I had just resigned myself to lying around and reading Kurt Vonnegut stories last night when Patrick called to see if I wanted to go out. As if he even needed to ask- even though I had to work the next morning, I was not about to turn down an offer to get out of here. "Out where?"

To a rather interesting adventure, as it turned out. Richard and Julia picked us up around 10, and we drove into Minneapolis to visit Julia's oft-talked-about but not-yet-met friends Nick and Owen. At their house, one can find four gay 20-something men who wear a lot of black, a cat who can sleep through the onslaught of houseguests and dance music, a huge collection of Ab Fab videos, cheap liquor, and a dinette set straight out of the Jetson's space age home.

It was fairly clear that they are perfectly accustomed to entertaining- I doubt any of them even knew my name (the indroductions were a wee bit rapid), yet they were completely comfortable having me fuss over their cat and lounge on the space-age dinette chairs while they scurried around getting ready to go dancing.

Yes, our ultimate destination for the evening was to be the Saloon, the dance club in Minneapolis whose slogan ought to be "Gay men's heaven!! And, well, we suppose other people can come, too. Maybe..." Thursday nights are the only 18+ nights, and are advertised, of course, as "Boy's Night Out".

The dance floor was so packed and hot that it was impossible to stay on it for long stretches of time, so we alternated dancing with wandering around. I did my fair share of people-watching in the process:

There was one fellow who, because of his apparent lack of fashion sense, stuck out from the well-preened and well-dressed crowd. Of course, he may also have seemed out of place because he was standing very still, eyes closed, against a pillar in one area of the club, with a drink in one hand and a cigarette dangling from the other.

Not ten feet from him were a row of eight or ten men lined up along a wall, all socializing in different groups, every last one of which were simultaneously lip synching along with a Madonna remix.

There was a strange sort of 'old man' dynamic there: The women at the club all ranged in age from about 18 to 27, while the men ranged between 18 and 60. It was a little disconcerting to see men my father's age and older hanging around the bar in a dark, pulsating dance club, and more then a little yucky to imagine that they had come especially for "boy's night out".

After the club closed, our group drove over to Julia and Richard's old friend Dale's nearby apartment. Patrick and I were nearly asleep to begin with, a fact that wasn't exactly assisted by the fact that the focus of the conversation was the antics of a group of people we hadn't ever met. Finally, when it was discovered that it was 2:30 am, we returned to St. Paul, and to bed.