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.”

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.