Damn, I Wish (Oh, How I Wish) I Was Your Lover

no cheese please

I woke up quite early this morning, despite having only gone to bed a few hours earlier. I was hungry and couldn't sleep. A bacon and egg sandwich was all I wanted in this world. Maybe some orange juice to wash it down. I walked to the bodega a couple blocks from my house and ordered my sandwich from the guy working the grill, an overwhelmed guy taking breakfast sandwich orders from a line of hungover people and the couple of cops working their beat, talking plot details to Pain and Gain, which I tried to block out as I planned on watching it later that day. I waited and I waited. I watched him give breakfast sandwiches to numerous people who had ordered after I did.

I gave up on ever getting food there, that it wasn't meant to be. I crossed the street and went to the Mexican diner where there was no line and ordered my sandwich, and which I received fairly quickly. As I ate the sandwich, stoned and watching Pain and Gain, I wondered about bacon and its use in other cultures, how widespread it is, or whether it might be something unique here. I certainly wondered why it was whenever I have gotten a sandwich involving bacon from a Mexican deli, why the bacon was never crispy, always undercooked, and always piled high, about three times as much bacon as should be on a sandwich. This is probably why there was a long line for breakfast sandwiches at the one deli and no line at the diner across the street. It's always a safe bet to choose the spot the cops are ordering from, that they know where the good breakfast sandwiches are made.

But sometimes you have to cut your losses, quit waiting, walk away.

So there is this guy, this really beautiful guy that I have a big crush on. I had a very brief romance with him some years ago. He was in a relationship for the last several years that he just got out of a couple months ago. I have always thought he was really cute and when I ran into him a couple weeks ago, this always slight crush flared up into a larger one. I wanted to make out with him. I have been trying to hang out with him since running into him, have asked if he wanted to meet for drinks numerous times, and last night I was finally successful in getting him to hang out with me. We went and saw Showgirls: The Musical. I had gotten there first, on time. He was running late, so I sat there and awkwardly talked to the HR guy from my job, who coincidentally was also at the show. And then he arrived, this beautiful man, and suddenly no one else was there, certainly not the HR guy from my work asking me why I hadn't signed up for the AIDS Walk. This guy was it. He looked really fucking handsome. We chatted about some stuff and I didn't hear much of it because I was a little overwhelmed by thoughts of how cute he was.

After the show, we rode the subway back to Brooklyn together. We talked about jobs, Ronnie Spector, and David Mamet. A girl told me she loved my tattoo. I asked her if she was a big Walt Whitman fan. Yes, she said, but I suddenly got the impression that she wasn't, that she didn't know that's who my tattoo was of. She said it also looked like Ethan Hawke.

He got off at his stop to go walk his dog, but said he was going to head to Metropolitan after. I told him I would meet up with him there if I wasn't able to get ahold of Diego, who earlier I had told I would go to Spectrum with. Once he got off the train, this couple got on and sat across from me. The girl was holding a six-pack of beer, the beer this person shares a name with. I took it as some sign, of what I had no clue, but a good sign surely I thought. When I got off the train, indeed I was unable to get ahold of Diego. I was happy about this and walked toward Metropolitan to meet up with this guy. I got increasingly drunk as the hours passed and talked to him and some other boys. He eventually left to go home, seemingly with this other boy, this gum chewer. 

I left shortly after they did, feeling fairly disappointed and sad. I made myself walk to Spectrum instead of heading home to mope. I danced with Diego for a bit there before he drunkenly stumbled home. By this point though, I was worked up to a fever, unable to quit dancing, letting everything out into these pop songs that they were thankfully and surprisingly playing at this venue that normally plays the type of dance music I need to be on some sort of drug to really get into. Instead, I had Robyn, Rihanna, and Beyonce to comfort me, to sing along to, to lose my mind to and dance like a maniac to, by myself in the midst of this crowd on the dancefloor. I danced and danced until I couldn't any longer, until I had trouble breathing, until I felt like I was going to throw up. I walked out of the venue, let the night air cool me off, and flagged down a car to take me home.

I lay on my couch, stuffing whatever food I could find at the time into my face. I saw that this boy was on Scruff, which made me happy since that would mean that he presumably did not go home with gum chewer. I talked to him on there about the rest of my night and put the question out there. I asked him if I was ever going to be able to make out with him or if I should just be happy being friends. I told him I just wanted some clarity and was fine with either, but just wanted to know. 

Earlier in the night, he had told me that I just liked him because he was comfortable and familiar. I told him that that wasn't true, but it probably is.

As I was stuffing my face with slices of rotisserie chicken, I read little text bubbles on Scruff. These bubbles said that he didn't want to jump into bed with me right now, that he doesn't rule that out from ever happening, but that he just wants to be friends.

So if you follow the cops to where they order breakfast because that's where good breakfast is served, and then the sandwich guy, intentionally or not, forgets your order and you wait and wait, at what point does a more indiscriminate hunger win out over a discriminate one and send you elsewhere? It's all about figuring out when to stop waiting. It's all about realizing that just about any place can make a bacon and egg sandwich.

#1 clipper on the sides

He snaps my head back into place. Physically, he is in total control. I love the act of submission that comes with sitting in a barber's chair. With his middle fingers pressed to my temples, he will guide my head into the desired position. He will set my posture straight, force my neck back. And then in a moment, he will with gentle movements push against the back of my head, force my chin to my chest. He will do this with the softest of touches because he knows I will submit.

Curls all around me on the floor, no longer on my head. I paid the cashier up front at the Astor Place Barbershop and paused to check myself out, adjust my hair, in the mirror above the ATM, the mirror with the sign taped to it: "When You Look Good, Your Money Looks Good!!!"

I thought that by cutting my hair, I could change how I was feeling, that I would no longer be overwhelmed by allergies, by sneezing and blowing my nose every couple minutes. I sneezed as soon I walked back out on the street, reached for tissues somewhere in my bag to blow my nose.

Tonight though, haircut not working, I took my co-worker's advice and smoked weed, and now don't feel these allergies at all, feel instead the new Daft Punk album and also feel the insecurity and cockiness (twins born from the same mom) of Nomi Malone, having just re-watched Showgirls to prepare myself for seeing the musical tomorrow.

And the dreadlocked downstairs stoner neighbor is still beating his carpet in the backyard at it approaches 11 at night. He is beating the dust out of it with a metal pipe of some sorts.

oh why people who shop at 7-11s in NYC should die

There is such joy to be had in purchasing toilet paper at your local Bushwick bodega. There are no organic chocolate bars on the shelf yet. There is a cat asleep on the floor. There is salsa music blaring and a woman singing along to it. It is such a beautiful scene. It is New York.

borne back ceaselessly into the past

Regret has taught me some very important lessons. There are things I wish that I had done with people, things I had wish I had said to people at the time, things I wish I had said differently to people. And in moments alone, my mind will pick over these moments from past relationships, enact them differently, and wonder how things might have been.

I sat alone in a theater in Times Square this morning watching Baz Lurhmann's The Great Gatsby. There was a couple sitting next to me, middle-aged straight Asian couple, that kept making out throughout the film. It was very distracting and I nursed a great deal of hatred toward them. Whether I would have nursed so much hatred toward them had I not been alone in the literal and figurative sense at this moment while watching this movie dealing with themes on my mind as of late, themes about romantic figures from your past, is an easy question to answer - I would not have. As it was, I wished great violence on them when I was not lost in these scenes between Daisy Buchanan and Gatsby, swooning at the idea of my own hoped for liaisons perhaps coming true.

The film closes by quoting those beautiful and depressing lines from the novel's ending, that, for now, is all I am going to say about what is going on in my life:

And as I sat there, brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther . . . And one fine morning --

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

tattoo ideas

Susan Miller told me that I should spend the beginning of this month alone, that I was going to do great work on some long simmering creative projects, that I had to turn off the voices around me so I could hear my own. She told this to the general Internet, faceless mass of Geminis. At the time, I didn't like the sound of this, so hungry for the company of a boy have I been lately, but a few days later, I find myself happiest in these moments of being alone. Good thing I hung up those curtains. I can drink wine and dance around my apartment, jerk off in my kitchen if I want to, twirl and spin in my own bubble.

I haven't been completely alone though. I have had the very good company of Sheryl Crow these past few days. Sheryl and I had a very nice walk together a couple nights ago. I had gone to a couple of bars, Jacob's going away party at Spuyten Devil and then to Phoenix to hang out with Matt for a bit. I was quite drunk. I was smoking a cigarette, a real one, outside of Phoenix and talking to a coke dealer. He asked me if I wanted a sample. I told him No thanks, told him that weed was all I really did these days. I have been to this bar on and off since moving to New York and I don't know why this one bar always seems to have coke dealers hanging out front openly hawking their wares. I thought to years past when I had far less self-control, buying coke from some of these guys, getting kicked out of Phoenix, laughing with a boy I was making out with at the time as we stumbled to some bar that would tolerate two messy faggots. I said bye to my new friend, the coke dealer, and left without going back inside to say goodbye.

This was when I met up with Sheryl. I fell alseep on the train listening to her tell me about her favorite mistake, thinking about my own favorite mistakes. I woke up a few stops past my subway stop and emerged into a part of Brooklyn I had never really been to. It was beautiful. I walked home along Wycoff Avenue, passing discount stores, Latin bars that were raging at that hour of the night, tacquerias still open, families leaving a banquet hall, taco carts outside the Myrtle-Wycoff stop with lines of people waiting for food. And I was so in love with the night, with the city, with Bushwick, with Sheryl Crow, with the memories I kept brushing against, and with the sense of pride I was feeling that came out of a place that was ecstatic about how whole and free and alive I felt here by myself on these streets, this music in my ears, this bounce in my step, this hunger in my eyes to take in all these sights.

I woke up this morning and remembered a dream I had last night. There was a box turtle outside my window trying to get in. There was a guy in my apartment, or maybe I was in his, this guy I barely know, and he made sure the window was closed all the way. I told him that I couldn't believe he wasn't going to let this turtle in, after it had somehow climbed to whatever floor this apartment was on. Come on, I said, look at that face, and the turtle was making sad puppy faces at this guy through the glass, not believing he wasn't going to be let in - how can you say no to this cuteness, his face asked, pleading, neck bending this way and that. I don't remember how the dream ended, though I don't think the turtle was let in, though I also don't think that was the point of the dream, that it needed no resolution, that the meaning was and is in this fragment.