Today I did my laundry and read the current issue of The New Yorker cover to cover for perhaps the first time ever. There are normally two pieces in the magazine that I want to read, and the rest I think I should read, that they would be good for me, that I want to be the type of person that reads these articles about global warming and about Richard Meier and his attempts at building in Rome. And today, I felt good because I acted the role of that person successfully, managed to read all the articles in the issue which I bought just to read the new Haruki Murakami story which wasn't even that good.

But now I have guilt. I am convinced I can do nothing without guilt, cannot do anything without thinking that that was a distraction, that I should have been doing something else. I realize that I read this magazine to distract myself from the unfinished reading project that was, that is The Adventures of Augie March, and that, all of my readings, all these books, are distractions from trying to write things. You see, I tell myself, that just this book, that I have to read just this one, finish it and then I will write, that I have to know the dialogue that already exists before I enter it, that this is necessary to write anything good, new, or true. And really those are more excuses, more lies to keep me from feeling guilty and if I could come up with better excuses than I would, but they would become tired too and I would soon feel guilty again.

Today I felt more lonely than I have in a really long time, was stir crazy and the evidence of this is that I did laundry, a task I never do, ever. Dara is on spring break in Florida and I don't even interact with her that much but her absence is the one sure human interaction I had just about every day. Diana moved to Nantucket a few days ago, which is probably good for me in some sense since everyday was turning into a drunken Scrabblefest, but now I feel her absence when I am bored and wish that she was still downstairs to go hang out with. I am really so terribly bored and I look through my phone which has lots of numbers in it, but I don't want to call any of the people in it. I come across the numbers of friends who don't live here, Bonnie, Peter, and those are the numbers I wish I could call, that I could hang out with those people. I need to make some new friends.

I masturbated three times today. That is not healthy. It is just not. Try applying that sex positive stuff to it and you're just a liar. You only jack off this much when you are really depressed, lonely, and bored. I felt like I was in tenth grade again, masturbating because I really didn't have anything else to do and didn't want to know it. It wasn't so much out of horniness, as an attempt to suppress the sense of miserableness that always seemed about to declare itself.

Last night, out of the same sense of boredom and stir craziness, I got stoned off the rest of the pot that old man gave me and I had amazing thoughts and I am new to this whole getting stoned thing and this, most of you are well aware of, but I want so much to have my motor skills functioning at the same level as my thoughts because I lied in bed and thought about my interactions with people, with friends, acquaintances, and crushes and thought about rhythm, how various people have different rhythms, rhythms of thinking, of talking, of acting, and you have to find someone you are in sync with for harmony, for you to feel good, and it is why it feels forced with some people. There is nothing the either of you could do or should do except say you are slower, or you are faster than me and say good bye, that it is stupid otherwise. And I thought many other things that I thought would be so genius if I could remember them or record them somehow, but stoned, I cannot even talk and make sense. Everything has such a beautiful nonverbal logic in my head and it is wishing that I could communicate that into a verbal form, somehow remember that sober, that I long for stoned.

What is it that we have inside us that needs outlet in another human being? Because I did not talk to anyone today in person besides my landlord for a brief moment, I feel somehow burdened, that there is something that needs release. And I masturbated three times today and that did not release it. I am going to go to bed probably with it still there.

Niki just asked me what is wrong with me, and really I don't know what the cause is but I don't feel like doing anything ever. There is no place more comfortable to me than my own apartment and even when I do go out, I cannot wait to get back to my apartment. I had been really excited about the gallery openings happening tonight and had made plans with three different people to go with them, Paul, Joe, and Niki. I just cancelled plans with all three of them. I didn't want to see anybody I knew, telling all three of them different reasons because there aren't really any reasons and I was grasping at plausible ones, trying to see if they were true. Television is a depressent and surely, the fact that I watched eight epidoes of The O.C. yesterday and four today had something to do with this. I really feel tired and exhausted and the only exercise I did today, the only thing even close to physical exertion was taking the trash down three flights of stairs to the curb. And yet, I am tired and moody. Luckily, I finished all the episodes and so now hopefully I can stay away from the couch, from that television. I hope so, but who knows. Maybe I should just go to galleries and get over this stupidness. Maybe the Whitney. Maybe Jillian just got home and I should turn off the stereo which is blaring the Gossip, has been blaring it on repeat for the past couple hours, and the album is probably only about twenty minutes long. That is what type of day it is.

Last night was a gin and tonic night. I had a couple watching television and then a couple more at Boysroom. In between the ones downed in my living room and the ones downed at the bar, I stopped at Niki's store where she gave me a shirt to wear, a shirt with her face on it. The color scheme is pink and black on white and it totally looks like something that might have come from H & M two years ago, but that is also why it is awesome, how trendy it kind of looks. The fact that we were wearing matching t-shirts also added to the humor.

I just downloaded five songs and I don't know why because they have made me talk with all these insecure qualifiers, why I just said "how trendy it kind of looks," and not something else and the wind has picked up. It is brushing against my windows loudly, so I could blame the weather also, but I really wanted to hear these songs and now I have and now I don't feel so hot. I thought these songs would prick something, make me happy, but they have killed something, pricked a general numbness that I had managed to keep in regression for a good few years now. The songs:

Oasis - Wonderwall
Oasis - Champange Supernova
Spacehog - In the Meantime
Garbage - Stupid Girl
Garbage - Queer

And they all make me sad for different reasons that singular as they are, are not too distinct from each other, they all have the roots in the same time period, the same place.

There have been spring showers this week, quick and sunny afterward, and walking around in that afterward is one of the joys this life has, the smell of wet sidewalks and trees in bloom. I fucking love it.

In a few hours, I will miss The O.C. because I will be uptown pissing and getting a blowjob from this guy who is basically paying all my bills. This will be my third time seeing him since last Thursday. That is 450 in one week from the same person. Plus he has been getting me stoned and playing nontypical sex music choices. First time, Dylan. Second time, Bach. I am wondering what, if anything, he will play today.

I woke up at five this morning without too much trouble. These are the only times I clearly ever remember waking up at this hour, trips out of town, an early morning flight, a road trip, or in the case this morning, a train to Connecticut to attend the mass for Paul. These early morning trips have conditioned me to get excited, filled with anticipation of both a trip and a destination, that things will be seen, felt. This morning getting ready, I had the same vaguely formed thoughts of setting out on a journey. I came across the concept of psychogeography the other day and thoughts vaguely related to what I understand this concept to be materialized in my head and vanished just as quickly as Jamie and I rode through a gray morning, passing trees and houses that looked very specific to their place, to this day.

Before we went into the church, I got really nervous because this was it and I had a gigantic cup of coffee that had my nerves on edge and my stomach in turmoil. We sat in a pew about halfway back right before the service started. The wooden coffin was carried in and I could feel my leg shaking against the pew behind me. I couldn't control it. My legs were shivering and there was this wooden coffin, so large seeming, there was Paul inside it coming down the aisle. The mass of the thing, the physical presence, longness and broadness of it affected me so much. The main parts of the mass were said in Polish which allowed my thoughts to wander and take their own route sans verbal guidance from the priest, thinking about Jesus, Emerson, and Whitman and things they have said. Brian gave a nice tribute that I realized is what I needed, what I perhaps would have benefited from had it been an entirely English mass. Words do it for me like not much else is capable of in this world and hearing him tell stories about Paul made the thing that much more real. My eyes were watering which never happens and the coffee and the nervousness and the thoughts about life and the absence of it lifted my stomach right to the back of my throat. It was a physical pain brought on by mental exhaustion brought on by listening to Brian's words.

And after the mass on the train ride back home, I remembered vague digressions by John Moore on the role of catharsis in drama and what Aristotle said about it. That we are cleansed by this catharsis, this emotional exhaustion, where we don't know whether to laugh or cry, have been so exhausted and we let those feelings out. It felt good afterward and I think this is why, that there were thoughts that needed to be thought, things that needed to be mourned and I allowed myself to do that. I feel really good after I exercise and this was a not all too distinct feeling, this emotional exercise. We passed over rivers. We sat in the obsolete dining car. There was a bar no longer in use that reminded me of Tom Burr's "Blackout Bar." There are ghosts and whispers about what change means in a non-functioning bar on an overcrowded train passing through the gray rainy morning. But there were kids in our car who whispered stronger things to me. It's a game of telephone, the whispers are always changing, the message is. This or that person is a jerk. To a large extent, you are hearing, I am, we are - what we want to hear.

A few weeks ago, Jamie tried to push me along and tell me I should write things. People tell me this often. I tell myself this often. It is normally only when I see some of my peers doing this that I get really excited, motivated perhaps by some sort of competition to keep up with my peers, and smartly, she told me that Paul was writing, and forwarded me an email he sent her with links to his stuff. It is all at Recharge Magazine, and you can find it by searching his last name. Here are the ones that he sent Jamie links to, and that she in turn sent me links to:

The Brave New World of Teen Marketing

The Sexuality of the Iraq War

And he linked to this one first, an obituary of Hunter S. Thompson, below the link he said this to Jamie who in case you don't understand is a Dylan fanatic, "This guy's death was like Dylan dying for you. So It spawned I think my best piece so far." It is weird reading this obituary again today, seeing parallel readings. They are good and they did inspire, albeit momentarily, me to get serious about writing, about sumbitting to these things. The clouds are starting to come in. It is supposed to rain tonight and tomorrow, to pour. Tomorrow, I am going to try with her to catch a train to go the mass way early in the morning.

I was going to try to go to Paul's wake today, was figuring out how to navigate Metro North trains online, and rushing from our apartment to my room down the hall to get dressed for the only train that would get me there in time when I see someone ascending the stairs to our floor. I pause, not even having my contacts in, but recognizing trouble, a bald black man carrying around electronics equipment. I stare at him and am above him and am lucky that this interaction did not occur a minute later when we were on equal footing, or when he opened our unlocked door to our living room. Flustered, he tells me he's selling VCR's and video games. I tell him I don't want any and am too tired, too just waking up to be scared and stare at him until he walks downstairs. I go back into the living room, lock the door, and call the police.

Within minutes a swarm of police are at my building. I give them a description, talk to them. They bust into Dara's room because I was downstairs at the time, waking her up with a gun. I talk to my frazzled landlords who were all home on the first floor at the time. And soon the police have the guy. I ID him. The landlord agrees to press charges for trespassing, and then more talking to police and landlords. And now I have missed my chance of catching that 12:07 train and the next one is not till 4:45.

Before noon, I am responsible for someone's arrest. It is not a way to start the day. And I am not sure that this bears mentioning amongst death and arrests, but yesterday I did some sex work. The guy got me stoned and I got a blowjob and a rimjob while listening to Bob Dylan, which he was blaring in the falling light of the day and it was an incredible experience. That life contains so much, all of this, these potential and realized feelings is awesome in the true sense, that I am just silenced with awe when I try to grasp it.

fyi

I was stoned, am stoned because today is April 20, and there wasn't a reason yesterday besides that of boredom and the onset of warm weather. And the gall to do this in the face of so much misery that this stuff causes, the hubris to drink and smoke all day for the past week with the evidence of my dad in jail, in a hosptial bed dying of lung cancer, an alcoholic uncle, and to do this, to do so much stupid stuff just to exercise a sort of privilege, that I can afford to take these liberties with my body and my amount of time happily inside it. It just seems like the most juvenile sort of privilege to do this when the risks are presented too explicitly. I felt like absolute shit reading about Paul M.'s overdose last night, that another one of my peers is dead in what seems like too quick a succession of years.

He was set to be my downstairs neighbor in a couple weeks when Diana moved to Nantucket. I don't know what that means, what death does. When you hear news, bad news, there is that terrible silence where your heart drops and the delay before you catch your breath and your heart again rises is so terribly long that in that brief moment you wonder if that moment is going to come, of if this right here is the bit of news that is going to do your heart in for good, that this time might be the time your heart just doesn't have enough elastic to make that bounce back, but it does. And with perhaps just the slightest bit of regret that that was not in fact the end of world, that you are still breathing makes your heart beat fast for those minutes afterward when this fleeting knowledge of the world and what time means or might mean passes as soon as the initial shock does, and sometimes you are walking down the street, on my way to get ice cream, the aftershocks of that initial shock are still vibrating out and you will get a pang as a car passes you too closely and you vaguely recall the permanent injury of a kid in your neighborhood hit by car and the fragility of it all, made vulnerable to the wind brushed against you by the passing car. And the sun is out. I walked to the store for junk food with this news in my head and the sun on my legs because I was in shorts and that amazed me. Sad news makes me happy in a singular way, that the fragileness is the ugly thing that we curse, but the thing that gives them beauty. Wallace Stevens inspired, sure, "Death is the mother of beauty," and the shortness makes everything so much more prettier, that they soon won't be. And I veered between this happiness and this grief on my walk in the sun and I don't know what to say, think it might be better to say nothing, but I have passed that point long ago.

annie's set list

Her encore was "Heartbeat."

The night started with drinks at Supreme Trading. They played Annie's "Chewing Gum" as we were leaving and that was a good sign. Then lots of Bacardi downed at Fischerspooner. A brief drumming performance and Casey remembered me and I told him who I was about to go see. Surprisingly, he didn't know who Annie was. Pizza and then Tribeca Grand where our drinking delays served us well. We got there right as the lights were being dimmed and the stage was getting ready. I danced a lot and sang along and Debbie from Avenue D was dancing next to us totally out of control the whole show. We were in the one little pocket of dancing. I think most people were there just to see her New York (US?) debut and stood around. A decent number of people left after her set and did not even wait for her to do her encore of "Heartbeat", which meant I got to get closer to dance and had more fun dancing since it was mainly the dancers and the fans that stayed.

If you go having high expectations, you tend to make the performance good, unless it is totally awful, a sort of willful self-delusion where you overlook lots. So I cannot say if the show was awesome, or if it was just my excitement that made it awesome, but I had a really good time. "The Wedding Song" was so cheesy. Chorus: "Will you marry me? I do. I do. I do." But still lovely pop. "Heartbeat" was awesome because it contained melancholy and that exuberant mania of synth-pop. It somehow managed to hold the both. Such a delicate mix that song and it blew me away and made me feel so many things, sadness for things and happiness for those same things.

PS - I am almost tempted to go Misshapes this week since she is DJing.

In just a few short hours, unless things go terribly wrong, say me getting hit by a car, or there being an insanely long line of people on the guest list and the doorguys closing off the line, I will be seeing and listening to Annie. In a few short minutes, I am going to start the booze train at Supreme Trading where there is some film party with free booze and then that Fischerspooner thing with free booze, and then it will culminate with Annie! I am listening to her now and getting so excited about dancing like a maniac, losing my shit.

I just reread the Pitchfork review of her, which I know I have already linked to once, but it is an amazing piece of writing and so I am linking to it again. Things I read and think are amazing rarely hold up when I reread them months later. For instance, Jerry Saltz. I used to be totally smitten with him, but now think his writing is pretty average and sometimes pretty awful. But this review says lovely things about pop music and it makes me so happy. I am so fucking excited you don't even know. No one better come between me and Annie tonight, otherwise someone is going to be drop kicked.

Yesterday was a good day. The good things:

I won a game of Scrabble against Diana.
I did another jack off video for that website.
Ran into Karen on the subway.
Fell in love with a boy on the subway.
Met with a cool porn director about work.
Went to the Strand, talked to people I miss, and bought
The Adventures of Augie March.
I later bought some fancy cigarettes.
It was sunny yesterday.

Tell me that is not an awesome day! Today could totally suck and it would not matter one bit because tomorrow is going to be awesome also and so it will be like today didn't even exist, bookended by these two amazing days. And today may even turn out to be awesome as well, in which case, look out. It probably will be since I am so excited about tomorrow and some combination of galleries, Fischerspooner, and Annie. So yeah, look the fuck out, here I come, world!

Who wasn't in this dream? That isn't as important as who was, even if that was - who it is I remember from the dream, the person that left me waking up feeling lonely. Longing for someone first thing in the morning alone in your bed is no way to wake up. It was a completely non-sexual dream, perhaps a completely non-sexual longing that I woke up with up, but for that reason, all the more intense, the more pointed the longing.

It was at a mall, some sort of store I was in, and I saw him and he had this really cute haircut that involved nice sideburns. I asked him who had cut his hair because obviously it was a friend, even in the dream I stuck to these standards, knowing that this is the type of person that doesn't pay to get haircuts. And he told me that Niki's brother cut his hair. I think I wanted to touch the edges of his hair, to feel the nicely trimmed edges. I didn't and soon after I was awake.

This morning, I finished reading this Lionel Trilling essay about Lolita and everything struck me as meaningful. I want to blame this dream and my feelings this morning, my desire for some sort of exciting love on Anais Nin's Henry and June, which I ended up rereading yesterday afternoon because I was bored and it is funny, awesome when you read things and they make you long for a similar feeling. I want to be Henry Miller. I want to be Anais Nin. I want to feel this passion. I feel it in the longing, in the reading of these texts.

This will suggest how far the modern ideal of love if from passion-love. The literal meaning of "passion" will indicate the distance. Nowadays we use the word chiefly to mean an intense feeling, forgetting the old distinction between a passion and an emotion, the former being an emotion before which we are helpless, which we have to suffer, in whose grip we are passive. The passion-lover was a sick man, a patient. (366)

I was reading this of Trilling's and sighing, thinking yes, yes, yes - loving how you can read things, watch movies, hear songs in a day, in a couple of them and they all seem connected, seem to be pointing you somewhere, like a really good horoscope, leading you to think things are forecasting events that might happen, and if not, that should happen

Is this for real? Of course, they are going to get eight million responses, but why not make it eight million and one.

NEED Someone who wants to learn how to design WEBSITEs
Reply to: contact@ovstudios.com
Date: 2005-04-12, 1:20PM EDT


I am looking for a student or someone who wants to learn how to Design websites.
I will teach you how to use photoshop, fireworks, imageready, dreamweaver and you will also learn all the intricacies of the Internet.

The position is part time and will pay $20 an hour.

Contact me via email.

I am now realizing that this is probably because I am not white that I may do some jack off photos for a guy tomorrow posing with a crack pipe. This should probably bother me a lot, but I am broke, and rationalizing it because I have big hair and could pass as a stoner and would be one if I wasn't so broke.

-Hey, whatever happened? I never heard from you again. I still would love to more stuff. Hope to hear from you
Charlie

-hey charlie. sorry. i've been really busy with some other projects. would you be willing to look like you're smoking out of glass pipe that they use for crystal or crack for one shot? we're doing an irreverant issue about drugs and stuff. let me know.
ron

-sure, no problem. sounds funny.

-ok cool. i might have time to do it tomorrow late afternoon or wednesday. whats good for you?

-either one of those times is fine. tomorrow would be better. but wed is cool also.

-ok cool. let's chat tomorrow. can you call me around 3?
ron

I just finished watching Godard's A Woman is a Woman, and I was mildy bored watching it, just like I was when I watched Sympathy for the Devil. Me and you may be finished from now on at the video store, Jean-Luc.

shit yeah!

All right, Annie this Thursday at Tribeca Grand, although none of these blogs, bullentin boards seem to know if it is a DJ set or a performance. I think I am a little late in RSVPing. I hope I can get in. Me heart Annie.

an email just sent to peter that says anything i would said here

Peter,

I just tried sending you a friendster message that I don't think sent, and should perhaps allay my fears and insecurity, and lead me to believe that it is Friendster that is acting up, but really, I am pretty sure that that is not the case, that in fact Matt has deleted my testimonial that I wrote for him a couple months ago. I really think I just need to delete my Frienster account because when slights like this happen they cause me way too much insecurity and fill me with too much self-loathing. If I didn't have a Friendster account, a score of boys would actually probably think I was not a stalker and I might have had chances with them. Might have.

But this, coming so shortly after I slept with him seems so rude, so petty, such a way of letting me know that he does not like me, and does not even want me on his testimonial page, let alone in his bed. Sometimes Friendster messes up testimonials and doesn't show them all, which I am hoping is the case, but really, I don't think it is because I see ones written after and before but not this one.

Why delete my testimonial - why not also unfriendster me? Peter, this is so lame that this distresses me so much and that I know I am probably going to be checking his profile obsessively hoping it magically reappears and that all this insecurity was unnecessary. This would bother me if it was anyone, but this is bothering me so much because, as is not really a secret to you, I really like Matt, almost to the point of idolatry and this definitely stings. I keep meeting cute, nice boys but I am not interested in them because they are aren't somehow sinister. Peter, the people that do it for me lately are perverts, snobs, and drunks. Matt was all three and that is what I want, someone that contains all that.

I don't know what's wrong with me lately. The weather here in NY is awesome lately, lovely cool spring days. I went to the Anthony Goicolea opening last night and saw him, and he wasn't nearly as cute as I had hoped. He was too cute - that was the problem, big toothy smile, well-defined cheekbones, and pretty people make me retch. He looked like Hillary Swank. I watched Part 1 of Angels in America last night. I am going to try to watch Part 2 today. There was something else I wanted to tell you but I don't remember what it was. I'll write or call when/if I do.

Love
Charlie

His apartment was in the West Village. He was a talker. I tend to like these people, the ones who for whatever reason are curious to know about your background, interests, and what you do with yourself. If I am in a hurry or if's it late, I don't really want to chat, but this was in the late afternoon that I was there, he offered me beer. I had some and talked to him before anything happened, still dressed. For some reason, we ended up talking about New York, bookstores closing, people having everything delivered, Fresh Direct and this article that appeared last week in the NY Times about the grocery delivery company. Incredulous, he mocked these people, "'Yeah, I am just too busy to shop for groceries.' Too busy! What are they so busy doing that they can not find ten minutes to shop for food." And I understood what he was talking about, the too busy people, who I don't understand, but whom there are so many of here, people that just don't ever seem to have the time. What they are doing with all of it is a very good question.

The guy undressed me, played with my body, sucked my cock and then we went into his bathtub where I pissed on him. Things then moved to his bed where he sucked me off and I soon was out the door, down the street, headed home. Soon afterward, I went out with Joe to Sin Sin where it was Morrissey night and there was an open bar. We left shortly after the open bar, after dancing to moody British music. There was this guy there in an "Ageing Gracefully" red t-shirt who danced so good. It is sometimes good to go to other scenes, this hodgepodge of Jersey people and lots of scary straight fat people because there was this one boy, this one treasure, and his odd dance moves that I would not have seen at a gay bar. He wore baggy clothes which helped with the effect. It was almost clowish, this jerky sort of up and down movement, mildy robotic that was so graceful and awesome and there is no possible way that I can describe this lanky boy's dance moves. I couldn't even imitate them in person for you. They were that good.

I am continually amazed that spring comes each year. Sometimes I don't think it will. That winter will contiue on, trees will be barren forever, but today, there were some green buds on a couple of the trees on my block, there were daffodils already blooming and each year, it comes, without fail. I sometimes think it won't and am always shocked when I see those first signs of it that life continues in such predictable ways, that things bloom in the spring, always and forever.

Wait, you mean I might, just might be able to hear Annie perform "Chewing Gum" in person, that I won't be playing it on repeat all day, that there is the slimmest of chances that I can hear it in person? Does this make me hipster trash? Reading these posts on boards and thinking this is exciting, even knowing this gossip. Also see yesterday's references to The O.C. and Fischerspooner when considering this question.

Um, I am going to update tomorrow but if I don't, let me just tell you that I hit on numerous people, was hit on by numerous people, including one guy who introduced himself as "Casey." I said, "Whoah! Casey Spooner?" He said yeah, and I said I was creaming my pants even though I think Fisherspooner is stupid. I ran into Casey again, he introduced me to some guy by name and I was impressed that Casey remembered my name an hour after I had met him. Because I was drunk and stupid (as per the usual when drunk) I asked if he would make out with me because I thought it would be really funny to say I made out with Casey Spooner. He said no, said he was committed, and then pointed out the guy he just introduced me to was his boyfriend. That was so funny. He didn't care at all and I asked him if he was going to his afterparty. He said no, but told me that I would see him next week, assuming that I would be coming again to the last week of his salon. I probably will be so I didn't really care about the assumption, but I asked Casey Spooner to make out with me and that is so hilirous and if you don't understand why, you are a twit.

Niki's opening was full of twits. I didn't stay the whole time. Twit is such a great word. I made it home for The O.C., which was awesome and so good in its Risky Business referencing. No, so fucking good! Then Fisherspooner (sp?), which I stole a whole case of Vitamin Water from, and then I went to Alligater Lounge, ate pizza, and sang a horrible, absoultey horrilbe karoake duet with Niki. Now, I am going to pass out in my bed.

grand and keap, across the street from my house

This is after the fire trucks and a large crowd of rubberneckers dispersed. I have been thinking about looking, the act of viewing lately and the politics involved, and this was an excellent place to observe people's need to look. Did not make that money. Don't think I am going to now. I am so scared of Ada.

The race is on. I have countdown five hours to make one hundred dollars if I am to pay my rent in full this afternoon to my landlord's mom who is coming to pick it up and bring it to my landlord in Pennsylvannia. More than likely, I am not going to pay my rent in full and my landlord is going to be annoyed with me. But I will try, will roll the dice on Craigslist for the next couple hours even though it is another gorgeous, mild day and will see if I can land those snake eyes.

Even though last night I knew my situation, I said fuck it, that if my rent is going to be short, it's going to be just a little more short because I am going to go get drunk among homosexuals and party. I went with Joe to the Tainted Lady Lounge where it was queer punk night and it turned out to be basically a Queer Fist convergence. I saw so many people there, so many of those QF people, so many of Luke's friends, plus Wyatt was there snapping pictures. Tom was dancing in these booty shorts. I was drunk and so a little more easily titillated than I am in sober conditions and I clicked my eyes shut again and again, capturing his pretty body that I have dreamed about before so that I could recall those images when I got home. I made out half-jokingly with Adrian.

I am not sure if I like that bar or not. It is small which bars should be because it forces people to touch and talk. But it feels like you are in a restaurant, which is what it really was designed for and what it is for most of the day with tables along the wall and a big glass storefront. We took a break to go check out what may or may not have been a homo night at Capone's, Joe and I, ate free pizza with our two dollar beers and played a game of pool that I lost after doing so well in the beginning. I talked to Zack there and then went back to the Tainted Lady Lounge where I drank more, talked to some people, and then went home, smoking cigarettes along the way. In bed, I had so much fun masturbating to recalled images, living in a depraved fantasy world until I came and passed out.

The reason I am pressed for time today is because lately my name is Al Coholic. The Princeton Review ended last week. I probably should have applied at a temp agency right then, but I am delaying that until Monday, instead going out, drinking, watching movies, television, walking around this town, and this evening there are so many things I want to do. Camille Paglia's doing a reading, there's a hot episode of The O.C. that hopefully I can get my neighbors to tape, there are eight million gallery openings but those I have to miss, will miss because I have to go to Niki's store opening from 6-9, which will be fun and which will involve booze, but which will also probably involve talking to twits. Come and talk to me there. 31 Crosby Street between Broome and Grand. Wyatt said he would come with me and then I am going to go with him to that Fischerspooner thing. Remember when I was making fun of that? Shut up, there's free booze. Yeah, I told you my name. I just want to drink and lose myself to the night, to the joys I have been finding there lately. Party! is the refrain in my head this past week, the past couple of them, and I keep listening to the same Annie song (Chewing Gum), the same Gwen Stefani song (Serious) because that is the mental state I am occupying, this delirious synth-pop party mindset, where all I want to do is have fun of the Cyndi Lauper variety.

str8/straight/h8/eight

It's the one thing that really makes me sad about sex work, the question or the demand, "straight acting?" I berated a person once about it and of course they never wrote me back. I don't understand this notion. What the hell is straight acting? The question just boggles my mind. I am boggled that it is asked, but even more so by the frequency it is asked with, and I will not lie this lie. I will lie other lies for money but this is an ethical issue where I will not continue to eroticize self-hatred. I did at one point. I am past that point in my life and not going to indulge someone else's stupidity and I say No. Ask me if I am bi or straight and I will tell you not that I am gay but something to make you uncomfortable, will tell you I am a faggot, will tell you I like dicks.

Idiot: IF and only if you have a reent face pic
looking for a hottie like you to pin me down and sit on my face and shove my nose in his ass and ride my face like that for an hour...
100 lookig for reg set ups

Me: sounds hot. here's a face pic. let me know.

Idiot: is that what you look like right now
i mean is your hair shorter or longer
are you healthy and str8 acting?
what part fo the city are you in
thanks
peace

Me: that pic was taken probably four days ago but i just cut my hair today, it is still bushy on top but shorter on the sides. i am healthy and QUEER acting. williamsburg.

Idiot: ok thansk inot str8 acting dudes--sorry part of the fetish and all but thanks

And I did cut my hair this afternoon. I was dancing around my living room under the pretense of exercising and my hair was making me so hot, so I chopped off the sides and the back, but it is a little too close in style to a faux-hawk and I might have to take out the scissors again. Today is the most beautiful day ever. I said that yesterday, too. But today was even more awesome. I wore a t-shirt, only a t-shirt outside for the first time since some time last year and it felt naughty, perverse, and so good, the wind in contact with the flesh of my forearms.

This is new. I have occasionally heard Pearl Jam on some classic rock stations, but right now they are playing Nirvana on Q104.3, after a block of Janis Joplin. Has really this much time passed? A block of Nirvana is being played on this wimpy station that normally plays lots of Billy Joel, Beatles, and Elton John. My world is collapsing. This is already nostalgic music for me, the alt rock. I don't need it being marketed as such. If I ever hear Smashing Pumpkins on Q104.3, I seriously do not know what I will do.

PS - If anyone is really into alt-rock of this era, Soundgarden, Spacehog, stuff like that, you should make me a mix CD to help me to write and I would love you forever.

This morning, I walked to this guy's house to jack off on video for some internet site. I was jacking off in his shower, the hot water making me real relaxed, the morning grogginess still hanging over me, and so these in junction plus a lack of sex in a while made me so horny. The guy filming me was real hot. He sucked me off for a bit and I saw a giant boner in his pants and told him to take it out. I played with his dick, with his gorgeous chest, and really had too much fun. I came in his shower, onto his hand, got paid, paid my phone bill and bought a movie (The Warriors) and a CD (an Astrud Gilberto compilation). The sun has broken loose from the clouds of the weekend, the sky is so blue right now. It is still bright out thanks to Daylight Savings Time and I feel good. Some days New York has it. Today is one of those. Walking down the streets today, smelling those carnival smells, sharing cigarettes with strangers, I was totally smitten.

milk

Loneliness is waking up late, past noon, even without the fault of Daylight Savings time coming in to play, and walking to the grocery store because you don’t have any milk to pour on your cereal, and you are replaying the events of the night before, the things that led to the hangover, recalling the disinterest of two boys you had a crush on, and just feeling like shit, gray weather, and you have to walk past all these couples strolling down Grand Street on a Sunday afternoon in early spring arm in arm. Yes, that is what loneliness is.

I still feel like crap, am not all there, blew off an opportunity to make easy money that just required jacking off because of this hangover, because of this malaise, am wondering if I am capable of connecting to other human beings, pretty much knowing the answer to that question, and wondering why that is the case, why I will always be in that role of the person passing these couples, never in their position, seeing the dejected, disheveled person buying a small thing of milk. Not that that is what I desire, not at all, but their conditioned expressions of intimacy make me long for intimacy nonetheless, albeit in different forms, but I still would like to be close to another, to many human beings. Even the friendships I have now here in this town lack intimacy. There is this distance that does not seem to be able to crossed. I have lots of friendships on the most casual level, but no one I can really talk to on the phone for hours, no one I can even talk to in person for hours without my eyes wandering away from their story, or their eyes from mine.

And why is that I am listening to the Smiths in this mood? Why am I even asking that? Duh, because I am in this mood and I don’t know why but there are these songs, these recorded sounds I can put on and feel a little better about this melancholy. Anything is better with a soundtrack.

The events that I was replaying in my head as I went out for milk, they came in flashes of shame out of sequence – I don’t know how to recreate that:

It just really sucks when you like someone and they don’t like you. I mean, it sucks when people that you don’t like don’t like you. It is all the more painful, and all the more damaging to your ego, when it is someone that for whatever reasons you like. First off, I should explain the setting here, give your mind some details, just the most basic ones for you to imagine these scenes in. This is at my friend Daniel’s house, an extremely casual friend who is the perfect example of what I am talking about with my inability to connect with people. I only talk to him when I see him at bars and he every couple months has parties at his house that I attend and banter with him at. This is how so many of my friendships with people are. But yes, this is at his large apartment in Greenpoint. It is an orange party, where everyone was supposed to wear orange. I know most of his circle of friends and so it was nice to see them and say hi to them all and chat with them briefly over beers in an orange setting. I went there with Paul, who is a new friend and I don’t know if it will ever exceed those boundaries of a polite, casual friendship. I am sort of doubtful that it will. You know when you are first becoming friends with someone and you have yet to develop a level of rapport, of comfort. Conversations are sometimes strained and I think that we have different levels of seriousness, of humor, and if you are not aligned with someone in that respect, then all bets are off. That is something that can never be reconciled.

At the party, I see in a big, orange winter coat, Charlie, the boy I have written about in here, about my crush on him, the boy I have sent drunk Friendster messages to saying I wanted to make out. I am recalling some snippets of conversation exchanged with him and cringing. There were only snippets. Every time I tried to talk to him, and I tried so many times, it was always brief and he found polite and impolite ways of excusing himself after a few sentences. I was in a bouncy, giddy mood because two of my crushes were in the same room with me, and I did not expect to see either of them there and so I was bouncy and giddy and I bounced up to Charlie until he told me to stop. That’s the beginning of my separation from the human community, the first baby steps into this melancholy loneliness. Later our paths crossed again. I made my path intersect his path and we talked some more. “Sorry for harassing you on Friendster.” “No, don’t be sorry. I don’t mind being harassed online. I just don’t like being harassed in person.” The steps into that other world are no longer baby steps. I am taking giant leaps and bounds, looking back at that other world, wondering why I fail so miserably in it.

The other crush was a party crasher, did not know the people and so his entrance was totally surprising for me, especially since I had been nervously anticipating running into Matt, wondering what our first interaction would be like after that drunken sexual encounter of a week or so ago. After I gave him that blowjob, I played with that as the setup for a short story and the crux of the story being the two’s next encounter in public and how both of them were wondering if they should apologize and how both were hoping that the other wouldn’t apologize, that just by saying that, a simple “sorry about the other night,” that that would make the encounter into something shameful. The entire story, which, of course, never got written, was going to be this tension and guilt in between these two encounters. That they would bookend the story, but the whole story would be about the interpretation of events first solitary and scared about the next interaction with the other character from the story, worrying about how if they had a different reading of events, it could throw your story, your history into total flux.

That was all bullshit and invented melodrama, as pretty much everything I contrive tends to be. Our interaction was so anticlimactic after I had worked out this whole story setup in my head. He was totally wasted and giggly and not there and I talked to him about Singin’ in the Rain, which I had just watched. There was no mention of that night. Anytime I talked to him, I barely had his attention. You would never have known observing our conversation that at one time we were regular sex partners, and perhaps that is good. I don’t know. I still have a gigantic crush on him that I can’t conceal when he is near. I get so giddy and jump a lot, talk faster, get wide-eyed, and so happy.

And when I get green seeing these couples walk down the street, it is not because I want someone to hold my hand also, it is just because I want to be able to sustain that giddy, happy excited feeling I get when I see a crush. It is because way too often, the results aren’t a sustained happiness, but a crushed one, a fucking I am going to take my steel-toed Docs and jump up and down, fucking smash your happiness to pieces. Tell you to walk home without that feeling, take this pathetic feeling and wear that home, loser. It sucks so much how quickly your optimism, your happiness can fade, that you can approach a situation so happy and within moments have perplexed eyebrows as you see your train come to a crashing halt.

I bought some awful Japanese cigarettes on the way home last night because I wanted to do something, to exhaust myself physically. I smoked them against the cold wind blowing on me and sneaked into the McCarren pool park because everytime I had been there it had been magical and I think I was hoping that if I could enact the scene right, I would feel the role, that doing this act would make my night something magical. It kind of did but I think I was too aware of what I was aiming for to enjoy it. I am not sure Paul enjoyed it. He told me earlier in the night that he hates walking.

Today, after I went and got milk for my cereal, I ended up eating a bagel instead.

I was walking down Third Avenue yesterday and these guys were gutting out a theater, throwing all those red, plush seats and seat backs into a dumpster waiting on the street. I saw the seat and seat backs, this mass of red velvet before I realized what it was, before more were tossed on to the pile and I realized what this was I was looking at. I thought there must be some creative use for these chair pieces. I couldn't think of any. I thought of ghosts and progress and continued walking.

Whenever I was on the train yesterday, I stepped out of this New York world and lost myself in Philip Roth's, was taken somewhere. I am getting high reading The Human Stain. I love when books give you that feeling.

Last night, I went to galleries with JS and there was/is some really amazing stuff. Margaret Evangeline's "paintings" (shot up pieces of metal) were mildly scary, but so beautiful. Luckily, JS was there because her mind works in a great way, making analogies and associations that I would never think of. She compared them to acne and constellations. I really liked both of those associations. Larry Clark's "Teenage Lust" was at ClampArt and I like this series but it was hung and framed so horribly. They are framed in these gray frames that are totally inappropriate and I couldn't even focus on the photos because of it.

Pat Steir's show at Cheim and Read was so nice after the Clark show just because that gallery is so elegant. The work was good, but perhaps only because it was so large. Chuck Close was there. The wine at this gallery was so excellent. So excellent and not just because normally galleries serve horrible white wine. This was the yummiest white wine I think I have ever had and of course, I didn't find out what it was.

There were some good group shows of young artists and I don't remember any of those artists names but there is some good stuff in Chelsea right now which is nice because for a while I thought everything was crap.

I am going to attribute part of this to Philip Roth - my appreciation of other things, of not thinking everything is crap. You just need something in your life to make you soft. Like when you are having good sex regularly and are just more pleasant and receptive to things this life will offer. Nothing can you get down then, life just seems more wonderful, you notice people and make eye contact with them. A good book can have the same effect. You just need one companion, one thing to return to and soften you up, break that shell, and then nothing else matters, or it all does because you are feeling good and have already had that certain gland pricked and so it is so easy to have it pricked again and again. The wound is still fresh.