Gay as gay can get

I love gay men. I love my gay friends. They can be a girlfriend and boyfriend fused into one. One day, they will share painful tears of a female heart, and another day, they will act as if they have manly bravado and sensual appetite.

I embarked on my very first gay environment experience with my good friend, Alvin. Turns out gay people are normal as normal can be. They dream, they fear, they fall in love and they get their hearts broken. They are not from another planet as others might typcast - sometimes they are even more in touch with the world than men with testosterone-overflow.

Alvin began our Saturday evening by practicing his make-up skills on me in my apartment. We made a makeshift beauty parlor-cum-photo studio in my living room for 2 hours. He did it really well :) He knows more make-up than I do. Different layers for eyeshadow. Blending colors. Thickness. Thinness. How come he knows that the skin in our eyelids are 4x thinner than our normal skin? The answer is just because he is gay.

We took photos after, ala CosmoMag photo shoot, realizing that this could be his first step in realizing his passion to make at least one woman beautiful everyday. (The hardest step to take is the first step you take.)

We had dinner at the East Village and headed up to East 60th St. at a (gay) piano bar. There I saw all kinds of gay men. The decent, quiet type. The rowdy type. The bondage freak. The man-looking. The lady-looking. The drag. And more! I was thrilled!

It was 12:47am. I donned my Clinique made-up face and a Single Bailey's with two cherries. My arms on the Baby grand, listening to my good friend enunciate his huge baritone voice out of his small body, as the piano player does it in Key of C. A smile of enjoyment on my face.

Enter Italian gay who claims to be an artist who does art and ballet.

"You're beautiful."

"Excuse me?"

"You look very beautiful."

"Why thank you, that's a very flattering compliment coming from a gay guy.", I beamed.

"I'm Rarfrrulel...And who's gay?" (I really couldn't understand what he was saying, it's the alcohol)

"You are? Aren't you?..." (with doubts and questions in my head)

"No, I'm straight."

"Oh, I didn't realize. I'm so, so, so sorry (profusely), I thought there are no straight men here! But thanks for the compliment."

(moment of awkwardness as he stares at my face for 10 secs) "Uhm, that's my friend there, he's really good in singing!"

"What's your number?", he asked.

"Excuse me?" (I pretended to not hear)

"I'd like to call you."

My cellphone rings. It's my cousin, TJ. He's outside the bar and will be crashing at my place for the night. Alleluia my cousin's a guy! And alleluia he lives in Jamaica to needs to sleep in my place tonight!

He walked inside and said hello to me.

"Oh, Ted, this is Rafael.... you're Rafael right? Yeah. Well, this is Ted, my boyfriend."

Wahahaha.

Confused Italian gay (who claims to be a straight artist who does art and ballet) pirouettes away. (go home and do your artistic ballet, dah-ling!)

I did say earlier that gay men are normal people. But there really are exceptions in this world and we just have to accept - and love them, without squinting, that they are just gay as gay can get.