His name was never mentioned and I never bothered to ask. A man from Craigslist came over to give me head, and the internet is amazing that people can post such things, such as looking to give head in Bushwick, and that other people, me on this evening, can reply to these postings and soon after have some total stranger in my bed, name unknown, sucking my dick. It is nice when the needs of people correlate. All troubles, interpersonal, stem from when these do not match up. And so it was a pleasant encounter, a nice way to end this day, the fifth anniversary of my having moved to New York.

It doesn't seem like it has been five years. I think this when I realize I don't have much to show for these five years, have not gotten on with the project of life, and instead have spent night after night, year after year, hopping from gallery to open bar to dancing there to occasionally that person's bed. There are no books written to have shown for these five years, no great works done, no major accomplishments, no meaningful job. And yet when I walk down various streets and can see the bar that used to be there or the deli that used to be there before that bank branch, then I know it has been a while, to have these places change so much and have layers of memories on top of all these streets I walk down.

I haven't found love and still find myself lonely or unhappy at times. I also find myself incredibly happy. And things are what they are and I am who I am and it is just about perhaps submitting to these things, recognizing them as such.

I came here looking for something, a certain life I imagined. New York was a dream from when I was a kid, a place I had projected this idealized world on to (see Rent's "La Vie Boheme"), and so it never was going to be that thing, that I had imagined an entirely different city and gave it the name of this already existing one. There are still aspects of the dream I remember, geographies of the imagined city still vivid, and the map is there. There is a map to the thing and I can still get there.