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I haven’t washed my hair in about a week and my monthly pimple has exposed itself on my forehead. It must be my time of the month. When I was younger I used to hate when people called me by the wrong gender (by either insult or mistake). Now, here I am, referring to myself as a “girl.” I’m a highly evolved individual. I remember when I was around ten years old with long brown hair and being mistaken for a girl at the mall when I was with a bunch of friends. It was devastating. It didn’t help that I was with a bunch of girls and I was wearing a Miami Dolphins Starter jacket (with the bright teal and orange colors!) and still burning off baby fat. I should have never downloaded two Matthew Good Band albums. It is all I have been listening to. Way to retreat back to 2000/2001. I remember when Beautiful Midnight came out in the states and Best Buy was advertising it for a super low price I could afford as a seventeen year old. They sold out of all the copies and I went to the customer service desk and demanded a rain check. Two weeks later it was in my possession. Do rain checks even exist anymore? It seems like such a dated, grandma policy. Along with layaway. Does anyone put things on layaway anymore? Sometimes I confuse layaway with layover when I talk travel with people. Those people must think I’m 80. I am drinking black coffee because the soymilk I have likes to rise to the top of the mug in a disgusting volcanic cloud. I’m on my second cup and my stomach wants something more nourishing but there is nothing in this house to eat but brownies and Girl Scout cookies. I was supposed to accomplish many things today but instead I slept twelve hours. Twelve hours of nightmares. I would wake up every few hours and return back to the same narrative without any delay. It was horrible and terrifying. I was basically dreaming of Freddy Krueger in Friday the 13th. Sequel upon sequel. It was exhausting. I don’t know why I can never dream of puppies and clouds, it’s always the end of the world or me trying to save my life while my teeth are falling out of my mouth. I had an appointment at my car dealership to get a new tire. A $100 tire that decided to go flat when I was forced to detour off a certain road I drive down to get home from work, to another road that is sketchy and full of potholes! So there goes my car right over a pothole and it instantly goes flat. (Mind you this is the second time within six months I need new tires on my new car). I pull into the creepy parking lot of some business at seven in the morning. I call roadside assistance because I don’t trust myself changing a car tire, despite knowing how to do it. Plus, my father put locks on the tires after someone stole all four tires off my stepmother’s car in the driveway of our house, which makes changing the tire a bit more complicated, figuring out which key goes on which lock. That was a long-winded sentence but I refuse to edit it. I guess Honda knows how frequent their tires go flat, so they offer free roadside assistance with the sale of a new car. Fortunately, roadside assistance arrives in twenty minutes. I’m surprised by their speedy response to my “emergency.” It was warm out that morning. The overcast and clouds keep it that way. It has been like this in New York for almost three weeks. A selfish (on the cloud’s part) and horrible start to the summer, a summer I have been eagerly anticipating since I graduated college—the first summer without classes, a summer spent summering in the sun, shade, and saltwater. I have been hoping for warm weather, warm oceans, and warm sand to sit and contemplate in. Finally a few collective moments to just exist. To think and submerge, without the threat of a French exam or a thesis on George Bernard Shaw. But this deep contemplation has not come because all it does is rain rain rain. So, the windows are rolled down in my car and I’m listening to the Andy & Muzz track my friend Jack put on a mix for me. I start reading Rolling Stone with Lady Gaga on the cover.* A nice elderly Polish man in slip-on Vans comes to the rescue, telling me how often he rescues cars and their drivers on New Highway because of potholes and debris. The donut on my car prevents me from doing anything I wanted to this lazy Sunday. Brunch with Michael Seth in Brooklyn? No. Ida Maria at the Bell House in Gowanus? Nope. Just sleep.
I just took a bath. Since I ran out of shampoo, I used my stepmother’s Filipino shampoo she purchases from the Filipino grocery store in Hicksville. I wonder if my hair will turn black, long, and silky like the woman depicted on the bottle. I use the Dead Sea salt scrub I bought from the Beautiful Jew in the mall a year ago and wonder if I’ll turn Jewish after this bap(th)ism. I don’t think the Jews do that though. I’m always trying to escape the self. Isn’t that what capitalism is for? Purchasing an identity that isn’t yours to begin with. Friends who left Brooklyn for Barcelona and Armenia sent an email documenting parts of her journey. It sounds beautiful and poetic. She unveiled the “secret” blog she has been updating for about a year and there are beautiful excerpts of her inner thoughts. Thoughts on people in crowded cafés, oysters, and how wrong sometimes a New York way of thinking is. I’m in awe. This is the same friend that inspires me to keep at writing, the same friend that wanted to start a magazine awhile back. I know it’ll happen, the zine that is, the timing was just off off off. I keep thinking about writing and if I see a creative future for myself there. I don’t know. I spend too much time fearing, doubting, and distracted to even begin anything. I have dreams of renting a cabin somewhere in the woods for three months. Without a telephone or neighbor for miles. I think I’d need the internet if that is possible, just for research purposes. I just need to escape, so I could concentrate on the novel(s) I have mapped out in my mind. You know the ones that are loosely-based on my own life, or the part science-fiction narrative I started awhile back, or my own Last Exit to Brooklyn. I’ll be the postmodern Emerson. Pen, paper, laptop, whatever. I just need the finances to keep me afloat while not working so I can focus focus focus. All I need is a french press, coffee beans, and running water. Perhaps I can find a grant or ask for donations from my lovely friends.
When I’m done writing, I think I am going to watch Sleepless in Seattle on Netflix Instant Viewing because it is the first movie I thought of that Netflix actually had streaming on their site. It seems appropriate because I am currently “sleepless.” But I’m in New York. But I’ve been having waking dreams of Seattle ever since I booked my trip there in July. Plus, I’ve never watched the movie before and it seems sappy enough to quench my lonely aching heart. Okay, my heart is not really aching but these late late nights spent not working and in my bedroom are quite lonely. I’ve been chatting with a boy online. He has scruff like me and has nice lips. We are also both Eagle Scouts. We both realized that we went to same summer camp in Rhode Island during the same week of July every summer. Though he stayed in Sandy Beach and I stayed in Three Point (which are only ten minute walks between each other at Yawgoog Boy Scout camp). We thought it funny, that we were probably in the same merit badge classes. Perhaps Wilderness Survival or Reptile and Amphibian Study? I don’t think anything will come of it but I think it’s strange that we were on the same ferry crossing the Long Island Sound to Rhode Island or on the same bus from the waterfront to the camp. Coincidences. Last night, or should I say Saturday night, I went to my cousin’s wedding. Before leaving the house I was feeling the pockets of an old suit and actually found matches from 1997. They were matches from her first wedding. Another coincident I couldn’t stop thinking about while people hit wine glasses with silver forks for the bride and groom to kiss. There was a pianist in one of the other rooms at Breakers (in New Jersey) and she was playing (and singing!) a Coldplay song. It was beautiful. Even though I looked ridiculous in my ill-fitting Italian suit, I got compliments with my choice of footwear. A brand new pair of black Converse. There was lots of awkward conversation. It didn’t help that I had to sit next to the groom’s father who called Bruce Springsteen “one of those very liberal Jersey boys.” His wife made us all hold hands and say grace before eating our main courses. Who does that at a wedding? It was a very Italian wedding and the Long Island and New Jersey accents seemed to be competing with each other. It’s awful, because being vegetarian in a situation like this unbearable and only mildly amusing for the first three minutes. “No wonder you’re so skinny!” or “You don’t eat chicken?! Or Sausage?” No, I don’t eat those animals because that’s what they are, animals. I fell in love with one of the staff members at the restaurant. Each time I went to the bathroom, my heart jumped a little when I saw him. Photographs were taken outside in the drizzling rain. The ocean roared behind us because the wind would not stop blowing. My aunt wore slippers for the entire evening and we blew bubbles instead of throwing rice. On the drive home my father and I talked about music and our love for 101.9 XRP, the self-proclaimed “The New York Rock Experience.” They play good songs from every decade. Sometimes Bush, sometimes Death Cab For Cutie, and sometimes The Who or the Sex Pistols. Even Matt Pinfield has his own morning show. We talked about where my father was during Woodstock—in a bowling alley, fourteen years old, with no money to get Upstate. I told him I met 3 Doors Down at Roseland once in the VIP area, when I really wanted to meet Oleander. Does anyone (except Cher and I) remember that band from 1999? They were great. I’ve written about running into M in this here journal lately. All throughout New York City. At the bar, on the L train, in front of Crunch…Well, we’re now Facebook friends. And we were chatting last night and he was a bit drunk and I was a bit sleep-deprived and he was apologizing for last summer…oh this is so boring. There were things I wanted to tell him but I just couldn’t. This third cup of coffee is too bitter. I’m coffee-d out. I think it’s about time for Sleepless in Seattle. I’m about fifteen years too late.
*Speaking of Lady Gaga, have “you” seen this David LaChapelle photograph?
It’s pitch perfect. I don’t know why I keep saying “pitch perfect” so much lately. It couldn’t be more appropriate that Lady Gaga is naked and covered up with bubbles. Bubbles, which are about to pop because she is Pop, personified. A pure confection of Pop with a capitalized P. Fully aware of her Pop ways she uses the tropes and modes of any other pop sensation. But she is in on the joke; she understands her confectionary ways, like sugar dissolving on your tongue. But she’ll shop at Opening Ceremony for Yahoo and drink from Chinese teacups on the sidewalk. But it’s something political ore ecological. Let’s not waste paper cups from Starbucks, reuse and recycle. And that is just what Lady Gaga is. She not only recycles cups, but she recycles sounds and fashion. She will play consumer and product. The ultimate commodity you can believe in. The meta commodity you don’t have to feel guilty for after consumption. Have you heard Marilyn Manson's remix of "Love Game?" She’s wonderful and I will leave it at that.
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...slowly unravels, in a ball of yarn, the devil collects it, with a grin, our love, in a ball of yarn, he'll never return it, so when you come back we'll have to make new love...
I’ve gone twenty-six years of my life without a tattoo. I've watched all my friends around me make appointments with their tattooist. I've seen the ugly and beautiful ink jobs. But I wasn't spending all the time admiring everyone else's artful tattoos, I’ve spent those twenty-six years contemplating my own perfect tattoo. Lyrics? Quotes from Ulysses or Lolita? Roman numerals? I even had dreams about certain tattoos forever marked on my skin. A favorite Sunny Day Real Estate lyric. But what stops me is the permanency. The fact that it will always be there. And all the questions. What color? How large or how small? In what font? What if the tattooist messes up? What if s/he can’t write in Hopelandish? Do I find a Scandinavian to stick inky needles into me to get Sigur Ros lyrics spelled correctly? A few months back, I was inspired, more inspired than ever to get a tattoo. Unexpectedly, I was hit with inspiration and intrigue. I was listening to Bjork’s “Unravel” on repeat and had visions of the “ball of yarn” she was singing about. It’s one of my favorite Bjork songs. One that breaks my heart, that makes me feel feelings I wasn’t sure I still had. And I realized it made sense. Even though my relationship with Bjork is rather new. We’ve only really connected about three years ago. It has taken me close to twelve years to discover how beautiful and epic Homogenic was as a record. It is the record that hosts the unbelievably tragic “Unravel.” It just made sense. How hard I fell for this song when I first heard it. It was on a mix a friend made me of all Bjork songs. A mix he compiled to help win me over, to make me a fan of hers, outside of the usual “Joga” and “Hyperballad” appreciation. She was an artist I always admired from afar. Her discography too large and epic, I didn’t know where to start. But thankfully Christopher guided me through her “emotional landscapes.” So, here I am, desiring a Bjork-isnpired tattoo. I’ll get a ball of yarn tattooed on me. Questions were asked. Where? How large? Who could draw a ball of yarn? Thankfully, knitting has been quite the hip hobby these past few years and those knitters love to share their knitting accomplishments on the internet. They are such aficionados that they even get tattoos of needles and yarn! As I googled searched I was inspired over and over again, through every page result. I think I found a tattoo similar to the one I desire on this random girl’s arm:
It’s more of a ball of twine than yarn and it lacks color. It’s simple but intricate and I can envision it on my body. I now ask you, dear friends, of your input. I want you to listen to this song that I conveniently uploaded for you. Even if you know the song, I want you to listen to it again and again and inform me of what you think. Tell me what images are conjured up in your mind while you listen. Do you see a devil with the other end of yarn? What color is that yarn? Where does it start unraveling? Where can you see it on my body? My arm? Left shoulder?
Now watch the YouTube clip above of Bjork performing it “acoustic” without all the electronic noises filling out the beautiful sonic landscape. Does it make you feel any different? Does it inspire you? Does it break your heart? Please. Please. I beg of you to help me out in this quest for a beautiful tattoo. You will forever be remembered each time I look at it.
Post.Script.
Do you recommend a specific type of ink? Do you have a tattoo artist you can recommend?
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Since I couldn’t find my copy of Matthew Good Band’s Beautiful Midnight, I had to download it illegally. It was necessary. I have been craving Matthew Good’s voice for a few weeks now. His voice is both sad and aggressive. It fits certain moods. And we all know, God, angels, and queers that my mood is shifty lately. One moment, while riding a caffeine high, everything feels aligned. The stars, the painted lines on the lanes of a highway, the bloody lines on a cutter’s arm. Even the telephone lines seem connected throughout each neighborhood I walk through. I remember this one time, when I was about nine years old, lightning hit a telephone pole on the corner of my block and I watched the live wire, dance in white and orange electric sparks on the wet pavement. My mother wouldn’t let us outside the house. The lights went out, so she opened the drawer in the living room with the unused candles from Christmas, that were reserved for emergencies like this. My sister and I loved chaos; nothing was better than feeling our way around the house in the dark. I remember one summer night, someone had to hold a flashlight over me while I showered in the dark. But the electric wire dance and zapped, like some modern skinny dragon. Neighbors stood out on their front porches, watching in amazement. My sister and I finally convinced my mother to let us out to get a little closer to the dancing wire breathing sparks. “Don’t go out barefoot! Put sneakers on, the rubber will prevent you from getting electrocuted!” she exclaimed as we opened the front door. Where was my father? He never seemed to be around during emergencies. We walked over to Phyllis’s house and stood on her front lawn to get a better look. Her house was the only house on the block that actually had power. Maybe it was because she was Jewish. We felt safe there. On her manufactured green lawn. The police finally came and told everyone to go back in their houses. I think my sister and I were the only one’s who listened. Back in the house the red taper candles were dripping red wax and we fingered it until my mother realized what we were doing. Where am I going with this? I’m not sure. A meaningless tangent. Perhaps it relates to the disconnection felt when the lights go out throughout the whole neighborhood. When the entire block is drowning in a viscous blackness. Dark. Dark to any coherent thought. Dark and isolating. A temporary escape from the television, telephone, and computer. Did I even have a computer back then? I don’t think so. Another reason this memory hitched a ride on this thought is because the thunder outside my window is rumbling. And the lightning is lighting up the entire sky. The surge protector went off in my bedroom and killed the internet connection. A sudden disconnect from the rest of the world. The reason I started writing was because things felt somewhat “aligned,” somewhat “connected.” I was ready to write this epic narrative about adventures past and adventures I plan to have. But here I am, inundated with feelings without faces. Feelings without names and meaning. Just another late night turned early morning spent alone, in my bedroom. The inspired feeling I had while driving on the Long Island Expressway is long gone. The blue veins running underneath my skin don’t feel connected at all. But lately there has been a kind of dialogue between my mind and body. A relationship is building. I have been going to the gym and my body is reacting to each thrust, pull, and stretch. Muscles in my arms, I didn’t know I had are responding when I grab a glass from my kitchen cupboard. And it’s not pain; it is a kind of awareness. Perhaps my mind is really linked to my body. Isn’t that philosophy 101? The mind/body problem? Well, I’m no philosopher, so I will keep out of the debate. The hour after I work out, there is this endorphin rush. This inspirational energy that aids my thoughts to pursue questions and answers. I usually can only conjure up the question, standing amongst a thousand question marks wondering why why why.
But once that hour is over, fatigue sets in, and I wonder how long these cardio runs on the elliptical and treadmill are going to last. I wonder how long I can stare out the window of the gym, glancing every so often to CNBC on the television, or the person next to me, sweating like a pig. I wonder how long I can run at the same speed, feeling like a mouse running in a wheel, watching my heart rate fluctuate between 154 and 170. It’s depressing, realizing how animalistic we really are. The senior citizens with their snowbird tanned floppy skin chatting away with each other, in the way of the weight machines. The women with their large asses, I see every day, but still have the same huge ass. I think about how insignificant it really is desiring the body I would like to have and is it even healthy for someone to push their heart and body so hard? But I listen to Lady Gaga’s The Fame and Phoenix as motivation; their records distract me from feeling like an animal, a mouse in a wheel.
[Transition from Matthew Good Band to This Mortal Coil]
It took me too long to get to Brooklyn Heights but I went to the Brooklyn Film Fest last night to see a film called Borderline. Michael Seth invited me along. It was French Canadian. It was probably the worst movie I have ever seen. No, really, it was. Only because it was completely heartbreakingly realistic. Only because Kiki, the protagonist reminds me too much of myself. It doesn’t help that she comes with her own disclaimer, something I should probably adopt. I’m a private menace, she tells the baker who is trying to win her heart wholeheartedly but she won’t love him back because she doesn’t know how to love. She has spent her entire life distancing herself from her emotions. Unable to cry, unable to feel, only able to feel in glimpses, in glances, in slight moments. And those moments are the darkest ones, the ones where she finds herself being fucked from behind by her “lit professor” who she jokingly refers to as her “lit therapist.” She also feels when she is being penetrated by the guy with the guitar, or when she shatters a mirror and cuts herself with a jagged piece. She feels human when there is pain; when Antoine walks out on her at a party because she is taking swigs from a vodka bottle and dancing topless with other fêtards. In the stairwell they argue and she pulls him closer but he pulls away. She cries and watches him walk out the door. She walks back up the stairs to the party and continues her reckless trajectory. She sleeps with her best friend’s lesbian lover, she uses the word cock as a young girl, explaining how she wants her foster dad to choke her with it, trying to get a rise to her best friend. But it all makes sense in context. Her mother was negligent, dealing with her own personal menace, her mind in a medicated mélange of antidepressants, painkillers, and mood stabilizers. In one scene, when Kiki is a just a child, her mother is a mess, telling her how much she loves her, articulating it in a slurring intoxicated way. Her mother ends up falling into the Christmas tree standing beside the couch they are sitting on. She wrestles with the tree in hysteria. Frenzied and manic, she is laughing as little Kiki just sits there on the couch stone cold. When Kiki is in grade school, she draws a creepy picture of her mother. Large blue eyes with tears streaming down her face. The picture still haunts me now, hours later. The most heartbreaking scene is when Kiki’s mother stops by her classroom while Kiki is in class. It’s Kiki’s birthday and she baked her a pale blue cake. Her mother looks disheveled, still in her night garments holding the blue cake for her, singing Happy Birthday. The other students in the class are silent. As her mother is singing she sees the portrait of her that Kiki drew and she drops the cake in shock and grief. The tears that I have been repressing the entire movie begin to fall down my face. I know this scene. I know this mother. I know this little girl. My mother collapses on the kitchen floor in purple dresses; she was the “class mother” every year, embarrassing me with her slurring and emotional outbursts. I am fucking Kiki. The protagonist with “cancer of the personality.” I am the girl suffering from borderline personality disorder. The trailer for Lyne Charlebois’s Borderline exists here. Don’t be fooled by the generic editing or music. This movie is devastating. The opening scene is beautiful. It is so still it looks like a painting. As the camera pulls closer to the two naked bodies on the mattress, you realize these two people are not so still and their exposed bodies will make more sense when you finish the film. There is even a penis in the opening scene, and it isn’t there for comedic purposes (like that Jason Segel movie). Kiki is in a master’s program, writing a novel she can’t seem to write. But when she starts writing it’s beautiful. Poetic.
When Michael Seth and I walked out of the theater he asked me if I liked the movie. “No, it was worst movie I have ever seen!” was all I could say. I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to talk about how heartbreaking it was. I didn’t want to talk about how much I related to the film. Revealing that I knew every feeling and every emotion that Kiki felt, was somehow admitting I have borderline personality disorder. I may suffer from some of the symptoms but I am not so sure I do. Michael Seth and I have argued about this last year through email. He linked me to psychoanalytical articles about the disorder and I considered their thoughts and how it related to me. But I was also able to refute his claims of me being borderline. I guess my next psychologist will have a lot on his or her plate when I actually find one in my health plan’s directory. We walked to Grimaldi’s for some pizza. Supposedly, it is an infamous pizzeria just under the Brooklyn Bridge. We lined up outside and listened while (seemingly) the owner with white hair went down the line asking how many was in each party. A party of seven without any brains gave the man a hard time. “I am going to ask you one more time, how many people?” he asked in a very Italian mafia-like way. Michael and I knew to simply say two. We were seated first, on top of other pizza eating folk. We stole their menus they stole our red pepper. I confessed to loving the film and we discussed how much of it is my life. I said I would never see it again. The pizza was stupendous. I ate three slices of the flat coal-oven pie. There was even a point where I started eating a slice and the next moment it was gone. I had no memory of ever eating it. It was surreal. I blame it on how good it was. We talked about me looking like a sunburn creep in LA and Michael looking like a stud when we stayed at the Viceroy in Santa Monica a few years ago. I put Just Buried on my Netflix queue, we listened to strange acoustic/electronic versions of pop songs, like Ednaswap’s “Torn” in the pizzeria, wondering why such songs were playing in such a place. I agreed to take a trip to Philadelphia to see The Veronicas and eat sandwiches “bigger than my head.” I think one of the waiters is a tranny but Michael said, “that doesn’t happen here.” He is probably right. We walk back to my car and we listen to the RAC remix of Kings of Leon’s “Use Somebody” on the stereo. I’ve been obsessed with it. I drive Michael Seth back to his apartment in Park Slope. I ask if I can use the bathroom but I already know the answer. Spike is inside and he doesn’t want to torture his bichon frise. Spike and I used to best friends. He loved me more than anyone else. Michael doesn’t want Spike to go through another depression without me. I understand.
Good bye Michael Seth. Since I’m vampire, 9pm is too early for me to head home so I decide to drive over the Manhattan Bridge into the Lower East Side to see The Girlfriend Experience at the Sunshine. Find a fantastic parking spot and purchase my ticket at the concession stand and find a seat in the theater. The lights are already off and the opening credits of the movie are playing. What happened to the trailers? I feel gypped. The movie is amazing. I really didn’t expect it to be. I really enjoyed how invested Chelsea (Sasha Grey) was in her clients. Her documentation afterwards to keep names and professions right was intriguing. After watching this movie I realized being an escort is not just about sex, it is about companionship and these rich men needed someone to listen, someone to share their troubles with. But what happens when the “stars align” and you fall for a client even though you are in a committed relationship? There is only so much façade and false appearances before the “real” Chelsea steps through the door and sleeps beside you in bed. The movie ends and I’m left feeling empty. Emotionally spent from two devastating movies. I realize I spend too much time sitting alone in dark movie theaters. I unintentionally follow two girls out of the theater. They smell good. One lights up a cigarette when we get outside and I rush past them down Houston. Home is where I go…
I found a website that is hosting/streaming the pilot episode of the never aired Gregg Araki television show This Is How the World Ends that he did for MTV. I always thought it was a myth but IMDB always said otherwise. I watched the first two minutes and I thought it was an outtake from Nowhere. I was too scared to watch any further because I hyped it up so much in my mind. Thunderstorms and lightning. That is all New York has to offer lately. At least a new season of Weeds started and True Blood starts Sunday and Nurse Jackie looks promising. I finished watching Make Me a Supermodel and the second season of Damages. Still watching The Real Housewives of New Jersey. I caught my father singing along to Passion Pit’s “Seaweed Song.” Gabrielle and I stayed up until 5 in the morning compiling the ultimate playlist from 2002 which includes and not limited to bands like Last Days of April, Hot Rod Circuit, Sunny Day Real Estate, Mineral, The Gloria Record, Brandtson, Elliott, Dashboard Confessional, Red House Painters, Inside, Blood Red, and The Anniversary. I went to the Massapequa Diner with Christopher (the bear) and we had amazing conversation as always over pizza bagels. We barely even talked about Lost (phew!). Saturday morning bagpipes, flea markets, pina coloda Italian ices, thai food, seeing Drag Me to Hell twice, horrible dining experiences at PF Changs. But had so much fun taking this awesome photograph in a Japanese photo booth in the mall:
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It’s eight in the morning and I just got home from work. These graveyard shifts will involve my own tombstone planted into the ground of federal government property soon enough. Theses shifts don’t serve their purpose anymore. They provided me a way to go to school during the day and now that I am officially a college graduate they are meaningless. I have been excessively thinking about purpose in general. Even in my last journal entry I was obsessive over purpose, context, and meaning. Of course that entry was a flood of existential neuroses drowning in an ocean of misused language and grammar. The “what am I going to do with my life?” post-graduate distress. Those “big” questions everyone seems to ask themselves. Why am I here? What is my purpose? What is the meaning of life? Oh, it is all so formulaic to just go through the motions of being human. But it is the awareness of each word you choose, each handshake, and every breath you exhale that makes it seem impossible to keep up the facade. The self-awareness is crippling. I can’t just choose an identity. There they all are, gift-wrapped, shrink-wrapped, advertised in your parent’s hope of a future, in the pages of Details magazine, in the muddled memories of the future you dreamed of in your youth, online in the margins of your Internet browser, and institutionalized by textbook, television program, and the supermarket. Through your consumption you are defined, adopting an identity without even realizing it. Living and breathing identities personified by friend’s on the opposite coast living a successful life, making money, living rich, or your sister offers the contrary, making the wrong choices and living with the consequential dread, anxiety, and dirty diapers. When indecision is your most devastating deficiency, what are you supposed to do? I remain stagnant, still, petrifying in an inconsequential depression. Leaving nothing but a fossilization of existence in a world that would never remember me. A scar on a wrist mistaken for a cat’s scratch. I am nothing. I feel like the opening of that Irvine Welsh novel or was it the movie? I think it was the Danny Boyle movie because I remember the poster Christina had on her bedroom wall...
"Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a big fucking television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disk players and electrical tin openers... choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on the couch, watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life. But why would I want to do a thing like that?"
Seriously, why must I choose? Why is the question always, “What’s next?” when I tell someone I graduated from Stony Brook University. Why is the first question a stranger asks you is, “What do you do?” as if your job has everything to do with who you are. I have prolonged my Bachelor’s degree to avoid a conclusion, to avoid an end, so a new chapter couldn’t start. I liked the reading primer. Simple sentence structures. Bright suns, dark nights. Periods, commas, fragments and complete sentences. No more of these metaphors stretching to make sense of something I could care less to deconstruct. I’m not ready to continue the narrative any further. I’m not ready to graduate to semicolons and epic poems. I hate your face and the generalized resentment in your voice as if the world has wronged you. As if someone forced you to be the assistant to a CEO of some company you deplore. I hate your gaze on the subway platform, the TV shows on your 98% full DVR, and the way you lick your finger before turning the page of the New Yorker. I have so many keys on my keychain. I’m not sure which lock they supposedly open. I know at least one key is useless. It used to unlock the front door of 3 Michael Lane. But I have a feeling that lock has been changed. Perhaps the door was even replaced. It is a souvenir to a life already lived. A life I wouldn’t mind struggling through again. The bruises, telephone jacks, and dark basements and Celebrity Big Brother marathons. I really need to stop retreating back there. I talked to Jared on the phone this morning. And when I write morning I mean about 3am. I pushed pause on Passion Pit playing on my iPhone. He needed a place to vent and I am an excellent ventilation system. I’m partial to roommate complaints and missed connections. Jared offered the former. On lunch break I watched two episodes of Damages. I just started watching the second season and it is working up to be really intense. Though, its plot twists are a bit more predictable than last season’s display of perfection in storytelling, I can’t really complain. Glenn Close is genius. And I think New York magazine is right; Rose Byrne needs a slap in the face to wake up. She seems so monotone this season. But William Hurt, Marcia Gay Harden, and Timothy Olyphant make up for it. I really cannot stop listening to Passion Pit and the new Carina Round EP. I just downloaded the new Field album along with the new Grizzly Bear (I refused to listen to the leaked poor quality version, out of respect to my friend (and old LJ user) Ed). If you haven’t already watched the pilot episode for Ryan Murphy’s new television show Glee, it is on Hulu or you can you download it for free on iTunes. No excuses. Jayma Mays who played Charlie on Heroes, Jane Lynch and future episodes with Kristin Chenoweth? Yes, please. I passed on all good intentions this morning. Instead of going to the gym, I am here writing writing writing. I simply could head to the gym now but all I am looking forward to is eating a bowl of cereal and falling asleep watching Bravo...
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Work. Sleep. Eat. TV. Work. Sleep. Eat. TV. Repeat if necessary. But I am realizing it is always necessary. This repetitious cycle is vital for me to keep afloat in my daily life. I drown myself in FICTION to keep REALITY at a distance. I rush home from work to watch fictional people on In Treatment talk about their fictional neuroses on a couch across from Gabriel Bryne who plays a fictional psychologist. He lives in a brownstone now in Brooklyn taking train rides to D.C. to visit his children on the weekends. Alison Pill breaks my heart during every session. Sometimes I feel guilty listening on to her appointments, as if I’m eavesdropping. I drink too much coffee, watch too much TV, always seeking something to inspire, invigorate, motivate. I started reading Them by Joyce Carol Oates. Her prose is beautiful but stagnant. Sometimes I want to strangle the descriptions of location but most of the time she genuinely understands the people she is writing about. I find it difficult to be completely empathetic for them but I blame circumstance and poverty for all they lack in character. I have been watching reruns of The L Word for the last two hours on Logo. Feist’s version of “Lover’s Spit” was just playing while Jennifer Beals was making out with a girl that wasn’t her partner. I am currently apartment/dog-sitting and Penelope is next to me on the couch in what seems like a coma. But each time I turn my head and look at her, her eyes begin to open. Earlier this evening I kept catching her staring at me (lovingly or creepily I’m still not sure yet). I called into work despite being sick because I was going to be at least fifteen minutes late. Who does that? I have been the worst employee this past month. I blame the end of the semester. I think I might have to write a resignation letter before the postal service terminates me. How awful would it look if the federal government fired me? There goes any professional career I might have wanted. But that’s the point; such a goal never existed for me. When I was younger, I could never answer the cliché. What do you want to be when you grow up? The last time I answered that I think I said “truck driver” and I was about six years old. I found it written in an old journal I used to have. It was white and hard-covered, with green and blue marker scribbled all over it. Perhaps I should follow that dream? Driving around cross-country doesn’t seem so bad. Supposedly it pays well and I can visit random cities and towns throughout the United States. I could collect snow globes for Gabrielle and listen to NPR. It would be both an ironic but genuine pursuit. I have a thirst for new places, empty landscapes, accents, and coffee poured into ceramic mugs at diners along freeways, expressways, highways and turnpikes. If I wanted, I could drink the same coffee in at least forty-eight different states. How creepy does that sound? Starbucks offers consistency, comfort, and scripted experiences. Someone in Idaho is sipping the same blend of coffee, from the same paper cup with the same eco-friendly message, while listening to the same Miles Davis or Lisa Hannigan song depending on which station the Corporation has tuned to, as me in New York. Doesn’t something seem horribly wrong with that? All I need is my CDL license and I’ll be paid to travel. There is no family to support, no mortgage to pay, nothing to really miss. Let’s do this. I never really felt I had a purpose. There is nothing in this world that I really wanted. Everything is just a distraction from the fundamentals. Purchases made to escape the mundane. iPhone distracts the monotonous motions at work, the slight lower back pain, the carpal tunnel beginning in your hands as you type up invoices with every keystroke. Lease a brand new Toyota Prius with monthly payments deducted from your checking account. Gap sweaters, gym memberships, flat-screen TV; vitiligo, suicide, cataracts. We evade death with every orgasm, with every thrill at an amusement park. But this wasn’t my objective, to be a Negative Nancy. But who at my age can say they worked at the postal service for the last nine years? It’s creepy and uncalled for. Following a path my father paved for me. Something safe and working class. Working the graveyard shift is fine. Sorting letters, and being part of the process of so much communication is overwhelming when you actually think about it. I could make a decent life working for the post office, stealing a few minutes more on my lunch break at 5am, or reading Ellis, Proust, or Capote on the floor of the factory while being paid. If I stopped striving, dreaming, or reaching for something more perhaps things wouldn’t seem so unfulfilling. Without school, without literature classes provoking thought and questioning, I feel no purpose. I took my last final exam almost one week ago, which means it has only been six days, SIX DAYS and I am already feeling worthless, stagnant and unfulfilled. After nine years I finally completed my Bachelor’s degree in English. Along the way I did acquire an Associate’s degree in Liberal Arts but I expected something more the day my educational journey ended. Perhaps in the back of my mind, I know that within in a year I’ll be enrolled in a Master’s program. Perhaps this is only a temporary hiatus from textbook, lectures, and college campuses. But for the last six days, I have done nothing but watch television. What scares me even more is that I have no desire to do anything but watch television. I wrote the longest email ever to Michael Seth the other morning. I didn’t realize how crazy the email was until he called me concerned about my mental health. The email was an incoherent and frantic exposition on television. Thoughts on Gossip Girl, In Treatment, Damages, Glee, nip/tuck, 30 Rock, et al. Michael Seth’s best friend Stephanie got married this weekend. I was linked to a video of her dancing with her husband Corey at the reception and they looked perfect together and not in that clichéd kind of way. They were going through the motions of a dance, self-consciousness enough to realize the ridiculousness of their public displays of love. Michael Seth called and left me a voicemail saying that there was an empty seat next to him at the wedding and he felt I was supposed to be there. It made me really sad. The days of Michael and Bruce and Stephanie and Corey are no longer. Trips upstate, staying in old cabins/houses with Jesus on the wall of the bedroom we slept in. Admiring how M and S can play Guess Who? referring to real people in their lives.
When you loved as hard as I did with Michael Seth, it feels impossible to ever feel that again. I spend $60 on a haircut I could have got at Supercuts for $12. But Jeffrey was a nice fag even though he made fun of my “recession.” We both agreed Lady Gaga was ugly but I was trying to convince him that it was charming and brilliant and not boring and sad. We talked about Nicholas who suggested I make an appointment with him. A woman came into the salon asking about wigs. She was a regular and was a Chatty Cathy. She just got her eyelids and eyebrows tattooed. She will never have to put eyeliner on ever again. She took off her existing wig for a “Dorothy” and I wondered where the names of wigs came from. Her had was shaved bald. I really liked it. Barbara the receptionist seems like Jeffrey’s aging faghag. She was knitting and not very helpful. I used the toilet and I was scared it wouldn’t flush my urine away properly.
I took that photograph in the bathroom at Souen. It was after I ate curried vegetables and eavesdropped on the French girl’s conversation behind me. I’ve been listening to Ani DiFranco’s “Not a Pretty Girl” on repeat for the last hour. Time to switch to Lady Gaga’s “LoveGame.” If you have not seen the video for the song please, do yourself a favor and watch it. It is an old school Janet Jackson video meets Marilyn Manson.
I am on my second cup of coffee. I fell asleep while watching This Girl’s Life. That was after I watched Final Destination with Devon Sawa and Ali Larter. I cannot believe that movie was made nine years ago! I remember seeing it in the theater. The Commack movie theater. There was a thunderstorm while driving home and I thought I was going to be struck by lightning. Death as a design, predetermined plan is something I used to obsess about; it was something that would lead to panic attacks if I started to think that mathematics could solve all the mysteries of life, death and all the stages of decay between. I also forgot that Final Destination took place on Long Island. And surprisingly the movie held up, despite the overdramatic score and how it looked to be early 90s even though it came out in 2000. Liran forgot we had pseudo plans on Thursday and I shopped at Urban Outfitters only to find out the shirt I wanted wasn’t as cheap as I thought it was and didn’t buy it. While downstairs, I almost walked into what I thought was Michael Pitt but realized a few minutes later was Thomas Sadoski. I just saw him in Neil LaBute’s reasons to be pretty and Gina Gionfriddo’s (dare I say superior?) Becky Shaw. I wanted to tell him how amazing he is but I refrained from being a pre-teen Backstreet Boys fan. I went to the Virgin Megastore in Union Square and even though it’s going out of business nothing is cheap. 30% off their prices is still more than prices anywhere else. Union Square was swamped with bodies. It was eighty-something degrees. I was wearing jean cut-off shorts and a pair of converse. I took a seat on a railing and listened to a girl with pink hair scream at a photographer for taking her picture. A group of boys invaded my personal space, I dropped my lip balm on the ground and decided to walk to Think Coffee. The barista was unfriendly as expected and the place was eerily empty since the NYU kids all went home. Met Liran there and we chatted for about an hour. He forgot to tell me about his new diet. He interviewed at Ben Sherman and promised me a discount if he gets the job. Coincidentally, I was wearing one of their shirts. He was heading to the IFC Center to see the new documentary Objectified with a girl, I was heading to the Sunshine to see Adoration alone. The paper I helped edit for him, he got an A on. He wrote about vacuums. I swear it was more interesting than it sounds. I walked with him to Sixth Avenue and I continued on my way to the Sunshine. I stopped by Aroma for a delicious treat. I ended up getting a croissant, pronouncing it in proper French because I can do that now. I couldn’t help making noise while eating my delicious treat. Fortunately I decided to indulge in its decadence during the movie trailers instead of disturbing the movie itself. Crumbs were everywhere. The movie was spectacular. So spectacular I can’t even find words to describe it. I took the subway back to Brooklyn. I hate the JMZ. I got off at Lorimer. I called Pfluger. He was with Christopher. I met them outside the health food store with Trina. Christopher offered me a delicious vegan cookie. They were sharing soymilk. We talked about brotherly love, fisting, and the “idea” versus the actual “act” of anal sex. C likes the color orange. Pfluger doesn’t want to look like Halloween personified. Ergo, semi-colons, and dog parks near McCarren Park. I have a weak throw; I’m fatigued but delirious at this point. It is nearing 1 in the morning.
Pfluger and I still not have booked our flights for our West Coast Extravaganza next month. I am still waiting for checks from the government to come in the mail. On Thursday morning G, A, and I went to the beach. I rubbed sunscreen all over me. There were a lot of people crowding Field 5. There was even people in the water. They told me stories from high school about classmates who carried around briefcases. A group of boys set up camp behind us. I couldn’t help but notice one guy was wearing board shorts that were a little too big for him. Each time the wind blew in my favor, I caught a glimpse of his penis. It was delightful and so wrong on many levels.
My graduation party is in one week. If you are reading this, you’re invited. You should comment if you want details.
I don’t want the attention that a party will inspire. Family and friends mingling together? Oh, so awkward. I already want to cancel it. Every Memorial Day weekend we used to go camping upstate on my Uncle’s property. Waterfalls, bathing in freezing water, campfires, marshamallows, Lisa Loeb and Fleetwood Mac sing-a-longs. Rolling down grassy mountainsides, Steward’s ice cream, catching crayfish, frogs, and swimming with dogs. Riding bikes through campgrounds that don’t like us to caves and waterfalls, rock slides and bee hives. Now Memorial Day weekends are spent sorting letters, empty houses, and spending hours at a Starbucks reminiscing about a past you wish you could have again. The carnival in the mall parking lot is up and running. The carnival I always associate with losing my virginity. Cutting school early in the morning and walking back to my house climbing on all the immobile rides. There is something so eerie about carnival rides that are not lit up or moving. Bush’s “Cold Contagious” playing on the TV while we are making out on my bed...the other morning I watched the roller skating rink by my house get demolished by large machines. The roller rink that hosted elementary school roller skating parties! So many memories are attached to that place that no longer exists. I think I might spend too much time in the past.
A brief hiatus where I dance the dance with the dragons of suburbia. All this free time I can actually catch up on what makes me miserable, desirable, and just a plain plain yogurt cup sprinkled with commodities sugarcoated with moth-like wings. Last night I danced to songs I didn’t really like but occasionally they played something good like The Presets. Or The Faint, Celebrate The Nun, Santi(o)gold. I fell in love with a tall boy in a Joy Division tee shirt, got harassed by a drunken goth girl who wore booty shorts and Uggs. and reminisced with T about carnival adventures while she was sitting on her current boyfriend’s lap. Oooops. A band started to perform just when I started getting my rhythm. Jon said the singer looked like Isaac Mizrahi and/or Corey Hart. It was true. So, I finally downloaded the new Passion Pit record and it is fantastical. It might be the jam of the summer. Caralee left Xiu Xiu just when she started to sing on the records. But Jamie Stewart is in a new band called Former Ghosts which sounds promising, after I took a listen over on their Myspace page. If you needed a reason to like Xiu Xiu this article might help. I had more meaningful aspirations for this post but this is all I have. I would like to dedicate this entry to my favorite French-Canadian.
/end
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On the way for coffee, I had the radio playing. Since I’m usually too lazy to plug in my iPod or iPhone or slip in an old-fashioned compact disc, I willingly suffer through the glossy melodies and affected voices. I find it so eerie how many songs sound the same. All the production on these pop songs have this weird camouflaging effect on the sound. Camouflage is not the right word, but my brain isn’t working this evening so camouflage it is. There is no substance within these songs. The lyrics are so inane and empty. The ambience in my car could shatter with one organic strum of a guitar chord. Everything is indistinguishable. I can’t tell the difference between Kelly Clarkson and Miley Cyrus. The only reason I can identify them is because their names appear on the blue florescent screen in my car. What is that screen even called? Is that a modern radio dial? I’m not sure. But what amazes me is that these songs keep me tuned in. As bad as they are, I’m still sitting there, looking through my windshield at the world, listening to these fatuous songs. I could easily take my iPod out of my bag but I don’t; something stops me and I can't place all the blame on laziness. Do I find comfort listening to Taylor Swift? When I think about it, I mean really think about it, I think I do. The simplicity, the Shakespearean allusions, the easiness and impetuousness of it all soothes something within me. I think I am still trying to figure out how these songs actually accomplish this false sense of consolation. Until then, I know I’ll be humming along with Beyoncé’s “Halo” and Kid Cudi’s “Day ‘n’ Nite.”
I think the one exception on the radio is Lady Gaga, who has managed to intoxicate me with her evocative style, luscious voice, and addictive melodies. She might be an exception because she delivers on so many different levels. Her candid YouTube videos while on tour, hanging out on Parisian balconies are so captivating. Each behind-the-scenes video begins with the following introduction: “Lady Gaga has been sent to Earth to infiltrate human culture one sequin at a time.” This couldn’t be more accurate. Here she is, on commercial radio stealing all the airtime with “Just Dance” and “Poker Face.” Supposedly she is the first new artist ever to have two consecutive #1 singles in the states. Plus, she still has an album worth of songs that are ready for pop consumption. But in these videos she speaks in a very quiet, raspy, ostentatious voice about traveling from one country to the next and feeling a little disoriented. Her accent is unidentifiable; it almost sounds British but she grew up in New York City. This is where I first realized how “ugly” Lady Gaga was. Behind the sequined masks, large sunglasses, and angled hats, which obstructs our view of her face, Gaga looks like the girl across from us on the train. She is not Hollywood beautiful. There is a running joke within my circle of friends that she is transgendered. But her “ugliness” is what makes Gaga so endearing, she isn’t classically beautiful, she reminds me of my sister. If my sister were put in a similar musical context, she would have the same attractive qualities that Gaga does. Lady Gaga is the post-post-modern Madonna. Like Madonna and the phenomenon that she was (is?), I can see Gaga being written about in academic articles. In English classes, I have read many articles referencing Madonna as a source for ultimate commoditization. Of course they were postmodern literature classes that were concerned with image, signs, signifiers, and simulacra, but Madonna and Andy Warhol were repeatedly used to further their argument. I can see Lady Gaga canonized along with them. What’s left for a generation left with the residual effects of the generation’s before them? The 20s, 50s, 60s have all been alluded to and appropriated. What happens when Madonna becomes the image you must contextualize and digress from? The fragmentation and the comodifiability becomes even more fragmented and commodified that the image almost turns in on itself. What’s left is an extreme sense of self-awareness that any move forward in cultural production almost seems artificial, planned, premeditated, and synthetic. So here is Lady Gaga to save the pop world from its moronic manufactured deluge of lip-synching and Auto-Tune. Here is a genuine artist who has infiltrated the commercial pop world who writes her own songs. She borrows the commercial pop tropes to become successful, to get her songs out there, but underneath the constructed image and inspiring sequins and bleached-blonde hair, Lady Gaga is a genuine artist making music she believes is authentic and veracious. She is offended when the media reports that she lip-synched a show because she is about authenticity and making “art you’d die for.” She writes an album titled The Fame, which is basically a pop dissertation on celebrity and stardom. What makes Gaga so brilliant is that she infiltrated the entire system before embarking on her own musical career as Lady Gaga. She has composed songs for other successful pop artists like Britney Spears and the Pussycat Dolls, permeating commercial pop radio before she was even an artist herself. It is almost as if she cultivated the tastes of the consumer, refining their desire, training their ears to a distinct pop sensibility, a Gaga-infused delicacy. Once she stepped into the world as Lady Gaga, we were already salivating for her infectious melodies.
And I will be the first to admit that for the longest time, I was fighting the infectious Gaga melodies on the radio. It even caused me to miss her two sold-out shows at Terminal 5 in New York City because I refused to accept that I adored her. I fought like she was an imminent cold but all the fighting turned into a fever. A fever dream, if you will. Once, I embraced all those antigens I finally understood how she has plagued our pop consciousness. I'm not sure if you are a fan of the original "Vida La Vida" by Coldplay but GaGa's cover of it, is simply endearing. Who knew she was such a musician? Look at those fingers dance over those piano keys. From this moment on, I will forever have Lady Gaga antibodies swimming and singing in my blood and I am totally okay with that.
Listen as she adds the lyric, "Be my Chris and I'll be your Gwyneth" and how she lingers on the lyric about ruling the world. Soon, she will do just that, rule the world. Just wait...
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Bruce cannot stand writing in Microsoft Word anymore. He can never seem to find the proper font to convey his thoughts either. It all looks jagged and discombobulated. I think that was the first time I have ever written out the word discombobulated. It’s weird how it is spelled out exactly how it sounds. That seems to never happen. Especially French words, which always seem to hide all kinds of vowels. My fourth (and last!) semester of French is coming to an end and it has influenced the way I think and write. It frightens me. I can no longer spell correctly and when I leave people voicemails, I end up practicing my French, so I only speak in phrases I am comfortable speaking in. Which can be very limiting in conversation. Anyway, I am going to miss my professor. She is from France and her voice quivers when she speaks sometimes. Each morning at 8:30, when our class commences, I notice her hair is always parted in the same way. For someone who is French, she has a lot patience. My previous three professors were not as patient. That may or may not be a lie. We watched Hors de prix last week and I couldn’t believe how stunning Audrey Tautou was. Perhaps I need to watch Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain again or A Very Long Engagement. But didn’t they ugly her up in Amélie? I’ve been chatting on AIM for the past half hour and listening to the new 2-disc Iron & Wine record. I think it is just a bunch of rare songs that were never officially released. If you haven’t already heard “The Trapeze Swinger” I think you really should. I’m not sure who “you” really is, but I tend to use it a lot when I write and I should probably clarify who this “you” is or just never refer to this mysterious person. But this Iron & Wine song is incredible. It is almost ten minutes long and should go on for another fifteen. I tend to fall for songs that are too short and I get depressed each time it ends. But this song is actually aware of how good it is and lingers on and on (in a good way). It is almost impossible not to put it on repeat. If you follow me on Twitter you already know this because I cannot stop myself from tweeting about how good this song is. It’s beautiful, sad, and epic. It is all encompassing. It reminds me of summers spent on pavement. Walking barefoot through my neighborhood pulling sisters in red wagons, collecting lightning bugs, waterbugs, and caterpillars and putting them in shoeboxes or glass jars. It reminds me of Peach trees and hammocks in her backyard. Remember that time when my sister and I were pretending to have sex and your mother opened the side door while we were mid-sigh? How embarrassing. But we talked about death and the pearly white gates. Jeez, we went to vacation bible school at your church every summer. During lunch we used to bite down on grapes and shoot grape juice all over each other. For some reason I remember playing hide and seek in the cathedral, bending down underneath pews. But this Iron & Wine song makes me feel both invincible and vulnerable simultaneously. I don’t know how that is possible but it does. I have a thing for slow melodic songs where the singer curses. Samuel Beam does it so mellifluously, you almost don’t recognize his use of the word fuck. I spent last weekend in the city and all I listened to was this song (and Lady GaGa’s cover of Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida”). On the subway, walking down 23rd street, but before I forget here is the link to the Best Song You Never Heard:
Iron & Wine- The Trapeze Swinger
While eating homemade spinach pie and couscous prepared by Gabrielle we watched Little Children on her new huge television. We caught it midway through but that is a movie where every scene is memorable. You can place yourself immediately within its narrative. I love Jennifer Connelly’s bangs and the little girl staring up at the street lamp, hypnotized by the moths and other insects with wings crowding the light. The night before in G’s apartment I was hula hooping (horribly) on her Wii Fit. She and Frank were laughing at my lack of coordination. Virtual worlds don’t make sense to me. My fitness age was 41. But my BMI was great. And I got enough stars to become a yoga instructor. Perhaps that should be my new career goal. Become a yogi. I could not stop laughing each time Frank threw his arms up in the air to catch virtual hula hoops being thrown at him by virtual wii characters. I laugh but I couldn’t catch any imaginary hula hoops when I tried. He was a pro. Tonight, Gabrielle bought a real hula hoop from the toy store that cost five dollars too much. I showed off my real hula hooping skills and Penelope kept barking at my swaying hips. Supposedly they couldn’t even get the hoop to circle more than once around their waist. I rule. We stumble upon 9 1/2 Weeks and Mickey Rourke is a stud. Kim Basinger not so much. Even when she gets out of the shower she has black eyeliner on. I thought every Adrian Lyne film was good. I guess I assumed wrong. This movie seemed to lack something. Though it looked like fun to pour honey all over someone. Perhaps I was too fatigued to care about Kim Basinger’s character. At work the other night, my boss and I were getting into some heavy conversation about death (or was it more about living? I’m not really sure). I told her that I don’t want to prolong life longer than necessary. I don’t want to be 112 years old, just vegetating on a nursing home bed. Nor do I want to be any kind of pain (either physical or emotional). She agrees with me one hundred percent. I told her that I feel it should be my right to die at any given moment in my life. I didn’t ask to be in this world, I should be able to leave it whenever I so choose. Why suffer? Why suffer through these repetitious cycles we find ourselves in? Why am I always focusing on ways to “better” myself? This constant need to move forward, to move upwards, to be more educated, to read more books, to meet new people. It’s exhausting. I’m graduating in about two weeks and I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. When will I ever know? And why does it stress me out so much? I should just accept a simple life instead of striving and reaching. Wouldn’t I be more content if I just stopped moving and dreaming? My boss completely agrees with me. She told me she once saw an Eastern doctor who stuck needles in her face and he asked her one question and the tears just poured from her eyes. The tears she has repressed for the last six years. She told him about her acceptance of death and that she welcomes it. He told her that people spend years of their lives meditating to reach the point that she is at. To accept death as is. She thought it was abnormal to feel the way she felt. She is going to give me the number of the doctor she went to see. Perhaps he can push me over the edge, push me to feel something. It is not healthy to feel this numb. Especially when everything is falling apart around me. Oh, the inner melodrama needs to end...now. On Thursday I saw Bat For Lashes at Bowery Ballroom. She had creepy dolls and lamps on stage with her. Her drummer was beautiful. Jon told me he was 40 but I don’t believe him. Perhaps I’m ageist. Natasha was beautiful too. I don’t know how her voice sounded so good live. She played an “unusual” version of Daniel which was very slow which was superb but then played the danceable version as an encore. She played “Good Love,” my favorite song off her new record and I felt tears forming in my eyes. My knees became weak and I haven’t felt like that at a show in such a long time. She neglected to play “Sad Eyes” and “Horrorshow” (my two most favorite tracks by her). A girl in an ivory jacket kept giving us the stink eye. I sold a ticket to a girl that responded to one of my tweets about having an extra ticket. She was standing next to the subway stairs. She was carrying Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. We bonded over our love for ginger green tea while walking to Starbucks so we could get change. Jon and I dined at a Spanish restaurant. I could only eat rice and plantains.
The best part of hooking up is the cuddling that happens after.
I would drop all my fantasies for a boy in Indiana.
I’m not sure what’s more environmentally friendly. Paper plates or washing a plate.
I borrowed Twilight from my best friend and I’m not sure I can bring myself to ever watch it.
I secretly liked the 95-degree weather New York had last week.
I like spending early evenings on the roof of a building in Chelsea even if my white undershirt gets dirty.
I don’t like saying good-bye to friends who are moving to Spain for five months.
I like when my favorite French-Canadian helps me study for my French final exam.
I like seeing my favorite French-Canadian musician (Julie Doiron) play in Brooklyn.
I also like when I talk with her for a half hour about her collaboration with Mount Eerie.
I like when she gives me her number so I can call her later in the week.
I like seeing Sci-Fi movies directed by David Bowie’s son at the Tribeca Film Festival.
I like following Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Courtney Love on Twitter.
I don’t like overweight and disinterested members of Saves the Day.
I don’t like Matt Skiba of Alkaline Trio’s obnoxious between song banter.
I do like having a Pfluger and Kyle Brown beside me at above-mentioned show.
I like when friends steal my lines.
I like the Polish brothers. Stay Cool as a bibliography? Only way it’s good.
I like not taking final exams but doesn’t want to write another 10-page paper.
I don’t like group presentations. I don’t know how to speak publicly.
I like seeing Gabrielle two days in a row.
I like visitors when I’m doing schoolwork at coffeehouses.
I like The Eclipse. It scared me.
I don’t like the lack of time I have. I forgot how to turn on my television its been so long.
I don’t like all the attention a graduation party will give me. But please come celebrate!
I like that my sister likes when I ask her rhetorically, “Who are you?!”
I like talking to my sister on the phone while walking down Bedford Avenue.
I like Frankmusik’s cover of Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab.”
I like M. Butterfly.
I like Greenpoint and Kyle’s new apartment.
I don’t like all the senior citizens who are Chatty Cathys.
I don’t like using Yahoo Mail but I refuse to pay for mail forwarding.
I don’t like missing Lady GaGa shows at Terminal 5.
I don’t like aluminum in arm deodorant.
I like a West Coast adventure being planned for June and July.
I don’t like how this ad makes me feel.
I like using Firefox instead of Safari (I finally made the switch!)
I don’t like sunburn on my face or pimples on my nose.
I like spending a full 24 hours with my best friend of all time in Sunset Park and Park Slope.
I like getting Mexican brunch in Park Slope.
I like driving with the windows rolled down.
I don’t like rude yuppie hipster mothers with strollers that cost more than my tuition.
I like when Michael Seth critiques me.
I like brunch (tofu scramble) at Brooklyn Label. (They serve Stumptown coffee!)
I like the new multi-vitamins I started taking.
I don’t like family having open-heart surgery.
I don’t like the fact that I can’t suspend my disbelief about God/religion.
I like Beyonce’s “Halo.”
Can you find me on this page of my high school yearbook?
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I swear to you I could listen to Radiohead’s “Reckoner” and “Videotape” on loop for the rest of my life. That is what I am currently doing, instead of being in class discussing diaspora and transnationalism in queer literature. I’m at Jon’s apartment, sipping a cup of coffee from Tic Toc Cafe. A cafe that is just across the street in St. James. Though St. James has some repulsive qualities, it is actually a town I don’t really mind on Long Island. If I squint my eyes and glance quickly, it almost feels like Brooklyn (without the racial diversity). I mean, even, Jon lives in a one-bedroom apartment, above a store that has a “We Buy Gold” neon sign on it. It looks exceptionally shady and dubious; I must admit it is more of a “safe” shadiness, because its backyard is suburbia personified. But perhaps that is why it seems so creepy and displaced. That is why suburbia is sometimes even more dangerous. The denial, the ignored, and disconnect from the rest of the larger world. Suburbia breeds dejection and lunacy. Did you ever see In The Bedroom or any other suburban indie drama? Suburbia is the ultimate crime on the human condition. Or perhaps I’m wrong. I was listening to NPR the other day, and these two community organizers were discussing how suburban communities are beginning to urbanize, creating a self-sufficient economy and blah blah blah. Anyway, Tic Toc Cafe brews excellent coffee. Though the last few times I have had it, it seemed a bit weak. I inquired once about their coffee and it seems they get their beans from different sources but have them roasted at the same place in Brooklyn. I woke up at 7pm yesterday. Tentative plans I had with two friends never pulled through. There goes another week, I won’t see Chris(Tina). I call my sister and she informs me that she is PMS’ing. I immediately want to hang up the phone but I stick around. Sophia is hysterical on her shoulder. She has a diaper rash. Sadie is tugging at her shirt for something. She puts Sadie to bed but she won’t stop crying but she closes the door anyway. She seeks tranquility in the bathroom where she lights up a cigarette. But there is Sadie opening the door wanting to come in but my sister doesn’t want smoke near her. My sister screams, “Get on the couch! Go! Go!” But Sadie won’t listen. “The mirror. The mirror,” Sadie whimpers. Supposedly there is a mirror in the dark living room and Sadie is spooked by her own reflection. But my sister sees through her masquerade. Sadie is only feigning fright. My sister bursts into tears telling me she can’t do this anymore. Playing housewife is not worth it. “At least other housewives have extra cash to walk through a mall. They can afford little indulgences. I’m here all the time. Stuck. Without Charlie’s help. He doesn’t do anything! I just can’t take it anymore!” She begins to sob and my immediate reaction is to laugh. I don’t know what to say but I know laughing wasn’t what my sister wanted to hear. She is just caught up in a moment. A moment of forfeit where everything seems to be against her. She hangs up on me. I don’t call her back. I feel bad but I know this feeling is temporary. Fifteen minutes later she calls again and apologizes and I apologize for laughing. Everyone around me seems grumpy. I find myself at the Cheescake Factory. I sit at a table with a cup of organic coffee, waiting for Jon’s arrival. I realize how irritated I am. Irritable in general and how much I try to disconnect from my immediate surroundings but when those surroundings take the form of actual people I must interact with, it becomes an unbearable struggle to not let their misery spoil my already irritable mood. Post-dinner we manage to watch two episodes of Breaking Bad. I fall into a food coma. I don’t read the novel I am supposed to be finished with by today. I also don’t write the prospectus due at 11:20am today. I wake up at 8, begin reading my novel, without any critical insight about Sri Lanka and the Sinhalese and Tamils and a queer mode of being. How will I ever write this paper due in just three weeks? I decide not to go to class, because discussion about a novel I didn’t finish reading yet, is the most painful thing to sit through.
I am so fatigued by Microsoft Word. It is uninspiring. I’m using Pages on Jon’s computer right now but I can’t seem to find a font that doesn’t bother me. I had a really awkward dream last night that I would not like to mention ever again. This pair of skinny jeans are a bit too tight. I forgot to mention in my last journal entry about my sister making her communion and how my father had a party at a Chinese buffet and how appropriate that seemed. The entire back of the restaurant was dedicated to Franzelyn swallowing a piece of metaphorical bread. 80% of the guests were Filipino and I seemed strangely out of place. Thankfully, a woman who is dating my father’s friend who claims she is a “city girl at heart” but lives in Long Beach decided to converse with me for what seemed like hours. She told me how her husband died in her arms, while they were dancing. It sounded like the most romantic thing I have ever heard. It has been three years since his death. I talked to my friend Christopher The Bear on the phone for longer than we planned. We started watching Hors de prix in my French class yesterday. Audrey Tautou is stunning. I have to do a presentation in French for my class. I think I am going to talk about Julie Doiron and Woelv. French-Canadian artists. I’m seeing Julie Doiron play on Saturday at Union Hall. I’m frightened of public speaking. I can barely do it in English, I don’t know how I will ever manage it in French. It’s going to be 84 degrees this weekend. I will be in Brooklyn/Manhattan for most of it. Yesterday was the first day of Tribeca Film Festival. Tonight I am going to see The Exploding Girl. I was reading an interview on nymag.com with Zoe Kazan, who stars in the film and it got me super excited for the movie. I loved that the movie was so low-budget that Zoe was changing in Starbuck’s bathrooms.
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The weather is as schizophrenic as I am feeling lately. One day it is 80 degrees and the next morning is barely 40 degrees. Overcast and cold. I still had the window open from the beautiful day before. And I woke up at three in the morning shivering. Though, I should have been at work sorting letters for all of Long Island, I thought the post office was punishing me for calling in “sick” the entire weekend. I have been doing that a lot lately. Calling in. I really don’t want to be fired from a government job, but I cannot assemble enough motivation to last a full eight hours there. Especially when French exams need to be studied for. Not to mention the novels and academic articles that need to be read. Oh, and my social life, has been a frenzied mélange of friends, adventures, and melodrama. Urban hopscotch from borough to borough. Parked cars. Alternate side parking is in effect. Metrocards lost, sneakers go untied. Faux-waspy childhoods are falsely remembered downstairs at the Lyceum Theatre in Times Square. I meet R’s boy he’s been talking about for months. He wears an orange beanie on his head. An orange beanie he is asked to take off in the theatre because the couple behind him supposedly couldn’t see the stage. We’re at the theatre to see Neil LaBute’s reasons to be pretty. It is his last play of his trilogy about how people internalize (or externalize) physical appearances. Like The Shape of Things and Fat Pig before it, the play is brutal. The friction between the masculine and feminine, and how differently a “man” would process their appearance (or any critic on it) than a “woman” would. Of course these are stereotypes, and Neil LaBute plays with these assumptions of gender behavior and gender roles. The opening scene is a couple arguing with each other in their bedroom. The woman, Steph, played by Marin Ireland is on the defensive, questioning what her boyfriend, Greg (played by Thomas Sadoski) had said about her. When he finally confesses to what he said, on the surface, it doesn’t seem so horrible; it doesn’t seem to justify the amount of anger and curses Steph is spewing out of her mouth. A chair gets thrown and in the next scene, Greg says a frying pan, or skillet was heaved at him instead. Is this an error in continuity or is this detail overlooked by Greg’s emotional recollection? Thomas Sadoski reminds me of Michael Pitt (physically) but there is no question that Sadoski can intellectualize and convey much more in a performance. I saw him in the wonderfully written Becky Shaw a few months ago and was enamored by him. In this play, he is no different. Are you curious what Greg said to Steph that made her so angry? Greg said that her face was regular—regular being the keyword. No one wants to be regular, and no one wants to be seen as regular by his or her significant other. I’ve made this mistake once, in my late-teens, telling my best friend I thought she was “average” and telling my ex-girlfriend that she was “two steps above average.” It all happened during the same drunken night, sitting outside on a curb, late one summer night and to this day, it is still brought up in conversation. Honesty, especially the brutal and sincere variety, should be distributed with caution. When someone just wants the truth, sometimes that truth needs to come with a superficial smile or nudge. That truth could cause an eight-year relationship to fracture and fall to pieces. We all cannot be the muse of the poet, or the “apple” of our lover’s eye. They can only exist in the pages of a glossy magazine or Gossip Girl. An ideal we all cannot live up to.
Enough of that. Piper Perabo is the unexpected crème de la crème wrapped in a security guard uniform. Who knew she could play the hard-jawed woman, with the thick leather belt and metal club. Watching her emotions get stifled and frustrated within her sincerity and frigid persona, is just exhausting. Without a proper way to release her emotions, stifling the truth she doesn’t want to hear about her cheating husband, she presses the superfluous and honest Greg to realize it for her. It’s devastating. Midway through the first act I realize Alison Pill is sitting next to me in the theater. She was cast as the “regular” girl when the play was in previews and probably played it better than the monotone Marin Ireland. Don’t get me wrong, Marin Ireland is fantastic, but I could only imagine what Alison Pill brought on the stage a few months earlier. She was extraordinary in the Neil LaBute’s other play, The Distance From Here with Mark Webber, Ana Paquin, and Melissa Leo. (I forgot how good that cast was!). I cannot wait to start watching the second season of In Treatment, the HBO drama that films therapy sessions five days a week with five different people, for Alison Pill to play a suicidal design student. So, in the theater she is seemingly alone, laughing really loud. During intermission she pulls out a novel and begins reading. I try and read the title but I don’t want her to catch me gawking. Part of me wants to tell her how amazing she is, but the other part of me wants to play New York cool and just leave her be. I opted for the latter. Two teenage girls are sitting in the row in front of us and are late coming back for the second half of the play. The women they need to pass through in their row glare at them as they ask them to stand up. The girls wore too much eye shadow and couldn’t keep their eyes on the stage. After the play we find a train. C is amazed by cardboard tubes that are laid out on the sidewalk. His orange beanie is back on his head. My hair is looking more and more like Farrah Fawcett as the day goes by. R and C tell me I should wear a hat after I shower and it will help my hair from flipping outward at the ends. For someone who doesn’t know anything about zodiac signs, he knows an awful lot about my sign. A Scorpio. I’m not sure why Microsoft Word capitalized my zodiac sign but I will leave it like that. Why question a machine? Stories about summer camp while on the F train. C has many stories. I tell R his jeans are really ugly, but I didn’t really mean it. I just meant I could never wear a pair with such a funky wash. We pass our stop. Delancey. We make it to Brooklyn and on our walk back to R’s apartment R makes fun of my serious need of an editor. I already start retelling the evening in my prose out loud. Now, if I could only remember what I was saying.
Earlier that day I went to see Un baiser s’il vous plaît? at the Angelika. I shared the entire theater with an older woman who sat a few rows behind me. It was only 2pm. I don’t know why a French film can never disappoint me. Though the story was very simple and elementary, it was still very good. I think it was intentionally uncomplicated to have a fairytale-esque feel. It was both a cautionary tale of the consequence of just one kiss; the film shows how one kiss can either go horribly wrong or even inspire you in ways you never thought possible even if it causes infidelity. It’s up to the person to take the risk or not. My favorite part of the movie was probably when the protagonist declares his loneliness and his (very human) need for a significant other. He needs a significant other that can take the splinter out of his backside. My other favorite part was the woman’s philosophy on kissing. She could not have sex with someone who was a bad kisser. She would much rather not kiss, so she could actually participate in fucking. After the film I walked through Soho. The weather was beautiful. I found myself on West 4th and dined at Vegetarian’s Paradise 2. I always choose Red Bamboo over VP2 but I finally fought redundancy and tried something new. General Tso’s chicken and some spring rolls. It was delicious. Though a few hours later, I regretted eating so much processed fake meat. I waited on too long of a line at Think Coffee. But the drip organic and fair-trade coffee was well worth the wait. I discovered a vacant seat and started reading a novel by Shyam Selvadurai called Funny Boy. Sri Lanka sounds like an exotic place to live when there isn’t violence all over the place. I wish my grandmother had a pierced nose.
Wednesday I went to see Nada Surf. Picked up Michael Seth from his apartment and we headed over to The Bell House. I heard him chuckling before he even opened the door to my Honda Fit. He was laughing at my tinted windows. A birthday gift from my father. I’m playing a sad cover of a Bruce Springsteen song and change it for some Chairlift. Nothings seems to please Michael Seth. A reoccurring theme in the saga of B and Michael Seth. We meet one of his friends there. I don’t know how to spell his name so I will refer to him as &. & and I squeal over our love for Weeds and Rilo Kiley. Michael Seth says something like, “That isn’t very revelatory. Everyone in Brooklyn likes Weeds.” He still refuses to watch the show even though Mary-Louise Parker is exceptional in it. He refuses to watch it in the same way that he refuses to watch Dexter. A television show I cannot wait to start again. I miss the Morgan family so much. Especially Debra played by Jennifer Carpenter! I miss the weather in Miami and Dexter’s artistic analysis of blood splatter. But back to the show. We stand near the back. We contemplate stealing the stools reserved for Nada Surf. & leaves us to go network. I cannot remember the last show I went to where I was in attendance for all the opening bands. Underground Railroad opened and they were next to fantastical. They reminded me of early 90s grunge, though they aren’t very grunge. Another band followed them that sounded like TV on the Radio and My Brightest Diamond. There were too people many on stage. Nada Surf rocked my socks off. Especially when they played almost every song off of “Let Go.” The gays seemed to congregate in our area. But then they were replaced with an annoying threesome, where a girl with ugly facial expressions kept getting irritated by the people trying to push through the area reserved for walking. Michael Seth and I continued to laugh each time she stared down a culprit. I tried to squeeze closer to her, so others would knock into her more. Yes, I’m spiteful (at times). I started to feel claustrophobic because a large man in a black jacket decided to occupy my personal space by standing next to me. I kept getting chills each time Nada Surf played a new song. A feeling I haven’t felt in a very long time. I miss pure rock and roll without the added production value. There is something so organic about just a guitar plugged into an amp. By the end of their set, my legs were failing me. It didn’t help that I ran three miles on the treadmill earlier that day. Each time we decided to leave, Nada Surf would play a song we couldn’t resist hearing. The acoustic guitar was taken out and I gave up on trying to leave.
I cannot tell if I’m getting sick or if these are just allergies attacking my head. I feel like I’m on airplane. Pressure on every inch of my head. It almost feels like I might get a bloody nose—something I have never had. Perhaps I should go to an allergist and find out if I really am allergic to things. If I were raised Jewish, I know for sure I would have seen an allergist by my ninth birthday. Damn Catholic upbringing, always sweeping symptoms and neuroses under the rug. I have been talking to my sister (the 25 year old, not the two younger ones!) a lot lately. It is good conversation. She accompanies me on my late night drives back home from Brooklyn. Almost every time we speak this eerie thing happens on with our connection where we hear a creepy digital, ghostly voice screeching and trying to talk. Last week it brought tears to my sister’s eyes, because she was sitting up alone, in her dark house, in Albany without anyone to comfort her. I blamed one of my nieces waking up in the middle of the night. Just the other night, I was the one was brought to tears with fright. Both of us had this weird epiphany at the same time. What if? What if it was our mother, her “spirit” or what have you trying to converse with us? Not that we truly believe she’s dead. But it is always an option lurking in our subconscious. She told me to check the backseat of my car, and I feared looking the rearview mirror. It was out of a horror movie. I looked and I looked again. Not convinced, I turned my head to look, just in case it were a vampire. For once in my life, I was glad there were other cars on the LIE with me. I truly love my sister. On the surface, it might not seem that way but we understand each other in ways that no other person we know does. The eccentricities and idiosyncrasies. Our unconventional thought processes and peculiar childhood spooked with egregious bouts of horror, pleasure, and thrills. We can finish each other’s sentences and complete each other where the other one lacks. She’s “street smart” and I’m “book smart” our family used to say. She adopted more masculine gender roles where I chose more feminine ones. We are both Scorpios. Born almost exactly a year apart. It frightens me how similar and dissimilar we are. On the phone this afternoon we talked about our depersonalization. My sister couldn’t label what she felt, but when she explained her feeling of detachment from everything around her (even her own body) I was there to explain to her that I have always felt the same thing.
Have I written about my tattoo I am thinking of getting here in this journal? I have lived my entire life without any ink, while all my friends around me were getting tattoo after tattoo, I remained unmarked and uncommitted. At twenty-six I feel I might be ready. I am thinking of getting a ball of yarn unraveling on my arm. I want the yarn to look more like twine and tattooed without color. Though I am open for suggestions. I am not a knitting aficionado but my favorite Bjork song “Unravel” references a ball of yarn. And that is the reason I want a ball of yarn permanently on my arm. Thoughts?
I cannot begin to describe the depressing, enlightening, and remarkable time I had watching the documentary Grey Gardens. It was four in the morning and there I was pausing it every few minutes gasping at how brilliant and sad both Edith and Little Edie were. It was incomprehensible how they managed to survive in such conditions. All they seemed to eat was pâté and pints of Hershey’s ice cream. They fed raccoons in their attic, let cats urinate all throughout the house, and there Edith was in her bed, cooking corn on the cob, reminiscing through old photographs of a elegant life lived decades ago, and singing along to one of her songs from the record player. The codependency was crippling and destructive. Listening to Little Edie blaming her mother for all her unfulfilled dreams was heartbreaking to watch. I don’t believe her mother was the only one at fault. The philosophical gems that came from Little Edie’s mouth were genius.
“If you can’t get a man to marry you, you might as well be dead.”
“Do you think my costume looked all right for Brooks? I think he was a little amazed. No, no, this is the revolutionary costume! I never wear this in East Hampton.”
“I only cared about three things: the Catholic Church, swimming, and dancing.”
Little Edie: “You can’t have your cake and eat it too, in life”
Big Edie: “Oh, yes, I did. I did, I had my cake, loved it, masticated it, chewed it, and had everything I wanted.”
“It’s very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present. You know what I mean? It’s awfully difficult.”
“He always compliments me on the way I do my corn.” (That is something my mother would say).
“I don’t have any clock. I never know what time it is.”
And probably one of my favorites:
“I can't stand being in this house. In the first place, it makes me terribly nervous. I'm scared to death of doors, locks, people roaming around in the background, under the trees, in the bushes, I'm absolutely terrified.”
How in the world is someone scared of doors and locks?! Can you explain this to me?
After hearing so much about Grey Gardens and HBO’s adaptation of it, I finally caved in to watch it. It always feels like a daunting task to watch a film that is so revered. (Hence me never watching a Wes Anderson film). The Beales are legends, especially in the gay “community.” I have caught a few scenes on YouTube before in the past but I never watched the documentary in full until just the other night. What inspired me to watch it was when I watched the trailer for HBO’s version of Grey Gardens. Drew Barrymore stunningly portrayed Little Edie. It was uncanny how good she was imitating her. Though each time she decided to cry in the movie, it broke every illusion. Drew Barrymore looks and sounds like Drew Barrymore every time she cries. At times I thought Drew Barrymore was in Mad Love. It was amazing to see how Little and Big Edie lived before they hibernated in their decrepit mansion on Long Island.
Saturday night was the Grey Garden viewing party. Met friends I should have met a long time ago. Sat on an uncomfortable couch in front of an amazing flatscreen tv. The graffiti on the door camouflaged the apartment building in Williamsburg and the buzzer situation was another thesis I couldn’t seem to understand. Push. Green button. Push. Again on the second floor. Of course I am the first one there. And I’m fifteen minutes later than I said I would arrive. He couldn’t even finish his bowl of cereal without letting another friend in. That HBO show about a ladies detective agency is on. It’s very bad. Jill Scot has a horrible Jamaican accent. I cannot believe the late Anthony Minghella directed this. I cannot refrain from petting the dog. And he gets too excited and urinates everywhere. Shake of hand, onesies and more potential urinating stories. Note to self; never wear a onesie when drunk. I don’t have interesting commentary during the film but A and J make me chuckle. A pair of yellow briefs and a glass of water I sip from every so often. I wouldn’t have noticed the curtains were put up wrong if B didn’t mention anything. After the film, I leave and meet up with some other friends at Black Betty. G informs me before leaving the apartment that I should get my booty shaking in gear because she thinks it’s booty shaking night there. I am hoping my friends are on the restaurant side of things and not grinding to music. It is a beautiful night and walking up Metropolitan without a sweatshirt feels good. Thankfully my friends are sitting down for a meal. Huge bowls of mussels and other Mediterranean food. I choose the falafel platter and it is really f’n delicious. I get a hug from everyone at the table except for K. He promises to give me one when he doesn’t have to reach over a table. I forgot his promise when he leaped for one on the sidewalk outside the restaurant. It made me smile. Anush is leaving us for Spain. I hope I can make her going away party next week. We walk to a brick building on Kent, where E is dog-sitting. It really is the ultimate bachelor pad. No stove and a bed raised a few feet too high. We drink some Belgian beer/ale/wine/some type of alcoholic beverage. It tastes like slightly carbonated raspberries. We make up NPR names, then porn names. I’m Spruce Middletown and Boy Illinois respectively. We walk dogs. One looks like an ewok and the other is cute with a small head and supposedly goes with my “look.” I pick up the acoustic guitar from its stand and play all the 90s songs I learned in high school. It’s getting late. Everyone starts talking about office life and programs they use there. I know absolutely nothing and that frightens me. I depart ways and think I should head home but I respond to a text message from a few hours ago that invited me back to watch television. I remember how to operate the buzzer this time around. I notice one of my favorite novels on the bookshelf. I am amazed that he can name every actor and actress from the television show Family Matters. I watch my first full episode of South Park ever and get introduced to his collection of sneakers. I like the office he staked out in the apartment. He plays his new song for me. I think I will end this here before I say too much.
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A boy in a cape handed me a shoebox. I opened up the shoebox and found a pair of shoes. Slip-ons if you will. Zuriik to be exact. And they are black and neon green. The boy in the cape, who was not really wearing a cape, but wearing a poorly constructed lanky shirt, had to walk up and down a flight of stairs more than a few times because he had a bad memory and I couldn’t figure out what size was comfortable. He had the same haircut this kid named Dan who went to my high school had. He was goth and also wore a cape. But it wasn’t really a cape, it was more of a black trench coat. But their hair was combed to the side with the opposite side shaved completely. It looks good. One afternoon, during lunch, we used to sit underneath this tree on the school’s campus. This is where Dan told me that he knew my father and that he always reminded him of Superman. He mimicked a smile and put his hands on his hips which resembled both Christopher Reeve and incidentally my father. My father never wore a cape though. The closest thing to a cape my father wears is probably his hideous long leather jacket he wears only on special occasions. I don’t know which is worse the long black leather jacket or his Syracuse University sweatshirt that was probably stitched in a Chinese factory in 1978. I ran into Dan a few years ago post-high school. He no longer has the same haircut but he still had the same piercing blue eyes he could slay dragons or vampires with. He was working behind the counter at a pizzeria. And odd place for a goth, if you ask me. Weird. I just remembered both Dan and I had a crush on the same girl in high school. I always thought Dan always had a better chance of scoring a date because he used more impressive vocabulary in his poetry than I did. I wrote poems about her with awful titles like “HalloGirl.” Waiiiiiit. I just stumbled upon it a few weeks ago. It went like this (transcribed from a Italian leather journal my sister stole for me from a shop in Lake Placid, New York when we were just jejune teenagers. Scratch that I actually couldn’t find the original version in all those pages of poetry but I found the edited version in issue #15 of Incognito:
HalloGirl.
I think orange roses would bloom from your eyes
Or a yellow submarine would fly out of your mouth
When you burp
I wait for these things to happen, but only your hair changes color
Pull up your striped pants above your waist
Tuck the cuffs into your soiled Doc Martens
Sometimes I can overdose, over your dreams
All you ask for is a cup of coffee and thank by saying terrific
Drowning your mind in maple syrup
While your cup sits in a flooded saucer,
Dripping on your lap
I can never predict your next thought
Or next move
I stand here on the monster’s eyebrow
Speculating if your Converse will speak to me.
Ugh, gross. Why would I ever think this was ever worthy enough to print? It is printed on a page with other bad poetry of mine and a collage of cut-out images from magazines. Tori Amos, Goldfinger, Drain STH, Scott Weiland, George Harrison and even a photograph of myself at nine years old strumming my father’s guitar wearing a David Lee Roth shirt, with a quote by Incubus pasted over it in jagged lines. If only I could turn back time and tell my teenage self that it was probably not a good idea to publish anything you wrote, nor was it a good idea to listen to bad punk rock and think meeting the drummer from Orgy outside of Bowery Ballroom was some type of accomplishment.
Halloween Party. 1998? Me as Twiggy Ramirez.
Attempting to write at four in the morning after you spent the last twelve hours in Manhattan is an impossible task. Though, I was inspired. By the rush drunk feeling I get when walking out of a train and up the stairs in a subway station. Or walking up Broadway during the grand opening of the topshop store and seeing a line of people wrapped around buildings to get in. Meeting friends in different boroughs through spontaneity. Twitter lends a helping hand to locate and communicate. Standing on line to get into a retail store seems like the capitalism’s ultimate crime. NPR called topshop the next “British Invasion” after The Beatles. Though it was probably a figure of speech, I wanted to take it to heart. I feel in love with the store in London a few summers ago, purchasing sunglasses, jeans, and a few collared shirts. A better H & M? Yes. Affordable? Usually. I have been (im)patiently waiting to reunite with the store, since I first read about it opening in Soho. Topshop brilliantly teased us consumers a few times about opening earlier than last week. I refused to queue up for an hour to reunite with my favorite British retail chain. Though I was tempted a few times, when Kyle seemed to want to linger around. The same Kyle that starts working there in two weeks. Instead K, R, and I do some shopping elsewhere. They introduce me to stores I only vaguely heard of. Oak and Odin. A Cheap Monday’s store? Huh? A beautiful pair of shorts exist at Odin but the $210 price tag will forever keep me away from ever obtaining them.
We’re walking to Le Pain Quotidien and we run into M on the street. Yes, that M, from last summer. He’s still beautiful. He seems to be everywhere in New York City. We hug and talk with reservation. I don’t introduce M to K and R because I already know they know each other, but not well enough to say hello. M initiates the awkward introductions. I like his well-kept mustache. I don’t remember how the conversation ended. He was on his way to a boxing class at Crunch. My friend Waka, ran into him a few weeks ago and told him things he probably shouldn’t have told him. Something involving me and LOVE and how we shouldn’t turn our backs when it shows its exposed face. EDIT: My other friend Jack ran into M last week and M asked me how I was doing. I’m not sure LOVE was resurrected but I know M was the reason why Michael Seth and I didn’t get back together. It went something like this…Michael Seth spoke to my grandmother and a few days later propositioned me because she told him things I wouldn’t tell him. At the time I didn’t know it was an authentic proposal, but in retrospect and many conversations later Michael Seth confessed that it was. I declined because I was unofficially dating M. C’est la vie.
I order a pot of coffee and an apple tart and R tells us about Pedro, the movie about Pedro from Real World: San Francisco. It sounds emotionally devastating. They leave me for Brooklyn and I begin reading Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. A self-proclaimed “memoir/graphic narrative” about growing up lesbian in rural Pennsylvania. A reviewer compares it to Nabakov, I’m not sure I would go that far. But there are many allusions to Greek mythology and with lines like, “I was spartan to my father’s athenian/Modern to his Victorian/Butch to his Nelly/Utilitarian to his aesthete,” I am hooked. If only there were less comic and more words, she would be my new favorite author. Though, I’m making claims I shouldn’t make because I still haven’t finished the book.
Little did I know that I would be heading to Brooklyn to meet up with Nicholas at a reading at Stain bar in Williamsburg. I am not familiar with Agriculture Review but their third issue has been released and some of the writers were reading at this bar on Grand. The bar is just a few storefronts down from the scuba diving shop my father’s friend owns. Weird. N was there with his friend Anjali. They are coworkers. She tells us stories about how adventurous she is. N confesses he can’t swim. I confess that I am a certified open water scuba diver. We sit next to a pair of legs, manikin legs that are decorated with Christmas lights. A pair of shoes rest on top of the thighs. An academian is on the microphone reading a short story he wrote using the LIRR as his muse. It is really good. I get lost within Plato references. A woman reads a poem where she repeats a line that goes something like, “Everyone I knew from high school is dead” and everyone giggles each time she turns the page and repeats it. A bucket is at her feet and she questions what to do with it. The pages of her poetry end up in there. Another boy reads, he has shaggy dark hair. I think he was the one who wrote a line about the separation or blending of reality and artificiality. And between these two states exists freedom and anxiety. He also wrote a line that went something like, “Malady is the melody” and within the context, or any context for that matter, it seems so fitting. He was reading from a novel he was working on, historical fiction. Ick. I think that is a genre I can do without. How very un-post-modern of me…I know. But I just…I just.
We walk to Bedford from where we are. I’m supposed to meet friends from LA I’ve never met before there. Or at least I have met one of them. Penny Licks we go and Nicholas devours two cupcakes “like a dog” and he is still using that against me. We talk about being goth. I keep away from the delicious treats around me because I still have not eaten dinner and it’s nearing 11pm. I don’t get the call or text message but friends left Clinton Hill for Manhattan, not Williamsburg. Off I go…to the West Village. Trapped in the touristy Caliente Cab where I meet best friends of best friends. I instantly fall in love with everyone. A friend of Liran’s looks like a young Scott Heim, with similar midwest backgrounds. Said friend knows my reference but didn’t know Mysterious Skin was made into a film (by my favorite filmmaker). L confesses his love for Placebo, and the music videos playing behind us while we converse and eat is both distracting and captivating. Especially when an Alanis Morissette video comes on. But nothing trumps Clique Girlz which is the worst culprit of them all. My burrito was not very good but I continue eating it anyway. I trip up the stairs when returning to the bathroom. While at the table, I realize I love brown boys and Jews. And that is not meant to be offensive. We walk over to Washington Square Park. It is 2am. We compare Long Island to “The Valley.” Liran is the only one who saw some of Long Island. Great Neck to be exact. We stop by Insomnia Cookies, a place I didn’t think really existed! Cookie delivery? It only seemed like a pothead’s wet dream. Eric buys everyone a cookie. I unintentionally order the largest cookie there is without realizing it. Eeeek. We go our separate ways. I miss the L train back to Brooklyn by three seconds. 25 minutes until the next one. I sit on the subway stairs and start reading Fun Home. A hipster stumbles and rolls down the stairs I’m sitting on. His messenger bag knocks into me. He gracefully stumbles (if that is possible) back to his feet and I hand him his bag. A few smarties fell out of it and created these artificial colors on the dirty steps. The friend he was with seemed embarrassed and continued walking. A Spanish man has a sneezing attack, hacking up phlegm and possibly part of his lung for what seems like fifteen minutes while two girls leaning against a column are still laughing at the cinematic fall of the hipster.
The Go Find is somehow acting as a conduit to these emotions. A phone call from Arizona didn’t help initiate this overwhelming feeling. On the verge of tears, but the mail keeps spinning through the machine, lining up in an order only a machine can read, so the letter carrier can walk around neighborhoods delivering mail to the community. Hospital bills for the 60 year old widow, who failed to see a traffic light change and an impatient teenager revved up his engine a few seconds too soon. Credit card bills with finance charges that will bury anyone making a salary like that. My grandmother went for an MRI, her regular 3-month check-up. This time around they found six “spots” of “cancer” in her brain. Supposedly the type of cancer she has likes to “hide” and the chemotherapy and radiation she went for last year didn’t involve her brain, so the cancer cells decided to seek protection there. It feels really strange talking about cancer as if it were a person. The fact that cancer has its own volition, making choices to hide in the cells of her brain or the fact that it “knows” to hide when chemicals are being pumped into their host is creepy. According to the doctor, it is treatable, but her hair was finally growing back. The last time I saw her she was pulling wigs on her shaved head. What makes matters worse, is her husband is having heart problems. Weeks after having open heart surgery, is heart is still weakening. Supposedly a valve is not working properly and they might have to operate on the heart itself, which is allegedly a dangerous procedure. There is just too much sickness in the world. Blood pressure, white blood cells, proteins, anemia. Testing and evaluating the body. Putting it on display on operation tables, and those other tables in doctor’s offices with the crunchy white paper. Test tubes, needles, and the body attempting to stop entropy. It is all physiology. I’m watching Breaking Bad, and the main character Walt, a high school Chemistry teacher is struggling with lung cancer. And he is a non-smoker. Between lectures he is rushing to the bathroom to vomit in the school’s toilet. A custodian offers to clean up after him and a piece of gum saying something like, “You have teaching to do. I’ll clean this up.” These small gestures, within a person is heartbreaking. The professional relationship becomes personal. The education of the youth is more important than wiping away the chemotherapy your body is rejecting. Ugh, the idea of pumping toxic chemicals into your body, made from the same Corporation that probably caused your cancer (have you ever read Richard Power’s Gain?) seems appalling. And the fact that a television show is showing us viewers the dark underbelly of cancer and not treating it as some mystical “illness” we are supposed to comb their hair, and catalog them, next to the grocery store shopping lists. I hate the idea of personalizing an illness, putting a cartoon face to embody something that is plaguing our loved ones. It breaks my fucking heart.
Ugh. My lips are so chapped for no real reason. I haven't had many hot make out sessions. I regularly apply my Burt’s Bees lip balm but for some reason it won’t keep them soft silky smooth. I also have this one tiny pimple on my forehead that won’t disappear. I got through my teenage years without any acne and all of sudden in my mid-20s I get these random pimples? Gross. I don’t even know what to do with pimples. The idea of squeezing them frightens me, so I just let them be. But this won’t budge. I should probably stop writing about acne. It is not very endearing. I even started washing my face with a Kiehls facial scrub a few months ago. But no it’s not helping. It’s nearing five am on a Thursday morning. It is currently my spring break. My last spring break of my undergraduate career. I drank too many cups of coffee today, perhaps that is the reason why I’m still awake. I went to Gimme Coffee and the barista was so much nicer than the barista across the street at Second Stop Cafe. Their bathroom is strangely located. I was listening to “Girlfriend” by Phoenix on the the R train and it seemed to move and stop with the rhythm of the song. It was eerily in sync. Earlier on the L train I noticed a guy that looked like Sylar. There were smart Snickers ads all over the train. Sylar and the Sylar look-like turns me on, which is kind of creepy. I finally stopped by topshop. No line, the way it should be. I continued down the escalator to the men’s section. Impressive, but not impressively overwhelming. I wish things were a little cheaper. I left with a pair of short shorts and a button-down shirt. 26” waist? Yes, but a little tight around the hips. The 28 was too big and didn’t fit properly. Continued walking down Broadway to Uniqlo. Found nothing there. I think I lost my Mastercard and Metrocard in the same week. I should probably cancel the former. I went to the gym on Saturday and ran on the elliptical? Is that what its called? I unintentionally was running next to two attractive gay dudes, which was both distracting and exhausting. I’m certainly not as fit as they are. Upstairs I went to do yoga. Siegfried is no longer our Saturday morning instructor. An older lady with one of those microphone headsets replaced him. She is horrible, but any movement in my life is worth it. The music she had playing made me feel as if I were in a Kubrick or Gus Van Sant film. And who can concentrate in a tree pose with images like that in their mind? It wasn’t very meditative. But back in Manhattan I was meeting N in Union Square. Gay activists from Vermont were picketing. I took a seat on a bench. A girl and a boy wearing a headband sat next to me moments later. I hated their conversation. Julie Doiron was not playing loud enough on my iPod. A woman wearing large black boots decides to vomit in the trash can I’m sitting next to. She reminded me of that Eric Shaeffer short-lived TV show Starved that aired on FX. This one, where the creepy bulimic man just opens his mouth to vomit (at 4:15 mark...but watch the full clip for an amazing performance by Jackie Hoffman):
Quietly I hear the vomit pour from her mouth and I’m scared to look and confirm the repulsive scene. The last time I watched someone vomit, I vomited myself. I thought that only happened in movies, but its true, the sight (and smell) of vomit can make someone else puke. Of course, I torture myself and look and it’s brown and….I get up. Go to Virgin across the street hoping it is going out of business so I can buy all their DVDs for 80% off. No such luck. I listen to Crystal Antlers on some headphones and use the restroom. N texts me, he is sitting on the steps in Union Square. Sexually frustrated we embark to get some eats. S’mac is packed. Vegan restaurant it is. We share a table with strangers at Angelica Kitchen. Our hostess is wonderful and our waiter is jerkiest jerk imaginable. He orders a salad he doesn’t really want. I order a vegan reuben sandwich and miso soup. Lethargic. He doesn’t even know how endearing he is. He gives me a cherry from his salad and I eat it last. I think that will be the last time I will take him there. We stop by the bakery I discovered the first time I met N. But the original East Village location. The honey nut pastry tastes even better than I remember it tasting. I unintentionally take advantage of N picking up the tab and ask for a cup of coffee. We get a free macaroon that is sitting in a brown paper bag on my kitchen counter right now. I’m through with winter. Long-sleeved shirts, sweatshirts, and a winter jacket is just too much clothing. I’m ready for shorts and summer tees. Long Island water parks, and eight am swims in the Atlantic Ocean. I’m graduating in one month and that frightens me. A summer without taking summer classes. What is a boy to do with himself?
Get a second job?
Internship?
Just relax?
I wish I wasn’t the most indecisive person in the world. To stay or not stay at the post office?
Wait. NYC. We see Gigantic. A movie with Zooey Deschanel, Paul Dano, John Goodman, and Jane Alexander. Hold on…sneezing attack. Gibberish. We went to see it without knowing anything about the movie other than our shared affections for Zooey. Synopsis was unknown to me. I thought the title of the film was a reference to the Pixies song. I really don’t want to be buried under three blankets anymore. While walking into my house tonight, I realized my father planted new flowers in the front yard. Sometimes I forget how many different colors there are…in nature. I almost liked suburbia again, as a retreat, a place to congregate, a place to collect my thoughts. But Gigantic was a good film. Weird and awkward and oddly paced but good. Zooey plays a seemingly unlikable character because she doesn’t play pure, innocent, and naive like she usually does. A bit of an outcast, but she is misguided, mistreated, and the complexity of her character is expressed through her deadpan speech and stare, oh that piercing blue gaze and choppy dark bangs. She sleeps with men in the back seat of her father’s station wagon while he is being treated by a chiropractor. There is no sardonic dialogue, or reading from a Diablo Cody-like script. I know a Harriet (nickname Happy). A “Neo-grandma” name as she says. I think we all do. I didn’t know Paul Dano was the kid from L.I.E.. Weird. I just remember him from The Girl Next Door then Little Miss Sunshine and There Will Be Blood. He has personal demons he must literally slay. And someone falls asleep in the theater and is snoring very loudly. The guy across the theater is laughing hysterically at the Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds romantic comedy trailer. How many times will I see this trailer? I’m not sure. Lymelife is already playing at the Sunshine. Rory and Kieran Culkin are both in it. It is just another movie that is out right now that takes place on Long Island (in the 70s). The other one being Adventureland (which takes place in the 80s). Oh, wait…Adventureland takes place in Pennsylvania, but was written and directed by the filmmaker’s experience working at the real Adventureland in Farmingdale, Long Island on Route 110. Yeah, the same amusement park I grew up in. The same amusement park I drive by to get to work every night. Boy Scout and Girl Scout trips there every summer. Birthday parties, and my first roller coaster ride. I remember begging my mother every summer day to take us. She always surrendered to our pleas because she loved amusement parks and carnivals herself. Getting sick on the swings, eating blue cotton candy and driving around on the railroad. When we got older we used to get dropped off there and wreak havoc, especially in the haunted house, where we would jump out of the moving cars and scare each other in different sections of the ride. But Adventureland the movie was superb. Jesse Eisenberg is exhaustingly neurotic and intelligent. Woody Allen Jr. Possibly. Kristen Stewart does nothing for me, in the same way that Kirsten Dunst can be in brilliant movies (The Virgin Suicides, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) but has no endearing quality as an actress. I don’t understand Kristen Stewart’s appeal but the boys seem to love her. She bores me. I’m beginning to wonder if Jesse Eisenberg can do anything other than “coming of age” films. I just saw the Fred Durst film, The Education of Charlie Banks and he plays a similar literary-minded character. Yes, the film was directed by Fred Durst (of Limp Bizkit fame) and it was good! Who knew he could handle all the literary/philosophy references. Milton, Derrida, and Gatsby! The latter being the premise of the entire movie. Class consciousness, violence, and Sebastian Stan. Oh my. Fred Viola on the soundtrack was amazing too. The Tribeca Film Festival starts in a few weeks and none of the movies are really that interesting. TiMER being an exception.
I call my sister on the ride back home. She is watching television. My nieces are asleep. She hears a little girl giggling and it creeps her out. She is in tears because she is so scared. She orders take-out from Denny’s. I tell her the bad news about our ailing grandparents in Arizona. But I don’t want to upset her, so I keep changing the subject. She loves when I say “Who AREEE you?” and when I make fun of her stifled laugh. She sounded like a grandma when she chuckled last. I tell her about the crush I have and how I am torturing myself with my affections. We lose our connection. And I immediately call her back. She thinks I say “Michael Novick” but I don’t. Perhaps that name slips out as easy as I exhale. Last night, after talking to my aunt, I almost called him. It was one in the morning. I knew he’d be sleeping because he has a real job now. But in desperation, he seems like the only one who can keep me together, in his brutal and beautifully frank way. A “wonderful Jew.” He humbles me and I love it. I hang up with my sister and I see she has left me a voicemail. I listen to it and there is a woman chanting on the other line, then “Stairway to Heaven” starts playing. It freaks me out. I call my sister back and she said she didn’t chant nor play Led Zeppelin. She blames the giggling ghost she heard in her house earlier in our conversation. Great, now I must deal with apparitions. I call Jared because he is a good late night conversationalist. We talk for over an hour. He sounds intoxicated but he swears he’s not. I believe him. Oh no, it’s nearing 6am and the sun is beginning to rise. I’m seeing The Books tonight at Columbia University. I wanted to get my oil changed but when will I sleep? I feel too awake.
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I was going through some files I had on some writing program I downloaded and discovered an unfinished narrative about my adventures in Arizona last June when my grandmother was really sick. And since I probably won't get a chance to write about my trip to Albany to visit my sister I offer this...Here it is, incomplete and unedited, and uncut...
Phew is all I can muster right now. It isn’t even the most accurate word to describe what I am feeling at the moment. There is no real “phew” when you haven’t reached a conclusion. It isn’t even the end of the week. Days are running into each other, pm and am, or du matin or du soir, it doesn’t matter. Numbers representing hours, the hands of clocks linger in glass bubbles and neon alarm clocks are all jagged and blurred. Mornings blend into afternoons, and phone calls to the post office that I am not going to make it in. Different time zones, jet lagged and remorseful. Rueful, sand, and a heat wave knocking the state of New York into a frenzy. Sweaty armpits and groins. Flip-flops, sunscreen, and lukewarm bottles of Poland Spring water. I haven’t found myself here, at my computer, typing away in about two weeks. Emails are left unanswered, even if they may advise me of my fate. Without these keys beneath my fingertips, I feel as if I am not reflective. Just a pour soul wandering the streets and avenues of existence. Consuming, shitting, and drifting. Where does the value, sentiment and history come from without these quiet moments that aren’t so quiet when you are sitting in a wooden chair at Starbucks using your friend’s password to cheat the wifi systems of the world. It is only 1pm and I have already found myself in two different Starbucks with two different beverages. Green tea and ginger followed by a grande drip coffee. Yes, I am avoiding the sauna of my bedroom, and the daddy daycare that my house has become. I skipped the early morning routine of dressing my little brother in his small basketball shorts and matching tank top. Or brushing the hair of my little sister and her teaching me how to put a headband on correctly, while my father is cooking eggs he grabbed from under the chickens this morning. Soft-boiled eggs are not my thing, thankfully microwaves can “nuke” every health benefit from food and cook my eggs thoroughly. Just for the record, poached eggs are not my thing either. I had them at some cafe I cannot remember the name of in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and had to “chug” them down. Kyle and I attempted to dine outside on the sidewalk but the heat was unbearable, especially when you are sipping on a cup of steaming hot green tea so we asked the pleasant host if we could move indoors. This is where the poached eggs were served along with some potatoes. A woman in the corner was busily referring to her laptop and the papers on her lap in an oddly mechanical way and for some reason I cannot stand when salt and pepper shakers are not the same size. So here I am, avoiding the French homework that is due at ten tonight. M is asking for my company tonight in Williamsburg for some raw food and a gallery opening. My laundry is piling up. I am down to just a few pairs of boxers, and how often do I really wear boxers anymore? I think today I am wearing my very last pair of boxer-briefs which are gray Fruit of the Loom. I cannot conjugate words and I am in the process of re-learning what adverbs, prepositions, definite/indefinite articles, pronouns, and adjectives are. As an English major you think I would have known all of these terms inside and out. But I was never one who enjoyed grammar, I am more interested in the philosophies within the words than the actual structure of the sentence. Process, pronunciation, and French with Michel Thomas, while driving west to the Manhattan skyline on my right as I drive over bridges. Frustré. Arizona was a blur of shopping malls, needy postpartum sisters, graduating cousins who are eerily eighteen years old who take fashion and shaving tips from me. Grandmothers with infections in the ports in their chest and on intravenous antibiotics for two weeks. Sleeping in, exhausted from 105 degree weather and bouncing on trampolines with little cousins who like to be popped like popcorn. I don’t remember palm trees in Arizona. How do they live without enough water? Fatigued grandmothers walking very slowly and dozing off in front of the television. She dreamed she dreamed and only remembered fragments upon waking…
Arizona. By desert, by a chalky dry planetarium. Fasten Seatbelt While Seated. Rows C, D, E. Lack of sleep. Dreaming through short segments from Paris, je t'aime. Woke up for Tom Tykwer and Natalie Portman. With Jon eating Girl Scout cookies out of the purple box. The night before my flight in the morning. Lip balm I mistaken for SPF, that makes my lips glow pink like some kind of queer. Sisters popping pimples in airplane bathrooms and worried about how her yellow hair in the ponytail. To my left and down one row sits a boy who served in Iraq, with a laptop and some girl, he just seemed to meet on his recent travels. Directly to my left sits a woman barefoot, lounged in three vacant seats. Before takeoff my sister seeks blankets and pillows in the overhead bins and manages to get yelled at by the Asian stewardess because she is jumping to peek into the compartments. At JFK airport my sister asks for extra cream cheese and tries to outsmart the fickle, thrifty cashier but fails. 81 cents more for each additional cream cheese please. Before I can stop my sister, she is already touching a stranger’s dress that was tucked in awkwardly. This is only the first awkward interaction of thousands she has with strangers everywhere. She does not discriminate. Gender, age, ethnicity, it doesn’t matter. She will converse, touch, laugh, and poke whomever she feels like. I meet my sister at the airport. Her husband drove her down from Albany. My father drove me from Long Island. We talk about Scotland and my new favorite band Frightened Rabbit. We both throw our arms up in the air when we realize the construction workers have not removed their equipment before rush hour began. We sit behind SUV’s and station wagons, in traffic for longer than expected. My sister actually gets to the airport before me. I feared her never making it on time and missing the flight completely. In the American Airlines terminal, I call her, asking her where she is located. From a distance, I see her dragging her larger than large luggage sucking on a blow-pop, with her cell phone tucked between her shoulder and right ear. There is a delay in the conversation. I see her mouth moving during all the wrong words I hear through my cell phone. I forget how small she is. Now, a mother of two, walking through the airport waiting for her older brother, sucking on a lollipop, talking about the ridiculously early hour she had to leave Albany at. I pull out my passport to retrieve our tickets, and before I could even attempt to use the machine myself, an Indian woman grabs my passport and walks me through the process in a very obnoxious way. My sister claimed she smelled…like menstruation. I wanted to vomit a little when my sister informed me of this. Away our luggage goes beneath the belly of the plane. We realize our flight is already delayed an hour. Which means we will miss our connecting flight in Texas. Ugh. We seek food. Some scrambled eggs and potatoes that were not worth their price. I find myself at the same gate I was in when I went for Raleigh, North Carolina with Pfluger in January. The only reason I remember is because the same Hispanic lady was working the counter and screaming into the PA system in her wonderful vernacular. And who could forget a plane that only seated like two dozen people? Thankfully we weren’t headed to North Carolina and were awaiting for a regular-sized plane. My sister spots two homosexuals before I could. I think she has better gaydar than I. I text Pfluger about the odd coincidence. He doesn’t respond. He is probably sleeping. Before leaving for Arizona I missed out on three opportunities to hang out with him. Sometimes I am the worst friend you could ever have. Think twice before writing me into your address book.
I don’t remember how but Texas happens. We just barely make another connecting flight to Phoenix. Sisters sleep and I struggle with exhaustion, tray tables, seats not in the upright position and clumsy stewardesses. I barely get through the two introductions to Hubert Selby Jr’s Last Exit to Brooklyn. Back in the terminal my sister’s voice escalates as she tells a story about a “crackhead” neighbor who really does cocaine, not crack. Serendipity. On the next plane, I sit between clasped hands and armful of veins. Is she in prayer? On the other side is a boy in military gear. As I scan across the plane to see all the passengers, I see camouflage dispersed through the crowd of heads and shoulders. I feel like the two gays from New York are following me to Phoenix. My sister trips through the airport for no real reason. I watch an old man named DAMON, put his suitcase up in the overhead compartment using his head. I point it out to my sister and she makes a joke that sends me into uncontrollable laughter. We walk through the terminal, through the futuristic “Windows Live” area that makes me feel like I am in a Stanley Kubrick film. This is all out of order. It doesn’t make sense. I am referring to notes I jotted down on napkins, palms, and notebooks. My mind does not work with chronology. Context and complete sentences are overrated. I am a severed open wound that bleeds truths and passions. While waiting on line to get through the TSA security checkpoint my sister pulls a loose strand of blonde hair off a woman’s black blouse without her ever knowing. I misplace our boarding passes numerous times. Airplanes are ridiculously cold. Aunt Emily and Aunt Irene pick us up from the airport in Arizona. They are identical twins. I tell them apart by their speech patterns. The latter has an autistic son named Christopher who would later on in the week pull my hair (really) hard while we are posing for a photograph outside of his brother’s graduation party. The former is very emotional and I can hear the pain and struggle with every syllable. On the way to my grandmother in Gilbert, whom all us grandchildren refer to as “Nanny,” our Aunts give us the lowdown on her condition. She was just released from the hospital yesterday, after a six night stay. The port in her chest was infected and she supposedly nearly died from the infection which is kind of ironic since the real problem is the cancer plaguing her lung. After the first week of chemotherapy her hair was already falling out in patches and my aunt convinced my Nanny to shave her head completely. We pass ASU on the highway and the nurse from the hospital is in my grandmother’s bedroom explaining to her and her son what needs to be done everyday to defeat the infection completely. My sister, Aunt Emily, and I patiently wait outside in the backyard while the nurse is there. My sister smokes a cigarette and another cigarette while we talk about my parent’s divorce and my mother’s sudden disappearance two years ago. Sweltering in the backyard, I can still see puddles of tears trapped under the eyes of my sister and Aunt. We all try to rationalize the irrational and seek the tangible out of the intangible. But we repeat the words, the words we have learned to use to express our fears and our sadness. It all seems so Hallmark, but language can only convey so much. In retrospect, I realize that most of the conversations I had in Arizona were one-sided. 71 year old “great” Aunts cannot “hear” me, and I don’t mean that literally. For some reason they cannot listen to an opposing view, or comprehend a word that doesn’t find itself on scripted soap operas and morning talk shows. Even my sister struggles with listening. We recycle the same words, the same thought patterns, the same vicious cycle of dependence, longing, and avoidance. I can never get a word in, and it seems no one is listening anyway.
I spend most of my days in shopping malls looking at red blouses, red shoes, and red earrings for my grandmother. Sears, Dillards, and all the shops in between. I cannot believe I found myself herding around a woman who was offering “Free Stuff!” on the PA system in Sears. All of us shoppers, waiting for our free items. She mysteriously describes it, pulling it out of her magic case, claiming it is so “new,” it won’t be on the shelves in months. The anticipation rises and the woman has achieved everyone’s undivided attention. She opens her magic suitcase and pulls out a piece of blue fabric. She demonstrates it’s us: to wipe away smudges on sunglasses, cell phones, and ipods. The disco lights, the hype, and the excitement over the loudspeakers in the store was all for a lousy piece of fabric! I felt raped and walked away frustrated as everyone else stood around for the next item she was offering. Somehow we found a bar in the shopping mall and waited there for my Aunt to return from her journey for a red blouse. Two margaritas later, I was officially buzzed, or more accurately drunk. My 71 year old Aunt Barbara was with my sister and I and opted for a glass of Coke. Who ever thought of opening a bar in a mall? And why are the drinks only three dollars? My sister makes friends with the entire staff and scores multiple free sodas for our aunt. She makes friends with an older couple sitting outside watching a game of some sort on the television. They peg my sister’s accent for New York and she snaps photographs of them, despite them declining. For some reason we are surrounded by chopped logs.
Thankfully I brought along my GPS to Arizona and TomTom directed me around Phoenix and Gilbert. Arizona’s aesthetic is strangely uniform. Desert-like colors of tan and orange. Sandstone, brown and indecipherable. Everything looks the same. I cannot distinguish a Wal-Mart or IHOP, or gas station until I am three feet from the entrance of the parking lot. Police lurk on every corner and the cities are mapped out clearly with bright traffic lights, and four “Don’t Turn On Red” signs when they don’t want you to turn on red. Driving around in my Aunt’s Escalade. I am not sure why she needs such a vehicle. Her British husband even owns a Porsche. So, here I am driving around in this huge SUV, trying to find a decent radio station. I couldn’t even find NPR. Either my sister is in the passenger seat or my seventy year old aunt. Alicia Keys or some American Idol-endoresed artist is on. Our daily adventures consisted of waking up, drinking black coffee, making sure my aunt can climb up thirty feet of SUV to get in the passenger seat and heading to my grandmother’s house. Pick up my sisters, jump back into the Escalade and pick up lunch for everyone from a “New York” pizzeria we can’t seem to find. My sister and I circle the same area for about a half an hour. She throws her hands up and quits, and I follow her lead and we travel back to Nanny’s, where an aunt jumps in the car for some direction. I think this is why out-of-state guests shouldn’t be running errands like this. But my grandmother was actually hungry and I leaped at the opportunity to put food in her belly that kept telling her no. Trips to McDonald’s for bags of ice, and trips to pick up my Aunt Laurie from work. Back to my grandmother’s and Aunt Barbara, the seventy year old is trying to log into her Myspace account. She succeeds after numerous attempts (and some of my guidance) and she is telling stories about all the photographs she has there. My Aunt Barbara only wants to talk about illness. Her battle with breast cancer, her kidneys, her hair loss, the nice radiologist, the mean nurses, and how amazing her children are. It is unbearable. She means well but can we talk about something else other than death? She plays poker on a handheld game and watches The View and the soap operas that follow every morning. She drinks her coffee black and I find it admirable. I treat her to a few cappuccinos during the week from Starbucks. She falls out of the Escalade one afternoon and I struggled with the idea of helping her up. Am I so trapped in my own head that I cannot even react to a fallen woman? My sister runs over and almost pulls her arm out of the socket, one of the many reasons that I didn’t want to help because I thought I would make matters worse. I realize that supermarkets are Aunt Barbara’s best friend. She loves to shop for groceries! I find myself in a supermarket almost everyday, since I am the designated driver for the week. Fry’s. I pick up some soymilk, cereal and green tea for my mornings spent in Arizona. Celebrity magazines are scanned and purchased by Aunt Laurie and she picks up my vegetarian tab. On one occasion I take my Aunt Barbara to the supermarket alone. And we walk up and down each aisle. She is looking for something for my sister because she feels bad for her financial troubles. She remembers my sister complaining that she has no socks and hasn’t bought herself new clothes since freshmen year of high school. This is probably true and it was confirmed when she pulled out this iconic tank top she used to wear back in the day. So my Aunt Barbara finds her some socks and asks me what else my sister likes? “Does she like candles?” I don’t know how to answer this and we find ourselves trying to pick a scent that Tiffany would like. It broke my heart, watching this old woman (though I was participating in my own detached way) sniffing all these different candles, trying to choose the best scent for my sister’s house back home in Albany. She probably imagines my sister lighting the wick of the candle, and gently placing it on her kitchen counter, while she picks up the Wal-Mart circular from the newspaper and decides what diaper is cheapest for her newborn Sophia. A rare quiet moment when the kids and husband are still sleeping and she looks up from the photograph of Tide and Mr. Clean, and looks up at the candle burning, smelling the first hint of cucumber or “spring rain.” It will remind her of Aunt Barbara, who had breast cancer, and who bought her a bag of white socks to keep her feet warm. Standing there in the air-conditioned supermarket in Arizona. A distant family member helping another. Aunt Barbara, a breast cancer survivor, but not necessarily a survivor because every month or so she gets CAT scans looking to see if the cancer has spread anywhere else. I guess I cannot blame her for thinking of death so often. If little trips to supermarkets and Wal-Mart make her happy, I will take her there.
Little cousins that used to be nicknamed Peanut have graduated high school and celebrated their eighteenth birthday. How did that happen? My sister and I end up hanging out with him most nights. Trips for evening coffee, or Dairy Queen blizzards. We even had free coupons for a free movie. We opted for the special midnight screening of The Strangers. Which was excellent. Before sitting down in the theater I told my sister to turn off her cellphone because I know her husband, Charlie will call. She seemingly heeds my advice. We are only five minutes into the film and she is already asking me what’s going on? I realize that she is going to talk through the entire movie, questioning motives, plot twists, and indecipherable dialogue. Fifteen minutes later her phone starts ringing from her bag. I cringe and hear her rustling through her bag, thinking she is going to turn it off. You know what she does?! She answers it! My sister is officially THAT person. “We’re at the movies! What? Huh? Yeah, at the movies!” she is telling my Aunt Laurie. People are hysterical, some laughing some screaming at her to hang up the phone. The guy in front of us in particular was annoyed most. Despite all of this, I really enjoyed the film. The lack of dialogue, the creepy use of a an already creepy Joanna Newsom song. I think Liv Tyler is underrated. Masks freak me out. I was impressed. At two in the morning my sister had to sneak into my grandmother’s house without waking up the dogs and the rest of the family. I dropped off my cousin Danny with his father’s McCain lawn sign staring at me in the headlights. I returned to my little cousin’s bedroom and slept with the Princess pillow they left for me to use.
Getting free pizza and breadsticks from Little Caesars. Opening Blockbuster accounts just to rent The Mist and I Know Who Killed Me, both of which I fell asleep during. But the former I only missed about fifteen minutes. What a crazy ending? Huh? I couldn’t eat the pizza because it had pepperoni on it so my Aunt Irene made me a delicious salad with croutons and all. Another afternoon we spent watching ghost stories one of those weird channels that love to find “reality” in “fiction” or vice versa. The reenactments are always badly staged and acted and I can never suspend my disbelief. The actors are always much more amazing looking, and eighty pounds lighter than the real people who experienced a haunted house. My sister loves them. I haven’t watched mindless TV like this since I was thirteen. That boredom, where you find yourself clicking from one channel to the next, longing for something halfway interesting to end your lethargy. Most of my television watching is on DVD or downloaded from the internets. I also feel it has some kind of redeeming value. XOXO.
Graduation parties at VFW halls and large Long Island iced teas from the strangely skinny bartender. Aunt Irene reserved a tupperware of sauce without meat in it just for me. Am I really the only vegetarian in this hall? Christopher is sitting on the one the metal counters in the kitchen playing with his plastic bags. My sister vanishes for an hour with my wallet and cellphone. I sit next to my grandmother and I think she looks so amazing despite what she is going through. I might have ate ten pieces of bread and treated myself to a soda. I talk to my cousin Danny’s grandparents. One is Cuban the other is Italian. They lived in New York and moved to Arizona when they retired. They are amazing. My Uncle Ralph was telling me how his mother is trying to sell the flat she has in London and how she wants to live in the country in between England and Scotland. I think about Dawn and how she is in the UK with her boyfriend I never met. My grandmother looks happy. I converse with cousins I haven’t seen in years. The other Danny, Laurie-Anne, and Bobby. One has a fiance, the other a girlfriend. How am I the oldest of the grandchildren? Photographs happen at the end of the night in the parking lot of the VFW hall. We return back the graduating boy’s house, before that we stock up on some at alcohol at the liquor store. I stick with Sparks, but I end up buying thirty dollars worth of alcohol including a bottle of tequila. We drink and drink, and sit outside on the driveway and talk about life and the McCain poster that is hammered into the ground. I attempt to play Guitar Hero. Who knew how difficult it is to play a Killers song. I am almost impressed by the collection of songs they have to play. The best was when my Aunt Irene played. I don’t know the true purpose of the game. If you are going to spend so much time perfecting the strumming and chords of a song on a plastic guitar, why not just play a real guitar?
Waterparks happen after our drunken filled night. Why is the ground so hot in Arizona? I don’t think people should be living in the desert. And Arizona is where the desert and capitalism meet. Slides, bathing suits, and water pools. Lazy rivers, and an amazing ride called The Cauldron that is too amazing to describe. My sister talks to everyone on line and the lifeguards that work the rides. I never made it up to the mountains even if I could see them in the distance. I slept more than I had in weeks...
I never knew how difficult it is to spend five days with FM radio, Muzak, and airport lobbies as your only source of music. Perhaps that was one of the reasons why this trip seemed to linger on the depressing side. Despite the fact that my grandmother has cancer. The same image of her keeps repeating in my head. Over and over. She is standing in the hallway of her house as I am walking out the front door. Our last good bye before we fly back home. Her nightgown reaches her sore ankles, pale pink, very grandmotherly. It is probably the only article of clothing she owns that makes her grandmotherly. Some people might say she has a mouth like a trucker, but reaching seventy years old, I am not sure if the New York in her is keeping hold of her heart. She is standing there in her nightgown, squinting her eyes as she watches us leave out the front door. She looks so tired even from this distance. Her head is now completely shaved. After her first round of aggressive chemotherapy, she was losing large clumps of hair. So pale and so fragile. In her nightgown she stands on her white-tiled floor. She is probably wearing a pair of slippers. Her head looks so small and round. The sunlight is burning faintly through the kitchen window, its last gasp of light before it surrenders to the evening. But the sunlight reaches one half of her face. I want to stop myself before I make comparisons to halos and angels because it almost feels like I am surrendering to the plague in her lung. It seems too easy and maybe too cliche. But how can can someone really contextualize something like death without sounding like a Hallmark card? I cannot fight what I perceive. But she did look angelic. An angel that bares the scars of living. Tough and wrinkled skin from a hard life. Not your typical angel. Not pure, not innocent. An old American hero. An old American survivor. Catholic schools in Brooklyn and Queens. A chance in the suburbs of New York, a mobile home in Fort Lauderdale, a condo somewhere else in the Sunshine State. A move to Arizona, losing sisters, losing children, allergic to painkillers. A fractured halo, scabbed wings, and skin that lingers on the bone just barely, expressing its age, wisdom, and permanence. I keep seeing her standing there in the hallway; ghostly and elusive. Not a smile, nor a frown. Her eyes almost seemed closed, her mouth a straight line, until the corners curve slightly down. Her head shaven, a skull I am not used to seeing. A barren head I am not meant to see. Mysteriously resilient and passionate, but not without a streak of forfeit and fear. I wondered if she thought this would be the last time she would look upon me. Her wings are bruised from needles and IVs. Puddles of black and blue all over her skin. I cannot shake that sad expression from my head.
She stood on her feet all night just to make my favorite dinner. Fettuccine alfredo with broccoli. I told her not to but she insisted. Twice a day she takes an antibiotic intravenously to combat the infection she got the week earlier from the port in her chest. She was in the hospital for six days and returned home the same day we arrived in Arizona. If she waited one more day before going to the hospital she would have died, the doctors told her. My grandmother dead from a lousy infection, rather than the cancer leeched on her lung. The antibiotic making her weak and fatigued. She requested a red blouse and red shoes for her nephew’s graduation party. She also got earrings and a tangled necklace. A few days before she went shopping for a wig. Dirty blonde and expensive. She walked into the bathroom to transform into someone she’s not. An actress pulling on someone else’s hair, playing victim, struggling with her strength and balance. She walks back into the bedroom where we all sit, preparing our reactions, readying ourselves with the appropriate response. She walks onto the the maroon carpet and my mother appears. I never realized how close they resemble each other. Her first born. My mother and her petite lips, alive and here in this bedroom, in Gilbert, Arizona.Drunkkkkkk.  Pictured here with cousin Danny and sister Tiffany. 
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I am on page seven of the five-page paper I am writing for my queer literature class. I am post-dinner break and I am left feeling drained, fatigued, and incapable of interacting with the rest of the world, or what glimpse I have of the world around me. I keep having dreams that my teeth are falling out. A few weeks ago they crumbled into powder on my tongue; last night they fell out like a loose tooth does when you are nine years old. I remember when I was younger my parents used to tell me stories, that I am sure were exaggerated truths, about what their parents would do when they had a loose tooth. Strings tied to front door knobs that would be swung closed or mothers who would sit on them and rip out the loose tooth they were complaining about for the last three hours. My mother chose the latter and I can shamefully say that 90% of my baby teeth were pulled by her fingers, her fingers that were always painted a color that would match her mood. The next morning I would always wake up from the deepest sleep, feeling underneath my pillow and feeling the puddle of cold coins. It always worked in my favor that my mother was a waitress because she always had an apron full of change from the not-so-big tippers. Years later, probably in my teens, I remember discovering a purse in my mother’s top drawer of her dresser (along with a roach clip that was attached to a large fuzzy feather). Inside the small coin purse were teeth—baby teeth. So, the tooth fairy didn’t exist. I wondered which teeth were mine. Having a sister just a year younger than me didn’t really help distinguish whose teeth belonged to whom. In retrospect it is kind of creepy that mother saved our teeth in a random drawer in her bedroom. Not to mention the baby hair she saved from my first haircut that is in an white envelope in my baby book in the closet. It is very Ed Gein of her, I could imagine the next level of keepsakes could be skin that she would fashion into lampshades. Speaking of cannibalistic lampshades, just the other day, while I was admiring myself in my father’s full length mirror, I noticed a lamp on the dresser; a lamp that has probably been there since I started losing baby teeth. This lamp is not your ordinary lamp. It is a lamp made of the shins and hooves of a deer. Wait, do deer have hooves? Or do they have paws? Feet? I’m not sure. Anyway, what flummoxed me was how barbaric of an idea that was. How Ed Gein (or utilitarian) of my father to think of such a thing. I can deal with the antlers mounted on a wall because they exist in the foyer along with stuffed mounted deer heads, fur, and a very large bird (which is pictured below):
Photographs were taken by the amazing Jack during an early photo shoot that was inspired during one summer morning. I can deal with antlers, but lamps made of deer legs? That might be worse than the time I went into my garage with Michael Seth for something a few years ago. As I pulled the string on the light, we both watched a large drop of blood leak out of the nose of a deer my father had had hanging by it’s legs on one of the wooden beams in the garage. It was out of movie. Did the drop of blood really have to drop as I turn on the light?! But I don’t think anything beats the time when I was about ten years old and my father took me into the woods to retrieve a deer he had killed earlier with his bow and arrow. I stood there in horror as I watched him gut the entire corpse. Pulling intestines, bladders, and stomachs out, throwing them deeper into the woods. I stood there pinching my nose from the awful smell, holding back the terror I was feeling inside. From that day forward, I would never eat venison again. And since 2001 I have given up meat all together. I remember the indoor archery range I used to go to with my father. I liked it there. No one killed anything. We just pulled our bows back and released arrows into paper targets and say “clear” every so often to retrieve the feathered arrows. My lane was always half the distance than the rest of the men, so it didn’t take me very long to retrieve my arrows. Half of them were on the floor anyway, so I didn’t have a tough time pulling them from the foam material. When I got bored of the clears and arrows, I would pet the taxidermal (yes, it can be an adjective, I checked!) animals in the back of the archery range and would tap my father on the arm and ask him for a few cents so I could sit on the stool with the maroon padding and ask the man behind the bar for a hot chocolate. It was always served steaming hot in a styrofoam cup. Salted pretzel rods were in a large glass jar on the bar for ten cents each. I remember ordering a few of them and dunking them into the hot chocolate. Huh? What? How did I get here? And where do I go from here? I leave for Albany in the morning. I am going to visit my sister and the family she created up there. It will feel good to see my little brother, sisters, and nieces again. This house is desperately lonely without anyone in it but me and the fish and parrots. Yes, I have two parrots. And four chickens in the backyard. No, I don’t live on a farm. Yes, I live in New York and it's not upstate in the mountains. I quit.
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I don’t understand why a simple brand of toothpaste must taste like a five-year relationship. That is certainly the last time I purchase Aquafresh Extreme Clean. I blame the supermarket nearby for not carrying any alternative toothpastes without fluoride and other compounds that are toxic to the body. I thought the natural personal care product company Tom’s of Maine was enough of a household name to find itself on the shelves of a corporate supermarket, but I guess I was wrong. I am currently steeping my last cup of yerba maté and listening to the water flow through the filtering system in the fish tank in my living room. The living room has become my new bedroom since my family has left me in this house for an entire month alone. The parents are in the Philippines driving through monsoons and descending to the ocean floor with scuba tanks on their backs. My siblings are scattered across New York State. Rocco and Rosalynda, three and four respectively are staying upstate in Albany with my sister. Franzelyn is staying at a family friend’s house just a town over since I am not home enough to watch her. As much as I don’t want to admit this, I must confess I have been a little lonely in this house. When I first acquired the knowledge that I was going to be alone for an entire month I was very ebullient (I have always wanted to use that word!). The idea of being in an empty house without nagging fathers and screaming children seemed as tranquil as a private beach on the Cayman Islands. Even if I spent my days with the blinds shut and the blankets pulled over my head to keep the sun from keeping me awake, it still seemed like a sun-soaked getaway. But what I didn’t realize was how the quiet and still mornings and nights turn on you. The quiet is no longer serene and comforting it becomes something deafening and mysterious. On the third night alone, I was showering with the bathroom door half open and I thought I heard something in the kitchen. When it was time to dry myself, I did so, quickly, and grabbed the nearest weapon-like device in the bathroom, a hair dryer. Stepping out into the hallway, I peeked in both directions anticipating a burglar, or homeless man but realized after a few minutes of standing in my blue American Apparel briefs, with a hair dryer in my left hand ready for impact, walking slowly, listening intently for any movement, that no one was actually in my house. Phew. This is the point when being alone lost its charm and novelty. I have spent the last few nights sleeping on the couch. There are four beds to choose from—including a heated waterbed but I choose the couch in the living room of all places to sleep. There is something strangely comforting about the couch. I think it reminds me of when I was younger and when I was sick my mother would put sheets over all the couches and rest me there in her arms. Sometimes a large Tupperware bowl would be at my side resting on the floor just in case I needed to vomit. Perhaps I subconsciously connect the couch (despite it not being the same couch) with the comfort afforded by my mother. I am on the couch now, as I am typing this, and I don’t think I’ll be resting my head anywhere else until the family returns to their designated areas of the house.
Franzelyn and I are planning a trip this weekend to drive up to Albany and visit our brother, sisters, and nieces. What does one do on a road trip with an eleven year old? I am noticing that she is slowly shifting away from High School Musical. I am not sure where she is straying but she has been reading these weird graphic novel-type books she got from the school’s book fair. She does hum along to classic rock since my father is always playing it. It frightens me that she knows more lyrics to a Led Zepplin song than I do. Will she become more rock and roll than her big brother? I could only hope so. She has Kayne West as her ringtone on her borrowed cell phone though. I also enjoy the fact that my little sister introduced me to the brilliant Fred on Youtube. If you go to your local shopping mall, you can even find Fred tee-shirts. Sigh, even eleven year olds can use social networking to make big bucks. Will I ever find a decent income? I am not sure what will happen on our venture upstate. Perhaps we will get slurpees and junk food for the ride and she will play her DS for the four-hour drive, while I listen to 10th Wonder (a Heroes podcast), Radiolab, and French with Michel Thomas.
Do you think it’s weird that I eat spoonfuls of unprocessed raw honey?
“There is nothing any sadder than losing yourself in love…”
As I was packing up my books at the end of my French class a fellow classmate caught sight of one of the books I was sticking into my tote bag and asked, “Transgender history?” For a brief moment, I thought I was in the blue hallway of my high school, overhearing one of the football players wearing their maroon Marauders jerseys. It didn’t help that the unfolding scene featured a stocky classmate who usually wears hockey jerseys to class. I have spent a good portion of my life, defending my sexuality, despite even acknowledging my orientation until sophomore year of high school. Quietly, I would hear the words “faggot” or “queer” or any other variation of those words and I would shrug them off in a very passive way, pretending with all my exteriority (facial expressions, body movement) that I didn’t just hear them. It didn’t help that I would show up to school wearing ridiculous outfits. I wasn’t voted “Most Unique” of my senior class for nothing. Most days were spent wearing my 14 eyelet Dr. Martens with a pair of Boy Scout shorts and either a polo shirt from a thrift store or a rock tee shirt. Though my style would change drastically from day to day, I would like to think it was universally punk rock.
or...
Anyway, back to the 21st century, my fellow colleague questions Susan Stryker’s Transgender History. I wasn’t ready for such an interrogation and responded with my heart in my throat, “It’s for class. Queer theory!” “They offer classes like that here?” Clearly this gentleman is not an English major. Another classmate I am friendly with responds, “Yeah, they offer all kinds of classes that are similar. Feminism, Ecofeminism, Masculinity Studies.” Phew. It frightens me that my immediate innate response to an inquisitive classmate that concerns gender and sexuality was filled with consternation. In my mind I was able to exist in both the present moment and still feel the feelings of a much younger Bruce a decade ago. Is that use of the Space-Time Continuum perhaps? This could also be a valid critique. Or perhaps this is all psychological and I should seek out that psychologist in the medical directory I keep telling myself I will pick out. But how does one even select such a person? By name? Gender? By their proximity to my home? If I am going to crack my skull open and bleed on their office chair and carpet, it has to be someone whom I can trust. If I am going to show them both visible and veiled scars they must tread lightly on my fragile consciousness but I don’t want them to be too gentle, because I want interactive, I want genuine interaction. I have had therapists doze off in the middle of a session. She would constantly use stock phrases and feign both intelligence and concern, which had me fooled for a good while until that one day her eyes, hidden behind thick glasses, were closed for just a few moments too long. I can still hear her voice, it always sounded like she had cotton balls stuffed in her mouth. I wouldn’t mind the Irish Gabriel Byrne, if he has any free time between Laura and Sophie. I don’t mind that he is an person acting as a therapist, he would be better than a narcoleptic caricature. /end of In Treatment references. Choosing a name out of an online directory, acknowledging the amount of education they received, which is duly noted with abbreviations beside their name, is not an easy task. And I have been struggling with my current state of melancholic waste, also known as depression, psychosis, and extreme fatigue and anxiety for longer than I thought it would last. Sometimes I pass as a functional human being but perceptive minds like M.S.N know it is a façade. They are not fooled by the half smiles, skinny jeans, and lengthy narratives found here in this journal. They understand the complexities of melancholia. I can shop at the health food store, filling up my basket with the darkest organic green vegetables and prepare a decent meal. I can even find myself, entirely alone in a theater at ten in the morning watching Tom Tykwer’s The International and relate to the creepy trajectory our (post)modern world is heading where globalization kills the individual, murders the independence, our last farewell to free will, forever spoiled by Interpol, commerce, and greed. A government that controls all—death, divorce, war, and the potentiality of your happiness. These highly perceptive people, ghostly but unique, not dressed in white sheets or surrounded by burning candlesticks, petition through the Death Of Communication, also referred to as email, that you romanticize the present and obsess over the past. Where is the future if your present is an un-reality, a figment of your imagination. Figment the dinosaur that speaks French with a slight lisp and messenger bag strapped over scaly shoulder walks you in circles within your consciousness. Delusional, syrupy thoughts muddled with disorientation. I spend too much time trying to navigate these post-love-blues. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss wrote a beautiful song titled Killing the Blues which may contain The Secret we are all searching for, our own mythical fountain of youths, shattered mirrors bad luck yuppie counterfeit emotions in a darkroom with over-exposed film and walls red like blood, blood red, there always seems to be two people tonguing in darkrooms, perhaps the smell of chemicals mixed pheromones induces sexual opulence. I know because my dick just got hard thinking of a scene from the L word until someone vomits on a photograph of their ex-lover, while they are cheating on their current lover with a woman who used to sleep with the vomiter’s current lover. Sometimes I cannot help being such a lesbian, but Gwyneth Paltrow’s cousin Shane, I mean Katherine Moennig is…I can feel the post-graduation blues are just around the corner. I know many friends who went through it. I’m still not sure they survived which leaves me spent, without that dollar in my wallet. I already find it difficult to just explicitly exist. I am always finding it a struggle to do truly exist. The usual distractions are not abstracted enough and I find myself tripping over the same misguided thoughts, obsessively seeking an escape that will not reveal to me its emergency exit doors or safety latch. Because I think I need to jump. Leap into the Void if you will….
And this is what I am listening to during my descent:
This ghostly take of a Bruce Springsteen song will push you to the edge of a breakdown. I never liked The Boss, but if I knew his lyrics were this good I would have taken Elizabeth Wurtzel’s obsession more seriously. Perhaps this will convince all those Bat for Lashes haters (cough Mark cough).
Bat for Lashes covering Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire”
The unexpectedly beautiful take of pop on pop, The Fray- Heartless (Kayne West Cover)
I cannot get enough of Julie Doiron’s new record. My favorite French-Canadian has such a distinctive voice. Her aggressive guitar strumming over hushed but poignant vocals layered in awkward melodies are so intense. I love how her words always seem to blend into each other. Perhaps this mp3 will convince someone to attend her show with me at Union Hall in Park Slope in April.
Julie Doiron- Spill Yer Lungs
Maria Taylor’s “Time Lapse Lifeline” has me completely hooked. On first listen, I wasn’t very fond of it. But after the third listen, I realized how fantastic it really is. If you’re like me and miss Azure Ray as much as I do, this should fulfill that void. Every time I hear the beginning guitar riff I immediately think of Placebo’s “Every You Every Me” for some reason even though it sounds nothing like it.
Since my dear friend Ed Droste of Grizzly Bear went on a twittering-spree one day praising the new Phoenix record, I finally obtained a copy of Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix and had a listen. Wow. When did these guys get so good? I remember the first time I listened to them; I was in an independent record store in Tempe, Arizona, just a few miles from PHOENIX. I put on the headphones and their album Alphabetical and it didn’t do anything for me. What I did leave the store with instead was a record from a band called Truxton. If I were in that record store and Phoenix released this album, Truxton wouldn’t have had a chance.
Phoenix- 1901
I don’t know why it took me so long to get into Chairlift but I am glad I finally obtained their record. With lyrics like this, set against such an 80s backdrop it is completely irresistible.
"I tried to do handstands for you/I tried to do headstands for you/Every time I fell on you/yeah every time I fell/I tried to do handstands for you/But every time I fell for you/I'm permanently black and blue/permanently blue for you."
Chairlift-Bruises
Last but not least, I offer you Metric- Help I’m Alive. I cannot get enough of this song. Though like every other Metric album, Fantasies bores me to death. This is the one song that completely stands out from the rest of the album. It is superb. "Help, I’m alive, my heart keeps beating like a hammer/hard to be soft/tough to be tender/come take my pulse/the pace is on a runaway train/help, I’m alive, my heart keeps beating like a hammer/beating like a hammer," will be repeating in your head for days.
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Perhaps they are all right. Life is meaningless, especially when you find meaning through the internet. Obsessively micro-blogging on a site called Twitter. Always looking for an escape, even if it is reading about what a stranger is eating for breakfast and what article they read that inspired them enough to share with the rest of the world. I received an email that said, “The idea of being out with you and you having to type something into nothing makes me a little unhappy” and it has thoroughly crashed my party. I don’t know why it is affecting me so much. Actually, I do know why I care but I feel so hopeless, helpless and lethargic admitting it. Same Old Story. It was written by the only boy I have ever loved, who loved me back even more. I know we broke up almost two years now, but I still can’t seem to shake him off. We embarked on a friendship after a year hiatus. He moved to Brooklyn. I stayed here to finish up the degree I should have finished four years ago. Am I really going to explain this? No, I really don’t think so. He read my last entry because I left it public. I could write out his analysis of the entire thing. From the language to the content. He’s Jewish and opinionated. He’s beautiful in his Gap sweatshirts, the Gap sweathsirts I am not even sure he wears anymore because BK is NOLOGO country. I still go through life thinking W.W.M.S.D? What Would Michael Seth Do? It’s infuriating.
"I’m feeling great tonight," Chairlift keeps repeating in the chorus of their song “Planet Health.” For some reason this song has permeated my subconscious and I hear it in my dreams, and in my head while walking on campus dodging the gusts of wind that try with all their gusty might to mess up my hair. But I run into friends with one eerily dilated pupil in the Wang Center and she is holding her professor’s assistant’s black sunglasses she fears she might break. We walk out the Wang Center doors into the deceptive weather. From inside it seemed warm but after stopping in the middle of campus to chat up some more friends my left ear begins to freeze. Existentialism and a professor who obsessively drinks Diet Coke. Med school, to interview, I’m carrying around my backpack from freshmen year of high school with Marilyn Manson, STP, Operation Ivy, and Radiohead patches stitched to it. Why do Jansport backpacks have to last so long? ATM withdrawals, and cute boys who wear galoshes when it rains sits next to me while I eat sushi and read an article about The Mountain Goats, a band I never seemed to get into but probably should, in New York Magazine. Speaking of such a zine, I was watching Bravo and The Real Housewives of New York City was on and it seems as though the caricatures are feuding through national print media causing gossip and uncomfortable situations. I don’t understand why the show is about New York City housewives because most of the women are not housewives and they don’t have “houses” in Manhattan. And every episode seems to be filmed in the Hamptons. The Maria Taylor song “Time Lapse Lifeline” is perfection. On my first listen, I kind of shrugged it off, but the melody and complexity has held my ears hostage, just like Yeasayer’s “Tightrope” which is supposedly performed acoustically on that French music blog The Takeaway. Sometimes I think I’m Jewish or I am mistaken for a Jew until I pull down my jeans. Last Sunday I had brunch with Jon. After stuffing ourselves with omelets, cannolis, cheese, and fruit we put on Laura Smiles. A movie M.S.N. used to obsessively talk about. Well, it finally arrived in the mail via Netflix and the elfish hands of the USPS. MSN was right. This movie is phenomenal. Fuck you’s under breath in the comfort of your own bedroom. Unhappily married unhappily committing adultery. Beautiful. Stark. Stunning. Here is the trailer:
Petra Wright deserves endless praise. More and more family members are joining Facebook and I am beginning to feel I need to begin censoring myself. At the corner market I run into George who is licking his vegan ice cream cone from Penny Licks as if he were in some porn filmed in the sweltering sun of L.A. He always had a nice pair of lips. The bottom lip is abnormally larger than his top lip but it is abnormally endearing. The non-dairy cream is dripping from that bottom lip and down the stubble on his chin. It is irresistible. I move in closer and whisper in his ear that I am going to lick up the chocolate chip cookie dough that is...A page of yesterdays New York Times sticks to my leg in the wind. I look down to further inquire what is wrapped around leg. Perhaps there is meaning behind this page and my life? I reach down and grab the inky newspaper and realize it is the obituaries. Death, an expiration I cannot avoid. The milkman tongues the yellow retriever, ringing the bell for service, a service bell, call service, car service, black limousines, dark shades, hip-hop and a simple answer machine stating your name and whereabouts, Reality TV junkie force-fed Zoloft and an anti-anxiety script your grandmother used to take for her anxiety spills, the ones that evoked the dirty napkin spirits that played tic-tac-toe on the walls of her nursing home in red and blue pen, digging their nails into a sloppy hospital bed with the lifeline bobbing up and through the heart of the newscasters who believes that shallow advertising is religion in disguise, a jingle as prayer, a slogan for verse. I AM THE WORD of God, not Paul the Walrus or Joseph the track star, in sweatband, Pike Place Market tee shirt he found near fish with slit bellies, a pocket full of jumping jacks, jack o’ lanterns, and the ring around the rosie, death dances, they used to sing in the Middle Ages to calm the hysteria, the black dark plague also known as HIV. Forget the hippie with the twelve-inch beard who sings Hallelujah in the subway station with his metronome, he only wanted...
II. The Art of Leaving a Voicemail
#869. Forever Young. We carried over into the new Nazi War Terror Big Bang Red Carpet Red Wall murder mystery Annie Hall, Bedford, bedlam, extra-small briefs in assorted colors, used vinyl and a falafel for only two bucks. Cautious living, collector’s series, I traded baseballs cards just to poke, plunge, and torture. Uniformed alibis, distorted lullabies, a baby cries in the corner of the room until stone cold. Ever see Trainspotting who dazed the nun syndrome, void block, blank check, disney Mac Mac, Delusional, fusion, I drank lavender to keep the bed bugs from...seriously? seriously?
is four in the morning, on one of my nights off from work and I cannot seem to sleep. I guess it doesn’t help that I brewed a pot of Top Pot coffee just a few minutes ago.
I found this photograph of my mother on Facebook of all places:
ARizona!
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Ugh. I am so exhausted today. I can barely keep my eyes open as I type this. I am currently playing soccer mom. I had to pick up my little brother from school and we walked to the post office together. This is where this photograph was taken:
Work last night was rough. There was too much mail. I didn’t even have to time to change the playlist I was listening to on my iPhone and I think I might have heard Ladyhawke’s “Magic” thirteen times. That is enough to make a stable mind reach psychosis; what if someone has an already scattered mental state to begin with? I could write a thorough explanation but my mind is frazzled, disordered, and unable to form complete thoughts. I couldn’t even explain the difference between an indirect and direct object in my French class this morning. I knew the answer but my mind wouldn’t let the muscles in my tongue express it. I watched the Independent Spirit Awards on Saturday and I’m glad they acknowledged Melissa Leo in Frozen River as “Best Actress.” I never knew how scattered she was as a person. Just a little bit batty. I love her in every movie she’s in. Everyone keeps talking about Mickey Rourke’s comeback, but I am not sure it is much of a comeback, it seems more like a reunion tour and he will soon return back to where he was all those years ago, aging and becoming more and more cynical about Hollywood and life in general. His speech was stupendous. Particularly when he couldn’t remember Marisa Tomei’s name and called an assistant “gap tooth.” His misguided and uninhibited speech was beautufil especially that part about missing his recently deceased dog. Man, that guy is endearing. What was his whole thing about Eric Roberts needing a comeback? Weird. John Waters and Zooey Deschanel on stage together? Oh my, they need to make a film together.
...
I seriously never want the sun to ever come up again. In the darkness I dwell and inquire about the idiosyncrasies and complexities of my seemingly banal existence. I receive ghostly text messages from a presumed stranger that speaks of corporeality, in riddles and iambic pentameter. He rescues me from Sixth Avenue hustle and bustle. The blinding neon lights and the platinum blonde hair tied up in a ponytail, peacoat, trench coat with oversized buttons to keep the February chill from creeping through. Handbags, tote bags, and little purses. Nike, Puma, and XXXX. The last days of winter are awfully confusing. One moment I'm numb, the next morning I layer myself up and end up sweating up a sauna, but my fingers and nose still remain to frozen in the city air. The ghost who haunts my phone through text reveals himself a few hours later. I miss that kid desperately. He makes more guest appearances in my mind than most people. Brilliant and endearing. I remember kissing him and another boy at the same time upstairs in the rainforest at The Delancey. I couldn’t tell the tongues apart. But the water kept falling, the faucet kept leaking and the boys all relieved themselves in the trough downstairs in the bathroom. Urine following the same current down into the same drain with the slippery marbles and the boys who are just outside the stage dancing their joker’s dance, and walking on blades and broken glass. I read epitaphs like people read obituaries over morning toast and jam. Dejected postcoital exasperation. Cum drying up on your stomach and the waistband of your boxer-briefs.
3:44am.
Long Island. The Gays are given a Wednesday night to copulate and grind grind grind on a beautiful dance floor. R invites me out then takes it back. Jack and I decide to go anyway. On the list. My bank issued new debit cards because someone hijacked their system. I cannot remember my pin. I see the lesbian that TA’d one of my English classes out on the dance floor dancing to a remixed pop song. Revenge and Domestic Tragedy. I don’t understand why her clothes have to be so large and that baseball cap has to go. I have 3/4 quarter sleeves and everyone is smoking in the club. It is illegal and no one seems to mind. The flat-screen TVs are playing performances by JT, Britney, and Beyonce. They all seem to be dancing and singing to the beat of every song playing in the club. Is pop really that derivative? Probably. But who can deny such glossy, sugar-coated melodies? On the way to Nassau, Jack was pointing out all the jems found on the new Kelly Clarkson album. Each song seemed to sound like a different artist. Here is Kelly Clarkson sounding like Peaches. Here is Kelly Clarkson sounding like Katy Perry. This is her as Lady Gaga. I understand a particular sound encompassing an entire album but when each song sounds like a different person, that is a bit more fragmentation than I can handle. It is a schizophrenic album. Here the boys are in the Abercrombie and Fitch costumes. Gelled spiky hair, I think they refer to them as blow-outs, fake tans and some bling. J and I wonder when this trend will fade, it has been around for almost a decade. These boys would be much cuter if they left their hair alone, stopped tweezing, plucking and adding layers of logos upon logos. We watch everyone around us converse with one another. Everyone seems to know everyone. Incestuous almost. J spots a puppy-eyed boy sucking on a lollipop I try and I try to avoid a boy I once knew. From behind me, a boy runs his fingers through my hair and immediately apologizes when I turn around. “Oops. I thought you were my ex-boyfriend. I’m sorry.” With a half smile I respond, “It’s fine. I hope my resemblance of your ex isn’t a bad thing.” “No, not at all. It is definitely a good thing. By the way I’m _____.” “It’s nice to meet you. I’m B____.” Awkward silence and I turn to J to help me ease away from _____. Oh, this is all so boring.
I should just fictionalize everything and then anything would seem a bit more interesting.
An excerpt from Susan Stryker’s Transgender History:
...as I looked out over the sea of several thousand faces. Even after being in the transgender scene for so long, I found the crowed a bewitching spectacle: brilliantly tattooed, biologically female queer femme women and their trans guys who used to be their dyke girlfriends; straight-looking male-to-female transsexuals with nail salon manicures sitting side by side with countercultural transsexual women sporting face jewelry, dreadlocks, and thrift-store chic; lithe young people of indeterminate gender; black bulldaggers, white fairies, Asians queens, Native two-spirits; effeminate trannyfags and butch transsexual lesbians; kids of parents who had changed sex and parents who supported their kids; rejection of the labels their society had handed them. Some people walked around in fetish gear, some in chain-store khakis or floral-print sundresses from the discount clothing outlet; most wore the casually androgynous style of clothing that is the cultural norm. Vive la différence, I thought as I stepped up to the mi[crophone] and surveyed the beautiful range of human diversity spread out on the grass before me. Live and let live
I don’t know why this passage struck me so. It possibly moved me because Stryker spent the fifty pages prior explaining transgender in a dizzying theoretical language and actually defined terms like cisgender, genderqueer, and gender comportment. It was such a relief as a reader, to end her introduction with faces and unity.
I really don’t want to go to my French class at 8:30 in the morning. It is already 4. Perhaps I shouldn’t even sleep. Who knew Jesse McCartney could write such a beautiful pop song like Leona Lewis’ “Bleeding Love,” How did he write such a good song? I have spent numerous hours of my life watching acoustic versions of the song on Youtube and recently found an epic version by Thos Henley.
Thos Henley- Bleeding Love
With lyrics like this why wouldn’t you want to listen to The Antlers- Bear:
We’re terrified of one another, and terrified of what that means, but we’ll make only quick decisions, and you’ll just keep me in the waiting room, and all the while I’ll know we’re fucked and not getting unfucked soon, when we get home we’re bigger strangers than we’ve ever been before, you sit in front of snowy television, suitcase on the floor.”
And if you’re looking to dance to a song about the consequences of sex without a condom try Lykke Li’s cover of Kings of Leon’s “Knocked Up.”
Lykke Li- Knocked Up
I don’t know why I have been uploading so much music lately in this here journal. I just feel as if some of these songs need ears, as much as I think your ears need them. It is 4:33 in the morning and I should be sleeping but I think I might have drank too much coffee today. Speaking of coffee, with the help of Twitter and a friend, I discovered a new coffee shop in Brooklyn. I was inquiring about electrical outlets at Gimme Coffee, a coffee shop in Williamsburg that I have been to once before on Twitter with above mentioned friend. Three minutes after Ed responded to my question, I got an email notification that Gimme Coffee was following me on Twitter and responded with its own answer! Yes, the coffee shop not only discovered me on Twitter but it actually conversed with me! How surreal is that? There goes Justification #78! Twitter is not only another social networking site which makes meaningful connections with other people, but it also establishes meaningful connections with coffeehouses, stores, and inanimate objects! If you are looking to follow your favorite fictional character, there is a chance they are tweeting right now as you read this. I currently have the misfortune of following (and being followed by) Sookie Stackhouse of True Blood fame. She tweets about falling in love with vampires, her mundane life as a waitress in Bon Temps, and even posts songs she is listening to. It is eerie. Not only is it the fictional Sookie from those fictional novels written by Charlaine Harris, which was adapted by Alan Ball for a HBO television show, played by the amazing Anna Paquin, now we as Twitter users can read her interior monologue/commentary written by who??? Is it Alan Ball? Or an intern at HBO working for college credit? How many more mutations of the same fictional character can we have/consume? I almost screamed when I got the Twitter notification stating that Patty Hewes (Glenn Close in Damages) was following me! That woman would slit my throat if she actually read my mundane updates. Since, I am always looking to justify the reasons why I use Twitter, I came up with Reason #79. Twitter kills idle time. During all those moments of idleness what could be more productive than tweeting (with an attached photograph) of the woman who left the house wearing two different shoes? Stuck at a red traffic light, on the bus on your way to work or school, at the airport waiting for your connecting flight, or standing on line waiting to order your lunch are all reasonable times to tweet. Why not tweet that thought you want to elaborate at length at another time? Twitter offers an escape from those idle moments, in those non-places.
Your aunt, not just any aunt but your godmother calls you while you are sleeping and leaves a voicemail. The voicemail is nothing poignant but she asks you to call her back when you get a chance. On your way to Brooklyn, you put your headphones on and dial her number. She tells you about a news report she heard on the television about women’s bodies found in New Mexico and Colorado. Don’t worry too much about it. Go on to Brooklyn and hang out with your friends. The authorities think all the women were killed by a serial killer and that was his/her dumping ground. We all need closure. We haven’t heard from your mother in over two years. No phone call. Not contact whatsoever. You should talk to your grandmother about it, perhaps they can send dental records to the authorities. This could be absolutely nothing but we all want to know we all want to make sense of this all. Images of dusty bones and skulls with light brown hair flicker in your mind like one of those gruesome crime TV shows. You’ve had nightmares of this possibility. But you continue driving westward, Bjork’s Vespertine is in the stereo and it distracts you from the realities in different time zones. But your best defense mechanism is repression and that is what you do until you don’t even notice your mother even disappeared, that your mother is still in her apartment in Phoenix, writing in her journal, or watching the soap opera network. I arrive in Brooklyn and decide to go to Second Stop Cafe on Lorimer instead of Gimme Coffee after realizing that Second Stop brews (Portland-based) Stumptown coffee. The same Stumptown coffee you had in Seattle last summer that made one of the most delicious soy mochas you have ever had. There are no vacant tables to sit at when you walk in but you order a coffee anyway. Just before you order, the barista looks bewildered at the cash register, because he accidentally hit a button that prevented him from taking my order. He was scruffy and wore a winter hat placed lazily on his head. I inquired about the beans and confessed my love of the Stumptown coffee shop I found myself in last summer after eating at the French restaurant next door in Seattle. He was so enthusiastic about Stumptown coffee and he informed me that it is wonderful to be in New York City right now during what he called a “coffee war.” Stumptown is supposedly opening up a shop in Red Hook and is actually going to roast beans there? He was so passionate about coffee beans I lost him a few sentences back. He said that Second Stop Cafe is affiliated with Stumptown owners and Stumptown visit the store regularly. His textbook knowledge of coffee and the supposed open frontier for coffee in the land of New York was endearing. I pour some soymilk into my ceramic coffee mug and ask a girl sitting at a table by herself if I could join her. She said sure. I pulled out Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues and started reading about lesbians growing up in Buffalo, New York. Buffalo does not sound like a good place now and certainly not back in the 50s where this novel begins.
[Insert a 24 hour intermission where I tell myself, “Self, let’s take a nap for two hours and then wake up and accomplish all the necessary things to accomplish on a Friday evening!” Those two hours eventually turn into six and it is already time for work]
12:19 is boiling water for green tea and macaroni and cheese and listening to my little brother play Garfield on his DS #
12:20 @octoberxswimmer I wonder...how did that cat stay culturally relevant? #
12:55 is why must they close the Virgin Megastore in Union Square? #
12:59 @michaelmcfadden jeez. how many times is that b*tch coming around town? #
13:17 @23r it is silly. one of the few reasons why i returned the sucker. #
13:42 @vintagelife I should be excited when capitalism fails; but all those indie record shops do not have the collection that virgin did. #
14:18 @nicholascook you can almost pass as a vegetarian these days! stay away from the "soy nuggets" #
14:56 is going to watch an episode of the L word #
15:10 @octoberxswimmer Helena: "[Dylan] colonizes my thoughts." I need to steal that line in the future #
15:32 did the L word just reference Vera Farmiga in Down to the Bone? Brilliant. #
00:39 @vintagelife I said pussywillows dotty! #
00:41 @blackandhip oh man. how many flights? #
00:46 @TattooOfSun really? I can't wait to watch the second episode. #
00:47 @bdubois omg! #
00:48 @lolwtfaids what about tara on buffy?! #
00:49 @TattooOfSun weird. she's crazy in real life. #
00:51 @db you should probably see that off-broadway play Telephone. it is all about this quote. perhaps a bit more poetic #
00:54 @nicholascook at least I got a hug the night before you declared official hug day! #
00:56 @nowirecoathangr where do you go? #
00:56 @mattbuchan exciting opportunities?! #
00:59 @Isak aw. #
01:20 @ryanpfluger you've been having too many good days lately! #
01:21 @tofumugwump I can't seem to help talking to myself! it is very meta and Vonnegut of me #
01:22 @nowirecoathangr which album? #
01:23 @ryanseattle I want vivace to exist in new york! #
01:29 doesn't like when naps turn into sleeps #
02:00 is Yelle is playing on one of those late night shows. she is so adorable. I wish she'd teach me French #
02:43 is forget about bat for lashes' glass and daniel check out pearl's dream and good love! #
02:48 @michaelkmak je pense le francais est tres difficile! trop beaucoup TENSES! #
04:00 watching Gossip Girl and Dan says: "our family went from Family Ties to Faulkner in one cocktail" #
04:21 Blair to Serena about going to Brown: "Maybe we can get a jumpstart on your veganism. Have some celebratory seitan at Angelica Kitchen." #
04:30 @octoberxswimmer mmm...I wouldn't mind some angelica kitchen right now! #
I was listening to Damien Rice’s O at work last night and forgot how brilliant that album is. It also made me want to watch every movie his songs appeared in (like Closer and Stay). Now I am listening to Nada Surf’s “Inside of Love” on repeat because it is summing up my mood as of late.
For some reason I cannot stop looking at this photograph of Heath Ledger and Rose Bryne:
So where does this narrative lead? Are you looking for some direction? Orientation? A proper location to set your bearings? I don’t think there is use for a compass here. We are in a Pynchon world now. Used car lots and an underground mail system that sorts letters with meaningless text. Communication for communication’s sake. Kind of like my compulsion to document. But I will try and mend the holes and finish this wearisome assortment of words.
At the coffee shop, I read, and the line about two lovers changing the pronouns of a contemporary love song to make it fit for them was very charming because I have done the same thing. The girl I am sharing a table with is reading an article about “muddy” psychology. I am not sure what that means but the red ink in her margins is very distracting. What else is distracting is a man at another table who keeps snapping photos with his phone. Why do phones do that anyway? Why have the “sound” of a camera taking a photograph when it is not necessary? It is nearing 5:30 and it is time to pack up my belongings. Blue highlighter, pen, novel, and notebook are put back in my bag and I place my coffee mug with the rest of the dirty dishes. Here is where Twitter Justification #80 resides. It is time to meet up with N to go see the play Telephone at the Foundry Theatre in the West Village. N is a friend from Twitter. Twitter Justification #80: Meet New People. I’m listening to Casiotone For The Painfully Alone on the subway and I start to feel weak and faint. The metal pole I’m clinging on to helps me from falling to the floor. I realize I haven’t eaten anything all day and when I rush off the train, I look for something to shove in my mouth. A bakery would be perfect. So, there I am walking down 7th Avenue and a bakery appears, the same bakery I have eyed quite a few times before. I order this amazing honey and walnut pastry from a very friendly guy who guarantees I will like it. Casiotone is singing “He cries in the darkness until the end credits roll...man that’s the only way to cry” as I continue walking to Commerce Street. I am too busy shoving this honey and walnut goodness in my mouth I almost trip over a median in the road. At another intersection a woman gives me unexpected bedroom eyes and I don’t know how to shake those brown eyes off. I turn down Commerce and this block is beautiful. Almost fairytale-like. It looks like what the city is depicted like in movies. Movies like You’ve Got Mail. Those bad movies that are always on television, the ones that pull you in with chance encounters and quirky ways of saying I love you in a bookstore. Those movies that construct a love that seems so attainable, that depict a New York so beautiful, that offer an escape from the mundane reality shows that are on the television at the same time. But here I am, in the setting of one of those films, standing outside the theater. Just a few minutes later N arrives and offers his hand for a handshake. There is about an hour before the play starts. A dog jumps around excitedly and N wants to pet him. We end up picking up our tickets which end up being just the program itself. The program looked as if it were xeroxed at Staples. We take a seat in the lobby. A lady thinks I am in the way, and says excuse me and we are confused what she was asking to be excused. Another lady, this one quite older, asks if she can rest her handbag on the bench we were sitting on. She kept thanking me over and over again and it made her inquiry even more awkward than it had to be. Peacoats with a NYT pin on them. You tell me you designed an application where the T spins. Texas. The difference between Austin and the rest of the state. Punching numbers into your fathers key as if it were a calculator when he worked from home. I cannot remember what you were wearing on you feet but your jeans had neat stitching. I’m glad to know that I am not the only who inquires what is in someone else’s bag. I just need to remember to ask someone before I start going through it. Sorry Kyle. One of the women working at the theater seemed to yell at us to be quiet at exactly the same time you were speaking. I felt her eyes penetrating through us. I try and defend Dollhouse and Buffy the Vampire Slayer but fail miserably, realizing just a few minutes before I was talking about how good Gilmore Girls was. I offer you some of the greatest pastry on earth and I think you agreed that is might be the best tasting pastry on earth. The lobby is swamped with people, people I didn’t expect to come and we squeeze through the doors to find a seat. The theater is beautiful. Brick everywhere. You pretend to play bongos on three bald heads in front of us. The furthest one away is abnormally shiny. You’re taller than I expected. Not fitting comfortably in the seat. The man at the end of the row awkwardly stands for too long as we let people pass down the row.
Telephone begins and I realize that I am never going to be able to put this play into words. In three parts the play is set in two different centuries. Beginning when the telephone is first invented and when its purpose is not completely clear. Philosophical meanderings about death and ghosts. The difference between listening and understanding. The second part was Babette a seemingly scattered and schizophrenic woman wrapped in a corset pondering the things every human ponders, but hears other voices in the distance. She seems to try and justify her delusions, thoughts of grandeur, and the fact that she has a telephone in her stomach. Something she only refers to a few times. She is not just master but slave. Her unintelligible but poetic rambling went on for so long. I wasn’t sure she would stop for a breath. I waited for her to trip over a word, but she kept the words flowing, flow, flowing, a constant hum into the empty spaces of the theater. We were on the other line, receiving her poetic stream of consciousness, almost like these words here, listening, not fully comprehending. but listening, perhaps not understanding, but what were we to do without a context? without knowing her before? what year is it? Perhaps that was the point, context and relevance doesn’t matter in a world saturated in a constant exchange of salutations in emails, conversations, bank tellers, and TSA employees at security checkpoints. communication. At what point are we to stop sharing? Stop comprehending. The difference between savoir and compendre. Miscommunication and disconnection. The last part of the play was visually stunning. It mostly takes place on a dark stage with lights shining on faces, backs turned, lips moving...while fragments of different phone conversations are played. Modern life expressed through modern technology. A girlfriend who cannot love a man the same way she used to, sounding bored, fatigued, disconnected, another boyfriend sounds dejected, they are all so different but fill in the golden silence that telephones create. Pregnant telephones and pregnant pauses. Awkward to sit through the sound of a supposed silence, with static and the whimper of someone who can’t fake the feelings anymore than the next person. I read an article that said the play was an “experience rather than a narrative-immediately into the subconscious.” We walked out of the theater in silence because all that was heard were feet stammering up the stairs and out the doors. I remember the woman who was putting lip balm on during the deluge of neurosis from the second act of the play. She is a woman who cannot comprehend without fidgeting for something to relieve her own subconscious. She reminded me of the piece of gum I had in the pocket of my jeans, that I instantly craved. I did laugh too loud at one of the lines during the play. I think Babette was talking about giving birth to a child through her mouth.
I’m really not digging this linearity. But after the play we walk down West 4th to look for something to eat. I know Red Bamboo is not too far from here, and I suggest it, but suddenly take back the suggestion because it is a vegetarian restaurant and I wouldn’t want to enforce my diet on someone else’s appetite. I also fear suggesting things that people will dislike. But we walk there anyway. Conor Oberst’s solo album is playing on the stereo and you try and restrain yourself from singing along. The tables are turned a half hour later when Death Cab For Cutie’s The Photo Album comes on and I have to suppress my urge to sing along to Ben Gibbard; along with repressing emotions that are so intricately entwined with this record. Ex-girlfriends and make-out sessions in my 1987 Chrysler Fifth Avenue. Things seemed simpler back than even if I was slipping from reality on your living room couch with my head rested on your lap. Confessions of a middle school actor and clarinet player met with confessions of a french horn player and a talent show that required leopard print and balloons for breasts. The wait staff is not as awkward as I presumed. Explanation of teeth. I didn’t think there were so many stories about enamel. I even spotted a Toms of Maine bag earlier and wondered if they had their own storefront in the city. Tripping over words and faux sweet and sour chicken and faux philly cheesesteaks. The lack of accents on both our parts. Coworkers almost become sister-in-laws and Upper East Side apartments surrounded by barking dogs and an alley with too much noise. I like your misaligned beauty marks. Crabby cancer, Gregor Samsa, the sharing of neuroses and anxieties. It was one of the first times I have ever felt someone really understood panic at its most devastating and paralyzing. Likes to sing Cher at karaoke. Reading posters on the wall and forgetting what you read. No alcohol. Awkward use of tweet, tweeting, and twitter. Au revoir underground at the Union Square subway station. A handshake turned hug. Down two flights of stairs. 8 minutes for the next Brooklyn bound train. Six people are dancing to Rihanna on the subway platform. I drowned them out by listening to the same Bon Iver song (Brackett, WI) over and over again. That gliding guitar and bass just kills me with each note. As I ascend onto Lorimer Street, I realize how eerily warm it is outside. I virtually knock on Pfluger’s door but he doesn’t answer. I grab a cup of coffee from the 24 hour deli and head back home listening to Yeasayer leaving voicemails on my sister’s cell phone because she makes me smile a particular smile only she can get me to contort.
/at 7:04 Sunday morning I finally finish this. When did it even begin?
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Bruce is finally with a cup of coffee and listening to Boy In Static’s “Young San Francisco”on repeat. Even here, in a Word document, I cannot even stop referring to myself in the third person. Twitter is not only changing the process of how I live my life but it is also changing the way I think. The constant tweeting, updating the “world,” however large (or small) that world may be, on my every move, thought, and action. It is eerily creepy letting the world know under the very oppressive 140 character limit about the meaningless trivial moments of my life. J***d referred it to as a constant need for validation and I can almost accept that criticism but the reason I tweet, tweet, tweet (yes, I know how unbelievably awful that word sounds but I am trying to accept the grotesque because I think Twitter will be around for a long time) isn’t about recognition or validation from others, it is something deeper, something within myself. It is the same reason I find myself, here on Livejournal, it is just another way for me to document my life. Through text, images, and conversation, I can continue this narrative, continue this work of fiction. It is documentation for my own purposes. Something “physical” or perhaps something more tangible than fading memories and fallacious feelings. It helps with reflection, though it might not work as well as a mirror, since it is filtered through my own neuroses and self-awareness. But if I am aware of the external pair of eyes, perceiving from its detached point of view, then I could see the truth behind the facade. But it isn’t necessarily a facade. We all cannot be floating around as Eros and Thanatos. I need all these methods of documentation. I am constantly retreating back and searching for meaning within this depraved narrative of mine. Since I have been deprived of time lately, Twitter allows me to “micro-blog”when I cannot find myself here. I refer to my updates on the site and expand on them when I am blessed with more time like this evening. I’m bookmarking thoughts, and since days usually bleed into other days, it helps me figure out which night was which. Before leaving the house on Valentine’s Day for Brooklyn, I even consulted my Twtitter and Facebook friends asking which shirt I should wear for my evening out.
vs.
Can you guess which shirt I left the house with? This is what I mean when I say Twitter is changing the way I live.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the criticisms, commentaries, and sharing of all things. What J***d would call validation, I would call a sincere need to share. Whatever I am sharing at any given moment, whether it be my experiences with my grandmother’s cancer or my trite commentaries on television programs, is never written in a disingenuous way. If a book has twisted all my beliefs into its fistful of enlightenment (like Foucault’s History of Sexuality Vol. 1) which I wrote about in my previous entry, I will write about it here and hope that someday someone else, might run into an edition of the book at a used bookstore in their hometown of Tulsa or Anchorage and pick it up because, their friend from the sticky webs of the internet wrote about it once. Since, I have been listening to that Boy In Static song for the past three hours, there must be something brilliant within its melody and it would be selfish of me to keep it to myself. So here I am, sharing it with you lovely people.:
Boy In Static- Young San Francisco
And since we are talking music, I think everyone should download Why?’s beautifully, slowed down version of The Cure’s “Close to Me” because it will break your heart into several messy pieces. It is another song that has been in constant rotation lately. What would life be without such captivating distractions? I can only listen to so much news on NPR on my rides out to Stony Brook University every morning. The mundane sorting of mail will also induce panic and the realization of how worthless and meaningless everything is around you unless you have Yoni Wolf of Why? singing in your ears.
Why?- Close to Me (The Cure cover)
And before I leave this music tangent I offer you Greg Laswell’s acoustic cover of Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”
In my last entry I wrote about one of the thirteen or so movies I saw at Sundance (The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle) and I realized all the movies I saw deserve the same recognition. This is something I wrote while in Utah after a screening of Dare.
Friends need to stop hijacking my iphone and updating my Facebook/Twitter status. I even put a passcode on my phone and Alex found a way to manipulate access to my phone. We are currently have some time between movies. We were just released from a screening of Dare which managed to make its way up near the top of my favorite movies of Sundance this year. I love threesome movies. I am not sure if just one person could fulfill a person completely. But adding another heart and mind to a sexual relationship always causes this awkward and complex tension. In film, it usually gets expressed the same way; that three people can never embark on a healthy relationship together. Monogamy (or loneliness) ends up the answer. Of course I am generalizing here. But almost every Gregg Araki film has a threesome that ends horribly. Or The Dreamers, Or Y tu mama tambien I’m not sure if Dare escaped this blueprint for disaster but it felt different, it felt right. Zach Gilford who played Johnny felt genuine in his emotional and sexual desire for both Alexa (Emmy Rossum) and Ben (Ashley Springer). I felt so much for Johnny’s character. The super popular jock who happens to be in a drama class. His desire for real human connection seemed remarkably conflicted and genuine. When he explains why he kissed Ben in a swimming pool to his therapist (who happens to be Sandra Bernhard!!) he said he saw how much meaning was behind Ben’s gaze. It made him feel good and special, something he has never felt in his whole life. Alexa and her friend Courtney dance to Elbow’s “Snooks (Progress Report)” a song I wanted to hear in a movie for so long. It is not a traditional song you can dance to but it has this beat that is irresistible. Alan Cumming, Ana Gasteyer and even Sandra Bernhard as a respected psychologist are in the film.
This is the short film Dare was based on:
One of the above shirts that I wore out on Valentine’s Day courted a few gentlemen at the bar we found ourselves at. One of them proceeded to take my iPhone and put their number in my contacts list and asked if we could get drinks next week. I was awkward as ever, wishing I were a bit more intoxicated so I could find the courage to whisper witty remarks in his ear. But there I was standing against a railing seeing sweaty limbs and heads bob up and down behind Brandon on the dance floor as he continues to converse with me, and I trip over my words and confess things I probably shouldn’t confess to others when first meeting them, but I don’t seem to have a filter, or don’t know when certain bits of information should remain in my own mind. Social interaction is difficult for me; strangers make me flustered, self-conscious, diffident, and inhibited. Or insert any other adjective that will paint me shy and withdrawn. He tells me he graduated with a Comparative Literature degree from Brown University. I remember I wanted to change my major a few years ago to Comp Lit but I feared the foreign language requirements but it didn’t stop me from taking Comp Lit classes that were cross-listed with my own major. I was already sobering up and didn’t even have a beer in my hand and not only was I verbally tripping but my hands didn’t know what to do with themselves. The fact that K was standing next to me brooding didn’t help either. Other friends were dancing and others were chatting with a guy with long blonde hair. I wanted to escape the conversation because I was certainly failing at upholding the illusion of being human. At this point sobering up completely would help, so I could take K home so he could retrieve his happiness. But there are other friends amongst the crowd of single queers looking for a 3am chance at love on Valentine’s Day. Earlier that night I was patiently standing at the bar waiting for the bartenders attention so I could order a Red Stripe. Out of nowhere an Asian boy pushes me and another dude from the bar so he could order his drink. His pummel seemed planned and intentional and it initiated a screaming match between boy and bartender that resulted in boy throwing a few $20 bills at the scruffy bartender. Everyone who witnessed the temperamental Asian looked around with wide eyes and the bartender didn’t know what to do with the money, so he put it in the tip pail (it wasn’t a jar, i think it was a tin pail). I guess not everyone is finding love tonight. But here I am, post-Valentines Day, post-date with the Brown graduate and not enough time to even begin transcribing conversation and the way he wore his long peacoat. He is a literary type from Oklahoma who shamefully confessed his love for Science Fiction. He is the 8,003rd person to tell me to read Snow Crash and I will finally put it on my Amazon wish list. He works for a literary agency reading submissions. He told me about the creator of The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers sent a treatment the other day to his agency. An older brother steered him away from Tori Amos as kid, and educated him in Built to Spill, Pavement, and Dinosaur Jr. I wish I were that lucky. I wish I could rewind back to the time I bought those Paula Abdul, Vanilla Ice, and Janet Jackson records and replace them with something a bit more endearing. It took some STP and Counting Crows to help steer me to guitars and meaningful melodies and that is not saying much. It depresses me to know that his seemingly alluring job pays him half my salary which is not always comforting for a soon to be graduate. I really don’t want to live in the Bronx with a laundromat just a few blocks too far. The night ends earlier than expected because exhaustion sets in. He walks me to my car and he is off to the Lower East Side. This Mortal Coil is playing from my CD player and it is remarkably poignant and sad. A quick drive home, I microwave a knish, squirt some spicy mustard on to a plate and head into my bedroom where I open up my laptop and stare into the hazy screen for the next few hours, feeling hazy and exhausted myself. This is where this ends.
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I accidentally slept through my shift at the post office last night. I don’t know why my thoughts have been obsessing over the amount of sleep I get. But the dreams about spinach and pesto almost disturb me more than the nightmares about plane crashes into a Southern rivers beside very Faulknerian landscapes. Woke up to a craving for a spinach and feta cheese omelet and The Microphones “The Glow Pt. 2” blasting in my ear. Gabrielle rang me at 7am and we were off for some diner breakfast and errands. Suburban malls, adorable baristas who hand us green stoppers that taste like peppermint, and new winter playlists playing in matching Honda Fits. Everyone needs a morning spent with a rambling Gabrielle, awkward waiters who forget to bring waters, and a trip to the Roosevelt Field mall. Her neurosis was consuming her and I tried to pull her way from her obsessive muttering.
It is Valentine’s Day and I have nothing more to say about that.
This whirlwind of a life has left me spinning, groundless, and perhaps more fragmented than ever. Boys come visit one long weekend from Texas and we dance amongst the human traffic in Manhattan. Immediately after subzero temperatures, I find myself in another winter landscape in Utah. Thankfully it is twenty degrees warmer there. Pfluger and I fly back to New York from Salt Lake City on different flights that leave ten minutes apart. We both must catch a connecting flight just a few miles apart in Maryland. But he arrives at JFK late, without his baggage, because his plane almost reached its demise (with the demise of all its passengers). My last semester at Stony Brook University begins the next morning. Classes five days a week. Intermediate French and a Queer Literature class. Thirteen novels on one syllabus and a $150 textbook in the other. One week of classes go by and I find myself in a different winter landscape in New England. West Dover, Vermont to be exact. A long weekend spent snowboarding at Mount Snow in 0 degree weather and drinking back at the House of Mayhem. Classes resume on Monday. Attendez! How does one register all these moments? I take snapshots, transcribe conversations in my mind but it seems I can only store so many memories at one time. Memories blur, poignant conversations become indecipherable, smeared ink on paper.
Sharing a house with thirteen other individuals in the mountains of Vermont is surreal. Especially when all of them are strangers with the exception of one person. It felt like The Real World and I could probably classify us into the familiar conventional stereotypes (i.e. The Gay Guy, The Closet Case, etc) but I will refrain from doing so because it would only simplify the complexity of the situation.
The game Scattergories is a good game to play, even if drunk. It is even better when people change the letter midway through a game or think the creepy-looking My Buddy doll is really named My Kid and everyone sings the jingle with the new name.
My view of the ceiling as I was lying in bed...all these distorted faces staring back at me in distorted ways
Boyfriends that look like chipmunks who could never satisfy or challenge enough. Green tea mornings and an introduction to Stevia. Not the only vegetarian who needs to eat modified meals. Dancing in kitchens and living rooms equipped with a strobe light and fog machine brought by a cousin and his adorable Russian girlfriend.
Spending five days without a wi-fi, 3G, or Edge connection might be the most suffocating experience an android might ever experience.
Meeting new friends who remember when Michael Pitt was on Dawson’s Creek. Flying dildos sweeping through the air of the living room dance floor. Tina the entrepreneur! Windy mountains, icy blue squares, and a cup of hot chocolate with eight inches of whipped cream on top prepared by a girl so stoned. The next day I ordered a mocha from the same cafe in the ski lodge which consisted of chocolate syrup and drip coffee. $5.75 please. I inquired about the process and the aging barista deserved a hot beverage thrown in her face. Forgotten gloves, oddly coupled couples that pull it off somehow. Girls dressed as boobs during the costume party. Nipples and all. Boys half naked with nothing but a “prosthetic” cock, slapping everyone with it. Dildos found in freezers, rubber snakes found in kitchen cabinets. Scaring a Pam with a fake spider. The hot tub decides to work once during the whole trip. Thankfully, it was when I decided to jump in. Seven-Elevens with an entire liquor store attached to them. From the window I watched 3am sledding with no boots on. Rock Band constantly playing in the background. There are some serious drummers in this group. Losing friends on the mountain. End up doing a few runs alone on a mountain I didn’t have a map for. I plugged my ears up with TV on the Radio and the new Beirut album to defeat the below zero wind chill. Back at the house everyone complains about tight and sore muscles, but I feel fine. Utah really warmed me up. I was hurting for two weeks after that day spent on the snowy mountain. I didn’t know they made butt protection for snowboarders, nor did I know people put paper towels in their snowpants to keep them from hurting themselves.
Downing a bottle of Mrs. Butterworth...
I participated in a drinking game. Something I have managed to avoid for some time now. 21. I ended up humping doors, hitting Casper, and laughing at how Tina’s motor and comprehension skills became more delayed as she drank. Katie helped me win second place at Scrabble, using the word cunt twice. I remember Jess kissing me good night at six in the morning. I remember long conversations about life at the kitchen table and doing homework for hours while everyone was on the mountain. I kept falling asleep too early and being pulled out of bed every night. I did escape with some episodes of Gossip Girl. I forgot the novel I had to read for class at home and talked about finding a copy of the book at a bookstore in Vermont but it never actually happened. I played DJ for a few minutes, and managed to get people dancing to Robyn and I felt successful in my endeavor but I was kicked off the turntable for some bad 80s and monotonous goth/industrial songs. Amanda was beautiful as Marie Antoinette. Finally get to eat at The Silo, which wasn’t all that good. Serious Tina. Teenage Tina. and Bodacious Bruce.
I thought this was going to be the End of the World:
When The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle is released you should go see it. Natashya Lyonne is back in action. Tygh Runyan is in it and the score is super. It uses Seattle as its backdrop and the director shares my last name. It was an unexpected favorite of mine from this years Sundance Film Festival. Where else can you see men give birth (with the exception of that movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito)? The trailer exists here.
If you haven’t already listened to new Bat For Lashes do yourself a favor and download the two best tracks I have uploaded here and here. I was blasting it from my car with the windows rolled down on one of those eerily warm days last week here in New York and felt like a complete gypsy. It sounds like a Bjork, PJ Harvey, Dolores of The Cranberries and Kate Bush orgy. Brilliant.
Can someone tell me why Elizabeth Berkley is on the final season of The L Word? And why haven’t I ever noticed her crazy eye?
This girl in Starbucks needs to shut her Jappy mouth. She hasn’t stopped rambling since she sat down near me. I have been attempting to drown her out with music but my headphones cannot seem to override her demon pitch.
- I am almost finished reading Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle. A lesbian folk hero? I think so.
- I don’t think I will ever be/perceive/think/copulate the same after reading Foucault’s The History of Sexuality Volume 1: An Introduction.
- My grandmother’s husband had open heart surgery and is doing fine but how many catastrophes does she need to deal with in one year?
- After much opposition, I have completely adopted Twitter (the micro-blogging site) and it has changed how I live my life. Add me: https://twitter.com/octoberxswimmer
- I am seeing Nada Surf on Wednesday, April 15th at The Bell House in Brooklyn.
- I am seeing Bat For Lashes on Thursday, April 30th at Bowery Ballrom.
- I want to see Neil LaBute’s reasons to be pretty. Come with?
- I want to see Her Space Holiday at The Bell House on Thursday, May 21st.
- Bruce finished watching the first season of Damages with his jaw on the floor.
- A new Julie Doiron record is released on March 24th. Here is one song off of it.
- How in the world is Tilda Swinton appearing on the new Patrick Wolf album?
- I finally finished watching Celebrity Big Brother. Ulrika? Really? But this video of Latoya Jackson makes my day every day! riding a mechanical bull. 6:50 & 8:20 mark.
- I miss Dawn.
- Sometimes I play psychologist and I am not sure that is a good thing to the people I give advice to.
- I didn’t know people still wore threaded leather belts.
- Nip/Tuck hasn’t been amazing. But this video of Jennifer Coolidge rapping might make up for it.
- I cannot stop listening to Cat Power’s cover of “Wonderwall.”
- I might be planning a trip to Montreal in March. Sylvain! Julie Dorion! And Rae Spoon?
- I am currently very mid-90s, wearing a thermal under a tee shirt.
Utah in photographs:
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There is a serious need to start documenting. Life has not afforded me any time to ponder and reflect. I feel as if memories are going to vanish, if they are not here, textually, visually, and read upon by others. I go throughout my day with words floating around my disordered mind. Some poetic, some not so much. I struggle with time. Twenty-four hours is not enough for one day. One can only lead a simple life within these hours. I think we should change our concept of time. Rip the calendars off the walls of your kitchens, program new dates and digits into your Google calendars on your iPhones. 48 hours should constitute an entire day. Imagine the possibilities! Think of all those organic meals you can cook from scratch instead of all those processed foods found in your cupboard, freezer, and pantry. No more on-the-go protein bars, Slim-Fast shakes, and instant coffee, soup, and artificial flavors and chemicals to make things taste like the things they represent. More sleep, so each morning is not dreaded. Less wrinkles, less bloodshot eyes, no more dark circles. The cosmetic industry might crumble, but who needs them anyway? I woke up this morning from only three hours of sleep with more energy than the coma I fell into the night before. Sixteen hours is an unhealthy amount of time to sleep. Especially when your subconscious mutates into exhausting dreams of running from zombies and pregnant classmates from senior year who were in your Participation in Government (also known as PIG, a class I managed to pass despite writing a ten-page research paper required of me). I spent the next day, fighting off the fatigue. Muscles weren’t working properly, everything seemed delayed. My motor skills seemed impaired. I ordered a coffee from a barista and my tongue wouldn’t move properly. Taking off the lid of my cup and stirring in the soymilk was an unbearable task. I wondered if I was having a stroke but I shook it off for hypochondria. But I keep seeing things in the corner of my eyes. Especially walking on campus, with the sun blinding me. I see these seemingly electric spots in my peripheral vision and I think I might be going insane. I blink a few hundred times and it only makes it worse. The spots become more like electric squiggles. They remind me of those strange screensavers from the 90s or images of DNA in science textbooks. Great, not only are my limbs and muscles not aligning with my brain, but my vision is starting to fail. I really don’t want to be one of those people that start to see things. It has always been my worst fear to be a certified schizophrenic. My friends and I joke about how it is a good possibility that I will find myself admitted into a mental institution, but I always imagined in a distant future. Not now, in my mid-twenties, while I am standing in a coffee shop stirring soymilk into black coffee. I begin to wonder if my fears are irrational or if everyone has similar thoughts. What temporarily calms me about it all is thinking most crazy people don’t know they are crazy. And I repeat this to myself, like some Buddhist chant, and I catch myself repeating these words under my breath, feeling even more detached from my disordered body, when the words start to lose their meaning, when they sound as foreign as Japanese and I begin to feel even more dejected and disconnected than before I started stirring my coffee and repeating a chant. This is a frightening place to be. I keep burying my consciousness into itself. Collapsing inwardly. A true solipsist! Nothing external could ever lend some comfort. All the fictions and narratives I continually immerse myself in are only distractions. They can only get me so far. Dissociative. To be honest, I don’t know how I ever get out of this state of psychological paralysis. Plugging my ears with headphones takes off the edge, but I can still feel the dejection and anxiety flooding the canals of my blood. Poisoning every thought, every desire, and every step I take. Twitching, heavy breathing, and a palpitating heart are all symptoms. But I leave the coffeehouse, with my cup of coffee, tune to NPR on the radio and continue my drive to campus where I will sit in a classroom in the basement of a building talking about sexuality and using queer as a verb. Lesbians, gays, and members of the LGBTA are scattered at the desks. Some of them have endearing freckles on their white skin; others have adopted the appropriate attire to signify their queer identities. My professor obtained his PhD at Berkley and used to teach at Dartmouth. Why did he come to Stony Brook University? The world may never know. Supposedly our English department is top notch. It is time to go? But I have more to say. It is time to play the role as soccer mom. Pick up my little siblings from school. Make lunch. And entertain their inquisitive minds that are always forming question after question. This is where I disappear…
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The moving image. How can I narrow down the images that pulled me from the mundane colors of my own life? How could one possibly reject the reflection of a reality you have experienced? I lose my breath when a movie reflects the passion you have felt when you kissed that most amazing kiss in a car huddled over an armrest that kept you distant enough to allow you to pine even harder, to fight even more to get only inches closer. Sometimes you’re not as witty as Michael Cera or Kat Dennings but you have walked through Bowery Ballroom’s door with a significant other in tow to see Interpol play a show. Your dad might not be an executive of some large record label but that significant other held you in their arms while Interpol played an amazing set. In this modern world we can create a soundtrack for all those special moments; it was always something I used to envy in movies. But The Shins or Kimya Dawson can play during our revelatory epiphanies. Just the other day, while I was in Park City, Utah I was listening to Low’s “Murderer” while walking home from the ski resort, I was watching the rain tumble down the sloping pavement and epiphanies were spilling out of every pore. At the corner of an intersection I had to take a few deep breaths and look both ways, searching for a moving car, the sound of tires braking, so I could insert myself back into the world because everything seemed to cinematic, too framed, too surreal. I think it might have been a side effect from spending too many hours in dark theaters all week watching movies at the Sundance Film Festival. We can have these moments now with a cinematic score, we can compile the perfect playlist to make out to, and even play Elbow’s “Snooks (Progress Report)”to dance to at a party like Emmy Rossum does in the movie Dare.
I have spent this entire month trying to compile a list of worthy films but it is such a difficult feat. Movies like Wall-E and JCVD have been left unwatched because I lacked time, or I lacked the distinct mood needed to watch them in. I watched the (very long) opening scene of JCVD on my laptop at four in the morning and I knew that I couldn’t handle the rest of the film at that moment. The whole scene was one long shot and then Jean-Claude Van Damme informs the director that he is getting too old for such long fighting sequences. Oh, how meta things can be. Speaking of metafiction, how about Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut Synecdoche, New York? That movie had me spinning through intertextuality, layer after layer. It was brilliant. Or how about Michael Haneke’s shot-by-shot remake of his own film Funny Games breaking the fourth wall making the audience his accomplices to murder?
What about all those movies I didn’t see? Nights and Weekends. Doubt. The Reader. Let The Right One In. Tell No One. Transsiberian. Stuck. Baghead. Boy A. Happy Go-Lucky. Repo! The Genetic Opera. Hamlet 2. Rachel Getting Married.
I tend to escape into dark movie theaters to avoid my own life but usually end up connecting with the cinematic narrative anyway which is counterproductive to my original intention. I might not know a wrestler but I have met men like Mickey Rourke and how damaged their relationships with other people are. The way the camera follows him walking, hearing him breathing so heavy, carrying all that weight. Harvey Milk might have graduated from my high school and grew up in my neighborhood but that does not make me partial to Gus Van Sant’s film. It deserves recognition, though recently I have been asked to be a little more critical of what the film and I have a feeling it might not hold up as well as I hoped it would. Listing movies by how much I like them seems unfair because comedies fulfill something different than a melodramatic tortured love story. Documentaries versus fiction? How can one actually compare the two genres? I have only listed the following movies with numbers because I did like some movies more than others. Plus, it is more fun to number things. I really do think I felt more for Jennifer Carpenter’s character in Quarantine than Dev Patel in Slumdog Millionaire. Okay, maybe that isn’t true, but it’s possible. Perhaps I would have to watch both films again to really make that claim. So please take the following list of movies with all the above disclaimers and remember this list is subject to change at any given moment.
Best Films of 2008
45. Choke
44. Zack and Miri Make a Porno
43. Must Read After My Death
42. Young @ Heart
41. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
40. Penelope
39. Forgetting Sarah Marshall
38. Brideshead Revisited
37. American Teen
36. Kabluey
35. Pineapple Express
34. Paranoid Park
33. Role Models
32. A Christmas Tale
31. The Ruins
30. Good Dick
29. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
28. The Broken
27. Quarantine
26. The Last Mistress
25. Snow Angels
24. Slumdog Millionaire
23. Teeth
22. Milk
21. Towelhead
20. Mister Lonely
19. Wendy and Lucy
18. The Wackness
17. Vicky Cristina Barcelona
16. The Strangers
15. Expired
14. Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist
13. The Tracey Fragments
12. Frozen River
11. The Fall
10. Blindness
09. The Dark Knight
08. Revolutionary Road
07. Downloading Nancy
06. Reprise
05. Burn After Reading
04. Quid Pro Quo
03. The Wrestler
02. Synecdoche, New York
01. Funny Games
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