I don't know what I am doing, and it feels so, so good. I have known what I am doing for too long. For two years I have known that I am going to wake up and go to work at the Strand. I have known that I have to leave my house at around 1:15 everyday to get to work mildly on time. I have known that every Friday, I would receive a check for just under the amount of 250. I don't want to use the word "comfort" here because it implies some sort of poshness that my wage did not enable, some sort of happiness that the indignities of the job did not enable. I have been experiencing discomfort from the comfort of knowing what I was going to do everyday. Really, there may be about only more week of work at the Princeton Review and Monday is going to be my last day of work at the Strand, and I have no clue what the future holds, but I believe that things will work out, that I will have enough money to sustain myself when I don't have any work.

And I am daydreaming. The very real possibility of financial insecurity looming is leading me to dreams of various jobs, leading me to think, just to use a portion of my brain that has been anesthetized by not having to worry about what I am going to do with myself. At the record store tonight, I flirted with the cashier and I think this means something. I am so happy, so elevated and am not giving a shit, am loving just walking down the street in my blue peacoat and swinging my arms feeling like Sarah Jessica Parker's character or Mary Tyler Moore in the opening credits, just a girl going against the city and coming out on top.

I am not one that is big on regrets, but man, I am wondering how much more I would have experienced, what other menial jobs I might have had, how much happier I would have been, if I would have done this earlier. And still, I am not sure that it really is going to happen. I have still yet to tell the Strand, but I am so sure of my decision, am on the schedule all next week at the Princeton Review, and man, I just can't even believe that I am about to jolt my routine so much. It is so exhilarating. For two years, I have sat on my hands and the part of my brain that dreams of running away and schemes atrophied, and blood is flowing into it again for the first time in a while. Like when your foot falls asleep and you have to jump and shake your foot to get the blood going back through it, and you wiggle it and are so happy to get some blood moving through there again. That is my giddy organ right now.

I have been downloading old girl pop: Shangri-las, Brenda Lee, the Ronnettes. And yeah, some Mariah in there also. I don't know why, maybe cause I am a fag, but I don't think so, right now, this sense of freedom, this joy of doing my own thing, is only finding expression in female pop songs. What is it about the female voice and why do so many gay males love it? (see The Queen's Throat). I want to avoid reductionist psychoanalytic stuff that will point to gender longing, and instead point to the perhaps patronizing notion it is because I identify with the female assertion that is occurring (yes, even the Ronnettes are asserting independence by stating their desire) in a culture that has not allowed for it much, is the thing, this giddy assertion of independence, reveling in this world, and I don't know, I am tired, have had a few glasses of wine, and just watched two episodes of Sex and the City on TBS, so there are reasons, but this is true: that I am excited, I am quitting the Strand, and I am tossing that hat, that beret (right?) into the air, giddy and a little wowed that I can do it, I can.