From The Ashes ...

Social Butterfly (NOT)

Yes, I did attend the GBNY (gay bloggers NY)event held Thursday night at Barrage. Well, by attend they were there and I was there so attend I did but of course we didn't meet up. You see my curiosity got the better of me and I simply had to see who would show up and how many would show up and what they looked like and would I recognize anyone from their pictures. But my social shyness is such that I could never just go up and introduce myself to someone and just, you know, talk.I wouldn't even know how to start that conversation:

"Hi, you don't know me and you've probably never heard of me and you've never read a single word I've written, nice to meet you?"

And this, my friends, is exactly the reason why god invented alcohol. Cocktail parties. The bane of the socially shy person's existence. Unfortunately, I couldn't employ that all -important weapon in my arsenal. I was due in at work at 10pm and was closing (5am), so getting liquored up at 7pm would have left me in a serious deficit in basic comprehension come work time. And while I definitely would not be the first gay bar manager to arrive for his shift drunk from a cocktail party, if you know me you know that's just not me. So I sipped my club soda w/lemon and quietly scoped out the scene. Apparently, others had no such alcohol restrictions.

As expected, they appeared to be a pretty diverse and animated bunch . Age range looked anywhere from late 20's to late 40's. Maybe not as geeky as I expected but if geeky looks like this, sign me up.

Anyway, Barrage is under a renovation, with yellow construction tape wrapped around all the fixtures/walls. Cute(ish) danger and hard hat area signs scrawled on the walls. You can't tell where they're going with it yet. It's really hard to keep a bar open and running while you renovate it but the lost income if you close is way more than most bar owners are willing to suffer. That's understandable. We did it (badly, in hindsight) a couple of years ago so I know of which I speak.

All in all I lasted 'till around 7:30 or so, before I grabbed my knapsack and headed back home. I understand from the post party blogs around town that the blogfest went far into the night with many smaller groups meeting up again on Saturday.(I also discovered that name tags were broken out at some point, which might have been helpful to me as I probably would have summoned the balls to speak to people I had read.) At any rate, I needed to fix some food for lunch which I ate while I fixed my dinner. Ironed a shirt and then high-tailed it up to The Bar. Speaking of which, if any NYGB want to do something like this again or if you have a cool idea for another Blogger party gimme a shoutout. I happen to know a certain Midtown East bar manager that's receptive to the idea. I promise to talk this time.

Oh, and on a side note, I did manage to discover a whole host of (mostly) New York City Bloggers that I haven't been reading. Seriously, my blog "favorites" column on my home computer has gotten wicked out of control. It takes me a good hour and a half to check them on a daily basis all at once.Sometimes I do it in sections over the course of a day. And a lot of them I haven't even linked to yet. But I like my periodic link updates. I think it keeps things interesting. What say you? Leave it alone? Show you everything I'm reading? Or the dreaded third option: Who the fuck gives a shit? ..... That's what I thought.

And for the record, I am fully aware of the ironic situation of describing myself stripping naked, having full out filthy buttsex in a room full of other naked men, only to be in a situation the next day fully clothed but unable to bridge a three foot gap across a room to speak to people I obviously have so much in common with. And yes, I know it speaks to my sexual compulsion overriding my social shyness, or it may have something to do with my confidence in my abilities as a writer. I find it highly amusing in a you-are-so-fucked-up-in-the-head sort of way.