There are 8 million people in New York City, and if you subscribe to the 10% theory, it's safe to say that nearly a million of them are gay. Walk the runway that is 8th Avenue between 14th and 23rd Streets, and you'll swear the statistic is obscenely underestimated. Of course, with a demographic this large, a vast diversity of mind, body and spirit is to be expected. It's certainly impossible for all 1 million of us to be natty dressers, inherently skilled at home décor and the proud owners of granite-chiseled physiques. Yet even with a group this diverse, certain commonalities of character, gay archetypes if you will, float to the top and appear repeatedly on the urban cultural radar.
Take the Party Boy, for example. By day, he is a respected professional with a higher education, but by night he is an uninhibited reveler in the disco-debauched demi-monde. No stranger to variety-sex, the Party Boy balances his need for physical gratification with his deeper desire for true love. He spends a great deal of time looking for Mr. Right, Mr. Right Now, or Mr. Whomever's Got Some Poppers and a Plan. The Party Boy is known to walk into g after a long day at the office, order a stiff martini, then talk to no one while he reads the Wall Street Journal. Once the vodka melts away the day and his inhibitions, his long journey into night can begin.
Then there's the Power Couple. Usually gay men, but can also apply to lesbians; Power Couples are those cloyingly annoying gays in smugly presented, long-term relationships. Power Couples long ago gave up first person singular when they entered into their perfect unions, and lost their individual identities in the process. Conversations always seem to center around recently-acquired antiques, fabulous weekends spent planting tulips in the country, and the joys of everyday provincial values that sharply contrast those of us heathen singles. What the Power Couples are not saying is that the impeccably ironed Frette linens haven't seen a hint of friction, a drop of action, or a squirt of semen, in five years.
Party Boys may be exciting, and Power Couples may give you the validation you need when bemoaning your single status, but the most colorful, and certainly the most entertaining of gay archetypes has to be the Caftan Queen. The Caftan Queen floats through life on a lavender-scented cloud, raining Froot-Loop flavored milk on his adoring, but color-less, subjects. He laughs at his own jokes, calls everybody "darling" and is constantly asking the question out loud "Am I bad?" Recently I had the pleasure of spending the evening with one of my favorite Caftan Queens of all time, flamboyant Cuban art dealer, Emilio Reina. Emilio, who collects and sells Haitian and Latin American art, rang me up recently to tell me he was in town, staying with his sister in the burbs, and desperately needing a night out on the town that he used to call home. An expatriate New Yorker, Emilio now lives with his wealthy Canadian boyfriend, a graduate student in Montreal. Emilio doesn't actually wear caftans (at least not that I know of), but he does have rings on every finger, a solid inch of pancake makeup on his face and a unique coiffure that could only be described as a man-bouffant. Emilio has two great passions in life: art and "pingy" (derived from the Spanish pinga, meaning penis). It's a toss-up which of the two is his priority. We decided to meet at Vlada to catch up on life and pingy stories while sipping lethal pink liquids from huge, chilled conical glasses.
"I've been reading your blog every day, Jon. I love it! Sometimes I sit in front of it for hours, poring over every word and laughing my ass off. I think Jacques thinks I'm crazy!"
"How is Jacques?"
"He's fine. Busy as ever. And grumpy. He's in the middle of his doctoral thesis. I decided it was time to get out of his hair and come to New York when he accused me the other day of only wanting to be with him for his money! Can you imagine?" I could. "Anyway, I'm really into all the blogs, Jon, especially the 'good' ones." The good ones? "Yes, come on Jon, you can't tell me you've never been to DudeTube or Caperboi or DudesNude!" I hadn't, though I had heard Raul talk about DudesNude. "Omigod, go home tonight and look, you won't believe all the pingies! Fabulous!" There it was, within five minutes and five sips of his Cosmopolitan, Emilio brought up his favorite topic and it was nothing but pingy pingy pingy all night night night.
"The best is RicoReport. There are so many uncut ones! And you know how I feel about that." It was true, Emilio had a strong preference for sausage still in its casing. Never really having had a preference myself either way, I was curious why he did. "Because it feels amazing when you yourself are uncut—see you wouldn't know about that, Jon because you're circumcised. But when you're uncut, your foreskin is always pressing against the head of your pingy and it's like getting a continuous blowjob without tongue or suction. It's like kisses on your cock! So when you know how that feels you want to be with someone whom you know is feeling the same sensation. Another thing you can do when you're uncut is you can put your pingies together and envelope them with both your foreskins. It creates extra friction and you can really get off like that. It's fabulous!" I see. "Jon, why are you looking at me that way? I can see the wheels in your mind turning. There's a lightbulb that just went on over your head! Jon, you CANNOT put any of this on your blog! Jacques would kill me. Jon, I'm serious! Do all your friends live in fear of ending up on Budget Fabulous? You have to promise me, you will not put any of this on your blog!"
"Okay, Emilio, I promise."
Well, what can I say, my fingers, toes and pingy were crossed.
The waiter interrupted and asked if we wanted another bottle of wine, but Farah had to get home. She was flying out again in the morning to LA. She paid the check with a black Amex Centurion card and we were on our way. She had dismissed Mr. Moose earlier so he could go home to his family. It was his daughter’s birthday. We started hunting for a cab.
