2010

As this new year and new decade were approaching, this new time that we are now living in, I was helping Diego install decorations for the Bana party in the Financial District. I was told we would be out of there by 8:30 and were going to go back to Brooklyn, get ready, and then hit parties, celebrate this year and whatever hopes we were attaching to a change in the calendar. Decorating took much longer than anticipated and we didn't leave there until around 10:30, did not get back to his apartment until eleven something. There were worries in my mind, this particular holiday having been infamously disastrous for me in years past and all I wanted was to escape unscathed, to have a pleasant time. I did. We opened a bottle of champagne on the subway ride from Bana to his house, started the festivities, and I started to relax. Diego, Nick, and I celebrated the stroke of midnight in their apartment building, low-key, did not try to rush the clock and make it anywhere before it struck. I kissed Diego in the hallway of his building, an open door leading to a fire escape next to us, a cloudy view of the Manhattan skyline and sparse fireworks being shot off in various corners of this city, cheers from people on the street. We had made it. We were all alive. It was a new year. The pressure was over.

We drank more champagne, talked about what animal's characteristics we would like to adopt in this new year, listened to Mariah Carey and Lady Gaga, and soon left for the East Village. Another bottle of champagne drunk on the subway ride there. Diego and I were walking down Avenue A toward Eastern Bloc, to say hello to Bob, to wish him a glorious new year, and along this walk, the two of us talked about romance, about how I desired it with him and how he was not looking for that. Diego rebuffed my talk, blocked the shots, told me that I was projecting stuff on to him, that I had ideas about romance from literature and films that I was trying to stage in my actual life, that I was trying to recreate scenes I had enjoyed in books and movies, in poems, in pop songs. I told him that was not the case and I also realized (more so) that I needed to quit having this conversation, that I can't keep trying to convince this person that there is something present if they continually want to belittle that something as nothing more than the childish projections of someone experienced with relationships. I love him a great deal and I am not sure what this thing is we have - a close friendship with dashes of physical affection - but I became more certain that I wanted to see another person on this night, that I wanted to meet up with Jacob, it being his birthday and me liking this person more and more. It was and is a new year, a time for a new start, time to leave some things and some aspirations in 2009 and pursue other things in this year of 2010.

From Eastern Bloc, we went over to Matt's party. Jacob met us there and I was so happy to see his drunk little face. We hung out there for a bit. I chatted with some people but now more so remember observing people and what their intentions were, their intentions a lot more visible on their face with the help of alcohol and the weight of earthly time on their minds and the late hour of the evening. I saw more frustration on faces than joy. Jacob was looking more and more wobbly, more and more cute, and I wanted to take him home, to be in my bed with him, and did so. The 1st Avenue subway station was splashed with huge puddles of vomit, about every ten feet another pile of vomit. It was quite a sight to see, a sight that gave me a certain bemused delight, imagining the hordes of drunk people stumbling around this city, some of them unable to contain all that alcohol imbibed, some of them unable to make it home waiting for that train, some people probably made more nauseous by the lack of music, the wait for the train, and the sober lighting of the subway station. The train too was covered in vomit when we got on to it, people crowded to one end of the car to avoid the big mess at the other end.

We had drunk, sloppy sex in my bed, and woke up some time yesterday morning, me before him by a couple of hours and I continued to lie next to him, reading, waiting for him to wake up, and smelling his skin, the alcohol coming through his pores. The scent of someone after a night of heavy drinking is one of my favorite smells on a boy. Diego often smells like this on mornings when I wake next to him and I don't think I ever really identified what the smell was until yesterday when Jacob smelled the same way. It's a lovely smell that I want to bury my face in, want to press up against their skin, hold them close, and be present in the smell.

Once he woke up, we started the day, his birthday, also the start of a decade, with some vodka cocktails. We went out to brunch with Diego and Bob, were already sauced by the time we finally got a table, and our day's course was set - a day of heavy drinking and continuing to party and the new year still being rung in, a bit of absurdity to start this year, this demarcated period of time that we call a decade and that we look on as useful for organizing bits of our lives, our cultural history, and putting them into these categorizations, feeling like the die has not been cast yet, that we are still shaking the die, and could very well come up with big winnings in this decade, this unit of time, if we do this thing or that resolution, if we follow through and commit to the things that we tell ourselves we are capable of, that we will one day do in this new year.

We picked up a bottle of Andre at the corner liquor store and again I was drinking champagne on the subway, this time midday, probably no longer as appropriate, but for that reason all the more humorous, all the more fun, and we went to the Spank party in Chelsea, it a bit underattended at that time of day, more drinks, more making out with each other, and then a text from a man on 96th Street who asked me if I was in the city. I said yes, that I was, that I was with a friend, and he would have to come watch. I asked Jacob if he would be into that and he was excited about it. The two of us then headed uptown with the intention of me getting a bj from this older gentleman, getting paid for it, and Jacob watching the ordeal. It turned out differently. We got stoned, Jacob got naked, and it turned into a really hot sex show that the two of us put on for this man. I kept mouthing the words "You are so fucking beautiful" to Jacob as I was fucking him, lots of intense eye sex happening between the two of us, and on the edge of the bed there was this man that I was barely even aware of, so into the two of our bodies together and the feelings I was experiencing to take notice of him. There were occasional moans from him that would make his presence felt and which made this act between the two of us that much more intense.

He paid us and we left, went back down to the Spank party in Chelsea, stamps still on our hands and us quite wasted, tripping on life, and wanting to go back to this party, probably the only one happening at 6 or 7 in the evening, and where our friends still were. We danced a great deal, drank more, and then went to go eat some fancy pizza in the East Village with Erica care of our what I felt like were our winnings. It was a blissfully absurd day spent in the company of a boy who likes to kiss me, who will often tell me in random places that he wants to kiss me and then just wait there with puckered lips like a fish, and I smile really big and of course have to kiss this cute person who makes me really happy. We ended up back in my bed, got stoned, and started to watch Skins, but passed out early on into the episode. He woke up this morning and left for work. I am really not sure if I have ever spent so much continuous time with a boy. He sleeps over just about every night and normally in the past I had desire for space or someone else did or else there just wasn't that desire present to spend so much time with the other person. When he left this morning, I kissed him goodbye and then curled back up in my bed, it still early, and thought about how insanely cute this person was.

The curse of horrible New Year's Eves that I had been under for the past several years seems to have finally lifted and I read into things a lot, I do project, and I am taking this a good omen for the upcoming year, that I have already established honest relationships with people, that I have these close connections with people in my life right now, and that I am feeling pretty fucking full of love toward life and my friends right now.