresh batch of Kahlua Chip ice cream, (my fave), so I got a large cone and ate dessert first on the walk back.

Willie-my-fuck-buddy lives right on the Ave along there. I thought of stopping in, but the only light on was in his computer room so I figured he was working hard on his thesis and probably didn’t need the interruption.

The guy who lives across the street from my brother owns the Oasis Mediterranean Restaurant, so I always check and see how business is doing, (and I was checking out the guys at the sidewalk tables.) In the window, I caught sight of a couple of familiar faces. I stopped, went in and sat down. Old home week with Jerry and Jeanne, my attorney and his wife. I worked for them for six or seven years in the 80s. Come to find out, just today they retired the time and billing program I wrote for the firm, jeepers, nine or ten years ago. Come to think of it, I did the accounts receivable and accounts payable programs too.

Anyway, we’ve enjoyed shooting the breeze every once in a while ever since. I usually stop by the office, but being a law office, they’re usually busy. I haven’t seen them since we finalized my "divorce" about a year ago. So we caught up over (their) dinner. Their oldest son is graduating from law school this June, and has a job with a firm in New York City. Their middle son completes pre-med this coming January, and their youngest son is road manager for a rock band who just landed a recording contract with Columbia.

They figured I’d already moved out west since they hadn’t heard from me in about a year. Just doesn’t seem like that long.

Well I’d been trying to come up with some kind of April Fool’s thing, but I’m just not that creative when it comes to fiction. The best I could come up with was to "come-out" as an elderly overweight Jewish woman living in Schenectady with about a dozen cats. Well, you can see why I nixed the idea. (Oy!)

Willie called tonight. He wanted me to go to Club Porkette, (There I go again! It’s Club Marchella!) to see a couple of his friends in their drag debut. The show doesn’t start until 11:30. And if it’s like any other drag show I’ve seen, there’ll be some sort of fashion emergency postponing the show for about an hour.

I’m tired. I didn’t get much sleep last night after the enjoyable day I had. And besides, I get up at 5:30. In fact, the only reason I’m doing an entry tonight is that I wanted to touch up a couple of things from yesterday’s changes. Put in a link I forgot and stuff like that. So as long as I’m tinkering . . .

Before the game, we four went to Jine’s at Park and Berkley, (across from Park Place Deli) for fish fry dinner. Of course, being right on the Ave, there’s always a lot of "family" about. (And, I ran into my cousin Sharon. Turns out, she’s moving to an apartment about two blocks away from mine. We only see each other at weddings and funerals, and there haven’t been many of those lately.) So between the crayon drawings, running into relatives, the food and the scenery, plus the fact that Mark picked up the tab, the evening got off to a good start.

At the rink, after the national anthem, I hear someone off to my left shouting, "Hey, Bruce!" Now I’m thinking, "I’m in a hockey rink with 10,000 other people, how many other Bruces could there be?" At least a dozen or so I figure, so I ignored it. This asshole keeps yelling, "Hey Bruce, over here!" Okay, so I look. Turns out, the asshole is my youngest brother, Glenn. (If you remember back to the January entries, he’s the one who gave me a hard time over having "cockjaw"). In fact, both my brothers, my dad, and my nephew, Alex, are there, sitting two sections over. So I wave, flip ‘em the bird, and figure I’ll run over between periods to shoot the breeze.

Our team, the Rochester Amerks, are in the AHL and the farm team for the NHL Buffalo Sabres. They’ve won the Caulder Cup (the AHL equivalent of the NHL’s Stanley Cup) the last two or three years running, but this seasons record doesn't hold much hope of that.   I haven’t been to a game so far this season. I instantly became infatuated with our "goalie twink."

Okay, yes, I’m thinking Aaron’s a goalie twink too!  Maybe it has something to do with the padding on the knees so you don't hurt them when you push 'em down there.  Or maybe the padded shoulders so you can be comfy while you sit there.

There’s several other cuties on this year’s team besides. Swoon! And the opposing team, the Hershey (PA) Bears, have a few cuties too! Well, we lost 3 to 1, but it was after all, cute guys with big sticks! (Can’t wait for baseball season!)

I gotta hit the hay. I’ll finish and post this in the morning.

While we were still online, I showed him the site. He didn’t seem too interested in it, except for the past couple of entries about him. He tried to show me his project stuff on his RIT page, but apparently I don’t have the right Java plug-ins for MSIE under WinNT. I’ll have to visit using Netscape 4.04 under Win95. And, I finally got to see his picture on the web. It’s from a couple of years ago and he’s in a Speedo on the beach in Nicaragua. Go to Jim's Page, click on Friends and Willie.

Oh, he’s going to have an interesting few days coming up, (I’m not sure of the exact dates). It seems RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology) is giving some kind of award to Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, President of Nicaragua from 1990 to 1996. There’s a picture of her in the article about Nicaragua on Microsoft’s encyclopedia, Encarta (I’m still using Encarta97 by the way.) He’s the only Nicaraguan student at RIT and he’s been asked by the school to participate in some of the functions and maybe act as an unofficial interpreter.

After discussing some of the politics of his country and how it may affect former President Chamorro’s visit here, we headed over the Muther’s. Their ad in the month’s issue of The Empty Closet says, "Twinks Party DJ Tommy". Well I didn’t see any more (or fewer) twinks there last night, nor were things as festive as last weekend, (the weather’s back to normal.)

I mentioned this to Jeff, the cook at Muther’s. He said it was Tommy’s whole idea and apparently he forgot about it. Tommy said he was going to throw twinkies into the crowd. "Okay", I thought as I pictured twinks stage-diving onto the dance floor. That would be interesting. He meant Hostess Twinkies. Not nearly so interesting.

After a while over by the dance floor, I headed back to the bar because my ice cubes were lonely. I saw you-know-who waiting for a beer. In the process of trying to squeeze through the crowd, I turned so my back was to him as I went by.

Michael-the-ex was at Randy’s end of the bar where I usually get my drinks. We exchanged complements on each other’s new haircuts. And Michael was Michael. His vodka consumption has returned to normal. This was a major source of conflict during our relationship. But I’d always wanted to date a guy who was the life-of-the-party type, and if nothing else, Michael is the life of the party. Guess it goes with the territory.

Somehow I got my back up against the big-screen TV and Michael was all lovey-dovey, kissy-huggy on me. I’m not sure if it was intentional, or the surge of the crowd, but he kept pressing his raging hard-on into my leg as we were talking. It was all, "I was hoping to see you here tonight, Bruce" and "I really think you’re sweet." Stuff like that. Sweet or not, somehow I managed to extricate myself and headed back to the dance floor.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned exactly how small a club Muther’s is. The bar is only 30 or 40 feet long and the dance floor is maybe 20 by 30. But right now, it’s Rochester’s most popular club, and on Friday and Saturday, the place is so jammed it can take you five minutes to move ten feet.

The only possible path through the crowd was right past you-know-who. "All right," I’m thinking to myself, "time to face the music." As I was propelled by, I stopped (causing a major traffic jam) and said "Hi". And I asked, point-blank, "What the hell happened last Friday?" He didn’t seem to understand and I had to recount the whole affair. He said that it wasn’t anything I did or didn’t do, he just saw someone he didn’t want to see, so he left. Okay, well he could have been a bit more gracious making his exit, I told him. He really is a lot of fun to hang out with at the bar, and so I’ve decided "Bar Friends and Ex-Tricks" is the category Johnny’s going to remain in.

As we were talking, DJ Tommy managed to completely clear the dance floor at 1:00AM on a Friday night. I don’t know what it was he played, but I’ve never seen such a thing in my life! I was in awe! Hundreds of fags in a dance club on a Friday night, and exactly zero people dancing. Everyone just moved to the walls, arms crossed and glaring fiercely at the DJ booth. First no twinks, now no dancers. DJ Tommy (and his career) were in mortal danger! Fearing for our very lives should the queens stampede the DJ booth, Johnny and I beat a hasty retreat over to the pool table, as DJ Tommy retreated to old retro queen records.

I recounted to Johnny, and Willie who had joined us, the stories of how, years ago, my "sister" Mark and I would sometimes put considerable effort into trying to clear the dance floor when the ratio of dancers to drinkers would leave the bartenders standing around with nothing to do. In a bar with no cover charge, the only source of revenue is after all, the bar. It just made good business sense to "cool down" the floor and get the bartenders back to work. To my recollection, neither of us ever succeeded. Although it was fun to see what kind of really whacked-out stuff you could play and still have a reasonable crowd on the floor.

It suited me just fine. I really didn’t want to leave my book. Alas, duty calls. One never knows when Mr. Right, (or even Mr. Not-Half-Bad) will show up. There were four guys that caught my eye, and it turned out that three of them were together, producing an "impenetrable twink cluster." The other guy left before I could check my coat. Oh well. I wasn’t really in the mood for tricking anyway.

Vince-the-ex was there with his entourage. He’s even signing his e-mails to me as Vince-the-ex now. I forget exactly what he told me that wasn’t supposed to go up on the site, so I’ll avoid our entire conversation. Tomorrow (Monday the 6^th) is his birthday. Send him birthday greetings at [...]. And he thought I’d forgotten.

I can still pick the hits. I tipped Lenny a couple of bucks to play "I Want You Back" by NSYNC. It not only held the floor, but built it. He was astonished that I tipped him. I guess nobody tips the DJ for requests any more. Seems strange. You tip the guy who serves your drinks, tip the guy who checks your coat, but you don’t tip the guy plays your tunes? For heaven's sakes, you’d put money in a jukebox to hear a song, what’s wrong with tipping the DJ? I just don’t understand it.

They’ve got some new staff there on the weekends. The new barback, a lesbian, is most aggressive when it comes to picking up empty glasses and bottles. On Friday night over by the pool table, I’d set my drink next to my coat, turned around and was talking. In the meantime, she swooped in and snagged it. I didn’t think much of it since it was after 2:00 anyway.

But last night around 1:00 or so, I was standing under a speaker and set my glass on the little shelf that runs around the dance floor, while I lit a cigarette. I no sooner got my Bic lit, when she appeared out of nowhere, and snagged my glass. It was more than half-full too! So I yelled, "Hey, get back here with that!" She took it that I was angry because I yelled. I had to yell because I was standing under a speaker. Anyway I got my cocktail back.

So, it was a lazy day around here today. Except for the fact that I finished the orange juice and bread this morning, I wouldn’t have even left the apartment. Although it was cool and windy out, it got quite toasty sitting in the reading chair with the sun pouring in through the windows. Made for a nice nap.

I hate this time change thing. It gets me all screwed up for nothing. I get jet-lagged for chrissakes. They say that most people take a day or so per time zone to get back on schedule. For me it it’s more like a week. I know I’m gonna be messed up clear through to the weekend. Well, I guess I oughtta get started on the tossing and turning for tonight.