I am 27. Never has a birthday felt so much like a punch in the gut, the age 27 now safely in the adult range. I woke up yesterday, my first day doing so as a 27 year old, in Diego's bed. He has come to mean something really special to me and we are both really honest with each other about what it is we want and what we should expect from the other, both of us prone to sleeping around. Drunk, talking over late night pizza, we talked about the word boyfriend and what that meant to me. He said that I could call him my boyfriend, that what we have is that. I don't think I am going to take him on this, to refer to him as this, the word not coming naturally and coming with too much baggage. Whatever it is, the bond between us, it is nice. This, we agreed upon, both happy with things, if not a bit surprised by their duration.

We took a cab back to his apartment. America's "A Horse with No Name" was playing on the radio in the cab. And sometimes something like that, the encounter with an old classic rock song overheard somewhere, say the drug store or a cab, can seem like a revelation, a sign to you sent from somewhere of things, and this was one of those times, this song so appropriate to the discussion I had just had, that this relationship with Diego is a horse with no name. And I was really drunk and imagining a cartoon of sorts in my head, a neurotic horse rider on a beautiful horse, and him unable to enjoy the ride or the horse, being too singularly focused on the horse's name and how he didn't know it. This imagined scenario entertained me a great deal and also made me see how silly the desire to name things, to have them placed can be, that to just enjoy the ride for what it is is all one should do. And that this boy understands that, is encouraging of that, is really fantastic.

My actual birthday, what followed after I left Diego's bed, was a bit depressing for no particular reason, me feeling very lonely for most of the day, most of the night. I took a nap by the park by my house and then went to some galleries, went to Prospect Park to hear Issac Hayes, and then went to this amazing queer performance/dance night at Glasslands. I danced myself into a sweaty mess there, the a/c not working in the place, having such an amazing time, all these booty bass songs being played. It was the dance mix I was hoping to encounter on my birthday, so fucking great for shaking your shit. This awesome lady hip-hop group, OMG Michelle, performed. I gave my number to some boy from London, his accent making me think of David, of the distance he is from here, and sort of projecting on to this boy, just because of his accent, this other boy that I like. I left and went to the river with Ben and Gabriel, and without the music to dance to, to distract myself with, I started to get down, thinking about people, about aging, about life, and about how it is passing me by, me not doing the things I should be doing.

I woke up today, still feeling a bit low and read in Robert's blog some references to me:
"a prostitute told me the other day that i should stop looking for intimacy all the time. there are so many things wrong with that, i don't even know where to begin.

p.s. this "radical fairy" bullshit. i'm not buying it, alright?"

And this certainly did not help with my mood, reading this. The other week, we had a talk in the park which I thought was nice and where I made clear that I wanted to be this boy's friend and where we talked about our love lives and the distinctions between the two of us. Apparently, I am "a prostitute," defined by some job title, said to make it seem abject, that it was not a friend who told him this, or a failed romantic interest, or even a Charlie, but a prostitute, one whose words and intentions apparently were totally misheard, me saying something very distinct from what he attributes to me. And the jab at radical fairies is surely a jab at my sexual ethics, me having talked to him about the lovely time I had at Short Mountain. And it is such an unnecessary jab, an aside to me, him knowing I read his blog.

And I haven't heard from Mark in weeks, that surely over also, two people I was really excited about having friendships with now out of my life by their choosing, me having tried to hang out with both of these boys several times recently. Last night, when I dropped off my bag in my bedroom, wishing I could drop other things also, just throw these heavy thoughts from my shoulder also on to the floor, I saw my sheets, blue sheets bought for Mark, bought because he was so disgusted by my earlier sheets when he had been over. And don't tell anyone, but the reason I painted my room was also because of him, because I wanted it to look nice, clean, for this boy that I wanted to like me.