I'm sitting in an armchair in the living room, next to the window, looking out over a wet Manhattan cityscape. It pretty much rained all day yesterday. Today, however, there are some signs of a break in the gloom - there are blue skies over New Jersey. That sounds like a song my mother used to sing

On Wednesday, I finally started spreading my tentacles out, calling acquaintances, and responding to emails from people who'd written me from an Internet personals ad I'd put out (looking for new friends in New York). And Thursday night, I began three days of enjoying the results.

I've already written about having dinner in Chelsea on Thursday night. On Friday night, I met C, a tall, handsome guy - originally from Trinidad but now living in Jersey for many years - for a drink in a bar called Martini's, on Seventh Avenue. We sat under a canopy, almost on the sidewalk, as the rain spattered on the passing Theater crowds. He seemed like a typical American businessman at first - serious, measured, thoughtful, keen to talk about his job. But every now and then his face would break into an attractive smile as his warmer nature broke through.

I remembered that New York's nicest new gay bar was just a couple of blocks away, so we dodged the intermittent rain showers, and had a drink there, standing upstairs on the balcony looking down the stairwell, watching the new arrivals. New York nightlife is somewhat different from San Francisco's. For a start, people dress differently. You still see guys in t-shirts, but they're more likely to be expensive or funky t-shirts, with other guys wearing long-sleeved shirts by high-end labels, and sleek designer pants. Then the ethnic mix is distinctly different. In fact, in the Chelsea and Midtown bars, you seem to mostly see white men. And although most of the younger men obviously work out, they frequently don't somehow seem to own their muscled bodies; you see an intellectual, studentish face strangely attached to a muscular torso, and the two don't seem to fit.

On Saturday, I had brunch with Everett, the man with whom I'd stayed in Chelsea when I was here over Memorial Day weekend. And then walked up Eighth Avenue looking for a likely place to get my hair cut. I settled on a place called "The Service Station" where a fire-cracker, opinionated Ukranian woman with the unlikely name of Victoria gave me an efficient $40 haircut. I enjoyed my afternoon, buzzing around lower and mid Manhattan under my umbrella, shopping and doing chores, watching the mix of people on the subway. Living in New York, you get much more contact with humanity than in San Francisco, where you're more likely to drive places. In one subway ride, I heard someone start to address the car in a well-spoken, educated voice, explaining how he'd become homeless, and asking for money. His request seemed to have an effect on several tourists, who reached for their wallets. Another, possibly homeless, grizzly old African-American man who sat next to me started to berate them for being so gullible.

By four thiry, I retired home to my apartment, where I did some writing. It was pouring by now, and I enjoyed the grey light stealing into my unilluminated apartment, where I worked on the armchair in the window.

My evening date was with B, a Chelsea muscle boy. I guess I wasn't giving him a fair chance by so categorizing him before I met him. We'd originally planned on going for a drink, but since it was still raining when I arrived at his beautiful apartment building, he invited me up and we sat on his sofa and chatted for a couple of hours, while I tried to avoid staring at his beautiful, silky biceps. He was, at the same time, exactly what I expected, but also, inevitably, more than I'd anticipated. Yes, he was somewhat self-involved. In fact, I don't recall that he asked me more than one or two questions about my life. Yes, he was a frequent attendee at circuit parties around the country. Yet he admitted to being shy and uncertain when it came to meeting men, and he almost teared up when he was describing a circuit party in Montreal which had commenced, in the Olypmic Stadium, with an immense carpet of candles surrounding a huge Aids ribbon.

By nine-thirty, I was starting to feel tired (I'd had quite a late night on Friday, and had gotten up early on Saturday in order to go running before heading out for brunch), so I said my goodnight, and headed back home on the subway. I stopped at Whole Foods and bought some organic milk duds which I consumed greedily, back home, while watching a great episode of the original Star Trek. It was that one where Mr Spock is in command of a shuttle pod stranded on a planet populated with huge, shaggy spear-throwing creatures. The creatures were hilariously bad - obviously just very tall men wearing carpets - but the story was really about the struggle between Mr Spock's logic and his subordinates' emotionality, and that story still held up well now.