Late nights

There are not-so-late nights that make you sick, and late nights that bring you laugh after joyous laugh. Last night was the former, and tonight was the latter. And a six-foot-three-inch Indian queen made all the difference.

Yes! Ro’s back. And more beautiful and fierce than I could ever have imagined.

I met Ro in DC back in the day, when we were both futzing around with jobs, honorary Jews, and looking for boyfriends. He was 6 feet and three inches of skinny, black-clothed, chain-smoking, body dysmorphic, feather-boa-waving, gentle, depressed, potty-mouthed fabulousness – a nicer, more sensitive version of the gay man friend every girl should be so lucky to have.

He moved to London from DC in 2000, and has lived here ever since, surviving layoffs, a boyfriend who beat and cheated on him, two muggings, financial desperation so bad that he ended up in the hospital exhibiting symptoms of a heart attack, and innumerable stupid homophobic comments.

I haven’t seen Ro for six years, haven’t spoken to him for two, and you know what I saw tonight? As Beyonce and girls sang, a survivor. Clad in black and white John Paul Gaultier newsprint pants tucked into black leather knee high boots and a muscle shirt hidden under a chic black jacket, he strode up to me outside the restaurant with a “Oh. My. God. You whore!” and picked me up as we hugged tight. And then we started an evening through London the way only a confident gay man can know London – first dinner at a nice Italian restaurant; then a walk down Bond Street commenting on all the store windows; then a drink at Claridges Hotel bar, where he kept pushing me to stroll around looking for hot men; then a drink at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel bar, where Beyonce stayed two weeks ago, where you have to pay a $10 surcharge on drinks if you aren’t at the hotel, and where a frantically lively and posh hetero meat market thrives; and then a drink at Balans, where a lively gay scene happens (though the real show was outside tonight, where two men and two girls dropped trou, for some inexplicable reason – perhaps the fact that they’d been drinking for 7 hours or so).

A note on the Mandarin Oriental: hotel bars are hotel bars, but I didn’t really believe Ro’s characterization of the MO as a sure thing until we got there and I saw: 1. A man totally feeling up a woman’s boob across the bar, while they sucked face (and these were, like, 30-year-olds!); 2. An older man trying to hit on Ro; and 3. Intense attention from the wedding party group behind us, especially from some dude with whom I had the following conversation:

“You’re from New York!” (Ro had set me up as a New Yorker visiting town, while he was “Alex” living in London.) “So what are you doing here?”

“Working. I leave on Tuesday.”

… (truncated for amusement’s sake)

“People don’t really love you for you. They fall in love with who they think you are, and then they forgive you for being who you really are. And then they love you.”

I thought about that for a second. “If you’re lucky.” I thought about it for another second. “That’s deep!” I said, fairly serious.

….“I’m a very happy man.”

“Oh, really? Why’s that?”

“I’m a brown, Muslim, 28 and living in London. And I don’t get any flack about who I am here. People judge me for me.”

“That’s nice.” (I mean, what ARE you supposed to say to that?)

“My friend here, I must say, is very well endowed.”

WHAT? “Um, that’s great!”

“And I’m hung like a donkey.”

Double WHAT?? “Um, congratulations.”

“I’m just kidding.” A beat. “No, I’m not.” Beat. “Yes, I am.”

“Well, that’s too bad,” I said straightfaced, “because now I’m not interested any more.”

…. “Oh, no, he’s won.”

“Who’s that?”

“See the guy and the girl over there?”

“So, what, were you trying to talk her up?”

“Yeah…”

“Well, maybe you could try again!”

“Yeah, I will. Look, I hope I haven’t ruined your impression of London.”

Hee! You know, at home I complain about guys not being straightforward enough, and here I complain about guys being vulgar. It’s true. You can’t win.

In his outfit and striking size, Ro attracted a lot of attention, especially when he took off his jacket and exposed beautifully toned arms. Look, boy was skinny when I knew him, and a chain smoker and drinker. Now he swims 3 miles a day, has cut down on the smoking and drinking dramatically, and looks amazing. But not all the attention was positive. When, about 3 am, we were looking for a cab home, three straight men looked at him and one of them said loudly, “WHAT are you WEARING?” The old Ro might have shrunk away from him, or yelled a curse over his shoulder while striding away. This Ro barely broke stride and just walked right up to the obnoxious guy, got in his face and said, “Clothes, you ass,” before walking away again to the whoa’s of the guy and his mates.

SA-WEET! That was seriously impressive shit. I wanted to cheer.

It’s impressive and inspiring to see a friend who has come into his own. Especially one who has kept the sweet, gentle nature he had before.

God, it’s 4:38 am. I had a fantastic night; I’m so glad I didn’t go away this weekend, especially as the weather was very fickle today. I hope I can get up early enough to go for a walk tomorrow, but I only got five hours of sleep last night. (Stupid Pimms cocktails. Stupid attorneys doing obscene impressions of Sesame Street characters – again with the vulgarity! It’s fine if you know me, but if you just met me a couple hours ago and you’re a partner? Inappropriate. Stupid hk for drinking too much on an empty stomach and getting dry heaves at midnight.)

In sum (and I cheat here a bit by summing up things I didn’t even write about): Friday night goodbyes are all fun and games until the vomitous feelings start – true, all except the part about the fun and games; Saturday morning impromptu rides in a bottega owner’s Maserati are vroomy and sexy (yup, rode in one, thanks to my mentor and her boyfriend, who live over an Italian bottega); Saturday shopping is annoying and unfruitful; a $200 Saturday night with an old friend, painting the town red = priceless.

God, I’m so incoherent right now. I'm going to sleep, like, in 10 seconds.

August 31, 2006
Next to last day of work!

Last night I was very dumb and, after writing the blog entry, read a serial killer novel until 3 am, at which time I attempted to go to sleep but was so convinced that the creaks of my floor boards were the sounds of a mad murderer coming to get me that I couldn’t fall asleep until 3:30. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Oh serial killer novels! Why must I love you so much, when you give me nothing but sleepless nights?

“WhatEV,” says the novel, because I certainly took it easy this morning. Seriously, I am so done with work this summer. I rolled in at 10:15 am (official work day starts at 9:30), totally forgot about something an associate asked me to do if I had time, and sat around doing the following:

- figuring out my classes and what to shop next week (fortunately, there aren’t that many classes I’m interested in, so not much to decide there)
- emailing the housing office and requesting a move (I was put in a suite of two men and me, and I just really can’t deal with sharing a bathroom with two men all year), which fortunately they granted
- asking our travel department about getting on an earlier flight next Tuesday, as I miscalculated my arrival and will arrive in Crimson City two hours after registration closes. (There is one – it leaves at 7:55 am rather than 11:50 am – but it gets into Crimson City at 3 pm, which leaves me one hour to get my luggage, get a cab to go the 30 minutes to the law school, heave my stuff out of the cab, and run to the registrar’s office; I’m thinking I may as well just sleep in that day.)
- writing the clinical programs office and The Turtle, my supervisor from last semester’s employment discrimination clinical, to arrange an internship at the State Commission Against Discrimination this fall. I’m totally going to have the Year O’ Employment Discrimination, what with an internship there this fall and then doing a research project with The Turtle as part of his employment civil rights workshop in the spring.

In the afternoon, I listened to an audiotape of a talk given by two securities lawyers about recent cases involving a Securities Exchange Commission rule that says the CEO and CFO of companies filing quarterly and annual reports with the SEC must sign off on the veracity of the financial statements in those reports. (Hey, did your eyes glaze over when you read that? So did mine!) (But actually, it was sort of interesting.) (Dear lord, am I going to be a securities lawyer?) (I think that’s a possibility.) (How … um, lawyerish.) I was about to summarize it when I got an urgent email for help from an associate I’ve been working closely with: would I please incorporate comments from the investment bank into a document with our comments on it AWAP?

Well, while I was doing that (essentially copying the bank’s comments onto our copy of the document) (yes, this does have a point, just a sec), I got a phone call from the tax partner I did a research assignment for two weeks ago, and he gave me feedback on my work and asked if I had any questions. While I give major props for the feedback call, I was trying to get those comments in, and during the feedback call, got a phone call from the associate asking where the document was.

All this leading up to the part where I’m in the associate’s office asking her about two comments I don’t understand, and the partner on the deal storms in, asks where the comments are, stares incredulously and irately at her (the associate), and then bitches her out for not having her priorities in order and not letting him (the partner) know that she has another deal blowing up: “We got these comments at 3 and it’s 7:30 now! They’ve already sent us a follow-up email, and we need to keep on top of this, or tell them why we’re not. If you can’t do it, I need to know!”

Then the partner, in a way that shows how clearly pissed he still is, looks at the comments I’ve been having trouble with, sorts them out, explaining them to me in an exaggeratedly patient tone, and then tries to play nicey nice by saying, “God, I’m really in a bad mood today, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” The associate, with astonishing sanguineness, asked, “Why?” and the partner replied, “I don’t know. Because no one loves me.” Barf. Stop trying to be all cute when you’ve just blown a gasket at someone YOU have loaded work onto and who is trying to address two different deals at once.

But I couldn’t resist asking, “Do you have a dog?” and amidst a too-loud laugh, following with, “Because your dog probably loves you.”

What I should have said was, “Stop yelling and keep your panties on, fool! Who freakin’ cares if we have it out in 2 hours or 4?” And then gotten fired. Which would be good, because I definitely don’t care if we get it out in 2 or 4.

I felt bad about taking so long with the comments, though, for the associate’s sake, and so stayed around to help her with stuff and “keep [her] sane” (in her words), until 8:30 pm, when she suggested we walk through the city to Victoria Station, where she could go to her boyfriend’s house and I could catch the tube to my apartment. And so the night of the yelling turned into a nice 45-minute walk past St. Paul’s, Fleet Street, Parliament and Big Ben, Westminster, a statue of Abe Lincoln (my main man!), for some reason, and finally into the tube stop and back home.

And now, I am finally going to go to sleep before midnight, for the first time in weeks, and so I’ll sum up: laziness at the office doesn’t mean I’m not accomplishing anything; employment discrimination – all year, all the time; the joy of getting things that I want is quite...joyous; partners who yell and then act cute suck the big time; and London is so, SO pretty.