The Slowest Week of the Year

I detest the week before Christmas; everyone is running around in a last ditch effort to "get in the spirit", there are few tourists to lighten up the day, and you just have to wince at the tropical Christmas decorations (this year colored lights in the shape of palm trees attached to street lights). Achieving that cozy Christmas feeling is one thing in Rockefeller Center with your nose about to freeze and fall off, it's quite another when strollers are wearing thongs and sipping a frozen drink.

It is also the week that friends with family obligations leave us and I was happy to have Jeremy and The 7th call and ask if I would be around as they were "stopping for lunch". Of course, their definition of "stopping by" is spending five hours at the bar, where after the perfunctory lunch, a whole lot of booze is consumed. Everyone was in good spirits and having a ball when the afternoon's levity came to an abrupt halt when the large seaplane that makes the daily flight to Bimini, crashed ten blocks down the beach in a spectacularly fiery plunge. The rather tight and overburdened streets of the city were immediately clogged with rescue vehicles and the whole incident cast a sad shadow over the mid-afternoon festivities.

On Saturday I walked out of my office and found KiKi chatting it up with one of the many gay dogs who visit The Palace, Dexter Ferriera. KiKi and Dexter (old friends) were talking about the usual things over a cool refreshing drink: other gay dogs and what they wear, current grooming techniques, how tacky girl dogs are (excluding the hagdogs, of course), and the opening of The King Tut exhibit. KiKi was growling his displeasure that I am taking a friend and not him and was saying, "That upstart will never take over my position. And", KiKi snarled, "platinum is NOT the new pink." A new gay dog entered the bar, though, and all attention turned toward his direction.