Monday, February 28, 2005

Four Things

1. Eric Rohmer's A Summer's Tale: I rented this because Neil LaBute referenced Rohmer in his interview with Soderbergh on the sex, lies, and videotape commentary track, and I was intrigued. Sometimes the right movies catch you at the right time, and this movie, I might have fidgeted through on another day, but I loved it on the slow day I watched it, loved the main actor, Melvil Poupaud. I want to watch more Rohmer films, especially the earlier ones, but they only have one other one, also a recent one, on DVD at Reel Life and that one is a period piece. Me and period films do not get along.

2. Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore: I finally finished it last night. It was good, and if I had read it at a different time, I would have loved it and been unable to put it down. Our paths didn't cross at the right moment.

3. Gore Vidal's The City and the Pillar: This is another product that was consumed at the right time. After the bland, translated sentences of Murakami about cats and coincidences, it was just what I needed, precise, biting sentences of someone with labored prose. Gay men and Brits have that sharp, mannered tongue that is so fun to read. The ending was a bit much and so, I am curious to find a copy of the original 1948 version of the book that has an even more melodramatic ending (gay man strangling his straight crush).

4. David Lynch's Eraserhead: Our paths didn't cross at the right time. If you are not in the mood for a Lynch movie, you shouldn't even try, because your rhythms won't sync and it will be an effort to slow your pace to the film's. I rented it because it was a major gap in my knowledge of cinema that needed to be filled, and it was interesting to see Lynch exploring the same themes in his first feature that he would pursue throughout the rest of his career.

Saturday, February 26, 2005

Yesterday, I watched Citizen Kane and sex, lies, and videotape. In between the two, I pissed on a guy on 34th Street and got a blowjob from him. I was paid a nice chunk of money by him and I left his house more happy than I had been in a long time, since the last time someone paid me. There are two factors at work here that are causing happiness for me lately and I don't like the correlation, but I don't know if I can do anything about it, don't know how to cut those ties or to promote new causes of happiness. The two things that make me happy and that bother me because they make me happy:

1. Someone desiring my body, even if they are a hairy, unattractive person.

2. Getting paid money, having cash in my pocket.

It is funny, the connections, the ties between forms of happiness, how if you are already happy than you can appreciate other things and be made happier by them, some upward spiral. It is hard to get on that progressive happy track, but when you are on it, things are pretty awesome. You, or at least I, watch movies in a different way, a good way. Too often, movies are a way of killing time, of doing something because you are bored and don't like to be alone with yourself. This is what they have been for me lately.

Yesterday, however, a change occurred, and sure, some part of it probably lies with the getting money/being happy connection, but I also think that I watched these movies differently, engaged with them, because the movies were so excellent - that there excellence compelled an engaged viewing.

Welles was 24 when he made Citizen Kane. That blows my mind and I have a year left to compete with him and produce an equally awesome first work. I don't know why I am so wowed by age sometimes, like Zadie Smith publishing White Teeth at the same age. It's yet another way for me create a sense of inadequacy and guilt for myself. It is one of my hobbies. But sex, lies, and videotape, Soderbergh's first feature also, I watched twice, once last night, and again this morning. Everything is so perfect in that movie and the acting amazes me, just watching the facial expressions. James Spader is so amazing in that movie. But yes, both of these movies have got me excited about various cinematic techniques and wondering how similar effects could be achieved, or if they have been achieved in the written form. How do you do things with isolating sounds, carrying them over one scene into the next - how does one do this successfully on the page? Is it even possible?

After Joe and I watched sex, lies, and videotape, we went to the Metropolitan. I was in a good mood, saw various crushes, past and present, and those made me happier also. It's like crossing a stream by hopping from stone to stone, amazed that you are making it across without having to tread through the water and just hoping that you will keep on being able to land on a stone with each step, amazed that you are making it that far, that you keep on catching the stones, and you get giddier and giddier as you near the other side. This is that happiness linked from one thing to the next, the happiness perpetuating itself, aware of it, and giddy because of it, a high wire act and looking at the ground beneath you. But normally, you run out of stones and eventually wade through the creek for one jump or so and that is the problem. I think you have to willfully ignore that upcoming fall and sort of trick yourself with each stone you land on that you are going to make it. It is the only way to make it across.

Friday, February 25, 2005

It is not for a lack of things happening, but I have lost interest in writing about my life lately, and I wish I could claim that it was because I was so happy and so busy all the time that I cannot write here, but it is probably more of the opposite of that, that I really am not that thrilled about anything these days, that I don't do much, that I watch too much television, too many movies, and I have been reading, not reading that Murakami book for what seems like the last two months. My inability to finish that book, to even touch it, discourages me so much. When I see that bookmark only about halfway through it, or when I come across a book I really want to read, and think no, I have to finish that Murakami book before I start anything else, it discourages me so much, and I feel dead and wonder how I got this way, wonder what it is that prevents from finishing this - why it is that right now when I am jobless and have nothing to do, why it is during this period that I have so much time that I am probably accomplishing less than I have ever accomplished in my life. Something about art arising out of adverse conditions, that there have to be other forces pressing on you, and that what you write is a release. Sort of like partying and being jobless.

I never feel like raging lately. There is no desire to cut loose, to get wasted and let it all shake out on the dancefloor. But when I used to be working, every night when I got off, I was ready to cut loose, footloose, to let out everything that had been held for eight or so hours. Without tension and stress there is nothing to release - I am in a constant state of release, deflated, always skirting the line of boredom. No steam in the kettle.

Finding sex work through Craigslist is getting harder and harder and thank god, the Princeton Review starts back up for me on Wednesday. I have twenty three dollars left. My metrocard expired yesterday. I am going to buy one for twenty one dollars today. That will leave me with two dollars cash until I can make some money.

I got stoned last night off of the rest of this joint Niki left here about a week ago. It was awesome. I listened to Gillian Welch and imagined two excellent stories that I am going to write tonight after I go see the Tim Hawkinson show at the pay what you can (a dime?) night at the Whitney. These stories are so awesome and I sketched out the outlines of them last night, real worried that I wouldn't remember them today. I definitely would not have, and I was a little nervous to look at my notes, thinking they would be unintelligible, but I understand what I was thinking and hopefully I can translate those remembered thoughts to paper.

Sunday, February 20, 2005

I have fucked myself with one finger before but never two, and a new boundary has been crossed as of an hour ago, and maybe I'll do it with a dildo or even the real thing. Driving straight and fast through roadblock after roadblock, the scraps of wood and roadside signage flying over the hood of my car, me, laughing that way psychos do in movies, pressing harder and harder on the gas, in love with not so much the speed of it all, but the lack of care, the not holding back, farting in public because you are on a busy street, and no one will know, no one will hear it or smell it, and even so, no one will be able to trace the smell, so farting and speeding and stoned, this morning, naked in bed, putting a condom on my fingers, lubing it up, and soon having two fingers up my ass. Because there is that pedal there, and so once you press on the gas pedal, you are not sure that it is you driving yourself forward because you feel the lurch of the engine and feel that forwardness, will trace its source in the car and not yourself, that something else, something outside of yourself is the thing pushing you forward. It is okay to be reckless, someone else is pushing you fast into this moment. You are in the moment and it took no thought, no preparation, no pro con charts to get there, and so then when you are there, are in that moment, you have no footsteps to retrace (perhaps even in diary format), nothing to recall, no a plus b equals c, and suddenly you are on the c side of the equation and you don't know what a was or what b was, and so it was something else, the engine that pushed you forward, not your foot on the gas, but always, something else, otherwise, what would explain why you decide to fuck yourself at one in the afternoon on Sunday, or why you make out with five people at a bar. How do you, or how do I, end up in them? Even how do I end up eating a can of chickpeas as a meal? What spell are we under in boredom; whose control?

I was thinking somewhere along these lines last week when I was getting out of the York Street subway stop to go shoot some porn photos at some man's studio in Dumbo. Their is a tunnel you have to walk through from the subway tracks to the actual street exit. And it is so narrow, sci-fi spaceship like, birth canal like, and long - it is on a slight incline so that when you exit the station, you are ascending to something or away from something, and walking through this tunnel, a group of policeman, all in cinematic swagger were walking toward me, into the station, and they were all in step, so casual, and so looming, elevated as they were from my position in the tunnel. I walked past them, and walking along realized that I was walking to go do jack off photos and I didn't realize when it was that I so easily was able to decide this or to do these things without giving much, giving any thought to them, wondered if there was not some other thing propelling me, if there always isn't this thing. I think to a Cake chorus and it goes "Satan is my motor" and that is not what I am suggesting, but perhaps suggesting that I am a zombie lurching and lurching and never sure why. I wish I could claim it was for anything as noble as the hunger for human brains.

Peter left New York yesterday. I went over to his house in the afternoon, and got some things from him and we said good-bye in front of his apartment on S. 1st Street. We hugged and then he went west to meet his sister in Manhattan and I went east on the street toward my house. I thought of the symbolism of this as soon as we parted, how he is walking west toward California where he is moving. I looked back a couple of times, knowing that I was saying good-bye to a friendship, and though, I will still talk to Peter and will hopefully see him, this part of my life was leaving and I would never be as close to him again. I stood and watched him walk away in his orange coat, his winter cap that used to be mine, tote bag over his shoulder and thought about this same idea of human actions and how we propel ourselves or what it is that propels us, what was the force taking him to California, what was it that made me hop up and down in a bar at the sight of my crush, what was it that makes me stick fingers up my ass, you know? What is the thing? Erotic desire seems to play a part in some of these things, but that is too easy to say, too mid-twentieth century.

I sometimes wonder if it is something else driving us. I think this especially when I am in the middle of an action and don't know what led to it, how I got there.

Friday, February 18, 2005

Each time I start to play music on my computer, I always start with this song, at least since I downloaded it a week or so ago, that has been the case. And then I play it over and over again before it has the chance to get even ten seconds into the next song. It started off with me listening to the song like he was David Cassidy, this boy Charlie, headphones pressed close to my ears, eyes closed, imagining him, him and I, silly scenes with a boy I saw at a bar one time and have never said a word to, but now, the boy, the crush isn't even present when I listen. There are just those perfect noises that make up the harmony and me spacing out for chunks of two minutes and forty seconds before the next song temporarilly brings me back to reality. I do this until I get tired of the song or tired of wasting my time, and then I stop the music and do something else.

Today, I did sit-ups and bought underwear, in anticipation of perhaps having to dance at the Slide tonight. Ron did not call me, so I guess I am not working this evening, and I am mildly sad about that and hope that I will still work there some future weeks. It is probably best that I am not working tonight since it is Peter's last night here before he moves to California. We are going to go out to the Royal Oak and hopefully dance and if it is lame, scary, or obscenely loud, we will be hightailing it to another bar, somewhere close. As of tomorrow, there will be an opening in the friends department, preferably a gay boy who lives close and will be ready to go the Metropolitan at a moment's notice. I might start going there by myself. I have to make friends again. It is hard. I might just rent a lot of DVD's all the time, sad romances and write about how lonely I am everyday.

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

I walked underneath the Manhattan Bridge on the Brooklyn side and was totally amazed by how massive it seems, by how massive downtown Manhattan looked, how tiny I was at the foot of these gigantic towering supports. The Brooklyn Bridge was just down the river and it looked equally awesome, even minimized as it was by depth perception. The weather while I was doing this was so nice, it was nearing sunset, and it was almost cartoonish how pretty the sky looked against these bridges.

I went and did some photo work at this guy's studio in Dumbo, right on the water, drank some of his tequila, and fucked a plastic sheep for the first time. His studio didn't have any windows. When I left, it was dark outside. I forgot to notice how the bridges looked at night. I am sure they probably looked awesome though.

Monday, February 14, 2005

PS

All right, now I am finding the negative reactions and they all harp on the color. If I had read these oringially, I probably would have enjoyed the Gates more. This comes from the NY Post (Should that bother me? It doesn't.) via Gawker:

It's enough of a sin that "The Gates" overpowers Central Park's soaring, hypnotic beauty. But the color of these bed sheets, plunked down on metal frames every 12 feet throughout the park, is so atrocious that the project's creators ought to be charged with assault.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude claim that the hue of the weirdly pleated cloth is "saffron." But, as any American junior-high-school kid will tell you, the precise shade is "vomit orange."


Also, Christy alerted me to this in The Washington Post.

Sunday, February 13, 2005

the gates

It was a nice apartment right in the heart of Chelsea, so it seemed like it could have been possible and so I asked him, "Is this Keith Haring real or is it a print?" He told me it was real and then pointed out other pieces he was proud of, including two gorgeous Warhols. I was a little giddy, never having seen big art names in such a private setting before, in a small apartment, hung in the hall next to the bathroom. I wanted to take more time to look at all the paintings but I could only concentrate so much, as I was about to piss all over his carpet if I did not piss on him soon. I told him such. He knelt in his bathtub and I pissed all over him, so much pee, having held it in for so long, almost wetting myself on the subway ride over to his house.

Afterwards, I stayed and talked with him for about twenty minutes, asking questions, looking at vintage gay magazines, and feeling like a kid in a candy shop getting to touch these old muscle pictorial magazines that I had only read about in histories of the male body. Physique Pictorial! Old copies worth so much, the Athletic Model Guild magazine. Normally, I leave as soon as I am finished, but I sat and talked with this man for about twenty minutes, really comfortable and impressed with him. I enjoyed talking to him so much and that surprised me so much.

It all came so naturally, my interactions with him and with his art. This afternoon, I spent at Central Park checking out Christo and Jeanne-Claude's "The Gates," and though I wanted it to, my interactions with it did not go nearly so well. I was glad to see Lauren say she found it "uninspiring." I went because you have to, because it was on the cover of the three big NY dailies yesterday and the Times has been creaming its pants about it in article after article. So I went, hoping to be wowed, and maybe my expectations were built up too much, but I don't think that is the only reason I failed to be wowed, to even connect with it.

This may be a nonreason, but I don't like the orange. And the Gates are orange - they are garish construction cone orange, hazard tape orange, not the natural "saffron" every article refers to the color as. I don't like the color. It seems more appropriate for autumn, not for late winter.

I really wanted to like these, I walked sixty blocks through the park, trying to understand, to connect. But the whole time, I kept on wondering what it was every family, every couple, every one of those many, many people in the park thought. I thought about cases of mass hysteria and wondered if this might not also be one, a public that doesn't care about art, all rushing out to the park to stare slack-jawed and amazed at pieces of fabric hanging from ugly beams, because it is done on such a large scale. Everyone always crowds around the big canvases in museums. The beams occupy too much of your sight, and the fabric, not enough. But that orange, it keeps coming back to that. Honestly, if it was a white or a light blue, I think I would find it a lot easier to join the crowds in cheering this. I walked along the large reservoir while I was in the park, it was frozen except for a spot in the center, far off, where birds were gathered round. The ice had frozen in these really cool patterns, or was melting in these really cool patterns. I am not sure which, but at the edge of the ice, along the shore, there was water, lapping gently against the shore, and this, water against ice, amazed me so much, reminded me of walking around frozen lakes near my grandma's house in Minnesota when I was a kid. This, the natural stuff, conjured more, inspired more, than that orange stuff. It is just too large-scale. And that, of course, is why people like it. And it is, of course, why I don't, because I like the more intimate things, the frozen reservoir that reminds me of Christmases at my grandma's, the art in his living room that I can see while I am naked and ready to wet myself.

Saturday, February 12, 2005

Okay, beer and pizza, I like. I know lots of females that do also. Sportscenter, though? Come on, Maureen Dowd. And I happen to love Jane Austen! Where does one rally the spirits to constantly fight such pervasive gender bullshit? This, from an otherwise liberal NY Times columnist, in a fairly messy essay that seems like it wants to say something:

The more I thought about it, the more it seemed not only risky, but the height of presumption to expect someone to devote that many hours to fathoming someone else's psyche. What guy would drag himself away from ESPN's "SportsCenter" to read "Sense and Sensibility" or from beer and pizza to devour "Cakes and Ale"?

What planet do I live on?

washington mutual (sexual) tension

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This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Thursday, February 10, 2005

from the guy i saw last night

Hey Charlie,

Woke up thinking about you.

I am free after 12:30.

You can simply drop by, or

we could go to the movies:
AT the UA cinema in Union Sq
Swimming Upstream
Rated PG-13, 1 hr 37 min
11:00am, 1:40, 4:20, 7:00, 9:40
This is the Australian Film about the domineering
father and his beautiful son
or at the Film Forum

Varick and W Houston St

Los Olvidados (1950)
Not Rated, 1 hr 20 min
Showtimes: 1:30, 3:30, 5:30, 7:30, 9:30

This is a famous Buenel film in a new print.

I could buy your ticket and follow you in and sit next
to you. You could look at me in horror and
dramatically change seats. When the movie started, i
would get up and sit next to you.

Or you could come over and pretend to sleep while i
slowly touch you, get you hard and then suck on more
cock.

You would be paid of course.
An hour or so ago, I had thirteen dollars and some change to my name. I mean, the amount that I have now, is still not impressive since I am actually going to be negative money whenever my rent check gets cashed. But yeah, I just pissed down some man's throat and got a blowjob for 150. I think I get hornier when I am with these strange, old men than I do when I sleep with my peers who I am attracted to. I am not sure why this is.

Have I really been unemployed for a whole month now? I have absolutely nothing to show for it, save the damage to my liver that I know is happening, that cannot possibly not happen if you drink in excess every single night. Tonight, I am sober for the first time in a long time, and that is probably only because I have to wake up early tomorrow morning to go pick up a friend from a test at the hospital.

I can't believe I am writing this, saying nothing, when these past few weeks, this past week especially, I have wanted to say so much, have composed entries in my mind on walks around town, while in bars talking to boys I am or was or want to be attracted to, and here I am writing about nothing. There is this bad cycle with drinking my night away, sleeping through the morning, and spending the afternoon trolling Craigslist for money. I have lost that space of time that I had somehow set aside when I actually was gainfully employed to reflect on my day and document it. I'll tell you that this cycle will probably not change soon. Tomorrow involves a gallery opening I am excited about and an open bar at a gay bar, both of which will surely spoil my Friday, leaving me totally hungover. However, this weekend, I also need to schedule time for making more money, seeing the Tracy and the Plastics show and the Isotoners show, so yes, forgive me for neglecting serious introspection.

A dog is barking really loudly but I will probably not be able to hear it from my room, where I am headed now to sleep.

Monday, February 7, 2005

To Do List with Annotations

-Find something to wear to interview this week
I probably sent out about fifty responses to jobs about two weeks ago and on Friday, I got an email from one of them, saying they wanted to set up an interview this week. No way am I going to get this job. I don't remember applying for it, and have no clue, why, even if I did, the D.E. Shaw Group wants to interview me for something they call "the Finance and Operations Assistant position." But looking at their website, I realized that I have nothing I could wear to this interivew. Pants, I might have. Shirt, no. Tie? It looks like I would have to wear one. Shoes? Please, my tennis shoes even have holes in them.

-Call Hunter and set up time to hand over evaluations so I can be in school in this fall. No more procrastinating. No more laziness

-Do taxes
Perhaps, go to H and R block so I can get money right away and not have to worry about these taxes and will have some money, which will segue nicely into our next item on the to do list, that being not having any money, having to overdraw my checking account to pay rent, and so:

-Do things to make money
You know, like, pee on people, give, get blowjobs, whatever. Make lots of money. Buy new tennis shoes with it, pay rent, and then worry about a new computer, and visiting California.

-See if health insurance was cancelled yet by the Strand
If it wasn't, go see a doctor, about what I hope if just a case of jock itch and not some STD. It it was cancelled, call the cheap gay clinics to see how much it would cost to see someone.

-Take photos of the cute front door windows on North 6th and other close blocks
I am in love with all the various crafty doorway windows that I see everytime I walk to the video store. Everytime I walk past them, I note to myself to take photos of them and document all the various designs. I will post them here for your viewing pleasure for those who don't live here.

-Call that coffee shop that is opening next to Key Food and get hired

-Do laundry

-Call people

-Write and get back to this at least once a week thing I committed to

Sunday, February 6, 2005

Laura Miller gets Murakami right, in a way that seems obvious and for whatever reason John Updike totally missed. The Times is a surprising couple of weeks late in reviewing this, and sadly, it wasn't Kakutani who did it. Lately, Kakutani's just been reviewing nonfiction work which is sad because it is so fun to read her rip into fiction authors.

Saturday, February 5, 2005

Besides the DJ playing MC Hammer's "2 Legit 2 Quit," I had an awesome time last night dancing to the fun pop music up on a wooden box, in a pair of little green briefs that I recently bought from H and M. I got there, searching around for Ron, the person I was supposed to talk to, and decided to ask the coat check boy where this Ron was, and who should be the coat check boy, but David, my first big crush here in New York. I was so excited to see him, found out who Ron was and went and talked to him.

He had called me at about seven yesterday evening and told me to get there at eleven-thirty, very little notice and barely no directions whatsoever. In person, he was just as vague and said that there were lots of people coming in and that I should dance now, that I could set my stuff down in the basement storage area. And down there, bending my head to miss the low pipes, I took off my clothes except my shoes and my skivvies and looked at myself in the full length mirror that was set up down, sucked in my stomach and liked how I looked better. I got upstairs, Ron pointed to the box on which I was supposed to dance and with about three sentences of directions, I became, for a night at least, a go-go dancer. Everyone at the bar turned to glance at me when I got up to dance and I looked at the ceiling as I danced because I was so self-conscious and could not make eye contact with anybody yet. Sweat kept pouring down my forehead and the red light shining on me made me all the more nervous about performing, but after the first two songs, I found my groove, got comfortable being looked at, and danced and danced.

Perhaps knowing that I didn't have the best body, I danced well and out of control because that I do have going for me I know, I can dance and look like I am having an awesome time because I am. I was pouring sweat again, but not from nervousness, from dancing so much. Gwen Stefani was played, the song I love, and I danced and danced and totally lost myself to rocking out and noticed I was getting a lot more attention. A couple dorky guys came up and tipped me. Throughout the night, it was always the slightly nerdy boys that approached me, I guess I had that nerdy aesthetic, which I am okay with.

The other go-go boy finally got up to dance and I got down to take a break, talked to David and drank some free beer. The other go-go boy was muscley, and this made me feel a little insecure about being the dumpy go-go boy, but then those nerdy guys came and told me that I needed to dance some more, that they liked me much better than the other boy, and I danced more, and drank more, and before I knew it, in the midst of having fun, dancing, not totally ready to quit yet, it was over. Ron told me that I did good, that he would call me. Um, I was going to write more about this and about the Queer Fist protest, but right now, I am going to watch Wong Kar-wei's 2046 because the hip video store had a copy even though it hasn't come out in theaters and I am so excited, and I'll probably write about that and about how it made me (because it surely will) want to fall in love with a boy and I also watched the end of Sex and the City today and my mind is in the clouds, and there seem to be cute boys left and right and it all makes me happy and I will write more, I will.

Friday, February 4, 2005

All right, it might be one night only, so if you've always wanted to see me dance around in skimpy underwear, make your way to the Slide tonight where I will be a go-go boy for a trial night. If they like me, it will be weekly. But perhaps you haven't seen my lack of stomach definition, and so I kind of doubt it. But tonight, it is happening, so come witness the spectacle.
Oh shit, gay marriage looks like it is going to happen in New York, and yes, you know that I am confused about marriage, because yes, I am so excited by this. As of 3 pm, the NY Times has yet to mention this, by the way. I love the feeling of sticking it to people that say no, and perhaps for that reason, I get so giddy when courts tell legislators what's what. This is all more reason to love Lamda Legal. I really wish I would have interned with them for more than a day. They are responsible for just about every gay legal victory ever. They made sodomoy legal. This news makes me want to go be slutty and gay and celebrate.

Thursday, February 3, 2005

shit, that is tomorrow!

late tuesday night
Semi-Famous Drag Queen: GREAT job tonite. congrats and welcome to the family!!

wednesday morning
Me: Awesome! Thanks a lot! I am so excited, just let me know when I can start.

late wednesday night
Semi-Famous Drag Queen: You start this FRIDAY doll. [Someone] from the Slide will call you

***************

I guess I need to do nothing but sit-ups today and hope that maybe I can make my stomach toned by tomorrow night. I am really excited, but also a little nervous. I hope this Someone actually calls me with details.

Wednesday, February 2, 2005

no, really, what do you mean when you say avant-garde?

Yesterday, a few things happened. I fell in love with three boys. Two of them at the Queer Fist meeting. One of them on the subway late last night. Skinny, brown hair, fill in the rest. I didn't say a word to one of them, but tried to peek at their eyes as long as I could until I got caught, did it in the hopes of being caught. I am really broke and need to do some work, but am lazy and want to watch the State of the Union speech tonight, so tomorrow I will try to find a John.

I am supposedly going to be a go-go dancer at the Slide's new college night that is going to be on Fridays. There is a funny story here about how that happened, but I will tell it to you the next time we hang out together, or will tell you some other story, don't worry, I will have stories. And I wonder if that is not part of why I find myself doing the stuff I am doing instead of applying at horrible retail jobs, for the stories. Stories are important, not just to brag to other people, to get the attention of an audience, as Peter is making me feel guilty about. But they are more so necessary for yourself, to keep things interesting. For a year and a half, I did the same work day after day at a bookstore, had the same interactions with customers and co-workers all the time, and when people would ask me what was new, I would say, nothing much, same old, same old. And I said it defeated, knowing that nothing was happening to me, and now stuff is, and maybe it's not good stuff, but it is stuff that is new, that reveals different things to me, and I am happier than I have been in the longest time. If you saw me, you would know this, you would see it.

For those of you that live in New York and are going to be free this Saturday, Queer Fist is going to be protesting outside a hoity-toity HRC benefit. What follows after the cut is the action alert, forward it to anyone that might be interested. Ignore the fact that whoever wrote this, used the phrase avant-garde nonironically. Come out and let me tell you stories, tell me some.


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While the Human Rights Campaign serves $350 plates of food at their Tri-State Federal Club fundraiser at the Waldorf Astoria, Saturday February 5th, 2005, QueerFist will be hosting a free alternative dinner to any passersby or HRC donors outside of the hotel. The funds raised by HRC at the extravagant event will help carry the organization through another year of suppressive policy and selective rights campaigning. QueerFist will be present to ensure that privileged, conservative lobby campaigns do not dominate the queer voice or queer representation.

While many members of the queer community are concerned with finding basic healthcare services, the Human Rights Campaign is more concerned that the members of the gay middle class have the “right” to exchange state sanctioned vows. Blinded by the right, the HRC has failed to consistently represent the needs of the queer community, as made obvious by the Tri-State Federal Club’s Corporate Equality Award, to be presented to none other than Pfizer Pharmaceuticals at their gala. In December 2004, the group announced its willingness to support President Bush’s social security privatization in exchange for benefits for same-sex couples.

Join us February 5th at 5:00pm at the Waldorf Astoria as queers and allies to show the solidarity of the communities that the Human Rights Campaign lobby ignores and sells out. Besides our free, vegan dinner, you can participate in our avant-garde street performance by toasting the HRC and their assimilationist agenda with our Human Rights Champagne, or take our QueerFist Pop Quiz to see how well-versed you are on HRC’s questionable policies. The dress is “festive to black-tie,” so come costumed.

The Waldorf Astoria Hotel is located at 301 Park Avenue. Meet at the Lexington Avenue entrance between 48th and 49th Streets. Take the 4,5,6,7,S trains to 42nd St. Grand Central Station or E,V,6 trains to 51st St.

For more information on QueerFist, visit www.queerfist.org or email info@queerfist.org.

Media Contact:
Jean Genet Ramsey