It is open, finally. The hotel opened its doors today to the general public and I worked my first ten hour day of real work, having had shortened days of little work these past few months. I stayed in the hotel last night along with many of my co-workers, us testing out the rooms to make sure there were not major problems and also having a hurrah of sorts to celebrate it finally opening. We were all decadent terrible hotel guests, people smoking pot while hanging out the windows in a non-smoking hotel. Everyone taking long baths, raiding the mini-bar, and ordering porn flicks. There was a staff cocktail party early in the evening. I followed that by a bath and then went out with a bunch of the homos to a gay bar, to the F Word. We got further drunk and came back to the Meatpacking District, going out to Brass Monkey before going back to the hotel. In the lobby, the hot gay co-worker that Zack and I have a crush on told us that he liked our other co-worker and to send him to his room, that he wanted to have sex with him. It was so funny to see all my co-workers so unhinged and so Girls-Gone-Wild at their place of employment. An afterparty formed in my room since I got a big one and it was absurd and eventually was interrupted by security telling me that my neighbors were complaining. I kicked everyone out of my glass bubble with amazing views of the city and passed out in my bed, getting a couple hours of sleep before starting to work today. Nothing worked. Every system and every room seemed to be having major problems and despite there only being a handful of guests was quite nonstop busy. I can't even imagine how hectic that job is going to be when all the rooms are occupied. Oh man, I am so excited, but also so tired, and need to rest for tomorrow, for another ten hour day.

I love you all a lot.

The streets and sidewalks are covered in ice. I awoke this morning in the clouds to see snow blowing all around me, all around this city, my home.

Snowflakes

I was sitting in a pizza place in midtown around lunch time, Pronto Pizza I believe. The snowflakes starting coming down. I could see them through the window. I got incredibly giddy, these first bits of snowfall always doing this, making me into a wide-eyed giddy child. It’s probably conditioned, snow as a child meaning no school and playing with friends all day long outside. Even though life doesn’t work that way anymore sadly, the reaction is still the same, that of incredible joy, wowed by the ways of this planet and how precious our lives are, beautiful even.

I had earlier in the day gone to the gym and jogged for a bit, jogged near a certain closeted CNN anchor, and thought about him for a second before I thought other thoughts, thoughts that circled around and around, no linear narrative to them, items would pop to the surface, recede, and appear again later. The subjects thought about during this jog were my new love of jogging, how the effects of it are entirely different than other cardio exercises, and how I am developing an addiction to it, have wanted to do it every single day lately, have woken up early and thought about jogging. It releases good things, this is known, and those chemicals are having a quite beneficial effect upon my mood these days. Also thought about were friends, new work friends and more weird queer friends, and how my efforts to hang out with the both of them at the same time doesn’t always seem to work sadly, and also thought about what impression my co-workers must have of me when I invite them out to random Brooklyn bars under the JMZ tracks, and discuss in detail with Richard the artistic visions I have for these two porn projects that I have discussed doing with him. That was last night. The bar was Trophy Bar and supposedly there was to be an open bar, but there was no such thing.

After jogging, I went and sat in the steam room. My rock god crush was there who I fooled around with the last time I was in there and we sat next to each other, me again trembling as I touched his body, thinking him the sexiest man I have seen in quite a while. His dick, his feet, hair, eyes, scruff – it all comes together too well and I have to stop detailing it, because I am getting too hot here in this decorous library thinking these thoughts and need to save these naughty thoughts for a time, very shortly from now, when I will be in my house and can jerk off to such recalled scenes.

I then came to the library again this afternoon and reworked the story I wrote yesterday, making it sound better. Right now, I am happy with it, but need to put it aside for a while, and create some distance, read it again in a week or so. I do this often, write things I think are quite good, and then coming back to them after a week or so with some distance realize how crap the effort was. Hopefully, that will not be the case, but even if so, there are other things to write, and I am really serious about getting in the habit of doing this near daily, especially once my work schedule settles in the next couple weeks and I can start making things habit and routine. The good news is that I start work again tomorrow, that the hiatus is over, and I can again start having some cash flow. This evening, I am quite excited because I am going to go see a screening of GB Jones’ The Lollipop Generation out in Sunset Park. I have had this on my calendar for many weeks now and am so excited that the date is finally here.

Patience and Fortitude

I am sitting in the New York Public Library, the Rose Reading Room in the main branch, and there are few more beautiful places in this large metropolis that I live in, its cathedral-like ceilings, long tables, quiet atmosphere, and studious lighting making it such a pleasant space to sit in and think thoughts, write story fragments, and ponder over the life that you are leading, 27 years of age and still unsure of quite a lot I thought I would be sure of by this age.

I just wrote a very short story about hearing a piece of Waylon Jennings music, a subway performer really hitting me in the belly with some songs the other day, and trying to get the experience down on paper in an only vaguely fictional way. I have had a hard time at most of my attempts at writing because I tried too hard to make it something else other than my life, my story, a first person narrative, but maybe you have to do what comes best to you, what makes most sense, and for me this seems the way it is going to be, not sure why I think it should be otherwise, am more and more sure (finally) of what writing can mean, writing produced by me specifically. It is about making art with words and revealing things in subtle ways, trying to get at this life thing, and this is how it works for me and my hands - often in diary format, but now in other ways also.

So I am lonely sometimes and unsure about a lot. Christmas is around the corner and it doesn't feel like it, especially in this sixty degree weather. It was nice to be out and about in it this morning, to be able to sit outside and drink coffee and look up at the sky and the things around me, not keeping my head pressed to my chest for warmth, but being able to linger in this space, in this city, to wander and take in my fellow residents of this place, us all out and about on this day, dressed in light clothes.

My Internet access at my apartment is spotty and it is too bad because without it, I don't have the urge to write in my diary, that this is the only way it has worked for me most of these past years, to be able to write these things knowing (or imagining) that they might be read, and that there was some point to it. It makes me slightly sad, only slightly though, to realize that my intentions may lie in exhibitionism, in some form of external validation. But we do what we can with this life and what gets off or what works is going to have to do.

Still without work, vaguely stressed about money, jerking off with sexy men in the steam room, and reading and seeing stuff. I forgot to mention (probably because of lack of an Internet connection) that I saw August: Osage County recently, certainly a bit late to the game with that one, but all of the praise that has been heaped on it is tremendously deserved. The play made me jump to my feet afterwards, that it was one of the few shows I thought so good that actually deserved a standing ovation. The acting and the writing are so incredible. I am thinking about that work and what I liked and what I didn't necessarily like about it, thinking about it in the context of producing American art. I have been thinking a lot about notions of America lately and certainly gas was thrown on to that fire with this play. I finished Reinaldo Arenas' Before Night Falls the other day, it a really good read and inspiring me in several ways, it pretty amazing that there are people, Arenas among them, that care so much about literature, that in the worst of conditions, under persecution and threat of death and arrest, continue to produce and write. It makes me feel epically lazy - that in some of the most comfortable conditions imaginable, aside from getting some grant to live in seclusion, that I am unable to even produce a short story now and again, that all I can produce are these diary entires detailing my days, my love interests that fall apart, my sluttines, and the cultural products I have been interacting with, that that is really quite pathetic. And to mention one more of these cultural products, I read Cristy Road's Bad Habits yesterday, which produced some of these same questions about production and first-person narratives and not being a lazy fuck.

Tomorrow I will be back here and will be back again on all these cold days when I am not working and things will be made.

unseasonably temperate for december, wet also

I go up and down, up and down. There are things that bring me up, I know what they are, and I should follow those little fireflies through the woods, down paths and hills, taking me where they may. There are also things that bring me down, fairly reliably, and it is about time, was about time a while ago, perhaps even a long while ago, to stop pursuing those things, that they lead through brambles and down rocks, that they lead nowhere good.

After watching Law and Order last night, I walked down to the Cock, a fair bit stoned, a slight drizzle falling, and was so in love with this city, with living in the East Village, and feeling so incredibly alive. For a moment, I pondered aging, thinking about how often I used to go out to this bar with Ben and Gabriel and others, how we used to drink beer around the corner outside a bodega, and how we would spend the whole night there, leaving at some really late hour, getting to bed at five maybe. I thought about how I don't do that anymore, stoned thoughts about life and its changes, about the paths you have followed, might have followed, and how your life differs or resembles past moments in your life, where exactly you are going. I thought these thoughts as I headed west and south, making my way to 2nd Avenue and 2nd Street. I tend to leave bars earlier these days, no longer do the all night thing, don't go out to the Cock as often, hardly ever - changes having taken place, going out to different places and going out with different people, going out less - thoughts about aging and drifting away from people.

At the Cock, I met up with John, talked about something under the spell of the rapture I was feeling then, giddy and word drunk, things spilling out of me with glee, me in love with the shaping of thoughts into words, into well constructed phrases.

Diego appeared. I told him, still in this emotionally loving state, how I had thought about him when I was walking around town earlier in the day, how I was thinking about how beautiful he was, about his big smile that appears on his face whenever I run into him, him down the street and us a bit aways to start talking yet, and so smiling, big and silly, until that point at which we meet. He kissed my neck, a thank you or something. The past couple days had seemed vague and I had read his behavior as wavering, as maybe wanting to still date me. I lost interest in John with Diego there, wasn't able to maintain interest in the many people who hit on me at that cruisy bar, thinking them second rate, thinking them not as good as this other person.

And then his new boyfriend appeared. They talked and kissed and I felt weird being in such proximity to these two, didn't want to keep stealing glances at them, observing their connection, seeing them together, but couldn't help myself, wanted to see what it was, to see what was special. Diego introduced him to someone as his boyfriend. Hearing that really crashed the joy I had been feeling, but made things clearer, ended the confusion I had felt these past couple days. At some point, they left together. I said bye to Diego and told him he was an idiot. But really, I had been, still liked this boy knowing he was now seeing someone else and thought that he still liked me also, hoped so, hoped for something probably absurd. But now that that didn't happen, that he has made his choice clearer, I am going to step back from this person, that they are no longer going to get my affection.

Despite being sad to watch the two of them leave together, I was quite glad that they were gone, felt less observed and felt less like I had to be aware of these two people in the room and what they were doing. The place was packed and everyone was in a gregarious mood; strangers chatting up strangers; everyone talking to people, looking for sex, love maybe, or really just some connection, some fun, the flint of conversation sparking our own feeling of vitality, feeling that we belong on this planet, in this city, this bar. I started talking to this cute couple and we somehow ended up in the basement all sucking each other's dicks, jerking off. After we attracted too much attention, too many wrinkly disembodied hands touching us, they suggested we all go home together, and so I invited them over to my room. We walked through the East Village, talking about writing, one of them a writer, about what New York used to be, and about beautiful erotic encounters with other men, meeting a guy at a bar, a couple, and walking the several blocks back to one's house to have a steamy threeway on a twin-sized bed. Oh, this life! New York! We talked about Philip Roth on the way over and in my bed, we all got naked and smoked a joint, passing it around. With each puff, more and more touching was happening, and by the time it was extinguished into a Coors Light can sitting on my desk, a 24 oz, we were all over each other, a mess of bodies.

It was so beautiful to participate in, to have a healthy sexual experience with these two boys, to just appreciate each other and help each other get off. I watched the two of them fuck. Later, the one I was really attracted to, fucked me, my first time doing that in many months, and it happened so much easier than I had been expecting, me worried about his large penis, about not being clean or practiced, but it was all for naught. It happened so easily, as it always seems to when you are so insanely hot for somebody, your body knowing to open up to this thing, that the person is special, and those times when you are not entirely feeling it, your asshole knowing better and guarding the gates. It felt so amazing and certainly being high made the experience and physical sensations all the more heightened, toes numb with pleasure. We came, it close to five, a mess of condoms, wrappers, and lube all over my floor. I walked them downstairs, my bed not big enough to sleep three, and came back upstairs, slept in my bed so happy about the experience that just took place in it, about life and how these experiences are there, always there, and it is just about bringing them into existence, being open to them, saying yes.

The hotel has again delayed the opening, having failed to get a necessary permit to open, and so the new soft opening date is December 21. We had already been told that we were going to be working little until the hotel opened, the hotel having already blown through shit tons of money on having us all come in for the past two months, doing light work, thinking that the hotel would have opened way earlier. And so we were told yesterday that we weren't going to be working for the next two weeks. The news is shitty but understandable, that it doesn't make sense for them to pay us to sit around, but knowing the business sense of their decision still does not alter the fact that I am now going to be quite stressed out for the next two weeks, somehow having to make ends meet while not getting paid. My rent is more expensive now and that was okay when I was getting paid by the hotel. It's not so okay when I am not making any money. Hopefully I will get some calls about sex work soon, many of them. So my situation is less stressful than that of my co-workers, me having lived this type of no solid income lifestyle for the past couple years, me still having the option of sex work available to me.

I met up with a bunch of friends from work last night for a frugal evening, given our now questionable finances, meaning that we had planned on hitting up a series of holiday parties, store parties, and open bars. The first stop was the holiday party at the Gay Center. This was from 6 to 8. I met up with Diego there and because of that sort of lost interest in talking to anyone other than him, including my co-workers, who at some point left to go the next stop on the itinerary. I continued to pound back absurdly strong vodka drinks with Diego, me struggling to keep up with him, him the only person I know who consumes more booze than me, probably one of the reasons why I like him so much. We were smashed and some of the last people left at the party and started talking to these two old dudes, mildly creepy, about anal sex.

We all hopped in a cab and went to Eastern Bloc, where I got more drunk and talked to Diego about love, about his current relationship, about our now-ended one, and about how it shouldn't be over. It was silly drunk talk and I wanted him badly last night. Our relationship is weird now. I went out to lunch with him yesterday and then met up for drinks with him when he got done working - it seeming a fair amount of time to spend with someone you have broken up with. At the Gay Center, I think no less than four people told us some variation of what a cute couple we were. I wanted to shut each one of them up, thought it absurd that all these random people kept feeling the need to tell me how cute my boyfriend and I were, this person that is no longer that, and about which I had been talking with him for most of the evening.

At some point, before midnight I think, I could take no more, was ready to pass out, walked home, stopping at the corner deli, overpriced compared to the one that used to be my house in Bushwick, bought a roast beef sandwich, and in my bed, once home, I smoked a joint, ate the sandwich, scarfed it down, and passed out.

Today, I cut my hair.

--------------------

Tonight's Law and Order is about the murder of a JT Leroy-like character, who is played by my friend Jeremy. I am so excited to watch this. Tonight at 10!

On Saturday, I worked at the hotel, did a really long day there as we ran around like crazy people, scrubbing the granite lobby walls, checking rooms, peeling tape. Vanity Fair did a shoot of the hotel today and so they assembled all the missing pieces of the front of the hotel over the weekend, filling the lobby with furniture, dimming the lights, and blasting music. The hotel is still incomplete, the opening has again been delayed because of lack of permits, but Saturday I saw what it was going to be, saw the lobby as a hotel lobby, realized what an amazing place this was going to be and how fun it was going to be to work here, and in what a lucky position I am in to see this hotel starting from scratch.

I haven't been writing much about this experience for a couple of reasons, one being because I haven't been writing in my diary as much lately, but probably more so because of confidentiality reasons. We had to sign confidentiality agreements prior to working there, and they have made it clear that we will be fired for writing or talking to people about the hotel's business and about who stays there. And so this entry is locked for that reason. The management freaked out last week when a photo of the lobby appeared on HotelChatter. They are very in control of the marketing of this hotel in a very intelligent, methodical way. It is pretty amazing to witness their plans for this hotel put into action, how they create buzz about it, and how excited some people are about this hotel.

Saturday evening, all of us took a break from our various dirty tasks and gathered in awe to look at the lobby mostly assembled. It was a really great feeling of pride that all of us shared, all of really excited about people soon occupying the space and it buzzing with life. I am so tired of the tasks we have been doing for the last two months and I cannot wait for this hotel to open (hopefully next week!) and to start doing crazy work!

So what I thought may have been poison ivy may in fact be scabies. Since learning this a couple days ago, on Thanksgiving, a friend telling me they think they have scabies, I have been itching even more and the itching seems unbearable at times. I did a scabies treatment a couple days ago and so that should either solve the problem in a week or I can go back to thinking I have poison ivy, and should it still be around a month from now, at that point I should have health insurance and get an actual medical opinion as to what this skin condition is.

I have had a succession of days off lately and so today I got stoned this morning while still in bed, got a bit horny, and started chatting with someone on Manhunt. He lived close and so I went over to his house. We sat across from each other at his breakfast table. He was beautiful, young and Brazilian, looking a lot like Adrian Grenier, big lips, sexy thing. He was kind of annoying, clearly a rich brat, and certainly a bad host. I felt very awkward because I was stoned and because nothing was happening. We made stupid conversation and he chain smoked and looked at his computer a lot. His little dog ran back and forth near us, chewing on squeaky toys and trying to fuck his cat, who seemed to tolerate the dog more than any other cat would. Watching these two animals hump, not even of the same species, I wondered why we weren't, me and Adrian Grenier lookalike.

There was one point where he asked me what my sign was. I told him and then asked him if he was into that stuff, if he knew about it. No, he said. He said it was just what people asked. And there was that stupid breakfast table between us and our unsexy questions and answers, and for whatever reasons it didn't happen and wasn't going to. Trying to leave before things got awkward and I got asked to, I told him I had errands to run. He walked me downstairs and we parted ways. As I was walking away, he called me back, asked me if I wanted his number, if I wanted to have a drink later. I was a bit shocked, having thought this dude hated me, wondering why I would want to endure more awkward time with him, more time not fucking and playing with his pets to somehow feel less awkward, but took down his number anyways. He said Ciao. Of course he did.

I jerked off with some older muscley dude in the steamroom today. I read some of Before Night Falls afterwards at Ben's cafe. I feel really lonely these days and wonder if I was coming back from a long trip, even a short one, who would be that person that I wanted to call as soon as I landed. My connections with people are becoming more tenuous. I am realizing what I liked so much about Diego was having some sort of person in my life like that, someone that I could call to hang out with whenever, and it is that that I miss I am realizing, not so much this person specifically, but the feeling of connection, a person to call, not having to think about who one should call, but knowing.

My phonebook now includes Adrian Grenier lookalike, a massage therapist I met at Short Mountain and re-met at Phoenix a couple nights ago, a boy I met at a house party on Saturday where it was all musical theater people and they all sang around a keyboard in the living room, and some other people, and there are thoughts often about who I should call, whether I should call anyone, and the choices are either unsatisfying or overwhelming, and there is something else I desire and it is not the past, about that I am more and more sure, and these days are transitional ones for me. Something is coming. I am not sure what person I will be.

For the past several nights I have been sleeping in the East Village. As I type this diary entry, I am sitting on the twin-sized bed in my tiny bedroom, which is right against a window looking out on to East 7th Street. There is a tree outside my window and I can see the branches move in the wind, and can feel comfortable knowing that I am not in that cold wind, but inside my new place of residence. On my window ledge sits an amaryllis plant which has yet to flower and which was brought over as a housewarming gift by Diego last evening. It was such a sweet and unexpected gesture, especially coming from him, and especially after a weekend spent moving shit, having asked friends to help me out and them not really doing so. I look at this plant though and I like it a lot and wish I could like it more, wish that I could think of it as sweetly as I sort of am anyway, think of it as this sweet gesture from a boy I love.

When he came over yesterday, I wanted him to be naked with me in my bed, wanted things to be what they aren't. We talked about how our lives were going and during a lull, I asked him what else was going on in his life. He said that he was in a relationship now. I kind of knew this already but had yet to hear him say so, for him to make more clear that he had moved on. I felt really stupid that I hadn't, that I liked this boy, that I had had unreal expectations for him coming over, that those expectations were now clearly not going to be met, that I would be disappointed, and that I was not this boy - a swirl of stuff really, and my mood crashed as soon as he said this. He asked if he should go and I didn't say, "Yes, please," like I wanted to, instead tried to play it like the non-crazy person and tried to converse with him normally. I was unable to. I told him that I was really sad and at some point he left. There is a plant on my windowsill, a flower that I am supposed to water and take care of, and it is something I am going to see all the time, and all those times I will probably think about this boy, and so I am not sure I necessarily like this flower, wish that I could like it as much as I actually do.

Yesterday, I ran into this guy I had gone on a kind-of date with once, and he was reading a book about meditation, and he told me about his meditation practice, done as soon he woke up each day, before showering, before eating, before anything, and how much the practice had centered him, prepared him for each day, allowing him to be aware of himself, of what's real, and what's bullshit. It sounded really nice and I thought then how I should try something similar. I often think such things when people talk about things they are into, things benefiting their lives; rarely though do I follow through on such desires, the desires passing whims forgotten soon after, a song played, The Ikettes' "I'm Blue" instead holding my attention.

That song came on last night while I was hanging out with Diego and how apt I thought, how fucking apt.

I moved the rest of my shit out of my apartment yesterday with Gabriel. We lugged it to the thrift store by my house and threw the rest in the trash. I was glad for the help, really glad. I felt a bit sad about leaving the place, about the circumstances of my leaving, remembering again how much a friend proved to be not one, thinking human relationships are generally all shit. I left my keys on the table and didn't say goodbye to Niki, never really want to say anything to her ever again. I am quite good at ending certain things with people and yet with others cannot seem to do so for the life of me, even knowing the score, how the game is rigged, and which team is going to win, still keep betting it all on the losing team.

It's okay and I am, am feeling quite good about things. I am alive and in this city full of lovely people and I don't have to talk to a one of them and could talk to all of them, and it is all there and I am happy to be there also. I live in one of the most lovely neighborhoods in the most amazing city on this planet and am working at a great job and will only be working four days a week and things are actually going so fucking amazing, and and and -

I am realizing how late it is in the year finally, the temperatures having finally dropped to the bitter windy cold that normally marks this time of year, the warm early fall temperatures of sixties and fifties fading, November now feeling like November.

I went to IKEA tonight and nearly lost it. I felt weird about being there but needed a narrow bookcase and a small desk for my room and wanted it then, did not want to scavenge countless stores and look at pricey things that weren't the size I needed. It was depressing, the store, reminded me of the one I went to in Northern Virginia, in the suburbs, the one I would go to with my mom after driving on the highway and then parking in a giant mall parking lot. I remembered having to walk through this maze of dioramas of perfect little rooms, so well furnished, and it was all shit, all numbers next to these boring lives that I guess I am aspiring to now, or feeling like I was in that moment, and writing down the aisle and number where I can find this bookshelf, where I can purchase my unhappiness. I wanted to hurry up and get to where I could pick up the furniture but kept on having to walk and walk through the maze of imaginary rooms I was finding myself longing for, and I felt crazy, felt the lure of being an American consumer start to hypnotize me with its song. I needed to get out of there, but I ended up passing tea candles I wanted to buy, 100 for only four dollars or so, and wine glasses and lamps. I had to catch my breath and tell myself to get out of the store, that I didn't want to be a headline in The Onion: Man Has Panic Attack In Ikea; Medics Called to Scene to Subdue An Extreme Case of Consumerism Anxiety. Or something like that. The lights were so bright. I got myself together, calmed down, did not want to be some headline, some crazy person freaking out in IKEA, and I bought my shit, arranged to have it delivered and left.

Tomorrow evening, the packages will be delivered to my new East Village place of residence, what I call the gay boardinghouse, what my coworkers jokingly call, and which I am realize may in some ways be true, a halfway house, them all a bit more bougie than me. And I have some anxiety now because I am working full-time and getting paid really well and have disposable income available to me so that I can make purchases at IKEA and arrange to have them delivered, and I am away that this is short term probably there, that house, six months or so, that I still think I am going to move into my own apartment, but now have more ambitious dreams residence wise, and those, those are counterbalanced with nightmares, worries about the onset of adulthood finally here at 27 for me, a steady job and a place not as far away, and talking about different things and with different people.

And I am trying to hold on to some things, but everything seems up for grabs right now. And I am trimming down my belongings, getting rid of a nice chunk of books, deciding which I actually need, which are worthy of taking up space in a small room, and which are just filler, just things that sit there and which mean nothing to me, texts that I have and probably never will have a relationship with.

You have to decide what to keep and what to get rid of.

I slept with Diego last night and that is part of it, part of what is making me feel better. I hadn't had sex in a while and so it was nice to have this boy in my bed, to get stoned with him while sitting on my bed at four something in the morning, having just devoured some Little Debbie brownies. We woke up this morning and got off a couple of times before he left and before I left shortly thereafter to go look at apartments. The other part what is making me feel better, feel pretty damn excellent actually despite the blistery wind, is that I now have a set of keys to a room in the East Village. I am going to live in what is basically a gay boardinghouse just a couple of doors away from Tompkins Square Park. The guy that runs it is humorous old pervert, who kept on making sex jokes the entire time was there, and who hosts sex parties every Thursday night in the basement. It is a boardinghouse setup with a bunch of rooms, bathrooms on each floor, and a shared kitchen. There are some downsides, one being the size of the room. It is small, but for the price and the location I don't care. There also isn't a stove here and you are supposed to store your food in your room, which also is something I can live with since I don't cook all that often now. I am on the fourth floor and have a window that looks out on to trees and there is cable in every room with oodles of channels and everyone seems so nice and I am going to live in fucking Manhattan and I am so fucking excited. I can't believe this happened today. I was on my way to look at some studio in Bushwick when this guy called and so I went over to look at the place and wanted it as soon as I saw it, thankfully had my checkbook with me, and now I live there! I am going to move my stuff out of here over the next week and hopefully be residing there my next weekend. So excited!

I had just recently been able to stop myself from nodding off, comfortable in my seat, warm after walking around in the cold all day, and so quite a bit tired, when I started to notice the little old lady seated next to me nodding off hardcore, practically asleep in my lap, so bent over she was, and I wanted to giggle, did do so, kept having to bite my tongue because it was quiet and everyone was taking in the things being said so seriously, this being a Serious talk, and so I bit my tongue and kept my giggles to myself, woke myself up this way, and began to listen to the talk, this serious thing, that I had come to hear, a discussion between Derek Walcott and Tom Stoppard on art and power at CUNY.

Both had interesting things to say, though it wasn't much of a discussion, and was quite unfocused, the moderator doing a terrible job and failing to shape the discussion or even help define the terms being discussed, vague ideas themselves, that being art and power, and so it was vague talk about undefined concepts, and so not terribly that thrilling. It was quite a joy though to get to see Tom Stoppard and listen to the way his mind worked as he mentally thought through some issues and verbalized them in really clever ways, in nice language.

Earlier this day, I had spent walking around my neighborhood, looking for For Rent signs, and calling up numbers talking to people about numbers, how many bedrooms, how much, addresses. There were few leads and there are still three or so weeks until the point at which I need to be out of here, and so there is time still, a bit of it.

Surely thoughts of this were part of why I was distracted a bit earlier during this talk and began to nod off. There were thoughts of other things and are still, this season and the physical landscape, shifting in slight and incredible ways, play a large part I believe in these expansive thoughts. In there also is the very real fact that I will be residing somewhere else soon, that I will have potentially a new neighborhood, and things, my very way of living, will be new and different. There is also the change in my relationship status, those leaves having fallen early, a month or so ago, and yet me, still trying to throw them back at the branches, hoping the branches will take them back and tell them that fall has not arrived yet, that it was a mistake, that there shall be no autumn ever, only an endless summer. And the branches have not, they can not, that fall is here.

And this weekend, I saw Diego at Mr. Black's, its opening night, Justin having performed, me having gotten into an argument with Gabriel, and me so excited to see Diego, hoping for sex, something else also clearly, and my excitement dipped quite a bit, crashed honestly, when I saw him with his new romantic interest. I felt stupid, really stupid, for thinking that the seasons would rewind themselves, that autumn had in fact not occurred, was never going to, was only a myth, dated religious dogma like geocentric models of the universe.

There is the fear of death in me. There is the longing for ends to never occur, that if they can here now, then they can later, will, that there is an end to it all. It terrifies me so much. This terror brings about such loneliness in me. The auditorium was packed with people during this talk tonight and I didn't know who they were, probably never will, never could, even had we been introduced. I look at people and pass over their faces, not able to recognize them, my brain distracted by other faces, those in my memory, of a few boys, and I look for them down every street I walk and don't see them but also don't see the other faces, too busy looking for these several.

And that probably wouldn't make me happy. It would at times, those in bed, and it wouldn't at others, and it would all be yet another way of denying the existence of these seasons, of mitigating my fear of them and of dying with the comfort of another body, something to make reality something else, something bearable and potentially, if I am lucky, enjoyable. And that's all bullshit today because these thoughts are willed distractions from the watermelon porn I need to be making and the books I need to be writing. And my tooth hurts, the one that got the filling, and I think the dentist did something wrong, and I feel where a piece of my tooth used to be, my body, and where it is not; a piece of me that was present, no longer; my body slowly dying.

Last night, people lost their minds on these streets of New York City. Every place, every bar, you walked by, people were watching the election coverage, everyone on the same team, everyone so fucking happy. It was such a beautiful sight. I am so glad that it is over and that soon the years of George Bush will soon be over. A person of color was elected to the highest office in this land. That is amazing. You can look at the portraits of all the presidents - I remember doing this in US History class, their portraits all lined up on several facing pages, them all old white men - and here is a break from that, a change, a dark face, still a man, but not a white one. And that is a staggering change that, a couple of years ago, I would have said was not going to happen anytime soon. Was everyone crying last night? Talking to my co-workers today, so many people mentioned how they bawled their eyes out last night. Catharsis, realizing that it is not as fucked up as it sometimes seems, that there is potential, that change can occur, that we can bring it about. What a beautiful fucking day it was.

And, yes, yesterday, I got two fillings, leaving half of my face numb with novacaine all throughout the celebrations, and yes I still don't know where I am going to live, and yes I may have poison ivy, and yes I am often lonely, and yes to so many things, but also yes to the fact that I was witness to and a participant (by voting) in one of the most beautiful moments of this two hundred some year old experiment. It really is so fucking incredible and inspiring. And you realize how much so, in case you forgot or weren't able to concieve, when you see Jesse Jackson crying nonstop, when you hear people from the civil rights era talk about what this means to them, when today my (black) boss told me how his nephew was sobbing his eyes out last night and how he, my boss, out-sobbed his nephew, that things we were told weren't possible are, that things we were told about our own potential can be shown for the bullshit it is. So fucking awesome.

Defend Your Porn Shops, Defend New York

New York City is continuing its war against gay people and against sex. While Proposition K, decriminalizing sex work, has a good chance of passing tomorrow in San Francisco, here in New York, police are harassing customers of gay porn stores, entrapping them in prostitution charges, people that are not sex workers charged with being so. It is so incredibly fucked-up and makes me seethe with rage toward the powers that be in this city and how they are reshaping this city in terrible ways. What I am talking about is the excellent cover story of this week's Gay City News, which details a series of arrests that have occurred at Blue Door Video in the East Village, many customers being entrapped in prostitution stings. It is fucking outrageous that our police resources, our public dollars, are being directed in this effort to stigmatize and intimidate patrons of porn stores, mainly of course gay porn stores. I patronize gay porn stores and I have the right to do so, want to be able to continue to do so, don't want these places closed for fictitious violations and offenses, don't want to see another Wachovia or Chase or Bank of America branch where something useful actually was. And maybe you moved to New York for the same reason I did, to escape all this bullshit and to live somewhere that had life, that wasn't stupid suburban bullshit on every fucking corner. And maybe if that's the case, you should tell your elected officials to back the fuck off of your shit. Contact City Council here or the mayor here.

And this is on the day where stupid Bloomberg signed the bill overriding the term limits that voters enacted by referendum. I think term limits are stupid (that that is what elections are for), but think that if voters vote for them, then those same voters should vote to get rid of them. It makes me so angry how the process of overturning this was done, so angry with the mayor and with the City Council. It is all so dirty.

Spring/Forward, Fall/Back

I am bored, very bored, and hungover, or telling myself I am hungover to somehow excuse the being bored on my part, to make sense of it and I don’t know if I can, am not sure what it would be to ever make sense, because honestly I have never done such a thing, this making sense thing, and so it is November now, November 2nd, and some years ago on this day my father died. Yesterday was the Day of the Dead. Tomorrow is my sister’s birthday, the anniversary of the start of her life, and I have yet to get her a gift to commemorate this thing, am not sure what I should get. But were I sure about that, then that would be surprising, as these days I am sure about so incredibly little.

And is that true? Or is it just a pose, just a way of writing something and having it sound interesting, dramatic?

This day has been spent in a fog. I have masturbated, cleaned, masturbated, eaten, and masturbated some more – one of those days when my worst impulses take over, when there is the desire to do something but not the will to, namely writing, and so to distract myself from that short falling, I take my dick in my hand and think about my friends naked and recall certain things.

I called Diego earlier today during one of these masturbation sessions and asked him what he was doing later, asked him this because I wanted him to fuck me while wearing this pair of combat boots I saw him in the other day, told him this on the phone. And he has to work so it is not happening, but seemingly will soon, maybe even later this evening. And I have been on Manhunt and on the M4M section of Craigslist and my mind circles back again and again to sex as a distraction from thinking about writing, this day all to myself, no commitments, my roommate gone, and me having declared that today would be a productive writing day, and instead it has been anything but that. Here I am, trying to make up for lost time, writing instead about how I haven’t been writing.

I have been reading this Queer Zines book and it is really fantastic and has me inspired to make small things, first off this NY Travel Guide that I have been dreaming of for the past couple months, to make it even dirtier than originally conceived. And so I am going to drink more coffee, maybe jerk off some more, play some loud music until I completely lose my mind, write a couple travel guide entries, and then maybe get fucked by a hot guy wearing just a pair of combat boots. I have had this fantasy for a while, thought about it when I first starting seeing Diego, and it was only the other day, after we had had sex and his boots were lying on the floor, only now that we are no longer together, and now that I have confessed dirtier things to him, that I told him I wanted him to wear them and fuck me. They are from an Army Navy surplus store, cost him twenty dollars, and he believes, for reasons I am not sure and which I find doubtful, that they are the boots of a dead soldier.

It was right before lunch that Michael, a co-worker that I have a flirtation with, asked me how my life was going, whether I was liking the job. I told him that I loved it, that the job was going good, that it was the only part of my life that was. Things would change after lunch and I am convinced that I somehow jinxed myself by being so positive about this job.

During lunch they announced the three people that were going to go out to LA for a week or two to train at their hotel there, an assignment I wanted a lot and which I thought I would get. I didn't and was a bit surprised about that, knowing how much the managers liked me and how much better I was doing at picking up all these various computer systems and other things we have been taught over these past few weeks. After lunch, I got called into a meeting with a couple of managers and I was a little nervous about it, it seeming quite ominous and me thinking it was either going to be good news or bad news, either getting some sort of promotion or getting fired. I really didn't know what it could be. They told me that they did a credit check on me. I have a terrible credit and I know this. They said it was because of my credit history that they didn't send me to LA and furthermore that because of my credit history I was a liability at the front desk, could not work in that position. They apologized, saying it was company policy, that they liked me a lot and were really happy to have me working there. Instead of working at the front desk, which I was really excited about, I am going to be working in rapid response, which deals with all sorts of problems and handles impossible requests that guests may have, such as finding a guitar in the middle of the night. It pays the same amount, still a lot, but it is certainly more work and certainly less glamorous. And it may potentially pay more as I would be more prone to get tips in this position and some fun people are also working this job.

However, it still sucks to be told such a thing, to be pulled off a job you like, to be told you are not going to LA solely because of your bad credit - all of this is quite embarrassing. And it is not just the free vacation that I am missing out on, but it is most likely a higher position and more money that I am missing out on, as they said that the people that were going to LA were going to be people they wanted for management later on down the line.

This news was a giant punch in the gut, especially since I really loved my job in a way I haven't in many years, especially since it was the one area of my life that seemed to be going fantastically. I still have a job at least, still a well paying job that will still be crazy and fun, but the news definitely brings me down. Also consolation is that when I told Michael this, he confessed that before he was hired he had had to explain his bad credit history to the head boss, which would have been ever scarier.

I hung out with Diego this afternoon so we could assemble our Halloween costumes. While he was getting ready to sew my outfit together, I started to hug him, started to kiss him. He tried to say it was a bad idea, but soon gave up the attempt, starting kissing also, and we hopped into his bed, ripping off clothes, having amazingly hot sex. I didn't want it to end. It did. After orgasm, I knew he had been right, that it was a bad idea. It felt good then, but now doesn't feel so great. I feel like I have lost.

up with live people

John Waters was seated in the row behind us last night at the screening of Bruce LaBruce's Otto, or Up With Dead People at MoMA. I say this not so much to dish celebrity sightings because that wasn't the effect, or it was and was something more, and was only a piece that contributed to the overwhelming feeling I had last night at this event. I think it might be difficult to overstate the importance he played in my development artistically and otherwise. As a teen, I watched his movies, earlier ones, over and over again, obsessed with them. He helped make me weird, encouraged my weirdness. The making of those earlier films fascinated me, that this gay weirdo could get his likewise weird friends to act out his insane movies, and that the result, though incredibly low budget, was amazing, amazing because of that low budget aspect, because it was filmed in backroads Baltimore locales, because there is something real and fresh and not canned about it all, and that he showed his stuff in local cinemas that would, midnight showings, incredible drive for his art. But this is a digression. The point here is that John Waters means a great deal to me and I have seen him around town before but never been seated so close to him, and so even before the movie started I got pretty fucking nervous and giddy, thinking about this my life and my heroes, I thought about being young and watching his movies and what they meant to me then, so incredibly much, and here was that person responsible for them and me seated so calm and casually right in front of him rather than screaming and jumping up and down, trying to get him to understand the effect he has unknowingly had on my life, and I thought about this line of queer artists in the room, Waters behind me, and up at the front of the room, LaBruce.

Terence Koh was in the audience also. There were some other recognizable big queer artists in the room and then in the front row, I spotted Bruce Benderson. I hadn't talked to him since our big blowup in Miami a year or two ago and got incredibly nervous again, though for different reasons, dreaded him yelling at me or something else awkward occurring.

The movie was really good, reminded me a lot of Raspberry Reich in its thematic concerns and in its structure. But the thing that I was distracted quite a bit by in this theater were thoughts of ambition and of place. In some ways, I felt like a fake, felt like someone that had sneaked into the party. I was surrounded by all these talented artists who were creating work and who had contributed so much to this dialogue I have spent so long listening to rather than jumping into. I felt like I shouldn't be there, that I had contributed nothing, made nothing significant, nor even really insignificant, and was just some hanger-on, a groupie to this big band. And I don't want to feel like that feeling ever again. I want to be in the band, want to be the band. The moment was one of revelation, of my age, of my talent, and of my laziness, and it made me so determined. It is beyond time to get serious, and yes I have lots of distractions in my life right now, among them needing to find a place to move, a new job, Spanish classes, and the need to think of a Halloween costume, but there are always distractions, and it's time to move.

I need to keep this theater in my my mind in these coming weeks and years. I need to explain why it is that I should be sitting there in the company of all these talented artists, need to explain what it is I think I am doing seated in that audience there.

I have consumed a lot of really amazing art this week and it has all inspired me in different ways: Charlie Kaufman's Synechdoche; a lot of work at MoMA, especially Nan Goldin's "Ballad of Sexual Dependency"; the Queer Zines exhibit at the NY Art Book Fair, which has an amazing catalog that I am reading now; and The Judy Experience playing at Starr Space.

I feel so overwhelmed these days in a really good way. I am still lonely and still confused about my loneliness. I am sleeping little, waking up early for work, like six am, and staying up late. There are thoughts of all these consumed cultural products in my head, the two movies I just saw, both so incredible, and there are thoughts about what I should be doing and those thoughts are going to have to start taking dominance. I don't know if I am accurately conveying what that experience in the theater meant to me, but it meant and still means a great deal, was a kick-in-the-ass moment that I needed, and I've got that in mind as I chase other things in mind.

Fall

waiting for home

In case you didn't know, Bowie at the Beeb is one of the best albums ever, particularly on fall days when you are feeling a tinge of melancholy and are unsure about your life and outside around you there is the sight of physical change in the landscape and there is also the knowledge that you are reminded of with these changing leave colors that your life, or at least mine, is also about to undergo some transformation. Leaves will change colors, fall to the ground, and there will be sadness, a fallow period, and then reemergence, new things sprouting. There was a period in my life, back in Sarasota, when I would listen to this album a lot, my roommate at the time, Jamie, possessing it, playing it, and getting me really into it. Bowie does this particular feeling so well and to find something in music that feels right, feels like the proper soundtrack to the emotions you are experiencing, is great. In fact, perhaps it is not so much that the music provides a nice musical rendering of your feelings, but rather that the soundtrack inspires the scenes, provides a context for your life that you were otherwise lacking, sends you off in the right direction, provides the cues for what expression you should have on your face in that scene, how you should walk away when you are leaving that bar, thoughts of being alone, of an ending, and hopefully a new beginning in your head, as you, drunk, too drunk really, stumble up through the East Village to the L train back to Brooklyn, and where you will wait a good twenty minutes on the platform thinking thoughts, not necessarily good or productive ones, about your life and the changes that you are going through, and you will think these things intermittently, as you drift in and out of sleep, trying to stay awake until the train comes, until the train gets you to the Jefferson stop, and until you lock your door behind you and drop your keys on your desk.

Still, I am unsure about where I will be living and cannot wait to have that figured out, to have moved out, because as of now (and probably for the next month) until I move out, things are incredibly awkward at my house. Niki and I haven't talked in weeks and are never in the same room, both of us pretty much staying in our rooms. It is quite tense and certainly far from an ideal living situation that I cannot wait to escape.

My job is going quite lovely, the one thing in my life that is going really well, and I am really excited about this opportunity I have been handed. It is a joy to go there everyday and my co-workers are all charming and funny, people that I am quite excited about forming friendships with.

I had a crisis at Marie's Crisis the other night, got quite sad while hanging out with Gabriel and listening to the bar sing sad songs while gathered around the piano. Earlier in the evening, I had talked with Diego and told him that I didn't think I would be able to spend time with him, that we weren't going to be good friends, that I didn't see how that could occur, and that I wasn't eager to again confuse boundaries and have a romantic friendship with someone that did not want romance. He was upset by that and I got angry with him, me even calling him stupid at one point in the phone conversation, getting increasingly frustrated with his method of thinking and of his inability to conceive why things needed to change for me. And at one point, I think the point at which I had finally had too much of the sadness, the bar broke into singing "Your Song." I had wanted to meet Gabriel for a drink and talk about our lives, but he had quieted me during one song, during a moment when I was trying to unburden myself by talking about things, expelling them through my mouth, and I bottled it, got sad, got annoyed. I listened to the sad song even though I wanted to talk over it. After a couple of these sad songs, I downed the rest of my beer, said goodbye, frustrated with my friend, with my life, with it all, and headed out into the cold fall night again, the air itself even mean these days, whipping me with its unfeeling, insensitive cold, and I pulled my clothes tighter and higher over my neck, keeping those boundaries between myself and others, the outside world, that I want so much to collapse. The turtle retreating back into its shell.

After some drinks at other places last evening, I made my way to the Boiler Room for the Butt party. I talked to Matt S. in line there and it was as if the world was out to taunt me, that when I would be feeling sad about boys, here would be one of the big ones in my life, one of the major causes of sadness in my life, my first kindof boyfriend, this boy that I was obsessed with and who has been an asshole to me, and me loving him all the more for it. I took his hands to look at them, see what it was about them that I found so beautiful, and I didn't know what it was, still don't. He has such a beautiful face. There is something harsh and awkward about the components of it, but when he frowns or smiles or rolls his eyes, the pieces work so well together, and I see this charming man and lose control of my bearings, become this boy crazy thing, still longing for this person who I should have long ago stopped liking.

So there was that interaction. There were thoughts of Diego. And I will add that Bowie is still playing and still sounding perfect. I ran into this boy, Antonio, who I have seen at Bob's place a couple times and who I have had a bit of a crush on. We talked a lot, it clear that both of us liked each other. At some point, a few drinks later, we started making out in the back corner. It was really lovely and the boy is so attractive. Diego then saw me and said hello. I talked to Diego and it was incredibly awkward and stiff, so unnatural, so not how I am used to talking, both of us being careful, and it made me so incredibly sad, this person that I like a great deal and loved, this person that things used to be so easy with, the two of us having so much trouble making short conversation. I lost it then, the steam I had, the confidence. I went back to talk to Antonio deflated, told him I was going home, and he was surprised that we weren't going home together, asked me what was wrong, could tell that my mood did a 180, and I explained, explained that I needed to go home alone, that I was distracted. And it then that I went out again into that night, the coldness making me more aware of my aloneness, nothing to warm my body against, no one to lean against, brush arms with, and made that trek up to that L train, thought about these things, and waited and waited to get home. I have been waiting for a long time now.

I have been thinking about Diego a lot these past couple of days, thinking of him in moments while riding on the train, while spacing out when someone is talking to me, and during all of these moments gaining insight into what it is to be this thing of skin and nerves and stirrings of a brain, of what is to be human and desire connection, of my life and how I have fucked up and how I haven't, and of how lucky I am. My sense of all this was really heightened this evening when I went to go look at the Elizabeth Peyton exhibit while at the New Museum for some other exhibit's opening. The galleries were uncrowded, everyone elsewhere, and more importantly I was a bit stoned, a bit drunk, and more than a little lovesick. The work hit me in all its beauty in a way it never had before, me always thinking it a bit too liked, a bit too popular, for me to really like it, that it was too surfacey, but this evening each of those images, their way of looking at people, was recognizable. They were songs sung in a language I understood. The melancholy that is present in a longing for someone was recognizable in the portraits of men, beautiful subjects that seem to barely care about your attentions, hers or ours, us viewers. And yet, despite that, maybe even because of that, still thinking the world of these things, these beautiful and distant men.

I was washing my face and brushing my teeth, was getting ready for bed so that I could wake up early again tomorrow, and while doing this, just moments ago, I realized many things, the thing that sparked all these other realizations though was the chronology of my relationship with Diego. It started nearly a year ago at a party during the MIX festival, at the now shuttered Boysroom. It ended at a party during this year's festival. That this queer film fest bookends my romance with him seems funny and seemingly meaningful, though what exactly it would mean I could not tell you, just that there should be some significance there.

In the Peyton show, there was a blue painting of Walt Whitman. I took that as meaningful also, a sign.

Numerous Rooms

After waiting about half an hour for Bob to meet me, I gave him back a DVD I had borrowed from him a couple of weeks ago, Four Rooms, perhaps my having watched it a sign of what my future held for me or perhaps an invocation that brought that future about, soon afterwards getting employed at a hotel. I had been through training sessions all this week with about forty other people, the inaugural cast of this hotel. Training was fun, held in a posh setting, catered with yummy food, and was with a really interesting group of young people who were fun to chat with and who I am excited about working with. The place is still not open and there is training up until that point, including tomorrow morning starting at 8.

But to get back to the original narrative, this mentioning of recent details of my life, having a job and such (still no apartment though), now taken care of, it was after I angrily handed this DVD back to Bob, annoyed that I had to wait in the chilliness of an October evening for him while underdressed for it, that I hopped on the downtown train and went to the MIX festival. I was quite late for the screening I had wanted to attend, but tried to go in anyways. I was told I needed a ticket and so went to the ticket table asking for a ticket since I had volunteered for them. They directed me to hospitality, who turned out to be Jeremy, and who I started making out with. We ducked into a little alcove off to the side of the lobby and went at it. We were soon sucking each other's dicks, licking body parts, and having a really hot time. It was when he was rimming me that I suggested he fuck me. We put things on pause to go find lube and condoms. He went in search of them and I pulled my pants back up and stumbled into the lobby to wait for him to return. There I ran into Ben, Gabriel, Richard, and several other people who were all leaving to go some penthouse party in Chelsea.

I was more than a bit off balance, really fucking horny, still in the middle of sex basically and was just waiting for Jeremy to return, but a penthouse party sounded great, as did hanging out with all my friends. I followed them since they were leaving right then, not seeing Jeremy around, and not even making it past the ticket collector after I had come all the way down to South Street Seaport to try to catch some films. Soon I was on the roof of some amazing apartment building in Chelsea, smoking joints, drinking cocktails, eating plates of food, and marveling at the incredible view of the city from there, also marveling at the unexpected unfolding of my last hour or so, that what was supposed to me going to a queer film festival turned into sex in the lobby of the festival, turned into being on the roof of some fancy penthouse apartment stoned.

We stayed there for an hour or so before heading back down to the MIX space for the festival's afterparty/sex party. There I had a chance to talk with Diego. This should have been mentioned earlier in the narrative to give this meeting some context, but it wasn't and so perhaps a bit of back story is in order. There is no need for seamlessness when you can just have endless digressions. A week or so ago at Julius' he had told me we needed to talk before proceeding further and I told him that I loved him a great deal and he said something similar. Ever since breaking up a month or two ago, things have felt more like dating then they ever did before. I have been able to unhesitatingly tell him I love him, have actually felt like I have, and have been quite smitten with him. We talk on the phone often about nothing and have been hanging out more often, and there has been lots of physical affection. So last night after he made some offhand comment, I sat him down in a chair and we talked about things, about what it is he wanted, what it is that I want. I told him that I liked him, that I wanted to have a romance with him, and that it frustrated me that he cast doubt on my seriousness whenever I had warm feelings toward him. He said he liked what we had. I asked him to define more clearly for me what exactly that is, explained that I wasn't looking for a prolonged flirtation, that this ambiguous status was only okay for me were he actually hoping it might lead somewhere else. He said that he wasn't, that he didn't want to be my boyfriend, that he didn't feel comfortable with that.

I got incredibly sad and my eyes swelled with water. Diego looked at them, seeing it, and I didn't want them to overflow so was trying to steady myself by looking at him, trying to hold it in, to not seem so fragile. It didn't work. The water started streaming down my face and I started to laugh because when one can't control their body or things in this world outside of it, it seems the only proper thing to do. I laughed a bit, trying to counterbalance how sad my eyes looked and the now depressing exchange I was engaged in. I really wanted things to work out, I liked him an incredible amount, and sadly our attempt at being friends after breaking up didn't work out - it was friendship and something more, much more - and I knew then that it was going to be very difficult to be friends with this person, that I would probably rarely see them and would probably have to curtail the one on one hanging out that I enjoyed so much, that I was saying goodbye and losing one of the closest people in my life.

I told him I was going to dance and walked away. I knocked back a couple drinks, talked with friends, and did dance, celebrated life. This guy on the dancefloor said hello. I said hello, touched him, he touched me, and I led him to some room and had really hot sex with him. We wiped the semen off of our bodies on to the fabric in the art installation that we had had sex in, black fabric covering the walls of the room, a small video monitor on a chair playing a grainy black and white loop of something. I never even looked at the video.

bjork on the stereo

I am aware of fall in a way that I wish I were all the time when I cut through the park by my house on the way to the subway. There are some brilliant splashes of red and yellow on a few of the trees there. I haven't been so aware of fall, of the incredible changes occurring in the landscape around me, because I have been preoccupied with the changes in my own life, some willed by myself, others seemingly willed by forces outside of myself, frustrating me greatly.

The good news, actually really good news, is that I got the job that I wanted. It is going to pay me a fair amount of money and will probably be quite fun also. Training, of which there are supposedly three weeks, starts on Thursday, and so these my last couple days as a free man.

Thursday is also looming for me in another way. It is when Niki is returning from her trip abroad and when the tension will probably return to our household, to what through sneaky maneuvering is actually her household, not ours.

The bad news, if really it could even be called that, is that I am not going to live with Richard. Sharing a room with him probably would have been a terrible idea, but I was still disappointed today when he told me that he was instead going to share his room with Posey. This is bad news, or appeared that way to me earlier today, because it had been my one sure method of escape, of quickly getting out of this apartment and away from Niki.

I just need to save some money in these next couple of weeks and the goal is either to move into a room in an apartment close to Manhattan, on the L for an easy commute to work, or to find a studio for rent on the L, most likely far out, and live by myself. Today, I came across two studios for around 850 nearby where I live now. Those finds have me incredibly excited. I am getting more and more excited about this idea of what it would be like to live by myself and really want to snag one of these places.

I don't know. I do know that I really hate this process of looking for a place to live, of even thinking about it, and can't wait to get this behind me.

Things are kind of weird with Diego, but I guess that's not new. I am still reading Joseph Mitchell. There is so much actually occurring, even aside from this quite tumultuous unending of my life, housing and employment wise. I am feeling love for a fair amount of the population. I recently saw Happy Go Lucky and really loved it and am considering seeing it again. A strange cat just climbed through my apartment window interrupting my thoughts, this activity of talking about my life, and there is symbolism in that, that interruption, and there is an ending in that.

This morning, I am breathing a sigh of relief, feeling a lot less anxious, one of my big concerns now no longer one. That would be the issue of a job. There, of course, is still the big issue of a place to live, which having become an issue with Niki telling me to move out also became the reason for me to seek out a job, to have a more steady income to make a move to another apartment. But perhaps even that issue of a place of residence has been solved, but we will address these in turns.

First, the job. In this past week or two, I have probably sent out close to a hundred resumes and cover letters, occupying way too much of my time and mental energy, applying also to just about every temp agency in New York. Doing this and not hearing back from anyone while flipping back and forth to reading the latest grim economic news on the internet is not and was not a pleasurable experience. With the market's giant swings downward and my inability to find work, I was feeling very unmoored and had more concern about my future than I perhaps ever normally do. A couple of days ago, I did finally hear back from one of the places I applied to, and mind you it's not like I was applying to work at Goldman Sachs or Google. I was applying at some shitty office jobs, some shitty retail jobs, shitty low-paying editorial jobs. But the one I heard back from was the [redacted to avoid Google searches by said job] to be a bellhop. There was a group interview yesterday at SoHo House, a mildly intimidating environment. They interviewed us three at a time in a fucking screening room. They had us seated on the stage while six really hip people sat in the audience asking questions, taking notes as we answered questions, and sizing us up clearly for how cool we appeared to be.

It definitely induced quite a bit of nervousness and self-consciousness in me, the slightly scary interview. I started to relax when it became clearer to me what they were looking for. I was glad I had dressed the part, wearing skinny gray jeans, a ladies black tux shirt, and white dress shoes. The other people being interviewed had done similar work at upscale hotels, but it was clear that these interviewers didn't really care too much about that. They kept stressing that they were going to be a party hotel, where media and fashion people came to party hard. Wank. Superficial latching on to the idea of hip. It was a look and a type of person they wanted. Luckily, I can play the part well. In my individual interview afterwards, the woman interviewing me again talked to me about the environment they are creating - a cool place where people come to party - and then she asked me about nightlife and New York and where I went out to. It was such a funny interview, one that seemed so distinct from the other ones I have had in my life in which they try to access your skill level or intelligence; this interview seemed solely about gauging my level of hipness, my coolness.

Even though there were twenty or so people being interviewed there that day, I left pretty certain that I had gotten the job because my interview went so well. And this morning, I got an email telling me that I had gotten the job and so on Monday I go to pick up my offer letter and on Thursday start a few weeks of training before the hotel actually opens. The job pays really well, has excellent benefits, and will probably be a lot of fun I imagine. I am quite excited about this. It is obviously not where I imagined myself at 27 and certainly not what I hope to do long-term, but it will hopefully allow me to transition to that spot, giving me enough money not to have to worry about that, to move somewhere comfortable where I might be able to work, and health benefits! It has been so long since I have had health insurance. I am quite excited about that.

So, with that worry alleviated, there is the second twin concern of my life these past few weeks, and that would be of where I am going to live. Richard has proposed that I share a room with him in the house(!!!) he lives in near Prospect Park. I am not necessarily that excited about sharing a room, but he is perhaps the only person I could actually see doing that with. He is going to be in California for the most of the next couple of months anyways. So I am thinking that I could try it out, that maybe a room would open up in the house at some point, and either way in a couple of months should I want a room of my own, I would have plenty of money saved by that point to go about finding a place to live. So I am quite relieved about that. However, he is still out of town and doesn't get back til Monday and so has yet to discuss these things with his roommates. So it is still a big maybe at this point, but a maybe is better than nothing, and a maybe with Richard is also better, way better, than the straight 37 year old bodybuilder, who was the only person to reply to my numerous emails to people off Craigslist.

One day soon, let's get really stoned and watched Lost Boys. We can light candles.

In the elevator, riding up to the apartment, I wanted to turn back. The elevator was filled with other people going to the bukkake party. They were the type of people had I an imagination more based in reality and its actual grittiness may have imagined as the type of people likely to attend such a function, however my imagination didn't do so and so I was surprised when Diego and I were riding up this elevator with the type of people that dash quickly into porn stores, creepy looking middle aged guys that looked like they never spent time in the sunlight, probably spent all their time masturbating in front of their computers.

The apartment and its setup continued the unsexiness of the elevator ride up to the place. Porn was playing on the television. Loud techno was playing. All the furniture was covered in protective plastic sheets. There were some cute people at the party, but there were also some not-cute creepy people there. I was getting it on with Diego at one point and looked up to see about twenty guys jerking off, watching us. That was too much for me to handle and I ran away from Diego, ran away from the hungry eyes of the watchers, and found a spot in a corner, where I was able to observe people getting their dicks sucked, really one of my favorite sights to watch, both the expression of the person getting head and the person giving it, those expressions and the actual dick thrusting in and out of someone's mouth.

The bukkake bottom lied on a bench in the middle of the room and drank a glass of jizz that apparently someone had been saving up for the event. People came in his mouth slowly. He would sniff poppers in between loads. I came in his mouth. I found Diego. We gathered our clothes and left.

My love of Diego has been growing a lot during these last few days, what we are entirely undefined at this point, both admitting at some point in these past few days that the problem was trying to define it, trying to be something. I get so much joy from just looking at him, making eye contact. We ended up by the Hudson, sat on a bench along the river, it a bit late and the park empty. The moon was so fantastic at this point. It was a brilliant orange, fiery orange, and setting over New Jersey. He was asking me about my family. Some guy sat on the bench next to us even though there was the entire park of empty benches. I kept on talking to Diego but noticed that this guy kept glancing at us and that he kept on rubbing his crotch. He would stop rubbing his crotch whenever I looked in his direction, but I knew what was going on and it drove me crazy. I got up to leave, Diego confused because he had his back to the creepy man and was unaware of what was going on. We walked further down the river, away from the creepy guy, me having gotten more than my fill of creepy men at the bukkake party. I ranted to Diego about how rude that guy was, that this city was full of sexual maniacs, of perverts. Diego reminded me where we had just come from, told me that we were perverts, that we had just come from a bukkake party.

The moon was so beautiful and I felt so lucky to be able to observe it with this boy that I like a lot, like more each day. I held his hand and walked to the subway with him and felt really comfortable, really happy, whatever thing we have making me forget the stupid aspects of my life, making me again aware of the joys to be had.

"maybe sparrow"

I woke up this morning many times, woke up this night many times, the time being spent on a Chinatown bus, forty dollars one way, carrying me from the outskirts of Nashville to lower Manhattan, a fifteen hour overnight ride which I slept intermittently on. But there was this one time when I woke up this morning when we had crossed the Pennsylvania state line and dawn was just starting to break. Most everyone else on the bus was still asleep and missed the sight, but slowly and slowly the sky started to fill with the grayest of light until orange started to seep in toward the center of it all, the earth, darkness, falling off the horizon, and the light getting a little brighter, eventually an orange ball of sun appearing on the far edge of the land, rising over farmland and the occasional barn. I was still miles and a couple of states away from home, perhaps further, perhaps my idea of home entirely wrong.

Niki talked to me when I got to what I thought was home, wanting to discuss the awkwardness of the past couple of weeks and what could be done about it. It again devolved into a similar conversation as the one that started the tenseness. She again told me I should move out. I told her that it wasn't her apartment to make that suggestion. She told me that it was her apartment, that she had got a lease and got it in her name. To her, it was a game of power, her ethics entirely different from mine, certainly from most people I know. I was pretty shocked by this ace she threw down, by the shadiness of it, having called the landlord after our last fight apparently and gotten a lease put in her name. The thing makes me so disgusted with her, though I was kind of before, but this scheming, her shady way of going about it, is entirely off-putting, and more than a bit disheartening from someone that is supposed to be your friend. She thinks she won something, but she has certainly lost me. At this point, after having decided this a couple times before over the course of our rocky friendship, I am done with her in my life.

This was all the more upsetting because I just spent several days in the woods of Tennessee with faeries, running around in silly outfits with friends, making out with cute boys in the woods, rolling around naked on a hill. It was such a beautiful time, one which I didn't want to end, and which I departed from earlier than most to come back to New York for my Spanish class tonight, a decision I am regretting even more now after this latest encounter with Niki. I met some really amazing people down there and thought about life in really magical ways. There were moments when I was incredibly stoned and laid in a garden watching butterflies frolic around me, thinking thoughts about beauty, purpose, and life, thoughts which I hope to soon replicate in some sensible form. I saw several shooting stars each night that I was there. The place and time was filled with magic.

I am thinking now about what to do, about where I should live, when I should move, whether it should be here in New York, some place more rural, or potentially some place foreign. Dreams of WWOOF and English teaching are in my head, were so before this, but now those dreams are taking on more prominence, as is the idea of a house, a dog, a yard. Niki is leaving the country for two weeks tomorrow and I am really excited about her absence, that it gives me time to think through things, these questions of habitation, as well as the thoughts and things I brought back with me from Tennessee to think through, those questions, always pertinent, now perhaps more so, of beauty, purpose, and life, and the relation among those things.

pink floyd's "wish you were here" playing on the radio and a past evoked

Pieces are coming together and the puzzle is still nowhere near completion but it is starting to take a recognizable shape; I am more aware of which section of the puzzle to direct these stray pieces. Lines from Whitman are still floating through my head from doing those performances this past weekend. I am large; I contain multitudes. Whitman's scope, absorbing it all, has had its effect on me; I am trying to learn from that, to accept these numerous things, some seemingly incompatible, and to see them all as okay, as necessary.

Earlier this evening, after attending Spanish class, I took the last pill in my PEP treatment. I am so excited. Tomorrow, I will start to have my mind back and my energy back. This past month has been spent in a fog, me inexplicably tired and wanting to nap all the time, often also experiencing dizziness and stomach pains. The evidence of this can be seen in so many aspects of my life, none more starkly though than my output on this diary here in this past month, the lack of it and the inferior quality of my writing as of late, the forced nature of the few attempts at it I have made. I really feel the stirrings of something great about to happen and I can't explain it, what that means, but I am so excited about again having my mental capacities return to normal and I am going to utilize them so much in these coming weeks, that I am about to explode with lots of great things and I cannot wait. In some ways, I am feeling more adult, more aware of time's limitations and of what I need to be doing.

I went to the dentist today for the first time in years and years and have six cavities. I am going to have to be a bit more frugal and work hard in this next month as those are going to cost me quite a bit of money.

I haven't talked to my roommate since our big blowup a week or so ago. We haven't been home together at the same time much, but when we have, we have both kept to our rooms and not really talked when crossing paths. It is certainly not the best living situation, but I really don't care. The television is no longer on, the house is a lot more quiet, and I am able to actually have uninterrupted thoughts. If it could be like this and not tense, that would be ideal. We'll see how time resolves this situation.

On Friday morning, I am heading to Short Mountain in Tennessee with some friends for a few days, me going to rush back for Spanish on Wednesday, and about this trip I am really excited. I am so excited that I won't be on this PEP medicine anymore, that I won't be on it during this trip, that I will have my brain and my natural energies. It is going to be so lovely.

I saw Equus last night, which is also a way of saying I saw Daniel Radcliffe naked last night. The play was really good, a bit dated and certainly not at all subtle, but powerful and affecting nonetheless. The portrait of sexual obsession was really well fleshed out, had me thinking a lot about my own obsessions, not with horses mind you, but able to relate despite that difference. I went with a critic and had such a lovely time talking to him, really felt like I had to step up my game a lot. Conversation became a game that I felt out of shape for. It has been a really long time since I have had really intelligent conversation with someone, and this is something I realized while talking to him, how rare it is for me to have these types of talks lately, that I need to hang out with more nerdy people and talk about books and movies and theater. We went to a bar afterwards and continued to talk, analyzed the play for quite a long while - a really nice practice that I might not have done had I known this person better, that because we didn't really know much about the other, we talked for a really long time about the thing we had both experienced, Equus, discussing it for quite a long time. I am reading Up in the Old Hotel right now, an amazing book by the way about old New York, and this critic had known Mitchell and had stories to relate to me. I was at one remove from this dead author I had been reading and I could not believe that he was able to tell me Mitchell's thoughts about New York's character. I was pretty enraptured with my evening last night.

We parted ways after the bar and maybe we will hang out again and maybe not. This date of sorts contrasts in every way imaginable with my date of sorts earlier in the week with this visiting Russian boy. We had little to talk about, his English terrible, me feeling incredibly awkward, and wanting so badly to roll around in bed with this boy. It didn't happen, maybe it will later, but maybe not, and either way, or some other way or ways, I do not mind. And Whitman comes to mind yet again: "Knowing the perfect equanimity of things, while they discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself."

Walt's Song

I went over to Diego's new apartment yesterday, not having seen it yet and wanting to continue to hang out with this person, unsure a bit about how to continue to be friends with this person who has become a big presence in my life, a good friend, now that I am no longer romantically involved with them, how to keep those boundaries there, whether I even should. His phone wasn't working and so I called out, yelled up, yelled his name. He came to his window, poked his head out, smiled.

In his room, we talked about this t-shirt project he is doing using semen patterns he had been collecting from friends. I asked him if he still wanted me to jack off for his project. He did. I started to do so, he started to kiss me, and soon enough he joined me in the jacking off, which led into dick sucking, which led into humping. It was really hot, had me so turned on in a way I had not been with him in so long. I came on a piece of poster board, he did also, and it formed two very different patterns.

I saw the difference and felt weird about what I did, wondered if it was appropriate to have sex with Diego, if it meant anything, and wondered why I wanted it to. We laid on the thin futon mattress he is using as a bed, a bright blue sky and cool air warning of fall coming through the open windows. We talked about our lives. I had to leave to go shower before going to the Whitman performances. I wanted to continue to lie next to him and talk, but I couldn't. There were time constraints and there were other ones I was trying to bring into existence.

I showered at the gym because it was right by the theater and there ended up getting head from some man in the steam room. That sex, meaningless as it may have been (a sorry word choice that I don't like but which I am struggling to replace with something conjuring the same feeling) - that sex was less confusing to me, less troubling, than the sex I had with Diego earlier in the day, that that felt so good during the act but afterwards I realized that it was no way to end things with someone, that it was where we were before, sex and little intimacy - and that is fine for some reason for me in the steam room with a stranger, but with the same person for some ten months or so just feels weird to me, is not what I want.

And the two performances we did last night of "Song of Myself" went amazingly well considering that there were only two rehearsals. It is such a treat to hear this poem so many times. New things are revealing themselves to me each time, lines I had never been struck by before are hitting me hard. It is only a little weird to be performing naked in front of an audience, that there is this large cast naked with you makes it seem natural, normal. This older guy read Section 8 last night in such an amazing way, this almost crazed reading, manic and a bit creepy, in the barbaric yelp that Whitman at some point mentions, and it really brought that section alive and the lines I had always loved seemed even more exciting: "What living and buried speed is always vibrating here, what howls restrain'd by decorum."

There are some more performances tonight and the weather is chilly and sunny and so, so lovely. I am alive!

Life is really good lately, this past week especially. And so maybe the American economy is about to tank, including my bank supposedly any day now (that being WaMu), and maybe that everything that has been happening with that is really quite incredible - absurdly so. And, yes, maybe my roommate also did tell me that I should move out this morning when I suggested she move the television into her room - that lovely flare for invented crisis and drama that Niki has and that can truly make one crazy. And so, okay, those are two things that should have me down. But they don't at all. I have unshackled myself of so many things somehow lately and feel pretty unstoppable at times. I went to the beach a couple of days ago and swam in quite cold water and had such a beautiful time there. I have clearer relationships with lots of people now, have a lot more clarity toward things, and so because of that no longer expect things to be other than what they are, and so levels of disappointment, frustration, and anxiety have all been removed. I feel lighter.

I think Whitman plays a role here - weed also - surely, should not omit that plant's renewed presence in my life - but Whitman, Whitman. So I have been reading "Song of Myself" a lot lately, the inferior Deathbed Version sadly, but quite amazing still. I have been reading this because I am part of this performance occurring this weekend at the Cell Theater, a nude choral reading of the poem. The first performance is tomorrow night and I am excited about it, curious to see how it even gets pulled off since there have been so few rehearsals. And maybe you know that Walt Whitman is a deity to me and so maybe you can understand, knowing that, how in love with life I have been with all this exposure to such gorgeous sentiments, to a world view and a vision that probably more than anything else has the ring of truth to it, to my ears. Something is plucked, some right strings, with hearing and reading these words. And so tomorrow,I will stand around naked for a few hours with a bunch of other people reading Whitman. The experience has been really fun and has made me giggle so much with thoughts of Christopher Guest movies and how I felt like I was in one.

I went to my first Spanish class this evening. I ate some free ice cream today. I know a place to eat some tomorrow also. I sat in the steam room for quite a long time after class. The weather is perfect and I am alive and what more could one want?

"I Know It's Over"

I wore pants today and at no point, even with the sun shining bright, felt too warm; in fact, most of the moments of this day, particularly once the sun went down, I found myself wishing I had worn long sleeves. There is that and then there is the texture of the air. It is crisper and has a feel to it that invokes past falls, thoughts of change, and for whatever reasons a more heightened moodiness, a keener sense of things and their significance. And what all this means is that the first signs of fall have finally arrived, that summer, after its extremely pleasant and long run, is about to close its curtains for a decent period of time.

Niki played a Smiths song today on the stereo and I heard it in a way that you can't hear it in the summer; I heard it in all its beautiful, joyful melancholy, felt it. There is my recent breakup that could have been the reason, and surely it was part of it, but most of it is this weather. I love this time of year so much, walking around today, sitting in Washington Square Park, I took it all in with the dreaminess that this type of weather enables, watched all these new students wandering around looking so young, the people in their nice outfits and with their intelligent books in their hands sitting on the benches around me. This is the type of weather that is the setting for all my fantasy pieces about what New York is - this mild weather, people dressed nicely and taking in, intelligently and somberly, the changes setting in around them, those changes and their import seemingly stewed over in the minds resting behind such vulnerable faces.

I was feeling quite busted today, my body and my insides taking a bit of a beating last night. I drank fairly heavily and - the evidence of that - entered a jello wrestling contest with Richard. He won and it was fun, but it was basically on a hardwood floor that we slammed each other over and over again, and on this day, this beautiful fall day, my walking pace was languorous not only because of the contemplative nature of this weather but also because my back and knees are sore and hurt with excessive movement.

And so I sat and I read, finishing David Carr's memoir of addiction, The Night of the Gun. The writing was a reporter's writing - not artful - and I became a bit tired of his Hunter S. Thompson posturing about halfway through the book, making the rest a bit unpleasant to read. There was little insight but the hijinks were amusing to read about. Carr's writing is defensive posturing, often him trying to sound cool or not such an asshole, but the way he writes about the mother of his twin daughters and ropes them into his judgmental attitude toward her by asking them about her is extremely distasteful and seems the best example of why I found the book shallow - a more extreme version of the defensive self-regard that the entire book is littered with. I am glad he survived addiction and survived cancer, but a good story doesn't necessarily make for a good book and, in this case especially, does not necessarily make for art.

Having finished the book, I waited for Diego to meet me, the two of us going to meet for a bite to eat and to talk in person. Over food, we talked about our days and about the petty concerns occupying our lives, exhausted those topics, and then looked at each other, held the gaze, seeing that we could talk about us, and dived in. He talked about his past relationships, about ours, and about patterns between them, about how he doesn't really allow himself to get too close to people. I told him that I realized more so now what it is that I do want, elaborated a bit about the contours of that. The conversation could not have been nicer. Neither of us held any resentment and both were really happy, felt really free to talk about these things.

We walked uptown together toward the gym and got distracted by a sign in American Eagle offering a free movie ticket for trying on a pair of jeans. We tried on some ugly jeans (like amazingly ugly and ill-fitting), got our free tickets, and canceled our gym plans, instead going to see a movie, seeing Hamlet 2 at Kips Bay. The movie was quite terrible and yet full of potential, perhaps just needed some better editing to tighten the scenes, make the comedic timing better, but it was free, and throughout it Diego and I would rest against each other, hold hands. It was one of the sweetest times I have ever had with him, this day, and of course it would be while we weren't dating, that perhaps that prevented it, or now that it is not there, there is the wanting of these moments of contact more. After the movie, during the credits, we talked about the movie, looked at each other, kissed, probably not a good idea, but it felt really nice, felt normal. I got on the subway, kissed him goodbye, and headed home.

I was alone on the subway, alone of my walk home through the park, but there were skateboarders doing tricks, trying to, and there was this chilly weather, and there was and is this city, this beautiful city, and my presence within it, my knowledge of my place in this world, my knowledge, recently gained, of so many other things.