The triple threat and other adventures...
There is one last story from New York I will mention. After catching The Drowsy Chaperone I decided to head down to Splash Bar. People rave about Splash Bar and if you live in New York it might be the best bar in town, but what gave the place a reputation was lost on me. The punters kept telling me the recent refurbishment of black tiles and chrome bath fittings was such an improvement I was perplexed to think how dire the place must have been before that.
Wednesday night around 2am they use the bathroom fittings to shower a whole lot of gentlemen wearing white underwear. This seemed to be a popular event. But I think people up for this sort of thing should wear their best white underwear and not some tired old pants that look like they were thrown in with a dark wash. This was obviously not an important consideration for those boys up on this elevated shower-stage. Presentation aside, the art of tease was also something that these performers knew very little about.
Anyway, a little while after the shower scene I found myself chatting to this gentleman who called himself Luke. He was sitting by himself and was waiting to speak to the manager about something. He suggested I bought him a beer and I figured the drinks were cheap enough to overlook this presumptuous suggestion. A couple of Budweisers later, he told me his name was Luciano and he was a personal trainer and an "exaaatic daaancer" from "Joisey". I began thinking to myself that usually if you did those two there was a third of escorting (making the triple threat), but there was no mention of that. Oh and his family were from Sicily. There was some mention about him being the black sheep of the family as well.
Anyway we started chatting about the difference between Manhattan and New Jersey, what was an Australian who lived in the UK doing in New York, and other finer points of popular culture. Around 3am he suggested we go to a great little after hours place in New York.
The concept of an "after hours" venue had to be explained to me as it was a little foreign. In London if you aren't staying out late enough to catch the first tube home in the morning, you're making a scientific analysis of how many drinks you can afford for the evening measured against the amount of time it will take on a night bus to get home, divided by how much enjoyment you will get from getting home quicker on the last tube. New York being the city where there are plenty of cabs that are cheap and a subway that runs all night obviously has a different culture.
I figured I wanted to see some more of the city, so I found myself jumping in a taxi to go to an after hours in the East Village. It was a bit of a circuitous route given Luke was not the sharpest tool in the shed and he had a vague idea where the place was ("you know, it's somewhere roundabout 'ere, you know" etc. etc.). His thick New Jersey accent didn't help things either. I could have done with a translator at times and so could the cab driver. I did help out the driver at various points such as by saying "I think he means turn left at the next set of lights," anytime Luke muttered something that was quite unintelligible. After touring the East Village we finally found the place. But it was closed. There was a police raid a few weeks back for trading late (something about their license), so they now were closing early.
But upon hearing that I was Australian and it was my last night in New York for a while, Lucy, who was leaving the bar, suggested the two of us join her next door for a drink and it would be her shout. I thought hey why not. I could sleep on the plane home tomorrow evening. So we all went into this little bar in the East Village having some beers until the wee hours of the morning talking about (in no particular order) terrorism, Katie Couric, London versus Australia, New Jersey versus New York and so on.
By the time it was 4am, this bar was closing and Lucy went to the bathroom. Luke was pretty eager to get some coke and had been asking me all evening if I wanted to get some. I kept telling him that I was way too anally retentive for that but I think he interpreted that as something to do with my preferred way of ingesting it, so he kept persisting. Lucy's trip to the bathroom was his chance to ask one of the other punters if he knew where he could score. One said he would ask around so Luke saw this as an opportunity to ask me for money. "He's going to get some what have you got on you". All I had was $20 and that was for my cab home. "That'll do as I need to give him something," he hissed. I started to detect a sense of desperation in his voice and he was starting to tremble a bit. I thought to myself, he doesn't deserve the $20 but that was a small price to pay for getting him off my back. God bless George Bush. May he continue to run the US economy into the ground so the greenback remains cheap for European travellers (it is almost half the value of the £ at present).
Telling this story over the last week or so to people back in London I was told I should have asked for something in return for the $20 but as it was 4.30am it was my turn for not being the sharpest tool in the shed. The irony however wasn't lost on me that I was giving a rent boy $20 to get off my back.
Lucy and Luke decided to go on to find another after hours, but I was ready to get some sleep. Lucy gave me $10 for the cab ride back home and we all exchanged numbers. I said look me up whenever you're in London (as you do – well I figured Luke wasn't going anywhere). I think I managed to get back to the hotel by 5am in time for the early morning news. I was up by 8am and checked out by 10. My flight wasn't until 11pm that evening but I still managed to check out a few museums and places and began thinking that it wasn't such a bad trip to NYC. Oh and thank you Red Bull…
So there it was. A brief sojourn to New York filled with a variety of strange and interesting experiences. Who could ask for anything more? Well, maybe tickets to The Pajama Game… Not that I'm a fan of musical theatre…
Wednesday night around 2am they use the bathroom fittings to shower a whole lot of gentlemen wearing white underwear. This seemed to be a popular event. But I think people up for this sort of thing should wear their best white underwear and not some tired old pants that look like they were thrown in with a dark wash. This was obviously not an important consideration for those boys up on this elevated shower-stage. Presentation aside, the art of tease was also something that these performers knew very little about.
Anyway, a little while after the shower scene I found myself chatting to this gentleman who called himself Luke. He was sitting by himself and was waiting to speak to the manager about something. He suggested I bought him a beer and I figured the drinks were cheap enough to overlook this presumptuous suggestion. A couple of Budweisers later, he told me his name was Luciano and he was a personal trainer and an "exaaatic daaancer" from "Joisey". I began thinking to myself that usually if you did those two there was a third of escorting (making the triple threat), but there was no mention of that. Oh and his family were from Sicily. There was some mention about him being the black sheep of the family as well.
Anyway we started chatting about the difference between Manhattan and New Jersey, what was an Australian who lived in the UK doing in New York, and other finer points of popular culture. Around 3am he suggested we go to a great little after hours place in New York.
The concept of an "after hours" venue had to be explained to me as it was a little foreign. In London if you aren't staying out late enough to catch the first tube home in the morning, you're making a scientific analysis of how many drinks you can afford for the evening measured against the amount of time it will take on a night bus to get home, divided by how much enjoyment you will get from getting home quicker on the last tube. New York being the city where there are plenty of cabs that are cheap and a subway that runs all night obviously has a different culture.
I figured I wanted to see some more of the city, so I found myself jumping in a taxi to go to an after hours in the East Village. It was a bit of a circuitous route given Luke was not the sharpest tool in the shed and he had a vague idea where the place was ("you know, it's somewhere roundabout 'ere, you know" etc. etc.). His thick New Jersey accent didn't help things either. I could have done with a translator at times and so could the cab driver. I did help out the driver at various points such as by saying "I think he means turn left at the next set of lights," anytime Luke muttered something that was quite unintelligible. After touring the East Village we finally found the place. But it was closed. There was a police raid a few weeks back for trading late (something about their license), so they now were closing early.
But upon hearing that I was Australian and it was my last night in New York for a while, Lucy, who was leaving the bar, suggested the two of us join her next door for a drink and it would be her shout. I thought hey why not. I could sleep on the plane home tomorrow evening. So we all went into this little bar in the East Village having some beers until the wee hours of the morning talking about (in no particular order) terrorism, Katie Couric, London versus Australia, New Jersey versus New York and so on.
By the time it was 4am, this bar was closing and Lucy went to the bathroom. Luke was pretty eager to get some coke and had been asking me all evening if I wanted to get some. I kept telling him that I was way too anally retentive for that but I think he interpreted that as something to do with my preferred way of ingesting it, so he kept persisting. Lucy's trip to the bathroom was his chance to ask one of the other punters if he knew where he could score. One said he would ask around so Luke saw this as an opportunity to ask me for money. "He's going to get some what have you got on you". All I had was $20 and that was for my cab home. "That'll do as I need to give him something," he hissed. I started to detect a sense of desperation in his voice and he was starting to tremble a bit. I thought to myself, he doesn't deserve the $20 but that was a small price to pay for getting him off my back. God bless George Bush. May he continue to run the US economy into the ground so the greenback remains cheap for European travellers (it is almost half the value of the £ at present).
Telling this story over the last week or so to people back in London I was told I should have asked for something in return for the $20 but as it was 4.30am it was my turn for not being the sharpest tool in the shed. The irony however wasn't lost on me that I was giving a rent boy $20 to get off my back.
Lucy and Luke decided to go on to find another after hours, but I was ready to get some sleep. Lucy gave me $10 for the cab ride back home and we all exchanged numbers. I said look me up whenever you're in London (as you do – well I figured Luke wasn't going anywhere). I think I managed to get back to the hotel by 5am in time for the early morning news. I was up by 8am and checked out by 10. My flight wasn't until 11pm that evening but I still managed to check out a few museums and places and began thinking that it wasn't such a bad trip to NYC. Oh and thank you Red Bull…
So there it was. A brief sojourn to New York filled with a variety of strange and interesting experiences. Who could ask for anything more? Well, maybe tickets to The Pajama Game… Not that I'm a fan of musical theatre…
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