South Beach is our mistress, and as with all those who ply their trade – hustlers, hos, and gigolos – she can be mercurial and vexing: but not this week. Let’s start with the weather. Given that Mother Nature sent Wilma to South Beach in October, it was kind of Her to insure that all week long the sky was cornflower blue with the ocean as smooth as glass. With temperatures near eighty, not a raindrop fell and hardly a cloud obscured the sun’s glow – and every hour brought another jetload of circuit boyz to the Beach. The beach was packed – and we’d been expecting everyone to have left for Los Angeles, and especially given that the past two money-grubbing New Year’s Eves in Miami seem to have irritated everyone. Then again, maybe the South Americans hadn’t heard, and also the Germans, and the Italians, because they were out in force. Boyz, boyz and more boyz and even Matt Kalkhoff would have succumbed, again, to the siren call of that mistress he once loved so much.

Because the whole week was kind of Fire Island Redux, and especially at the New Year’s Eve party thrown by Ernie Sauer. Ever since Ernie left Gotham for South Beach, he’s thrown a New Year’s Eve party at his penthouse in the sky. The kind of condo which can’t help but inspire real estate envy: a floor-through apartment on South Beach’s Gold Coast with full-length balconies at either end, one facing the Miami skyline and the other facing the ocean. If this is the kind of apartment that soft porn can buy, then thank heavens for Puritanical repression. The elevators, two of them, open directly into the apartment’s vestibule – and immediately there’s enough eye candy to gorge yourself for the next year. Happy New Year indeed. Patrick Forrett is the night’s deejay, keeping well over two hundred boyz happy and gay with his energetic mixing of the year’s best tunes, and the Italian and Venezuelan boyz come and go, wandering the condo’s labyrinthine halls, from balcony to balcony, and we’re against the railing, all that boy flesh pressing against us and suddenly we get a panic attack – for just how much boymeat can these balconies really hold before they go crashing into the ocean so far down below? Ack, we’re outta here, and back onto the dance floor. Another cocktail, please.

And now it’s 2006 and we walk home to our little pad – which after Ernie’s place looks like a dune shack – but no matter, we’re happy and healthy, and we’ve got another party up ahead: Genesis III, the all-New-Year’s-day affair at Crobar with Tracy Young at the helm. It’s another gorgeous day in paradise when we get our wake-up call from Doug and Josh who are heading out the door at ten a.m. and we tell them we’ll meet them inside, because maybe we’re thinking it won’t be all that hard to find them given that New Year’s is LA’s circuit holiday, so how many of us are left here on the Beach? Right? Wrong. We’re out in front of Crobar on Washington and the sun is so bright and we slip into the lobby and then, BAM, we’re blinded. It’s pitch black inside, darker than Black Party, and we’re stumbling into stool and boyz as our eyes try to make the adjustment. Help, I’ve fallen into k-hole and I can’t get up. And right away, we bang into Josh and Doug, clinging together against the tide. It’s way crowded. It’s eleven a.m. on New Year’s Day and Crobar is so packed, it’s a swim through a strong current to get upstairs where we finally can see all there is to see. The floor is wall-to-wall and there’s Tracy, ciggy in hand, spinning platters which make the boyz move. We lean over the railing and watch and marvel. To think this is going on in Los Angeles, and also in New York at Crobar, where Victor’s at the helm, and also in Montreal, and D.C. and San Francisco. So many boyz all around the continent working it out on the floor, and we toast to all the ones we love in our favorite cities. Happy New Year, boyz – and there’s Hilton and Mel up in VIP and what a happy new year it is for that man, and bless his heart and soul, and there’s our sweet boy Roberto, whom we’ve watched since we first hit the beach six years ago, and now he’s almost a man, such a sweet Puerto Rican boy, we do love him so, and tell him so, and all around us are these boyz we know but not really, kinda know from seeing them all year, in so many different towns, during so many nights, and we wish them all well, and hit the floor.

Tracy does it right. She gives us “How Does It Feel” and “Easy Ride” and she reaches into her Junior vault and gives us Santana and Robby Rivera’s “Dirty Dancing,” but it’s new and darker and deeper and better and perfect for now, and later it’s “You Used to Love Me” and also Offer Nissim’s mixes of Maya, and oh, yeah, we like it. We like it. We love it. There’s also a little bit of “Don’t Cha,” way in the background, just enough to remind you of that song which ran through the memory all year, and “Home,” which makes us think of Joe Caro and all the music he’s given us, and we toast to him, and Nurse, too – and to all our circuit family, we toast to them all wherever they are.

And then the boyz are swept from the stage and we wait, and wait, and wait some more, and Tracy gets funny and plays “Hung Up” again: “I’m tired of waiting on you.....” And finally Maya makes her way to the stage and, damnitall, but she ain’t got any more stage presence than she exhibited this past June at Pride at Peter Rauhofer’s Gods party at Spirit. It’s like she ain’t never busted a move since birth. What’s up with that? Grrrl, this is a dance club and we’re dancing and maybe you should think about moving more than your two fingers. She’s got a voice, a voice like a nightingale, high and clear, but excuse me, a smile wouldn’t hurt. And behind her, Tracy’s got her arms up in the air, prompting all of us to applaud, as if Maya’s a scared little bird ready to fly away.

A lesser party, this performer could’ve killed, but ain’t no way the boyz at Crobar are leaving any time soon. It’s like all that sun from the days before have energized our souls and we all know the sun is still shining outside, and will be tomorrow, and the day after that, and so right now, there’s no better place to be than here on this packed floor with Tracy throwing down music which is hitting our body and soul. It’s that kind of music which someone critiqued as a harder-edged Tracy, and yeah, maybe that’s right, but it’s just what we need and want, right now, after the year this planet has had, and we are definitely taking our problems to the floor and working them out so they ain’t gonna be haunting us forever more. Werk it out, boyz, and there’s one on the box in front of us who is driving us to distraction, he’s pumping so hard, and touching himself, grabbing and plumping. A South American boy with a face like a dark angel and a body that knows pleasure 24/7. Egads, he’s trouble and we’re totally connected. We love trouble like that. He’s a motivating force, two hits and a bump all wrapped up in one package and we can’t stop smiling, grinning ear to ear, because Tracy’s in the booth and the boyz are all around us, and we’re so happy, so happy on the circuit, so happy to be here.

And the hours come and go and no one seems to be leaving, the balconies are packed and the corridors as well, and up in VIP, there’s a whole other party going on, and in the bathroom, the boys are playing, and also in the stairwells and cubbyholes. What an irrepressible bunch we are: centaurs and satyrs, demi-gods and angel boyz. What a life, what a ride – happy new year all around.

It’s nearly five when we leave. Five in the afternoon on New Year’s Day, and finally, we find Josh and Doug wrapped in each other’s arms. They’re staying, but we head outside – into the blinding sun. Eeks and ack, I can’t see. I’m blind. But somehow we find our way to the beach, to the ocean – and would you believe, the beach is packed with boyz. You would have thought we were all at Crobar, but no, there’s a whole bunch more of us on the beach, in the water, sunbaking on the sand. My God, but we’re reproducing faster than we thought. Parthenogenesis, clearly.

And sitting there in the sand, letting it all wash over us, the simple joys of South Beach, the sun, the sand, and the pretty boyz, we know, we absolutely know, it’s gonna be a very good year indeed.

Here’s to happiness for all of us, all over the world and all year long.