"last weekend we went to george's (black man, black man) 40th birfday bash."

i've kept myself pretty busy lately since the "break-up". honestly i've lost track of time really. i volunteered to build a new web database for our company hosting an image and lengthy description of every product we represent, a virtual catalog if you will. to refresh your hard-drives, i'm an office manager for one of the showrooms in the boston design center. we represent a diverse group of furniture and lighting manufacturers, featuring 18th and 19th century reproductions as well as transitional and contemporary styles. we sell to-the-trade only ie. interior designers and architects, no retail i'm afraid. sorry playas, no $28,000 table for you kids.

anywho, we rep over 25 lines of said furniture, which amounts to about 25000 products. so i've been spending about 30 extra hours a week scanning photos. when i'm not scanning and photoshoping, i'm sitting in front of the tv doing hardcore data entry. i now know more about furniture than most of our salespeople. come on quiz me, what's the difference between a console table, a buffet and a credenza? come on a dare ya! don't make me educate your sorry asses right here in front of the world (not) but at the very least a handful of hags and a gaggle of gays.

the project has it's pros and cons. the pros being i haven't had to sit and think about losing my love. i don't have time to lament about how i can't control how people treat me. love isn't always a fairytale, i get it it. moving on. it has also substantially raised my value in the company. since i'm salaried they can't help but notice i've been putting in substantial amount of over-time without compensation. at the most, i'm hoping they spike my christmas bonus, at the very least i've created enough work for myself to stay busy for the next couple of years without falling into another creative deficit.

the cons are that i've got a pretty bad cold since i haven't been all that active or eating right. i ran out of groceries about 4 weeks ago, protein mix about 2 weeks ago and i've pretty much been eating crap purchased from the local store 24 on the fly in front of the computer. i'm down to my last box of far east long grain rice and my last tub of plain oatmeal. thankfully i still have 4 boxes of brownies left. i just polished off half a pan for breakfast. don't worry the only other sweets i have are the last cookie from a tub of alphabet cookies i bought at costco. i've saved the last cookie because the letter "j" and the letter "o" seem to be fused together to spell "jo". the beevis in me has to point this out to another human being before i eat it. besides my lousy eating habits, i've barely been going to the gym. this rain has also prevented me from riding my bike to work for the last couple of weeks as well. i'm also up all night because my ocd-mind won't give me a moments peace. i'm always buzzing about work-related projects, the database and our impending move to a brand-new custom built showroom. even my love for television has taken a back seat or at the very least a background seat to these projects.

you see i'm a very project oriented minded person, personally (in case you didn't notice) and professionally. if i have a goal, i obsessively labor at it until it's complete. hell i usually never leave my office for the day until i've finished all my work. i hate to leave things unfinished. it leaves me unsettled. ya i know i have control issues. surprise surprise. i hate loose ends and unfinished business to haunt me as a slumber.

all of this work time has left me very little time to play and spend time just veggin with my peeps, (ok, shut up i'm over 30). i've only been doing two personal things a week for the last couple of months. tuesdays with joel (formerly wednesdays with joel) and one night a week hanging with j-cu, aka john john. i never call him john john to his face. i'm not sure why, i only refer to him as john john in print. i think it's because he's a big star, worthy of a cher-like-star-quality nick name.

anywho, last weekend we went to george's (black man, black man) 40th birfday bash. it was fun and pretty enlightening. we drove out to dedham in a hurricane with one of j-cups co-workers, jean with her boyfriend gene. ya gene and jean...moving on...it was pouring rain and we couldn't find parking so we were soaked by the time we walked to the hall all smushed under two tiny umbrellas.

i don't know george all that well but he's a really amusing guy and i'm really enjoying getting to know him. it's not just because he calls me "apples crunches". it's supposedly because my ass is as hard as fresh apple or something like that. i couldn't think of a gift worthy of his creative wit so i just bought him a "mahogany" card, with a few slight modifications. i'd like to point out it wasn't because he's black. my neighborhood hallmark only sells "mahogany" cards. the gay ghetto isn't as much gay as it is ghetto, at least at my local walgreens. anywho, i bought a black barbie card and took a photo of john john making a cunty face and cut it out to fit on her perfectly black and tiared head. john was a good sport about it and george thought it was hilarious. mission accomplished.

so cutting to the chase and addressing the big pink, (err black) elephant in the room: we were the only four white people in a room full of black people. it was refreshingly eye-opening as i said, i couldn't help but wonder if black people feel this way when they visit the local gay white suburb. i don't think it makes me a racist to note that we were the only white people there. there were certainly a few black people who pointed it out. we heard a few "there people beat us down" and a couple of "i thought i was in the wrong place when i saw the white people." haha. it's all good as i'm so not fond of saying, (like ever) but you get my point. it's also pretty ironic to note the hall's 100th anniversary gala was taking place upstairs or as gene called it a gay-la. hee. it's worth noting only because the old white people in their ball gowns stiffly danced upstairs as the black people "got down" in the basement, having the time of their lives. ok i'm sure it wasn't intentional, it was a total fluke that the man was upstairs while the formerly-oppressed were in the cellar.

all and all everyone we spoke to was very welcoming to us. i was even dragged on the dance-floor by a 50+ black diva who danced her inner-josephine baker off while i awkwardly did the white-man dance. i'm normally all about throwing the ladies around but the ceiling tiles were so low i didn't want to hurt anyone. besides i was in shy white guy mode. the dj played a mix of raggee and old school house circa 1993-1994. let me tell you i never thought i'd hear barbara tucker's "beautiful people" again outside of my own ipod. the crowd was a mix of gay and straight with the medium age around 47. both george and his older boyfriend's families had flown in for the occasion.

why listening to the music at our table we learned that gene, jean, john, and i are all not-so-closet fans of early 90's house music. it's only a little weird because we all seem to be in totally different demographics, johns a 20-25 gay male, jean a 30-35 straight female, gene is a 25-30 super-white straight male and i'm a 30-35yo gay male. it would seem i'd have the only legitimate reason to know who the hell sylvester was but as soon as we all heard "beautiful people" we all pretty much asked ourselves synonymously, i wonder if he has any "uncanny alliance"! he didn't, he left it at home. doh.

if you don't know "uncanny alliance" then you're truly missing out on some early 90's, campy, yet socially relevant music, at least that was the plan. "i'm beautiful dammit!" which was covered by bette midler a few years back, and by covered i mean water-downed and ruined, was a great commentary on any number of -isms from race to sex all the while having a positive attitude and a delivering a positive message. we should all start our day by looking into the mirror and singing: "lemme start loving myself"; it might make the world a better place.

"i've got my education"'s obvious statement of get your black (or brown or gay or purple) ass out there and make a living is amusing..."been six months since she lost her job, when she called her boss a big fat slob. he looked and smiled and gave her a wink and handed her a slip that was very pink"...but really makes a point of attacking the attitude of entitlement with today's (hell the attitude of the last 20 years) youth. besides, any song with a chorus that shouts "a bitch got no where to live" is bound to be a classic with gay men. the lyrics "get away from my windshield, trying to wash my window with that old dirty water, rolling your eyes in the back of yo head like you're blind, you know you can see girl! listen i'll give you a sandwich but i ain't giving you money, you might try and buy crack or sumthin with it." is seriously reaching into that pit of self-conscious racial prejudice we all feel, black or white. am i the only one who can laugh at my own social stereotypes? i think not. hee. ok someone shut me up before i go on about the track "ain't no meat without the sauce".