I WANT TO have sex,” she announced politely but firmly, like a little girl demanding a new doll. “Where can we go to do that?” Not anywhere around here, I thought as I looked around the barren park where we were lunching. There was a devastating lack of shrubbery; surely we would be spotted fornicating like the wild dogs we were from every conceivable spot in this obstruction-free landscape.

I’VE NEVER BEEN a member of Manhunt, Adam4Adam or any of those online sex sites geared for horny gay guys. Mostly because I’ve always been terrified of a co-worker or acquaintance giggling over my photos or my profile, but also because I freeze up when confronted with the prospect of going to a stranger’s apartment for sex or, worse, having someone from the Internet come to my place. The handful of times I got laid via Craigslist, I hid knives in strategic locations all over the apartment. Clearly, I wasn’t cut out for online sex. Porn stores, however, turned out to be a different matter.

“Dude? Seriously, if you would just hold still for one second, I swear to God, I can almost get this fish’s eyeball in your butthole.”

THE AIR IN the cell was warm with evaporated piss and sweat, so eventually I took off the leather jacket I’d been wearing. Someone sitting on the bench—a young, coffee-colored guy with fat red lips tattooed on his neck—jabbed the guy beside him and pointed at me.Well, it’s about time, I thought.

MY FRIEND ERIN is the girl who gets one-liners from men at bars. The do you come here oftens of slurred solicitation that she brushes away with a derisive laugh and a flip of her blond hair. My friend Danielle gets the CSI variety of creepy lurkers, and she’s found her personal antidote in a keychainbound can of mace and a black belt in Aikido. Another friend gets the drunk dials, and still another gets the exes that return in the middle of the night like housecats. It’s been said that every woman has the potential to bring out the worst in men. I summon forth the cock pictures.

“DO YOU WANT to see my work?” “Yeah!” I sounded way too hyper. It had been two years since I first met Sylvain and began having spread-eagle fantasies about him. It was the summer of 2005 and I was 20 years old, a virgin from California passing the summer in Paris after a year abroad in Bordeaux.

AT AGE 17, people still called me “pimple beard.” My mouth was filled with braces and while my scoliosis developed better than the doctors expected, I still had a slight hump. The only thing greater than my physical monstrosities was my sex drive. Despite being hobbled by social anxiety disorder—when I got nervous around people I licked my wrists—I was determined to finally get laid.

OCTOBER ALREADY, CAN you believe it? My doorbell rang this morning—a deliveryman saying he had a package for me. I was so excited I skipped down the stairs thinking it was a package from you. It was actually a box of purple suede go-go boots I bought online last week and then forgot about. I was a little disappointed that the package wasn’t from you, but then I tried on my new go-go boots and kicked around the house a bit and felt better.They have zippers! I’ve since put them back in the box, however.

I crave hot dogs the way crack heads crave rock. My preferred dealer is the Gray’s Papaya at West 72nd Street and Broadway. Last April, I decided to give into the hankering before a hair appointment. After injecting two dogs (well done, no kraut, no onions) I exited Gray’s wearing the afterglow of gastronomic pleasure. At the corner, I noticed an older white man noticing me. His 1980s navy blue Members Only jacket read retiree.

A FRIEND ONCE said that it was too late for us...too late for love. She said that if we hadn’t met anyone at college, we never would. Ridiculous as it sounded, once I landed my first post-college job and became resigned to the daily NY/NJ commute— stepping onto the bus in the predawn and returning home in the dark of night, motion-sensored porch lights flickering on at my approach—I began to believe her.

“Take it off, take it all off!” a hottie in a miniskirt shouted. There were 12 of them, all built rock hard. Were they cheaper by the dozen?

Billy, can I take your picture? He made a face and pretty much shuttered his baby blues. Billy, another one, can you please open your eyes? I asked again.

Monday night, on the second floor of the powerHouse Arena, Jonathan Lethem was spinning records for the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35,” a showcase of young novelists.

Did you get your freak out at Click Drag 3.1: The Second Coming, the gender-bending fetish party on Oct. 17 at Santos Party House? If not, maybe next year, dahlings. Start planning now. They won&rsquo

Salvation was there Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass at the powerHouse Arena. Salvation was not a saving of my soul, but the hardcore band from Philly, along with a trio of kick-ass writers: “Bloodclot” John Joseph of The Cro Mags, the “Indestructible Wolf” Max G. Morton and old-school New York tattooist Jonathan Shaw, all of whom have written books for Heartworm Press recently. We’re talking Outlaw Lit 101.

In a town full of skyscrapers, it’s often what’s happening beneath the sidewalk that ends up being the most exciting. Hidden spaces—think SubMercer, the basement of La Esquina or the late, lamented Undochine—are black gold in New York's over-saturated nightlife scene. A hard-to-find, little-known location with the right music and crowd can become an overnight sensation, and if a group of people just above 14th Street play their cards right, they might have New York’s next one on their hands.

The kids were in costumes ranging from Santa Claus to a two-man electric outlet, but the room was hot and they were listless. Glum is the new glam. Had the Bushwick boys and girls ran out of meds? Tall, lean, leatherbooted Susanne Oberbeck.

Glum is the New Glam “No more tonic water!” the costumed cutie purred from behind the makeshift bar. Shit! I was partying in the United States of Bushwick: no direct train without shuttle

Every aspect of Horror-Bowl— the Josh Wood-produced Halloween party—from the hard-to-find location (Lucky Strike on 12th Avenue) to the drinks ($10 beers and $15 shots) to the fur-clad clipboard holder at the door, was off putting.

Upon arriving at 3rd Wards new space, an old factory at 573 Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg, I was hit with the realization that I had been there before. At the tender age of 19, I rode the finicky industrial elevator to the fourth floor to an illegal loft with a killer view. The last time I had been there I was naked and high, and now, nine years later, I was ready to see what the building had to offer me. Of course, it was dick.

Mayor: Michael Bloomberg As we mentioned back in September, the key to governing the city at this critical juncture is nursing a more diverse economy back to health while maintaining and building on the gains of recent years in education, business, public safety and the vibrant culture that defines the City. We think Mayor Michael Bloomberg is best qualified for this job.

WE ARE IN A DIRE SITUATION. We are at a crossroads. We are living in an unprecedented era. We must do something now. If you believe all the pronouncements, proselytizing and punditry (and the requisite media hype), then we are undergoing an extraordinary shift in the way in which Americans will live their lives, as well as a renewal of faith in our politicians to do something about it—which means it’s a perfect opportunity for agitprop and activism to take hold yet again. At least that seems to be the argument from a recent upsurge in politically minded documentaries that seek to rouse a lazy populace once content to shop away all fears—both foreign and domestic.

TRADITIONALLY NEW YORK PRESS has not endorsed in local elections—unless it was meant as ridicule. But times have changed.This is only the second time we’ve endorsed a mayor (an entirely different editorial board and publisher “satirically” endorsed Fernando Ferrer in 2005), and nowadays we take the entire process seriously.

You need help. No, seriously…you are in desperate need of an intervention. Ever since November 2nd, you have become addicted to all things Barack Obama. You’re so hooked you’ve even given his wife a fashion award just for dressing better than Barbara and Laura Bush (not a hard task by any stretch of the imagination), thinking that Michelle’s approval will bring you closer to his heart and once that’s done, he’ll give you what you’ve been needing: passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA); the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA); and the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT).

It shouldn’t take a genius to point out that getting a new publicity photo is not a good reason to conduct a low altitude flight of Air Force One—complete with a F-16 fighter jet in hot pursuit—over the skyscrapers and monuments of New York City. But there you have it, on April 27; officials at the White House proving that sense ain’t always so common after all. And while most New Yorkers experienced a collective feeling of ‘here we go again, more in-flight drama in the skies above Manhattan,’ my particular déjà vu skewed more toward the realization that I had seen this kind of bureaucratic bullshit before.

Just when you thought it was safe to be gay, along comes Carrie Prejean, the runner-up in the Miss USA contest, who may have totally destroyed all hope of ever achieving full equality for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community when she so astutely stated, “We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. I think in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman.”

You may have heard. During Sunday’s Miss USA pageant openly “gay” activist and pageant judge Perez Hilton – the self-styled “Queen of Media” – ambushed Carrie Prejean – the openly Christian Miss California – with a politically loaded question on so-called “same-sex marriage.” Prejean’s candid answer – as both Hilton and Miss USA organizer Donald Trump later admitted – likely cost her the crown.

Being a native of Kansas, you can imagine my delight when I learned that Oz, the critically-acclaimed HBO series from the late 1990s, wasn’t some lame update of the Frank L. Baum classic featuring Dorothy and the Scarecrow. Instead, it was a gritty, sweaty, nasty prison drama full of gritty, sweaty, nasty men all sharing the same living space 24 hours a day with not a woman in sight.

I love Rihanna. I’m firmly convinced that if she and I were to ever meet, we’d become instant BFFs. But as much as I adore that cute Caribbean pixie, I won’t use this column to join the chorus of well-meaning public figures imploring her to leave her abuser and then further demanding that Chris Brown be brought to justice. These efforts, while commendable, are all just part of the all-too-repetitive song and dance where, every few years, a famous woman makes headlines not for her musical or cinematic hits but for the physical hits visited upon her face and body by an intimate partner.

You have to hand it to the Republicans; they sure do know how to pick 'em. To counter their reputation of being the party of old, crotchety white men bellowing on talk radio that they are losing the country to the blacks, the browns and the gays, the Grand Old Party has recently put forward a couple of new faces of color.

THE HALOGEN-BRIGHT morning sun beat down on my crusted eyelids. Opening them felt like I was prying the top of an ancient jar of mustard. To my right, my girlfriend’s carcass was comatose, immune to meddlesome light. I stood and stretched. My back snapped and crackled like bubble wrap, my muscles sore and flu-achy. Perhaps it was the tub of Buffalo Trace bourbon I consumed the previous eve, but it took several beats to make an important realization: Well, I thought, it looks like I’ve lost my pants and underwear.

CONAN O’BRIEN HAS been comparing L.A. favorably to New York since he landed, way before his recent swipe at nearby Newark’s crime rate. Watching a clip from The Tonight Show in a cab, I saw O’Brien riffing on his new L.A. driver’s license photo. “They are so image conscious here,” he said. “The woman told me to smile and kept saying ‘You can do better than that!’” He contrasted his beamingly vapid California image with his old New York driver’s license, where he is caught mid-blink, his mouth hanging open, really impressed that the woman gave him three tries.

GROCERY SHOPPING IS not for the faint of heart. Every second Saturday, I woke with tremors knowing that I would have to lace up, ship out and somehow make it back alive with dinner. The East Village crowds I had learned to fend off, swimming through strangers to grab frozen pizzas and fajita mixes. But the sheer physical pain of carrying plastic sacks home a half-mile, two or three committed to each forearm, had me worried I would lose a limb before the ice cream melted.

THIS MAY SOUND as sacrilegious as an Exxon exec owning an electric car, but I often despise patronizing bars. I have a love-hate explanation: I love craft brews. I hate paying $6 or $7 a pint.

YOU CAN CHUCK them in your mouth or put them in water, but if anyone vomits,” the cute Chinese event coordinator chirped, pointing to trashcans lined with I HEART NEW YORK bags, “they’re disqualified. Anyone have any questions?” Just one: Why did I enter Chef One’s sixth annual dumpling-eating contest? Answer: A little bit of hubris, a lot of jet lag and, naturally, no common sense.

“I won’t shave the beard,” said David. “The beard stays.” When my boyfriend of eight years said this to me, my heart filled with dread. Pimples around my lips and cheeks forever from trying to kiss the Brillo pad of whiskers that now surround David’s face—I didn’t sign up for this.

MY GREATEST ASSET is my gullet. Despite my horse-jockey height, my gullet is long and elastic, permitting me to swallow ponds and streams in one breathless gulp. It’s like discovering a Wizard of Oz munchkin is hung like Dirk Diggler.

LET ME BE blunt: I loathe interviewing celebrities as much as I detest raw tomatoes, a vegetable barely fit for chucking at American Idol rejects.

GROWING UP, I daydreamed I was Princess Leia, in freakishly braided buns, traveling at light speed in the Millennium Falcon and hanging out with Ewoks.

When I was young, with a liver that performed like a Lamborghini and employment as the world’s surliest receptionist, I adored open bars. I’d spend workdays alternating between misdirecting phone calls and scouring Craigslist for freebie offerings—say, unlimited Bud at Lit Lounge or vodka tonics at Blue Owl, a Wednesday standby that endures today.

I read with great interest your article “How Much Is That Dignity in the Window” (Mark Durane, Flavor of the Week, Nov. 11-17). Anonymous sexual pursuit seems to be all too many gay men’s drug of choice. This is why so few of us are truly content. We smile at everyone but cry inside.

No big revelation that Justin's cellmates were where they were in “On A Tear” (Nov. 4-10). And if he ends up stupidly adopting their linguistic suggestions, he better get used to that steamy, warm jail cell.That kind of vocab (indicative of mentality) just breeds ignorant, thoughtless, criminal behavior. I hope his girlfriend broke up with him after hearing the crassly vulgar final words that wrapped up his little “article.”

Simon Abrams’ piece about Halloween film offerings, “Bumps (and Chumps) in the Night (Oct. 28) caused on reader to respond: “F*ck Film Forum. Their programmers have always had contempt for genre films, yet they threw together this mismatched pair of (admittedly great) horror/thriller titles, late in the game, just to have something available for Halloween. Rent Theater Of Blood and Scream Of Fear on DVD, and spend your hardearned dollars at a cinema that stoops so low as to care about genre films throughout the other 364 days of the year, like BAM or Anthology.”

Heroin is So Passé I have a bit to add to your NYPress contribution (“Smack Time,” Oct. 21-27). Drug use, from my observations, is entangled in the culture of gay prostitution. As a gay male, I have seen a lot in the past 13 years in Chelsea.

But back to the Coens perceived hatred. Not so: If you look over their filmography, there is a begrudging love for even their most callous characters, though they look down on bad behavior, the interlinking connectivity of characters in a Coen Brothers movie is the key to why they care to be moralists at all.

Another reader wrote: “It’s hard enough to read one of your reviews when you hurl your thoughts into these incoherent, blithering tirades. Lets keep it one review...one movie. Also, the idea that Armond White uses the words ‘bad journalism’ in an accusatory tone is the most hysterical irony I’ve heard all week.

We received many positive responses to Matt Harvey’s cover story last week, “Fear in Alphabet City” (Sept. 16-22), with one writing: “I really enjoyed this article. It felt as if I were reading a blend of a sociology treatise and a Damon Runyon short story. While my background gives me more in common with the middleclass interlopers, the writer had me pulling for the Alphabet City natives in their struggle to hold onto their neighborhood!

So let me get this straight. [In your endorsements, (Sept. 9-15)], [y]ou cite Bill de Blasios effort to be an aggressive watchdog on development, making sure that affordable housing, landmarks and neighborhood context are given adequate consideration in the approval process as a key reason you are endorsing him for public advocate.

I am writing to thank you for the two beautiful articles (I won't call them obituaries) that your paper has published about the life of our good friend Carlos Alvarez [Jonathan Toubin, “In Memory of Carlos Alvarez” Aug. 28]. Some of us who have been assembling photos and videos to share with his friends and family believe there was a cartoon published in the New York Press in the summer of 2003 depicting a man, dressed in a lion suit, passed out in a pile of trash near the Verb Cafe on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg.

The article (The Beets Go On, Aug. 19- 25) does not do The Beets justice. Why? You make them sound like directionless morons when, in reality, they are really amazing talented witty people. Mistakes in this article: 1. They are all members because they are all talented musicians, not out of convenience or because of need of makeshift management.

How easily you Scorps seem to forget the campground rule of relationships: Leave things better off than how you found them. Unfortunately, people frequently need extended recuperation periods after emerging from relationships with Scorpios, and some never.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 21) Eliminate distractions. I don’t expect you to stop being obsessed with the things that fascinate you, but admit that right now they’re keeping you from getting to the other stuff you ought to be doing. Instead of trying to deny your own impulses, however, which will just consume more time and energy than you have to spare, may I suggest indulging them? Simply do so as efficiently as you can, and get them out of the way for now. Once you’ve gotten your “fix,” you should find concentrating on the task at hand much, much easier.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 21) I love Scorpios. I even spent 12 months trying to walk in your shoes (I told everyone my birthday was November 11th that year), just to see what it was like.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 21) Halloween has its roots mainly in the ancient Celtic tradition of Samhain. Their calendar divided the year into two parts, light and dark, with Samhain (roughly translated as “Summer’s End) representing the end of the light half and the beginning of the dark half. You are all too familiar with your dark side, but sometimes I worry about you losing touch with the lightness that is also an important part of you. Can you use the next six months to get back in touch? After all, the darker things get, the easier it is to shine.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 21) Don’t act helpless.We both know you’re not.There’s a big difference between something you’re not capable of doing and something you just don’t really want to do. Pretending you can’t when you really won’t is a pretty lame tactic, even if it works occasionally. It’s definitely a bad strategy to employ this week, since people are likely to see right through it to your unwilling heart. As you can imagine, that won’t reflect well on you. It would be better to just suck it up and get shit done, especially because it’s not nearly as bad or hard as you’ve built it up to be. This week store up some good karma credit, instead of spending what little you’ve got banked.

Libra (Sept. 23-Oct. 22) You’re not good at suffering. “Who is?” you might demand incredulously, to which I’d refer you to those masochistic Scorpios and rugged Capricorns. Unlike the latter, who usually bear hardship stoically and without complaint, you frequently make a big fuss over your misery. Fishing for sympathy and seeking relief from suffering aren’t especially character-building activities, though, and they’re poor preparation for those times when neither compassionate attention nor reprieve are forthcoming. I don’t expect you to change—you’re simply not wired to enjoy suffering. However, since this week’s torments are relatively mild, it’s a good time to work on developing your endurance, so that it’ll be there when you really need it.

Thats made the remaining items unreasonably important, and it can consequently be devastating when one of them goes missing. Spend some time this week dredging up the rest of your Things That Make Me Happy List from memory, or reinventing it from scratch.

Libra (Sept. 23-Oct. 22) Any efficient leader has to be somewhat singleminded, and, to some extent, insensitive and bullheaded. If you take the time to listen to and consider every single person’s opinion, you’ll never actually get anywhere. Striking a balance between heeding individual needs and steamrolling ahead with a workable decision is what every strong leader must learn to do.This is especially hard for you Librans; because of your ability to see every side, you almost have an inability to ignore any side. That’s not to say you can’t be effective leaders—you just have to work a little harder at it. This week, you should get multiple opportunities to practice.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) I bet we’d be shocked at what percentage of people have totaled a car at some point in their lives. However, I doubt we’d be that surprised at how few of them were Virgos. Of course, there are some of you who’ve probably managed to wreck your vehicles, but I’d be willing to bet that the percentage is much lower than for those reckless Aries, death-wish Scorpios, or spacey Pisces. However, there are times when the improbable is much more likely to happen—and this is one of those. Drive especially carefully this week,Virgo.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) You’re like a teenage mom. Here’s an unexpected baby, demanding time, attention, and nurture, and you’re terribly unprepared to take care of her properly. Just like that teen mom, however, you have more choices than you probably think you do.You could rise to the challenge, and learn to care for her and help her realize her potential. Naturally, handing her over to someone who’s better equipped and eager to do exactly that is also an option, provided you’re not already too attached. I can’t make that choice for you, but I can say this: just like a baby, this creation will have its own trials and rewards; it may also keep you from any other plans and dreams you had for quite some time.