Nowhere-Phoenix-Stonewall Post-mortem: Passivity has made a failure of our home

Nowhere-Phoenix-Stonewall-The View Post-Mortem: Passivity has made a failure of my home

Perhaps I should stop thinking ahead of time. I mean, I should stop thinking with preconceptions or hopeful assumptions of what a night out should be.

As previously mentioned, I started tonight out in the East Village, a place where I have always felt a tad bit uncomfortable because I never see anybody who looks like me around. Well, that was true. At Nowhere, I was the only person in the bar. Fortunately, the bartender was very affable and great to be around. Anyplace that has Pabst for $2 a can during happy hour is good in my book.

Next was (the) Phoenix. Here’s where things started to go awry. Phoenix is a place that is in one hand hospitable, and in another tacitly hostile. It’s a bit hard to explain, but the clientele lived up to my preconception of what the stereotypical East Villager is like: seemingly very bohemian, but the more you look underneath, still the snob from the suburbs. Now, in their defense, I will say that these are my opinions based on a random Tuesday night with 17 degree weather, but that is what I took away. The bartender was at least pleasant and welcoming.

I was intending on going to the (in) famous Cock, but I couldn’t find it based on the listing I had. I know it has moved, but perhaps the address I had was the old one. Either way, I needed some sleaze. I found it, in of all places, at the Stonewall which had some sort of special night going on upstairs. Whatever this night is called (Buff Boyzz, maybe), it seemed to involve a lot of go-go boys. For once they were actually good looking. Good looking enough to make me pay for lap dances. That’s where I had my internal meltdown. Somehow, I really was taken in by one of the dancers who took me to the equivalent of their champagne room and showed me a very good time. Such a good time that my rational mind went out the window, and I started to believe that he was interested in me sexually. For his sake, I’ll keep the acts to myself, but I think that what he/we did was above and beyond the normal call of duty. Something seemed strange and I couldn’t put my (metaphorical) finger on it.

Drunk enough for another round of dances, I eagerly went for him again. This time, it turned into talking amidst all the grinding. I found out that he was almost 30, still in love with his 20 year old ex-boyfriend (whom he left his “girlfriend”—let’s not go to that issue tonight—for). Yes, on some level it was demystifying the fantasy, but on another level it was it was taking me out of the carnal and into the cerebral. I guess to some extent I should feel flattered, but honestly, I just feel used.

You see, men that I am quite strongly attracted to are rare. Quite likely this is me thinking with my crotch, but I wanted to go have hours worth of animalistic sex with him. I didn’t really care about his problems, because he never inquired about mine beforehand. This was meant to be a sexual situation and it wasn’t.

That aside, what gets me more than that is that I have no self-confidence. I really wanted to see if my Pollyanna thoughts had some substance and I could snare him in my bed for a few hours. Did I try? No. I was too chicken. I am my own worst enemy. Who knows what could or couldn’t happen if I had taken the risk?

My resolution for next year? Kick this doubting Thomas to the curb by next January.