My body doesn't work the same ways as everyone elses and I mean, sometimes that is nice, and other times, now when I am tired as all hell and crashing, not so nice. I have been going out nonstop lately because there are eight million people in town whose company I really enjoy, and yet even though I don't get to bed till five or so, I will wake up by ten and have energy for hours and not feel hungover and then comes five o'clock in the pm, about right now, wherever that boost of morning energy came from dries up and I can barely even stand up.

Last night, my hangover didn't hit me until about eight o clock and so I decided I would not go out to Misshapes with everyone, laid in bed and then decided that that was stupid, that I don't have a job, that I have an unlimited MetroCard now so subway fare wouldn't be an issue, and sleep is for corpses - so I got dressed, and waited forever for the stupid L, ran into Ethan and brought him along. He commented on my flushness/sweatiness. I was so hungover and my body was totally overheating and pouring out sweat even more so than normal. I mean, I am a terribly sweaty person normally, but last night was so out of control. I spent most of my night at Misshapes outside of it, talking on my phone, cooling off on curbs, trying not to die of heat exhaustion. I don't know why I continue to go there. It is so crowded making it really hard to dance to songs which I am not always excited about, and sometimes even decidedly unexcited about. Most times, I do the same thing and end up outside talking to people who live far away, drinking beer from a bodega on some stranger's stoop. Which is nice and pleasant, but really there is no reason to go to Misshapes to do this.

My missed connection from Opaline wrote back and though he sounds nice, I have vague memories of him being kind of lame, and so I might not write him back. I might and might take him up on his suggestion that we get something to eat. I don't know, but you are shaking your head and saying that you do, that you do know, that this is how I operate - I like someone until they like me back and I have a chance with them and I lose interest. And you might be right, but I don't think in this case, you are.

I am thinking also about how amazing the human mind is. Last night on the subway home, I asked Ben about his black socks and if those were all he wore. He said yes, and I giggled because I remembered an interview with Chris Carrabba in a Rolling Stone from two years ago where he said, "All my socks are black." I don't know why this quote has stuck with me so long or why it makes me giggle so much to recall it, but I want to know. I want to know why my brain can remember a quote from a now two year old weekly periodical with a lame musician but cannot remember quotes or passages from my favorite books. Even though I have read some Whitman poems over and over way more than that interview, I can't remember lines from them, and the few lines I used to know, I now barely know - I mix up the words and don't get it verbatim. Wallace Stevens, I used to know most of "The Idea of Order at Key West," and now can't even remember the first line. "She sang gently by the seashore," is most definitely not it, I am mixing it up with that Sally sells seashells tongue twister surely, and why my mind attaches itself to some things and why those things continue to make me giggle way past the point where it might have been considered funny, I don't know.

Oh yeah, I am going to Metropolitan now because there is free food and you know, that not being a corpse thing.
___________________________________

I was so off.

She sang beyond the genius of the sea

The past few days have been a drunken parade of bars with days spent recooping, shaking off hangovers before bringing the parade to some new streets, to your town. Last night alone involved five different bars. It is so funny and excessive when I think back on these past nights. Last night, I can giggle about so many things thinking back on it. Text messages I sent, Wyatt falling on his face, giddy conversations with strangers on the street, man.

It started off at the new Opaline all the way up on 39th Street for their two hour open bar with a giant pack of people, so many faces from Sarasota, it is funny being in such a large group. There was Ben, Solomon, Robyn, Sasha, Kate, Cristy, Audrey, and Wyatt. A lot of us and all of us supposedly on some list. And bitchy door people thinking they are running Studio 54 rather than some second tier club attended by a bunch of Bridge and Tunnelers and dorky homos. There was so much drama and tension at the door, behind the motherfucking velvet rope (vomit) because we weren't on the list and they were trying to charge us five dollars (yes only five dollars, but still!), and then the various door goons consulting with each other when we said we weren't paying and were about to leave. And there was all this confusion as to whether we had to pay and then when a couple of us walked away, the door guy started yelling at us, telling us not to be bitches, and saying there was going to be a fight if we didn't go inside.

This door guy was so out of line and I was a little sad that half the group was already inside because I really just wanted to leave and not support a place where promoters think that type of thing is acceptable, or that being a jerk to people trying to get in makes your place cooler than it is. You can dish as much attitude as you want at the door, but even that still can't save your pathetic ass club from the lameness in every motherfucking corner and that occasionaly even comes out the soundsystem, blaring electroclash hits from 2001: Peaches and Fischerspooner. Come on, what about some WIT and ARE Weapons while you are at it? Can you see that I hate Opaline? Anyway, so many drinks were consumed there, a cartoonish amount of strong drinks downed like mad and the group split in two - most people going to some party and Wyatt, Ben, Solomon and I milking the open bar until it closed before we rode the train, found out the L was being screwy, and got in a cab courtesy of Wyatt. The cab got in an accident with another cab. We made it to Williamsburg to hit up the open bar at Capone's but were led astray by Wyatt to Trash where I had to leave fast before I punched people. I convinced Solomon to leave with me to go to Capone's, thank god. Trash is everything I hate about New York, and more specifically Brooklyn, and even more specifically Williamsburg all encapsulated in this simple bar.

I don't hate hipsters, that is not what I want to say, what I hate are a certain breed of them who don't have any of the artistic sensibilities that redeem most people classified as hipsters - rather these are people who adopt that aesthetic and care about nothing other than looking cool. I really hate class voyeurism and the ironic appropriation of "white trash" by rich, bougie assholes, which is exactly what the design of Trash is. The barseats are car seats. PBR is popular, of course. And they serve tatter tots there. I hate how contrived this trashy aesthetic is. Man, what other bars can I shit talk today?

Also there was this boy Ron there who I gave my number to and who has been calling me recently and who I've never called back, so yeah - Solomon and I dipped quickly and made it to Capone's, which is a bar I really do love. It's a really nicely desinged bar, fairly gimmick free and just laid back people out for some drinks and dancing. It's so not a scene and it is so nice for that reason. If I can go into a bar and not feel the urge to punch people or not have to think about how class and wealth are being flaunted, then that is an all right bar.

I drank two Red Stripes, danced a little and soon Ben and Wyatt showed up. Unsurprisingly, Wyatt again corraled us into going somewhere else and we headed toward Royal Oak, but thankfully stopped at Wyatt's to get stoned. And I mean not that things already weren't blurring by that point with so much rum and beer in me, but this is the point where the details of the night become more blurry as we march from place to place for some reason under the directions of Wyatt wanting to meet up with his pretty friends, one of whom was the Ron boy I really was trying to avoid. Royal Oak is another nicely designed bar with a good setup and lots of nooks to hang out in. The hip level is definitely a lot higher than at Capone's but luckily the bar has a nice enough atmosphere (read not Trash) where those things are not glaringly visible. Surely, me being stoned probably helped also.

A march to Supreme Trading and then a march back toward Royal Oak, but we left Wyatt before getting there and went to the McCarren Park pool, Ben and I sneaking in, me getting cut up. And I went to bed at five totally drunk still and somehow woke up at nine thirty and am somehow still going. I am going to crash sometime soon, just collapse from this pace of heavy partying that does not seem like it is going to let up at least for the next couple of days.

And oh yeah, I didn't get that job at the porn shop and oh yeah, I need a job like all hell and oh yeah, I have no money, and oh yeah, I think I have to ask my mom for money for the first time in about four years and oh yeah, that sort of makes me feel totally like shit when I think about how I am 24 and too old to do that and oh yeah, maybe that's why I get really excited about not thinking about that and going out to bars, and oh yeah.

urban pent up

Man, I am in love with all these people that are in New York right now, Ben, Solomon, and company. I am sure there are lots of reasons, me getting tired of hanging out with the same people all the time, the change of vibe, how they love to dance and drink. All great things. This is why New York is awesome because even if you are sometimes bored and not in love with all your friends, there are always visiting out of towners from your past just about every other week.

I just recently, an hour or so ago, started to feel non hungover and as soon as my hangovers recede, my natural energy comes out in force from its long slumber and I get really giddy and excitable and of course, want to go out again, which very may well happen it what, two hours, if I am to take advantage of one of the four open bars I know about tonight. Nick Zinner and one of the Bloc Party guys are djing at one of those bars. At a different bar, one without an open bar, but free, Diplo is spinning and rumor has it that MIA will be there. I have been listening to lots of oldies all day today and yesterday and it really is so beautiful, this sound. Chubby Checker, Little Richard, Dee Dee Sharp and her Mashed Potato. Sometimes I really wish I grew up in this era, the 45 era with dancy songs with lots of harmony. I want to be one of those dancing kids and twist. I think some people view then as dated, restrained, and uptight. But these songs make me want to dance in ways that rarely anything put out today does.

Isn't music the best?

Also, I mean, I am excited that No. 1 Chinese seems to get more and more word of mouth, but it's already so hard to get drinks at the open bar, I really don't want it to blow up, and I do not want a bunch of straight nellies there. There is already Boysroom a couple blocks away for those yuckos on Wednesdays. There is a really nice write-up about last night on MyOpenBar that makes me worried it will attract a lamer crowd there. That site also has some pictures of last night with a comically dazed looking Ben Haber. Also in that set are pictures of two boys I am sort of in love with. Um, very last picture, yeah, so dreamy.

And yes, I have finally made it on that site, and I have mixed emotions about it, like I am sort of excited and also sort of shamed at feeling some excitement inspired by vanity. And thank god, he didn't post the naked pictures for every single scenester in New York to see my penis. I mean not like it's not already visible in other places, but it would definitely have been a little weird.

Yes, I am one of the biggest hypocrites you have ever met and ran into Merlin Bronques (aka lastnightsparty) on 14th Street and talked to him, asked him many of the questions that have been on mind, specifically the effect on club/bar culture because of party photo blogs like his. I also asked him about his wig and if it was a Warhol reference. And I didn't really get many answers, but because I am a hypocrite, not even ten minutes later, I was naked in the back of Nowhere, of all places, taking pictures to be one of his pin-ups after complaining about the lack of cock on his site. More tomorrow maybe, possibly even the pictures which he said he might post by then, but right now, food in my belly and then passing out in my bed.

more questions than answers?

So yes, I did half-heartedly try to convince Ben to make out with me. He politely declined. Is there such a thing, polite dismissal? And yes, Matt was there again, perhaps being the reason all I wanted to do was make out with someone. I talked to him briefly, embarrassingly, and made lots of eye contact with him, that was responded with a roll of the eyes dismissal. Um, I ended up hanging out with Cassandra and Radha after Ben, Solomon and company left - and that was mildly weird, but still fun - and I was about to make out with this boy Quentin, but some ho beat me to it, and then Quentin's fag hag, left alone, kept talking to me, telling me how much Quentin should have made out with me. That, most definitely weird. Oh yeah, no Depeche Mode at all at motherfucking Metropolitan. But obviously, that one Shangri-las song that I sing pretty much every time I go there because it is the only worthy song in their pathetic selection. Let's not talk about me trying to do "Edge of Seventeen", okay? Um, why this Matt obsession? Blame it on the hands - talking to him, I stared at them, imagined them gripping his cock or mine, such long fingers, short bitten nails, so pretty.

adventures in job huntin

I have been really motivated the past week to change my situation and find a job. I have a level of energy toward this that I have not been able to muster ever in New York. Niki today asked me why I have turned over a new leaf, and last night, I was thinking the same question after I spent hours writing cover letters and finally after getting off the computer at three in the morning, then when I was getting in bed, I wondered what it exactly it was that pushed me over the edge, and I realized that it was Bonnie's last night here when she was in New York, listening to her talk about her life and what she wanted to do with it. So thanks, Bonnie. It made me depressed that I never really pondered any similar questions and that I have wasted so much time already doing nothing and the thoughts have still not managed to verbalize themselves either in my head or on my lips - but still, I have this energy, this unexamined energy to just do something. I have sent out resumes and cover letters to so many places in the past couple days, and today, eager just to be working, I hit the streets today, spending five hours walking around in the heat getting a major farmer's tan.

And yes, this would be going against my own resolution to myself when I was twenty-three to not be working in retail when I turned twenty-four. But, I need money. I need to be doing something with my time. And, even if I do get one of these retail jobs I applied at today, I will be applying to non-retail jobs until I get one. I had a really nice talk with the owner of Unicorn Video (a gay porn/video booth store) today and even though so many people were applying for that job just in the fifteen minutes I was there, I think I have a pretty good chance. I clicked with the owner really well and she said she would make her decision by the end of the week. It sounds like a fun/funny job. She told me that you have to judge people and whether they are sober enough to go into the back, and if they are not, you have to deny them admission. She told me that people will get really verbally mean in that case and find your weak spots and insult the hell out of you, but she told me that I was allowed to throw verbal punches back. This woman was pretty tough and funny. Even though the job doesn't really pay money, I would still like to work there just for the experiences.

The other place where I got to talk with the owner was at the bookstore I have wanted to work at since they opened, McNally Robinson. Things were going so awesome. I told her that I used to work at the Strand and she joked that I had that Strand worker look. And we talked about whether there is such a thing. I think most people caricature Strand workers as quarky, hip looking people, so I am hoping that that is what it was and I will take that as a compliment. But when I think of a Strand look, I think dirty - I think of mildly loserish people who look a little grimy, which most definitely am, but I just hope that her notion of Strand look is the former for vanity reasons. And yes, things were going so awesome with her, and looking at my resume, she kept exclaiming excellent, excellent, excellent. But of course, I would somehow fumble this ball, at the place I really wanted to work and when the owner seemed to really like me - it just required basically keeping quiet until I could make it out the door.

But no, she asked about the union at the Strand in a sympathetic way, and I went into pro-union, anti-capitalist mode, telling her how part of the reason I left the Strand was because I was really crushed with the results of contract renegotiations, how they fucked us over on health care. And really, there is so much bottled there with regards to unions and specifically the Strand's and it came out. She responded, I think a little worried, saying that she was pro-union but how she didn't know what she would do with a union at her store since it was so small. And I wasn't advocating unionizing her store, but I think she saw a potential liability right there and risk of it and our conversation came to a screeching halt with her saying, "Have a good day." And maybe she will call me back, but I am pretty doubtful. As soon as I rounded the corner, I hit my head, jumped up and down and asked myself what the fuck was wrong with myself, obviously a store owner with business interests is not going to be thrilled about unions. What was I thinking? So hopefully, the porn store will hire me at least.

I don't even know how to explain what is going on with me lately, this energy - it is not taking verbal shapes and so I can't really explain it here or even write well here anymore because I am feeling life in a way that seems really familiar and un - when I hear an old song and get excited about it in a way that reminds me of past times and how I used to have a certain high energy, and specifically, Echo and the Bunnymen's "The Killing Moon." That song makes me so nervous about the future and my present attempts to influence it, and really I am so scared of dying lately, and being alone and the absense of eternity - and thinking more and more that the only way to solve this loneliness is with another person and really so much is going on lately and I might try to talk about it more except I know I am not doing such a hot job of it, and anyways, Solomon and Ben Haber and apparently some other NC kids are going to be at Metropolitan and so I have to go and sing some motherfucking karaoke before I die. Do you think they have Depeche Mode? I mean something other than "Personal Jesus"?

the past couple days

Short Cuts - Robert Altman
Finally, saw this. I was in love with half the cast already, so seeing them play these cute character studies was obviously enjoybable. Lili Taylor. Peter Gallagher. Andie MacDowell. Julianne Moore. Lily Tomlin. Robert Downey, Jr. Frances McDormand! I loved the performances so much more than I loved the movie. Again, I am underimpressed by Robert Altman's directing skills. I am also really glad that I read Carver a long time before seeing this movie, but maybe, that is also what prevented me from being able to totally embrace this film, its unCarverness.

Ada, or Ardor - Vladimir Nabakov
I finally finished this book a couple days ago. The first third of it was amazing. The second third took me a couple weeks to read. The steam wasn't enough to carry it that far. It never is. The most perfect books are just shy of two hundred pages. It is the perfect length to say anything that needs to be said. Anything past that point and you are stretching things, having to go into family history that is filler and throwing all these stories and details at the page that ruin the possibility of a perfect moment. Sure, there are great long books, but they are all family histories, and they could be sliced down and be even more awesome. That magic can never sustain itself for that long, you can be impressed and wowed by parts - but you won't walk away thinking you had this beautiful moment with a book, because it's impossible at that length, you've had way too many moments, been reading the book for a month maybe, and no way did you approach every section of the book in anything even close to the same mental state. Whereas a book you can plow through in two days, you have that special moment with.

Trapped in the Closet videos - R. Kelly
These are so soap operaish, but in a good way. Yes, I was just complaining about length, but this series of five videos is pretty perfect, lengthwise.

Wedding Crashers - Who Cares
Predictable in every way as soon as you hear the plot. The two coxcombs are going to learn the errors of their ways and discover true love by the end of the movie. And yes, I am not giving anything away by saying that. Predictable as it was, the movie was still fairly entertaining. The homophobic jokes were pretty brutal and unneccesary though, specifically the grandma going on about "carpet-munchers." There is a gay artist brother of one of the chicks, and he is creepy and obsessed with Vince Vaughn in a dark, psycho way. As troubling as that is - having a gay guy obsessed with straight guys, I was mildly relieved that it was not a flamboyant queen like it normally tends to be, but this dark scary guy who might cut you in your sleep. That, I did like, and really, it is not a stretch at all to have a gay guy obsessed with straight guys, just I guess, a little saddening at the truth of it and how it is played up as a joke for straight audiences.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Tim Burton
Remakes of movies you have such a fond attachment are always bound to let you down in certain ways, and yes, in some ways, I think I like Gene Wilder more than Depp. But this movie has nice moments and Depp is pretty good in his creepiness. But every scene I was comparing to the original. I just watched this this afternoon, so I am still thinking about it, undecided about it.

James Wood's recent New Yorker piece and interview here
Wood is the most thoughtful literary critic currently writing. Even though, I have never read Cormac McCarthy, it did not matter. This essay still said so much and explained McCarthy to me. His level of analysis impresses me so much and serves in such strong contrast to the lack of analysis exhibited here today, and that is why he inspires me so much.

My windows are closed now and that mild breeze that I was enjoying so much yesterday is no longer circulating through our apartment. There was a cartoonishly large and terrifying wasp making a nest or making babies, thousands of scary wasps right inside our living room window. This wasp was so big, about as big as the small mouse that also inhabits our apartment, but which I don't mind, which doesn't have my heart beating ready to lock myself in the hallway. Wasps are so scary because they move so fast and look like some horrible combat aircraft ready to strike and bomb villages at any second. This one was smart and knew the layout of our apartment. It would fly in through the living room window with whatever it had gathered, work on its construction right above the window and then fly through the living room, into Jillian's room and out her open window, only to come back in the living room a minute later to build some more. Terrified beyond reason of this thing after it made a circle and exited Jillian's window, I ran and closed her window and then ran back into the living room, shutting the window here, but so terrified the wasp would beat me back and see me attempting to close the window and fly through the closing window, sliding right under before it shut a la Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom - and then it would know what I was doing and attack me over and over again. Luckily I beat it back, but I am so scared that it will find a way in somehow. It is trying its best, menacingly hovering in front of the closed living room window, looking for a way back in. I sprayed roach spray on whatever it was building and if it makes it back in, I am dead. This wasp is so scary.

Today, so far, has been one of the most lovely days in recent memory, and like most relaxing days where you sigh with content over and over again, it is because I haven't really done anything. Not that I have been doing much at all lately. You know, since I am unemployed, you might think everyday is like this. It is not. Today, the fans are off in our house and that says everything that needs to be said if you live in New York and don't have air conditioning. The last week fans have been on high and been doing nothing. I lied out on my roof this afternoon, half covered in the shade and my legs stretched out past the shadows, my feet, toes soaking up the sunshine. The sky was an awesome blue, is still an awesome blue - the really deep kind that make you think to those times when you've been out on boats and surrounded by the blue of the water and the blue of the sky and really feeling what it means to be on a planet with a gigantic solar system out there beyond the sun drenched blue of a cloudless sky.

I laid out there on my roof for hours, reading and not reading, and the shadows got longer, covered even my legs. The content I felt with the world for those hours is something that I have not felt in the longest time, lately being stressed out about an indeterminate future. Content almost seems too weak a word to describe the exuberance I felt lying in the sun, in the warmth of a midsummer day watching clouds go by slowly. Fuck! That is how fucking amazing it is and how it was and how it really always is, but sometimes there are just these other things that prevent me from realizing this, from seeing this - and I need to demolish those things, smash into the fucking ground if they ever prevent me from realizing anything even close to the happiness I felt this afternoon.

And yes and no - I am not sure - I don't believe that it is because I did sex work last night and now have at least some money, still far short of rent, but some money nonetheless, that I might also be feeling this happiness. I don't like that I might be unable to divorce my financial situation from my stress level and obviously as a result, from my happiness. But today, really, this sky and lounging under it could have probably made any troubles seem irrelevant. I really love New York, but I also think that I might be happier some place else, you know, some place with big skies.

Books that depend for their sense of opposition on the straw man of a presupposed bourgeois mentality outside the fiction itself — on shock value, in other words — are working in conditions of profound safety disguised as risk.

This article (via Maud Newton) articulates so well many of the problems I have with "shocking" books, but I also think it fails in certain ways to appreciate how powerful a force anomie is. I can think of wicked things I have done just because I have been bored and sexual acts done out of boredom. So Dee's quick dismissal of Homes and Cooper for that reason troubles me, but it is understandable and an interesting argument to read, especially because it is so readable.

There is that line about history and its repetitions, first time tragedy, second time farce - and years ago when I saw Dancer in the Dark, I thought it was a beautiful, sad movie - most of my love, of course, being inspired by Bjork's participation in the film. Last night, I watched it again, and I could not take it seriously at all. I roll my eyes a lot lately, but man, last night, they were getting an extra work out. There were times when I giggled and times where I wanted to shout at the screen. And I feel a little like a flag-waving conservative but it's not jingoism, it's that Lars von Trier is not an American and should stop trying to make these big statements about America because he doesn't get it, doesn't get it at all.

It was Dogville that allowed me to see those same cartoonish sketches of America that Dancer in the Dark is full of. The overwrought melodrama, that ham fisted striving for the classical sense of tragedy - that doesn't even annoy me so much, even though I think it is the worst kind of storytelling - what really annoys me is this immigrant story, Bjork exploited in every way by America and by her neighbors. Forced to kill her neighbor just to keep the money that is hers, in that scene right after there is a prop just as subtle (read not at all) as the rest of von Trier's style of cinema: an American flag waving over the house that he has to keep including in the shot, as if we don't already get his point. Everything about this movie is so incredibly stupid. Ugh, critics that cream their pants over him need to get punched in the stomach.

Luckily, Bonnie came over right as the movie was nearing its finale and I hung out with her downstairs with Jamie. Our Florida house reconvened here in Brooklyn. We sat around and talked about things and didn't talk - it felt pretty similar to sitting around our living room in Florida. It was nice and the whole time I thought about what it is I want to be doing because it was then in Florida in a similar setting that I thought about those things, listening to Bonnie talking about what she wanted to do with her life and they were serious plans which no one in New York seems to have, but which everyone in Florida had - aspirations of some sort. And I aspire to get those aspirations back, reclaim a nervousness toward the future that I have lost here in New York to a self-satisfied comfort in going out often, hanging out with attractive people and having nice little moments, none of them strung together in any discernible line, but just these atomized moments which I am beginning to wonder mean anything if they are not somehow connected. Need to either figure out how to connect them or find some other method of having moments, one that has a pattern.

I am not as happy as I could be as I often as I could be. Sadly, lots of the reasons are because I often don't have money and this infects pretty much every aspect of my life with stress, so a job I need, yes. I have been applying all day to temp agencies and jobs online. And I am also figuring out who is good for me and who is not. Some people I am going to break up with and spend less time with for my own sanity and my own attempts to move my life in some direction I like. The question of what makes a life meaningful has resurfaced in my life and that is a good thing even though it might make me sad to examine my own current life under the lens of that question, because self-awareness is the only way to move forward. It doesn't really seem like too much for one to desire, a life of meaning (and its resultant happiness), but how to achieve that is the one of the hardest questions for me to answer. Yes, dissatisfaction is creeping in.

I got there right before Dressy Bessy started to play last night. I spotted so many people I knew in the crowd - all of them homos, all of them living in Brooklyn. I said hi to some people and then got close and even though no one else was dancing for the opening act, I just could not help it. They were really good. Or, I thought so last night. I wonder if I actually heard their album if I would still like them. They are this really perky indie pop band and really good with their guitars. It was impossible not to dance.

The Hidden Cameras came on next with what if my memory is correct was seven musicians in addition to Joel Gibb, who I have only seen bad photos of, but who in person knocks my socks off with his dreaminess. Tall, skinny, brown hair, pretty nose. I stood right in front of him the whole show and danced and danced. I am not sure how the crowd reacted, if people were dancing because I was right against the stage and wasn't looking back. At first, I was almost dissapointed because Dressy Bessy had been so tight, so loud, so rocking - and now here was THC playing these loose songs sans rocking guitars. By the time they played their third song though, they became a lot more rocking. They played two songs for their encore and brought out a dancing mummy for those two songs and also tried to lead the audience in this dance that resembled the YMCA dance too much for me to do it without feeling like someone drunk at a wedding reception. I don't remember what that first song was, or maybe I don't remember what the second encore song was. But one of them was "Breathe On It," which I love, and which, obviously I danced to - trying to ignore the asshole who came up next to me and Bonnie and started screaming non-jokingly for Gibb to show his cock, and who was waving his hands in front of Gibb trying to get his attention as he was singing his song. I really wanted to punch that guy. Really hard.

I felt so good when the show was over, not really sick, and I sweated so much during the show and I wonder if I danced away, heated and killed all that nastiness in me.

This is the state I am in: I just finished eating a bowl of pasta here in the living room and went to put the bowl in the sink, and found myself walking to the bathroom sink asking myself what I am doing. I caught myself and went and put the bowl in the kitchen sink.

That is the effect of not only a cold, but an exceeded dose of Theraflu, aspirin, and Claritin (really Walitin because I am cheap). And I am supposed to leave my house in minutes to go stand in the Bowery Ballroom for a couple of hours and try to hold back my snot and not crumple on the floor in tiredness. I was going to try to rest tonight so that I could be in top form tomorrow, or at least no longer sick, and have fun at the Siren Festival, but Dara got a ticket today and then for some reason couldn't go, so now I am going to see the Hidden Cameras, who I love, but not when sick. Sickness, be gone.

My snot today and yesterday is not the nice thick kind, but the warm, watery kind that contanstly drips out of your nose. Of course, it would conincide with Bonnie's short trip here, my getting sick. Yesterday, I watched the Roots play and kind of enjoyed it because I knew if I wasn't sick I would love it, so it became this giant act of pretending I felt better than I did and eventually I gave up, came home, and slept for thirteen hours.

Today, again broke, again rifling through my book collection which is probably a third the size it was when I quit the Strand, seeing which books are acceptable to sell (not many, they have already been pawned) and which of the ones that are acceptable, I would not mind parting with. I was thinking of selling my copy of Marcel Dzama's The Berlin Years, which after looking on AddAll, Abebooks, and Amazon, I discovered is extremely rare. There are only two copies listed on the internet, one for 350 and the other for 400. But then I had a flashback, thinking I might have used one of the 32 reproductions the book came with to make a card for someone once. I prayed that I had not, and went and counted through the reproductions. There were, there are, only 31 of the reproductions. I think it was a card for my mom. Now, there is no way the book will be worth anything near those prices, but I still might take it to Spoonbill and see how much I can get. Some of those short run McSweeney's book accrue value so quickly, it is a little obscene. The actual first issues of McSweeney's (not the later reprintings) are worth so much money. And this is a little flimsy paperback packet that originally retailed for $14 not even two years ago.

Last night, I talked to people and didn't talk to people. I talked to Jason Trachtenburg for about ten minutes late in the night on Avenue A about Dunkin Donuts, New York, his in-laws, and the neccesity of creating art.

I did not talk to my crush at No. 1 Chinese, but I did post a Missed Connections today lamenting that fact, only to get my first ever email response from someone I wrote about. He wrote back a pretty sarcastic email that sounded like I probably wouldn't actually like him if I ever talked to him, but I emailed him back and divulged my identity, and now, I am going to have my avert my eyes every time I run into him.

There were probably more people talked to than people not talked to. Bonnie got in town last night and I am so excited that she is here for a few days. Obviously, she was one of the ones - one of the many - talked to.

I knew what I was doing when I ordered all those rum and cokes last night. I know that rum in large doses makes me out of control and it was opening night at the new Cock and I wanted to be out of control and I was.

There was a line of people out there at eleven waiting to get in, because the bar was not ready to make its debut yet even though there was an advertised open bar from 11-12. At eleven thirty, the new Cock opened and it filled up quickly, everyone paying the five dollar cover, which there never was on Monday nights at the old Cock. I am hoping it was just because it was opening night with an open bar that there was a cover. It is bigger than the old Cock, but smaller than the old Hole. The place is rumored to have two floors, but that may not be true - regardless, just the main floor (perhaps the only floor) was open, which is supposed to resemble the old Cock. They lowered the ceiling of the Hole and installed bathrooms at the back of the bar. There is that same long mirror that hung over the bar at the Cock. Black glitter is painted on the walls and it is lit by a red light to have that same sleazy darkness that the old place had. All that was missing was the scary "Watch Your Wallets" signs they had pasted all over the old place.

I found myself talking to various strangers, the bar packed with homos looking for scandal, everyone flirting. A few too many rum and cokes after getting there, I was relieving myself of some of those fluids at the urinal and I met some guy, exchanged hellos. And I cannot recall what the transition was. I know there wasn't much of one, but I would still like to know how you can say hi to someone and look at them for a long, pregnant pause and then find yourself walking to a back corner of the bar together to be naughty. There is no backroom at this Cock, but there is a little nook in the back of the bar that I am sure they did not design with a backroom in mind, but which turned into one last night.

People are always waiting for someone else to do something, so that they can do it also. So often, I find myself being this first person, letting other people do the things they want to do. Specifically, dancing. So often at bars or parties, everyone will just be waiting for dancing to start. No one wants to be the lone one out there on the floor. I don't care. And last night, I took this boy's cock out and starting giving him a blowjob while I sat on a bench and jacked off. Soon another boy sat next to me, and sucked this boy's cock also and sucked mine - and soon all these men who had been standing around horny in this little dark nook let loose their inner sluts. Last night was one of the most sexually charged nights I have ever seen at a bar. The number of hot people having sex I saw is enough masturbation fodder for months. Also, I performed some sexual gymnastics last night, coming in three people's mouths.

I would get a blowjob from someone and then head back out into the bar where you could not make it from one end to the other without being gropped at least a couple times. I would talk to some cute stranger until a distraction of some sort ended our chat and I headed back to the back of the bar to be a voyeur and watch hot people go at it. But would end up giving someone a bj, which turned into getting another one from some stranger, and repeat until the end of the night. It was so fun and I tell myself that I am proud of it, that I don't have guilt, but occasionally a whiff of shame will blow my way. It's hard work liberating yourself.

And the thing that fascinates me so much is how I would never hook up with these people in any other situation because of racial, class, age, or just body image boundaries that people normally don't cross. It doesn't matter if this person is a boring looking person in bad clothes in a backroom as long as they have a hard dick. I need to actually read Delaney's Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, where he verbalizes this in nicer language - calling these sex cultures democratic because it is one of the few public spaces where you interact with all these different people you normally never would. I love that idea and it has always stuck with me ever since I read an excerpt of the book, that casual sex is a democratizing agent. I am an agent of democracy!

high of 92 i heard

Of course, it would have happened, because it is always when you are talking about how this thing never happens to you, that God has to teach you not to talk in maxims, and that thing that you said never happens to you will happen to you right after you finish the utterance. Ethan and I were hanging out at guess where? We were hanging out at the Metropolitan (shocking, right?) and talking about boys, about the pursuit of them, and I had mentioned how I am never pursued, always the pursuer, except of course in the case of old men who will pursue anyone because they've got nothing to lose, there is already that expectation of a no, and so they can only get good news or the news they were already anticipating, never bad news.

But yes, at some point, my friends were in the bathroom and so I was left alone and this boy, Ross, came up to me and I chatted with him about something of little note for a couple minutes, but it was enough to make an impression, or to give him the impression that I might like him. I am not sure, but last night, when he was following me everywhere in really dogged persistence, I saw myself and some of my own behavior patterns amplified for me - that this, my sometimes similar pursuit of boys, is not attractive, that so much depends upon playing it cool, not showing all your cards. This boy was insane. I purposefully and very clearly would leave a conversation with him and walk across the bar to talk to someone else, anyone else, and soon he would be right there. I did this a couple times before finally running to the bathroom to escape him and when I came out of the bathroom, he was right there waiting at the door. I tried talking closely to Ethan so that he couldn't be there, but Ross sort of threw himself in front of Ethan and blocked me from talking to Ethan.

It was pretty comical, and would have been even more so if it had not been happening to me. I started talking to this boy, David, pretending he was my boyfriend - that did not dissuade this boy. Then finally, I ran to Daniel to complain, but there Ross was right away again. Daniel became my new boyfriend and we had our arms around each other and Daniel told Ross that I was with him and he would still would not go away. I just stayed there close to Daniel, right against him, no way for Ross to come in between. I had to swipe his arms off of me and finally at some point he gave up and went and sat on a bench. Shortly after, I decided it would be a good idea to leave while I had seperated myself from him. And I left with the people who rescued me, Daniel, David, and Ethan - and of course, Ross came out after me and I told him good night, hugged him and then left so annoyed at someone who made themselves so transparent.

So yes, a taste of my own medicine in concentrated form, perhaps. And that was the most painful part perhaps of his antics, not just their obnoxiousness, but how they were this distorted reflection of my own behavior. I had to ask myself and Daniel, if I was this bad also? I've never followed someone around the bar, but I have been as equally excited to see crushes and run up to them and terrify them sometimes, especially that Charlie boy. This was a good lesson in how not to behave, in how that type of behavior is received (not kindly), and learning from this lesson, I am going to work on playing it cool as best I can from now on.

I don't understand myself sometimes and why some things I have no reservations about, will yell obscenities when so moved, and in other times, perhaps even in more appropriate times, last night with that boy, for instance, I couldn't just be aggressive enough to say, "Get the fuck away from me." But after leaving the bar and walking home, a car of full of potentially tough guys stopped at a light called Ethan, David, and I fags, and here are people that could actually kick my ass and greater in number than I, but I asked them if they wanted to suck my dick, and thankfully they did not get out of the car and kick my homo ass and they didn't really say anything in response either. When people call you a fag, that don't really expect a response. It is a shaming technique for failing to meet certain codes of masculinity and when you aggressivley accept your homoness and tell them to suck your dick, it silences the party that meant to silence with their remarks. It's also pretty awesome when it actually works and you don't get the shit kicked out of you.

The Sweet Smell of Success has me asking the same questions, making the same observations that I always do when ever I watch old movies. In the past, watching them, I had always tended to take movies as ethnographies of the time and now, I am not so sure. See, until tonight, I had always marveled at how people constantly are drinking and smoking in old movies, how everyone has a liquor cabinet in their living rooms and sometimes even in their offices, and will casually drink cocktails in the afternoon. In every scene, people are lighting up cigarettes, also in the office.

And I sort of envy that culture, thinking that the current one, oddly enough has more teetoaler tendencies now than those days of Dick Van Dyke, wonder what it must have been like for it to be normal to enjoy cocktails in the afternoon as a non-event. Did people really smoke this much then? Did they actually drink this much then? Or, as I wondered tonight, are the both just used as props in the blocking, something for the actor to hold and gesticulate with? Perhaps in fact, people's smoking and drinking habits were just as minimal then, and the directors were lazy and used these props as crutches, making it easier to evoke a mood. But the liquor cabinets in the living room - if they didn't really exist, people would say, "What is that?" so surely they must have been so common.

Last night, I found myself in a fairly typical situation as of late, drinking beer at the Metropolitan and chatting with friends, but I couldn't bridge the gap last night and make connections as easily as I normally am able to. I was not all there. People asked me what I did, how my day was, and I did things yesterday, really. I met up with the sixty-three year old. I went on a walk and had nice thoughts. I read some of Ada, and normally any one of these things would have been enough impetus for me to get excited about life and start an engaged conversation, but I had few words last night - I was totally starstruck.

I tried telling people about this, but they hadn't seen the movie or didn't know who Gena Rowlands was and so I couldn't fully make them comprehend how this actress startles me and her amazing her acting abilities are. Right before I had gone out, I had watched the Criterion copy of Cassavetes' Faces and some of the bonus features on the disc, mainly an interview with Cassavetes from 1965 that is one of the most inspiring things I have seen in so long. I still don't even know exactly how to frame this today, the day after, to talk about the way this movie and this talk silenced me, which is odd because good things are supposed to provoke you and stimulate your thoughts, and this did, but I haven't yet figured out yet how to verbalize those thoughts.

I was already convinced that Cassavetes was a genius from his other films, but until I saw this interview with him, I never knew about the nobility of his genius, how really inspired a person he is. He can't sit still. He stands and talks and does things with his hands, interacts with other people as he is answering questions, smokes nonstop, and gives this wonderful monologue about art and how he is using Hollywood to destroy Hollywood. He talks about how he much he loves America's reliance on credit, and how this enables him to make his movies, how he has no money and doesn't care, that art is all that matters. It is such a beautiful talk that he gives. And for some reason, the oldness of it, to see this black and white document of this person talking so passionately about their commitment to art, that this was in 1965, fucking takes my breath away, and the things he talks about, the culture of money and how it destroys life, and surely things have just gotten worse in the forty years since then, and no one talks like this man now, but we all should.

The movie is one of the most perfect documents ever made. He holds these scenes, let's them play out for all their worth. He get's everything so right. There aren't these short scenes, one then the next, but just this long played out drunken dialogue that at times makes you squirm in recognition, that you sound just as much as an ass when you are drunk probably. There is nothing like his movies, the performances he gets from his actors is shocking, how good every single person in the films are. And then, of course, there is Gena. Lucille Ball is such a large part of her. I can't watch her and not see in her mannerisms some of Ball's, oddly enough.

And last night, at the bar, I was doing the same thing, inhabiting these thoughts, but more so, just the repeated Wow, totally shocked at the excellence I had just been privy to. What do you do after you encounter greatness? How do you go about your normal routine? How do you integrate the knowledge that greatness is possible and within reach into your normal worldview and still manage, still even desire to make small talk at a bar? I couldn't do it. I just wasn't there when people were talking about their favorite dinosaurs. I just couldn't even answer the question, could not even think of the name of one dinosaur, my mind was so elsewhere.

However, I did on my way out of the bar make out briefly with Jared, the boy I made out with on my birthday. But I scampered away instead of trying to bring him home with me because I had other things on my mind.

name this song: "say something once, why say it again?"

I got an email from this guy twelve minutes ago that said, "you couldnt possibly be this stupid." This guy could not possibly be any more scary. I had talked to him online earlier today around five and made plans to see him in about an hour to receive a blowjob, this after he offered me a pretty shocking $300, which would have eliminated all my worries about paying my rent this week. Because I realized that tomorrow, I am not going to do sex work because Paul has an opening tomorrow afternoon that I have to go, and Friday I am seeing someone and that will pay 150, so really tonight was my only real chance to try to make the rest of rent by Friday.

This guy is the reason I applied to about six jobs today, because this is what I fear and this what worries me, these psychotic guys who want to possess you and are just crazy. My regulars I can deal with and even enjoy, but meeting new clients is always so scary because they could very well be the psychotic person who everyone is scared you are going to encounter. So anyway, the guy calls me at seven or so and tells me he has to go to Jersey City but then will be back in the West Village and will give me a call. I had already had my doubts about whether I actually would meet up with him because you do have to go with your gut, and for some reason, something in his voice, a mildly aggressive tone, the way the end of each word was hit, that the words didn't meld one to the next, but each stark, I was having doubts. And when he finally called again at 9:30, I decided that it was too late to go be meeting up with this stranger, and just didn't answer his calls. Four calls. One after the next. Finally he left a message saying that he would pay me $500. The fact that he was so worried about meeting up with me and called back and back in a span of two minutes while I could have conceivably just been in the bathroom had me very freaked out, as tempting as five hundred dollars is and was.

But it gets even better, or scarier depending on if you are the reader or the writer of this, he leaves a message maybe two minutes later, a message so long saying that he would take me wherever I wanted, Rome, whatever, that he could get me a job, introduce me to his lawyer friends, that I wouldn't have to hustle, blah blah blah - this message was so creepy and I hate that possessive, paternalistic attitude that some guys take to sex workers, that you need help or want it. I don't want to go hang out with you and your lawyer friends. I want to cum and then leave, that's it. I texted him back telling him he took a long time, that I was tired and going to bed. This started a flurry of text messages from him and a couple more voice messages that made me very glad with my decision to stick with my gut and not meet up with him. He proved himself to be quite psycho, and keep in mind that I had told him I was going to bed and did not respond to any of these, and yet they kept coming:

9:40 I had to take care of some family business. I hope you arent flaking out on me

9:41 I had to take care of some family business. I hope you arent flaking out on me

9:55 Thats why i asked you before what was a good time i canceled 2 meetings to meet you beautiful If i give you more will you come out

9:57 Do you have to get up for work or can you come let skiing with me

10:09 How about$600.00

10:21 Ok so should i assume you dont want to hang out? Assume you arent allowed out after 9pm? Assume you are a rude self absorbed sCum bag? I missed meetings wit

10:23 Very powerful people to meet you and say you i think you can have the decency to respond

10:31 THE MOST DISRESPECTFUL THING TO ME IS BEING IGNORED BAD MOVE ON YOUR PART KID

Yeah, I will continue to be broke and stress about rent before I go see some rich, cokehead lawyer with an outrageous sense of entitlement where even though he postponed our meetup by hours, for some reason, I should still go see him out of a sense of duty. I like the meek, old people that are my regulars. But man, six hundred dollars sounded so nice and I cannot lie that I might have wavered just a little bit at that point. I need a real job so I don't have to deal with people in this way anymore. I can deal with being treated as cog for mininum wage, that indignity I can handle - but when people think that because you do sex work, that they can name any price and you will consent, that you are obviously for sale, I hate it. Really, I do.

Yes, she reported bogus claims of Iraqi WMD's in the paper of record, giving Bush's claims validity and pushing us into war, but today, she has redeemed herself and she is my hero of the moment. She is locked up until October for refusing to name her confidential sources and holding the line, the only one (her and the NY Times) holding the line on the freedom of the press. With Time and Cooper caving in, her refusal is all the more noble and inspiring, especially since she will be serving in one of the scary DC area jails. There is not enough resistance to bullshit and fuck yeah, Go Judy Go!

I went to a bunch of galleries today, saw some good stuff, saw the Momus stuff and seemed to be just a little behind the trail of Jerry Saltz. In just about every gallery I stopped in, his signature was only three people ahead of me in the guestbook.

Charlie, I want to request that you not wash your body at all on Friday, come as you are, and use no deodorant, so, I can lick your armpits very thoroughly as well as other parts. I hope that is all right with you. If not, I still want to see you and won't insist.

This, from the sixty three year old this morning. But this is really exciting news because I made this Friday the deadline by which I would tell Iris I would pay my rent by when she asked me about it, which thankfully, she has still yet to do. So I just need to see two other people this week and I will be able to pay my rent. Hopefully, the weekly regular will contact me tomorrow and then I will only need to see one person by Friday, which is a fairly easy task.

Niki yesterday, when I told her I did not meet up with someone I was supposed to tie up, sounded shocked and worried, said, "Why? How are you going to pay your rent?" And I told her that I don't worry about these things, that they always work out. I have developed such a zen attitude toward money lately and it is really not good, because it is totally supported by my luck with money, how whenever I seem to need it, right at that moment, one of these two regulars will contact me, or I will find out that the Princeton Review has work to do, or they will send me a paycheck even though I didn't work there lately - things like that. Whenever things seem dire, it will be right on that day without fail that I will be contacted by the regular, like he can somehow sense that I might need money. And so yeah, yesterday, I was being totally serious when I said that everything will work out because without fail it always seems to. Everything has worked out for the past six months since I have quit the Strand and things worked out for the year and a half I was there making no money at all. But yes, I know that my zen attitude is really just a spree of good luck and that these things can only go so far before luck runs out, so yes, the job hunt is starting.

PS- I love Nabakov. Reading him is what reading is supposed to do to you, to make you more sensitive to the life outside the book. And I think now, on this my fourth book of his, I am just starting to get his voice, and get his humor. It wasn't really until my second or third Philip Roth book that I felt at ease with him. It's just like meeting a new friend, at first your banter seems a little forced. You are not yet on the same wavelength and so they or you don't always catch or respond to all the jokes or references. It takes time. Timing is everything. And now, I wonder what it would be like to read Lolita again, the first book I read by him, the first (and usually only) book people read by him, that the writing seemed kind of dry to me then, impressive, but definitely dry and not someone I felt entirely at ease around. I am sure I would enjoy it so much more now, but sadly for both Lolita and for me, that rereading or first real reading will probably never occur because there are so many other Nabakov books to read, and so many Philip Roth ones, and god, there really is no end. People that read the same books over and over again, or even just twice really impress me because they have a patience or an acceptance that they will never read everything that true as it is, I just cannot accept. I see the rows and rows of fiction titles, most of which I have never read and feel like I am wasting time even reading multiple titles by single authors, that there is Trollope and Updike and Winterson and basically everyone that I have still yet to even encounter.

Niki, as per the usual, was way late in meeting up with me last night so we could go milk the open bar at Misshapes. Waiting for her to show up at my house, I started getting drunk, drinking vodka tonics while watching Adams Family Values on TBS with my roommates. I am looking at that vodka bottle which was about half full when I started drinking last night, and now is basically empty and realizing how drunk I was, even though I knew this, did not need the evidence of the bottle - but it makes it that much more striking for some reason.

First we were supposed to attend Adam's party by my house and because Niki seemed like she was never going to show up and because I also wanted someone to talk to at the party, nervous that Niki would ditch me to talk to Adam's friends once we were there, I invited Paul and roommates to come. Paul and about nine other people met me at my house to go to this party and this entertained me so much, the number of random people that would be at Adam's most likely staid party. We pretty much doubled the size of their party once we had got there, all hung out together, and I drank lots of rum. I had so much fun last night with this crowd of people. I love meeting new people and so it was so exciting to get to talk to Paul's new roommates. I also maybe sort of had an outrageous crush on one of his roommates.

Apparently Niki was not having fun at the party she had wanted to go to. Shockingly enough, going to a party at your ex-boyfriend's might not be the best way to spend a Saturday night, or any night. Niki yelled at me after we had left because she had kept wanting to leave, which I hadn't noticed because I was so in love with these new people and with talking to them. There were little single shot bottle of booze out with the alcohol and we were such bad party guests because Niki, Nick, and I all took some. I took an empty one and made myself a martini in a bottle for the subway ride to Misshapes. Niki and I said bye to everyone and walked toward the subway before I decided (wisely) that I didn't really want to go into Manhattan, and that Niki should go to Alligator Lounge to meet Ramsey. Uh yeah, I was insanely drunk and probably a little horrible to Niki last night. I parted ways with her at Alligator telling her I was tired and going home, but really, Metropolitan was right there on my way home and I thought I could just stop in.

I ended up pouring my martini in a bottle in someone's empty glass and talking to (drumroll please because this right here is the first mention in this diary of this boy, this boy who I am totally smitten with, and who I want to fall madly in love with, so get excited, basically, da da da...) Josh. I went to bum a cigarette from him shortly after getting there and pretty much stayed there and talked to him and his friend, and later Paul, and even later Niki all night, or at least until Josh and his friend left. Really even though I was sitting in such close proximity to him for so long last night and talking to him, I really this morning after cannot say that I know very much about him. Some people just radiate something and you can see what type of person they are in the way they smile, the ease with which they do. His facial expressions remind me so much of Sean Desjardin's and so for that reason, I imagined, I imagine that there is something similar triggering those facial expressions. Sometimes I think that these really singular habits are only made singular by their doubling, by the second appearance of them. These things so unique to Sean, a way of looking and smiling, I wasn't able to tag as this specific thing until I saw them again last night reappearing in Josh's smiles.

And yes, Josh is skinny, has brown hair, brown eyes, and a big nose. Just like every other boy I obsess over. All I know is that he is this nice filmmaker boy and he asked me what I do, and okay, yes, the other day, I claimed that I don't lie about this when asked, but some people lose interest after you tell them and I think timing is everything most of the time and normally the question is just asked and then other things are talked about, like the answer doesn't really matter and so I answered "kind of unemployed" not wanting to in any way scare this boy I really liked, but this of course was when Niki was there, when she had rejoined me but not before yelling at me for making her stay at that party, for not going to Misshapes, then for claiming I was going to bed only to run away to Metropolitan, and basically for all the wrongs of all the world. And Niki, never a fan of timing or tactfulness told him, Josh, to dig deeper. And so I told him and he didn't seem disturbed but man, I was really wishing I had not answered my phone ten minutes earlier when Niki was calling, that she wouldn't have been sitting there had I not.

God, what am I talking about? Sometimes I just babble and really there is no arc to this other than that arc of so many of my nights: sobriety, then drunkenness sparking interest in a boy or boys, talking to them, getting giddy, going home alone and falling asleep drunk with high hopes. And that is how this is going to resolve itself because really I am not sure I am saying anything, am still mildly out of it, and eventually Josh and his friend left and even though Josh lives in the neighborhood, I have never seen him before, he said he rarely comes to Metropolitan and so I don't have the hopes that I normally have that I would/could just run into this person again soon, and so yes, I am thinking of perhaps writing him an email since he said his website address last night. But I would not know what to say to him, or really to any boy I liked but didn't know but wanted to, in an email. I mean there is really not much social risk to it since I have never seen this boy before and probably will not run into him again, so there's nothing really to lose, except, of course, some pride - which I have never had very much of to begin with.

against my window

Even though not one, not two, but three people were supposed to meet me at that Deitch party last night, none of them had even left for it by the time I had had enough of it, the party, and decided to leave. I got there and a block away could already see tons of kids hanging out in the street out front, as I got closer I saw cop cars out front, the cops arguing with the organizers and the neighbors who were very upset about all the noise. And it was so much noise.

I went inside, it was pitch black except for a giant screen with strobe like visuals. They weren't serving beer anymore because of the cops. It was so hot. And yeah, the music, the loud noise rock was loud beyond the point of even rocking out party type. It was just headache inducing. And after about twenty minutes of this, I decided it was probably going to get shut down and headed home to eat a burrito. This morning, reading Momus's diary, I learned that it was shut down pretty fast.

I ended up getting stoned at Wyatt's house and then going to Metropolitan where, unlike most times when I am stoned, I really wanted to talk a lot, was having so much fun trying to verbalize thoughts. I talked to Paul and his really cute friend, Josh, who I thought about so much hanging out with them, trying to get at the root of what my desire for him was founded on, and if it was not just how he exemplified certain standards of masculinity. I might talk about him more later in the day given a cup of coffee. Everyone left and weirdly, as I was sitting out back, Kevin came up to talk to me. I asked him about the jack off photos and how he had found them. He told me that a friend sent him the link to see another boy they knew on the site and he came across mine. So now I can breathe out knowing that those boys do not read my diary. My knee touched Kevin's leg as I was talking to him. I doubt he even noticed but just that contact planted the thought in my mind of more contact with him, desiring this boy who is a pretty big asshole to me most of the time. But then he went back inside, telling me I should come talk to him and Matt. And my two second crush on Kevin was over, had faded back into caution, wondering what his motive was in talking to me.

It is supposed to pour again at some point today and so even though I wanted to go see some things in Chelsea - Momus's show, Bellwether, Daniel Reich - I am going to stay in because I can't stand the rain.