Gridlock!

By Adam Kuhn
Posted Friday, July 13, 2007

New York City is the land of the successful. People come here from all over the world to live out their dreams, and live it up in the meantime. However, coming here before you’ve made it big can get a little rocky. For example: the twenty-dollar downtown lunch.

I had an hour to kill before a meeting at my new school, so I went hunting for an internet café that I would claim as my new creative headquarters. On the corner of Franklin and West Broadway, I discovered “Pecans”. A very modern restaurant-style deli/café who’s only connection to nuts was the distinguished gentlemen walking in.

After only 15 minutes, not only had inspiration hit me, but so had the eyes of at least a dozen gorgeous artsy types, and adorable Wall Street interns. I was beginning to feel more at home already. That’s the thing about New York. Any given day can instantly go from bad… to hot.

New York, for many, is looked at as a challenge. Making it here, to a comfortable standard at least, is difficult. Apartments are expensive, competition is ferocious, and if you don’t understand the people, it can become very easy to get lost.

The system of operations in this city can be overwhelming, but for people like me, it’s just a big Monopoly board, and every piece is screaming “come and get me”. It’s said that your chances of success in this town are based on how fast and how well you can grab Manhattan by the balls. Establish yourself early on, make some important connections, and then let your talent and accomplishments carry you up the ladder to fame and fortune.

The first few nights I was here, a friend of mine took me out to certain events and gatherings with certain members of the Manhattan homosexual aristocracy. Whether they were actually significant members in New York’s gay high-life or just snooty bitches remained to be seen, but either way, my new network was growing.

The events started small. A visit to a friend’s huge Chelsea apartment for drinks, a quick stop at a tanning salon for my first artificial baking session, and then to a bar appropriately named “Posh”; appropriate because everyone inside, like the name suggests, had to prove that they were somehow more fabulous than you.

About ten minutes into our visit, and not seeing a single person in the joint my age, I started to think twice about the so-called fabulous Manhattan gay scene. These people weren’t fabulous. They were old and spent, looking for fresh meat to spoil rotten, and thinking they have carte blanche to share your drinks in the meantime. It took one drunk wanna-be socialite making fish-lips at my cosmopolitan for me to hate the place.

Before we left, though, I heard someone make a comment about a friend’s relationship. This friend of theirs just ended a short-lived relationship with some other “posh” being unknown. The relationship lasted three months, to which my company translated to three years. “Isn’t that about how long it would be in ‘gay years’?”

Apparently, I was either all wrong about the New York gay crowd, or way ahead of the Connecticut gay crowd. Most of my recent thoughts and stories revolved around how gay men were never getting too invested because they’re too busy getting laid. I couldn’t tell if I was fitting in with these people, or becoming more and more tired of their “posh” attitude.

Maybe it was the drinks. Maybe it was the location. But with all the tanning, and fake socializing, and posh this and posh that, the state of mind these people were in was throwing me through a loop… and really starting to ride my patience. I started to wonder, when it comes to being gay in a big city, did New York really make a difference? Or was it all Los Angeles to these people?

It was still early in my New York experience. I didn’t know where my place was in the Manhattan gay scene yet, but luckily I got a very posh perspective of gay New York early on. I wasn’t sure if I would ever grab Manhattan by the balls, but having found my niche in a place called “Pecans”, I was just fine grabbing this part of it by the nuts.

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