tomorrow night

I will be reading at this event at Envoy Enterprises at 131 Chrystie Street in New York.

sandy hook

The ferry that we were on took us underneath the bridges of the East River connecting Brooklyn and Manhattan, first Williamsburg, then the Manhattan, then the Brooklyn Bridge. We were on the roof of the boat for this lovely view. The clouds were dark, the trip to the beach seemed like potentially not the best idea and drops of rain hit us every so often. By the time we arrived at Sandy Hook, the sun had broken free of the clouds and the weather was quite hot. I brought a book to read, a magazine too, neither one of which were touched. It's hard enough for me to try to get reading done at clothed beach, too distracted by the human bodies around me, even more difficult for me to do so at a nude beach. We swam in the ocean every half hour or so to cool off, drank vodka that was warm and gross, and looked at the bodies around us. I kissed this beautiful boy in the water. We tried to have sex but neither of our assholes was loose enough in the cold water. I dove under and sucked Jacob's dick for a second. I came in the water, spurts of semen drifting toward the surface and away with the tide like little toots of steam from a locomative in a cartoon. And this world is a cartoon we live in. The sky is beautiful and we walk around in this universe on two feet and there are machines that take us here or there and we do what we will or can and sometimes don't or can't and are brought down by either how we are not free or how we choose not to utilize our freedom.

29 and counting

I woke up early this morning, another 7am shift, and my body has gotten used to them, but there are costs, mainly that by the time midnight rolls around I am usually passed out and the life I used to take part in before, that of nightlife, is now something I am less and less taking part in, something that in and of itself is not bad, and maybe even a good thing, maybe this is what happens as one ages and becomes more and more of an adult, whatever you want to take the word to mean. Maybe it’s not a good thing though and there are certain things that happen late at night that I am missing out, interesting conversations, one’s own mind turning over restlessly and exploring thoughts, going off down trails it doesn’t generally go down in daylight hours. I am missing out on dancing. I am missing out on spending too much money on alcoholic beverages and am missing out on terrible hangovers. I am still drinking, still sometimes going out, and definitely not getting enough sleep.

I am not sure what life is going to bring for me, not sure what I want it to. I am still going through the emotional hoops that birthdays bring with them, wondering about aging, about where I am in my life, where I thought I would be at this age, and where I would like to be, whether I am measuring up to various yardsticks, and which yardstick exactly I should be measuring myself with.

There are some things that are constant though and that aging has not changed. I still feel trapped on sunny days when I have to be at work and imagine being at the beach, think about ways to escape, look at weather forecasts to figure out whether my days off will be beach days. Tomorrow is supposed to be 91 degrees and sunny and I just could not imagine having to be sitting in a fluorescent-lit office tomorrow morning during such lovely weather. I started planning my sick call today, thinking of how I could possibly call in sick given that I have long ago already used all my sick and personal days and also given that my employer is starting to get a bit annoyed with me calling in sick so frequently.

And so tomorrow I am going to go to Sandy Hook with Jacob and swim in the Atlantic Ocean and lie around in the sun naked drinking vodka. I cannot wait. I should be writing tonight but am having difficulty doing so, cannot focus on myself, on my thoughts, on writing. I am realizing that I am out of touch with myself. Reading is hard. Writing is harder. I need to reconnect. I am working on it and I have a short time to get back in the groove. I am reading at the “Brother, My Lover” series this Thursday night at Envoy Gallery and so need to prepare something excellent to read. I am very grateful to Robert for asking me to read there again, am still grateful he asked to read there the first time around. It’s a bit of a problem that my inspiration to write often comes from deadlines like these. I need to construct for myself more deadlines, more reasons to write things. The performative nature of reading a piece makes me more aware of how I need to make something good, something that an audience might hopefully enjoy, something that doesn’t suck.

I have been having lots of thoughts about exhibitionism lately. Yes, I am going to the nude beach tomorrow. Yes, I do like having sex in public, at bars, in steamrooms, in front of other people. Cam4 and ManRoulette eat up far too much of my time. There is something in that. These things are the cousin to this diary, to me reading, to me writing – all forms of exhibitionism, some desire to be seen, getting off on this knowledge that you may see my body or read about it. I don’t know. I want to explore these thoughts at length but don’t have the drive to chase it tonight. I’d rather work on this bottle of wine and continue to listen to Bob Dylan and maybe read some more of this book I am reading.

I need to spend less time on Facebook. I need to get back into doing yoga, especially since apparently my knees do not also share the pleasure I take from running. I want to read some Greeks and Saint Teresa and the Bhagavad Gita and 19th century novelists and everything really. I need to eat more vegetables. So many things to do, to start doing. I am not so old that I can’t work on some improvements, don’t think I’ll ever be that old, hope so.

french bulldogs and canes

A month or so ago, Jacob and I decided that we really, really wanted a French bulldog. Soon after, I saw them every place I went, one after the next, this breed I had never even really noticed until recently. I now saw one on every corner, a cute, adorable French bulldog. I don't understand things like that, how the collective general public will all decide that a certain breed is really adorable and suddenly they are everywhere. I don't understand how those trends start, wonder who it is that influences me and all these other people out there, how this ball got started rolling. Did they recently feature in some cute romantic comedy that I never saw?

A week or so ago, I ran really hard on my knee even though it was kind of hurting as I was jogging. I ignored the pain and continued to run because it is what gives me so much pleasure. That was a mistake as my knee hurt much worse afterward and now still hurts a bit and feels weird to put too much weight on, has me doing a slight limp when I am coming down stairs or particularly feeling it. Yesterday and today, I noticed so many people with limps, me thinking about this one and now noticing all these other ones - that or there actually being a much larger number of people limping and using canes today as some sign from this universe. I want a French bulldog and see them everywhere. I injure my knee, limp a bit, and now see limping people in every direction I turn. The mind is interesting, the eyes too. They work in tandem in ways I often don't think about - that these things are always there and your eyes for whatever reasons don't see them even though they are walking down the street right ahead of you, that until it becomes a subject in your mind you won't recognize it as such outside your mind, that your mind doesn't know of the word yet and so has nothing attached to it - there is an ideology and these things are outside of it. What other things are there that my eyes are not seeing because my brain has not focussed on them yet, obsessed over yet? Our vision is so limited by our feeble human brains.

I live in a new apartment. It is the cutest apartment I have ever lived in. I am really in love with it right now and am crushing hard on it. It felt lived in on my birthday this past weekend. Up until that time, it felt unfinished. Every day for the last two weeks involved something with the house - painting, or going to Ikea, or assembling all that Ikea furniture, painting some more, moving furniture so the super could replace some walls, picking up a couch, calling the super, seeing the super, calling the landlord, seeing the landlord, getting this or that fixed, or picking up this or that item. It was a great deal of work that went into making this feel like my home and I think I have succeeded in a way I have never done with a house. Mikki told me it looked like an adult apartment, that someone in their thirties would live in. I did not take this as an insult.

I turned 29 and I am pretty comfortable with that, really comfortable actually, but do have an acute fear of a year from now, of turning 30 and still being in the same position, that I need to be somewhere closer to the goalpost at thirty, need to be moving in that direction, doing things I would like be doing. I need to write, write, write this year and run once my knee heals and go to the beach and have lots of sex and get out of town. There is a lot to do and I am not bored and I am feeling pretty alive and really happy with how things are going right now with Jacob and feeling secure in someone else's company, that there is a boy that wants to sleep next to me every night and that will get stoned with me and be stupid. It's pretty awesome. But I'm also cursing this injured knee, wanting to run so bad. Today, I went to the gym and rode on the fucking bicycles, which is some sort of cardio and which was the only type I could do without hurting my knee, but the act of running and being in the air for brief moments and of really sweating and using your entire body - that that is going unsatisfied.

And I started reading this book last night, Eat, Pray, Love,, surely way after the point when everyone and their mom has but I just started it because, embarrassingly, I saw the preview for the movie the other day, which did not look amazing, but which did make me really want to read the story, that it might offer me something right now at this moment in my life, this story of a woman not too far away from my age, unhappy with her life, and who travelled off in search of meaning, of happiness. Because I am turning 30 in a year and because I know I need to change and do more things and get off my ass and that I am going to die one day.