Last night, I was asleep in bed, dreaming of things, your mom, your childhood, the dick of this person, the body of that straight co-worker I am little obsessed with, his lips, often curled into a surly expression, a book I am nearing the end of about gay lust. I was stoned and thoughts were jumping from one to the next, not bothering to fully form themselves, an impressionistic jumble of short-lived thoughts, sleep nearing, sleep needed, an early shift this morning at seven. I lay there, nearing sleep, and the door opened, Jacob home from work. I tried to pretend I was fully asleep, not wanting to wake up even more and prolong sleep more, despite how what I really wanted was to get out of bed and look at his art and talk to him about his day and have sex with him. I said hello, sleepy sounding, playing a part, chatting briefly as though in a fog of sleep. He kissed me goodnight and went into the living room.

A couple minutes later, he came back in, sensing correctly that I wasn't actually sleeping. He said he wanted to give me another kiss. That kiss turned into making out. I had been jacking off in the those couple of minutes while he was in the other room and this was the entrance of a real person into my fantasies I had been conjuring earlier. I wanted to kiss him more and more, wouldn't release the kiss, kept on trying to obtain more of him, hungry. I was underneath the sheets and he was on top of them, on top of me. Soon the boundaries separating us collapsed. I put his dick in my mouth and sucked it, pushed it far back into my throat, wanted to be overcome with this body, with these physical feelings, to gag and think of nothing else. This dick was going to stop anything else, force it back down, make it so that my world became his dick down my throat.

The sheets were thrown back. He was thrown back on to the bed.

We sniffed poppers and made out and fucked, were having really intense sex, something we haven't done in a while, schedules not aligning lately. I kissed him, wanted to consume him, wanted him to consume me, wanted to merge something, collapse something. When I went in for a kiss, my lip hit his front tooth hard, really hard. We were in the dark and I was high but I felt like my lip was bleeding from the bumping of heads. I was losing steam, another world was entering this one. The concern with sex, not even that, but the living of it, the inhabiting of this world of frenzied passion was disrupted by a hurt lip and my concern that I had cut it, that it was bleeding, me feeling around with my tongue to see if I was actually feeling blood or whether I was just high. The spell had been broken, sex a weird thing and dependent upon the stage production. Someone was texting on their cellphone next to me during the movie and I thought about that and no longer inhabited the narrative of the movie, its world. I fucked him until he came and then I went to the kitchen to rinse off my dick in the sink, any lube or shit that might be on it. I had not come and he mentioned that. I was tired, I said. I checked out my lip in the mirror, saw that it was not bleeding.

numerous angles

"If you shoot an arrow and it goes real high, hooray for you."

Eight years and a couple of days ago, April 24, 2003, a young gay boy recently kicked out of college in Florida and ready for the next stage of his life, moved to a city he had always dreamed about, a promised land where things would be magical and full of art and meaning and beauty. There was no real plan, no job, no apartment lined up, just a desire to live here and a small amount of cash in a bank account. I had little savings and all of my belongings in two big pieces of luggage. I arrived late at night to Niki's apartment in Red Hook, a cab dropping me off in front of her house. I buzzed her apartment, this still before I had a cell phone. I had arrived and was so excited.

Every year since then, I have tended to celebrate this day, this anniversary, it an important one for me, a birthday of sorts, the day I decided to really take control of my life, it no longer being dictated by certain geographical demands, by being under my parent's care or by being in college. It was the day I set into motion a greater independence and a more assertive say in what type of person I would be. This is a city of refugees and immigrants, some domestic ones. We all came to Oz, the Emerald City. In certain ways and on particular days, we have discovered the little man behind the curtain, have seen this place for what is, and longed for the comforts of Kansas. There are days when the flying monkeys are really just too much to deal with.

Luckily, the weather has finally improved and spring seems to actually have arrived, comfortably warm temperatures and bursts of brilliant sunshine showing off the buds on trees. Sunday, one of these warm days, the actual anniversary of this date, I went to the piers and read from Andre Aciman's Call Me by Your Name, my shirt off for the first time this year, my skin again being touched by sunshine, cute boys nearby looking around at cute boys, beautiful dogs, blankets spread out, a city set free from their prison towers they had been confined to for months. I met up with Jacob after he got off work and we walked along the Hudson River from Battery Park City up to the West Village and then ate some good food at Westville. A rainstorm, light, had started by the time we left the restaurant, and we stopped in some shops on the way back to the train. I purchased a copy of Paris is Burning and when we left the store, the storm had turned torrential, buckets of rain dropping from the sky, us without an umbrella. We ran to the subway and rode it home dripping wet, soaked and happy.

Those are the days I moved here for. Yesterday was the day I moved here for. I met up with Erica and Alex at Wreck Room early in the evening and we shared drinks and chatted with the bartender who kept pouring us shooters to drink with her, us getting more and more wrecked, very appropriately. We then got on the train and went uptown to Providence to see the Drag Race finale and meet up with many old co-workers who we had convinced to come as well. The line was two blocks long, was insane. There was no way were ever going to get in. Everyone was ready to give up; plans were already being made to go elsewhere, conversation about what bar to go to. I was not about to miss seeing Carmen Carerra, Yara Sofia, Raja, Manilla, and all the rest of the girls in the flesh. I was determined to get into this shindig. I led Erica and Alex, the only ones who had something close to my interest in seeing this, up to the front of the line where I was about to pull out some tricks. I told the lady at the front of the line that we were on Manilla's list.

Manilla doesn't have a list, she said, shooting me down.

Well, we're also on X's list, I said, pulling out a name of someone else I thought might have a list.

Even if you are, she said, you still need to get in line.

I was not having this. My brain was devising potential schemes, looking for any chance, and one soon presented itself. She just let a big group into the venue, and while she was busy with her list and the line, I followed them inside, trying to get Erica and Alex to join me. They were hesitant and were left behind, casualties of war. I had made it in and was so excited. Even once inside, it was still not the promised land. The place where all of the drag stars were was the main level and the plebeians were cast downstairs into the basement. You have to have a special stamp to enter the world of fun. Again, I pulled a similar stunt and when I saw a big group of people being ushered into the main room, I quickly mixed myself into their group and flashed my wrist confidently and quickly, pretending I had a stamp, and he didn't look close enough to notice I didn't. I had arrived and soon was near all of these beautiful ladies that I gag over each week. Alex was soon calling me, begging me to tell him get in somehow, and after numerous attempts I got him into the building and also got him a magic stamp granting him access to the fun room. I had so much fun there. Drag Race makes me a bit delirious with glee and I was so happy last evening. At one point, I posed for some pictures with Raja, got her to sign my chest, was a mess, but a lovely mess and a happy one and the spell was cast again, this city seeming like the coolest place on the planet again.

I worked a long shift today, collecting some overtime, this job I have been doing for near three years now and this job that I don't particularly love. When I left Florida I was working a job at a hotel, and let me tell you, when I had all these grand dreams about moving to New York, this was nowhere in those dreams, to be again working in a hotel. I was already a really famous writer by this point in my dreams and living in a really awesome apartment and staying out really late every night and being a hot mess able to balance that with producing great work. And yet, I am again working in a hotel. I sometimes get sad that I don't have much to show for these eight years other than a face whose skin is not as tight, not as young looking, and a few gray hairs emerging recently. But I am living in an apartment that I like with a boyfriend that I love, that I want to spend the rest of my life with, and who is just about the cutest thing ever. I like my body and like making it more to my liking by working out, an immense pleasure in that. And my job, despite not being what I would like to be doing, despite not being what I ever envisioned myself doing, does pay enough to live my life comfortably and eat nice food when I so desire to. But then there are always those fears that Party Down articulated so brilliantly, that weird moment in one's life at which point they accept a career they never wanted for themselves and as they dream less and less about the ambitions they once harbored, essentially the slow process of dreams dying. I've got to move. The window is smaller and smaller, almost closed, in which I can still start a job path I am interested and in which I can still produce writing that comes from a place of fire. And though it may seem otherwise, I am really excited about my life in these upcoming months and days and the potential that I can seen in them.

open container

"remembering what you had, and what you lost"

I was at work today and I heard Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams" playing lightly on the radio, background music. I reached out my arm toward the volume wheel, turned it clockwise, turned it up, inhabited this song for a brief moment. I was in Florida and still in college. I was in a dorm or in a car, but the sun was shining and I had an enthusiasm toward this life that is absent lately. I was young, younger in a lot of ways. Fleetwood Mac hit me hard in those years. It was a a hippyish school I was at. We didn't wear shoes and held dance parties outside. We would go down to the Bay on mushrooms to watch the sunset. I was in love with so many boys at this point. I was so sexually inexperienced and dreamed about love a lot. I drank the fruity St. Ides that we purchased at the Shell station we would always walk to. The airport was right next to our campus and during my first year, that time before 9/11 and excessive security, I would go do my all night studying and readying at an airport gate, would sit far away from any of the TVs playing CNN. This band really, really hit me hard during this time. I cried a lot to these songs and played them loud and dreamed about life. This is magic music. Those opening chords of this song send chills down my spine.

The moment was brief and too soon I was back at work, back at this boring job in this office with no windows. I didn't always used to be so boring, I thought. I am waking up from winter. I am also finally coming out of this long chain of colds I have had. I wish there were other things I could do and I am a bit unnerved by turning thirty in a couple months and thinking about where my life is at this point. I am also getting my ass kicked in what are probably good ways by these thoughts. I am thinking about things I need to do, doing at least some of those things, and seriously intending to do the other ones. Time is flying by so, so quickly. Somehow it is already mid-April. Somehow it is already 2011. Somehow I am turning 30 in June.

I want a new job but that dream has to wait because of this European vacation this summer, that I am very doubtful any job that might hire me would allow me to take two weeks off in July. That is discouraging, especially so since my closest remaining friend at my job, who has worked there as long I have, is leaving in a week, making me feel more and more like I have overextended my time there, that I need to be moving on, getting on with my life.

Another thing that is contributing to these thoughts is my recent viewing of the British TV series, "Pulling," which I really enjoyed a great deal. It approaches near-brilliance at times. I could not stop watching it, plowed through the entire series in two days. It's a version of "Sex and the City" if the looking glass had shattered, the series following three thirtysomething single women who still party like they're in their young twenties, but who don't have successful careers and are hardly glamorous, and who seem to have not really grown up much. The show also straddles humor and tragedy in this really awkward and brave way that I can't think of too many other TV shows that do. In tone, it slightly reminded me of "Party Down," which also successfully managed to be a comedy and yet still retain these same intense and depressing moments wherein questions about life in the 21st century and aging are raised and maybe not answered, but at least they are raised for you to ponder. And I have been pondering them. I have been wondering at what point my life becomes the lives of these characters, whether it in fact already has, or whether I still might have some time to try to get my act together.

Premier Veal

The Meatpacking District quickly and quickly continues to lose the aspects of it related to meatpacking. I have worked in the neighborhood for a few years now and even at that point when I started working there it was already a very gentrified destination for rich individuals to dine and party and shop, however it has changed even more so in these past few years. There are only a few meatpacking plants that are still operational. I have witnessed a couple shutter. I used to take some pleasure walking to work really early in the morning and seeing large trash cans full of bones and scraps of meat that seagulls and pigeons picked apart, the sidewalks covered in animal fat, birds fat and happy circling in the air. The plant I am talking about here was on the northwest corner of Washington Street and West 13th Street. It closed a while ago and is to be demolished sometime after May 1. A really ugly building, tall and glass, is to go up in its place. I am going to be very sad when this change occurs, when this building is torn down. I have gotten lost in looking at the layers of paint on the building, imagining what's behind its brick walls, getting lost in the contemplation of the beauty of old metal meat hooks that still hang there on Washington Street, that these will only still be there for another couple weeks. There are thoughts of William Carlos Williams and his red wheelbarrow when I look at this building. Catch it while you can. You have a couple more weeks to walk around the thing and to think about the future and the past of this city.

Today, a sunny day, temperature in the seventies, I walked with Jacob along the High Line. I saw a building behind another one where the roof was caving in. I wanted to see it up close, so we walked over to West Street. There stood for a just a little while longer another meatpacking plant. I saw its demolition. These are really beautiful buildings with hand-painted business signs over their brick surfaces. This is really beautiful stuff that doesn't exist anymore, that isn't made anymore. This little slice of Manhattan, like most of Manhattan now, is desirable, is not on the edge of town anymore, is not a bad neighborhood. These factories make less and less sense economically, knowing their owners could make so much more selling the land to a developer. It's nice to get lost though and imagine a time when this neighborhood was these cobblestone streets and these grimy meatpacking plants and this city had an industrial pulse.

The building that was torn down said Premier Veal on its front in big painted letters. It sits on a piece of land that is to become the downtown location of the Whitney Museum. The demolition was very sad to watch. I was sad that we had stumbled on it, that no one else was there other than the construction workers tearing it down and a bicyclist who had stopped to take pictures. No one was here to mourn this building, to wish it farewell. It was lonely, was on the West Side Highway, a relic, a bit dilapidated, and thus beautiful.

A Sunday in April Under Cloudy Skies

I was on my way to this dude's house on the Upper West Side that I sometimes see, he having texted me earlier today. As I walked fast through the tunnel connecting the L and the 1,2,3, trains, that long tunnel, I could feel the soreness in my throat and in my chest, could feel whatever this infection was and how large it was. I have been in a daze for weeks. I have not had my normal energy levels, have continued to have this persistent morphing throat infection for about three weeks now. I thought it was finally killed. I had been prescribed antibiotics about a week ago and it was feeling near gone until yesterday when something else came over body, something that feels like the flu. I felt like I was going to throw up, that I was using too much energy by walking so fast through this tunnel, trying my best to rush to this guy's house to meet him at the time I said I would.

On the way through this tunnel, I passed a man, homeless looking, advertising himself as a New York Times-published poet. I am not sure what that necessarily means as I don't think I've ever seen poetry printed in the newspaper, aside from a selection in a book review or something. I passed him and then near the end of the tunnel I passed this old Asian man who was playing a flute of some kind, a very traditional type of music. I hate flutes. I'm not sure why. The hatred is intense, near violent.

I rode uptown, reading and not reading from a magazine, pausing to think about various things, among them: the stupid seat designs of these older trains, how no one fits into these proscribed seats they have created of oranges and yellows, immediately identifying its creation time, some seventies aesthetic at work; Dan Fishback's "thirtynothing," which I saw last evening at Brooklyn Arts Exchange and which I gave passing thoughts to on the train, thinking about the difference between this incarnation and the portion of it I saw at Dixon Place a while ago, what it means to see a work evolve; Dave Eggers' Zeitoun, which I finished today, and which is a great book, though not necessarily great writing, Eggers muting his personal voice to write this near-journalistic account of this one family's horrific experiences in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; about how fucked up America behaved during that time and how I had never really known the extent of the injustices committed to the incarcerated individuals during that time, how absolutely unconstitutional and fucked-up their treatment was; Europe and various plans for how I need to save up money in these next couple months; and Jared Hasselhoff naked, who I thought about to get me horny to see this dude, having been watching videos and looking at photos of him most of the morning pissing on his bandmate and pulling items with his penis.

At 96th Street, I exited the train and went to this man's apartment. I smoked a little weed with him, pissed in his mouth, came in his mouth, and then twisted his nipples until he came as well.

I then took a downtown train back to 14th Street, thinking about many of the same things, but doing so from a happier position, having a bit more money in my bank account at this moment and having just ejaculated. Also mixed into these thoughts were now ones concerning: the Continental Baths, which were referenced in an article in the magazine I was reading; 70s New York and sexuality in that time, a time before Internet and cellphones, what seems like a magical time that required more effort at human connection and more of it, wherein people couldn't look to their cellphones during conversations or plays or while alone at a bar, that we had to look at each other and engage; and the admonition to create a spreadsheet timetable when I got home to figure out my income, bills, and ability to save in the next couple months.

In that tunnel connecting the 1,2,3 trains to the L train that I walked through again as I made my way home, the old Asian man was still there playing his flute. The New York Times published poet was sitting on newspapers, sleeping.

quick pick

I had a conversation with two of my co-workers today about the lottery. I dream about winning it a lot, perhaps more than I really should, but it's a nice, fairly harmless fantasy. I have two dollars and some odd cents in my bank account right now. This is because a few days ago I purchased plane tickets for this European adventure I have planned for this summer. I get paid tomorrow, but I have a feeling that that paycheck will very soon be depleted and I will be going through another week paying for stuff in change and cooking the pasta that has been in the back of my cupboard for months. I owe Jacob some money. The two of us have months worth of utility bills to pay off and perhaps, more importantly, than most of these things is that we need to purchase some weed. We haven't had any in a couple of weeks because we have been broke and trying to be frugal, but this really cannot go on for three months. Weed has become a necessity for my mental sanity. It makes me so much happier and so I cannot wait for tomorrow to arrive, for my bank account to again have some money in it.

This is why I dream about winning the lotto, why last night I gathered up enough change from our change jar to walk down to the bodega and purchase a PowerBall ticket. This is why when I woke up this morning, I checked it before I went to work, daydreaming about that phone call I would hopefully be able to make after checking the numbers, saying something along the lines of: "Peace out motherfuckers! I quit!" I would say this and then figure out how to go claim my millions. Instead not one of my numbers matched. And so I took some comfort this evening when my co-workers started talking about the lotto and how we would really love to win a job-quitting sum of money. They all purchase tickets regularly, one of them had about twenty tickets that he checked at the time, which really made me quite happy. I love seeing people engage in vice, especially young people, but this is also the same person that goes and bets on horse races so it wasn't entirely surprising.

The weather is finally getting nicer. I think that winter might actually come to an end sometime soon. There is still some light in the sky right now and it is almost eight and that is a beautiful thing.

I Spit on Your Corpse

I was at Erica's birthday party last night, drinking punch that was supposed to resemble the blood of Christ and which was made from Four Loko, vodka, various fruit juices, and, later in the night, gin and rum as well. There were Nilla wafers that were supposed to be the body of Christ. At some point Erica was wearing a veil in her First Communion themed party, though I don't think that was on for very long. There were several people at this party who asked me if I was still at my job. The question bummed me out the first time. It bummed me out even more to have it asked in succession by the next couple people I ran into. At some point, the party migrated to Tandem. I drank had another drink, danced to some music in their laser and smoke filled back room. Jacob and I soon walked home, stopping at Wreck Room on the way home for those fried rice balls they sell there. We walked home down this cobble stone street that I love and that has this old building at the end of it that I find insanely beautiful.

I did not much today except look up stuff concerning this trip to Europe I will be making this summer and watching a bad seventies movie with an awesome soundtrack, lots of horns.