Friday evening Sam and I crashed a party of mostly gay ministers. Mostly of a certain age. Like Sam's age. We didn't exactly crash. We were invited through our Pagan Friend. He and his partner, Who Retreats With Fellow Followers Of A Beloved Guru, Sam The Jew and I, The Presbyterian arrived just after the first round of burgers had been served.

People were sitting on the porch. On the porch. In Brooklyn. No, not the stoop. The wooden porch. With a porch swing. It's attached to a free standing wood frame home in Midwood, Brooklyn. Wow. Surrounded by others like it, mostly owned by Orthodox Jews.

Anyway, there were a few interesting aspects to this party, but what stands out most to me was that at least once during the course of the evening, Pagan Friend, (He) Who Retreats With Fellow Followers Of A Beloved Guru and Sam The Jew all indicated me and said, "oh Larry's involved in church." As if these guys had never met anyone who went to church. And that's when I felt the awkwardness of being an amateur in the world of professionals.

Even after this 60-something minister finished telling me about his sexual exploits in the great outdoors of the Pioneer Valley (wherein lies Holyoke) and asked me what's important to me and please tell him about it, I mumbled something like "I sing and act. And, um, go to church. Church is important to me." He actually got out of his chair and walked away within, maybe, a minute of my saying that. I guess when a minister finishes telling you about having sex with some guy (who he guessed might have been Buddhist!) in a Rest Stop in Massachusetts, the last thing he wants to know about the listener is that he's a good, churchgoing man. As I said, awkward.

But I felt pressured, dang it! My 3 non-organized-religion-identified friends (or "disciples" as I like to call them) expected me to perform acts of lovingkindness as a divertissement or something. But that's like going to a party of ER doctors with a 2x4 sticking out of your head. They feel obligated to remove the 2x4 when all they want to do is party. Even Outdoor Sex Guy probably only wanted to know what I like to do with parts of my body; he just didn't have the vocabulary to ask it properly. He probably did, but his praydar (oy.) sensed he had a Follower sitting across from him and he went into automatic without really meaning to.

I don't know. And that's the point. Better we should have gone to this party as gay men. That's that. "Oh, and what's important to yooooouuuuu?" Judy Garland and Levitra. Oh, and a cure for AIDS. "Well, hello gorgeous!"