Bash Compactor: Popping Pills

Because there's a month between The Glammies and The Pill Awards, New York gays are subjected to something akin to the space between the Golden Globes and the Oscars. It’s enough to make a Chelsea queen drop his meth habit and get some sleep.

Heading into Arena on Sunday night for The Pill Awards, which honor underground gay videos and multimedia, I was accosted by a gaggle of muscle men attempting edgy, Downtown looks (any excuse to feel the vinyl pants at Pat Field’s boutique) and, of course, the smell of testicles wrapped in tights.

The night was emceed by porn-starturned-singer Colton Ford and drag queen Hedda Lettuce, with the latter explaining that The Glammies—awards for glittering night crawlers—are “much less attractive; at least they shave at this award! I did too, but I had to choose between my face and my nuts.”

But just like The Glammies, The Pill Awards were a shit show: nobody could explain why singing trio Whore’s Mascara ended up presenting the Virgin Pill awards to themselves (poor planning?), or why Ari Gold also ended up awarding himself with a Pill for Best Pop Video.

Thank goodness then for Billboard charttopping singer Jason Walker, who enchanted the crowd with his soulful vocals—his performance was by far the best of the evening.

Nominees who also performed and presented awards included The Ones, gay rapper Cazwell (who performed a functional stage version of his “I Saw Beyoncé at Burger King”) and his bosom-ed buddy, scene queen Amanda Lepore (“Oh look, like a little bit of confection,” quipped Lettuce), whose trim go-go dancers developed massive erections, injecting the room with some much needed entertainment value, during her performance of “Cotton Candy.” The only thing more ridiculous than Lepore ascending a staircase was the presence of Samwell—the YouTube star of the “What What, In the Butt” from 2007—who actually flew in to accept two awards! In doing so he illogically beat out a more recent YouTube sensation actually from New York, the lovely and completely unspookable Brittney Houston, who was wearing a Gem and the Holograms-inspired look complete with five-inch purple pumps and what she called an “abstract algebra mini dress, stitched together by mice in my basement.” Aside from Houston, the only other flawless queen hanging around was RuPaul's Drag Race winner Bebe Zahara Benet who, after presenting the last painful award, forbid me from leaving the floor with her scary, glowing eyes. “I’m doing a show!” she said.

“Me too!” I thought, scared that I would get trapped in Arena forever. “The incredible disappearing Jew,” I said mostly to myself, and ran off to the safety of Brooklyn.