Tuesday Night Jeff,

Wednesday Afternoon Tin Man

Well, this is a record for me. I’m in the second week of my new job and already I’m slipping. I’m hung over, I went to bed at 4:30 this morning, I came into work 45 minutes late today. And on top of that, I’m blogging at work.

At least I’m wearing a tie. Oh wait, no I’m not anymore, because it was choking me.

“I can’t deal with the fact that life is hard.”

I said that about two-thirds into my therapy session last night.

That’s the source of almost all my problems in life. You know, I think the main difference between functional people and dysfunctional people is this: the functional people accept that life is hard, while the dysfunctional people either don’t accept it, try to fight it, or have convinced themselves that it’s not true.

I’m one of the dysfunctional ones. Surprise!

Long ago, when I was forming my perceptions of the world, back in kindergarten, here is what I learned: I’m smart. Schoolwork comes easy to me, and therefore I will never have to work hard. And my teachers treat me differently from everyone else. They treat me like I’m special. I’m better than everyone else because I’m smart. On top of that, I’m very well-behaved.

But, as my therapist told me last night, all these teachers did me a disservice by treating me that way. It was a disservice because it helped solidify my view that life was supposed to be easy, that I could coast. Now, when life gets hard, I’m usually convinced that it’s my fault, that I must have made a bad decision. If I’d made a different decision, things wouldn’t be so hard right now.

Not even school was always easy. The first time I realized that was in third grade. I had to write a report on a famous person, and I picked Albert Einstein. I remember sitting in my bedroom with a couple of child-level biographies of Einstein, getting really frustrated and angry and throwing one of the books across the room because this wasn’t easy. I was good at doing things that I could dispatch quickly — alphabetizing words, doing math problems, passing spelling tests. Fast equalled smart. Whenever it came to a long-term assignment — one that required perseverance — I had a harder time of things.

I wish I hadn’t been treated differently. I wish I hadn’t been placed on a pedestal because of my brainpower. When you’re at the top, all the pressure is on you. Everyone’s looking at you, everyone expects terrific things from you. You’re not allowed to be a normal kid or do normal things or have fun or play in the mud.

And so today I’m two different people. Part of me wants to please people, do the “responsible” thing, behave well, get that admiration from my teachers and others. But another part of me wants to misbehave, rebel, break out of that prison, because I never had a chance to do it when I was younger. You know how commentators used to describe Bill Clinton as two different people — “Saturday Night Bill” (the bad guy) and “Sunday Morning William” (the good guy)? It’s kind of like that. I’m divided.

I mean, look at me! I take a job as a lawyer because I think I’m obligated to give practicing law a chance. Obligated. And yet I give the job a big “screw you” by staying out too late last night and drinking too much and by not concentrating on my work. I’m doing these things as if there’s a higher person out there, someone whom I’m simultaneously trying to please and rebel against.

When will I realize that there’s no higher authority out there except the universal law that life is hard?

So, anyway. About last night. It sure was interesting.

Last night was Twentysomething. It was my first time there in a month, because the previous meeting had been during Rosh Hashannah. It was nice to be back after so long. Wales was there — I hadn’t seen him since the middle of August. He seemed happy to see me. (Wales, you may recall, is my British friend whom I first really got to know during the gay pride parade in June. I’d also talked with him at a Twentysomething meeting and at Date Bait a few days before the parade.)

After an initial icebreaking session, we split up into small groups to discuss the topic of the evening — coming out. In my group there was this cute, short, red-haired guy with glasses. I kept looking over at him during the discussion. Actually, there was this other guy who was even cuter — actually, he was adorable — and I kept looking over at him as well, but he’s not essential to the rest of the story.

At the end of the meeting, everyone mingled again, and I wound up in a conversation with the red-haired bespectacled guy and a couple of other people. One of those other people turned out to be his boyfriend. D’oh. The other person was this tall guy with nice dark eyes whom I’d seen at several meetings before. I’d actually caught him looking at me occasionally over the last few months, but although I thought he was kinda cute, he never made much of an impression on me. There’s something a little undefinably weird about him. Maybe it has to do with the fact that he doesn’t smile.

Anyway, he and I were talking for a while, and it seemed liked the conversation was winding down. Then the cute red-haired bespectacled guy and his boyfriend came up to us, and the boyfriend said to the tall guy, with no attempt at being discreet, ‘Do you need a pen so you can get his number?’ or something like that.

Um, that was kind of an awkward moment. At that point, Tall Guy said I was welcome to go to Beige with them.

I’d never been to Beige before. Beige is an event that happens every Tuesday night at the Bowery Bar (also known as the B Bar). Basically, it’s Gay Night at the Bowery Bar, and there are crowds of people there. Apparently celebrities like to go there — Rupert Everett, Matt Damon (!), Joan Collins, and Danny from “The Real World — New Orleans” have all shown up before.

Tall Guy was cute, so I decided to go. Why not? Bespectacled Guy came too, but his boyfriend didn’t. And Wales came as well, so it was just the four of us.

The place was enormous. We got there at around 10:30 and sat down at a table for some food and drinks. The four of us talked together for a while, but eventually we wound up splitting into two separate conversations — me and Tall Guy, and Wales and Bespectacled Guy.

Did you know that Tall Guy once made out with Anne Rice’s son Chris, right there at Beige? Wow.

After dinner, we all got up and each got another drink and walked around the place. Now, I don’t have very much tolerance, so after two and a half beers (and my dinner, which consisted of a third of a plate of calamari), I was swimming.

There was some major flirtation going on between me and Tall Guy. We’d find ourselves just looking into each other’s eyes for several seconds at a time (for which my head had to tilt way upward, since he’s nine inches taller than me).

But besides that, Bespectacled Guy — who, mind you, has a boyfriend — apparently had a big thing for Wales. I know this because Bespectacled Guy made his intentions clear to Tall Guy, and Tall Guy told me. Apparently he and his boyfriend have been together for two years and he’s never had so much as a blowjob from another guy, so this was kind of interesting.

I don’t know — when someone who has a boyfriend starts majorly coming onto someone else, it trouble me. I don’t know if I’m just envious, or if I have a moral problem with it, or what — maybe it has to do with the duel between my inner good guy and my inner bad guy, as explained above.

At around 2 in the morning, we all finally decided to leave. Tall Guy gave me his phone number and asked me to call him the next day (in other words, today), and then he caught a cab home. Wales and I had to walk back to the PATH station to Jersey City, and Bespectacled Guy decided to walk with us to the station.

I was kind of drunk, so I offered to walk up on ahead and let them be alone and whatnot, but Bespectacled Guy said that wasn’t necessary. So the three of us walked along.

I really had to pee, so we stopped inside Washington Square Park. I went over to a bush.

As I was peeing, I turned my head around and saw that they were kissing. Gee, what a surprise.

I turned back around, finished up, and then, pretending that I hadn’t seen anything, I announced, “I’m going to turn back around now.”

When I turned back around to face them, they were just standing there. Hahahaha.

We started walking again, and, still kind of drunk, I mentioned that I’d seen everything, and that it was none of my business so I wasn’t going to say anything to anyone.

But for the rest of the walk I felt dejected about the whole thing. So I kept on walking, dejectedly now, my head tilted down, eyes on the ground.

We got to the PATH station and Bespectacled Guy asked to exchange phone numbers and e-mails with Wales, so they did. Bespectacled Guy gave me a hug goodbye, and Wales and I walked down the steps to the platform.

I was still annoyed. And when I’m drunk, my thoughts and feelings — which are usually hard for me to hide anyway — become even harder to hide. My face becomes an open book. I don’t really know what bothered me about the whole thing, but I was bothered.

Wales and I sat there, and he looked kind of ashamed. He started talking about how he wasn’t sure what had just happened, and how he thought Bespectacled Guy was cute but had had no intentions of doing or saying anything because the guy had a boyfriend. And it’s true — Bespectacled Guy had been the one who’d initiated everything.

We were sitting there, and I was still sort of drunk, and suddenly I wanted to tell him about Date Bait back in June. If you don’t remember, I’d written him down on my card (a way of expressing interest in him), but he hadn’t written me down. Therefore, we didn’t have a match, but he also never knew that I’d written his name down.

I don’t know why I wanted to tell him right now. I’m no longer interested in dating him, so there’d be no purpose in telling him.

But as the train pulled in, I said, “You wanna know something interesting?”

“‘Sure,” he said.

I paused. And then I said:

“When we were at Date Bait –”

And then we got on the train, and suddenly I realized that this wasn’t a good idea after all.

“Oh, never mind,” I said.

“No, it’s okay, you were going to say something about Date Bait?”

“Nah, never mind, it’s stupid. Anyway –” and I changed the subject.

We stood on the train and had a non-sober talk about guys, all in earshot of a guy sitting right near us. I guess the alcohol made it not matter.

He got off at his stop and we said goodbye, and I continued on home.

But that’s not the end of the story.

It was 3 in the morning, and I had to get up at 8. But for some stupid reason I decided to go online and see if there was anybody “interesting” around. Despite the late hour, there was. There was this guy whom I’d chatted with the last couple of nights. He lived nearby and had a good-looking photo.

We chatted for a little bit, and then he invited me over.

At 3:30 I was at his place.

At 4:00 we were finished. It wasn’t very good.

By the time I got home and went to bed, it was just after 4:30 in the morning. I set my alarm for the latest possible minute. When I woke up at 8:15 this morning, I pressed the snooze bar several times, and I didn’t wind up getting to work until 9:45.

Fortunately, nobody seemed to notice. There was some sort of bagel brunch going on.

Now it’s 3:30 in the afternoon and I’ve done absolutely nothing today. And now I can flog myself in writing.

Oh, me.

Tuesday night Jeff, Wednesday Afternoon Tin Man.