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.

Why Doesn't Anyone Ever Know What I'm Talking About? I'm Hung Up On You.

I'm Hung Up On You: Live From My Portal

i.
Dr. C always asks me the same questions, so I always give the same answers. Then at the end, he'll laugh (nervously) and make some completely out-of-left-field comment that will totally knock my socks off. Today, not only did he ask me 'Do you have any additional superlatives for me?' after I'd responded to the quality of my moods, sleep, anxiety, overall health, living situation, job, etc. as "Super!" , "fantastic!", "never been better," "magical," and "mind-fuckingly-unbelievable!" but then he followed up that excellent execution of vocabulary with:

"Black nails, huh? So are you--goth?"

(note: he said this in almost the exact same tone he used to ask me if I was bi, except, due to content, it felt decidedly less like a nervous sexual advance and more like a quasi-adorable question from a-completely oblivious-to-pop-culture hippie father. If that father was not a hippie and wore only Banana Republic and said things like "millions of people take [medication name here]. It can't be bad for you, if millions of people take it.")

"Yeah," I answered. "Me and Lindsay Lohan. Thus the studded dog collar and the Hot Topic platform boots. And the attitude."

(Side note: black nail polish is totally "over' and in fact I think verging on saturation/uncool-ness, so I love it even more now. i'll like it 4-eva, just like chuck taylors.)

"What's Hot Topic?"

I was suddenly roped into providing definitions for: Hot Topic, Goth, Emo (which I sub-divided into "Seth Cohen emo" and "pop punk emo").

These things mean nothing to me, but I know about them.

ii.
Which is what's so fucking weird about our world right now. We sit in front of identical machines that offer portals into absolutely everything. It's not our rapidly expanding ability to pursue niche interests or obsessions that interests me, but rather how there are things I can't even imagine avoiding on this machine--like Gawker, or like blogs in general---things that are SO CENTRAL to my universe and so completely out of the orbit for so many other people. We all know the media is sort of a circle-jerk, but you don't really realize the extent of that until, over the course of one week, you are met with a blank stare regarding the following topics: The James Frey debacle, "RENT" (the musical, the movie, the empire), NPR, Gloria Steinem, Raymond Carver, the Jim McGreevy scandal, the term "JAP" (Jewish American Princess), the "logo" television network, the Duke rape case, the concept of "independent" films, Jack Kerouac and "On the Road," Ted Haggard, the connection between the failures of our public education system and prison populations, and the political movement of people who think the Holocaust was a lie (it's encouraging, of course, that holocaust-deniers are not in the public eye as much as I imagined). Oh and also a clueless computer tech guy who, after M commented on her ravenous appetite this time of the month, actually asked if a period lasted ONE OR TWO DAYS. As in "One day? Two days?"

iii.
I was endeared recently to learn that there is at least one person in my universe who has never seen the music video for Madonna's 'Hung Up.' Living one's entire life without seeing Madonna gyrate in her pink leotard is super-tragic, though I'm not sure I would have been turned on to it were it not for melaina's blog and the gym. And I think I was working at nerve.com then, and we had our pulse on the finger of bare thighed women in popular music. Also I go to the gym and there are about 10,000 TV screens there. It's like Sears.

iv.
Also, until last week, though I claimed otherwise, I did not know what made a Nintendo Wii different from other Nintendos. I don't understand why they keep making new Nintendos. How could anything get better than MarioKart?

v.
Also I still don't know what "The Departed" is about, and, I realized, in conversation last week about why I don't like Russel Crowe, that I have not seen a single movie with Russel Crowe in it. Ever. No, not even Gladiator. Shove it.

vi.
I've accepted that there are many things that compose huge giant chunks of my consciousness, like literature, that don't matter to most people. I don't expect everyone in the world to know about Savage Inequalities (re: the American school system), the Jonathans (Safran Foer, Franzen, Lethem), Ani DiFranco, blogs, theater, The L Word, New York Magazine, Lorrie Moore or Christina Ricci.

vii.
But sometimes people really surprise me. Like not knowing about Freygate.

Or when I referenced the "George Bush doesn't care about black people" Hurricane Katrina "thing," and [redacted, because i was such an incredulous asshole about it at the time you probably wanted to flood my life with toxic water from the Hudson River] replied with a blank and curious stare and said they hadn't heard anything of it.

I guess because we are all sitting in front of the same machine, it's boggling how easy it is to bypass entire portions of it's content. Do we really have access to everything, or are these new filtering tools (like Google Reader, my playground lover) just enabling us to filter out everything, via tag, and increasing our limited knowledge of our limited world?

viii.
Also why doesn't my computer know the word "internet" yet?!! Stop highlighting "internet" every time I do a goddamn spell check. Waa.

ix.
I'm trying to work this stuff out.

In these cases, the "you" refers to the group of people who do not know about the chosen thing.


Gawker.com:
Why I Assume You Know This: If Gawker were a girl, she would never win homecoming queen but she'd sweep the yearbook hand-outs: "most popular," "most likely to succeed," "best style," and "best looking." Gawker would be really pretty, but like--interesting pretty. Gawker would be very popular but she would keep her loyalties few and select. When Gawker was in the room, you'd feel self-conscious. You'd feel simultaneously that Gawker was looking at you AND had no idea you even exist. You'd be afraid to talk to her because she might tell everyone what you said, or just judge you, silently, which would feel almost worse. She'd have a really distinct/enviable style and be known as mean and smart and cold and there'd be mysterious rumors about her home life (single mom? gay dad? raised by famous author? lives with punk rock headlining sister in a van down by the river?) that maintained your rapture though you knew/suspected it was all a lie. She would get into Brown but drop out after three years for a tempting job offer. Her crowd would be girls who had to copy each other to fit in, but she could just be intimidating and smarter than them and that would be enough to keep them at their heels. Every time she'd look at you, your heart would skip a beat, and you'd add it to your psychological sidebar. You'd kind of hate her though, underneath all that love and admiration, because she has all this power. And she actually deserves it sometimes.
Why you don't: You don't live in New York City and you don't like New York City or the media it produces and then congratulates itself for.
OR 1. You aren't in publishing or in the media. 2.You have a job that requires you to perform certain tasks in exchange for a salary and you can't spend the entire day blog-surfing and checking to see if they've put up the gold star motel yet.


Gloria Stienham:
Why I Assume You Know This: You are an educated human being in the 21st century. You have, at one time or another, heard a little snippet about feminism. NOT about women who throw paint on fur and think all sex is rape, but like, ACTUAL feminism. The kind you shouldn't be afraid of, unless you are Ted Nugent or a Morman.
Why You Don't: Because I don't know who played in the Super Bowl. And because of the patriarchy. Because of most of the points she's ever made.



The James Frey Thing:
Why I Assume You Know This: You can either: 1. hear, 2. read, or at least you could last year. You like to use these senses to pick up newspapers or glance at television screens playing the news, or "surf the web" in search of additional news. You have conversations with people who read literary fiction or memoirs. You know about Oprah, for Christ's sake. Larry King. OPRAH?!!! Oprah. Everyone knows about Oprah. And if you don't, you are amazing, and I love you and forgive you.
Why You Don't: This story was more insulated to the world of publishing than I thought, I guess? I mean, I couldn't have avoided hearing about it thirty times a day, but then again, I missed The Olympics.


NPR:
Why I Assume You Know This: You are alive in the nation called America, and you've heard of a thing called "radio."
Why You Don't: I really don't know. I'm not saying I think you should listen to NPR, I'm just saying you should have HEARD of it. (pun intended) Because I am an elitist boho bastard with no connection to the American people? Because I grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and you grew up in Buttfuck, Nebraska? Actually, that would be hot, if there was a city called "buttfuck." And actually, then, I think, there would be NPR there. I don't know. I'm being honest, I think it is because I'm an elitist twat. That's fine. If it wasn't for Krista, I would have missed a lot of things that happened in politics. Now that she's in New Haven, I probably do.


Some Things I've Been Called Out For Knowing Absolutely Nothing About Recently:
"Lost" (TV), "American Idol" (TV), John McCain (i know a little. but not a lot), the i-phone, the aforementioned Nintendo Wii, any movies that have come out with guns in them, Pan's Labyrinth (?), football, some cop-shooting thing, "The Sopranos," pretty much every TV show on TV that's not on "The N" or on at the gym in the mid-afternoon or not "The L Word" or "The View," why Dean stopped running in 04...also, i didn't get that youtube thing until like, 10 years after the rest of y'all.
I never saw TV as a kid, too. Like Facts of Life (?), and um, whatever else was on that people keep talking about. A Different World, or Different Strokes, or Different something something. Whatever. Shows that were on between 1980-1992. Didn't see them. You Can't do that on television? Me neither.

Okay.

There's a lot of stuff I don't know anything about. A lot. So I'm just as uncool as all of you. Except for the "One Day? Two Days?" guy. I'm cooler than him. Also he asked "so do you just stick something up there when you think it's going to come?" (REMINDER: his convo, NOT mine, which I could not BELIEVE we were having), and I said "Uh, like a tampon?" and he said
"Yeah. You could call it that."