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So last night as the hoi polloi and the papparazzi battled it out
with Evander Holyfield and posse at the
newly-reopened-yet-again-Sound Factory-now-called–Pacha-nightclub—
Meanwhile, down at Cipriani at 55 Wall Street in the soaring 1830
Greek Revival ballroom of what was at one time the New York Stock
Exchange and the US Customs House (as well as the site of Liza's
infamous wedding reception with her soon-to-be-battered husband),
the moneyed gays were out in force. The Four Hundred, as Ward
McAllister once called New York's moneyed set, back in the days when
blue blood really meant something. Four or six hundred gay boyz and
girlz, sporting their best Gucci and Prada and showing their support
for the Hetrick-Martin Institute at the 19th annual Emery Awards,
where Senator Hillary Clinton, to a thunderous standing o, handed
out an award to Dr. Christopher Barley, the tireless and generous
health policy advocate, and where Melissa Etheridge was honored in
absentia, and where one of the most touching moments of a
lump-throated evening came when Maya Keyes, the 20-year-old lesbian
activist daughter of conservative Republican commentator Alan Keyes
of Illinois (who recently, thanks be to intelligent Illinoisans,
lost his bid for a Senate seat), accepted her award and told of
becoming homeless once her parents disowned her for publicly coming
out, and where David Mensah, executive director of HMI, spoke
eloquently and passionately about the at-risk kids of HMI and of the
three transgendered youth of HMI who were murdered this past year,
and how he was not merely saddened, but enraged, and where Mario
Cantone was a manic and maniacal auctioneer, selling a dinner with
Hilary Swank for $11,000, and where Levi's was the evening’s
presenting sponsor, therefore enabling all sorts of preening from an
army corps of male models in Levi's latest E-for-Education brand
jeans, and where a video presentation by Levi's made clear the
company's long and ongoing history of openness and tolerance, for
example, in hiring women and blacks when no one else was doing so,
as well as its most recent stand to protect genetics, given the
increasing number of studies that contend our sexuality might be
innate and not learned -- and through all this emotion and with the
kids of HMI periodically speaking about their dreams and hopes, the
bellinis flowed and the boyz in Gucci and Versace swayed and
sashayed through the candlelit ballroom, the mahogany doors of the
men's stalls slamming in their wake, before they emerged again,
bright-eyed and bushy-tailed -- and yes, there was swag, a full 2.7
ounce bottle of Marc Jacobs latest cologne for men and CDs from A/X
and backpacks from Levi's latest RIP collection and candles from D.L
and Co. and at various points throughout the night, it was
incredible to stare up at the 70-foot Wedgewood-domed ceiling,
framed by those massive and monolithic Corinthian columns, the wine
flowing freely on tables laden with silver salvers of pastries and
chocolates, and to feel how far we, as a community, have come in the
less than thirty years that HMI has been offering a safe place for
GLBT youth to be educated, and how now there are gay-straight
alliances in thousands of secondary schools across America – and yet
also to realize how much further we have to go. One thing's for
sure: to see such determination and resolve in the gay youth who
surrounded us last night is to see hope for our future. Let it be
so.
Best always,
Mark and Robert
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