Society nicety

I don’t often feel like a piece of meat, but man, I do find myself besieged by well-kept old ladies and gay men. Considering I work in the arts, am an artist and have a lot of older friends/connections, I end up at events where I’m the youngest, and if not the youngest, the most serious of the young set. I also tend to be approachable, so I find myself at the bar, trying desperately to get through the evening over a few/seven drinks and trying to have a non-art conversation with the bartender when, inevitably this/something like this happens:

“Aren’t you having a great time?” says, getting another drink. “Let’s toast: Here’s to god.”

I reservedly clink glasses and give her a weird look.

“Oh, I don’t mean… GOD, you know. I mean, spirituality, the vibrancy behind the art. The passion. The universal love manifest in art.”

“Well…” says I and look at the bartender. “I… yeah, sure.”

And then, the hunting party shows up and I’m locked amongst a twittering, impassioned and very agitating conversation. Of course I can get out of it all by being like the other people my age (if there are any in attendance) who can barely carry a conversation, who don’t look at others and barely even talk to each other. Problem is, while connections and entrées are an important part of the world, being 29 and in my position means I have to, on top of my past, either ride on novelty or nicety. I’m trying to ride both horses.

A couple nights ago, I was at a gallery for a reading and got trapped by the husband (much older) of a friend of mine, who wanted to discuss digital cinema with me. He’s involved with the whole scientific side of the adventure. I ended up nodding and pantomiming parts of his story and avoiding being in any photos. He kept telling me that he didn’t want to bore me with the details and I kept thinking: “This isn’t the boring part?”

At some point, I was asked to chaperon a group of the single older ladies and some gays to a whiskey bar. I’d actually planned on dashing for the same bar, and because I had my mind set on it, I thought: “Hey, how bad could it be?” Why do I always have that thought?

The whiskey bar was reserved for a private party, so we went to a dive near the gallery.

Upon a step in to the dive, one of the ladies said she wanted “a fucking drink” and “wanted to dance.”

Good thing dancing is “forbidden” in bars… except in the back room, so the bouncers kept escorting the ladies back, but like cats, they kept turning around and running into the main bar to groove to the awesome music…

I got caught in a conversation between a gay Spaniard and the “a fucking drink” lady regarding their secret obsession with reality shows. She kept doing some sort of birthing rite dance to explain how much she enjoyed reality shows, all the while slipping out of her black shoulder wrap and dropping her bag after every time I picked it up for her. I ended up tossing the bag into a booth the rest of the party had overran.

I was in a bit of a dilemma, though. Before I went out that night, I found out the Spanyard has his work exhibited in a space I co-founded about ten years ago, but haven’t had any connection in more than six years. To say, or not to say? While he screamed about Project Runway, and “a fucking drink” lady nattered about Sheer Genius, I downed my gin and tonic, then started in on a cosmo I was holding for someone else.

At a certain point, I got dragged into the dancing room and thought: “Fuck it.” If I was a cheeseball, I’d probably say “Laissez les bons temps rouler,” suck another Red Bull vodka out of a yard glass and take off my shirt.

After a bit of dancing and realizing this was not a good scene, I opted out and ran.

I ended up at another bar I go to occasionally, but not enough to know anybody at, and I’m pretty sure the guy who struck up a conversation with me was gay. We were just talking about whatever, nothing sexual, and this pretty drunk old fag comes up to us and sort of leers at me then at the guy I was talking to.

“Uh, no thanks man. I’m not gay,” says I.

“mummblemumblemmmmumblemmummbblle”

“Yeah man, I’m just having a beer,” the guy I was talking to said.

“mummblemumbblemuummmbbbllee [leer] mummmblemumblemumble”

We try to ignore the guy, but he keeps hanging around and tries to flirt with both of us, and… the old aggression reared:

“Hey man, we said we’re not interested. Move on.”

“mummmblemummblemummbbble” and he tries to caress me and the other guy.

“Fuck man, you don’t understand what I’m saying.”

“mummblemumble I’m not trying to flirt mumblllemummble [leer and lick of the lips]“

“The fuck you flirting with, you not flirting with me or this guy, huh?”

The old guy kept looking between us and still wasn’t getting it, so I say “You don’t know? You flirting with the wall maybe,” I said, reaching behind me and tapping the wall, some football poster on it. “You flirting with these guys on the poster? Yeah, they might like your sorry ass, but why don’t you move on buddy cause I’m standing in front of this wall right now and you’re bothering me.”

The guy finally shoved off.

The guy I was talking to laughed and said that was great. I felt a mixture of coolness and irritation at talking to the poor schmuck like I had. I’m sure I could have handled it better, but at the time, that’s all I could take. The guy I had been talking to told me he was at a bar the other night and this guy grabbed the bill of his hat and pulled him closer… or something, I missed the details of the story.

“You do that? That’s how guys flirt?” I asked him.

“Yeah. Sometimes it’s more aggressive.”

“I wouldn’t be down for shit like that. I wanted to punch that guy just for being an idiot. Listen, I gotta go. Nice to meet you man.”

I am her foil.

A friend of mine and I keep up via gchat/gmail. It’s gotten to a point where we chat a bit every other day or so, but never see each other in real life and do not have any other contact with one another. In fact, I say we’ve seen each other three times over the past six years. She maintains that we’ve seen each other twice in the past eight months. (We can’t agree to how long we’ve known each other.) I also joke that I am a wholly imaginary friend of hers.

me: nothing i eat, so i’m no help.

dorthea: have you had chocolate chip pancakes before

?

8:41 PM you are not an idiot, right?

and not at this moment naked?

me: i don’t like pancakes.

i don’t really eat ice cream

dorthea: but the chocolate chips counter the pancakiness

me: i generally don’t eat too much yogurt

i don’t really like melted chocolate

dorthea: really?

8:42 PM i don’t know what to say to that

me: yes

dorthea: i’m not sure i can trust you anymore

chocolate chip cookies fresh from the oven?

me: i am imaginary and live in the corner of your screen.

dorthea: that’s right

you do

me: “Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one.”

dorthea: also true

but if i were to make you up

me: chocolate chip cookies… they’re ok.

8:43 PM not really my thing either

dorthea: you would definitely like chocolate chip cookies fresh from the oven

and i would make them for you all the time

me: that would not be much of a foil.

8:44 PM dorthea: are you saying i cannot make things for my imaginary…

me: isn’t an imaginary foil better than an imaginary mirror?

8:45 PM dorthea: interesting question.

i do not need more imaginary mirrors

8:46 PM me: that’s an interesting question

We have mutual friends, and more than the ones we originally met through. For example, a girl I went to grad school with, and who I had a very minor dating relationship with more than three years ago, is now in a very serious relationship with my friend’s best friend from grad school (grad school for them was the Midwest).

It was a bit surprising when I got this email:

do you know kizzy finlay?

did you know that waking up after crying all night feels like waking up with a hangover. waking up with a hangover feels like waking up with a hangover.

My response:

wow, what an email to wake up to.

yes… why?

Hers:

do you like kizzy finlay? is she a good artist? a good person? you can be honest, i won’t tell her. she’s dating my best friend from iowa, stanford baum, translator of ganem, mentioned in the article. just wondering what you thought of her. i didn’t particularly care for his previous serious girlfriend–she had some good qualities, but a little too something for me to click with her–wondering if he was just dating into type or making a change. either way, he seems happy, which is all that matters. stanford and kizzy are in spain together at the moment. then going to africa next month.

Boy howdy, that was a hard email to answer. There are a lot of details to explain it all but…

So this Kizzy was a little crazy, didn’t know what she wanted, we’d go out, it would be all romantic, then we’d walk back to her apartment holding hands and at the door she’d ask if I wanted to crash on the couch…

I asked what that meant, and she just sort of shrugged. I asked where she was sleeping. She said her bed, which happens not to be in the living room. A while ago, I decided to play my side of the game by taking women at their word. I kissed her good night and said I could walk the ten blocks back to my apartment if she was offering me a place on her couch and not her bed. The next night, it was almost a replay of the night before.

So we did the whole kiss good night thing again and I didn’t talk to her for a bit. There were some other issues, and I wasn’t all that attracted to her in the first place, so I kind of let the friendship reestablish itself. Then, one night, it got vastly weird and I ended the friendship, then her and her friends did something only modern technology would allow them to do, so I put the kabosh on that entire sub-group of friends and then it got more and more weird until there was an absolute non-communication between any of us, though we were all around each other almost every other day, worked together, went to the same parties, bars and had many of the same friends.

And, no, I don’t think she’s a good artist.

Once she and all her friends moved to Brooklyn, none of us really saw each other again. Occasionally I’ll pass a cafe/wine bar we all used to go to and there she is, furiously working away or having a wine.

And if she sees me, we’ll wave.

Occasionally I get a email from her. I email back. Stanford is definitely a good match for her and I now wish her no ill will. They’re moving in together, in fact. He teaches at some small school in the MIdwest. This more than enough satisfies any ill will I’m not admitting to.

But what could I tell my friend? So I said Kizzy and I never had class together (true) and that I didn’t know that much about her art. Sort of true. My opinion on her work is based off a few things I saw, but nothing substantial. I mentioned that I knew she is the personal assistant to this really famous artist (who doesn’t particularly like me, and the feeling’s mutual) and that she’s from somewhere in the South. I forget where she’s from, but it’s somewhere south of the Mid-Atlantic.

Then, I changed topic.

Today, Dorthea asked how my weekend went. I’d planned for a great weekend; a friend of mine is interviewing for a position with a sports league and so spent the weekend with said league. I’d planned on a kick back weekend hanging with my friend, plundering VIP lounges, watching from great seats, having a good time. I ended up being a gigantic dickwad on Friday night, of course apologized, found myself hanging with a some members of a biker gang on Saturday

and then sort of chilling out Sunday at a massive bar with a lot of fucking beers.

Not exactly what I had planned, but then I realized that my buddy is kind of… I don’t know. I don’t want to speak ill of him. I do like him, he’s a fine fellow, but let’s say a friend of yours asked something on par with “Wait, you live in Murray Hill?” after hanging out up to four nights a week for a year… you might stop and wonder what you’ve been talking about for the past while.

Back to the reason behind the post. This Dorthea, she tries to stay in the background at work. Most people in her same department have no clue who she is. She hates almost every last one of them, except she likes manly good looking guys. Hey, we all have our thing. Today, apropos of nothing, she sends this:

dorthea: what? what are you giving me?

3:24 PM you see the photos out loud?

3:25 PM pete went to atlantic city a while ago. got in a car accident. his friends had to go to the hospital. they had tickets to see a fight. and he was torn. but friends said he should go to the fight, not waste the tix. so he went. go there late. this was after dropping off the car at the mechanics and being told it would take 3 days to fix the car–2 more than they’d planned on being there.

fight ended 1/2 a round after he gets there.

somewhat anti-…

so he goes to a strip club.

3:26 PM isn’t into being there. but a dancer sees him. says he looks sad. straddles his lap.

tries to make him feel better. really goes at it. grinding and cooing.

3:27 PM all pete can think about are his friends, the car, the 2 extra days in AC, what he needs to get done in NYC, that he’s missing.

thinking about anything but this chick, who is working really, really hard.

after quite awhile of this, she stops and says, normally, i charge a lot for that, but i could tell you really enjoyed it.

3:28 PM strokes his hair and leaves.

enjoyed it?

me: ha

good story.

dorthea: then he realizes, he had his cell phone in his front pocket the whole time, and she was working really hard at getting it up.

B Bar, cocktails, sex.

What to do when you get off work early.

I happen to work a lot, but I’m a happy worker.

I, in fact, wonder what to do with myself on weekends. Sure, I like to hang out with friends or be outside, scrambling up rocks or something, but give me a weekend when I don’t have a definite plan and man, I start thinking about what I could do at work.

Thankfully, I have a wide open range of tasks in regards to my career. I can spend a morning fabricating metal or wood

,

fixing a skateboard

,

flirting at a cafe

,

spend my afternoons at lunch meetings

,

or lunch meetings with lots of wine

,

or site tours

,

or at electronic stores

,

or more site tours

,

and then various meetings

,

and flirting with coworkers

,

get in uncomforatable positions to take photographs

,

ride scissor lifts

,

on climb on scaffolding or ladders

(see, the deal is I kind of hate heights),

then afterward, there are work related parties and such

and so on.

I actually started this post yesterday. I was going somewhere with this, but have now forgotten why I put so many images in.

I did see the types of things people are searching for and happen on my blog. In my estimation, I would say there are a few paedophiles out there. I talk about puberty in one post and those searching are looking for something along the lines of puberty, but from a more odious direction: “gay puberty male in shower” / “hung puberty” / “boys showering”.

That said, I’ll never write about puberty again and in fact will change one of the images I found — this great Russky graph of male adolescence from some old text book. It’s now replaced with a picture of a turkey. And, here, I’ll add in a video.

First off, I’m pretty down on child molesters. I’m not much for the death penalty and I’m pretty obviously not into prosecuting “victimless” crime. (One can make all sorts of arguments against that nebulous term of victimless crime, but that’s another post / another time.) That said, I think child rapists should encounter a particularly bleak and lasting life contained in general population of some violent crime centric prison, a life that does not allow for state sanctioned death penalties and only allows for a long and incomprehensible destruction at the hands of the worst murders, rapists and psychopaths. I’m all down for the particularly inhumane torture of those who diddle children.

That said:

HEY, HOW ARE YA?!

()

So getting off work early. What do you do with yourself? I… am lost. And I head to… wait for it, wait for it…

THE BAR.

A buddy of mine met me, we ended up between a few bars, one of which was a truly hidden treasure, described somewhere online as being a good place to make a handful of bad decisions. Perfect. It’s on, ostensibly, a dead end, to the side, set back from the street and in what I think is an old bank building or something. It has a vestibule with a marble floor, then through a doorway and you find a wooden bar all the way down, not much light coming from behind the bar and really the only orangish light coming from the back where two pool tables sit. Though it was Friday (by this time, we’d wasted quite a few hours and it was getting into night), and the place was tight, it’s not too tight to easily move to the washrooms in back. And the washrooms themselves unbosom some more serious past to those sidling up to the old-style urinals set up from the floor and implanted into the wall, those type that start about elbow high and drop all the way down.

My buddy’s friend bought me a drink even though he was a total tool. He’s going to law school. Great, whatever. The girls he was with were varying degrees of friendly and one was super cool. For some reason we decided to change bars and the group dispersed. Fine by me. The place we were headed is some sort of race-fan sausage fest

and my buddy and I ended up at one of my favorite wine bars

where we met a few girls, but no one particularly mind blowing until we both saw this early-stage coug with some tool. Actually the guy was cool, I guess. Sort of drunk and friendly, a loud standard-issue guy. We spent too much time talking to his lady, which at first seemed fine and since I was running wingman, this guy Patrick, he was, sort of bears into me and tells me about women, all the while punctuating his speech with a finger driven into my chest and spilling my sancerre all down my shirt. Funny thing, he apologized each time, but kept doing it. When my buddy and I traded places, I told the woman “You gotta break up with this schmo” and probably something else about how she’s too classy for a guy like that… ’cause I’m classy like that, yo. Instead of smiling, or arguing against me, she gave me a look like “I know.” Bingo. So we do a bit of back and forth, me always reiterating how she’s much better than friend-Patrick over there… and then suddenly, I get swung around and introduced to some hag I’d ignored an hour earlier and there stands my buddy with the hag’s haggy friend. Pat whispers that the girls are wet and want to take any guy home. Mine looks maybe three months pregnant.

Downer.

I do a bit of the chat, then wander off, leaving buddy-boy to fend for himself. The washrooms are packed out, so grab my friend and try to drag him out so I can take a slash in the alley, but he begs off. Strange, he’s still chatting the haggy friend. That’s… cool, but I know I have to rescue the night. After finishing, I go back in and try to pull him away again, but he’s too busy chatting this girl up, so I head out front and perch on some car waiting for him. He finally comes out, leans into me and says “They have pot, beers and want to fuck.”

Well…

I say “Let’s think about this.”

And we lean there and ponder until he says “Pot, beer and fucking, man.”

I ask if he wants to fuck either of those hags. He considers this an amazing counterpoint. I then ask if he wants to smoke out, which neither of us are that into. It’s obvious beer could be more than enough to get us anywhere. Then, he says “Slap me hard.” I do and then he says “What the fuck was I thinking? We got to bail.”

I happen to have let a house across the street in college and know of a secret parking space, and since it’s a fucking trendy street and late enough on a Friday night to be impossible to find parking when we came in, all we have to do now is cross the street and down the alley, turn at a ⊥ alley, c’est ça. But then… from the heavens: “Hey boys!”

We look up and hanging over the roof of this new modern house are two girls in bikini tops.

“Hey ladies!”

They’re having a pool party, and the thing is, I think I know the people who own the house and these ain’t them. They say they’re staying at the house and that’s when I see a dude lean over the edge. Odds are set spinning. Possibility of getting laid high, possibility of an orgy high, possibility of a bit of the ol’ male on male high.

We do a bit more chatting back and forth with the girls and the guy, who has a bit of the gay affect, tries to convince us up. My buddy and I consider, deciding the gay guy won’t mind if we hook up with the girls, almost head over to the side gate and finally decide it’s time to head home.

Shit happens.

On Bastille Day

It’s too bad that Bastille Day has finally come and I don’t have time to write anything.

On Bastille Day… getting back on topic

Today, I am more calm about Sarkozy. He’s still right-wing, and I just found out he was born in the 17th Arr.! ARGH! I bet he was born in the north part. (I can’t believe I linked to this website.)

Now, back to the continuation of my mis-scheduled Bastille post:

What had I to say about bromance… I forget. I like my guy friends, they like me, most of us like girls.

Sometime around the start of puberty

(This image replaces a much better image that I believe was being misread.)

my childhood guy friends and I split ways. We ended up at a different school due to ours beginning a massive remodel, so we used some auxiliary/unused/uh… I don’t know what the deal was school, and our classes were changed around to some degree. The grammar school we went to began testing in kindergarten and separated us into similar learning types, and from there divided the students into various specializations. For example, I was initially separated from everyone and sent to a Spanish-only school. My family went along with the “experiment” for a while, but they soon had me rejoin my original classmates. From there, everyone in each group had a differentiated level of course study. There were a few of us who went to school longer than the others, and studied different subjects at different class levels. By third grade, I was tutoring a Greek student (who was 13) in his english.

The overall idea was that we’d study with the same group of kids until high school. During the remodel, though, the concept broke down and… we faded away, socially. I remember once walking through a side courtyard, me to the computer lab and a friend to lunch, us crossing paths and not even looking at each other. He had been one of my best friends but after a few months, our bond was gone. I still had a few classes with some classmates, but even then we didn’t speak much.

Once, another one of my until-then life-long friends walked up to me and said, “Hey, my sister found this the other day.”

(not the note)

It was a valentine I’d made for his older sister years before. I’d totally forgotten I’d had a crush on her, and even that he had a sister. A classmate standing near asked what it was, we showed her, and she said: “I didn’t know you two were friends.” And our simultaneous response: “We aren’t.” Then we backpedaled and tried to explain, but since I don’t even really understand it now, I only remember we didn’t have too many words to try and explain it.

After that, I moved far far far away and that sent a huge shutter down on a lot of my past.

And, yes, I was kind of like that. A shutter down. And, uh, yeah…

The five years from 14 to 19 were not much to write about, or they were. I was outwardly an only slightly strange teen. I hung out with the popular kids at school, though I was still an outsider. I went to school in a secluded community where everyone was very homogeneous. I don’t want to paint them as bad or weird or anything, but every time I try to generalize them, I erase the description and start all over again. Anyway, I was there, I went to school, I did my own thing, I hung out, I pursued my own interests. Thankfully, the school was in some ways similar to my grammar school, so I had more control over what I wanted to study and the whole facility was liberal and relaxed. I can’t say I made any lasting friendships and only briefly considered going to my 10-year reunion this year. On our class’ website, there are pictures and profiles of most everyone I graduated with… and my god, some never left the hamlet lifestyle, let alone the hamlet. Many of them are very successful, some them are just regular people, almost all of them have a plain different life than I.

Many of them are married, kids, house, boat…

It wasn’t until I wandered around for a while afterward and went to college that I started making good friends. By then, Dandyism had crashed again, I mean the whole metro/bi thing, so everything sort of got confusing. Like getting hit on the other night.

(Hopefully Electric Six is still playing.)

I usually go to the gym after work, and I happen to work out a private gym. I’m pretty sure there are more gays than straights there. Whatever, no problem undressing and showering around g(u/a)ys. The sauna, though almost always empty, can get a bit… Let’s just say there’s this one German guy who always uses a bottom locker, doesn’t use a towel around the middle when he’s walking about, and likes to do a lot of squatting… I do not use the sauna if he’s in there. Most times, though, it’s the standard change/workout/shower/leave/don’t talk to anyone. Sometimes, or more than often times, I’ll go to a nearby bar and grab a couple drinks and watch SportsCenter or catch the end or replay of the game. The bar is great, almost entirely wood all the way around, dark, music I haven’t heard since jeepin’ in the backwater of the South. They don’t have any draft beer, they have some tvs, they serve food all night. The crowd varies from

to

so it’s a pretty good mix. I watch some sports, I drink some, I usually keep to myself.

But… occasionally there seems like a bit of a pink mafia hanging out on one side. Fine. So the other night, I’m hanging out, drinking a Miller Lite (the standard of beer they have) and some guy slides into the stool next to me. I look over, nod, look back to the tv.

“Hey, how’s it going?”

I look back, recognize an italian accent and we start chatting, mainly just because europeans are easier and friendlier. He’s from Genova, been here nine months, chat, whatever. I then asks if I work out. I… pause… He’s a little guy, maybe 5′6, giant forearms and biceps, but not all that defined, just big. He then tells me he’s a trainer. I go “oh” and think he’s just trying to drum up some business. About half the people at my gym have trainers and I overhear them bitching about how people aren’t hiring trainers anymore. Cool. Then he feels my biceps… except not like he’s testing the density and mass of a muscle, instead, it was a bit more like coping a feel. I remind myself he’s european. My group of friends in Rome, we kiss on the cheek more than is required, we play slap, we hug. Ok… then, Mr Guido here says: “You have soft skin.”

Ah.

Gotcha.

Why yes I do Mr Guy, you can now stop feeling it.

He then tells me he was finally able to come out now that he’s in the US.

Oh.

Great.

Flattered as I was, I was divided by two instincts: Continue to be amicable, yet let him know I didn’t want him to molest me, or, get up and leave after telling him I wasn’t interested. I’d just got another beer and I didn’t want to seem a homophobe, so I told him I wasn’t gay. We went back to workouts and routines and everything, fine, until he said he’d like to work out his upper legs more… and then grabbed my thigh.

Whoa stallion.

We had a friendly enough good-bye and I was off.

There was another night where I met a girl at a gallery, we went out to a bar where a lot of my friends and a lot of their friends go, I was living in the Netherlands at the time and really any bar or restaurant a 20-something would go to in this neighborhood would be filled with people you know. So we were having drinks and talking to other friends and this guy I sort of knew started talking to the girl. All three of us started drinking and talking and she was really into me, he was really into her and I was just chilling out. I thought she was cool, but reminded me of a lame girl I used to date in college,

hot, but nothing there. I was fine with my buddy working some magic on her, but it hadn’t even got to that point. A number of flestjes into the night, and a bit of the ol’ increasing of flirtation, we decided to go to an after-hours and dance. Now, the Dutch aren’t all that liberal. Sure, you say but:

!

True, true, but only if you’re a tourist and visiting in Amsterdam. The Dutch are actually pretty down on all that, not down for all that. So we’re drinking and dancing, all three of us and my buddy is an extreme close-talker, like put his cheek on yours and let his lips brush your ear. Ok, cool, but looking back on it, I can imagine what others thought about it… oh, wait, I don’t. So there we are, dancing, touching, kissing a bit with the girl, appearing to neck with my buddy, him kissing her… and then he goes to get a beer and she and I are just dancing all sexylike and he comes back and I see him dancing with some creepy dude. Cool, maybe he’s bi and I’ve been misreading everything.

A fat older woman gets my attention and with a worried look points to my friend, then points back to the girl and I. She’s saying something about how our boyfriend is fooling around on us. I look over at him, look back at her, shrug and say it’s ok. Then, suddenly, I get sick to my stomach. The beers have added up until absolute vomiting would be the natural course of events.

Thankfully buddy comes back and starts making out with the girl and I lean back against a ledge and try to recover, consider the difficulty of making it to the wc and making it back and decide it’s better to do that than spew chunk all over where I stand. Unfortunately, maneuvering the washroom is tough. There’s only one and to get to the women’s, one must go through the men’s. This confuses the shit out of me and even though I concentrate hard over one of the women’s pots, nothing comes out. I need to go home, but we stay for another hour or so and I down water.

As the sky is turning a bit light around the edges, we stumble out and huddle together for warmth… and suddenly it’s one of the more awkward moments of my life.

They actually live near each other, I live close to where we are and don’t have a bike there… we kind of talk about me pedaling her bike and her riding on the back… eventually, I say good night, get her number and realize I don’t actually have his. He’s a friend of a friend and this is the most time we’ve ever actually hung out. To get the number, or not?

I didn’t.

They rode off together and I watched. They seemed to be having fun.

I saw him the next night at a party in closed restaurant and opted out of the main space by leaning around with the coats in a hallway between the kitchen and open floor. We didn’t say much to each other. His girlfriend was somewhere. We mostly talked to other people who passed by, including a girl he’d gone to grammar school with, whom he hadn’t seen in 10 years. She was porcine, but not fat and her attitude wasn’t all that positive. She seemed happy to see him at first, then started to sound resentful and eventually dropped some negative comments. She’d moved out of the hometown years ago and worked as a server at the restaurant, and was working that night. It got to a point where we were standing there in silence for too long and she finally had to deliver some drinks. He told me she’d liked him back home and that he was never really friends with her.

Come to think of it, that’s the last time I saw him. He was moving somewhere soon after that. I wonder what happened to him.

On Bastille Day, my thoughts turn to bromance.

First off: Fuck Sarkozy. Who voted for this bozo? Second: Ségolène Royal should have been president. Not only because she’s a pinko, but because she has such a bizarre approach to policy (and not one that I wholly agree with) and because she is beautiful. And in the end, I am not French so I can have whatever opinion I want. In the end, those who would not elect her said she focused too much on societal issues. The end, oh well.

God forbid anyone attempts to lead a country by effecting the people who live in said country.

Four: Here’s what I’m a bit irritated about. Sarkozy, reacting to tensions between China/Tibet in March, says we should boycott the Olympics. So… that starts a bit of action, then, he thinks: Hey, maybe I should ally with China. He says he won’t boycott. He’s going to the opening. He has plans to meet with the Dalai Lama, to which China says: Don’t do it… we’ll get angry.

Celui que je dis n’en tiens pas compte. Alors…

It occurred to me on the way to work that I’ve never been in France during the quatorze julliet.

I have been on the Eurostar a few days after the national holiday, where I happened to sit with a guy who went to the same college (we didn’t know each other) and who went to study abroad and never went back the US. I also sat with a parisienne who’d lived in London for years and who was moving back to Paris, leaving her boyfriend behind, and crying the entire trip. inconsolable crying. It was a strange trip. The guy’s last name was Brilliant. That’s about all I remember of him. We were the last train of the night, but at a point we powered down and stopped in the countryside for over an hour, the train dark. I’m not sure what was going on, the voice from the ceiling only telling us everything was fine and we’d be moving momentarily. As we sat in the darkness, fireworks began going off in the middle of a field. Left-over, of course, from earlier in the week, but it was so strange to see the explosion from a dark train with no homes in sight.

Off the train, in Paris Nord, I went straight to the taxi stand and promptly got into a fight with my cabbie who didn’t want to put my bag in the trunk. I asked, in french, if he spoke english and he said no, so I only spoke in french until he refused to respond. Fine, whatever, but I gave him the address to my hotel, told him it was in the 17th Arr. — I stay in the same hotel every time — and… he pulled out his A-Z.

While driving, he consulted… …and consulted, then threw the map in my face and said “You find.” Not in french, either. I found the street in a second, and he yelled at me that I’d found the wrong street, so I pushed myself through the partition and shoved the map under his nose and said, “Non, il est ici. Regarde, mec!”

“Ok, ok.”

Then, he made a big show of taking my bag out of the trunk in the middle of a traffic jam, when we were sort of close to the hotel… saying, “You find.” Honestly, I was happy to finally be done with vehicles and happily tipped him. Dumb American.

And, as for liberté, egalité, fraternité, or maybe… confraternité d’attirance(?).

Bro-dy

My friends and I… are a bunch of bromance m.f.ers. You see us at a bar, we’re leaning against each other and close talking, we hug a lot and it’s definitely a tender and wondrous connection. We braid each other’s hair and help with the manscaping, exfoliation, drink microbrewskis and get together for every Yankee’s game in front of the television and drink manhattans.

Okay, not really, but we’ve gone through long conversations recently about how short our curlies are, and how we get them that short. A mate (British) is convinced all Americans shave their balls. Another mate trims his with scissors and takes pains to make sure there’s a bit of a… ravine… between the brush and the tree. Others have all sorts of methods/designs/reasons. One guy says his nipples could blink if he didn’t keep his chest trimmed. Another buddy trims his chest/stomach down real close and trims the pubes, but says he wasn’t really planning on the back hair and doesn’t know what to do about it. To his credit, it’s light, sparse and not that noticeable. I keep my chest and stomach trimmed and that’s about it. And this weird small patch of hair on my right shoulder… where’d that come from? Why’s it there? This pisses me off.

As for the face, we’ve spent hours trading methods like some kids trade baseball cards… in the 1950s. One friend, no matter what, cannot keep razor burn off his jaw and throat. I’ve event shown him how to shave, which direction his hair grows in, and he says it doesn’t matter. Thank god his balls don’t get ingrown hairs. That would be a bitch. Some buddies go from Grizzly Adams

Total bromance.

to

with no in between. I vary between heavy stubble to clean shaven, and every variation between. I started shaving when I was about 11, which is about the age half my friends started and about five years before my other friends started. I had a goatee for a while in high school, but then again, about 80% of the guys did. I, of course, grew a beard in college and had it for about six months. It was fine after I got used to it, but my facial hair is definitely coarse, so it wasn’t the best for romance of the non-bro kind. After I trimmed/shaved that up, I had a goatee for a long time. When I lived in England, I didn’t shave for a while, then shaved… and without clippers… one hard son of a bitch. Once, after a while on the Mediterranean, I had a good beard going and some dark skin. The only time I’ve been searched at an airport. Since 22, though, I really haven’t gotten too crazy with the face fuzz. I look older with too much ten-day shadow, so I try to trim once a week, and I usually shave down on Saturday. Occasionally, I’ll rock a variety of face creations on the weekend, though, many times they don’t get past the couch.

I have to meet a friend for drinks (basic crew cut, no more than a two-day stubble, no body trimming), but I have so much to actually say about bromance.

And I have to talk about the guy who hit on me last night.

Also… you may say: la quatorze julliet is not today, for today is 9 July. Yes… see I thought today was the 14th.

“the dude wrote children’s songs while on acid, sounds perfect for you.”

This post will be coming.

“Everybody’s Talkin”

I suppose you could call me an _lc___lic

I never considered my relationship to alcohol until a few years ago, and even then, no real consideration. I’ve always been known for being a bit extreme in temperament, experience, mood, speech, habit, so on… The fun with drugs part fit in, I only moved within liberal groups in a few metropolitan cities. I was known for meeting some random person, who’d offer an invitation somewhere and the next day, I’d come across a friend; me unslept and recovering from whatever had happened and more than happy at it all.

The 4th of July weekend aside, and my previous post, I do tend to get a bit carried away by libations.
Drugs in general, not so much. Save a few of the explicitly illicit and illicit-due-to-someone-else’s-name-on-the-bottle, I’ve done everything. Some I immediately disliked [pot], some I knew I’d do many times again [not pot], but there was no time where I said to myself

“Self, you have to do this drug all the time.”

In fact, my favorite drug, cocaine, isn’t even on my list of things to do in the foreseeable future. It might be after the very last item “Train your own dogs for the Iditarod,” but I don’t know. It takes about an hour of scrolling down in my things_to_do.xls file to even get to that item, so I don’t have the patience to go further.

I first did cocaine with a good friend of mine in his apartment, then in the bathroom of the Miltonian Social Club. My taste for a drug is partially dictated by the method of doing it multiplied by the ability to do it in public. ({Straws, bills, bumps [off various parts of the body], keys} ∩ cocaine) x bathroom stalls ⊃ common tables = ZING. I cannot accurately count the number of nights I was duro. Nights spent arguing philosophy outside bars at 3am with a light snow storm falling around us. Nights considering taking a walk with the guy outside Welcome to the Johnsons who always offers to sell me blow, instead of calling up my delivery man. Nights aggressing, or starting fights, or being the asshole at the other table, or trying to have a conversation with a girl who wasn’t on yay and trying real fucking hard not to snort my brains out and calm the f down so she wouldn’t get all freaked out. Coke dick. Ah, the good times.

Then, I didn’t do it for a long time. It didn’t have anything to do with the pathetic last bump I did, or what I did after. (Not saying anything about this only because I can’t figure out how to capture everything involving that time.) It didn’t have to do with the money spent. I just stopped. Then I did it again about a year later, in a bar I promised my friend, the owner, that I would never do coke in. (Aside: After immigrating, he sold coke in Times Square.) It also had nothing to do with that friend dying a couple weeks later alone in his bed after speedballing. I was very shaken by that, and felt guilty, though I know my sneaking into the kitchen and cutting some lines had nothing to do with my friend’s death because… well, a speedball is pretty fucking serious and not something you just decide to do one day

like getting off the train a few stops early and walking home. It’s definitely not like that. It’s like deciding to walk home drunk after a bender through Koch’s Manhattan… oh, and you lived in the Windermere. (Or, if you decided to walk down the hall of the Windermere now, I suppose.)

I didn’t do coke again until a few months ago, where I found myself in a real ratty-assed bar, with a bottle of tequila under my coat and a beer in my hand and a buddy turned to me and said “If you want some blow, that guy right there sells it.” $120 later + a bizarrely large bag of pretty good yay = a good night with good friends cutting lines off, of all things, Twelve, in a park in East LA at 3am.

A couple nights later, with some other friends who share my affection for alcohol, (errata slip: In this instance, please replace the word “alcohol” with the term “Bolivian marching powder.” —The Editors) and I went to the Dark House and couldn’t get out for hours. My buddies were vibrating so hard, I doubted the bar’s balcony’s ability to remain intact. A coworker happened to show up and I was able to carry a reasonable conversation until one of my friends derailed the conversation. Then, my other friend, who taps his leg as it is, and I got into a heated debate about god and next thing I know, there are women and I end up having a nice get-to-know-you with a Christian. That, at least, pulled me all the way out of the Dark House, though she didn’t know what kind of Christianity she follows, nor that there are pesky things called “denominations.”

How is this about alcohol, you ask?

I meant it to be, I did.

How are you not a coke head?

Meet some of my friends and compare.

I tried to do some blow the night after, but the first bump didn’t sit well and I switched over to drinks and happily watched the degree of annoyingness my buddies reached. Fortunately, there were other friends and a girl’s birthday party for distractions.

And this is not to say the Dark House night had anything to do with stopping, just as the pathetic story I didn’t cover earlier had nothing to do with stopping. I, honestly, spent the {4th, day} x {beer, cyclobenzaprine} = {(4th, beer), (4th, cyclobenzaprine), (day, beer), (day, cyclobenzaprine)}. That ordered pair describes 13 hours of sleep and enough side effects to cause my semi-daily jog to quickly lead to a not all unpleasant light-headedness. I also recently spent a night floating out on norco and beer while meeting some other interesting people (refer to the people involved here).

Which should not involve the Mike Raahauge Range.

But back to alcohol:

That’s what I do find myself taken away by. (And if I think alcohol is more of a problem than what I hint at in my stories above, that might be an indication of the severity of the situation.) While strolling around, waiting for the showing of WALL·E on Sunday, I told a friend that I need to start cutting the alcohol supply to my face. She said, “Same with me, but when you’re an a__oho___ like us, it gets real fucking hard.” That it does. I can snort, smoke, eat all sorts of chemicals that make me anything from a

to a

or one of the

, but the next day, I can be
.

But I can get so carried away on alcohol, I end up

and worse. And I don’t know why I keep going back. The day after drinking hard, I don’t always get hung over, but I often have a torn up stomach and spend a lot of time on the pot. I also end up with a pocket full of credit card receipts and most of the cash in my wallet spent on booze.

|Drinks| + (-$) =

Aggression’s in the air…

I almost got into a fight the other night.

You say: Yeah, so what.

I don’t get into fights. I’ve been punched (in the face, aggressively) once. That was by a good friend of mine when we were both drunk and in college and I was delving too far into my honors psychology courses and he was being a bit tender. We were in my car; in his driveway. I’d dropped off our other friends and he was crying. Yes, “pussy,” I know… but sometimes, a guy’s got to cry (and not just at the end of sentimental sports movies or when Germany looses the Euro 2008). So I says what I says, he pulls back, pretends to punch me, I don’t flinch (I trust my friends) and then two minutes later – WHAAM! in the kisser.

My response was to give him a hug.

Where did my parents go wrong?

I’m sure you’re hanging your head in shame at me right now.

That’s cool.

So, I’ve had a rough couple of weeks, drinks-wise. I have a series of stages I try to slowly work through. First, I try not to drink too much on a regular basis. Second, if I do drink, I would like to keep it to less than five a night on the weekends. Third, if the previous two stages don’t work out, I try to keep my boozing to a discreet period. Say the weekend, where I usually black out by 10pm. Fourth. By this point, I generally give myself over to that damn booze bag monster living inside me and do whatever I want. Fifth, I try not to do any other drugs while drinking. Sixth…

So, I was up to stage The Fifth this past week. I’d spent every weekend night in a drunk vagueness. I’d met tons of people

(I’m a happy drunk… is that Rue McClanahan?) and been to a few of my favorite places, seen some of my favorite people, hooked up in ways only I find myself hooking up in (I have scars and bruising right now), and I kind of continued drinking through the week, but at more moderate paces. One night was due to a work event and a lot of Peroni and passable white wine on a hot night.

Another night was because I was horny and wanted to hook up. Friday rolled around. Off work a bit early… go to the gym? Ah… yeah, the tail-end of a sinus infection, damage done during the violent hook up, and an unrelated healing back injury… another weekend off the gym is good. Nature? Early, but not early enough to get somewhere and do anything productively natural. Go home and sleep…?

So, I drink. I bounce between the two bars in one of the pubs I frequent. At one is a behemoth of a woman — not… fat. Not like you’re thinking. She is taller than I (I am unarguably tall) and about half-again my width (I am arguably fit… if I go to the gym on a regular basis). While I’m trying to watch baseball, she’s trying to pick me up. Is it just me, or do all women of a certain size have a personality problem? I like aggressive women, but I don’t want a woman to make threats on my penis. Which this woman did within five minutes of vaguely listening to her.

At the other bar are three Welsh rugby player. I love Wales and I love rugby. These guys and I did not particularly hit it off, especially after I tried to get one of them to have sex with Behemotha

in the other room. Around 10pm (about four and a half hours after my first drink, and without a proper lunch or any dinner to speak of), I wandered up to Mexican.

I’m a bit wasted, I’m anticipating my vege burrito with chips and fresh salsas. I’m totally blissed out. I eat half the burrito, I run out of salsa, I go to get more and some zanahorias en escabeche, and when I return to my table, some dude’s poking at my meal, starting to pack up my burrito.

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING!? [I push him]

Hey man…

THAT’S MY FUCKING BURRITO!

Man, I’m sorry… I just came down here from Santa Ba…

I DON’T GIVE A SHIT. WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING!?

And as he starts to walk away, I get in his face and so many things flash through my imagination. I consider clocking him and kicking his face in. I can almost see the scene. I am also suddenly conscious that the restaurant is quiet. That does not stop me from having a flash of picking something up (what, I don’t know) and knocking him out with that.

I follow him for a bit, yelling at him as he goes. I go back to my table, consider the filth left behind and realize I’ve put myself at worse danger eating other things than what’s before me, so I settle in and ignore that I was a giant asshole played against a fantasy of me marching his sorry ass up to the counter and forcing him to buy me another burrito… and if he didn’t… then kicking the shit out of him. I was very consumed with imagining terrible things done to this guy.

It doesn’t occur to me until later that a year ago, I would have let the guy take my burrito without saying anything, chalking it up to helping someone less fortunate than I. I, as recently as the end of 07, tried in vain to find a homeless person to give a doggy bag of lunch to a bum, and not finding a single bum in Downtown, stood on the street corner, considering where I could stash the food so it would be protected from cleaners, yet still be available to some homeless sob.

But all that, gone.

I don’t get into arguments; I haven’t play wrestled in years. Yet this behavior? Tsk tsk tsk.

Earlier that day, I had a flash of getting out of my car and beating the crap out of some teenager… that I remembered a bit later that night, also. His mom picked him up off a busy street corner in a mini van, stopping traffic in all directions and keeping me from making my left turn before the light turned red. Then, she wanted to drive at less than 5mph (with no one in front of her) and at the next stop light, she popped the shag wag into park and opened her door, just as the light was turning green. I raised my arms in the classic “What the f?!” pose

and the teen, upon doing a bit of a Chinese fire drill with moms, mimicked me and said something I didn’t catch. It wasn’t “Yeah, my mom’s a nut job, but trust me, me driving will be better for everyone.” He also then took his time getting in, giving me the hairy eyeball the entire time. That was the first trigger of aggression in me. I so wanted to kick his ass, I even grabbed the latch to open my car door, but of course didn’t.

Cooler heads prevailed, though I did cut him off within five seconds and didn’t feel guilty about it.

As with the previous considerable me, my friend comment on how nice a driver I am. “You want in?” I say. “You got it, get in there buddy.” Somebody is tailgating me even though I’m going 80mph in the fast lane. “Sorry sir, let me get out of your way.” Somebody lets me in, I give a wave. Now… that all is slowly fading too.

Why?!

I hadn’t seen Wanted yet. I wasn’t reminded that any white guy who isn’t the big fucking gorilla motherfucker of all he purveys is worthless. I wasn’t reminded of all the same things, in a much more enjoyable way, conveyed via Fight Club when I was still soft-headed enough to buy into some degree of the boring white male bullshit. Raised progressively by the schools I went to (and a family a bit in the background), I knew women could be anything they wanted to be, and so also the other “minorities” defined by the Anglo Males for Dominance Over All Society (AMDOS). But, is it possible that as a result of the proliferation of feminist and queer theory from the womb, that there persists an undefined manhood?

Being a Man seemed pretty easy for everyone up until my, and my friends’, parents generation. What’s a Man before then? Work hard; be aggressive; be honest; if you have to lie, have conviction in the purpose of your lies; don’t be a homo; find a wife; have some kids; sweat; build a house; get a better car… am I spouting Tyler Durden?

Anyway, you know how many times I’ve discussed what it means to be a man since I started growing body hair? One, two, three, four, five… more than a couple dozen hands worth. Did any of us get anywhere? No. More than half of my buddies are bona fide men, no question in their minds. A smaller percentage still ponders. The smallest percentage don’t give a shit.

The day after my burrito incident, I got a voice mail from one of my best friends, a man fitting into the largest group I just mentioned (grew up on a farm in Upstate New York, fucked and fought most of his youth and 20s and now has more money than anybody else I know – and he earned every penny). We haven’t spoken since Thanksgiving and the message he leaves: “It’s fucking hot and sticky in the City, man. I was walking around and wanted to talk, so I thought of you. Hit me back when you get a chance. I want to tell you about the cabbie I strangled last night.”