spikey bleached blonde hair. grey/blue eyes. a boyish but chiseled face, framed with tight little sideburns, with a naughty smirk that reveals perfect white teeth and a wicked tongue. slim swimmers build… biceps and six pack but it’s really an 8-pack. exactly as tall as me, so we can see eye-to-eye and so things line up appropriately. a white boy from the midwest with california skaterboy mentalities… perhaps a tongue piercing to spice things up.

we all have types, you know… types of people that you have dated or will date or are attracted to or were attracted to. for me, the above is my ideal type. the getmyjuicesflowingohmygodican’tstop type.

in high school in indiana, it was jeff, the quarterback of the football team one year older than me. think zack from saved by the bell, but hotter. jeff who i sat next to in trigonometry class, who i helped with his homework, who invited me to the parties. jeff who, to this day, am convinced was well aware of my affection.

when i started reading xy magazine, it was nathan, that delicious skaterboy raverboy from wisconsin whom i used to send fan mail to, then exchanged emails with, and who i had a disasterous date with. nathan, who, years later would be a writer at the very same magazine that i was now editor of.

and now i need to tell you about chip.

even though i shouldn’t, i really really shouldn’t.

chip is straight. no, bi. no, gay. but it doesn’t matter anyway, dude, you know?

chip has a boyfriend. they have an open relationship. no they don’t. we’re just fooling around, right.

chip plays the game better than me. it’s a symbiotic relationship… he needs me about as badly as i need him, but yet i’m always the one feeling like an ass afterwards.

the first time i met chip was at .discotec, and it wasn’t until we snogged macked for a few minutes that he told me he was with his boyfriend. i assumed he was just another confused american tourist exploiting and getting exploited by the london scene. i lied to him, agreeing that being bisexual is valid [i'm closeminded like that] and that i have no prejudices against straight/confused/bi boys [been burned too too many times].

weeks later, after a few text messages, i convinced chip to come over late one night for [what was really my first ever] random hookup. he demanded a few cocktails before being comfortable for even a kiss. he was quirky, sarcastic, borderline rude, but eventually we had the slumber party that we both wanted, and it was hot.

eyes rolling back in the head hot. steam up the windows, hand prints on the ceiling, where did the past 6 hours go hot. the next morning, i embarassed him horribly with a kiss in the early morning mist of finsbury park as he got on the bus back home.

months later, after entirely too many text messages, we meet again, this time at his place for some midday fun. his sarcasm has changed into full-out abuse, and i sit there staring at this object of my affection as he slags me off… asking me why my teeth are stained and saying my feet smell and telling me i have bad music taste. i know that this is all a horrible mistake, but i rationalize it as being no different than when 7yo sally tells billy that he’s gross.

it’s dr. jekyl and mr. hyde, in equal increments. i threaten to leave or to wash my smelly feet to appease him and suddenly he’s all affectionate and we’re at it again. afterwards, post-coitus he asks me if he’s going to catch anything from me because i’m gay. i explain [but don't lecture] about safe sex, and assure him that everything’s going to be okay.

over the next few months, i get flurries of text messages. he wants me to leave work and come over. he wants to come to my office and go into a conference room. eventually, we agree to meet up at my place one evening, but through a comedy of errors he ends up wandering the streets of vauxhall on his own at 1am, while i’m unknowingly [...] tucked away asleep in bed.

another instance, he gets so annoyingly persistant, that i refer darian over to him, just because i can’t attend to his constant texting. they exchange texts and agree to meet up, with neither of them knowing what the other looks like. whatever, none of my business… all i know is that got chip off my back case for a week or two.

you have to understand the torment. i fall easily and fall hard for boys this stunning. he’s a 9.9/10 for me, and that says a lot. psychologically, i’m attracted to his bad boy behavior. and i’m fascinated by him. he’s intelligent yet confused. confident yet insecure. and he trusts me, he’s slowly letting me into his closeted world.

this monday i hear from him. he’s having a crisis and needs someone to talk to. we meet after work. i feel like i’ve chugged red bull and snorted poppers while standing on my head. my heart is in my throat and i can hear it in my ears. blood is flowing. nervousness. anticipation. horniness.

dude, you live in the fucking ghetto [it's fucking zone one vauxhall inside the congestion charge with nice local amenities, bitch] and dude, why are you dressed like that [cuz i had meetings at work, bitch] and your place looks like one of those prefabricated model homes [give me a break, student boy] and, and, and. i can see where this is going, so i pour us some beer. we chug it. then some more. we chug it.

and then some more beer. and then a cocktail. even me, the alcoholic, even my head is swimming. while imagining him naked, i am also playing the part of good concerned friend and dishing out some excellent advice. as i’m talking, he interrupts, telling me you know, you’re like the only gay person i’ve talked to like this.

we’re laying on my bed, and i’m debating whether to kiss him. i do, and he ignores it. he grabs his stuff, saying he has to go to a friend’s party, but we make vague plans to meet at .heaven later. he gives me a brotherly 2-pats-on-the-back straight hug and struts out the door, with his freshjive jumper that he no doubt picked up at pacsun in michigan.

after 4 solid days of having to justify my american-ness, it was great to embrace, for just one evening, some english culture. although friday was guy fawkes day, the biggest bonfire night fireworks celebrations were on saturday, up at alexandra palace.

guy fawkes day, for those of you who don’t know, is a holiday that occurs every four years to celebrate guy fawkes, a 12th-century abbot who invented fireworks. on one fatefull november 5th, he was summonsed to buckingham palace, where the king demanded a royal display of this newfangled wizardry known as pyrotechics. unfortunately, guy was so nervous that he lit off his entire cache of fireworks, which quickly killed everyone in the giant palace ballroom except for the toddler prince, who regined on the thrown from the age of 2 until his 10th birthday, when he married his cousin, elizabeth. guy went down in the history books as being a traitor to the royal bloodline, and, as legend has it, is where the phrase your fucked [fawked] comes from.

nowadays, the holiday is celebrated by hoodlum children buying quarter-sticks of dynamite and throwing them at each other, usually around 1am in the morning while their child minders are doing crack in the lifts of the building in which i live. well, that’s what tradition dictates.

atif and kerrieann and mitch and scottish david and my darling ben traipsed all the way up to ally pally for the grand display. i’m accustomed to 4th of july fireworks, which are romantically held on balmy evenings with fireflies buzzing and hot dogs in your belly and little 4yo kids waving flags and everyone singing patriotic anthems mixed with bad country music.

this time around, it was bloody freezing and crowded and damp, but still a brilliant show. the fireworks were so good, that i had to insist to my lovely english mates that surely an american company must have been brought in to put together the show. i love england—don’t get me wrong—but when it comes to spectacles or attention to detail or just general presentation, the good ole u. s. of a. is the leader of over-the-top wowing.

everyone debated me, but then halfway through the show the music switched from british anthems [robbie williams, the darkness, etc.] to really bad country music. i rest my case.

was fun to cuddle with the boy and light sparklers with the girls and drink lager with the lads, and slowly wind our way back home to duckie at the royal vauxhall tavern, where i ran into 19 familiar faces and 0 people whose name i could remember. bad/pretentious/silly electropop couple with exaggerated stage performances. i’m always up for a bit of zaniness, but i’m not going to spend a saturday night watching a new yorker dressed in a bloody hospital gown bang on a keyboard, speaking in a german accent while his friend, a 40yo scrawny woman writhes naked on the stage covered in blood.

the message? well, she had a big red cardboard circle with a slash through it, hung over her hairy vagina. the message? no bush!

the purple map—red vs. blue

all this talk of red state versus blue state is bollocks. the red states were, in many cases, barely red, say by a 60/40 split. the same holds true for the blue states. above you’ll see a map, courtesy of jeff culver, outlining not how red or blue each state was, but actually how close to purple most states were.

this flows into another concept, that many of the voters are middle-of-the-road, or purple. they might say, i don’t really care one way or the other about gay marriage, and the war on iraq is a mess regardless of who takes over, and i just want lower taxes or i’m anti-abortion and anti-gay-marriage, but i’m tired of bush so i’m voting democrat, just this once and so on and so on.

election results by county

this is map is courtesy of andrew tanenbaum who ran the amazing electoral-vote.com website which collected polling data prior to the election. it shows a breakdown of red counties versus blue ones, and shows once again that the concept of red state/blue state is bollocks. 48% of the voters are highlighted in blue, and 51% are in red.

this election wasn’t about red states versus blue states. this election was about liberal cityfolk versus conservative ruralfolk. the election was decided by suburbia. by soccer moms. by commuters. that’s who voted, that’s who made the difference. of course nobody really knows where the the 100 million or so people who didn’t vote are scattered.

is the country horribly permanently divided? no. the division between red and blue is a fairly arbitrary one, and it takes a huge step back to realize that we’ve been duped by both sides. i mean, who isn’t anti-abortion? of course most people agree abortion is an unpleasant idea… the real debate should be when does life begin? at conception? maybe. at 3 months? 6 months? perhaps. 9 months? 1 day before birth? let’s have a debate, with science and facts and conversation. along the same lines, is anyone in favor of larger government and bigger taxes? of course not. and so on.

bush karl rove won the election by pumping fear into his conservative base… fear of terrorists, fear of abortionists, fear of man-on-man monogamists [thanks jon stewart]. they came out to the polls to knock down gay marriage, and while there decided to punch a vote for dubya. the next four years will be a mess, with gay/women’s/minority rights being stripped away, and a new 1950s-style era of conservatism washing over america. i look forward to a fiery hillary clinton running for president in 2008.

at 303am this past saturday night, i was at .heaven, like most saturdays, dancing around like a chimp in heat, pretending to be attractive, enjoying the freedom of flailing around inebriated with friends. secluded freedom, as there’s no safer place to exploit your sexuality than in the middle of a 2,000-person capacity gay club.

at 309am this past saturday night, i was flirting with that straight/questioning/bisexual skater boy who i love to taunt, i taunt to flirt, i seduce because i can. i would be more sensitive to his internal homophobia if he weren’t such a prick. tease.

at 313am this past saturday night, the clocks had just turned back and it felt much later than it was. i got my coat from the cloakroom, stumbled out of the vip room, said goodbye to the 271 people that i pretend to know, and exited .heaven, all alone, stumbling into a herd of minicab?! minicab?! minicab?! drivers.

at 315am this past saturday night, across the river from .heaven in jubilee gardens, a man was sat alone on a bench, watching clubgoers stumble home along the river thames. he was approached by two teens, who smashed a bottle over his head and fled.

at 317am this past saturday night, in a drunken foggy haze, i debated how to make my way home. a £20/10 minute minicab ride, a £1.40/20 minute bus ride, or a free/30 minute walk. i started walking towards hungerford bridge to the south bank where i worked in 2002. i’m a sucker for the view across hungerford bridge, and i was looking forward to seeing the sights along the thames… the london eye, big ben, .beyond…

at 321am this past saturday night, before reaching hungerford bridge, i chance upon a persistent minicab driver. after a bit of cat and mouse [come on, my friend!] i haggle down to an entirely reasonable £12 to vauxhall. i hop in the back and try to start calling atif, who left the club an hour before me.

at 325am this past saturday night, two men, aged 25 and 29, are attacked by at least two youths near hungerford bridge, suffering minor injuries.

at 330am this past saturday night, as i’m driving past big ben, david morley—a 37yo bartender who was injured in the 1999 bombing of the admiral duncan pub in soho—has just left .heaven and is walking across hungerford bridge with a 29yo friend. david had survived the hate-motivated bombings in 1999, and helped the gay community heal after the attack, by working to get the admiral duncan reopened after the attacks, which had killed 3 and injured 70.

as david crosses the bridge, he is badly beaten—some 40 times to his head and body—by two youths. they flee across the bridge, punching a woman in the face on the way. david morley later dies in hospital due to injuries sustained in what is feared to be a homophobic attack.

i’m angry that fucking punk-ass kids can weild this sort of might and power over innocent gay men. i’m frustrated by yob culture that prevails across inner-city london. i’m pissed that i thought this kind of thing just doesn’t happen in 2004. i’m mad at myself for becoming complacent and less militant with regards to gay rights and acceptance.

living in london has spoilt me. the episodes of will and grace, and the shirtless go-go boys, and the anonymous sex, and the myriad of gay clubs, and the loving gay friends where every sentence ends in a punchline, have all perhaps blurred the fact that people still hate fags, that religious zealots want me to burn in hell and 16yo punks can smash bottles and beat the shit out of innocent off-guard gay people at 330 in the morning for no fucking reason. fear. anger. power.

it’s taken me a while to realize how lucky i am, how lucky i always am. what was my damage this weekend? my liver’s not too happy, my seratonin levels are a bit non-existent, i spent entirely too much money, i lost my mobile phone, someone wet my bed, and i didn’t meet the scissor sisters.

how many gay people were attacked this weekend in london? there’s been an increase in muggings and attacks in and between the two gay ghettos—soho and vauxhall. .gregiño was mugged a month ago, and smashed in the face. i’ve heard of a myriad of muggings through the grapevine, of post-clubbing blokes getting beat up closer towards the vauxhall clubs. of the yobs recording the beatings on their video mobiles. to show to their friends.

and now this, a one-night spree of violence, most definitely targeting helpless off-guard gays in the wee hours of the morning.