"Hello Loverrrrrr...!" - LIVE from the BIg Apple

It's terribly appropriate to start off this post with the opening lines of the spankin' new Sex and the City movie: here I am, in Carrie Bradshaw's backyard on the day of the movie's release. If ever there was an occasion to yell Hallelujah!, then this is it, bab-eh! :)

O my, o my, o my... where do I start from, and how do I stop feeling like a ditsy school girl writing this blogpost?! I've been spending the last couple of days drinking in Manhattan, and I suppose why I feel so... intoxicated. The boys here are unbelievable, really. All those fables we heard around the winter fire when we were wide-eyed eager gay bunnies with bushy tails/asses in Bombay, about the wondrously shining world of Manhattan, all the stylish young (and older) men looking divinely gorgeous, all the designer wear and the designer attitude, the bright lights and the big city - it's all true, me-dearies! The fairy tale is so fabulously fag-ulous, it's enough to lose your sense of being grounded - and thank gawd for that! Welcome to the Big Apple, where the men are simply too cute and sexy to be anything but gay, and the labels scream out so amazingly rich and loud.



OK then, enough with the hyperbole, already. So what have I been up to then? Mmmm.... it's all a whirl of sensations, emotions and excitement, really... Walking in Central Park, remembering the scene where the SATC girls have their picnic; sipping divinely rich mocha and crunching on raspberry rolls at this tucked-in-a-corner Israeli cafe near the Empire State; watching the city spread before me, while up high on the 102nd floor of the Empire State; floating down the Hudson river, watching the harbor lights of the city twinkle in the sunset; Lady Liberty holding her torch alight and me getting an idea for my Halloween costume this year (giggle!); drooling through the Tiffany's window at Fifth Avenue; counting the days/years/decades till I live in a high-rise overlooking Central Park; partaking of Vietnamese food in the original Chinatown and remembering that episode where Carrie freaks out on Big for taking her to a discreet Chinatown restaurant; doodling hours over at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and contemplating Picassos and Renoirs; sipping Starbucks coffee and blowing cream while watching bare-chested Adonis' jog past me out on the street; munching on sidewalk cafes on Broadway; letting the lights of Times Square shine on me like crazy freakin' diamonds; dancing my sexy tush at the Splash bar (and trying not to feel too ugly in front of the semi-naked perfect Gods go-going there);... and all this is just three days. *whew*

So I get an invite to head down to Manhattan's Splash bar for their Sex and the City movie launch party, and I meet this gorgeous Jamaican who's a friend of Sexy Older Guy. The good news is: the Jamaican is realllllly into me. The bad news is... ummm, well, not really bad news, more like the dampener for the unabashed sexual rampage I would have had in mind, was the fact that I'm already "taken". :) So, the Jamaican and I did some hot and heavy dancing, loads of flirting, innuendos and all, lip-licking heart-thumping thoughts and stuff, but when push came to shove, I did a Cinder-fella and scooted from the bar, leaving my glass slippers behind and keeping my undies up where they belong. Well, it wasn't a very a timely exit, seeing that I got back to the hotel at around 4.30 am, but you get what I'm trying to say. That's called Domestication. Capital letters.



O, but the SATC movie is going to be HUGE! Everyone knows that the gay community is waiting anxiously to see it - click here for a firsthand account of the NYC premiere - and I'm dying to get back home and watch it for myself. Will force Irish Coffee to come with me - hell, this is what he gets for having me keep my undies up and not take them off for sexy Jamaicans! *giggle*

In other news: I finally came out to the older brother. :) But that's for another post. This has been a busy couple of days for me in the Big Apple!

Update: Not sure whether it has anything to do with my presence here right now or not, but NY state has just decided to recognize the legality of gay marriages conducted in other parts of the country/world. Perhaps it's a small step away from being the third US state to legalize gay marriage? A teeny bit of wishful thinking never hurt anyone, in any case...

Bad Boy in the Big Apple

I'm excited. Frikkin' excited. That's cuz, come Wednesday, I'm going to be in that cliched yellow cab in sexcitingly fantabulous New York City! There'll be the big, beautiful lights of the big bad city, dancing and theater and music and ear-splitting, heart-thrilling New York City! I can hardly wait.



So I spent the last couple of days hunting for that perfect deal on air tickets, and that made-for-me hotel room booking. If any of you fag-ulous queers live in the Big Apple, I'll be just across the bridge in Long Island at Greenpoint Avenue, and I'll be there for almost a week! Man, this beats the blogging action live from Delhi anytime! This is the big time, bab-eh! :)

I mean, let's face it: I was meant for better things than Small Town, USA. My facebook profile has this quiz I took that says how I'm meant to reside in a Manhattan penthouse, for Chrissake! I'm meant to tip-tap through the East Village, grin at the hotties on Times Square, and put out for the moneyed millionaires of the champagne and caviar kind. :) First things first: time to dust out those skinny jeans and slip in a Madonna CD...

How about... a Leather Woody?

Take a rocks glass,

1. pour 1/7 part vodka.
2. pour 5 parts tea - unsweetened.
3. add 3 drops of lemon concentrate.
4. drip Log Cabin syrup - depending on how rich you wand it.
5. add sugar syrup (optional).
6. crown with 4 cubes of ice.

And, you have...



In case you're wondering where the fag-ulous name came from, let's play a word association game: tea has tannins, which are used to tan leather; Log Cabin syrup contains maple syrup, which is a tree, and of course that also ties in with your... ummm... woody. :)

Just another Sunday night...! :)

Airing out the closet

More than four years ago, I began posting on this space with

"This is my gay blog. It seems funny to put it like that. This is my blog where I post about myself: the emotional, ethical, sexual, spiritual, hilarious parts of being gay. An overall experience that is so intrinsicaly not just a matter of sexual preference, but so much a type of being... Most of all, the gay blog is a statement to myself: I'm gay. I like being gay."

It's amazing how inspiring nostalgia can often be. Like when you (read: I) haven't blogged in more than a month, either because you/I haven't got any time or because there doesn't seem anything worthwhile to say, and then it takes a stroll through memory lane to get you/me all fired up. If I were any good with machine-stuff, I'd use a mechanic-car-engine quip here but since I'm not, I'll skip that. Getting back on track, though, four years of the closetspace hence, I wanted to kickstart this blog again, and so there's a new template and a read of my very first post.

Voila!

Regular visitors would know that my favorite screwed-up apple has been around here for donkey's ears - almost since the first day the blog started, I've had the apple template, despite loads of entreaties to remove it or modify the template. I've resisted that because I always felt that the apple was so frikkin' perfect in this space: it explained all the "emotional, ethical, sexual, spiritual, hilarious parts of being gay" that the first blog post talks about. But, as anyone will tell you, four years is a helluva long time - hell, that's way more than most gay relationships last! So, I guess it was about time the apple got dumped. :( And the rainbow-jumping boy leapt to take its place.

Yesterday, in a phone conversation with SnowWhite's Stepmum, he told me, "You know, there are other kinds of activism, not just gay activism!" and of course he was totally correct. On one level... On one level, it seems silly that when there's so much screwed-up in the world, with hunger and poverty and child abuse and war and destruction, with all of this going on, that the world should sit up and listen to a bunch of people who're quite well-satisfied in other respects, who want to be gay openly. Is the closet really such a big deal? Why does gay activism have to make it into this weird do-or-die situation, where being out of the closet is absolutely essential to being free? Even I, in an earlier post, bitched about gay activists and activism, saying I absolutely did not want to have anything to do with it. Instead, my mantra has been: I'm gay and I like being gay, so let's just blog and bitch and rant and rave about the fun stuff, the cheesy stuff, the emotional stuff, the weird stuff that being queer entails. Just because there's a brain in the closet, doesn't mean that it has to be worn on the sleeve: Prada and LV are still much more pleasant to ogle at, than a mass of pink jelly.



So then, why does it feel so frikkin' great to hear about the California Supreme Court's judgment on the unconstitutionality of banning gay marriages? Why does it feel sad to hear that Sexy Old Thing has broken up with his boyfriend of fifteen years? Why is my work suddenly so important to me, where I talk to gay Americans and ask them about their coming-out experiences and how it felt to be marginalized and silenced while growing up? Why should I care for any of this, really? As I keep telling Irish Coffee, I'm not American, and I'm really in no hurry to become one...? So then, why does all this touch me so deep?

The California case is, of course, making news across the world. They say, what California does today, the US does tomorrow. Sort of something like they used to say about Bengal earlier: what Bengal does today, India does tomorrow. I'm not too sure about that, though. As I've said so many times before, the US seems a highly religious-ized society (yes, I invented a new word), and the polarization between sex and religion seems too great to bring about gay rights for Americans any time soon. It's strange to think that while the "original" (if I may say so) gay movement started in the States, so many other countries have beaten the US in this regard... But again, getting back to the topic: why does it matter to me?

The answer is really in that part I quoted from my first blog post, and I guess I never really recognized it as such. "An overall experience that is so intrinsicaly not just a matter of sexual preference, but so much a type of being." And there you have it. That's the part which really calls for all those "standard" arguments that activists offer for gay rights. That's the part which really ensures that a fight for gay rights in California or Massachusetts is also a fight for gay people and their allies everywhere across the world - Bombay or Lahore or wherever. That is immediately obvious when you consider how many of the strategies of gay activists around the world are interconnected. When I talk to some of the people here, and hear their stories about being in the closet, I can't help but remember my own experiences - of not one of "the boys" playing football or cricket during lunch break in school, or not being able to tell my mum about Irish Coffee when she asks me over the phone whether I've met any cute girls here - and I know that even the teeniest amount of work I can do, to help young people understand their sexuality and realize it's nothing to be ashamed of, will somehow find its application somewhere in my backyard. And I also know it's about love - something that is quite universal. News of a 15 year old relationship gone sour saddens me - it would, even if it were hetero love. Hell, if the anti-gay brigade can get up on their damned soapbox and screech so incessantly, I can do the same!

For me, nostalgia is important because it inspires and reminds me of the things that are really important. Which is not to say that Prada shades don't require their fair share of spotlight, but what I really mean is this... a blog is supposed to be personal. My tiny little closetspace in cyberworld was always supposed to be about the real and the personal. Four years down the line, I guess it's important to reaffirm that to myself. So, welcome... welcome to a brand new closet. Where the boy jumps over his rainbow, and he spills his soul, and he writes words that he hopes will mean something. Something important.