When gay really does mean happy

Today was my first day back at the gym after gorging, imbibing, bingeing, and noshing for three days straight. It was far more crowded than usual. People really do make New Year's resolutions after all. I've put on a centimeter or two, which I can tell from the number of belt notches it takes before my waist screams, "Stop! You're hurting me!"

New Year's Eve was a blurry panoply of Blue Point oysters, wine, cheeses, beer, dips, champagne, sushi, ruggelach, brownies, cookies, et cetera, et cetera. New Year's Day at Jenn and Steve's housewarming was a smorgasbord of cold cuts, wine, cheeses, beer, crudites, soda, dips, breads, cookies, et cetera, et cetera. An encore presentation of New Year's Eve at Eric and Sheri's that night (with Malpeque oysters, yum!), then a brunch of huevos rancheros, Bloody Mary, and pastries with Glenn and Derrick in Williamsburg, capped by a command performance of Saturday's pigfest at Jenn and Steve's, before Jenn ships off to Portland, Maine, to be in a show for 2 months.

I worked out extra, extra hard tonight.

All my favorite boys were there, and some new hotties: a guido named Vinny, whose name I guessed only because it was etched into his arm (unless I'm wrong and it's his boyfriend or favorite movie character), and some miscellaneous hunky guys I've never seen before and hope to see again. And of course my boyz Howie and Ben were there.

Howie is a 20-something attorney at a prestigious firm in Manhattan. He's smart, cute, and funny, and he works very hard in the gym. Like Ben, the newbie I wrote about a few weeks ago, he pays way too much attention to me and makes way too much eye contact with me throughout the workout. They are both a little fey, but not in an unattractive way. Maybe I'm inadvertently going through midlife crisis and am just happy that younger guys are paying attention to the old man. Maybe my gaydar is on the fritz and I need to give back the toaster oven. Or maybe, just maybe, naughty girls need love, too.

Tonight Ben, Howie, and I were in the locker room--the setting of many gay porn movies--when I decided it was time to come out to them and set the record straight, as it were. I hadn't been deliberately coy up until this point--the topic just hadn't come up. We were talking about real estate, and I said that my partner and I were looking for a place to buy in Brooklyn. "He's not from Brooklyn," I said, emphasizing the male pronoun, "so he has no preconceived notions of the way neighborhoods were 10 years ago."

"I live on 14th Street and 6th and rent," Ben said, vertically scanning me in my briefs, "but my girlfriend and I are wondering if we should wait because things are so expensive. Even Chelsea is way out of our league." Wait. What? Was this girlfriend as used in queer parlance--as in "Girlfriend, you are working my last gay nerve!"--or girlfriend as in "I got my girlfriend pregnant, Father"? And why the reference to Gay Grand Central? I was too busy recovering from this combination when Howie sucker punched me with, "Yeah, my girlfriend and I don't know whether the time is right, either." Wait. What? Two solid hooks with neither punch landing.

Ben shook my hand vigorously and smiled as he left. "Hope to see you Wednesday," he said, and winked. Howie waited for me so we could walk to the subway together. He gave me a New Year's hug.

Can it be that neither Howie nor Ben is a disco dancin', Oscar Wilde readin', Streisand ticket holdin' friend of Dorothy? Or am I just totally...clueless?