Where Did Everybody Go?

Black socks and single gay men are both disappearing at an alarming rate. I'm down to three pairs of socks for work. I don't know where they all went - I keep buying them, and they keep going AWOL. Either someone in our neighborhood has a strange fetish and is stealing them from the laundry room, or there is a wormhole in my closet.

But missing socks are common. We all deal with it. But now men have started to disappear, and I'm getting worried. Maybe there's now a wormhole in the sauna. Something is taking them. 24 Hour Fitness used to look like gay happy hour pau hana time. Now there's rarely more than two or three of us. I talked to the guys at Golds and the Y, but the men aren't there either. The Surf Club has faded. Five or so guys go regularly, but none on Saturday mornings. Max's has been haunted solely by creepy old men lately. My boys aren't there. Hulas still draws a crowd, and Angles is still packed with drunks. But where is my old crowd? I went dancing over New Years, and Michael Fong is an excellent DJ but even he couldn't pull the old crowd in.

So where did they all go? Is it my age? The times? The right-wing war on gays, Arabs, and anyone else who won't bow down before them?

And now that I write that ... I think that's it. Because I hear the same thing LA to NY to Sydney: the clubs, the parties, the life - it all seemed to peak a few years ago. Let's hope it comes back soon.

As for my New Years weekend, I didn't get off island like I had hoped.
I stayed put, and had a nice emotional roller coaster of a weekend.
There was no major drama, just the basic me vs. myself. [I won]. 
[I think].Alan Hanaike had a big and casual house party for NYE,
and everyone was cool and laid back and it was Hawaii at its best.
I went to an after hours party that didn't quite reach critical mass.
I had been kind of hoping to hook up that weekend & there wasn't
even any *potential* single man there and I crashed.  Sunday was all 
what am I doing in Hawaii? and is this my life? and ten years from
now will I be sitting here in this same
exact spot with the same exact life? and brothers, it wasn't pretty.

I guess 40 hit harder than I thought it would.