Autoportrait 3.0

[Autoportrait]

It's April of last year. This is where I've started to begin; April of last year. We're in Malibu and the wind is as perfect as wind has ever been. You're looking at the beach because you recognize a celebrity and her dog down there and she's huddled in your hoodie, her whole body squeezed up inside it 'cause she's always cold and even colder now smack between the pool beside us and the ocean below. She's so tiny in there, like a girl, and now looking back I remember it like this: it's because it was your hoodie, that's how you made both of us feel sometimes, like a girl all wrapped up. And alternately, like something torn of its surface and alone. But maybe that was just me. It's just easier to imagine or remember that it wasn't just me. I mean I feel smarter that way.

The wind picks up. We put rocks atop our construction paper and our crayons throw caution to the wind.

I come back to this beginning [Malibu, April] because this is the scene that opens the novel [fictionalized, of course, with everyone playing someone else, including me] I assume I'll eventually finish, otherwise this whole thing [my life] is kinda anti-climactic. In the novel, we are there with our crayons when I get an email on my phone from my other half, who I haven't heard from in years -- I've lost him, that much is true -- and it turns out he's in LA but he doesn't know I am too.

When I tell vosotros, you say, Clearly we are going to stalk him right now. My friends love me like that, drive faster for me. It's a novel. This didn't happen.

++

Malibu in April was a place where everything felt perfect except me. And you and you and you and you and you, and her. It was like crying and laughing at the same time, it was the opposite of fucking & laughing at the same time. The air and the sky, and how at night the stone floor would get so cold, and how I slept so easily next to her because I trusted the silence so bad. I was torn up from all sides, like a fistful of frayed rope.

The three of us in the sunshine; three jellyfish with hoods up and phones out but unimportant, dream on, shades shading.

See -- I'd decided to go to Malibu only a few hours before I got on the plane to go to Malibu. I was still packed from the trip to China I never took, and though that dream had been dashed a few weeks prior to Malibu I had not yet unpacked because I was very busy self-destructing in New York, crawling with blades flared across those creeping warm dumb almost-spring days. Then you called me from the airport and said do you want to go.

That was the week when my heart crashed. I don't mean broke. I mean everything breaks my heart but my heart still works though, I mean that my heart crashed.

I was alone at the time of the crash. There were no witnesses. Or there was one witness; later. Your finger on my skin, and maybe I told you it was your fault and maybe I didn't but it didn't really matter, it wasn't her fault, I mean it wasn't your fault, I mean it was my fault, I mean nothing is anyone's fault except my own and cracks like blades and I had a magic pill that made me forget. It kills me now not to remember.

++

In Malibu we spoke in little bright charges of electricity and then retreated like lights going off. We drove like nothing bad had ever happened. Does she know, she would ask, does she know? Does she know?

No, of course not. No one knew. We thought we knew and we didn't.

Something changed that week inside me. I mean it changed before I went. In a way I knew what I had to do but I decided instead not to do it because I was scared that if I did what I had to do that I would end up alone and heartcrashed. I mean that writing this I have to pretend like you'll never read it. You, and you, and you and you and you and you and you it was not just you, or even just you, vosotros, you, you ah'tem, ah'ten.

I mean that now as I write this I am heartcrashed to know two or three things I know for sure: that you will not read it, and that you won't either. You weigh against one another like steel and iron, like fire.

++

In the past week, three people have mentioned to me that it's still hard to see themselves, here, sometimes, in the right kind of light. If I get you at a bad angle. If I was in the right place at the wrong time. I was, I guess. I love the wrong time. I am the wrong time, you're a circle and I'm a fist and an angle. No, I'm a circle.

It's just that I don't know that much about the right time except that I'm determined to prove to you that right can come out of wrong, that right doesn't need to be new. Like I don't trust my own decision to always prefer the blank slate. Like I don't know what I want so I just feel like right now I am trying to remove myself from everyone who could be impacted by that decision.

++
I was someone else before you and you. The red bulb and drawing on her back, the girl who lied and the girl who cried, Brooklyn and Harlem and red red red and smoke in the air and the secrets you share alone and naked that you can't explain, which is what makes everything exactly what it is.

And now when we talk about the way we were back then (before you, and you) -- before I knew the jellyfishes I know now.

I don't think I could do shit like that anymore, I said, I mean. Now you can't pretend like you don't get what you deserve when you get it.

Dra-ma, she said.

I don't want to do anything we won't remember, I'd said then.
But it's fun, she'd said.

I don't know that girl back then. I was all desire, no want. I was patient and fast. I dug that Radiohead last night, she said the next morning a chunk of years ago. I love the things there isn't time to say at the time. That was years ago. One day I too would no longer want to remember.

++
I was born with three wishes, but I didn't know any words. My head like a cannonball and flames to the brain. I wasted my first wish on words. My second: no one can leave before I'm ready. Third wish = Infinity.
++

Now she's picking glass out of her foot with tweezers.
I missed the part when she stepped in the glass.

"Don’t hurt me," she says.
Her first wish.

I ask her if she wants a the middle or the end of the sandwich

and she says she wants the end. She says she likes the ends of things.
"I like pretzel ends, I like hot dog ends, Twizzler ends. The ends of things."
++

When she wrote me and said It's stagnant, and you don't like that, I said you're right even though I'd never really thought that before. I never thought I craved change because I didn't like staying still. I always assumed I craved change because where I am never feels right. By "assumed" I mean "I've always known."

But did I tell you about how the air in Malibu was so perfect, how everything was so perfect and airy, how slippery it is on top of a rainbow and skating.

I'm telling you the air was perfect. I mean it when I tell you that I think it was in the air. In Malibu, remember? Where we were when this story began, and a place we will never be again. Those were the last moments of that dream. So there it is. Behind me. I had mentioned, after all, the ocean.

++

I've never been good at describing the weather 'cause it always just seemed so obvious. Now I'm obsessed with it. I want to know about the wind and the ocean and all the things that people who like life like to be close to.

Maybe that was because that was the week I realized that everything was so much larger than me. The good and the bad. That's when things started changing in me. In the fall I decided I wanted to be infinite. In the winter I hid in the middle of everything.

Now there are so many yous, there are so many shes, it's like the universal you. The universal she.
The memory, which we can forget if we want to,
or change when we re-write it,
or eat it, and keep it in our guts forever
like o
like h
++

When I re-write you, I will make the breeze breezier. I will make your eyes bluer even if they weren't blue in the first place. I pick blue because it's the color of sky. You will laugh at me when I say this.

And now I feel like you laughed at me from above and she laughs at me from below and here I am in the middle, nowhere near the ends of things. And I can't hear. Because isn't the wind terrible.
++
Which is to say none of the pronouns I so carelessly employ necessarily apply to anyone specific, I mean that.

I wish we had a proper vosotros.

I'm sort of on my own right now, in a weird way. Not for reasons I can explain. But I am, in my head. Oh, no one ever makes sense.
It feels almost like when I stopped taking the anti-depressants years ago,
like coming up from underwater onto a shore that looked black to you but golden to me.

++

The night before I left for Malibu (before I knew I was going to Malibu), I was on the phone with her and then you arrived and I told her my Mom was on the other line but she wasn't, and never would be. Not at that hour.

And I saw you. And we were together for a moment or twenty in the darkness. And then you left. I felt like a very very bad person, which was sweeter than saltwater. Maybe that happened or maybe you didn't.

I called her back. "So anyway ..." I began.

And we spoke like only simple things had transpired between before and now, like nothing had changed, maybe she'd had a snack or I'd put on my pajamas, like we are two little rocks of love that are stronger than time or change or memory or anything. That's something. You need two or three things you know for sure, a person and maybe two or three more people who are like rocks. Then you can have wind on top of the rocks which don't move. The trouble begins when you mistake Malibu for forever. When you mistake anything for forever.

And the next day I slept until I couldn't sleep anymore because every waking moment was hard. I woke up and you called and asked if I wanted to go. Of course. Of course all I ever want to do is go. I didn't tell you that I'd gone until I got there and you were mad at me for going. But I was safe.

And I went.

++

We came back laughing. We took two Valiums each, or maybe you took three. Then we were really flying. Nothing hurt. I'd always hated flying but I wanted that flight to never end. Our seats were large, we pretended to be rich people because you pretended to be a rich person all the time and I went with you wherever you wanted to go.

And I loved you so much in that moment. As a friend, perhaps I had never loved you or needed you more as I did in the air that day, coming back from where you had taken me and feeling you'd never take me anywhere again. I always knew, you know.

Hiding in your hoodie, and the Valium you put into my palm.

The food they brought us on trays. We flew through sky and clouds and the world was as perfect as it had ever been.

++

Nobody ever really changes. So you take it or leave it.

++

I've always wanted to run away with someone crazy.
Instead I came back to someone who made me smile.

Instead now I

++

I think of Neal Cassady,
I even think of Old Neal Cassady the father we never found,
I think of Neal Cassady, I think of Neal Cassady.

I've got a postcard super-glued to my desk of William Burroughs trying to stab Jack Kerouac with a dagger. I did that 'cause I opened a super glue bottle and it got everywhere and so I had to put something new on top of it, so I put this postcard on top of it and after all this time it is still here on the desk from the whorehouse. "That's what you call it?" She asked me, once. "You call it 'the whorehouse'?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said to her.

++

The ends of things.



Then you left, and I wasn't ready.

Sunday Top Ten: We Didn't Do It

"We think of our lives as a series of events ... of things happening one after another. But it's just as accurate to see our lives as a series of things that don't happen to us."
(Ira Glass, intro to "We Didn't" episode of This American Life)

She did it, she boarded and flew all the way across the country, away from New York's industrial erections and valiantly towards somewhere that made up for its failed promises in baths of well-lit potential and it wasn't just her who did it. People move in body if not in mind, and finish novels and start revolutions and quit jobs and lose weight and get really into yoga and sometimes I do and I will but when you think about it -- and I have, 'cause I have a lot of thoughts happening at once in my head -- there's way way more things that I didn't do.

Sunday Top Ten
We Didn't Do It

exhibit a: things i was gonna do

10. California Here I Come

I didn't move to California or Michigan but I L.A apartment-hunted online. I didn't say goodbye to all that and disappear like heaven on wheels but if I'd had the financial means I would've left this apartment before they asked me to but I didn't so I didn't. I didn't move to Walden Pond but I looked on craigslist for cabins in the woods. I didn't leave for the summer or the winter but I packed for both. I didn't move to Australia but I downloaded the form to get a passport and left it on my desktop where it still stands today, awaiting my attention, having survived the acquisition and subsequent fall of a new passport in the meantime.

9. You Had Time

I didn't write my book. I took a lot of notes. Mom & I voyaged to the Michigan storage space to excavate the artifacts of my little life and Mom said she'd kill me for losing the key to my locker's lock 'cause we had to pay for a chainsaw 'cause I was supposed to hold onto the key but I didn't. I read books for research and I assembled my notes & research & wrote an outline, marketing plan, etc. But I didn't write the actual book 'cause I'm not ready for such substantial truths and so I decided to write a novel instead but I didn't. But I will. "Did you know it took Diaz 11 years to write Wao?" I wrote to my agent. "This segues neatly into my next topic ..."

8. Falling is Like This

I didn't jump out the window but I did forgive you except for the few times later on when I didn't. I didn't overdose on anything though I felt my heart beat so hard inside my chest I thought it might leap right out of my body on legs of its own, bound across the city and get on a plane and leave me all alone, heartless. I didn't ever go heartless but I did get sad and mean. I thought I could make it all better and I tried but I didn't.

7. Out of Range

I didn't apply for an M.F.A. program but I sat at B&N with books and copied down lists of the best schools, sent out for brochures to put into the file folder "Graduate Programs." So I didn't move to a room of my own in Iowa City where it'd get so quiet at night that I'd feel my sober heart beat like a horse. I didn't move to Missoula to forget about reality and embrace my past friends as characters.

6. And Darling

I didn't write back to many emails & I've got 182 e-mails in my draft folder and some of them are for blog-readers. I generally try to discard drafts rather than keep them but sometimes 'cause of auto-save I didn't.

Of the 182 e-mails I never sent: 33% = to exes, 33% = jobs , 20% = angry rants to friends & 10% = emails I thought I DID send but didn't.

These are the titles of some of the emails I didn't send: Sancho is Not Retarded, obvs it's me so it's not good news, STOP., Typist Position, that's fine I'll send you three emails in a row I'm not above that, portfolio samples, copy gig, part-time assistant, your blog makes my firefox crash, fall or silence, UPDATE, room for rent, communication, re: apts and such, Pick Me! So Qualified!, um., guestbian blog, the summer they electrocuted the rosenbergs, this is stuff for my book that i am going to write about myself because i am self-centered, home is where my habits have a habitat, some things i wanted to say to you.

exhibit b: things i was gonna do

5. If I Gave You my Number

I didn't try to track down anyone's phone number when my phone got stolen so I didn't ever keep in touch with anyone I knew before that time though I didn't ever say I would anyway so I didn't.

4. Take me Anywhere

I didn't go to Reno or China or the West Indies but I researched plane fares and packing lists and room rates. I didn't go to Paris and I didn't apply for Yaddo but I did download the application & inserted it into the "writing-work related" folder and I bookmarked some web pages.

3. Walking With A Ghost

I didn't start The Factory but I watched Factory Girl and started to read The Diary of Andy Warhol but I didn't finish it. I looked at warehouses online all over the country but I didn't look at any in 3-D but I still believe in it and I'll make it happen, I didn't yet but I will.

2. Fix You Up

I didn't make my resumè into the kick-ass thing it wants to be but I did look at resume examples and read books about resumès and made ten different copies of my resumè for different kinds of jobs but I don't like any of them. I didn't put together a copywriting portfolio but that's 'cause Brian didn't send me my samples and I asked him twice. I didn't call Natalie's temp agency and I didn't work at the new Starbucks just to make it go faster and I didn't start that Sacred Altar business with Mary or sell that teevee show with Carly and I didn't send that new pitch to New York Magazine and I didn't do the Best Idea EVER yet but I WILL.

1. As Cool as I Am

I didn't stop writing this blog. I didn't do another comment contest or make Autowin totebags or black shirts or continue Great Mysteries of Life or The Year in Review. But I mean I'm still writing this blog. That's something.

I thought the whole world was gonna change in January and it did but it didn't change exactly how we'd expected. But when I say now that I feel like things are falling in place I'm not taking about magic anymore, or blessings or karma, I'm just talking about people and stability and change and calm that's tangible. It's like the year of magical thinking, and if you haven't read it I'm not giving anything away when I quote the last lines: "You had to feel the swell change. You had to go with the change. [John] told me that. No eye is on the sparrow but he did tell me that."

I love ending a blog on an obliquely optimistic note. I think if I sound vague, it's 'cause I feel vague too. Vague ... but good.

I'm trying to think of the biggest thing I didn't do and I'll write about that later but first I'll ask you; what didn't you do this year?

UPDATED! Sunday Top Ten: You Tell Me

On Sunday I said this: "I'm accepting suggestions for the Sunday Top 10, as "The L Word" and other catastrophes* are crowding my brainspace. It's my job here at AutoWin to provide the illusion that it is possible for a semi-intelligent human girl to produce an endless flood of ideas, howevs, this is not true. Therefore, I'm fully prepared for the possibility that no one else has any ideas, either. But I thought I'd throw it out there. If I pick your Top Ten topic, you can win an auto-apparel item of your choice pending size availability. Or stickers. Um, or nothing. Soundtrack? Haviland? Just the joy of the game. The spirit of the game? It's not if you win or lose, something something. OMG, I feel like Snoopy or something, it's really gross. Hm. Well, here goes.

*JK!"

Now it's Monday. There are so many beautiful Top Ten ideas, I barely know where to begin! Some of the ideas are kinda similar to stuff I've already done, but I think I might end up doing alot of them as time continues to go on like sand through a hourglass. I've put the list of all the ideas here. And I'm thinking about it. Input is always welcome. I also have to get a passport today and a number of other important tasks, but this is totally like the top top ten list on my list of top things to do for the day of today.

Someone suggested I do a Sunday Top 10 of the Best Top Tens. So, while I ponder the next Top Ten, here's an old school link dump for ya'.

Ten Best Top Tens of 2006:
12.28.06: Top Ten Books of 2006, Some of Which I've Actually Read
12.24.06: Things They Are Better At Out Here in the Heartland
11.26.06: How to Provide Visitors With The Ultimate NYC Experience
11.19.06: Relationships I've Had With Animals
10.29.06: Revivals
10.15.06: Reasons Apartment 1A Is not A Place For Good Clean Living
10.8.06: Things That Are Cuter than Cute Overload
10. 1. 06: Yom Kippur Edition - Things I'd Like to Repent For
8.20.06: Things I Would Like Back, Please
7. 23.06: Appearances by Flannel Shirts in My Videos From Middle School

Ten Best Top Tens of January --> June '07
1.30.07: Why You Don't Want to Date Me
2.27.07: Dreams You Want to Hear About
3.25.07: Apartments I Want To Live In
4.15.07: My Skills
5.8.07: Potential Reactions To The Loss of One's Sunday Top Ten
5.13.07: Summer Scattergories
5.20.07: Requirements for My Unpaid Intern
5.28 & 5.31: Top Ten Clubs To Which I'd Be a Member: Part One & Part Two
6.11.07: I Am Not The Only One Without a Phone
6.19.07: On Camp

Ten Best Top Tens of July '07 --> December '07
7.2.07: Team Awesome's Gay Teevee Show Is Unlike All Other Gay Teevee Shows
7.22.07: Things That We Lost Along the Way/Concepts Abandoned Prior to Execution
8.13.07 & 8.16.07: Things I Want to Do Before I Die Part One and Two
8.30.07&9.2.07: Worst Nightmares One and Two
8.23.07: Live Through This And You Won't Look Back
9.16&9.20: Dream Jobs Part One and Two
10.2.07: Great Mysteries of Life Part One and Two
10.22.07: Things That Were Harder Than I Expected
10.28.07: Things You Might Not Agree With
11.26.07: Cities I Could Totally Never Live In

The New Sunday Top Ten will drop on Tuesday, fo'serious ...

This Girl Called Automatic Weirdo

Hi! I've got some things I wanna say and so I'm gonna write them down here in this google doc, then cut and paste them into a blog and then publish it. Carly's coming over in about 30 minutes and then Haviland 'cause we're gonna make some vlogs that're gonna be awesome and make you LOL your asses off, so I've got about 20 minutes to figure out what I need to say and say it, and I'll edit it later because it's gonna be totes muddled. First off; I'm not depressed right now, I'm not in a Bell Jar or Emily Dickinson mood, nor am I about to renounce all things in the world, delete my blog or myspace, go out and drink into an oblivion, fuck 'til I forget who I am, change all my goals in life, move to Michigan or run away to my emo cave, suddenly fix relationships I've let falter or neglect new and thriving ones. In fact, I'm not gonna do anything besides exactly what I've been doing and planned to do, like tonight we're making some vlogs, I've got some phone calls and emails to return, I'm behind on Google Reader like WHOA, I still haven't edited last week's blog or this one, I need to clean my room I think, and tonight Tila Tequila's gonna meet Dani's parents which is a very exciting moment for everyone in the whole wide world, obvs. I think I owe a lot of blog comments, emails, etc.

Okay so I'm just writing, seriously not deleting anything unless it's a typo, this is a totes stream of consciousness nonsense. [UPDATE: I've edited it as little as possible just so it makes sense, but remains almost exactly what I originally wrote. Sorry, I used "its" wrong and it was ruining my life.] I think I'm going to finish the secrets blog this week, or maybe not, but I probably will. It might not make sense and you don't have to comment, maybe it'll be weird?

My brain's a little confused these days, it's trying to wrap itself around paradox and that's hard to do when I've got a lot of lock-boxes and storage space up there that's already maxed out and when I've got so much I'm excited about and for and when I feel so much of ME and so much of my friends have changed over the past few months in a way that's really quite beautiful. I think we've become more humble and I hope I've inspired a few friends to live more for the moment and wait for the next joke and to dance, I like dancing even though I'm bad at it. I like a lot of things that are actually a lot like dancing.

About a month ago, one of my best friend's infant brother died suddenly from an aneurysm, he'd only been alive for about six weeks. It just didn't make any sense whatsoever. I remember when I told Lozo about this baby's death and he said nothing surprises me anymore or something to that effect. I was like, but wait wait isn't that so fucked up? A baby? Like, wtf world? And then all that other shit happened with the job and me getting fired and all this terrible out-of-the-blue stuff w/r/t Olive and he was like seriously, nothing surprises me anymore. I remember when I first read about this on his blog, I thought, OMG, seriously? REALLY PAPI? Like, no. You know? just NO. And when he told me that he wasn't surprised by this shit that was knocking my world off its feet I said no, if we accept such tragedies and also if we accept such unfair and ridiculous behavior out of the blue and when we accept the failure of the medical system to take care of the mentally ill properly and when we accept death before the word "surprise" turned tragic on our tongues then how do we prevent these tragedies and he said, well, we can't. I said how do we keep on? But I already know the answer to that question, obviously. I know how we keep on, wanna know how? WE JUST DO.

In the ensuing weeks following that whole week of hell in which I almost broke my computer from crying onto my keyboard, I swear I read about six bloggers write about the death of a loved one from illness or something unexpected. Perhaps you are one of them. I seriously feel like every day my Google Reader announced one obituary at least, and every time I was like "Seriously, G-d, wtf, stop it! Stop it now!"

Over the weekend I was frolicking with two people I love very much and having a good time and enjoying things and being laid-back. As I did this someone else I love very much almost died but didn't. I don't want to say anything about it but that, and I won't, and please don't ask, or guess who it was, or anything, and I'm not asking for pity or sympathy or even trying to incite a reaction of any kind or anything. I just need to say this to get on. I'm just saying this : it happened and I cannot loose this person, I absolutely refuse to.

So, it was Monday and Cait and Haviland and I were at an art exhibit called WHACK! at this D.C museum in a room dedicated to feminist porn from the 70's and there were all these naturally hairy and un-airbushed women fucking with strap ons and whipping each other and making out with 10 people at once and got this text and I thought right away that I knew who it was texting and I picked it up ready to read something totally adorable that would make me smile and other things but instead it was not that or from who I'd for some reason assumed it'd be from, instead it was news that someone I love very much had almost died and so I sort of just fell on the ground all of a sudden because my heart fell out of my body and Cait was like "What's going on?" and for a long time I could not speak, and then I did.

Then we were in the gift shop later and Natalie called excited about this awesome vaycay we're taking next year and I got so happy talking to her because I love Natalie and am excited for vaycay and I don't feel bad about that either, or weird about it, even, or weird about anything.

Okay so moving on; everything is fine w/r/t this person I love and will be fine. [By that I mean she is alive, fortunately.] That's all I'm gonna say on that.

On Sunday night, a beautiful girl I've never met, but who was one of the people who sent me a secret I'd written about on my secrets blog and one of the people who thanked me afterwards, was hit by a car when she was driving home on her motorcycle. I'll call her Kelly, because that's what I called her in her secret. Kelly read my blog in the first place because she'd been told about it by someone who loved her very much, one of my Top People/Brightest Ring Of Angels, who I'll call "B," was an inspiration to C and helped her to change in ways that were visible, tangible, gorgeous. When B first met Kelly, B said "she's totally out of my league, stunning, kind ..." On Monday, Kelly, after bleeding from her brain for hours and hours and hours, died. She was 26. What's worse, if anything could be worse [not worse, but also terrible and tragic], is that B's done this before. She's already lost someone super-duper-close to her-- NECESSARY (what a word! how nothing truly can be, after all, except life itself!) -- to her from a car accident before. I literally did not think that things like this were possible. I mean, I know from tragedy, obvs, but in some weird way I felt protected by my father's death, like terrible things might still happen to me [and have, from time to time, relatively] but I wouldn't have the exact same thing happen to me again any time soon, no more unexpected or unbearable deaths in a top spot.

When I read about what happened to Lozo in April, I couldn't fathom it. When I relay the entire story of my summer to friends, or the story what happened in October with Olive, I witness shock and awe and more often than I'd like -- disbelief, actual disbelief, these things do not happen in the world they live in either, or so they thought. Like how we all thought for a moment on 9-11 that it was a movie.

So this weekend, I was driving back. I'd had a fun weekend with girls I love and couldn't live without (don't knock on anything, certainly not some dead tree, because there's really no such thing as supersition, it's just an abstraction, all we have really is faith and hope and love, srsly), I realised I'm maxed out on expectation. Stephen Dunn, in one of my favorite poems of all time, "Grudges," wrote this: "Easy for almost anything to occur/Even if we've scraped the sky, we can be rubble./For years those men felt one way, acted another." Obvs it's about 9/11, and the last verse contains, among other words, these lines: "Before you know it something's over/Suddenly someone's missing at the table./It's easy (I know it) for anything to occur -- "

When I read that poem, I thought of my father's heart suddenly attacking and dying, I thought of 9-11 which didn't effect me personally [I am lucky for that], but effected I think everyone's ideas of the Possible and Impossible, at least those of us protected in America and relatively privileged in our lives so far, just a reminder of the implicit mortality of life. Now, when I read that poem it seems universally applicable, and I guess that's sad as hell, but well, life is sad sometimes, and what can we do? Which I guess is what Lozo said when he wrote that top ten for me , and I can't believe I'm quoting wisdom from Lozo, but oh well.

I don't intend to make any dramatic decisions or react as I've reacted in the past to these crises of faith -- in many ways my life's been one long reaction to November 14th, 1995. I'm not threatening benders or a loss of control or inhibition or becoming totally healthy or Zen or really changing any of my present habits. I'm not less excited or energised or happy about any of the truly fantastic things that are happening right now and nothing has or will change how I feel about everything that's going on and all the people I've extended purely excited and optimistic energy towards while simultaneously moderating tragedy on the other line. I'm not numb or over-feeling. I'm not impatient with people's little problems and I'm not any different than I've ever been about how I feel everyone's entitled to their own sadness, their own tragedies, I'm not less worried about the aesthetics of my thighs or my expectations for the fucking L Word premiere or anything.

I guess I'm just slightly more grateful to be alive and I guess I wanna say also, and I say this purely, and not like, cheesy or trying to make anyone react, that ... well, okay, recently Haviland and I were talking about our career goals and I realised suddenly that most of mine are no longer so urgent as they once were. There's a lot of things I want to do still obvs, and sooooo many projects I'm really extra excited about like the teevee show and the BOYSHORTS and my new website and my book and our vlogs and etc. But all I ever wanted to do from writing was help people or help people through times that hit them hard, and I feel so grateful to have done that for so many of you. If you've ever emailed me or commented to tell me how you feel or if I told your secret and you said it changed you, that is the most fucking beautiful thing ever. If I made you LOL or like The L Word more or feel okay about who you are even for half a second, that's worth more than a New York Magazine article or a Conde Nast job or a million dollars or maybe two chicks at once too. After all, the jokes are all we have, guys. Seriously, I think LIFE IS NOT BULLSHITTING WITH US SO WE SHOULD STOP BULLSHITTING WITH EACH OTHER. Totally just used all caps, next thing I'm going to be emailing you about enlarging your penis or pissed at you about something retarded or I'll be Carly texting me to say I GOT AN IPHONEIPHONEIPHONEIPHONE which my phone has never forgotten because every time I type "I," the t9w is like, "oh do you want to say IPHONEIPHONEIPHONE" and I'm like, no, but I'm glad somebody did. I'm excited about the Britney Spears album and about mashed potatoes for Christmas and about going shopping to get gifts for people and about 2008 and about dancing and about hopefully becoming a better person too, about The Planet Podcast and about writing and publishing more and sleeping and being sad sometimes and laughing and making out and going to strip clubs with Lozo. There's a lot of things I want, obvs, as we must want as we are wanting monkeys. Also, I swear, I'm not on crack. I believe in G-d, the children, and that I can fly. Clearly.

Anyhow, what was I saying? Oh yeah. I'm grateful to what I've got now that have made these recent blows easier to weather, and I'm happy to have so many friends who I've met through my blog and know what they're getting into therefore, friends who haven't gotten annoyed at me when I pull crazy shit like deleting my blog or being totally sentimental and ridiculous or exploiting cliche or myself or telling things about other people maybe I shouldn't say, or relishing in attention I might not deserve, or attention that's not healthy for whoever's providing it.

OK so Carly is gonna be here soon. I just wanted to type this stuff out, and it makes me feel important to have a place to put it, because I am a fundamentally ridiculous person. This year has sucked for so many of you, and for me too sometimes, but wow I sure have learned a lot.

You guys should totes cry if you need to and laugh too. Life is really funny, seriously, have you ever seen it? It's fucking ridiculous and hilarious and random as hell. It's fucking tragic. So you know, like hang in there. I'm not gonna say it'll get better but it'll be an experience for sure.

Today I sat down to write a journal entry in my paper journal and all I ended up writing was two pages that started like this: "Tara, I forgive you," and kept going like that, you know, like, also forgave kids who made fun of me in middle school and my retarded ex-boyfriends and the guy who didn't care that I said "no" and just about everyone except Ilene Chaiken and George W. Bush and then I forgave Tara again and again, like Bart Simpson writing on the chalkboard every week during the opening of "The Simpsons."

I know there are a lot of of people I've wronged too and I'm sorry, and I'll probably fuck up again 100 times while I'm still alive, and I'll be sorry when I do.

I'll probs emo out on y'all 100 more times too and get wrapped up in self-pity or self-centered excitement and I'm not really sorry for that, actually. You shouldn't be either when you do those things. I've never judged anyone for anything because we've all got our dark unbearable secrets, things I've done that maybe you wouldn't like me anymore if you knew about, habits I need to break, commitments I've failed on and stuff. But there's a lot of things I'm totally doing good on right now.

Also, I am going to find this entire post unbearably embarrassing and completely retarded and/or inappropriate in about 10 hours.

Also, clearly I am disassociating right now, but oh well, it's a great strategy. Also, I love Six Feet Under, it's the best show ever, you should all watch it.

Rain

Woke up this morning with
a terrific urge to lie in bed all day
and read. Fought against it for a minute.

Then looked out the window at the rain.
And gave over. Put myself entirely
in the keep of this rainy morning.

Would I live my life over again?
Make the same unforgivable mistakes?
Yes, given half a chance. Yes.

(Raymond Carver)

Ok! Carly's here, ttyl.

That's all. No point. I told you I was a total weirdo. Later, gators

Sunday Top Ten: Each From Different Heights, Who Saved Me From Suicide This Week

The "T" Key is broken again. So is my soul. However, I have not jumped out the window or stopped using words with "T"s in them. You know what that's called? Inner strength. Know where I learned that? R&B/Hip-Hop, especially Beyonce.

This's one of the worst Sunday Top Tens ever written. Because I cannot possibly do any less than ten things at the same time right now, which means I can't do any of them well.

UPDATE: This post is a mess. However, I am not.

SUNDAY TOP TEN:
EVENTS OF THIS WEEK THAT HELPED ME STAY ON THIS SIDE OF THE OPEN WINDOW, WHICH I WILL ATTEMPT TO RELATE TO GAY PRIDE WEEK.
OR:

omg!!!! The "T" Key situation is driving me crazy. What if I wrote this whole post w/o Ts? And was just like "Figure it out, bitches, you know the alphabet, yeah? You know how words work?" But then I remembered I have international (that word really wanted to be "inernaional") readers who have a hard enough time reading my rambling whathaveyous. Seriously. I need o go o he apple sore asap.

There is a little dog on my bed. Oh. He just left. Sad. What a lark!

You know what? MySpace should have a category called "Damaged." I rejoined myspace. I like MySpace, it's cute. Try and find me, grasshopper.

10. My Friends

Y'all are totes hands down awesome. Also, I'd like to thank AIM for making our friendship possible. And thank you for taking that extra minute for yourself every morning to make sure you're pretty, otherwise we wouldn't be friends. Some of you are GAY and that's okay. I love gay people. That's why I'm excited about the cruise, which's so soon I'm getting tan just thinking about it. Wheeee! Love GAYS! I cannot wait for Susan Powter yoga, I need her to tell me how to become a warrior ASAP.

9. Depression Diet=Donuts and McDonalds

I recently lost much of my emotional and digestive capacities, and though I've always been a bit lanky, it's especially pronounced now. I had to purchase an actual belt and wear it every day, which's never been my habit. [People're often surprised that I don't own any: belts, earrings, necklaces, lube.]

"You look completely wrecked, to be honest with you."
-My Therapist

(Obvs I am speaking to her upside down with my legs hanging over the top of the chair which is not a Freudian couch, it's an actual armchair, so this's not how it's meant to be sat in, but I was too wrecked to be upright, obvs.)

It's ridiculously symbolic, the taking back of one's alloted space--"no, it's okay, you can have that air back now, I'll just take up less room"--into a bony shell of your formerly robust self. But the best part of Depression Diet?! When you finally DO acquire an appetite, you can eat whatevs you want because you're just so proud of yourself for eating at all! For example, I haven't had a donut for breakfast since I was like, 12. Until this week, when I had like; 12. Donuts are delicious. Howevs, donuts would be even better if Dunkin' Donuts could just hire one person with an IQ over 40. I don't want sugar in my coffee so cut it out!

They should hire more gay people. GAY people are smarter than other people, because they need to figure out how to have sex, it's not just like get on top, stick it in, bang-bang-bang, it involves either: a) passion and dexterity, b) fitting a large object into a way-too-small hole without causing rectal bleeding. Sorry but someone had to say it.

8. My Mom.

I love my Mom. She's awesome and helpful. Also, she's GAY! Here's my Mom and I at her gay wedding. We're clearly eyeing different cameras. I'm wearing all pink, because it was a gay wedding and pink is the color of The Gays. No one thought this was as funny as I thought it was, unfortunately.

7. Alcohol

I can't say enough about this particular substance. It's reliable and it's always there in a pinch. Some totally flawed studies in the 70s and 80s suggested that GAYS are more likely alcoholics, but if someone did some new less dubious studies with better sample sized populations, I wouldn't be surprised if it was at least a little true. I mean, it's really depressing sometimes to be ostracized by your friends and family and denied the same political rights as strais. I've been very lucky to live in a tolerant little bubble of Gay Pride, though, thanks guys. Personally, I'd find it depressing to be regularly rammed up the ass. But that's just my own personal thing, and I'm not a good sample size, so that's that.

6. Chris Pureka

K-Lilly (GAY!) turned me on to Chris Pureka (GAY!), who sings perfect sad GAY folk music about how we lose each other, feel about it afterwards, and think about it later. but we never explain why we treasure our secrets we're in love with our sadness sometimes. I honestly don't know what I'd do without Chris Pureka. I put my ipod ibuds in my ears and she cries straight into my brain-cage. She validates me.

5. My T-Mobile Dash.

I haven't really figured out how to use it yet, but it looks really neat. It's everything I've ever wanted in a phone: a full keyboard, internet, and larger than a GAY fetus. I don't like small phones, as I've said before, because they remind me of my iPod and I don't wanna be all like "Hello? Prince?"

4. Going Out to NATION: Actually, Not So Bad.

Saturday night: Washington Square Park, an hour past dusk, met up w/Tara-D and her crew of GAYS. Split off from the Under-21s and went to GAY night at Nation. I've mentioned before that I despise Nation, as it is never fun. However: we had fun.

During a breakup, your priorities get shifted quickly. Emotional survival is your only task, really, which's why I spent the entire Summer of '03 playing 'The Sims." You're just trying to stay in the green, you know? Fun skyrockets, and the best way to enable fun is to drink as much as you can without dying. Tara, Vicky and I met up with Carly and we drank, danced [I only "dance" when drunk and/or alone and/or I think no one's watching], talked.

The music wavered somewhere between decent and fantastic, and pure, uncomplicated fun was had. SoCo and lime shots, like kids on vacation. As if we are not adults, as if life is not quite so serious as all this. All action, no head, like a Zen superhero, like your first time flying.

Nation employs these whore-ish girls to dance on the bars. One of 'em's ass cheeks were hanging out and then all this money came out of her shirt, like money was flying in the air, and I took it. That came in handy later when some whore-ish someone stole Tara's bag. I won't talk about that though, because it was depressing.

3. The Best Moment of My Life So Far: Sunday Night Dance Fever

After dinner at Vinyl, we [Carly and her friends Stuart & Matt, and obvs me] venture, full o' Pride, to Posh, a GAY Bar for homosexual men who like to have sex with other homosexual men, often via asshole.

My face still hurts from laughing at Stuart's story of last year's "Himalayan Hunter" Halloween costume (told during dinner) which involved a thong, a lot of feathers and very serious boots but most importantly: actually changing his skin tone via three day fake-baking/spray-tanning regiment. He took three days off of work to develop the proper skin tone for his Himalayan Hunter Halloween costume. I kept thinking: would someone've been like "You know, if you'd been just a tad whiter, I woulda thought Deer Hunter. But that orange glow just gives you away!"

I've been here, I think, as our quartet approaches the throngs of men in tank tops and cargo shorts. The boys at Posh look like frat boys, but with expensive hair gel and shinier muscles, and once inside I remember: I lost my cell phone here, '01: Happy Hour after a lunch shift at the Olive Garden. I remember telling James I'd never talked to the new girl, Karen, because I was intimidated by how pretty she was, and he said, but you're the most beautiful girl at The Olive Garden. This is depressing on many levels:

1. I totally wasn't AT ALL. I mean, total over-compensation complement Thank You James. The Olive Garden was full of hot girls, which's pathetic.
2. He's GAY.

Yes, that afternoon, 'o1: On the black couch I felt Jason's hand on my thigh, thought: You have a girlfriend, seriously, what the F is wrong with you? He tried kissing my neck, disguised as something he needed to say immediately, like via teeth-to-neck transmission. I squirmed. At some point, I put my Nokia on the glass table.

Then I remember vomiting in the Times Square Burger King bathroom, stumbling back to the NYU dorm I lived in that summer, mumbling some nonsense to my BFF, then calling my phone from her phone, affirming I'd left it at Posh, and passing out. I returned later, when it'd transformed into a meat market, and I was like a vegan angel parting the waters of disappointment.

Anyhow, back to present tense: Stuart danced with this woman and it was really funny/amazing, Carly and I were like, this is the best thing to ever happen in the history of mankind. Also, this's one of those things that I should probably just write about in my livejournal, as it's hilarity has no hope of translating onto the page or feeling remotely relevant or interesting to anyone reading this blog besides me. But I don't have a livejournal. Or a t-key, p.s.

2. In the Flesh

On Wednesday, I attended the Special GAY In the Flesh Reading with Tara-D, Vicky, Angelica, and four other girls who's names I forget because I was depressed and wanted to die, therefore I was not paying that close attention. Also, I possibly put too much vodka in my Vitamin Water considering all I'd consumed on Wednesday was four four-packs of cheese-and-peanut-butter crackers and a Lean Pocket. [Note to readers: I need to eat massive amounts of food about every two hours, so this's like, imagine if that's all a Sumo Wrestler ate all day.]

[Also, I'm refusing a return trip to Pathmark: last time, I literally waited THIRTY MINUTES to check out, which made me want to smash my by-then-spoiled Stonyfield Farms yogurt into the retarded eyes of the cashier til all the fruit sunk to the bottom of her retinas and blinded her for life, thus enabling her acquisition of a Seeing Eye Dog who could probs do her job better than she can.]

We saw JD Glass read, and I met her and Radclyffe, who edited that "Lambda *GAY* Award Winning Stolen Moments anthology I was in. Radclyffe's written about 5,000 books. She's even more prolific than my hero RKB.

Speaking of RKB, I talked to her (while drunk) and ... !!! .... I'll be reading at The Best of "In the Flesh" on September 19th. Clearly Haviland's reading with me. I think I'll extend the city-tour begun in last year's story, "Fucking Around." It'll be like: Philadelphia looked like a sweetheart, I thought he was gay, maybe, but then he stole my Sidekick. JK. Go Philly, I love Philly. Good cream cheese, travel/tourism campaign for homos, etc.

1. Y'all

I had an idea for this section: I was gonna get one of those ridic greeting cards with the sunsets and scan it and it was gonna be this weird like poem-y Thank You card or something, 'cause I was gonna be like "how can I talk about how my readers are so sweet and sent me not just comments but emails and stuff and honestly like, opened up to me and all of this and that's just really like, amazing, and unexpected, and heart-warming. Like my heart is officially warmed.

So yeah, I love all of you readers, GAY, straight, bisexual, red, blue, green, Jewish and Muslim, poet and preacher, administrative assistants and girls who spray perfume on you at Bloomingdales, I love all of you. Thanks for being really cool.

Intro: "Naked on the Internet" Panel

TB and I've decided to individually recap the perfectly marvelous
Museum of Sex Naked on the Internet panel,
then post our relative perspectives on our respective blogs.

It's writing exercise, but also it'll provide endlessly delicious entertainment for YOU, the reader.

For example: Was the "TB drops her Blackberry on the floor, thus attracting the attention of everyone in the room for about five seconds incident" different from TB's vantage point?

We've not exactly started this recap yet, 'cause TB actually had to do work today at her work,
which's unheard of,
and I broke off my "T" key this morning
and literally spent the entire day
trying to fix it.
And doing laundry while listening to 1984 on Audiobook, etc.

But it's coming. Pun possibly intended.

*

Viviane's photos, my edits:

You can see in these photos that I'm having a lot of very deep thoughts. Also you can see that the string of Lux Nightmare's tea's in a different position in each photograph. This's 'cause she kept fiddling with it, which may or may not've made me want to take the string, wrap it around my neck, and die. However, as you can see in the displays behind us, this probs woulda been interpreted as an "auto-erotic-asphyxiation" fetish, which I know all about from Law & Order: SVU and Six Feet Under and 'cause that's what I tell TB I'm doing when I'm actually doing other things, like enjoying a lemon wedge or a brief dangle from the ceiling.

Anyhow, luckily I didn't hang myself, because then everyone would've missed out on the fabulous panel! It went very well, I think, and Lux Nightmare: I forgive you for the tea-bag-string thing. I myself am very fidgety, and I've been told I develop strange habitual tics when speaking in public. We're lucky I didn't have a teabag string to fiddle with, otherwise I woulda driven everyone crazy.

"Being Driven Crazy/Driving People Crazy" is also a fetish: clearly, it's mine.

*

I came to MoSex for an opening this past February called "Kink." After looking around and licking some feet, Lo and I ended up sitting upstairs, dissecting and describing the hours that'd passed since we'd last really spoken; since I moved out in August. Upstairs is all video: screens and more screens, including the one in our corner, seven minutes of porn on repeat as innocuous as air. I don't remember what was in the scene, only that it was funny we could talk about serious things without acknowledging the fucking out of the corner of our eyes like so many other bodies passing our space: like our own. But I guess we do that all the time now, yeah? Like that rubber clown I kept seeing at the panel! Like, rubber clown, what's up dude? How's that clown nose? Kinky, yeah? [Wha?!!] Totes not judgin', just sayin'.

Goooooooooo sexxxxx!!!!

*

This time, Stephanie and her boyfriend came, Krista came, Matty came, Tara-D and Lainy and Vicki and Tara's cousin and of course TB and later we all had dinner at dragonfly in the West Village and Kristen came and it was an all-around really perfect evening. I'm really glad that I did it. Go Waking Vixen, Madeline in the Mirror, Ellen Fredrichs and Lux Nightmare! And that dude from Mahunt or whathaveyou with the children and the Escort Reviews!

Thanks, guys. You're all very kinky, and special, and you can all have a pony and/or a monkey, whatever your adorable heart desires, and also the Superpower of your choice.

P.S. I still do not have a phone. It's funny, I don't feel that different. It's not that I repress behavioral instincts to avoid making phone calls, it's that I have the same ones as usual, I just don't feel guilty about it.

P.P.S. Typing with a broken T key is so annoying though, I might have to get a phone.