2009

The year is on its way out, a decade is. Jazz is playing on my stereo, I have a bit of a cold, and I am dressed in layers in my apartment, it a bit chilly, but there also that cold that I've already mentioned that is messing with my body temperature, that led me to call in sick to work today, and sleep in with a boy in my bed, this boy Jacob, and wake up late and eat breakfast sandwiches from the place across the street while watching Season 2 of "Skins." In some 30 odd hours, this year and decade will be done with. We will be living in the year 2010.

Again, I am aware with the passage of time more of my failings than of any accomplishments, am again already making resolutions, ones I have already made before, several times before actually. A few months ago, I set myself the goal of establishing a new web presence and writing this erotic travel guide/memoir that I have been outlining mentally all year. These two things were supposed to be completed before this year ended. They most definitely will not be. The web thing is slowly happening - there is at least tangible progress with that. The travel guide however has yet to even be started.

Looking back on this past year, I am hard pressed to say where it has all gone and what I have done with it. I moved around quite a bit, as much as I did when I first moved to New York and was getting settled, hopping from sublet to sublet. The year started with me residing in a gay boardinghouse on the southeast corner of Tompkins Square Park, a depressing living situation that became more so with each week, paying by the week and getting a new key each week, no real kitchen, and a heavy loneliness that weighed on the place. This time of my life also was when friendships seemingly became permanently upended and things shifted. The year started, New Year's Eve last year, with a gigantic fight with Gabriel. Soon after, he told me he did not want me helping him throw the Judy party and that effectively served to distance me from an entire circle of people that I had been close friends with, but whom would always talk about planning Judy parties with each other constantly, making them kind of unbearable to be around. There was distance between Diego and I at that point because of a new boyfriend. There was distance between Niki and I because of her kicking me out of our apartment and being the cause of why I ended up in the gay boardinghouse.

That first part of the year really sucked thinking back on it. I should go back and reread diary entries, try to see what life was actually like then, but in the interest of speed and of me getting out the door soon, we are going to continue with this narrative, trying to retrace what it is that occurred this year, what it is I did with myself. Somewhere in there was a trip to Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta and now in this cold weather, I am again looking at cheap flights to places south of this US border and dreaming of adventures in Spanish speaking places, dreaming of warmth, dreaming of beaches, dreaming of streetcar tacos. But we move on and did, moved to a place off the Bedford stop sometime in the spring. The change was nice, was a first step in some other direction. I didn't particularly like the living situation, roommates I never saw and a giant, unhomey apartment, but I liked the location, I liked the privacy, I liked having a kitchen and not switching out my keys each week and paying rent in cash to an obsese, older gay man who would make dirty jokes each time I saw him. Brooklyn felt more right. My time in Manhattan, I came to see as time in exile. There was a trip to Short Mountain for Beltaine somewhere there that was kind of terrible but did help me put a lot of things in perspective.

In August, I moved into this place I am now typing from, tiny little studio off the Morgan stop, an apartment to myself and joy became a bit more steady in my life. I painted the walls, got some furniture, and started to feel like I had a home again. The summer was spent at beaches and my favorite memories of this year are from those places - Sandy Hook, Riis, Fire Island, Provincetown - and I am looking forward to warmth's return and to those beaches again. Over the summer, I became good friends with Diego again, things blurry, me wanting something romantic, that not happening. Some other boys here and there throughout the year, but mainly him. A new boy now entering my life in this last month, Jacob, and me spending a lot of time with him, many nights getting stoned and drinking wine and cuddling and having fun sex and looking at each other a lot and this particular feeling having been absent for so long, that new feeling of having a crush and being into each other and sex with each other and it is quite wonderful right now.

And I have talked about houses, places I have lived, friendships I have burned through, and boys I have slept with, but the trouble is that I am thinking that that was all there was to this year and view that as problem. I am not sure why that should be a problem, that that is the life of a great many people. I am not mentioning great projects I have done or new work and that is because this year, 2009, did not see much of that. There was some middling dance party that I helped Ojay throw very briefly at Happy Ending but which I excused myself from after only a few short weeks, annoyed with the venue, with the work involved, with the straightness of it. There were a couple stories written, one of which I did actually read, but the output was so little compared to what the goals were that I can't help but feel disappointed about what I have done with this past year. There is a job that I work at, a fancypants hotel, that eats up a lot of my time and (I am convinced) eats up a good portion of my brain so that I don't have energy for much afterwards other than cocktails and food. These next few weeks are really going to involve a good deal of reconfiguring my life, of finishing this web stuff, of starting this travel guide, and of writing far more often.

In 2010, I resolve to write more, get a new job, cook more, run more, read more, have healthier relationships, travel more, to live more.