5-203a

Gabriel got surgery on his ankle yesterday and so I spent the day in the hospital today hanging out with him as he recovered from the surgery, watching him press the button for his morphine drip, throwing up, and nodding off every so often. There were also nice snatches of conversation, a fair bit of laughing, and many, many moments throughout the day where, grateful, I realized how much pleasure I recieve from just the company of my friends, that despite the setting and the circumstances I had a nice day.

I started reading Rabbit Redux on the long train ride uptown and got really into it, enjoyed those first thirty pages very much so. I am in awe of these thirty pages, of some of these sentences. Updike, in these Rabbit books, is a staggeringly good writer.

Adele moved out of my apartment today. JJ is moving in soon. Niki may move into the first floor. There are these changes and then there are so many things that seem to never change. These aforementioned changes in residence as well as other types of changes occuring around me make me too aware of the things that aren't changing, of the things that are not keeping pace with their surroundings, that some things, seemingly most things, are changing in ways for the better, and yet these other things never left that small town, instead watched enviously as everyone else moved to the city.

I watched the sunset last night from a roof in Bushwick. With the clouds and the fog of heat, the sunset looked like something out of Ghostbusters 2, intense swirls and streaks of colors that seemed somehow a bit ominous, a bit tomorrow-the-world-is-going-to-end. I need to clip my fingernails. I need to do many things. Fingernails, however, a much easier thing to contemplate, the solution pretty obvious. And yet even with this obvious solution, the thing seeming to take too much time right now. I should not be typing these non-things here for the same reasons of time, should not be doing so because I need to be leaving my house right now to accompany a friend to the hospital so he can get pins in his ankle.

I finished the book I was reading yesterday. There are several in my house unread, but none that I am really excited about it. I think there is an analogy waiting to be made here, but again let me point to that lack of time right now as the excuse for failing to make that analogy.

the last sunday in june

To watch the Gay Pride Parade from beginning to end requires a level of endurance that I have never had. Despite watching it for several hours yesterday, I still ended up leaving before the end, probably way before the end, too exhausted from standing in the sun, clapping and cheering. The parade itself and the mass of people on the street, most of them gay, made me really happy, this mass of people, of gays, occupying so many city streets.

There is that, big swell of happiness to be surrounded by so many smiling and accepting humans, and then there are other moments, moments that tamper those fits of happiness. In past years, bored with the parade, I have always retreated to the Christopher Street Piers, have hung out there in the sun with lots of other gays, everyone enjoying the water, the sun, and the large mass of people sharing this same setting with them. This year, for reasons which I still don't understand and can only interpret in hateful ways, the city had the piers blocked off. These piers, a public park, which are open every other day of the year were closed on the one day when they are put to the most use.

It seems pretty apparent that they were closed to prevent a mass of people from congregating there, and yet people still congregated right outside the piers, on the little pathways along the water. Everyone who would normally have hung out on the piers were instead forced to convene in even tighter spaces. The piers are a non-commercial space open to all. It is not a bar setting where you have to be 21, a drinker, of a certain look, and of a certain gender to be admitted entrance to. That the city would close off this space on the day of the gay parade seemed and still seems to be an incredibly hostile gesture. It should also be noted that most of the people who hang out on the piers are young people of color, black and Latino teens. The closing of the piers yesterday, more than an anti-gay gesture, seemed to me to be a racist and classist gesture.

While these twin piers were closed off to the public, closed off to the mostly young and black people who would have used them, a couple blocks further up the river, Pier 54, another public space was open, having been rented out to Heritage of Pride. That pier was open to the richer, to the mostly white, and to the almost entirely male gays for the Dance on the Piers, a $50 event.

What occurred yesterday was fucking bullshit and made me so mad, made me even madder due to how well-coordinated it was, how big the police presence was on the piers, how they had taken the time to plan how best to block off access to the Christopher Street Piers, and how in the face of this, nothing could really be done, that all of these people who wanted to be on the piers were instead forced to stand outside them and bear that fact, to accept their exclusion, our exclusion, from a public park, from spaces that belong to us.

I could mythologize a little, could stretch for meaning, and say that my actions later on in the evening were a response to this being pushed, were me pushing back against mores and restrictions, that my actions later on in the night at the Cock were a conscious engagement in radical queer actions, that by getting my dick sucked all night long by strangers in the basement I was engaging in serious political actions asserting transgressive behavior, but doing that, trying to make that analogy, would be a little disingenuous on my part. I think that might be there, that that might have been present somewhat in there, the brash assertion of queer sexuality without apology, but more at the forefront of my mind was my own horniness and the many drinks consumed that egged that horniness on.

mermaid parade

Last night, for the third time, I read John Weir's short story, "Neo-Realism at the Infiniplex." The story is really beautiful, really sad, and really good. I am telling you that you should read it. I pressed it into the hands of friends today on the ride to Coney Island.

shadows and fog

To be 26 years old means something. What though, I am not entirely sure, but I have spent the past week now occasionally contemplating the thing, this number now attached to my person. I have contemplated that thing, age, but for the most part have done so with respect to what it means to live a life, for these years to pass by, one after the next, and to wonder exactly what it is that means, whether anything.

The increase in age makes certain modes of behavior seem a bit inappropriate, that at this age I should not still be going out every night of the week and getting really drunk, that at some point that becomes a bit pathetic, though I am not sure exactly where that point is, where the line is that demarcates an indulgence in the joys of youth from an overly extended youth, from a failure to mature and progress. I don’t think that I have reached that line yet, but I know it lies up there around the bend.

I took a picture of myself the other day. The photograph, digital thing, signaled to me more than any other recent event, more than my actual birthday itself, that I am increasing in age. In the photo, my face reveals this thing. Yes, the photo was taken tired and hungover and perhaps makes me look a bit more haggard and worn than I actually may appear in better moments, but in it still I see a difference between this image of myself and past ones, was made aware by this difference, slight as it was, that I am changing in certain ways, aging, and sometimes the reality of that doesn’t entirely hit you despite the fact that every year your age bumps up one more number, despite the fact that we see people around us age, older family members, and despite the fact that we have seen death and know the physical changes that its approach brings with it.

There, on the right side of my face, a distinct shadow, a line, on my cheek.



That I am okay with, the physical signs of aging, these slight changes. I actually like these changes evidenced in no longer getting carded for everything. The problem arises however in that these physical changes and numeral ones make me seek out their correlation in interior changes and lifestyle changes. Is it just the body and the actual age changing? Have I progressed at all in the last four years? And, if so, if I want to try to make that claim, what I would point to as the proof? To what would I direct your attention to say, “Look here! Look at these great accomplishments I have to show for my past few years on this earth”?

And that is where this depression, slight as it is, is emerging from – from the realization that I am not living as productively or as fully as I can. I am unemployed right now and doing the occasional sex work job. This creates too much free time to ponder these things, and free time which I am not even utilizing well; rather, I am using it to do stupid things and non-things. There are changes that need to be made and I am thinking about exactly what those would be and how best to go about enacting those desired changes, how to ensure that the stated resolution becomes a lived-by principle.

I called my temp agency today and hopefully they will set me up with some work for the next couple of weeks, which hopefully should alleviate one current source of frustration, my lack of any real income to speak of. Aside from that, I am going to start waking up earlier, early enough to hopefully be at the gym by ten am. Physical activity, as it always has in the past, should clear this fog of ennui. That is to be followed by time off of the Internet, ideally writing, or at least reading. I really do like living a lot and want to try to do it better, to make the most of this thing.

Yesterday, I was biking to a friend's house in Bushwick. Along this bike ride, lovely thing that it was with the sun out and the heat of summer setting in, patches of shade appreciated in a way they often are not, I, a bit buzzed on coffee, started to recite out loud the bits of poetry that I have memorized. It did not amount to much. Some Whitman, some Millay, and some Stevens. A couple of lines from others: Blake, Eliot, Olds.

I need to memorize more. Those lines take on a special rhythm when said while in motion on a bicycle, one that seems somehow more appropriate, better matched, to the lines.

I am good at making these resolutions, saying I need to do this and that I will start doing that, but not nearly as good on following through with these resolutions. Tuesday, the day I turned 26, I did resolve to quit smoking, and so far have held to this.

just another word for nothing left to lose

Saturday night, things finally blew up with Bruce. It is too bad that it couldn't have happened on Tuesday because following that blow-up, I had such an amazingly good time in Miami. He blew up at me after days of my distance from him, saying that I was unexcited about everything and that I could pay for a cab if I wanted to go these gallery events I had wanted to go. I told him that I was going to spend the night at Rebecca's and that I was just going to leave from there for the airport. He told me he was going to pay me in that case and left to go get cash somewhere. While he was gone, feeling the freedom close at hand, a castaway almost at those other shores, I started to get so giddy, so happy. Rather than wait for him to come back, for him to feel in any way like I needed him or his money, I packed up my stuff quickly, wrote him a note, and left the building. I walked to the busstop, hoping I wouldn't encounter him along the way, and felt so free. It was the happy ending to a movie, the person finally walking away, a long shot of them walking down the road, a smile on their face slowly widening, the grin irrepressible, and in that smile, that quick strut, a knowledge, and a happiness in this knowledge, that they are free, that we, human beings, have this ability to put one foot in front of the next and walk away from places we don't want to be, to go new places, to say good-bye.

The bus came soon after I got to the stop and once I had paid my fare and sat down, it felt complete, my freedom. The getaway was going to go off without a hitch, cops lost in the dust back around that last bend.

That night, I went to galleries with my peers, young, and that youngness, its attributes, very distinct, were made very clear. A car full of us, the windows open, most of us drunk, the night air, heavy Florida thing, pressing against us, and music being played probably louder than necessary. With little sleep, I woke up early and other people were up early and we went to the beach. I had conversations about things that really interested me, did that and played in the water, tried to swim out to the buoy with Julia, being stopped by the whistling of the lifeguard. The contrast was very clear to me between this day and the prior ones, between many, many things. The water also was very clear, clearer than it had been all week, perhaps due to the gentle, barely present, waves. The clearness of the water seemed meaningful, still does.

Last night, so happy to be back in this city, to see the people who make my life a life, who give me joy and pleasure, I went out to some Tonys afterparty for Justin, but spent most of the night on the street, drinking beer from the bodega, talking with friends and strangers. I met this boy last night, Spencer, and on the subway ride home, I asked him if he wanted to come home with me. He said yes. The sex was so hungry on both of our parts and, for that reason, so fun. I haven't had such pleasurable sex with someone in so long. He fucked me for a while, it happening so easy and feeling so great, it increasing in roughness as the night went on and me only wanting it to be rougher, needing at that particular moment to have my brains fucked out as they say, an apt and perfect metaphor for the mental release that intense sex enables. There was dirty talk, lots of noise, some biting. We came and then fell asleep. I woke up not too long after, horny again, and started to pet this boy, waking him, and we had sex again. Then a bit more sleep followed by another round of sex. And then again this morning after waking up, we had sex, my dick sore from it all but still hungry for more despite the soreness. He was skinny and young and brought me back, set me free, helped me let it all go, all of it.

miami

without clothes, made both vulnerable and free

Sperm in water is a funny thing, like oil in water. It sticks together, the little clumps, and floats slowly through the water, slow enough for you to meditate on the thing, pause and consider that this, this odd looking substance, is the thing which released, freed from your body, is giving you so much pleasure in that moment.

I went to the nude beach today, Haulover Beach, with Bruce. Naked, surrounded by lots of men, most of them unsexy, was enough to stimulate me, my being unaccustomed to being naked and allowed to in such a public place. I laid stomach down to hide this stimulation until it passed.

After sitting in the heat of Miami in June, warm, drunk off the heat, I went into the ocean to cool off, dove into the surf and found myself unable to touch the bottom with my feet. I treaded water for a while, floating on my back and observed my penis right beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, that massive body of water I am lucky enough to be able to play in this week.

Some man found his way over to my direction, a Chuck, and we talked for a while about where we were from, about the differences between swimming in lakes and oceans, and about getting boners at that particular beach. We stood close to each other and kept on diving underneath the water, doing little dives beneath the surface so that our asses were visible as they rose above the surface and then went under, this really erotic flirting that had nothing explicit about it, nothing other than swimming. I said goodbye and swam back in, really happy with this interaction.

On the shore, Bruce, a bit annoyed, complained about how he was glad I had made new friends but he didn't have anyone to put sunscreen on his back because I was in the water for so long. I told him he could have just laid on his back and started to read my book, a bit annoyed that there are these contrasts, beautiful moments with people in pleasant moods and, so soon after, encounters with people in totally different mental states, ones that are enemies of your current mental state.

I soon went back into the water and swam really far out, swam out to this sandbar about fifty feet out. My new friend, Chuck, soon appeared again. We talked again, nothing flirty in the talk whatsoever, the conversation as bland and polite as possible, but here we were naked in each other's company and both had big smiles on our faces, both of us doing slow dives beneath the surface, showing off for each other but not saying so, floating on our backs, making our penises visible to the other. The water was about waist high and in this exposing water, we started doing handstands. He would do one and his penis, because of the low water, would stick out just above the surface. I would follow by doing the same. We got closer and closer to each other as we did these handstands, so that soon we were inches from each other, each having really close views of the other's dick.

We had still yet to even touch, to even say anything that would imply that that might happen with each other; it was instead just this really erotically charged form of play. By this point, I had a pretty big boner that was visible to both of us just below the surface of the ocean. Bruce was at the shore, far off enough to not know what was going on, but knowing that he was right there made this situation probably more exciting that it would have otherwise been, though, yes, it would have been exciting even then, very exciting - to be out in the sun, on a gorgeous Miami beach, on a sandbar with this other cute man, a bit older but cute still, who was into showing off his body.

Finally - finally - touch happened. He made to do it gently, passing his hand past my penis so if I were offended, it could have been claimed an accident. I am not the type to get offended by such things and smiled when he did so, touched his thigh and leaned my hips in, jutting my penis in his direction, making it clear that I wanted it touched. He started to tug on my penis and it felt so great. There were several other people on this sandbar not too far away and I must admit it, though you probably already know, that that also turned me on, the brazenness of what we were doing. I started to play with his penis also and our legs made contact, hips pressing against each other, and water gliding in between your skin as it makes contact with that of another is such an amazing feeling - it made me, the entire scene did, so happy. He jerked me off until I came and we watched, between the two of us, my semen bunch up together and trail slowly through this beautiful water.

Afterward, I went back to the shore, Bruce there unaware of anything, and laid down on my towel and looked at all the other naked men around me and felt so happy, so much better.

Things have been going really good ever since yesterday, basically right since I wrote how miserable I was. Bruce and I finally had sex yesterday. He was more pleasant. We drank cocktails at his house, ate dinner, and then went to some cheesy gay bar, Twist, where I had a really fun time. He left early on and encouraged me to stay, and so I did, not needing that much encouragement, and I chatted with some nice people, made out with one person, and danced to a lot of really terrible music, but, man, oh man, what fun I had doing so!

Driving to and back from the beach today, we listened to the classic rock station at my insistence and that, too, aided so much in making today a fairly amazing day. Those songs have so many associations for me, most pleasant, and as I am riding in a car, driving along sun bleached roads, sublime cloud formations every way you look, the effects of those associations become something overwhelming, beautifully so, my heart throbbing with the joy of it, with the fact that these things are and that I am for a bit also.

miami

It is Thursday. I arrived here on Monday and leave on Sunday. This, today, the halfway mark. I am in Miami for the week with Bruce. It hasn't been terrible, but nor has it been great either. There have been really nice moments. Swimming in the Atlantic, diving again and again underneath the surface, saltwater dripping into my eyes - that was nice, lovely even.

I am in love with underwater scenes in movies. They mean a lot to me, always have. They tend to be shot nicer and they are the nice, odd moments in movies where something explicit about the desire to escape, to be free, is stated. There, of course, is that scene in The Graduate, Benjamin Braddock underwater in his scuba outfit in his backyard pool, while his family is gathered around the edge of the pool, saying things he can't hear from underwater.

That was how I felt each time I dove underneath the water - that things were so nice there, so absent of the things driving me almost crazy elsewhere, namely the man on the shore, fat, old, and hairy, who the night before had told me he thought we were soulmates, the man who also the night before told me that I put him at risk by having unprotected sex, who also told me that I had a sloppy approach to writing, that my diary was full of errors, and on and on with the paternalism. Try to tell me what to do or how I should do it, try to think that you should play that role, and watch how quickly I will be gone. And while I may still be here in Miami with him, in his house, I left that night at the dinner table, told myself that this was over when I got back to New York, that this man's desire to play some mentor/father role was not what I wanted.

He is pretty manipulative and really passive-aggressive when he does not get his way. He paid for my flight here and is paying for my food, meals, drinks, and such, and was going to pay me for each time we had sex. So far, no sex has occurred. I will be a bit bummed if I don't make any money this week, but also fine with it, maybe even more happy about that than having to touch this man in any way.

Yesterday, I hung out with Rebecca and that was so lovely, put me in such better spirits even though it was pouring rain all day yesterday. Being in her company made me realize a lot, made me think about past selves and this current one - this current one that is in this current situation and the things Rebecca is now doing with her life, things that at one point in time I might have been more prone to do.

Also last night, bored silly while Bruce was working on his computer, I fell asleep on his bed around eleven reading a book. I think he was pretty annoyed that I had fallen asleep, at my general distance, and so woke me and told me that I could sleep on his foldout couch if I was going to fall asleep, that I wasn't cuddly anyways.

He unfolded his couch and got out sheets to put on them. I tried to help him put on the sheets and he said, "No, I will do it."

Things are weird and I am pretty ready to get out of here, wish Sunday was tomorrow, wonder if things will become better today, and am maybe thinking about trying to leave early. I will see and will spend lots of time with Rebecca and will eat this free food and will play at the beach and make the most of this. New York, I miss you and your residents that I love so much. I know what home is, where it is.

There had been a point in the afternoon, sullen and moody, where I had said that I was leaving after I finished this drink, at that point only my second. But people left and people came and with those changes my mood perked up a lot, perked up more as at some point I found myself alone, Nathan making out with someone, and all these people, many cute boys, all there to meet and talk to and connect with. The rain was pouring, the first rain in about two weeks, much needed, and to be there in the company of all these other people sheltered from the rain, convening underneath a dripping roof, felt so lovely, the sound of the rainfall complementing excellently the excited, indistiguishable voices, the bar noise.

I talked to various people, bouncing here and there, in love wtih these brief sparks and the glow of their attention. Finally this one boy, Moses, was about to leave with his friends and asked if we could kiss beforehand. We did so, the kiss turned into its plural, kisses, turned into making out, and then turned into a confession that he wanted to come home with me. And this boy with the biblical name walked home with me through the rain. We smoked cigarettes, drank some beer, and he played with my iPod, putting on, as if he needed to do anymore to win me over, the Shangri-las. He talked about wanting to be able to heal people.

In my bed, touching each other, with gusts of wind, little droplets of rain, coming out the window above us, cool, would hit our bodies, and the sensation of that further heightened the one, the pleasurable one, I was already experiencing. I leave for Miami in twenty minutes and have yet to pack a thing.

bushwick art pararde

Yesterday, I marched in a parade, carrying a giant white flag, waving it through the air back and forth, parading through Bushwick. It was really lovely to have this giant thing that could be set to such great motions by just the air and the force of my arms on the pole, the white stream making figure eights, circles, and looping right over the roofs of cars going in the opposite direction. Afterward, I got stoned and masturbated and rode a bike and those moments were also absurdly magical, powerful, affecting. Then I went to the piers for a sunset picnic for Nathan's birthday, got stoned on the way there, drank some beer there. There was a jerkoff session at Dugout with a friend, a stranger, and friends watching.

This white flag, symbol of surrender, felt so amazing to hold as it streamed through the air. Though I was holding the pole that this thing in fancy flight was attached to, somehow I felt the thing also, the freedom of movement and its pleasures, and throughout the night, throughout all these nights, this life of mine, that is what I have been chasing, that surrender, that freedom, that movement hinting that there might be rhythm, maybe even grace, to the way things work.







This photo care of Joe: