a visual aid to that last entry

Here is a picture I found on Slava Mogutin's blog, why sometimes photographs hold nothing to the photographed subject.

a visual aid to that last entry

Here is a picture I found on Slava Mogutin's blog, why sometimes photographs hold nothing to the photographed subject.

Spring Awakening

I kept saying that I loved him, and Marcos and David, one or both of them, would tell me that, no, I did not love him, that, rather, this was lust. And, yes, I do not know what love is. As many people have commented on over the centuries, the feeling is so remarkable for its lack of a precise description. And stick a feather in your cap and call it macaroni because what I felt last evening watching this go-go boy was a feeling I wish I could be suspended in forever, this longing that makes my insides collapse. And, yes, it was lust, the classical description of it. I was totally overcome with sexual desire for this go-go boy in a way that I have not felt in such a long time.

Those feelings last night were so powerful because in that moment I was reliving every other moment when I have been so sexually attracted to someone who I could just look at, never have. That moment last night was a reliving of eighth grade gym class, having a locker across from Travis Ralston and watching him in his boxer shorts and socks everyday, putting on deodorant, changing into or out of gym clothes. He and this go-go boy and so many other of these boys, all one last night up there dancing, so effortlessly comfortable in their skin, none of that awkwardness, that nervousness, that insecurity that resides in my own self. And really, the watching of these boys is some erotic form of envy – a longing for something totally unattainable, and which in most moments I would regard the pursuit of as folly at best and immoral and assimilationist in its worse readings.

He was this tough looking Latino boy with these crazy designs in his cropped hair and this perfect body. David gave me a dollar to put in his briefs and so I did, touching his body, so thrilled, even more thrilled that he gave me this really tough stare while it was happening as if he was so bored. There was a two hour open bar last night at the Cock, where this scene is taking place, and so I was quite drunk and I was with these two older men, David and Marcos, who had taken Gabriel, Ben, and I out to dinner and a play earlier in the evening. I was totally obsessed with this go-go boy and David and Marcos kept on forcing dollars in my hand and telling me to go touch the go-go boy some more. I only felt mildly silly about this at first, but after a couple of interactions, I was totally loving this ability to put a dollar in someone’s pants and to be able to touch them and to feel something in yourself, some pleasure that is predicated on the fact that you know you can never fully have the pleasure you want and that this is a tease, the best you’ll ever get – a grief felt bodily, but that is somehow tied to this immense erotic pleasure from touching his sweaty ass, feeling his cock, his legs, chest.

At some point, losing myself to this pleasure, I started licking my hands after touching his sweaty body, trying to get as much out of this as possible. And really, this was a small part of the evening on a timeline of the night, but it overshadows everything else, perhaps for good reason. We had dinner at Gobo and the food was quite excellent, and then we went to go see Spring Awakening, a musical with music by Duncan Sheik. It was ugly, a total mess. I am really curious to read the reviews of it when it officially opens. I don’t understand how this is being mounted on Broadway as is, because though there are a couple of nice songs, the story is a mess, all over the place, and dealing with issues that perhaps are supposed to be edgy or emotional, but in such a trite, sentimental manner.

But I have never really enjoyed any theater performance. There is always something overly sentimental about it, along with that unnatural stage acting, and it never hits me. This boy, though, nameless boy, him on his stage, small dark stage poorly lit in the back of a bar, hit me though, moved me, and sparked so many things in me, things which I thought about last evening as I got home and jacked off to thoughts of him, and which I thought about this morning, waking up with a boner, jacking off again to thoughts of him, the details of his body already fading. I played with my dick, trying to hold on to these memories of his body, him slowly blurring. I know I am going to die sometime and this is all frenzied masturbation, my living, like trying to hold on to the details of his body in my mind before they totally fade. I already can’t remember what shoes he was wearing, soon it will be his eyes, his broader face, and then eventually, probably within a couple days, the entire memory, at least in its distinct form, will be lost, and that is everything, trying to hold on, to get off as many times to the memory while it exists, to live before I die.

dusting the ice of Alaska

Oh, India. My job, one of them, is to basically make things legible that were transcribed by people in India. This current interview I am editing is particularly full of humorous mistakes. For instance:

Interviewer: Since the day-to-day is in other hands, what now for yourself occupies most of your time?
Interviewee: Still as of today, we are still in negotiations with Anglo, basically finishing off the transaction and most of it is in the hands of lawyers at the moment. This is older days when lawyers are finishing off dusting the ice of Alaska, and we are very close to consummating the arrangement.

How it should read:
Interviewer: Since the day-to-day operations are in other hands, what now for yourself occupies most of your time?
Interviewee: As of today, we are still in negotiations with Anglo, basically finishing off the transaction. Most of it is in the hands of lawyers at the moment. These are older days when lawyers are finishing dotting the i’s and all that stuff. We are very close to consummating the arrangement.

There is something so absurd about this job, this process of outsourcing transcription to India, only for me to have to basically rewrite the whole thing. I saw The History Boys last night and am thinking about that, about boys, about books, basically about everything but this job.

I could probably look at the television listings to determine what time it was that I am talking about, what time it was that I, drunk and stoned to the nth degree, laid on my couch with my head propped up in case I threw up, watching Hairspray on TBS, feeling as if this moment was the rounding out of a circle that had started Wednesday night when I rode out to Middletown, New Jersey.

Over the past few days, with my family, I drank a lot of beer, and talked with my cousins about various things, often recalling past events in our family mythology and Hairspray was brought up at some point in these discussions. When we were kids, younger than we are now, whenever our two families got together for the weekend, we would watch this movie over and over again all weekend long, much to the displeasure of aunts and uncles. We would recite the lines from it, and at least on one occasion, reenacted the thing for our aunts and uncles, a very clear sign, as if one was needed, that I was a homo from a very early age.

I watched my seventeen year old cousin, who the day before made fun of me for being able to outdrink me, lose her bravado as she puked hungover on the main street in downtown Atlantic Highlands. I walked along the beach at Sandy Hook, inadequately dressed and shivered against the winds coming in off the ocean, trying to tell myself that the sight, the moment, this beach should overwhelm my physical discomfort. It didn't, though I could lie right now and tell you how beautiful this moment was, this chilly beach, tide, waves, sand, etc. There was a Chinese food place/bowling alley that we went to. And lots of roads driven down to get to all these places, roads through woody suburbs and along rivers and bigger bodies of water, and to ride as a passenger in a car and to get to just look, that is one of the most satisfying pleasures in this world, to be able to take in all of this with these eyes and for that to spark recollections of other things, to see these things in front of me and yet to see these other things long behind me so clearly.

And last night, I arrived back at my apartment after hanging out with my family in New York all day doing touristy things, and I had this desire to lose control of my self, to ideally sleep with someone. So I went to Boysroom with numerous people, drank numerous drinks, was well on my way to losing myself, and then with Allan, went into the bathroom and got stoned out of my fucking mind, totally lost myself three times over, to the point though where sleeping with someone was surely not going to happen. The end of the night is a blur. I do remember laughing a lot, and I remember that I wanted to dance but could not distinguish songs. Though surely I knew each song played there, I could not for the life of me determine what the song being played was, could only hear this rhythm, one I was projecting on to these songs, and then occasionally would catch some lyrics and realize that this rhythm I was hearing was nothing like the rhythm of the song with those lyrics and that maybe, just maybe, it would be better to not dance.

I do know that I ate two slices of pizza, and ended up at Metropolitan for one brief second before walking home alone, thinking brilliant thoughts, which I can only vaguely recall right now, and which I would like to transcribe for my own benefit right now, but there is a man on 96th Street who wants my cock in his mouth that I need to get dressed to go see, and so these attempts to filter stoned thought into something legible will have to wait.

links

1. For those of you who read Dennis Cooper's blog, you may have noticed that it has been hijacked and you are redirected to some porn site. The new address is:
http://denniscooper-theweaklings.blogspot.com/

2. Go to the iTunes store, search for Bookworm podcasts and download last week's (it's free) with Zadie Smith. Her and Michael Silverblatt ,with On Beauty as a jumping point, talk about so many things in such a wonderful way, spening a good amount of time talking about what it means to read. It is a lovely, inspiring talk. Silverblatt is such a perceptive reader and it is really a joy to listen to any of these podcasts, but particularly this one.

3. YouTube and video cameras on phones and digital cameras, man. Every gaffe will find their way to the Internet within days from now on. I think about what this means and get no closer to an answer. But two things that sparked this are the Michael Richards racist tirade and the UCLA student getting tasered by cops in the library.

And on and on, because all I do lately is play on the Internet while at one job and listen to things downloaded from the Internet at my second job. I have started reading Dave Eggers' What is the What and I am so excited. I am supposedly leaving for work in five minutes, but the fact that I have still yet to get dressed and am playing on the Interent (again) perhaps points to the fact that I am more than likely going to be a bit late. Tomorrow evening, I go to New Jersey for several days and I am actually quite excited about that.

aerial ballet

There was a day last week when a long sleeve shirt was enough. A few days ago, a sweatshirt. Yesterday, a jacket. There are shades of gray throughout the day before they fade to the darker darkness of night. Most of the leaves have fallen from the trees, save for the ginkgos, which still have some yellow leaves on their branches, for some reason the last of the leaves to fall. I can't believe that Thankgiving is in less than one week, cannot believe it because then it is December, then Christmas, and then a new year, all coming one on top of the next, always coming faster then you (or, at least I) expect.

And this has me nervous for several reasons, one of course being my recent thoughts and terror about death and its unpreventableness, the forward march of the calender proof of this unavoidability. There are thankfully other reasons that make me nervous, that this is not all that occupies my thoughts, musings about death not too different from the musings I had about it at the age of fifteen. I can't believe that so much time has gone by, that 2006 is almost over and the goals I had set out for myself at the beginning of the year again seem like they will be unrealized, and so I have a month to get myself into high gear, to try to make some positive changes in my life so that when 2007 to soon rears its head, I won't be lamenting my lack of activity in 2006.

I did find a job more along the lines of what I would like to be doing, but my goal is to find one more in line with what that goal is very soon. Physical activity is going to start happening somehow. I am going to write more and have set up some a method of encouraging this with a friend with a similar goal.

And on and on with more goals that bore you, that you have heard before, that you tell yourself also when you are evaluting your own life, but it's fall and these thoughts are inevitably brought on around this time of year, the change in the physical landscape forcing you to contemplate the landscape of your own life, of what leaves should fall.

There is that, or perhaps there is the more obvious fact that I got fairly drunk last night, danced a bit, and these are simply hungover thoughts, that these would be occuring in spring or summer, that the season is irrelevent, that it's the hangover, stupid, that it's the Harry Nilsson playing on your speakers.

notes from the underground

Today at work, I was listening to an audiobook of Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground, and the sentiments of the narrator were too apt, his questions too close to sentiments I had been pondering today. Yesterday, I watched Apocalyspe Now, and, of course, there has been my nagging regrets about my behavior on Saturday, and so I have been wondering about good and bad, about descents into bad, and here these thoughts from Dostoevsky hitting me like a sack of bricks this evening:

Tell me this: why does it happen that at the very, yes, at the very moments when I am most capable of feeling every refinement of all that is "sublime and beautiful," as they used to say at one time, it would, as though of design, happen to me not only to feel but to do such ugly things, such that ... Well, in short, actions that all, perhaps, commit; but which, as though purposely, occurred to me at the very time when I was most conscious that they ought not to be committed. The more conscious I was of goodness and of all that was "sublime and beautiful," the more deeply I sank into my mire and the more ready I was to sink in it altogether. But the chief point was that all this was, as it were, not accidental in me, but as though it were bound to be so. It was as though it were my most normal condition, and not in the least disease or depravity, so that at last all desire in me to struggle against this depravity passed. It ended by my almost believing (perhaps actually believing) that this was perhaps my normal condition. But at first, in the beginning, what agonies I endured in that struggle! I did not believe it was the same with other people, and all my life I hid this fact about myself as a secret. I was ashamed (even now, perhaps, I am ashamed): I got to the point of feeling a sort of secret abnormal, despicable enjoyment in returning home to my corner on some disgusting Petersburg night, acutely conscious that that day I had committed a loathsome action again, that what was done could never be undone, and secretly, inwardly gnawing, gnawing at myself for it, tearing and consuming myself till at last the bitterness turned into a sort of shameful accursed sweetness, and at last--into positive real enjoyment!

And this rhetorical question closing Part 4:

Can a man of perception respect himself at all?

I think that once I finish the books I have lined up on my plate, it should be a winter of nothing but Russians.

I am not sure at what point it happened, at what point in the evening I got so incredibly wasted, at what point I became insistently sleazy, at what point I decided that I should have my ass hanging out of my pants all night. I do know that I stayed too long.

On the way home from the silver party, some time past four in the morning, Peter and I were dragging our feet home, the walk being so long when this tired, this drunk, and on Manhattan Avenue, an SUV full of young boys started yelling at us, teasing us about being gay. I kept on trying to wave down car services, not wanting to get teased by any more people (being dressed in some pretty goofy silver outfits) and also wanting to get to bed as soon as possible, still under the delusion that I was somehow going to be able to wake up in three hours and go into work.

During that walk, both of us talked about how for not totally clear reasons, the party made us feel a little shitty. I don't remember how I passed so many hours at the party. Surely, I must have talked to people, but I have no clue about what, or really to even whom I talked to, aside from, of course, a couple of crushes, the interactions with whom I can recall in detail, and just may, just may because these are the recollections I have been doing on and off during my brief moments of being awake today, and that these recollections, if I can recall them in the right way, can redeem the night, the party, and my own self in this world - perhaps. Or, at the very least, it can give it a shine, a luster, in the recollection that it may have not actually ever possessed, and to which I can pin something to, hope perhaps, or just a more vague feeling of giddiness that life can possess these things.

And, yes, I agree that perhaps I am beginning to stretch things out a bit, am trying to skirt the issues, and add a gloss to a night that was really nothing more than me being slutty, failing in that sluttiness, and very likely probably being annoying. I am listening to Gillian Welch right now, very content with this hungover state I am in, the slow pace of this music, the coffee by my side, and this open window letting in a nice fall breeze. And this scene here right now, the wholesomeness of it, makes me feel guilty about that other scene which I have still yet to recall for you, for myself, or whoever it is that I might be trying to convince and also whoever it may be that has the patience to endure all of this chatter supposedly leading up to something.

There is that SUV of teen jerkoffs, a trivial incident in the night, that I think is in some ways significant in this story here, that those boys and their vision of the world, their derisive comments about what they presumed to be my lifestyle, is a similar vision I have of myself on hungover mornings when I recall the incidents of the night before - the sentiment uniting these two worldviews is shame. I want to live beyond it, and not have to analyze my actions of the night before, the people in attendance at that party, and what they may have thought of my behavior, whether they will think less of me.

And perhaps these are all thoughts induced by this fairly painful headache I still have from what I did not think was excessive drinking, but I guess it did start around six at Niki's store and continued until sometime in the AM. There is that circumstantial evidence, but even more so the physical evidence of this headache and that I slept until four today and still feel a little dazed.

There was a lot of skin on display last night. It had been a while since I had gone out, and so my desire was to cut loose, to throw off a week of working too much and to indulge in some partying to counterbalance the rest of my time --

Okay, sometimes you just have to say that you are not going to pull it off, and I don't even agree with some of these sentiments here, think they are a little too sentimental and more than a little dramatic at some points, and what the point is that I was trying to build up to, I am not sure. So, in short: I hit on this couple that I have been trying to sleep with and touched their bodies, and was at a couple points touched by them, and I desired more touch, still do, and that was the impetus behind much of last night, behind me baring my ass and talking to boys - this desire to be touched and to touch. My desires are simple and basic. And there was this other boy, Rich, and he is the reason I stayed too long. Had I left when Ben and Joe did, I would not have stayed and hit on this boy that I have a crush on, would not have asked him if he wanted to hang out sometime, and would not have been told a vague, polite no, but a no still the same. It was really that final interaction at that party that has perhaps colored my view of the entire evening, giving it this sad air, this pathetic air, something desperate, me flinging myself at the gates, trying to enter, the locks not breaking.

And so, once home, in bed, I thought about the ass of a former crush I saw at the party, and began to masturbate to thoughts of that recollection, these recollections worth more than the moments recalled, worth more than gold, and satisfied myself with my own touch, imagining skin.

I am falling/with no one to catch me

There are a confluence of factors probably causing it, but, man, I have been so down the last couple of days. The factors: the wet weather, not drinking as of late, not interacting with many people as of late, both of my jobs, my poor eating habits.

And yet there are moments when this is okay, most of today even - the drizzle that my broken umbrella was barely protecting me from seemed so lovely with the Morrissey soundtrack my headphones gave it. I am so lonely. I read something today about truth and sincerity, which when I am not so tired I may quote here. The jist of it was that you could say truthful sentiments earnestly and they could, and more than likely would, be insincere. It was in the Pamuk book I am reading.

While reading this book on the train home from work, the woman next to me, young and nice, told me that she had just read his other big book, Snow, and I never really know what to do when strangers talk to me. And, oddly, it happened several times today - oddly because it rarely happens, and even more rarely when I am feeling so lonely and sad. Twice in the elevator today, strangers on other floors started to make chit chat with me. I chuckled at what they said, that easier, so much easier, than saying something, thinking of that something, to say in response. In essence, I have abdicated my human responsibilities today, have said that I am not capable enough of coming up with banter, of dialogue, and so I will just chuckle and wish I had had my headphones on, Morrissey, who does not require a response, but who if I feel like responding to, I can bop my head to or sing in unison with, or, at the very least, attempt to.

mid-terms

"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything." - Rick Santorum, 4/21/03

This quote was still in my head, three plus years later, as I watched the returns last night and saw that this asshole lost his Senate seat in Pennsylania. Granted, the Democrat who won the seat is anti-choice, but I can much easier stomach that than someone who is a hateful asshole in addition to being way more anti-choice. [I have decided to stop using the linguistic framework of the right in this argument. I am no longer going to say pro-life, but rather anti-choice.]

I don't know how Virginia is so close, or I do know, and that depresses me, but there is good news elsewhere, and possibly still even so in Virginia. The unqualified good news is that Eliot Spitzer easily won the New York governor's race, which is not a surprise at all, but still such good news. Spitzer is amazing in case you did not know. As Attorney General of New York, he put the fear of God into Wall Street, doing such amazing work. He is one of my heroes and I am so excited about what he might do as governor.

It is raining, dreary, and dark outside, and so, dark in my house also. I watched My Beautiful Laundrette last night and put my hand to my heart a couple times as if to calm it, or more likely to pretend that that touch of my own hand might be that of another, a film character, or, even better, someone in real life, someone to touch and to touch me and to send little thrills through my fingers, hands, body.

The body and its need for sleep make me realize how precarious everything is, even seemingly solid things like physical balance, my mental state and sense of my self, that, tired, I get totally cracked out. I made a pointless blunder at work today right before going to lunch and had to come running back to fix it before it was sent out. I went out to galleries this evening and came back to see that I had left my laptop playing music - just very silly mistakes I am making. And so, I am going to go to bed before ten, right now, and will hopefully be very well rested and again feeling like myself again tomorrow, so I can stop having this crisis where I realize that my mental state and my perception of reality is built on such fragile beams, that this world outside of that structure is pretty terrifying.

One year ago today, my father died. I wish I weren't so cracked out so I could reflect on this, but, truth be told, I have barely thought about it at all today.

Tomorrow, I need to go see Borat. I am so excited and even more excited that the reviews are really perceptive and understand how intelligent Sacha Baron Cohen is and how subversive he is, all these mirrors and layers of discomfort, cultural drag to look at America - it's going to be so brilliant. I cannot wait.

Last night, I went and saw the Knife play at Webster Hall. I was running on empty last night, having gotten about six hours of sleep over the previous two nights combined, and was very giddy and nervous when they first started to play. They had a mesh screen covering the stage, a screen behind the stage, and there was lots of video and blacklight stuff going on. It was really nice and made me happy, but not in the same way that I would feel later in the night. And that could be because later I had had some beer, but I am going to credit the difference to other factors - the joy I get from loud guitars, from instruments being played and how magical it can be that four or five of these being played by different people, the aggregate of which is able to somehow make something totally awesome, that there is more at stake, more exposed here rather than someone just singing along to their laptop. And don't get confused, I did love the Knife show, but this later show at Galapagos I liked more.

I saw Apes and Androids, The Harlem Shakes, Lo Fi Fnk, and Thunderbirds are Now!.

I encourage all of you to listen to the Harlem Shakes. I had not heard them before last night, but man, they are so good and were so good to watch and to dance to. Even more danceable was Lo Fi Fnk, who were probably my second favorite band to see of the night. I love live music so much, not that I don't love recorded music, because as you all know I certainly do and will dance to that without hesitation, but the joy of seeing people up on stage, playing things, singing, is such a joy. I want to see eight hundred more bands before CMJ is over. I need to find some more free shows to go to.

halloween

Locksley






We Are Wolves











Eliot Spitzer is my hero and I can't wait for Tuesday:




I am up for work and that is amazing. Last night was so nice, and that's about all I can say sadly if I am to make it to work on time. The parade was boring. Fontana's was fun and I saw the two amazing bands pictured and fell in love with the lead singer of Locksley, who melted my heart a hundred times during his set with his early Beatles voice and lyrics. I danced a lot at Tribeca Grand with people I like to songs I like, and really that is all I need.