Brad, Anthony, and My Car: A Night At The Eagle

I had an interesting evening at the DC Eagle again last night.

I chatted with a guy I’ve been lusting after for quite a while, a bear-cub type named Brad. I’ve spoken to him once before, and he seemed like a very affable guy, but this was my first extended chat with him. He came up tome making note of the GayBC T-shirt he’d seen me wearing the previous evening. Apparently, he knows GayBC’s John McMullen and had talked with him about possibly, perhaps getting involved with GayBC.

I have to say that, at first, I was pretty put off. He painted a picture of himself as a real agent provacateur, who had repeatedly logged into GayBC chatrooms under various aliases then made statments that “were the opposite of what you’d expect a gay person to say.” Not because he believed these things, but just to cause a ruckus. He said he was pissed when he got banned over and over again, and stopped listening to GayBC. Then he told me he’d just recently applied for vanity plates in Virginia reading “WH-RE”, which, because of the strategic placement of a circle logo on the plate, would actually come out reading: “WHORE.” So, as you may imagine, by this time, I was thinking: “A**hole.”

But then I began to reconsider. Maybe I’m just rationalizing because I think he’s really, really cute, but I think the world has room in it for a fewprovacateurs, as long as the provoking is done with humor and style. For example, Michael Moore, the documentarian, often makes me squirm, but I’m glad he’s around. Anyhow, we’ll see how this friendship develops, if it develops.

I also ran into the cutie from Stockton I mentioned earlier, Anthony. He was on his way out the door, so we didn’t get much of a chance to talk, but it turns out he’s ditched the “incredibly jealous boyfriend.” Well, well, well. Hopefully, I’ll see Anthony again soon.

The final curious event of the evening happened as I returned to my car, parked a couple of blocks away from the Eagle on a block I would call ‘dicey,’ even though it’s less then 200 feet from a police station. As I neared my car, maybe about 30 feet away, a group of thuggy looking characters was approaching from the opposite direction. As they passed my Mazda, I watched as one of them clearly cased my car for anything visible that might have value. Luckily, as is usually the case, there wasn’t anything to catch the eye, so they walked on. And I could see them visibly startle, look around, and tense up when I used the remote to turn off the car alarm. I got in and drove away, with them staring after me. A very good reminder to carefully hide all valuables when leaving my car, that’s for sure.

In other notes: Tom Shepard was in town last week for yet another screening of “Scout’s Honor,” this time for the gay student group at American University. (Tom didn’t come to DC exclusively for this. He was back East for screenings in New York, as well, and a showing at the GLSEN annual convention here in Washington, which, unfortunately, was cancelled by the events of Sept. 11th.) It was a pretty well-attended screening for this kind of event: we completely filled the classroom in which it was being shown. Strangely, this group of young students was, by far, the most reactionary crowd I’ve ever viewed the film with. Many of them, though gay themselves, had pro-Scout viewpoints that they propounded at length and repeatedly during the discussion period that followed the film.

Finally, my friendship with Ryan is definitely flourishing. I’ve invited him out several times since we gotback from the NLGJA convention, including a little get-together at the bar Chaos with Tom Shepard and some of his friends. Of course, as gay indie-doc directors, they immediately bonded. Cool.