Saturday night was amazing.
Not so much for the party.
The client throwing the party is a pretty small operation and even though it was at a swank Beverly Hills hotel I figured it wasn't going to be a grand affair. The words "Cash Bar" on the invite pretty much guaranteed that. All the same, we scheduled our departure to allow for traffic and yet arrive fashionably late. The party was to start at 8:00.
Unfortunately, due to someone's unexpected "hair issues", we ended up leaving almost an hour later than planned and then found ourselves stuck on the 405. By the time we pulled up to the hotel, it was 9:30.
And the party was winding down.
There were only about 20 people still there and whatever food there may have been was long gone. I finally found my client, we were meeting for time. He went around and introduced me to "the team", and I likewise introduced the boyfriend, who's hair, I must admit, looked amazing. We went to the bar and ordered a couple of drinks and made small talk with our new friends for about 10 minutes. I noticed the few remaining people were starting to trickle out and saw my client closing his tab at the bar. The party was basically over.
Normally I probably would have been pissed, driving all that way for less than 30 minutes of action, but the truth of the matter is my social skills are pretty rusty and that was probably the limit of my current abilities. Baby steps.
So there we were, waiting for the valet, at 10 o'clock on a Saturday night in Beverly Hills. Starving.
My first thought was, well, let's just grab some fast food and hit the road back. We could probably make it by midnight. I mentioned this to the boyfriend and he turned to me and said 'Fuck That".
And he had a point. It was the very first time the two of us had been back in the city together since we moved two years ago and it wasn't an opportunity to squander. He made a suggestion: we aren't giving each other gifts this year, we most likely won't be back in the city together for a long time, we're all dressed up for the first time in ages, let's splurge and have a nice dinner at one of our old favorite restaurants. A night on the town will be our gift to each other.
Maybe I've lived in Bakersfield too long, but I thought it prudent to call the restaurant and make sure they were still serving dinner. It's not that there aren't dining options in Bako at 10pm on a Saturday night, it's just that they all involve drive-up. I called the restaurant and the host must have thought I was a rube; of course they were still serving dinner, the kitchen was open until 12:30. God I miss the city.
We arrived at the restaurant, in the heart of West Hollywood, around 10:30. The street was teeming with people and the restaurant was packed with members of the tribe. I'd forgotten what it was like to be around other gay men. We proceeded to order a three course feast and just kind of basked in the warm glow of all the holiday decorations and good cheer. It was the best night the two of us had had in a very long time, since at least before we were exiled.
By the time our entrees arrived the restaurant had started to thin out and by around 11:30 we were almost the only people left. Without all the chatter you could finally hear the music playing softly in the background and just around the time we asked for the check, "Home", by Michael Bublé came on...
"Let me go home
I’ve had my run
Baby, I’m done
I gotta go home
Let me go home
It will all be all right..."
We left around midnight and were back in Bako shortly after 2.
It isn't home, and it never will be.
