Magnum Exits the Stage

It was maybe three weeks that we had him. Yesterday, we said goodbye to Magnum and another couple picked him up from our house, a new family for him, another couple attempting to live out the fantasy of having a French bulldog. They are the cutest dogs, adorable, and we somehow had put on our blinders to everything else that is involved with having a dog other than this cutesy aspect. There were many not cute aspects. Waking up bleary-eyed and stumbling to the bathroom only to step barefoot into a big pile of shit is not cute. Waking up in the middle of the night to him crying also not cute. Taking him for endless walks also not cute. Constantly cleaning up piss and shit very much so not cute.

A week into having the dog I was completely over the idea and knew that he had to go or my sanity did. My nerves became shorter and shorter. I dreaded coming home because I knew it meant doing nothing but taking care of the dog and making sure he wasn't chewing on this or pissing there. I realized how much I really do value my alone time and having a dog means no alone time.

Speaking of which, Jacob just came home.

I thought I would play George Michael's "Freedom 90" when the dog left yesterday and dance around my apartment in celebration. Instead I was actually quite sad, had really come to like his mushy face and perky ears staring at me all the time. Instead I played Bob Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," and The The's "This is the Day," neither of which really fit the mood I was in. I was grasping for some musical accompaniment to the moment, googling songs about goodbyes, all of them rather terrible, and so I listened to these two instead thinking they would work. Maybe not every moment has its appropriate soundtrack; maybe the absence of music, a quiet, is the best soundtrack for some moments.

Tina says Lorne says:

"The show doesn't go on because it's ready; it goes on because it's 11:30."
This is something Lorne has said often about Saturday Night Live, but I think it's a great lesson about not being too precious about your writing. You have to try your hardest to be at the top of your game and improve every joke until the last possible second, and then you have to let it go.

You can't be that kid standing at the top of the waterslide, overthinking it. You have to go down the chute. (And I'm from a generation where a lot of people died on waterslides, so this was an important lesson for me to learn.) You have to let people see what you wrote.
-Tina Fey, Bossypants (123)

"It ain't no used to sit and wonder why, babe, if you don't know by now"

This morning, I woke up, it about five-thirty in the morning, groggy, not really wanting to be awake, wanting to sleep more, but knowing that I had to get up to get ready for work. I tiptoed out of bed and into the kitchen, trying not to wake Magnum, our newly acquired puppy. Despite my attempts to quietly get to the kitchen, perhaps because of those attempts, he awoke, crying and whining from his crate. I was tired and wanted to worry about getting my own self together, awake, but instead was now having to try to quiet/comfort some dog, attempt to calm him down for just ten more minutes until I could take a shower and get dressed, so that I could take him out of his crate and out for a walk to piss and shit. I became enraged. It was probably about other things. I wanted to throw the dog down the stairs, was wondering if this might have been the worst decision, that now there would be ten years of no alone time, that I will continually have this animal needing things of me, needing me to take him outside early and late when I am tired and don't want to leave the house.

I worked with this twenty year old girl today. She is harmless and funny, but is also young and says things the way young people often say them, without thinking of how they might be received. She said something along the lines of, "I never realized you were so old." So old being thirty. She meant it as a compliment she was quick to say, but given that I have been thinking about how unproductive and unsuccessful I have been with my life these last few years, it wasn't too much of a compliment to have someone a decade younger than me who does the same job that I do tell me that I am so old. I really need a new job. She also, it should perhaps be mentioned here, called me a cougar due to the young age of my boyfriend.

My nerves were already short today because of waking up to a crying dog that I wanted to strangle. I had already been thinking about the stalled nature of my life a lot in the last few days, and so to be told these things really was about all I could take. I was afraid I was going to start to cry and made myself steady the wheel - held the smile tight, didn't let those lips tremble.

Tonight the temperature is supposed to drop to the high forties. It is nice and brisk outside, fall's perfume coming down the hall ahead of her, making you look in her direction. Everyone is at their lockers in the hall, putting books away, a break between classes, and she is coming down the hallway. The camera is in soft focus all of a sudden and the film speed slows down to show her in slow motion, hair being blown back, a new season striding forward, camera showing heads gawking her way, mouths agape, books falling from hands.

I keep hoping to win the lottery and keep on failing to get even one matching number. I have finally gotten around to watching Mad Men, just started the second season tonight, and do see what a fantastic television show it is, cannot get enough of Don Draper and his depression, his disenchantment with the world, and his very successful coping mechanisms for getting through it. It's such a fantastic show that deals with issues of gender and class in specific historical circumstances so great. The show is also probably what is bringing me down and making me think about my own life, my own failed attempts at it, my lack of attempts at living. That's a good thing, the show bringing me down. Sometimes you need a good kick in the pants, someone to tell you that they are sick of seeing your cutoff "Our Place" shirt that you have been wearing every single weekend.

9/11

Ten years ago, I was living in a house in Sarasota, Florida. I was just waking up and getting ready for class when Bonnie came home from her early morning class to tell me that the US was under attack, that planes had hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Never in my life have I experienced such confusion, terror, and panic as I did on that morning. Sheer and utter panic, the world I thought I knew no longer existing, my mom potentially dead. I tried calling my mom but couldn't get a hold of her. I really started to panic, believing my mom had died in the Pentagon, where she worked. I watched news coverage and that did nothing to calm me. I might have tried calling my sister next to see if she had heard from mom - I don't remember. I do remember getting ahold of my dad at some point and he had heard from my mom, saying that she was okay, that she was fine. I cried out of relief and because there were just too many emotions for my body to process any other way.

Ten years have passed since that horrific day, all of us changed people in so many ways. A bubble was pierced and things we never used to imagine or fear will now sometimes cross our minds, the possible expanded to include atrocities that were unimaginable in America ten years and a day ago.

I'm not sure where America is now and where it would be if things hadn't happened. I know that the sky is gray now after being blue this morning, that there is a dog asleep on the couch next to me, that I'm now in my thirties, that I am very confused about what I am going to do with my life, how I am going to still make something of it, that there are several emails in my inbox that I have sent to myself, links to jobs that I should apply to, and that instead of applying to them, I have been looking at porn and taking vitamins and putting on face masks. Those are the things I do know.

Magnum

I told Jacob that I didn't think they were Amish because they clearly had a microwave if the puppies were living in an old microwave box. Jacob said that they were probably Mennonites then, that Mennonites were allowed to use electricity. We were in rural Pennsylvania, had driven up a dirt hillside road to this house. We knew that unless there was something seriously wrong with the dog, we were going to purchase him, that we were not renting a car and driving three and a half hours for no reason, that we were going to come home with a dog for all this effort.

The two of us have been talking about wanting to get a dog for at least a year now. The dog that we fantasized about getting was a French bulldog. Their expensive price tags have always made it a bit prohibitive. We kept talking about saving up money for one. At one point, there was a puppy fund, savings with the goal of getting a French bulldog, but that fund morphed into a European vacation fund, and we spent two lovely weeks on the other side of the Atlantic this summer instead of getting a dog.

I'm not sure what finally spurred it. Perhaps it is the perceived change in seasons, the desire for a cuddly thing to get us through colder months now that summer has ended. Perhaps it's because they are insanely cute and with no other planned trips on the horizon, it was finally the time. I have no idea. All I know is that we have yet to even mail out our rent checks for this month that started a couple days ago, that I intend to do that Tuesday morning, and that hopefully the checks won't get cashed until Friday at earliest since we have spent all of our money that was supposed to go to rent on this adorable little puppy that we have named Magnum.

We drove home through mountains on I-80 and listened to current pop songs and classic rock anthems and lite-rock torch songs that I sang along with, trying to keep myself awake and alert, the seven hours total of driving a bit much at times. We finally made it home. The dog got carsick and puked several times on the drive.

We have only had him for a day and he is still only a young puppy, only eight weeks old, and so we are now in the painful task of potty training. My nerves are already getting a little frazzled and I have no idea how people potty train human beings. He cries a lot whenever I try to put him in his crate, but he is warming up in ways. He loves lying on the couch with me. He licks my toes too often. He makes adorable faces with confused expressions and he is just about the cutest thing ever. I am so incredibly happy to have this puppy and know why I have been wanting one for so long, know that it was a good desire, know that this decision was the right one. I am going to be very broke for a couple weeks and will probably end up having my bank account overdrawn once this rent check goes through, but that's okay. I cannot go out for a couple weeks because I have this adorable puppy to take care of, to play with, to love.

Irene

The storm came and went. The subways closed. The city basically shut down. I didn't go to work. The feared effects never materialized. The worst did not occur. I breathed a sigh of relief this morning when I was woke up by a bit of daylight through my kitchen windows, having slept on the living room couch for fear that my bedroom windows might shatter with these terrifying wind gusts breathless endless local news coverage prophesied. There was daylight. The world had not ended. My house was still standing. I was alive. None of my fears were realized, and this was a good thing.

The past couple days have been both nice and boring. I have felt trapped in my house because of the storm, because of the lack of public transit. I had stocked up on food before the storm and so spent most of the weekend on my couch eating various junk foods an watching various movies on Netflix. I jerked off a lot. I looked at a lot of porn. And I watched way too much local news, it on nonstop, every segment basically the same person out in the storm talking about nothing, getting wet.

I responded to some Craigslist ad, horny. A couple hours later, a surprisingly cute boy was waiting at my front door. I had never seen a face picture, didn't really care that much during this storm, was just bored, horny, and thinking the world might end for me and so I might as well get off one last time. He was blonde, which initially was a minus in his column, but he was cute enough and had a nice enough dick that I forgave him that. We sucked each other off, made out, and touched each other's bodies in this very intimate way that was somehow allowed by the storm, both of us I think looking for the same thing, coming to this encounter for the same reasons, just wanting some stimulation and physical contact in the midst of our cabin fever and so we took it slow, were delicate with each other, and fingered lovingly the bodies of our traveling companions through these end times. We both came finally and then I gave him some paper towels and turned up the music on my computer which had been playing lightly during our encounter.

He remarked that he had never gotten it on to this album and how he didn't think he ever would. The album was Madonna's Erotica, which, yes, I had been playing during our hookup on repeat, but only lightly, and only because I have recently fallen in love with the thing. We talked about our experiences with Madonna, our memories of her as a child, as a teen, and what albums we had allowed ourselves to like during those times, me explaining how it was only a couple of weeks ago that I had really listened to this album, and how now I could not get enough of it, played it continuously, the thing a beautiful thing that I like to surround myself with. He got dressed. He put on his glasses last. He left. I asked him to close both of the doors downstairs behind him.

I went back to the fridge and then back to the couch where I ate and watched more local news coverage of this storm. The rain at that point started to really pick up.

At the Trader Joe's wine store, a cashier's nametag read "Diego Gabriel." My attraction to him came to a crashing halt at this flashing warning light.

It was a few days ago when I realized that next week would be September. I made immediate plans to go to Fire Island for two days with Jacob. I called in sick Monday night and on Tuesday morning I was on a ferry heading toward Fire Island, sunshine on my skin, wind whipping around me, a bunch of gays seated near me, everyone excited about being at the beach. I had to get in a little more summer before it vanished, before it was again some far off distant thing that I could not wait for, that I fantasized about through blustery, cold days. Best decision ever to call in sick, especially so given this insane hurricane that is barreling toward our city.

We ate lunch, had some Bloody Marys, looked at the cute boys that walked past us, and then headed toward the beach. We spread out our towels in the nude section of the beach, sexy sights on all sides of us. My goal was to get rid of my tan lines, and since I was naked just about every moment while the sun was out during those two days, I did a fairly good job of that. We smoked some weed, drank some Coors Lights, swam in the Atlantic Ocean, looked at the boys walking past through sunglasses while pretending we were just looking at the horizon, laughed while recalling dialogue from Smiley Face. At some point, there was an earthquake. We were on another planet though, and heard the news hour later from people more connected to Earth. Reports back, breathless evening news coverage, texts, Facebook status updates, etc. I felt like I had missed something, this collective moment that New Yorkers experienced and that I did not. I had a bit of earthquake envy. Just a bit though because the weather could not have been more perfect and I was on this beautiful island and there were no cars and no phones to answer and an abundance of beauty, both the human variety and the non-human variety: butterflies galore, green and flowering plants, deer, green ocean, and blue sky.

We checked into the Belvedere, showered off the sand and salt, and then went up to the roof deck to catch even more sun. We had the roof deck to ourselves and so jerked off up there while drinking cocktails. A bit later some other people came up to the roof as well and we watched the sun set over the bay, more insane beauty. Drunk and goofy, we hiked across the island to the Pines to go to tea dance. It was winding down, almost over, and a group of Pines boys wanted us to take a water taxi back with them to Cherry Grove so we could go out to more bars. We were getting wrapped up in something we didn't want to, getting stuck hanging out with prissy gays who didn't want to talk through the Meat Rack, and so we (very ridiculously) walked away pretending to look at something and then literally booked it down the path to the ocean to escape these boys. We walked back to Cherry Grove along the dark beach under a gorgeous night sky, so many stars, and the two of us talking about very earthly things. And why anyone would pass this up to take a water taxi I do not know; the most beautiful moments I have ever had at Fire Island have always been these slightly scary walks through the Meat Rack, trying to find your way in the darkness through the woods as you walk back and forth across the island. Back at the hotel, we hung out at the hot tub with some annoying older guys and then went up to the roof deck again where, alone again and left to our own dirty devices, we fucked, overlooking the bay. As we were finishing, this guy ended up coming to the roof. We kept on fucking, not caring because we were almost there. He watched and we kept at it until Jacob came. We then went downstairs, wiped ourselves clean in our room, and went to bed.

The next day more of the same, more poolside time in the sun, more time by the beach, more looking at sexy men and beautiful nature. We stayed until our skin felt burned, seared, and then we left, boarded that ferry headed in the opposite direction this time, back toward New York City and all its own pleasures and all its own negatives, things about it, or my life there currently, that stress me out, and that for a good two days or so I had managed to put out of mind, managed to forget about for a little while. And today, back in those things, I approached them more joyously, having gotten my sexual fill for the first time in a while and also having gotten to swim in waves and lie on sand and to hold these memories fresh in my mind. Perhaps it's easy to make it through these days, through work and drudgery, if during those times we can still hold on to memories of good times recently had. Either I need to take some Gingko, work on building up my memory's skills, or need to continually replenish my short-term memory with fun moments, things that make me happy to be alive and here on this planet.

naked guitar heroes

Beyonce - Roseland Ballroom - 8/18/11

There were many moments last evening, while I was pressed in a sea of bodies in the overcrowded and hot Roseland Ballroom, that I longed for a past I only briefly got to experience. I didn't want to live in this world or the future world that was to come. I got incredibly depressed for brief moments when I realized that there was no going back, that a certain type of unmediated experience was now forever gone, and that this would be the future. There was a very brief few years in the late nineties and early aughts in which I went to concerts and could stand on tippy toes and see the performer on the stage without seeing the same image reflected back to me on countless small screens held in hands. This was before digital cameras dropped in price point to become common sights at concerts and also before smartphone was even a term. It is now near-impossible to attend a concert and not see lit-up screen after lit-up screen ahead of you showing you the same concert you are watching, or trying to watch, but the attempt at which is being hindered by raised phone after raised phone, preventing you from not only getting a good sightline, but also from perhaps losing yourself in the experience, instead having to see it mediated it on thirty or so screens ahead of you, all different angles, everyone trying to possess something unpossessable, the capitalist urge to acquire, to cage, to stockpile always unceasing. It is really a shame because there are moments when I get lost when I close my eyes and have a moment with the performer, a communion of sorts, on what level I am not sure, but a communion nonetheless, and then that is hindered by the crowd in front of me when I again open my eyes and see their urges to document, to already before the moment has finished think about future moments and uploading this photo or video to Facebook or Youtube, and as a consequence bring a future world into this one that is trying its best to create a present-tense moment.

I know I'm old for a concertgoer, now in my thirties, and that for some people young people this is the only concert-going world that they have ever known, but I got so incredibly sad last evening by thoughts of a bygone world and the realization that this irritant is not going anywhere, that it is only bound to get worse, that at this point there is no going back, the gates have already been breached. People already think this is acceptable behavior, they feel entitled to this, and there is no way to shift these now so prevalent habits. I am imagining an absurdist comedy from decades ago, one not written but which seems like it could have been, a futurist vision spoofing technology no one thought would ever actually be used as such, in which every member of an audience at a performance is taping the performance, everyone documenting the thing, various purposes stated to themselves, all of them however really having the same reason, not the one they stated. Meanwhile, not one of the audience members is actually watching the thing, everyone instead watching the performance on their screens, everyone missing the performance in front of them, too busy watching the simulacrum of it on their devices.

I am so sick of this urge to document - and yes, I am more than aware of the hypocrisy and irony of me saying such a thing here, in this web project documenting my life, me who has made a point of documenting my life in online diary form for the last ten or so years now at this point. But I do believe that there is a difference in reconstructing your memories, reassembling them after the fact as you stew over them and write about them in your diary, and that of the urge to photograph or record every piece of art you encounter, that snapping a photo is not interacting with the thing, and your snapping the photo actually hinders my own interaction with the thing, my own desire to get lost.

And so yes, there were these moments of introspection about what it means to attend concerts in these contemporary times of ours and these thoughts often led me down dark trails that had me lamenting the way we live now. There were those moments, yes. There were also, and of longer duration and greater frequency, moments in which I did not notice the people around me and their stupid cameraphones which they held out outstretched for the entire 90-minute concert, and instead perched high up on my toes and saw this lady, only a year younger than myself and with such a big body of work already and with such enormous talent, dance and sing and do so amazingly.

The concert was styled in this very hammy Broadway one-woman show style. It seemed like a Liza show for its first half, Beyonce recounting in humorous and linear fashion her rise from a child performer, being rejected by Star Search, her father getting her and her bandmates a record deal, the many member shake-ups of Destiny's Child, her switch to being a solo artist, and her parting ways from her father as her manager. She interspersed this history of her life with brief versions of songs from each of these eras, opening with a beautiful cover of Michael Jackson's "I Wanna Be Where You Are," the song that Destiny's Child first auditioned for Star Search with.

The song was a very appropriate song with which to open, especially since Jay-Z as of late has been trying to position Beyonce as the heir to Michael Jackson's unique pop skills. And as much as there is something a little brash about such claims, they are deserved. Beyonce is actually fucking incredible. I was blown away be her performance in this venue. To see such a massive pop star play a smallish venue is such a treat and that's why I bought tickets despite their expensive price, knowing that there was no way Beyonce would be playing any more small venues anytime in the near future, if ever. She was charming, energetic, and on point with every song. She sang and danced flawlessly for ninety minutes. I'm not sure how she did it. I am always amazed by performers that don't seem to get of breath and can not only dance in heels but also belt out tunes.

The first half of the show seemed to be the favorite part of most people in the audience, not surprising given the lackluster reception to her new album, even on my own part, but for me the second half of the show is really where she turned it out for me. An album that I had thought was fairly boring suddenly became this really beautiful and great-sounding thing in the renditions she performed. Highlights and all of which I think would be great singles were: "I Miss You," a gorgeous track co-written by Frank Ocean, surely why it's so gorgeous; "Party"; and the absolutely amazing "Love on Top." This was the highlight of the night for me when she performed "Love on Top." This was one of those moments where for a good three or four minutes I forgot about the many distractions around me and shared a moment with Beyonce. Her voice and her runs up and down the scales for parts of the song sent corresponding chills up and down my spine. It's a really fantastic song that has been growing on me more and more and her live version of it was absolutely incredible; the energy that seems a bit lacking on the album version is overflowing when she sings it live. The concert presented several songs like this, in which the live version had so much more energy and life and oomph than the album version, which is really too bad because the album would probably be doing a lot better if some of that same energy could have been transferred to the album. "Love on Top" was insanely amazing and I have been recalling this particular song a lot during the course of today, my spine again tingling, the memory still strong, me again biting my lower lip, in a mix of pleasure and disbelief that a person singing could bring about so much pleasure, that the human voice can do this to you, provoke such sensations, me shaking my head back and forth because when someone is so good all you can do is shake your head, say "Damn!," and be thankful that you get to experience such things in the course of your life.

summer storms

Another rainy Sunday. I was woken up last night by the violent rain beating against my air conditioner unit. I ate some mozzarella and almonds, suddenly hungry. I looked at boys on Grindr, read Facebook, and decided three something is a little too early to wake up, and so smoked some weed so I could fall back asleep. Jacob is still asleep, a bag of piss on the floor next to him. He has a catheter in him until tomorrow due to recent surgery he has had.

His mom was here for the weekend and now thankfully is gone. I can again walk to the bathroom in the middle of the night naked, then snack on mozzarella and almonds while looking at what boys are awake in the middle of the night and kept awake by urges that, despite what they may think when looking into cruising applications on their cellular telephones, will not be easily sated.

I spent some time with my own mother as well this weekend. She came into town for a few brief hours, a free Amtrak ticket that was about to expire, and took my sister and myself out to dinner. Because of weird time constraints imposed my mom who wanted to leave town early and geographic restraints imposed by sister who needed to eat somewhere in midtown, I chose Ma Peche for us, a restaurant I have always wanted to eat at. Thankfully, ma was footing the bill at Ma Peche. The food was amazing. There are dinners that stay in your memory, the food so extraordinary, and this is going to be one of those dinners. Everything I ate was so terrific, each bite an orgasm in my mouth. It has now been two days since eating there and I still am recalling fondly some of the things I ate and drank. I drank this amazing wine, a trousseau, that was unlike any wine I have ever had. The server warned me that the wine would have a really funky, earthy taste as way of letting me know that I might not like it, but that only made me want to try it even more. It tasted like a smelly sherry. I need to find a bottle of this wine now and drink more of it. There was a crispy pig's head dish that was amazing, followed by great swordfish, and served along with this lettuce that had been smoked. This lettuce might have been the best thing there and that is not diminishing anything else I ate there to say that the lettuce was the best part because all of the food was extraordinary, but this smoked lettuce was like nothing I had ever tasted before, and combined with bites of the swordfish and avocado, there was a symphonic swelling of flavors within my mouth. For desert, I had peas and strawberries, a dish that was definitely showy, but still none the less delicious for being so. It was a riff on strawberry shortcake, except with a dried pea cake where the shortcake would be, and sweetened pea shoots as a garnish, along with pea mousse. It was an absolutely incredible meal. Now on my dining wish list is a meal at Momofuku Ko. Once I come into some money and don't have insane dental bills looming over me (about which another time), then I am definitely going to splurge on a meal there.

I made myself a halloumi salad last night and drank it with cheap white wine. That meal was also delicious. I ate it with Jacob at our kitchen table, looking out at the gray sky, storm still yet to arrive but definitely on its way, Neko Case as the soundtrack.