tattoo ideas

Susan Miller told me that I should spend the beginning of this month alone, that I was going to do great work on some long simmering creative projects, that I had to turn off the voices around me so I could hear my own. She told this to the general Internet, faceless mass of Geminis. At the time, I didn't like the sound of this, so hungry for the company of a boy have I been lately, but a few days later, I find myself happiest in these moments of being alone. Good thing I hung up those curtains. I can drink wine and dance around my apartment, jerk off in my kitchen if I want to, twirl and spin in my own bubble.

I haven't been completely alone though. I have had the very good company of Sheryl Crow these past few days. Sheryl and I had a very nice walk together a couple nights ago. I had gone to a couple of bars, Jacob's going away party at Spuyten Devil and then to Phoenix to hang out with Matt for a bit. I was quite drunk. I was smoking a cigarette, a real one, outside of Phoenix and talking to a coke dealer. He asked me if I wanted a sample. I told him No thanks, told him that weed was all I really did these days. I have been to this bar on and off since moving to New York and I don't know why this one bar always seems to have coke dealers hanging out front openly hawking their wares. I thought to years past when I had far less self-control, buying coke from some of these guys, getting kicked out of Phoenix, laughing with a boy I was making out with at the time as we stumbled to some bar that would tolerate two messy faggots. I said bye to my new friend, the coke dealer, and left without going back inside to say goodbye.

This was when I met up with Sheryl. I fell alseep on the train listening to her tell me about her favorite mistake, thinking about my own favorite mistakes. I woke up a few stops past my subway stop and emerged into a part of Brooklyn I had never really been to. It was beautiful. I walked home along Wycoff Avenue, passing discount stores, Latin bars that were raging at that hour of the night, tacquerias still open, families leaving a banquet hall, taco carts outside the Myrtle-Wycoff stop with lines of people waiting for food. And I was so in love with the night, with the city, with Bushwick, with Sheryl Crow, with the memories I kept brushing against, and with the sense of pride I was feeling that came out of a place that was ecstatic about how whole and free and alive I felt here by myself on these streets, this music in my ears, this bounce in my step, this hunger in my eyes to take in all these sights.

I woke up this morning and remembered a dream I had last night. There was a box turtle outside my window trying to get in. There was a guy in my apartment, or maybe I was in his, this guy I barely know, and he made sure the window was closed all the way. I told him that I couldn't believe he wasn't going to let this turtle in, after it had somehow climbed to whatever floor this apartment was on. Come on, I said, look at that face, and the turtle was making sad puppy faces at this guy through the glass, not believing he wasn't going to be let in - how can you say no to this cuteness, his face asked, pleading, neck bending this way and that. I don't remember how the dream ended, though I don't think the turtle was let in, though I also don't think that was the point of the dream, that it needed no resolution, that the meaning was and is in this fragment.