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.

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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.