a few nights ago, we’re at a going away party for some guy named mike. why’s mike moving back to florida? let’s just say in florida you don’t get put on hold when you dial 911. in florida your car doesn’t get stolen after the police pull you over. in florida they don’t let you out of the hospital while you’re still suicidal. none of us really knew him anyway, it was just a party.

sitting upstairs sipping margaritas on the deck overlooking weho, heat lamps keeping us toasty, i clock this angry looking guy wandering around the bar, drinking a 40. bridget [petite sexy 21yo gal] steals his attention, and angry guy comes over, introducing himself as klaus. he’s not just angry, he’s also german, and explains that he’s bipolar, giving me a wink.

bipolar, in his case, means he’s soon making out with gal-pal bridget and boy-pal bogart in no time. he continues to try to impress me with his germanness, but of course i’m not. so, you’re a foreigner in a faraway land? whoopdie doo. he keeps showing off his german i.d. card and stuff, even though he’s lived here for 14yos. what a poser.

abandoned by this menage-a-blah, i chat up this cute aussie boy who is perched on a stool on the ground floor patio, keeping an eye on passersby. he’s australian but doesn’t wanna talk about it. i explain i’m from london, and have visited sydney, have lived with a few aussies, etc., but he’s… distant.

daniel is a cute, very innocent looking 29yo. dressed head-to-toe in diesel-esque rags, he looks like an extra in scissor sisters video. our smalltalk steers us towards talking about his ex.

over the next hour, i play dr. phil and psychoanalyze daniel, discovering quite quickly that he’s actually stalking his ex. just as this discovery hits me, the ex stumbles out of .micky’s next door, and daniel grabs me and starts sloppily making out with me. he rotates us to ensure his ex can see, but his ex is too drunk to notice.

the ex then proceeds to get pizza at the pizza place next door, and then hangs around on the sidewalk with a few boys. the whole time, daniel is pinning me up against the wall, his tongue sloppily slathering everywhere, murmuring, what’s he doing? can he see us?

an hour later, we’re dancing. again, his tongue is flapping around like a rag at the car wash, but i’m putting up with hit. eventually the ex moves on, so we call it a night.

as we’re walking back to daniel’s car, we take turns explainig to each other that nothing’s gonna happen tonight, that he’s just gonna drive me home and that’ll be that. mid-sentence, i turn and realize daniel is no longer walking next to me.

he’s approached a parked pickup truck, and is chatting with a beefy white guy and beefy latino guy inside. wanna come back to my place? he’s asking these strangers. the white guy eyes me up, says yeah! while me & the latino guy in the passenger seat give each other confused shrugs.

after a few minutes of negotiation, i make it clear that i’m not going home with any of them. out of nowhere, a girl pops up in the back seat of the cab, exclaiming, i’ll take all four of you at once! let’s go!

eventually the pickup truck couple come to their senses, and tell daniel, why don’t you and your boyfriend just go home? daniel turns to me, and says, him, he’s not my boyfriend! he’s like a 5, maybe a 6.

i make it a few blocks down santa monica blvd before daniel catches up with me, out of breath from jogging. that’s not what i meant! you’re a 9! you’re a 9! i give him a quick explanation of how my ego works. of how i only surround myself with boys who worship me, etc. etc. etc.

back at my place, in bed, he continues talking about his ex. they dated for something like a month, 4 months ago, and this boy has been stalking him ever sense. calling him from payphones, showing up at bars he knows he’ll be at. he explains some convoluted scenario of where he organized an orgy [his own words] in order to win him back and/or make him jealous.

as i doze off, horny as the day is long [wait—that doesn't make any sense, but you know what i mean], he explains to me how good it feels to just cuddle. he’s a recovering sex addict, you see, and tonight is the first night he’s been able to resist getting frisky with a boy he just met.

charmed, i’m sure. at least with chip i got a little action with my tongue lashing verbal abuse…

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everyone in l.a. [waiter/actors, waiter/writers, waiter/filmmakers] loves to network. every night of the week, people get dressed up in the latest couture, sporting labels just outside what they can afford, and swish into faux-vip parties across town, in the hills, at hotel lounges, clamoring to ratchet up a notch or two on the hollywood totem pole.

last night, i dragged .greg to a golden globes party at east/west, hosted by diva. the goal, i guess, is the same as any night out with .greg—to find husbands, friends, people who want to get involved with qr and to have a hell of a time.

the evening starts with a sarcastic, who’s on top conversation with the cute/bitchy guestlist boy, who spends the whole night examining and re-examining his clipboard in the cold, even when nobody is at his desk. with a smile, he lets me in for free.

next is the i’m going to pretend i’m running this place stunningly cute doorman. dressed in a sharp suit, with carefree hair curling down to his shoulders. an air of dignity and class. too bad .greg recognized him from his manhunt profile as a boy who is in to less-than-savory activities. soooo-eyyyy.

the actor/bartenders who are used to being the most attractive gays there, were suddenly thrown off-kilter by the homos that overtook the normally-straight bar for the evening. upon arrival, i waited 9 minutes [9 minutes!] for a bartender to notice me and serve me. they were entirely too busy prancing around, checking themselves out in the mirrors and trying to figure out which powerful hollywoodaddies to flirt with.

outside, .greg and i were approached by the very definition of broadway queen… some nelly older gent who, without any provocation, dropped inappropriate joke after joke. a bomb about lesbians. a bomb about asians [this is at a fundraiser party to help promote ethnic diversity]. a bomb about some actor we’d never heard of. eventually he actually talked to us rather than at us, explaining how much he loved london—in 1987. never even got his name.

after sitting down with tori spelling, we sat back as she shared bizarre story after bizarre story. she was so trashed that she lit the wrong end of the cigarette, and couldn’t quite focus on anything in particular. as i went up to the bar to get .greg and i’s second round of drinks, i realized that the l.a. glitterati really can’t handle their liquor. it was barely 9pm and people were already stumbling.

at the bar, i made smalltalk with nick from project runway. and, by smalltalk, i mean can i squeeze past you so i can get to the bar? which really means i don’t care who you are can you please stop standing awkwardly in the one spot where they’re serving drinks. he was nice though. almost cute. auf wiedersehen.

chatted a bit with nelson, the friendly sassy organizer, who explained that they’d be raffling off all sorts of prizes. a signed script from desperate housewives. tickets to attend the taping of the final episode of will & grace. a threesome with the boys from brokeback mountain. tickets to see ellen. a few moments later, my name is called. i run up to the balcony to claim my prize. a friggin’ calendar. thanks.

i return to tori and .greg, where i find sat next to me a lovely lady who reminds me a bit of dawn french with glasses. smalltalk smalltalk smalltalk. i size her up immediately… you are a… producer. for films. independent films. she actually looks surprised. she’s the first person i met that night who didn’t have a desperate/sad/eager look on their faces. she was probably the only person there to enjoy herself and not to sleep her way up a notch or two. i asked if i could try on her wig. a minute later, she excused herself and ran back inside.

tori tells me, my friend trent doesn’t really like you. huh? exsqueeze me? yeah, he heard your name called at the raffle, and apparently you two had a thing? eric wracks his brain… trent… trent… i’m sorry, we did not find any results for “trent”.

eventually this trent boy comes over, explains some complicated story of how we met [at a party after the outfest awards, where he worked on a film with a friend-from-college's boyfriend]. good memory. meaningless connection. not sure where the anger comes from—apparently i didn’t respond to his email? or something? geez… i sleep with boys and they hate me. i don’t sleep with boys and they hate me. just can’t win.

we eventually vacate, to dive bar number one. inside, .greg and i are letting some friendly older gents buy us drinks, as this sorta cute anthony rapp lookin’ motherfella comes up to me, asking if he could play with my hair. i get this a lot, and normally don’t mind, but tonight so many people had groped my sidehawk that it was presently in a semi-flaccid ‘fro. i explain this to him, but he insists.

he’s sorta cute, and is wearing glasses, so i turn to .greg and see that look on his face. which look? the oh my god this boy is going to be my future husband and, no eric, it’s not just because he’s wearing glasses which is my number one fetish. i flirt with hair boy a bit more. he wants details, though, details about what products i use and how i do it and stuff.

turns out he’s an actor, and he’s just been cast as a street hustler. and he’s looking for an authentic look. thanks. bitch. i pass him off to .greg, and notice his very handsome friend sat on a stool next to me. i introduce myself to him [probably the only cute boy i'd seen the whole evening, except for the bitchy waiters at east/west], and he smiles back, telling me that he’s an actor too and has just come back from filming in australia.

jet lag would explain why he’s tired. but jet lag doesn’t justify why he’s trying to put his hands down my pants. that would be slobbering intoxication and horniness, something i’m usually quite familiar with but tonight i’m not quite in the mood. the boy then proceeds to fall of his barstool. classy. i help him up, kiss him on the cheek, and slip my card in his pocket. classy.

.greg and i conclude the night at .fubar with a little song and dance and karaoke with bruce daniels, our new best friend and probably the only person we’d met the whole night who wasn’t desperate to network. brill.

i’ve been thinking a lot about how my four years in london have changed me… the confidence, the mojo, the snarkiness it implanted into my frontal lobe, that it brought out from the murky depths. i don’t blame the city itself… if anything, i used my monumental move to london in 2001 as an excuse to finally let myself be the outrageous self that i’d been suffocating over the years.

i arrived in london on july 3, 2001—a tuesday. wednesday, i unpacked, and thursday was my first day of work at scient, the same dot-com consulting company i’d worked for in san francisco.

that thursday, i met my new team of 20, and my new project manager, mark. i immediately sussed mark out to be a no-nonsense, no-bullshit expense-account-loving, frequent-flier-miles-hording, wrinkle-free-khakis-wearing traveling consultant. he was nice enough to me, but generally had a pissed-off demeanor as he scurried from meeting to meeting around the client’s offices.

friday, my gay colleagues took me out to lunch… i had known them from conference calls and mailing lists, as i was pretty active in setting up the gay employee network from san francisco the year previous. one of my gay colleagues, andreas, was having a birthday party at a posh bar in soho that evening. was i free, he asked? ummm… yeah… i don’t really have any plans for friday.

so, on my 3rd full day in london, i excitedly went to my first party, my first social engagement, my first brouhaha.

i remember showing up, and thinking how out-of-place i looked. how baggy my clothes were. how stylish everyone else was dressed. a cocktail remedied that in no time flat, and i laughed as holly and micha explained to me what a mojito was.

still horribly jetlagged [remember, this is the old, innocent, fresh-off-the-boat eric], i decided just before last call it was time for me to go. as i was saying my goodbyes, this very handsome latin boy comes up to me, introducing himself as gabriel.

he’s dashing, 30, handsome and quite the casanova. he’s buying me drinks, he’s touching my arm, touching my shoulder, winking… definitely putting the moves on innocent old me. i’m strangely intrigued by this guy.

i should point out that i’m only 24 at this point, and, to this day i’ve only been with 2 or 3 guys more than a year older than me. i’m attracted to innocence, to youthfulness. but, something about 30yo gabriel convinces me he’s exactly who i need to fall for, this, my 3rd day in london.

out of nowhere, my boss mark shows up, wearing a tight valour shirt and looking a bit tipsy. he comes up to gabriel, saying i’ve been looking everywhere for you! and nods my way, saying, oh, eric, you’ve met gabriel!

the three of us make smalltalk for a while before mark excuses himself again, saying he was getting his coat. gabriel leans in for a kiss, and, after the fireworks disperse, asks me if i’d like to go home. i blush, and suggest, maybe we can get some coffee?

sitting outside old compton café staring at our boiling-hot mochas at 1130pm on a friday night, i’m attempting to make smalltalk as casanova keeps putting the moves on me—flirtatously, and phsyically. his mobile keeps ringing, and he keeps ignoring it.

just before last tube, we’re standing in a doorway of the cambridge theatre [where les mis played], and we kiss. quite possibly the manliest kiss i’ve ever experienced. with that, casanova convinces me to go home with him.

in the taxi ride back to his place in hammersmith, i try to piece together why he was at the party. well, i know everyone through mark… he looks down at his phone, and then out the window of the black cab, his hand on my knee.

mark’s sort of, well, my boyfriend… he grimaces as he tells me.

oh, great, i’m going home with my boss’s boyfriend. on my third day in my new home country, after my second day of work.

the next morning, standing naked on his balcony overlooking the thames, he phones up mark, apologizing for ditching him at the bar, and making up an elaborate story as to why he didn’t answer his phone the 34 times mark called. i drag the pillow over my head to block out his lies, the sunlight and the reality of what’s just happened.

i would say that monday morning was awkward—but it wasn’t. i sat in meetings all day with mark, and it was obvious he had no idea what had happened.

awkward would be a few weeks later asking my boss for time off to go to ibiza, where his boyfriend was secretly meeting up with my buddy duane and i.

yeah—that was awkward. but fun. and naughty.

i’d say that’s precisely where the shift occurred. when i went from nice, sweet, innocent eric to the egomaniacal creature i am now.