Hurricane Sandy Sunday started with boozy brunch at Harlem Tavern with a friend of Bohoken's. The flirty waiter’s spot-on
drink suggestions put me in a great mood for our stop at Boxers. As we headed
to dinner, most of NYC was heading home because the MTA subways were scheduled
to start shutting down at 7 to prepare for the storm. The PATH, however, was
open til midnight. I had every intention of using my extra 5 hours wisely.
While we were at dinner, I got a text from Cole (of MaverickMen.com
fame), who was looking for nightlife suggestions. This would have been simple
enough, except that they had a 20 year old with them. Even the dive bars in NYC
checks IDs now. I walked Bohoken to the PATH and met up with Cole, Hunter and
their boy around 10 as they wrapped up dinner. We agreed that the best course
of action would be to go to their hotel room in the Meatpacking District for a
drink.
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| it's a little chilly, guys. maybe a jacket over your tank-tops? |
Now, you might suspect that an invite to The Maverick Men’s
hotel room could only mean one thing. But it wasn’t like that at all. Besides,
Cole had texted me earlier that they didn’t want to meet up til late because
they were fucking. We had a great time talking about circuit parties, nightlife
and gaffes from event producers that had hired them in the past.
Bohoken had told me not to risk waiting for the last PATH
train, but I was having way too good of a time to leave before it was
absolutely necessary. I departed in just enough time to run for the 11:47 back
to Hoboken.
The storm was supposed to hit on Monday, and by that morning, everyone had
already hunkered down wherever they were staying. Facebook was a never-ending
stream of hilarity relating to the hurricane. I turned on the TV, hoping to
catch Wendy Williams, but it was all
news all day on Fox. Bohoken and I were sure to keep our laptops and phones
charged as well as our battery cases for our iPhones.
After stocking up on food that would keep for a few days, we
decided to venture out in the early afternoon for a drink. By that time, the
wind had picked up to the point where it was hard to walk straight by the
water. The W Hotel and shut down their bar, so we found a sports bar on
Washington St. (the main drag in Hoboken) and ordered a couple of martinis. The
bar had to shut by 5 since there was a 6PM curfew in effect for the city. On
the way home, we stocked up on more prosecco and wine. The main liquor store
was already closed, but the small, Korean-owned store across the street (the
one that was open Christmas morning) was bustling with drunks citizens
in need of last-minute provisions!
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| image from blogyourwine.com |
Bohoken: “Babe, I got more red wine! It doesn’t have to be
refrigerated!”
Me: “Brilliant!”
As we were finishing up our first bottle of wine that evening, we could
see the wind gusts getting severe. Bohoken’s apartment is in a high-rise right
on the water with a row of easterly-facing windows facing the Manhattan skyline.
Bohoken tapped my arm and pointed out the window.
“Babe, the power went out in Manhattan! It’s black from
Midtown all the way down.”
One of Bohoken’s easterly-facing windows never quite lined
up on the track that allows the lower half to slide up and down. Let me tell
you: with the wind, all the windows were flexing, and the building was swaying.
But that one window was rattling like a body builder’s plates on his last rep! It really
wasn’t all that surprising when it hinged wide open. Hopefully, this is the closest I’ll ever come to a
change in cabin pressure on an airplane.
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| part of my panic process is taking pictures for instagram, okay! |
Bohoken is generally an anxious person, so if I started
freaking out the way I wanted to, nothing good would come of it. But Bohoken
was surprisingly calm and practical considering we had 80mph gusts blowing
directly into the apartment (luckily, there wasn’t much rain). Within 10
minutes, we’d emptied a bookshelf, propped it up against the window, refilled
it with books and anchored it with the couch. It still left the window open a
couple of inches, but it greatly reduced the noise, wind and possibility of
projectiles flying into the living room.
We opened a new bottle of red in the bedroom just in time
for me to live-tweet Drag Race All Stars.
The episode was half over when the power went out the first time. It came back
about 2 minutes later and then went out for good.
After poking around online for a while, Bohoken’s laptop
battery wouldn’t make it through our History of the World, Part I screening. On my phone, I saw bar check-ins from all
the HK gays (mostly Hardware, which had just opened) and a video of the ConEd transformer
explosion that left so many without power.
Bohoken passed out before we finished the bottle of wine
I was even remotely tired, so I did what any sensible gay with no power would
do: a candlelight photo shoot in the bathroom mirror.
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| blackout realness |
The next day, Bohoken was determined to clear out bookshelf
space in anticipation of my imminent move to Hoboken (yeah, that’s happening... if the PATH ever comes back).
He went to work like a crystal queen at the end of a house party! A fortunate
side-effect of this domestic rampage: he found my camera! I’d just gotten a
text informing me that I’d made it to Round 3 of the GayTravel.com Guru
competition earlier in the week, so I took the fully-charged battery as a sign
that I should use this free time to write and film the video required for this round forthwith. Bohoken
was happy to interrupt his rearranging to work the camera and help me find
lighting, making more progress with his organizing during my costume changes
and line-memorizing.
That night, we used most of the last of my laptop battery to
watch Lost in Translation, which was
surprisingly entertaining despite how little happened in the film.
The next morning (a Wednesday) was Halloween, and the annual
NYC parade had been cancelled. However, we had more important things to worry
about: a friend had agreed to give us a ride to my place in Washington Heights,
which had never lost power. Or water. Or heat. Our friend, who was driving from
Queens, had to come via the RFK/Triboro bridge from the Bronx side and
traverse the GW bridge, coming down the river to Hoboken from the north.
Luckily, this gave us plenty of time to pack!
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| @myra_bilis, you called it, honey! |
As we traveled back up the river, we were amazed to see so
much of Jersey had no power. Most of Washington St. in Hoboken was blocked off
by police. Unlike Hoboken, Weehawken (just to the north) at least had flashing
stoplights. Electricity seemed to be in tact in Fort Lee (right across the GW from Washington Heights). We managed to cross the bridge with no
problem or delays once we got through the traffic to it.
Once we got to Washington Heights, I found out that my day
job’s email servers, which were apparently hosted in Brooklyn, were disabled
until Sunday. First, our VP emailed us on our personal accounts that we’d be
okay to stay home until Monday! By that time, the MTA busses were running, but
I’d read on Facebook that people couldn’t even get on them because of
overcrowding. Bohoken was talking about rollerblading 120 blocks to the office,
but he quickly changed his mind once he read that the city parks were closed. Soon
thereafter, he got an email saying he’d have been useless at the office anyway.
Bohoken signed into work from his laptop while I walked over
to SEPTA’s place with a bottle of Citrón to test out his new SodaStream machine. After a few drinks, Bohoken joined us, and
I introduced them to the joy of rice and beans from El Malecon. Bohoken was feeling especially tired, so I tucked
him in for a disco nap before catching a cab to meet the Maverick Men, who had
moved to a hotel in Hell’s Kitchen. I joined them for an abbreviated tour of HK
(Hardware and Bar-Tini, both of which were packed). When I took my leave, Cole was getting a 6’3 model who was dressed in drag to show him his cock in the
corner of the bar. If you saw his pics as a boy on his phone, you probably
would have stayed to watch. I, on the other hand, cabbed it back uptown to wake
up Bohoken just in time to arrive at No Parking around 1. But when I saw the
line (there’s never a line anymore!), I realized I’d had to walk back home to
pee.
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| i'd like to try one of each, please. |
After several drinks, a few lap dances and about as many
hours of sleep, I spent Thursday fucking around on the Internet and editing my
Gay Travel Guru video until the early evening. Turns out I’d missed an email
from the VP at my day job saying that the email servers were back up and
running and that “though your safety is the first priority, people are coming
into the office today. We’d love to see you if you can make it.” Oops. By then,
many of the trains had partial service, and the A train’s new termination at
168th St was only a 15 minute walk.
Friday, I felt sick and stayed in all day and night, leaving
the apartment only to get food. Saturday, however, Bohoken and I ventured
downtown for the first time since their power was back on, which turned out to
be about an hour-long trip by the time we walked from the temporary end of the A at 34th St to Chelsea. We grabbed brunch at Elmo (which was out of half
its menu), got hair cuts, grabbed a drink at Gym and headed home for a disco
nap. This time, it was Bohoken who felt sick, so I went out to No Parking
alone. I ran into Sir Honey Davenport as a boy as well as a briefly-lived (but
still friendly) hookup from my past. I guess I must have done a good job with
this hookup because his best friend kept buying me drinks and saying how
awesome he thought I was from whatever stories the hookup had been telling him about me.
*Kanye shrug*
Sunday, after 2 brunches ('cause that's how we do), Bohoken and I met up with some
friends at Gym to kick off DJ Corey Craig’s Marathon-themed Pub Crawl (since
the NYC Marathon was cancelled) to raise funds for Ali Forney, The Red Cross
and NYC Cares. The invite encouraged people to dress in running gear. Even
though I don’t even run for the train, I happened to have some black long
johns spandex and a fake Under Armour shirt. And finally, I had an occasion
to use the silk running shorts I’d gotten from a ridiculous AmericanApparel.com
sale a couple of years ago!
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| i'm already winded. |
I’m not sure how much Corey ended up raising, but Gym was
absolutely packed! Did I mention that Corey Craig and I were the only ones
dressed up in running gear? Yeah.
Did I also mention that I as of posting this, I
still haven’t been back to Hoboken since the PATH isn’t
running there (and still no timeline of recovery) and the bus situation is appalling? Yeah.
Planning a date from Grindr can be dicey. Click here to check out how it went for me.
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