I watched All That Heaven Allows with Arthur last night. We talked on my couch for a bit afterward before going to bed. The heat was on in my apartment because my landlord is crazy, and even with the windows open in my bedroom, it was still uncomfortably warm. We made out for a bit, but eventually quit, both a little uncomfortable with the heat, both tired anyways. We laid naked on top of my blankets gently spooning. I was woken up some time in the night by the intense cold of my room after the heater had stopped coughing. I slid under my blankets and got closer to Arthur. Even though I may not have much to say to him, these moments in bed together, for now, make me not care about that at all, so pleasant are they, making me feel more vulnerable, comfortable, human than I have in a really long time.

"Perhaps he would discover, as did the hero in the book, that the place could not be found; it had to be created."
-Thy Neighbor's Wife, Gay Talese (146)

Perhaps. Is it saying much about my night last evening if I say that my favorite part of it, far and away, was that long walk home from Bushwick by myself, that wait in La Bonita while they made my bacon cheeseburger, and then finally those moments in which I was eating this sandwich? Or is it saying everything about the sandwich?

In the window of La Bonita, they have all these cakes displayed, one of which is the giant dome of a cake meant to look like a big hoop skirt and there is this little plastic top half of a woman on top of the cake so it looks like this person with this enormously huge dress on. I don't know why I love this so much every time I walk past it, why it is I want to be this cake, this woman - what exactly that would even mean.

I feel like shit today, which is reasonably to be expected when you have been drinking heavily just about every night for about the past month. I have had cup after cup of coffee trying to inject some energy into my body, and it is just not working, not at all.

Last night, dinner with the two older men we met at the Cock a couple weeks ago. Cod on mashed potatos at Spring Natural, rice pudding at Rice to Riches, whiskey at L'Orange Bleu. A lovely evening and so I am not sure why it was such an unlovely night of sleep I had. I was in a horrible mood when I woke up, possibly hungover, but having had unpleasant dreams the whole night and being cold also, but too lazy to close the window above me. Tonight, supposedly I am supposed to hang out with that boy I slept with over the weekend, Arthur, and hopefully that will both happen and be amazing.

williamsburg development update and commodore theater news

One of these past nights, I was walking home drunk at a very late or very early hour, depending of course on your perspective, from the JMZ, and I walked past the Commodore Theater to see it boarded up along the side as if it were about to be demolished, and true enough, there were work permits posted to the boards for demolition.



This theater is so beautiful, the outside at least, it having been closed ever since I moved to New York. It doesn't clearly state though if the building is being torn down or just gutted. It would be so cruel and stupid to raze this gorgeous building from 1921, but not entirely surprising given the disregard of developers and people in general for preserving old buildings. No one seems to know what is happening with it on this page about it. I would reccomend going to look at it and see it just in case it is torn down. It's on Broadway and Rodney and it's my favorite building in my neighborhood.

Here is the NYC Department of Buildings page about it. And here are some pictures that someone took from the inside.


Back in August, there were a bunch of buildings in close proximity all recently torn down, and I took some photos then. Here are some two months later with little changed except at one of the sites.

Grand and Keap, NE corner:
August:

October:


Grand and Keap, SW corner:
August:

October:


Keap and Hope, SE corner:
August:

October:


463 Grand Street
August:



Borniquen and Hooper, SE corner:
August:



Rodney and Borniquen, SW corner:
August:

October:

it's alright, ma (i'm only bleeding)

Obviously, in pretty major ways I do not know what it is I am doing with myself. And these ways are numerous and they are big things like career, life goals, etc. But in other major ways, for the first time in a very long time, I am so sure about what it is I am doing with myself and what it is I want to be doing with myself. And I don't even know how to go about cataloging this without sounding in some ways silly, that these instances, examples, seem insignificant. Though they may appear so, the happiness that they give me is pretty damn significant. I am more at ease with myself in social situations, am caring less about things than I used to do (and more about other things!), and just trying to have the joy I want to have, regardless of the means necessary to attain that joy and ignoring my fears about how people will react to those means. In essence, I am experiencing something along the lines of freedom.

I got way drunk last night (shocker, right?) at Boysroom and then went to a party in Greenpoint at Anthony's house. Within minutes of being there, I found myself talking to a boy that I found really attractive and speaking unguarded. The party was out of booze and he kept on offering me his drink, a whiskey and coke, from which I drank sips of, already pretty smashed and not needing it, but loving the gesture of offered goods and the significance in the acceptance of them. Everyone left to go to a party in Bushwick. I told this boy that he should come with us. He seemed hesitant to trek out there, and then I offered the alternative of coming home with me. And he said he wasn't going to Bushwick, but that he would come home with me. And so we walked back to my house, having a nice chat about some of those big things - careers, life, and unhappiness with our direction - and things like What About Bob?

We had sex in my bed and it was so lovely. The proceeding scenes were equally lovely, possibly more so. He was affectionate and cuddling and warm until noon when we woke up, and being in bed with him and his body felt so nice. It's a niceness I want to know all the time. These joys, they're so numerous and ours for the taking. I am living and trying to be born over and over again. I heard that Bob Dylan line at the end of Easy Rider, which I watched this afternoon, and that line, "He not busy being born is busy dying," even though in a cover version by someone lost none of its resonance, none of its ability to make me sigh at a perceived truth and at how amazing we can make things.

While it was honestly not my favorite bookstore, I am still terribly sad about the news that Coliseum Books is closing. New York, I am worried for you. I am worried because I even see my friends occasionally with bags from Barnes & Noble. I could go on and on with this train of thought, lamenting changes in New York, lamenting the tendency of everything to turn into a mall, lamenting the decline of independent booksellers, on and on, but you know it all, and I need to get ready for work.

Headache city, I have arrived. My head is throbbing because I drank too much last night, every night, because I did not get much sleep, and work is going to be pretty painful today I imagine. But, hopefully, the memories of penises and boys recalled throughout the day will be able to entertain me and keep me awake. The downstairs of the Cock was open last night, and if you were there, you probably know that I was a bit slutty. There was that sluttiness with several people and then there was also more G-rated making out with a couple of crushes. And all of this would be so much better recalled in bed, or recalled in the crazy logic of dreams, but instead, I am awake and running on empty, dreading the day that lies ahead.

people in motion

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It makes you move slow, the sand, and you cannot walk too fast on it, but the joy I get from it under my feet, the joy I am convinced everyone does, makes me occasionally think, yesterday for instance, that the world should be nothing but sand and we should all be barefoot. I went to Sandy Hook with my mom and sister yesterday and it was so outrageously gorgeous. We went and looked at abandoned officers' houses and walked along the beach.

It was so lovely outside yesterday afternoon and we drove around, had some soft serve ice cream at a roadside stand and I played a Bruce Springsteen CD I found in the car.

Later in the day, we went out to Red Bank to eat Thai food and on the way, this song was playing and I lost my mind. How fucking good is this song?

Then I went and saw David Sedaris read some humorous stories, and then rode the train home, sleeping the whole way home - lovely, lovely exhausted sleep.

The opening paragraph of Gay Talese's Thy Neighbor's Wife:

"She was completely nude, lying on her stomach in the desert sand, her legs spread wide, her long hair flowing in the wind, her head tilted back with her eyes closed. She seemed lost in private thoughts, remote from the world, reclining on this wind-swept dune in California near the Mexican border, adorned by nothing but her natural beauty. She wore no jewelry, no flowers in her hair; there were no footprints in the sand, nothing dated the day or spoiled the perfection of the photograph except the moist fingers of the seventeen-year-old schoolboy who held it and looked at it was adolescent longing and lust."

That paragraph is so good. That shift in focus that occurs at the end of that paragraph totally surprised me. I was all ready to read a narrtive about this woman sunbathing, only to be suckerpunched by this being a photograph some boy is using as jackoff fodder.

I picked up this book yesterday along with four others that I am totally excited about at Housing Works Used Book Cafe's outdoor book sale, all for a dollar each. I watched The Science of Sleep later on in the day. It was a pretty lovely day, all the lovelier because I was asleep in bed by eleven (the first time in how long?), this book at my side.

I am about to head off to New Jersey to hang out and eat with my family, and then, with my sister, to see David Sedaris read.