from a letter from Saul Bellow to Arno Karlen on 8/17/61 that is in this week's New Yorker:

Everyone is writing "Ulysses" all day long, within himself, and when we speak we speak sentences out of an inward context - only the tip of the iceberg appearing above the surface. So that you heard only the clause beginning with "but," and not what preceded it.

What I should have said to you about being a writer would have gone something like this: One has the choice now of coming before the world as a writer or actually being one. The Mailers and the Angries are dissatisfied with what you call the rapping on the cell wall, and they have decided to make a public appearance in the writer's role.

420

Woke up late and exchanged some emails with my bosses at work about transferring to another department, to working in events, which may be less money, which may be less steady, but which would also be more fun, less early morning weekend shifts, and which would also be a change and an escape from the office I have been in for a year and a half now. We'll see what happens with this when I go in to work again on Friday, slightly worried about it, but also feeling quite liberated now that I have put it out there that I no longer want to work in my department. There is more and I would like to talk about it, but let's leave it at that as talking about work subjects on the www is never good form and can only have bad consequences.

Next subject. Today is beautiful and after these emails were sent out, I smoked a bowl because it is a certain day and went out to do some errands and to go to the gym. I got on the elliptical machine at the gym and got really into it in my stoned state and watched absolutely horrified an episode of "16 and Pregnant" on MTV and really began to wonder about where society was headed. I tried to lift some weights after that but found that a bit too taxing and requiring more focus than I was capable of mustering.

I went into the steam room, which was lacking in actual steam. Faces became more and more visible, features did. The few of us kept on looking to the temperature regulator that controls when more steam will come on. We all wanted to hide ourselves, to be shrouded in mist, freed from seeing each other, seeing ourselves. We wanted to be shapeless. An older man with werewolf toenails pressed desperately against the temperature regulator hoping to make the steam come on. People were too sad looking in the light of the steam room and it just felt like a bacteria trap with its lukewarm temperature. There had been this really sexy guy seated next to me and that he became more and more visible was not a problem. His back reminded me of Taylor Lautner, perhaps an association inspired by the old man's werewolf-like toenails. He was about my age and seemed too much of a peer, too nice somehow, for me to be overtly sexual with him.

I moved to the sauna because I wanted some heat and to relax. He moved as well and was soon seated next to me. It was the two of us alone in there and we kept on shyly looking out of the corners of our eyes but wouldn't let our eyes meet. I wanted to start chatting him up but I was stoned and it seemed like the most difficult and unnatural thing in the world. He left. Some older man came in and sat across from me with legs wide open so I could see his hard dick underneath his towel. I smiled. He started touching himself. I did as well. Taylor Lautner came back and touched himself. The guy across from me left to go to the steamroom with some other sexy daddy, leaving me alone again with this cute guy. He walked over to me, rewrapping his towel, huge beautiful boner for me to see. He made some motions with his eyes for me to follow him into the steamroom. I did. It was crowded. I ended up sitting between him and werewolf toenails who was jerking off and looking at me real hungry and I wanted him to look elsewhere. His gaze made me too self-conscious, made me think of him rather than Taylor Lautner next to me. I couldn't deal, was too stoned, and had spent far too long in these heated rooms already. I took a shower, put La Roux on my headphones, ate a big burger across the street, and made my way home, unsure about a lot but really quite happy about regardless. I am moving in with Jacob in June. We are not sure if we are going to stay in my apartment or find a new one. I have to wait and see how things go with my job this week, make sure I still have one at the end of this week. But I am feeling freer and freer. My rent is going to be cut in half. I am going to live with this boy I am in love with. I am going to be working less and hopefully working a more fun job. I am going to go the beach a lot this summer. I am going to try to get my bike ready for summer bike rides tonight. I am listening to La Roux again, having downloaded her as well as the new LCD Soundsystem and Caribou, am really into all this beautiful dance music, really want to dance tonight, but don't know of any place to do so, and know of some fun dance parties the next two nights so am thinking I should maybe just store my dancing desire for those parties.

A muted red streak running horizontal across one stretch of the sky, day's last explosion of color, the firework show over until tomorrow, dusk settling it, darkness pulling up the covers, getting comfy. Two twin steeples silhouetted in the distance, a church I have walked past before. Foregrounded against the not yet totally dark sky are dark diagonal lines of factory machinery at cement plants nearby, beautiful looking. There are some trees with black, leafless limbs, spring still in its early stages, that look so gorgeous, almost heartbreakingly so, against the sky edging its way between day and night. These scenes really take my breath away, dusk always the most beautiful part of the day for me, how absolutely delicate and fragile and flimsy the light is, how in not even ten minutes this little hint of light in the sky will be gone, this magical barely lit feeling, and the luminescence of otherwise ordinary objects will be over. This beauty really pushes me to the edge, swells me with feeling, and the feeling breaks my heart sometimes, more often warms it, but the reason for both effects is the same - some knowledge of the temporal nature of things, of how transient beauty and life and all of it is - the quickness with which light shifts and in turn shifts the way things are perceived, how for a span of minutes certain objects will absolutely glow, will bounce off the skyline, how briefly this lasts and how quickly it passes.

These were the thoughts I was thinking moments ago as I walked to the bodega to find something to appease the gods of my very finicky stomach. This volcano is spitting out most offerings, accepting few. I purchased some pasta per my doctor's suggestion today, telling her I was getting real sick of eating Triscuits, but how it was the only thing my body could stomach eating. Since Friday, I have barely left my apartment save for brief trips to the store to get food or stomach medicine or today's trip to the doctor, and perhaps that might also be why this glimpse of dusk impacted me so much on this walk, why I found it so outrageously beautiful. I'm not sure what is wrong with my stomach, the doctor didn't really know for sure either, but since it seems to be fading, she suggested just waiting it out, which I am fine with. I've eaten more food today than I have in the past four and I've actually taken some solid poops today; I am feeling better. Because I go to a gay health clinic, they suggested that it was either from either eating something or from rimming someone. I told them it was from eating something, that I haven't rimmed anyone in months.

The one benefit to being sick is that I have really been enjoying movies in a way I have not been able to do at home in a while. At home, I am normally to willing to be distracted by the numerous devices around me - my fridge, my phone, my computer - and don't totally get absorbed in what I am watching. But over the last few days, I have barely even had the energy to watch something on my tv, and so when I did, I certainly had no energy or desire to be looking at things online at the same time or texting someone or looking at Grindr. I can't wait for my stomach to normalize again though, to be able to have an appetite and eat whatever I want, and go out and enjoy the day and not need to be close by my toilet. I want to take shits and not look at their consistency, their lack of it, and wonder about the state of my stomach, looking for clues in toilet bowls.

The sky is dark now, has been so for a while. I have set water to boil and will see if my stomach will accept this offering of pasta.

Yesterday, I was sitting on the Christopher Street Pier with Jacob. We were drinking vodka and taking in the unseasonal but very welcome ninety degree weather, lying out there shirtless, me with a book I wasn't reading, and the two of us looking at all the sexy men around us, talking about living together, about our trip to Milwaukee, about dogs. Looking at all these cut bodies, I was aware of my stoner/winter schlubiness and resolved to join a gym on Friday, payday. Today, I left work early because it is so boring there and was so nice outside today, was the last of these insanely hot days before we go back to normal spring weather. I went out to the pier again, ran into a couple people I knew, and did not read from my book again, too distracted with the sights around me, with the daydreams in my head. I left there, bought some running shoes, and rejoined the gym I used to belong to. It is expensive, but I know I'll go there. It's close to my work and full of sexy men and a naughty steamroom. The steamroom is incentive for me to go there, a treat for working out. I ran and lifted some weights and then went to go sit in the steamroom. Immediately, this guy scooted several feet over to sit next to me, starting jerking off next to me and looking at me. I scooted over away from him a bit but he kept on staring and I was trying my best not to look at him, to cut off this interaction by being cold and distant, hopefully making this creep move on. After a few minutes, I looked over to the side to try to steal a glance at him and saw that he was actually sexy and younger than I thought. This changed things. I looked at him, looked at him stroking his dick, smiled. He scooted closer. I started jerking off as well. He began to jerk me off as I stared at and touched his muscley body. One of the guys that works in the locker room came in to collect the towels strewn about. Both of us quickly covered ourselves. There was a boner poking out from beneath my towel. First day back at the gym and already slutting it up in the steamroom, not what I had planned on doing. I left the steamroom, showered, and saw Bob in front of the sinks. He gave me a knowing look. He knew that I left the gym floor a long, long time before and had clearly spent that time cruising the steamroom. I put Niki Minaj on my headphones and walked toward the subway, feeling really, really good.

Easter

It is Easter. I was raised Catholic and so this day has a lot of symbolism for me. I am not always aware of when it is going to happen, a week ago was asked to dinner for Easter by my mom and I had to tell her I had no clue when that was and she told me it was a week from then, what is now today, and I said yes, and today I ate dinner with my family at some really stiff steakhouse in Midtown. I worked today and would occasionally get glimpses of people lying out in their swimsuits along the Westside Highway from some of the room windows. I got a little bummed, more than a little, having to be in this job, any job really on such a beautiful day, a weekend day too, having to work bringing me down, and thoughts about how I needed to remove that feeling from my life, had to get a new job where I would not have to be there at 7 am in the mornings on such a lovely Sunday when I should be one of those people out on the Westside Highway lying around shirtless, soaking up this amazing spring day that we were privy to today, the blossoms energetic and popping all over these streets. People showing skin and these buds showing their blossoms - spring - and since I have become a little more involved with the Radical Faeries, the idea of Easter, of its pagan origins, this celebration of rebirth and new things that Christianity had to anthropomorphize in the resurrected body of Jesus, here it is again on this city streets, there it is in my bed.

And so there is the desire as well to bloom again, to renew the things latent in me suppressed for whatever reasons, be they seasonal, economic necessity of having to work, or otherwise. Jacob fucked me last night, Easter morning technically. It was the first time he had fucked me and it meant a lot to me. I had wanted it to happen for a while, did not like these clearly defined sexual roles that had been established, am not used to being the top role in a relationship, really wanted him to fuck me, to be thrown around, taken down. And for whatever reasons, my fickle asshole, my often weird feeling bowels, or just the circumstance of habit, it had yet to occur, was becoming a thing that I was aware of, that it was a barrier we would have to one day cros, and it happened naturally. And it was really nice to get fucked by this boy that I am loving more and more. I became happy that the roles were more fluid, more balanced, before had been about worried that it was a sexual dynamic based on size and age. It is Easter. I had dinner with my family today. I did not tell them that my boyfriend that I am trying to get to move in with me fucked me for the first time since we have been seeing each other and how insanely happy it made me. This is what I would have liked to talk about at dinner, how my asshole still felt pleasure at being stretched out last night, yesterday the first time I had been fucked in many, many months, how there at that table we were eating at, boring steakhouse with terrible art on the walls and way too dim lighting, that I was thinking of a dick in my ass, of a boy I love, and of renewal, of things happening, blooming, of change.