1157pm on a friday night. i’ve just guzzled some more tylenol-brand bedtime decongestant cold flu minty blue liquid. my post-birthday cold/flu/cough is pretty much gone, but i figure some more of this elixir can’t hurt. i may nod off at any moment, though, so be warned!

what a smashing, smashing birthday i had! starting tuesday and continuing on my actual birthday wednesday, the love poured in via phone, email, ecard, by post and by myspace, from australia and canada and england and germany and ireland and bushland. so many lovely, witty, hilarious missives and notes and jokes and poems… i’m truly blessed to have so many thoughtful loving friends.

especially considering how crap i end at remembering other people’s birthdays. or even christmas, some years.

dinner featured a mix of boys and girls, young and old, straight and gay, and i wouldn’t have had it any other way. the 14 of us sat around that table for four hours, but to me it seemed like the blink of an eye.

my 29th birthday was not a particularly poignant one for me, and as i’ve been saying the for the past few years, i’m quite comfortable with my age, and am not even mildly worried about the big 3-0 milestone next year. i will say that i feel quite lucky to have so many l.a. friends, considering i’ve only been in town for 8 months.

i have to give manny, my boy visiting from london, mad props for the brilliant card “the higher the hair, the closer to .heaven” and of course for the brilliant cake, which had the whole wait staff at o-bar in stitches.

thanks to everyone for the lovely cards, the ecards, the notes, the phone calls, the myspace bulletins, the presents, the presence, the love, and for the smiles. there really is no greater gift to a wandering global soul like myself than to be connected to my friends around the globe—thank you!

and, no, although my cake was made out of all sorts of grade-a pharmaceuticals, my present condition (cough/sneeze/sore throat) is completely unrelated to any scandalous drug consumption, boy snogging, boy shagging, alcohol guzzling from the past week… no such activities occurred, honest!

erm, you say you’re here to see his royal highness, prince william?

after a relatively chilled friday night of dinner with marky, a bad film and then craig’s party with .gregiño, i crashed pretty early, still recovering from the awful flu i had earlier in the week.

when my alarm went off at 930am saturday morning, i started making the calls. mark, .gregiño, scottish david and marcos all were awoken to my greeting of happy christmas. like white spandex on a circuit boy, like 3 layers of foundation on a pimply drag queen, like a number-two buzzcut on a lesbian, the holiday of gay pride was all over london.

friggin’ gay homosexuals, they’re taking over the city!

started off the day with a very magnificent march, starting at cleopatra’s needle by westminster, wandering past 10 downing street in whitehall, eventually passing my old green park office on picadilly ave, concluding in hyde park. perfect weather, a few bottles of champers and the lovely marcos, .gregiño and mark made for a delightful stroll, along with 60,000 others. no problems, no arrests, no violence. a police spokesman was quoted saying, as far as i’m aware everything is hunky dory—especially hunky!

okay, so the four of us weren’t necessarily making a political statement by stumbling around central london with cheap champagne [ala torsten], but there is something important about [1] feeling part of a larger community, [2] celebrating our diversity (i never meet lesbians, trannies, leather daddies or those strange bisexual types) and [3] showing our strength in numbers to the rest of the world. gay marriage may be legal in canada, section 28 finally repealed over here, and gay sex is now legal in america, but we have a looooong way to go still, both politically and socially.

even though i lived in san francisco for years, and am editor of a huge gay magazine, this was my first pride parade. i’ve always poopooed the concept of pride. yes, i’m proud to be gay, but i’m not necessarily proud of gay people having a hedonistic day of drinking and drugs and sex in the bushes. well, color me a hypocrite, cuz that’s exactly how i spent saturday.

16 bazillion tossers anxiously await the best disposable pop groups of the week

this year the pride celebration was fabulously in hyde park, thanks in no small part to the gay-friendly liberal mayor of london, ken livingstone. fifteen years ago, when the gays tried to secure hyde park, authorities told us royal parks are for families, not homosexuals. we arrived at pride, schlepped over our £25 [!!!] tickets, and met up with atif, john, spikey james, andrew, luke among others. we made it to the main stage just as the first act appeared on stage.

there was quite the lineup for pride… i was particularly looking forward to jimmy sommerville, junior senior, mis-teeq and soft cell. the first act came out, and everyone gasped and giggled as we heard the gals on stage exclaim, hello london party people! we are the cheeky girls, and we want you to take off your shoozies and dance!. special cheekies pills were distributed around the group, to innoculate against pop overload.

mmmm…. laserrrrrrs

greg and i did speed-dating, which was a hoot. i was wasted trashed high as a kite confident throughout my 10 3-minute dates, and had a blast. out of the 10, the 6 that i liked liked me back [and so did the cute boy sitting next to me], but i most enjoyed the other 4 freaks, particularly the leather daddy [replete with handlebar 'stache] who’s opening question was what kinda sex do you like? i answered franky & honestly, and he demonstrated the proper way to give a blowjob. we like kinky!

other vague memories include running into friends visiting from america, consoling popstarz simon on his condemned stage, getting quite muddy with some lad named pete, convincing landlord charlie and tim to buy us lots and lots of champers at the champagne tent. oh, and dancing like a robotic cowboy for some 6 hours straight in the humid tents.

trekked over to universe, which, by all accounts, is probably the best clubbing night out in the uk. we swam in, scraped the mud off our souls knickers clogs boots, and spent a few hours chilling in the vip, chatting up anything with two legs. well, except for that midget guy. i tried being all politically-correct and stuff, but dancing with a midget whilst high is a recipe for paranoid insanity [example].

amazing, amazing, amazing tunes. was so great to [finally] drag .gregiño out for some all-night clubbing/bonding. the perfect mix of hard-core party boy marky, with young innocent andrew, expert raver greg and trashy party animal extraordinaire [moi] made for quite a band of superheroes for anyone who crossed our paths. we danced and chatted and drugged and clubbed and drank and pulled and just soaked in all the amazing positive energy from the heaving masses. in typical eric form, i made an ass out of myself chatting-up nicholas, the owner of coco latté.

eventually the wide-eyed sweaty masses of nubile brit-flesh started to slow down, the laserrrrrrs started to lose their hypnotic effects, and the drugs started to wear off. chilled watching the sun come up on an entirely silent london bridge, laying down next to the thames for an hour, just chit-chatting and lurving life. in total, lots of cheekies & cheekiness, a solid 12 hours of dancing, and tons of mysterious new numbers in my mobile’s phone book. good times, good times.

friday
naked picnic at simon’s. mustard, mayonnaise and hairspray. i love his dorm room.

dinner with mark at balans in soho, followed by drinks at friendly society. the perplexingly friendly proprietess is now my best friend. run into .gregiño, teacher james, atif and spikey james along with a gaggle of lesbians.

off to .popstarz for six hours of grinding, pogoing, flirting, grooving and breakdancing. thank god for guestlists. i drunkenly call simon about 10 times.

in kings cross, we consume minging sandwiches which taste of soap, and then head back to finsbury park for some proper kebab shop grub. atif, greg, mark and i enjoy some early morning mtv-mtv2-mtv dance-mtv base-vh1-vh1 classic-the box-kiss-kerrang music videos.

slumber party

the four of us decided to have a slumber party, which meant three to the bed and one on the floor mattress. greg was being a bit handsy, so we demoted him to the floor, but that was just the excuse he needed to jump and tickle and poke and prod us unsuspecting victims nestled on my bed. the pictures will easily illustrate who the victims were :wink:
Continue reading ‘WWEBD?’

on friday i ended my week long i’m-too-sick-and-or-too-ugly-to-leave-the-house stint. standing in leicester square waiting for mark, i slowly eased back into society by helping tourists with their queries. “ehhh… ehhh… ehh… excus-ehh me, do you know, ehh…. where, ehh… the ticket shop iz… ehh…?” bless.

after avoiding my mates for nearly a week, we had much to catch up on. mark and i had a delightful dinner at zizzi in covent garden. it might be the organic wine, or some other cosmic coincidence, but we always seem to share tawdry graphic details and goss whilst at that open, crowded restaurant.

after dinner, i dragged mark to the box to mix things up. everyone at the pub was pretending it was summer still, and crowded out onto the pavement with their pints. mark and i managed to convince a growing circle of peeps that we were cousins, on holiday from the US and canada, and that we we’re dating. “you’re cousins?!” “does your family know?!” “isn’t that illegal?!” “oh, i can see the resemblance.. you have the same smile!” “that’s disgusting, but intriguing. can i have your number?!”

with our perfect timing we slithered up to the front of the popstarz queue just in time. ran into jakob as we approached the queue, who dragged us to meet two of his friends. then jakob brought his posse of 8 sambuca-swilling swedes and greg. then another handful of people squeezed in. then ash. then a gaggle of six more. the people behind us didn’t mind in the least.

i have smart friends. one of my smart friends pointed out that the best way to take advantage of the 2-for-1 vodka drinks before 1130pm deal was to buy quadruple vodka drinks. an excellent idea, if you ask me. as i became intoxicated for the first time in 5 days [8O], josh joined us for his maiden voyage, and the swedes became more rambunctious. jakob who is georgous [but not my cuppa] was flirtatious, which was fun except for the death stares it evoked from greg. alas, boys will be boys.

the evening ended around 430am with a few less swedes, an £8 minicab ride home, and a happy greg who got to hear his hole songs and snog the deejay.