2009

The year is on its way out, a decade is. Jazz is playing on my stereo, I have a bit of a cold, and I am dressed in layers in my apartment, it a bit chilly, but there also that cold that I've already mentioned that is messing with my body temperature, that led me to call in sick to work today, and sleep in with a boy in my bed, this boy Jacob, and wake up late and eat breakfast sandwiches from the place across the street while watching Season 2 of "Skins." In some 30 odd hours, this year and decade will be done with. We will be living in the year 2010.

Again, I am aware with the passage of time more of my failings than of any accomplishments, am again already making resolutions, ones I have already made before, several times before actually. A few months ago, I set myself the goal of establishing a new web presence and writing this erotic travel guide/memoir that I have been outlining mentally all year. These two things were supposed to be completed before this year ended. They most definitely will not be. The web thing is slowly happening - there is at least tangible progress with that. The travel guide however has yet to even be started.

Looking back on this past year, I am hard pressed to say where it has all gone and what I have done with it. I moved around quite a bit, as much as I did when I first moved to New York and was getting settled, hopping from sublet to sublet. The year started with me residing in a gay boardinghouse on the southeast corner of Tompkins Square Park, a depressing living situation that became more so with each week, paying by the week and getting a new key each week, no real kitchen, and a heavy loneliness that weighed on the place. This time of my life also was when friendships seemingly became permanently upended and things shifted. The year started, New Year's Eve last year, with a gigantic fight with Gabriel. Soon after, he told me he did not want me helping him throw the Judy party and that effectively served to distance me from an entire circle of people that I had been close friends with, but whom would always talk about planning Judy parties with each other constantly, making them kind of unbearable to be around. There was distance between Diego and I at that point because of a new boyfriend. There was distance between Niki and I because of her kicking me out of our apartment and being the cause of why I ended up in the gay boardinghouse.

That first part of the year really sucked thinking back on it. I should go back and reread diary entries, try to see what life was actually like then, but in the interest of speed and of me getting out the door soon, we are going to continue with this narrative, trying to retrace what it is that occurred this year, what it is I did with myself. Somewhere in there was a trip to Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta and now in this cold weather, I am again looking at cheap flights to places south of this US border and dreaming of adventures in Spanish speaking places, dreaming of warmth, dreaming of beaches, dreaming of streetcar tacos. But we move on and did, moved to a place off the Bedford stop sometime in the spring. The change was nice, was a first step in some other direction. I didn't particularly like the living situation, roommates I never saw and a giant, unhomey apartment, but I liked the location, I liked the privacy, I liked having a kitchen and not switching out my keys each week and paying rent in cash to an obsese, older gay man who would make dirty jokes each time I saw him. Brooklyn felt more right. My time in Manhattan, I came to see as time in exile. There was a trip to Short Mountain for Beltaine somewhere there that was kind of terrible but did help me put a lot of things in perspective.

In August, I moved into this place I am now typing from, tiny little studio off the Morgan stop, an apartment to myself and joy became a bit more steady in my life. I painted the walls, got some furniture, and started to feel like I had a home again. The summer was spent at beaches and my favorite memories of this year are from those places - Sandy Hook, Riis, Fire Island, Provincetown - and I am looking forward to warmth's return and to those beaches again. Over the summer, I became good friends with Diego again, things blurry, me wanting something romantic, that not happening. Some other boys here and there throughout the year, but mainly him. A new boy now entering my life in this last month, Jacob, and me spending a lot of time with him, many nights getting stoned and drinking wine and cuddling and having fun sex and looking at each other a lot and this particular feeling having been absent for so long, that new feeling of having a crush and being into each other and sex with each other and it is quite wonderful right now.

And I have talked about houses, places I have lived, friendships I have burned through, and boys I have slept with, but the trouble is that I am thinking that that was all there was to this year and view that as problem. I am not sure why that should be a problem, that that is the life of a great many people. I am not mentioning great projects I have done or new work and that is because this year, 2009, did not see much of that. There was some middling dance party that I helped Ojay throw very briefly at Happy Ending but which I excused myself from after only a few short weeks, annoyed with the venue, with the work involved, with the straightness of it. There were a couple stories written, one of which I did actually read, but the output was so little compared to what the goals were that I can't help but feel disappointed about what I have done with this past year. There is a job that I work at, a fancypants hotel, that eats up a lot of my time and (I am convinced) eats up a good portion of my brain so that I don't have energy for much afterwards other than cocktails and food. These next few weeks are really going to involve a good deal of reconfiguring my life, of finishing this web stuff, of starting this travel guide, and of writing far more often.

In 2010, I resolve to write more, get a new job, cook more, run more, read more, have healthier relationships, travel more, to live more.

I have a few short minutes to try to write things, have a deadline of a phone call happening soon, Jacob on his way to my house now. Last night, I met up with him at an SVA house party in Williamsburg. Lots of young kids in black drinking tall boys of beer and seeming very art school. I felt old, older than them, removed from whatever scene was happening. As some experiment in contemporary anthropology, I enjoyed the party. We left there, went to Adam's party - more my scene, Brooklyn homos past their mid-twenties. We started chatting with Diego. I told him to come back to my house with Jacob and I. He did. We fooled around and had sex and it was really quite lovely to have the both of them in my bed and to feel close with both of them in this nice, open way. This morning, I woke up really happy, saw that the three of us were cuddling and it made me quite happy. We woke up, had coffee, talked about the snow that was predicted.

I had brunch later today with Diego, Bob, and Nick, a Brazilian place. The snow started while we were eating. Some cocktails were had then. I went back to Diego's and lay in his bed with him watching the snow fall through his window, a church out his window, the backdrop to nature's display. We went to the West Village to go shopping for presents for family members, but ended up getting more cocktails at the quite lively for 3pm Boots and Saddles. And that was my day - not one present bought. I was soon wasted and wandering through snow with this boy I like, occasionally kissing him.

I came home, took a nap, and now am going to be homebound in this snow, a boy coming over, us going to get stoned and watch crap and cuddle and I am really loving the snow and these days and my relationships with people.

Unrelated to these thoughts and because there is that time limit here - no time to try to segue nicely between subjects - I saw Avatar in 3D yesterday and as a visual treat, it was pretty spectacular, the best 3D movie I've seen. I kind of want to go rewatch it really stoned. The film has these really strong pagan sentiments that were a bit weird to see argued for so forcefully in this Hollywood spectacular and there's a lot of not so subtle stuff about Native Americans and recent wars that the US has been involved in, all of which made the movie more interesting, more of an oddity, less of what I was expecting.

I have a bag of cookies at my side. I am about to eat some of them.

dirty laundry

It's when I greet him at my door or when we walk out of it together in the morning that I notice it, his age, that I am aware of some striking difference between the two of us. When he is in my house though, this studio of four not too large walls in which my own reality rules, that difference seems not noticeable. We are often stoned and naked, making out, staring into his eyes with bossa nova music playing on 91.5, an hour of it for some reason. And I am not sure you can imagine it, not sure you get the same heartswollen feeling when you listen to bossa nova music, but the stuff is pure sentiment and tugs at my heartstrings and makes me weak in the knees about what it is to be alive on this planet at this time, but more so at any time - what an entirely weird and fragile little thing this is here, our existence for some period of time in this world. And something about bossa nova makes an awareness of that seem more present, that the music seems to be informed of those things, that this is music written from people profoundly aware of these things, experienced mystics accepting of these things, and so it is this beautiful and sad and loving and lamenting thing.

And so I was stoned last night and we were sitting on my couch drinking wine, and I was kind of thinking this boy was insanely beautiful, that his eyes were full of magic, and that I wanted to kiss him so much, make him aware through some tactile form of communication how it was I was feeling, how much I was feeling then, and a large part of that had to do with the music, some part of it had to do with the weed and the wine and the cold weather outside making the idea of cuddling up with a boy, some warmness against the frigid world outside the bubble of your couch, of his arms, making that idea, the idea of cuddling up with a boy seem so amazing - and so not even that makes up all what is happening here, not all the parts - some part of it was the eyes, the skin, the dopey expression on his face, something else. We kissed and kissed and eventually turned off the radio and started to watch a movie, The Big Lebowski, because I am kind of obsessed with the film and he had never seen it and his failure to have ever seen it struck me as outrageous, made me feel that there was some noticeable age difference here between the two of us, that someone my age would understand why this movie is so necessary on a list of films that you must see numerous times in your life, that this would be one of them, that he would know that, and so I insisted we watch it, me also a bit stoned and wanting to see this movie so bad during that moment.

This took us to my bed, laptop on my lap, and the two of us wrapped around each other. I have spend quite a few nights in a row now with this person, who I have decided I really need to stop referring to (even jokingly) as "the 19 year old," that that was the only real detail about this person I knew when he was just some person that came over to my house for sex from Grindr. But now he is Jacob, this nice sexy person that makes me feel really comfortable, and who I am beginning to like a little bit. I question it and wonder if it's real or what's going on here or what this feeling could stem from. I am a bit doubtful, and think that I am resisting liking this boy, holding back for a bit but that those self-restraints I had originally imposed are coming loose. It was a lovely and dirty night with him, sweaty fucking and gentle cuddling all night, and kind of everything I am looking for right now - a person that is into me physically and wants to sleep next to each other and get stoned and watch movies. It's kind of perfect and sort of everything I have always tried to push my relationships toward but have always failed at, and here it is right from the start. I also think I have forgotten what a new flirtation feels like, those first few dates with a boy, having been thinking things might happen with this one boy for a while and now trying to maybe move past that, but only kind of, and also why I am only kind of into this person, Jacob.

When I walked out of the door with him this morning, around 7, when I was leaving for work, his sweater was oversized, making him look tinier, younger. I saw some age difference, wanted some other bearded boy, my peer. And then today, I texted with Jacob and got giddy and there are ups and downs and swings from my thoughts of this person to that person to another person, to the two or three of them together, and me with them, and also thoughts about this threesome I have been trying to facilitate and really so many silly thoughts, pretty much all about boys. I turned my sheets inside out this afternoon when I got home from work, them kind of disgustingly dirty with sex stains. I could have taken them to the laundromat, done laundry, but I didn't want to, didn't want to be outside in this cold, and so instead will sleep on them, will drop them off at the laundromat tomorrow morning before I go try to find my family some Christmas presents and will pick it up later in the afternoon, clean sheets and towels and clothes in a bag all neatly folded, and me paying some monetary amount per pound of clothing for the pleasure of this task being taken care of by someone else.

Surname

Not too long ago, I was at Blackbird, drinking some wine and chatting with Bob and some other people. They were probably chatting at this particular moment I am describing, because it was a moment when I wasn't listening, wasn't really participating, was seated at the end of the table and so a bit out of the main dynamics of conversation, and anyways while drinking the wine, fingers near my nose, a whiff came my way of asshole, of this boy's, of Jacob's. The smell made me terribly happy, turned me on, and out of the conversation as I already was, I for a moment got lost in the recollection of the afternoon I spent with him.

He came over to shoot some photos of me jerking off for some photography project for school. That of course led to the two of us having sex. It started on my couch and because my lube was up in the corner of my lofted bed, I eventually moved him up in that direction. We fucked and kissed and came and then lay next to each other chatting, making out, kissing each other's necks for a long while. He had a paper to write and I had things I wanted to accomplish, food I wanted to eat, but we continued to lie there, continuing to kiss and stare at each other. And how quickly things can change. He had been just some fuck buddy from Grindr and over the course of this day became some person with other attributes. He now has a last name. He told me that I was in his phone as Charlie Grindr and I told him he was in mine as Jacob X. We painted in other details for each other, disclosed last names, sexual histories, daily habits, things, details from which to glean some idea of who a person is, or who they might possibly be. I am beginning to like this person. This is good and maybe not, because what does it mean to like someone when there is someone else you still kind of have your heart set on? What also does it mean to like someone so much younger, younger by nearly a decade, that how much connection can there actually be? All questions I do not know the answer to. I do know though that I spent a couple hours lying next to this person today getting really giddy looking into their eyes, feeling their naked skin pressed against mine. I do know that I feel and felt quite happy.

With each sip of the wine, I tried to place the smell, what particular things I was smelling, the pieces of his body, the pieces of mine. People talked and there was music playing and I kept finding myself in my bed, this person's body next to mine, their not-entirely-certain-of-what-this-person-across-from-me-might-be-thinking smile, their beautiful smile. The wine did things to my brain, these recollections did, and I felt quite comfortable there at that table, present somewhere in this world even if not there.

"empowered by Whitman Blake Rimbaud Ma Rainey & Vivaldi"

Friday night, I worked the elevator at this event, had thought I would be out of there by midnight, already had set in my mind the idea that I was going to have an amazing night filled with dancing and friends and perhaps excessive alcohol consumption, knowing that (as is often not the case) I would not have to be at work Saturday morning at 8, that that time would not be hovering in my mind as some warning to go to bed at a decent hour and not get wasted and not sleep over at some random person's house, to not even attempt for that. And so it was more than with a bit of annoyance and disappointment that I received the news that the party I was working had been extended until 1 and that I would be leaving until around 2.

At 2, I was on the move, my hours of night, of fun while bars are still open and people still at them, drastically cut now. On 14th Street, the entire block was filled with Latino families, all clustered around the Our Lady of Guadalupe church. On the sides of the sidewalk, vendors sold flashing and glowing things, flowers, t-shirts, food items. The atmosphere was insanely festive for the early or late hour and I kept on looking at all the children, wondering if they had woken up early or if they had stayed up this late. I also wondered what the day was being celebrated, wondered a lot, thought about the Virgin of Guadalupe, of seeing that cloak in my time in Mexico City, thought about how it must be to celebrate the day she appeared to that Mexican peasant, whose name I could not remember. I did not seek out confirmation of this, did not pause to ask anyone what the celebration was in celebration of. I had limited time and walked as fast through this crowd as I could to the subway, to a train that would take me to Brooklyn, to Bushwick specifically, Jefferson stop, a bar called Tandem, some gay party, some friends there.

I started pounding back whiskeys, danced a bit, and then filling somewhat of this night, of what Fridays mean to people, I sat at a table with Diego and this guy visiting town, Michael. I wanted to sleep with the both of them and was trying to make this happen, was suggesting that once the bar closed they should come over to my house. This suggestion seemed to be well-recieved and I thought it was going to happen, Michael and I having flirted before, having made out before. I am not exactly sure what occurred to derail these plans. I know that at the end of the bar's night, I made out with Michael, that Diego did not appreciate that, and that Diego, speaking for the both of them, said they were not coming over. Some other friends living not so close wanted to sleep over. I told them that I was perhaps going to be having sex, plans to call the 19 year old already in my head now, him earlier in the night telling him to call him no matter how late it was. They were fine with that and so these three and I walked back to my house and Jacob was already waiting at my door by the time we got there.

We drank vodka and smoked weed and listened to Queen and then people that Last.fm said sounded like Julieta Venegas. We read some Allen Ginsburg. Gage was passed out on my couch, cup of coffee in his hand. The hour was getting later in the night or earlier in the day and I could already see hints of dawn through my curtain. I said it was bedtime, turned off the lights, and the awake people, four of us, climbed into my lofted bed, somehow all fitting into it. I started to make out with Jacob, our underwear came off, and soon we started to give each other head, G and P next to us jerking off, touching each other. The night was a haze of being insanely horny and fucking this boy on and off again all night, doing so, passing out for a bit, and doing it again. There are bits I remember, that I have been recalling when jerking off since then, I recall G sucking Jacob's dick while we were fucking, I recall the shape of hands jerking off barely seen penises in the darkness, and I recall a penis wet with its own semen.

Once I finally cleared my house of the still-tired looking people yesterday afternoon, I met up with Diego, Michael, and Nick around 1 and followed them to some bars where we had some drinks. My body wasn't ready for it yet, wasn't as awake as it thought it was, and I soon headed back home, to lie in my bed and nap, and where I jerked off again and again, occupying physically the site of the memories I was jerking off to. Once I awoke last night, going out again seemed silly, seemed a bit much, since I had done nothing all day really, that to wake up and immediately go out to some bar and dance like a crazy person seemed a bit false, that that dancing should be some release to a day, to things that occurred throughout it, not some morning salutation. And so I read and listened to music and watched Larry David be an asshole to various people. I woke up early today, am feeling quite ready for things though I can't identify what those things are, the clouds outside my window make the day seem less inviting, make today seem like a movies and blankets type of day. Sonny Rollins is coming out of my speakers. Coffee is within reach of my left hand.

you can't start a fire without a spark

We had come back to my house, taken a cab from the East Village. I had promised to roast him some garlic. We got stoned instead and sat in my bed. Diego was going on and on about how he feels weird about how he is beginning to love Lady Gaga, and it's a thing I have heard a few friends say lately, that they are beginning to like this person a lot. Specifically, he was talking about the song "Dancer in the Dark" and how he had listened to it over and over again at the gym. He explained his reading of the song. I told him to play it for me. He played it for me on his phone's speakers. We continued to smoke weed while listening to the song, we were already drunk, having come back from some bar, and the intersection of the substances with the lateness of the evening with the setting of two boys in bed together talking about music made it all quite lovely, made me love this song also, though I wasn't sure I entirely got what the song was trying to say. I asked him if the song held any reference points to Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark." He didn't know.

My phone's speakers now put to use, the Boss playing this song. The song is sentimental, is beautiful, is full of expectation and excitement toward a night ahead, toward what nights mean in a life that is otherwise sad, toward the act of living. I started to kiss Diego in a way that was filled with all of these sentiments, this song and this boy near me making me quite giddy. We continued to kiss and to fool around, touching each other's bodies, as the song switched to another Bruce song and another, me failing to reach for my phone, buried somewhere now in my bed, to turn it off, and I'm not sure I have ever used Bruce as a soundtrack to making out, but it really works quite well, colored the actions I was participating in a mournful and exuberant light.

The temperature has dropped, below freezing last night and this morning, the weather invigorating but more so daunting, me not wanting to venture too far past my doorstep, past the heated comfort of my apartment. Last night, I went to Eastern Bloc, flirted with some boys, wanted to flirt with others and instead just made eyes at them, hoping that that would somehow lead to conversation, to making out, to sex, to holding hands. It didn't. The bar was quite crowded but filled with lots of button-down shirts (which, don't get me wrong, I love if they are fitted and interesting and somehow conveying a sense of dress-up), lots of people that I was not so sure about. The Pixie Harlots were dancing there and I kept chatting with some of them, dancing with some of them, and I realized I could be at a bar where it wasn't just the performers who were interesting, but rather the attendees of the bar and that I should head over to Mattachine. With this intention, I left the bar. Not even half a block away, I was ready to throw in the towel and headed to a pizza place to think about what I really wanted to do while I ate a slice. What I really wanted to do was to be warm and so I headed into a cab again - the subway seeming too far in the cold, Mattachine seeming even further, and yet me still occasionally wondering how I burn through money so quickly - and headed back home. I texted this 19 year old I have been sleeping with off of some silly iPhone app to come over. I started watching people from "The Jersey Shore" talking about themselves on mtv.com because my interest in trashy television that that station is capable of manufacturing has apparently not waned even as I near the age of 30. I was stoned and too drunk and told him I would probably pass out soon, that he should maybe not come over. He said he would be over in 20 minutes. I stayed up and waited a bit, that time limit. This morning I see from texts that he had come back to our neighborhood but that I was asleep by then.

The year is 2009. In a few short weeks (just think of how short these past nine years have been), we will be in another decade. There are technologies that enable me to meet gay men based on their proximity in feet to where I am. I can chat with them and depending on our horniness and our levels of attraction to a random picture we have decided to choose to represent ourselves with on the site, can meet up. Sometimes our horniness will be at such a level that our thresholds for what we consider attractive fall quite a bit. I can talk about music with a boy in my bed and we can mention a specific song and he can hum it for me or just as easily he can pull the thing up on his phone and play it over its speakers. There is coffee that is still brewed in ways my grandmom would be familiar with and the feelings that boys give me seem somehow not dependent upon this particular year, this moment in time. It is quite cold outside and I dress myself in layers, in a scarf, in a hat, and in a jacket, just as my mother taught me to when leaving for school in the morning as a child.

First Snowfall

Some snow fell today, the first of this winter. Normally, this inspires in me some warmth, some awe, some appreciation for the workings of this world and the cyclical nature of seasons. Today, however, because the snow came scattered in between freezing rain and slushy droplets, it was missing some of its magic. My boots were soaked through, my jeans were quite wet, and my umbrella was falling more and more apart. I had wandered around the garment district with Erica this afternoon, looking for fabric, looking for something shiny to make into an outfit for my job's holiday party tomorrow.

Much of my life now seems to be consumed with this, of there being some party coming up that seems quite fun, maybe not even a party, maybe just an opening, a reading, and there being my desire to play dress up, to wear something fun, to assemble an outfit of thrift store finds, out of fabrics from Spandex World, out of constructions Diego has made me for. This, I am beginning to think, may be a bit of a problem, that dressing up is all well and fine, but when it begins to consume so much of your already limited time in this city, then something might be wrong. There are some priorities that be a bit out of whack. It is not infrequent that I wonder what feats I may have accomplished already with writing were I too put something close to the same amount of effort and time into that as I do into looking for clothes, scavenging thrift stores, and getting ready to go out places.

Last night, I went to a masquerade party on a boat for Brian and Schaffer's birthday party. The boat cruised down the East River, pushing off from 23rd Street, floating past the warehouses of the Williamsburg waterfront, underneath various bridges, all quite beautiful looking, to the tip of the island of Manhattan in sight of the Statue of Liberty, and then back up to where we came from. People were quite dressed lovely, the call to play dress-up heeded by everyone - and the refrain "look good, feel good" my de facto response when I think about dressing up, whenever I (or someone else) questions my dressing habits. My relationship with clothing has shifted so much over the years, from being comfortable wearing just about anything, most of it ill fitting stuff that I now think is boring and ugly when I look at pictures of my self from high school and college. There was even a hostility toward people hyper-fashion oriented, to being so obsessed with their self-presentation, with what they wore. Now, though the pleasure of wearing things that make you look good is a pleasure I am more and more drawn to, the comfort of a tight button down shirt, tight jeans, and dress shoes something that gives me not only pleasure, but from that, some confidence of a sort, feeling more at ease in this world, more aware that it's all about playing roles in this world and the quickest way (the laziest maybe?) to convey a character is to dress the part, and I don't know where I am going with this - I was talking about a boat party.

The party was quite fun. I made out with one boy a lot on the dancefloor, kissed another one's chest, this boy I am kind of insanely attracted to, and talked to several of my coworkers who were at this party as well, feeling slightly awkward after I had been rubbing boners with this one boy on the dancefloor, and then turned around to see some coworkers I didn't know that well right there. I got to know these coworkers better though after the party, headed down with them and Ethan and Bob to Eastern Bloc, where I was witness to some making out, and then participant in some making out, doing so with one of my coworkers, this beautiful boy who I have had a slight crush on for months, admiring him but knowing that nothing would come from that admiration as he had a boyfriend. There was some moment last night after lots of talking with each other, after a bit of eye-flirting, that we started to kiss, and it continued, the kissing, to another bar, Nowhere, and we talked about our sexual fetishes, things that turn us on, and made plans to sleep together some future night when not as wasted. I am not sure if that is to happen. I am not sure if anything is to happen in this world. Snow generally does fall every winter - there is certainty in that. That, perhaps, is the joy we get from that first snowfall, a sigh of relief, that things still are to happen at certain times, that we can count on some things.

I slept next to Diego last night, slept in his bed, cuddling with him and kissing him throughout the night, so attracted to this person. I had met up with him at Eastern Bloc earlier in the night and we had had drinks and danced to various songs and at some point talked about things, him telling me that he didn't want to have sex with me anymore because he felt we were too fragile, me telling him that I wanted to continue to have sex with him, that I loved doing so. I talked about my feelings, he talked about his. A better understanding was reached or seemingly so.

We slept together naked and did not have sex despite my best efforts. I was kicked out this morning so he could go to the gym. I went home and we met up a few hours later and went to some sample sale in SoHo and then wandered around town, making our way to the Halloween store so I could purchase a mask. It was a nice and friendly day and night with him, and it has calmed me a great deal, things again feeling comfortable to me. s
Later in the afternoon today, I went to midtown and saw this John who had contacted me. He was staying at a fancy hotel on Madison Avenue. He had a wedding band on. When I was jerking off over him, I saw his shirt buttons, the detailing on them, "Brooks Brothers" engraved into each button, a detail I had never noticed about Brooks Brothers shirts before, me looking at them rather than looking at this man in this face, this man who said he wanted to be my slave and who was a boring lay and who gave me specific guided instructions in how he liked to be jerked off. I followed his instructions and he came pretty quickly. I was out of there early with a nice sum of cash. He rode the elevator down with me because he wanted to go get something to eat and didn't want to pay $25 for two slices of pizza from room service. This man clearly had money to be staying here and to be paying me a pricey sum for half an hour or so just to get off and yet something about the cost of room service irritated this man to the point that he would go outside in midtown to find a pizza place instead. This was about the only thing we talked about. I have no sense of this man, don't know his name, where he's from, anything really, other than how he wants someone to jerk him off and that he is offended by pricey room service.

I headed down to the Lower East Side to go to the "Brother, My Lover" reading series at Envoy. As had been the case every time I have gone, there were some really lovely pieces that I enjoyed. I got quite drunk off the free wine on offer and toward the end of the reading, the guy next to me started rubbing my foot and because I didn't say anything he took that as a sign that he could rub further up my leg and feel my crotch. He then whispered to me that he was going downstairs to the bathroom and that he wanted to see me soon. I said okay, and he left, perhaps thinking I would soon be following him, but I had more room now to stretch out my legs, did so, and enjoyed the last reading, this pro-femme piece about a cult of Trisha - maybe my favorite thing of the evening.

I chatted with some folks outside until I got bored, until I wanted to hear Wilco more than I wanted to hear them, and said bye, put on my headphones and listened to "I'll Fight" as I walked uptown.
___________________________

Tuesday night, I saw Cate Blanchett starring in "A Streetcar Named Desire" at BAM, in a production directed by Liv Ullman. It was a thrilling piece of theater, lit magically, and excellently performed. It was a near-perfect production. I have been seeing a lot of theater lately and none of it really standing out much in my mind. This, however, was fantastic.

And so what a thrill to see another fantastic production last night as well. I saw Manhattan Theater Club's production of "The Royal Family," and liked it perhaps even more than Streetcar. It closes in a week or so and so if you live in New York, I really recommend seeing it. It is loosely based on the Barrymores and is a portrait of this wacky family of actors, the Cavendishes. The love of theater that is woven through the play is really touching, as it is to see this family committed to the craft of acting above all else, even above domestic happiness. It's a big ensemble cast and each member brings something special to the proceedings, everyone allowed to camp it up a bit since they are playing these dramatic personas, stars of the stage when there was such a thing, right as film is taking off as a medium.

So many other things to see! The list of plays I want to see is about as long as it's ever been and this month is probably going to involve a great deal of theater to try to trim this list down a bit.

"our love is all we have; our love is all of god's money"

I was riding the train home from Middletown, New Jersey today, up along the coast of New Jersey, through marshlands, through early suburban development, now rustic looking, through faded industrial cities. The sky was grey and overcast and I was listening to Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot," feeling the album in a way that I did seven, eight years ago when I was obsessed by the thing, and was getting quite moved on this train ride, plastic bag full of leftovers by my feet that my mom had sent home with me. I had been in a hurry to get out of that house this morning, was bored and felt uncomfortable. I thought about that, about my distance from my family now, about how much I enjoyed holidays as a kid when they were big extended family affairs, but now they are depressingly quiet, my mom's husband saying all of one sentence to me while I was there, that being if I wanted any more coffee.

And so I felt a bit lonely, leaving that place in New Jersey while the weather was so grey, passing ghost towns of what used to be prosperous cities, trash strewn by the side of the tracks, an unbelievable amount of mattresses, me wondering how they ever got there. I was reading Don DeLillo's "Midnight in Dostoevsky", which is an incredible short story, and which contained series of lines such as this that had me pausing and taking in the scenery passing outside my window while I contemplated the thing I just read:

"At times, abandon meaning to impulse. Let the words be the facts. This was the nature of our walks—to register what was out there, all the scattered rhythms of circumstance and occurrence, and to reconstruct it as human noise."

I got home a few hours ago and called Diego, really wanting to see his face, to feel connected to someone strongly after a day just spent wondering about the extent of my connections to anyone, my family even seeming distant. He called me back a couple of hours later and it was pleasant conversation, spirited. I asked him when I was going to see him today. He told me he didn't think he'd see me tonight because he had to get a haircut and hang out with this guy.

I knew what that meant and asked him who his date was with. Some young boy, he said, brushing it off, wanting to move forward with the conversation, past what he feared was a speedbump, what was one. I asked him why he was such a heartbreaker. He asked how my Thanksgiving was. I told him I couldn't talk to him right then and got off the phone.

I called back a minute later, frustrated that every time I try to discuss this thing, the conversation is redirected. We talked about this thing. I told him that I really liked him and that I felt really sad. It was an awkward conversation, was me being sincere about my feelings toward him, instead of the flippancy that normally marks our conversation, a mistake maybe. He had told me a while ago when we again started hanging out that he was incapable of a relationship, that he did not want one. And despite him telling me this, I had hoped that us hanging out often, having sex often, making out often meant something else, that for me there was a great deal of romantic sentiment involved, that I am absolutely crazy about this person. He referred to us as friends and again said that he wasn't available for a relationship. We talked about how to proceed so that I would not be sad. I said I would probably establish distance, should probably not be physically affectionate with him, etc. The conversation had a force of its own, taking me to these conclusions, and him as well reluctantly. Had he not already had plans tonight, I probably would have been able to hang out with him and would not have raised this subject, kicking it further on down the road for some other day.

It's really painful to admit your love to someone and to have them tell you that that's not what they are looking for. I think Wilco may have had something to do with this, but I can't blame Jeff Tweedy for the result. And I don't know. I guess it's time to move on, probably was a long time ago, but I still believe that there is something really lovely that exists between the two of us. And it's the knowledge that that thing there is there that makes me particularly crazy. I have gone on some dates in the past couple months with boys and haven't been invested in them, have had my attentions and hopes still focused on this boy, hoping that it would become something, that I would be able to admit its existence, that he would.

I haven't felt this sickness in a long time, chest suddenly feeling empty, wanting to vomit and cry. I have Wilco on again. The call was ended by him, saying that things were getting too intense, that he just got back into town, and that he would talk to me later. I feel sad, incredibly so, and thank God for this band right now. I know things though and I should acknowledge those things and feel free, feel unburdened by what I had been hoping for, know now to focus my attention elsewhere, to try for love with others. I know that, and yet, yet I still hope that he will call and tell me otherwise. Turn up that stereo and call your friends you haven't seen in a while. Get out of the house.

There has been an absence from the world of diarying for the past month or so not by a choice and not by what usually happens - the indifference of a drunk and often rudderless late twenty something - but rather by the death of my last laptop. A new one has been purchased and today Time Warner has come to my place of residence and installed high-speed Internet, now a thing I need to pay for each month, my neighbors with unlocked networks apparently deciding to lock theirs in that time I was sans computer, sans some device to write on this world wide web the slights and joys I have had over these past few weeks, and they have been numerous, though perhaps not abnormally so, that they are always numerous in any given span of weeks, that that is what life is, and we are continually surprised by the myriad ways in which joy and sadness can present themselves, all the wildly varying recipes, recipes calling for totally different ingredients, totally different methods of baking, and yet still producing a pie that tastes the same.

And so with this Internet now being streamed into my house, I am writing to say I am still here, that I am going to get back into this habit, that perhaps it will not start in depth tonight as I have to wake up in five hours to work on Thanksgiving morning before racing up to Penn Station and catching an NJ Transit train out to my mother's house where I will try to be thankful and probably in fact will be. And so there is this, the world of diaries which I am happy to have Internet for. And there is also online porn. I have jerked off far too many times today, so excited to again be able to watch dirty videos online and to be able to do so on this fancy new computer and with a high speed connection. Sadly, XTube was down, but YouPorn, itsallgay, and various other dirty video sites were up and running, and I ran along with them, unable to sate my appetite for this stuff. And there are two other things that this www has provided to me and really this is why I had originally logged on, just to gush about these two products, enabled by two things about the Internet I am so excited about.

So, first of all, there is YouTube. Today, I heard Wilco's "I'll Fight," and because there is this thing called YouTube, I have been playing it over and over again for the past several hours, unable to get enough of this song, thinking hard about life while listening to it, and the song somehow giving life the narrative I want it to have right now, its sense of determination and its clear statements, no modifying adjectives to diminish their assertive nature. I am listening to it now as I write this and it is informing and probably distorting everything I had wanted to say.

Second of all is that because I now have a decent Internet connection and a decent computer, I can now stream this vast library of old Netflix movies. I just watched Paul Morrissey's Flesh and, holy shit, what a beautiful film. Joe Dallesandro is captured so lovingly as this beautiful ideal, this beautiful hustler, cocky, aware of what he has, horny. I don't know how I had yet to see this movie, but I am so glad that I finally did. Some great scenes between hustlers and johns made me think a lot about sex work. Some lovely shots and quick cuts made me think of life, of boys, of desiring a particular body so much and what both the cause and the effects of a decision to worship a body are.

And there is YouTube, a jukebox that was heaven sent, playing any song you want to hear at any time, and here is Wilco's "I'll Fight":

haunted houses

A weekend for me started on Thursday night, the idea of a weekend did, the idea of some contrast to what had seemed like a boring week wherein all I really did was work. The weekend would be committed to the idea of reckless fun, of overconsumption of substances, and of having casual sex. That was the idea. We are still in the midst of this weekend, halfway through.

That first night of this idea I went to Eastern Bloc where I consumed numerous whiskey cocktails, where I smoked a spliff outside, and where I expounded on my ideas about place and cycles and loneliness and all sorts of nonsense to a patient Adrian. When I went outside to smoke this weed, I soon found myself too overwhelmed with emotions, with an inability to be able to translate these things to other people, found myself anxious about going back into a bar and having to be social and so I went on a walk, circled the block, west on 6th Street, north on A, east on 7th, and during this walk, this time to collect myself before heading back into conversation and a bar, a place where there are expectations of being able to hold a conversation and where it is generally not okay to just be a stoned awkward person in a corner - during this time I began to think a lot about Halloween, this day that it currently is, but at which time was still approaching and I felt tremendous grief in the presence of ghosts. I began to think about the past year, about where I was last Halloween and about the things that have died since that time. I thought about Niki and about Gabriel, whose birthday it is on this day, and about Diego. It was a year ago that Niki kicked me out of our home on Suydam Street and which put into motion my year of feeling homeless and lonely, really just the beginning of what would be many losses. I would soon stop talking to Diego, and then a few months later, stop talking to Gabriel. These were the ghosts that were haunting me on this walk, thinking through all these things, these changes that have occurred in the last year and I thought about that terrible gay boardinghouse that I lived in on 7th Street between B and C.

I was approaching the place. It was past the circumference of the circle I had intended to make and the idea of continuing east on 7th past Avenue B really frightened me. I knew that I should confront the place, view this place, see if for what it is, what it may have been, and to show myself that I didn’t live there anymore, to know that I had moved on, grown, become better. And I hesitated on the corner of 7 and B for a long time, not sure if I wanted to continue, not sure if I could handle seeing the house. I was stoned, okay, and so the house was taking on a perhaps outsized significance in my thoughts about grief and life, mine, and of Halloween. A haunted house.

I finally crossed the street and made my way to in front of the house, looked up to the fourth floor window that used to be my bedroom, tiny thing, wondered about who was now residing there and was so happy it was not me. There was a great deal of grief about my life at that time and the things that led to me being there. I felt better though, seeing it, staring it down, and being able to walk away. I rejoined the circle I was making and looped around back into Eastern Bloc, where I told these thoughts to the bewildered Adrian, who really only seemed to be interested in making out with me and not my depressing stories about lost friends and gay boardinghouses. Matt, at some point, cut me off from drinking more. I left. I had to stay committed to the project, enact the idea.

I went to the Hose where I could order more drinks and flirt with unknown boys, boys without history, without names. Street Hero performed and I danced like a crazy person – the idea of the weekend enacted, lost in dance. After their show, these two boys touched me, told me they liked my moves, asked my name. I told them my name, asked them theirs. I was outside smoking a cigarette with one of them, the one I was least attracted to. He told me they were a couple, a threesome was discussed, whose apartment we should go to was discussed. He mentioned something about how there’s no such thing as new music, how it all sounds like earlier stuff. I didn’t like this statement, its jadedness, its failure to approach things freshly. I was also belligerently drunk and easily annoyed. I started to kiss him. We talked more. I kissed him again because I was done with talking and wanted to get this threesome on the road. He said no when I kissed him this next time, said it had to come from something we were both feeling. I was wasted, said okay, and made motions to leave this conversation, to seek out other people. I imagine now that my moves were not suave as drunk as I was, as cigarette and pizza and whiskey smelling as my breath must have been. He asked if I wanted to exchange numbers so we could all hang out, coded talk I believe for having a threesome, but I was annoyed about his no, about his comments about music, and about how really I would just rather have sex with his boyfriend, and I said No, I don’t. I left and talked to other smokers, these people that hang outside of bars. His boyfriend came out and asked him what happened and they left. I got a BLT at the corner deli, a candy bar of some kind, and got into a cab home.

Yesterday, the weekend continued, this idea refusing to die. I went over to Diego’s in the daytime and he made my costume for me, this beautiful harlequin outfit that I cannot wait to put on shortly. We had sex afterwards in his bed, collapsing afterwards on top of each other, semen smearing between our bellies, a pleasant mess. I went home, napped off some of the hangover I was still feeling from my attempt at a weekend the night before. I woke up and was ready to continue the narrative, met up with Bob and went to some gay bowling party with an open bar and free bowling and too much dry ice. The open bar ended and we moved on to another one, cattle grazing, moving from field to field once one is exhausted. We went to the Hose and I am really starting to get sick of that bar, of every party being there, of the feeling that there is this one gay bar for some reason in this large city we live in. But there was free booze and I drank some it before that was over and I realized that the party really sucked. The fog machine could not hide this fact.

I left and went to Eastern Bloc, the same sites revisited again and again, pagan rituals performed on these altars, Halloween practices. There I started talking to this sexy gentleman, Jed, who had felt up my spandex-clad legs, had had flirty conversation with him, sexually charged from the get-go with his feeling of my legs. He said he was going to go pee on the street. I told him he should pee on my face instead. He went out on the street to pee.

There was this other person there, nameless last night, despite his name somewhere in my phone, who I have made out with at bars before, who looks like Diego, and who I made out with last night. He kept biting my lip though, this vampire, biting it really hard in a way that was not at all sexy, that would continually kill whatever feelings of sexiness I was feeling. I screamed each time he did so, afraid he was going to bite off my lip, and he would whether I liked that. I would tell him no, that I did not like that, and minutes later again it would occur, this terrible kissing habit of his. At some point, I had enough, and slipped out from under him into the crowd. I found Jed. He commented on my smeared makeup, joked that everyone wanted to make out with me. I was that slut. At that moment, on cue, some intoxicated lady came up to kiss me. Proof of his statement.

He, this Jed fellow, asked me where I lived. I told him and he curled his face at how far Bushwick sounded. I asked him where he lived. He lives in the West Village. He said he likes to take boys home there and fuck them. I was turned on by this, ready to leave with him. He told me though that he doesn’t take home boys with makeup on and that I needed to wipe my face, that it was all smeared. I told him no, turned off by the pushiness of the demand, that probably I would have washed the zebra stripes off my face at his apartment, but to tell me to do so here, at this bar, as a condition of going home with him, was something my belligerent self was not going to tolerate. He tried to hand me cocktail napkins to wipe it off. I turned away.

I had to leave, had to escape the vampire kisser and also the presence of this makeup hater, this person trying to wipe me clean, erase something about me. I fled, got some pizza and got into a cab, wanted to be home quickly, to some idea of home, running from one projected idea to the next.

There were really ambitious goals for this weekend. They involved writing in my diary these things I have been mentally composing on subways about town. I am going through some things I was excited about writing. Additionally, I was going to move old entries from two online diaries to one new one, to a domain I purchased. I was going to work on the HTML code for this site, making it quite pretty. My computer, old Dell laptop, has come under assault though by pop up ads and pop up virus scans every two seconds. It is quite difficult to get ahead of this problem, to even identify it to remove it. So now I have to put these projects on hold for a bit, writing this from my phone. I need to buy a new computer, which I will do once I pay my rent and raise some funds through the generosity of older gentlemen looking for things they think I may be able to offer. Going to see Gena Rowlands introduce a screening of A Woman Under the Influence at MoMA, listening to CCR, waiting on Thai food, gray weather.

Teddy Wilson - "Rose Room"

I am listening to early jazz, am quite stoned, and am thinking of Woody Allen, feeling a bit that this, me in this city, his, and listening to these jazz standards with blaring brass is some scene from a seventies work of his, this the soundtrack. I think to movies a lot, framing particular moments of my life as scenes from movies, that the movies I love shaped so much of my perceptions about what friendship and love and joy could be. A great deal of how I live my life, or how I would like to, I am increasingly coming to realize has been informed by movies, that I want that same intensity, that same feeling depicted on screen, that longing for some achingly great connection with some other person, thinking of Annie Hall and of Manhattan especially. And maybe, maybe, to try to push my life closer to that cinematic ideal of life, I add these touches to it, will play this music to achieve the effect, to follow the same staging techniques.

Perhaps pretty clear evidence of this is that I watched Away We Go this evening, felt fairly sentimental about life afterwards, and then punched in Sufjan Stevens into Pandora, and soon had my house filled with the same indie folk that had earlier served as the soundtrack to this film which had me thinking about love and family, that to continue these thoughts, the feelings, I needed the same soundtrack.

Where I am going with this, I have totally forgotten, don’t think I ever actually knew. I really had just meant to start this off, this act of diarying that I have fallen out of practice with and which I intend to get back in the habit of doing near daily, that what I had meant to say, what I had intended, was to provide some setting to this current entry. I was going to have myself make some mention of the fact that I was listening to this jazz, perhaps to even discuss how just moments before I had concluded what had been an epic ballet staged solely for the benefit of myself to many of these numbers, how the moves that this dancer performed, oh man, you should have seen.

And there, again, I go, off and running after some tangent which I don’t even know what I would do with were I to catch it.

I spent today doing laundry and editing my co-worker’s story. As payment for this, he offered me a ticket to go see Oleanna last night. The production wasn’t that good, Julia Stiles and Bill Pullman, both being a bit bad and neither one of them engaging the other. Aside from that, the play is pretty obnoxious in its disdain for some vague notion of feminism. The play makes Carol seem wicked, seem awful, and since she is made to represent “the group” whose goals she refers to – not a particular organization mind you, but a broad “the group,” leaving you to project on to that all manner of devious feminist groups - since she is made to represent “the group,” this group, these ideals, must also be wicked, awful, ridiculous, that things have gone too far for the women’s movement if this honorable professor trying to help a student loses his job because of it, is even accused of rape, that things have approached the ridiculous. That message is one that for reasons I might hope you would understand rankles me a bit, makes me slightly uncomfortable.

I think that After Miss Julie also contained some pretty blatant disdain for “uppity” women in its text. Miss Julie, the terror of the play, is a bit of a looney toon, playing sexual power games with a couple in the employ of her house. And then when we get her back story, we learn that her mother was liberated and slept around, and clearly this is the source of Miss Julie’s emotional unstableness, her inappropriateness, that she her and mom were too loose, did not conform to how a lady should act. They are playing three blocks away from each other, two Broadway stages showing these works about the wicked ways of free women, and I wonder what it is about this particular moment. But I guess it’s a story we like to tell a lot, like to hear a lot. I am starting to get bored of it though.

Today, I really missed Washington Mutual. Chase, my new home now through the mechanisms of mergers and acquisitions, does not have overdraft usage. At WaMu, I could overdraw my account my bank account by up to $900. This was a thing that I did continually and really saved my life more than a few times throughout these past years in New York. Surely not a good thing to do since you still incur overdraft fees and yes I should manage my money better than I do, but I don’t and that’s not the point here - the point is that Chase no longer does this, so for instance right now when I have three dollars on my person and only three in my bank account, I cannot do what I would normally do, which I did as recently as a couple weeks ago, cannot still take out a bunch of cash from the ATM to make me able to continue to live recklessly until my next paycheck arrives. And I get paid on Friday and surely it is not the end of the world to live within my means for two days, but it was a major blow today to go to the ATM machine and discover that this was no longer allowed. I called Chase to inquire about this and was told straight up by the guy on the phone, a Chase employee now, that Chase does not have that and that WaMu had more benefits and that he misses WaMu too. It was a nice moment of reality with a person in a call center, something so rare to encounter when talking with customer service people on the phone.

I have had more than a few such nice encounters today, all with strangers, some really nice brief exchanges with people on the street. People are feeling it today. I certainly am. I’ve got a very well-selected soundtrack.

P-Funk playing on the radio, a sunny fall day

I woke up this morning and looked at the text messages I sent out last night, kind of fearing that they were too much, and fears proved correct, proved prescient. I don't know what happened. I went to go have a couple of drinks at Eastern Bloc after getting off work and I consumed them quite quickly, leaving shortly thereafter to go home. I am now Facebook boyfriends with Matt. I sent a text to a co-worker I had been flirting with all night at work and who I was supposed to have drinks with but who had to stay at work later, flirting back and forth via text, eventually me suggesting he come over to my house. I sent out another invite to some person I have been flirting with on Grindr forever, suggesting he come over and get stoned with me. And all of those are a bit much, but the real kicker is the text I sent to Diego. It's long and self-pitying and in which I declare my love for him, lament its lack of return, and say that I am going to seek out new loves.

Things have been working themselves up to this text for a while. We have been hanging out often, sleeping together often, being quite affectionate, and I have become attached or think I have, and regardless there has been me making more and more pronounced the extent to which I like him and there has been him stepping away emotionally from me, trying to make distance from these comments that try to step closer. I just finished reading this book, A Vindication of Love, essentially a defense of crazy, impassioned love in an age that the author, Cristina Nehring, believes is too focused on concepts of "healthy" relationships, of neutered affections, of equal and reciprocal feelings. She argues, using the canon of Western literature as her examples, that for most of time love has been something that has made people crazy, that it will leave you scars, perhaps kill you, and that all of that if fine, great even, that that is what makes a life a life. And the book is all right, flawed in many ways, but still that is the thing I had been reading and surely that had some effect on me, caused me to become a bit more crazy about this boy I dated a while ago and who now at this point in time I am supposed to be friends with.

The intensity of my affection and regard for this person move it into some realm other than friendship. We saw Brighton Beach Memoirs on Monday night and it was sentimental Americana, but I loved it regardless, nearly cried a few times thinking of my own family and of my own relationships with people. Watching Laurie Metcalfe act on stage was a great pleasure. A greater pleasure though was watching it next to this boy, his leg pressed against mine and him continually falling asleep throughout the first act. After the play, we went to Metropolitan and had some drinks and we talked about things, about emotional distance, about how I am in love with him, and we also didn't talk. It was awkward and I was sad and unable to express things and hurt that things weren't what I wanted them to be, that I wasn't sure if they would be. The thing I have with him is great and yet it also falls short of something I want. I find myself even here unable to properly say things, there are pauses in between each of these sentences, and I am sure the thing reads terribly - that I don't know how to go about saying it, perhaps don't want to.

The implication of what I have been told though comes down to this: he is still hung-up on his ex-boyfriend, cannot be the person I am looking for, that I should probably be trying to find these things in someone else, and yet I don't want to, don't see these qualities in other people. So, a problem. But we'll see. I guess I should step back, read books not about passionate love, and start to seek out new faces, new eyes to flirt with. The weather is amazing. Fall’s onset has really invigorated me in just about every sense and I feel well poised for change, for things I want to happen, things I don’t want to, and things I am going to make happen, things I want to do with myself, goals, and dreams.

brother, my lover

Last night I felt like I was in a night I had lived in some years ago, that there was some incongruity, that perhaps I was trying to make it like that, that perhaps I was too old to be wasted at some East Village gay bar, quite high and drunk, having gone there by myself after a friend's performance in the Lower East Side, and having run into this boy that I have had a crush on for a while and who I have only ever briefly talked to before, to suddenly be outside sharing a cigarette with him and the two of us exchanging a look signaling, asking, whether the other person wanted it as well. I started to kiss him against the hood of a parked car on East 6th Street and we didn't stop for some time, until he had to pee so bad that he had to go back inside. I went back inside as well to pee, the moment seemingly passing. He said he had to go, had to wake up early, and we started to make out again, inside the bar now. There was some self-awareness of what a drunk slut I must have appeared to be, but that self-awareness was slight and my attraction to this boy was greater, far greater, than any concerns I may have had about social propriety. He did go home and shortly after he left, I did as well, only wanting that boy, the other ones in the bar holding little appeal, my night indeed over. I got some pizza on my way to the train and listened to the music coming through my headphones, feeling pretty ecstatic about that makeout encounter I had just had with such a cute boy, wondering if it was at all likely that it would repeat itself, hoping it would, but thinking it may have just been that thing there.

This morning, after waking up, I got a text from the John on 96th Street I used to see often but who I haven't seen in probably close to a year. I am convinced this meant something, but I am not sure what. The reason I have this conviction is because yesterday I inserted this man, 96th Street guy, into a story I am working on for this reading on Wednesday. It is incredibly weird to me that I would write this guy who hasn't been in my life in a year or so into a story and then the very next day I would hear from him. I don't know what this says about writing, coincidence, human beings, or life, but it did give me a great deal of faith that I need to continue writing.

I was asked to participate in this reading by Robert and I am very grateful to him for that, that it has really inspired to come home and work on writing pretty much everyday after work. I am going to be reading with some really good performance artists and so I do feel a bit weird and slightly insecure about my presence on the bill since I haven't read or performed before and all these folks have. And so since agreeing to read, I have had incentive to write, reason to, and for that I am really happy. If you are in New York and want to come, below is the flier:

Sissyboy Washes Up

Last night, after a lovely day at the beach, what I assume to perhaps be my last hurrah of the summer, the last warm day on the upcoming calendar that I had off, the last day perhaps where I could lie in the sun and splash around in the water all day, after this lovely day, I went to Dixon Place to see "Sissyboy Washes Up," a theater piece by Sissyboy, a Portland-based queer performance group clearly heavily indebted to the Cockettes.

I had heard nothing but good things about this group and was really prepared to enjoy this performance, but I have not disliked a piece of theater in so long. Five minutes into the thing, once the Pixie Harlots had finished their piece, I was ready to go, did not like what I saw at all, but stayed put because I was with friends there, stayed put also because I thought that the work would have more to say, would somehow piece itself together as the show went on, that maybe the amateurishness of the beginning would be just that, a stage piece, an opening with which the rest of the performance would dissect, would somehow show as a play within a play. Sadly, I wasn't going to get anything so meta from this group, and yet the show's conceit had so much potential.

The premise of the show is Sissyboy leaving Portland, Oregon to become A-list performance artists in New York with a Justin Bond caricature standing in for A-list NYC performance artists. The Justin Bond imitator was pathetically lacking and I wouldn't have known that's who they were trying to send up if they didn't constantly refer to the character to as Justin Gold-Bond. I was a bit confused why Bond had been chosen by this group as their target, but even more so was sad that the imitation was so lacking, that Bond has very distinctive attributes that the person failed to get. He wasn't even close to the throaty, dramatic singing that seems pretty easy to imitate.

And so that was the plot, a good idea with lots of meat that they completely failed to run with. There is so much to be said about the provincialness and insularity of the New York art world, about how for whatever reasons the New York art world is privileged in its recognition in a way that areas in the rest of the country are not, about how little notice is given to art movements that do not take place in this city. There is so much to be said about this and yet instead the audience got people in drag running around and screaming and emema jokes and a performance that seemed slapdash past the point of intention, to the point where it seemed amateur, unintentional. There were more than a few points at which I thought maybe there is something better about the New York art world, that stuff like this doesn't fly here, that we are used to better, that maybe this group is big in Portland because that city is lacking, that this group has epically failed in their ambition to be A-list New York performance artists and needs to head back on their cardboard cutout boat to the West Coast.

Their references in the show to Divine and Justin Bond didn't help their cause, just made everyone more aware of would good transgressive art is, showed what the difference was between that and a gay club act. The program made big claims for the show about breaking down gender barriers, about queerness, about some other things, claims far too big. They have big dreams and seemingly lofty goals for their work and yet realized the work falls so far short of those.

The two most touching moments to my time in this theater were when Q Lazzarus's "Goodbye Horses" was played, a song I had never heard but fell so hard for, a thing of beauty and restraint and sadness, things I wanted from my evening, things I'll always be glad to take from a work of art. Second moment was leaving the urinal and seeing this boy I had not seen in a year or so whom I had a long flirtation on Manhunt with, with him and his boyfriend, often talking about having a threesome with them. It never happened. I am still filled with desire toward this boy and to see him and to exchange smiles with him and to be filled with nervousness and horniness and memories of the past and hopes for future memories filled me with a spinning, dizzy feeling, overwhelmed with this life.

I left that place, walked up to the new Mr. Black's, drank a tall boy of Coors Light along the way. It was a full moon, there were lots of people out, and I was feeling really present in a way I had not in a while. I could also say here that the new Mr. Black's is terrible, is in the old Room Service space, a small bar that was designed for bottle service. The dancefloor is a small thing compared to its size in previous incarnations of this club, which might be okay if the music wasn't so terrible, bad remixes of tired songs. The door people there are also insanely intimidating and intense. Despite wearing insanely tight jeans in which everything could be seen, I was still patted down and frisked by some brutish man. I am not sure why they have such intense door staff working at a gay dance club but it really turned me off from the venue even before I had made it all the way in. So I didn't stay too long and left and walked back down to the L with a friend and listened to him tell him about his intense sex life, the night still there, and so too those feelings of being present, of being alive.

Every day I come home and set to work killing the flies in my apartment. Every day I kill every last one of them, the task of chasing them down, slowly stalking them, and banging them with a rolled up magazine giving me far too much pleasure - some demonstrable sense of completion, a task I set to myself done, a goal completed - my stated goals of writing however don't ask about. And every day, thinking I have successfully killed off these flies that swarm around my house, that there should be no more left to spawn more, I still find a few flying around the next day when I get home from work. I am convinced that shortly my efforts will be successful and that I will come home to a house free of flies.

I am eating lots of chickpeas and using olive oil to cook just about everything I eat. I just finished reading Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food and am trying to alter my diet and food buying habits. I have been eating more plants, buying more of them, and trying to buy minimally processed foods. After reading some of his other work and that of many other food crusaders, the book wasn't revelatory, the argument having been made before in other venues, other articles and books, about the negative effects of industrialized food, and yet the book was still affecting, reminded me of things and explained others in interesting ways, laying out a cogent argument against the culture of nutritionism and showing how the ideology underlying it allows food processors to continually market new products containing some hyped nutrient.

Fall arrived on Thursday. I called in sick to work on Wednesday and went to the beach, the weather forecast scaring me that it may have been the last warm day of summer, certainly the last warm day of August. And perhaps it was, the air quite chilly now at night, the days having some scent of fall, an autumn breeze seeping in, feelings of nostalgia and loneliness and lovesickness all colliding in a way that they tend to with the onset of fall for me. I want to put on the Belle and Sebastian and wear long sleeve collared shirts that I can shelter my neck in from the wind bringing about these melancholy feelings. This week I have been consuming things: alcohol, lots of cigarettes, Britney Spears at MSG, Gloria Trevi, Paulina Rubio, Juanes, and Enrique Iglesias also at MSG, The September Issue, the already mentioned Pollan book, Didion's After Henry, and countless (mostly pointless) magazine articles. I am looking for distractions. I live by myself and sometimes find I don't know what to do with myself. Increasingly, I find myself longing for some sort of boyfriend figure, someone to hang out with and sleep next to often. I am killing flies.

It was while I was on the LIRR this afternoon headed to a town I had never been to before to wrestle a stranger, a man who contacted me and wanted to pay me money to wrestle him and pin him and scissor him and taunt him, that I noticed my iPhone no longer worked. This was and was not great timing. This was not great timing because my bank account is running a bit low after blowing through money in P-Town and after just purchasing tickets to see Gloria Trevi and a bunch of other Latin acts on Friday. This was not great timing because I really did not want to have to pay my overdue phone bill, quite large at this point, so I could get a stupid upgrade, and in addition to those costs there still being the cost of purchasing a new iPhone, of having to buy the more expensive 3G data plan, and on and on, a litany of costs I was beginning to add up as I futilely tried to get the touch screen to respond to my touch, it refusing, it no longer turned on by me, these the delayed effects of me cracking the screen a couple months ago. This was not great timing because I had no clue how I was going to contact this man once I got off the train since my phone did not work, since I couldn't even slide the screen to answer an incoming call, and since this person's info was stored in my phone. The only way in which this could have been considered good timing was that assuming I was somehow able to still meet up with this guy, I would have all this cash to pay my phone bill and to purchase a new phone, the thrill of the money no longer so thrilling, no longer this supplemental income to spend willy-nilly, now it was to be used for specific purchases, phone bills and such, and not say a weekend trip to Key West.

I got off the train, worried that I would be unable to find this person without being able to call him, that my trip out there had been in vain, and that I would not have enough money in my bank account tomorrow to purchase a new phone, would be incommunicado for a while, would be unable to call a boy I like say, the real consequence I was thinking of with regard to not having a phone. I walked past the line of cars waiting outside the train station hoping that this person would be waiting there, would recognize me, and would call out to me. Check, check, check. Things worked out as they seemingly do often and the guy waved at me. I hopped into his car and we were off to his suburban house.

He put on ESPN and talked to me about the Yankees.

We wrestled on his bed, a picture of a teenage boy across the room taped to his dresser mirror, looking like the photograph of a son, me imagining this as someone's dad. I was kicking this man's ass and taking some pleasure in being able to outwrestle this man about twice my size, to have him pinned so easily again and again. When we tired out we would lay on our backs, the tv talking in the background, and him asking me questions about my life, and me with just a few fibs here and there, answered him honestly, talked about my life in more articulate and sincere ways than I am able to talk about it with people I actually know. I have this ability to charm certain people, generally older men, and this man was charmed my verbal nonsense I could tell. Most of the two hours I spent with him was the two of us on our backs talking about life and me trying to work out some theory of seasonal weather being necessary for one's mental health, holding up all the crazies that come out of Florida as an example.

I took the train back home, falling asleep along the way, bored and annoyed with the talk of the people ahead of me, and waking up in Penn Station. I walked across the street and bought a travel alarm clock at Duane Reade, my phone dead to my fingers and that having served as my alarm.

There is so much going on and I am feeling more and more the desire to get it down but my time is limited that I have to do so. Work is taking up too much of my time but paying me well so that I can live in an apartment by myself and make silly purchases and eat out and go on weekend adventures. I really do want to write and really, really am determined to figure out a way to balance the two, to not lose and be past a certain point, one past this already late one, without commencing on this thing that I believe I can do very well and can bring something special to. I am inspired by the drive of some of the younger people I have met lately that are just doing doing doing it. A man on Friday night at 4 am at the Bedford stop chastised me a lot, read me in a really rude way. The conversation started off with him telling me I was sexy and I had my headphones in and wanted to keep them in, me not into him, not into anyone save for the idea of sleep and the voice of Lou Reed coming through my headphones. The man thought himself something deep and started to talk about what we do with our lives, how much we underutilize them, how I am dressed in a pretty and color-coordinated outfit and how that is what concerns me, how that is hardly enough, the wearing of cute, monochromatic outfits. All of this gleaned from me trying to ignore him and saying little. His accusations weren't entirely off and after a good ten minutes of his drunken prophecies I put in my headphones again and told him I had had enough, drew a line, declaring my own mental space, and defended myself against his accusations that I was rude to put in my headphones while he was talking to me, had to explain how it was rude of him to talk to me while I had my headphones in, that just because my interests did not align with his need for social interaction that that did not make me rude. It was an insane interaction, one that I want to sketch out more. I have been thinking about it a lot since its occurrence, thinking, like I too often do without actually doing it, how I need to change my life, to do this and that and less of that and that.

the absence of a couch, the presence of other things

I get it now, get why so many people make the trip up to Provincetown, why people like the place so much. This past weekend I went with Diego to Boston, spent a day and a half there, quickly seeing some old friends, some art, and the physical sites where this or that happened, seeing the graves of Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, Paul Revere's house, pretty parks, and the amazing bookstores of Cambridge. From there, we took the ferry to Provincetown and spent a couple of nights there at this slutty gay guesthouse, The Ranch, sharing a twin bed and a fan. I got giddy as soon as the boat approached the dock, the masts of sailboats in the harbor foregrounding the onset of dusk over this cute little town, the site gorgeous, new, and something that stirred something in me.

Every aspect of this town was beautiful and charming, the place continually feeling like some movie set, some place too cute to be real. There is a lovely beach that one has to hike to through a long stretch of sand dunes and salt flats, clam shells, little crabs, and sea birds present. There are lots of fun bars to go to. There are happy hours with dollar oysters. There were amazingly friendly people. There is the most outrageous public sex site I have ever seen, probably some hundred or so men underneath a dock on the beach after the bars close, all jerking off together. We extended our ferry departure time, neither of us wanting to leave yet, wanting to milk as much from the town as possible before leaving back for home. After already checking out of our room, we wanted to have sex with some boy, Eric, but had no place to. We asked, quite drunkenly and high on sunshine and the fun spirit of the place, if we could use someone's room, told them they could watch. That was absurd and turned into a group sex session hurried by the limits of time, by the fact that the last ferry was leaving in half an hour and we had a brief amount of time to get off together before dashing to the ferry, passing out on it, and then dashing to the bus once back in Boston, getting home around three am yesterday.

I got about two hours of sleep before rushing off to a 16 hour workday yesterday, which was also amazing despite me being quite tired, despite being at work so long, and that is because the second half of that day was spent serving food at a fancy party. At this party I saw two of my artistic idols, Tar*ntino and Rushd*e. It was pretty exhilarating to be in such close physical proximity to these people, to brush past all these big names as I pushed through the packed crowd carrying around trays of fancy finger foods. And last night again, I got two hours of sleep before again having to be at work and that was okay, it was all okay, the not sleeping for days, because those days were filled with sights and beautiful beaches and a boy who I love a great deal in a blurry way and there is work again in not too many hours and then there isn't for a few days and I still don't have a couch and don't know when I am getting one. The energy that I had when I first moved into this apartment has dissipated to this heat and to my desire to burn through money going here or there and being out and seeing that person, this person, or going to the beach and trying to read a book but really just starting at people and daydreaming and swimming. And summer only has a few more weeks left to it and the couch will probably have to wait.

August 1

Diego’s head popping out of the ocean, hair and face wet with sunlight, the day the warmest and brightest one in too long, this summer not yet entirely feeling like one in the way they normally do, the weather and its coolness and its oft cloudiness somehow affecting my perceptions of summer, that something seems a bit off, but today, this afternoon, in the Atlantic Ocean on the shores of New Jersey, a fairy ride away from this city I reside in, New York that is, today, oh, the day felt so right, so summer. Perhaps it felt like last summer, to be with this boy going off on some gay adventure together, to the nude beach in NJ, that that made it feel like summer, his company, like some memory of some summer not too far back. Maybe, but why assign reasons or try to trace things back to their source and feel guilty about the well you are drawing these sentiments from, that that water made you sick once before, that you should know better, and blah blah blah – why, why do that, when the feeling is so nice? And so I submitted to it, to what it was, enjoying it for what it is and what it is not, that this affectionate friendship we have is nice, that we are friends and neither bound by standard ideas about sex, and can have this thing, and sometimes there are hurt feelings, more so on my part, but lots of times there are not, lots of times this thing is just what I need at this moment in my life, that I need something.

The sight, to mention it again because it is something that struck me so much then and has again in recalled memory a few times since the image manifested itself: We were fooling around in the water, kissing, hugging, rubbing our penises against each other hidden somewhat by water, surrounded by gays, and after a wave would crash over us, there would be this smiling face of someone I care a lot about in my face, goofy looking, so cute, that some beauty not always as readily apparent was brought out by him being wet, that I am not sure why people look better when they are wet, something innocent about us revealed, that you see the little kid splashing in a pool, so fucking happy, some lovely life. The bright sunshine and the salt water in my eyes made the image often under-exposed, the horizon darker that it should appear and yet the light on his hair and face in droplets of water, of ocean, making it seem so beautiful. I told him he looked so cute when he was wet.

He said, “Great, so I look ugly when I’m dry? I only look cute when I’m wet?”

“Yep.Uh-huh.”

We drank vodka and lemonade drinks we made from our beach bags and laid in the sun and looked at all the various types of dicks, talked often about ones we desired.

I called in sick today to work. I needed it after the past few days, which I had had off but which were spent doing the process of moving from one apartment to another. The process by this point has become hardly emotional at all, it becoming so common this past year. But I feel settled and at home in a way I haven’t since Niki kicked me out of our Bushwick apartment. I don’t really talk about it too much, but when I think about life late at night and how it’s been going lately, I see that moment as a big one that set me off on some nomadic quest for the past year, feeling a bit unmoored and lonely, kicked out of a place I thought was home. I still have a lot of anger towards Niki about that and all the more so now that I have realized how much crazier that has made me, how awkward I have felt in the past couple places I lived, unsettled.

I am living by myself in a studio apartment off the Morgan stop. It feels so great and I feel so at ease, so at home, so excited about the prospect of making this a home, of having one that I feel tied to and whatever subconscious feelings of security and happiness that having one provides a person. I have painted the walls, built bookshelves, painted tables and chairs, and it is not yet there yet, but it’s well on its way. I jerked off into all these various paints I used, me feeling like it was some ritual to make this place home, to imbue it with something, these walls and this wood furniture. I believe that things are going to be really good here. I am going to buy groceries and cook as much as possible. I am going to buy a good radio that picks up the public radio stations at the bottom of the dial, specifically 91.5 and I am going to listen to the radio and sit at this cute little kitchen table that I painted yellow and type missives to the world, and I am going to get a sofa, but maybe the radio first, and I am going to be so much happier.

His name was Sonny and he was Dutch, from Amsterdam, here for a few months doing work. I found out this information, the only information I really know about him, on the couple block walk from the Bedford L stop to his apartment.

I worked for 15 hours yesterday, the last portion of that working at an event doing coat check with this other cute boy, who I flirted with, sometimes the two of us finding some reason to brush against each other while going back into the coat check area. We exchanged numbers and lots of goofy smiles. This was followed by me heading to some goodbye party for friends moving back to Europe at Brass Monkey, where I consumed some drinks quickly, needing the feeling provided by those drinks after a day of working, after hours spent working at a party watching people drink for hours. This time spent at this bar was time I was supposed to be spending with this really attractive Mexican boy, Ali, I met on Sunday and who I was supposed to hang out with when I got off work at ten. I missed my chance to hang out with him and instead went to eat with Brian and some other people. At this restaurant, I flirted with the waiter, exchanging numbers with him, and was told I could wait an hour at the bar for him to get off work and then to go out with him somewhere. I declined the offer, not wanting to sit at some straight restaurant bar for an hour.

I was still quite horny though after this day of flirtations, of thoughts of boys, and wondered as I got on to the train if I had made the right decision, was thinking about going back to this restaurant to wait for this boy to get off work, his name Dom. I sat on the train, put on my headphones, and rocked out to Little Boots, which I have been doing pretty much every time I have been drunk or high for the last two months, me in love with this pop music every time I am a bit tipsy and all I want to listen to.

At Union Square, this boy sat across from me on the train, and I thought that it was Ali, the boy I was supposed to hang out with earlier, even though he had told me he was already home in Astoria. I kept looking at him, trying to figure out if this was him or not, and if it was him why he was not saying hi to me. I soon realized that it was not him, just someone dressed like him and that resembled him physically. This knowledge that it was not the person I thought it was did not stop me from looking at him. He caught me a few times and did not seem annoyed by it; rather he seemed amused by it, into it. My staring became a bit more lustful and we would hold a stare for long stretches, an intense stare eventually broken up with a smile. This happened until the Bedford stop, where we both got off. I pulled out my headphones at this point and said hello, asked him what his name was. This is when I found it was Sonny. Outside the station, he asked me where I was going. I said home and pointed in that direction. He said something along the lines of, "No, you're not. You're coming home with me," and I followed him in the opposite direction. In his apartment, we undressed and had really hot sex, me pretty much in heat after such a day, such an intense subway flirtation somehow so quickly transformed into something more, into me in this person's bedroom naked, the two of us sucking each other's dicks, his ass sitting on top of my face.

After we came, I put on my underwear and shorts, ready to head home. I woke up sometime early this morning being spooned by someone and seeing an unfamiliar apartment. I wondered where the hell I was, thought to myself that I had went home last night afterwards, but realized I must have passed out in his bed while getting ready to go back home. I realized whose bed I was in, not some regret, but someone beautiful and sexy. My brief moment of discomfort and feeling of disorientation gave way to comfort in his arms, to where I was. I slept a bit more, we cuddled, got naked again, and had sex again this morning. His cat kept trying to hop into bed with us and I kept shooing it out.

I got dressed this morning successfully and I left his house, not exchanging numbers, but saying that I hoped I ran into him again, pretty certain that I would, and that if not, then knowing that it doesn't matter. Things are going to happen or they are not, and the exchange of numbers would have only made me think otherwise, that a certain something should happen. It was really beautiful and as he opened his door for me, we kissed goodbye, the polite kind of goodbye kiss, but knowing that this may have been it, that polite kiss turned into something else. He closed his door and we made out intensely against his wall for a few minutes. I said goodbye again, stumbled home against the crowd, the morning stream of people heading toward the subway, to their jobs, me heading in some other direction. Recently I find myself wondering what direction that is.

July Sixth

The age of 28 arrived a couple of weeks ago. It feels a lot like 27, though I was happier to receive this gift, feeling more and more comfortable with these increasing numbers, my shift into adult-age sounding numbers, less and less of a fear of no longer being part of these early and mid-twenties, of becoming old.

I am torn lately between the Apollonian and the Dionysian, thinking through the appeals of both and trying to decide between them – my life for the most part some Dionysian orgy, an extravagance of fun, release, and energy, but new options being both thought about and presented to me. This conflict is chiefly embodied in a boy with an oceanic name beginning with P. I met him several Sundays ago at the Metropolitan BBQ, which I plan on heading to shortly, no food in my house and being quite hungry. There was some connection that was more intense than a normal flirtation. I was really attracted to this boy and he apparently to me as well, and so when he jokingly or not said we were going to get married and have a dog called Horatio, I was quite seriously imagining that future, quite into the idea of it.

I went home with him that night, talking about my love of the Late Night line of Doritos along the way, stopping in bodegas hoping to find these rarely stocked Doritos to let him experience it as well as to satisfy my drunken fixation on them, my hunger for the things, perceived in that moment to be just the thing my stomach needed, the only thing that would satisfy it. On his bedroom wall were lots of pictures of Marilyn Monroe; I think these were the only things on his wall, photographs of Monroe in various stages of her career. This made me even more smitten. I overslept for work the next morning, not really caring, quite happy to have met this boy, the potential trouble worth it and more.

We have hung out a few times since, the conversations sometimes going off down the trail of relationships, of what an ideal one would be. His ideal one is monogamous and mine is not; we discussed the different philosophies informing our view of why this or that is better, the two sides a bit irreconcilable. I know that if things were to go any further with this boy, cute, adorable, and smart, then I would need to make some changes, to basically quit being such a slut. And so lately I have been thinking about the two sides presented here – this debauched carefree life that I have been living for the past few years, one which for me really does have philosophical groundings in the sexual nature of man, a belief that the body is something really magical and not wanting to see that hampered down by morality, possessiveness, or the fragile underpinnings of human egos. I feel like in some ways I would be compromising something I believe in to satisfy someone else’s belief system. But I am also thinking that maybe that is okay, that changes are okay, and that I do like this person quite a great deal and should maybe let it play out by normal rules and see how things go.

A few days ago, I did however sleep with Diego, and that threw into doubt many of these thoughts, that it was fun and a really nice experience, that it was the type of hungry sex, of instincts being gratified, that I find really fulfilling and enriching, something that gives me a great deal of happiness, and something that I would potentially be losing. There are many forms of happiness though, and so, saying what I say quite often in these confused and directionless days, I don’t know. I may meet up with this boy later tonight and we’ll see if that happens and if that is ever followed with anything. He loves Muriel’s Wedding, which him kind of perfect.

This past week, I have been working the graveyard shifts at my job and I really do not enjoy it at all, have been sleeping away the day, getting even less accomplished than the little I do on days with a somewhat normal sleep schedule.

It is Father’s Day and I have been thinking about my father some on this day, some music provoking the thoughts more than an awareness of what day it is. It was only after I followed a trail of thoughts that I realized what day it was. But there are things that I think I should get from his sister while I am still able to, bits of information and dates that I would like to have and that I don’t. There are thoughts about some fictional project tied to this desire to collect data, to get details rights.

After Gay Pride next weekend, things are really going to have to change. I am going to start being more frugal because I am going to be going out far less. I am letting life get past me, am working a great deal and partying probably an equally great deal, getting very little sleep and having zero time for reflection, the absence of diary entries here lately proof of that. There are so many things that I would like to get done but which I never do. There are things that need to be written and I am going to have to figure out how to work that into my schedule. I also am feeling a bit restless in my current job, do love the amount I get paid, but don’t really want to be doing this for the rest of my life, and so really need to think long and hard before more of these birthdays appear and I find myself saying similar things, need to think long and hard about what life I want to be leading and to make that a reality, to pursue things I want to, to make things, to perhaps find a job requiring a bit more of my brain.

And these diary entries are so often a forum for me to say this and this and this is wrong, to point out these flaws in myself, to show you my banged-up knee in the hopes that you will kiss it and make it better, but to be clear, to add a bit more flesh to this skeleton of what my life is lately, things are really good despite the normal doubts that come now and again about everything. The week leading up to my birthday, I got to eat amazingly decadent meals each day for free in this restaurant that is opening in the hotel tomorrow. I have friends that really entertain me and care about me and add a lot of joy to this thing, this time here on Earth. There is a boy who makes me kind of insanely giddy and he doesn’t have any of the baggage that everyone I have really liked over the past few years has had; it’s a healthy start for once with someone. I have been in the habit of reading more, of getting stoned, and listening to pretty music on my new headphones with clear sound, no longer the tinny effect of my busted ones I had been using for months. The difference and its effects on my well-being are striking.