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.  

The "T"

The "T"

Folks, the moment we've all been waiting for has arrived.  She herself has contacted me from on high to let me know exactly what she thinks of me. Not much has changed. 

I've been sitting in the dark and cold for 4 days in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy; my heart goes out to those still dealing with the effects of this crazy storm, it's definitely not over for a lot of people and I could have had it a lot worse.  

However, in the middle of dealing with the fallout from one hurricane, I was faced with a different kind of storm; one I'll call Shitstorm Heather.  Wednesday night, upon returning to my pitch black apartment in lower Manhattan, I noticed that my newly charged cell phone was blowing up; after two years and five months, Heather was reaching out to me. Here's the first screen capture; try not to be moved to tears:

Isn't she the sweetest thing?  As you can see, this person is, in fact, real. Real in a living, breathing, walking the Earth sense; definitely not in a sincere, trustworthy, practices what she preaches sense. This 42-year-old woman operates on the level of a not too bright, albeit moderately well-read 14-year-old girl.  You see, the reason she very maturely mentioned my hair is that she thinks my title has something to do with her actual hair.  I actually used to temper my opinions based on things that this person said.  

I said "I have no idea what you're talking about." in reference to her "misery" assertion. This is a person that literally tells people she's just met how fabulous her life is.  How could she possibly be miserable? And as far as my comment about wishing her well; I do, in fact, not wish her harm which I'm pretty sure is the same thing. Next ball up:

To be fair, I have written about those things, they're just not up yet. Also to be fair, don't text while you're in a blackout during a blackout.

This is my favorite Heather. The Heather who, when confronted with her own behavior, turns on the person confronting her and tries to make him or her feel that they've done something wrong. I'm not going to lie, this used to be super effective on me.  I fell for this one every time. P.S. I never once during that conversation said I wasn't writing this blog. Keep up, bitch. Oh, and she's about to get nasty:

                                  

At this point, she accused me of being crazy, which, I mean, come on... once again, keep up, bitch.  Also, I hope her glass house investment pays off.  She also started calling me, which was never an option that was on the table.  I don't know where she got the notion that I was picking up the phone to talk to her after 11pm in the middle of a blackout. I also stopped responding because, a.) there was nothing to say to any of this.  One thing I definitely do not do anymore is entertain ridiculous people like this. I made an exception by responding to this foolishness because it was Halloween and I was bored. b.) she was doing just fine without me. And c.) bitch wasn't worth the battery power. Final ball up:

Well that about says it all, doesn't it?  Listen people, I may be angry. Who am I kidding? I'm angry.  I thought I had made that plainly obvious.  Everybody has a different way of dealing with their anger.  Some people climb tall mountains. Some people crochet.  Some people buy a business, then mismanage it, blame their employees, and sit around drinking Chardonnay in the dark while texting people they really shouldn't.  I write.  I always feel better after I do it and there's no hangover the next day.  

As far as Heather being a made up caricature, you have it from the horse's mouth, folks, she's not.  I have been warned that by writing her as she actually is, she couldn't possibly come off as real.  Well based on that final, extremely childish remark about my first boss (whose name has been distorted for everyone's protection), you can see that this person does, in fact, behave this way. And I worked for her for eight years.

Eight years that I spent trusting, idolizing, and emulating someone who used to treat me vastly worse than these texts reveal. 

As for me being pathetic; jury's still out.  I might be. But I'm pretty sure I'm not.  I'm writing this because I think there are a lot of people like me in the world. Narcissistic? Possibly, but if I'm right, then there are people who need to know that they don't need to dim their own light because of a Heather.  There will always be Heathers in the world; people who need to be surrounded by "D-pluses" so that their "C-minus" looks like an "A." The danger is that when they encounter an "A" who tries to deal with them, they start to break that "A" down and make it feel like an "F." All you need to do is look above to see what I'm talking about.  

Finally, I'm not out to change anyone's life here.  It sounded like that just now, didn't it? Make no mistake, this is a fucking blog; the most self-centered outlet known to man. Except maybe Twitter (follow me @jaybrancatonyc).  I'm just telling my story, whether anyone reads it or not.  And why, exactly, should I not have a platform to do so?  Is my story less compelling than the Kardashians'? Honey Boo Boo? Snooki? So, in reference to the above texts, my motivation for writing this (and believe me when I say, I am NOT addressing this ever again or, so help me, I will turn this car around...), and my reason for putting it out as a blog; IT'S ABOUT ME, BITCH. YOU are a character in MY story.  boom.