So Watch Your Head and Then Watch The Ground, It's a Silly Time to Learn to Swim

Though I honestly never sat through/paid attention to/understood The Matrix and therefore never grasped its widespread appeal, I frequently employ "there's a glitch in the matrix" to describe how life's going. E.g., this week. April is the cruelest month ... and so on. Disclaimer: I've been a little feverish for a few days now. I might just be talking crazy.

Life today isn't all that similar to life a week ago. Things keep happening that don't make sense, that seem wildly inappropriate, inspiring metaphors about being underwater and existing inside giant cottonballs.

Yesterday: my head felt like the moment the jets turn off in a hot tub ... a durrrrring pool of disappointed/subdued dumb bare skin. I didn't even do auto-fun! There's auto-fun in this post though, it's at the bottom, and footnoted throughout. I'm playing with it.

Does this happen every late March/early April? Last year, my entire life fell apart in about four days. In '06, I lost Lo & gained Haviland. '04: his other girlfriend & I paid him a surprise visit to tell him what we knew, '03 I fell head-over-heels for him in the first place. But those events (which ultimately in the scheme of things are fundamentally unimportant, as concentrated and personal as they are) aren't what I'm talking about --

it's more like when you walk outside and feel like everyone else outside has been transported to earth just that very morning, and you're still fumbling about like you've lived here for years.

Maybe we're still stuck on semesters, compelled to begin transition this time of year. I still call the last two weeks of December "winter break."

Some people I once knew seem so far underwater that I'm fairly certain even if I strapped on an oxygen tank and got all deep sea diver about it, I'd probs just hit my head on a coral reef (I can keep going with this metaphor ALL DAY, all night, watch me go!) or get hugged by a dolphin (yeah! That's my way of saying "this can be good or bad or neither." Dolphins! Manatees! I speak the secret language!)

And then; the most random people showing up in my inbox. Or on my facebook ... (1).

Yesterday I couldn't think/update (synonyms, maybe) 'cause it was my fourth morning running on no sleep 'cause every morning I'd been woken up by this noise, which I so kindly recorded for you because I am: 1. insane, 2. bitter:

boomp3.com


So I figured I'd do the things I'm usually too anxious to sit still and do: I got my hair did by a trannie named Mariah from Texas. Now I look like a Bobsey Twin, which's fine (I've just been avoiding mirrors). I'd like to solve some mysteries or whatever it is that they did, first mystery: wtf?

Yesterday's weather was impossibly, aggressively sunshiney. I've been waking up from crazy dreams and then lying in bed for impossibly, aggressively long periods of post-dream reckoning -- the things that happen in my subconscious battle reality for possible truths. (Also, duende. (2))

You have plans, or something to say, and then a whole day passes where you have nothing at all whatsoever to say in a way that feels selfish and stark. Sometimes circumstances get you down (3), sometimes you wanna stop (4), but luckily I am a compulsive over-share-er and cannot ever stop (5). Obviously. I must breathe, blog, pay taxes ... (except that I just realized, err, I haven't paid taxes. Maybe I should. I think I'll contribute to the purchase of one soldier's pair of socks. Ideally, a schoolbook, but let's be real here, this be George W country.)

So my swamp-turtle mind felt the world recognized my silence and responded in kind -- my Blackberry was a little, silent turtle with nothing to share. Then I accidentally dropped it, turned it back on, and it exploded with everything I'd received that morning and afternoon at once. Also it's deleting messages at random.

Also a stranger just called me and left a voice mail recording of the news announcing airline-related information. An accented voice goes: "Hello? Hello?"

Last night was the book party for Dirty Girls at Sutra (6) (6a) (6b) ... I managed to rally for about three hours before feeling feverish again. For the first of those three hours, Alex and I got lost somewhere between chinatown, soho, the lower east side, the east village, and bangladesh. Luckily I like to walk. (7)

(Next week! "In the Flesh" at Happy Endings Lounge!)

**

The first glitch experience happened in 2000 -- it started when all my tips from an eight-hour lunch shift at The Olive Garden were stolen, meaning I'd just served approximately 545 unlimited soup salad & breadsticks lunches for fun, which's funny in that not-funny-at-all way. I came home to find roommate Sarah in a hot panic -- she'd just done the same thing w/her Blue Water Grill Lunch money, couldn't find it.

So what do I do -- I meet Meg at a The Columbia Cottage (Chinese, uptown, free wine) to drink 'til I forget about it, then jet to Times Sqaure to see The Matrix with a boy, paying just enough attention to grasp the glitch concept and then therefore apply it immediately.

"What are we doing?" The boy asks as he walks me home.

"What are you talking about?"

"You and me, what are you doing," he asks. "I'm 27, I don't play games."

About twenty blocks later he kisses me. (Reader: I'm nearly 27. Do I still play games? Did I then?) I sit on the steps and wonder how that happened & what I'm doing.

The next day : still woozy. Woozier still when Sarah & I choose a champagne brunch ("Are you celebrating something?" Um, yes, being served though we're only 18? But instead, this raw deal: we toast "To the future!"). 3 P.M. hits and I'm napping.

Apparently I'm still woozy when I wake up @ 6 p.m. and buy a plane ticket to Paris for no reason.

Ryan calls; he's fucked up an audition, this never happens, he feels disoriented and confused and do I want dinner before our friend's birthday party? I do, we do, and circa midnight, Ryan and I actually fall asleep on a couch in the pulsing downtown nightclub Roxy. We wake up confused, he wants another drink and I don't so we squabble and I flee home. Sarah's there.

"What are we doing?" Sarah asks.

"What are you talking about?" I respond.

"With our LIVES," she responds, but I know. I already know. We're college dropouts. We serve bad food, lose our money, sleep & drink. Her harp collects dust in the corner. I sometimes use my laptop for AIM, when the dial-up's working. What happened to all the self-important yearnings we had in boarding school, still so fresh on our sad young literary tongues? (8)

Later, I'm lying forlornly on my bottom bunk when Ryan arrives home and joins me (his bunk assignment is "top"). We apologize for fighting over nothing. He tells me about his fruitless gay bar hopping and flavored martinis.

"What are you doing?" He asks. Like, why am I so often sick? Why all the throwing up, all the almost fainting starry-eyed surprises? Why aren't I reading enough? He then tells me everything I'd ever wondered about, like what happened (with us) in high school (what were we doing? trying to be straight?). He answers all the questions I'd never have asked and then he gets to the point ... the real secret is: he loves me so much that he even admires me, and he demands I do more. Admires me? Why?

I tell him: "I don't know what I'm doing."

He knows: I'm serving Fettucine Alfredo, kissing boys who don't read books, sleeping mid-day and buying plane tickets to Paris just to see if I can (I can).

"You need to take yourself seriously," he says.

Across the street, The Beacon Theater's back doors extract happy, solid, stable people. Though I suppose they'd probs think the same things we'd been thinking if they'd seen us from their window: "Those people are happy, and know what they're doing."

But we don't.

For the first time since dropping out and moving to the city with Sarah (who has her own room), Ryan and I sleep together in the same bed of our bunkbed. It's a tiny thing, but we sleep like angels. (9)

**

I think they finished drilling the holes in my sidewalk, finally, so I slept last night.

I'm pretty sure my stomach is lined with something toxic like rubber (and you are glue, which is why everything we both eat bounces off me and sticks to you).

I considered the master cleanse, 'cause I feel like there's just something off inside me, but the way it was described to me made it sound like it'd probs make my ass bleed more than a night at Babylon with Brian Kinney (yeah, I said it). Also I think I said I wanted to do it when Stef did it and Cait said "Don't do it!" and I said, "okay."

I went to the cheap Chinese massage place yesterday, which's like China, only smaller. I was too in the zone to even think about the thin curtains and the other people, the lack of privacy. I honestly just wanted to lie there forever, as it seemed to be the only place on earth that might demand nothing from me. Simply by lying completely still, I was doing my part.

Basically, here's the symptoms: hot flashes, nausea/vomiting, cravings for strange foods, inexplicable breast growth (without the corresponding overall body-growth), sluggishness, moodiness ... possibly I'm preggers, which'd be impossible unless on the off chance that I am, in fact, Marie Magda-Lyn. For all you heathens out there, that's a reference to the Immaculate Conception. Not to be confused with The Immaculate Collection, Madonna's best album.

I like this poem. (10).

---

quote: "When I think about it like this, I can't help asking myself, "Where is there any logical consistency in the world?" I don't know -- maybe the world has two different kinds of people, and for one kind the world is this completely logical, rice pudding place, and for the other it's all hit-or-miss macaroni gratin. I bet if those tree frog parents of mine put rice pudding mix in the microwave and got macaroni gratin when the bell rang, they'd just tell themselves, 'Oh, we must have put in macaroni gratin by mistake, or they'd take out the macaroni gratin and try to convince themselves, 'This looks like macaroni gratin, but actually it's rice pudding. And if I tried to be nice and explain to them that sometimes, when you put in rice pudding mix, you get macaroni gratin, they would never believe me. They'd probably just get mad." (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles)

---

links:
1) Facebook Gets Frisky With Your Most Feared "Friends" (@ny observer)
2) Peggy Munson writes a playlist to her poetry book (@largehearted boy)
3) Dan Savage: "I just fucking can't." "At a Loss" (@the stranger)
4) Emily, formerly of Gawker, does an Obituary for Personal Blogs (@guilt & pleasure)
5) Your Guide to Internet Oversharers (@gawker)
6) Babeland says that my story had them at hello, which makes me feel special/glad to be the first story in the book. (@babeland @dirty girls virtual book tour)
7) Converse Turns 100 (@the smart set)
8) Why Does it Take So Long to Grow Up? (@The American Scientist Online)
9) Prologue to "All the Sad Young Literary Men" (@n+1)
10) Embarrassment, by Brenda Shaughnessy (@poems.com)

I was asked to "claim" my profile by posting this link:
Check out my Blogebrity profile!
(Of course, now that I have, I've started caring. Which is surely a symptom of something parasitic.)

Sunday Top Ten: Anyone Living Anywhere Else Must Somehow, In a Sense, Be Kidding

I'm in Washington, D.C., home of the world-famous United States government, with Haviland and Cait. The hotel just hooked us up with a free bottle of wine to ease the pain of our recent move from the third floor to the fourth floor on account of the heat being broken in our previous room [Haviland's resting body temperature is -56 degrees, and it's wintertime]. I said I was gonna drink it 'cause it's hard to turn down free alcohol, but then I tried to, and turns out that Merlot tastes like ass. But, I keep drinking it and I'll tell you something, it gets better and better. So ... D.C. -- on Saturday night, we had dinner at this restaurant called Manhattan's, and it closes before we're done drinking. I ask an employee for a bar rec. He asks "What kind of scene?" and I say, "No douchetards or assholes." And he says, "There's [BLABLA] bar or [BLABLA] bar but you should go to [TURNED OUT TO BE LAME] bar, I say that because you're wearing black nail polish." I've got no clue what he means, so I ask: "Black nail polish? What does that mean?" and he says something lame and clearly not memorable about my alternative lifestyle and I'm like "Oh, is it really dark? Do they play goth heavy metal music?"

[Disclaimer: This thing needs to be proofread like WHOA, will do in the morning/afternoon.]

Unfortunately for me and my dark dark soul: no, it was packed tight with douchetards, the music was way more Hootie than Ozzie. We went somewhere else, it was awesome, life is awesome, I could never live in this city, there's a lot of pearls and Republicans. I've been here many times, and on recent trips I just feel like I'm in enemy territory. Apparently, according to Hav and Cait, it's unwise for me to keep yelling "Praise Allah!" in public. Whatevs, Shalom, Republicassholes.

I can't imagine a job in D.C anyone'd hire me to do [cash register at the HRC shop? They've got cute Marc Jacobs and Heatherette tees, seriously, buy one!], but regardless: absolutely could not live here right now. I'd considered Georgetown once, but when I visited, my friend advised against it. She said all the guys were ugly and wanted to be politicians or news anchors, and all the girls just wanted to marry them. She said it was grey all the time.

So Cait, Haviland and I started talking about where else in America I could never live. Then I had to write a Top Ten, so here we are.

SUNDAY TOP TEN:
MAJOR AMERICAN CITIES I'VE BEEN TO THAT I COULD TOTALLY NEVER LIVE IN FOR THE PURPOSES OF LIVING MY ACTUAL LIFE
FOR A PERIOD OF AT LEAST ONE YEAR

First of all, if you live in any of these cities, I'm sure you're very nice and your city is secretly awesome, because you're reading this, and people who read this are the best kind of people. In fact, many of you do live in these cities. I know this 'cause I've got a sitemeter, though it thinks I live in Virginia, so who knows, maybe by "Cincinnati" they mean "Bangladesh."

Second of all, I'd live just about anywhere if I was building houses or helping people, even in D.C. I'd live in D.C to teach kids to read or make birdhouses. OK, mostly I'm talking about New Orleans -- obvs I'd live there if I was building houses or feeding people or performing juggling for people w/o houses, but I couldn't live my normal life there.

Cait suggested a major city in Alaska for a spot on this no-go list, because it's always dark, but I love the dark. As I've mentioned, I'm a vampire and I find dark days verify my negative attitude. Also, everyone's cuter in the dark, dark come soon. I can't stand the rain. This Merlot is supposed to taste like ripe plum, maybe they mean "ripe bum." I don't like intense heat or locales where people are always wearing bikinis. I hate New York, it's unbearable, but I love it too, it's beautiful, so what can you do?

10. Atlanta

Firstly, it was really hot. Oddly enough, I've dated or bffriended many Georgia citizens and thus been there many times, which's weird, since I'm super not-Southern -- I'm not particularly polite, I'm not into facades, racism, the cotton gin, slavery, heat, willow trees, or massively confusing endless highway systems. I just felt like we spent every day stuck in traffic with a bunch of sweaty people in business suits. It was really hot.

*
9. Orlando

Firstly, it's so hot there, and there are fireants. If Carly and her hip friends like Cesar hadn't lived in Orlando as grown-ups with free will [as in, they weren't born there or forced to move there as slaves or prisoners of war or managers of Darden Restaurants], my overall impression of Orlando would be 100% negative instead of 99% negative [the 1% = obviously cool people do choose to reside there for college and consequently kinda enjoy themselves]. So, that withstanding, it's about a thousand degrees, filled with tourists and amusement parks and is in Florida, responsible for the impending apocalypse via the Bush Administration. It's just got no discernible personality besides headquartering a million bizarre corporate commercial entities, like my former employer Darden Restaurants and Universal Studios. Strip mall, strip mall, $9.99 All-You-Can-Eat Crab Legs, Mickey Mouse tickets.

Also, I love Disneyworld, seriously, I love visiting Florida and surfing on the sandy beaches. Just wouldn't want to live there.

*
8. Oklahoma City

Firstly, it's so hot there. Strip malls, real malls, cars, houses like other houses, houses not unlike other houses. No cowboys. Tornadoes. Where are the gays? I feel like OC is one big chain restaurant that serves baby back ribs and the waitresses have orange tans and serious push-up bras. The best part was Frontier City. Here's the thing: I can live somewhere totally ridiculous for about a year. Baltimore? Nashville? Miami? Sure, I'm totally in, hilarious. That's sort of my policy for life: you must be good, or you must be so bad that you are hilarious. Unfortunately, the ratio of cowboy-themed amusement parks to insane churches in OC doesn't enable it to cross that line from "bad" into hilarious, sorz.

*
7. Detroit

I just wrote this whole graf about Detroit and then looked it up on Wikipedia to verify my facts and learned that apparently people do live in Detroit and it's on the up-and-up, which's awesome because in addition to losing sleep thinking about the state of the publishing industry and what'll happen if musicians run out of melodies, I spend a lot of time worrying about Detroit. I just can't believe how empty so much of it is, and how badly the automotive industry's outsourcing has affected what was apparently a once extremely prosperous city. Anyhow, before I learned that somehow I've managed to miss every populated area of Detroit proper on my 10,000 trips there (Also: I'm not counting suburban Detroit, which is super-duper populated, obvs, my Moms live there, clearly, and also Somerset Mall, also a lot of annoying Jewish girls, I can say that, I'm Jewish. Also: if you think you've been there you probs haven't, the suburbs are where the Pistons play, and the aiport.) I'd written the following: it'd be hard to live here 'cause there's not much housing anymore, it's like ghost-city, all depressing dirty streets and blown-out buildings, remnants of the '67 race riots and the GM factory shut-downs. Honestly to geek out for a minute; I'm utterly completely OBSESSED WITH DETROIT. I'm intrigued by its downfall, its rapid ruin, the fact that white flight's enabled suburbs to thrive while the urban fabric crumbles and crumbles and then; crumbles. One of many interesting things about Detroit is [still here? still listening?] is Woodward Ave, where I've been many-a-time for concerts or shows at the Fox, it's nice and busy, about five solid blocks of bustling commerce. But literally one block further east or west and you are in a completely dark scary ghost town where most of the buildings are literally abandoned, just giant empty buildings.

This website's got a really through visual archive of Detroit's ruin, I find it endlessly interesting.

There's a pretty hot music scene in Detroit (seriously, like punk, techno, indie rock stuff), and one sumer night we came in for a Saturday Looks Good to Me show at this hot bowling alley venue, then went to Mexicantown for dinner and on the way home it was raining so bad the streets were flooding, but we sped through in Jake's bright red mini-van and the puddles splashed up against our windows like a car wash. It was like driving through Haunted House/Splash Mountain.

But seriously, there's not a lot of places to live there anymore, so I'd either be living on the streets drinking Mad Dog from a paper bag or with Eminem in his trailer. That's fine, trailers are hard-core and portable, probs bigger than most NYC apartments, but Eminem has serious issues.

*
6. Salt Lake City

Because of the Mormons. You know like Julie on The Real World. They don't like lesbians/gays or alcohol, my two favorite things. Once I went to Mormon church with my ex-boyfriend to see his friend speak about his trip to the mission, but it wasn't in Salt Lake it was in Vegas, but whatevs, so, they let all the kids run around in the back and scream during the service. Seriously, it's hard enough to be holy without babies screaming and hurling plastic toys at the wall, I've got no clue why premairtial sex is a sin but being annoying yelling children is totally encouraged. My agent's family is Mormon and we had dinner with her sister and I got drunk (surprise) and asked them a lot of questions about if it was hard to not have sex and they were like "Nope, my relationship with G-d is really important," and I was like wow. Seriously, that's impressive. Good job.

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5. Houston and/or Dallas

Firstly, super hot there. I'm breaking my "no cities I've never been to" rule, 'cause I'm confident I'd hate both these places without stopping by to check. It's hot, I think everyone likes football and eats a lot of meat on the bones like ribs and steak, and G.W. was once the governor. I'd like Austin, but the rest of this state I'm skeptical of. If you live there though, you're awesome, there's an exception to every rule. Um, nice boots. Love cowboy boots. On the floor bedow bowwwww.

*
4. Cincinnati

Seriously, what's in Cincinnati? Besides some of my family members and The Reds? I don't know. I don't even feel like looking it up, I get bored just thinking about it. Oh! The Abercrombie & Fitch headquarters is there, I think, right? Totes.

*
3. Las Vegas

Firstly, it's really hot. What's brill is once upon a time I considered living here 'cause my ex-boyfriend hoped to move there when we were grown-ups [in his weird fantasy world where I could spend one additional minute of my life with him w/o clawing his eyes out] because there's no property tax in Vegas. That's really why. I don't know why I thought I could do that. I guess there were a lot of things I thought I could do then that really don't make any sense to me now, like be his girlfriend. How could you possibly live in a city that exists for tourists who come to Vegas specifically to do things they wouldn't do at home? I don't even gamble or know how, what a waste of money, I'd rather go to a strip club with Lozo and let him waste his money. 'What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.' What if your LIFE happens in Vegas? Is it all giggles and buffets? Because that's a lot of buffets.

*
2. New Orleans

Firstly, so hot. My brother lives here, and la-la-loves it. We're very different. E.g., he's an engineer and works to help get this city back on it's feet, I'm an aspirant and I work to tell retarded jokes at the expense of myself and others. I went to his graduation and lost my mind, though I felt exuberant when Ellen & Bill Clinton spoke at graduation and I enjoyed seeing my brother & his laid-back friends. The Ninth Ward made me despondent. Though my reputation may suggest otherwise, there's nothing about "The Big Easy" that appeals to me. [Ha! Ha! Seemed funny when I wrote it last night.] Everyone in NOLA's so chill, which gives me anxiety, I've got this New Yorkish affection for anxiety, depression, misery and multi-tasking. Also, they had this Hurricane, our retarded government completely fucked up, and a naturally chill attitude combined with missing street signs, no housing, a reduced labor force and people who've been seriously neglected with no-place to go equals a really long line at Rite-Aid. Also, really, girls show their tits for BEADS? Beads? Are they magic beads? There are so many things about the world I don't understand.

Anyhow, see disclaimer above, I'd live in NOLA if it was in a helping-people situation, just not to like, live normal life.

*
1. Washington, D.C.

Hiya. Seriously, this wine gets better and better. Maybe I coulda lived here when my fave prez Bill Clinton was in office, but it feels funny now. I don't know. It's corrupt here, isn't it? They got a rough treatment in my "Fucking Around" story, to be featured in the "Dirty Girls" anthology. Most people I've passed on the street look like someone I wouldn't mind punching in the face, though I love the bookstores especially the incredible gay bookstores. Pretty streets. I'm not a salesman or a politician, I'm too into honesty, obvs, to a fault ... though I hope to be a full-time activist one day, you know, to change things. Education, mostly. I'm ready for a new president. I miss Bill Clinton. What a multi-tasker, that one.

In any event, it's been a fabulous weekend, we walked a million miles today. The city's essentially deserted on account of the holiday, it wasn't that cold, and I like just being away, from my little emo cave, and everything. Love this hotel. We'd all like to live here and be little Eloises, just bathe and wear white bathrobes and drink coffee and eat fruits and things. So good to chill w/Cait and Haviland, who're both tucked neatly into bed and sleeping while I type away like a lunatic.

It's been such a strange fucking year. It's funny; my animosity towards D.C isn't so violent as it was a few months ago, it's like, everything is a mess, what do we do? Pick up pieces, move on. Look forward. I've got hope there'll be space in the clear on the other side for a reconciliation of some kind for this effin country and I'm praying that that isn't all there'll be room for ... we do small things, here and there, press on, wait for the next joke and laugh at it, we crescendo, we dance. We wait for the next joke, even when it's on us. I feel like laughter's pretty pure. There's lots of pure pretty lovely awesome things actually, and friends. I look at New York and I wonder how she does it.

Sunday Top Ten: Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me and My Monkey

Hello, welcome to Friday. How are you? Good, good. This is fo'reals the last post of Secrets Week. JK! I mean: it is. This is the last post of secrets week, but I've got a few left that I want to treat properly, so I'll use 'em next week some time, I'm gonna take a vaycay from talking about you and return to making fun of myself for a few days. If by 2008 you don't see yours in here, it's 'cause you're a complete fuck-up and I can't handle your issues, or because putting up all the Riese-Shrine photos I received would seem a little self-indulgent, and clearly I do not indulge the self. No, it's because it got lost in the shuffle probs, like my favorite green hat and my American Eagle hoodie, both MIA for a few weeks now. And Amber, where's Amber? I don't know. You can email me with YOU ARE RETARDED in the subject line or something, and then re-paste your secret, if you don't see it here by 2008.

**

**

So many of my personal friends responded with "You know all my secrets, right? Use whatevs." Really though? I don't know if any of my friends know all my secrets. My journal -- you know, the old fashioned pen-and-ink kind, is The Real Secret vault. There's still so much I'll never tell, never, and I hate that, and that maybe this blog is often a massive overcompensation for the guilt associated with these compromises. Maybe that's why I'm so non-judgmental of others, because I feel I've got the same ugly secrets, I'm just hiding mine better.

Thus, I'm obsessed with various permutations of "truth" [Thus, I la-la-la-loved Closer]... I believe that often ignorance is bliss, but sometimes lying is a cop-out too. I had a friend who checked her boyfriend's email as regularly as she checked her own, and the thing is that chances are you've got a lot of evil thoughts about people you love but you can't tell them everything, I mean, it's not relevant, you gotta filter. If he was cheating on her, there'd be more evidence than one flirtatious email to an old girlfriend she uncovered deviously. That's why I don't read other people's journals or hack into their email (unless they are having affairs with 16-year-old synchronized swimmers using the laptop I gave them) because I've realised that what we choose to communicate with each other often holds an intent even purer than truth.

We do what we do to each other and reveal what we do for a reason, to meet a certain end/intent, and the reason often matters more than our darkest paranoias or theories about it, 'cause that's the truth of what we want even if it's not the truth of how we feel, so it's the only practical thing to say. Does that make sense? Probably not. I'm not sure if I even know what I'm talking about. This is, as you may notice, a pattern with me. What's my secret? I've got that song from Beauty and the Beast stuck in my head, it's making me crazy. Bonjour! Good-day! How is your family? Bonjour! Good-day! How is your wife? But she won't find out it's him 'til Chapter THREEEEEEEE.

*
"You knew me pretty well but I never let you see my dark side." (Chris Pureka)
*

What's my Secret? That's sort of a lie up there because I used to read other people's journals almost compulsively. So gross. This was years ago -- high school, I guess ... the last time I read someone else's journal was -- I'll call him "Rick." It was March 2000, he was in the shower, it was right there, right next to the bed, I just had to look. He'd written "I'm "dating" Marie now, she's sooo cute, hot body ... but she's 18, and it shows, she's soooo 18 ..." and I thought, "Wow, I gotta start acting more mature." He was 27. Sidenote, I'm almost 27, and still not mature, so I don't think it was an age thing. I also thought of that line from Sex and the City that Miranda says when a guy calls her sexy: "Smart, yes, sometimes cute, but never sexy. Sexy is the thing I try to get them to see me as after I win them over with my personality," to which Carrie responds: "You win men over with your personality?"

I got addicted to his journal. I needed it to tell me what to do next, until it started telling me about the other women, the ones who were his age and mature, soooooo mature, "real women" who had multiple orgasms like easy and apparently didn't think it was cool to race him to the subway stop or dance on the bar or run drunk through Times Square doing heel-clicks like in Newsies or dress in costume just for fun.

Then he read mine. We shared a locker at work, I trusted him [I don't know why I trusted him, but I did], I kept my journal in the locker.

I didn't know this of course; he just ignored me for about two weeks and then when I asked him why he was being such a consistent douchetard he finally came out with it: "Why do you care how I act to you? Aren't I BORING, anyhow?"

Omg, omg, like, if I'd had ten cheerleaders behind me going "O! M! G!" that wouldn't've been enough. Didn't he know I'm made the Top Ten Reasons I Can't Date Rick because I didn't think I had a choice, and I needed to feel better about my only option?

And also, sidenote, he was kinda boring, as a person, but I was never bored with him. We had fun together, we made each other laugh a lot and he made me feel pretty.

How unfair, I thought, and how unshakeable. I also wondered why he hadn't noted, on that same list, that I didn't like this one navy blue turtleneck t-shirt sweater, because he totally kept wearing it. This is that list, from my journal, May 2000:

Why He's Wrong For Me:
1. Likes Armageddon and other bad movies.
2. Fat-ish.
3. Doesn't like my writing
4. Too old
5. Becoming weird about going out.
6. Doesn't read poetry.
7. Weird attitude about women.
8. Those light jeans and that one blue turtleneck -- HATE IT.
9. Sometimes, he bores me.
10. He only cares about money -- has no true passion in life.

He still made me see Mission to Mars with him, so obviously he saw what he wanted to see anyhow. There's only so much space for the reality we've decided is our own, and sometimes that reality involves Ben Affleck like it or not. Also, hello, Sunday Top Ten, birthing itself right there.

**

The point is that I learned my lesson. You don't really wanna know what people say about you in their journal, but I'm glad that he had one, for his sake. Ignorance is totes bliss, sometimes ... but lately, I've been thinking maybe it's not. Maybe we'd all be better off if we figured out a way to keep something inside but also to be way more honest than we are. Emotional truths: important. We shouldn't read each other's journals, but maybe there wouldn't be so much to hide if we stopped hiding, like from ourselves. Yeah, I'm totally Angela Chase today.

So .... yeah. Thanks, dudes. For like, sharing your secrets with me. It's awesome to hear that seeing them has helped you in some way, that's the best thing I could ever hope for, seriously.

And thus, here we go, Bonjour! Good day! wWAAAAA.
**

SUNDAY TOP TEN: PART FOUR OF FIVE:
SECRETS SECRETS STILL ARE FUN
AND IT SEEMS AS THOUGH I'LL NEVER BE DONE
DOES ANYONE WANT SOME RUM?
NOT ME, I LIKE VODKA, BUT THANKS.
DUM-DUM-DUM.
*

*
16. Like O, Like H

Rayanne's home from college for the summer and so she gets a job at Circuit City, where she sells major appliances like overpriced refrigerators, dishwashers and vacuum cleaners. Her coworkers, slightly more dedicated to the fine art of keeping things Cold and Clean, are all older men and she's the only young firm object/body with tits. In fact, she believes her hiring is owed equally to the following three things: good grades, rudimentary understanding of refrigeration technology, C-cups.

Steve works in Car Stereo Install, which's the big-box store equivalent of blue collar. He's tall and good looking, barrel-chested and of black Irish descent, and he ignores Rayanne which naturally intrigues her. He disappears for two weeks and returns with stories of visiting distant relatives in Dublin, and it all sounds so romantic -- Irish cousins he barely knew, taking him in and feeding him, keeping him swimming in whiskey and ale. He returns with gifts for his mother.

He strolls into the aisle between the washers and the dryers and Rayanne nearly forgets everything she knows about defrosters when he approaches her, smiling all dimpled, all white teeth and lips and a strong chin with its rough, black stubble. She wonders what that might feel like on her neck and that wonder flushes her face and skin and her breath is intentional: "Hello there," she says, like a movie star.

"I took a trip to Ireland. I brought this back for you".

English Lavender. She's confused and flattered. They make plans for Friday night. She laughs nervously, her curiosity burns, and doesn't die down when she learns he's a Jesus freak. Really? Not one of THOSE Jesus freaks, okay then, she wants to know how that stubble feels. His hair looks soft.

Yes, she says, let's go for a drive in your car. The stubble is sandpaper, but he's gentle, he can kiss.

The summer hums on. She sells crappy microwaves to single men and giant refrigerators to obese women. She thinks: maybe I won't go back to college. I could just keep working, right? The money's pretty good.

More Friday nights are spent making out in the car: she's virginal and unsure but his hands know things about how to hold hips and her legs know something about how to straddle and respond to the indecent suggestions of his lips.

Stop, he says.

Stop? She says.

We know where this is going, he says.

We do? She says.

Yes, he says. I'm a Christian, Ray.

Right, she thinks. He mustn't be seduced by virginal flesh.

You should be ashamed, he says, almost removing her body from his body like it's a blanket the world just got too warm for.

What the fuck did you just say? She asks. She feels sick. Will he see her again? Can they just slow things down?

His stubble is rough, she wants to claw the flesh from her cheek. Also she's got no plans to accept Jesus as her personal savior. In fact, she's already eyeing the door as she so often does, the door she believes in far stronger than he claims to believe in something holy and designated as such. She doesn't want to meet his mothers. She will build temples to honor her escape. He doesn't seem to understand. Don't call me, she tells him. She's going back to college.

Oh -- and? All her doors swing open, slam shut. I fucking hate English Lavender.

*
17. I Hear Noises

Kim likes to performance dance to Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights" for an audience. She's pretty sure it makes everyone else uncomfortable and embarrassed for her, but she refuses to give it up up until she wins some kind of gold medal, perhaps earns one million you tube clicks. "Something in this league."
**

Lisa says she's bisexual and is active in the bisexual-activist community, but the truth is she's really only interested in girls if she's watching her boyfriend fuck them.

**

Nicole has regular sexual dreams about her brother and has for about a decade. She blames V.C. Andrews.

**
18. So Jealous

When Elyse and Jordan broke up, she first got depressed and then depressed/completely fucked up and then so jealous when she saw him with another girl that she could barely do anything besides prove as often as possible that she was desired, desirous, desirable.

So she decided to seduce the French exchange teacher. One loaded moment of eye contact can make something into something, just like that. He was maybe 24 and she was 17 so it wasn't too creepy, just totally illegal and weird and "not hot at all."

After it happened, she was over it immediately. Mission accomplished. She went back to being an obsessive tater-tot-eating jealous high school girl but she knew that he was probably racked with guilt and petrified that she'd tell on him.

The next day, he sent her an email that said "Pas de regrets, et toi?" As in: "If I say I don't regret this huge mistake maybe she won't tell on me."

She didn't. She only told one person; me. What's my secret? I actually kept it, among others.

I've been historically bad at this; not at blurting others' secrets to the world, but at establishing secret clauses to secret-keeping. Like; "Well, I'm not supposed to tell anyone, but OBVS I have to tell you, as you're my boyfriend/girlfriend/BFF" or whatever. I got better at not doing this as I got older, but now it's easier to navigate since my friends are all over the place and might not even meet each other [until someone decides for some insane reason to marry me and then obvs all my friends will meet each other because there'll probs be a large party involving copious amounts of drink, and Diet Doctor Pepper for Haviland. Did I mention that I proposed to Haviland at the Time Warner Center? I think I did. However I didn't have a ring, because I'm not a money tree, so, you know, so don't think that if she's not wearing one it means she didn't say "Yes."].

But every now and then you have someone who's secrets you keep like second nature, you just do it, you just can't betray them, and won't, and not because of fear but because it feels just totally wrong to do so, you're not tempted, you're just silent.

*
19. Time Running

This happened to Sharon when she was 12 and it changed everything more than she's cared to admit. More than she's admitted. She was twelve. She had to stay late at school and therefore walked home alone.

At the top of her road she saw a guy standing near her house. Chances are she would've quickly forgotten this if what followed hadn't happened (He isn't going to rape her, I'm telling you this now because if that's what you're expecting, as I was, then your primary reaction to what follows will be relief that she doesn't get raped, and I don't want relief to be a part of what you feel about it, so I'm saying this now.)

He sees her, he turns, he walks away, and she thinks nothing of it 'til she reaches her back gate and sees him still standing there, smoking. He buts out his cigarette. He pulls down his pants.

She didn't know what to do: he was right in front of her gate. She keeps walking, she puts her head down and walks by in front of him.

This she remembers: in one swift moment, when she's passing and he's got his pants down, poised for something she knows can't possibly be good -- he takes that moment to put his hand on her ass, lean into her ear and say, hot and heavy breathing, "Alright, darling."

Sharon has something in her hand, she swings it, she doesn't know if she hits him or not but the next thing she remembers is turning around and seeing him running up the road. She stands there for a few seconds, takes some deep breaths, and goes inside. She walks right into the living room, looks at her Mom and her Mom asks: 'Are you alright?"

She has a million thoughts but she doesn't know the words for them, doesn't know yet how it feels to be touched when it's not a violation, doesn't know anything, she's twelve, experience, after all, is relative to only one thing which is all other experience, so she says: "Yeah, I'm fine. Work okay?"

Sharon isn't sure why she still hasn't told anyone, and sometimes she wonders if keeping it inside has enabled her to almost forget, like how sometimes she looks back and thinks it may've just been a dream.

She's gotten to the stage where she thinks that people would just think she was being silly if she told them, because "nothing" happened, things could've been so much worse: she was lucky that she was at her back gate and lucky that she had something to swing and lucky that nothing happened. But the thought of what could've happened--what was about to happen--scared her then, and continues to.

Maybe it's not that big of a thing, she reasons, but she was twelve. She thought life was safe. It was the first legitimately frightening thing to ever put it's breath or hands someplace unexpected and also the first frightening thing she's dealt with alone.

*
20. Clever Meals

Megan: "There's another kind of secret that transcends these innocent, everyday dishonesties. A sort of deception that, if revealed, would change what even your closest friends think of you. It'd change what they'd say when they talked about you, and it wouldn't be something you could apologize for or change. You just have to live with it buried in the coldest recesses of your conscience or risk forever exposing yourself for what you truly are. Most people are lucky enough not to bear this sort of secret. I am not so lucky. You might think this selfish, but that's only because you've ever experienced the darkness i've known for thirteen years. It's with this meager apology that I must let it be known ..."

Megan doesn't like Wes Anderson films. It felt good for her to say it out loud, after she recovered from the shock. It's just not fait. She's exactly the kind of person who oughta unabashedly adore Wes Anderson. She owns a white belt like the other shiny, happy hipsters. ("I'm not wearing it right now, obviously, but I own it.") Why can't she see the brilliance in these movies? All she sees is a science fiction film that's set in reality, "which is retarded."

Yes, she's seen them all: Rushmore, Bottle Rocket, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic. She's done what she could to fill this gaping hole in her hipster delusion -- but she'd like to add, having seen them all, that they're really not any different from one another.

She knows that were her friends to discover her true feelings, she'd be permanently branded as hands down totes uncool, more of a J-Crew chino totesbag toter who puts summer blockbusters on reserve at her local store, she probs couldn't even use Netflix to obtain her uncool movies. She'll just continue to laugh along as grown men run around onscreen in yellow jumpsuits, shooting precious statements of overgrown boyhood into inappropriate situations while a stone-faced Bill Murray extols self-consciously fetishized snibbets of wisdom onto the young scholars in his accidental care.

Unlike Coldplay, Life of Pi, and Grey's Anatomy, the evidence is stacked against her and she's certain the problem "lies unquestionably with me, not West Anderson. Acceptance is the first step. All I can do now is simply pray that my sordid abnormality is never discovered by my friends, relatives," or anyone else she could ever see ever.

[What's my secret? I couldn't even get through Life Aquatic or Bottle Rocket actually, though I loved Royal Tenenabums because Margot Tennenbaum is my hero both for her supreme sense of style (the eyeliner and the blonde hair, the polo shirts) and her deadpan delivery of life's must brutal truths. I'm likely to quote her and you might not even know it if you aren't as dedicated as me. She is everything I ever want to be in life and more and I dedicated the entire winter of 2004 to becoming Margot, even announcing this intention to the entire dinner table when Natalie's parents took us out for her birthday, which didn't go over as well as the other diners plans to get internships and such. Howevs, all his movies are slightly irritating though, just 'cause they're so super precious and like "oh, look at these boys who can't grow up, they are so adorable awww." I liked Rushmore.]

Sunday Top Ten: We Don't Know So We Wait for Tomorrow

You'd think "dream jobs" woulda been an easier topic, but maybe it's something I've never truly thought about, not specifically, like B2 does here, and how Rob does in High Fidelity when he makes his "Top 5 Dream Jobs" list. [Coincidentally, many of my ex-boyfriends declared a perceived unique affinity to the character of Rob when that movie came out. He's very rumply-haired, obsessive, emo and dissatisfied and likes making mix tapes, so that's something.] [???] So the idea of "dream job" is that when you get there; that's where you've wanted to be, and then, at last, you relax. Your life is in stasis.

And what's dawned on my monkey-mind lately is that a future prospect of relaxation/contentment is precisely what motivates us into anxiety, which is semi-hilarious -- people disguised as robots, robots disguised as people -- just as the concept of a settlement is what inspires and propels the argument. So we run around like maniacs in order to one day stop running? Human beings are retarded. Clearly we don't want to relax that much, otherwise we'd be doing it, right? Or not? This paragraph had a point when I wrote it last night, and I'm not sure what that point is anymore. I'm leaving it in in case it occurs to me later.

I never thought I'd be able to do what I wanted to do in life by getting up and going to a job every day so maybe I never thought about what that Dream Job might be? [I've also been consistently aware that I'm somewhat limited by fibromyalgia and what hours I can manage and still keep that under control, etc., but that's another blog entry -- like a really boring one, actually.] Anyhow, I just imagined always waitressing or temping or dealing crack to supplement writing until my first book deal or television development contract. Luckily, I sort of love waitressing a little, even though I'm bad at it, I'd totes waitress right now if anyone would hire me. [Waitressing became intoxicating, almost; its unpredictability, though it provided for a certain risk of complete poverty, also implied the possibility of jackpot treasure striking at any moment. Though it wasn't likely you'd make $200 on a Friday night ... it also wasn't impossible, which meant you could plan ahead allowing the chance of improbable good fortune. Also, I loved the exhaustion. I loved running around all night like my life depended on it, like if Table 59 didn't get their Bruschetta before their Pasta Milanos, a great cloud would open above us and G-d would strike us all with lightning bolts. Which it would, in the form of douchetards. A million small, achievable tasks.]

I look back on my whole life before now and I'm amazed I've gone this long without a steady "job," considering I went out and applied for jobs as soon as I was old enough to legally work (age 14, but you can't use knives until you're 15), even ultimately foregoing extracurricular activities (soccer, theater) in favor of closing Dana's Deli every night, and foregoing an active social life all through college in order to waitress. I loathed, all my life, the idea of not having a regular job for even one day, let alone so many months. If I'd've told myself in March that I'd be, right now, without a steady reliable place to BE and reap income for at least 20 hours a week (outside of my apartment), I'd be like "Wha?!!! What's going to happen, Psychic Weirdo?" Actually, there are at least 500 things that Riese-in-March wouldn't've believed about her future. No, probs like, 1,000. Most of all I never thought I'd have bangs, obvs.

Sooo ... in High Fidelity, this is Rob's Top Five Dream Jobs List:

1. Journalist for Rolling Stone magazine, 1976 to 1979
2. Producer, Atlantic Records, 1964 to 1971
3. Any kind of musician, besides classical or rap
4. Film director, any kind except German or silent
5. Architect (seven years training)

Laura reads his list. This conversation happens:

Laura: So you've got a list here of five things you would do if qualifications and time and history and salary were no object?
Rob: Yeah.
Laura: -- and one of them you don't really wanna do anyway.
Rob: Well, I did put it at number five.
Laura: Wouldn't you rather own your own record store than be an architect?
Rob: Yeah, I suppose.
Laura: And you wouldn't wanna be a 16th century explorer or the King of France--
Rob: God no.
Laura: Well, there you go then. Dream job number five. Record store owner.

And here's the thing: he totes IS a record store owner. Get it?

*

I had to scour the archives to ensure I'd not written on this before; a recent archive look-through (I can't remember why) made me aware of the fact that I repeat myself LIKE WHOA. I mean, seriously, clearly the side-effect of my EPIC output is that I don't remember what I've said and not said, and therefore I'm liable to post the exact same Sunday Top Ten more or less twice. I could save a lot of time with cutting and pasting, obvs.

SUNDAY TOP TWELVE, PART ONE
(12-8)
DREAM JOBS
"If time, history, salary, and qualifications were no object."
(Also, requires attendance, as in, no freelance hoo-ha, like totes "be here, this time, etc." kind of situation. To be a "job.")

---

12. A Staff Writer/Editor/Whathaveyou for one of the following publications:

Vanity Fair (1919-1924), Sassy Magazine (1990-1993)
Rolling Stone Magazine (1970s), Mademoiselle Magazine (1950s-60s)
The New York Review of Books (1963-1979), JANE Magazine (1995-2000)
Ms. Magazine (1972-1980), McSweeny's (2000-2002), New York Magazine, (2001->3/2007)
MIGHT magazine (1995-1997), Spy Magazine (1986-1996),
The New Yorker (1992-1998), The Paris Review (1953-1983)
Vogue (1963-1971), ElleGirl (2005-2006),
Curve (present), Bitch (present), Bust (present), Radar (present)

---

11. Super Hip Bartender in Fictional Location/Someplace Hip 'n Fit in the 70s

Most actual bartenders hate their jobs; something about having to cut a lot of fruit early in the morning. Or maybe that was just my bartender friends at The Olive Garden and the Mac Shack, 'cause we sold so many drinks requiring fruit garnishes. Anyhow, in the movies, this always looks like a good way to meet cute girls and make wads of cash and be overall very cool, and also be frequently drunk for free. Mostly I wanna dance around on the bar to that remix of "Can't Stop the Moonlight" or do tricks involving glass cutting through air, the subsequent pour of burning liquid ... and the few times I've bartended -- filling in -- I've liked the speed, the potency of what you have to offer, the ability to hook people up most of all. It feels like you're the Goddess of Loose Inhibitions, which is not a bad thing to be supervising.

---

*
Had a bad day, as bad as they come.
Time to get a real job, you gotta stop having fun.
So I, so I got a real job, I'm working nine to nine.
I'm making five bucks an hour till the day I die.
*

---

10. Schoolteacher

This's actually something I truly would want to be if it didn't require a degree and waking up at 6 A.M. I wanted to do Teach for America until I saw a friend enter the program idealistic and bright-eyed and exit on anti-anxiety medications and a persistent case of influenza. I want to teach kids about books. If you read Savage Inequalities and don't want to be a teacher, then you have no soul, sorz. I probs'll be a writing teacher one day, ideally as good as the ones I've had, or that dude in "My So-Called Life" who started The Liberty Lit, because that's what you do after you've published a book and no one will hire you to do anything else because they don't realise you're not about to 'take off' [this's happening to me already, and it's super-annoying, it's like this weird in-between place where you become totally unemployable and unemployed], and you can teach Uni or private school w/o a teaching degree, I think.

---

I'm one third passion, and I'm two thirds pride.
I said I used to have a life once,
He said, "I used to like your smile once."

---

9. Travel Writer

I would like to be sent all over the world for free and given all the nicest things, like footrubs, free bathrobes and fruity non-caloric cocktails. Also I'd climb mountains. I'd like to be like Pam Houston. I just want someone to pay me to have fun and get drunk is that too much to ask? On that topic, Curve magazine, the home of Stacey Merkin, has asked me to do a piece about a trip I already went on (the r-family cruise), which means I've got one foot into -- OR, RATHER -- OUT OF -- of the proverbial door, yeah? Totes. Wait. Does this count as someplace you have to go to every day, according to my rules? Huh. Yeah, probs. I have to go to like, BALI every day. "Go to Disneyworld!" Okay. Will do.

---

8. Basketball Player

First of all, I'd be in really good shape. Second of all, basketball is fun, and third of all, it would be a good way to meet girls. Or maybe it wouldn't be. My Mom used to go to a lot of WNBA games with her buddies. I don't really know what to say about that.

---

"I got a picture of the way the world has summed me up.
If I could have one wish, I sure wish that I had never grown up.
I got a picture of the way I looked when I was three.
I came out laughing, screaming, dancing."
-Tegan & Sara, "More For Me"

---

Okay, I'm sure there are at least 100 more dream jobs. I seem to have more thoughts ABOUT dream jobs than I do actual dream jobs. I'll finish this later this week. I just thought of one. Oh, it's funny! [Imagine Stewie saying that] Saving it. Oh man, I just had a lot of good thoughts about it too. Also saving them. I will be happy I stored up all these thoughts later this week when I realise I still haven't written that story for the reading. Erk.

The protagonist of our teevee show, Morgan, is cited in the character descriptions as "struggling with ambition and inertia." I guess we write what we know.

This, after all, is what I know; this blog, my body which never learns, my friends, my books and my hat and my ipod and my bag and my favorite jeans and Chuck Taylors, this cruel expensive city, the muscle in my chest that once composed a relatively intact heart and has, in the past six months, been hollowed out and beat up and doesn't know how to put itself back together anymore, because it was such a scotch-taped and rubber-cemented deal to begin with, and has been for over a decade ... my fingers, this keyboard, my mean crazy neighborhood which never stops screaming, my roof and it's respite, my inbox, how hugs work, sleeping, the hours, the hours, the hours ...

I can say I want to be a rockstar, I mean, who doesn't want to be a rock star? I don't know, what is my dream job? What is my dream? What do I want? I know: I'll figure it out, right? I've got time, yeah? Not really, though.

The problem is, I've been the girl that knows what she wants, or at least acts like she does, pretty much my whole life. Now I don't even recognise myself, because so much changed on someone else's volition, so many choices were made FOR me, and I can't seem to UN-do them. I keep trying to work it out in language, hoping that'll translate to life soon enough. I'm certain something's off but don't know where to begin, and by "where" I mean "if."

I've had a series of "big pictures" -- huge all-consuming projects -- Conde Nast, [redacted] magazine article, totes mad twatwaffle, teevee show ... Right now we're in a waiting period, so to speak, on the teevee show -- so this week, for the first time pretty much all year, I've actually had to think about what like, MY big picture is. Two days after the story I told in "1" on the "SomeDay Top Ten," I declared I didn't want to write anymore I just wanted to work at Big Boy's, which even though I later decided was retarded, was still quite a shakedown for my mind ...

... maybe the reason I find it so unique and revolutionary every time I come to the revelation that I don't know what I want, which turns out to be something I've discussed at length in all journals, live, blogged, and otherwise, for years, when I actually look into it -- is because it's at odds with who I believe myself to be, essentially. So the rest of it is such a phase I forget about it even only days after it's concluded.

When it comes to this stuff, I'm a goldfish.

Anywhere else on earth is a good place to figure out these things; New York isn't so much. Because everything's so expensive. The air is urgent, like if you don't suck it all in right this moment, it could evaporate, and you'll be left unable to breathe.

*
There's a part in "Muppet Babies" when they're facing a bunch of doors
and don't know which one to enter.

Gonzo says he can take care of it: "I know this place like I know the back of my hand."
Gonzo chooses the door and they end up being lead into something awful,
probs an outer-space abyss of some sort,
a monster, something, I don't remember if they went in or just looked at it,
it doesn't really matter,
and Gonzo adds: "I guess I don't know the back of my hand very well."

*
(Gonzo's dream job: Professional bowler.)

(our stolen bowling shoes, high school graduation)

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.

Sunday Top 10: Those of Us Who Think We Know

[P.S. I've started posting again on Auto-Straddle, for those of you with interest in such things.]

Next Monday, June 11th, at 7 P.M., I'll be appearing on a panel at the Museum of Sex for Audacia Ray's new book Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads and Cashing in on Internet Sexploration. That's right: me, on a panel, having sex. Just kidding. That's private, weirdos [sex]. I'll just be talking about my former life, in which I found internet dating to be a very bizarre/enchanting little adventure.

I met lots of cool people, like Justin "Bush is a Friend to Israel" The Banker, who delighted in purchasing cocktails for the eccentric writer/waitress/model personality he projected onto my body. He tilted his tanned head condescendingly, laughed indulgently, like: Look at the cute monkey doing tricks!! She says such strange things!

Or Joey "Not Actually Jewish Even Though He's on JDate," who took me to a baseball field to smoke pot, then to his Mom's Bay Ridge beauty salon, after-hours, to have serious conversations in chairs topped with hair-dryers. He had feelings. I had feelings too, but not for him, which led to a series of psychotic voicemails. "I really opened up to you! I feel USED!" I felt used too, because he said he was 5'10 and he was NOT. Like, 5'8 at the most.

Anyhow, I have a girlfriend now, but for the purposes of this panel, I'll be recalling the great repository of information I've still got in the old noggin.

Internet dating's not the only thing I know a lot about even though the information's no longer relevant to my life. There's a lot of things I could ramble on about based on prior immersion, despite present ignorance. Here's some of them.

[I'm doing this Top Ten in two segments. Because I have this tendency to write ten gazillion words about everything. Who's got time for that? Not me, not you. Why not just do it in segments? Yeah? Good idea, Auto-Win. Thanks. I mean, look how long this intro is! You must be going BLIND from staring at the computer!]

SUNDAY TOP TEN, PART ONE:
KNOWLEDGE TAKING UP A LOT OF SPACE IN MY BRAIN THAT PERHAPS COULD BE USED FOR OTHER THINGS, BUT SINCE IT'S NOT, ANYONE WANT ME TO BE ON THEIR PANEL?

10. Emo Pop-Punk Music.

It's all about driving in his purple KIA ["It's BLUE!" -him] on highways by strip malls, singing along: This world's an ugly place, but you're so beautiful to me. We attend dozens of concerts, he crowd-surfs. He's got bleached tips & pierced tongue, shops at "PacSun." CDs are your basic nightmare: Blink 182, Alkaline Trio, Good Charlotte, Simple Plan, Newfound Glory, Starting Line, Something Corporate, etc. I still think Unwritten Law's okay. I interview Sugarcult and Yellowcard for The Michigan Daily, which makes him feel close to stars: he likes me even more, he finally reads my writing.

It's easy-breezy-sinister-beautiful. The sinister part's a secret though, even from me. The music is so earnest! So fresh! If it was a color, it'd be bright purple that secretly made you stupid just to look at it. [Like my blog! JK!]

We're at an all day outdoor concert in Vegas when several 16-year-old girls flash pierced nipples at once ...

I tell him: "We're too old for this."

He replies: "Are we? Fuck. What do I do now?"

I realize I'm suffocating with him, one day in my bedroom. I flee. I leave him and all his music behind me.

A month or so later, he'll comment: "I notice you never listen to our music anymore."

"Our." It hurts me more than it hurts him, to hear him say it like that.

*
9. College Basketball, circa Fab Five Era.

The Fab Five--the starters for University of Michigan's '92-'93 basketball team--almost won the NCAA championship twice. My interest started fading following Chris Webber's early departure for the NBA, then it declined steadily 'til dropping off completely 'round the time I started going to school there. Okay, I figure if you're still reading this paragraph, you know who I'm talking about, so we can cut down to the marrow, if you will.

Now, they've been stripped of everything due to recently-discovered player-payment scandal. Bullshit: obvs these players were getting competing offers! Michigan's not the only school to offer special treatment to it's college basketballers.

Hello, just rent Blue Chips, starring Shaquille 'Rappin' Genie with an Attitude' O'Neal!

My father and brother and I read the book, saw the documentary, watched every game. My Dad was a mentor for the basketball team, so we got good seats, which we'd be on the edges of, usually. It was a pretty glorious era, in general. So when they took those titles back, they also totes stole my CHILDHOOD! Fo' reals, punks.

Also, when C-Webb called that time out, I cried. Seriously. Tears. Bawling.

*
8. How to Give Blow Jobs

The thing is, I put a lot of time into mastering this skill, and now it's totally useless.

Just kidding. I mourned that loss for about negative ten seconds. Totally hurt my jaw. I was like: Oh well.

Also, I'm never giving a blow job to a dildo [like the lesbos do in porn movies]. Because that'd be retarded.

Hi, Mom!

The thing is, by talking dirty like this, I'm preparing for my panel, obvs! I don't want to get nervous when the other ladies say stuff about sex, because they are like, super-educated Sexuality degree-holders or hot sex-blog ladies, e.g., Alt Porn Star Lux Nightmare, Writer Madeline Glass, and Ellen Fredrichs of teenwire.

I'm just me. I'm gonna be like: What's up, my banner'll make your head explode! Once I went on an internet date with a girl who showed me photos of guy's wieners she had stored on her cell-phone, and I was like, dude, if I wanted to look at that tonight, I wouldn't be on a date with a girl right now, obvs. Bada-bing. Leggo of my eggo, bitches.

*
7. Photography.

Took an NYU summer class and loved the cool, red-and-black-warm darkroom, the recluse from the feverish city heat. My project's titled: "I'm Not Just a Waitress." I photograph my Olive Garden co-workers in uniform, pair photos with captions explaining what they "really" do: actors, singers, dancers, students, fathers, mothers. Ranjit: the food runner with a degree in some complicated science I'd never understand, useless in the U.S.A 'cause his University's in Bangladesh.

Michigan, Advanced Photo: Did an independent project with a new all-girls middle school. Pondered self-esteem, faltering sense of self in pre-adolescents, wrote research paper, took photos, did long interviews with the girls, surveys, read Schoolgirls. We have a gallery show and are told to pick up our projects from the classroom the following week. I go there: mine's gone. Totally 100% disappeared.

Felt symbolic, like: you can't really "capture" anything, even with a camera, which's allegedly their point. You've just got memory, I guess. Which is a very tricky thing.

So yeah, I quit photography. Over it.

*
6. The Brady Bunch

The thing is, TV in and of itself's never been that exciting for me. As a singular entity, it's silly, I'd rather read a book. It functions only in it's unique method of telling a story: in that there's untold backstory and process, and the possibility to watch it with other people. I liked this show 'cause I liked the backstory [via Growing up Brady, the classic literary work by Bary Williams, a.k.a. "Greg," and various Brady trivia books]. I'd read about the eps before watching them: I was interested in context, in how a show comes together as a story, as a marketable good/service in a capitalistic Western society, as a collection of humans with distinct personalities gathering to complete a project as a team, as a particular significance re: history and social import.

This's just to say that I wouldn't watch The L Word or America's Next Top Model in a cave. I like the commentary better than the thing itself, often.

That being said: Why the F did I become obsessed with The Brady Bunch? I'm comforted to know that Haviland Stillwell totally loves The Brady Bunch too and read Growing up Brady. And I want that line to come up when you google her, that'd be awesome.


P.S. If you don't come to my panel, then I will never forgive you. Unless you live far away, or I owe you three or more emails/phone calls, which's like ... everyone.

P.P.S. Okay: if you don't come to my panel, then I might forgive you, unless you live far away. If you live in NYC and don't come, I might forgive you, but the odds are not in your favor, kiddo.

P.P.P.S. Also JK, I'm totes talking about other stuff, not just internet dating.