Though I work in very extroverted field—-teaching, media and have to stand in front of dozens to hundreds of people—-I am a classic, deeply entrenched introvert. I enjoy silence, solitude, being quiet, sometimes on a weekend off, I don’t say anything the entire time but please and thank you to store cashiers. I read a lot, don’t watch TV, watch documentaries on Netflix and Hulu. I write, a lot.
I’ve of course been to nightclubs, sometimes for a period of time but it’s not like my second home. Once, living in Washington Heights there was a nightclub that the owner also owned a local restaurant and he would send the food leftovers to my men’s groups and I in turn would bring people to his club, take my youth LGBT students there as an outing to learn about being social. Then they started having theme nights and Thursdays and Tuesdays were sort of loungey, maybe only 20–30 people, a stripper or two. So I would go there and write. I wrote about 3–5 books at that bar, nursing my 2 for 1 Bacardi 151 and coke. People thought it was my super social time but I worked 2pm to 10pm and lived 3 blocks away….and got a lot of writing done. I often would write to the exclusion of everyone but the bartender and the stripper who had to step over me at the bar. My big wish was for wings or something. There was another bar downtown that I would go to after working out on Sundays for the wings but it was more crowded. I was there 95% for the wings.
I love to dance and music but it’s often crowded, the songs are cut to a minute in length (studies show this is creating ADD in people) and I don’t strangers being handsy with me or on me. We don’t have to simulate sex to dance. I was just thinking that once I met someone in a club, I was just sitting in the corner by myself in a Buffalo club and he brought me over a rose…then we went back to my place…and….well, there’s another story thee but I’ll file it under a different heading. The point is that has been my sole “take home” from a bar experience. When out at clubs with friends, I often watch them socialize and talk to whom ever their fancy wants and I can be that sort of extroverted chatty after a few drinks but then for me at least, it’s false because it’s alcohol fueled and while I enjoy a drink or two, I’m not consumed with having to drink every-time I’m out at a club….which incidentally freaks people out.
So how do I meet guys?
Thank God for work, school and the internet or else I’d be a drunk in clubs being overly friendly. School is a biggie. Also men’s groups. I have a black belt in internet dating, having brokered several long term relationships from them and many, many liaisons. The nice thing I can say abut school and the internet is it’s very open and obvious and you can find common ground in a favorite subject, a class or your profile or his, tells you about the person. While some people find it daunting and challenging, I find it very normal and fun. This I’m sure is tied into the fact that I write so for me the written word is more intimate, I can convey myself better. I find night clubs and parties a bit of sensory overload to try and pay attention to a person and their body language.
From there a lot of my life revolves around work, my media business, writing, school so I’m often heading places or leaving places. I make it a point to regularly go to the beach, no matter the season, I enjoy the expansiveness, the relative quiet, the peacefulness. I have preferred spots, particular blankets and even a thermal sleeping bag that I can put around my legs and feet, so I can take off my shoes, as I sit there and read or write or sometimes I take coloring books and I’ll sit for hours on the train and there just coloring. Just being present and enjoying myself in coloring simple pictures. Then of course there are a couple of restaurants I really like, a Chinese one that makes incredible ribs.
I exercise a lot by home, walking a certain route through Manhattan and around a park that I’ve measured the distance of so I can count miles. I shop at two or three particular supermarkets as I like to cook so there are degrees and ranges of foods from Whole Foods to a more regular supermarket for basics. I have a near sexual obsession with Fresh Direct, often sitting at work or between classes just filling up my basket with items and then ordering every 6 weeks or so. There’s a thrill in the delivery men arriving with all of these boxes and unpacking them, setting everything in cabinets and the refrigerator, the unveiling, if you will.
I have an addiction to books. So much so that I’ve maintained a storage room initially for extra furniture and media stuff but now 2/3s of it are books. I tend to read 5 books a week so I have about 300 new books a year. For the past I would say 20 years, give or take. I have a few at home, a few at work, okay more than a few and I often fantasize about just buying 12 beautiful bookcases of pure wood and filling up the apartment space…and I suppose one chair. lol I try to keep the books at home to immediate ones and a couple of bookcases. I was just dropping off 50 books last week and I was thinking I could double the size of the storage room, set up a desk and chair and bookcases and make like a bat cave office. Hmmm, maybe….?
This of course leads into Borders, Barnes & Noble and smaller stores plus my insane Amazon wish list. I actually draft prepare my taxes by printing out my Amazon purchases for the past year and marking what’s work and personal or to what project a book belongs—-I buy that much in books. I have an agreement and PO Box with the post office where they set aside my packages for a couple of months at a time because I pick up in bulk. My biggest was about 10 large boxes when I bought out a bookstore.
I belong to several professional association, mastermind groups and intermittently men’s groups, community groups, boards and I’m often invited to conferences and seminars so that can absorb a lot of my “social” time. Generally I try to make my time productive when out and about. If it’s a wandering day that I have free I generally try to go investigate something new, a museum exhibit, etc.. I don’t go to the movies a lot anymore. Mainly because I detest crowds so I time my film going to sometimes holidays, the morning. Thanksgiving first show, Christmas day first show, New years first show and I’m good for seeing two to three films at a time. I also like a meal and my personal beverage choice, Pepsi so I have a bottle in my bag, and if it’s an off weekday evening, I bring Chinese food, once I brought a whole beef rib dinner from BBQs into the theater. Now there are dinner at chair theaters here in NYC so I might try those. But I enjoy more than popcorn but rarely candy at movies.
While I love to cook and routinely volunteer to cook for groups or at shelters and soup kitchens I don’t have as many dinner parties as I used to. My biggest was inviting 50 people and 50 people showed up. It became a seasonal thing of 10–12 people who would trek from states away for their party date. That was fun. I would cook about 2/3s of the food because half of the appeal was people wanted my cooking and buy the other third from a restaurant. One time the dinner party was so great and I’d made so much for a Saturday that the people who couldn’t make it came Sunday for an early dinner—-I really liked the symmetry of that. I decided when going back to school that I had to give something up, which became routinely cooking so I buy more prepared foods to give myself a break now. But I’m about half and half, cooking for myself.
I have a handful of restaurants that I love here and in other cities and I’m good for inviting a friend or a date to them just because I feel an inkling and hankering. I’m a huge steak and seafood fan so City Crab, Frankie and Johnnie’s, Morton’s, Plataforma Churrascaria, Pennyfeathers, Bobby Vans, a few others. Some are out of business but I will often invite someone and if no one can go, then I wander in myself and I’ve always been treated spectacularly…and I always have a book or a pad to write in so I’ve never been uncomfortable dining alone.
I hate the idea of dates, cheap men, expectations, if I invite you out, I’m paying——if your ego needs an equalizer, massively tip the waiter. I like good food, good company, though I’m not big on wine so I want to enjoy not play power games abut resources. Yes, I have a dollar extra, yes, the restaurant might have a few stars and yes, I try to always dine with linen table cloths but my students I routine take to Chinese spots, to BBQs and when they accomplish something to my favorite 4 Star Plataforma. I’m not cheap. That irks me about gay men. Well the insecure ones…and I’ll say it some of the minorities. Though the weirdest date I was on was with a dancer at Frankie and Johnnies who ordered just a piece of salmon, no salad, no side, and water. I of course had half the cow and tried several sides. He later admitted he was nervous and overwhelmed by the price and the menu. A Pisces. I will refrain from a judgmental comment.
But weird manshit like that irks me about gay men. The terror of giving. I figure if you don’t have $10 to $200 to give to treat someone on a date then maybe you’re not ready for a relationship of even the most casual kind, to equate money to ego, to identity, to power in that way is extremely distasteful to me. I make a pointed effort when people give me things, money, treat me, etc to just say thank you, to accept the gift as given., Marianne Williamson talked about a man after one of her lectures years ago went to give her a check for $1500 because he felt she could use it, he was so moved. She refused it and then saw how crestfallen he was that his loving gift was rejected, that the giver is getting a particular joy out of giving and sharing. That’s one of the things I screen men around, their capacity to share, to give, to receive, how they treat others—-the wait staff, etc..
That’s pretty much it. But I do work diligently on a drama free life on removing people. I also work on my propensity to want to help by curtailing it to certain spaces, to certain people. I can’t save everyone. Not everyone wants the help they scream for.
I move through the world, through cyberspace, I carry myself often in suits and slacks, rarely do I wear jeans——I don’t even think I own a pair. Sometimes shorts at the beach. It’s a very simple, slightly elegant, quiet life of engagement and boundaries.
I am free.
Smile, Kyle
KylePhoenixShow@gmail.com
KylePhoenixShow@gmail.com
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