Last night I hung out with my gay friend CanadaGirl, whom I’ve known since college. (I was going to refer to her as TorontoGirl, but for some reason that sounds like the name of a Neanderthal.) We went to a gay UVA alumni cocktail party, which was hosted by another UVA alum and his boyfriend at their cute little East Village apartment with walls painted in soothing Martha Stewart colors (pale blue living room, mango bathroom). We were among the first to arrive, but eventually around 20 people showed up. Lots of mingling with some people I hadn’t seen in a while and some I’d never met.

CanadaGirl and I both got nicely soused. When we were in the kitchen, fixing ourselves drinks, mine went terribly wrong. I can’t remember what I was trying to make, but it wasn’t right, and each time I tried to add something to fix it, it wound up getting worse. It was some combination of lime juice, orange juice, a liqueur resembling Triple Sec, and tequila, and it was pretty bad. But CanadaGirl was so generous that she offered to switch drinks with me; she drank my gross concoction, and I drank her gin and tonic, which was much better than what I’d attempted. Sometimes simplicity in drinks is best.

Eventually CanadaGirl had to meet her gay friend Dave at a nearby East Village bar called Phoenix, and she invited me along. She tripped and fell on the way over but wound up being fine.

The bar was a really nice change from the Chelsea bars. The Chelsea bars are all attitude and tight shirts and more attitude, and they show us that we can stop the research, because human cloning has already been achieved. The East Village gay bars are more relaxed, more diverse, less glitzy, less “gay.” I just went to my first East Village bar a few weeks ago, Wonderbar, and it was refreshing. Phoenix was similar but a little grungier — it could have passed for a straight bar in a working-class city. I wouldn’t have pegged most of the people there as gay if I didn’t know otherwise. But there was still some nice eye candy, as well as a short and stocky MTV veejay who lost the vote to that guy Jesse a few years back but wound up become a veejay anyway. (I didn’t know who he was; the others pointed it out. He sort of looked like Oliver Platt.) There was a pool table, along with some pinball machines and a Ms. Pac-Man console (guess that was the one giveaway — if it were a straight bar, it would have just been Pac-Man).

Dave and his boyfriend were both good guys, charming and witty. I wound up not having to pay for any drinks, because first Dave bought me one and then later CanadaGirl bought me two. Eventually we left and went to Wonderbar, which might not have seemed like a gay bar if not for two guys who were alternately liplocked and smiling sexily at each other.

Shortly after, nicely roasted and toasted, I wandered across town to the PATH subway station and came home. I was hungry, so I heated up some rice, ate it, read for a while, and went to bed. All in all it was a good night. Sometimes it’s great to be alive.

And tonight I get to have sex.