This is Yuri's third date with Daniel -- they met on Valentine's Day -- and he has invited me and some of his other friends out to dinner to meet him. Daniel seems to be exactly his type: early 40s, handsome, bearded, with a bodybuilder's v-shaped torso, ample chest hair poking out over his t-shirt, and of course an enormous bulge (Yuri likes them gigantic).
I usually stay over with Yuri on Wednesday nights rather than going all the way into Manhattan and back again the next morning, but I don't want to suggest "sharing" so soon in their relationship, so I say "Well, the Long Island Railroad awaits..."
"Can't wait to get back to the City, huh?" Daniel asks.
I've been having rather a bad day, and I don't relish the idea of two hours on a train, a 20-minute subway ride, and a five block walk in the in the February ice, so I snipe "No, actually, I don't like it there at all."
Gulp -- that was the mistake. All gay men living east of Chicago are expected to believe that Manhattan is Heaven, to be desired, dreamed of, wept over, and fought over. You don't like Heaven? Blasphemer!
"Maybe you're staying overnight with Yuri too much," Daniel says, with a note of jealousy in his voice. "Maybe you're not giving it enough time."
"I only stay with Yuri on Monday and Wednesday nights. I'm in the City five nights a week. It's just that...everyone is a stranger. The streets are crowded with ghosts, time travelers, lost souls."
I'm on a roll. "My roommate is a stranger. All of my friends are here on Long Island. I don't have any hangouts, like the French Quarter in West Hollywood or Orphan Andy's in San Francisco. I'm always alone."
"What is hangout?" Yuri asks.
I explain it to him.
"Ok, that's easy. We come to the City this weekend, find you a hangout. You pay for dinner."
"It's settled, then," Daniel says. "The Great 'Find Boomer a Gay Hangout' Quest of 1998." He pauses. "And you don't need to go back to the horrible bright lights of Manhattan tonight. I'm sure one of these Long Islanders will take pity on you and offer you his bed."
The rest of the story, with nude photos and sexual content, is on Tales of West Hollywood.