You're Not One of Those Fags Who Gets Depressed and Becomes a Hermit...

...but you are really bummed about the fact that Blonde Beard is a Crack Head. Or might be. Hell you don't know, but you had such high hopes for this one and now you are totally re-examining everything underneath a giant microscope, even though what you really need is one of those giant Drug Sniffing Dogs that like to hang out around JFK Customs.

You're working from home today even though the police called to let you know that they recovered your laptop from the Lazy Blackmailer's apartment. You told them you'd drop by the precinct and pick it up tomorrow partly because you don't feel like getting out of your pajamas, but mostly because you're enjoying wallowing in your own filth and self-pity. After whining to your BFF about your latest novel: "Crackheads and the Boys Who Love Them," he informs you that your dilemma is nothing that can't be solved by a few Gay Cocktails. So you two make a plan to meet at The Ritz for their extremely economical Half Priced Happy Hour.

After an unproductive day of work, somehow you pull it together to take a shower. While you're waiting for the hot water to meander its way up to your 6th Floor Walk-up, you end up staring at your mopey-fish-face mug in the mirror and decide that you need to shave off the damn beard you've been growing. You think of it as a symbolic shave that will somehow rid you of your disturbingly co-dependent feelings for Blonde Beard. Besides, yesterday someone told you that it made you look older, so good riddance and buh-bye to the beard. First you do some weed whacking with your manscaping clippers and then you hop in the hot shower to shave the fucker off.

Afterwards, even though it's only been a few weeks, you definitely do a double-take because you've already become accustomed to your fuzzy/furry look. You definitely look younger though. Gray hairs sprouting from your cheeks was definitely not your best look. So you get dressed to go out and meet your BFF, but when you go to leave your hovel, the bottom door lock just spins and spins, yet never unlocks. There's no click. You stare at the inside of your apartment door in disbelief as you begin to grasp the fact that you are actually locked inside your apartment. How is that even fucking possible? Did your Hobosexual roommate break the bottom lock when he went out for dinner? Do these sorts of ridiculous things happen to other people? Or specifically just to you?

You immediately call the Hobosexual and, of course, you get his voicemail. You leave a frantic message, partly because you want your message to seem a bit urgent, but mostly because you are totally Jonesing for your Gay Cocktail. Next you call your Super, even though he only answers to text messages, but you figure bombarding him with S.O.S.'s can't hurt. Then you call your BFF so that he doesn't wind up going to The Ritz, since it's pretty damn obvious that you won't be meeting him there anytime soon. When he answers you tell him, "Don't go to the bar." "Too late," he informs you, "I needed a cocktail. What's up?" You explain your ridiculous situation which he can't help but laugh at you, "You're locked inside your apartment?"

After lecturing you on your shitty-ass karma, your BFF pledges to come downtown and rescue you after he finishes his cocktail, of course. While you wait for your BFF to arrive, you end up playing sappy broken-heart love songs, and by the time he buzzes you, you're busy scanning the ceiling of your Hovel for something strong enough to hang a noose from while listening to Jennifer Hudson belt out "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going." Ten minutes after buzzing him in, your out-of-breath BFF reaches the final step of Mount EverShanty. You tell him that you're gonna slide the key under the door for him to see if he can unlock it from the outside. Luckily this works and you don't have to go to Plan B where you play Rapunzel and yell out the window pleading with Bad Samaritans on the sidewalk for help. Or the dreaded Plan C where you have to call, and pay, for a Locksmith that you will never be reimbursed for.

You let your BFF catch his breath before beginning the long descent to gayer pastures. By the time you reach the third floor, the two of you decide to go to Urge since it's close by. And as luck would have it (obviously your BFF's luck, as you are void in that department lately) it turns out that your BFF knows the bartender (which is the New York equivalent of winning Lotto). After a few extremely strong and desperately needed cocktails, you actually end up having a laugh about your latest dating debacle. Your BFF thinks that you should keep your plans with Blonde Beard for tomorrow night and just go out and have a good time. After all, you really like the guy, and you don't know for sure that he's a Crackhead. Maybe he's only a recreational Crackhead? Maybe he uses soap that smells like Mothballs? Maybe it was his roommate's Crystal Pipe? Since you don't have the answers to any of these questions, it's important not to presume that Blonde Beard is guilty until proven innocent. You should never judge a Crackhead by his Crack Den. Especially when the Crackhead is great in bed.

And then, after you are sufficiently cheered up (or, more likely, sufficiently liquored up), the cute London Lush without any facial hair (who you've been keeping tabs on from the corner of your wandering eye) begins to chat you up with his adorable accent. You ask him a few questions about nothing in particular, and, yadda yadda yadda, you're making out with the London Lush in the back corner of Urge, exchanging cell numbers. Blonde Beard who? Anyway...

You're Not One of Those Fags Whose Closet is More Impressive Than His Résumé...

...but you do have way too many clothes for your closet-sized hovel of an apartment. So to kill time while waiting for your Blackmailer to go online so you can IM him about getting your laptop back and/or catching the fucker, you decide to start rearranging clothes in your closet. Your sweaters are still in a big pile on your bedroom floor and it's almost February, so you start removing piles of tank tops, skimpy gay bathing suits and camouflage cargo shorts that are hogging up valuable sweater space. You put all that summer stuff into a large suitcase and promise yourself that you'll buy some Mothballs and schlep it all over to your storage space in Queens sometime before Memorial Day. The sweaters take up way more room than your Speedos but somehow you make it all fit. Meanwhile, the Blackmailer never signs on so you climb over your overstuffed suitcase and go to bed as visions of Blonde Beard's Crack Pipes dance in your head.

The next day, when your Lazy Blackmailer still hasn't signed on to AIM, you decide that you're just gonna text your oppressor back. You T9 him, "Who is this and what do you want?" and begin a Text-fest where he explains that he was hired to crack the password on your laptop's login screen. Luckily, being a paranoid fag, you used your phone number for a User Name just in case something ever happened. You were also clever enough to squeeze the word "Reward!" into the login and now this Lazy Blackmailer obviously thinks he's gonna extort some extra cash before selling your stolen Dell on eBay. After a few irritating texts the Lazy Blackmailer valiantly offers to sell your stolen hard drive back to you for $250, almost as if he's some geeky Robin Hood 2.0. Luckily, since you use a free online backup service, your entire hard drive has been completely backed up so you could give a shit about it, but you really want the laptop back, and you definitely want to catch the fucker, so you, of course, call the police.

The Detective handling your case tells you that if you can get the Lazy Blackmailer to agree to meet you somewhere and make the exchange that they will arrest him at the scene of the crime. You immediately have this retarded, yet exciting image of being a gay Johnny Depp in 21 Jump Street, so of course you agree to it (see fagnote #1, below). Meanwhile you have a Doctor's appointment because your right nut hurts and you are absolutely sure you are dying of testicular cancer. Unfortunately, when you get to the Doctor's office, you realize that the waiting room is buried deep in a Post-War monstrosity and you have no cell service (Get More with T-Mobile!) so your text-fest quickly grinds to a signal-less halt (see fagnote #2, below) as you wait to drop your pants so the specialist can inspect your recently manscaped testes.

The Ball Doctor asks you a few questions and then sends you away to give a urine sample, and then you are sent back into the waiting room. Eventually your name is called (and mispronounced) three times by a man who not only looks like Wallace Shawn, but also shares his speech impediment, which is somehow coupled with an impenetrable Russian accent (see fagnote #3, below.) You follow Wallace into a little room overflowing with medical equipment, and the next thing you know you are lying down with your pants yanked down to your knees, as Wallace mumbles, then gestures for you to hold your penis out of his way. You gulp when it dawns on you that you are actually having a, get this, Scrotal Sonogram, which you are not at all happy about it. At all. You try not to think about the ugly little straight man rubbing his electronic wand around your junk so, of course, your mind quickly turns to Blonde Beard. But the mere thought of the sexy boy actually arouses you, so you immediately start thinking about bad, penis-softening things. The recent Crystal Pipe incident comes to mind and that's when you remember that Blonde Beard kind-of-sort-of smelled like Moth Balls when you were covering him head-to-toe with kisses. It was so weird that it really stuck with you, and it wasn't like he was wearing some old sweater because he was absolutely naked at the time. Anyway.

You leave the Doctor's office with an antibiotic prescription to cure your, get this, epididymitis (try saying that three times fast...) and your phone instantly begins to beep with lots of anxious texts from the Lazy Blackmailer. After the two of you agree to meet at a Starbucks on 14th Street, you immediately inform the Police about your rendezvous. The Detective tells you that he'll meet you ten minutes beforehand to discuss the plan of action. You're pretty psyched about starring in your own private episode of Law and Order, but, even though "You're ready for your Close-up, Mr. Demille," you end up going back to your office to try and get a little work done before your 8pm call time. Only when you get back to the office the first thing you do is google: "crystal meth moth ball smell." The number one result is entitled "How do you know if your son is using crack?" and as you search through the answers you are shocked when you stumble upon this one: "One tell tail sign that you can not miss, people who smoke crack smells like moth balls. A really putrid smell that if your not used to smelling it you will catch on anyone." (See fagnote #4, below) Your heart instantly drops and you don't get any more writing done before the Sting Operation because you're too busy wondering if Blonde Beard is really a crack head or are you really just a Nervous Nelly Olsen? Then, of course, loads of suspicious things start flying into your head. For instance, if Blonde Beard doesn't smoke and doesn't have a cold, then why the hell does he have a hacker's cough? Anyway.

Eventually the Detective calls you and you mope your single ass downstairs to meet him on the street, only your broken heart is no longer into this Sting Operation anymore. All you can think about is how it's hard enough to meet someone who you even like, not to mention feel connected to on several complicated levels. Unfortunately, you know you'll never be able to connect to Blonde Beard on the Crack Level, even though you're sure it's very slimming. When you hit the street you hop into the Detective's unmarked, yet completely obvious, squad car, and he and his partner inform you that they'll get to Starbucks first and promise to arrest the Lazy Blackmailer as soon as you make the exchange. Then they drive away down the block, letting you walk the rest of the way so the Lazy Blackmailer doesn't get suspicious of you showing up in an tragically unmarked police car (see fagnote #5, below).

Only, as you're jay-walking to the south side of 14th Street (what, are they gonna arrest you?) you hear your name yelled out from behind. Something tells you not to turn around because you are sure it must be the Lazy Blackmailer, especially since you know that the Plain Clothes Detectives are already inside Starbucks. So you pretend you don't hear the Lazy Blackmailer and run inside to tell the Cops in a panic, "My Blackmailer is across the street!" Then you cleverly call the Lazy Blackmailer and tell him that you're in Starbucks but can't find him. He says, "I'm double-parked across the street. Didn't you hear me yelling your name?" So you go outside to meet him and he's actually super nice. Not so cute though. He starts blah-blah-blahing all about some Freelancer's Union Health Insurance PDF he saw on your hard drive and segues into how you both have freelancing in common. You almost ask, "Since when did Blackmail become freelancing?" (see fagnote #6, below), but the Detectives have him cuffed up against his car and are reading him his Miranda Rights as soon as he hands you the hard drive. You kind of run away and hide behind the subway entrance because you think it's probably not the best idea if this criminal remembers what you look like.

Eventually one Detective takes the Lazy Convict back to the tragically unmarked squad car as the Other Detective informs you that they will definitely search his apartment with the hope of retrieving your stolen laptop. You take the hard drive home and all you want to do is lie in bed and wait for the Bedbugs to bite while feel sorry for yourself because you're afraid you're never gonna find someone to settle down with. Without settling. But when you get home you almost trip over that damn suitcase filled with your summer clothes and decide that you are definitely not going to put any mothballs inside of it. Anyway...