a funny thing happened at 117am last night—it all became clear, just for one moment.

did you ever wish that you can go back to your youth and re-live certain events, certain days? we all wish that we knew then what we know now.

i can look at my life and my upcoming move in a variety of lights.

one light suggests that i’m going back to california, that it’s a retreat, and that in many regards i’m starting over. although i’m a very smart cookie and have done brilliantly at every job i’ve worked at, i am somehow feeling a bit like i’m floundering in my career, starting over again in a new city, new peeps, a new role.

the same light argues that giving up my london life is solely a bad thing, that i’ve never been as content and happy and successful as i have been over my four years in london. saying goodbye to a brilliant network of friends and associates will hurt as much as pulling out my kneecap through my belly button.

when i first stepped into the .g-a-y megaclub in 1998, i was overwhelmed and nervous. after rising to the top of the london social scene during my days at xy magazine, i went back several years later to the very same club and felt obnoxiously above it all. yet, last night, i felt bewondered and bewildered and bemused by it all. and a bit uncomfortable. of all these cocky 17yo shirtless kids gyrating around me. of these happy bouncing masses that will continue to bounce long after i’m gone.

7 years ago i fell in love with a loverly irish lad, resulting in a roundabout long-distance romance, replete with handwritten love letters and expensive international phone calls and visits to dublin and los angeles as we tried to make it work. over the years, we’ve remained friends, but i’d managed to lose contact completely with damien a few years ago. running into him last night was pure serendipity, of course.

damien, of all my friends, can relate to my madcap existence, having lived and loved in dublin, london, poland, italy, chicago, cape town and god only knows where else. as we began to frantically catch up, then and there on the smoky dancefloor of .g-a-y, late on a bank holiday monday, he helped me to put it all in perspective.

we were interrupted mid-sentence by a talent show on stage. singers, dancers, strippers. as we watched the show in silence, i had time to process all of the reassuring advice that insightful damien, visiting from dublin, had just dished out. my life is great, moving back to the states is great, seeing my family will be great, starting the magazine will be great, unplugging from london will be great. and, somewhere along the way i’ll find romance.

at 117am, just as some drag queens finish their dance routine, a dashingly handsome lad takes to the stage, sheepishly grabs the mic, and starts belting out a beautiful rendition of your song by dame elton john via moulin rouge. i was feeling particularly vulnerable at that moment, having been reunited with a brilliant long-lost friend, having just been psychoanalyzed, torn apart and put back together, and this love song just managed to find its way into my exposed nerve…

reminding me that the greatest loves of my life have been the artists, the singers, the passionate creative boys who have been the ying to my nerdy, pretentious, self-absorbed, analytical, stressed-out yang. so, i stood there, staring up at this talent show contestant crooning away on stage, focusing all of my romantic intentions on him—or someone very much like him.

having dramatically uprooted myself several times in my life, i know with certainty that i will meet the man of my dreams 3-4 weeks before my departure. that’s the way love goes.

i’m being tested.

the past few weeks have been testing, but over the past few days i feel as if tests are being laid out before me. tests to help me evaluate whether or not i should stay in london… tests to help me understand whether london is the place for me to continue living my life.

last night, just past midnight, i found myself in lewisham. i’d just missed the last train and the last dlr that would get me home in time before the tube stops running. so, i navigated from stop d to g to a to wait for the next bus. turns out i’d missed the last 436 bus [which run every 8 minutes] for the evening, and would need to wait for the first N36 night bus [which run every 30 minutes, starting 37 minutes from when i got there].

i was in lewisham for the launch of my buddy wayne’s new music video. it took a lot of self-motivation to haul my carcas from my depressed stupor at home, but knew it would be worth it to see all the smiling faces and more importantly show my support for wayne and marcos and fontaine and grace as well as .greg and suja for directing and producing. everyone was cheerful and chatty, and everyone had brilliant advice to give me about my situation. move here, move there, do this, don’t do that, have you tried this?

after the video, and the performances, and the dancing, i wanted to escape. after walking taren and the girls to their train, i found the right bus stop, and started the long wait. 37 minutes isn’t that long, generally, but when you’re bored, cranky, and it’s 1206am and you just want to get home, 37 minutes is an eternity. but, nightbusses are part of the charm of london, and i couldn’t even remember the last time i’d taken one, so i figured why not.

headphones in, staring off into the distance, i ignored the gaggle of chattering chinese tourists next to me, the smelly rasta bloke smoking godknowswhat, even the huge police drug bust that happened 20 feet away from me, with 20 officers tackling some travelcard tout to the ground. i took out my earbuds, though, when i saw him approach.

eee, excuse me. eee, do you know which bus for, eee, central lon-don?

sparkle in his smile, sparkle in his eyes. curly black hair, dark features, bright smile. a macho gait, a macho stance, a very familiar glance. definitely brazilian.

i ask, where are you looking to go, exactly?

eee, a club, eee, called the end. you know it?

bank holiday thursday, and this brazilian boy is taking the night bus allllll the way into town for .discotec at the end, the big gay latin house night every thursday. a club which forces you to start your weekend one day early, a club where i’ve met entirely too many boys whose names i can’t pronounce much less spell. a club where, coincidentally, most of the people i’d just watch perform typically deejay.

—

116am, and the N36 has made it just about to my front door. for the past hour, this boy and i have sat nervously on the top saloon, chatting, as the bus slowly crawled across south london before continuing on to heaving central london. chatting about brazil, where he’d just come back from on holiday. chatting about clubs, about boyfriends, aboud london life.

i push the call button, and stand up. he looks up, with a sad look on his face. i explain to him that he has at least another 30 minutes on the bus before his stop. he misinterprets this as an invitation. he stands up to come home with me…

london is filled with tests. there isn’t always a right answer.

x-”

although i felt pretty much spent after 3 consecutive nights of severe clubbing, on sunday night i groggily awoke, found some leftover mojo in the back of the freezer, and decided to celebrate the resurrection of our lord savior jesus christ [sorry for the gratuitous blasphemy—i'm just trying to get googling christians to start reading my site] with some more clubbing fun. grabbed .darian, flatmate mitch and tiptoed down to crash in vauxhall for the yearly .popstarz ray of light fundraiser party, raising funds for macmillan cancer relief, a great charity helping people living with cancer.

kudos to popstarz simon for organizing such a wicked party for such a worthy cause. crash, normally a seedy souf-of-the-thames afterhours club was transformed into a sexier, more glam version of .popstarz… the indie room had lazzzers, there were more proper punks than poseur students, more mohawks less mullets, more divas less faghags, more dancing and less drunkenness.

the vibe was really electric, with lots of fresh faces enjoying the bank holiday, plus the grand trinity of .popstarz + .ghetto + .the cock all rolled into one. i took it easy on the drinking and drugs, focussing a bit more on dancing and catching up with freaks friends. i actually turned down free drinks from two bartenders—look at me… :roll:

thoroughly enjoyed getting run over by the gritty electro beatz provided by .the cock deejays, and i managed to pass out a few copies of my new single, but was too chicken to give it to any of the deejays. i’m not looking for fame, and in fact i sorta wanna stay anonymous with my musicmaking. i guess. just before some twisted live electro act took the stage, they played the original version of gary numan’s “cars”, which my track “boys” is a remake of. shoulda coulda woulda.

this type of modern life, is it for me?

48 hours of non-stop debauchery:

saturday scooped up mark and andrew in soho for some bank holiday debauchery, before meeting up with atif at retro bar to hit heaven paul’s birthday party at .heaven. got there just as the party was bumping, giving birfday smooches to the birfday boy and other innocent victims. after enjoying free birfday cocktails, rejoined the commoners, crossing paths upstairs with hiphop marcos, alex and even superman from the previous night at .popstarz.

saw two of the boys from the salon, and thoroughly enjoyed feigning ignorance as they tried to bedazzle me in the cloakroom queue. whilst queueing, one turns [knowingly] to me, saying oh, hello! [which really meant oh, hello cute boy, aren't you impressed to meet me?]. my blank look, american accent and disinterested demeanor certainly put them in their places.

the private party, the music and entire crowd at .heaven were perfect for a bank holiday saturday, but at 4am it was time to leave. ran into model joel, whom i had been avoiding for a few weeks, and scooped him up to go to beyond with the boys. beyond was absolutely perfect, with the perfect mix of lasers, lads, chemicals and jubilation. andrew and mark left me around 9am, while i fluttered around, eventually leaving beyond around noon for 18-on-a-scale-of-1-to-10 loving with joel. nothing’s more satisfying that watching a boy’s eyes roll back into his head and lose their ability to speak :twisted:

rather than sleeping sunday afternoon, i only had time for a quick shower before going to a delightful easter dinner at manny‘s with mark. we enjoyed a very chilled, very classy evening, with cocktails, homemade cuisine and gossip with the movers and shakers of gay london. after being awake for 24 hours, the wine and grub started to make eric a bit sleepy, but that was quickly remedied with a brisk commute to universe for a redux of new years eve.

ran into wisconsin chris just outside the universe, which made me tingle from tip-to-tail. why did we stop chatting? what ever happened between us? why did i let him slip away. i’m a dumb dumb boy.

stepping into universe around midnight, mark and i felt as if we had never left after new years, that is, the megaclub had been going non-stop for the past four months. for the six hours we were there, not much is remembered except [1] mark and i know approximatley 600,000 gay men in london, [2] the floors of the club are made of mashed potatoes and all slanted, and [3] there were zero shiny disco balls. at one point, my mind fell into a recursive stack overflow… i was aware that i was aware that i was confused that i was aware that i wasn’t moving but that i was dancing and that i wasn’t making sense but that i was aware of everything. i blame the lasers.

i dunno what i would do [or how i would've survived this weekend] without a companion like my marky. even in the depths of chemical paranoia, we still managed to communicate telepathically. as per my fetish from friday and saturday, i found myself still/again lusting after/onto several skinny skinhead lads [the politically-incorrect auschwitz look], and there were plenty at universe, ripe for the pickin’.

at 5am we trekked over to orange/a:m which was pretty much idential to beyond 24 hours prior, except twice as many peeps, twice as hot, and generally more mayhem, crowding and queueing for the drug-ingesting cubicles toilets. .gregiño was amusingly there, which was great but disconcerting, as he represents youth and innocence and r’n'b funk, whereas that place represents clichéd circuit-boy hedonism and the dark side of clubland.

amazingly, when we left orange/a:m this morning, i was perfectly awake, sober and coherent, although i had been awake for nearly 48 hours, about half of which were spent on the dancefloor.

dancing. clubs. boys. socializing. smiles. exercise. sex. music. meditation. joy. and you know i’m satisfied.