By some evil calculation, it was decided that I should receive the same week-long food-poisoning twice in thirty days. The first bout came just before Christmas, and the second one is coming to an end this weekend. After the first time, I'd assumed I'd picked it up at a Chinese restaurant I used to frequent. But since I stopped going there, that cannot explain the second visitation this week.

When I'm sick, I usually end up watching a lot of movies on TV or video. Last night I watched "Circuit", a film I expected to fast-forward part of the way through, since I'd heard bad things about it, and hadn't liked the director's previous film. It's a morality tale about the seductive evils of the gay party circuit; a handsome small-town guy in his early thirties moves to West Hollywood and gets caught up in the party scene, drugs, and prostitution. Of course, he comes to his senses by the end of the movie, and settles down with a nice forty-year-old in Venice Beach.

The movie was actually quite watchable, and didn't have the insular narcissism of the director's previous movie "Man of the Year" And, to give the filmmakers credit, it was quite honest about why so many people get sucked into that scene. If you ask circuit-party boys (as they're known - I'm not sure whether this is a label they've chosen for themselves or if it's a put down, like "gym bunnies") what's so attractive about the party scene, you'll often hear the same party line (just a small little pun there): that it's about male "tribal" togetherness. At these parties, they say, something breaks down the walls between a disconnected gay community, and attitudes drop, and you feel like everybody is your friend.

Of course, the not-so-quiet dirty secret is that the "something" that breaks down those walls is drugs. But the drugs, I think, are just a means to an end, and the movie didn't avoid the truth that that end is personal validation. You live for those moments when a hot guy on the dance floor smiles at you, or when a hand attached to a muscled forearm glides down your naked back in appreciation, temporarily banishing those fearful thoughts of "am I good enough?", "do I belong?" and "do I have value?"

It's a long while since I went to a circuit party. Probably ten years. But I'm somewhat familiar with those feelings. On New Year's Eve, I went out to one of the big gay clubs, and had my moment under the sun where I felt eyes of acceptance on me as I took off my shirt. It's a great feeling, and there's nothing wrong with looking for such a moment. For me, it came at a moment of resurgent youthfulness, at the age of thirty-eight, newly recovered from chronic-fatigue syndrome, where I felt grateful to be healthy, virile and strong. But I'm enough of a realist to know that moments like those are not going to carry me for the longhaul. And I think that's where the circuit party scene is dangerous. Life becomes too much about seeking those moments; and people go to increasingly dangerous lengths to get there. It starts with light party drugs like ecstasy. And it ends with heavy drugs, maybe even heroin, and taking steroids to achieve that fantastic, impossible perfection, vomiting in toilet stalls, engaging in unprotected sex, and in losing your focus on the real world. All for that fleeting moment of validation.

I don't mean to say that everybody who goes to these parties follows this path. One of my best friends goes regularly to the White Party in Palm Springs, because he loves men, with a simple, passionate physicality, loves that feeling of togetherness. He doesn't even touch alcohol, let alone drugs. But not everybody has his strength and sense of self. Certainly, I don't think I do either. My saving grace is that I'm too scared of losing control for me to surrender myself to strong drugs. And I get too easily bored to indulge myself in the party scene for too long.