Friday, September 30, 2005

Okay, one more thing about boys. On Friendster now, you can look at who has viewed your profile and quite a few cute Brooklyn boys have that I want to make out with. Like now in this beautiful sunshine. Can you tell that I've had lots of coffee today?

Gawker and a few other people are not so pleased about this, but I think it makes it more fun, but surely after today, most people will change their settings and you won't know who was looking at your profile. Sadly, none of the people who I would want to look at my profile have, all those various crushes whose profiles I check every couple days, and they will see me on their page of people who looked at them and what will they think, will they roll their eyes and say obviously - Matt, Christopher, Ashton, Charlie, Christian, Kevin, etc. etc. The list goes on and on.

Talking Heads + Beautiful Fall Weather + Caffeine + Romantic Feelings = Totally Crazy Giddy
One of my heroes scolded me last night. His current self I find annoying, sex negative and pretty anti-intellectual (as most radicals tend to be), but I still have so much respect for the brave and fearless work he did in starting ACT-UP and GMHC. But yes, last night, Larry Kramer in a talk he was giving at the Strand with Michael Specter of The New Yorker, being filmed for C-SPAN with an audience full of cute homos interrupted his interviewer to point me out and ask me why I was laughing. And I wasn't even guffawing. I was just chuckling to myself because Larry Kramer was making pretty absurd statements and Specter even thought they were absurd and kept on rolling his eyes while Kramer talked, and so I chuckled to myself, big deal. So I told Kramer that I was laughing because of Specter's facial expressions. I totally felt like I was in middle school and getting reprimanded for giggling, and pointing the finger at someone else.

But yeah, the interview was not too thrilling because Kramer is old and seemed exhausted and just made uncited pretty debatable historical claims, like when he said that blacks and gays are kidnapped sometimes and just dropped in the middle of the woods to die - and it was this statement that I was giggling (softly) about. Specter wasn't too good an interviewer, but I don't know if you could be one if Kramer is the subject who rants a lot and goes off on tangents. I had been planning on leaving early to catch The O.C. but after I got scolded by Larry Kramer (awesome!), I thought I had to stay for the whole talk so it wouldn't look like I was being rude - and thus ended up missing everything but the last fifteen minutes of the show.

Kramer also complained about gay art last night and lamented how everything was about sex and relationships, how he wanted to see a book about a gay president of a company. I rolled my eyes because that's not art, what he wants, that "straight" novels, the good ones, are also about sex or not getting it and desire and relationships. That what I think about often is sex and male bodies and so much of my day out in the world is walking past someone on the street and almost crumpling to the ground with unrealized desire. Today, on Park Avenue, this man had on a messenger bag and was walking in my direction. He had a mess of brown hair on top of his head and a tight t-shirt on that lead my mind down those dirty paths that Kramer would deem tragic and his bag had the effect of pulling up his shirt just a little, so that an inch or so of skin was showing on his right side right above his pants and there was that clear muscle definition of a V that comes to a point at that spot I wanted access to, it's an arrow pointing out where to go, which trail to take, and I made eye contact with him as he passed me and I wanted to lie down on that sidewalk and stop all those pedestrians and roll around with my hands to my chest as if I was clutching a saftey blanket, eyes closed like when you are so comfortable in your warm bed with that blanket because the moment is so nice and that there is such beauty in the world, so much of it all the time is too much for my easily overstimulated mind to handle sometimes and I walked on to pay some bill or other and was so glad that there are human beings in this world to interrupt us from the humdrum stuff we have created for ourselves to do and take us back to that place, home, where I want to be like Mr. Byrne sings, is singing right now on my stereo, the less we say about it, the better, mm-hm.

Thursday, September 29, 2005

Last night, I was Elaine Benes. I thought to that episode of Seinfeld where she is kept awake my those loud dogs in her neighborhood and does everything to sleep and eventually kidnaps the dogs and drives them out to the country. When you cannot sleep and it is because there is something, someone's pet preventing you, you have the most violent fantasies. I imagined killing these dogs, feeding them poision, establishing a quality of life that is prevented by this pack of howling dogs.

I am not sure if this happens all the time or if last night was a rare occasion - a party in dog land - because this is only my second night in my new bedroom which faces the backyards of my entire block. After about ten minutes of tossing and turning, trying to block out the sound, I finally closed my window and shut myself off from the comforting fall breeze and was so pissed that my asshole neighbors denied me this pleaure, were denying me sleep because they couldn't take care of their dogs. But even that didn't work. It sounded like they were right next to my ear, these sets of opening and closing big jaws barking and barking. I kept saying to myself shut-up, shut-up - saying it like a crazy person but not loud enough for the dogs or my asshole neighbors to hear me. That went on for a while before I finally lost it, threw open my window and let all my frustration out into the night air, leaning out of my window and screaming for all the neighborhood to hear, a loud, bellowing SHUT-UP.

And amazingly, the dogs all heeded my command. I lied down in bed and couldn't believe that they had stopped barking. New York is funny and not funny. I mean, weird and not like anyplace else in the fact that no one really sleeps. It is not a weird sight to see a mom with a toddler at two in the morning riding the subway somewhere, or packs of twelve year olds hanging out on the street way past the time I would have had to be in bed at that age. And dogs, too, which I think of as children in how they behave. Normally dogs sleep at night, but two in the morning in New York, and these dogs are having a raging party and I had to be the grumpy old man telling them to turn down their music. But yes, I slept soundly and today, I am going to find out the address of this dog owner and next time his dogs are yelling late in the night for a good half hour, I am going to call 311.

There used to be a bird on Bedford a couple years ago that would make calls late into the night, two, three in the morning and everyone commented on it that I walked by it with - that birds don't make calls at night - and something about this place confuses everyone's bodies. It is that toxic air, wrecking our internal clocks, or is there just some energy in this place that even reaches the natural world, birds, dogs, and such?

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

I spent all day moving my stuff, two years of it that I had just crammed under my bed, across the hall to my new blue bedroom. I moved from a pink bedroom into a blue bedroom and if I was feeling a little more ambitious, I could try to somehow make that into some broader analogy about how I have changed and in what ways in the past two years.

Underneath my bed, I found one of those cheap Lomo cameras that I stole from the Guggenheim gift shop when I went to see the Cremaster exhibit and today, I realized that I never got the roll developed, never even finished it, but I could remember all the photos I had taken. I remember I took some photos right outside the museum of cars in motion, and then of some kids in the park. And then it sat around my room for a while until one day, I took some photos of me jacking off, so curious to see how they would turn out in this four frames in one frame camera. And today, I was so excited to develop this roll, getting even more excited that the film itself may have been damaged by time and heat, that I love damaged film and I think it has mystical properties that make photographs so much more dreamy. So I rewinded the roll, and then opened the camera only to find out that I didn't finish rewinding it all the way, and now I have probably surely exposed all of those prints I was so excited to see. And again, surely there is room for analogies with regard to my life.

I was excited to leave my house this evening after cleaning it all day but after calling numerous people to come out with me to Number 1 Chinese, and getting nothing but declines, I am instead going to shortly play Scrabble with Paul in my clean apartment, which a

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Jamie called the roommate selection process American Idol, which is not an exaggeration.

Yesterday, I found myself far sadder than I expected to be at Dara's departure. We never really hung out that often but had a really nice casual relationship where we chatted whenever we encountered each other in the living room and yesterday when her room was empty and her van basically all loaded up, there was this physical absence of stuff in our apartment. That's when what her absence would mean also began to hit me. I lived with her for the past two years, which is a decent chunk of my life and knew her for four years before that. I remember meeting her during orientation week at college.

And so it has been a really comfortable, relaxed living situation - one that I was unaware of how comfortable it was until she was leaving and I thought about how I had to find a new roommate since that Amanda girl called the day before to say she didn't want to move in. And I knew that there would be awkwardness having to interact with someone I have not know for so long. I had told about eight or so people yesterday to come look at the place at 7:30 when Jillian got home from work. And as soon as Dara left, I kicked it into higher gear, trying to get our disgusting apartment into open house shape. If you had seen the apartment yesterday morning, boxes everywhere, dishes everywhere - just an ugly mess - you would have been so impressed by how it looked when I was done cleaning.

At seven, all I had left to do was vacuum and then eat some food before people started showing up. But at seven, the first person also called me to tell me that she was outside. I was pretty annoyed but showed her the apartment and explained that I said 7:30 because that's when my roommate got home. I made conversation with her a bit and got over my annoyance because she was really nice and went to lots of the bars I liked. She is a total scenester and knows all those "cool" kids - the Misshapes people, the Stache people, etc - and it was fun talking to her and she told me that we should go out, that she knows about all the cool parties. And so she was definitely growing on me. She also told me she could get me a job. More points for Mel.

I told Jamie to come upstairs since I was running out of things to talk about and we opened a bottle of wine and finally Jillian got home. And shortly after Jillian got here, it was one person after the next, all of them arriving at about the same time, making it really hard to talk to anyone of them - at one point, I think we have had six potential roommates here at the same time. They all stayed for a long time, drinking wine and talking, all of them were people that I wouldn't mind living with and that is the worst, when you like all of the potential roommates because it makes the choice that much harder. It's so much nicer when it is a bunch of people you don't like and one or two gems that show up. We finally got rid of them right before the Dylan documentary came on, talked for a bit about them, and then did not do so for two hours because we were watching what I thought was a pretty sloppy documentary. It lacked any narrative focus and so much of the footage lacked dates even though they were years apart, some of the stuff. There would be early footage of him in some bar in the village and then some footage of him playing electric and getting booed and maybe it was because I was kind of drunk off of wine, but it seemed so sloppy and so full of Ken Burns' zoom in on photo doc techniques that I couldn't understand why the thing was so hyped.

But after it ended, the conversation picked up again about who we wanted to live with and we narrowed it down to three people: Connor, Mel, and Adele. Then because we had to winnow it down to two, after a lame attempt at a pro/con chart, we axed Connor and then had to decide between the two twenty year old hipster girls. There was something aggressive about Adele and her outfit was so hip that it seemed like she might be kind of snotty, so we were leaning toward Mel. And then we decided that Mel would be moving out of her parents' house and living with roommates for the first time, so we swung back to Adele. We swung back and forth between them both before again settling on Mel.

Then I found their Myspace profiles.

And maybe that makes us horrible that we basically chose our future roommate based on who had the cooler profile, but we had to choose somehow and it is always going to be some superficial, gut judgement that you make about a new roommate who you talked to for maybe ten minutes. You only get to see the side they want to present to you in that amount of time and it is so hard to know what living with someone will actually be like. Mel had one of those imported image backgrounds and music playing on her profile, one of those profiles that slows down your computer so much. And there were Misshapes, the Corbrasnake, Fight Cats, and other obnoxious things listed under her favorites. She had about 400 friends, whereas Adele had a much nicer seventy something. Adele also had really good taste in movies and listed two artists as her heroes. So that made our decision a lot easier, one seemed perhaps obnoxiously scenesterish, and one seemed nice and so Adele it is, unless we change our mind again this afternoon. They both seem nice, though, and both would probably be fun to live with. And both Jillian and I are pretty weak willed, go with the flow personalities. Neither one of us had a choice that we were pushing. We were both wavering back and forth and I sort of wish that one of us would have been really adament about someone to make it easier, but whatever, whoever it is, will surely (fingers crossed) be a good roommate.

Oh, and because she likes to drive me crazy and is out of her mind, Amanda, the girl was supposed to move in tomorrow, but two days ago said she didn't want to and basically gave me a panic attack where I wanted to pull out my hair and was forced to spend the better of yesterday talking to strangers seeing if they wanted to live here, called last night during the open house and left a message on my phone saying that she had changed her mind, and not to find anyone else to live here because she does want to move in. Oh sure, Amanda, I understand that you changed your mind. Of course, you can still live here. Whatever you want, take as much time to make up your mind as you want because its not like we have to pay rent or anything. Fuck you, Amanda. Live on the street because we aren't having you and your wishy washy self living here.

Sunday, September 25, 2005

Because really this day has not been enough of a rollercoaster of highs, lows, and scares, Amanda, the girl who was supposed to move into our apartment in three days decided that she no longer wants to move in, or she doesn't think she does and is being so wishy washy and I want to strangle her. So I have put up an ad on Craigslist and will probably have to spend every evening this week showing the apartment and I want to pull my hair out, or better yet, Amanda's hair out. So if you need an apartment like tomorrow, you know, drop me a line or something.
I love my mom. I had dinner with her at Cheers in their garden under gray skies and felt loved, like everything was right in this world. Then we got gelato at Fortunado Brothers and I walked her back to her car, hugged her tight and said good-bye.

I talked to him on the phone and his text message was about somebody else, not him. Someone that he wants to sleep with warned him that they had HPV. So, scratch that concern from my brain. One less thing to stress about which is awesome.

Dara is moving out tomorrow and I am pretty sad that she is leaving. It is finally hitting me that my roommate of the past two years, this chill girl I went to school with in Florida is moving out and the house will be different. She is playing a show in about five minutes at Otto's Shrunken Head that I might try to go catch the end of since it is her last night and all. I am so nostalgic right now after seeing my mom, dealing with gray skies which remind me of being 15, and looking at Dara's semi empty room and dreaming about arrivals and departures, but mainly departures.
Genital warts are very contagious and are spread during oral, vaginal, or anal sex with an infected partner. They are transmitted by skin-to-skin contact during vaginal, anal, or (rarely) oral sex with someone who is infected. About two-thirds of people who have sexual contact with a partner with genital warts will develop warts, usually within 3 months of contact.

http://www.niaid.nih.gov/factsheets/stdhpv.htm

It hasn't been three months yet. I am still not sure that he has it, but I am pretty sure since his text message last night said, "Three letters: HPV". If I get it, or if I have HPV, especially if contacted from a friend, I am going to be so mad. There is no way to test for it in males, but I am hoping that I am safe. I wish he would call me back, but I am pretty sure he has it.

I was really drunk when we hooked up and it wasn't until afterward, when he was asleep naked on his stomach that I noticed a weird growth on his anus, but I didn't ask him about it because I felt weird since he was/is a friend and it might have been something else. I didn't make contact with it, but I had sucked his dick and so there is surely a risk. But thankfully, there is not much of a risk with oral sex so these sites I have been looking at say. And it was brief sucking. There was no fluids exhanged and it was mainly just jerking each other off interupted by the occasional giving of head.

The day after, sober, I was really paranoid about it and washed my sheets and told him that we could not hook up anymore. The reason being my fear of his ass, but I did not tell him that. And now a couple months later, this mysterious text message that perhaps confirms my suspicions.

Fingers crossed that no warts sprout up. Fingers crossed. Call me back. I am actually not too worried since it has been a couple of months and the contact was minimal and no signs of HPV yet, but still a little nervous. STDs are so scary.
I am not a horrible friend. Really. Niki is for making these demands on my time and everyone else's. And so maybe last night, I voted yes in a car full of people to leave her in the wilds of Brooklyn. Either you put up with her craziness and wait around for her forever, or you leave her or don't wait and be a jerk. And someone that continually forces you into one of those situations is not a good friend.

Yesterday, while I was out at galleries with Jamie, Niki called me and talked to the both of us about how we had to come to this party out in some weird area of Brooklyn, how we never do anything with her, and blah blah blah. So we agreed and told her we would leave at eleven since that's when she was leaving. At nine thirty, while playing Scrabble, we get a call from her, telling us she was at the party and probably going to leave soon. I reminded her of how she yelled at us earlier in the day into coming out to this party, how we agreed to leave at eleven, and how if she was not there when we got there, I was never talking to her again.

We ended up getting a ride there from EFF's friend, Tom, which was really nice and what would have been an hour subway ride was only a short five minute ride. The party was actually kind of fun, but that's what not I am talking about here, or what I want to - what I am going to talk about is the trip home. Jamie, EFF, Tom, Karen, and I got into the car and I was confused if Niki had said she wanted a ride back to our house, so I called her and she picked up right as Tom put the car in motion, yelling to wait for her. So she came running from the bathroom to get in the car. We dropped Karen off and since it was her neighborhood and she actually knew where she was going, I asked her for directions to the BQE, but because Niki must always be the center of any situation and will BS her way through anything, told us that she knew directions even though she lives in fucking SoHo. And she started calling out directions, taking us home in a way that seemed totally wrong, further and further out into Brooklyn. She was adamant that she knew where she was going though and asked us to stop at McDonald's so she could pee. All of us refused since we lived five minutes away and just wanted to get home, that she could wait. And a couple blocks down, we got stopped at a traffic light in front of some nightclub and Niki hopped out of the car and started talking to the bouncer.

All of us were shocked. Eric and Tom asking if she was fucking crazy, and we saw her getting directions and were all pretty annoyed that she had claimed to know them. Then in Niki fashion because we were already annoyed and in the middle of a busy lane of traffic stopped, she came over to the passenger window and told Eric that she had got directions. And after a dramatic pause, she finished her speech with, "And I'll give them to you right after I pee," and bolted into the club. All of us were shocked that she had the audacity while we were not even parked to hop out of the car to go the bathroom when we lived five minutes away and we told her we weren't stopping. And there is no way this was a bathroom emergency - this was just another one of her taking everyone with her on absurd detours. I really think she might be crazy and everyone in the car was asking so. Tom had had a bit to drink. He wasn't drunk, but enough to get in a trouble if the cop ahead of us asked why we were blocking traffic and the fact that Niki put us in that situation made me so mad. Tom suggested leaving her there and I quickly voted yes, Eric voted yes, and Jamie after waiting about two minutes in total shock, agreed also.

So yeah, we left her at some place, in some neighborhood I don't even know the name of. But it was such bullshit - and I am so tired of putting up with it. I told Tom to turn around from the way she had taken us and got us home in pretty much the opposite direction that Niki was heading us in. After about five minutes, the calls from her started. I put my phone on silence.

This morning the calls started again at nine and there were about five of them by noon. I finally called her after I got out of the shower and it was an awkward two minute conversation where she was pissed and I told her that she had no right to be, that I wasn't even driving the car, that a carful of people were so pissed that they left. She said, "Fine. Good bye." And then about ten minutes later, she called back and said, "That's it. This is it. We aren't friends anymore. I never want to talk to you again." And perhaps a little too harshly, but surely what she wanted - an explanation, madness - I told her what a fucking asshole she was, and how someone who had just met her for ten minutes had the same opinion and had no problem leaving her in the boonies of Brooklyn. Told her what a dick thing it is to do friends, to make them either put up with your shit or play the asshole role for not indulging it. The fights and tension have been working their way up to something for the past few months and I think it finally exploded and I'd be pretty surprised if I hang out with Niki anytime soon.

Saturday, September 24, 2005

Fuck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am so mad. My roommmates are still asleep and the carpenters did the worst job you could possibly imagine and I want someone to complain about this with. And I tried to go talk to my landlord who doesn't speak English and have to wait for her daughter to come back to explain to her how shitty this is. It is the ugliest fake wood linelioum you have ever seen. But worse, it's not even glued down and there are giant air bubbles and it is not sealed against the walls. I could have done a better job installing it. So pissed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They are fucking idiots who can not do even the easiest things right.
Not that I ever have the cleanest apartment, but right now it is absurdly disgusting. Dara is moving out in two days and so for some reason she has decided to start stacking boxes in our living room rather than her gigantic bedroom. Everyone has decided to collectively stop doing dishes and so there are dishes pretty much everywhere. Six glasses on the living room table I count right now. But to make matters more crazy - in additon to all this crap, this maze of boxes to even get to the computer - the microwave is now on one of our chairs. Everything from the bathroom in the kicthen is stacked in our living room and the fridge has still yet to be moved. Our landlords are replacing our kitchen and bathroom floors today and my roommates like to pretend they are asleep and not answer the door when our landlord knocks over and over again at nine in the morning, knocks until she just starts calling out my name, since apparently she either doesn't know my roommates names (which she does) or who fucking knows. And so I have to wake up and talk to her and move all this shit while these lazy roommates of mine sleep in their rooms.

And then when Dara's gone, Jiliian and I are both moving rooms and then Amanda is moving in, and this house is not going to look even somewhat decent for probably a week or so, and I cannot stand it.

Friday, September 23, 2005

Firefox just closed on me as I was finishing up an entry about this amazing show I saw today. Candice Breitz at Sonnabend. I will probably write more tomorrow about it, because I want to get at why it touched me so much, and I am going again tomorrow with Jamie. One room is a bunch of people singing Thriller a capella. In another room, thirty video projections of thirty people all singing in sync (almost) to Madonna's The Immaculate Collection. I was so giddy and could not contain myself. This show made my day. Amazing! If you live here, you must go see this. It will rock your world. Here is the press release from the Michael Jackson site(!).

Thursday, September 22, 2005

the antonym of victor is loser. just saying.

I have pretty much nothing in common with Victor and he even kind of annoys me with some of the things he says, but that doesn't matter because there is a physical attraction that for whatever reasons, and probably only for a short time, allows those things to be overlooked. Because it's not a conversation we have. Surely, things are said, but everything that is said, however unsexual seems a kind of foreplay, that eye contact and standing close to one another - a tease of sorts, prolonging the advent of the pleasure you know is going to happen at the end of the night, a talking with the knowledge that it is only a formality.

And so there's that. But then there are also the things he says - how he likes Heatherette and Bret Easton Ellis and works at Genre and a clothes store - all things I sort of detest. And how he doesn't know lot of basic things I reference. The lack of shared cultural references makes conversation kind of hard sometimes, and if there wasn't that erotic charge when talking, I probably wouldn't continue to talk to him. One thing, he said though, maybe just joking, but I don't think so and it really annoyed me because it is so common - that racism in the gay world where you make your racial erotic tastes too explicit.

I introduced Ethan to this boy that we both have had a crush on so that I could talk to Victor without also having to talk to Ethan, basically tried to get rid of him and did so by introducing him to his crush, Roman. Victor could tell I was also sort of into this boy and afterward really snidely said, "So, you're into Asians?" And I told him that no, I am into really hot, intelligent boys. And then he told me that he wasn't into Asians like you would tell someone you don't like sweet potatoes. And ARGHHHH - why are gay men so stupid and racist? These things are not okay to say - they are only okay to say if you want to talk about them and talk about why - if you follow up with some analysis as to how you were taught certain racial preferences and by some desire to try to unlearn those.

And I said something to him and he said something back and because the erotic charge was too strong, those things didn't matter. The conversation retook its course of leading to sex. I drank so much vodka, even had had some before leaving my house and try to keep up with me if you can, but I have got a tolerance to outdrink an infantry. And Victor and I consumed a bunch of drinks, him telling me to down mine faster and I finished mine and he finished his and not too long afterward at Phoneix, Big Talker was puking in the bathroom. We sat outside on the street for a long time, him trying to feel less ill, and then went to hang out at Nowhere where he sobered enough so that he could actually stand up not supported by a wall and where that loaded potential in the tone of our voices and the looks in our eyes as we talked finally realized itself and he came home with me and we sucked each other off and jacked off and cleaned it all up with a towel before he headed home to wake up for work in the morning.

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

I fell asleep last night reading the new Haruki Murakami story, "The Kidney-Shaped Stone That Moves Every Day," in The New Yorker. I bought the magazine after seeing that guy last night. I bought it just for the Murakami story. I also rented Head On and bought Chinese food. The two of those were consumed pleasantly together. Both were really good.

I climbed into bed after the food and the movie with this new story by this author whom I used to love and whom I still do, just not as intensely as a couple years ago. It was a crush and what happens with everything happened - my interest waned and new things, new writers piqued it. But, of course, that did not stop me last night from hopping into bed with him. After a few pages, the time, two-thirty or so, started to catch up with my body and right at this moment, as the couple in the story was lying in bed, talking before they fell asleep, I could no longer keep my eyes open and tossed the magazine to the side.

Today, I reread the paragraph I was reading when I just could not do so anymore and discovered on either a second reading or a first one this sentence, that is so gorgeous and so un-Murakami in its ornateness, but is totally lovely still. Here is the sentence along with the preceding one for setup:

Juniper was falling asleep and could not answer. In the night air, her sentences lost their shape as grammatical constructions and blended with the faint aroma of the wine before reaching the hidden recesses of his consciousness.

Maybe you should read that a second time, too, and see how lovely that is. Normally, Murakami does the whole short and potent Carver style, which works well, but man, this sentence, for whatever reason, I really love. Maybe it was the afternoon light filtering through the ginkgo trees outside my bedroom window that totally made this story seem more amazing to me today. Everything about it wowed me today. Same thing with Running with Scissors - when I read it at night, I think it is such mediocre writing, but then when I read it during the daytime, I actually think some of the writing is pretty good.

But back to this story - there's a character who throws this kidney shaped stone into the ocean, does it knowing it is some big gesture, and that hit me so strongly, remembering throwing a wax heart offered to me into the Hudson River. And my heart beats so freely lately, throws itself around much more grandly than I could ever hope to do in some throwing my heart to the sea gesture. I feel it shooting out of my chest, attaching it to boys walking down the street, telling me to follow them, follow them if you want your heart back. This tough boy today outside of Domsey's in a Snowman shirt, my heart went after him. It totally went crazy today for this Murakmai story. It went crazy because a CD was lying on my bed, play surface up, and the sky was there so bright and blue on my bed, this perfect little circle. And oddly, or perhaps typically, it is sort of restrained in anticipation of meeting up with this boy, Victor, tonight - and I don't know how to play the piano. I just like to hit the keys all over whenever I get near one, loud and spastic, just making noises, hitting those keys. And it sounds good to me and I know to no one else and it is something similar, the wanting to hear all they keys at once, the crushes on everything and everyone, and getting bored when someone tries to teach me how to play or plays an actual song for me, showing me how it is done.

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Luke shared my tiny twin bed with me last night and I slept really comfortable until sometime past eleven. Normally, I cannot nonsexually share my bed with someone and get a decent night's sleep. The whole time I am uncomfortable, trying not to make contact with them, sticking to the edge of my bed and just generally feeling awkward. I think this is more a reflection of Luke's coolness, my ability to sleep last night, rather than some new change in my personality.

Maybe I also slept so nicely because I knew that it very well might have been the last time I had to share a tiny bed with someone because in countdown six days, I am switching rooms and taking control of my departing roommate's nice, big bed.

Rebecca slept on my couch last night and that was awesome, waking up early to go pee and seeing her there already awake and reading on the couch, reminding me of how she never sleeps late and is always up pretty early, reminding me of times with her in Florida, of times when I was pretty insanely happy. It's so nice to encounter those people from your past that you love and that just seeing, just chatting with makes you feel happy, like a more complete person, that there is this entire history again recognized that people who have just met you here in New York have no knowledge of, those prior selves. And disjointed sections of your life's chronology are breifly for the time they are in town brought together.

She left early this morning while I was still asleep. I read large sections of a book today, fell asleep, read some more and now am going to go pee on some guy in Chelsea, and then, will probably read some more in the hopes of finishing this book, but probably will end up falling asleep before doing so, before reaching any goals. Because there is always tomorrow.

Monday, September 19, 2005

an early band of gram parsons

I just got off the phone with Ethan not too long ago and told him that I was just about to eat a burrito. He said, mildly scandalized, "From Morelos?"

Because it is at least the third day in a row that I have gotten a spicy pork burrito from them. This morning when I woke up and had to make myself breakfast because I had the morning turning over of my stomach, it telling me that it wanted food, and even then, for the first thing in the day, I dreamed of that spicy pork burrito and how good it would be. I resisted the urge and ate something far more appropriate for the time of day, but only after lots of mental debate between my desires and what I know is good for me, some sense of right.

And all day long, I want one whenever I get hungry and try to tell myself that there are other things in this world to eat, lots of them also yummy, but I am in the midst of a crush right now and all I can see, all I daydream about is this burrito. But most of my crushes eventually tire themselves out and I like new boys. The boy in my life a few months ago used to be General Tso's chicken. I used to be totally obsessed, but now, I get ill even thinking of eating that shit. The last time I got it, still having fond memories of the crush and not actually experiencing the crush itself, it was such a chore to eat.

One day, me and Morelos will part ways, and surely, my tastebuds will cum just as easily for whatever new fried junk food enters my life. But right now, God, what a thrill it is I can get everyday for only three dollars and a quarter. The moon was full as I walked there and that made me happy. I found the sleeve for a vinyl copy of Purple Rain that is now displayed on our kitchen counter. I also thought about the movie I had just watched as I walked to Morelos, Gloria, which is a Cassevettes movie because he wrote and directed it, but it's not about a bickering couple and so it was sort of a letdown because that is what I wanted to watch. It was kind of sappy as pretty much all movies with children tend to be but it was still good and tense and it made me happy and want to go hang out in cemeteries.

Saturday, September 17, 2005

To go out or not to? If my roommate and her boyfriend weren't home, this choice would be so much easier. It would be so easy to watch bad tv on the couch and not feel guilty about it with other people here in the apartment.

Someone just called me and I didn't answer the phone and it was probably someone I didn't want to talk to because they didn't leave a message. This happens pretty often where I will get a call from a number I don't recognize and not answer the phone because there are some people that occasionally call me that I don't want to talk to, and then of course, whoever it was doesn't leave a message, and for a good half hour afterward, I regret not having picked up the phone, wondering who who it could have been.

I went to Morelos this afternoon and got caught in the rain on the way home. For a brief bit, I tried to outrun the rain, make it home before I got soaked. I realized how stupid it was and besides, I was already drenched, so I gave in to the rain and it was amazing. I walked slow and had an ear to ear grin, laughed, and had a blast getting totally soaked while people hid under awnings. I love these things.

bah lidge

Because apparently there was a problem with what the signs taped up all over said was their asshole neighbor, the concert did not happen on the rooftop as I had been kind of excited about. Instead, it was held in this hot loft space where the bands played on this elevated part of the room that is probably someone's bedroom. It was a neat setup and it felt good to see bands play in a party setting instead of the typical stage setup of every concert venue in the world, or at least, New York. There was tons of free booze and after a couple whisky and cokes, I started just asking for whiskey and they filled the cup up basically all the way. I drank two of those and then some wine, and not surprisingly by the end of the night, Ethan and I had decided we were going to have a band called Bah Lidge. And in true Bah Lidge fashion, I asked a couple of scared people if they wanted to be part of Team Bah Lidge.

And because of all those drinks and eventually seeing other people I knew and wanting to chat, the first band, which was pretty awful is the one who I most vividly remember. VAZ is two guys, one on guitar and vocals, the other on drums playing loud, loud, loud noise rock. My innards were vibrating along with the insanely heavy bass rhythms shaking me. I felt like such an old man and wished that I had had earplugs. I was so worried and paranoid that I was permenantly causing damage to my ears by listening to music so loud.

The next three bands from what I heard of them all sounded really good. Dirty on Purpose were the first of those and no one made any musical associations either during or after the set. No one to me, at least. Either Paul or Ethan, maybe even both - someone said that A Place to Bury Strangers sounded like Coldplay. We heard them from the staircase outside overlooking the skyline. I didn't think they sounded like Coldplay but have no other musical associations to make you understand what they really sounded like. Before Youth Group came on, I talked to this girl about them who was familiar with them and really excited to see them. She mentioned lots of bands that they sounded like, the only one I remember, probably because it was the only band she listed that I knew was My Bloody Valentine. Again, once I heard them, I didn't think the association was apt.

And then there was the closing act who most people I talked to did not know, whom I did not know, but whom I was told by a few sources, reliable ones, that they were awesome and put on an awesome show. I told lots of people what high praise I had heard about them and perhaps got lots of my friends' expectations excessively high. The Lovemakers were either a three or four piece band - I can't remember if there was a drummer. Either way it only seemed to be two of them that mattered, the two guitarists/singers/oversexed gyrators - a guy and a girl.

Now, I am not sure if they were good or what because I wasn't really listening. I was dancing so much with all the other people who had all started to dance for this band. I had a fun time but I think I am more into the earlier three bands, that with stage antics and being hypersexual, of course, you are going to please the crowd, but it's too easy. And yet, the two of us, no musical talents other than Ethan's laptop and no ability to sing whatsoever (um, have you ever heard me at karaoke? yeah.) are planning on a band that is also entertaining before being good musically.

After the show, I hiked to Morelos and ate a spicy pork burrito that was the most perfect kiss goodnight, that not even in sappy romantic daydreams, me being swept off my feet by that charming man, could I ever have even come close to hoping for. Call it a lack of imagination.

Friday, September 16, 2005

I don't even remember how I met him, but surely there must have been some hello originally and then some flirting banter before I made out with him, but I can't remember any of that part. All I remember is making out with this boy, Victor, pretty much all over Happy Ending, which he thought was really funny because it was such a straight scene and his delight in queering up a straight party made me really happy. I love that when you instantly click with another person at a bar and get dragged around everywhere, running outside together to smoke, going upstairs to dance to whatever song seemed really good under the spell of numerous free drinks.

Apparently Ethan made a bet with his friend that I was going to go home with him. Victor's friend betted that it wouldn't happen. I am not sure what was even betted, but this totally made things difficult for a while because he didn't want his friend to lose the bet, did not like the fact that it was being betted on. So I got his number and we made plans to hang out on Tuesday after his relatives leave town.

We made out some more and then we abanonded our plans to hang out together before having sex and he came home with me, because I am a bad influence and even though people have jobs early in the morning and want it to not be causal sex, I am the devil on their shoulder and show them the light. We stopped under an awning because it was drizzling, and smoked a cigarette there and then got on the J and made out in my bed, losing clothes pretty quickly and the whole time I kept smirking because I thought he was so cute and it was so playful and fun, it made me terribly happy. He left at about five this morning because he had to be at work at eight or something and I am still glowing and am only slightly worried that I might not like this boy when I actually talk to him and find out about him. Because besides his name, I really don't know anything about him.

Thursday, September 15, 2005

Shit, today is looking to be a pretty beautiful day. I just smoked and hung out on my roof. This Pizzicato 5 album just finished and now I am listening to Bjork and I have an interview in countdown two hours, way too much coffee in my system, little cash in my wallet, and the effects of coffee are pretty outrageous sometimes. But there is no real reason that I am updating except to say that there is so much stuff going on today, this week, and maybe some of you, all of you will want to do some of these things. Maybe even with me.

I wasn't planning on going out to gallery openings tonight because there are only a few going on and I should probably be trying to make some money today, but I just learned that the Alona Kagan Gallery has a group show called "If You're Feeling Sinister," and shut the fuck up, a show about one of my favorite albums ever, I am most likely there. Bitforms, Postmasters, and the Kitchen are also having openings.

And there is an open bar at Happy Ending that I want to go tonight with lots of supposed giveaways. There is also a competing open bar at some place with a CMJ Prom theme that also sounds tempting, and I need someone to lead me down that road of sin, hold my hand and skip off to free booze land with me.

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

The Lovemakers are also playing at this party on Friday even though they are not listed on the flyer. Bonnie promises that I will really enjoy this band and so I am going to go see it. Does anyone want to come with me, hopefully? Anyone not Niki.

Niki flaked out on our plans to go to Happy Ending right as I was getting ready to go and head out the door. This made me really mad because she always does this but considering that I told her that I was pretty sad earlier and really wanted to go out and party, it made me even more so mad, how inconsiderate she is.
Okay, I suddenly got really happy. I went for a walk. I am now playing the Cure and something is going on. Craigslist has lost its mind because tomorrow will actually be my third interview this week off that site. Normally, sending resumes to jobs listed there is basically just like throwing resumes from a rooftop. I never ever get responses and yet this week, three responses and three interviews! This job is a paid internship for some really boring career advice publisher. Yuck, business publishing, but at least it'd be experience doing editorial work. It is the same resume and cover letter I have been sending out for months - why is it finally just starting to get responses? Maybe I'll even hear back from MoMA. Ha! - then I would know that there is something seriously peculiar going on with the planets.

Yeah, yeah, because I love song lyrics, and no I am not listening to Le Tigre, but sing it with me anyway:

Things are fine and they're going to get much finer!

disc 2, track 8: if you don't cry

I am just coming out of a hungover fog and starting to feel somewhat normal. There, of course, is the sticky humid air confusing me as to how much of my groggy sweatiness is from being hungover and how much is due to the weather. Before going out last night, I drank a bottle of wine. That, before ten o' clock. Then there was a gin and several beers and of course, it's when you mix all that crap that the hangover is intensified.

But sadly, that bottle of wine prevented me from making money last night. Two regulars contacted me to get together last night, but I was too drunk off of wine to even consider it. I am regretting this now because not only would I not be hungover and mildly sad but I would also have money to go out tonight to some place other than one of the two open bars I may or may not go to. I could go see Grizzly Bear at Pianos tonight ($12) or Jaymay at the Living Room, which is actually free except for the mandatory pricey beers I would have to buy. And I am the king of bad choices and I am not always happy to wear that crown. Of course, the two regulars would both contact me on the same night when I decided to get totally blitzed at dinnertime.

There are some pluses to this day that I have been analyzing, some pluses that you only get on those hungover days after sad interactions with crushes and the sky somehow knows what is the right backdrop to cue with your day, and it's gray and possibly going to rain - yeah, those days, today that you can play the Neil Young, the Gillian Welch and enjoy it. It's music that I love but normally I am too busy, too pumped to go out to slow down and hear it. And the Magnetic Fields taught me a lesson today in moping, that "if you don't cry, it isn't love - if you don't cry, then you just don't feel it deep enough." And I laughed a lot and turned it up real loud so that it sounded fuzzy on our tv's bad speakers and sang along because I didn't cry and these moods are so self-indulgent and I realized that because it was a really good pop song that I could dance along to. And yes, last night, after he said he just wanted to be friends, I cannot lie and say I was not terribly sad - that I even knew what to do with my hands, they seemed so preposterous and I wasn't sure what I normally did with them when I was just walking down the street, that the movements felt so forced and so I put my hands in my pockets and curved my shoulders inward and felt like I was getting a big hug and walked home that way.

But yes, that song with the fun synth beats in the background and the admonishing lyrics snapped me out of it. There was also some coffee consumed around this time and surely that helped also and I didn't play Morrissey today because I talked about that last night and it would seem so theatrical. So much of my life is spent resisting engaging in things that might be interpreted by observers as theatrical. This isn't a new situation but I am worried what its outcome will be. It's not the first time that someone I liked has told me they just want to be friends, and some of these people, I actually remain friends with, but others, once they verbalize bounds of an interaction somehow in doing so, close off any interaction because people are awkward, so hopefully that's not the case and there won't be that wary look the next time I talk to Greg. Pretty much all of my gay friends are people I have slept with or tried to sleep with and gotten the friends talk. Is that normal?

And also, who wants to dance?

end is the only part of the word that i heard

To those of you that are tempted to say, "I told you so," please bite your tongue because I do not want to hear it. Not right now. Not any time soon. And if you say it to me, I will probably do my best to call you less often and hang out with you as infrequently as possible. It is not what I want to hear. You know that. You know that I like to live in my world and hear what I want to hear. So yes, shut up, you may have been right but I don't need to hear that.

I hate this boy, Dara's boyfriend, who is staying in our apartment for about the next three weeks and totally occupying a physical space that I am too used to claiming as my own. And really, if he doesn't stop strumming that guitar right now, I might very well flip out and try to choke him with the neck of that guitar. But he is, of course, not who I am talking about. It is never who you are ranting about that is the real source of your frustration, and the person that might be, also isn't. It is surely myself and dealing with whatever malaise I am going through and the process of finding a job, and fuck god, now he is singing! Shut the fuck up and get the hell out of my apartment right now before I lose my shit, you annoying asshole!

Okay, really, most of my rage is devoted for him and how much I do not want him in my apartment not tonight and surely not for the next three weeks or so. And because really, I did want to type something here in my living room, some story about my life, but really I cannot bear to be in his presence, I am going to have to sum things up much more quicker than I was originally hoping to do so, and fuck, I want him out of my house, and really what I wanted to say was that I applied for two jobs, had interviews at those two jobs today, both at wine stores and would be so happy to work at either one of those, and really, I think he is so obnoxious, especially since he can't even play the guitar (and Jillian, don't tell Dara I wrote this, but God, isn't he so annoying?).

But besides the jobs there is me being rejected by my big crush as of late who I have been indirectly writing about, Greg. And fuck you, guitar wannabe hippie boy, because this was what I wanted to talk about but I want to kill you and so have to go to bed without explaining how I feel about Greg telling me he just wanted to be friends, and how it upset me slightly and nonslightly, but in a seriously maudlin way and how really, I am not sure what I want from life, what it is that I think would make me happy, and what it is I want, what it is I am claiming would make me happy. Because you know, I talk big, and say I want this or that, but only because it is easy to say and not what I would really desire or what would really solve anything.

And now he is finally going to bed, and maybe I should talk about it now because I can and hopefully he won't read these rantings of mine about his grating guitar playing, but I mean, you all knew about my crush - I told you about it fairly often, and surely, he knew about it too. Jamie, today, asked me who I was talking to when he was over. And I told her who, and she said that she could tell I was talking to someone I liked, had a crush on, because I always talked different when I talk to a crush, more excited, more excitable. And he has dropped hints to him seeing someone for a while which I have done my best to ignore, but tonight after we left R Bar, after the bartender asked us if we were hitting on each other and I confessed that I was hitting on Greg, Greg told me that he just wanted to be friends. And you know what Cake song is going through my head right now as I say that my life is so predictable, and I know that you all knew this, and yet, if you all tell me that you knew this, that you told me so, I don't want to be your friend.

Monday, September 12, 2005

TOMORROW

I'd like to plead with all of you registered Democrats in New York to take the time to vote in the primary tomorrow. Don't blow it off just because it's the primary. This election is basically going to decide who is Public Advocate. And I would hope that all of you will go out and support Norman Siegel, who for decades has actively fought progressive causes. His biography puts anyone else to shame, makes me even feel a little shame myself for doing nothing anywhere as noble. It is an important office that has been underutilized by Gotbaum, that has the ability to push the city to do righteous things.

I am not nearly as firm about the mayoral candidates. I think they are all excellent and because of that, I will probably end up voting for Ferrer because he is in the lead, and I'd like to see him reach forty percent to avoid a runoff so he can get on to the battle of campaigning against Bloomberg.

Pretty please take the time to vote tomorrow.
All right, it's party time all week long it looks like and I need to do some sex work so I can enjoy all these parties and maybe see some of the many rock shows. I think I might go to the Dim Mak show on Friday even though my roommate is going to the KRS show. Choices, choices. Also, here's a bunch of Dim Mak and AddVice parties happening this week that I am going to try to go to that involve my favorite two word combo: open bar.

Hopefully, I RSVPed early enough that I will get on the list. It hasn't been listed on that site yet, so hopefully. Fingers crossed. I have nightmares of another Frying Pan debacle though, which was also promoted by AddVice.

Shows far away that if I suddenly get a windfall of cash, I am going to see:

11/9 - Art Brut - Maxwells
11/20 - Echo and the Bunnymen - Irving Plaza
12/7 - Depeche Mode - Madison Square Garden
I felt pretty gross two or so hours, when waking up from a nap, starving, I walked to the Chinese place and the video store and realized it was the first time all day that I had done any movement, the first time I had left the house all day. I am going to try to fix that tomorrow. I just watched Greg Araki's The Doom Generation and really enjoyed it, its ninetiesness. I was really uncomfortable during that last violent scene and felt a bit guilty that I didn't flinch during the earlier violent scenes, the only one that made me upset was one in which one of the main characters, a person whom I had come to see as a person, was the victim of violence, when everyone else was just as equally human throughout the movie - I just failed to recognize that.

The soundtrack might have also been one of the things helping the movie. I really need to scour some used CD stores to see if I can find it, or you know, not be so lazy, and just download the songs.

Other movies I have seen in the past week:
Gregory's Girl, The Brown Bunny, and Paris is Burning. The first one was cute and not much else. The second one was awful in too many ways. The third one, I want all of you to watch. It is a terribly good documentary that affected me so much.

Sunday, September 11, 2005

Yesterday, I watched eight hours of tennis and thank god, the US Open is finally ending today, so I can quit watching it and you know, read a book, or play outside in this nice weather. I am in love with watching tennis and because you see the ad for a brand of soap and want that soap, see the chips on the tv and want those, I really want to start playing tennis again. So if any of you New Yorkers have some racquets, hit me up, and let's play some tennis.

After that really brief women's finals match, Ethan came over decked out in pink and we walked up to Daniel's house in Greenpoint to attend his pink party. It was so amazing to hang out with all of my crushes, all these cute boys at a non-commerical venue, at a place without lots of assholes and old men. Niki called me after I had been there for about ten minutes to see if I wanted to go to Misshapes and that made me so happier to be at this party. I realized how special it was and how bad the alternative Saturday nights that I could have lived would have been. Probably from being sedentary on my couch all day, I cut loose as soon as I got there, all that energy not spent earlier in the day coming out in the form of boy craziness.

And man, it was not hard with just this giant loft packed with nothing but hot Brooklyn homos, pretty much anyone I have ever had a crush on was there. Charlie, Ryan (Morrissey boy), Ashton, Christopher, Christian, Josh, etc, etc. Oh, and really shockingly, the go-go boy from the Cock that I had/have a crush on was there. It was just a really fun awesome time, talking to cute boys all night long, bumming cigarettes off people, drinking cheap canned beer, varieties I have never heard of. And I didn't get to make out with any of those boys and I was sort of sad about that, but only slightly, because that is not where the thrill is for me. It's in the crushes leading up to that. Sometimes.

Friday, September 9, 2005

wcw

I was riding the subway this evening after going to gallery openings and answered to myself a question Gabriel asked me a few weeks ago. He asked me how I had so many crushes - how I didn't suffer from heartache all the time. And a couple weeks ago, I gave a glib answer. Tonight, I confessed, ready to cry, I don't know. I am not sure if I can continue to do so. It is a lot that you give when you have a crush, and when it doesn't succeed, man, that feeling, that heartache is unbearable.

On that subway, that crowded last car I was on, I wondered how everyone does it - that everyone seated there, standing here, all either are doing so now or have done it in the past, pining for someone who they won't get and won't understand why. I was certain that it was just not me thinking of a crush on that subway ride home, that other people were thinking of their failed interactions with other human beings they were attracted to, all mulling over what this meant and either trying to minimize the effects on their self-esteem, or wallowing in those effects, enjoying that singular perverse pleasure of indulging in self-loathing. And I was involved in some mixture of the two and wondered how other people rationalized loneliness. A train full of broken hearts, everyone so lonely and how we all manage to get up and walk, I couldn't understand. And I wanted to indulge everyone's self-pitying instinct and imagine what rejection still stung them, what crush they still desired on subway rides home.

Was this the effect of Yoshitomo Nara and Marcel Dzama, looking at their sad drawings? And was that giant head with the eyepatch and glasses that appeared throughout the Dzama show supposed to be Joyce?

I don't know.

Thursday, September 8, 2005

three doors down

Last night, I had a scare on my way to the Chinese place. Taped to the backside of our front door was a sign saying "BEWARE OF PIT BULLS AT 418 GRAND", followed by a letter underneath describing how this person was severely attacked by a pitbull from that house, the dog was taken in, and yet, for some reason was released again to the owner. I already have a really strong fear of pit bulls, and it is an effort for me not to cry like a baby when I have to walk past the numerous ones that are in my neighborhood unleashed and menacing looking while their equally menacing owners stand by, ready, I am convinced, to give the attack command as soon as I am near. So these vicious pitbulls that attacked this person who had to get stiches live three doors down.

My Chinese food was yummy. The bottle of Cabernet I was so excited about was not so yummy. Then I realized that maybe the Malbec wasn't so yummy either, that maybe because I had not had one before, I had nothing to compare it to, and so, of course, it would taste good. But Cabernets, I have had far too many of, too many good ones, and so I know when one is not up to par. Maybe, I just need to try new wines from now on, so I won't be dissapointed that something doesn't measure up to the criterion I have established for a certain varietal.

I headed out to No. 1 Chinese, because I like habits, I like getting Cabernets and spicy pork burritos, and also because Patrick, my favorite dj, was playing. It was a weird crowd, full of lots of grimy, rocker straight boys. They danced a lot, which was good. But the straight energy, not so good. The music, excellent. I was a little boy crazy, in love with so many boys there last night. Question: What type of boy has the confidence to wear an all white outfit? Answer: The dreamy type. This boy was so cool, too cool for this party, sat on a couch the whole time looking bored out of his mind.

Ashton was there also and I talked to him for one hot minute before he left and pretty much spent the rest of my night plotting how I could make out with him. Ethan and I left shortly after various crushes did so and I rode the subway home, drunker than I thought because I found myself way too blatantly cruising boys on the L. This one German looking nurse was really cute and I caught him checking me out but then he would always turn away when I looked his way. I kept on trying to make eye contact with him the whole ride home. And at some point, right before my stop, I made eyes with this cute Asian boy who was at the other end of the train. I held the stare, didn't shy away, and he held it too. I was curious to see what would happen and I am not a pitbull. I'm all bark and none of the bite because holding the stare, this boy walked all the way to my end of the train and I totally chickened out and stared down at my feet and he was standing right next to me. I could feel him looking at me and I was too afraid to turn my head and make eye contact.

I got off at my stop and walked really fast to the exit, got up the stairs and saw those pit bull signs. This person, the attacked person, had put up signs all around the Lorimer stop, the whole way home, every ten feet or so, some of them even hand written, BEWARE OF PITBULLS, again and again, this fear inducing slogan leading me home.

Wednesday, September 7, 2005

This morning, I woke up early, at eight, and did some dishes. Looked at the bottle of wine to see that there was maybe a glass of it left in the bottle. I went to bed last night, pretty sure that I had drank half a bottle, remember looking at the bottle and seeing this before I went and passed out in bed. So I couldn't figure out if my roommates had drank some, or if I am insane and totally remembered wrong. There were no wine glasses in the sink so it didn't seem that anyone had drank wine, but I was so confused and totally trying to figure out if I am crazy or not.

And really that has pretty much been my day because there are some people here, making me high with glue fumes as they install a new wall behind our shower in the bathroom. I have kind of had to take a number two for a while now and thought about this for a long time, my pooping habits and how they are so much more regular, and perhaps happening too often, happening far more often than everyone else I seem to know. But surely, the reason I poop so much in the early part of the day is because I eat bran cereal and drink tons of coffee, both of which are laxatives. So I am sort of frustrated that my bowel schedule is being thrown off by these carpenters.

I have applied for four jobs I certainly will not get and been listening to Jillian's CD collection.

Tuesday, September 6, 2005

Today was another one of those days, one of those beautiful, not hot at all, crystal blue sky type of days, and it made me so happy. All I did today was shop for various food and drink products, yummy sandwiches, coffee, wine. I saw that guy today, got paid by him and went headed toward my favorite wine store, Astor Wines and Spirits. Walking there, around that Astor Place area and also earlier today when I was walking around my neighborhood, there were some shockingly cute boys that I have not seen before and so many of them, just about every twenty or thirty seconds I would pass another one of those guys, the intense brown eyes, the mop of hair, and me staring hard, impossibly smitten with these boys and not understanding where they were all coming from, why they are suddenly popping up everywhere, if all these cute boys went out of town for the summer, or if more likely, they are all bougie NYU kids that I would probably hate if I ever did manage to catch their eye and chat with.

But yes, I made it to my favorite wine store, and if you live in New York and like wine, it is probably already your favorite store, that or you have a decent amount of money and don't buy the cheap wines. At most wine stores, the ones in my neighborhood for instance, the cheapest wines are normally six dollars and God knows where they bought them because they taste like shit normally. But at Astor Wines, they have excellent wine buyers and they buy in bulk since they are so big, sometimes even have stuff bottled exclusively for their store, and so it is cheap, but it is not crap - it is really yummy stuff. Even the two dollar bottles that they sell rival the six dollar bottles I buy from my local wine store.

Normally when I go, I always walk away with a Cabernet Sauvingon. It is my bad habit, the same one that makes me order a spicy pork burrito every time I go to Grand Morelos, but I always get a Cab because I love them rather than venture out and try new varietals. Today, though, I tried to kick this habit (sort of) and got a Malbec. For a five dollar wine, it is pretty shockingly good. The problem with cheap wine is that you can taste the alcohol - it overpowers the wine and it doesn't go down that smooth, but this one man, I have been downing it like water. I also got a Cab that was in the discount box of wines with torn labels that I am really excited to try.

I think my love affair with red wine is starting again now that the weather is cooling off. Really, is there anything better than smelling your glass of red wine before drinking it, and right after you've had a nice big hunk of bread dipped in olive oil? No, my friends, there is not. There might be things just as good, just as close to an amazing experience, but harldy (at least in my wine induced drunkeness) that I would declare better than this experience.

Monday, September 5, 2005

GOOD NEWS GREAT NEWS

1. Jillian is staying! I do not have to look for two new roommates.

2. Amanda is going to move in! I do not have to look for any roommates.

3. I've got a DVD/VCR player!

4. I've got two Bruce La Bruce movies that I am watching tonight. You are welcome to join me.

5. I saw a client yesterday and I am seeing another one tomorrow. Money is coming so easy without me having to be online for hours to set something up. Regulars are awesome.

6. The weather!
It's not really a coincidence since we do live in the same neighborhood and all, it is just the law of probability that I am bound to run into Matt occasionally. But still, I had decided to go the video store before I went to the burrito store at the very last minute and crossed the street to the video store to find someone that looked like Matt with his back turned, checking out the videos on the wall. I looked closely, perhaps even a little enviously at his back side, and this other boy with him saw me do so, and then obnoxiously, possessively put his arm around his waist. I was really excited that for whatever reasons my mind decided to turn my body at the last minute, otherwise I never would have run into Matt. I grabbed the two videos I wanted, Hustler White and Skin Flick. Then I said hi to Matt. He looked at the videos in my hand which have covers marketing it as gay porn and he wasn't familiar with Bruce LaBruce and I am certain thinks I was just renting dirty porn. He was painfully cute to look at, but it was a really decent, normal interaction. And I only briefly thought that I would like to sleep with him again. Then I realized I would like to, but don't care, that the sky is so blue and that certain things belong to certain moments and I have lived that one already, and wanting to sleep with him is wanting to live in that time again, to live in memories that are surely more sun soaked than they were in reality. Fuck me, is the sky amazing or what today?

"don't play fast and loose with my heart"

Today, I am getting a new DVD player as soon as I finish drinking this lovely cup of coffee and that is terribly exciting. I also might go to the Strand and buy a bag of crap books for ten dollars. There are people that don't read, quite a lot of them if I were to be realistic, and I don't know how to respond to that sometimes.

Last night, I went out to Metropolitan to meet up with Paul and Ethan and barely talked to either of them the whole night. First, I got stuck talking to Zach as soon as I came in, who was moping about how no one likes him, and I couldn't really handle the talk, the things he said because when you are in a good mood and confident and not even caring about that shit, you don't know how to even relate - it is so alien from your current state of mind and to even give what he is saying moderate consideration might infect you with the mopey disease also.

And then at some point, this boy, Quentin approached me, saying hi, asking if I remembered him - and I did remember him, not his name, however. I met him a month or so ago at the same bar and we were hitting on each other, things going really well and then at some point, I talked to some friends and saw him making out with some boy and soon leaving to go home with this boy. We talked for a couple minutes last night until he said, "Hey do you remember my name?" And I told him no, told him so unashamed, and told him that I forgot his name when he started making out with that boy.

Physical attraction is such a delicate thing, always on the verge of disapperaring and only held together by the most precarious of threads, and they had been snipped already and as attractive as this boy was, I really didn't have any interest in him. Even though I think I made this known, this boy continued to talk to me, to sit with his leg brushing mine, coming with me when I went to the bar, etc. And then there were the two final snips. He told me he didn't really read, that he can't stand reading books. And then, telling me he was an actor. That is an immediate turn off for me for some reason. I cannot stand theater people and lost whatever slight interest I still had. He told me he thought I was cute, and asked if that was a problem, and I was about to say something, but couldn't think of anything non-asshole to say, so said nothing. When he went to the back of the patio for a second, I totally ran away. Ran through the bar, saying quick goodbyes to my friends who I wanted to talk to, who I had come to the bar to talk to, and walked home really fast.

Oh also, while I was talking to him, Christopher walked by and I talked to him totally giddy, the way you talk to a crush, fast and eager. And when Christopher went away, Quentin asked, "What was that about?" And I asked him to define what the "that" in that question was supposed to signify, even though I knew and he knew. And those Christopher strings have yet to be snipped in all these past two years. The crush is still strong somehow. I am endlessly fascinated by my desires, by why I have crushes, so many of them, and what is the thing that makes that spark originally happen, what is the thing that prevents it from happening - but, surely, you already knew that.

Sunday, September 4, 2005

What a day! I woke up around nine this morning, still feeling shitty from drinking so much in Virginia and getting so little sleep, but looked out my window and saw that awesome blue and am convinced that today is as perfect a day you could possibly hope for. I went to the grocery store, bought myself some food to make breakfast and coffee, and ran into Stephen there who, I realized, turned me on to this whole boat shoes fetish I have. He has had the exact same look since I first moved to New York and started working at the Strand, and he would be that dreamy boy behind the register with the mop of black hair, the super tight dress shirt, his tight pants, and his boat shoes - doing some dandyfied version of the eighties preppie look. It is an awesome look and there is no need to change it, but he was the boy that made boat shoes look so adorable, and now whenever anyone wears them, I notice the shoes and think how cute the person wearing them is.

I got some breakfast, got the giganto Sunday Times and have been reading it on my couch, loving this day so much, occasionally thinking for brief moments before I suppress them, about stressful things. So yes, as I mentioned last night, my rent is going to be raised. Currently our apartment is 1300, so I end up paying 400 a month. It is insanely cheap considering that I live in Williamsburg in an actual bedroom with a window, and so it is not unreasonable for them to raise our rent. Starting October 1, our rent will go up to 1500, and so each of us will be paying 500, which is still not bad, but it will be a lot harder to scrape up 500 at the beginning of the month, than it is to do so with 400. This means I will definitely need to get a real job, which even though this is going to be a week fully of paryting (I will mention more in a second), I need to buckle down and apply everywhere.

But, the girl, Amanda, who was going to move into our apartment under the assumption that rent was 430/month, I had to call last night. She told me that she isn't sure she wants to stay in NY and that she doesn't know if she wants to pay 500/month and I told her she could take the weekend to think about it and to let us know on Monday. But it sounded like she really just wants to go back to Mississippi, so I think she won't be moving in, which means we will probably have to have another horribly painful and socially awkward open house this upcoming weekend. But maybe she'll stay, and I won't have to worry about finding a new roommate. And hopefully, I won't have to find two new roommates - I still haven't heard back from Jillian to see if she's okay with paying more rent. I am assuming that she will pay the extra fifty a month and stay, but who knows?

I am so behind the times on this one, but I am in love with 69 Love Songs and it is pretty much all I ever want to hear from now on.

It is supposed to be beautiful weather all week long. This week is also the start of gallery season. Just take a look at how many openings are happening this Thursday! So that is what I will be doing not only Thursday, but also Friday, and probably Saturday. There is the Deitch Art Parade on Saturday which probably won't be nearly half as fun to watch as all the scenesters that'll be there. Wednesday, Patrick is djing at No. 1 Chinese, and he is currently my favortie dj of the moment, so I will be there dancing for sure. And Saturday is Daniel's pink party. So yeah, it's going to be a busy week and my liver will probably hate me come Sunday, but hopefully you're down for damaging your internal organs with me and we'll be hanging out a lot this week.

Saturday, September 3, 2005

Fuck! Rehnquist died! Bush gets to appoint another one, but at least, the person can't be worse than Rehnquist. I feel awful. I am back in New York, sleep deprived, still hungover, and I cried today for the first time in a long time, was so filled with rage at the racism going on in the debacle that is New Orleans. Gas prices were outrageous in Virginia, there were some long lines, and things seem apocalyptic. I got mad and incredibly sad by watching people pour pesticides on their lawn. My rent is being raised. Everything is going to hell and I don't have much hope.

Thursday, September 1, 2005

I am at home, on the back porch of the house my mom is selling, typing on her laptop, which doesn't load Gmail, enjoying this little shaded spot for the hour or so that I have in it until the sun makes its way further up, or further down - I am not sure which - but at which point there will not be this little shaded area. I am blaring Fleetwood Mac and drinking coffee. Everyone is gone. I just masturbated in my bedroom, looking at the sports team photos of my high school yearbook. That wrestling team photo from the 1998 yearbook where everyone is in their little wrestling tights and the hair and build of Ryan Autrey's chest cannot be contained by those tights and I think back to seeing him in those Adidas sandals and at that point, being so filled with desire, a desire I had yet to name as gay.

I am pretty convinced that I am losing my mind, or my memorey, which seems just as bad, if not worse. Last night, we were eating at some insanely pricey restaurant on the top floor of someplace in Crystal City, so many of my relatives. I noticed the amber glow of my silverware lit by the candles on the table and I remember when I used to eat out with my parents, I would always stare at that amber glow off the curve of forks, so fascinated by something, lost in thought. And last night, I remembered that staring habit, got lost in it again, thought to how long it has been since I have eaten in what most people consider a nice restaurant. On the drive there, we passed this Salvadorean restaurant and a Hawaiian restaurant, both boarded up for what will be the new entrance to the Woodrow Wilson bridge, and we talked about them both, and then I mentioned my love of this place by my house, Morelos, told my mom I was obsessed with it. And my mom, sarcastically replied, "I couldn't imagine that. You? Being obsessed with something?" And I just thought to myself, Mom, if only you knew, if only you knew. My mom has no clue about my obsesssion with boys, and that is how I normally tend to think of my obsessive personality, but my mom's comment made me realize that I have always been this way, even in pre-sexual ways, with movies, with songs, and with specific objects.

But yes, my cluelessness - leaving the restaurant, one of my aunts made a comment to my mom that it was almost her birthday and wished her happy birthday, and I realized "Oh shit, in two hours, it's my mom's birthday." Today is my mom's birthday and it did not even cross my mind at all before coming here, and I did not have a gift and wondered how I could get something since I don't have a car and there are no bikes here and the nearest store is a CVS about two miles away. So yes, this morning, while my mom was out, I went gift shopping at CVS and felt like shit that I was that jerk of a person running to the drugstore to try to find a gift for someone that I love and someone whose birthday I totally forgot about. The pickings were way slim and I ended up getting some crappy DVD and chocolate. But this has me so worried that I didn't remember this at all.

My mind is totally off in la-la land, thinking about Virignia and my past memories of it. Last night, I slept in the basement and spent hours looking through old photo albums and realizing that things are so different than how I remember them. Like my old house - there were all these photos of it that I took when I was probably ten or so and had got a hold of the camera. You know, how you get all those prints back from when a little kid had the camera for a while, that "waste" of pictures - but looking at them, these random kid's eyeviews of my yard, I saw things again from that age, saw the real path of the sidewalk leading up to our house, and it was so different than how I had remembered it. When I walked to CVS today, I heard crickets and cicadas (I think? Christy, those loud humming noises?) and remembered so much more, was having a fit of recollections all day and thought about how to write those, how to somehow reconcile these different memories, the photos and the ones I have, and the erotic past and how it continues to occasionally pop into masturbation fantasies in this present. There is really so much I want to write about (non-diary stuff) and I really need to buckle down and do it as soon as I get home, when they will be memories again and not the thing here in front of me, that distance is neccesary. I have been thinking a lot about what type of writing I like and what I want to see and what I want to produce, how so much of it is well-written but easy to do so and even easier to read - that I don't want to do that. The closest thing I can think of to what I am shooting for is the writings of W.G. Sebald, but easier to read, less bleak a view of human history, more American, more pop-oriented, but just as dreamlike, and blurred between events. I am tired of books with plot trajectories that are written really pretty - it's all there is - I am tired of arcs and plots.

Other things along this theme:
Flipped through the radio, and even though I remember hearing that HFS was no longer an alt-rock station (all I listened to in high school), it was shocking to stop there on 99.1 and hear this Spanish music blaring. It was fucking awful. Past/living in it/reconciling the present with it.

How much time is spent in cars here, so much time spent listening to the radio, so much time in conversation film noir like never seeing the people make eye contact, but both looking ahead at the road at the passing sights and occasionally talking.

There is a road here that passes under an overpass and it is one way and cars have to stop at each side and make sure no other cars are coming though. It's so small town and such a vestige of this area's past, maybe even only five, ten years ago before all this development out in Lorton, Springfield, and Fort Belvoir.

Walked past a creek today, that smell of Virginia, that scent we talked about bottling from Michael's tree (yes, we were obviously going to be gay), how green and dense the woods are here.

The way people dress here.

That one way road is emblematic of all the change, how you'll occasionally pass something in a desolate stretch on Route 1, an old BBQ place - and that Southerness of sorts is covered up, built over by all the townhouses and the bougie striving. Things built over other things. Displacement of something, some quality.

etc. etc. etc.