I finally have internet again in my house. This makes me so happy. Here is an entry I wrote on Election Day and some photos from the past few weeks. There are not this many leaves on the trees anymore. Things change fast.
Election Day 2004
Those same halls you used to line up in to do fire drills – I was walking through those this morning, walking down hallways with those thick green tiles on the walls to get to the school gymnasium where the voting booths were set up. There were lots of others marching down the hallways with me, all going to vote. There was also a crowd going the opposite direction, just having voted. Everyone kept exchanging looks and we all knew that we were on the same team, that we all wanted the same outcome. It was such an amazing feeling to see all those knowing glances exchanged, this expectant happiness, everyone seeing that all these people here were voting one way, that things should go well tonight when we watch those returns come in. It was all the more thrilling for the motley mix that composed these crowds in the elementary school hallways a short two blocks from my house. There were the few Hasidic Jews, the large Latino numbers, and also the scattered newcomer to the neighborhood, the young hipster. And everyone feeling a solidarity, happy to be there where things seemed logical, where people were voting for one person, and even more so, not voting for another person. I looked at all the exercise posters taped along the walls as I waited to enter the booth, I saw a mass of yellow leaves outside the gym windows.
It is fall. November. It is time for more moody music. Those slow Led Zepplin songs, anything folk, anything sad. In the middle of Union Square, there is a cluster of trees that are all a gorgeous yellow. This one little cluster, most of the trees in the park are all still green, but there is this shining circle of yellow peeking through all the other trees from the center of the park. Yesterday, I went into the new Filene’s Basement that opened up on Union Square South last week, and for anyone that lives in New York, I want to recommend a similar trip for a reason that I will tell you right now. It is not for the selection of clothes you could get at any department store in any town, but instead, take the escalator all the way up to the sixth floor and look out of those windows that look out on to the park. It is an amazing sight to see such a pretty aerial view of Union Square, the park where I spend so much time. You can see the patterns in the tiles, you can see that little circle of outrageous yellow trees. The skaters that hang out front look tiny and completely harmless.
Halloween was fun, decadent, and inspiring. I dressed up as a bunny. I will post pictures of the outfit once the internet in my house finally gets fixed (tomorrow supposedly). Gravy Train was fun to see, but Le Tigre was more than that, fun yes, but tack on something else also, awesome, good. Kathleen was dressed as Annie. JD as Tarzan. And Joanna as a nun. I had already seen them play twice before hand, but I was still so moved by this show. I used to not like the “Hot Topic” song but now it is one of my favorites of theirs and when they played it I got so excited, so happy, and so filled with thoughts about what I should be doing with myself. Gravy Train seems totally irrelevant when compared to Le Tigre, that here is a band serious about issues and doing so in a fun way. Le Tigre is definitely my inspiration for this week. I want to think of ways to incorporate these two strands somehow in my own way: activism and artfun.
After the concert, I stopped by briefly at Le Petit Versailles before going to Will’s party filled with nothing but Strand people. It was fun to see all these people, but it also made me want to get out of control, that here is a group of nice, but slightly boring people and I want to rock and roll, to cut loose, foot loose. So on the way home to the subway, it is not totally surprising that Joe and I stopped at the Cock. It was Halloween, a night where out of controlness is not only pardoned but encouraged. As soon as I walked in, I saw go-go dancers getting sucked off on the bar. I drank some, smoked some, and did naughty things in the backroom with countless strangers. I have no idea how many people touched my penis, I think I have an idea of how many people sucked it (four?), and it was an awesome time that had me so happy I was living in New York, that this bar is awesome for being so dirty. The backroom was so warm because of all the body heat, and it smelled so much like b.o., like sex. Just stepping into that room from the dancefloor turned me on, the temperature, the smell, and so it is totally understandable, my behavior. I made out with a pirate, with a boy scout, and I danced to lots of Prince songs it seems.
I walked home from the subway cold in my outfit, looking at the night sky, feeling the fall air, happy with human bodies, remembering what it felt like to be with all those naked male bodies in that bar on Avenue A. Today in the polling place, I had the exact same happiness with human bodies when there was that mass of bodies in the hallway, I had it yesterday looking down at the mass of bodies in Union Square from the sixth floor of Filene’s basement. I don’t know if I can ever make you understand that the first experience, the group sex is just as pure, just as wide-eyed a love with human beings as waiting in line to hopefully elect a certain person to be the president of these united states.
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