Thanksgiving

First off let me apologize for taking such a huge break. I would say I was busy but that's a total lie. It was more like laziness and a lack of anything interesting to write about. My time in Philly was mostly spent sitting on a couch in the green room playing games on my phone and swatting away 50+ year old roid-heads at the gay gym by the theater so other than a couple of drunken hook-ups (including the night before I came back to NYC) it was fairly uneventful in blog terms. I mean, when your tricks get nicknames like "Hair Plugs" and "Scrappy-Doo" it doesn't really leave me with much to write about. But Thanksgiving, however, was now officially the first day I got fucked AND fired in the same day. Not too shabby if I do say so myself. :)

I was woken up Thanksgiving morning to a holiday mass text from a friend who is notorious for sending them instead of personal messages which to me is completely pointless. If you want to spread the holiday spirit and cheer then send me a personal message like my old roommate did that read "I miss the 5am Celine performances, stank hands, sending me your old tricks as bday presents, and just your adorable tranny ass in general. Happy Thanksgiving." Now THAT is a real heart-felt holiday text message that means way more to me than any impersonal generic slogan with three "FWD:" signs at the beginning of it. But once I was up I began my normal routine of procrastinating the showering process and posting on Facebook for 20 minutes until I finally got my shit together and made some taco dip (one of the three "party treats" I know how to cook) for the Thanksgiving lunch I was headed to before work.

Before I left for Philly I interviewed at this new country western gay bar where the bartenders dance on top of the bar in the style of Coyote Ugly and they immediately loved me as most people do. My interview wasn't even me talking about myself as much as it was giving them advice on the neighborhood's gay bar scene since they had never owned a a bar in Hell's Kitchen or a gay bar for that matter. The bar opened while I was still in Philly so once I got back I knew it wouldn't take long to get on the schedule and for the most part I was right. Once I started working there I came to know of the "quirky" little rules that comes with working in any privately own bar. For example, in addition to the choreographed numbers that we would do intermittently throughout the night, we also had to do some solo freestyle dancing on top of the bar, which for me meant acting like a total drag queen in cowboy boots and a sleeveless t-shirt because if I didn't full-on tranny-out I was told that I looked lazy. The house rule was that no more than two songs could play without someone on top of the bar dancing which means that for your 12 hour shift with no break you were pretty much moving non-stop which for me would have been fine if I was given time to eat at least one of the two meals I was missing by being at work.

Once I left the cast of characters at my friend's party which included but are not limited to an ex Playboy bunny, a friend's non-English speaking underage flavor of the month, a postal worker, the 4 foot tall 50 year old swear-happy building's super in her pajamas, a deaf woman who asked me "what kind of pager is that?" as I was texting in the elevator, a woman who I'm pretty sure worked at the deli across the street, and my personal favorite: drunk mom and her ethnic son who showed up with McDonald's chicken nuggets for Thanksgiving and who I made cry by locking him in the closet at a previous party, I headed to work where they were having their own catered orphan Thanksgiving. I was completely unaware until I got there and saw the sign on the door that we were opening an hour later than normal so even tho I was annoyed to have left my friends (and the characters, because believe me they were entertainment at it's finest) I played it off like I had planned on arriving at that time and grabbed my 3rd giant plate of food in less than 4 hours. Fatty-no-friends was on a mission and that cherry pie was totally worth losing my foot to diabetes!

The night itself was pretty slow but I think I chugged about 4 cups of coffee hoping not to get tired. I was reminded by my bosses about the one time I yawned at work (yawning on a 12 hour shift with no breaks??? Was I mad?!?!) every night after, so I wanted to make sure my pending food coma was postponed for the full 12. At one point this lonely old townie woman (who I'm pretty sure didn't realize it was a gay bar) came in and requested a slue of songs on the jukebox that definitely took me back to my childhood when my grandfather used to go on month-long drinking binges and play "shot my pa, shot my dog, tear in my beer" 60's country songs at unreasonably high volumes, and she mixed them in with 90's boyband songs... like ya do. Naturally when "I Want It That Way" came on I knew it was my turn to freestyle on the bar aka: serenade everyone with my best AJ impression, and was reliving my freshman year of high school all over again. One of the rules there is that the patrons were not allowed to put tips in our pants like strippers but instead had to leave any sort of tips for us on the bar to collect (which is always on awkward conversation "give us your money, but only in a way that we allow it"), so when the hot muscle daddy at the end of the bar shoved a dollar in my pocket when I wasn't looking I flipped out and ran to the other end. When his even hotter tattooed muscle daddy boyfriend came back from the bathroom they clearly were eating my AJ impression alive and started waving more dollars in the air which put me in the difficult position of having to tell them that they couldn't do something that they already done... so I didn't. I don't like confrontation and if I can do anything to avoid it in any way I will, even if that means breaking what I didn't realize at the time was that huge of a rule. Needless to say I was sent home immediately with no pay and informed by email the next morning that I was taken off the schedule.

Well, a normal person facing that sort of situation (cause ya know, that kind of stuff happens to normal people) would've gone home collected their thoughts and figured out the next steps in getting their situation back on track, but not this huge mess! I went back to my friend's apartment where sadly all of the characters had left and only my good friends remained and I started drinking about it. They all greeted me as I walked in the door by shoving dollars into my front pocket for irony's sake which I kept because let's face it, I had just worked half a day's shift and had nothing to show for it and poured myself an incredibly strong cocktail. I'm not sure exactly who thought it was a good idea, but eventually someone invited over these two British tourists he had been talking to on Grindr and once they arrived I realized they had been sitting at the bar when the whole muscle daddy incident went down and were just as shocked to hear the outcome as the rest of my friends. I guess even a guy who is open minded enough to come to a complete stranger's apartment party in a foreign country thinks that the firing was a little extreme.

Eventually the booze ran out and we headed out to the bar for some holiday socializing. At this point I was already a little wastey-cakes from my two stoopidly strong cocktails so I was caught off guard when the first thing I heard once I walked in was "You called me fat in your blog!!!" Now... I'm not one to spread other people's business in front of their friends (unless it's something that anyone can find out for themselves like internet porn), but he brought it up so I replied "Um, actually I said your body wasn't as nice as everyone else's which was true. I also called you bitchy and good in bed but you just let this entire bar know which one of those things you relate to the most." But I'm pretty sure he didn't hear me cause he just kept yelling "You called me fat!" as his friends were looking around at each other saying "Wait, that was you?" He then started taking some random pictures of me which I can only assume was because he was hoping for a bad shot he could post somewhere public and tag me so obviously I was fairly accurate in my original nicknaming.

Now what Charlie Sheen style holiday would be complete without the obligatory public screaming match with your best friend for literally no reason whatsoever? Not any one I would ever make myself apart of! Basically what had happened was... after at least one more cocktail and one of the British guys buying me a shot before moving on to the next guy when we realized I wasn't taking him home, I wouldn't shut up about the incident that happened earlier in the evening regarding my employment situation to which my best friend was calmly responding "You don't know if you're fired yet, so just let it go for now and if you are then we'll drink about it later." However, my drunk ass heard: "Quit your fucking bitching cause I don't wanna hear it!" So naturally I went mildly apeshit and caused a huge scene screaming out belittling accusations, uncalled for insults and just general drunken idiocy. We've more than made-up from it now, but looking back it was definitely not one of my finer moments. :(

Around 2am-ish I finally decided that enough was enough and got my drunk ass in a cab home. On that cab ride however my clear, sound, and obviously good judgment from the previous 12 hours came shining through yet again as I pulled out my phone in the cab and hopped on everybody's favorite "sup" app... Grindr. Not long after logging in I got a message from a Beefy Latino Muscle Jock I had sup-ed a day or two earlier who was horny and apparently liked white boys. Once the cab dropped me off in front of my building I sent my friend DJ a text that read "Home!!! Goal!!!" which meant that I had made it home safely and I jumped in the shower in an attempt to sober up some and hopefully rinse some of the shame off. Obviously it was gonna take a lot more than a sensible shower to make either of those two things happen so I threw on my favorite white jock-strap (mistake number 2) and got back in a cab headed to Hell's Kitchen. Now... I'm no rocket scientist myself, but it seems to me that he should've figured out just how drunk I was waaaaaaay before he did. But eventually he did catch on to the Charlie Sheen essence that was emanating from my pores (which probably had something to do with the "tiger's blood" stain that was getting bigger on the back of that white jock strap) and said "You are clearly wasted and should probably just go home now." so I did. Sadly that wasn't even my worst drunken Thanksgiving Day hook-up. A couple of years ago I ended up going home with the tall gay guy from the Jersey Housewives and not that anything crazy or exciting happened that I could write about... he was just really bad in bed.

The next morning I woke up and sent a good 800 apology texts to my bestie hoping he wouldn't hate me for life, and got the email informing me that I had been taken off of the schedule at work so I decided to spend the day on my couch sulking and hating myself, something I have become very good at these days. I completely forgot that we had made plans to go see The Muppets that night and it was my turn to buy the tickets online but once I was reminded there was nothing anyone could do to keep me from seeing that movie because I needed it ball-change times twelve and I was right. My new favorite character from any movie ever, Miss Poogy, is basically a Pecan Sandy-esque Miss Piggy impersonator with a deep voice and a knife collection who keeps popping up at all of the right times. I can't even look at her picture without full-on belly laughing. After the movie we went to our normal post-show bar for a couple of late night happy hour cocktails and I don't think I was prepared for what was about to happen next. A friend of mine who I don't hang out with that often but had become friends with on Facebook via a mutual hatred for his ex-boyfriend came in to the bar and sat down at the table next to us with this guy I had hooked up with a while back (little known fact about yours truly but the short BLMJ's turn me into a raging top!) and a week later schooled his dumb young ass when he drunkenly accused me of being HIV positive based on false information that didn't even have anything to do with me. And who should follow in right behind him but the BLMJ from the night before, neither of which making any attempt at eye-contact with me (I mean, would you?). My friend later informed me that he was celebrating what is referred to as "Latino Friday" a traditional soiree that I hope to some day become a part of... just obviously not with that particular group of Latinos. The combination of Miss Poogy and the two of them sitting at the table next to me was enough to cheer up a spinster on Valentines Day so I got the hell out of my funk and ended up having a blast with my friends which was exactly the pick-me-up I needed, unlike the pick-me-up I tried to get the night before.

A couple of days later I went to get the sweater I had left in the coat check thinking that it was in my friends bag, and ended up catching up with some friends I hadn't seen much since I'd been back in the city. The next thing I know my arm is "twisted" and I end up going out with them and having yet another epic night after deciding that there was no way I was moving to Orlando or buying a car so auditioning for Disney World the next morning was pointless. Again, not as much crazy stuff to write about but I did run into an old fuck-buddy who we used to call "2C" because he was also hooking up with two friends of mine who lived in the same building so we'd always yell "Hey 2-C!" when we walked by his place. Another guy who I was in lust with before I knew he was the world's beefiest bottom decided he was going to "fight me" for what was his version of a BLMJ to which I responded "You can have him, he's not ethnic enough for me." And I definitely spent a good couple of hours talking to a guy who I thought was someone completely different (thank you dim club lighting and a couple of shots of patron), complete with pictures taken which was how I figured out it wasn't actually him when I went through my phone the next morning. :-/

So there were some ups and downs, ins and outs (that's what she said), and rights and wrongs (most of you probably have stronger opinions on the things in this story that are "wrong" than I do), but at the end of the day we can only learn from our mistakes and hope to make ourselves better people because of them. I'm not going to pretend like it took Mr. Toad's Wild Ride of a holiday weekend to make me realize that I shouldn't drink when I'm that emotional, because I obviously already knew that. But I can walk away from this crazy weekend with the good and the bad and make my future "life choices" (as Judge Judy McOne-Look calls them) with what I've learned through those experiences. So judge me if you want. Ask me not to mention you by name because you don't want to be associated with the events you actually were apart of. Don't date me or cast me in your show because you think I'm a whore and a mess. Do what ever the fuck you want to do because at the end of the day I still know that even though I don't always make good decisions or go flying off the handle from time-to-time I'm sharing my experiences with the world for the sake (and my own personal need) of entertaining the ones who know that compared to all of the crazy shit that happens in this world getting drunk and hooking-up on a holiday is far from the worst thing I could be doing with myself, aka: the ones who get me.

To conclude I'm going to leave you with something I've used to help define myself for quite a while now: If you're going to be ashamed of what you're doing, then you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.