I’m a New Yorker. Well, I grew up Westchester County and currently live in Weehawken, NJ, but that’s only because I have a rent controlled apartment in which I’ve lived for 16 years now – cold dead body and all that that -  unless I’m lucky enough to find a comparable place in Manhattan which doesn’t seem possible, but I digress…I’m stayin’ where I am, but I consider myself a New Yorker. I work at one of the busiest Hotels in Times Square and the oldest continuously running cabaret theatre in New York City, I earn my money there and spend my money there, so I’m from there.

Anyway, I digress….

I’ve been a long time subscriber of your magazine, I’d go so far as to say it  is one of my favorites if not my favorite weekly periodical. I always feel more connected to the comings and goings-on of my city after tearing through you. I feel a wee bit more cosmopolitan; as if I were, in the know.

I keep hoping to be in the right place at the right time to be seen in the Vulture Pages; I’ve eaten at restaurants recommended by Oliver Platt’s brother and your listings section is the end all and be all of what’s going on around town.

But again, I digress…

I LOVE NY

I’ve been working aboard a cruise ship for over a year and a half; I’m sailing the seven seas singing-out as I visit cities around the world – cities which are nice, but don’t quite measure up to the greatest city of them all.

When I left, I put my subscription on hold. No need killing trees while I was away, and yet I’d scour the local magazine stands whenever we’d visit an American port – sometimes succeeding in my quest mostly not – finding a New York Magazine in St. Petersburg, Russia or Fanning Island, Kiribati isn’t an easy task.

So, I digress again, I recently discovered your iPad application, and noticed that you offered current subscribers free access to the full magazine by way of the app.

What!?!

Where was I when this started? Peru, at the Nasca Lines? Sailing through the Panama Canal? Scaling the Tower of London? Kissing the Blarney Stone in Ireland? Driving a dogsled in Alaska? White water rafting in Costa Rica? Gazing at the Mona Lisa at the Louvre in Paris?

I can tell you where I was when I found it, it was Norway, at the bakery, Goot Bread, where the bread is good and the internet is free. I discovered your iPad application quite by accident, but when I did…it took moments to download and before I knew it, as a current subscriber I had full access to the best magazine in the world via my iPad.

I downloaded fourteen issues that day alone.

You helped me feel connected again. To New York City.

I devoured four issues that sitting with my good bread from Goot Bread, I felt compelled to write this note of thanks.

Thank you for still being there, for still reporting on NYC while I wasn’t there; we New Yorkers like to think the city stops when we’re not there…but secretly accept the fact that it doesn’t, it wouldn’t be New York City if it did now, would it?

Next, on the Reginas...

“A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.”

– Tim Cahill

Lush

As I get older, I realize i need to take better care of my skin. As I’ve been getting older while traveling the world, your products have become my new skincare addiction.

I was introduced to your products by a coworker, a face mask here, a lump of soap there. A squirt of cream…I liked everything.

A stop in Ireland found me on my first Lush shopping spree. A buying pattern which continued into England, Ft. Lauderdale, Maui, and San Diego. I’m certain, your NYC stores will be on my regular shopping routes.

My Favorites:

Rub Rub Rub: I can’t live without it! It’s a sea salt exfoliator, or as they describe it, “a startling refreshing shower scrub.” I use it on my face, my hands, my entire body. It makes me feel like I’ve got a new skin.

Mask of Magnaminity: The “big green giant of a face and back pack. Deeply cleansing, toning and exfoliating pepperminty mask.Refreshes and brightens all it touches.” I use it on my face, scalp, hands and shoulders. When I use it after rub rub rubbing myself with Rub Rub Rub, I feel as if I’m in my twenties again.

Enchanted Eye Cream: While I believe eye cream is eye cream and there is no magical lotion to give one un-puffy, young looking eyes, but this one just smells and feels so, well, creamy. I don’t think there’s a major difference in my eye’s appearance, but I like the fact it doesn’t make my eyes water.

Ambrosia: The best, I repeat, the best shaving cream I have ever used, and believe me, I’ve used a lot of shaving cream. This product brought me back to the blade after years of electric shavers. I was suffering razor burn and ingrown hairs and just three weeks of using this product, the skin on my face has changed. I don’t have the annoying bumps at my neck line anymore and while I know it has nothing to do with it, my beard feels softer. All you shavers out there – but this product, you will not be disappointed.

Eau Roma Water: Toner, that doesn’t sting? What?

I’ve yet to pick a favorite soap. I want to try every one before making my decision and there are so many to choose from…

Listen Lush, I’m very brand loyal, and I’m your target demo; a gay man with no children and plenty of disposable income, don’t fuck it up and you’ll have a costumer for life.

Thanks for your time.

The apartment was dirty, it felt rundown and unloved.

When I started my Grand Voyage, I’d simplified my life, riding myself of much of the crap holding me back. I’d slapped on a fresh coat of paint and left my cats in the care of strangers. It was a place, a sanctuary, to which I couldn’t wait to return.

Upon my homecoming, I find my cats hate me – Molly Mae has ignored me all day and Joey took a chunk outta my hand, hissing at me every time I pass him – not exactly the reaction I was expecting from my boy…and, again, it was dirty – I had to vacuum the vacuum cleaner.

I can forgive the breakage, I didn’t really leave anything I couldn’t live without, so if a one-of-a-kind, priceless (to me) Nightwing action figure lost a leg, oh well, it’s not the end of the world. What I can’t forgive is the dust.

Dust.

Thick ropes of dust. Dust that looked as if it started collecting the day I left all the way back in June of 2010 – and on that day, believe me, there wasn’t a speck. I left lots of cleaning supplies – ’cause I needed to buy $130.00 worth of fresh supplies to get it back into shape I know what i left was used, but used where? And on what? Certainly not the ceiling fan in the bedroom or the kitchen floor….

I don’t fault my cat-sitters, after all, this stuff, wasn’t their stuff, it was someone else’s stuff. Really no different then a hotel, and let’s face it, who among us treat hotels with respect?

“I’d sail the Greek Islands…on a private yacht, staffed with twenty hot and sweaty sailors. Did I mention they’re naked, or was that implied?”

While The Boat is not a yacht and it’s not staffed with hot and sweaty sailors, I traveled to more Greek Islands than my Greek local friends. I set afoot in Athens, Katakolon, Olympia, Iraklion, Mykonos, Rhodes, Gythion, Mykonos and Santorini. Of course, I was there during the garbage strikes and general protesting in the streets. Not the safest time to be an American traveler, but I experienced Greece the way I’d always dreamed.

It was end of the season, I’ve always believed end of the season is the best time to explore a new place on a budget, but in Greece, end of the season, is more like, “Don’t come here, there’s nothing to do, we’ve all gone home.” Or in my case, “Don’t come here, we’ve all gone to protest.”

Santorini

Except for Santorini. Santorini is a Greek paradise, it’s everything I expected Greece to be. I rented an ATV and tooled around the island with the regular gang, ate one of the best meals of my life at a small second floor restaurant we picked because we believed the Browns wouldn’t climb the steps and we’d have the place to ourselves – we were correct in our assumption and I rode a donkey named Dick.

Santorini via Donkey

In Athens, I went to the Acropolis. The Acropolis. What can I say? I have trouble wrapping my mind around what came before us. The ruins I saw, were works of art in and of themselves, I can only imagine what they looked like when they were first built. Awe inspiring, the simple massiveness of marble, awe inspiring.

The Acropolis

In Mykonos, we gays did our research. You see, we knew where we needed to go and how to get there, what did didn’t know that where we wanted to go had closed two weeks earlier. When the cab rounded the cliff overlooking Club Paradise, our driver, a crone of a woman, laughed.

“You have the whole beach to yourselves. Twenty dollars, each.”

Denied!

Then she cackled again as she drove away and became concerned. The gate was open, but no one was inside. We were trapped, miles away from The Boat and nothing around but a deserted gay beach village. Did I mention the cats? The place was overrun with feral cats. It was a scene out of a horror movie. Four American gays in Mykonos looking to get their gay on are abducted and locked in a deserted beach house, only to be tortured to death by the crone cab driver who’d orchestrated the plan to appease her ancient gods…obviously, we made it back, I’ll let you use your imagination to fill in the how….

Mykonos had left a bad taste in my mouth, which was clean washed away by my short time in Rhodes. Good beer, good friends and a good deal on a fantastic little diamond ring.

In Greece, I stood in the Temple of Zeus. I stood on the site of the first Olympics, the first Olympics! I have a greater appreciation of Greek food and a new love of feta cheese. Feta goes with everything!

Olympia

Greece was everything I’ve always hoped it would be, minus the twenty hot and sweaty sailors…but, I’m NOT complaining!

Nasca Lines...A Dream Come True

I’ve been fascinated with the Nasca Lines since they were featured in an episode of In Search Of… with Leonard Nimoy. Seeing them, a bucket list item since before I knew what a bucket list was. To think I’m about see them, especially the Nasca Monkey, with my own eyes, wow, it’s mind-blowing

For those readers not familiar with the lines, they are a “heritage of humankind site,” and are located 400 km south of Lima, Peru in the city of Ica. The windswept desert plains were carved by the Nasca Indians using a simple technique of scraping trenches into the ground to form dozens of different figures, geometric shapes and straight lines. The most important aspect about the lines is that their mere existence demonstrates that the Nasca civilization had developed a highly sophisticated culture and had a marvelous expressive capacity, a vision many pre-Columbian civilizations shared.

Aliens did it!

I think the aliens did it, but that’s neither here, nor there…

It’s little after five in the morning as we make our way down the Peruvian coastline. Nasca is five hours away, one straight road. I notice, the sky is gray. We’re the only car on the road. The sea is gray. “Why are there no other cars on the road?” The mountains are brownish-gray. The only visible vibrant color is the green of the occasional palm tree. Peru is very gray. I didn’t realize the coastline of was desert, it seems odd, a desert so close to water…but, it being salt water, I guess it make sence. A couple hours pass, the skies turn a light pale blue, still, with very few cars on the road, but it’s Sunday, perhaps Peru, like my travel-mate, is sleeping in.

My name will be on that sign forever...

The further south we travel, lush vegetation replaces the bleak desert. With farms dotting the low mountainside – wait; mountains, the beginning of the Andes? – to our left and beach resorts punctuating the right. New construction, or is it abandoned construction, stands at the ready. Bricks waiting for bricklayers, crane waiting for operators, I guess today is the day off.

On one side of the road, what were rolling sand dunes become private fenced-in beaches with tennis courts and swimming pools. Ah, rich people.

A mile further down; shanty towns, corrugated tin walls, cardboard homes. Ah, poor people.

Dunes becomes fields again; the smell of smoke hangs in the air as crops lay scorched next to acres upon acres of…what is that? Corn?

Our driver doesn’t speak English.

I can’t ask the questions to which I want answers.

We pass a prison. Must be, the barbed wire is a dead give away. Is that a prison, in the middle of desert?

Next, grapes? A vineyard? A winery, perhaps. Olive trees? Fig trees? Are we in Italy?

There’s road construction and tollbooths. If it weren’t for the fact we’re driving though a desert, I’d say it felt a little like heading to Newark Airport…

I’m incredibly frustrated; in my broken Spanish I can ask for a bathroom, a hamburger and a Diet Coke, but I can’t figure out how to say, “What’s growing over there?”

“What are they building over there?”

“What does that sign mean?”

“Why are those men wearing underwear on the side of the road?”

We drive for three and a half hours without stopping. I gotta to pee. Of course, there’s nowhere to stop, desert to the left…with not a tree in sight. “Senior? Banos por favor?” If I knew how to say, “Pull over, I gotta pee! NOW!!” I would have.

“Un memento. One moment, mi amigo.”

Fifteen minutes later we hit our first stop. My kidneys ready to burst.

We changed cars. We changed drivers. I peed for ten minutes, straight. We added a personal, English-speaking tour guide to our merry band – I believe her name is the Spanish equivalent of Jillian, but if you put a gun to my head I wouldn’t be able to tell you with 100% certainty. For next two hours we’re treated to interesting facts and figures about Peru and the Nasca Indians.

She answers the questions I have, before I get a chance to ask.

“Ica with over 350,000 residents is the largest city in Southern Peru.”

“Agriculture is the number one economic product in Southern Peru with Paprika, White Asparagus and Artichokes it’s biggest crops.”

“Peru’s largest prison is here. The desert conditions keep the men from escaping, there’s nowhere to go.”

“Peru mines thirty percent of the world’s silver.”

“There are dozens of wineries and Pisco producers in the area, the dry conditions are ideal for growing grapes.”

“Nasca means ‘place of pain and sacrifice.’”

“The lines were created fifteen hundred years before Christ was born.”

“The conservation of the lines is completely natural, the dew reacts with the gypsum creating a gluelike consistency in the morning holding the small rocks and sand in place and the heat of the afternoon forces pillows of warm air into the trenches which acts like bubble wrap to keep the lines intact.”

There’s one question I have she didn’t answer, “Is Nasca spelled with a ‘Z’ or an ‘S’?”

“In the Spanish language, the ‘Z’ does not make the sound the ‘S’ makes. Nasca is spelled with an ‘S.’”

Curses!

In my head, it seemed more exotic with the ‘z.’

I'm bigger than the plane!

Exactly five hour and five minutes after leaving the Port of Callao, five we arrive at the airport. A forty minute flight aboard a four-seater Cessna OB-1655 was the order of the day. We waited for what felt like hours for the other couple to fill our four seats – it was probably closer to  20 minutes but I digress, I made it bearable by visiting all the gift shops.

Outside the terminal, vendors were setup and did they see me coming! A tee-shirt, a coin purse, two patches, a decorative plate, a sterling silver dog-tag with the monkey on it hanging from a brown, woven-leather cord and a one magnet later, it was time to fly.

When the other couple arrived, we made a quick pass through security, well, I beeped four times. The fifth time through, I was nearly naked, but headed out to the tarmac. The wife, a bit irked I made her wait…the nerve. In front of me was the smallest plane known to man. From the outside, to me, if all six of us got in, it wasn’t getting off the ground. But before you can say, “Come fly the friendly skies,” we were up in the air.

Have you ever flown in a teeny tiny propeller plane, Jew and Gentile Readers? If you have, you know it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. It’s like taking a ride in a dryer.

On two separate moments, right after seeing the whale and right before seeing the spider, I was sure I was going to toss my cookies.

“Do you need the window open?” The Co-Pilot asked.

A resounding “Yes!” from all the passengers.

“Quick, to the right…”

In forty minutes I learned to hate any phrase that began with, ‘quick, to the…’ because they were always followed by a quick jerk and dive in said direction. Without time to prepare for the quick change. Like rag dolls, we were tossed. Cameras clicking, no time to focus, just point and shoot, hoping here’s something on the film.

The hummingbird

“Quick, to the left…”

“Look over there…”

“Oh my, there it is…”

“This is amazing…”

The Monkey!!!

I saw the monkey, the Nasca monkey. With my own eyes.

Check her off.

We land without incident, my legs shaking. My heart beating in my fingertips. I’m struck dumb. It’s not very often I’m speechless, so instead, I cry.

“How was it?” Jillann sounding name asks.

I can’t answer, I just cry.

The rest of the day is a blur, there was lunch and a stop at the Nasca Museum, the five hour ride back, the sunset…

Tuppence, Tuppence....

“When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.”

– Clifton Fadiman

I do lots.

But mostly, I watch TV.

Now, Jew and Gentile Readers, not the TV broadcast to my room, that would be Fox News, the 10,000th viewing of The Last Holiday or Fox News and I’m not that much of a glutton for punishment.

I’ve been watching full series TV without commercial interruption on my computer. True Blood, Sex and the City, Charmed, Glee, Little Britain, Star Trek Voyager, Family Guy, Queer as Folk, Rick and Steve, the Happiest Gay Couple in the World, Robot Chicken, Weeds, Battlestar Galactica, and Xena, Warrior Princess.

Who’d a thunk I’d miss broadcast TV?