Saturday Night in NashTrash.....

As we begin round 23 of the South's menopausal season (we don't have winter, fall, or spring, per say), the temperatures plummet from the 70's of Monday to the 30's of today. The day started off sunny but now, it's cloudy and rainy and cold. Needless to say, my cheap ass is staying in.

Going out in Nashville is not expensive, especially compared to L.A. (hello $20 parking, $15 cover, and $10 drink), but it can still burn a whole in your pocket because you realize, hey, this is pretty cheap. So far. By the end of the night, you can spend $100 easy. (Unless you're like the frat boys and head to the strip clubs at the end of the evening. You might as well chuck your wallet into the Cumberland River.)

I'm doing pretty well, better than most (Nashville is, for the most part, recession proof - thank you, healthcare billing industry), but I know I have to make cut backs. I can't make the trips into town, I can't spend money on food and drink. When one beer costs $4 and a six pack costs $6, well, you can see that the six pack is a better deal.

But I'm newly single (for those of you who don't know me...which is pretty much a lot of you), and I've been single now for six months. And I'm wondering, if I don't go out much, how am I going to meet somebody? Even if it turns out to be platonic or just a fling, interaction with another gay guy is healthy and I don't have that many gay friends here in Nashville.

There's a disease in Nashtrash among the gay men and it's called "Husband-noma." If you're not going to marry them (or provide a cheap good time), they are not interested. It's the same phenomena with single women in the south. I find that people want to be married and settled down way before 30. It's like a race and the age of 30 is the finish line. We're all guilty of it down here.

I myself rushed into a relationship and made it move too fast because I thought, "I found someone! Now I'm safe." The relationship was horrible for me, because we were incompatible. Instead of being built up, my self esteem went in the toilet, I lost all self confidence, I became much more self conscious, and not because he was abusive in any way (and was a great guy in his own right), but because we weren't working and we knew it. Instead of admitting it, I tried even harder and he went the route of apathy.

Now I'm trying to learn to be okay with the silence in my apartment. I'm finally sleeping in the center of the bed and that's never happened since college. I'm mostly fine, but there are times when I miss not my ex so much as I miss being in a relationship.

So as I sit in my apartment, alone on a Saturday night, a glass of cheap red wine in one hand, a Big Lots $3 DVD of the The Good German in the other, (I'm incredibly cheap and hey! Cate Blanchett! George Clooney! Steven Soderbergh! For $3, that's a steal, ladies and gents), I wonder if I'll have to turn to the internet to meet someone. My experience with meeting men through something as banal as myspace proved disastrous. (What can work in email does not work in person.) And as a singer who does not perform musical theatre, I hang out with mostly straight guys. Fun guys. Sweet guys. Great guys. But straight guys. They'll give me a hand when I'm down, but they won't give me a handjob before going down on me.

What about the bars, you ask? Well, now that's a different post, because the gay bars down here (of which there are...4), resemble...well...why spoil the surprise? Until next post!