As many of you may know, Clay Aiken has been living amongst us in New York for a while now, performing on Broadway's Spamalot. As many of you may also know, Clay Aiken has, over the years, been accused of being a closeted homosexual. And as many of you may know, I am a homosexual.
This past weekend, I found myself in Hell's Kitchen. It's not a neighborhood I frequent, but my good friend Gregory was having a "birthday event" at Posh. Despite his venue choices, Gregory is pretty awesome guy with an eclectic group of friends. Actually? Gregory's the only cool one in the group, so I ditched on the early side of a Saturday night and headed back for the subway.
Walking along Eighth Avenue, past some of the few remaining video peep stores, "that" feeling crept up on me. It was that sensation of knowing someone is watching you. After checking the eyes of a few oncoming gays, it was from under a cornflower blue hoodie that I saw the eyes that were zeroing in on me. Being a proper gay, I employed the three step rule. After walking past Mr. Hoodie, I took three steps and did a glance back. Confirmation - this was indeed a cruise scenario.
The immediate thing that sprung to mind was, "wait, this guy isn't my type at all". The twee nature of this fair-skinned twink wasn't the usual pursuit for me. There were three mitigating factors however. At the birthday "event", despite my short stay, four Jager shots had reached me in addition to the whiskey and cokes that I had been drinking. It was crazy cold out this weekend and the tourist demeanor of my street friend screamed "hotel" to me. The final selling point? Collectible vintage Nikes of the type you see on wealthy Japanese teenagers told me that this tourist was staying not only at a hotel, but probably a five-star hotel.
So I stopped in the sidewalk and gave a "come hither" gaze that is 85 per cent of the time effective. And it was yet again. We chatted briefly and I got to the point: "You staying nearby?" His answer was a mumbled, "Yeah, but I can't really go back there and there's a cab!" Suddenly I'm running to a cab with this person I don't even know and in whom I was really more interested for his accommodations than anything else. Bereft of the hotel stay, I was, well, a little less turned on.
It's when he smiles at me and asks with a little southern twang, "So, where we goin'?" that it dawns on me that I've seen this face before. After apologetically explaining that if we're going to get it on then we're going to be going to a borough, I have to ask him. "Are you Clay Aiken?"
Before I go further, let it be said that I'm no starfucker. Sure, I've been with actors (um, porn stars count, right?) but the majority of my "high level" conquers have been CEO's and other types of executives. (A major VP at Disney was particularly nice.) As Clay confirms his identity and starts telling me about "how hard this is" and "the pressures" he faces, one thought pops into my head: I'm going to totally video tape this.
My desk is in my bedroom and the camera on my laptop is unnoticeable, so it will be easy to do. Evil thoughts of selling the video to Nick Denton pop in my head. Then bigger eviller thoughts of selling the video to Harvey Levin or Bonnie Fuller rage along. Then I reject the evil thoughts and think, "no I'm going to not sell-out on this, well with the exception of allowing it to draw attention to me."
Enough said. In the clip you'll see that the lighting is actually decent. (I had expected him to be a "turn out the lights" type.) You will recognize his face and his body. And yes, there's nudity. His and mine. This is just over a minute, but over the next week or so you'll be seeing the whole messy thing ...
