2015 December 11

Hunk with hairy forearms on the 6.

GA at Hi Life. We had a sort of staggered attendance for Michael D.’s birthday celebration with different people arriving at different times, some quite late. As has been the case of late, I mostly hung around the bar and lounge. {…} As usual, I was eyeing the adorable blond waiter’s butt and undressing the newer darker waiter with my eyes. There was a chocolate birthday cake at the bar and Michael was smiling and hobnobbing with all. Lee came over when I was in a small social group and said how happy and friendly I am to the other persons’ agreement; Marc W. was saying how much he likes me and that I’m one of the person’s he seeks when there because he’s supposedly antisocial; Faisal and I wound up coincidentally near one another as our separate little conversations drew to a close and he spontaneously hugged me; Salah laterally embraced me as I approached his small social group and called me his best friend, so I really felt loved and appreciated. {…} Allahu akbar is the only Arabic phrase Michael J. knows and I heard him say it about twenty times over the course of the evening. A group of us (Mitch., Tiffany, Felix, Michael J., Andrew, Marc and I) wound up desiring solid food and took a separate table because there were too many of us to fit at the existing table. (In fact, each table had seven occupants at the time.) The music at Hi Life is pretty good {…}, and this week, like every week, friends commented that I’m always in motion. {…} When he introduced me to Vinoo’s possibly Jewish wife Jen, Omesh actually remembered and brought up how similar the names Omesh and Mosheh are. I liked Vinoo and Jen a lot; they seemed smart and conversational and friendly and savvy, but I barely interacted with them, particularly with Vinoo. Omesh seemed to think I’d had a long absence from GA but I think he drew that conclusion from his breaking his long absence by attending on the one Friday I missed. John K. is endlessly amused by my off‐the‐cuff remark many weeks back that I was disappointed that the Sam Harris/Maajid Nawaz video didn’t turn out to be pornographic before it ended, and he told me he’d told the anecdote to Michael Shermer who supposedly loved it. Koretta was friendly and physically affectionate as usual (and called me Eli) and enjoyed pointing out that there was a Guyanese contingent (her, Omesh and Nasiba) present; I guess I’m spoiled because this is New York City, and plenty of Jews (and even an infrequent Palestinian Arab) attend the group, as well as other Near Eastern (Iraqi, Turkish, Armenian) persons, so I do not feel like any kind of ethnic outcast. Hi Life had a prominent electric ḥanukkiyya at the host stand and a few persons asked me questions about the holiday. Surprisingly, Salah, who is from Ramallah, could not remember the name of the holiday when he wished me a happy one and kept making errors when he referred to it later on.