So, New York City is a big place. The biggest, really. The subcultures here are strong and independent, vibrant and bustling, but sometimes hard to break into—and even harder to leave. Sometimes they explode. Sometimes they are drama factories. Sometimes they are particularly terrifying, and full of all of my exes in one place. Sometimes they have all the most wonderful people I have ever met, coming together for some sort of common cause.

And sometimes, that cause is to get someone laid.

This weekend, I’m hosting—by which, I mean I made a Facebook event and invited all the friends I could think of—a happy hour for a friend who’s coming in from out of town and hoping to get laid. Hey, the queer events in this city can be hard to navigate, and if you’re coming in from somewhere else, there’s the subways and the Brooklyn car services and the taxis, the many venues in many different areas of the city, the people who can be at once abrupt, stand-offish and warm, and the calendaring problem to begin with: Which of these events should I go to for maximum hotties in attendance?

You’re following me already, aren’t you? Here’s where a local on the ground can help. Not that the dyke watering hole I chose for the happy hour is a particularly great place to pick up girls, because, well, it’s just not. More like a local tavern than a hot spot. But still, it’s nice to have a place that us queers can call ours, and when hosting an event like a singles’ meet-up, I wanted it to have a solid gay-positive vibe.

I’m not really a matchmaker. I don’t have much experience with picking two random single people out and trying to get them to meet each other to see if there’s a spark. But I’m fascinated with the things we crave in love and sex partners, and my mind automatically scans my other single friends to see if any of them might be a potential fit. I want to know what makes a person “tick” for another, and who is looking for what, who might have fun together if they knew each other.

Plus, my friends are more fun when they’re getting laid! Aren’t yours? A little more bounce in their step, a little more twirl in their hair, a little more belly in their laugh. Sex gets us into our bodies, gets us in touch with our senses, and enlivens our hearts. Not to be all cheesy about it, but generally, it makes us feel better.

So I make the little event on a social networking site and poof, it exists. I post it to my other social networking sites and cross-post and invite and suddenly I’m “marketing an event,” when really I’m just trying to get some fun people to show up and have a good time, bonus if my friend meets anyone interesting—or if anyone meets anyone interesting.

Since I’ve been inviting my friends, well, I know I’ll probably have a good time. A few beers, some laughs, some introductions ... maybe that’s all matchmaking really is, just putting people into a room together and possibly telling them something about each other to stimulate the conversation. I’m not particularly invested in the outcome. They might hit it off, they might not—who knows? Ask me in a year, and we’ll see if anything comes of it.