I had written a couple of lines here about my life moments ago, started talking about how all that I think about these days is sex or masturbation, about how I either am doing something with my dick or thinking about doing something with my dick. I lost my momentum with that narrative I had been composing, stopped a few sentences in because even trying to write about it here, trying to actually think it through, was upended by me starting to stroke my penis. That may have started because I am sitting here naked in front of my computer about to go to bed and generally being naked in front of my computer usually also involves masturbating, and that in some Pavlovian fashion, I would immediately start to tug my penis, even despite my intended goals to reconnect with myself and with that of this as of lately neglected diary (one and the same maybe?).

And so I have started again, am trying to focus. Jacob was not here in my apartment when I get home from work at 3 am and I was kind of disappointed because I have become so used to sleeping with him every night for months now that it just feels weird. And yet I am wondering why that is and whether or not that is the reason I am writing here now, his not being here - if perhaps his presence and the happiness it gives me, the sex it gives me, the company it gives me - that I don't have these alone moments to stir and to stew and seek out sex online and think about my life in the terms of the narrative I had been doing for so long earlier - lots of that centered on things that seem less pressing now perhaps. I don't know. I just got really hungry because also when I got home, aside from expecting to see him in my bed, me not seeing him, and me feeling a bit sad and a bit weird about feeling sad, questioning somehow, somewhy, the reasons for feelings, rather than feeling them, perhaps wondering if I wasn't acting in some way that I learned elsewhere, some role that I really liked the sound of or the appearance of. And maybe it's best not to try to question the motivation of particular feelings, especially toward other people, that it just leads to lots of trouble, but that that the trouble, that constant questioning (even of things that may be absolutely wonderful for you), is what narrative tension comes from. No one wants to watch a movie about sunflowers and big bright sunny days but if people were stoned or tired and sleepy they might think that that is the type of world they would like to live in, despite how watching a movie of people living that life would be an absolute snooze-fest. We want to see people get shot up, slapped by lovers, crying in dingy gay bar bathrooms because they're coked up and their father never loved them and it's hitting them so hard there - we want bank robberies, planets exploding. We want lots and lots of drama and so when you're life becomes lately drama-free as it were, the ability to even conceive of a narrative for that, one that would be interesting to anyone else, becomes difficult. It all seems so sentimental.

So I get home and he's not there and I think how nice it would be to write in my diary, how amazing that would be! How for the first time in absolute months I am spending a night alone, the space in which I used to stay up late on these computer devices talking to strangers and friends all over this little country, trying to find out things, form myself in chatrooms as a teenager, taking this or that stance, all because I wanted to seem like something, that seeming and being were somehow the same to me at that point, maybe even still are, that if people thought you were, you were. A bunch of little bullshit, but also great fucking shit, the type of shit that pushed me from one thing to the next, that had me on here working out my thoughts so often while parents or roommates or whoever was asleep, when I retired to a bedroom by myself and really dreamed about things, thought them through, perhaps thought them over too much. This is the space, a late night alone, in which in a state right before sleepiness, perhaps to bring sleep about, to expel these things from my head so I could sleep nicely, I would write things on here, long, hopeful emails to friends in other cities, or I would write in my diary, first Diarlyland, then Livejournal, now Blogger, doing this for nearly a decade now, and now falling off the habit perhaps, this thing that I really loved so much, this my pre-boyfriend boyfriend, that now that I have this person, Jacob, I spend every night with him, sometimes having sex, sometimes cuddling, sometimes me pushing his sleeping body far away from mine, but I spend them with now and not this glowing computer, a connecting little tube to some plural notion of people.

I am out of weed and I am too broke to buy some right now after all these moving expenses that have been paid and that still need to be paid, that it seems like too much of an indulgence at this point. But oh man, getting home from work tonight and having to wait for that shuttle bus which for some reason 7 years after I move here and start riding this little L train that I have so come to love, that they are still doing track work and making me get a stupid slip of paper at the Lorimer stop, little lotto ticket feeling slip of paper, usually pink, and take that up a steep flight of stairs to get on a crowded bus. So I was a bit sad you may imagine that when I got home and only wanted to get stoned, I had no weed.

Found some crumbs in an old bag, made it work. Desperate times. Got real stoned and Jacob has just walked in the door. These thoughts are going to end here, though I would have liked them to continue. I am moving in a few days into an apartment that is larger than a studio, moving into an apartment with Jacob, and so will have more space, will be able to write even though we live together, can hide in another room while he is sleeping without waking him, and I am really excited about that. I am excited that the next couple days are going to be in the eighties, that summer is so close, that I am moving, that I have a penis and that there are so many of these things on others of you out there.

The body is a sensitive thing and I have thrown my body clock off its normal schedule by working a week of overnight shifts last week. I was supposed to work a 7 am shift this morning, which is normally what my schedule is but at 5 am this morning, still wide awake, I had to call in sick to work, telling my boss that I couldn't fall asleep, that I had been trying for hours and didn't want to work without sleeping. I got to sleep sometime well after the sun came up this morning and slept until three, which is again going to make it hard to go to bed at a decent hour and be in at work at 7 am tomorrow, but I guess I'll pop a couple Tylenol PMs at some point this evening to make myself sleep.

I never have trouble falling asleep and last night was so painful. I realized the real pain and frustration that other people talk about when they have discussed with me their trouble falling asleep. I understood what they were talking about in vague forms, but didn't realize how crazy it can make you feel to be unable to fall asleep. I tossed and turned, Jacob passed out asleep next to me, and I was so jealous of his sleeping state, wanted to be in that state too, tried so many things, tried smoking a lot of weed, tried breathing exercises, meditating, singing these couple of lines that calm me about the goddess - none of it working. Once I saw the sky start to lighten outside my windows, I became so frustrated with my body and my mind. Work is making me crazy these days. Two people that work in my office quit without notice a couple days ago because of the situation there. Now, they have to hire more people, which means I shouldn't get stuck with overnight shifts anymore, which means who knows what. Their departures have sparked in me a reexamining of my life, a wanting to get on with things, to move my life in some other direction. I don't know what that it is, what it should be, what it may be. I do know though that I get paid quite a lot of money for relatively easy work and there are very few jobs I'd be able to get that would pay something similar. I do also know that once I settle into my new apartment and furnish it and pay off some bills, then I am going to take a lot more seriously the task of looking for a new job, will be paying several hundred a month less in rent and won't necessarily need a job that pays as much.

Tonight, I'm going to see Vaginal Davis's show at PS122, am going to try to catch some of Joppy's album release party, and then will be hitting up a bar or two, all of which will hopefully exhaust me, the multiple locations if not the alcohol, and will make me able to sleep tonight before the sun comes up.

I am obsessed with running lately at the gym, need to do it just about every day to feel good. The bodily high produced by this running is something unique to this activity. I run and run, making the treadmill go faster and faster and watch myself in the mirror ahead of me, imagining myself running through fields being chased by villains, outrunning everything and everyone, none of them fast enough to keep up, and escaping, being free.

a move, not a goodbye

[This is the last entry posted to my previous diary. I have since imported all of my old diary entries on to this site. This was my explanation at the move for the time. Beginning March 5, 2010, I cross-posted entries to both domain names, that one and this one. This was the day I stopped doing that and only posted things here.]


There are a few reasons. I wanted something more identifiable with whatever the thing produced is and less with the site hosting it. I wanted a shorter, easily remembered URL in case I ever promote the site. Maybe even I wanted to brand myself, start to try to establish a writerly, or at least online, identity. There was also a whim one day in which I purchased the domain. There was also a resolution. You know, various things. I am slowly transferring over the stuff from older diaries, this one mainly, over to the site. It will hopefully surely change its appearance once I become a bit more adept with CSS and HTML. We'll see. But follow me if you would like to my new site where I'll be writing and posting things:

www.charlieq.com

"wherever he laid his hat was his home"

There were seemingly hours today spent looking at apartments, waiting outside of them for people to show them to us, calling these same people about them in the first place, or in the second place calling them to ask them why they weren't at the apartment they were showing to us half an hour after agreed upon showing time, or in the third place asking them why they were not there an hour after agreed upon showing time. The apartments that we looked at were all close in price range but ranged wildly in terms of quality and within terms of places I might actually want to live in, in which I would ever feel comfortable having anyone come visit me in, and ones in which I could not imagine even walking barefoot on the floor.

The first apartment we looked at was off the Jefferson stop and was really cute, was kind of what Jacob and I were dreaming about. We were ready to take it but wanted to look at other ones first. The second one we were supposed to look at turned into the third one we looked at because that was the one in which the guy, Joey, was an hour late in meeting us. The second one we looked at had no appliances, no floors, had just recently been gutted, and was very hard to imagine what it might actually look like and also had me trying to imagine why the guy was even trying to rent it out at this point. Then it was off to the terrible one in which we waited so long to see. The guy said he used to rent it out by the week and it looked like that type of place, the scary place where a holed up drug addict might live. It was quite terrifying. At this point, we called the first apartment to tell them we were ready to sign but that we just were going to check out one more apartment first.

This apartment turned out to be a dream. It is right off the Montrose stop. It has old, gorgeous hardwood floors. There are bookshelves in the fireplace. There is so much sun. It is big. It has a fire escape. It is on a cute block. There was also a French bulldog in the apartment. Jacob and I have been planning on trying to get a Frenchie once we moved and so this, this cute little dog, was a sign to the both of us that this was the apartment for us, this just aside from how much we loved it, running from place to place telling each other to look at this or at that. We kept on mouthing at each other how much we loved the apartment. There was another girl looking at the apartment at the same time which was kind of awkward and which became even more awkward once we told the realtor that we wanted it. He put us in his minivan and started asking us all sorts of questions about our credit and salaries and past apartments. He was Hasidic and very intense and slightly scary and I confessed that I had terrible credit but that it shouldn't be a problem cause I made decent money. He drove us to his offices near the Williamsburg Bridge and it was slightly weird and also reminded me of the things I like about New York, being in this office of Hasidic realtors all talking amongst themselves in a language we didn't understand and meanwhile the two of us scared shitless that we might not get this apartment that we fell in love with at first sight and had no doubts about.

I have to fax him all sorts of papers and documents tomorrow that I am not that excited about and he will soon make a judgement about our fate, whether despite our non-stellar credit we can live in this amazing apartment. I have my fingers crossed that this will all work out, otherwise we will have to continue this annoying search, at which point it will become even more frantic since I have to be out of this apartment by the end of this month. I have never desired to live in an apartment so much as this one. There is something about it that I think is meant for me. It's not new, a little derelict, has a tiny gross bathroom, but there are touches to it that absolutely sing to me. I want it so fucking bad and I really, really hope that this all works out. Tonight is my last night of normal sleep for the next five days as I'll be working the overnights this week, and that is more reason why I hope everything is done now, because otherwise I will have to spend my days, when I should be sleeping, looking at places, and going totally crazy. The Temptations "Papa Was a Rolling Stone," is playing on Pandora now as I finish typing this and there are a few lines in the song about home and it seems appropriate. Music is like that, songs always coming on with some relevance to your current thoughts, current situations, somehow.

interstate

"my traveling companions are ghosts and empty sockets"

A few days ago, I returned from a trip that brought me to several states in this country of ours, to a couple cities I had never before been to. It started off with a trip to Milwaukee, a city Jacob and I were flown into by a john. That leg of the trip is a very long story in and of itself that I want to parse out in a fiction piece, exploring this man's life whom we went to see. An odd fellow he was. He has a wife and two kids and is obsessed with escorts, seemingly every other weekend flies one into town from San Francisco or New York, pays them a large deal of money in addition to the costs of nice meals and a nice hotel. We are both convinced that he must embezzle money from the company he works for. After the first time we had sex with him, he called his wife while we were still naked in bed to tell her that he was at a meeting, a very interactive meeting, very hands on. He ran his finger along my leg, caressing it as he said these things and I felt quite weird, a bit uncomfortable, and was ready for him to go back to his wife, felt bad for her. At one point, he took us to a cheesy chain Italian restaurant in the suburbs only a couple miles from his house. There was definitely some thrill he got from putting his life so at risk. I however was a bit uncomfortable about having a supporting role in this man's drama. He would come each morning, feed us bagels, want to get fucked senseless, and then took us sightseeing around the city, before taking us back to the hotel, him desiring to get fucked senseless some more, a hungry and whiney bottom, and then he would leave around five or six, the end of a workday, and head home, the two of us alone by ourselves in a fairly depressing city, a city where there seemed to be a couple of parking garages for each block. Once I noticed the large amount of parking garages, I couldn't stop thinking about them, wondering what it said about this city, about most cities actually.

He dropped us off at the airport and we made like we were heading to check in to the flight he had bought us home to New York, however once he was out of sight we doubled back and went to the Dollar rental car counter where I had reserved us a car for the roadtrip we were about to embark on. We were handed keys to a Ford. We drove out of the airport parking lot, trying to find a radio station to start the journey with, an appropriate soundtrack. I am not sure what it is we settled on. We drove and drove, having started later than we had hoped and so not making any stops, having to pick up Bob early the next morning at the Nashville airport. We drove until Bowling Green, Kentucky, where we stopped at an "America's Best Value Inn," because they were advertising $30 rooms and we were tired, needed to sleep until the morning when we would do the final hour of the drive and pick Bob up and all head to Short Mountain for Beltane.

It's a Friday night and it's getting-ready-time and so I am hurrying way too quickly through these things that during them I could not wait to recount in my diary later, but I have been working nonstop since getting back, doing other things, and have found no time to document these things, and so again, an apology to my future self and to you because you are getting the abbreviated version, the highlights reel.

The hotel, this supposed best value inn, was such a downgrade from our luxurious lodging at Milwaukee's Pfister Hotel that we laughed really hard when we opened the room's door - broken lamps with yellowed shades, a room reeking of smoke, a janky old tv, and disgusting sheets - basically what one would expect from a room for $30 a night. We left early the next morning after I jerked off on to Jacob's face, headed back on the road toward Nashville, toward Bob.

It was pouring rain and I was already dreading what would lie ahead at Short Mountain, having been there last year when it was nonstop rain and wondering why it had to be the same situation this year, was so disappointed and almost wanted to just skip that portion of the trip and head straight to Memphis. Bob definitely wanted to do the same while we were eating at a Waffle House while watching the heavy rain on the other side of the windows. As much as we wanted to though, we had to go there because we were supposed to give Diego and Kyle a ride from there to Memphis where all of our flights were out of and we were all going to see Graceland.

We stopped at a Wal-Mart, bought a tent, and navigated our way to the mountain. We set up the tent and seemingly immediately jumped into the craziness, eating some mushrooms. The rain let up a for a slight bit and the actual Beltane ceremony took place as they prepared to hoist the maypole. I was tripping hard at this point, the rain had started up again, and I was shivering too hard to stay put. I jumped ship, leaving everyone in the circle, and ran to the safety of the sauna. I ripped my wet clothes off as fast as they would come off and sat there in the warm room, naked and slowly drying, the shivering ending. I never wanted to leave the sauna, did not want to get wet again, did not want to be stuck in the rain. Eventually some common sense told me it would probably not be a good idea to stay in the sauna for hours and so I got dressed and tried to decide what to do, tripping very hard and finding it nearly impossible to interact with people, just wanted to lie down and roll around in blankets. So I walked back to the tent, barely finding it, my mind quite gone. I stripped off again and got into my sleeping bag. Eventually Jacob, Bob, and Diego found me in there and wondered what I was doing. I tried to explain that I couldn't handle anything else and just wanted to lie down until I got dry, until my mind calmed down. Bob felt the same way and joined me. The two of us lost our minds together, while everyone else ran around in the room. We talked about boys, pissed in water bottles because we didn't want to leave the tent, talked about the terrible storm and all the terrible things that could happen. This lasted seemingly for hours, but of course in such conditions who can really say how long moments last?

It started to wear off and I heard some bass far off in the distance. I wanted to dance, wanted to go play in the woods with all the crazies. I got dressed in insane clothes, tried without success to convince Bob to join me, grabbed my big bottle of whiskey, and went in search of fun, found it. I had such a lovely time that night, got stoned, danced in a pavilion sheltered from the rain with all these other bodies around me, friends, lovers, and people I wanted to be one of those things. There was a campfire that inspired nice physical and mental sensations in me. I found Jacob and Diego again and was so happy to see them, was so insanely happy to see Jacob's cute little face, had wanted to see him ever since I left the tent a couple hours ago, had wanted to spend time with him in the woods, this beautiful creature that I am insanely in love with. Seeing him made me so giddy, so happy. We danced and danced. We sat in the sauna. We played with our dicks. And we danced some more. Tired, we walked back to our tent in the dark night, occasionally losing the trail, holding hands since we couldn't see anything, hoping to avoid puddles.

The next morning after a lovely walk to an abandoned barn in the middle of the woods, we packed up our stuff and headed out. Jacob went to get the car and it got stuck in the mud, had to be pulled out by a tractor. The rain started up again once we were on the road, became heavier and heavier. We got stuck in traffic in Nashville, sat on I-40 in standstill for two hours before finally managing to escape. We went the wrong way on an on-ramp to get off the highway. We tried another east-west road, which was also blocked off. At this point we learned that the roads were all flooded and all closed, that the Cumberland River had swelled and washed out a lot of the roads we needed to take to get to Memphis.

Twelve hours later, we finally made it. We had to take a very long detour a couple of hours south to try to get there and finally made it. Reading the stories about Nashville and the losses its music community especially has suffered has made me realize how crazy that storm was.

We checked into a Motel 6 in Memphis, in a very sketchy part of town. Two rooms. Bob, Jacob, and I in one. Diego and Kyle in another. Graceland was amazing. The barbecue food I ate was amazing. Getting drunk on Beale Street and having crazy conversations with people was maybe the highlight of the trip for me. We all got shitfaced there and Bob, Diego, and Kyle took a cab back to the hotel at some point. Jacob and I kept drinking and kept talking to strangers. We walked home, talked to some crazy man outside a Walgreens, eventually ran away from him into the Walgreens. A little while longer, we were back in out hotel room when Diego and Kyle are calling out to us that there is someone there to talk to Jacob. It is sketchy guy that apparently followed us home from Walgreens. We tell him to go away. I am pissed off at Diego for numerous reasons all sort of taking shape because he told this clearly scary looking man Jacob was there and really furious with drunk Kyle who after people telling him to go away tells him to come up to our room. I shut the door on the two of them as well as the crazy man. Ten minutes or so later, calmer, I tell Diego and Kyle to come over and drink with us. Instead Diego wants to talk. We do. It's stupid. I go back to my room. Ten minutes later, he asks for the car keys to get their stuff out, saying they are just going to take a cab to the airport tomorrow. I don't really protest and no one else seems to mind either, actually seem happy about losing some people.

The next day the three of us ate at a really cute place, went thrifting, made a quick stop to see where MLK was shot, to take in that place and imagine what was lost there, what occurred in that place. I thought a lot about place and history and what it means to be at the site of certain things, sites where such notable things happened. In Milwaukee, we visited the site of Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment, now demolished. Memphis has Graceland, Sun Studios, and the Lorraine Motel. I was with people I loved and we were taking in ghosts, pausing before things for reasons which I don't think any of us were sure of, but which I am certain are good reasons, valid, necessary even.

beltane

This was written in a tiny little notebook on Beltane while I was tripping on mushrooms and hiding in my tent from a torrential rainstorm that would flood the city of Nashville.

Dear Diary,

You are the original Facebook status update for me. I am here in the woods of Short Mountain and want to post something to FB for reasons I am not sure of really -
is it to communicate something to other people
(anyone specific though?)
and what
and why

I am here in the rain and came to this tent because of really dumb logic that I wanted to see Jacob and Bob and thought that they might be at the tent -

um, is my rental car going to be washed away in the mud?

that will probably be very, very expensive and then I probably will certainly regret having considered this trip

um, also I'm kind of tripping balls right now -

took some chocolate mushrooms -

started shivering in rain
went into steam room

if i just take a nap, maybe it will quit raining -

um, i need to quit coming here

I hate the rain
wha???

want to lie in my bed with Jacob right now, no idea where he might be, also don't want to put on clothes to get them wet again

ugh...

why am I wishing cellphones worked here to reach him?

kind of really in love with - no, am really in love with him and want to see him -

lightning, thunder!!!

why am I here?

bad decision to come to Short Mountain in the rain, also bad decision to come back to tent - ugh!!

I hate the rain!!!

why am I using so many exclamation points - there was a period of my life not too long ago in which my intent was to seriously communicate things with language

um, took too long to handwrite

going underneath my covers to nap...
?