They say looks are deceptive, and today, another example of this in the steady stream the world has already served us: the sky is so blue, the sun is so bright, and it looks so nice outside. No. Right now it is fifteen degrees and windy, I think it may have been even colder earlier. It is painfully cold outside. But looking out my window right now, it looks so nice outside, so not painful. I was outside for maybe all of five minutes today, shuttling to and from the subway, but that was five minutes too long.

I went to the dermatologist today, realizing I needed to go ASAP before my health insurance got cut off. The Strand has still yet to do it, but I know it will not last past the end of the month, so I went and got some creams that would have cost mondo dollars without insurance and paid five for them at the pharmacy, and am going to try to use the refills in a week before my coverage ends. I am milking the Strand for every last penny I can. I called Aetna to find out about continuing my plan to be told that it will cost four hundred something dollars a month. No fucking way is that going to happen, and thus, the urgent trip to the dermatologist today, trying to go before I was cut off from my benefits.

That was the one great thing about the Strand, the health coverage (which they are in the process of rolling back), paying zero dollars to go see a bougie dermatologist on the Upper East Side each month was such a nice benefit. There will be no more of these trips on Medicare. I need to find a job with a health plan. Now that I am not going to have it, I am so worried that I am going to get hit by a taxi or something else that will be mondo costly.

I have been applying to jobs through Craiglist, starting to get slighty nervous about the approach of being unemployed. That is this Sunday, for those of you counting down at home. I just came across this low-paying job, which eventually will pay you with Lasik. This seems so wrong. Oh yeah, I applied to some tea shop with a cover letter that started with, "I love tea!" I haven't heard back from them.

It is out, the new Murakami book, Kafka on the Shore. I am too broke to buy it right now and am thinking about going to exchange new looking books at Barnes and Nobles and buying it with store credit. I have a copy of Gilead, but I haven't read it yet, but might trade it for Murakami. John Updike wrote a long-winded review that for all its length doesn't really say anything, except ties Murakami's work to Japanese spirituality, which seems like a misreading to me, but I haven't read it yet. When will the Times review come? Will it be Kakutani that writes it? I hope so. I am a nerd for her.

But yes, I am pretty broke. I haven't worked in a week and on Wednesday, I work, and then stop working on Saturday, and then I will officailly be jobless but that will be enough money to pay my Feburary rent, my phone bill, and hopefully enough money to buy cheap pasta or something to survive off of until I get a new source of money.

The scary junkie on the second floor is loudly moving his stuff out today and Jamie and Derek are going to try to move into that apartment. I read Dylan's Chronicles and didn't love it. I read Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and did. I am reading Eagleton's Literary Theory right now. The weather is cold and I am not doing anything. I have the weather as a good excuse to stay inside and eat and read and watch movies. I love my new life. I don't know if I will be able to adjust to having to work full time again.

an email just sent that tells more

To: Peter
From: Charlie

Peter, I shouldn't be afraid in my house. I shouldn't be afraid anywhere. This scary man came upstairs a second time and was knocking on my bedroom door. He then came to the front door and tried to tell me that his phone wasn't working and to open my door. I said, "No, you make me uncomfortable," and he went back downstairs saying derisively, "Thanks neighbor!" I wanted to tell him I was going to call the cops but I didn't. If he comes up here again, I am definitely calling the cops. Also, I went into my room through Dara's and my door was pushed in a little, but for me to lock it earlier this morning, I had to pull it tight, so I think he tried to push through my bedroom door. So now, I bolted my bedroom door from the inside also, and I don't know what to do. I am too nervous to conentrate on jobs or reading, and I can't listen to music or a movie because the noise makes me more nervous and I think it is him. I kind of wish Derek would have called the cops last night. This man is so skeez-o. Because even if I left my apartment to go do something, I would have to walk by his, leave my apartment knowingly empty where he might do something to it, and also, I would have to come back by myself to my apartment which terrifies me, you know that time unlocking my door where I am trapped in the hall. Why does he want to get into my apt so bad? What is he going to do? He is so scary. Peter, I hate New York. Let's move to the suburbs.

I can barely type this. I am shaking. I cannot stop. I am so scared. He just knocked on the door and I tried not to answer it, to be quiet, but he kept knocking. So I talked through the doorway, asked him what he wanted. And then he asked me to open the door. And I said, "No, I am too busy." And he said, "OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR." Then cursed about fucking neighbors and told me something about his family and stomped downstairs. If he comes back up here, I am calling the police. I can't even go to my room because I don't want to go in the hallway. I am not leaving my apartment. I am so scared and shaking. I hate this. I hate him.

The pre-Giuliani New York made its way into my living room last night. I never got to experience this New York, the New York of lore, of that subway scene in Adventures in Babysitting, and sometimes I yearn for this past, wondering what all I missed, what energies, what scenes, what stores, what culture instead of Barnes and Nobles and Starbucks and bougie NYU kids all over the East Village. But then, when I get mugged, or when things like last night happen, I know that I like the saftey enabled by this new bougie culture of New York.

Jamie and Derek came home around midnight last night and tried to open the door to the second floor apartment which they want to move into and which has been empty for about the past month. However, last night, it wasn't empty. One of the occupants, this Irish guy, had arrived back to pack up his things. So he showed the two of them around the apartment, showed them around while porn was playing in two different rooms and he was drugged out of his mind. Jamie and Derek then came upstairs and told Ramsey, Niki, and I all about it and Jamie mentioned how scared she was of him and how she was worried that he might come here, and sure enough, before we had to time to knock on wood, there was a knock on my front door. We all exchanged wide eye glances at each other nervously. Jamie ran and hid in Dara's room and I got up to answer the door.

Irish guy, who I should mention is married and has a child and some adult responsiblities, said he had a proposition for us, that he was leaving the country in a couple of days and had all these expensive electronics that he couldn't move back with him, and that he would sell them to Derek if they were going to move into the apartment. We all told him that we didn't have any interest in them, and wide eyed and obviously drugged out of his mind, he asked us if we knew anyone that wanted to buy them, asked us this as he started to make himself more comfortable and sat on the arm of my couch. The next ten minutes were so awkward and nerve-racking, Niki and Jamie hiding, Derek, Ramsey, and I sitting out there watching a movie, trying politely to get the guy to leave, but him telling stories about pussy and drugs, and how he only had a couple of days to get fucked up before he had to go back to his family. At one point he offered to buy Ramsey's sweatshirt for a buck fifty and a toke. Ramsey and I both tried to make him leave by saying we are in the middle of watching this movie. He ignored us and told us more dodgy stories, tried to sell us his watch, and then Derek finally ended the passiveness, and said, "Look, you need to go." He said "All right," and then proceeded to tell us he had liquid cocaine, explained what it was, and asked us if we wanted any. We said no, and finally got him out the door. I asked Derek to look through the peephole to make sure he went downstairs. He did not.

My bedroom door in the hallway was open as it always is (or was, now I am nervous), and I went in the hall to see him coming out of my room with one of my CD's, Creedence Clearwater Revival. He asked if he could borrow it. I said sure, just because I wanted him to go away, and I locked my bedroom door, then locked our living room door and sat nervously and watched the end of 24 Hour Party People. Jamie wanted to call the cops because Derek's cousin or someone is a captain of the narcotics division or something. I thought that would be totally unneccesary and mean. I hate how drugs have the ability to make people so nervous and so on edge. Jamie was obviously terrified. I was almost shaking when he was in the room with us, so nervous, having flashbacks to other nervous drug encounters with the sketchy people in Sarasota that somehow you ended up in the same room with just because you were on drugs. Some drug experiences are these horribly democratizing encounters, where you find yourself with people coming to things from totally different perspectives, dodgy folks of every variety all thrown together by whatever same substance they are ingesting. It also caused me nervousness just because this was an adult with a kid who was doing the wrong things, for reminding me of my own dad and his drug problems, and how sad human beings are, how willfully they will be ugly.

And the scary thing about pathetic people, the sadness that they inspire in you in just a recognition of how close you are to that also, how easily it is to tragress the lines that demarcate acceptable behavior from unacceptable behavior. That this is a man looking for kicks, looking for fun, and it is what so many of us do, what I do, and at one point do you have to change your method of getting kicks? Yesterday, I was thinking about the themes of private pleasure and how they are always transformed when they are brought into the light of public perception, how they become something else. But this man is different. I am scared to even leave my apartment now. I just heard a large crash from his aparment and then a loud scream and a bunch of pained yells. He is so terrifying. He is moving out Saturday. I cannot wait.

what i did and what i said i did

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my second wong kar-wei

Last night, I watched Happy Together and it was another sad romance, this time a gay one, and this time set in Argentina. Parts of it were startlingly good, some of the shots, and the character Chang who is sensitive to voices and sound. It is always so fresh to hear people say poetic things in conversation, say things that they are lucky enough to even think to themselves, but to hear them said aloud is another thing altogether. The couple smokes lots of cigarettes and are totally brutal to one another in a way that seems true and too real of how people treat people. Sometimes though, in both this movie and Days of Being Wild the shots are cut a little too fast and things go too fast, that would be so much nicer to watch if they were just a little slower, but I guess that is the trick to make you look closely, to reel you in, to , and wonder who just got hit with a bottle in that scene that was a blur. This seems to be how so many things work to attract you in this world. They don't show enough skin. They pull away from a kiss just as you want more. They slight you in attempts at conversation and you want it more, watch the movie more closely.

This job is about to do the same, about to pull away from the kiss just as I am getting into it. I have just found out that there is only a couple more days left of work here. And so tomorrow may be my last day of work here for a while. They won't have more work until the 19th and that is about two weeks without, kind of a long time to be without work, and then, it is probably only going to be about a week's worth of work. So very soon, Monday maybe, I may be unemployed and I am looking at Craigslist here, seeing horrible job after horrible job that I am not really qualified to do, and I will probably apply at some temp agencies next week if there is no work and get anxious and watch sad movies and daydream.

my first wong kar-wai

I am at work, it is almost over, and I have done practically nothing all day long. I have been wasting time online and why I didn't bother to think about updating on Livejournal earlier, I don't know. I watched Days of Being Wild last night, and it was so sad and romantic, and it was too easy to identify with the women in the movie, the women who fall for a man who is not interested. And really, I am nothing like these women at all, they are all at least originally successful and are in a serious relationship with this male before he totally spurns them. I have this problem that I am not sure if it is a problem, and if so, exactly why, but I love sentimental romantic plots, and not in an ironic way at all - instead in a way, that is almost --

Okay, I don't know where those thoughts were going, because Howard, my co-worker, fifty something years old has been playing music for us all day and now coming on blaring is the Spice Girl's "If You Wanna Be My Lover," and I haven't heard it in so long, and even still, time has not removed the humor from this song, where everyone in this office burst out giggling with that opening rhythm, realizing that soon we would be listening to the Spice Girls. I honestly can't even begin to get back on the same train of thought with this chorus of "Slam your body down, the party's all around."

After spending a decent portion of the day drinking beer and watching The Office with a rotating set of people in my living room, I went to the Metropolitan with Ethan, and there I saw Matt by himself sitting at the bar. It was a rare chance to talk to him, and I ran up to the bar, sat next to him and asked him about his life. And within the first few sentences he uttered, I was totally transfixed. His manner of speech, which I don't know how to describe, except some perfect combination of petulant Daria, the sort of snorting way of talking of Butthead, and a slight faggy inflection. And because of his voice, I was giddy and excited. Minutes before I was talking to him, I could hardly muster the energy needed to participate in a conversation with Ethan because I was so tired, but as soon as I started talking to Matt, I could not stop, I did not want to.

I talked to him for a decent chunk of time, and did nothing to embarrass myself as I have done in past encounters. How about a high-five? When he was leaving, I asked him if he wanted to have pie, and he said no. And shortly after he left, I did the same, walking home totally and helplessly giddy, thinking about how I get so few people in this world, and how for whatever reasons, I think I get Matt. He is fascinated and enthralled by aspects of popular culture in a way that very few people are without the moralism attached to it. And so it is the things he is saying, but maybe even more so, the voice he says it in, and I really think he is one of the coolest people ever, although I shouldn't, and it just makes me sad that not everyone is this cool, that people don't laugh at the same things, that not everyone talks in that petulant manner, because it makes it so much harder to be interested in everyone else, in anyone else. But there are other petulant boys who like trashy television. I just need to find them.

Also, I called the payroll guy at the Strand today, and he was about as big an asshole as he possibly could have been. He had always been kind of nice to be before, but now because I quit, he talks to me like as asshole, and I wanted to cuss at him, but I thought that would my chance of collecting any pay, and even that seems like it may not happen. He told me I get one personal day, being assholish and sticking to the one personal day per month thing that they never stick to otherwise. I will see what my paycheck says on Friday. Fuck you, Strand! You have nothing over me anymore. I am going to work at the Princeton Review in a few hours and that will be awesome because it won't be that other place.

No competition. Without a doubt, last night was the worst New Year's ever. So I went to this silent meditation thing at a yoga center downtown with Joe that was supposed to culminate with chanting at midnight. There were so many people there, all silent, and it was so hot. I was pouring sweat and unable to concentrate on anything, slowly losing my mind, and I decided that no, I did not want to ring in my New Year's like this. I could not find Joe in the mess of people, but did not care, just had to get out of there fast, so at 11:40, I found myself on the streets of the east village by myself, and feeling horribly alone. I decided to go just to a crowded gay bar where I wouldn't notice my loneliness and headed toward the Cock. On my way there I saw a drunk man pissing, and his penis was so large, and it solidified my decision to go ring in the New Year like a slut.

However, I get to the Cock and there are seriously five or six people in there. I ran back outside so quickly and walked around the streets, not knowing what to do with myself, thinking how bad an omen it was to ring in the New Year's by myself. I was walking down Second Avenue and I heard noisemakers from parties in apartments, large cheers, and the honking of taxi horns. I was relieved, so glad that the moment had come and gone, that there was no longer this anticipation for midnight, and I walked by a psychic, Mary Lee, and decided to get a palm reading on New Year's.

This is terrible idea #2 of the evening. The first one was thinking that I would want to sit silently still on New Year's for a couple hours. She tells me that I am going to have a long life, am going to live to be 86 or 87. But she also tells me that I am going to be lonely my whole life, that I cannot relate to other people, cannot allow them to get close to me because I am a male body with female emotions. Yep, that's right, a male body with female emotions, and as a result, I can get close to neither males nor females. She also said that I have had three past lives, and been very religious in them. She also said that I was empty, that there's nothing in my area 3 (my stomach/heart according to the diagram she showed me) and that people saw that I was empty and that's why I would never be able to get close to other people. She also said that I have artistic energy that I don't use.

When you are feeling horribly lonely after just ringing in the New Year by yourself, the last thing you want to hear is a psychic you paid ten dollars to, tell you that you are going to have a terribly lonely life. I was so shocked and wanted to cry, left the psychic, finally got in touch with Joe, grabbed a strong drink at Phoenix and then went to Metropolitan to meet up with Peter. Once at Metropolitan, Joe left me to go talk to some old man, and I sat outside by myself and some 37 year old man, Chris, came up to talk to me. I still remember his name, however, he could not remember my name at all during the conversation, asked me three times. He told me he was writing a novel and I maliciously imagined how horrible it probably was. I was excited just to have someone to talk to, even if he was a lecherous old man. I think he was lying about his age also. He seemed much closer to 50. But after he repeatedly asked me what my name was over and over again, I lost it, and got up and interrupted Joe's conversation, and told him and whoever he was talking to that I was not talking to that scary old man anymore. Finally Peter arrived. I drank until five with him, failing to get miserably drunk and then went home. But yes, worst New Year's ever.