I'm Not Even S'posed to Be Here Today!

Last night I filled in for my friend Calvin DJing at our home bar. Saturdays are fun and crazy and my job is just to twerk and sp1n h0t beetz (it annoyed me more to write that than it did you to read it).  I make the booth my own private dance floor and it goes something like this:

Whilst I'm engaging in my own private vogue-off, customers will often interrupt to request songs. Requests fall into a few categories:

1. Things I secretly want to play and am glad someone requested so I have an excuse.
2. Things I'll actually consider but wouldn't normally play.
3. Things I'm already going to play.
4. Bullshit that I wouldn't play at Ann Coulter's funeral.

Last night, a straight couple came into the bar.  This happens all the time; yes, it's a gay bar, but we welcome everyone. Sure, they were getting the shady side-eye for making out in the middle of the bar, but so were the two boys humping outside the DJ booth. Lucille, could you please demonstrate?

Thanks, lady. See you at the pool; they won't give me full club membership either.

Anyhow, said straight girl spit out her boyfriend's tongue and came up for air long enough to request a Justin Bieber song.

I know, right Whitney?

So the girl said it was fine and walked away, leaving me and Whitney alone to kiki about this week's episode of Smash.  About 20 minutes later, I spin into the remix of "Catch My Breath" by Kelly Clarkson, who just happens to be one of my favorite singers. Wouldn't you know, straight girl's boyfriend picks the second the beat drops out to yell, "You're playing Kelly Clarkson?? FAG!!"

Customers around the booth were GAGGED.

                                      

 OK, calm down, Detox; it was last night and I'm fine now. I did have that moment, though... followed by this one:

Now, I know it's the service industry and we're supposed to be all:

 when it comes to the customers.  However, it's a gay bar and unless you're a drag queen or a close friend of mine, the use of that word makes me go from this:

to this:

I really try not to pop off. I do. It's hard as FUCK most of the time because I see people being ridiculous ALL. THE. TIME.  People are rude and I keep my mouth shut every day, but this particular case was an exception. Girlfriend clapped her hand over this dude's mouth and looked like she would rather be in a three way with Donald Trump and a dead squid than standing in this bar with this man.  I wish I could say that I read him, but what I did lacked any sort of wit, grace, or cleverness.

Yes, Meryl, I could have said that. Christ, you have three Oscars, it's getting show-offy...

I basically told him that this, being a gay bar, is not the place where you can just call anybody anything.  Oh, I also told him to GET THE FUCK OUT. Twice. I don't think of myself as being intimidating, but it kind of looked like this:

from my perspective.  His girlfriend grabbed his coat and started to hustle him out of the bar (smart) but lost her grip on him and he started to backtrack (girl!) but my friend Mario, who is also the doorman, got in his way and stood with his arms crossed over his chest letting brothaman know his adventure was over for the night. I was already back in the DJ booth looking like this:

Good to see you, O-Ren.

The reason I reacted the way that I did is that I was in my safe space.  I work in this bar three nights a week and it's one of the places that I, and other gay men and lesbians, feel free and safe to be ourselves.  Yes, we're fine with a straight couple making out in "our" bar; but it's not the same for us in a straight bar.  We still don't know who's around and in an ass-kickin' mood. I know we've come far as a society and the winds of change are blowing and the President asked the Supreme Court to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act.  That's all awesome, but gay people are still the victims of hate crimes every day. Basically what I'm trying to say is, I was defending my turf, our turf; and I did it because in that moment, that's genuinely how I felt.  Don't come into a haven with that shit and expect me not to stand up for myself because you're not just attacking me, you're attacking everyone in the bar.

I mean, it's bad enough that I feel like I walk around with a sign over my head

*sigh* Thanks, Randal.

God that guy's proud of himself for all the wrong reasons...

OK rant over, back to life; just thought I'd share a thought or two. Namaste, motherfuckers.

Sleep

I couldn’t sleep last night because I was fixating on a problem. It all started last year when my boyfriend and I decided to move to NYC and our toilet seat broke.  We went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond on 6^th Ave. to purchase said toilet seat and on the way back to our apartment, he spotted a Sleepy’s mattress showroom and decided we needed a King Sized bed.  I’m all for a larger bed as I’m over 6 feet tall and he likes to spread out, so I very often end up huddled at the edge of the fucking world, or worse, on the couch.  Nevertheless, I had no intention of shopping for, let alone buying, a mattress when I left the house and it made for an unwelcome deviation from the plan. 

As soon as we walked in, I knew we were screwed. We were immediately greeted by Wendi, a gruff woman in her early to mid fifties who seemed less than stoked to be working at Sleepy’s and I’m guessing can throw back a box or two of pink wine each night.  Wendi showed us a few different mattresses and resorted to snapping her fingers at me and ordering me to remove my jacket to experience the “full effect” of each bed. 

I still haven’t figured out what kind of special malfunction this woman suffers from that resulted in her inability to glean that my indecisiveness had nothing to do with not feeling the fantasy when I tested each mattress; rather, it was the fact that I had no intention of being there to begin with, had no desire to make a major purchase on the fly, and would have preferred at that moment to be in a 3-way with Michelle Bachmann and Zombie Strom Thurmond.  I most definitely said 2 out of 3 of those things audibly in her presence.  You should have seen her face when I threw down "Zombie Strom Thurmond." Her powers of perception notwithstanding, Wendi managed to get me to lay a down payment on a super sweet King Size bed that I knew would probably not be coming to my apartment anytime soon, due to the fact that my interior designer boyfriend is incapable of making design choices for himself and wanted “the perfect headboard.”

It’s now almost a year later and Wendi won’t stop emailing and calling me to ask when I’d like to take delivery on my order.  There are a few problems with this:

       

      1.       Husband still hasn’t found “the perfect headboard.” I’m about as shocked at this as I will be when Honey Boo Boo’s meth lab explodes.

      2.       I have no desire to do business with this woman knowing that she’ll collect a commission on a sale that she hacked her way through.

      3.       I don’t have the fucking money to pay for the rest of this mattress at this point.  Maybe I’ll set up a Kickstarter.

That last reason is the thing that bugs me the most about her incessant emails.  Doesn’t this bitch know something’s up? Every time she emails me she reminds me that my boyfriend is making this decision like he’s a Republican Congressman voting on the debt ceiling and I have about as much disposable income as a Chinese factory worker.  One of the best pieces of advice Heather McQueen ever gave me (You listening, ho? I’m about to say something nice about you.  Don’t get used to it.) was not to badger people about things they couldn’t do because there came a point when it just became a constant reinforcement of everything that was wrong with their lives. 

This proved especially true last night as my “inner psychologist” started whispering in my ear and very clearly said, “Jay, you’re only fixating on this because you don’t want to deal with these other problems…”  My super terrific brain then played a fucking speed-round slideshow of all the shit that’s bothering me.  Thanks a mil, psyche, I really needed to be reminded that I don’t have health insurance at 5:30am… what’s that pain in my side? It’s probably just lupus or polio, no big deal. Sleep tight, self!

Plus, I kept having to get up to pee.