Loring Park Episode #16: Jaymes Vaughn

Previously on Loring Park:

-An emotional affair officially went awry! Roger got drunk and asked Jakey out! Jakey is still closed for business! The CUTEST BOY EVER!

This week's episode begins on a Wednesday night at LUSH, which is the best place to go mid-week (dollar drinks, even though I usually have a Grey Goose Lemonade by the end of the night). I, of course, arrived at midnight because I am inconsiderate that way, but it was lovely to see my usual suspects there: Jared and Joey and Liam and Markie and our friend Esquire, who just passed the bar. South Dakota Version Two, a.k.a., the CUTEST BOY EVER, was on the dance floor and I was blushing just talking about it. I also realized that I remembered nothing of the conversation we had, except that we discussed the weather and the probability of coat check.

"Wait, that's *all* you remember?" Esquire asked. "You don't remember anything about him telling you had a 'positive aura'? He must have mentioned it five diferent times."

No, I remember none of it. And it's not because I was piss-drunk, either. When I later told this story to my brother, he scoffed, "What, were you that lost in his dreamy eyes?" And, yes. Yes, I was.

I didn't talk to him that night, though, because he was dancing with his hot friends. I hate high school. MANUEL~!, the boy who stole my cell phone the week prior and then gave it back to me two seconds later when I said "Excuse me", was starting fistfights on the outside of the club. SOME PEOPLE. Joey and I briefly snuck off to Legends, where I ran into the same St. Anthony girl that I encountered last week! Small moments! Joey is enjoying his new life living with the Muscle Gays, and is allegedly planning a dinner party. Fancy! We will discuss politics and glute exercises.

Back at LUSH, I gave Jared $25 to take a cab home so I could go to A-bar with the boys, and that was only because I knew that Ryan Robertson was going to be coming with us. Ryan Robertson appeared nameless on an earlier episode -- I met him for two seconds at LUSH and he helpfully gave me workout advice -- and while I have never had another actual conversation with him, he has always been as cordial as he is dreamy. Markie, Liam, their friend Blake and I drove together while Ryan drove beside us, and I was a delightful mix of loopy and nervous.

Markie lives with Lawrence and we all trekked down to the basement. Ryan laid on the bed perpendicular to Liam while I sat on the edge of it, and spastic conversation was had. We all went on Grindr as a joke but I have a *horrible* Grindr picture these days, a tragic side effect of always losing your cell phone. Star Quarterback was on Grindr and I refuse to believe that he is 6'2" and 180 pounds.

"He used to be fat," Liam said.
"Still," I said. "That boy is LANKY." And I am not bitter at all.
"I'm 5'11" and 155," Ryan Robertson shared.
"You are *not* 5'11," Markie accused, because Markie is the expert on all things, including height.
"Pssh, I am too," Ryan Robertson said.
"No," Markie yelled. "I don't believe you".
And I, who had said nothing to Ryan Robertson since that fateful night in April in which I learned what ab exercises I should be doing in the morning, decided to pipe up. "Well, stand up," I said. "I'm 5'7".

He stood up in all his lanky sexiness and we stood back-to-back, like you do when you're in grade school and wanting to find out who is the tallest kid in the class. Markie immediately whipped out his measure tape (what, who doesn't have a random measure tape on their nightstand?) and declared that Ryan Robertson was exactly four inches taller than me! And thus ends the closest I will ever be getting to romance with Ryan Robertson.

Loring Park Episode #15: We're Not All in the Mood For a Melody

I am that weird age where I am too old to be following random 19-year-olds on Twitter but young enough to snag myself a sugar daddy. Both are dangerous.

I went to LUSH twice in a row last week! LUSH is still my favorite gay bar and while I’m very happy to be in Loring Park, I miss being within walking distance of it. Chuck and Joey were both attending, and I felt bad that I didn’t get there until 12:30. I have a chronic inability to arrive at a social gathering before midnight. It doesn’t matter what time I start to get ready. I have to shave, and take an hour-long shower, and put my make-up on, then remove my make-up because it doesn’t look right, then re-apply, then change my outfit three times. I think I have Gay OCD.

Joey moved in with muscle gays in the suburbs, and I have not met them yet but one of them I often see at the clubs and the other one I Facebook-creeped out of boredom. I told Joey that if I am just randomly in his suburb (that I don’t think I’ve ever been to in my life, truthfully), I just might need to borrow something like vodka or a cup of sugar or an orgasm. I went to the bathroom and stood at the mirror next to someone who had to be a model, and then Star Quarterback came out of the stall with four other dudes, and he was wearing a zip-up sweater and looked dreamy. My life is a joke.

At the end of the night, Chuck and I stood by the fire and somehow we ended up in conversation with a boy who used to work coat check at The Saloon. You know I’m not one to be overdramatic or use exaggerated statements, so you’ll have to trust me when I opine that he was THE CUTEST BOY EVER. He was from South Dakota and that meant that he didn’t know that he was beautiful. We talked about the weather, which means I must have wowed him.

“I heard you met a boy last night,” Liam texted me the next morning.

“Not like that,” I said. “We only talked about the weather.”

“I know his last name,” Liam said. Then I Facebook-creeped and found out he has a boyfriend. Cue the music they play when people lose on The Price is Right.

Loring Park Episode #14B: Wake Me Up When September Ends

Previously on "Loring Park " ...

With a few minute exceptions, I realize I took a month off from writing. September was a weird month, you guys.

During the last week of August, I found out that I had made the semi-finals of the ACME Funniest Person in the Twin Cities contest. This meant that my score was in the top 25 of the over 200 participants. My semi-final date was the last Friday of the month, and we wouldn't find out the scores until Labor Day weekend.

I, of course, went to The Saloon that night, as I found it to be my last day of summer. None of my usual club buddies were there, but I was happy nonetheless as I walked out of the bar, and reflected on my "summer of love". My summer of love wasn't about hook-ups (I really only had one). The love was in other forms, like going to the grocery store with Chuck and Peter and making them hold my bags because I was too busy holding up my shorts, and Joey coming over at the time I had told him to and then I wouldn't even have showered yet, and roller coasters with cute strangers, and late-night kiki's with the neighbor girl, and gay softball games, and Jared and I singing Salt 'n' Pepa at 3 A.M. on Hennepin Avenue, and doing stand-up in pubs in Duluth and garages in Northeast Minneapolis. I felt happy. I felt alive. I looked at my phone and found out that I had made the finals of the Acme contest. I wanted to tell everyone, but then I realized I didn't know anyone standing outside of the bar that night.

The finals were on Tuesday. I only knew one of the other finalists, but she was a girl who I've seen on a regularly standard basis at open mikes, and I felt comfortable with her. While everyone else was silent and walking on eggshells, she had no air of competition about her. "I have chap stick, lozenges, breath mints, anything you need," she announced when I walked into the green room. I saw Colin Kane's name on the wall. I couldn't believe that Wendy Liebman was the headliner! I remembered watching her "Pulp Comics" episode dozens of times when I was a kid and Comedy Central would show it at 2 in the morning. Yes, children, there was a time when Comedy Central actually showed stand-up comedy. Like how MTV used to show music videos.

Short story long, I won the damn thing. And for a few days I was on a high, as the Facebook "likes" kept pouring in, and I got some publicity (a sentence that sounds sooooo douchey to say, but there it is). And then, not counting a show at The Saloon in front of 20 gay guys, I didn't do stand-up again that month, because the weirdest thing happened.

I got really fucking depressed.

Was part of it disappointment? As I have written before, not even 24 hours after I won, another comedian made sure to tell me that "Winning the ACME contest doesn't really mean anything". Maybe I expected certain things that didn't necessarily happen. I didn't get gigs or offers from the sky (was I supposed to?). I still didn't know what open mikes to go during the week, or who to talk to in order to get on stage A on night B. The boy I liked could have given two shits (to be fair, I should have promised him something more appealing than a dinner at Embers when I texted him of my winning). Then I felt guilty for being depressed, because there were at least 200 people in this town that wanted the proverbial title I now possessed. I had also hit a wall at my real job, the one that actually pays my bills, as my two closest work friends got promoted while I could not get past the judgmental 22-year-olds with clipboards holding the velvet ropes. If you are obsessed with divas of professional wrestling, especially from the years 1998-2006, an apt analogy would be that I was Ivory in the summer of 2002, doing bikini contests with Torrie Wilson and Stacy Keibler on Smackdown house shows, while I got to watch from afar as Molly Holly, Trish Stratus, Victoria and Jazz get to go out there and have actual wrestling matches on every episode of Raw is War. For 98% of the population, I am not even going to bother to explain that. Just trust me when I say that it felt like my soul was dying. I drank excessively because I was depressed, I was depressed because I was broke, and I was broke because I drank excessively.

But my identity crisis didn't fully make sense to me until I re-read "Guts" by Kristen Johnston (an amazing memoir, by the way). Kristen Johnston won two Emmys for 3rd Rock from the Sun, and she writes that at the height of her fame she became deeply depressed, because she realized that she had lost her ambition. That makes so much sense, right? You have a goal, you meet your goal, and then you have no idea what to do with yourself because you didn't plan on anything after the goal was met. I also realized that, superficial qualities be damned, it was Kevin's relentless ambition that I had grown to admire most about him.

So I tried to go back to real life two weeks ago. "Loring Park". Gays of our Lives. I went to three different birthday parties in one night, a fact that would have made third grade me sooooo jealous. Joey was in town and there is a slight chance he is going to move in with a group of muscle gays in the suburbs, and I hope they allow him to have friends with body fat in the double digits. We showed up at The Saloon at 1 A.M., booty-danced but did not make out, and Star Quarterback was right there and saw the whole thing, but I still sprinted far away from him every time I made eye contact with him, because I am good at flirting. Chuck came over several times and taught me how to do grown-up things like clean the bathroom and vaccuum under furniture. I lost my cell phone again. Jared got mugged and got his cell phone stolen. I lost my cell phone a *second* time, but mercifully it was in Markie's car and Liam delivered it to my workplace the next day.

Last night I was going to recognize my budget, but Piano Man asked me if I was going out to The Saloon, so I ended up there at 12:30 A.M. I was in line right behind Star Quarterback, because you can't make this stuff up. It is gay high school, and I have decided that Piano Man is the popular Student Body President and I am the chunky girl with the three-ring binder trying to convince all the cute boys to join the drama club. He flirts with me, and I flirt back, but then he tells me he can't have his arm around me because people will think I'm his boyfriend, and I have to fend off the three boys drooling over him, but after my fourth Three Olives lemonade I realize that maybe I like Piano Man too, but I am closed for business, and that is putting it mildly.

"You're past closed for business," Jared told me on his last day at work. "You're like .... bankrupt."
"I know!" I cried. "It's like when you drive by an abandoned Hardee's and it's boarded up!" I'm surprised I don't notice tumbleweeds when I take my clothes off.

But the people I have met! I met a newscaster who drunkenly accused me of thinking that I'm better than him (couldn't have been further from the truth!). Jared called him out for wearing colored contacts, but then we bonded over our love of Esme Murphy. I met a drunk man at Lush who announced, "I know you", and I was hoping he recognized me from stand-up, but apparently we would talk about pro wrestling on adam4adam. "Your picture was of you in a yellow shirt against a white car," he slurred. That was scary accurate! "You lived off of University and you were going to come over and fuck me!" he yelled so loud that the entire patio, if not all of Northeast Minneapolis, could hear it. That was not accurate.

I had my proverbial summer of love. I don't know what my autumn will be of, but I'm more hopeful now than I was before. It's like the saying goes: You make plans, and God laughs. It's like the other saying goes: You win your city's biggest comedy contest, and then a week later you're sobbing at your mother's kitchen table because, even though you just won $1,000, you somehow have no money in the bank (okay, I did splurge on clothes, such as Vince cords and a Cardigan t-shirt and two Quiksilver sweaters. Judge me not).

It will be my first autumn in Loring Park. I will change and mature with the leaves, and hopefully that doesn't mean that I will be totally bald by winter, because I'm still telling everyone I'm 24.

Loring Park #14: Nothing Really Matters

Anygay ....

This happened.

Loring Park Episode #13: September's Coming Soon

Typically on the 13^th episode of a TV show’s freshman season, loose ends are tied up because a show is initially only ordered for 13 episodes before the network decides to give it a full 22-episode run. Hell, if this were a cable show, we’d be at the season finale anyway. You would expect something eventful to happen in Episode 13.

I turned down sex three times in one night last week. That should let you know where this is going.

Loring Park Episode #12: Jersey Chaser, Drunk Facebooker, Bad Picker-Upper

The Gay World Series is in town, and as a result my checking account is practically subzero. Jersey chasing is a sport in itself.

But before all that, I went to Peter's apartment in St. Paul. It was a lovely chill night of wine-drinking, and Peter is a delicious source of gossip as he knows all of the names I drop. We are opposites, he and I. At 19, he is already "over" the club scene as he went through his bar-star phase when he was ridiculously young but with a fake ID and connections. I, on the other hand, am 26 but think it's all new and exciting, and therefore have the same wide-eyed lust as a silly, naive, high school junior would. Nevertheless, I instantly had to tell him of my past weekend and summer of love, and his opinions were scorching and hilarious.

"You're friends with Taylor?!"
"What? He was nice to me! He let me have some of his drink!"
"I don't know. He acts like he's hot shit."
"He is kind of hot shit, though. If I looked like that, I wouldn't be nice to anybody."
"Wait, is that PHILIP?!"
"Yes! I don't talk to him, though."
"That bitch is MY age! He goes tanning way too much. He has pock marks everywhere."
"But look at his buff friend! I had to get a picture with him just to prove to myself that I actually met him!"

At this point, I think Chuck had rolled his eyes so far backward they made marks in his brain. I talked about possibly being promoted at work, and  Peter and I discussed name brands for an hour, which made Chuck roll his eyes back AGAIN. I slept on the couch under a blanket with hot shirtless men on it (Peter only has the best things), and in the morning I realized that my car had been towed.

Apparently, you can't park in front of a driveway in St. Paul.

Chuck drove me to the impound lot, rubbing my leg in support and constantly apologizing, but I really wasn't that distraught. I mean, yes, it sucks, and it's another month that The Money Fairy won't come, but when something like that happens, you have two ways to react to it: You can feel like the world is against you and is ending, or you can realize that shit happens. Also, I have a Discover card.

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