rejection is one thing, but rejection from a fool is cruel

It is just further proof that people who have both the time and the desire to sculpt their hair are not cool people, despite how cool those boys with Morrissey hairdos may look. People that look nice more often than not tend to be total or, at the very least, partial assholes. After getting a blowjob from that senior citizen yesterday, I gave Ryan, that boy I liked, a call and left a message telling him that he should come to the Metropolitan for dollar PBR's. A few hours later, he gave me a call back, saying he would be there. After I got off the phone with him, I let out a little shriek of excitement because I was that giddy to be talking to a crush, that I was going to meet a crush for drinks. I threw on a sweatshirt and speedwalked to Metropolitan so giddy, head totally in the clouds. And I'll foreshadow a bit here and tell you that this walk to the bar will serve in stark contrast to the walk home from the bar a few hours and countless beers later.

I got there and talked to him awkardly for maybe five minutes before his best girlfriend/roomate showed up and then the conversation became even more awkward, me trying to talk to two hip people who I didn't know at all and who have known each other forever. After about five minutes of really lackluster conversation, Zack came over and said hi to me. I talked to him for a long time and basically ditched those other two for the most part, much preferring the easy conversation I was able to have with Zack where we were talking over each other rather than thinking of what to say to each other. I occasionally went back and talked to the two of them even though it was very appearant that Ryan was not interested in me, that we were to be friends, if even. A couple of times he asked me if I knew certain cute boys that walked by, in the hopes that I could introduce him. I inwardly rolled my eyes because I wasn't upset just annoyed by this boy. Why even meet with me for drinks? I found myself going outside to smoke, to escape just about every five minutes. But it was okay because Zack was outside and he is awesome and made me laugh so much and people that have the ability to make you laugh are gold. Nothing better than easy conversation in this world. And there is almost nothing worse than labored conversation.

Okay, I was a little upset that Ryan was not into me but not in a maudlin way, just in a what the fuck way. He was so into himself, it was absurd. He told me that he wasn't going to call me, but that I should call him, but he wasn't going to pick up, he never does, but I should leave a message. Uh, yeah. At one point, he told me to email him about galleries on Thursday. I rolled my eyes and said, "Why wouldn't I just call you?" But the best part of the night was a half hour after he had told me he was leaving, I was on my way out the door and he was at the front of the bar talking to some people. I said bye to him. The Pixie's "Here Comes Your Man" came on. He introduced me to his two new friends as Christopher. I told them my name was Charlie. The two boys were confused. I didn't answer their questions. I danced to the song to the back of the bar to bitch to Zack some more.

But no, really, I think I just lied about what the best part of the night was, meaning of course, what the worst part of the night was. That would have to be when walking home, I realized I had lost my phone at some point during the evening. I went back there today and it is not there, so I am now without a phone until I get enough money to buy a new one, or until someone gives me their old T-Mobile phone. Oh yeah, I had an interview at Triple Five Soul today that did not go as horribly as I had imagined.

I've been listening to Morrissey all day, so happy even though last night wasn't so hot, but I don't even look it as awful, as funny how self-absorbed some people are. Thank god Zack was there. Having a Morrissey hairdo does not give you any of his coolness, not at all.

PS - I lost my fucking phone!!!! So e-mail me to hang out, or come out to karaoke tonight at Metropolitan and get trashed with me.

Sixty-three. The man was 63 years old and I didn't mind one bit. He looked really old and walked slow, but it was better head than I have gotten from most people.

mediocrity rules!

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part two

So really, the motivation is a little lost after this few hour break. The events have been recalled again with Niki's pessimism, making my optimism with which I was earlier going to tell the story seem like just that, optimism. Niki even called me delusional earlier. Keep that in mind as a counterweight while I tell you about Ryan. While in the exhibit at Deitch Projects, I was staring at the cute boys and their cute outfits and there was this one, in particular, dressed in a mod brown suit and Niki agreed that he was way cute.

Later outside, Paul knew his friend and so I ended up talking to the cute brown suit boy, Ryan. We clicked really well and kept talking outside even as our friends went back inside. He told me to sit next to him. I did and we talked and it was awesome and there was none of my typical displays of behavior when I am around a crush. There was no screaming, no fidgeting, jumping up and down and telling inappropriate information. As they say, I played it cool. And as people tell me all the time advice wise, this is how you get people to like you. It worked and I later talked to him more at Lit where there was an open bar, told stories, danced a bit, and then sadly, I had to leave. The fucking video, Six Feet Under, due back by eleven. I was thinking fuck the video, pay the three dollar late fine, but as you may or may not know, I am not at liberty to drop an unneccesary three dollars here and there. So I left, but not before exchanging phone numbers and him taking photos of me. All good signs, right?

Well, let me play the role of Niki and stomp on my lovely Sunday afternoon fantasies about making out with a cute, smart boy. A few times early in the night, he thought my name was Chris. Not too terrible in my book since I have trouble with names, especially when drinking, but Niki brought this up again and again when I just tried to exclaim how dreamy this boy was. "Charlie," she would exclaim in that finger wagging tone, "he didn't even know your name!" But by the end of the night, he called me Charlie. And then, oh yeah, there was mention of a boyfriend in Montreal, but there also was flirtatious touching on his part. So yeah, basically I don't know. I will see what happens when, and if, we talk. But I am hoping good things because I have been stalking him this morning via the internet and found him on various sites. There is this Friendster thing, this MySpace thing, and his website. And I probably should not have tracked him down because knowing that he likes many of these things I love is sort of going to make it hard "to play it cool" as they say, that my crush grows by leaps and bounds when I know that someone likes awesome things.

But in other awesome news, that Niki also tried to stomp on, I received a paycheck from The Princeton Review for $250 even though I have collected all my paychecks and I have not worked there in nearly two months. I don't understand it at all, but it could not have come at a more perfect time and now I only need another two hundred by this Friday. Also, I am going to Virginia this weekend to my sister's graduation. Oh yeah, also she is a Fulbright Scholar and is going to Indonesia for a year and puts me to shame in any sibling comparison and I don't care because I got money for nothing and there is a cute boy who I think likes me. Life is awesome, sha, la, la. Sing it with me.

part one

The weather was gorgeous yesterday, and I just read in the NY Times Book Review that one of Elmore Leonard's writing maxims is to never open with the weather, but I am not a crime novelist and the weather was gorgeous yesterday, all the more so because I had been told it was supposed to rain all day and that rain never materialized, never even threatened to do so.

I drank too much coffee in the first part of the day, watched Six Feet Under, sat for some photos for Paul, and then this is what the day will really be remembered for when I recall in future ones - Barry McGee. I went to his opening at Deitch Projects because I knew it was going to be a spectacle, but the spectacle I was anticipating was a large crowd of fashionistas. That was there, sure, but what outspectacled even the usual outsized crowd attending Deitch openings was the art itself. If you are Mr. Deitch and just drip money, this is what you should be spending it on, amusement park like installations that you most likely cannot sell, but which let the people seeing it for its brief erection, see something singularly spectacular.

You enter the gallery space through the cab of an overturned delivery truck. And then there are smoke machines fogging up what is a mutliple car pileup that reaches to the ceiling of the large Deitch space. Underneath this, cavelike, is a perfect recreation of a public bathroom, of what looks like the bathrooms in high school. Stalls painted a hideous color. Graffiti stained mirror and a motorized mannican spraypainting back and forth. Across the room from this, there is little booth that you enter to find a ladder which you climb down through a narrow passageway to get a small room with a bunch of his small drawings hung around painted VCRs. When I climbed out of there, I took in the whole room again and thought that this is what the apocalyse must look like.

I am so glad I attended this during the opening because it gave the entire scene this added Lost Boys quality, all those young people, lots of skateboards in tow, drinking and partying around this fogged up demolition site. It was, far and away, the best show I have seen in recent memory. Perhaps the best concieved gallery exhibiton I have ever seen. I was only familiar with McGee's sad, disemobied heads that he paints. Those were almost lost in this exhibition. You don't even really notice them or how good they are with a car wreck steaming behind you.

Outside, I met this really nice boy, Ryan, and talked to him for a bit. After the opening and after one at Artist's Space, I went with Niki to Lit where there was an open bar till ten. I got way drunk and had to leave to return a video by eleven. On the way home, we stopped at Taco Bell and almost creamed our pants because it was so fucking good. No, so fucking good. I have to go now because Niki just got here. But there will be a Part 2 for Friends eyes only to tell about some other things.

****************
Thanks to jinxremoving for this link to pictures of the opening. Look!

Oh my god! I have a crush, biggest crush in so long. Niki is asleep on my couch. She is not the crush I am talking about. His name is Ryan. I was staring at him at the Barry McGee opening, which I will talk about later because it was FUCKING amazing - but yes, staring at him, eventually talking to him, him telling me to sit next to him, him flirting with me, my crush flirting with me -- then later, I ended up at Lit because that's where the open bar was and where he was, talked more, flirted more, and I am beyond smitten. He live in my neighborhood. He is hot as hell. He likes art, books, and dancing and he complimented me nonstop. I am so smitten. We exchanged numbers because I had to leave to return a video due my eleven.

A crush, a hot crush likes me back!!!!!! I am so giddy. I was so suave. Niki was impressed. I did not freak out and jump up and down and scare him away, but played it cool and things went so well. This is how I am proceeding from now on. Uh uh uh! Excuse me, while I daydream and think about how awesome tonight was. And I didn't even mention Taco Bell!

Last night, I successfully had fun with new friends, new gay friends. There has been this void in my life for the past few months since Peter moved to California where I have not had homo friends to call on a whim to do things with me, but I am resolving that, making friends and it feels so good to make friends. I want the whole world to be my friend, especially the whole gay world. Sometimes I am shy and convinced I will spend all my nights lonely and bored until I die. And then there are days where I don't get off on pity, where I am in a deliriously happy mood and want to talk to and befriend everyone. Yesterday was definitely one of the later type of days.

I met up with Wyatt in the afternoon and went with him to Chelsea where we met up with Paul and Carl to go to galleries. Wine was downed first, then some mojito like drink, then beer, then rum and more rum. By eight I was trashed and in addition to galleries, after Paul and Carl left, we crashed some small reception at Eyebeam, pocketed cheese wheels there and then crashed a sonogram benefit at the Chelsea Art Museum, also serving nice little finger foods. I don't know if I can tell you happy I was because it was one of those states beyond the realm of the verbal, but still one of those states where your verbal skills are superb and so you talking so much trying to delineate this state, your feelings in language. My head was in the clouds, so happy to be out in this city, to be surrounded by the company of intelligent, cute homos. Surely, the coffee, multiple types of liquor, cigarettes, and Zantac had something to do with the state, but there was something else mainly responsible for propelling me forward and forward, some sense of love for everything that surrounded me, a love I wanted to glow and glow, and knock down any obstacle this world might have tried to throw in my path.

After the free booze train ended, we rode the subway down to Canal Room and saw Fischerspooner play. Guestlists rock! Fischerspooner, however, don't. It was fun to see them, although I can't take them seriously and know that Casey is just a pop star, that he would be nothing without his producers, or without the people who wrote the songs. For one hot half a minute, I had so much respect for them. Their last song before their encore, predictably, was "Emerge," and thirty seconds into the song with the crowd wild and dancing, everyone there in some small or large part having come to hear them play this song, their purchases now being rewarded - thirty seconds in though, Casey cut off the music, told the crowd that that song was dead, that they didn't want to hear it, and the band walked off the stage. I would have thought that was so awesome if they teased the band with their hit and then didn't play it. But of course, they came back on stage and played it to an even wilder crowd.

After the show, Wyatt and I went to the Metropolitan, where his friend Zack was and I talked to them for the rest of the night, drinking beers and hoping the Morrissey songs I put on the jukebox would come up soon. I smoked too many cigarettes, danced to a few songs, kissed some birthday boy, and stayed till three something. But the most exciting part of the night was perhaps seeing Wyatt breakdance. I had no idea he had these insane dancing skills, but seeing him do flips on the floor of the Metropolitan, I had to stop dancing and stare in awed respect. This, his awesome dancing skills, make me like Wyatt even more. I walked home, thinking how awesome each of those homos I hung out with throughout the night were and are, how I am going to hang out with all of them and new ones as much as I can, that life is only fun when you are living it, and I am going to.

slo jams

Sadly, I cannot go see them tonight, but if you are free, you should. Even though I could find nothing about them on google, Slow Jams is playing a show tonight in Greenpoint, says Todd P.


TONITE there's an awesome spazzy / sloppy / Providence-ey noise show, curated by Colin from USAISAMONSTER, happening at the Kingsland Tavern - a beautiful old Polish working-class bar with a huge half-moon art deco bartop, terrazzo floors, faded depression era murals, gorgeous picture windows looking out onto Nassau Ave, and a cozy event room in the back. Cheap Zywiec!

Thursday May 5th @ the KINGSLAND TAVERN

:: Slow Jams ----------------------------------> from Brooklyn
:::: OVO ---------------------------------------> from Italy
:::::: White Mice -----------------------------> from Providence, Load Recs
:::::::: Joshua Hydeman --------------------> from Boston
:::::::::: 2 Dead Slúts, One Good Fúck ----> " "

Yesterday, I downed lots of Tiger Beer at Hiro with Niki, feeling vaguely out of place in such a bougie bar but enjoying that feeling. Then Queer Metal night. Then sleep. Now galleries and thanks to Jamie, I am going to go see the Fischerspooner show for free. If anyone hears any future dates for Slow Jams, let me know.

Yesterday felt good. I did one thing and then another and then after a glass of wine in the afternoon, I had the opportunity to pass up the chance to do something, to sit on my couch and I didn't, I threw on shoes, scrubbed the wine stains off my teeth and went out did a thing and then another thing and then yet another. After watching What the Bleep Do We Know? a couple days ago, I have gotten a second wind and am just doing things, not thinking about doing them and the time involved, but just putting on shoes and leaving the house. The movie was cheesy and earnest but there were little nuggets of wisdom that are good to be reminded of every now and again. That we are creators, have the ability to determine what we will do and what we won't, and that positive thinking is the best kind.

I had a job interview yesterday at a yoga health food store in the West Village to be a cashier, and most likely I will get it and start this Friday. Then I walked around town, went home, had the wine, and then dashed off to the Queer Fist meeting, which no one else showed up for except the host, Peter, whom there is a very cute picture of in this week's Voice on the Tear Sheet page. So then I went to Niki's store, had some sangria with her and Adam and then went with them to the "Tedious Limbs" show at Deitch Projects last night. It was cute, ironic video pieces. Ironic and hip, of course, the only type of art Mr. Deitch likes to show. It doesn't mean that they are not good, they were. They were hilirious. The free beer helped the humor go further than it might have with a sober crowd. Paper Rad had one of their Gumby videos, but the standout was Slowjams Band. They jumped around on a trampoline, the three of them in front of the video screen. It was juvenile pot jokes, but it was so awesome and I cannot find out much about them because there name is hard to search for without bringing up crap. But lots of people seemed to know them and their routine, chanting Slow Jams Slow Jams before they took to the trampoline.

Walking around SoHo to pee with Niki, we walked past Michael Stipe who was sitting on a stoop with a nineteen year old looking gay fanboy.

Then I watched some music videos at Niki's before walking to the train, waiting forever for it to come since it only seems to run on one track every single week now at night. Walking home, I ran into Chris and told him to come up to my apartment to drink beer and talk to me. I talked to him about boys and it was awesome. Today holds just as much potential for interactions. I am a little late in getting started, but that is okay.

My roommates are asleep so I don't want to be in here, the living room, typing for too long, but tonight I went with Niki and Paul to Jaymay's show at the Living Room and it was really good. It was really weird to catch snatches of conversation before and after the set, of people talking about how good she was, about how he looked at her site, and yeah she always plays small venues like this, about how it's crazy that she is not signed yet. I was very excited for Jaymay hearing all these hip looking strangers talking about her.

Then I walked with Paul over the Williamsburg Bridge and saw the skyline and realized again that I do love this city, that I could not imagine any other place more wonderful. I was sad that some of my friends couldn't or can't see that. I thought about my neighborhood and the sad news declared today that it is going to change drastically, trying to imagine what it would look with all those high rises by the water.

I drank a beer with Paul and I wanted to drink another round and Paul said he wanted to go and I encouraged him to, and I was giddy about being at a bar by myself, so proud of myself that I was sitting in a bar by myself since I have never really intentionally done so, not without waiting for someone else to show up. I felt so liberated. This feeling lasted for about two sips before Wyatt showed up and said hi and then I talked to him and this boy he was either friends with or flirting with, and I couldn't decide which, but was hoping the former because I thought the boy, Zack, was so cute. Brown hair, brown eyes. I imagined myself in bed kissing with him. It seemed so natural. I really wanted to flirt with him, but knew it was not allowed, that Wyatt was into him, or possibly so, and I hung out with the two of them, listening to silly stories. Zack, talking about some acid church. Wyatt, talking about how he liked the Damien Hirst show. I gagged dramatically.

I walked home, thinking how such simple purchases, phone bill, DVD, beer could use all the money I made today with the old man, the money that would have been half my rent. I thought about this only until I saw a puddle and thought about how much I love the streets after it has rained when there are those after rain scents, the puddles reflecting the lights we produce to fend off the night.