slut fever

I just drank a bunch of coffee. There is also Dayquil in my system. I am going to soon go to the bodega and see what non-drowsy fuck me up cold medicine I can get. Then I am going to start drinking some whisky before I pack it away in a flask and go to the parade with Adele and maybe other people. Then I want to be a drunken slut and go to bars and am probably going to. Hopefully with someone else, multiple people. So call me and get on this train. I was in the Salvation Army today and they played that hip hop song from a year or two ago with these lyrics:

When I move, you move. Just like that.

Over and over again and I sang along in my head and danced around looking at oversized Cosby sweaters.

never say never

Since most of my day yesterday was spent in the fog of a hangover and since people were being wishy-washy about actually going out with me last night, I had given up on going out around eleven-thirty, climbed into bed, knowing that it was for the best, that my body needed to rest and detox This is when David called me telling me he was by himself in my neighborhood. And so he came over and without having to try too hard convinced me to come with him to some party on S. 4th. The party wasn't too exciting. After a couple beers, we headed off to Zan's party on McKibbin Street, which was fun, but where I hardly knew anyone also. I drank more beers, some whiskey, some more beer and soon starting dancing and talking to boys I thought were cute. Um, mainly Daniel, whose costume was tastelessly a gay hate crime.

It was already late in the evening when we left, leaving because the party was starting to clear out. I mean it was late or it wasn't because of the time change, one or the other, and either way, there was still some bar time left in there and so the two of us walked to Metropolitan, which was just about as exciting as it has ever been. Last night had the same energy that bars have on gay pride days, the anticipation of sex just fills the air, the room is packed full of people who normally don't come out and it was awesome. I am a fairly self-deprecating person and so for me to say that last night I probably could have slept with anyone there is not wishful thinking. I got hit on more last night than I have in probably the past six months combined. Dude, if you want action, wear tights and booty shorts and you've got your pick of the bar. And so I was being pretty picky, ignoring people that hit on me that normally I would have been interested in.

Some girl took my picture and then asked if David was my Tinkerbell. I told her I wished and so then she giddily confirmed that I was single and told me she had my honey. And I asked her if it was really my honey or if it was vinegar. She told me that it was the later and so I went and talked to this boy and there was no seat on the bench next to him and he told me to sit in his lap and there was something so forward about this boy in a really charming way and he was cute and so after about two minutes of conversation, he asked me if I wanted to come to his house. And I said Maybe, and of course there was never really any maybe about it. We left and went back to his house. Ryan is his name. Not the Ryan that I met the other night. He had these sort of far apart blue eyes that reminded me of Jacob Dylan and dark brown hair and pale skin and the contrast of all these things, the blue, the near black, and the pale white looked so gorgeous. We lied in his bed in our underwear talking for a while with legs touching and soon enough kissing happened and soon enough the underwear came off.

And when I pulled his dick out from his underwear, I was surprised because it was so large and so pretty and I sucked his dick for a long time, his legs wrapped tightly around my neck and I was lost in this physical act and I could say that either I was forgetting or remembering something, maybe myself. Either way, it was pretty awesome. It was also my first time having sex with the lights on in quite a long time. It was nice and different. Eventually, tired and losing interest, just wanting to sleep, I made him sit on my chest and jack off for me, perform. And why watching this jack off performance turned me on way more than the actual contact with him, I am not sure, there are reasons, obviously. But we both came and I was a mess, drunk, tired, dried sweat in my hair and the jizz of two bodies on me.

I wiped off the jizz with his towel sitting on his bed, him standing in front of me, and I admired this gorgeous penis right in my line of vision, talked about something with him, got dressed, did not bother to put back on my tights or Peter Pan cap. And I left, kissing him goodbye. We didn't exchange numbers, and out of some notion of politeness, I thought for a moment that I should get his number as I was leaving and then I squashed that thought, accepting that I can have casual sex and not have to desire something else attached to it. It felt really nice to walk home with that thought, tights dangling from my hand, and me trying to figure out how this time change worked, what difference it would make if it were five or it were six.

Today, I was unable to hold that pride in sexual freedom and fretted whether or not this boy might have felt slighted since I did not sleep over and made no offer to exchange numbers, even though, I am pretty sure it was what he wanted also, just to get off with another body. He also had this scar going down the middle of his stomach that was so beautiful and for that reason I was so glad the lights stayed on, that I could see it occasionally, this tattoo of fragileness. I thought about this a lot, recalled his body and our interactions, played them out in my head today as I made a gigantic breakfast with Adele and then went with her and Jordan on a car ride with the windows open, that gorgeous breeze on my skin, and as I wandered around Park Slope in the setting sun in and out of various small stores.

I asked Dennis Cooper in his blog about the Leroy debacle/Sluts similarities. And he responded in his blog saying this:

charlie q, Yeah, quite a lot of people have remarked on the similarities between the concerns/plot of 'The Sluts' and the details of the JT Leroy thing. I agree it's a very weird coincidence. I was friends (or rather thought I was) with JT during much of the writing of the novel, and was privy to a lot of the earlier lies, exaggerations, and manipulations he/she used to get attention and publicity, and it's possible that factored in to the novel's particular concentration, but I didn't intend any deliberate referennce to JT.

JT Leroy has been posting knee jerk support responses about the New York article in "his" blog. They are entertaining to read and just make it seem more pathetic, the holding on to this identity.

Of course, it would be right after I talked to my friend last night about the death of his father two weeks ago, that my aunt would call me to let me know that my father has a couple days left to live. She did so, while I was hungover and sick and frying up a pan of bacon. She has given me dire prognoses before that death was imminent, but never one with an actual timeframe. His cancer has spread to his brain. He is now paralyzed and does not recognize anyone. This, my father.

It is weird to think about this for many of the reasons I talked about last night with this friend, talking about what role messed up fathers play in our lives. It is good to meet other people that are more accepting of human faults and understanding that everyone's imperfect, some people more so than others, but that is life. My sister, not one of these people that accepts this, but everyone reacts how they have to and you can't fault them for that. My father wants to be cremated. I don't really understand the details of what will happen with these ashes, but supposedly my aunt is going to hold a memorial service in Land O'Lakes because that is where she lives, but I am not real sure who is going to this since no one lives there but her, and there is also supposed to be one in Montclair, where he has more family. Most likely, I will go to Montclair since it is a bus trip away. I think I still don't believe it since he has outlived every death forecast given to him. Four years ago, he was told he had six months to live. My aunt, his sister, today said that he has outlived what anybody predicted and that is because as both of us know, he is stubborn. At this my aunt laughed, and it was the first time I had heard her laugh, not holding back tears in years. She said that she was going to miss him something terrible. I thought of what a choice phrase that was. And her laughter is what I think should be the rule rather the exception - that it is all too beautiful and too funny and too short to do anything but

I want to die. I was on the phone with Bonnie till just past six. I love having a good friend on the West Coast - I mean, obviously, I wish she lived here - but when it's late at night and you can't call anyone else, there is this person who it is three hours earlier for and you can call without being too annoying. But yeah and then I didn't fall asleep till about seven. And my phone rung at nine thirty, waking me and then I couldn't sleep well/at all and the few moments I did get of it were filled with awful nightmares that involved nipple abuse (my own) and they were deformed looking utters by the end of my weekend in this hotel and there was lots of blood and a couple of deaths, and maybe this is because I talked to Ethan about The Sluts yesterday, and maybe it is because it is nearing Halloween that I am having such violent dreams. Daniel pinched my nipples last night really hard, and maybe that's a cause also. So yeah, with less than four hours of sleep, feeling painfully hungover, am about to go see what Halloween costume I can assemble from crap. And despite that ham and cheese I ate before going to bed, I am totally ravenous, particulary for more things that involve hot cheese and ham.

Thanks to clues from Greg, I found the boy from last night on Myspace, wrote him and deleted that missed connection, and oh my god, how I want to make out with him.

Let's just say, I am gellin' again, mixed with a decent amount of caffeine and it is under this fog, that I am about to go see a screening of the John Cameron Mitchell movie, Shortbus.

I have a working phone again, and so if you haven't, you should give me your number so I can drunkenly text message you early in the am about boys like this one, this Ryan, or you know, whoever it is tomorrow that I have an insane crush on.

I got way drunker than I should have, considering I am on lots of cold medicine, and feel pretty fucking fucked up right now. I talked to Merlin (aka lastnightspary) at the show for a really long time. The opening band was pretty good. JD Samson's new side project was not so good, and of course, after suffering through them, it would be them and not the Gossip who had the sound system working. Four songs through The Gossip's set, the sound system went kaput. It wasn't working that good anyway. It was way too much feedback and you couldn't really hear Beth too clearly, but it was danceable and fun, but the fucking soundsystem blew out and that was the end of the show. I told Beth, she gave me a good Halloween story and she gave me a big, wet, sweaty kiss on the cheek.

After sticking around for the Troma film party, getting way too drunk off another open bar and smoking way too many cigarettes and being way too ba-lige, I ended up going to this new gay bar in my neighborhood, Fun, run by the same people who run the Cock. I went with this pack of people whom I didn't really know and lost them pretty much as soon as I got there. I got way more drunk and talked to various boys, a couple of whom I wanted to bring home with me, and toward the end of the night ended up sitting on a bench, avoiding this one boy and watching the go-go boy dance in his jockstrap, and it is that memory that I am about to go jackoff to right now.

There is also that boy, whom I want to make out with so bad. Him, the go-go boy, and this boy in a white hoodie, Anthony. Oh, masturbation fantasies, I am so excited.

I can't help all these updates because in the words of Clint, I am gellin'. I ran into him at Walgreens in the cold medicine section, this after ten minutes of me walking around Walgreens in a daze wondering why it was I had come there. He asked me if I was gellin' and I didn't get it and they he said geltabs, and said he had taken them too, and man, these Dayquil geltabs fuck you up. I have been walking around feeling stoned for the past couple of hours. I was looking at the drowsy antihistamines because they were cheap, but saying I shouldn't get them because they'll make me sleepy. Clint said we could order coke and I am pretty certain he was serious. It's always hard to tell with him, though. At some point he also talked about how cheap the lube was and we had a lube conversation across the aisle really loudly, both under the spell of geltabs, and an Orthodox Jewish lady walked past us and we both felt naughty.

I get nervous, waking up and seeing a banner headline on Nytimes.com, fearing something's been bombed but then I read the headline, "Bush's Pick for Supreme Court Withdraws," and with wicked glee root that Bush takes another lashing. That he cannot even gain the support of his own party members. And knowing that this came after the 2,000th soldier died in Iraq and he took a lashing for that, and that most likely within the next two days, things are only going to get worse and hopefully Rove and Libby will be indicted like the criminals they are. It is lovely to watch someone fall apart in such dramatic fashion, someone who seemed to never get scratched despite numerous debacles.

But then again, this probably also means that someone far more awful is going to be nominated in place of Miers, that if all these conservatives opposed her, maybe she was the best we could hope for from Bush.

My sickness is waning and the evidence of this is in the more musical nature of my dreams. When I was first falling asleep, I heard noises in the living room and was convinced someone was robbing us and I thought to how I would escape the situation, imagined fighting off this intruder and how we were particularly vulnerable, not having a working cellphone in the apartment to call the police. That was around eleven when the sickness was still intense. Early this morning, I had a dream about shopping in a very specific Super Wal-Mart with my sister for groceries. This Super Wal-Mart is not one that exists but it is one that I know, one that I have dreamed about before, the layout is unlike anything that could ever be realized, even by Wal-Mart. It is a massive maze of merchandise, probably about three times the size of a Super Wal-Mart, but when you get to the end of what normally be one of these stores, the opposite side of the grocery section, past all the clothes, past the electronics, past the hardware, past the toys, the sporting goods, past the garden stuff, you walk down this tunnel sort of area and the merchandise suddenly gets better, more pricey at least. But anyway, I was with my sister in the grocery section and I had two boxes of cereal and something else in my arms, and told her I would be right back, and snuck away through the entire store to go the pricey area because it was where I thought the Cliff bars were which I wanted to steal a few of, and I did not want my sister to see me stealing them.

After the long walk there, I got there, only to discover that it was just hardware back there, and that there were no Cliff bars. So I walked back through the store, I had left the boxes of cereal somewhere and would need to get them again. I ran into my sister, who was looking for me, in the clothing section. And one song was just ending over the loud speaker, and the next song started to come on and immediately, I said "Oh my god, do you know what song this is? I love this song!!!" and started to dance through the aisles as we walked to get more cereal. The song was Aretha Franklin's "Rock Steady," and I was a dancing fool. My sister was pretty mortified and trying to get me to stop, but I simply pointed out to her that I was not the only one dancing. And right at that moment, a family walked past us with their shopping cart, all of them dancing in line, like ducks except awesome and dancing. And everyone in the store was dancing to this song as they were shopping and I pointed to them and suddenly my sister was no longer moritifed and danced also.

Other evidence that my sickness is waning is that my snot is more of a solid substance that blows out my nose pretty easily, rather than a drippy faucet of goo.

I could feel the dryness in the back of my throat last night as I was getting ready to go bed, and prayed that it wouldn't happen, that that wasn't the first sign of being sick. My prayers did no good. I woke up with the sorest throat, the dizzyiest head, and have pretty much spent all except for three hours of this day in bed. I sort of love how when you are sick, you are always bordering on delirium - I assume other people are also, or this might just be further evidence of how far I deviate from what is normal, because half my day awake is spent having waking dreams, imagining crazy things and this could be because I am reading a book that talks a lot about Blake, or it could just be because I am sick. That is pretty much the only part I love about being sick. I do not love the sore throat, the coughing bordering on dry heaving, the tiredness, the inability to have a conversation, or to be unable to listen to someone without getting into zombie mode and wondering what the hell they are saying.

Not too long ago, in talking about The Sluts, I made the claim, fairly discredited these past couple of weeks that Cooper is oft mentioned as being Leroy. Too bad I had not read this New York article before saying that. Now I am caught up again on my literary gossip. I still think The Sluts, though, mirrors in too many ways the JT Leroy situation, with someone taking on a fake idenity and all the readers of this internet thread liking the gritty aspects of this persona. And why is that, that we, as readers are always ready to privlege something more if we know about the author's background, why we love writers that have struggled and survived. Obviously, Leroy. There is also David Wojnarowicz, whose writing I think would still hold up regardless. Also Melissa P.'s 100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed, writing which even with the privleging of being a memoir is unable to hold up. Really, countless examples.

The Penthouse letters phenomenon. More than likely these things are fake, exaggerated, fictionalized - but so much of our getting off depends on believing that these things are real, that they happened - and is this because we hold out hope for the possibilty of these things happening to us, that that is where the power of this documentary stuff comes from, in the perhaps one day realization of our dark sexual fantasies.

Dennis Cooper talks about the Leroy thing in his blog:
I can't speak for anyone else who knew JT Leroy -- whoever or what that is -- early on, but for me the progression from knowing and caring about a seemingly real 14 year old kid who claimed to have been horribly abused his whole life and was living on the streets and who claimed he was going to die of AIDS any minute and who could nonetheless and quite remarkably write well and honestly and sometimes beautifully about his life to watching this seemingly same kid transform into a fame and fashionability and money chasing alternative culture mini-Paris Hilton to discovering that the entire thing was probably a heartless and greedy if rather brilliantly carried out scam has not been fun at all, but, speaking for myself, give me some time and maybe the ludicrousness of it all will sink in and I'll join the people who weren't so personally involved in the saga in laughing my head off. I think that's quite possible. Not that I don't laugh about it now, but it's painful laugh. Yeah, 'Sarah' may not be a classic for the ages, but back when I thought it was written by the person I described at the beginning of this paragraph, it seemed like a pretty special achievement.

This analysis of the Leroy situation mirrors the plot of The Sluts so much and I do not think Cooper is aware of that. Also on his blog, is an entry called "Scrapbook Two, p. 8 (10 American Prositutes)," which appears to be images he has gathered from online escort ads (with or without their permission?), and some of these subjects are strikingly beautiful, particulary Matthew (19, Houston) and Lucas (21, San Diego). There was a time when I didn't respect Cooper and I would loudly proclaim so. I remember at one point arguing with Ben about him, who I believe was writing his thesis on him. But now, I revere him so much and think he is an amazing artist, that his writing is something really special and forces me to think about what it is I like to read about and what it is I want to write about and how. This Oe book I am reading right now is pretty amazing and pretty nonlinear, but even it is a little too typical narrativish after reading Cooper.

Early on at the party, when I still had my wits about me and could hear myself saying choice phrases, I told Adele, "This party is like a Who's Who of my sexual imagination." Because, really, who was not at this party? Name any former crush, present crush, or past sexual partner and pretty much every single one of them was at Ashton's gigantic birthday party getting insanely drunk off the copious amount of booze there. And of course, I wanted to talk to every one of them about this as you more than likely know.

I had smoked some pot with Ethan and finished off a forty even before arriving at this party and so arrived pretty wasted and only continued to get unnecessarily more so. It was raining when we went to the party. I brought an umbrella that I totally forgot at the party. I have left countless umbrellas all over this city while drunk. A dog pissing on telephone poles; showing I was there. But perhaps the real sign of how drunk I was, aside from the painful hangover I am experiencing and the cringing recollections of spilling drinks off a table, throwing myself at crushes, and giving head in the bathroom, there is the evidence of a broken phone. I am not even sure how that happened, but now my phone does not work in the slightest and I imagine I am not going to be able to get it fixed, get a new one until Friday at the earliest, so until then, e-mail is where it's at. Ben may have been the last voice my phone will ever know.

Toward the end of the night, all I wanted to do was talk to Christopher, the boy I have been obsessed with pretty much since I moved to New York and get him to make out with me, and like every other person I am attracted to, he told me how awesome I am and how we should be friends. I am so fucking tired of sublimating my desire to hump someone so that I can be friends with them and listen to them talk about boys whom they want to hump. I mean, it's just becoming a pretty common pattern is all. At some point in the night, I shared the bathroom with Christopher's friend to pee, some boy whose name I don't even know. And as he was zipping up, he made some joke about giving him head and I made some "Well?" expression with my eyes and briefly sucked this boy's penis and then kissed him even more briefly and then went back out to the party and only in passing asked myself why. I got myself a plastic cup of Carlo Rossi, the beer having run out, and that is how parties always seem to lead to their denouement, with Carlo Rossi. Where these jugs of Rossi come from, who the party guest is that brings these to most parties I attend I don't know, but they are always the last thing to be imbibed, and I drank the sweet red stuff that I hesitate to call wine and talked and talked to Christopher, oh, how I talked, how I always do and never seem to know when to stop.

Super fast update. I've got a bagel in the oven and I am only giving myself enough time for it toast to write here. Last night, after getting off work, bored and tired as all hell, I ran into Adele on my block and made her come with me to the Stay Gold opening before going back home. And I felt like such a certain type of person, getting off of work, and saying Man, I NEED a beer. And I went and had two even though I have claimed I am going to try not to drink. And those two beers, since I hadn't really eaten all day made me fairly drunk and way tired, and I passed out in bed after watching Charlie Rose and other people talk about Syria, which sort of terrifies me, what we (meaning the US) might do, and the sky is gray and I am ravenous and need to do sex work to do, and if I do, I might go watch Cremaster 3 wasted at Sunshine at midnight, and my bagel is most definitely burning.

Bob Dylan is playing over the speakers here at work and I am sitting next to a window overlooking the black Hudson and looking at the little lights building up to the sky across the river on the Jersey shore, spread across the black land, these little amber dots, these little dots of light that puncuate the night sky in such number. And yet, depsite the numbers, the sky wins and they seem like lonely defenses against the night. I am drinking tea and am as sad and as happy as I have been in so long. Since probably last year, working here, doing the same routine. And the music is so good today, and that is about it, and I am trying to be okay with that, that depression is just as natural as happiness and I should savor it for what it is.

It might have started with sitting next to Matt on the subway this afternoon and talking to him, but I think it was there earlier and I am not sure why, and sitting next to Matt was so nice in a way that just felt so comfortable and made me so happy that I didn't desire him and could talk to him somewhat casually. Maybe it started when he got off at his stop and that comfortableness was no longer there, when there was an empty seat next to me and an unread book in my bag that I didn't want to start because I only had one more stop.

Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking and Dennis Cooper's The Sluts

There are at least two points in Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, at least two that I can remember, in which she talks about the way time has changed what is and is not allowable, or at least desirable, when it comes to public grieving. She quotes from a 1922 edition of Emily Post’s Ettiquette when public grieving was expected, at a time shortly after the influenza epidemic when there was scarcely any house that escaped the grief brought on by that flu virus. And she contrasts this with now with the adjectives that we apply to grieving parties, adjectives such as indulgent, how we live in a period that does not like reminders of death, and like it to happen behind closed doors, out of sight. I think she is right in her assessments and that is why I find it so powerful to read this memoir dealing with the death of her husband and the serious illness of her daughter, who now, also is dead. It is so honest and so tragic.

I thought of many examples of literature and film of recent memory that have dealt with death, but none that have done so, treating it as a tragedy. There is that term now, a few of them I can think of that distinguish the period I live in from that of Emily Post’s: black comedy and tragicomedy. That there is no tragedy, that there is tragicomedy. Dave Eggers wrote a memoir about the death of his two parents within a month or so of each other, and yes, there were heartbreaking moments to that, but there was also, as there is in most instances where death is discussed, an ironic tone to it all, a lighthearted remark said shortly afterward to let us know that you are not taking it that seriously, that there is some distance, and surely, this is a worthy coping mechanism we use to protect ourselves, but it also seems like one unique to our particular historical circumstances.

And so, it was plenty refreshing, plenty heartbreaking to read Didion’s memoir. It is the return to form that so many critics were hoping for with Where I Was From, and where you read a paragraph and wonder how it was you got to the end of that paragraph, by what path Didion guided you, and I was blown away more than a few times reading it. It is elliptical in a way that grief is, letting some trigger guide you down memory lane, remembering that house in Malibu and the real estate agent and the mudslide and Morton’s and on and on, painful, nostalgic sentences that have you, me, longing for our own past.

Throughout the book, she also talks about her own writing career and that of her husband’s, John Gregory Dunne, reading meaning into passages he had written in his books about death and heart attacks, and as much a pleasure as this book is to read, knowing that you are privy to something special here by one of our nation’s best writers, it is also so painful at times, like being punched in the stomach again and again and again with how these catastrophes happened so close to one another to this frail old lady, how she loses the two people most close to her and has to deal with that. I never cry. Ever. Especially not during movies or books, but my eyes did water a few times reading this book, and that never ever happens, so that is saying a lot about how much this book affected me. Far and away, my favorite book I have read in recent memory.

After finishing it in two, three days, the book still in unread condition, I brought it into Barnes and Nobles since they have a liberal return policy and exchanged it for Dennis Cooper’s The Sluts yesterday afternoon. Like the other Cooper books I have read, it is a quick read because the content is so salacious and incendiary that you can not put down the book, that the sleep you need just sounds so tame compared to snuff movies and hustlers and castration. This book is also amazing and I am sure lots of grad students probably are creaming their pants over it and the dissertations they could write about it. Cooper is so meta in this book, the setup of it being the postings to an online escort review site, and some of the posters complaining about previous posters posting fake information or posting under fake names, and throughout the novel, there being this big concern with whose reviews are real and whose are not, this whole concern with having a reliable narrator. There are also points when posters will critique other posters and their interest in snuff films, and how by having these sexual fantasies they are contributing to people’s deaths, and surely, as any good pomo lit reader knows, this is Cooper chiding us and his critics, implicating us by the nature of us reading his narratives, that we are just as participant to the creation of the text’s meaning as Cooper is. And there is so much to explore there, but really I think the real issue of this book, one that I have not seen mentioned in the couple of reviews I have read of it, is JT Leroy.

As some of you probably know, there is lots of debate going on, there has been for a while, about whether there is actually a JT Leroy or if it is not a big charade orchestrated by another writer, the one most often cited as being behind Leroy, being him, is Dennis Cooper. And really, I think Cooper is giving us a coda with this book, The Sluts, perhaps even admitting to being behind Leroy, or at least having fun teasing us that he might be. And I didn’t realize this until this afternoon when I was on my way back to B and N yet again, exchanging this book I really enjoyed for another one, this time for Kenzaburo Oe’s Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age!. The whole book, Cooper’s, centers on this couple, Brian and his whore, Brad, who he plans on killing, and when Brad chickens out on dying so publicly, dying at all, all the readers of this thread want the narrative to continue, want to know where Brad is now, and eventually an impostor, Zack takes on the role of Brian pretending to be him, even finding an impostor Brad, really a Thad who wants the internet fame that Brad had, and so they orchestrate this hoax, pretending to be the Brad and Brian, already this collective fantasy of all these online forum readers. On the subway ride to the bookstore, I thought back over the book and thought to one of the characters, Jimmy Taylor, and for some reason, I remembered that only once, briefly, the way online forum people will abbreviate things to their acronyms, he was referred to as JT. This JT is friends with the real Brad and threatens to expose the fake one and tell his real identity unless he provided him with hush money. And here, at least, I think Cooper is acknowledging the Cooper/Leroy identity, discussing how easy it is to create these fake identities, these personas via writing, how these writings spring in an almost Bahktinian way from the collective imagination, that this stuff is already out there, the writer is just tapping into popular fantasies and making them appear real, say perhaps the fantasy of a truckstop hooker working his way across the South pretending to be a girl, say even Sarah.

It may seem like a stretch, a conspiracy theory, but I am pretty convinced that The Sluts is written about the ease with which fake writing identities are created, specifically that of JT Leroy’s.

Sorry Hannah, I returned The Year of Magical Thinking after finishing it yesterday for another book I wanted to read, Dennis Cooper's The Sluts, which I finished this morning and am about to return for another book. Possible options being considered as I finish this cup of coffee before heading out to the bookstore: Humboldt's Gift, Herzog, Rabbit, Run, The Berlin Diaries, (big maybe here):Will in the World. What to do, what to do? I want something new like W.G. Sebald but I don't know what that would be - any suggestions? I think I should get something new because most of these books with luck I could find at a used bookstore for cheap, but new books seem so blah except for some hardcovers which is more in store credit than I will have after returning this Cooper paperback.

a saturday, a part of it, in picture

Put checks next to all of these:

Rent Paid
(aka went to Bank and Post Office)

Bought Things at Drugstore
(including Can of Shaving Cream that Exploded and which I may or may not return, may instead just be lame and buy a new can)

Returned Hannah's book
(although not to Hannah, hopefully you got it?)

Bought Headphones
(and am now listening to the New Pornographers as I secretly type this from work)

and and and....

Bought the new Joan Didion book, and and and ...

Read the First Two Chapters (the part that was excerpted and also read at her reading, so my third time through this part, and now everything is new stuff and I am so excited to get off work and read it)

I woke up this morning fairly hungover and got a call from the regular, ran off to see him, so glad to get this money that I needed so bad. Then I did laundry and cleaned my house a little, finally having clothes that don't smell like cigarettes, booze, and sweat. And then because everything eventually will gel, I got contacted by the other regular and went and saw him, jizzed in two people's mouths with the span of seven hours, and now have enough to pay my landlord the rent tomorrow, even enough to have eaten a burrito and flan at La Morelos this evening. They were out of spicy pork though, and so I had to deal with the terror of not having my saftey blanket and instead getting chorizo.

Some moments, busy days like this one, you feel so proud of yourself and your ability to get all these things done in one day, on the one day you needed to, your one day off from working at the Princeton Review. And tomorrow, bank, post office, hopefully the Strand to return Hannah's book, and then work, and then I will be done with all my obligations and can just relax. I am so excited for tomorrow night to have all of this behind me, to have clean sheets to climb into when it is all done and to curl up in bed with a book, right now Kelly Link's Magic for Beginners, but if there is enough cash left after tomorrow's bill paying to buy it, I will be curling up tomorrow night with The Year of Magical Thinking.

The reason I was hungover this morning was because last night I went out with Ben, Christy, and Whitney to the Rapture show at Tribeca Grand, and luckily I was with Ben since he knows people just about everywhere, and so we didn't have to wait in the block long line to get in and were actually able to see them play. Then I danced and drank whiskey from my flask and smoked Top cigarettes at the Look dance party, scared the bassist from the Rapture, who I am in love with and more or less made that known to him. Christy and I also terrified some of the partiers by screaming, "Death to Heteros" and other such nonsense in the middle of the dancefloor. Merlin took pictures of us doing so, but sadly, none of them got posted, however one of me smoking a Top cigarette, probably rolled by Ben, is up there.

Oh yeah, and tomorrow headphones are going to save my fucking life and make my job about eight million billion times better.

Help me! I am stuck at work sans headphones listening to the worst music ever that my boss, my age, a boy, is playing. How can someone my age in New York listen to such bad music? U2's "The Sweetest Thing." Lots of bad Enya-ish world music. Some Avril Lavinge sounding singer. Awful! It makes me want to cry. What the fuck is going on? I am going to have to buy some headphones even though I am broke before risking coming in again and having to listen to this.

big hands - i know you're the one

You see, I didn't think I was that drunk this evening when I left Royal Oak in search of a Sparks, but as the walk ended up being longer than I hoped since there were no bodegas in close proximity, I realized that no way did I need another drink and then I also realized that I should just go home because no way would I have gone back to the bar, as fun as it was, and not end up buying more drinks with money I don't have, and coming home yet again grossly drunk at four in the morning and waking up an hour before I had to leave for work.

And so, instead, I just ate the bag of cheddar popcorn of Adele's that I just bought for her a couple hours ago and wrote a missed connection for this boy, Brendan, whom I really maybe kind of like. I think Paul might hate me because I left without saying goodbye because I didn't think I was actually going home and ended up texting him when I neared home saying I wasn't going back. Morrissey Boy was at Royal Oak and came up to Paul and I, said a brief hi to me and then talked pretty much exclusively to Paul and danced with him pretty exclusively while I was there, sort of obnoxiously ignorning me. He looked really cute like he always does and ignored me pretty much as he always does. I ignored it and closed my eyes and rocked out to what else, The Smiths. Along with LCD Soundsytem ("Losing My Edge"!), Violent Femmes, and other amazing songs with my eyes closed, danced like a maniac, ignorning whatever lack of social grace was going on around me, smoked a bunch of poorly rolled cigarettes, and then finally left for that Sparks before never returning.

I was really sad that Ben had left at Capone's and not come along also to dance with me so I didn't have to dance so close to Morrissey Boy who most likely hates me. I love having Ben in town and know that I hang out with other people when he is not in town, but I couldn't imagine doing so now, and maybe Ben is lucky in the fact that he is here only for these brief instances and so I never get tired of him, bored of him, and think every moment is really exciting when he is around. But I sort of don't think so. I think he might just be that awesome.

PS - White cheddar popcorn is amazing. Other things: Cigarettes when drunk, The Smiths when drunk and when played loud, not having to carry an umbrella, cute boys, awesome new roommates, and last but not least, adhesive tape!

PPS - I gave my number to some annoying boy last night because I was too drunk, too tired to think of a fake one or an excuse not to and he sent me a text message today saying, "Hey this is Phil. We met last night but i cant put a face 2 name.what were u wearing? Was i really sloppy n gross?! Don't remember." Yes, sloppy and gross and graceless and never getting a response from me. Ever.

I'm at work right now, and therefore, going to miss the sure to be thrilling Deitch opening, along with an opening at David Zwirner and many other things. But I cannot tell you that I am not happy to be here on the twelfth floor of this builing in SoHo, looking out over the gray and cloudy sky, the industrial buildings and the Hudson River. Perhaps I should mention that my boss just played an Aimee Mann song. Surely, that is helping this mood. My thoughts are wandering to music and wondering why dj's can't play good music - that everyone djs on fucking cds nowadays and so surely, they could download anything and burn it to a disc, but they don't, it's the same stuff everytime I go out. And I am also thinking about a boy, Brendan, Brandon, not sure which, whom I met, and whom I think is pretty cute. I love music, sad music on rainy days when your body feels like crap and you've got to much caffeine in you, too much unexpressable love and little else.

Music geeks, I really need some help. So last night at the New Pornographer show, I heard this song and I have heard it before, but am not sure where, what album, or even the song title. But I really liked it, and thought to myself that I wanted to stitch this one line from the song on to the front of a t-shirt. However, now I cannot even think of what that lyric was or other lyrics from the song, or even the name of the song. I have just briefly skipped through all the tracks on Electric Version and did not hear it in my cursory listening. So the clue:

The line was something along the lines of: We've got the right to feel(alt. show) hurt (alt. pain), [indecipherable] heart (alt. hurt.)

I know that is probably the worst clue ever, but if you can help me, you would be smarter than Google and that is saying a lot.

PS - Someone's photos from last night. Check out the Stevie Nicks dress.

Dan Bejar's voice is so unique and such a pleasure to hear. Remarkably, it sounds live exactly like it does on his Destroyer albums. When Destroyer played last night, I was so happy, so surprised to see what Dan Bejar looks like, and all the more happy that he was this dumpy, short guy with unkempt hair, and such a genius. He did not play one song from Your Blues, and so I didn't recognize one of the songs he played, but they all made me so happy and unlike most other live performers, you can make out just about every word Bejar is singing, so it was okay.

During the downtime between these two sets, they were playing background music, Bee Gees, Arcade Fire, and things. Ethan asked, "Do you know what would make me so happy right now?" And I said a big, comfortable couch, and he agreed, but said he was also wishing that they would play a Stevie Nicks song in that mix of songs. We talked about which Nicks song we would really like to hear and then moved on to other topics, boys or something.

New Pornographers came on afterward sans Bejar and blasted through "Twin Cinema" as their opening song. Bejar didn't come out till the third song, which I can't even remember and left the stage right after. Maybe "Jackie, Dressed in Cobras"? About every three or four songs, they would call out for Dan and he would take his time making his way back to the stage, drunker and drunker each time with a new beer in his hand. I wanted him to stay on stage because Carl Newman's vocals sounded so pop compared to Bejar's. Neko Case's vocals, not surprisingly, were totally awesome and she was wearing this really big yellow dress and I commented to Ethan when they first came on stage how there was his Stevie Nicks, in that dress. And even though Newman's voice sort of annoyed me, he, along with the rest of the band is such a pleasure to watch, that there is all this noise going on, so many musicians and yet, it still sounds so good. Also, Newman was wearing a Mates of State t-shirt, which I thought cute. Midway through their set, they played, "The Laws Have Changed," and my night could have ended happy right there, hearing my favorite song of theirs done so well.

I am not sure what it is in their music that makes it so good - I don't think it is possible to dissect the elements and try to examine your pleasure - it just doesn't work - there is just something about it, hearing those songs that makes me smile ear to ear and want to bob my head and try to make my physical expressions somehow mirror the mental pleasure that this sound gives me. They played two encores because everyone else there felt the same way about this band, and I felt really old because so many of these people seemed so young, eighteen, if even, and the music was so good, so incredibly good, and during that second encore, the drummer proudly said that he had made Neko's dress and this led to lots of stage banter about the dress before the drummer said it made her look like Stevie Nicks. I hit Ethan on the arm, and then someone in the band started jokingly playing the opening chords of Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams." Some people in the audience, including Ethan and I, screamed so insanely excited hoping that the joke would turn into a cover and the band all started to improvise their way through the song and Neko, a little reluctantly started to sing the song, and even though she messed up a couple of the lyrics, it was so insanely thrilling to hear after Ethan and I had just been talking about wanting to hear some Stevie Nicks. It was amazing to hear New Pornographers playing Fleetwood Mac! That was the new highlight of my evening, after the band already giving me so many. So generous, those folks.

After the show, I went and met Ben and Solomon on the street who were both silly drunk and irrate and Ben was beating this sorry excuse for an umbrella even further up. I went to Nowhere with them and soon the rest of their posse arrived (Sasha, Christy, Amy, Steph, ?) and I had a few beers and talked to various people, still totally high off the show I had just seen. The train for some reason waited half an hour or so in the 1st Avenue stop before leaving, so slowly and then again stopping at Beford for a long time, at which point, tired of this insanely long trip home, I got off there and walked through the rain, this never ending rain, of which today is the seventh straight day supposedly. It is going to be such a joyous sight when these clouds break and I see the sky again. I cannot wait. Supposedly this may happen briefly Saturday afternoon.

And oh yeah, in an hour, I have to be at work. This is my first time doing actual work in probably five, maybe six months.

Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Monday, Tuesday. 3-10. Yes, I am going to be working, but I do not know how I am going to do the sex work I planned on doing tomorrow and Friday evening to pay my rent by Friday. Yikes! New Pornographers = Amazing. More tomorrow. Sleep now.

coming in may along with the sunshine

Everyman is the title of the new Philip Roth novel, which is supposed to come out in May. I am so excited. As you probably now, there are two living writers I am obsessed with, him and Joan Didion, two people at two opposite ends of the prose spectrum. Didion's so clean and precise; Roth's so brilliant, almost on the verge of sloppy bursts of monologue. This is Roth's 27th book. He is a machine.

Link via Bookslut

Three days ago, I had about thirty dollars left to my name, and yet have gone out the past two nights to bars and came home pretty drunk, surely drinking big bottles of cheap beer before going out helps this situation, and I have eighteen dollars to my name right now. I will have about three hundred by Friday and just need to get two hundred between now and then to pay my rent. And oh yeah, I am going out tonight and probably most nights until Sunday when Ben leaves. I am going to see Destroyer and the New Pornographers tonight and I am so excited as the hour approaches.

I have been sleeping a lot lately since moving into my new room and I am not sure if it is because my bed is so comfortable, because the sunlight no longer hits my window at exactly nine on this side of the builing, because the weather is getting cooler and darker, or if it is because I am mildly depressed about unspecified things.

Because I think it is the later and my body hasn't been feeling too good with all this drinking I have been doing all summer long and because going out to bars has not brought me love, or even frequent sex, I am resolving to stop going out once Ben leaves town. This doesn't eliminate the possibility of a bottle of wine and movies, but yeah, no more binge drinking at bars for a while after Sunday. So maybe I'll see you tonight at No. 1 depending on what time the show lets out and maybe I'll see you somwhere else tonight and maybe I'll see you at some bars later this week, but beyond that, if you want to hang out with me, you better like one of these: movies, Scrabble, other exciting board games, walking to the water, eating. Seriously.

and we'll laugh and toast to nothing and splash our empty glasses down

I am on a lonely road and I am travelling, travelling, travelling, travelling. Looking for something - what can it be? Oh I hate you some. I hate you some. I love you some.
*******************


Where did this love of Joni Mitchell suddenly spring from? And more particularly, one song, "All I Want," which I have been listening to on repeat on and off for the last three, four days. I know twenty somethings that live in New York City, Williamsburg no less, in the early part of the twenty-first century are not supposed to be listening to such earnest stuff, but I cannot help it, and nor do I want to help it.

I saw Wynne Greenwood and K8 Hardy's performance at Foxy tonight and it was nice to be out there listening to all this talk of art out in the light mist and the cool air with people I get so happy to see. I am about to go out to the Metropolitan to see some more of those people. Of course, I am listening to Joni Mitchell before I go, and maybe this is why Ben said he had never heard me so calm, so mellow. Maybe that's the reason, and maybe it's because I am stressed about some things and so don't want to think about them and just want to sleep and so I am tired even though I shouldn't be or maybe it's because my body is physically exhausted from going out every night or maybe Joni or maybe something or or or because it's life and something about giving yourself to the tide, not fighting it.

PS - Sometimes photos decontextulized are gorgeous objects. And, oh my God, look at this one.

So when I woke up this morning, surprisingly not hungover and feeling all right, I listened to a message from my landlord that made me feel not so all right, spoiled the content I was feeling from just waking up, a message not unreasonably asking me to mail her our rent about which I have to call and tell her I will mail on Friday and which gives me to Friday to get it. Somehow? The regular called me last night and I postponed plans with him even though I am insanley broke and needed that money so much, did so because I was in Union Square when he called about to go see my hero, Joan Didion read at the Barnes and Nobles there. So I told him I could get together at about nine, but he ended up calling before then and cancelling saying that he was going out to dinner with a friend instead.

The Didion reading was the most packed reading I ever been to at that store. We were toward the back of the top floor, Ben and I, with a sea of people's heads between us and tiny little Joan. She read the same excerpt I had already read, the one that was in The New York Times a couple weeks ago, and so that was dissapointing, but it was still really thrilling to see this writer whom I adore so much in person even if she was really far away.

Later on after learning that I wasn't going to see that guy, I cruised Craigslist unsuccessfully for a bit before giving up and enjoying programming on the Food Network, a thing of pork lo mein, a beer and a Sparks, and then heading out in the rain to hang out with Ben, first at Metropolitan and then through the pouring rain to the Cock. At the Cock, I bummed cigarettes off of just about everyone that was smoking one, danced to songs I didn't totally enjoy, save Nine Inch Nails, drank Coors Light (yum) on the street and had a really lovely time talking to Ben. The night ended with someone ODing on something in the Cock and being unresponsive to the bouncer who was shaking him and all that was pretty upsetting to watch. The little nook that served as a backroom has been barricaded off and the bouncer kept marching around with his flashlight, in what looks like a pretty big clean up of the Cock's raunchy behavior - have they been recieving citations maybe? There was this boy, David, who was really cute and funny in a nerdy way and when I asked when he was going to make out with me as I was leaving, he said, "Oh, in about fifteen seconds," and I counted down on my fingers and that three, two, one was so exciting, almost more exciting than the kiss I was aniticpating in those last few seconds. And I have his number and may or may not call him.

Oh and there is good news that really I meant to mention earlier because yes, I am stressed about my rent, but the good news is that the Princeton Review called me today and said they have work available starting tomorrow. I worked for them last year as you may or may not know and was aniticipating the start of work again in the fall and was nervous that I had yet to hear back from them after contacting them a couple weeks ago, was sure that they were going to hire me again. But fuck yeah - they called and I am going to start working in the next couple of days and hopefully as many hours as possible and I'll start having paychecks again, big paychecks and I won't have to see old men naked anymore and I'll have reasons to leave the house and I am so happy, you do not even know. I mean, at least, I'll be able to pay my November rent on time now. And everything cancels each other out. You can only be sad for so long about a phone call, that of your landlord's, before maybe not even two hours later, you get a good call, telling that you that you are probably going to have a couple of weeks, if not a couple months of work available that is super easy. Okay, but now back to worrying about this month's rent. Why are we the worst tenants ever? I sort of miss Dara this month and her delinquence with the rent that made me feel better about mine.

Would it be too bad a play on words to say that I am undecided about Indecision? It is not bad, although there are groan worthy moments. And it is not great, although there are some really great passages. It's a sloppy book that has potential for greatness, or had it if an editor would have sat on it until it was reworked. Every review makes the Holden Caulfield analogy, but I think the better analogy is Benjamin Braddock. Dwight Wilmerding, the late twenties protagonist just floating through life reminds me so much of The Graduate's Benjamin Braddock floating in his father's pool day in and day out after graduating from college, no direction, no motivation - and no real clear path for a male in his twenties to follow at this particular historical moment, that there is a prolonged adolescence for people in their twenties, and Dwight at a couple points in the novel claims it is because of the absurdly long lifespans people live, so that our parents are still alive, that they are dating in their fifties, and going to live for a couple, if not a few more decades most likely, and that this is something that people did not have to deal with until recently, and thus one excuse among many that Dwight attributes for his ennui.

And surely, this is why I enjoyed this book, and why The Graduate is my favorite movie because I relate so well to that pool scene, because I spend my day lying in bed reading, or doing so on my roof in nicer weather and I don't know where it is I am going, don't even have any destinations that I am shooting for. And surely, part of the reason I didn't like this book is because it is someone close to being a peer who has been published, someone who I don't even think is that good, but someone who had the motivation to put pen to paper, or hand to keyboard, or whatever, but someone who overcame the indecisiveness of his character, Dwight, and did something he wanted to do.

It is also pretty impossible to read fiction by twenty somethings and not hear the influence of Dave Eggers. As maligned as he often is, I am really convinced that years down the line when people look at all the stuff written from this era, they will be able to see how all these writers obviously read Eggers at some point and picked up that same voice, those same energetic, getting all your caffeine induced thoughts out in one breath, in one comma heavy sentence, and doing it all that new sincerity way, taking genuine pleasure in odd things, in things where enjoyment would previously be considered ironic. Kunkel's path mirrors Eggers' so well. Eggers published Might, a small circulated, but widely adored magazine and then published A Heartbreaking Work, which got well-deserved praise, but praise which was so pervasive and everywhere and surely a result of his connections already among the literati. Same deal with Kunkel and n + 1 - and surely his association with that magazine is probably the only reason this book was published by Random House and why it has recieved the amount of press it has, as imperfect a book as it is.

And just like Eggers' first book also where there is a scene in the car with Eggers and Toph unironically enjoying Journey, Kunkel has a car scene where he is unironically enjoying Air Supply. The ending of this book is also similar in some ways to A Heartbreaking Work with a rousing monologue urging the reader to live life, to be a part of it, and this is where this book really falters, Kunkel's - it changes the tone of the novel too much, these last twenty pages and sounds way too didactic. It doesn't come naturally enough, organically.

And since I borrowed the book and am going to give it back tomorrow (Hannah, hopefully you'll be at work), here are the quotes I might at some point want to thumb back to:

Arriving in Banos at dusk I dashed into the HOMBRES room of the bus station and stood pissing into the reeking urinal with fantastic mightiness. It did me a lot of good, releasing the suffering contents of my bladder. And as my pain gave way to half-happiness I though of how I loved to piss, and in fact to sneeze, to shit, to remove wax from my ears or snot from my nose, to ejaculate or to spit, and even when sick to vomit - anything at all along those lines. I might never become a wise and decisive person, but at least an entire lifetime of excretion and other removals remained before me, and faced with the prospect of such cost-free, morally neutral, and abundantly available pleasure, how could I ever regret my disgusting life on earth? I am the poison that is in me, and I love getting rid of it. 117

I walked out of Alice's building and started hustling to work. Along with the morningtime coolness there was also something new in the air: this slight kind of back-to-school tightness. The sunlight seemed faintly to smell of sharpened pencils, a sensation that comported very nicely with the feeling of renewed education you get from being psychoanalyzed. And along with the back-to-school flavor there was a definite edge of anticipation in the air as well. Because going to school year after year - it really schools you, and so at every onset of fall I'd always feel a certain seasonal imminence of big games and difficult exams, new crushes, homeroom disasters. At the beginning of every school year and now into adult life I'd walk toward class or work in the morning and think Something big is going to happen this year. At some point during these nine months that will seem longer than a year, something is definitely going to take place. The statistical near certainty, combined with the utter vagueness, sent the same chill through me that was already in the air. 144

In my experience when a person doesn't know what to do with himself, he will check his email. 192

"No!" She punched me on the shoulder. "React to me! Think, or feel - don't guess at it! If you ever had been me, you would react to me, not always guess." 207

oh, darkness filled the sky as pools of water filled your eyes
they sparkled like phosphorescence in the bay
although our lips barely touched
i have never felt so much
and i’d really like to feel that way again
oh , oh , when ?
i walk through the streets and memorize the city
i count every light until i reach the shore
sometimes i close my eyes and you’re not very pretty
sometimes i can’t believe i’ve had those thoughts before
we pulled a boat down to the dock and stole two steady oars
i pushed you off into the dark: acrisius favours
and from above the great abyss
you threw pennies in and wished for the feeling of wanting nothing more
sometimes i close my eyes
and hope that i can keep away all the darkened skies

This, my favorite song by The Organ was played midway through their set, maybe third or fourth song and before they played this song I kept hoping that the next song, that this one would be "Memorize the City," and when it came on that is when I really loosened up and stopped half heartedly moving my body, that awkward hesitant dancing people do at shows, especially early on in the set. When the song started, all I wanted to do was shake to it and sing along to it forever. But the problem was I climaxed early, I just wanted to hear that song again and kept thinking back to how amazing a song that is throughout the rest of the songs they played. Not everyone's favorite song can be the finale, though.

I was still feeling the aftereffects of last night's binge drinking and smoking all day today, even during this band's show at eleven o'clock at night, I still felt hungover and was mad at myself for ruining in some small way this present that I had been looking forward to all week. My brain was totally fried and I found myself sometimes awkwardly at a loss for words talking to Ben, talking to Christy, talking to Lauren, and too bad The Organ couldn't fill those moments all night long. I am going to go to bed and probably not read this book I am so close to finishing because I think it would be wrong to not hear the bang in my best mental shape, that these are my last moments with this book and I should give him my full attention, not this hungover crap. I want to feel sharp when I wake up tomorrow morning. I am not getting wasted for the next couple days because tomorrow, Joan Didion at 7 pm at Barnes and Nobles.

And then on Tuesday (Lauren, David, Matthew, Greg and other Tracy and the Plastics fans might be interested?), Wynne Greenwood is doing a performance at Foxy Production at 6, and since I don't see the event listed on their site or on the DKS List, here is the press release that they emailed out:


Foxy Production is pleased to announce New Report, a performance by Wynne Greenwood and K8 Hardy. For the third edition of The Dare Series, Greenwood and Hardy present a live newscast from the feminist TV news station, “WKRH - Pregnant with Information.”

As Henry Irigaray (Hardy) and Henry Stein-Acker-Hill (Greenwood), the artists stage reports on subjects that might not otherwise be considered newsworthy, including their friends, their bodies, their anxiety, the closing of a feminist bookstore, random acts of dancing, and an evening bath. These "breaking reports" are broadcast live to the newsroom for comment, and then out to their studio audience. While exploring the nature of news as we know it, its parameters and its packaging, New Report delves into underrepresented spaces, crises and histories.

K8 Hardy (1977, Fort Worth, TX) holds a BA in Film and Women's Studies from Smith College, and participated in the Studio Division of the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program. She is a founding editor of the queer feminist art journal, LTTR. Selected exhibitions include Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York (2005); The Kitchen, New York (2005); Art In General, New York (2004); Cubitt Gallery, London (2004); Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH (2003); Centre National d' Art Contemporain de Grenoble, France (2002).

Wynne Greenwood is an artist who lives between New York, Washington and California. In 2000, Greenwood founded the band Tracy + the Plastics, in which she plays all three band members, singing live as Tracy while interacting with the other two members (Cola on drums/ Nikki on keyboards) on a video screen. The band tours often, performing at a range of venues that has included Harvard University, the Plains Art Museum in Fargo, ND, queer discos, made up art spaces, and the Whitney Biennial (2004). At The Kitchen this past winter, Greenwood collaborated with Fawn Krieger to install a larger than life living room that set the stage for the performance, ROOM. Her other work includes single channel video, video collaborations with artist K8 Hardy, and music projects with Sally Scardino.

NEW REPORT is made possible with support from DYKE TV.

For further information or high resolution images, please contact Michael Gillespie or John Thomson: t 212 239 2758 – info@foxyproduction.com

And then there are a bunch of openings on Thursday and Friday that I want to see, and God, I want to live and be happy and feel things.

i am large

On mornings after, when I find myself listening to soft folkie music, I am not sure which it is, if I am too tired, too hungover to listen to anything but the most mellow of music, or if instead, the reason I now am listening to Blue is that I am in denial, am trying to whitewash my drunken persona that I recall in fits of embarrasment, painful scenes briefly spotlighted as I go about the task of pouring myself cereal, that there I am admitting my crush on Josh to Josh in front of a busstop, in front of other people - but yes, that the listening to folk music on these days after is a way of saying that that is not me, that I can also sit here and read and drink coffee and listen to Joni Mitchell.

And I am so bad at properly evaluating my behavior because toward the end of the night, I got insanely stoned and saw everything as more embarrasing. I smoked way too much pot, which sometimes I do because as you may know, I have no self control, do not know what this word moderation is and ten minutes after smoking, the amount that I had smoked hit me and I could barely stand up without thinking about it for five minutes beforehand, about how I would place my feet and that I could will myself to stand up from the couch. I mean, not that I was not already way too drunk before adding to that way too stoned, so it is probably not surprising how incredibly dizzy I was. Ethan and I left the loft and walked toward home and only when we were maybe two blocks away, I totally could not remember where I had just come from and could not figure out where I was going and didn't recoginze the streets at all and was so terribly confused and giggled so much because I didn't want Ethan to know that I had no clue even what neighborhood we were in - Manhattan, Brooklyn? - but we got on the subway back to my house and I really do not think I have ever been so stoned in my entire life and riding the subway that wasted is surely an experience, thought to Willy Wonka, the old one when they are in that boat, quickly passing all those bright lights on the side of the tunnel, that was me last night, I was in that boat watching all the lights on the side of the tunnel passing by quickly, making it seem we were moving as astronaut speeds.

I got myself a ham and cheese sandwich, and ate it, and then finally got to lie down and no longer had to worry about falling over each time I stood up or sat down, and in bed, unable to fall asleep was when my mind, of course, unable to let me go to sleep with simple visions of couting sheep, instead recounted the night and how I behaved, that it started fine at Stay Gold with Jamie and Adele, and meeting up with Ben, Sasha, Christy, and then Ethan there. That I looked at molds of breasts, and drank a few Stone IPA beers and then we all came back to my house and I drank some more and smoked an insane amount of nasty Top cigarettes, two dollars for a pack of the stuff, and chatted with these nice people and then made our way to Graham Lounge where it was a gay hip hop night called "(Not) Straight Outta Compton," being thrown by Matt and Kevin and then there was a Sparks and a rum and coke, and somehow those two pushed me from drunk to OOC, maybe it was the music also. I don't know. I do remember that I made out with Adrian because I thought it would be funny. That one Josh, I started talking to about my love of him for some reason, fueled on by this insane urge to talk by the Sparks maybe. Paul told me I was so drunk quite a few times, him being there to hear me talk to his friend Josh, and him also being there for me to try to grind with against the busstop. And then I managed to scare off another Josh also, another one I had a crush on. I danced a lot and do not think if pressed I could name one of the songs I danced to.

And really, I am okay with these things, I don't think I have to reconcile these things, that I can listen to this folk music and also get drunk and throw myself at boys, that I like to inhabit every space and I think to lines WW said about containing mulitudes, saying Very well then, to the question about contradictions. Very well then.

This is at least, at the very least, my second night in a row, nursing myself to sleep with a ham and cheese sandwich from La Bonita. Tonight, I don't how it started and even more so, how it ended. I am way drunk, more so than I have been in a while. But I think it started after making myself some yummy vegan pesto and faux meatballs with Greg here in my apartment, drinking beer and watching David Byrne's True Stories. Then there was a drink or two at Metropolitan before heading off to Royal Oak, spending half my time outside on the phone talking to Bonnie, and then running into Paul who supposedly was going to a party Ashton had told him about.

Ashton was the impetus of my night, the reason I ended up going to Royal Oak, because according to Greg, according to his crush, this boy, Ashton, my crush was supposed to be there. He wasn't there and when Paul told me about this party, my hunt for Ashton, my desire, the game to make out with him took new form, and I pressed Paul and his friends to go to this party quickly, now, now, now - leave Royal Oak. Josh was one of these boys, another one of my crushes - and we ended up leaving the bar but for some reason not going to the party - instead going to Savalas, where I danced a lot, probably really silly, and drank drinks that people had left along the wall. I stared at Josh a lot, dreaming of his dick in my mouth, of his whole body in my mouth, all of it so beautiful - and you know, it didn't happen - but we walked, all of us boys, toward Paul's house afterward to watch Six Feet Under and I walked behind Josh, watching his feet, his calves - he was wearing shorts - pick up and drop as he walked and imagined the dirtiest of scenarios, which even in my drunken state I hesitate to tell you - but yes, we had wonderful sex in my mind and at some point we passed Christopher and my mind passed to other sex scenarios, and eventually I said goodbye to the homos and made my way to La Bonita for the ham and cheese sandwich which was consumed and which made me tired enough to climb into bed, which I am about to do, but not tired enough to not imagine Josh naked and on top of me, his gorgeous self, and this, more than the two fifty that the ham and cheese set me back, is going to put me to sleep so well you cannot even imagine, and for all of zero dollars, and though I have never seen him naked, let me tell you, his dick, in my dreams, is awe inspiring.

Yes! It looks like the the hammer is about to fall in the next couple of days and Bush staffers might get indicted (22, according to DKS) in the Valerie Plame leak. Fingers crossed, fingers crossed - I want to see Bush fall hard. Fuckface will finally suffer some consequences.

Next week, the Nobel Prize for literature gets announced and even though Philip Roth isn't being mentioned as one of the main contenders, there is still a chance. Fingers crossed. Fingers crossed. This upcoming week promises good news. I am so giddy about these Plame indictements and hope Rove's name is on one of them. Die, Bush, die.

I am getting depressed and so I need a job because I need a reason to get out of the house every day, otherwise, left to my own devices, I do nothing with myself, don't leave the house all day, or if I do, only do so to walk three, maybe four blocks to go get some food, and instead spend my day, my life doing nothing, no physical activity to release those endorphins, and spend my time not even horny, just bored, but yet still looking at porn sites for hours.

I have eight dollars right now and sort of want to strangle one of my current roommates and one of my former roommates, Jillian and Dara. I paid various utility bills last week to avoid them being turned off and so really, I should have about three hundred something dollars in addition to those eight, but Jillian is unable to pay me until the 13th and Dara is going to pay me who knows when. It is almost more frustrating than being broke, this knowledge that really I do have more money, I just have to wait for these people to pay me or find some sex work, which didn't happen tonight - and so I am not being able to partake in pleasures that I enjoy, like say eating things other than pasta, going out to bars, and yeah, um, riding the subway. All dressed up and nowhere to go is how I feel.

Tomorrow to avoid a similar feeling of hitting ten o'clock and realizing I've done nothing with my day, I plan on waking up early and completing a bike ride before noon. Then some coffee and lunch. A couple hours of job hunting both real and sex work. Then a couple hours reading on my roof, than some more sex work hunting. And maybe I will have gotten money from Dara by that point and if so, I am going out dancing and getting obliterated. If not, another night with you LJ. Not that I don't love you, but you know.

ten talons clawing at twenty-six letters

Favorite Quotes from Philip Roth's The Anatomy Lesson
No, if the pain intended to accomplish something truly worthwhile, it would not be to strengthen his adamancy but to undo the stranglehold. Suppose there was the message flashing forth from a buried Nathan along the fibers of his nerves: Let the others write the books. Leave the fate of literature in their good hands and relinquish life alone in your room. It isn't life and it isn't you. It's ten talons clawing at twenty-six letters. Some animal carrying on in the zoo like that and you'd think it was horrifying. "But surely they could hang a tire for him to swing on - at least bring in a little mate to roll around with him on the floor." If you were to watch some certified madman groaning over a table in his little cell, observe him trying to make something sensible out of qwertyuiop, asdfghjkl, zxcvbnm, see him engrossed to the exclusion of all else by three such nonsensical words, you'd be appalled, you'd clutch his keeper's arm and ask, "Is there nothing to be done? No anti-hallucinogen? No surgical procedure?" But before the keep could even reply, "Nothing - it's hopeless," the lunatic would be up on his feet, out of his mind, and shrieking at you through his bars: "Stop this infernal interference! Stop this shouting in my ears! How do I complete my life's great work with all these gaping visitors and their noise!" (27-28)

The well-known pornographical paradox: one has to esteem innocence highly to enjoy its violation. (180)

Least Favorite Quotes from Benjamin Kunkel's Indecision (so far)
Soon the emptied seats had filled up with passengers going on to Quito, and the flight attendants were reciting their spiel again, first in English, then espanol. I'd never learned to habla espanol even a poquito. (8)

But what a tremendous, almost vegetal peacefulness there was in working for das Man! (As Knittel would say.) (21)


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Not to say that the later book is bad, it's just not great, not yet - and the writing, the cutesy-ness of it sometimes falls flat. I have rolled my eyes more than a couple times because the prose seems so labored in its attempt to sound lax. Roth's prose, on the other hand, is amazing, and he also tries to have readable easy prose, but there is a lyrical quality to it that is amazing. Roth has so much going on in his books, so many literary jokes, so many jokes about his own career via his doppelganger, Nathan Zuckerman - and yet, unlike other writers who strive for literary greatness, Roth is such a pleasure to read. His books I don't want to put down. He gets everything right. He understands what perversity is when so many people say they don't understand why someone would do something, asking why someone would be into watersports or panty sniffing - Roth doesn't even bother with those prudish questions. I am thinking of Sabbath's Theather and how these turn the characters on and it is not sick but simply is. I love the repeating theme in a couple of his books, including this one I just read of an aging man flipping out and having less and less respect for social decorum, for convention and just spirals out of control into a mean, perverse growing curmudgeon. When Larry David is at his worst, that is the closest I can think of to other instances of a character just saying fuck off to the world in such a fashion. And just like with Larry David, it is a thrill to watch, something that makes you even a little envious that you hold some of it back and are not such an asshole also.

The Organ are playing a bunch of shows in New York this week, two of which they seem to be the headlining act - this Saturday at Cattyshack and Sunday at Pianos. I will probably go to the Pianos show since it is a music venue and I've never been to Cattyshack and normally think bands sound awful when they play in bars. Either way, I am excited.

I am also really excited because Hannah let me borrow her copy of Benjamin Kunkel's Indecision, which I have been salivating over for a couple weeks now everytime I've gone into a bookstore, wondering whether I should just drop the twenty five and get the book. I have been racing through The Anatomy Lesson and should be through with it later this evening and then I can start the much hyped Indecision. Then the next books on my plate are Zadie Smith's On Beauty and Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, and I plan on buying the Didion book, racing through it, and returning it for the Smith book. Or at least, that's the plan now. The amount of books out there that I need to read is totally staggering sometimes when I contemplate it. I sort of hate people that don't read books. I need to get a job at a bookstore again so I can have people to talk to about the things I read since no one seems to read good books that I know.

Oh, Cafe Bustelo, I found myself back in your arms this morning when I was at Key Food with a thing of cold salmon pressing against my groin hidden underneath the waist of my pants, the waste of my pants. Even though I have a thing of pricey Illy coffee in my fridge and it smells really good when it is made and tastes good, it doesn't give me that same buzz of cheap, dark coffee and so I picked up a giant yellow can for two dollars and fifty cents and just downed a cup of it and can feel it. Bustelo clears my bowels within about twenty minutes of drinking it, and I also like that effect it has - it makes me buzzed and feeling clear, light and ready to conquer the world or at least whatever book it is I am about to finish - in this case Paul Auster's The Book of Illusions, which I tried finishing last night but was unable to do so before sleep got the better of me - but this morning, with the help of Bustelo, I plowed my way to the end of it, eager to start Philip Roth's The Anatomy Lesson, which I bought for one ninety nine, plus tax, of course, at Junk on North Ninth last night.

Paul Auster was better than I thought he would be, and now he is crossed off my list of authors oft mentioned who I have yet to read. And now, I am back to that spicy pork burrito of books, Philip Roth, of whom I have read many books but who I love and so I return to again and again, never disapointed.

Yesterday, I did a lot, walked a lot - and yet most of the things that I could list as having done don't compare to the things that are harder to list as things done, just walking in the early afternoon across 125th Street, exploring Harlem and feeling like I wanted to cry out of happiness and shake people to see if they felt what I was feeling. It was beautiful there because it wasn't the Lower East Side or Williamsburg and I realized, or re-realized how segregated New York is, how the two neighborhoods I hang out in are pretty exclusively white, at least as far as nightlife goes - and there was something amazing about walking down 125th, remembering working in Eastern Market in DC and all the various cultures that manifests themselves in black neighborhoods - all the Afrocentric stores, the Nation of Islam people standing on street corners looking mildly scary. There were so many vendors out yesterday selling black nationalist videos, selling bootleg DVDs, selling shea butter and the weather was so amazing yesterday and the pleasures of being a flaneur and passing through these scenes is something that thrills me more than most other pleasures, than most of the other things I did yesterday. Just walking around, observing, talking to people passing out Jesus brochures, that this sated me more than going out to bars, than walking around Greenpoint back and forth eight hundred times. I bought two CDs for five dollars - the Kanye West and Lil' Kim ones.

On a corner there was a female preacher giving a pretty inspiring talk, at least the snatch of it I caught while passing her was inspiring and it was meant for me - it is so amazing that there are these sentiments everywhere in books, in songs, on street corners, and sometimes you will encounter these things at the most perfect time, when they seem like the perfect verbalization of inchoate thoughts you are nearing. This woman said something to the effect of, "Every day that you leave your house and come back to it at night is a good day. That is a day to thank God for, to be grateful for. Every day you are alive is a gift, something that is not owed to you. No day is promised to us." And that is not even close to the phrase she used, but it was something to that effect, albeit stated far more eloquently, and it had such a profound effect on me because I was already so happy to be alive and the sentiment was made more explicit by her, given shape - that each day is one to be thankful for, that it is a miracle to experience this gift, something we are all incredibly lucky for, but which we sometimes forget how lucky a thing it is until someone close to us dies, that how wonderful and fragile a thing it is should always be at the forefront our our minds.

I sort of lost that insight during the rest of my day - that sentiment, such a heightened one is so hard to sustain, but it is something I am working on, and trying to be able to sustain that level of gratitude. I might have lost it in the basement that is Greg's apartment, away from the sky, watching Live Forever, a documentary about the new Britpop movement. But I think I really might have lost it somewhere between Greenpoint and Williamsburg, walking my bicycle back and forth, back and forth. Or maybe I lost it by ending my night at Metropolitan, a place I go to too often, that it has become routine, I am not sure. I quickly regained that thrill when I saw my crush Christopher. I also saw Matt as I was walking home from the bar in a white belt and I rolled my eyes and realized that there are things I need to do which I am not doing, and the things which I have for whatever stupid reasons been expecting to provide me with happiness, are probably the least able to provide that thing it is which I desire, and so much of it is to be found out on the streets under this bright sun and these gorgeous blue skies.

Things are going good lately. The weather is nice enough that you can wear long sleeves and bunch your arms up into the cuffs of your sleeves when a breeze comes by and really, this weather provokes things in me that I don't even know how to begin to get it. Last night, I saw an old man at a seedy Times Square motel and got paid more than I ever have before, got paid 450 for really easy work considering that he didn't even get naked. And I met a boy on the subway who I met at a party months ago, and exchanged numbers and now I have to go pay a 365 dollar electric bill before our power gets turned off, and I have not had any coffee yet today but you would not know that because I am insane and manic and happy and I've got to go.