2005, it's over. don't write. don't call. it's over

Because last New Year's was the worst New Year's ever, I guess I should not be too surprised that 2005 was not the best year ever. But surely, part of this assessment is just from where I stand now, from the fact that I have been mildly depressed for the past month or so. Were I to evaluate this year from three months ago, things may have been differently. But, it's being looked at from this last day in this last month of 2005, and right now I am saying that the year is one I could have done without.

I quit my job at the Strand at the beginning of the year and then found myself broke and by the end of January, fully jumped into the world of sex work, being a hooker, doing porn, naked housecleaning, and go go dancing. All stuff that seemed somewhat thrilling at the time, but now, just seems tiresome. January was also the month of Wong Kar-wei, watching his movies and dreaming about boys. What all my life has been about to some extent or another, daydreaming about boys. The year started out with a Kar-wei marathon and ended with a Woody Allen one. My year is bookended by these two romantics, Kar-wei's films, where desire is a little more realized, and then Allen's where it is certainly more frustrated, often not realized - and there is an analogy just waiting to be parsed out here about my own life and how it has transitioned over this past year from something to something, but I am not going to make that explicit. One, I am not sure exactly what it is. Two, I am too lazy to go about figuring it out. Three, that right there is the transition, laziness, apathy, frustration.

February brought with it the departure of Peter for California, a departure that still saddens me, did so last night when at the Metropolitan, Joe pointed out someone that looked like Peter, who actually didn't look anything like Peter, and made me miss the actual Peter all the more, especially in my increasingly isolated, lonely state I am finding myself in. The rest of the year is nothing worth noting. I thought it was at the time, each day when I wrote here, but now, today after rereading all my entries of the past year, taking stock of how I have been living, I see how silly it became. I became, or came close to, to becoming one of those scenester bar hoppers at all those stupid parties and open bars and can not imagine how that managed to excite me for so long, how it excited me, kept me entertained, all year up until November 2nd, the day my dad died and when everything just began to seem so petty that I was concerning myself with, that the people around me were.

It has made me terribly depressed to read how frustrated all of my pursuits of boys were this year. There are so many entries here talking about Matt, Craig, Christopher, Charlie, Gregg, Zach, Ryan, Chase, etc, etc, and it's all so predictable - if this were a book I would throw it at the wall in frustration. The plotline is the same in every single story. Surely, the main character, this Charlie fellow could not be so hard headed to continue pursuing boys in the same ungraceful way and then wonder why things did not work out for him. It is a caricature, no one in real life would act this way. This author is not presenting reality. Ah, but he is. Sadly.

A short while ago it was snowing, and I was so happy for a few minutes, unbounded optimism, a glee produced by falling shiny white objects. I ran out on my roof, camera in hand, and snapped away and afterward, looking at the pictures, I saw the smile on my face, and it was the biggest smile, the most natural one I have seen on my face in the longest time. I have the potential to be so happy. I need to find the substitute for falling snow in my daily life.

Three funerals and one wedding in this year, 2005. Paul died in April. My mom remarried in September. My dad died in November and my Uncle Robert died three weeks later. Everything seemed more fragile and after each, I told myself that I would hold up new things as important, the right things, and hopefully, I can do that better than I have so far in this coming year.

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My favorite art of this year, at least the top things on the list all involve sing-a-longs. This year also started with me developing a fondness for karaoke, that has by now, the end of this year, worn off. Worn off somewhat. But this morning, in the shower, listening to the radio, that disco era "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now," came on and I lost it, turned it up so loud, despite roommates still asleep, had to sing at the top of my lungs along with this little boombox on this last day of this year, had to, and I do love to sing, despite my lack of skill. And that is what these sing-a-longs, what karaoke is all about - a democratizing statement about art, that everyone can do this release, let out their emotions in this vocal manner, regardless of ability.

1. 25th anniversary of John Lennon's death in Strawberry Fields, remembered by the voices of thousands huddled in the cold all singing along to Beatles songs.
2. Candice Breitz at Sonnabend
3. My extended family, twenty or so people, doing karaoke to the oldies station over Thanksgiving/Robert's funeral, everyone drunkenly singing and dancing to Marvin Gaye's "Ain't No Mountain High Enough"
4. The New Pornographer's performing Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams" and the audience singing along
5. Miranda July's Me and You and Everyone We Know
6. The effect LCD Soundsystem's "Daft Punk is Playing at my House" had on me when I first heard it played in bars
7. Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking
8. Noboyushi Araki at Yoshii
9. Grizzly Bear at Union Pool
10. Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man

Also: Hernan Bas at Armory Show, MIA at Central Park, Hidden Cameras at Bowery Ballroom, Dennis Cooper's The Sluts, Antony and the Johnsons I am A Bird Now

********************************

So fuck off '05. I've got a new man. His name's 2006, and he said he'd kick your ass if he ever saw you come around.

what fucking evs

Fuck, I mean it is hard for me to talk about boys without sounding like a gossip, like a boy crazy nut, which, you know, I might very well may be - in fact, probably am - and so, as all good gossips say, whatevs - I am going to talk about boys. I went to Metropolitan tonight with Joe and it was cruisy, which is rare for the bar, and everyone seemed to be way trashed. Christopher, my long standing crush of the past nearly three years, whom I have probably talked to you at one point or another if I have talked to you at all - well, he was there, and after that fiasco at Ashton's birthday party, I expected him to never talk to me again, but tonight, he yelled my name and said a really energetic hello. And I talked to him on and off again throughout the night, and really, I think he may have been flirting with me. And Anthony was there also, and Christopher asked how we knew each other. And Anthony, saying what I was about to say, said, "Oh, we slept together once, and then he never called me."

Anthony left, and I chatted with C, and man, look at all these ands - and then this and then that, and then he said, and then he did this - again, whatevs - C confirmed with me that I slept with Anthony in what I thought was a mildy competitive tone, and then I asked him if he had slept with Anthony also, and after trying to not answer, to be silent, he finally confessed that he had once also. So now, I am one person away from C in a sex web, which, for whatever reasons (um, my insane crush) has me realy excited. And then this other boy, Anthony's friend, who was mildly hitting on me, asked where C had gone, why wasn't I with C, and blah blah blah - basically jealously questioning me about C, obviously thinking C thought something of me. I left the bar, but not before giving Anthony a bloody lip when hugging him goodbye (Um, awesome?). And maybe I could have slept with Christopher, there are other things I could tell you about, like how he also sort of competitively was like, "Oh, who was that?" when Joe said good-bye to me, then asking I was sleeping with him - um, whatevs - he was drunk - but fuck, Anthony has slept with him, and like the jerk he is, said rude things about his performance, but whatevs - I want C so fucking bad and now I am thinking maybe I am an idiot for still not being at that bar and trying my hand, my cock.

Um, I will be at the same bar again tomorrow night, ringing in New Year's with actual people this year - as opposed to last year when I wandered the East Village alone and then got told by a pyschic I was going to be alone my whole life - no joke, it's what she said on New Year's right at midnight (fucking jerk!) - um yeah, so if you don't have plans, come hang out with Joe and I, call me, and let's not take this thing seriously that fills me with all sorts of social anxiety as to whether or not I am cool, when I don't give a shit, or say I don't want to, and then have this night come along that makes me fret about that maybe I actually do care.

Charlie, why when bored, clicking through channels will you let it stop on wrestling and sit there for an hour watching it?

Well, I could tell you about my childhood and how this is a nostalgic act, that I used to really love WWF as a kid, but really, it is to watch people like Randy Orton in speedos rolling around. I am so horny right now, it is disgusting.

It was either the CBS or NBC local morning news broadcast and it was around five thirty this morning that I was watching this, stuffing my face with food, drugged out of my mind on Tylenol PM, yet still awake, tellling myself that I should eat food, yes food, before going to bed because I was hungry and even though I was feeling the effects of this sleep medication, I was afraid I would sleep in fits if I was hungry, if I had even the slightest reason to want to get up, and man, the dialogues I had with myself last night while waiting for two different trains, which in case you did not know, do not run too often at five in the am, and on this news broadcast, I couldn't understand if it was my tiredness or if there was really something so absurd broadcast to commuters and early risers all across this tri-state area, what people thought of this who were coming out of sleep reluctantly, grudgingly, if their perceptions of this news were in any way distinct from mine - if the tiredness of rising is so different from that of about to go to sleep and what accounts for that difference.

I heard Tina's "Proud Mary" in the background of the weather report and I thought it must have just been a problem with my television, that the audio frequency from another station was bleeding into this one, but no, when it got to the fast part, the weather man, in some fancy mod leather boots said, "Take it away, Ike and Tina," and danced across the weather map of the US out of the picture as the seven day forecast played to the fast part of the song and then there was a dancing penguin over today's day. And I was so confused by this dancing penguin, but the weatherman was so excited, seemingly perversley excited by it, any sort of excitement at that hour of the morning seems perverse, and at the very least, cracked. And on days when we were supposed to hit fifty, the dancing penguin was shown, and then the weatherman cued whoever in the booth to have the penguin dance across the screen this way, then that way, then to sit on the shoulder of one of the newscasters, and all of this was totally compelling this morning for me. I stared open mouthed between bites of the ham and cheese sandwich I had made for myself, watching this in the dark because the lights were too much for my eyes at that point after working fourteen hours and why I related that, I do not know. I am not sure what the point of that was, I really think I was going to try to use that to start thoughts upon another subject, namely my mental faculties and how riding the subway this morning at the crazy hour, when it is nothing but middle aged crazy, perhaps homeless men who seem overdressed and I wondered what they were like in their twenties and whether I will be one of those crazy men with canes having energetic talks with other crazy men riding the trains anywhere, staying out of the cold. And right now, I am just riding those trains anywhere and maybe that sort of scares me, but I don't know, there is a joy and a nervousness, that you could easily cry or giggle, just this nervousness when you are running on empty and ha, time to hop on the trains again and work another graveyard shift and listen to my headphones and tap my feet, my right foot actually, so the singular case is the more proper one, tapping that one foot up and down, a method of staying awake and not stopping.

We are not going to talk about how many more hours I have here because if I do the math it will depress me. I just want to clarify something. Yesterday, I said that I loved Diana Ross's "You Keep Me Hanging On," referring of course, to the Supremes version. Apparently, she released a solo version of the song in those disco years that is just a little too gay club remix for my taste, and it came on just now, and I was so confused, thought it sounded different than the song I was so in love with yesterday, and found out that yes, yes, it is differnt. I love the Supremes version of that song, not the sped up version. Surely, if you dug deep enough, you might uncover some anxiety about gayness, about things that appear too gay. Loving the Supremes is gay in one way. This other version of the song is a little too close to a gay that scares me for whatever reason, because I still am perhaps a little insecure about how I am percieved, despite what I sometimes might otherwise claim. But fuck, the Supremes are amazing.

Take the Money and Run

This film is similar to Zelig in that it is another mockumentary; this time, Woody as an inept criminal who can't even rob a bank right. I have to admit that this earlier stuff I do not like so much, but this movie, I found charming in some way and I am not sure why.

At one point, Allen is doing a voiceover talking about his love of this girl and says in the midst of all this a joke about sex, always with the one liners, but this one, so funny, and surely, because the things that are so funny are those things that are so true, as ugly as they might be, as mannered as we would like to pretend to be. And he says:

In prison, I remember the psychiatrist asked me if I had a girl, and I said, "No." And he said, do I think that sex is dirty, and I said, "It is if you're doing it right."

And this line, I obviously liked enough to write down, and another day it might have been different, I might not have written it down, but today I watched this an hour or so after rousing from another fitful night of sleep, that was more like eight or so hours of obscene sex hallucinations. The things I dreamed last night, so dirty and I woke up at eight something, looked at my clock and told myself to sleep more, that I would not be happy about this lack of sleep come when it was nearing five am and I was trying to stay awake, feeding machines scantrons, but I could not get back to sleep, all I could do was imagine perverse scenario after the next one, tossing and turning and trying to will sleep through different positions of my head on the pillow, dreamed stuff I would be embarrassed to tell anyone, and finally at nine, I gave up and masturbated, showered and watched this movie, and heard this quote said, and nodded in agreement, yes, yes, so true, and reached for my pen.

What's Up, Tiger Lilly?

His first movie, finally watched after this two month marathon of his movies, and tomorrow morning I will watch his second one, Take the Money and Run. I was too tired to watch it tonight, thought I should get plenty of sleep prior to the advent of my crazy work schedule. Then there is Bananas and Match Point, which just opened here, and then I will be done with having seen all of his movies, all forty or so.

It was better than I had thought it would be, What's Up, Tiger Lilly?, but also worse than I had hoped it would be. It's a pretty brilliant concept - he dubbed over a Japanese spy flick with comedic dialogue and made it a movie about various factions trying to obtain this egg salad recipe. There are some really funny moments in it, but the gag wears off pretty quickly.

I am reading Fran Lebowitz's Metropolitan Life right now and finding it mildly funny, but like so much humor writing, I find the delivery a little flat. I don't know why but I have such a hard time reading humor, finding it funny without it being delivered by a human voice.

The human voice that I was in love with at work today was Diana Ross's and I played "Keep Me Hanging On," over and over again at work. The track sans vocals itself is amazing and then layer those painful lyrics on top of it, and I cannot get enough of this song. The rhythm sounds so futuristic for some reason and maybe it's because I want to get there, to that point to be able to say those things so tough, so not lying - and motherfuck, it must be eighty degrees in my apartment even though the windows are wide open and have been for the past two hours. I wanted to leave my apartment as soon as I came home. I never like being here lately. The orange is going to be repainted on my next day off, on Saturday, because I have decided I hate it. I come home and I know people and I know this space and its dimensions, its constraints, these orange walls, this always just too warm for comfort temperature, and I like wandering the streets, taking my time coming home, hoping to encounter someone, but never doing it, but the hope being there that maybe that connection will be made and I know I could pick up my phone and seek it out but obviously I don't want it, I tell myself I don't want that, but really, it is probably that I don't want it if I were to be honest, that's why I hope for things that I could obtain but don't want to, why I look for it out there. I really like walking at night down empty streets and want that now, wish I could turn off my lights and say goodnight and it would be dark and I could sleep in something other than fits and masturbate not quietly because waking up at whatever hour with a hard dick seeing the light of the tv outside my door and knowing someone was out there awake and so cumming quietly into an empty cup that I found next to my bed, within arm's reach because I did not want to get out of bed and look for a towel, letting it be know that I am awake.

Let it be know, I am awake. And I claimed that I could not stay up for a second Woody Allen film this evening. Good night.

I really want a pair of tennis shoes and this was my goal yesterday and despite four hours of wandering from store to store marching down Broadway from Union Square to SoHo, I could not find a pair that I wanted in my size. Basically, I want this one pair of brown leather Asics and only a few stores had them, and none of them had it in my size and I resisted the urge that often comes over me after hours of shopping to just get something, anything and end this ordeal, to feel like those hours were not wasted, but I was really proud of myself for saying no after trying on a pair of shoes that I wasn't totally in love with but which were comfortable, for saying no, that I don't have to buy something just to have bought something and I felt so good afterward listening to music walking in my same old shoes.

I did however end up buying a couple DVDs for five dollars at Circuit City and a couple used books at Housing Works, but those are purchases I felt were somehow acceptable, somehow good for me in the long run. I got home at maybe four thirty in the afternoon and was totally wiped, wondered if it was too early to order a pizza, wondered if it would be too gross to order one even though I had the house to myself, and said Fuck it, said Merry Christmas Charlie, and ordered a pizza, ran to the bodgea, picked up a six pack and watched movies and drank beer and stuffed my face with pizza and I was so glad there was not the chance of a roommate walking in to find me drunk by six with an open pizza box by my side. I was too aware of what a sad picture it would make, and so thankful that there was no one there for it to be a picture, that it was just mental speculation on my part, since I did not even have a mirror to observe my own self in the scene. Hours later, Adele came home as I was trying to shove the pizza box in the fridge and I ate more pizza, drank more beer and watched Last Days with her.

And I found myself again telling myself that this was good for me, the same thing I did during Elephant and Gerry, that it wasn't boring, that I was just too trained to view things in certain ways, and this was an act in trying to retrain my ways of perception, of learning to see the beauty in these slow shots, these boring scenes, and I told myself this until I fell asleep, falling in and out of consciousness, eventually waking up for the credits and the cars descending on the house.

I just picked up some shifts for some reason, because I am mildly bored and because surely, I could find a way to spend that extra money I will have, and I am working two graveyard shifts this week, one of them tomorrow after my evening shift. So tomorrow, I work fourteen hours straight, from 3pm to 5am, and believe it or not, I am really excited about this. Staying up through the night sober and being up for dawn is something that I haven't experienced in far too long.

What equals bullshit is the fact that my job cancelled tonight's shift this morning because the supervisor wanted another day off. She should have not scheduled a shift tonight then because otherwise I would still be in New Jersey, would not have woken up at eight to get on that ferry that for some reason makes me nauseous. I could have instead stayed another day and eaten leftover turkey and watched more crap on television. The real reason it sort of stresses me out is because I just found out that my job is now offering health coverage to part time employees and because there are all these complex rules regarding eligibility that would probably bore you, essentially having to work enough hours during the pay period when they would start your coverage, which only happens quarterly, to cover your first premium, and that pay period is this current one (they told us about this a couple days ago as the pay period was nearing an end, of course) and so I may not be eligible for another three months now because of this cancelled shift tonight.

But man, aside from that, I am in really good spirits. That ferry ride there was amazing and I sat out on the little back viewing area for most of the ride, the only one out there because it was a little cold, windy and wet and I saw underneath four bridges, Williamsburg, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Verazzano and it was such a beautiful ride happening right near sunset and that imagery, the feelings I had while observing it, if only there was someway to hold on to that, or to experience such lovely sights all the time, man, I would be set.

My mom's new house is cute and small and 95 years old and I ate lots of food, drank beer, watched tv shows I had been wanting to see and enjoyed the fact that I did not have to walk anywhere. "Laguna Beach" is enough to make even a neo-con want to start a commie revolution. It wasn't even a guilty pleasure, watching it. I was so disgusted. LOGO, the gay station, is pretty shameful. But there is good news from tv land. "Boondocks" is so fucking good. I was scared that the comic strip wouldn't translate to tv, and it doesn't. The show is a totally different beast and it is amazing. I need to find someone with cable so I can watch this all the time.

Um, I think I might go shopping since there are lots of sales today and I am no longer working and I do have some cash to burn. The revolution will have to wait.

In one hour and twenty minutes, the ferry I plan on taking will be departing and speeding across the Hudson to my mom's new house. I have wrapped presents, have still yet to pack, only actually put on pants and a shirt about half an hour ago, had been enjoying the fact that my house is empty, blared music and laid on the couch in my boxers reading the last of Lord Chesterfield's letters.

I leave in twenty minutes for this ferry and in that time, I really should not be here on this computer trying (always with the trying) to say something because there is not time for that, or there is and I am not up to the challenge, know that I should get masturbation out of my system for the next couple days and should actually pack some clothes and find a new book I want to start reading, and so, Merry Christmas to all of you, which is my polite way, my mannered way of saying I love you all so much and don't want to die, nor you too, but want you and I to have the happiest lives.

The Doors song was playing, for some reason or other, and I went up to him, my crush of the past two weeks, and sang along with the lyrics, said, "Hello, I love you, won't you tell me your name?"

He told me his name, and we talked, and I was getting pretty giddy and then his friend came up and they left without saying good bye. Just another Friday night.

I am terribly lonely and say this because I don't like the things I could say instead.

I am done with that pack of cigarettes, done with cigarettes.

I watched Chungking Express this afternoon and found myself terribly lonely and crying by the end of it. The wine I drank while watching it may have had something to do with that.

Earlier today, I listened to Craig's music for some reason. Perhaps that masochistic tendency I have with regards to crushes and it was so good and surely, most of you guys would like this band, The Ballet. There is lots of stuff there for the downloading, all of it really pretty indie pop that just made me desire Craig all the more, made that loneliness pick up some steam, and yes, tomorrow I am going to get out of this house and stop being lame, and plan on eating lots of yummy fast food. Pizza, burgers, and chow mei fun, oh boy.

It's amazing how much my having or not having money effects my mood. I hate it that it does, and I would certainly be pretending I was way more liberated than I actually am were I to say otherwise. The evidence: I just got an email saying my paycheck arrived and I can pick it up tomorrow morning. So much of what I was worrying about, everything that I was worrying about, vanished. Dancing to Hall and Oates, and feeling pretty damn fine, aside from the stir craziness that this strike and my not working have been jointly causing.

Some other homo has a crush on Bobby Cuza. That is amazing. If local news is already the second or third tier of broadcast news, NY1 is even a step below that and this is just some random NY1 reporter and someone else is after him also. This person needs to die. Bobby is all mine!

Paychecks did not arrive at my job like they were supposed to today which is pissing me off. And if they don't arrive tomorrow, I will be really pissed and really screwed since I have a dollar to my name and have yet to buy my family presents and also need to buy a ferry ticket to get there. More evidence again presented to me that I should not wait til the last minute, but hopefully they will arrive tomorrow morning, otherwise I will flip out at some stupid test prep company.

My neck is so sore because I did situps wrong yesterday, lifted with my neck and not my stomach, and fuck, I want a massage so bad. Bobby?

loneliness scrapbook (part 2)

I don't know when it exactly started, some time within the last couple months, but coming across the word alone or lonely or loneliness hits me in the gut. The previous word that used to give me pause, albeit in a totally different manner, was inchoate, and that was more just awe at that writer's knowledge of the word and their usage of it. This, from an ariticle about the effects of the transit strike, a quote from a homebound woman reliant on a visiting nurse. The word alone when spoken makes this daily world of images and how are you doing, doing good comments fall away. The curtain is withdrawn with this magic word, this abracadabra conjures all that fear of death and vulnerability that I am able to normally put out of mind, the word gives me shivers.


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Gloria Ramos, 74, who lives on the Lower East Side and takes 17 medications daily, was seen yesterday by both a visiting nurse and a home attendant, but she feared what would happen in a prolonged strike. "More than anything else, I do not want to be alone," she said.
-Tolls Start to Mount

"if you don't like whiskey, then you better get used to wine, cause wine is fine"

The amount of television I have watched these past two days is pretty disgusting and has had the effect of depressing me. Both what I have watched, and the fact that I watched so much of it, wasted so many minutes, so many hours. I haven't had to work these past couple days during the strike and so I have no awful stories to share as my roommate does and seemingly everyone else about walking for hours or getting charged obscene amounts on cab rides.

I have a long quote from Lord Chesterfield that I want to share with you because it has been on my thoughts since I read this about a week ago. It was written almost exactly 257 years ago on December 30, 1748, and so I think that the theme of a new year approaching and what to do with these years and these months, days, hours, and minutes, is particularly relevent, and here it is:

"Do what you will at Berlin, provided you do but do something all day long. All I desire of you is, that you will never slattern away one minute in idleness, in doing nothing. When you are not in company, learn what either books, masters, or Mr. Harte can teach you; and, when you are in company, learn (what company only can teach you) the characters and manners of mankind. I really ask your pardon for giving you this advice; because, if you are a rational creature, and a thinking being, as I suppose, and verily believe you are, it must be unnecessary, and to a certain degree injurious. If I did not know by experience, that some men pass their whole time in doing nothing, I should not think it possible for any being, superior to M. Descartes's automatons, to squander away, in absolute idleness, one single minute of that small portion of time which is allotted to us in this world.

....

I send you, my dear child (and you will not doubt) very sincerely, the wishes of the season. May you deserve a great number of happy New Years; and, if you deserve, may you have them. Many New Years, indeed, you may see, but happy ones you cannot see without deserving them. These, virtue, honour, and knowledge, alone can merit, alone can procure. Dii tibi dent annos, de te nam caetera sumes [May the gods grant you a long life, for other advantages you must secure for yourself.], was a pretty piece of poetical flattery, where it was said: I hope that, in time, it may be no flattery when said to you. But I assure you, that whenever I cannot apply the latter part of the line to you with truth, I shall neither say, think, nor wish the former. Adieu!"

And yet, most of the past two days have been spent wastefully. Chesterfield would certainly wish me dead were I his son. I have been so ravenous and most of my day has been spent either cooking, eating, or in between eatings and thinking of what I was going to eat next. There has also been lots of masturbation, lots of watching local news outraged at some of the sentiments I hear expressed on it. I did write today and I mean to do so every day. I am already starting to make resolutions for myself, bracing for one's I will declare on New Year's. I did not study Greek for an hour today as I had told myself I would but there are still some hours left in this day to do so, but having drunk half a bottle of wine already, it seems pretty unlikely that any Greek book will be opened this evening, doubtful that it will even leave the bookshelf. In addition, a couple days ago, I resolved that this was my last pack of cigarettes and there are six or so left in it, and we will see how well I hold to this resolution, especially when drunk. I have read under natural sunlight lots of fiction these past two days (another resolution). And I have exercised (another resolution), and yes, I am counting doing pseudo-ballet to Charlie Parker as exercise. I was exhausted and felt so good afterward. Charlie Parker spastic dance marathons are going to hopefully become a part of each one of my days also.

Tomorrow, hopefully my paycheck arrives at work and I will leave the house, walk the 3.4 miles Mapquest says it is to my job and cash that shit and buy a nice burger and presents for my mom and step-dad and I'll hopefully even run into people and interact with human beings, something that I am sure has been causing some of the depression of the past couple days, that I have not left the house and my roommates have not even been home.

I have had the International Fiction issue of The New Yorker, and it has been good to me, but it certainly is no substitute for human beings. October 4, 1746: "The knowledge of the world is only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet. Books alone will never teach it to you; but they will suggest things to your observations, which might otherwise escape you; and your own observations upon mankind, when compared with those which you will find in books, will help you to fix the point." I would recommend that you pick up this issue, despite Lord Chesterfield, because the three short stories I have read so far are amazing. The Roberto Bolano, Nabakov, and Tahar Ben Jelloun stories are so good and I wish you would read them. I want to share the gold I find.

My second least favorite noise ever: car horns.

strike

I remember staying up late on nights when it snowed watching Red Apple 21, the cable station associated with my school county, hoping that text would start scrolling across the bottom of the screen saying something along the lines that always began with "Due to inclement weather," and there was just some thrill watching that station throughout the night waiting for the news to appear. It normally never did by the time I went to sleep and there wouldn't be anything, any text scrolling until the morning when I woke up announcing a snow day.

Last night, I was up until two watching NY1, waiting to hear it made official. Not that I even had to work today, but still curious, still anxious to see that text scrolling and it didn't happen before I went to bed, was not made official, but now, as most of you surely already know, it has been. Strike! And on a really cold day, too, with highs in the mid-twenties. I am excited about this strike now, but of course, I don't work today, but surely this thrill will wear off soon, I imagine.

yes, i did just email this to bobby cuza

dear bobby,

i am watching you right now on ny1 talk about the transit strike, the
possibility of it, and i just wanted to let you know that i think you
are pretty damn dreamy, and even though a strike would totally disrupt
my life in many ways, i am glad to hear about it, would gladly hear
the most horrible news, so long as you delivered it.

love
charlie

mea gulpa too mucha/culpa

The good news is Craig does not seem to hate me. The bad news is maybe I poured a drink on him. Um.

**************************

Craig-
Um, I just ran into Kevin and Matt who reminded me of how out of control I was not too long ago at Beauty Bar on the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's death. That night will haunt me forever. It already has pretty much cost me one friendship, those four solid hours of drinking I did prior to ten, and now I was reminded of stuff I did not even remember, mainly being an asshole to you, Matt, Kevin, and God knows who else, so yeah, sorry about anything I may have done or
said to you. Sincere apologies and lots of shame. Lots of it.
Charlie

**************************

hi charlie! no shame at all! you were not a jerk to me, at least. you were just a bit, you know, totally wasted. i like having drinks poured on me! and i'm not even kidding. so don't feel bad, we all have those nights, i've just come off about seven in a row of them.

hope you are well. perhaps we will cross paths before i head west for the holidaze.

x
c

Thank god, Jillian's boyfriend Josh is always here in the apartment. Otherwise, I would not have toes. I went outside to take out the trash barefoot, and in a t-shirt and the fucking door closed behind me, the door that is broken and never manages to lock, somehow closed and locked in this thirty degree weather with me stuck outside. I was so scared, not having my cellphone, no keys, no shoes to even go to a store and warm up, wandering what I was going to. I started throwing a toothbrush at Jamie's window but her fucking roommate did not bother to answer even though I know she was home. Fucking asshole! Then I tried Josh's window, not sure if he was here or not, and luckily after about ten minutes of throwing shit at windows with a pack of construction workers across the street, watching with pleasure my struggle, finally Josh answered the door and so I will still have toes.

Lord Chesterfield is amazing, by the way! Just about every other page, I am starring a quote. And soon, I will share some because they are so fucking good.

I love you! By the way.

That night of drunkenness that culminated in getting kicked out of Beauty Bar and puking in my sleep will never escape me. Tonight, at Metropolitan, at their holiday party, I was having such a good time, talking to friends and for a bit to Matt, whom I wanted to sleep with so bad, stared at him and was so jealous of my past self that dated him for that brief time, could not even fathom that at one time I had this boy so often who now seems so unattainable.

Later outside, I was talking to Kevin, and like I do so often with want of something to say, I said, "Let's gossip." About what, he said. Name a person, I said. Craig, he said. And, of course, the hairs pricked on my arms and I wanted to hear what he had to say and he said he didn't have any gossip, that Craig and Matt were dating, which I already knew after seeing them at Beauty Bar.

Oh, fuck.

I started to realize why I probably got kicked out of Beauty Bar and was terrified that I didn't remember Kevin, Matt, or Craig there. You could essentially tell me I did anything that night and I would not know any better. Kevin informed me that I told him I was going to kill him. Great. I searched out Matt to find out more details, so full of shame, and just wanting to die, but wanting to know why I should die before doing so. Matt told me that I propositioned him, which is nothing new, he added like a dickhead, but that I did so right in front of Craig. Ugh. And then I guess I told them we should start a fight with someone and I don't even know, it all became so mortifying that I couldn't even really listen, was also so depressed that Matt and Craig were dating, these two boys that I like so much, liking each other and not me. And fuck, fuck, fuck.

And then because he's so good at those cutting remarks, Matt said something along the lines of, "It's okay, Charlie, we all have those bad nights. You, however, just seem to have them way more than anybody else." And from that cute face, that body that I want to hold, came that, and yet, still, that did not mitigate my desire for him in the slightest.

The seagulls and the pigeons can be brought together. They were scavenging through someone's leftover bag of McDonalds at the end of my block and normally, I don't see them together, but everyone gets hungry, I guess.

I went to La Bonita this morning, this afternoon because I woke up quite a little hungover and had no coffee in the house, so went there to get some, and once there picked up a slice of carrot cake also, but the coffee - I asked for a large. We are out of large. It took a while for that to process, what that could possibly mean, and then I understood that I was not going to get a large coffee and then thought to whether I should get one regular coffee, or if I should make it two, if that would in effect, be ordering a large. I ended up getting one and am drinking it, it tasting less pleasant with the aftertaste of the frosting from that carrot cake still in my mouth.

Yesterday, I was in a bit of funk earlier in the day, but how quickly that mood changed, and how quickly they always do - that they are the most fragile things and so easily shifted, these moods, essentially my days, my life is by random sights, things I pass on the street holding the potential to shake me, snap me out of it, and let me see that there is so much going on here in this world and that I can dance if I want to. Walking to work, having got there early and so just circling blocks in SoHo until three, I was across the street from this woman who was a real live version of an iPod commercial. She seemed non crazy looking, looked like she could be a richer version of my mom, and there she was in the middle of the street with her white headphones on and dancing like a maniac without a care in the world at three o'clock in the afternoon. It was totally mesmerizing and everyone that walked by, smiled and pointed and she really seemed not to notice, to be performing for anyone - that she was just hearing a really good song and could not help herself. And this, this little sight changed everything, gave me some inspiration, that I just need to put on some tunes I like, and dance it out of my system, that there is so much joy to be had in this world, and of course, you forget this when you are not in motion, when you are sitting in your apartment doing nothing, because so much of this world's joy is to be found when we are moving these limbs in one or way or another, shaking it.

I went to Fun last night and met up with David and Joe who after showing up late and making me wait forever, bored on a couch in the back of the bar for so long, then they decided to leave so soon for Metropolitan right when I was starting to enjoy myself. I, of course, refused to go, knowing that that place is never as exciting as you hope it will be, and certainly no place to go to if you are having fun and hoping to have more of it. I ran into Christina, talked to her, and ended up leaving the bar with her to go to Matthew's party in Greenpoint where I drank whiskey for the first time since that night of Exorcist vomiting and did not lose my mind, did not stick a crucifix in my coochie. I did, however, run into a girl I used to work with at the Strand. I saw her across the room, and asked myself if that was her, was starting to have doubts and was nervous about approaching her, being drunk, and it being dim, and me being somewhat doubtful about my recognition capabilities under these circumstances. Her name is Erica. Now, I remember that. Just now. All night I was trying to remember it. Anyways, I did go say hi to her and it was her and we talked for a decent amount of time, somewhat nostalgically about the Strand, and I remember hiding in the fiction section with her and talking about gallery shows we loved all day long. That job was amazing.

Soon after, everyone headed to Fun for the first time, and I did so for the second time, walking all over this borough of Brooklyn and loving the cold air and listening to people talk into it. And my body was in motion, and obviously, I felt good, and I imagined my body in motion throughout the night talking to various people. As static I was in those situations talking to cute boys, there was the hoped for, the imagined flailing of limbs.

Bullets Over Broadway

Forget those days when you just don't know the answers, when you can't figure out what to do, because those days are preferable to this one so far and yesterday, the ones where there aren't any questions, let alone answers.

I am finding myself masturbating more frequently and that is normally a symptom also, a general boredom, not knowing what to do with yourself, not even asking that question, but waking up, eating food, going to work, picking up a Woody Allen movie on the way home and then going to bed - going through the motions. I hesitate to call it living. Surely, I am breathing and pumping blood, but not much else beside that.

A week from today, I am going to take an hour long ferry ride to my mom's new house not too far from the beach at Atlantic Highlands. I am looking forward to that boat ride, to some change in scenery. I have still yet to purchase my mom or her husband any sort of Christmas gift, have yet to even give it more than passing thought and don't plan on doing it until Friday when I get paid.

The Curse of the Jade Scorpion

I can't decide if I am going to do the hour and half walk to work tomorrow if the trasit workers go on strike. I was told I didn't have to come in, but surely, there is that getting paid money thing that I do enjoy.

I just ate a fortune cookie. The fortune:

If you want the rainbow, you have to tolerate the rain.

Oh, the many possible readings of that. Some homo surely wrote that.

Okay, now I do not like Bloomberg. You can do a lot of things, but as soon as you start being anti-union, I hate you. So surely, you must know that there might be a tranist worker strike come Friday, but now Bloomberg has thrown the city (us!) into the fight and is "asking a judge to fine the transit workers' union $1 million and each striker $25,000 on the first day of a strike and to double the fines successively each day after that."

I don't know if there is much, anything I can do other than express disapproval to you about this, to tell you that I support the demands of transit workers and will support their strike efforts, will not be pissed if I have to walk the couple miles to work. I imagine that a strike won't happen, though. But if so, let's support our fellow workers and not complain about being inconvenienced. Um, I imagine that is all I can do.

When I am out in that cold, twenty something degree weather, I never want to smoke again because that winter air feels so good, fills my lungs so good. I breathe in deep and breathe out deep, watching it rush out of me and upwards and I couldn't imagine anything feeling this good on my lungs, this clean, this pure and I think it's because I want to experience something like this that I smoke but it doesn't come close to this, out there.

Apparently, a woman was mugged right in front of my building tonight.

I smelled like old man cologne, like cheapness with class aspirations, up until thirty minutes ago when I took a shower and washed it off of me. I got called by that same guy I saw about a week ago and went over to his apartment that reeked of pot and this time, declined his offer to smoke me out, and watched porn on his television while he sucked me off, and then lied there for about another ten minutes afterward, while he rested his head on my chest and held my flaccid penis and jacked himself off. It was then with his head on my chest that whatever smell he wanted to smell like for whatever reasons, that he thought it made him more attractive to someone, that maybe it was what someone he once found attractive wore and that this would make him the same, some sublimated way of sexual attraction to an old locker room crush, that then in those moments, him jacking off and resting on me, I became infected and the power of water is amazing. There is a reason people baptize themselves in the stuff, walk into that water. It washes away all. And taking that shower getting home, I was clean, free of any earlier activities. They were gone, washed down the drain, even if it did take them a little while to drain since our tub is slow to do so from the buildup of hair and various body scrubs and dirt down there in our drain.

I woke up in a fairly good mood, masturbated in the pool of sunlight that hits my bed at around eleven and felt pretty excellent. Of course, that would not last too long. I keep on waking up to bad things on the internet. Yesterday, I think the first words I read were "FUCKING DIE." Today, the first thing I read was the work schedule that was posted for this week and again, I have only been scheduled for two days this week. Whereas I soon read an apology after reading those first words yesterday that somewhat soothed them, today, nothing - just this stupid fucking schedule that has me convinced whoever is making it hates me and does not like me.

I am so fucking sick of having to go in to work and then lobby when I get there about getting more days that week. Erica, the supervisor who likes me always finds holes in the schedule where I can be added, but fuck why wasn't I put there in the first place instead of having to every single week snivel for more days? I need another job. I need to maybe leave this city for a while, but of course, that's really hard when you don't work steady and are always just barely paying the bills you have, let alone being able to purchase plane tickets and go places, see friends you really want to see. So I smoked a cigarette, needed to - and that is bad. Normally, it's not from stress that I need one, but even before I had my cup of coffee this morning, I told myself I need a fucking cigarette, and God, I felt so much better afterward. Then, I started essentially looking at porn, that mindless fantasy crap, except I was looking at hotels and resorts in Florida that were hiring for the tourist season and thought about maybe subletting my room for two or three months and getting the fuck out of here for a while, going anywhere, anywhere warm and where I don't get stressed out so easily.

And then eventually I calmed down, only to go downstairs to check the mail and have my landlord, the seventy year old witch of a woman called Ada who can only yell in Spanish, have her hand me my mail. I was really curious why she had it, and was going to ask her, but instead had her sort of yell at me about the front door, saying she didn't know what we did to it that it was broken. And I guess that's why the she had our mail because the mailperson was uable to get to our boxes because our front door does not open at all. I don't know if it is frozen shut or just broken, but surely a fire hazard and definitely obnoxious that if I want to leave our apartment, say if I want to come in really late or go out really late, or even just go out now in the daytime, I'd have to go through Ada's aparment and out her front door - such fucking bullshit, and if this is not fixed within the next couple of hours, I am going to call her daughter who speaks English and lose my shit because really it is about that time with all these various things happening at once, that you know, that title of that Flannery O'Conner book, that it's all rising and it must converge and I am bound to freak out soon and surely whoever hears it, whichever object it is projected at will be totally undeserving of the brunt of the anger, but that's how these things go. And where could I go and work for a couple months?

One of my great uncles, Jim, is an ex-priest. His wife is an ex-nun. Another one of my great uncles was a priest until he died earlier this year. My uncle Jim has been e-mailing me stuff ever since him and I got into a conversation at my mom's wedding about politics, this shortly after Katrina. I am fairly radical but this old man, even more so. And when people talk shit about Christianity, dismiss it as right wing nonsense, I try to tell them my experience was different, but don't succeed much because my experience isn't common, but there is a radical Catholic tradition that I have always been interested in and always heard, maybe I listened for it, or wanted to hear it. But I just got an email from my uncle that has these two paragraphs:

Commentators Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and John Gibson of Fox News and Bill Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights dishonor the spirit of Christmas by grandstanding about superficial issues while undermining the true spirit of Christmas Much like the Pharisees of Jesus’ day, their focus on the language of retail advertising, and shopping itself, makes a mockery of the real Christmas message. Recent attempts targeting department store advertising, the President’s holiday greeting card and the Christmas tree outside the Capitol (yes, we agree it’s a Christmas tree) distract from the true meaning of Christmas: that Jesus Christ was born to bring good news to the poor.

“If Jesus entered a department store today, he wouldn’t be worried about whether the advertising said “Christmas” or “Holiday.” He would care if we were so stressed out about shopping that we didn’t have enough time for family and friends. The Catholic social tradition calls us to ask if Wal-mart workers and shoppers are earning a family wage, if they were able to feed their families, and take their kids to the doctor.” said Alexia Kelley, Executive Director of the Catholic Alliance for the Common Good.

I love my family so much. This e-mail made me so happy because I was feeling so lonely and so worried that my mom's phone has gone straight to voicemail for the past two nights and I have not heard back from her, imagined all these awful scenarios and wondered what I would do if something truly awful should happen, who I would call, realized that there is no one in New York that I think would understand or care enough or be that person I would trust enough, and thought to my family, and basically just imagined this worst case scenario for some reason or other. Maybe it's because I just watched two movies that deal with loneliness in some major ways, Brokeback Mountain and Klute.

Each was amazing. I will probably talk about them more soon, but because why not, because I am not tired and am not in the mood to read, I am going to make it three right now and watch What's New, Pussycat?, while not directed by him, is the first movie he starred in and wrote.

New York Stories

I am counting this as a Woody Allen film even though he just has one of the three shorts in it. The other two are by Coppola and Scorcese. The Scorcese one was pretty good. The Coppola one I watched the first five minutes of and thought it was awful, awful, awful, and so had no hesitation about telling Adele not to bother pausing it while I went up to Greenpoint to get Matthew's old phone. I came back, probably in a much better mood because of the fact that I no longer had to stress about a lack of a phone and then watched the Allen short, "Oedipus Wrecks," and immediately I laughed out loud and sort of said, "Aw, I love you, Woody Allen," and curled into a comfortable position on the couch and this is the same reason that I have been doing this marathon through two deaths, that for some reason, Allen resonates with me in a way that no other filmmakers really do. What will it mean when I finish the last few films I have left of his? Will that conclude something; and what will gain closure?

I also watched Shampoo earlier in the afternoon and found most of it too loud, that the dialogue wasn't isolated, there was all this salon, or party, or car, or office noise going on in the background and it really stressed me out for some reason. Woody took that stress, that tightness and let it all unwind and I felt so good after watching this short even if the moral of it, that Jewish boys should marry Jewish girls, was mildly troubling.

PS - Adele bought a bunch of records yesterday, which always makes me happy because I end up listening to them all day long, and she bought the New Pornographers' Twin Cinema and yes I have heard it so much that I already know every single word on it, but fuck God, I am listening to it now and there is something similar going on with them and Allen and the moods both are able to evoke in me so quickly, some sincere joy. I love them so mcuh. This album is going to played forever. I will just keep flipping sides all day long and never putting on anything new, at least, until Adele tells me she wants to hear something else.

PPS - I didn't sleep well last night and found myself unable to concentrate on Chesterfield.

Yowsers, I have totally torpedoed one of my closest friendships here and it is nothing new. Look at the comments section in my last entry. Do I ever have friendships that don't end in a dramatic fashion. Leslie beating me with a guitar. Nora. Sarah. Niki and that car incident. And now Gregg with me trying to make out with him and a sort of war of words. It feels normal and I know that is not a good thing, but whatever. I have even been unMySpaced.

In good news, Matthew gave me his old phone and so now I am no longer phoneless and that is awesome.

I am going to read letters Lord Chesterfield wrote to his son a couple centuries ago on how to become a distinguished gentleman.

i am hanging up on you

Shut the fuck up. So yes, it's checked often enough, but right now it is totally unchecked - my ego - after reading some boy's blog I found that I had a crush on not too long ago. It fucking sucks reading boys write about how much they want a boyfriend, reading boys writing things like this whom you have made obvious advances to. Suck a fucking bag of dicks and keep on talking about how you are struggling with your rent and how you had to be a gogo boy to help pay it and then in your next entry, no joke, talk about going to a party at Trump Towers with your rich parents, your mom in her fox hat. Are you fucking kidding? Dancing one night on a bar does not rent make. Feed your dick to fat old men and then we can talk. I am so sick of fucking overprivleged douche bags who think they are slumming it because they take public transportation. Why are so many people fucking idiots?

If I ever whine about wanting a boyfriend, something I don't do (I whine about wanting dick), someone please beat me till I am bloody so I can be reminded what problems really are.

I am so full of a healthy rage right now, so bring it on. And I am listening to Madonna's "Hung Up" over and over again because it is fucking amazing and if you don't think so, guess what, we're not friends.

Ring Ring Ring, goes the telephone.
The lights are on, but there's no one home.
Tick tick tock, it's a quarter to two.
And I'm done. I'm hanging up on you.
I can't keep on waiting for you.
I know that you're still hesitating

He showed me his cock first and then I showed him mine. This, right outside of Fun, and this made me realize how horny I was.

Earlier in the night, I had come to this bar to see Gregg dance. It turned out he wasn't dancing, but Daniel was, and despite not having a cell phone, I managed to run into so many of the people who I would want to see, whom I haven't seen in the past couple weeks. Josh introduced me to some of his friends, three of whom I thought were adorable, one especially so and sort of wanted to make out with any of them. This was my goal for the night. As you may be able to predict because I have no luck with members of the male sex that are under thirty, I went home alone. At some point in the night, I went to the bathroom, only to come back and find all of the hoped for make out partners all gone. I asked Josh if they had left, and he said they had.

It was at this point in the night that I finally went home. I had planned on going home after one drink but wanted to stay and hopefully make out with these boys, so stayed for another and then a third and then a fourth, but finally with these boys gone, I could leave also, that the game was lost and nothing was going to be gained sticking around as the crowd thinned and things would have gotten more and more desperate and certainly infected me also.

And maybe I am fine just looking, maybe it's all I want to do. That boy, Chase, the gogo boy I had written to on Craigslist, he was there also. And he said hi to me, said Hi Charlie, and I was really surprised that he remembered my name, but even this boy who I had liked so much for a couple days, that I had had daydreams about touching, lying next to, that even this boy, when I actually began to talk to him last night, it all unraveled. As it would have to, unless he were God (even then, who knows) - and the conversation was awkward and kind of awful because what do you say to a boy who you wrote a really nice letter to sort of praising them and talking about the visual thrills, the plain good feeling to be gotten from the sight of a cute boy, that really what is there to say that hasn't been said except to say that I didn't mean it, and that, something that can't really be said.

I came home, horny, not so much lonely as hungry, and masturbated in my bed, tried to do so to specific fantasies, but the slight drunkenness prevented even that level of concentration, and so I treated it like a job, that just come and you can go to bed, just do that and you can sleep.

ying yang twins - wait (the whisper song)

So wrong, so six, eight, twelve months ago - who knows - but so fucking good:

You're fine
but I ain't gonna sweat you
See I wanna fuck you
tell me what's up
Walk around the club with your thumb in your mouth
Put my dick in, take your thumb out

This song is amazing and has me dancing around my living room. Thankfully, when I watched Rize, I did so alone, and so had no shame about getting up during the movie to dance along with the screen, to show those people up up there, and maybe steal a couple of their moves, like what they referred to as the stripper dance. I have got my ass bouncing.

PS - I think there is a correlation between how often I update Livejournal and the level of functionality of my cell phone.

PPS - I want to shake it.

things seen today

I went to Chelsea today, wandered around all the galleries I had been meaning to see shows at and there is some really good stuff there right now. The sun was slowly and slowly making its way down over Jersey and the air was so crisp and despite the cold, while the sun was still out, it felt good out there in the outside with that sky above me. I saw so much, but still did not get to see everything I wanted to. The things I saw, most of them, made a big impression on me. And there are two experience shows that are worth going to just to witness the spectacle. The Mike Kelley show at Gagosian is a bad acid trip at the carnival and the gallery was packed today with everyone taking in all this craziness. It started to give me a headache after a while and so I left but definitely worth checking out, and only up until the 17th.

"Art and the Video Game" at Pace/Wildenstein is another busy show, another fun show. I don't know what "fun" show means. I do. But I don't know how to go about describing it, a show you'd tell people from out of town to go see, something that makes you smile and doesn't require a level of somberness. And no surprise, both Cory Arcangel and Paper Rad are in the show, and have the two best pieces in the show. I don't know why, but I really do love Paper Rad's stuff and I found their video pretty amazing.

Other things seen today:
-Marina Abramovic's "Balkan Erotic Epic" at Sean Kelly
-Mary Ellen Mark's "Falkland Road" series at two galleries
-some male nude photos by Andy Warhol at Chiem and Reid, where I also saw:
-Warhol's Blow Job film!!!!!
-an amazing chess board/pumpkin by Yayoi Kusama at Lurhing Augustine
-less amazing chess boards by Damien Hirst and Paul McCarthy
-a couple of other shows that left me underimpressed
-cute boys at these galleries possibly checking me out
-David LaChapelle's Rize

The problem with light colored pants, specifically these new white/blue striped ones I am in love with: They stain easily.

I am one dirty person and I am a little unaware of this because normally I wear dark blue jeans every single day that I don't even flinch about wiping off grease/oil/chocolate from off my fingers onto them. I have been trying to stop that habit, but yet still, little kids spill on themselves less than I do.

I just washed them yesterday and already today, in the last two hours in fact, I managed to spill not only tomato sauce on them, but also just now, chocolate ice cream. Either I am going to start having to do laundry all the time (as opposed to monthly) or I am just going to have to let these no longer be my favorite pants. But fuck these tiny little stains, it's dark out now and I am still wearing them tonight. Oh yeah, I don't have a phone but am probably going to stop by Fun tonight around midnight if any of you are waiting at home for someone to make plans with you, pretend I have a fun and just called you. And if anyone has an old T-mobile phone that they want to donate to the Charlie Social Life Cause, well, he would love you a whole lot

Shit. I need to put something thicker on the glass front of my door, than the weaved little piece of cloth or whatever that is on there now. Because I just masturbated in my bed, in the pool of sunlight saturating it, mildly concerned that I could hear Adele out in the living room and then someone else after she left for work here at the computer. The problem is that I am sitting at this same computer now and looking in the direction of my room and because of the way the sun is moving through my room, I can see perfectly clear, a sun soaked bed and pillow through my closed door, which means that my roommates very likely saw a sun soaked Charlie jacking off in bed. But fuck it, I can't help it that I have a glass door on my bedroom and I am human and I need to be loved (by myself if needs be).

Open bars may have free booze, but there are costs, there are always costs. Especially when it is a two hour open bar. The proof that I was fucked up, God, what more proof do you want? I threw away a comforter, a sheet, and a towel this afternoon. I woke up sometime early this morning when it was still dark to see the snow falling and to see myself sleeping in a gigantic puddle of vomit. Vomit all over the floor also next to my bed and I remembered none of it. Thankfully, I did not choke and die. But I did manage to sleep unaware in a pile of vomit if that says anything about how drunk I was. I threw the sheets in a corner of my room, flipped my mattress and showered all the yuckiness off of me before going back to sleep in a stinky room, so feeling like shit and not wanting to even think about cleaning up this mess. I woke up to hear Adele and her dad chatting this morning in the living room and I waited for them to leave before even trying to rouse myself, not wanting Adele's dad to think her roommate is a disgusting drunk.

Oh yeah, I also threw up on my new pants that Jamie gave me, that I am/was in love with. But perhaps worst of all, my phone was at the bottom of this pile of throw up for hours before I tried cleaning it, and no surprise, now it is not working. I have broke way too many phones. I am embarrassed to even take it into the T-mobile store because it smells nasty. [Hey Matt, do you still have that old phone?]

But wait, there is more evidence of how hammered I was. There is the obscene fact that I took a cab from the pizza place on Beford to my house, not too many blocks away. But wait, this is the real clincher here: I got kicked out of Beauty Bar. Um, how does that even happen? Good question, one that I am wondering this morning, wondering what I could possibly have done, broke glasses, yelled loudly, vomitted somewhere, fell - God only knows what embarrasing thing I did that some kind man escorted me out of the bar and once outside told me I was not allowed back inside.

My night had started out so lovely, though, you never would have predicted it would have ended with me passed out in a puddle of my own vomit. I went to a bunch of gallery openings in Chelsea with Joe, some of which I really liked a lot. After that, drunk, but pleasantly so, on a mixture of red wine and cheap beer, we went to Strawberry Fields and I think I exclaimed at some point that it was my favorite moment I have ever had in New York, because it was that beautiful, hundreds of people gathered in the cold night all singing along to Beatles songs. I fell silent for a moment during one of the big ones that everyone knew the words to, to hear all this people singing around me, and I thought that this is how I want to leave this world, surrounded by people on all sides of me singing songs. It was fucking beautiful how there were so many people there of so many ages all singing together.

After about an hour, because I was starting to shiver, we left, headed back downtown to go to Pink Elephant for the David LaChapelle afterparty that Gregg had told me about. And as if I had never even heard of the word moderation, I was downing whiskey after whiskey and yet not realzing how drunk I was, but man, this painful headache alleviated only slightly by the Advil I took, this burned out stomach, this is the proof that I was shitfaced. Toward the end of the open bar, I angered Gregg by telling him I wanted to make out with him. [Sorry Gregg, I would call you and say that except I vomited in my phone.] Then a bus was hopped (a bus?) and Joe and I rode down Fourteenth Street to Stache, and this bus ride is the last clear memory of the night. I have no clue what happened to Joe, what I did once there, if I drank more, if I danced, and wondering what it is I did to have gotten kicked out. All I remember is being out on the street and being confused about not being allowed back in. So I went to Nowhere, pissed in their bathroom and then headed home where a big mess was made in my bed, a mess I cleaned, but which I can still smell from out here in the living room and Antony is singing really pretty music and I am about to go to the bodega to get a coca-cola and some food that won't make me retch

PS- Annie Proulx's "Brokeback Mountain," is reprinted online this week in The New Yorker. When I have some free time tomorrow, I plan on reading this and then seeing the movie.

Grizzly Bear is playing tomorrow at Tonic and I am pretty sure I am going to go. Anyone else want to go?

PPS - I think I might stop by Strawberry Fields today, maybe tonight during the minute of silence, 10:50. Q104.3 is playing nothing but Beatles today and it is making me so happy and just a little sad, but feeling nonetheless, and that's the thing I am after.

In these rephrensible go with the flow times, Russ Feingold amazes me to no end. I have been in love with him since high school. Him and Paul Wellstone were two of my heroes who were elected officials. He is threatening to filibuster the reauthorization of the Patritot Act. He is amazing.

I just took a shower, my second one of the day, this one to wash all the saliva of that old man. I am about to go the Brooklyn courthouse because otherwise I will be fined and/or jailed for not filling out a jury duty questionairre, even though I totally did. I remember having done it online.

Also, I love bacon so much and this is a recent love. And I could have gone through life without these unhealthy vices, cigarettes and bacon, but within the last year, I have discovered the pleasures of both. God, bacon is so fucking good.

s.d.

Knocking on their door, of someone you never seen before and who you are about to sleep with in some manner for money, that one moment between your knock and their answer, when you can hear them approaching the door, you wonder who is this, what does he look like, because you never can tell, sometimes they will actually be young looking and in shape, other times, they will be a runt of an old man, other times, a fat middle aged stoner. And tonight after walking down the cold wind tunnel that was 7th Avenue, saying hello to his doorman, and then finally getting to his door, knocking there, I wondered what this guy who described himself as clean-cut and straight looking was going to look like. I have come to realize that "straight-looking" is the best way you can describe yourself if you are unattractive to gay man. I don't fall for such tricks and so when he opened the door, I immediately thought Loser.

There was also the strong smell of pot lacing the air and so, I smoked two puffs off his joint, two puffs too many. I talked to him for a bit about music, art, and vodka before we went into his bedroom. I cannot smoke pot and have good sex. The other times I have smoked before seeing someone, I have ended up coming so quickly, having absolutely no control over when it was going to shoot out. And today, only fifteen minutes after getting there, I kept feeling myself about to come whenever he gave me head. I kept tugging at my penis, taking out of his mouth, trying to prevent myself from coming so soon. And it worked for the most part, but then man, when I was about to come, I started feeling so weird. My entire body was shaking because I felt like I was about to come for five minutes, but didn't, and so was just on that peak of feeling that climax for five minutes which is way too long to experience such a thing and so my body, my right arm especially, was shaking from the effort.

Finally, I jacked myself off on his face after he ate my ass out for a long time. Then I laid by his side and watched the porno playing on his tv, while he held my cock and stared at my body and took what seemed like an incredibly long time to jack himself off. He seems like what will become a regular, telling me he definitely wants to see me again, and even proposing taking me to his house in Connecticut, which I as politely as I could turned down.

Then I felt good and walked down the street, still mildy stoned and went to a couple stores and found myself being so chatty and so friendly with the cashiers, wanting to talk about everything, their day, the cold weather, anything just to try to form some bond with my fellow humans, and despite being paid 150 for just getting a blowjob, I am already again down to 15 dollars somehow. There was a Metrocard which was a decent chunk of that, but then there was a trip to Duane Reed where some unnecessary bath products might have been bought, a trip to the booze store where a decent thing of whiskey was bought, and then of course, Artforum from a newsstand, some cake from La Bonita, and some Chinese food.

I just finished watching another Warren Beatty movie by chance. Jillian and Josh were watching Bonnie and Clyde, which was all right, but which was weird since I was supposed to watch Warren Beatty in Shampoo tonight, but which will probably happen tomorrow and that'll be three Beatty movies in a row, and maybe after tomorrow, after that, I will try to put into words what it is that makes Beatty so hot, how he reminds of various aspects of boys I have obsessed over, some of whom I have even touched, slept next to.

Can I tell you how much I love these pants Jamie gave me? If only I didn't spill oil from a tuna can down the front of them last night. I am still wearing them but now will try to do laundry tomorrow so I will look a little nicer. Just a little.

So I am trying to make some money because I have one dollar in my wallet and negative three in the bank and I think I get paid tomorrow though, so really, I don't need to worry. I just have to ask people to swipe me through the turnstiles, which is sometimes a little scary and bring out the socially anxious person in me. Being told no is like being rebuffed by a boy you like, but normally there is always a nice person with an unlimited card that will swipe me through. And I think it is good for me to get over social and class phobias and put myself out there.

So yeah, I am going to go see a new person tonight which is always kind of scary, and which I don't need to do because I get paid soon and also tomorrow morning I am going to see the 63 year old. But maybe by seeing both of them I can even pay my rent this week this way and still have a little spare cash to maybe buy wine every now and then and rent the rest of the Woody Allen movies I have yet to see.

These pants are amazing and I think a Janet Jackson dance party needs to happen right now in my living room.

according to Gawker, yes - 11 points for me

Are you a Hipster quiz

At one point, it mentions how Pianos is so 2003, but I think all of it is, this fascination with what constitutes a hipster and blah blah blah. Maybe I am older, maybe I have just grown comfortable in this New York scene and no longer view it as an outsider, but I don't think any of it is as big as it was in 2003. Everyone just seems like hanger-ons or people late to the game now. Maybe it's because I am in love with my DVD player now and never really venture anywhere, other than 1920's Kansas.

Last night, I watched Elia Kazan's Splendor in the Grass, and it was really good. Natalie Wood's character is a boy crazy mess that I am able to sympathize with a little too well, especially since she is crazy, literally nuts over Warren Beatty. Beatty is so fucking hot. Adele and I kept commenting on his hotness throughout the movie, and in his younger years, he had that inexpressable manly quality that made him so hot, those DSLs, that cockiness, that stand offishness, - man, he makes me weak in the knees watching him on the screen.

I also finished Philip Roth's The Professor of Desire last night and it was good, better than a lot of other books, but still not particularly good for Philip Roth. The plot's big timeline seems too disjointed and something never really seems to click about the book, but of course, I still read it so quickly, in love with his style of writing, in love with lots of things he says. Now: shower, food, a new book (but which one?), and life. I am alive and I don't know what to do sometimes with that overwhelming burden, that surely something must be done before I expire, that it is all so fucking short, but God help me, I don't even have even one good answer.

"i was lying in my bed last night, staring at a ceiling full of stars"

Sometimes my snap judgments are totally stupid and prevent me from experiencing lots of beauty, saying I don't like Antony and the Johnsons for the past year just because I really did not enjoy their video for "Hope There's Someone," saying it perhaps just to have an opinion on the matter and fortifying that opinion by my behavior just for the sake of consistency, so never actually listening to him in any serious fashion, but man, to everyone I told that I didn't like them, I understand if you thought that I was an idiot or had bad taste or no soul, because you would have to not to appreciate this album, I Am a Bird Now.

Adele bought the LP yesterday and it was playing when I got home from work, from leaving work early and walking home from the subway in the start of what was supposed to be a big snowfall, but turned out to be nothing. The snow was falling in front of streetlights and I was already revising something I had been saying earlier like a jerk, that I hated it when it snowed, because who could not be moved to glee at the start of snow and seeing it pass in front of sources of light and gently falling on you and thinking of earlier moments in your life when this, falling snow and the likelihood of no school gave free reign to your desire to play and to live, when all this is stirred again by the sight of snowfall it renders all that earlier tough talk a lie, a silly, silly lie.

I came out of this snow already so happy and so sad and so everything all at once and this album was playing and like my earlier back pedaling of what I had said about snow, I realized that this is such a perfect sound and it made me so happy, seemed the perfect soundtrack to that moment. I was, in fact, said when she changed it after it was over to play another record she had got that day. There is this one song, "Fistful of Love," that I have been playing over and over again today. It is so fucking beautiful I don't even know how to go about talking about, other than that it has me alternately swaying around my living room, slow dancing with myself, in love with the feel of how these new pants Jamie gave me hang off my hips, from that to sitting and eyes watering trying to sing along with it. It builds so perfectly from this slow song to this slow song with horns and it is so magical, so this melancholy soul song. It is like so many things I have heard before, but like so many things I have heard before and loved.

Last night, I tried to play Risk with Adele and Gregg, and though I had been so excited about playing this game for the first time, no one knew how to play and no one was really eager enough to learn how to, and so the game ended right after we had set up the board, everyone giving up all at once. Gregg took some pictures of my bedroom and then some of me, and I was so uncomfortable and pained during this because I am comfortable in my own skin until I become aware of it. Until a camera is pointed at me or someone talks close to me and insists on making eye contact. You may have noticed this, but when I talk to people most openly, I don't look directly at them. Sometimes I hate the fact that we have these human bodies. I don't like that I have to feed it to be comfortable, that I can't read sometimes because my hunger distracts me, don't like that my skin frustrates me, don't really like any part of it until I am dancing or until I get a boner and play with that.

The Princeton Review ran out of work last night and they don't get their next shipments of tests in for a week. They may call some people into work before then, so hopefully I will be one of those, but otherwise, now I am forced to worry again about my finances. Because now this next paycheck will be less than half of what I thought it would be, which is going to make paying rent a struggle and means I am going to have to live more frugally right as I was about to go on a spending spree with this week's paycheck, ignoring rent and buying things I really want, and instead paying with my next check. The list I had been making in my notebook, like a little Christmas list, me being my own Santa and Christmas being this pay day, this Thursday: one of those Italian stovetop coffee makers that make really thick brews, a nice winter jacket, boots for when it snows, a monthly subway card, the year end Artforum, a humidifier, more jazz records from The Thing, tickets to see Grizzly Bear this Friday. Really, the only necessary thing in there is the subway card, and if I didn't get all those other things, rent would not be too much of a problem this month, but ugh, how I want them, and how less special this early Christmas/payday will be - it will be just a bunch of ill fitting clothes I never plan on wearing, one of those Christmases.

Today was sunny and the little bits of snow on rooftops around me glowed and everything looked so beautiful from these windows with this record playing and this Philip Roth book I am reading.

Oh, Camille. It's been three or so years since you left Salon and yet, not much has changed. She has a new piece of criticism up on Salon, critiquing the new Madonna album, and while it is always, at the least, entertaining to read her, it is now past the point where I would become frustrated with her, past the even earlier point when I used to adore her at 18 and 19, looking forward to her columns in Salon every month, revering her as an academic idol, to now where I can't even muster the will to care, to be frustrated by her broad generalizations, polemical dismissals of everything, self-promoting, telling us again and again how she was ahead of the curve and did this in 1990, her almost parody of Harold Bloom academic speak (her mentor), play the Camille drinking game for every time she says "dionysian" and be totally wasted [Bonnie pointed out how much she uses this word to me last night], her shrillness - now I just roll my eyes and say Oh, Camille.

She is worth reading, even if she is absurd to the nth degree, if not just for that reason and it was when she left Salon that the publication started to really go downhill, when my daily checking of it turned into weekly, turned into monthly, and now, this is probably the first time I have been back to the site in close to a year - maybe she will revive some of the steam, readership, and writing Salon used to have back in those heady days before we all stopped reading long form pieces on the internet, and instead just read the blogs summarizing those pieces: Gawker, Bookslut, Maud Newton, Wonkette.

Despite her flawed history of the current and past music scene, her reading of current cultural trends, of pop culture is still amazing, something that doesn't get done enough - intelligent readings of these pop trends. The only other commentator who I think is as astute and fun to read is no longer writing in a regular forum, Richard Goldstein. He may still be writing, but I have not come across it since his dismissal from The Village Voice, and in amazing news, more reason to think low of how that publication is being run besides their poor treatment of its writers, its disputes with the paper's union, and its recent merger, are that Goldstein is suing the publication for sexual harrassment and you can read his detailed claim on The Smoking Gun.

And actually, there is one other source that I think still produces amazing commentary every now and then in the guise of a record review, and this isn't me being an indie snot, but Pitchfork quite often has words of wisdom about current cultural trends, as I was forced to admit last week in their excellent review of Music from the O.C., Mix 5.

When I roll my eyes at Camille Paglia, I am also rolling my eyes at aspects of my own personality that I am now able to recognize and no longer like as much. Obviously, my early adoration of her in those important years had at least some influence on my own rhetorical style, a smug self-righteousness that I try to couch in references to works of art, a high minded appreciation of pop products, a tendency to dismiss things vehemently that disagree with my own thoughts, and a habit of theatrically overstating things. Despite it all, I am glad she is back on the scene.

I just masturbated, did so with the lights on because I am not tired, not going to bed and I like to occasionally look at my penis down there, and afterward lying in my bed, I got a whiff from my armpit and smelled my pretty pungent b.o. and thought to that Whitman line, "these armpits, aroma finer than prayer," thought to whether or not I should worry if my neighbors can see me lying naked in bed since I don't have curtains of any kind of my window and I can see other people's rooms, apartments from my bed - but back to the pit and the smell coming out of it - lately, for two weeks at least, I have not worn deodorant. I ran out of it a while ago, and even that, Tom's was never that good, so I have always been a little smelly, but without, so smelly and I was in love with the smell now and surely this is not good, this will not attract boys to me, not that that happens even when I don't stink but this could be the final nail in the coffin of isolating myself socially by not caring that I smell, in fact, embracing it, this smell, this me that I try to sanitize. And CBS Evening News is doing a special weeklong series of reports on the possible link between antiperspirant and breast cancer all this week and maybe soon I won't be alone in my smelliness. A nation of evening news watchers all embracing Tom's also and being always mildly smelly.

I watched more awful tv today that I care to admit, close to ten hours and not one thing worth telling you about, and now, I have guilt about it, am full of a little self loathing, but just a little because there is quite a bit of coffee pulsing through my system. I smell and I love it. There is a little snow on the ground and supposedly there will be much more come Tuesday morning when I wake up. During all this tv watching, something that I should be even more embarrassed to admit than the fact that I watched Stepmom, I am going to confess that I was really turned on by a commercial for Axe cologne. They are always the most absurd commercials, marketing sex of some sort, sexual attractiveness, that it is essentially Spanish Fly, and yet today, knowing this, I was still so turned on watching this chiseled shirtless guy spray it all over his chest before going out, and surely I would hate anyone that wore cologne, let alone that much of it, but the sight of his body blinded me to my current vogue for promoting b.o. and allowed me to see past the fact that this boy was the enemy, campaigning for opposing forces that try to have us smelling like synthetic chemicals of some sort or another. But yes, turned on and for the next couple hours, daydreamed about other boys. This was just the spark, this Axe boy that lit that fire for desire of boys in general and I thought to a few, thought back to Halloween boy again and continued to curse myself for not getting his number or anything, thought to friends, thought to how much I wish I had someone in my phone I could call right now for sex that I would want to have sex with and how they would oblige, how they would want it to. But that wasn't in my phone and that's why I spent so much time watching tv with my roommate, even with her there, still so alone, no boy in my bed waiting with his penis there, that chest there, that body there, that b.o. there, only the absence of it and I longed for this and more inexpressable things, at least as easily so in terms of pure erotic visual imagination, some unerotic things, but some things that make the idea of life seem fulfilling and yours seem not so when you are watching bad television for no reason at all on a Sunday morning, afternoon, and night only because there are not only no better options, but no options. I proved myself wrong on that point just before sitting here, that there are other options, but surely I would have been doing that earlier had not all my roommates been out in the living room, and my door made of the flimsiest glass.

If I have to take a number two really badly because this is how my bowels work, that I eat Raisin Bran and coffee for breakfast and then poop a lot, if I do do this even if we do not have running water, will it flush? Will the toilet be empty afterward? Will my roommates be disgusted? Will I? Should I just hold out for two hours until I go to work? Oh life, you and your deep questions.

I got some sleep. I drank lots of coffee and am listening to Billy Joel and basically, I feel pretty amazing. Maybe the Philip Roth before bedtime had something to do with it also.

What I also love is how my landlord's son came upstairs to tell me that they were going to be working on the pipes today and were going to turn off the water in about half an hour for a few hours, telling me this so that I could use water beforehand. What I love even more so is how not even five minutes later, the water was turned off.

MFK Fisher - How to Cook a Wolf

I woke up at six this morning, went into the shower as it was still dark outside, and saw dawn already spread across the sky when I came out of the bathroom. Being awake for the transition to day always makes me self-satisfied in some way, surely because it is a pleasure that I allow myself too infrequently, do not allow myself it because of its unpleasurable aspects, mainly getting out of my warm bed and facing this cold world.

Work goes by so much quicker in those morning hours when you are still only half awake and by the time you are finally awake and alert, your workday is pretty much over. I should try to work more morning shifts, or at least the occasional one to enjoy this pleasure, to shake up my routine of rising late.

After work, I don't know what I did. It is just as much a blur as those early hours spent at work. I listened to records and read on my couch and ate some food and played on the internet. I just finished MFK Fisher's How to Cook a Wolf, and parts of it were really amazing. I have always heard stellar things about Fisher's prose. I believe Edmund Wilson called her the best prose writer in America at one point. Now I cannot find this quote that I swear I read blurbed somewhere no matter how much I google it. And so she has been on my list of people to read for a while, and now I want to get my hands on a couple of her other books. Particularly, The Gastronomical Me and Serve it Forth. This particular book I just read was written during the ration periods of WWII and talks about how to still live pleasurably even under tough circumstances, how it is necessary if we are to retain what makes us humans, what distinguishes us from beasts. It is such a pleasure to read some of her sentences praising the act of eating, but also, painful sometimes. Especially reading late at night in bed. This book, these recipes, made me so hungry at such bad times. The problem I also have watching the Food Network. I enjoy it but it makes me long for food I cannot afford, time wise or money wise. Below, some quotes.

********************************


Probably the most satisfying soup in the world for people who are hungry, as well as for those who are tired or worried or cross or in debt or in a moderate amount of pain or in love or in robust health or in any kind of business huggermuggery, is minestrone. -38

I suggest that anyone who acknowledges the value of good cookery in a life deliberately full of love, happiness, and health (that is, anyone who cares about human dignity!) read several other books and from them and this one and most of all from himself produce his own decision [as to the best way to cook a recipe]. -124

It is a sinful waste of human thought and energy and deep delight, to teach little children to pretend that they should not care or mention what they eat. How sad for them when they are men! Then they may have to fight, or love, or make other children, and they won't know how to do it fully, with satisfaction, completely, because when they were babies they wanted to say, "Oh, what a fine soup!" and instead only dared murmur, "More, please, Papa." -166

After listing various ways to cover up stinky kitchen smells, she concludes her list, by tartly and hilariously saying this:
And if you are somebody I do not know and furthermore do not care if I ever meet, you can burn a little cone of incense.

Or you can broil the meat, fry the onions, stew the garlic in the red wine ... and ask me to supper. I'll not care, really, even if your nose is a little shiny, so long as you are self-possessed and sure that wolf or no wolf, your mind is your own and your heart is another's and therefore in the right place. -173

MFK Fisher - How to Cook a Wolf

I woke up at six this morning, went into the shower as it was still dark outside, and saw dawn already spread across the sky when I came out of the bathroom. Being awake for the transition to day always makes me self-satisfied in some way, surely because it is a pleasure that I allow myself too infrequently, do not allow myself it because of its unpleasurable aspects, mainly getting out of my warm bed and facing this cold world.

Work goes by so much quicker in those morning hours when you are still only half awake and by the time you are finally awake and alert, your workday is pretty much over. I should try to work more morning shifts, or at least the occasional one to enjoy this pleasure, to shake up my routine of rising late.

After work, I don't know what I did. It is just as much a blur as those early hours spent at work. I listened to records and read on my couch and ate some food and played on the internet. I just finished MFK Fisher's How to Cook a Wolf, and parts of it were really amazing. I have always heard stellar things about Fisher's prose. I believe Edmund Wilson called her the best prose writer in America at one point. Now I cannot find this quote that I swear I read blurbed somewhere no matter how much I google it. And so she has been on my list of people to read for a while, and now I want to get my hands on a couple of her other books. Particularly, The Gastronomical Me and Serve it Forth. This particular book I just read was written during the ration periods of WWII and talks about how to still live pleasurably even under tough circumstances, how it is necessary if we are to retain what makes us humans, what distinguishes us from beasts. It is such a pleasure to read some of her sentences praising the act of eating, but also, painful sometimes. Especially reading late at night in bed. This book, these recipes, made me so hungry at such bad times. The problem I also have watching the Food Network. I enjoy it but it makes me long for food I cannot afford, time wise or money wise. Below, some quotes.

********************************


Probably the most satisfying soup in the world for people who are hungry, as well as for those who are tired or worried or cross or in debt or in a moderate amount of pain or in love or in robust health or in any kind of business huggermuggery, is minestrone. -38

I suggest that anyone who acknowledges the value of good cookery in a life deliberately full of love, happiness, and health (that is, anyone who cares about human dignity!) read several other books and from them and this one and most of all from himself produce his own decision [as to the best way to cook a recipe]. -124

It is a sinful waste of human thought and energy and deep delight, to teach little children to pretend that they should not care or mention what they eat. How sad for them when they are men! Then they may have to fight, or love, or make other children, and they won't know how to do it fully, with satisfaction, completely, because when they were babies they wanted to say, "Oh, what a fine soup!" and instead only dared murmur, "More, please, Papa." -166

After listing various ways to cover up stinky kitchen smells, she concludes her list, by tartly and hilariously saying this:
And if you are somebody I do not know and furthermore do not care if I ever meet, you can burn a little cone of incense.

Or you can broil the meat, fry the onions, stew the garlic in the red wine ... and ask me to supper. I'll not care, really, even if your nose is a little shiny, so long as you are self-possessed and sure that wolf or no wolf, your mind is your own and your heart is another's and therefore in the right place. -173

September

I was surprised a couple days ago when the NY Times posted its top 100 books of 2005 online and Murakami's Kafka on the Shore was listed, an uneven novel not nearly as good as his past novels, and even more surprised when I read their top 10 list today to see it in the top ten. Surely, some of the book editors are big Murakami fans and just want to see him on the list, looking past how imperfect this book was.

I've read four of the top 100, and two of the top ten. This makes me feel inadequate in some way. I have read far less this year than I have in years past. Part of this is because I no longer work at a bookstore, but that's a weak excuse also. It is also because I have been going out too much, am too in love with other people to ever want to spend time by myself, or perhaps just too un in love with myself to ever went to be alone.

I think John Haskell's American Purgatorio should have been on the list. His really good book was oddly absent from just about any critical coverage even though it is way better than some of the other books I read that got big handjobs in every publication. Thinking of you, Mr. Kunkel.

September was really good, considering it was one of his dramas, which I normally hate.

I am out of coffee. Sorry.