I just went to La Bonita and bought a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich. I did this after pouring myself a bowl of ceral and tasting that the milk was in that beginning stages of turning sour, where you could still eat it if you did not really think about the taste too much. Normally, this is what I do do, too broke to buy milk if I still have some that is not yet totally bad. But this morning was different. I decided I was going to not only get new milk, but was going to get something else to eat for breakfast besides cereal, the aforementioned sandwich. And the reason that today was different is because last night I was either Satan or lucky, depending on which system of ethics you subscribe to.

I was outside the Cock, waiting for Rebecca down the block, and I saw an object on the bench at the bus stop. I went to go see what it was and saw that it was a wallet. I opened the wallet to examine its contents and saw that there was $120 in cash sitting in the billfold. I looked at the only piece of ID in the wallet, his driver's license, saw that he was a cute boy from Georgia born in 1980. I thought about it, whether to do it or not, and then because there seemed to be too many reasons to do it, I did. I pocketed the $120 that the next person who stumbled on the wallet also would have taken (so I tell myself), and I bought myself a beer with it at Phoenix. I drank so much last night, talked to so many nice people that I have known, and talked to so many nice people that I met last night.

I also tried to buy coke last night with this money, believing that it was a windfall and should be spent like one, forget all those bills that need to be paid. In the bathroom at Phoneix with Joe, we discovered that it most defintely was not coke since it burned our noses and did not numb our tongues, but instead crystal meth. Throughout the night, I had been talking to this beautiful boy, Scott, who resembled Jimmy Fallon and was wearing a silly poncho shirt. I danced with him and his friends throughout the night, danced until the Cock closed and they kicked everyone to the street, walked toward the subway with his friends, and got his number from him before parting. It is always awkard to try to get someone's number from them while their friends are there also. However, beer and crystal meth will get you over this shyness, and so hopefully I will see this boy again.

I came home, ate beef jerky and ice cream from Kellog's, found myself lying in bed totally wired at 4:30 in the morning, and tried reading a book before realizing how boring that was, and so I masturbated myself to sleep, coming on my chest finally, finally tired, and did not even want to wipe the semen off, did not want to reach for a towel. It seemed like so much effort, that it might destroy my tiredness were I too reach for the towel and then I would be wired again. I risked it, wiped myself off, and perhaps passed out before I even finished doing so.

There may be time for a more detailed update, if I go into work and get suspended for calling in sick two days ago. But, as for now, I must make it quick since I have to get ready for work.

The march itself took forever to start, but once it did, the heat was not so nearly as painful as in those long moments where we were at standstills. People, god so many people. Estimates at half a million. And yet in this half million, I run into so many people that I know, so many New College people. I watched Rebecca lead a color guard of pink flags, and it was an awesome sight - it made me so happy. It made even more happy to see the drum corps of this band containing Robbie Radcliffe and Siggy.

After the march, we made our way up to the NYPL to meet up with Queer Fist. We were late meeting them and caught them as they were marching in formation to Times Square. The meetings had had maybe twenty people at them, but in this marching line, there must have been hundreds of radical queers, all walking two by two, to avoid being ticketed, an army of queers marching through Midtown. We chanted raunchy cheers through throngs of befuddled tourists before making our way to a busy corner, where the kiss-in happened. Not too much kissing happened. Everyone was a little shy, but the group then started to cross the street to move the kissing party around and stopped at an island in the middle of the street. They were hanging out there for a while, and Peter, Joe, Gina, and I decided to leave to go check the gathering at Central Park. Literarlly, as soon as we crossed the street, cops swarmed the island we had just crossed from, randomly arresting people. We watched from across the street, as everyone scattered, and soon they were shouting matches between the queers and the cops. It was turning into a very ugly scene with riot cops marching toward it, and so we thought it was a very good time to leave for Central Park.

Central Park was not the wild scene we expected since that was the illegal gathering. It was in fact, the calmest event during the whole day. Everyone just lied on the grass in smalll groups talking, and cops stood about on the edges non-aggresivley. It was so nice.

God, I am running late, but I really want to tell you in better detail about this day, but I know if I don't do it now, I probably won't later.

Anyways, went home, showered all the sweat and dirt off me, then went to Boiler Room for the Singles Against War gathering. So many of my crushes were there. Peter was pairing off with Chris. Craig did not want to talk to me despite my attempts. I was talking to Dominic until he asked me who my friend was. I introduced Joe, and then the two of them spent the whole night talking. I started talking to some 43 year old man because I was bored and he was hitting on me. The attention was nice, and perhaps this is why lately I have started to enjoy talking to old guys, just because I am not worried about that they think they are too good for me. And so, I spent my night talking to him and to this really annoying activist named Purple, who loved to talk about the cops, and about being arrested. Chris kept making fun of me for talking to the old man, which made me feel all the more self-conscious about how lame a night it was turning out to be, how I was the ugly stepsister no one loved, watching all my crushed talk to other people. I walked toward the subway with Chris and Peter, thought about this, about what it is that I want, and about the night sky, which was filled with huge clouds backlit by the moon, looking the palest shade of gray against the black sky.

Listen, I will not have that much time to update in these coming days, and that is a good thing. There is an incredible energy in this city right now that I love and that I want to spend as much time in as humanely possible. I felt sick this morning, slept until five, felt better, and went to an opening at Deitch that most have been at least two hundred degrees. I did not even really look at the art - I ran outside after about two short minutes inside. I then went to the Rev. Billy performance at St. Marks Church, which also must have been about two hundred degrees, with one little fan blowing around hot air in a corner far away from where I was seated. But I sat there, and sweated until my entire body was drenched. I watched with fascination the sweat beads start to form on the pores of my arms and legs. He eventually led the congregation out front to escape the heat. There was dancing and clapping and a sense of camredeire. It was amazing. Tomorrow is the big day with protests left and right. I am giddy. I keep talking to random activists. They are so friendly. I want them to stay in New York forever, to never leave, for this radical energy to be present all year round.

I am going to a party at Peter's now that will also probably be about two hundred degrees. But it will be fun, as everything is this week. I also noticed that the moon is just about full, and I think it so perfect that a full moon is coinciding with all this protest activity.

I have not had time to update in a long time. I do not have time to update now, but I want to let all of you know that I am happy, the happiest I have been in a couple of seasons. I am liking this life, this town, and the friends I have. I have started a secret habit that you may or you may not know about, and which I will tell you about when I have more time so that you won't be disappointed. I danced a lot this week. I have been working a lot. The protests are this weekend. I have seen boys I have liked this week, boys from long ago. A homeless man tried to pick me up in Union Square, started to jack off through his pants. It hasn't rained in a while, the sun has been out even though it has not been hot.

The new R. Kelly album is amazing. Don't think I am kidding or being ironic. Listen to it. I have been in love with the "Happy People" single for so long, even though it has been played for about a year now. I cannot get enough of this song. Download it. The cover is a total Stevie Wonder pose. That is what the album sounds like also, probably more like Marvin Gaye though. But it is the best music I have heard in so long, so 70's soul. Bjork and Jill Scott come out next week. I need money to buy all of these. R. Kelly, I should be able to find on the streets though.

But yes, life is good.

Yesterday was one of the best days I have had in a long time. I didn't have to go to work, instead just lounged around my apartment for the first half of the day, drinking coffee with Jillian and Jaymay. I then went into Manhattan to get money from the Strand, with which I bought some yummy food and a magazine. It felt so good to buy myself a magazine for eight dollars, even though really, it was a totally unneccesary purchase and one, which I cannot really afford at this time, but to not care and buy it anyways felt so good.

I then went to the Radical Queers meeting in Tompkins Square Park, where I drank tea and watched the sun slowly start to settle behind the buildings bordering the park, saw the sky through some pretty awesome tree leaves, and listend to a nice planning meeting about RNC events. There was a cute boy there that I kept covertly peeping at through the meeting. This boy, Adrian, is the person who suggested what is now our group's name: Queer Fist. A name which I think is so awesome. After the meeting, we split up into smaller groups, and I met with people about cheerleading, and Adrian also joined that group. I didn't stay for too long though because the coffee and tea were putting enormous pressure on my bladder, and so I left, but got a friendly good-bye from Adrian which really excited me.

I hurried home, peed with a great sigh of relief, ate some yummy Chinese food, and then went over to Peter's to hang out, drink beer, smoke cigarettes and listen to the new This is the Talking Heads album. Then we got on the subway to head to Crobar, which I am more than a little embarrassed to admit, since it is a snotty, massive club that charges an obscene cover ($20!), but which we were going to get in for free to because we were on Cazwell's guest list. Once inside, we grabbed a couple drinks before the open bar expired, found Joe and sat in this way too stylized lounge area with glowing faux-bamboo stalks sprouting up between all the seating areas. The dancefloor in this first room was insanely tiny considering all the hype I had heard about this "superclub." Most of this massive space was posh seating areas. This clubs are so cheesy. Give me some of that trashy East Village Cock or Hole action anyday. I like a bar that smells like puke, piss, and smoke.

We knew there was another room somewhere, so Peter and I went on the hunt for it and ended up at the coat check room where the attendent tried to give us directions to the other room. We were leaving there and this boy asked us if we knew where the V.I.P. room was. He and I then recognized each other from the Queer Fist meeting. His name is Chris, I found out, and we brought him with us to find the other dance space. I then saw that his friend with him was also from the Queer Fist meeting, was my crush, Adrian.

The caravan of us finally found the other room, and it was like in Willy Wonka, where they get through all those shrinking hallways and emerge into the Chocolate Factory. There was better music playing, dimmer lighting, less gaudy interior design, people dancing. And the night was fun, I talked to Adrian a lot, went hunting with him for coke, which was really funny. He went home with some boy he had been making out with earlier, who had coke, but he told me he wanted to hang out, which made me happy. I talked to Chris some more. Danced a lot with Joe and Peter. Ran into James Glisson from New College.

Eventually, Peter and I left, tired, not even wanting to stay for Boy George's performance. Outside the club, we ran into Chris, who was outside talking to some friends. I started talking to Chris some more, asking him about his job, and to deflect the question, he asked me what I did, and I said, "Oh, I just work at a lame bookstore." Something clicked in his memory, and he said, "Wait, what bookstore?" "Oh, the Strand." And he was silent, and I thought this meant that he didn't know where it was, and so I said, "12th and Broadway," but he knew where it was, he was silent for some other reason, and then it clicked with him, and he started giggling, saying, "Wait, I think I hooked up with you." And I told him that I didn't think so, that I didn't remember hooking up with him. And then he said, "Yeah, yeah, and I kept commenting on how odd it was that you were uncut." And well, there was the proof that he was not mistaking me for someone else. And then he refreshed my memory, at the Cock back in Feburary, and then I remembered, and felt silly that we had been to a couple Queer Fist meetings, sitting near each other and not aware of this, that I had been talking to him all night unaware that we had jacked each other off in the back corner of the Cock many months ago.

These are the moments when life is so funny, that I am in good spirits, because it all seems like one big cosmic joke, that someone is having fun showing us how tiny this world is, and how much is dependent on memory, that I was attracted to this Chris boy twice, totally unaware of the first time. Peter and I walked down to the L train, stopped at a porn store on the way, where Peter bought a three pack of old porno mags. We met up with Joe on the L, and when Joe and I got off at Lorimer, Peter gave Joe and I each a porno mag. On the way home, with my porn mag, I bought a box of cookies at Kellogs. They were yummy.

There he was, grinning and waving hello to me as I sat behind the information desk helping some customer find some book. At first, for a brief second or two, I wasn't sure who he was, and then some neurons made some connections and I grinned also, probably grinned far more than he was, and waved hello back at David, this boy who I was obsessed with when I first moved to New York, who had a boyfriend, but who still came home with me one night over a year ago.

Right now, at this moment, I still can't even stop grinning, thinking about him. There has been a very long stretch of time recently where I have not smiled this giddy smile, this I-have-a-crush-and-life-is-goddamn-motherfucking-awesome smile. I have not had a serious crush in a long time, certainly nothing close to what my David crush was. When I like someone, I cannot keep it secret. My face will always give my secret away. And sure enough, last night, even though I had not seen this boy in months and months, I was smiling ear to ear while talking to him, looking at that stoned expression he always seems to have, that relaxed smile, eyelids that seem a little too heavy, all of it too familiar, his corporal self, the one standing in front of me, lining up exactly with the half-sketched memories of him I still had, now sketching in the forgotten parts. I told him about the Queer RNC meeting tonight, which he said he would attend. He left, saying "See you tomorrow" and high-fived me. I think I smiled for about the next straight hour, lost in a reverie of cute boy thoughts, thinking back to the encounter that just happened, the smiles on both of our faces and what it could, might mean.

In my memories, David tends to be disembodied head, and perhaps not even a full head: a beatiful, big nose, droopy eyes, and nice brown hair. Sort of like the pieces that you attach to Mr. Potato Head, unattached, floating in a cosmic blackness occasionally puncuated by bar lighting, by someone dancing in a strobe light. These features floating against those alcohol soaked memories.

Two days ago, my memorey took on another disembodied body part to its already full inventory of them bouncing around my head's interior. A gropping hand, kind of hairy, with a gold ring on one of the fingers (wedding band?). I had left our union meeting out of frustration and boredom, but didn't feel like returning to work yet, so stopped at Circuit City so I could go potty and then listen to CD's in Virgin. I went into the one empty stall, sat down and noticed the person's feet in the stall next to me. They were bouncing up and down. Every so often, the bouncing would pause, and his legs would be arched with the pressure on his tip toes. I was sort of shocked that someone was masturbating so blatantly in the Circuit City bathroom. I didn't even go the bathroom. I sat there astonished, turned on by this person having pleasure so publicly, voyeuristically watching these gyrating feet. Soon he had both of his feet pointed in my stall's direction, and I lost perspective of where I was or what era it was. It seemed like what I imagined gay life to be in my teens when my only exposure to it was through Edmund White's A Boy's Own Story, describing crusising bathrooms in the fifties.

I was hard by this point and stroking my cock quietly while I watched these feet, these feet saying something, a code I wasn't sure I understood. Then there was a hand, that disembodied hand I will probably always remember, which reached underneath the partition between our two stalls, that gropping hand, gesturing either come here, or put something in this hand, or both. I knelt quickly, and he started stroking my cock underneath the partition. I was very nervous that someone would come into the bathroom, way nervous, ready to jump to my feet at the first sound of a creak, and so I came as quickly as I could (probably in about a minute or two), and then started to pull away, but he motioned again with his hand, and so I let him squeeze out some more come into his palms. I stood up, and bended my sticky penis into my jeans, not caring about jizzing my pants or the bulge, just wanting to leave quickly. And I hurried out of the bathroom and out of Circuit City before I had to see what this man looked like, before he could see me. I wanted to leave it as the faceless encounter that it was.

I then went into Virgin and listened to the Best of Talking Heads album just put out by Rhino, thinking about that hand, how I didn't want to see the body attached to it, ever, and why that was.

Hurricane Charley may perhaps cause serious damage to Sarasota, my last home, or to Tampa Bay, the town where I emerged into this world. I have been reading all the news reports on the Herald-Tribune tense with anticipation about the storm, and yes, a little envious of those that are there. And while I have never been in a storm this size, I am recalling other tropical storms, am wondering what the sky will look like, how dark it will get, and what it will sound like. Tropical storms are some of the most awe-inspiring events in this world, totally beautiful in their recklessness, and I truly hope no one gets hurt so that this won't read as tasteless naivete a few hours from now.

This storm, and reading Motherless Brooklyn right now have helped to see that my heart isn't here, that so much of it is still in memories of Florida and while I don't ever plan on moving back to Sarasota, I am wondering if I need to move somewhere. The book is awesome so far. I read somewhere a blurb comparing Lethem's writing to Nabakov's and after reading Pnin a week or so ago, the comparison does seem apt. They both write in this really clean, precise prose that use similies and sometimes lofty descriptions which always land on their feet. Lots of other writers, even good ones, sometimes try too hard to achieve nice prose and you can see that the phrase was worked and reworked, and you can still see the scratched out phrases underneath, how hard they were trying.

And while I love the book so far, it does have me feeling a little removed from Brooklyn. Even though I know most of the streets he talks about, most of the neighborhoods, I still feel like I am reading about someplace else, and yes, the book gives a noirish quality to Brooklyn that is not really how most people see the town, I still feel like this is someone else's town, someone's else's history. There is almost too much history here in New York. I walk by buildings all the time that have historical markers on them and I usually try to pause to read them, while everyone else rushes by, thinking gosh wow, where am I, what I am doing with myself. I don't really know what I am saying. I really think I have seasonal affective disorder because it hasn't been to sunny lately and I have been feeling it. Wait till a week when it is sunny and warm (will there be anymore with summer almost over?) and listen to me talk about how much I love life and this town.

But I hope all of you in Florida come out unscathed from the storm, and if there are any "I Survived Hurricane Charley" shirts, you know a certain Charlie that you should send one to. A small size.

He said that he should have pleaded not guilty and that he was sentenced to five years, saying he only had four more left, talking as if he would live those four years. The talk with my father this morning was not what I wanted it to be, it was too typical, and for that reason, it shouldn't have been suprising how disapointed I was with the conversation. I barely did any talking besides answering his brief question about if I was going to college again - the question that people love to ask me.

He said that his old housemates got arrested and then accused him of selling them his Oxycotin, but he pleaded guilty following the advice of his lawyer, who suggested he might be able to be home sentenced if he did so. My father has the most annoying sense of entitlement to say things like this, since I know he used to sell his Oxycotin, that I drove him to the hospital once and there he met up with a friend who then with my dad, snorted Oxycotin in the backseat of my mom's minivan, which I had driven him to the hospital in. And maybe this is why I was silent during the conversation besides the requiste verbal nod of the head, the uh-huhs, to show that I was listening.

He said that his tumor has spread from his lungs to his bones, but that it is in remission. He said that he was doing real good, and I don't think he meant it. He told me I should write my aunt Herta a card for her birthday on Saturday. I wanted to yell at this point, to yell like I did yesterday at McDonald's when I felt like I was being wronged, when an employee told me I couldn't use the girl's bathroom even though it was just one stall, a single bathroom and I was about to wet myself after a giganto size cup of coffee at the queer RNC meeting. I got in a shouting match with her in front of a restaurantful of people because I had to pee, and I had to pee bad and it was totally senseless that I should not be allowed to use an empty stall when I was about to piss my pants. I called McDonalds when I got home and filed a complaint against this rude Alba.

But yes, yellling is what I wanted to do, to say don't tell me what to do, don't tell me that I need to send a birthday card to your sister after not talking to me for two years. But I remembered that he would be dead soon and that all I had to do was hold my tongue, that some things are not worth it. He said he had to go, that they only let him talk for about ten mintues. He said, I love you, in that way you do to parents and children when you are getting off the phone with them.

I said, Love you too, and didn't know why, felt like I had to. Sort of regretted it, and as soon as I put down the phone, a new song started on my mp3 playlist: Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart." And because it just seemed too appropriate, too right, I ran to my computer and turned the song up as far as it would go, tried to overwhelm my senses, to push my body to a breaking point because I wanted to cry. But I didn't. The song ended and I went to the bodega to get a banana.

I feel hungover even though I did not have anything to drink last night, nor the night before that. Maybe that is why I feel hungover. I've got a throbbing pain in the back of my head and no painkillers of any sort to relieve it. I thought coffee might do the trick but now I feel nauseous.

Two days ago, I ran into Christopher on the train, had to ride all the way home with him to our stop, and then had to walk the same way home together, and man, that was painful, especially when he asked me why I didn't call him. And I could have told him I didn't return his way too numerous phone calls because he is the most boring person I have ever met, that even on just that short subway ride, I was ready to fall asleep listening to him prattle on about something or other at his job, and that all I wanted to do was put on my headphones and listen to Prince who I had been listening to prior to running into him, that maybe if he had just a smidgen of the raunchiness, of the sexiness, of the coolness that Prince has in even his least cool songs, then I would have called him back, then I wouldn't have ignored his phone calls like he was the fucking credit card companies. But I didn't tell him this. I told him I was in a monastic phase and not talking to anyone, and then there was still that whole walk home together with stilted, painful conversation until I reached my door and shut it giddy, so happy to be away from Christopher.

I am going to leave work early today to go to a meeting to queer the RNC protests. Rebecca and Luke are going to be there, which I am happy about. Rebecca sort of warned me that Charles Radcliffe was going to be one of the organizers of the meeting, which is funny, since I haven't talked to him in four years, since Halloween PCP where I was an asshole to him, and so that will be funny to see some person from a past time, from a different land, leading a meeting here in New York that I will be in attendance at.

Tomorrow morning, between 10 and 10:30, my dad is supposed to call me. I have learned from my aunt that he was in a prison for about the past year, and sentanced about a month ago to a year's time for intent to distribute drugs. He is at a federal hospital in North Carolina where he is being treated for his advanced lung cancer. He is in his last days and will probably die in this hospital prison. I have a lot less anger toward him after talking with my aunt last week, listening to her really, not much talking on my part. And sometimes it is just good to listen to other people and their experiences with life. Herta talked about life in these broad, general terms, sometimes with a tint of religion, but for the most part not, talking about the shortness of life and about letting people die with dignity, that the cruellest thing you can do is not allow someone to die with peace of mind. She wasn't demanding forgiveness, but just more a reconciling with what cannot be changed, with life's realities. And she told me about her own father, how she never talked to him before he died, and how it still troubles her many years later. That was the thing that really got me. My eyes watered as she told this painful part of her past that is still with her in the present, and I thought I had nothing to say, I thought I didn't want to have anything to do with him anymore, but it wasn't true. The heart, this one, struggles against other, sometimes stronger impulses. This act of love is not easy. It is not a natural impulse. It requires conditioning. I sometimes have to remind myself to be kind on days when I am not feeling it for this world. And maybe it was just the spectre of a future with regrets that has softened me, but without an imagined future, without telling yourself you are going to be a failure, a mediocrity, really it is only with this, that the present becomes something worth making the most of. A father's upcoming death, a son's imagined regret - both urging the most of this life, urging the most love possible spread, created. And I know there is stuff I have to do, that I am plenty capable of doing and I have to. I must.

The beach in the morning has that very distinct sense of chill. The chill will seep into wherever you are, inside or out. The ocean rocks forward and back, and that cool wind laced with the tiniest bit of warmness is carried forward by the tide. And I swear, this morning, the muted hum of cars passing on the highway on a Sunday morning was the sound of the ocean. I checked the weather when I first woke up. It was only sixty three degrees. The chill had seeped into my house. As I walked from the shower to my room, I shivered, wet and cold, and kind of glad to be at the beach.

The sun is brighter and higher now. I have yet to step out of my apartment but I wonder if when I do, the clouds will look the same as they looked yesterday. Yesterday the sky was a cloud explosion, huge white, huge gray clouds all fucking massive and bursting at the seams, like in all those old 19th century landscape paintings that try to capture the sublime. And the sky behind these clouds was a blue that maybe you only see during the fall time. The haze of summer heat normally prevents you from noticing how blue the sky actually is, but god, yesterday with the cool temperatures, that sky was something else.

I found myself in the Circuit City bathroom yesterday on my lunch break, overcome with a case of bad gas waiting to use the toilet. There was this buff man in the stall peeing without the door closed. He left without flushing. I flushed the toilet for him and saw that he also did not bother to lift the seat, that there were droplets of piss on the seat. I thought back to that buff man and sat on the seat without wiping it, feeling the warm piss on the back of my thighs. I dabbed my finger to one of the droplets and put my finger to my tongue.

Coffee from a good coffee shop tastes better than anything I could ever brew at home. It has a certain thickness that cannot be achieved on a home machine, or at least not on the one that I have at my house.

I love it when you are sitting in a room without lights on during the daytime, using the daylight as your source of light, and you can watch the room get brighter for a few seconds, a minute even as the sun temporarily escapes from behind a few clouds. And the room you are sitting in brightens, and then dims, brightens, and then dims like a little kid is playing with the dimmer on the lamp, creating a mild strobe effect. This one, however, all natural.

All right, I just got home from watching Donnie Darko at Joe's house, and hesitantly turned on my kitchen light to see what it looked like, and I actually love it now. Maybe it is the forty of High Life in my system, maybe it is that that has killed my hangover, or maybe it is that I just saw a good movie with lots of awesome eighties songs in it. Whatever the cause - maybe it is even that the actual color of the kitchen, the paintjob itself - I love my green kitchen. Yes, I do. Yes, I do.

The bathroom is the only thing left to paint.

My kitchen is no longer white. It is dancing lime, or pulsating lime, or psychedelic lime. It was some silly adjective preceding the lime. I cannot remember what it was. And I loved my new paint job before the sun set and I saw this green under the not kind glare of our flourescent overhead light. Under artificial light, it is hospital green. It is pretty fucking ugly.

I spent the day grossly hungover from mixing stuff you shouldn't mix at an open bar at Nowhere last night. I still am not feeling too great. Painted my kitchen ass green and am probably going to go to bed real soon. How else would I spend a Friday night?

I am already running a bit late for work, so don't have time to say much more about his subject, but if you will notice the "Press Clips" column, written by Richard Goldstein since the Voice sacked Cynthia Cotts is MIA in this week's issue, and the reason is that the stupid Village Voice has appearantly fired their best writer. Goldstein has written many queer readings of topical events, such as Janet's boob, the Prez stuffing his flight suit, and competing masulinities in the prez race.

Fuck you, you stupid shits at the Voice, don't fire your best writer. Don't fire the only person writing great queer criticism for a massively circulated paper. Can't rant anymore, must get to work.

alt rock never dies

My grandma's house was huge. She had nine kids and I remember looking at all the photos hung on walls throughout the house, especially between the kitchen and the dining room of my mom and my aunts and uncles as kids in their first communion outfits, at lakes in swimsuits. Some cool seventies outfits. Everyone's bedrooms still had touches of their old selves. The basement was filled with an old nostalgic smell that I cannot really describe other than the smell of a grandma's basement, of what life may have smelled like at one point, or at least a stagnant version of that time, a fragrance that has sat for a while on the shelf. There were old toys; old books covered with dust, perhaps containing treasure maps; more recent ones that amused my sister and I like The Preppie Handbook, which taught us that a Melvin was an idiot, and we used to jokingly call people Melvins for years after reading that. It was in Minneapolis a few blocks away from Lake Harriet, and we used to walk around the lake just about every day. We would go out there just every summer when I was kid. Years ago, kids all grown, she sold the house and moved into a condo with lots of other old people in Edina, Minnesota.

We never really used the front door at that house. There was a back door that went into the kitchen that was the real entrance to the house. When I was volunteering on Bill Bradley's campaign in New Hampshire, going door to door, in lots of areas we were instructed not to knock on the front door, to knock on the side door because they didn't use the front doors either. I don't know why, but this morning, I found myself thinking about this and nights spent at Denny's in high school with friends, hanging out for hours, talking about nothing but thinking that it wasn't. I am reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, loaned to me by Dara, published by MTV books and which the NYPL has classified as a YA book. And for those of you that never worked in a library, that is Young Adult. At first, I was resistant to the book, thinking that it too easy, too filled with all those teen morals and lessons (the afterschool special type). I was very tempted to quit it, but decided that I should read it all the way through. And now, I cannot put it down. Yes, even Publisher's Weekly, notorious for writing fluff for publishers to blurb, called it "a trite coming-of-age novel," but I have a soft spot for those teen movies and all things whose subject is adolescence. It is a fun, sentimental read that has me recalling my own family memories and my own memories of high school, which is good since lately I have been vaguely brainstorming how to write something about adolescence without it being YA.

I have been thinking about this subject for a while, sort of inspired by recent trends in visual art that deal with adolescence in thoughtful ways, and wondering what the literary equivalent would be. A few days ago, James Iha, came into the Strand, and I did not know his name at the time, but I knew he was the guitarist for the Smashing Pumpkins and had this confirmed by some other employees (who knew his name), and I was astounded, was again a fervent masturbator, a nerdy high schooler listening to alt-rock late into the evenings on a low volume after even after everyone else had gone to bed. I looked at him as he walked around the store in this the year 2003 and tried to think back to what was it, ten years ago?, when this same person was what I listened to for hours on end, stretches of days, feeling comfort in my then otherwise comfortless world, and this was the person responsible for that noise. It was his hands (albeit on a guitar) that guided be through awkward teenage years.

I am thinking about these things on this early day in August in my apartment in Brooklyn.

ten songs

At the Strand, the place I work, there is no air conditioning. This hasn't been too noticable most of the summer because it has been so mild, but this last week, it's been getting warmer, and you can feel the heavy, hot air all over you, and man, it is one of my favorite feelings. And how do you write deliriousness? Is there a way to put this feeling down in words? Even more importantly, can this be done when you are in a delirious mood? I am not convinced that there is. I want to shout words, phrases, and hope that you understand how I am feeling, but I know that you won't, that it would require more effort on my part, that I would have to somehow ascend this state of deliriousness, of heat fatigue, of heat inspired horniness to a mental state less disjointed. Wordsworth was right. I sometimes don't think he is/was, don't believe that poetry is emotion recollected in tranquility. But right now, I would like to somehow put on this page, this screen, how I have been feeling lately and find myself totally unable to do so in any cogent manner.

This morning, the past couple of them, I have gone through just about every pair of underwear on my floor, sniffing them after I showered. All my clothes are on the floor of my bedroom from never feeling like folding clean laundry, and so each day, I put my underwear to the sniff test and just about every pair smells like crotch. I try to find the least pungent smelling one and think how long this can continue before I do laundry again. In the past, I had been able to go a month, maybe even two, without doing laundry. The recent warmness has been making me sweat a lot more.

Yesterday, at work toward closing, I was standing in one of the back aisles, reading from Nabakov's Pnin. I paused to feel the sensation of the heat, the dry heat all over my skin, felt myself alive, my ability to feel things. The heat, the only thing that has caressed my skin in months other than my own hands. I felt that eager slut, heat, slide its hand between the space between my cock and my shorts, and I was turned on, zoned out of whatever joke Nabakov was telling and thought naughty thoughts, eager to get home, to my bedroom.

I have drunk a fair amount of coffee this morning and have been listening to the most awesome playlist ever, with rocking Roger Sisters alternating with gorgeous, melodic songs that really do not have much in common as a group: those two new Bjork songs, Cat Stevens' "If you want to sing out", and The Whispers' "Rock Stady." Whenever any of these last mentioned songs come on, I get so happy, and you might suggest that I just remove the Roger Sisters from the playlist and just listen to the ones that make me really giddy (did I mention the coffee?), but you would be so wrong in what you think the end result would be, because it is only contrasted against the Roger Sisters (who are awesome, but do not make giddy), it is only the unexpected surprise of one of these songs in a randomized playlist that I get so happy. And people, do you remember this "Rock Steady" song? It may be my favorite eighties R and B song. I can even remember the video of them on a rooftop. Best song ever!

In summation, words and phrases, in some flow, forward or backward:
Heat --> Increased Sweat --> Boxers Smell like Crotch <--> Increased Horniness <--> Masturbation <--> Happiness <--> Good Music / Big Plans for Living

But then the potent, but perhaps irrelevant question: Will they be realized?