Is it me, or is The New Yorker totally phoning it in with its daily cartoons lately?

Can we all just agree to agree that geraniums are stupid?

Their “blooms” look like either '80s prom scrunches or gloopy blood clots, their leaves are so dense that they divert water from the watering can to the outside of the pot instead of to the thirsty, thirsty soil beneath, and they smell all over like cadaverous spider farts and dusty boredom.

DAY 1 WITHOUT DIET COKE

I have replaced my morning 44 oz. bucket of delicious chemical elixir with a can of itchy water infused with a vague taste of sodium and a wisp of a lie about ephemeral fruit flavor. We should find out relatively soon exactly how many tears of desperate despondency I’m capable of shedding as I shake uncontrollably from delicious chemical withdrawal. Stay tuned.

Also: Ranch peanuts taste exactly like peanuts that have the word Ranch on the packaging.

Well, THAT was awkward

We were running along at a nice pace down the Cedar River Trail, the sky started thundering at us, the rain started ... and I started having my own flashes of light. And the gray sand washing down my face that I feel when I’m about to have a blackout episode. Because bipolar meds are fun.

This happens multiple times a day when I stand up too fast. But it’s never happened when I’m running. I tried to slog through it, hoping it would pass ... and I got about half a mile before I noticed I was zigzagging so I wisely let what little common sense I had left prevail and I stopped. It was mile 3.12, which was almost our turnaround point. But it WAS a complete 5K, so I deserve a medal.

You know who else deserves medals? Rob and Scott, who stopped their run and insisted walking the 3.12 miles back with me. I kept insisting I was fine. I kept insisting that they run ahead and get their miles in. But they kept insisting on being awesome friends and not leaving me. Those jerks.

I feel normal now. The flashes of light and gray sand are gone. But I’m frustrated and a little concerned and totally embarrassed about the whole thing. And very soaked from the rain.

Shit.

I hate to be all judgey BUT I’M GONNA BE ALL JUDGEY

because AAA just sent the cast of Deliverance to wordlessly change my tire and start to climb back into its truck with zero interaction with me regarding the inflation level of my spare, how long they recommend I drive on it or anything else related to what I should look out for as I pull back into the highway with the back-right quarter of my car supported by a donut that hasn’t seen the light of day for 14 years. 

AAA, you really suck right now. But I’m heading home. Or into fiery death in a ditch.

I just somehow managed to eat one of these

I still can't get the taste of corpse and regret out of my mouth.

Thus all fairy stories end ...

The chronic, increasing, sometimes-doubling-over abdominal pain finally won the battle 30 hours, three Broadway shows, three celebrities, two museums, one tap class, one theater tour, one new-boyfriend meet and seven friend reunions short of the complete birthday Broadway vacation I'd planned. I decided it was best to get home and in the care of my own doctors on the off chance the pain is an indicator of something serious enough to warrant surgery or a hospital stay. My initial assumption that it was just another miserable side effect of my bipolar meds seems entirely misguided at this point, so home I go. And as disappointed as I am, I know it's the smart decision.

So now all eyes are laser-focused on next year! Watch out, NYC: I'll be 50 and wealthy beyond description and cured of all abdominal pain and bipolarness and if I'm not already starring in three Broadway musicals simultaneously I'll be coming to see every sequin and kickline ya got. 

And I'm totally bringing my tap shoes again.

Please use your inside voices

So after a lengthy visit to the doctor -- made lengthier by my inability to pee on command -- the diagnosis is there is no diagnosis. Which is good in the sense that there's no intestinal blockage requiring surgery but bad in the sense that my tummy still hurts sometimes to the point of doubling over and nobody knows why. The very early stages of appendicitis and kidney stones are still possibilities but are highly improbable. And the doctor didn't say this outright but I know in my heart I'm not pregnant. So all I can do is wait and see if it gets worse. And nap. Which I'm totally about to do. Yes, nap. Nap nap nap.

But thanks for all your concern and well-wishes. I'm still really bummed I cut my trip short but I do get an unplanned day out of it that's perfect for napping. Which I'm totally about to do. But you maybe already knew that.

Flush with excitement

One of the small pleasures of two-leg flights going home to smaller markets like Cedar Rapids is the higher probability that you'll run into people you may know when you get to your final-leg airport gate, which is usually tucked away charmingly in a bubbling drainage ditch behind a haphazard pile of desiccated cows six miles of hardscrabble terrain from the last functioning airport bathroom. And when you change your flight at the last minute, you often get the very back seat on your tiny puddle-jumper-to-smaller-market plane. Right next to the lavatory.

My final score for this flight is 0% people I know and 100% very back seat right next to the lavatory.

My painful distended abdomen and I can't wait to get home.

Oh, what's the good of the strongest heart ...

It seems I've added another bipolar-med side effect to my collection: a stomachache/headache combo that leaves me practically doubled over in pain. And it must have stowed away in my carry-on because it's clearly followed me to NYC. It canceled our trip to the Whitney Biennial yesterday and saved me money on an expensive restaurant last night. Now it's canceled my second tap class and postponed a theater tour today. And it hurts so much I almost don't care. Which is exactly why my lucky understudy Bette is going on again for me tonight. And I'm curling up in a ball on the couch.

The loneliest little Single

The August issue of Chicago magazine is out, which officially signals the end of my July-long reign as one of Chicago’s Top 20 Singles. And while you’d probably think membership in this elite club would bring me a lifetime of untold love, happiness and shoes, you’d be wrong.

In fact, it has brought me nothing but disappointment, embarrassment and random little tufts of hair on my back that my workout partner takes great delight in pointing out (they may just be a result of my getting older, though). And here, for your reading pleasure, are my final ruminations on the exciting process and the dismal results of the whole adventure:


MY PROFILE
Could it BE any more obsessed with gay stereotypes? (We got the drag and the (yawn) French lessons squeezed in there, but where’s the mention of the marathon training and the sky diving and the career accomplishments?) Could it BE any more inaccurate and misleading? (Paris in the fall? Since when is March in the fall? Not interested in finding a “song and dance man”? What part of “I’d love to find someone who’s as into musical theater as I am” is so hard to understand?) Could it BE any less appealing to potential suitors? (Apparently not, as you’ll learn further down in this diatribe.) And to add insult to injury, the online version is truncated to focus on just the REALLY gay stuff. Go me.


MY PHOTO
I hate it. My family hates it. All my friends hate it. People have either said it looks nothing like me, or—if they were feeling charitable—they merely said it looks “OK.” I decided to let the anonymous masses vote impartially on its appeal, so I posted it on hotornot.com a month ago—along with a picture I took of myself as the control. Here’s a comparison of photo shoots and results:

Their photo shoot
• Professional studio
• Professional lighting
• Professional hair and makeup artist
• Professional stylist who picked my clothes, steamed them and even fussed over their drape every time I moved
• Professional lighting-level checker
• Professional photographer
• Assistant to professional photographer
• Lady who got me a refreshing beverage
• Multiple cameras
• Two rolls of film equaling about 50 pictures
• One hour on a beautiful May afternoon
• Final selection by a professional photo editor
The result: This monstrosity, which bears a greater likeness to Grandpa Munster than to me.
Hot Or Not rating as of this post: 6.8

My photo shoot
• Studio = my bedroom on a sunny June morning, soon after I woke up
• Wardrobe = my favorite T-shirt, still kind of wrinkly but relatively clean
• No makeup
• Total bedhead
• Cheap digital camera perched on a book on a chair on my bed
• About 10 shots using my automatic timer, many of which looked pretty good, IMHO
The result: This picture, which I had to crop because my bedhead was worse than I thought, and since I wasn’t able to look through the viewfinder I was barely in the picture anyway. But I think it looks a lot like the guy I see in the mirror every morning.
Hot Or Not rating as of this post: 9.4

Point spread between low-reality, piss-poor-quality professional picture and my modest attempts at self-portraiture: 2.8

I rest my case.


THE RESULTS
The magazine set up a special email address for each one of us—and the editors specifically instructed us to check it every day because they said the mailboxes tend to fill up with marriage proposals and then the magazine has to field angry calls from potential suitors who can’t get through. They also told us that they get lots of letters for the singles, which they regularly forward to us in large envelopes. Furthermore, we were told anecdotally that potential suitors historically have found many featured singles in the phone book and inundated them with phone calls and flowers. One editor described the whole experience as “the heavens opening up and raining down men” on me.

Here’s how it really played out:

Emails:
• 1 from a drag queen who can’t spell
• 1 from a guy I hadn’t heard from since we did a theme-park show together in Buffalo in 1988—he saw the magazine in his doctor’s NY office
• 1 from a neighbor who also saw the magazine in his doctor’s office
• A handful from a bunch of friends back in Iowa who were told about it via an email from another friend
• A buttload of spam

Packages of letters in the mail:
• 1 free book about finding my soul mate with a cover letter from the author that began, “As one of Chicago magazine’s Top 20 Singles, I wanted you to have a copy of my book … .” (Note to those of you who for some unfathomable reason aren’t irritated to the point of justifiable homicide about misplaced modifiers: The author was NOT one of the Top 20 Singles, but the way he muddied up this sentence CLEARLY stated that he was. And he’s a fucking WRITER. Who should KNOW BETTER.)

Flowers:
Let’s just say the dust levels in my vase collection are higher than they were before the issue came out.

Phone calls:
Gay men are notoriously clumsy dialers. I’m sure the phone will start ringing any day now.

Marriage proposals:
Maybe the cousin-fuckers in Missouri who just voted gay-marriage discrimination into their constitution discouraged all the marriage-minded men from contacting me. Maybe.

Being recognized by strangers:
Actually, this has happened a couple of times. A friend of a friend met me at a crowded street fair one night and then recognized me the next day in the magazine. And this guy recognized me on Friendster. So that was kind of cool.


FINAL THOUGHTS
You know how Charlotte on Sex in the City dreamed for so long of having a beautiful engagement picture in the New York Times and was so disappointed when it was printed with a huge Hitler-mustache smudge across her face? That’s kind of how I feel about the whole thing. It's not like I'm deserving of any level of attention and admiration—or like the "honor" of being picked to be a Top 20 Single makes one whit of difference in the world. But I was sooooo excited about the prospect of being profiled in a glossy, high-end national publication (and who wouldn’t be?) and I even let myself fantasize that this—finally—would be the catalyst for sending me on celestial trajectories of social excitement (dare I say validation?), career satisfaction and—yes—even True Love.

And when I saw the goofy picture and read the profile that clearly cast me as the token faggot in the Rich Straight White People Magazine, I was almost sick with disappointment, embarrassment and the realization that once again my life wasn’t following the Boy of Destiny path I’d been hoping for.

The only positive thing I’ve gotten out of the whole thing is the occasional praise from gay people who note that I’m the first Top 20 Single (apparently in the history of the magazine) who’s totally, shamelessly out. (Not like I had any control over the content of the profile, but I did tell the writer that I’m totally out in life and that I’m not afraid of bigots, so there was no reason to reduce my sexuality to mere innuendo. And for once, she listened.) And—on a side note—that deafening silence in response to the profile includes a welcome silence from the goat-ball lickers in the Christian hate industry who have been so quick to send me anonymous save-the-gerbils postcards when I've had gay stuff published in Time and Newsweek and other national newsmagazines. So either they’re threatened by publications with three-syllable titles or they know better than to fuck with me. Because since I’m still totally dateless (sigh) I have plenty of time—and unfocused frustration—to fuck with them back. And Christians vs. Faggots is one arena where I'm used to winning.

My night as a celebrity

I just got back from the Chicago Magazine Top 20 Singles kickoff party.

We Singles, you see, were the "celebrity" draw tonight at a charity fund-raiser/kickoff event for the issue that features us. How on earth I can achieve any level of celebrity status simply by virtue of the fact that I can't get a date is beyond me, but I won't let rational thought get in the way of enjoying the opportunity for some fawning attention and free sodas on a beautiful summer night. And I actually had a great time.

The day didn't start off so well, though. I could NOT get my hair to look good.

And then I had a hella stressful day at work. But I eventually made it -- only 15 minutes after we Top 20 Singles were expected to show up. I took my officemate Liza as my date, and I wore my new $105 gay-clone shirt (you know: striped, collared, fitted, untucked, sleeves too long, etc. etc. etc.) that Bill convinced me to buy for the occasion. So we get there, and the place is pretty packed. It was held at the beautiful Chicago Historical Society, and it was almost more fun to admire the architecture and the grounds than the people there.

(Speaking of the people there, the only big-ticket fund-raisers I've ever been to are populated by gay people. Fussy, elitist, social-climbing gay people. So I was a little shocked to be at a party where 1) strangers were extremely friendly to each other, 2) the guys don't look like cartoon characters, 3) I recognized the music they were playing and 4) people clearly don't know how to dress themselves. I swear, I've never seen a bigger collection of women who really, really need gay best friends to help them build wardrobes of flattering clothes.)

Our obligations as the Top 20 Singles were pretty small: Congregate behind the stage so we could be introduced to the crowd, and then line up on a magnificent circular staircase in the museum for our Brady Bunch photo.

The being-on-stage part seemed pretty easy. When the hosts for the evening started introducing the singles, they asked questions about their jobs and their interesting lives. When they introduced me and read on their little cue cards that I'm a singer, they asked me to sing. AS IF. The conversation went something like this:

"Will you sing something for us?"

"I'd rather not." (I'm not warmed up and I'd sound like shit. Next question, please.)

"Why not? C'mon -- sing for us!"

"No thanks." (Really. I'm not interested in sounding like shit in front of 500 strangers who may or may not be potential love interests.)

"Are you sure? Why not sing a little something?"

"Um, no." (Why is this such a hard concept for you to grasp?)

"OK ... that was Jake, everybody! Our next single is ..."

So if my fag-centric profile in the magazine weren't embarrassing enough, I'm also now the boring old homo who won't sing like a trained monkey for the straight people. No wonder I can't get a date, they must be thinking.

I ended up standing on stage next to Jennifer Schefft as they introduced the rest of the singles. (We were introduced alphabetically, you see. Which for once in my life put me at a standing-next-to-a-quasi-celebrity advantage.) I'd never seen the dating show Jennifer was on, so I wouldn't have known her if someone hadn't told me who she was. She's really rather short, and not too talkative. At least not with me. She sure was animated around the other gay guy in the Top 20 Singles, though.

And speaking of him, the boy either underdosed on his ADD meds or overdosed on his ecstasy tonight. He was as wired and unfocused as a Madonna movie, and during the Brady Bunch photo, the photographer actually had to yell at him -- repeatedly -- to get him to stand still and smile for the camera. Sheesh!

And speaking of running into contestants from nationally televised dating shows at the party, I'm pretty sure I saw "Bachelorette" reject and fellow social-anxiety-disorder-sufferer Jamie Blyth there. He's a little shorter than I'd expected, but he's dreamy in a Shaun Cassidy kind of way. And -- being true to our disorders -- Jamie and I never even acknowledged each other the whole evening.

Other highlights from the evening:

• Host Larry Potash is cute, but noticeably not as cute in person as he is on TV. (I have the opposite problem; I'm cute-ish in real life and I look like Ichabod Crane on TV.)

• Straight guys actually talk to me like I'm one of them. (After a lifetime of evidence that people rarely can tell that I'm gay when I meet them, I'm still always surprised that I continue to "pass" as straight. My paranoia about this is clearly just in my head -- though it was not unfounded tonight; anyone who read my gay-ass profile in the magazine probably expected me to bourrée in en pointe and sprinkle fairy dust on everyone I met.)

• It's a small, small, small, small world. Liza and I hadn't been at the event for 10 minutes when a woman RUSHED up to me all excited ... and it turns out she and I had done The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas together eight years ago in Iowa. An hour later, we bumped into the son of some of my parents' best friends in Iowa. Good Lord ... why are all these Iowans stalking me?

• In keeping with my unflattering and wholly unfair theme of gay/straight dichotomies in this post, I noticed that gay guys just have better bodies and better wardrobes than straight guys. Straight guys are far more friendly and fun and easygoing to hang around with, but homos sure can jack up the eye candy factor when they populate a room. I'll go to a bar or a gay event and find myself thinking lustful thoughts about a good 50% of the people I meet there. Tonight, I think I saw three guys I wanted to see naked.

Anyway, the party's over. I didn't get any numbers from anyone and only two strangers came up and talked to me all night (not that I expected to make a lot of love connections at an event marketed to a straight demographic). And I'm climbing into bed to rest up for tomorrow's Proud to Run 10K, which starts at 8:00 am -- ACK! So early! -- and kicks off all the Pride festivities in Chicago.

Night!

Being recognized by strangers

It's started, and the Top 20 Singles issue hasn't even been out for a week -- hell, it's not even on newsstands yet.

Two guys have recognized me from the Chicago magazine profile so far (even though I'm well hidden behind that grotesque photo):

1) This guy, who found me on Friendster, and

2) One of Red Shirt's friends, whom I met briefly on Sunday night at the Andersonville street fair. I hadn't told Red Shirt about the Top 20 Singles thing (mostly because it would have some creepy -- and pretty arrogant -- "I just met you but I'm already projecting a lifetime of happiness on a few dates and I want you to know that you may be faced with a world of competition for my affections in the coming months" subtext), but he seemed to see the whole thing as kinda fun last night when he told me about his friend discovering me in the magazine.

I've gotten some other feedback from family and friends as well. Here are a few (some paraphrased) quotes:

"Jake, this is HUGE!"

"That's a horrible picture of you."

"My friends told me the profile doesn't even sound like you."

"I wondered why you didn't tell me about this. Now that I've seen the picture, I know why."

"It's about time they featured gay guys who aren't afraid to be openly gay."

"I hate the profile they wrote of you. It doesn't capture you at all. It captures the stereotypical gay male as viewed in the eyes of ignorant straight people. I find it offensive."

"That can't be the best picture they took of you."

"Did YOU pick that picture? It's awful."

"Congratulations! I hope you win!" (This quote is from a friend of my parents who obviously doesn't get that it's not some sort of competition.)

And speaking of Red Shirt and last night ...

Date Three was just as fun as dates One and Two. We saw The Stepford Wives, which is neither good nor bad but simply a lot of fun. We held hands during the movie, which is a MAJOR cool thing for me. We discovered our shared obsession for bargain hunting and then regaled each other with stories of great deals we've gotten on everything from clothes to furniture. He revealed his "dirty little secret" to me: He's a Republican. (I already knew that, though, through my spy, Anders.) And while anyone who willfully associates with the Republican party is a little suspect in my book, I'm more horrified by toe-the-line partisan politics on either side of the aisle than by Red Shirt's measured, selective association with the so-called Grand Old Party. Best of all, we capped off the night in each other's arms on his couch. Mmmmmm.

On the down side, our schedules are NOT date-friendly over the next two months. In fact, we've found two dates where we can get together between now and the end of July. On the upside, we've locked in those dates for each other, which means there's still a mutual spark. Next date: June 28!