Dr. Everything-Gonna-Be-Alright

Our little group has experienced some attrition lately, and Matty and I have been discussing ways to address the problem. As with any problem, there are two ways to deal with it: you can treat the symptoms, or remove the underlying cause. Here, the underlying cause is the rash of marriages in the last year. Joey, between fisticuffs, has settled into domestic bliss with Robbie. BT runs constantly around the country with Toby, and I’ve got Carlos keeping me out of the bars and bath houses. More recently Woodsy has found love (or at least mutual dysfunction) with Jimmy, Jerome has Good Mark and a series of sport coats, Evil Mark has his usual gang of underage internet whores, and even JPK found a soul mate at least as crazy as he is. Ben has the yellow hordes of Asia (and, according to rumor, Mike Meola). Paul and Curtis are together (although not in the traditional “love, honor, and cherish” mode), leaving only Matty and Adam single.

As anyone can tell you, having a boyfriend will disrupt your social life. Some, such as BT or JPK, disappear into their boyfriends’ social circles and aren’t heard from until they get dumped and come crawling back to their friends like whipped curs. Others, like yours truly, try to balance our obligations to friends and boyfriends, and end up pissing everyone off and making ourselves miserable in the process. Then there’s the third approach, taken by Joey, Jerome, and now Woodsy: focus on your boyfriend until your friends stop calling, and then schedule a “reconnect event.” Regardless of the approach, the net effect is that people in relationships simply don’t have as much free time as single people to carouse with their friends.

That means the carousing duties have fallen to essentially to Matty, Adam, and Paul (who isn’t really encumbered my a relationship that means anything to him). While Matty and Paul have done their level best to take up the drinking-and-boy-chasing slack, they can only do so much. And Adam is practically useless: he’s rarely on the prowl, and when he is he won’t actually get drunk or hit on anyone. While Matty has happily suggested we just break up all the relationships (he rejected a 12-step program for bitter old queens), I think that this once curing the problem might be worse than the disease. If you don’t believe me, you’ve never seen Carlos when he’s pissed off; he’d kill me with a butter knife. The alternative is an infusion of fresh, single boys into the group.

I, for one, think we would only benefit from some fresh blood. It would give Paul new boys to sleep with, Matty new boys to date (but not get to sleep with), and me new material for the blog. Plus, we could reconstitute a posse that’s willing to go out and get smashed on Monday night because, frankly, no one cares when or if they get home.

The trick (so to speak) is to find and integrate these boys, and that’s where the recent cocktail parties come in. A cocktail party is a great venue for meeting new people: you have the alcohol and music of a bar, but limited hookup-and-leave options and an unspoken expectation that you’ll socialize with everyone. It’s a good idea, but so far the cocktail parties are missing one key ingredient: fresh blood. We can’t meet new boys if the only people that attend are you tired, old married queens we’ve been carousing with since Hector was a pup. The bottom line is this: bring cute, unattached male friends to upcoming cocktail parties, or Matty is going to lose patience and start wrecking your relationships. Well, Paul and Curtis are safe, their relationship couldn’t get any worse. But the rest of you are in real danger, because if the doctor can’t treat the symptom, he’ll cure the disease. (Except for Evil Mark; he has a strain that is resistant to antibiotics). So get out your little black books, fire off some emails, and let’s make the next cocktail party (at Curtis’s, I believe) one to remember!