Giovanni's Room

I reread James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room yesterday. That could be the reason. Or, at least, part of the reason. A reason among a multitude of them. The weather also. As much as we as humans might like to think we’re independent, sentient beings in control of our destiny, our emotions, our lives, often the reason why something is or is not comes down to something so deceptively simple as the weather - a thing we mistake as simple, a part of life, the background to it - when, in fact, it’s often the showrunner, the producer, the script we act out, life itself, the thing that determines what we do or do not feel, how we behave. So the weather, too. Let’s add that to the list of reasons. Also, the gym. Another reason. I’m going to Fire Island in a week and I’ve been working out hard in some last-minute attempt to get more in shape. Working out is producing certain effects in me, inspiring more confidence in my body as well as releasing whatever chemicals and hormones it does, chemicals and hormones that have me increasingly horny over the past several days.

And so it’s the sum of those, plus all the other assorted things life presents - meals, sleep habits, scents of trees, scents of men, people passing by on the street, the skin of shoulders on display on the sidewalks in this warm weather New York is experiencing, memories, texts, imagined futures.

All of these things combine to make me a person, a human, a man, desiring the company of another person, another human, another man. I want something nice. Sex is easy. I jerked off with a guy in the steamroom at my gym yesterday morning before work. Things like that are easy. There are guys on Scruff and Grindr who are to the point, who tell me that they want to be fucked, that they want my load, that they want me to suck their dick. Which, good for them. There are nights, days, mornings when such talk appeals to me. There are nights, days, mornings when I talk such ways also. Lately though, it’s something else I want. I want to have a drink first and chat, and then yes, we can have dirty sex, but I want some connection, to feel something with another human being beforehand.

There is a heat in the subway stations that seems early for late May. In some stations, it already feels like August. The heat has been trapped in some of these stations. People wipe the sweat from their brows and fan themselves with free newspapers, their copies of The New Yorker. Once boarding the train today, I rode next to this man in rolled up short sleeves, wearing pants cuffed high with no socks. There was skin, glorious skin, on display. I wanted so bad to touch it. I let our arms brush against each other while holding the pole above us. There was a moistness to his skin that sent shivers through me. I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, imagining certain things, nothing even in particular. I let this reverie of feeling take me off in its current as the train swayed through tunnels, taking us somewhere, to destinations known, to destinations unknown.

Confusion

"Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford and you are not that young anymore."
-Giovanni's Room (40)

Roisin Murphy's "Exile"

Last week, I flew to Iceland, spent a day in Reykjavik, where I ate whale, fish, and more fish. I walked around the city, cold for the most part, underdressed for the weather. I stood on the water and looked at snowcapped hills across the way, taking in the landscape. I napped in my hotel bed, cruised Grindr, and wrote some stuff for work.

Less than twenty-four hours after landing there, I was off to London. I am always so happy there. I love everything about London. It makes me so happy. So happy even when walking around in shoes that don’t fit. So happy even when stopping in Topman to buy new shoes and then falling down a flight of stairs in those new shoes. So happy even walking around and realizing that these new shoes that I fell in are also too small and hurting my feet. Much energy, probably too much energy, in those few days was spent thinking about footwear.

I hung out with David a lot, went to a lot of fun bars, had lunch with Jacob, saw a couple cool art shows, and saw the incredible Roisin Murphy perform. I kissed a Scottish boy on the street. I had sex with this cute Argentine in some sex club and then had a cute, awkward breakfast date the next morning with him, in which, suave person that I am, I choked on coffee and spit it all over the table and myself.

I bought a new pair of shoes that fit me nicely. I flew home.

There was also a lot of drinking on this trip that was done. This is being mentioned because I had severe stomach pains over the last few days and after going to a doctor yesterday I was told that it was my week of binge-drinking on holiday that most likely messed with my stomach lining. So I have gastritis now. I have to take a regimen of pills for two weeks and am also not to drink coffee or alcohol for a while.

Coffee and alcohol are pretty much all I ever drink. The next couple of weeks are going to be really hard. Or good and healthy. Choose your own adventure.

Martinique

The subway always seems to know when you just cannot be late, when you absolutely have to be on time for something. Otherwise, I can think of no other reason why it is that so often when I leave early for something to get there with plenty of time to spare, that those are the moments when the train stalls or isn’t running or there’s a sick passenger or there’s a pack of feral cats in the tunnel or whatever the reason that day is that the announcer says.

Yesterday morning, despite giving myself plenty of time to get to a job interview, of course the L train (of course, the fucking L train everyone says in agreement) stalls at the 1st Avenue station for a good ten minutes before finally kicking everyone off on to already insanely crowded platform. It took me a good fifteen minutes to push my way out of the station, at which point I took off running toward Union Square, pausing only for traffic lights and to curse the sky - of course, it would fucking be raining then even though that was not in the forecast.

I bolted across this island of Manhattan, hopped on an uptown train and barely made it to my interview on time, covered in sweat, rain, and out of breath.

Despite this, maybe because of this, I managed to charm them and am now on to the next round.

But you just got hired somewhere, you might be saying. And yes, you are indeed right. What then am I doing? Really, I have no clue. I thought the listing sounded slightly interesting and wasn’t expecting to hear back, let alone get called in for an interview the next day.

In that office where I was being interviewed, they had a sample of Martinique wallpaper hanging from the wall. This is a print that I am pretty obsessed with lately. I took this as a sign.

I take a lot of things as signs though.

There’s a boy that I like. Okay, so maybe there a few. For now though, let’s narrow the focus and discuss this one in particular. I have never talked to him in person. I asked him to meet me for a drink. He’s working tonight, but hopefully that will happen soon. I am trying. I haven’t done that in a while, but this weather has me feeling again. Happiness is here with blue skies and rolled up sleeves. I want to clink glasses with a cute boy and talk about life and then have him in my bed. Or, I can end up in theirs. I’m not picky.