Poor Henry, Lucky Me

Yesterday, I attended an “A-List” cocktail party at a beautiful house in Georgetown. I was invited by my friend, Cornelius Baker, who is the Executive Director of the Whitman-Walker Clinic, and an all-round great guy. The event was actually a “garden party” fundraiser for Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, which partly underwrote my suit against the Boy Scouts. A lot of the local “A-Gays” were there, including city councilmen David Catania and Jim Graham, gay icon Frank Kameny, and a lot of others. The best thing about the event was the chance it afforded me to catch up with James Dale, who gave a nice little speech. Did I mention James’ boyfriend Gabor is cute?

After the party, Cornelius asked me if I would care to attend the Clinic’s big fundraiser this Wednesday as his guest. Previously, Cornelius had made a point of saying he doesn’t usually invite personal guests to his own organization’s fundraisers because, well, he’s working. But he said that he was making an exception in this case because one of his jobs is to attend to the needs of their celebrity award recipient, Ted Koppel, and he’ll need some help on that account. He thought I was a good choice since I’m a journalist. So basically, I’m going to be Koppel’s host/minder. Should be much fun, or at least cool. I’m very excited.

Later last night, after hanging out for a while at Kingdom (a gay once-a-week dance event that tries to cater to a racially diverse crowd, though it’s becoming mostly black), I headed over to another Sunday party, Lizard Lounge. It’s always a beautiful crowd, but I never get any traction there, and just as I was contemplating leaving, I got a call on my wireless phone from Henry Thaggert. Henry was having his first migraine headache, and was in a lot of pain, and pretty obviously scared. I suggested he try smoking a cigarette (one of my favorite migraine cures — which works only if you’re a nonsmoker). But Henry said he’s allergic to cigarettes, so I left Lizard Lounge and quickly walked home to pick up a doctor’s sample pack I happen to have of Imitrex, the only prescription treatment for migraines. Henry popped the pill, and I hung out with him for an hour to make sure it was going to help him, which it eventually did.

He left a message on my voice mail this morning saying he was doing much better.“