Manhattan Offender

Would someone please stick Michael Musto's peepee in their booboo, and soon?

Following is a comment I wrote on Michael Musto's blog.  Click through to find read what provoked me.

Homo, please. 

There are plenty of one-night stands to be had out there.  I question your choice of venues.  The eyebrow-threaded, popped-and-ironed-collar, dihydroxyacetone-dyed cosmo drinkers at [insert name of Hell's Kitchen venue here] are bad lays anyway, Michael dearest.

The problem is more that there is now a variety of gay venues from up-market to down-market.  You're making choices to go to chi-chi cha-cha bullshitterias when you could be at the bumpy-bump bam-bam cocketerias.

(The real problem is that everybody now carries a fucking camera in their phone.  (Myself included.)  Any illicit activity is photographed, broadcast, and cataloged.  For this reason, the feeling of intimacy/privacy/safety in public spaces has forever been abandoned in the public gay venues.  Thus the retreat to one's own home in order to let the cock free.  (Hell, I am hesitant to even to go to a trick's place, fearing a hidden cocksucker's camera catch me and throw me out to x-tube.))

Link: village voice > blogs > La Daily Musto > Sad Gay Reality: You Can't Get Picked Up in a Bar Anymore

Via Gawker

What I really wonder is why Michael Musto is Village Voice and Harry Levin is TMZ! The stature is all backwards!

Just when you think you'll never add another blog to your feed, long-time Village Voicer Michael Musto debuts his. New York's tartest tongued tattle started strong, but has expressed trepidation about finding subjects for a daily posting.   

The expected updates will be of the celebs (and not-so-celebs) that Michael encounters while bouncing between book-signings and boîtes, but there are, of course, slow news days.  After the jump, some things I'd love to see from a Michael Musto blog.

I'm sleeping with Michael Musto

My first encounter with Michael Musto was, as it is for many, reading his La Dolce Musto column in the Village Voice.  At the "alternative" bookstore near Atlanta's Piedmont Park (near which I lived in the early early nineties) his vivid descriptions of vivid people would lighten my day.  For the most part the people mentioned drew a collective blank in my mind, but also created a desire to fill in the blank.

After moving to New York, our paths would cross occasionally.  Eying the crowd in a VIP room at Webster Hall or Tunnel.  Waiting for a ferry to Fire Island.  Standing in a darkened corner of a sex club.  For the most part smiles would be exchanged and there was no certainty that he knew my identity, although he did do an MO Interview.

And now, for the past week, he's been in my bed.

Most nights Michael is to the left of me, but occasionally he sleeps on the right.  Invariably though, when he sleeps on the right, he can be found on the floor in the morning.  He's been riding the subway to work with me in the mornings and at times riding home with me at night (although sometimes the iPod is turned on and the eyes closed, ignoring his presence).

Granted, this is not Musto in the flesh, but rather Musto on the printed page.  His latest tome, La Dolce Musto, is a collection of the columns of the same name from 1980's to the present.  From stories of junkets afar or clublife anear, from the freaks to the headliners (also freaks) Musto's inimitable whirlwind writing style is always a jaunty ride. 

Particularly fun given the range of time they cover are the fifteen pages of 'blind items'.  Although some are quite dated, the author still doesn't give an update.  (Surely the fabricator of the Richard Gere "gerbil rumor" can be revealed by now?)

A compendium of (counter) culture history, the book is sort of a must.  Why it was released as a post-holiday book and not as a summer beach read?  Unsure, but the short vibrant articles are great commute reads or bed-time stories.  Let Michael Musto into your bed.  If you grow tired of him, he'll sit on the nightstand and wait for you until morning.

Musto's new gusto

One of downtown's demi-gods, Michael Musto, is reporting a return to the land of the libidinous:

It's a phenomenon—an absolute wonder that my bat is hitting homers so late in the (let's be generous) fourth or fifth inning! But now I desperately need advice on how to transition from the life of a nerdy castrato to that of the world's most bizarrely desirable genital juggler. Help!

It's been a few years since MO swam in libido lake, but being a slut emeritus, a few things remain clear in the mind.  Surely some tips can be shot out to the beloved Must-ho:

• FreshDirect won't deliver to your door the first items you must get back in your cupboards.  You know the brand-names:  Trojan, Lifestyles, Rough-rider, Wet, Eros, Pjur, and, of course, Fleet.  A better bet is drugstore.com.
  
• Now that you're back in the saddle (or is it the sling?) your wardrobe requirements are changing.  Forget fashion and start thinking easy-access.  Buttons are bastards.  Instead opt for zippered pants and pullovers, but avoid velcro - that screams cheap.
  
• The outer layers are met in importance by what lies beneath.  The return to raunch requires proper panties.  Retire those tired former-whites and pack that package in some color.  (Suggestion!)
  
• While you're shopping, buy new sheets and towels.  You don't want to explain a stain.
  
• Making out in public is alway acceptable; but the aftermath can lessen your chances for more making out in public.  Scout your locations properly and learn the locations for tidying up.  Record whether the restroom is properly stocked with your recovery requirements. 
  
• Make a mental note of every camera-carrying queen in the room and put your GPS on those bitches.  Blackmail ain't pretty.
  
• Most of all remember the basics:  Smile, wink, nod.  And never look twice; that's trade's job.
  

Art by OLAN.

La Musto, Dolce

"Do you know who that is? Do you know that that is Michael Musto?" asks Nello, one of my 'neighbors' at the Cherry Grove Hotel. Nello had walked into my hotel room earlier in the day, loud, tipsy, happy and chatty. After the shock of the initial intrusion, the introduction to one of Cherry Grove's 'old guard' was welcome.

"Yes, Nello, I've met Michael." Which I have, several times, especially when I was working for a big corporation that hosted large starry events. (dreadful). I find him charming and demure. His column, with the bonus internet exclusives, is a must read.

"So go up and talk to him, numb nuts." (Have I mentioned that Nello is from Long Island?) But that is something that Offender would never do. Offender knows that unless you have something to offer La Musto, you should let her alone.

But still, as Miss Sweety was lip synching her heart out and La Musto was making notations in his pad, I wondered, "Do you need spelling on that Michael? It's Karz, with a K."