Believe it or not, I woke up this morning still drunk. Not a hangover - drunk… I can’t remember the last time I drank that much…

It started with me getting out of the apartment so I didn’t have to deal with my boyfriend. I went downtown, had a chicken burger at Better Burger (they were packed at 3pm!), then wandered around town. Sat in Union Square for a while watching people go by. It’s all there - homess people mixed in with Yuppies, mixed in with parents with new kids… Even the homeless people had diversity - there was the young, hip, homeless group (sorta like hippies), and the ones that looked more like stereotypical bums.

Then I had an idea to go watch a movie, but despite walking past a bunch of theaters didn’t find anything that I wanted to watch happening near the time when I was at the theather. I just missed the showing of W. - that would have been cool.

So I wound up at Gym Bar. Ordered a Maker’s Mark on the rocks and they gave me this HUGE glass of it, though it tasted a little watered down (the ice must have melted quickly or something). Thing is, people don’t really talk to strangers at Gym, so after I had finished the burbon I left. I walked up to 23rd to see what was playing at the cinema there, but didn’t see anything I wanted to watch, so I got a muffin at Murray’s Bagels to sop up the alcohol and then went to Rawhide. [BTW, incredible muffin...]

Rawhide is just really low key and friendly. People talk to each other there - and not just in packs of friends who already know each other. The people aren’t as attractive as Gym, but if you just want to hang out and talk to people Rawhide is so much better…

Let’s see, there was a guy from Hoboken (NJ) who’d lived in Hoboken his whole life. Then there was “Juan from Weehauken” (NJ) who was really aggressive about wanting to get fucked (not my type though). Surprisingly he didn’t have much luck and was still coming onto people hours later. Both of the guys from NJ tried to convince me that they lived closer to the bar than I did.

Most of the night was spent talking to Bob - a guy who was playing pool and beating absolutely everyone. He was a bit of a pool shark. It was fascinating watching him. He’d literally miss shots to prolong the game and make people think the game was competitive. When I asked him about himself he was sorta evasive - made it sound like he had homes all over the place and just went around playing tennis and stuff. Curious guy.

All in all I had 4 Wild Turkeys and a Stella at Rawhide. All the drinks there and at Gym were pretty big. Since that study I’m doing has me tracking how much I drink I actually updated a note on my cell phone every time I got a new drink. It’s the only way I actually remember how much I drank - came out to 9.5 “standard drinks” (where a shot, a glass of wine or a bottle of beer is one standard drink).

Needless to say I was seriously drunk and it was a really good thing I didn’t drive. I had been eating all night trying to absorb the alcohol. Even left Rawhide at one point to get one of those horribly dry muffins they sell at the bake shop on 23rd & 8th, and I got a sandwich on the way to the subway. Even with all that the subway ride home was sorta miserable. I was tired, but had to keep my eyes open otherwise I’d get motion sickness.

So I get home and my bf is coming out of the building walking the dogs. And I walk the dogs with him. He had sent me a couple text messages during the day. He finally decided to read the blog thinking I was giving people intimacy and withholding it from him (he’d never read it before). The fact of the matter is we’re pretty intimate already (though not all that sexual), and the guys I fuck are often just holes to me.

When I got to the apartment I just collapsed and went to bed. When I woke amazingly I was still drunk. Not hung over… drunk.

My bf and I talked a bit. He’s cooled off, but said he was disturbed by what he read here on the blog (I didn’t ask details). Honestly, I don’t know where things stand exactly or what comes next… I’ll deal with that when I sober up… 

Well, here’s honesty for you… Turns out my cockring mishap was sorta for the best… Later that evening I noticed what looked like a little “discharge”, but it wasn’t the normal yellow thick stuff that would indicate I had gonorrhea. I almost wondered if it was piss or precum or something… My dick had been a little “itchy”, but that happens when my PA gets irritated, but itchiness plus something else I pay attention to (which is why I was looking to see if there was discharge in the first place). So I made an appointment to go in and see the folks at Callen-Lorde. Then on top of that it burned when I pissed first thing yesterday, so I knew I had something… Bottom line I saw the doctor there yesterday and she thinks I probably had chlamydia. Oh well, it happens when you like fucking cumhole bottoms… [And yes, I did send e-mails to all the guys I had hooked up with in the period specified by the doctor...]

So yesterday my bf and I had had a small argument over the phone. It was over something that cost less than $10 (plus some effort in doing something), so really wasn’t major but neither one of us handled the situation the way we should have. I had forgotten about it by the time he got home, but he hadn’t and he was in this pissy mood. I gave him the better part of an hour to chillout and when he didn’t I figured I’d go out and have a drink and give him more space to cool off.

So the question was where to go… I just wanted some dark bar where I could “be alone in a crowd”, so to speak. I hadn’t been there in years, but Rawhide seemed like it would fit the bill. Rawhide has been around for 30 years now and feels like an old bar (in a good way)… If nothing else I knew there would be go-go dancers I could watch. Rawhide turned out to be a surprisingly good choice…

I wasn’t expecting to talk to anyone. The other day (after the hookup with “the hole” and the research study), I had gone to Gym Bar and, other than some quick remarks about how badly this cute tattooed Latin guy and his female friend where playing pool (it took them 4 tries to hit the balls on the break, and went downhill from there), no one really seemed to want to talk to me. And I was looking really cute that day too - I didn’t get it. But at Rawhide it was completely different…

The first guy to approach me was this handsome older guy (probably 60ish). He said he managed a mostly wholesale business in Brooklyn. He was pretty intense and sorta all over me (with little bit of touching), but while the conversation was nice, there came a time when I wasn’t into it anymore. I went and got a beer and didn’t go back to talk to him.

They had two go-go dancers at the bar - one was a guy who looked like a big, muscular Israeli, the other was a black guy with a huge dick who must have taken Viagra^® or something, ’cause it never went soft - the whole night. When the Israeli got done dancing he spent like 20+ minutes talking to an older guy. It was really clear the Israeli guy was looking for “work” when he got done go-go dancing. Then there was this other beautifully built guy who was fully clothed but always talking to older guys… Him I tagged for an escort as well. It was weird seeing so much escort work going on at a “neighborhood bar”. At the same time it was discrete - I talked to two “regulars” (below) who had no idea there was escorting going on. They were looking right at it and not understanding what they were seeing. I guess it helps having been an escort to understand what was going on…

One of the weirder parts was there was this guy who brought a female co-worker into the place and they stayed for a long time. She wasn’t the type you’d expect to hang out at Rawhide (at least not for very long)… Very weird, but the guy who she was with was pretty cute (and really short too!)

There were two guys playing pool most of the night - a cute little one and another one who looked a tad “alternative” (all black clothes, shaved head, goatee)… We chatted for a while and when the cute little guy heard my theory on the escorting going on he went right up to the Israeli guy and after some serious flirting and a $5 tip, asked him what his price would be for a night… Turns out the guy charges $600…

As the night wore on it was really clear the ‘alternative’ guy was into me. In fact, it got to a point where he was sort of all over me, we were kissing, feeling each other up, etc. He saw my wedding ring early on, and made it clear he knew there were limits. When I said I wasn’t looking to hookup, he said he expected as much… Still, I was drunk (4 pints of Stella by that point) and we started making out a bit. He was hard and kept having me grab his ass… I guess it could have been fun, but I don’t “function” that well when I’m drunk and the whole probable chlamydia thing meant it was a no-go even if I had wanted to try…

While we were sorta all over each other there for a while, we didn’t make nearly as much of a scene as the gaggle of bears that were there. Two of them had their shirts either off or pulled over their head showing off their big bellies. And I mean big bellies - these guys were probably 300 lbs or more… And the pants on one of them kept riding low - so there was bear crack to be seen as well. I found it amusing but the cute little guy was a little put off by it.

So all in all it was a really fun night. I haven’t had that much fun at a bar in a long time. Guess I should do it more often…