it might have been the oysters i’d been shucking and eating earlier, or the champagne we’d been guzzling, or just the electric breeze coming off the thames, but i found myself irrationally giddy, queueing outside of .heaven yesterday evening with atif. it was only 830pm—which made it a bit surreal—but my gut told me that tonight was going to be an amazing, memorable, star-studded fabulous evening.

the invitations to the vip preparty celebrating the 25th birthday of the world’s most famous gay club .heaven were ~`the most exclusive invites of the year!‘~, causing me to fantasize about laughing with celebs, gossiping with pop starz, spilling drinks on reality teevee stars and debauching with a boyband member or four.

dressed up to the nines, we were. black tuxedo shirt with funky collar, unbuttoned provocatively, tucked into tight black trousers, daringly with no belt. hair [still] a dark brown, funked up to one side in a sideways mohawk. atif looking similarly dashing, quaffed and primped, elevated for one evening from plus one to on the list.

swimming into the club like we owned the place, we immediately did the rounds to check the scene. the grand remodeling that i’d heard so much about was really only minor reconstruction with some new fiberoptic-y lights. the exclusive hard-to-get-invites-for preparty quickly swelled to a 500-person mêlée. but, a party is a party, and atif and i mingled and charmed, spilling anecdotes, meeting our fans, stroking our egos while being self-depricating. as per usual. pretentious much?

was great to see the owners and managers and staff having a good time, and the first hour was spent flirting with the bartenders as usual and running into old friends. the free drinks were a bit much, especially with atif and i purposefully mixing vodka cokes with so-co lemonades and shots of vodka and god knows what else.

as the mêlée got more drunk, and the queues to the bars got longer, i started to get annoyed, or ~`bow’~ which is our new code word for bored now. the bartenders, in addition to throwing me compliments on my dress, started throwing me drinks as well, much to the dismay of the people impatiently queuing in front of me.

it perplexed me to no end, as to why certain bartenders that normally ignore me or are rude to me monday/wendesday/saturdays were now looking past tons of queueing punters to happily serve me. after the third time of walking by the bar and having a cute/beefy/brazilian bartender hand smirnoff ices to me, i had to ask, flabbergastedly, why are you being so nice to me?!, only to have him respond back equally shocked, i don’t know?! i think maybe my nice shirt hypnomomomotized him.

i see some boy lurking under the arches staring at me while nibbling sushi. i’m about to go up and say something when alarm bells go off in my mind. it’s gay activist peter tatchell. it might’ve been the way he was cruising me, or his black puffer jacket making him look like security, but something else about him made me not want to approach him, even though i’m sure we would’ve had loads to discuss and debate.

atif and i take to the dancefloor, and all eyes are on us since the floor is empty. we dance, we laugh, we soak up the attention, until these two cheeky girls swirl next to us. it’s an old fashioned dance off [dance off?! dance off?! dance off?!] and i accidentally back up into one of them, who touches my bum.

and that’s all of the namedropping i can do, really. the highlight of the entire evening, the most exciting thing that happened during this faux-exclusive, pseudo-fabulous evening is that i got to dance [and later share lollipops/toilets/deejaying*] with the cheeky girls.

you have to understand that i had great expectations for the evening, being a heavily-promoted once-in-a-lifetime 25th birthday party. back in the glory days, a week wouldn’t go by without stealing boy george’s hat, snogging graham norton or dancing shirtless with sir ian. having celebrities at a party makes it more memorable, elevates the excitement level, and makes you feel as if you’re part of something studio 54-like legendary, ya know?

i’m convinced i saw sir ian later, and christian slater was rumored to be there, but that was it. a few weeks ago, i had accidentally started a rumor that madonna was going to be there, and that surely explained why so many punters were willing to shell out £20 each for an otherwise typical saturday night at .heaven.

my drunkenly short and shortly drunken attention span caused me to ditch atif and ben around 2am or so, pissing each of them off terrifically**. miraculously, i drunkenly caught a nightbus home to vauxhall which somehow dumped me off in paddington instead. i am such a fucking rock star.

---

* apparently because i don’t quite remember.
** it’s okay we all met up at my place later and had hot sex. well just the two of us, i mean.

i hate sitting in the 107th row.

a few weeks ago at my day job, we had a big corporate all hands meeting where the bigwigs from america came over to tell us about forecasts and mergers and revenue and products and to generally motivate us. they’re up on stage, and i’m sat way in the back in the 107th row.

years ago, back when i was a dot com millionaire, these meetings were fun and motivating and made perfect sense. i knew the ceos and marketing folks and sometimes even helped put these presentations together.

after the dot com millionaire days, i fled to london, gave up the fat paychecks and stock options of the internet world, to take advantage of a brilliant opportunity—to run one of my favorite magazines—gay youth magazine xy.

no more sitting in meetings all day discussing server-side scripting and front-end technologies and information architecture and functional specs. instead, i’d be scheduling issues and organizing interviews and arguing politics and generally improving the lives of gay youth around the globe. challenging, rewarding, fun—and interesting to discuss at cocktail parties.

don’t worry, i am going someplace interesting with this.

i found myself moving in interesting circles. i suddently became friends with the celebrities i interviewed. i found that many people at the top were fans of my magazine, meaning perks galore. eric was suddenly in vip rooms, members bars and getting invites to film premieres.

one summer evening, i remember going to china white for the first time [an exclusive but otherwise uninteresting members club where the royals hobnob with boyband members and random americans]. there were a cache of hollywood people there, including a girl we’ll call grace.

grace was loads of fun, and would buy many £150 bottles of smirnoff blue at the club, and always shared entertaining stories from her days in hollywood. she was a mover and shaker in many circles, not just because of her sparkling personality but because she came from a powerful hollywood family.

but lately, since i got screwed over by my boss at the magazine last year, i’ve had to jump back into the internet world in order to rescue my finances. my heart still lies in the magazine world, and in addition to gathering funding for my new project, i’ve tried to keep circulating in those old circles, keeping in touch with the kings and queens of the media and the gay mafia.

so, it was with extreme irony that i sat in the 107th row of this big conference hall, listening to the corporate bigwigs from my day job on stage. with a huge round of applause, the ceo takes the stage, and i laugh to myself. i laugh because i’d partied with his daughter grace several times, and was even supposed to hook up with her on my last trip to california.

it’s been a long time since i’ve sat in the 107th row, and it’s getting to be time for me to move up, one way or another. i either need to take the reins at my day job and start doing the level of work i used to do in my dot com millionaire days, or i need to jump ship and get cracking on qr magazine.

[continued from part one]

this game of ours is a complicated one. it’s cat-and-mouse, where we’re both the mouse, and neither of us get the cheese. i went in for a kiss, and it was as if i were kissing a mannequin—a hot skaterboy mannequin, sure—but no response of any sort.

he had to leave, he said, to meet friends for drinks, but he wanted to go to .heaven later. dude, call me at like 10 cuz i’m outta credit on my phone. i know full well that if i were to call at 10 he wouldn’t answer. so, instead i don’t call, and at 10:25 he calls, pissed off that i’m forcing him to use up his credit. we agree to meet at 11 outside .heaven.

he struts up at 11:15 with an obvious smirk on his face. touché, nice one. so, can you get me in for free or what? we jump the queue, we head into the club, we jump the cloakroom queue, and i give them our stuff to put in the cloakroom. dilemma—do we check it together or not?

stupidly, i say yeah, put it together and chip freaks out. dude, why did you do that! what, do you think something’s gonna happen?! so cruel to my fragile ego. he may be cute and confident and cocky, but i sense he’s a bit out of his element on a very busy monday night at the gay disco.

i take him into the vip room which i think actually managed to impress him. hey, dude, can you get us some drinks? i’ll take a bud. i roll my eyes and get two budweisers. i introduce chip to some friends, telling everyone that he’s my straight brother visiting from indiana… incredibly plausible as chip is 4 years younger, originally from the midwest and looks a bit like me.

gay men love nothing more than harassing a cute straight boy, and they take turns harassing him. chip plays the part to a tee… he’s quite good at playing it straight. once chip realizes he’s charmed them, he lays into them even worse than he lays into me. he tells paul [the owner] that the music sucks and he should play more björk. he calls manny fat. he loudly tries to buy drugs off of jake with security right behind him. he spills a drink all over olly.

on the dancefloor, we’re dancing. he’s eyeing up the women. and the men. i’m eyeing up him. drinks, drinks and more drinks. eventually he dances with me instead of near me, and we both smile. i drag him upstairs to the r’n'b room so we could do some dirty dancing.

everyone loves chip. everyone wants chip. the bartenders are stumbling over each other to serve him, the men approach but are deflected by me, the women [assuming chip is straight] beg him to grope their breasts. which he does, followed by a snog.

after he molests 5 or 6 women, i’ve had enough. it’s gone from amusing to awkward to tragic. i ditch him, and complete a few carefully orchestrated circuits of the club. it takes a professional like me about 8 minutes to circle past the 600 people in the main room and 300 people in the middle floor and then the 150 crammed into upstairs and end up in the vip.

it’s like 3am by this point, and i’ve heard that all the leaves are et et et oh et et techno version of california dreamin’ 3 times already. i find chip up on the podium in the middle of the main room, sweaty and smiling, and i tell him i’m leaving. he says, okay. and that’s that.

i head to the cloakroom, but realize all our stuff is on one ticket. i take my jacket and tell them to put his bag back. they start to give me hassle and i flash my stupid vip card and they reluctantly smile. ugh. i head back to the podium to give chip the cloakroom ticket and he frowns. guess he thought i was bluffing.

he takes me to the side of the dancefloor, puts his hands on my shoulders and looks into my eyes. kisses me, gently. looks up at me through his best puppy dog eyes and asks can we stay 15 more minutes? i’ve had enough of his games [of course i haven't, but that's what my inner monologue is saying] and i already got my coat from the cloakroom.

he reaches into his pocket, finds £1 and offers to put my coat back in. of course i could’ve put it back in for free. and of course it’s only £1. but it’s the first £1 that the boy had spent all night. game on.

chip decides he wants a threesome, so we go from room to room sizing up available prospects. the tall lanky brazilian with spikey hair? how about that boy over there with his shirt off? hmmm… what about that french-looking lad by the bar? chip doesn’t like any of them, so instead i up the ante.

as we start checking out couples, i wonder if my bed can handle the weight of four bodies, and i wonder if my neighbors can handle the noise. i’m happy, though, that none of the couples pass muster with us, and i drag chip out of the club, hand in hand, passing my mates who have figured out that we’re more than, erm, brothers.

in a sense, though, we are brothers. he’s intelligent [no, really], he’s studying journalism, we come from similar upbringings and are presumably at different stages of our lives. i slag chip off for the games he plays with me, but underneath it all there’s an interesting creature who has some very redeeming qualities besides his hot body and tongue ring and delicious… i digress.

eventually both of our walls came down, and we both stopped playing this ridiculous game. as the sun comes up, we’re cuddling, talking, laughing, playing and being entirely… civilized.

i can feel you will stay for a while until the winds change again and take you with but i won’t taste a bitter tear cause the only thing you wanted is to hunt and not be hunted not to have, not to hold running hot burning cold and i know just go ahead and fly again no one’s gonna hold you back driven by a lonely heart tell me, can you love like that? the wind’s come back stir my soul i take you in you take control wide awake you leave me haunted cause you want not to be wanted not to have, not to hold can’t pretend, in the end i still know yeah, go ahead and fly again no one’s gonna hold you back driven by a lonely heart tell me, can you love like that? not to have, not to hold can’t pretend in the end i still know tell me, can you love like that?

only a true scene queen would get excited about the arrival of a new gay bar in soho, but you have to understand that trash palace was intended to be something special.

simon hobart’s friday night gay indie night .popstarz and his subversive underground club .ghetto have become not only mainstays of my social life, but a representation of my coming-of-age in london. simon has done a brilliant job of capturing the vibe of young gay london, providing a much-needed alternative to the .heavens and .g-a-ys that pump out housey house and pretentious pop to the foundation-wearing, label-sporting masses of 17yos of soho. it was with great excitement that i’ve looked forward to simon’s latest venture, a new gay bar off wardour street called trash palace.

i consider simon to be a friend, in the sense that i admire him, respect him, have shared a handful of drunken conversations with him and we’re usually mutually friendly. we have a symbiotic relationship, wherein he guestlists my friends and i [which provides me with an iota of status and a fair amount of convenience] and in return i drag friends old and new into his clubs [which provides him with new punters and a steady stream of alcohol purchases].

sure, i was a little bit miffed that i wasn’t invited to the private launch, nor did i receive an invite to the general opening nor did i get so much as a single drink coupon. when i finally dragged my posse up and down wardour street 5 times looking for the new bar, and into trash palace, i was only slightly miffed when simon ignored me not once, but twice. it’s opening night, he’s busy, i absolutely understand.

my preconceived notion of the new trash palace bar before stepping foot inside: a large bar spanning two floors, encapsulating the best of .popstarz [unadulterated indie mayhem, punk rawk ladz and red stripe] and .ghetto [cheesy pop, r'n'b, electro, trash, friendly bar staff, alternative skatery vibe]. i envision some surprisingly funky lighting, perhaps a small dance floor. i envision friendly cute bar staff and cheap drinks. i envision a sex pistols-visit-buckingham palace decor, with broken chandeliers, oil paintings hanging askew, faux pretentiousness. tounge-in-cheek glamour, something to offset the real glamour of shaun and joe and sanctuary and shadow lounge and the rest.

in actuality [on its first night of opening] trash palace was neither trash nor palace. it was quite difficult to find, for starters. it’s located at 11 wardour street which is practically leicester square, nearly picadilly circus, smack in the middle of chinatown across from sound. i’m guessing it was a former chinese restaurant, cuz the place is small, very small. spanning two floors, the place was filled up by 9pm with just maybe 150 people.

i don’t want you to think that i’m dissing the bar, but i have to share my disappointment for what could have been. soho is in such dire need of something new and different. there are three categories of gay bar in soho: faux exclusive cocktail bar [shadow lounge, sanctuary, too too much, shaun & joe], pubs [comptons, admiral duncan, duke of wellington], twinky glittery pop bars [ku bar, g-a-y bar, village, escape] and then a few miscellaneous gems [e.g. friendly society]. anyway, my point is that there’s nowhere to go if you like, say, something besides pop music and cruising for rich old men/bald old men/twinky young men.

i want to go someplace that plays rock and r’n'b and indie and electro and synthpop and maybe something i’ve never even heard of before. this is what everyone assumed simon would do with trash palace, but i didn’t get that feel on my first night. granted i was only there for a few hours, but all i heard was generic loungey kinda music, as if the aim was come off as being a swank cocktail bar.

the bottom floor has small squat bar-type stools and not much place to stand. upstairs is a bit bigger, and is decked out with mirrors and plush red velvet everywhere, and a handful of tables which were already gobbled up at 6pm and i’m guessing i’ll never have a chance to sit at, ever. drinks are cheap, bar staff are friendly and cool, and the implementation is high-quality, it’s jus t the design, the style, the layout aren’t quite right in my humble opinion, but what do i konw?

trash? no, it’s sorta faux-swank. palace? no, it’s sorta tiny and uncomfortable once it fills up. how can it be fixed? bring in some great music, clear out the furniture, and make it funky. make it scandalous and unique and crazy enough that people talk about it. will i be back? of course. and i promise to change my review if things improve.

i want it to work, as i share simon’s utopian vision for a more alternative gay scene in london, where people socialize and drink rather than take their shirts off and have anonymous sex on drugs.