Song of Myself — A Duet

I’m a fuckup.

You are not a fuckup. What are you talking about, you’re a fuckup?

I just am. You know I am.

Why don’t you tell the blog-reading folks what you’re talking about.

Fine. About a week ago I realized I was nearly broke, wasn’t going to be able to pay my rent at the beginning of the month. I knew I’d have to ask my parents for money. Again. But then my state tax refund came in, which allowed me at least to pay my rent, but I probably wouldn’t have enough to cover my bills before my next paycheck came. So yesterday I called my dad and asked him for money. He eventually told me he’d give it to me, but not before giving me a lecture about how I should get a part-time job. But I’ve already been there, I’ve already had a part-time job, I’m already working in one full-time job, why should I get an additional job? Why didn’t he just tell me to find a cheaper apartment, why did it have to be a part-time job?

Okay. And this makes you a fuckup?

Clearly! I’m a lazy-ass son of a bitch who thinks he’s entitled to things. Who doesn’t want to work for them.

Excuse me. You went through three years of law school. You’re telling me you’re someone who doesn’t want to work?

Yeah, well, I didn’t work as hard as I could have. My law school grades weren’t exactly stellar.

You went to one of the nation’s top law schools, and you’re complaining.

Yeah.

Why do you hold yourself to a higher standard than other people? What gives you that right?

What do you mean, that right? I hate it. And anyway, because it’s true. I’ve always had to meet this higher standard.

Why?

Why? Because. When I was a kid, I got approval for being good. For being smart. For both of those. It wasn’t just the brains, it was the rule-following. It was the well-behaving. From my teachers. My teachers loved me when I was a kid. And from my parents. And from my friends’ parents. Everyone always expected so much of me. When I was in kindergarten I could recite the months of the year and the days of the week, backwards.

Okay.

So I’ve expected that everyone I met in life would judge me. Evaluate me.

But you know what you’ve learned in the last few years. You’ve learned that people don’t want to hang around with someone who’s perfect. People want to hang around with someone who’s a little fucked up. Most of all, people want to hang around with someone whose company they enjoy.

Good point… and anyone who reads this blog is probably going to get the impression that I’m not a very fun person.

Well, that’s because they haven’t met you in person. And anyway, you can be a fun person. You’re warm, you’re caring, you have a good sense of humor. You have some friends.

Yeah. Some.

What do you want, the whole world to be your friends? You want to be Mr. Social Glad-hander who knows someone in every state?

That would be nice.

Get back to this: people are not evaluating you. People are friends with you because they enjoy your company. Or because they think you’re cute. Or both.

Okay. But I’m still fucked up.

Go on with the story. There’s more.

Okay. So, I called my dad back a couple of hours later and suggested we go out to dinner. In the past, he’d said that I didn’t communiciate with him enough. Like I’d want to communicate with someone who always has a way of driving it into my head that I’m a fuckup? Anyway, at my mom’s suggestion, a few weeks ago he called me to have dinner. So we did. So I decided I’d call him up and see if he wanted to have dinner again. You know? Making the effort. So he couldn’t accuse me of avoiding him. He was glad to have dinner with me. So last night we met in the city and went to TGI Friday’s. My second time there in three nights. Neither of which was a Friday.

Anyway. I had the exact same thing I’d had two nights earlier, except it was a few dollars more because this was Manhattan. Which didn’t matter, because he was paying. We talked for a while, but there were some points of contention about me and about the decisions I make. About why it’s so distasteful for me to get a part-time job. About why I feel like I’m above it. Well, I don’t feel like I’m above it. I just don’t feel like working an extra job. “You know, if you were working in a law firm, you’d be working those late hours anyway.” Yeah. And that’s exactly why I’m not working in a law firm, Dad. You know what? My twenties are almost over. I’ve wasted most of them. Three years of law school that I wish I hadn’t gone to. I wish I’d had more fun. So I’m making up for it now. Dad, I’m only going to be in my twenties once. I want to enjoy them.

So I say that to him, all of that. But he’s like a paper towel. No, a sponge. He’s like this big sponge, this big spongy wall that absorbs everything I’m saying and dissolves it. Okay, I guess he’s an acidic sponge.

Forget the metaphor. What are you trying to say?

What I’m trying to say is that I have all these arguments that make no logical sense, that cannot be explained by practicality, and I feel them in my heart. But I start to say them all to my dad, Mr. Practical, and even as the words are coming out of my mouth I can see them disintegrating in their ridiculous impracticality. Those words don’t belong on this planet. I don’t belong on this planet. Do you know how impractical I am? Incredibly impractical. My dad is not impractical. My dad is very practical. My brother is practical. Or at least outgoing. Or at least he seems to care less about what other people think. The world was made for him. He and the world move in the same direction. Me — it’s like everyone else was given the instruction book except me. The world moves in practical ways. But I live in an unreal universe. Where I live, nothing makes sense. None of my decisions make any sense.

Tell them what your dad told you. What you learned about him.

Okay. Toward the end of the dinner I decided I had to take the heat off myself. Wanted to turn it into more of a conversation. Wanted to be a listener. I asked him, “Do you have any regrets? I mean, not about me. I mean about your life in general.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I wish I’d gone to law school.”

I already knew that, but then he told me the story. My dad graduated from college in 1970. Toward the end of college, he applied to law school. He got into Columbia and NYU. Terrific schools. He was also afraid he’d get drafted. So he applied to the reserves. Which would have been a full-time deal. He thought that’s what he was going to do, be in the reserves. So he deferred his law school admissions. But I guess his draft number didn’t come up or something. So he didn’t have to go into the reserves. The next year, he applied to those law schools again (I guess you had to reapply), and this time he didn’t get in. He thinks it’s because he didn’t complete his honors project. Who knows.

So, who’s the fuckup? He’s calling me a fuckup?

Has he actually called you a fuckup?

I don’t know. You can’t trust your memory sometimes, you know? Anyway, that’s the message I’ve got from him over the course of my life. I’m impractical. I don’t live in reality. I expect my parents to save me. I act like a child. I don’t take responsibility.

Anyway, he can be an argumentative little fuck. He likes to argue. He would have made a great lawyer. He argues with me, he argues with my mom, he and my brother argue with each other, because my brother picked up his wise-ass-ness somewhere along the line. My dad always has to be right. Always.

You might want to wrap this up, because at this point your readers might start to get bored.

I know. I always write long entries. Too long. Tell my readers I’m well aware of that fact.

At least you have the potential to be a prolific writer.

But this is what I do. I think too much. This is how I work myself out of it. Writing.

And you can write damn well. You’re a fuckup, with that skill?

Doesn’t matter. I’m completely impractical. I can’t make decisions. I have to do one of two things right now — increase my income or decrease my expenses. Get a cheaper apartment. Look for someone who wants a roommate. And I’m not making any progress.

Oh, NO! You’re being lazy. What a scandal. Maybe people won’t like you!

Stop… no, see, the thing is, I equate everyone else with my brother. My brother represents the imperfect, flawed, outgoing, fun people in the world, the people who criticize someone like me. He represents the normal people. Those who accept their imperfection and go out into the world and make the most of themselves anyway. In fact he represents every twentysomething in the world. I’m the only one who doesn’t know the rules; he and everyone else know the rules; he criticizes me and thinks I’m a fuckup; ergo, everyone in the world thinks I’m a fuckup.

But he got that from your father.

Who knows. It’s true. I’m Mr. Impractical. Unreality. I’m starting to sound like a broken record.

Okay, look. Fine. You’re a fuckup. What are you going to do about it?

Oh, yeah. The question my friend asked me once.

Yes. Either stop complaining or do something about it. Either stop being fucked up, or accept the fact that you’re fucked up. And stop using the phrase “fucked up.” You’re human. You’re just a human being.

Okay. I’m fucked up. So what am I going to do about it? I’m going to accept it, I’m going to accept my humanity, and more importantly, I’m going to stop beating myself up about it. Or at least I’m going to try. Yeah, I always say I’m going to try, and it’s true that I’ve gotten better at it over the years, but every so often I relapse. Anyway. You know what? The most important thing to me? Is to be liked.

Jeff. People do like you. And you don’t have to be Mr. Most Fun at the Party either. You don’t have to be the Most Liked Person. You just have to be you. And that will be enough.

That makes sense.

You’re not fucked up, you’re you, you’ve got lots of special qualities, and anyone would be well off knowing you.

Thanks. But isn’t that a little much? You’re being as overblown as me.

That’s because I’m you.

Right. Sorry.

And it’s not being overblown. There’s nothing egotistical about saying you’re as good as everyone else in the world.

Okay. I have some mental blocks to what you’re saying —

Emotional blocks. Psychological blocks.

Right. But anyway, I’ll try to remember what you’re saying anyway. If I can get that into my head —

Into your heart.

If I can get that into my head and into my heart, eventually, if it will percolate, work its way in, things will be good. It’s like learning something new. Learning how to think and feel in a different way. It doesn’t happen overnight.

At any rate, we have to end this thing. The readers are getting impatient.

Right.

We’ll continue this another time.

Oh, believe me, we will.

Don’t I know it.

Apophasis

I could blog about the fact that I’m still not feeling all that great about the state of my life.

I could blog about the fact that last night I had leftovers from TGI Friday’s and it really didn’t agree with my stomach at all.

I could blog about the fact that last night I spent several hours on the Internet, unsuccessfully searching for something fun to do with someone. Or rather, unsuccessfully searching for someone with whom to do something fun.

I could blog about the fact that last night I finished reading Philip Roth’s American Pastoral and thought it was an amazing book, and about the fact that soon I’d like to read Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, and about the fact that the most amazing reading experience of my life happened four summers ago, when I read David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.

I could blog about the fact that I’d really like to read Suze Orman’s 9 Steps to Financial Freedom.

I could blog about The Little People Meet Mr. Potato Head.

I could blog about how I’m going to watch the big gay kiss tonight on “Dawson’s Creek.” (Thanks for the heads up, Eddie.)

I could blog about what a great piece of writing this is.

I could blog about how it’s been a few days since I’ve hung out with people, and how I’m looking forward to Friday night.

I could blog about how the last sentence of this entry was going to be “But I won’t,” but about how then I realized how uncreative that would be, because that’s probably how you would have expected me to end it, and about how it would sort of be a cop-out, too, kind of like when a kid doesn’t know how to end a story and so he says “but then there was a big explosion and the universe collapsed!” or “but then he woke up!”

I could blog about how I didn’t really feel like writing an in-depth essay today for my blog, because these last few days I’ve been caught up in some unenjoyable feelings and I know that that’s what the in-depth blog entry would wind up being about, and about how there’s too much negativity in the world as it is, you know, so why add to it, especially when it’s about me, and about how instead I figured, well, I have lots of little bits and pieces of things on my mind today, several of which I thought I’d blog about, so why not just be kind of cute and do something that on the surface seems creative but has probably been done lots of times before, particularly in courtrooms (“I could talk about my opponent’s numerous ethical problems, Your Honor, but I won’t,”), and give it a flashy-looking slick one-word title, a word that I wouldn’t even have known had I not seen it in Dean’s blog a couple of months ago, and about how I know that maybe by doing this I’m just trying to mask all those unenjoyable feelings, and about but hey, that’s what life is all about anyway, isn’t it, masking our unenjoyable feelings with things that are enjoyable, whether by writing, or humor, or intellect, or having sex, or taking drugs, or eating, or singing, or sleeping, or watching TV, or doing crossword puzzles, until we’re ready to deal with those unenjoyable feelings by taking the appropriate actions that will end them and replace them with more enjoyable feelings, but not in a temporary way such as through those above distractions but in a more permanent way, so that the problems causing those unenjoyable feelings are solved, but about how on the other hand I’m not really trying to save myself from thinking about these unenjoyable things, but rather you, the reader, from having to think these things about me, because I wouldn’t want to give you the impression that I have bad days or bad weeks, even though I know that everyone else does, because I think too much about what other people think of me, which I know I need to stop doing.

But then there was a big explosion and the universe collapsed.

The Big Gay Kiss, and a Dream

Last night I watched the Big Gay Kiss II on “Dawson’s Creek.”

I’m 27 years old and I watch “Dawson’s Creek.” Isn’t that sad? I guess I’ve become a regular viewer. I’ve developed a Wednesday night routine: on Wednesday nights I stay in, cook dinner, and settle in for “Dawson’s Creek” on the WB at 8:00 followed by “The West Wing” on NBC at 9:00. It’s a nice contrast — at 8:00, it’s slow, melancholy, soapy high school angst, making me feel like a kid; and then at 9:00, it’s quick, snappy dialogue and intelligent plot developments about Chinese satellites and the White House Counsel’s Office, making me feel like an adult. Affairs of teenagers followed by affairs of state.

“Dawson’s Creek” isn’t a great show. Plot developments occur suddenly, and characters make rash decisions without the writers letting us see their motivations develop. It’s like they film a two-hour show and edit it down to an hour. But I can’t help but watch. This is partly because I look forward to seeing Jack, the gay guy, but on top of that, the show has lots of beautiful people. And it’s filmed very well. The scenes and the people are angst-filled, laconic, bucolic watercolors.

Too bad the show doesn’t make much sense. I mean, last night’s episode was the senior prom, and it took place on a big yacht, and there were no chaperones around. Pacey yells his head off at Joey, his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend, in the middle of the dance floor, and no adults show up to ask what’s going on. And all the other kids just stop and stare. These are high school students, and nobody laughs or makes fun of Pacey? And the students can pretty easily take swigs of alcohol out on the deck of the ship? And Jen is seriously in danger of falling off the side of the boat, and there are no chaperones there, either? If I were a parent of a Capeside student I’d seriously be considering a lawsuit.

But the kiss.

Jack and Tobey have had this platonic thing for a few months now. Tobey’s very out, and Jack isn’t comfortable with that. Jack’s friend Jen tricks Tobey into asking Jack to the prom, so they go, and they sit together all night having a nice, fun conversation, although we only get to see about 30 seconds of it. Later, Tobey asks Jack to dance, and Jack gets angry and snotty at him, telling him that this date is purely platonic. Tobey gets up and leaves.

Switch to the other characters having their hetero teen angst for a while.

When we get back to Tobey, at about 8:50, he’s out on the deck of the yacht, staring out at the moonlight reflecting on the water. Just like they used to do on “The Love Boat.” Isn’t this where the washed-up former TV star with the 1970’s haircut shows up, wearing an evening dress and a pearl necklace?

But no — Jack comes out onto the deck. Tobey slowly turns around, and Jack walks toward him. He tells Tobey that he used to be afraid of him because Tobey was so out. But he says that after this terrific night of conversation and laughter, he’s realized that the thing he used to hate about Tobey has turned into the thing about him that he most admires. And that he doesn’t feel platonic anymore. And he leans in, and their lips come together. And they stay together, tenderly, for five full seconds.

It’s not raunchy. They don’t suck face. Instead, it’s just really, really sweet. Gentle. Romantic. Pure.

It made me feel something that I hadn’t felt in a long time. Before I came out of the closet, this was my vision of gay life. Romance. A kiss. A boyfriend. Purity. Poetry. Before it turned into casual sex, perpetual singlehood, and cynicism.

What happened?

Later, I went to bed and I dreamed.

I dreamed I was at a party, and a friend introduced me to a guy with black hair. I fell in love with him immediately; I was head over heels. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this way. In some sense I felt like I’d met him before. And he seemed to like me, too, but I wasn’t sure.

We talked for a while, and then he told me the bad news: he was HIV positive. And he was bisexual, and he’d got HIV from having intercourse with a woman.

And yet the next thing I knew, we were lying together in a bed, wearing clothes, cuddling, being nice and tender with each other. It felt so wonderful, like he was my soulmate, even though I was scared and I didn’t think this was ever going to work out.

I woke up from the dream, and I realized that in physical appearance, he was a composite between the second guy I ever dated — someone I didn’t date for very long — and a particular blogger who lives in the Mountain Time Zone.

The dream has been percolating in my subconscious all day.

I wonder if maybe I’ll be happy, but only if I accept certain realities.

“The key, according to Joseph Nicolosi… is to ‘attack early.’ His idea, which serves as the starting point for Focus on the Family’s multi-tiered campaign, is that an errant sexuality is more easily stopped early than reversed later. Accordingly, he offered the parents, teachers, and school counselors in the audience a list of the warning signs of ‘pre-homosexuality,’ which, for boys, included having a sensitive temperament, being aesthetically inclined, and responding strongly to either well- or badly dressed women. Janelle Hallman, a daintily attired therapist, gave a parallel accounting of tomboy red flags, which included wearing army boots.”

— link via Mr. Plutonium

Baby, you can’t drive my car.

Blog Summit

Last night was another blog summit. There were eight — yes, eight — of us gay New York bloggers. Check out the photos of all of us and a dog.

I had a terrific time. There’s something special about people who keep online journals. These are not ordinary people; they’re intelligent, talented, warm, and friendly. Or at any rate, Sparky invited the ones who possess those qualities. For the first time in quite a while, I felt like I was part of a tight group of gay guys. In fact, I don’t know if I’d ever before felt like part of a group of gay men that went beyond one-on-one friendships. But I feel a connection to these folks that goes beyond the number of in-person meetings we’ve had. There was something very Broken Hearts Club about it. Boys, thanks for a great evening, and Sparky, thanks for organizing it. I’ve been feelin’ lots of warm fuzzies.

TMI?

I don’t quite know how to describe the day I’ve had. It was a strange Saturday.

At 2:00 I met up in the city with my friend Nick. For several hours we walked and walked and walked as the weather changed from cool and breezy to sunny and humid. We walked up Fifth Avenue and he bought a shirt at J. Crew. We walked over to Union Square and considered going to the Heartland Brewery but decided it was too straight. The strap on my messenger bag was making my shirt stick to my skin. We walked all the way over to the East Village, but none of the bars were open yet, because it was only about 3:00 in the afternoon. Then we walked all the way to Chelsea, up hill and over dale, trying to find a place to kick back with a drink. Eventually we settled on a very early and cheap Mexican dinner at Maryann’s on Eighth Avenue. We each had a Corona. Halfway through the meal we realized that it was Cinqo de Mayo. Total coincidence.

We sat there and talked about our lives. Like me, Nick has a therapist, but he’s quitting in two weeks because he feels he’s solved his problems. He’s only 24, and I seriously doubt he’s figured everything out in his life, but who am I to tell him otherwise?

Then we switched to my life.

I’ve been feeling paralyzed lately. I have the same problems I’ve had for the last couple of months, and they’re not life-threatening or incredibly horrific, but they suck. My apartment is too expensive, and I don’t know where to move to. I’ve applied to work at the New Jersey attorney general’s office in Newark once my clerkship ends in August, which will be a $7,000-8,000 salary increase, but I’m not at all excited about it. And I have debt coming out of my ass. Some isolated events in my life are enjoyable — for example, last night’s Blog Summit — but running underneath everything, like a sewer flowing underneath the Great White Way, is this general malaise.

I’m stuck. Dammit, I’m just plain stuck. Paralysis has set in. I haven’t been looking at apartments, because I’ve been scared of being taken advantage of by a broker and scared of having to make a choice. My current place has major drawbacks, and I’m sure others will as well. I’m unhappy with Jersey City, scared of Manhattan, and contemptuous of the New Jersey suburbs. When do you settle, and when do you just say no? I don’t know how to make decisions, so instead of making them, I just let the malaise continue. Week after week goes by and nothing changes. Things aren’t at all bright enough for me to be excited, yet they’re not so catastrophic that I’m shocked into taking action. I’m just sort of accepting my circumstances and trudging on. That’s not a wonderful place to be. And yet I’m too scared to do anything. I feel like I’m swimming in sludge.

Nick basically told me to give my dad a big symbolic Fuck You. And he asked me, what is it that you really want to do with your life? I told him the truth: I want to write. Then write, he said. And move somewhere else. Apply to the Iowa Writer’s Workshop or something. Freelance.

I began to think about leaving this place. Moving far, far away, away from my parents, away from New York. Just buy a car and hit the American Road. I could move to a moderate-sized college town. Or I could move to another city, someplace that has a sizable gay community but doesn’t have New York’s high cost of living and extreme ways of life. On the other hand, as the song says, I’d miss New York before I could unpack. New York sometimes kicks my ass, and yet I don’t know if I’d be satisfied anywhere else.

Sitting there in the restaurant, I was filled with the urge to do something really big, just make a huge, sudden, drastic change in my life. But I couldn’t figure out what it could be. And I felt like I was stuck to a piece of flypaper.

After the meal, we walked all the way back to Union Square and into the Strand Bookstore, where I looked for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay but learned they were sold out. Then, after browsing for a while, we walked even further east, back to the East Village, to hit Wonderbar.

Instead of hitting Wonderbar, Wonderbar hit me.

It was 7:00 when we walked in, and there were only five other customers. We sat at the bar. Nick ordered a Corona and I ordered a bourbon and Coke. I watched the bartender take out a Corona. Then I watched him take out a glass and fill it with ice. He filled the glass 3/4 of the way with bourbon. Then he topped it off with Coke. Um, wow, I thought. I guess I’ll be getting more than my money’s worth. I stirred the drink with the tiny straw and took a sip. It pretty much tasted like bourbon.

Over conversation, we checked out the other patrons and sipped our drinks. Eventually we ordered a second round. The mad scientist behind the bar mixed my second drink the same as the first. What was he thinking? Did he even have a bartender’s license? Anyway, I sipped my second drink and Nick sipped his second Corona.

We were talking and talking, and at some point I realized that I was far gone. Nick realized it first. You know you’re gone when someone points out that you’re slurring your speech and you think they’re wrong.

We were talking about my history of Internet hookups and he told me how sketchy and dangerous he thinks this is. I told him that I’d done it a number of times over the last couple of years, and that nothing sketchy or dangerous has ever happened to me. He wasn’t convinced that it’s safe. He said that he himself can’t separate sex from love. Yet he gets his action in the sauna at the gym on his lunch hour. What’s going on here? But I was still feeling ashamed of myself and my sexual behavior.

We continued to talk, and I turned back to my other problems, and my dad, and everything else. My head was spinning. I was feeling dizzier and dizzier and more and more burdened. I couldn’t think straight. I was feeling ashamed of my cowardice, of my laziness, of my failure to take any action that could make things in my life better. I was ashamed of my drunkenness. I was feeling like a totally incapable human being. And Nick wasn’t helping. He was egging me on, kind of kidding around, but Nick can be a bastard without even realizing it. And I don’t know if he realized the extent of the shame and embarrassment and self-loathing I was feeling at that moment. But he smartly ordered each of us a club soda.

After that, we decided we’d better leave, so we did. It was almost 9:00. We walked all the way back to Union Square so I could buy Kavalier & Klay at Barnes & Noble. As we walked, we continued talking, and though I was trying to talk myself out of my funk I wound up talking myself deeper into it. We got to the store and the book was full price, but I really wanted to read it, so I bought it. Yay. Then Nick offered to buy me some coffee, so we went over to Starbucks and I sipped an iced mocha. The caffeine and sugar must have coursed through my system, and although I’ve never really been affected by caffeine, I started to feel more alert and energetic. But my face felt warm. My ass had been kicked by the sun, by the endless walking, by the stress, by the bourbon. I needed to just go home and collapse. So we parted ways and I came home and drank two glasses of water and on an upset stomach I wrote my previous blog entry.

I sit here thinking, what am I doing? Why am I writing about all of this here? Could this possibly make anyone think any better of me? I’ve realized that one of my goals in keeping a blog has been to make connections with other people, and I’ve met some great folks, last night being a case in point. But on the other hand, what could they and anyone else possibly think of the complete basket case who’s writing these words? I mean, I’m a fucking mess. A week and a half ago I went out for drinks with a guy who’d been reading and apparently admiring my blog. The next day I e-mailed him my phone number. He hasn’t called me once. But his domain name is still showing up in my referral stats. Great. So I’m worth reading but not worth talking to.

Is it possible to know too much about a person? Subconsciously, I think I’ve hoped that my blog would bring a love interest into my life. Just be honest and truthful about myself and people will be all touched and moved and impressed by my honesty and self-awareness, won’t they. But how could someone love me after seeing all my mangled up, chaotic insides? Is detailing all my neuroses just a stupid, stupid idea? I mean, what the hell am I thinking?

Dear God! Why am I the way I am? Why do I make mountains out of molehills and molehills out of mountains? And why can’t I stop feeling this way? Why can’t I stop being who I am?

Cripes! I’m just a mess and a half.

That Ninety-Nine Percent

After Saturday evening’s big mish-mosh of sulkitude, yesterday I decided to treat myself to a day in. I basically lounged around in my underwear all day, white t-shirt and gray boxer-briefs, sitting up in bed, reading and writing. I decided it was time to tackle some story ideas I’d had for a while, so I picked up Anne Lamott’s Bird By Bird off the bookshelf and read select chapters for the umpteenth time. Short Assignments, Shitty First Drafts, School Lunches, Characters, Plot, Plot Treatment, and so on. And over the course of the day I managed to get down several pages of what I hope will be a novel. I don’t know if that’s just a little too ambitious. But it’s the story I’ve always wanted to write. At the same time I have a couple of unfinished short stories that I’ve been working on for two or three years. It would be nice to finish those as well.

I worked on my pages intermittently throughout the day. Every so often I’d read them over and think, wow, these are pretty damn good. Better than I expected.

And then I picked up Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and started reading it, and I thought, damn — how can I compete with something like this?

I’ve been a fan of Michael Chabon ever since I stumbled across his second novel, Wonder Boys, on the new paperbacks table at Barnes & Noble five and a half years ago. It was one of those times when you’re looking for a book to read, and you know what you want but can’t quite put your finger on it, and then you find it. I picked up the book, read the description on the back cover, and thought, this is the one. And it was. It was terrific. A couple of months later I picked up his first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, which was published when he was 24. Twenty-four! That’s disgusting. And it too was terrific. I’ve read it twice.

The thing about Chabon is that although I love his dizzy plots, I can’t quite get a handle on his writing. Sometimes his words seem like those of a foreigner who has mastered English better than a native speaker; stiff, formal, unnatural, as if they’ve been translated from Czech or Polish or Spanish, or as if they were written a hundred years ago. His prose is not quite human; seamless, smoothed over, with no holes. He can feel overwritten. His prose can be a bit cold.

But oh, his skill, and his plots, and the little observations he’ll throw out at you!

I wondered what the heck I was doing, trying to write a story of my own, but then I thought of what Natalie Goldberg has said: it’s a spacious world. There’s room enough. Tell yourself: He is good, and I am also good. They’re not mutually exclusive ideas; it’s not a competition. There is always room for one more person to speak. After all, there are billions of us on this planet.

If I’m going to be published, I have to write. Regularly. And not just in my blog. So, although I lack discipline, and can rarely keep myself enthused about something for more than a few days, I’m going to try to sit down every night and work on my story. I’m just gonna do it. I know that I have it in me, I know that I have the potential. I’ve got the inspiration, just gotta work on the perspiration. And if I don’t have the inspiration, then I’ll write until I do. Good old Thomas Alva Edison.

Meanwhile, speaking of discipline, I came into the office an hour late and I’ve yet to do any work today and it’s noon. Better get cracking.

Welcome to PlanetOut Personals!

Personal ads tend to fluctuate in importance in my life, depending on various things: my mood, my idealism, my realism, my desperation, my disillusionment, my horniness level, the temperature outside, the newspaper headlines. They have brought me coffee, new faces, interesting stories, perspective on life in Tennessee, perspective on life as a Mormon, and sometimes even sex. But they have yet to bring me love.

I was going through the personals this morning, reading the ads of other people and tweaking my own.

This is what I’m getting paid for, right?

No?

Oh.

The concept of a personal ad — at least, if you’re using it to find a relationship — is inherently flawed. It’s not just the fact that you’re making decisions based on some text and a photo, although that’s a part of it. Basically, personal ads share a problem even with something like Date Bait, where you’re actually seeing people in person. The problem is, you’re seeing someone completely out of context. He’s selling himself.

This sort of all-American hype and self-promotion is great if you’re looking to buy a new mixer, because you know what you want there: you want something that can mix. You want your floor wax to give you shiny floors, you want your camera to take great pictures. But what do you want your boyfriend to do? Make you laugh? Walk your dog? Rim you? Clean your shower? Pick your cotton? Boyfriends don’t “do” anything. They just “are.” And you can’t find one if you’re going to be task-oriented about it.

I go into PlanetOut and type in my search criteria. I choose among male, female, MTF, FTM. Gay, bisexual, queer, lesbian, straight, questioning. Type in an age range. Looking for relationship, long-term relationship, sex, friendship, support, “hiking partner or whatever,” something online. Butch, femme, androgynous, all over the map. African American/Black, Asian/Pacific Islander, Latina/Latino, White/European, et cetera. Activist, bear, blue collar, circuit boy, conservative, goth, hippie/granola, homebody, jock/sporty, leather, military, preppy, punk, suburban, urban hipster. Slim, swimmer, average, stocky, musclebound, curvy, athletic, petite, heavy. CD player or cassette, A/C, leather back seats or vinyl, power windows, small, medium or large, fries or onion rings, permanent press or tumble dry, slice, dice, puree, julienne. Metallic green or non-glossy teal, eggshell or ecru, mauve or taupe. Should I buy the hardcover or wait for the paperback?

If you don’t fit the above physical description, dont worry about it. It’s a preference, not a requirement.

If I don’t fit the above physical description, you’re not going to talk to me.

Okay, random thoughts: I’m just your average Wile E. Coyote super genius type – though often my evil schemes work out, I have been known to end up holding up a sign that said “yikes” moments before something nasty landed on me.

You’re making me a little uneasy.

Am finally ready to avail myself to someone special, after having finished grieving a relationship that ended a year ago. I want to meet someone who will reap the benefits of all that I learned in that relationship. Timing wasn’t right then, but now it is.

You’re making me run.

The sad thing is, any of these guys could be terrific, but I’m not going to know it. You can’t meet someone when he’s selling himself, and yet whenever you post a personal ad, that’s what you’re doing. I look over my ad, trying to pick a catchy title, trying to strike the right tone, one that makes me seem sane, but not boring; witty, but not obnoxious; interesting, but not exhausting; intelligent, but not intellectually threatening. And then a couple of weeks later I go back and read it afresh and I realize that I’ve failed on all counts. And yet how could I not? You can’t meet people this way. You can’t choose among people like this. Sending someone an e-mail, tossing a few messages back and forth, talking on the phone, and trekking over to Xando to meet them for coffee takes too much time and effort for you to waste the choice on someone whose ad gives you even the slightest frisson of uneasiness. One: People are flawed. Two: If you have a flaw, you won’t be contacted. Great system.

Newsflash: people are complicated! And thus:

I’ve considered including a link to my blog in my personal ad.

An Internet marriage of PlanetOut and Blogger — wouldn’t that be neat? I could write, “Here’s a link to my online journal. If you don’t know what to think of me right now, read my journal for a couple of weeks and see what you think then. If you like me or find me interesting, say hi.” I’m still considering it. I don’t know if it’s such a great idea to post up my URL indiscriminately like that. On the other hand, I can’t really think of any other reason not to do it, except that friends might come across it, and only one of my “pre-bloggin’ days” friends knows I have an online journal, and he doesn’t even know the URL.

You can’t get to know someone who’s trying to get you to know him. You can only get to know someone who doesn’t think he’s being evaluated. In fact, you can only get to know him if you don’t think you’re evaluating him. And then some random day, after months of looking out the peephole, asking to see everyone’s ID card before opening the door, you notice that a guy whom you hadn’t even known you were thinking about has somehow seeped into your life through the cracks in the wall.

That’s the way it happens.

In the meantime: do I want fries or onion rings?

God help me, I’ve added a photos page.

Sweet Dreams

This afternoon we’re putting our family dog to sleep.

I really wish we didn’t have to do this. But she’s really deteriorated, and she’s old, so old. We’ve had her for more than thirteen years.

Back in 1988, my brother was nine years old, and for a long time he’d wanted us to get a dog. But I, the 14-year-old older brother, was resolutely against it. I was scared of dogs. Terrified. I think a big scary-looking dog had knocked me over at someone’s outdoor birthday party when I was a kid or something. I don’t know if that’s why, but for whatever reason, dogs scared the crap out of me. But my parents had still been talking on and off about getting one.

On Saturday, March 12, 1988, my mom was at the local hair salon with my brother. PAWS, the local animal shelter, sometimes brought a pet to local businesses to let people know that there were animals that needed homes. That day, at the salon, this dog was resting on the floor in front of the reception desk. She was a mutt, a mix between a collie and a golden retriever, one to two years old. She was just lying there, so cute, harmless, with a terrific disposition. My mom and my brother noticed her, stroked her fur, said hello to her.

Afterwards, they came home and talked about it with me and my dad. I said no. But a few hours later, or maybe it was the next day, the two of them went to the shelter to pick up the dog they’d seen at the salon.

They brought her home and brought her inside. I was so mad at them. I stood at the top of the stairs and looked down at the front hallway and saw this blond-colored dog with dark eyes and pointy ears standing there. How could they do this to me? I went into my bedroom and closed the door. Later, I left the house as quickly as I could and went for a long walk in the park.

During that year, my freshman year of high school, I usually came home to an empty house. The day after we got the dog, I came up to the house, opened the front door, closed it quickly behind me, and ran up to my room, not knowing where this creature was. It turned out that my mom had put her on the third floor of the house for the afternoon, behind a closed door. I was relieved.

Later that night, my mom and my brother took the dog for a walk, and I decided, what the hell, I’ll go too. I did, and she seemed pretty harmless. I decided it wasn’t so bad. Maybe I liked her after all.

When we got her, one of her back legs was weak and it would sometimes shake. And she was very shy. We think something must have happened to her before she was ours. Maybe she was in an accident or maybe she was abused. She was also a real wimp. If you left real food on the floor, she wouldn’t eat it; she’d just look at you plaintively, waiting for permission, even though it was right in front of her.

But she had energy, too. This dog loved my mom. Whenever we’d bring the dog back from a walk, we’d make my mom call her name from upstairs, and she’d gallop up the steps to the second floor like a thoroughbred racehorse on crack, squeal on her brakes, turn the corner, and bolt into my parents’ bedroom.

That summer, my dad’s company offered him a position in their Tokyo office. After talking about it, we decided that we’d do it. We’d move to Japan. But what to do with the dog? We couldn’t bear to get rid of her, so we decided to take her with us. In September 1988, on the day we moved, we had her tranquilized and put in a crate. She made the 14-hour flight from JFK to Tokyo with us, only she was asleep in a crate in the cargo area. When we landed at Narita Airport, the crate rolled along the conveyor belt with all the other luggage. She saw us and barked her head off. “How could you do this to me?” she was probably thinking. (If dogs can think.)

Japanese policy required that we leave her quarantined for two weeks at the airport. So we left her there. After two weeks, we picked her up. She sat in her crate in the back of the car and we let her have some licks from an ice cream cone.

For the three years we lived in Japan, she was there with us. We’d walk this big American dog along the winding streets of our Tokyo neighborhood, and she’d sniff everything in range, taking in all these foreign smells. Japanese people with their little pointy-eared Japanese dogs would come up to us and try to ask us in English what kind of dog she was and what her name was. We’d tell them, and they’d try to pronounce it. “Brondie,” they’d say, unable to pronounce the L.

In the fall of 1991, after three years, my family moved back to New Jersey, along with the dog. I started college in Virginia that fall. But all throughout college and law school, whenever I’d come home, she’d be there. If ever I was alone in the house, I wasn’t really alone; she was there. After all this time, her soul has melded with the soul of the house. She’s softened the right angles of its rooms. I can’t even imagine the house without her. I can’t imagine walking in there one day, and being there by myself — truly alone.

About three or four years ago, she had a problem with her throat and needed throat surgery. After that, she wasn’t able to bark anymore. When she tries to bark now, she makes a raspy sound, like ripping cardboard.

And now she’s old. She can barely walk, let alone get herself up the front steps. You have to lift her from underneath and help her. Her back leg now shakes whenever she’s standing. She wears diapers because she can’t hold anything in. She wears little rubber socks on her paws so her feet can grip the floor. She can barely hear. She’s not the same animal she used to be. All she does these days is sleep, and lately she’s developed sores on either side of her haunches because she’s constantly lying down. She’s in poor shape, and she’s probably in pain. Four months ago, the vet said we should seriously consider the possibility of letting her go. We’ve talked about it for months. Week after week I’d talk to my parents on the phone or I’d be at home and they’d say they were going to have to do it soon. My brother and my father had been resolved to it for a while; my mom was the holdout. They were waiting for her permission. Finally, she decided it was time.

So, finally, we’re having it done this afternoon. They have to do it at the end of the day so it doesn’t scare any other pet owners who might be at the vet. I’m leaving work early, and I’m going to go home, and then, with my mom, and maybe with my brother, we’re going to take the dog to the vet and say goodbye.

Last night, at around 11:00, my brother called to ask if I was going to go. I said I was. Then there was no sound on the other end. I realized that my 22-year-old brother was crying. When we got her, he was nine years old. We got her because he wanted a dog; he wanted one more than anyone else in the family. This is hard for all of us.

Because of this one, sweet, gentle dog, I’m not afraid of dogs anymore. And she’s the only family pet we’ve ever had. I’ve known her since I was 14 years old. She travelled with us around the world. I can’t believe we’re doing this. My parents’ house isn’t going to be the same without her. I’m crying as I write this.

Goodbye, sweetie. Thanks for being such a huge part of our lives. I love you.

Rainbow Bridge

How it Went

Everything yesterday went just right. I feel like I had plenty of time to spend at my parents’ house with the dog before my mom and I took her to the vet. When I got to the house, my mom hadn’t gotten home yet, so I had some time alone with the dog. I lay down on the kitchen floor next to her head, and she licked my ear, and I started to cry. When my mom got home, she got on the floor and wrapped her arms around her and she cried, too. The dog was shaking; she was probably wondering, why is everyone acting so strange around me? What’s going on?

Before we left the house, I lay down and lay my head on her stomach with my eyes closed and just listened to her breathing, in and out, in and out, letting her chest rise and fall beneath my head. I must have lain there for a full five minutes. It was what I needed to do.

Then I carried her outside and we let her walk around the front yard for a few minutes. When we were ready, I picked her up again, my mom got into the front seat of the car, and I got into the back seat and let the dog rest on my lap. I held her close to me during the fifteen-minute drive to the vet. After my mom pulled into the parking lot, I sat there with my eyes closed for another couple of minutes, just sat there, letting myself feel what it was like to have the dog in my lap, taking it all in, letting it all seep into me.

I’ll just say that the vet and his assistant were wonderful. We’d been using this vet forever, a middle-aged and reliable man, and when it was all over, he said to me and my mom, “Thank you for letting us care for your dog over the years.”

It had been a long afternoon of tears and pain. When we got home, my mom got out a blanket and a bottle of white wine, and we went into the backyard and lay down on the blanket on this pleasantly sunny May afternoon, looked up at the trees, and drank some wine. I felt better. I was glad it was over, and I felt happy that the dog was now at peace. When my dad came home, he joined us outside. Eventually, my brother came home as well, and the four of us went out to a diner and ate. We Jews always turn to food when we have to deal with death. It’s just comfortable that way.

Later on at night I came home and got into bed, but I started to cry, so I had to get back up. After a few minutes of sobbing, I went back into bed, and eventually, I fell asleep.

On My Honor as a Student…

This may seem odd, but a day after putting the dog to sleep, today was my brother’s graduation from NYU. I didn’t go, because he was only given two tickets – which went to my parents, of course – but I met up with them for lunch afterwards at the Gramercy Tavern. I’m not a restaurant critic, so I’ll just say that the food was delicious and the company was great. The Gramercy Tavern is elegant and classy, yet trendy, modern, and relaxed. Just like a restaurant should be.

In other news, my double alma mater, the University of Virginia, is dealing with a cheating scandal. Yay. Some 122 students in an introductory physics class called “How Things Work” have been accused of plagiarizing substantial parts of their term papers, despite the school’s honor code, in place ever since, according to legend, a student shot a professor on the Lawn back in 1841. I could be wrong, but I think that UVA has the oldest honor code of any American university and that most other schools with honor codes have modeled them on ours, sometimes with modifications. We have a “single sanction” system: if you’re charged with lying, cheating, or stealing, and then, following a hearing held by the student-run Honor Committee, the charges are determined to be true, you are expelled. Done deal. Just like that. There have been many student referenda over the years that have attempted to create a dual-sanction system, with some lesser penalties for certain offenses, based on the belief that people refrain from turning in cheaters because they don’t want to see their fellow students expelled. These referenda have always failed.

On the night of our convocation as UVA students, in the fall of my first year, we all had to sign our names in one of several big books, pledging to follow the honor code. And on the last page of every exam you take and of every paper you turn in at UVA, you must write the following sentence: “On my honor as a student of the University of Virginia I have neither given nor received aid on this exam (paper) (assignment).” Then you sign your name and turn it in. It’s assumed you’re telling the truth.

I never cheated at UVA, and I personally don’t know of anyone who did, but it does happen, and certainly not just in some gut of a physics class. Still — 122 students in a single class?

Throughout most of my years at UVA, and especially in the couple of years since, I’ve been proud to be a ‘Hoo. A Double ‘Hoo, at that. So, although this doesn’t at all surprise me, it does sadden me.

Wahoowa.

“One of the hardest moments for me and, perhaps, other gay men and women is the first time you actually say out loud to another person ‘I am gay.’ You hear it inside your head a lot and you think it will be easy. And you’ve constantly been saying, ‘I’m not gay,’ so one might imagine that excising an apostrophe and a single three-letter word and inserting an ‘a’ would be easy.”

“It’s not.”

— from “The Very Last Life Serial”, in Glassdog

Mom?

I had a disturbing dream last night. I dreamed that I found out that my dad had had an affair with a woman a very long time ago, and it turned out that this woman was actually my real mother, instead of the woman whom I’ve come to know and love and cherish as my mother, and that everyone had hid this from me. In the dream, the mistress and my dad told me the news together. I was crushed. I didn’t know who I was anymore.

The three of us were driving along in a car — me, my dad, and this strange, evil woman — and I was trying not to be upset. But as the woman was talking to me, I realized that hiding underneath the dashboard was the woman whom I’d always thought of as my mom. I made eye contact with her and I wanted to cry, but I didn’t say anything, because I was afraid of what the strange woman would do if she knew she was there. But my dad knew that she was hiding there also and didn’t say anything because he didn’t want the mistress to know. Apparently, he was really on my side and disliked the strange woman as much as I did.

I woke up feeling really uneasy. What the heck? How do you know that your mother is really your mother?

When my mom and I brought the dog to the vet the other day, it was a real bonding experience. We were hugging each other and crying and then afterwards we had wine in the backyard. On the drive back to the house I felt moved to tell her how much I love her, how much more I feel like I connect with her than I do with my dad or my brother. I really and truly love my mother.

And dammit, I just know she’s my mom…

Is it just me, or have other people with online journals been seeing an incredible number of sex-related AOL search requests in their referral stats lately? This has been happening to me for the last two weeks. I know Jonno was having a similar problem recently.

Is this happening to anyone else?

What a Country!

In case you didn’t know, dear readers, Blogger was fucked the entire weekend. We blogging folks could post, but our posts wouldn’t show up on our websites until, well, now. And reading a two-day old post is like eating a piece of stale bread, so there was no point in posting things that you wouldn’t be able to see. So here’s a brand-new post. Wow, Meg was prescient.

Anyway. Let me tell you about my weekend and the breakthrough I had.

On Saturday night I went to a friend’s surprise birthday party at a gay couple’s apartment in the East Village. In attendance were mostly gay UVA alums. Afterward, several of us went to Wonderbar. This included Arch and Carrot, the physically mismatched couple whom I’ve mentioned before; the birthday boy; and a guy whom I’d just met that night, named Ken, who for a short time dated a good gay friend of mine at UVA but whom I’d never actually met.

I was being the usual neurotic variation of myself that appears whenever I’m at a gay bar. There was a healthy dose of attractive men, some of whom I’d make eye contact with for half a second and that’s all. The small group of us was in the back of the bar because Arch and Carrot wanted to sit down. This left me with a bad vantage point, no place to sit, and no wall to lean against, so I decided to take my beer and stand by myself against the wall at the front of the place. I foolishly thought that maybe if I stood there alone, people would come up to me and strike up conversations, or that at the very least I’d look kinda cool standing there alone with a beer bottle in my hand. I was conscious of the way I was holding the bottle — some people grip a beer bottle at the thicker, lower part, while others hold it higher up, wrapping their fingers around the narrow shaft. Either way you hold it, when your arm is down, the beer bottle tilts upward a bit. There’s something sexy about a guy holding a beer bottle.

But nobody came up to me, and my neck kind of froze up so that it was difficult for me to even turn my head and look at anybody next to me.

After a little while I went back to my friends. Time went by. I was talking with Arch and Ken about how difficult it is for me to cruise people. I’m terrified by it. It feels like a clinical phobia. I’m cruisophobic. Anyway, I was telling them all about this. I said to them, “I don’t even really want to talk to people, you know? I just want to get to the sex.” And Arch said, “Everyone is here for sex. But you can only get there by talking to people first.” Ken said to me, “Is there anyone here who you have your eye on?”

There was this black-haired guy with a long-sleeve black t-shirt and blue jeans with whom I’d made eye contact at various points throughout the night. In the dim light of Wonderbar, he looked sort of attractive. He wasn’t stunning, but he was decent-looking. Now he was sitting on a couch near us. I tilted my head in his direction. Ken turned around surreptitiously. “He’s cute!” he said. “You should talk to him.”

“No,” I snapped. “I can’t. I just can’t do it. I’m terrified.” And I was.

The two of them kept pushing me to talk to him. I told them how hard it is for me to start a conversation with someone, how I just could not do it. But I’d look over and I’d make eye contact with him again. At one point I walked to another part of the bar, with my back to him. When I returned to my friends, Ken said, “Jeff, he was looking you up and down.” “But I have no idea what to say!” I said.

They kept trying to push me into it, and I grew more scared and irate and snappish. It reminded me of this time back in summer camp, when I was 10 years old, and this one loud overbearing fat girl with too much makeup wanted me to ask her cute shy petite friend to the end-of-summer dance. Her forcefulness collided with my absolute resoluteness against the notion, and I wound up in a tear-filled panic, not knowing what to do, just wanting everyone to leave me alone. That’s how I felt on Saturday night. I was nervous and embarrassed, made even more so because I could tell that the guy knew what was going on. Arch and Ken would look over at him and then they’d look back at me and talk to me. He had to know.

At one point he got up, and a little while later he was sitting on another seat, with an empty space next to him. Finally I decided what the hell. I sat down next to him. I touched the fabric on the part of the seat next to my back, and it was wet from someone’s spilled drink. “Looks like someone spilled something,” I said. He laughed a little. “Yeah,” he said.

Several long moments of silence. Okay, that was a dead end. What do I say now?

“So, are you from New York?” I said.

“Actually, I’m from Portugal,” he said, in a foreign accent, surprising me.

That got the ball rolling. It turned out he was an NYU grad student getting a degree in finance and he lived on the Upper East Side. We talked for a while. Eventually he said, “Can I buy you a drink?” I said sure, but I just asked for a glass of water — my stomach felt full, and yet I needed to have something to sip. During the time he was gone, I leaned over to Arch, and I told him that this was easier than I’d thought. “Tell him he’s cute,” he said. “He’ll probably tell you you’re cute too, and then ask if you can kiss him.”

The guy came back with a glass of water for me and a Heineken for himself, and we talked some more. Then my friends came by and told me they were leaving. They left.

His left thigh was pressing against my right thigh, and as we were talking, I leaned in closer and closer. I found an appropriate lull in the conversation, and I looked at him and said, “You’re a cute guy.” He had an expression on his face as if he hadn’t understood me, so I said it again. “You’re cute,” I said. “You are too,” he said. Long silence.

“Can I kiss you?” I said. Again he couldn’t understand me, so I said it again. “Can I kiss you.” “Sure,” he said, and we kissed. It lasted about five seconds. I got some tongue. And then he pulled away.

We talked some more. His hand found its way to my inner thigh, where he rested it, and I returned the favor. Each of our hands was achingly close to the other’s prize package, and I had my arm around his shoulders. We sat there like that for a little bit. Then he said, “Excuse me for a moment. I need to use the toilet.” He got up and waited on the bathroom line. When he came back, he sat down and we resumed our manual acrobatics.

And then he said, “You know, I think I am going to go home.”

“Hm?” I said, knowing full well what he’d said.

“I think I’m going to go home.”

Oh.

“Oh. Okay,” I said.

“Maybe I will see you here again,” he said. Then we said goodbye, and he left.

Well. I see. That was interesting. Here it was, after 3:00, and I was alone at Wonderbar. I felt a combination of things — happy and excited and proud of myself for having gotten up the guts to talk to someone, but puzzled as to why he left. But the puzzlement and dashed expectations were overpowered by the pride I was feeling. I’d passed a crucial milestone.

And yet… I resumed looking around, seeing if there were any other attractive guys to talk to. There were a few, but I couldn’t get myself to talk to them, and it was late. There was one hottie in particular who had been talking to one of my friends earlier, but I felt inferior to him, so I didn’t try to talk to him. Instead I decided it was time to leave. I’d accomplished enough for one night. So I left.

When I got back to my apartment it was past four in the morning. I got online and wound up finding a guy whom I’d met up with before. I went over to his place and wound up releasing all the sexual energies that had been building up inside me over the course of the evening. It was pretty great sex.

When I left his place and walked back to my apartment, around six in the morning, it was completely light out. I walked past an empty field surrounded by a fence, and in the distance, I could see the back of the Statue of Liberty, her torch still lit in the morning sky. I stopped walking and I just stood there, staring at her. I thought, holy shit, I’ve been up all night and I finally talked to someone at a bar and he was a foreigner and now I’m walking home from having great unexpected sex and I’m looking at this world-famous icon that people all over the planet would jump fences and dodge bullets and stow away on ships and risk their lives to see. Wow.

God bless America!

Chat Rooms

This post was originally going to be about my problems with casual sex, but I started writing and realized that what I really have problems with are chat rooms.

I just feel like a loser when I’m hanging out in them. I could be doing other things with my time, such as going out and meeting people. And inevitably, when I’m sitting at my computer, logged into a room, someone will open a private window with me and ask, “What are you looking for?” If I’m not there with the express intention of finding a hookup, then the intention is usually at least latent, and it’s easily awakened by the arrival of someone who seems within walking distance and has attractive “stats” and a decent-looking picture. (Therein lies the most well-known problem with chat rooms, of course: what you see isn’t always what you get.)

It’s exciting, the exploration of an unexplored body. And at least half the time, my expectations are met and it winds up being enjoyable. But post-ejaculation, everything changes. Immediately after pleasure is achieved, and I mean as soon as I collapse in sexual fulfillment, I want the experience to end. It’s not just the usual post-sexual androbiological desire to curl up into a ball and sleep; I actually feel embarrassed and ashamed, and I just want to get out of there (or, if I’m hosting, I want the guy to leave). And once I’m alone once more, I sometimes shake my head and tell myself, “Jeez… I did it again.”

And despite those negative feelings, it still winds up happening again.

Why? Why do I do it? Mainly because I have an almost manic desire to make up for lost time. I’m a guy who — except for a couple of quick, furtive experiences — didn’t have sex with anyone until I was 24. On top of that, I was always a good, angelic kid who set all these restrictions and boundaries on myself and my behavior. I never rebelled, except passive-aggressively. The first time I got drunk was at the beginning of my second year of college. I smoked half a cigarette once, when I was 22, and I don’t think I fully inhaled. I’ve never smoked pot or any other drug, and I have no desire to. Yet I enjoy sex, and I’m often conscious of the passage of time, and so I feel like I have a lot of ground to recover and a lot of territory to explore.

But why chat rooms? Well, if you read me regularly, you know that I can be shy around strangers. Also, there’s only one gay bar in Jersey City, and I hear it’s kind of a dump. The next-closest bars are in Manhattan, which means I’d have to hop onto the PATH train, walk over, and spend five bucks on a drink. Which would be okay, except that lately I’m always on the edge of being broke, and the whole experience is a lot to go through on a weeknight if my ultimate goal is just sex that might or might not happen. So when I get the urge, it’s just cheaper, more convenient, and a lot quicker to sit down at the computer and see who’s there.

On the other hand, I feel so lame when I do it. I’m just sitting there at home when I could be doing something else. Is it better to sit on the couch and watch TV, interacting with nobody? Not really, but at least when I’m watching TV, I feel like my dignity is intact. I don’t feel that way when I’m in a chat room; I feel like a coward.

I need places to go and things to do. I need activities. In college I was always busy — classes, three singing groups, a part-time job, an occasional newspaper column, and I lived in a dorm with a bunch of friends. Boredom wasn’t really a problem. Today it is. If I’m sitting in my apartment on a weeknight, and “The West Wing” isn’t on, I get cabin fever, and there’s nothing to do in Jersey City on a weeknight. Nothing.

In posting this entry, I feel like I’m going to lose lots of respect. I feel like there are people who are going to look down on me and cluck their tongues at this behavior and think to themselves how pathetic I am. And you know what? I do feel pathetic. I wish I could please those people; I wish I could be a responsible, respectful person so that all those innocent closeted 18-year-olds would respect me. Sometimes I really and truly wish I were as innocent and clean as, say, Closet Boy.

I do want to say something, though. Anonymous sex does not mean unsafe sex. I’m not stupid. For the record, I’m as clean as a bar of Ivory Soap. It’s not the number of sexual partners that determines what happens to you; it’s what you do with your sexual partners. Which is riskier — to have safe, protected sex with lots of people, or to have one unsafe encounter with a single person?

And I miss the emotional connection that comes from sex that is based in love. But if I wait to fall in love, I’ll be waiting a long time. I don’t know if I’ve been truly in love with someone yet; it doesn’t seem to come easily for me, and I’m picky. In the meantime, I spent too much of my childhood and adolescence repressing everything inside myself to go back to such self-imposed puritannicism.

Tell me: is there something wrong with me? Because part of me thinks there is.

Search This, AOL

Who knew it would be so complicated to get my website unlisted from the AOL search engine? I didn’t know. Did you know? I didn’t know.

First of all, the problem is different than I thought. This isn’t like Google, where your site comes up if certain key words are located in the text of your site. For example, if someone typed sucking hot cocks into Google, my site might come up if it contained the following sentence: “The weather was sucking majorly yesterday morning, because it was so hot out, and I knew it wasn’t even six in the morning yet because the cocks hadn’t begun to crow.” (Of course, my site now contains that sentence. Terrific.)

With the AOL search engine it’s different. Apparently they classify sites into certain categories. For a long time I was wondering why people were getting to my site from such search requests as “80 year old woman naked” or “13 year old sucking a penis” or “massive cocks,” and it left me feeling pretty disturbed. I always imagine the seeker of such information to be a cross between a mustachioed closeted guy from rural southwestern Virginia and the Comic Book Guy from “The Simpsons.” It sure is interesting what people look for on the Internet when they think nobody’s looking.

At any rate, if you click on this, for instance, you will see my site listed. You won’t see any particular key words from my site — you’ll just see my main URL. I checked several of these requests and realized that some idiot at AOL must have classified my site as a porn site. I assume that the person must have seen the gay content of my site and automatically equated it with pornography, which, even if no malice was intended, majorly offends me.

Last week I went to the AOL Search feedback page, only to find that the server was down, so none of my requests for help could even be submitted.

Last Friday, I finally sent an e-mail to support@aol.net.

NOTE: majorly lengthy bureaucratic correspondence ahead.

********
e-mail: fois25@yahoo.com

subject: please remove my site from your search engine

Hi,

Please remove my site, http://tinman.blogspot.com, from your search engines. In the past two weeks, the referral stats for my site have turned up an incredible number of sex-related AOL search requests. I have no idea why these sex searches are bringing up my site, as I do not run a sex-related site. I have contacted the Open Directory Project but have received no response.

I would much appreciate either that you remove my site or, if this is not possible, that you send me a response detailing what must be done.

Thank you,

[me]
********

The response:

********
Dear Fois25,

Hi, my name is Grace . Thank you for writing to America Online Techmail Department. It is my pleasure to assist you regarding any concerns that you may have.

I understand from your email that you would like to remove http://tinman.blogspot.com from AOL search.

On America Online, please go to Keyword: MEDIA SPACE.

On the Internet, please go to the Media Space Web page at: http://mediaspace.aol.com.

It has been a pleasure assisting you. It is my hope that the information provided would be of great help with regards to your concern.

Please let us know immediately about any further inquiries or comments you may have. I will always be ready and happy to assist you. Thank you very much for your continued support.

Grace P.
The TechMail Department
America Online, Inc.
********

I went to the site she suggested, http://mediaspace.aol.com. Gee, that’s helpful.

I sent another e-mail, also to support@aol.net. Unfortunately, this channels your e-mail to a different person every time, so I made sure to paste the previous correspondence below the new message. I wrote:

********
subject: Please remove my site from your search engine

Thank you for your timely response. I went to the website you suggested, http://mediaspace.aol.com, and I do not understand how the site relates to my problem. Please explain further.

Sincerely,

[me]
********

Let me say this again: my previous e-mail, and Grace’s response, appeared directly below that message, easily available for reference.

The response:

********
Dear Jeff,

Hello! My name is Nove. I want to thank you personally for taking time to write to America Online Technical Support and making us aware of your concern. It is always a great pleasure to assist you regarding any issues you may have.

Based from your recent email, I understand that you have question about America Online.

I personally apologize for the inconvenience that you have been experiencing. I appreciate your patience with this matter and I am here to help you.

Because we answer hundreds of pieces of mail each day, it is difficult for us to remember your original question as well as our response to it. For this reason, I am unable to determine the exact nature of your request.

Kindly accept my personal apology if I cannot provide you a resolution right now.

It would be a big help if you could clarify your question or send me additional information about your question in order to provide you an accurate solution. I will be happy to help you in anyway I can. Please be sure to include the information I am asking for. Please bear in mind that I do want you to have accurate information.

Please send me any specific information you can think of that applies to the issue.

Once I have this information, I can better work with you to resolve this matter.

When responding to an email from us, please be sure to use the FORWARD button so we can receive your original request for help, along with our response.

I would like to take this opportunity to personally thank you for your patience and continued support. I hope the information that I provided helped.

If you have any inquiries, suggestions or comments regarding America Online, please feel free to write back and we will do the rest.

May I reiterate our commitment to continue providing you, competent and efficient online services.

Have a nice day, Jeff. :o)

Sincerely yours,

Nove C.
The Technical Department
America Online, Inc.
********

I wrote back — with the previous correspondence automatically attached:

********
subject: Re: Please remove my site from your search engine

Dear Nove,

Thank you for responding. If you had scrolled all the way down, you would have seen my original request without having to ask me to repeat it. Please scroll down and you will see my original request.

Sincerely,

[me]
********

The response:

********
Dear Jeff,

Hi, my name is John, and I would like to thank you for writing to America Online.

I understand that you want a certain kind of site to be removed on AOL serach engine.

I apologize because you were misinformed about the site that you have to visit. The correct site would be:

http://www.dmoz.com

From there, you maybe able to remove it. Just choose a category and there are some tabs above written as ADD URL, UPDATE URL, etc.

I want to thank you personally for taking the time to write.

Please feel free to write back anytime with questions or comments that you may have. It has been my pleasure to assist you.

Have a great day!

John P.
Customer Care Consultant
The Techmail Department
America Online, Inc.
********

So I went back to the Open Directory Project and found a more specific place to send feedback. I briefly explained the problem and asked to be removed from the Open Directory Project, thinking that might help. The response:

********
If you want your site moved, deleted or changed at the AOL search Dmoz is not the place to do it. Your site (http://tinman.blogspot.com/) is listed in Weblogs at Dmoz. There is nothing about porn or sex in the description the site is listed with. I don’t see your site listed in any Adult categories here.

Removing the site from Dmoz won’t change how its listed at AOL. They use Dmoz content as it shows up in the directory. But they also list sites on their own. Its likely they listed Tin Man on their own somehow and have flubbed it. I can’t do anything to change how a site is listed in AOL Search.
********

I wrote back:

********
Thanks for your reply — when I contacted AOL, they told me that I should contact the Open Directory Project. Any other tips? Thanks, I appreciate it.
********

The response, from the same (I must say, rather competent and complimentary) person:

********
Hi Jeff,

I don’t know what else you can do. I searched the Adult section of Dmoz for Tin Man and nothing at all comes up. I’ve only looked at the AOL Search once. Is there a place to submit a listing there? If so you could try submitting your site to the area its listed incorrectly and add a note for it to be moved/reviewed again at least.

You likely know the SearchEngineWatch site. I know there are messageboards there in which other Dmoz editors regularly post and handle problems. I’m not sure there is a board for the AOL Search. But maybe someone at the Dmoz board would have some experience with this and be able to help.

Wish I could think of something to fix this. AOL was wrong to pass the buck. :( I’m here if there is something I can do. But I really rebel about removing Tin Man from Weblogs. Its a good site. I liked the post you made about writing, the one Evan put on the main Blogger site a week or so ago.
********

So I wrote back to support@aol.net. I sent my message twice, figuring it would go to two different people.

********
subject: please remove my site from your porn listings!

For the last few days I have been trying without success to have my website, http://tinman.blogspot.com, removed from your search directory. From my site’s referral stats I have noticed that my site is constantly coming up as a result of pornographic searches. For instance, if someone types in “big hairy cocks,” my site comes up. This greatly troubles me, because my site is in no way a pornographic site.

I sent an e-mail to AOL support and was told to contact the Open Directory Project, http://www.dmoz.com. I contacted the Open Directory Project and received the following e-mail message from them:

“If you want your site moved, deleted or changed at the AOL search, Dmoz is not the place to do it. Your site (http://tinman.blogspot.com/) is listed in Weblogs at Dmoz. There is nothing about porn or sex in the description the site is listed with. I don’t see your site listed in any Adult categories here.”

“Removing the site from Dmoz won’t change how its listed at AOL. They use Dmoz content as it shows up in the directory. But they also list sites on their own. Its likely they listed Tin Man on their own somehow and have flubbed it. I can’t do anything to change how a site is listed in AOL Search.”

I don’t know what else to do at this point. I want my site removed from the AOL search engine as soon as possible.
********

Response from Person #1:

********
Dear Fois25,

Hi, my name is Ardee. I am writing to you on behalf of America Online in response to your recent e-mail or concern. As a Techmail Consultant, it is my pleasure to assist you regarding any concern you may have.

Based on the information you have provided, I understand you would like to remove your site from AOL search directory. Go to to the site below:

http://hometown.aol.com/_cqr/_register/edit.adp

I do hope that the information provided would be of great help with regards to your concern.

Thank you for taking the time to write. Please feel free to write back anytime with questions or comments that you may have. It has been my pleasure assisting you. =)

Very truly yours,

Ardee D.
Customer Care Consultant
The Techmail Department
America Online Inc.
********

So of course I went to http://hometown.aol.com/_cqr/_register/edit.adp, signed in via the AOL screen name I use from home, and got a completely generic and unhelpful site called “Edit My Pages.”

Again, I’d sent my most recent e-mail twice. Here’s the response from Person #2:

********
Dear Fois25,

Hi! I am Dan from America Online (AOL) . As a Customer Care Consultant from the TechMail Department, it is my pleasure to assist you regarding any concerns you may have.

I understand from your recent e-mail that you are having problem deleting your web site.

I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and I want to assure you that I am always here to help you resolve this issue as quickly as possible.

Eventhough I am more than willing to assist you with this concern, I feel that I am not the appropriate person to address this issue. Moreso, there could be some upgrades and new development with this issue.

However, I feel that it will be unfair on your part if I could not do anything about this. To be able to help you, I would like to refer you to the appropriate department.

Kindly check the following and send feedbacks or questions for your web site problems.

To send feedback to AOL Search: http://aolsearch.aol.com/feedback.adp

Use this link to send feedback specifically and only about our search engine, AOL Search — such as not finding a page, a broken link on the AOL Search pages, and similar search-related questions. AOL Member Services provides feedback support for AOL Search, answering replies and providing help for users.

Your general comments for AOL.COM should be submitted using the Feedback to AOL.COM link below.

To send feedback to AOL.COM: http://www.aol.com/info/feedback.html

[other stuff deleted]

I would like to thank you for writing America Online. Kindly write back for the results and if you have any inquiries or comments, I will be more than happy to assist you.

May I reiterate my commitment to continue providing you competent and efficient online services.

Dan C.
Customer Care Consultant
The TechMail Department
America Online Inc.
********

Sigh. I sent yet another e-mail to support@aol.net:

********
Subject: for the fifth time, please remove my site from your search engine.

To Whom It May Concern,

My problem is listed in the e-mail correspondence below. If you scroll down, you will see my original e-mail, and above that, you will see the response I received.

I went to the “AOL Search: Feedback” web page and typed in my problem. But when I hit the “submit” button, I received the following message: “The requested URL cannot be accessed due to a system error on this server.”

Please know that I am incredibly frustrated. I have sent numerous e-mails to AOL Support asking to have my site, http://tinman.blogspot.com, removed from your search engine. Nobody at your company who has responded to my e-mails seems to know what is going on. Please note that I am an attorney, and that if my site is not removed from your porn listings at once, I will have to consider taking appropriate action.

All I want is for someone to remove my website from your search engine. That is all I want. This sounds like a simple request, does it not? PLEASE REMOVE MY SITE FROM YOUR SEARCH ENGINE. DO NOT GIVE ME ANOTHER URL. DO NOT TELL ME TO SEND THIS PROBLEM SOMEWHERE ELSE. I expect the best possible service from America Online and I would like someone to take action on this matter. I am fed up.

Thank you,

[me]
********

Yeah, I know. As an attorney, I have no idea what an “appropriate action” would be, but I didn’t care at that point.

I received the following response this morning:

********
Dear Jeff,

Hello! My name is Lane from America Online (AOL). As a Customer Care Consultant from the TechMail Department, it is my pleasure to assist you with issues or concerns regarding America Online Services.

Thank you for writing to America Online and I want to assure you that I am here to help you solve this issue as quickly as possible.

I would like to direct you to AOL’s hub of online advertising information. This area is designed to provide advertisers with the resources they need to research and make decisions about advertising on AOL.

On the Internet, please go to the Media Space Web page at: http://mediaspace.aol.com.

PLEASE CALL THE NUMBER BELOW:

Please call:

1-888-235-0893

Thank you!

Lane D.
Customer Care Consultant
The TechMail Department
America Online, Inc.
********

Cripes. So this morning I called the phone number. After waiting for about 25 minutes, someone came on the line and I tried to explain the problem. It took several tries, and I don’t think he ever fully understood the problem. He seemed to think it was going to be complicated, and he gave me another e-mail address, webmaster@aol.com, as well as another phone number. I also got the AOL Corporate mailing address.

So I wrote to webmaster@aol.com this morning. We’ll see if anything changes. I doubt it.

I also poked around online and found some HTML that blocks robots from sending your site information to search engines:
(meta name=”ROBOTS” content=”NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW”). I added that to my code. Of course, it’s too late to block AOL.

To Grace, Nove, Jon, Ardee, Dan, and Lane: you know what? You suck. I hate being patronized and treated like an idiot by people who are idiots themselves.

And getting irate doesn’t seem to do anything, because apparently these people have been trained to either ignore it or respond with even more Stepford kindness.

Holy moley. God, I hate AOL.

“The West Wing”

I thought the season finale of “The West Wing” last night was pretty terrific. First of all, I was bowled over by the woman who played the young Mrs. Landingham in Jed’s flashbacks. She completely nailed Kathryn Joosten’s delivery — the accent, the timing, the intonation, everything. Pretty incredible. Blew me away.

There were some really nice camera shots. I’m thinking particularly of the transitions back and forth between Charlie giving his speech at the National Cathedral and the young Mrs. Landingham pestering Jed about unequal pay for women. A pillar in the cathedral becomes a pillar along the private school’s walkway, and back again, and back again. And there was the abrupt transition from a shot of the stained-glass window of the Cathedral’s soaring ceiling to a shot of the White House and the Washington Monument. Church and state. Ahh, now I get the episode’s title… “Two Cathedrals.”

There was the president’s terrifically acerbic monologue delivered to God at the Cathedral in Latin. (This translation is helpful.) Throughout this series, we’ve been able to marvel at the power of the most powerful man in the world — his motorcades driving through red lights, his army of aides, his grandeur, his private movie theater — and then we realize that even the President of the United States is powerless before God. His tirade made me think of Bill Clinton: Here I am, look at all the good I’ve done, look at all the people I’ve helped; so I screwed up! Do I deserve to be punished this severely?

But this all paled next to the penultimate scene in the Oval Office. Wow. A storm rages outside and the exterior door of the Oval Office flies wide open. (Where were the portico’s guards at that point? And would the White House staff really have let the door’s hinges stay unrepaired for that long? Unless the door was opened by a Higher Power…) And then Mrs. Landingham just strides into the room, as purposeful as ever, as if she were still alive. Their conversation was so inspiring and moving.

(Just think of the possibilities, though. They could turn this into a sitcom! “I Dream of Mrs. Landingham.” The president’s secretary dies in a freak accident, and nobody can see her now except the president. Wackiness ensues. No wait… that’s “Providence.”)

I could have done without the Dire Straits music as Jed rode to the press conference — I would have preferred more of the pure West-Wingy intense presidential-sounding stuff. But I looked at my watch and saw that it was about 9:56, and I kept thinking, “Please don’t end it now… please don’t leave us on the edge like I know you’re going to… just a few seconds more, a few more seconds, okay?” And then it cuts to black. Ack! I was all giddy and crazy for a few seconds, jerking my muscles around like I was doing the tarantella. Well, of course he’s going to run again. I mean, the series wouldn’t be much fun otherwise, and there was also his body language — hands in his pockets, looking up and away, a hint of a smile on his face. So the agony isn’t in waiting to find out what his answer will be; the agony is in waiting for the catharsis, for the brilliant resolution that we know is coming in four months.

Four months? Damn.

To get through the long summer, here’s a compendium of “West Wing” quotes.

Whew… between last Sunday’s incredibly intense and nail-biting episode of “The X-Files,” and this, it’s been a terrific few days of television.

“I am the guy that the Christian Coalition, and probably a healthy portion of my classmates, believe would be unfairly protected by a bullying law. I am the guy whom their consciences demand that they belittle and deride. Fortunately for me, however, I don’t need the law anymore. I’m a high school senior about to get out of Dodge.”

— “If You Flame, You Get Burned”

Uh-oh… I wonder what will happen to Blogger this time.

It’s a Bird… No, It’s a Plane…

Today I am Zinc Man. I thought it would be a nice change to move myself 20 elements lower on the periodic table, you know, shed a few protons. (Did you know that the abbreviation for Tin is Sn? I’d forgotten.) Actually, the reason I’m doing it is because I’ve put myself on a regiment of Cold-eeze, with all its zinky goodness. I woke up yesterday morning with a dry and achy throat, the precursor to a cold, and it was a little worse when I woke up this morning. I’m feeling sorta crappy today. I’m tired and congested and I’m having great mucus-related enjoyment. Hence the Cold-eeze. The power of zinc to reduce the duration of a cold isn’t clear, although there is some evidence. There are dissenting views, of course. (Both links are located here.)

Anyway… Zinc Man needs a faithful sidekick. Anyone? Berkelium (97)? Americium (95)? Californium (98)? Europium (63)? Einsteinium (99)? Cadmium (48)? Well, I could go on and on and on, of course, and I’m sure you could come up with your own examples (there are at least 118 elements, after all), but the choice is obvious: Plutonium (94). Maybe along with a little tungsten. Hee hee.

Last night, before the “Friends” season finale came on, I was sitting on the couch, reading a novel. I came across a passage in which one character made another character some scrambled eggs, and suddenly I had a huge craving for a scrambled egg sandwich. I kept on reading, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Perhaps my under-the-weather body was craving cholesterol or something. I absolutely needed to have a scrambled-egg sandwich right then and there; I could not go on. So I ran out the door and bought a dozen eggs and a bottle of ketchup and came home just in time for “Friends.” I turned on the TV, cracked a couple of eggs into a bowl, threw in some salt and pepper, and mixed it all up. I melted a little butter in a heated pan and poured in the eggs, letting them solidify. It’s best not to move them around; that way you get a nice solid mass for a sandwich. I don’t have a toaster, so I put a couple of pieces of bread in the microwave for about 20 seconds, spread ketchup on both slices, put the eggs on one slice and put the other slice on top, cut the whole thing in half, and took it over to the couch with a glass of juice. I had myself a nice thick egg sandwich. It was pure heaven. And then I made myself another one.

After four slices of bread and four eggs (not to mention a bowl of soup I’d had earlier), I spent the evening in blissful catatonia, watching Chandler and Monica get married, followed by the revelation that Rachel is pregnant (I haven’t seen the show in a while. Who’d she sleep with?). After that was “Jack & Karen,” usually known by its official title, “Will & Grace.” Ehh… it was so-so. Then I watched five minutes of “E.R.” before turning it off — for some reason I lost interest in the show about three years ago.

Anyway, tonight’s probably going to be a stay-at-home evening. I’ll probably just read and write and eat and sleep. But we’ll see.

So the New York Times now has personals. I’m sort of surprised that the Old Gray Lady has decided to become a yenta, but I suppose it was only a matter of time. At any rate, right now there are only six entries listed under “Men Seeking Men.” Their ages are “60’s”, 51, 60, 45, no age listed, and 58. On top of that, there are no pictures and you can only respond to an ad through a voicemail system that costs $5.98 for the first minute and $2.99 for each additional minute. I think I’ll stick to PlanetOut for now.

The Original 1966 Batmobile.

“The new book seemed to want to take place in Pittsburgh, and thus, in my basement room, I returned to the true fountain city, the mysterious source of so many of my ideas. I didn’t stop to think about what I was doing, whom it would interest, what my publisher and the critics would think of it, and, sweetest of all, I didn’t give a single thought to what I was trying to say. I just wrote. I had characters. I had their story to tell. And, most importantly of all, I had the voice to tell it with. Six weeks later, after Ayelet had taken the bar exam, I took a deep breath and told her that while in all that time I’d done nothing to solve the problems of Fountain City, I did have one hundred and seventeen pages of a novel called Wonder Boys.”

— Wrecked, by Michael Chabon

Random Notes From a Weekend

It’s always a little bit strange to write about things like this, but late on Friday night I had the best sex I’d had in ages. It was a totally random thing, but he turned out to be my absolutely ideal body type: slim, smooth, shorter than average. He was a dancer, with a lithe, tight, beautifully proportioned dancer’s body. He was incredibly passionate and sweet. And each of his little biceps had a vein running up the side, which I love. It was such a great experience that I actually wasn’t eager for him to leave; I even invited him to spend the night, although he politely declined. And apparently today he’s leaving for Martha’s Vineyard for a month. Anyway, it was what it was, and it was a wonderful experience.

Actually, I was such a homosexual on Friday night even besides that. I felt like staying in, so I made myself some dinner, plopped down in front of the TV and watched “Providence” followed by about half of the Daytime Emmys. Have I mentioned that for several years I was a devoted “Days of our Lives” fan? I’ll have to write about that sometime.

On Friday evening I also finished Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, which was beautiful. The book wonderfully evokes New York City before and after World War II, and it touches on several themes I find personally meaningful, the most obvious being the history of comic books. Have I mentioned that for several years I was a devoted reader of DC Comics? I’ll have to write about that sometime, too.

I needed something new to read, and I’ve been pressed for cash lately, so this morning I went to my bookshelf and picked up Battle Cry of Freedom, which I bought several months ago in hardcover at the Strand for ten bucks. It’s supposed to be the best one-volume account of the Civil War. I’ve read the first chapter so far, and I love it. It’s actually one volume in the Oxford History of the United States; last summer I read the most recently published volume, Freedom From Fear, by David Kennedy, a history of the Great Depression and World War II.

Have I mentioned that I’m a big American history buff? I think I’ll write about that now.

I’m in love with the narrative sweep of American history. I think this is the most optimistic nation that’s ever existed on the face of the planet. Our nation was founded on optimism — people sailing west to leave their old lives behind and start anew. This optimism is built into our geography; the West, that great safety valve, a basin of bottomless possibility. It’s always felt kind of strange to me — a Jew whose grandfather emigrated from either the Ukraine or Belarus, I’m not really sure — that I’m so in love with nineteenth-century, pre-Civil War American history in particular. I can’t really trace my ancestors further back than about a hundred years, and yet the antebellum United States has always seemed to me to be this lost era, sort of like the United States between the two world wars.

I’ve always enjoyed history in general. I think I’ve often used it as a means of mental and emotional escape; when things are rough in my life, I can delve into other eras, and my problems don’t seem quite as significant anymore. But there’s always been something special about American history in particular. I looked forward to my A.P. American history course even before I began taking it, and it turned out to be my favorite class in high school. In college, where I eventually majored in history (after a fruitless year and half of interesting yet ultimately useless pre-med courses) , my favorite course wound up being American Intellectual and Cultural History to 1865. When I was in school in Virginia, I used to love to hop in my car and drive along the back roads of Albemarle County and the Shenandoah Valley; I fondly remember a summer afternoon when I took a spontaneous road trip down to Appomattox Courthouse.

Part of me has always wanted to leave my existence — to slip its surly bonds and escape permanently into another era, a place where I could begin my life over again, with none of the old baggage; a place where I could be a new person, live a new life, have a blank slate, fresh, glorious, optimistic. For that reason, American history has always seemed special to me.

So Now What?

I don’t know how to describe the emotion I’m feeling right now. Am I fed up with my life? Am I upset? Am I feeling despair? Whatever I’m feeling, I feel like I’ve reached some sort of insight into something that’s lain under the surface for the last few years.

I’m in mourning for an old life that no longer exists. When I was in school, I used to fear the future. And now I’m living in that future, and it’s just as bad as I thought it was going to be.

Major things are missing from my life. It feels incomplete. When I was in school, I felt full. I was busy, I was surrounded by friends. Now, things are different. And I feel that this is what I have to look forward to for the rest of my life. There are no more built-in life-changers, such as a graduation from college or some such event.

When I was younger — in college, for instance — I had hope. I had things to look forward to. Maybe things sucked at times, but I envisioned a time when things would be better. Although I feared the day when I would have to go out into the world and work — the day when I would have to choose something, finally, and stick to it — I had this little hope that when that time came, I’d be a different person, a more developed person. Well, now I’m there, and I’m the same person I was then.

I’m not meant for this kind of life. I’m meant to be a student. I’m meant to be constantly learning, filling my brain with new things; living in dorms, where you don’t have to deal with landlords; not having to earn a living. I’m still a kid inside. The adult world scares me. I don’t feel like I can deal with it.

During my first couple of weeks of college, I seriously considered suicide, several times. Not just as a notion, but as a concrete option. I had no hope. I felt like my old life was over; I couldn’t deal with the big change, college, and with becoming what I thought was an adult.

But at least when I was younger, I had the excuse that I was young. Now I’m not. Now I am an adult, and so my feelings that I’m incapable of getting by in the adult world are compounded by feelings of embarrassment and shame that I’m 27 years old and still haven’t got the hang of it.

This world is a mystery to me. I don’t quite understand how it works.

Last Sunday was Mother’s Day, of course, but my dad was overseas on business, so we all decided we’d do something today (Sunday) instead. Yesterday my mom called me, and I asked if we were doing anything. She suggested I talk to my dad and ask if he wanted to do anything, since he’d just got back the night before from a very long flight. I didn’t call. I don’t know why. Maybe I didn’t feel like speaking to him. Maybe the intellectual pursuits I was involved in — lots of reading and a little bit of writing — seemed much more appealing.

This morning my dad called. He said that he’d made reservations for an early dinner, but that my mom didn’t want to go. He explained to me, with a note of sheepishness in his voice, that he’d yelled at my mom for buying clothes while he was away, and that he’d slammed some doors, and that she decided she didn’t want to go out. He then told me, with a hint of criticism and annoyance, that my brother and I shouldn’t have waited until he got back from his trip and leave the decision up to him; that she’s our mother, after all, not his. Then he asked me to call back and talk to my mom myself, because maybe I could convince her to change her mind and go out.

I called back and talked to her, but she really didn’t feel like going out. One reason was that she had too much to do (she’s in a graduate program right now), but the other reason was the argument with him; she was pissed at him, and she really didn’t feel like going out to dinner with him. I totally understood.

Here’s what I don’t understand. My dad makes six figures. My mom was working last year, but now she’s in school, so I guess their joint income is reduced. But still, he makes six figures. I don’t understand why he got mad at my mom for buying clothes. Maybe she bought lots of clothes. I don’t know. But what really gets me incensed is the fact that they just recently leased a state-of-the-art BMW with a navigation system that works via a little computer screen. My mom rarely drives it; he does. Presumably this purchase was his idea. So what the fuck? They’re allowed to make expensive purchases if he wants them, but not if she wants them?

I’m pretty sure that my dad resents the fact my mom took it upon herself to quit a job she disliked and go back to school to get a degree that she wanted. She’s been in this program all year, and she’s worked hard, and she really enjoys it. She’s in a master’s program to become an art connoisseur. I think my dad is jealous.

I’ve always seen my dad as this big emotional oaf who’s never been able to admit that he’s wrong, who’s never been able to work his way through some crucial self-analysis. I just don’t get the man.

I don’t know what this has to do with my huge resentment of adulthood. I just wish that I’d somehow been better prepared for the adult world.

But maybe this is the first step to changing things. Maybe I first have to achieve a certain level of despair at the way the world works, express lots of anger and sadness and frustration at the fact that the rules of the world turn out to be things I can’t ultimately escape. For the longest time I tried to avoid them. I put off the choice of a college major, I put off the choice of deciding what I wanted to do with my time. I sort of worked for a year, and it was very unfulfilling, so I went to law school because I thought that would save me. When law school got old and frustrating, I looked forward to graduating and moving back up to the New York area, because I thought things would be better then.

And yet I find that I’m still unhappy. Is this ever going to change? It makes me lose hope. In fact, it makes me see the futility of hope. Whatever choice I make in life, there is always going to be a downside. I’m kind of depressed. Well, I don’t know if depressed is the right word. But I’m very disillusioned with the way the world has turned out to function.

First college, then a good major, then law school, then New York. I have nowhere else to go, no more fantasies in which to put my hope. What happens next?

All you cynical realists out there, you who all have known the truth for a while now — how do you deal with life?

Reading About History

I spent most of the weekend under the weather, and I still felt that way when I woke up this morning — congested, scratchy-throated, tired, generally miserable. So I called in sick and also postponed an interview with the New Jersey attorney general’s office that was supposed to be this afternoon. I’ve moved the interview to Wednesday.

I wound up having an incredibly pleasant day — essentially, I’ve stayed in bed all day, reading Battle Cry of Freedom. After two days I’m up to page 406 out of 856, which I think is pretty amazing. And it’s renewed my interest in American history. Assorted history books are sitting on my bookcases, some from my college courses and some that I bought at one time or another on impulse; there are a few of them that I’d love to read after I finish this one, including (don’t laugh) The Inner Civil War: Northern Intellectuals and the Crisis of the Union, and David Herbert Donald’s well-received biography, Lincoln, which was published in 1995. I also have this desire to read John Jakes’ North and South trilogy, a three-volume epic of historical fiction that came out, I think, twenty years ago, as well as assorted other books.

That’s pretty much the way my mind works: I get overly enthusiastic about eight million things at once, and I want to read everything now before I lose interest. It’s strange how this great salivating enthusiam for certain things is balanced by a great anxiety that my life is a waste and that time is about to end. Or are they connected? I don’t know.

All I know is that no therapist I’ve met has ever thought that I need Prozac. I guess that’s a good sign.

Graduate School?

Well, I managed to drag myself into work today, even though I’m still sort of feeling like crap. I figure I slept in yesterday, I should at least present a facsimile of being productive today.

Here’s a crazy idea: I wonder if I should go back to school and get a graduate degree in American history. This is one of those ideas that I’ve considered from time to time ever since the middle of college. American history, as I’ve talked about in the last couple of days, is a subject that connects with something deep inside of me. When I’m deeply involved in a good book, particularly a good narrative work of history, I feel fulfilled.

I sometimes feel like I was born in the wrong century. Sometimes I think, oh, to live in eighteenth-century Philadelphia, or nineteenth-century Boston! These vital, vibrant, intellectual communities…a slower pace of life… of course, the whole gay thing might present a problem. I guess in some ways I should feel lucky to be living at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Although who knows — the twenty-second might be better. (On the other hand, you never see anyone gay on “Star Trek.”)

I love the intellectual and cultural community of a university. It’s where I was born to be; it’s where I’ve always felt most at home. I don’t know why this is, but it’s true. And it’s certainly not unprecedented to have two graduate degrees. One of my law professors had a J.D. (a law degree) as well as a Ph.D. in history, for instance.

There are some cons to going back to school, though. I remember that when I started law school, after having worked for a year, it was hard to get re-accustomed to the idea of never having any down time. When you work, you have your work schedule and that’s that — after work, you can put it aside. When you’re a student, you can never really put your work aside; it’s always there, waiting to be done. On the other hand, this was really only a problem during my first year of law school, when I hated all my classes. Maybe it would be okay if I were studying things I enjoyed.

Another con is money. I wouldn’t be working full time, so I’d have to live the financial life of a student again. On the other hand, I’d be able to defer my law school loan payments… but I’d finish grad school with even more debt than I started with. Unless I could get scholarships and grants all the way. I wonder if that’s possible.

Another con is, what would I do afterwards? I guess I could see grad school as an end in itself, but then what? I suppose I could teach. I wonder if I’d want to teach.

Finally, sort of a more abstract issue: in some ways I see going to grad school, and entering a life of academia, as a retreat from society, as an escape, as not being involved with the day-to-day world — the ivory tower syndrome. This seems especially true with the humanities. Even during law school, I felt like I was missing out on some things; everyone else in their 20’s was out working, earning a living, doing something “useful” (well, presumably useful), and I was still in school; they were all producing, and I was just consuming.

There’s always a shortcut, of course. I already have a law degree, and so perhaps I could get a teaching job as a law professor. Perhaps I could even focus on the areas I enjoyed most in law school — constitutional and legal history. That wouldn’t be quite what I want, and I’d still have to be in the milieu of “the law” and law students, with their corporate bent and their barracuda mentality. But maybe I should try that out first.

I wouldn’t want to use grad school as a way to escape. Then again — is it perhaps okay to escape? And would I really be escaping from something, or would I be going into an area that I enjoy? If life is all about finding happiness, then life is really one big escape, after all.

Any thoughts, anyone?

Zzzzz….

I don’t know when you’ll be able to read this, given that the Blog*spot server is down, but I figure I may as well post something anyway. I’ve been suffering from withdrawal. I can’t read East/West or Insipidity or any of those other blogspotting blogs. Dammit, entertain me!

Early in the week I had a pretty bad cold, but it seems to have passed its peak. Yesterday I went to the doctor, because my boss was hit by a pretty bad cold/fever combination a month or so ago, and I’m a hypochondriac. The doctor took a look at me and told me it seems to be just a cold, although he took a throat culture anyway. He prescribed me Claritin to help reduce the congestion.

In other doctor-related news, for the last few weeks I’ve had this weird little thing on my upper lip. I must have cut it or chapped it, and it didn’t heal correctly. So when I was at the doctor’s office yesterday, he took a look at it, and he referred me to a plastic surgeon to have it removed. Yikes! I thought the doctor would send me to a dermatologist, but no. He says that if it’s not removed correctly, it could make my upper lip all puckered or something. And I certainly don’t want that. So tomorrow morning I’m seeing this plastic surgeon. When I talked to the receptionist on the phone, she pondered whether it would require stitches. I hope not. Yeesh. Anyway, I’ve had a fear of plastic surgeons ever since I saw a particular episode of “The X-Files” back in the fourth season, and I’m trying to just relax about it. No biggie.

Meanwhile, yesterday afternoon I had an interview at the New Jersey attorney general’s office. They have offices in Newark and Trenton, and I stated that I would want to be placed in the Newark office, because I live so close to Newark and so far from Trenton. I was interviewing for the position of Deputy Attorney General; that’s really less impressive than it sounds — there are about 500 deputies. Basically, I’d be an attorney who represents the state, and I’d work in a particular division. Every person who has had my current clerkship and who has interviewed with them has been hired. The only problem is that you have to make a three-year commitment. I think that’s a little unreasonable. If you leave before your three years are up, your record states that you have resigned “not in good standing.” I suppose that’s easily explainable to another potential employer, but it still doesn’t sound good.

I was also dismayed to learn yesterday that their office has recently instituted a residency requirement. If you work for them, you must live in New Jersey. This must be a new thing, because I was under the impression that you could live anywhere. My heart sank as the interviewer told me this, but I just kept on nodding, and when he asked if any of the conditions would be problematic, I said, “Not at all.” But I’ll have to think about this.

I was riding the train back home from the interview, thinking all of this over, and I decided I have two choices. I can try to find a job in New York City, or at least a job that would allow me to live there; or I could take this job — assuming I get it — and stay in Jersey City.

Given everything I’ve written here about my strong passionate desire to live in Manhattan, it might seem strange for me to say that I’ve been thinking it might not be so bad to stay in Jersey City. When it comes down to it, my two biggest problems with my current living situation are my high rent and my noisy block. I could solve those two problems merely by looking for a different apartment in the same general area. My current street is a main thoroughfare, and my building — which has three apartments — is the only non-Hispanic one on the block. Everyone else seems to have this eternal block party. These large groups of people just hang out on the street, blasting Puerto Rican or Dominican music from their parked cars. Fortunately, my bedroom is in the back of the apartment, but it’s still annoying. Whenever I’m walking to and from my apartment I feel kind of nervous. But if you go just two blocks south, you’re on a quieter, one-way street of brownstones.

I’d still have some drawbacks — whenever I come home from Manhattan late on a Friday or Saturday night, the PATH train is packed with all these noisy drunk people. I call it “the paddy wagon.” (Although, if I go down to the World Trade Center and take the PATH home from there, it’s much quieter and less crowded.) I also have this inferiority complex about where I live. I tend to feel that everyone I know in Manhattan looks down on me because I live in Jersey City, or pities me, neither of which feels so great. I also feel like no Manhattanite would want to date someone who lives in Jersey City. But I could be wrong.

There are upsides. Jersey City is still really close to Manhattan, for one thing. For another, in Jersey City I could probably get a better and quieter place than in Manhattan for the same money. I’m worried that any place I looked at in Manhattan that I could afford would be noisy and shabby. Perhaps I should put off living in Manhattan until I’m making around 50 or 60K.

I could continue to look for a different job that would pay more and allow me to live in Manhattan, but a) I usually seem to choose the path of least resistance, and b) making more money usually means a job is less appealing, right?

As for that whole grad school thing — I don’t think it’s something I want to do after all. I wrote that entry on Tuesday morning, and by Tuesday afternoon I’d decided it was probably overkill. Grad school would kill my interest in history. And I don’t particularly want to teach, so there’s no point in making such a big sacrifice. I can read all the history I want — and possibly even write books — without going through grad school.

Ugh

Well, I just came into work after visiting the surgeon. The procedure took maybe five minutes, but my upper lip is still numb from the anesthesia. He told me the anesthesia would wear off after 30-45 minutes, but so far it’s been about 80 minutes and it’s still numb. Of course, I’m mister paranoid hypochondriac, so I have this fear that the anesthesia killed the nerves in my lip or something. I hope that’s not true. I hate this feeling, and I’m in a slight manic panic right now because I want to feel my right upper lip again.

Anyway, when he was done, I looked in the mirror and the lip was a little puffy. I reminded myself of Bubba from “Forrest Gump.” (“Shrimp stew, shrimp soup, shrimp salad…”) I have a couple of small stitches there, too, which apparently will dissolve on their own in a few days. Yay, lippy fun. It looks a little nasty now, so I guess I won’t be kissing anyone for a few days. Which sucks, because I *love* to kiss…

On top of that, I barely slept last night. I went to bed around 10:45, at night and for some reason I woke up at 1:45 in the morning. I couldn’t fall asleep again until about 6:45. I don’t know if I was nervous or if it was some side effect of the Claritin I’ve been taking to reduce my congestion.

Anyway, I’m trying not be so paranoid about my lip, but it’s really making me nervous.

I’ll try to relax now.

Update: The anesthetic finally wore off about 45 minutes ago. Now my lip just hurts. But at least I can feel it! Yay.

And we’re back!

Oh, the Irony

Wow, I’m out of blogging practice. This past week was really weird — I couldn’t blog, I had a bad cold, I had a job interview, I got stitches in my lip. I feel a little disoriented, and I haven’t written a really good, deep, thoughtful blog entry in a while. Plus, Blogvoices isn’t working, so nobody can comment on my blog. But (hint hint) you can still send me e-mail!

Friday night I stayed at home, because my lip was hurting and I just felt like lazing around. And I had barely slept the night before, so I was tired, too. It was a night to stay in and veg out.

Saturday

Yesterday I wasn’t very social either. I don’t know why. In the early afternoon I started to get all panicky, because all the nerve endings in my body felt dulled and I was feeling a little light-headed. I sort of felt like all my body parts were disconnected from each other. Have you ever felt like that? It was weird. I could feel things, but I couldn’t really feel the pleasurable nuances of touch — the tickle of a feather against my palm would have done nothing to me. It sort of felt like something was wrong with my brain. I wonder if it had to do with the Claritin-D that I was taking as a decongestant. So I stopped taking it. Also, my lip was still hurting a little bit.

I couldn’t just sit around — I knew I had to get out of my apartment. So I went into the city and walked over to the Strand, where I browsed for almost two hours, especially in the American history section. The store has a terrific collection of second-hand history books in the basement. You can get some great deals there. But I didn’t buy anything. And from there I walked over to Barnes & Noble in Union Square and basically did the same thing.

At that point it was after 9:00, so I decided to walk over to Wonderbar. When I got there, around 9:45, it was practically empty. So I left and went over to Phoenix and had just a Coke for some reason. I sat there with my drink and flipped through a pamphlet for the New York Gay Film Festival, and then I left and went back to Wonderbar. It still wasn’t too crowded, but I decided I’d stay anyway. I got another Coke and found a seat, and after 11:00 the place finally started to fill up. There was this group of friends. One of them was a guy with a moppish Beatles haircut, horn-rimmed glasses, a wool sportscoat, and a skateboard. He put the skateboard on the ledge behind me, and at one point he started dancing strangely to the music. He was doing these really weird things with his legs and pelvis, and his friends were laughing their heads off. He was doing this on purpose, sort of as a joke, I guess. I think he was being ironic. Is that the correct word for the situation? I don’t think I’ve ever really gotten a hang of what should be called ironic and what shouldn’t. I do know that the things mentioned in Alanis Morisette’s song “Ironic” really aren’t ironic at all — they’re just great misfortunes — which actually makes “Ironic” pretty ironic.

Anyway, I wound up having a couple of beers. I didn’t really talk to many people, which was fine, because I wasn’t feeling very social. I was kind of tired and my lip was still bothering me. I wound up leaving the bar at about 12:15 and coming home.

Today

This afternoon I went on a little excursion with a group from 20something, a gay social organization in the city for people in their 20’s that I’ve mentioned before. We went up to The Cloisters, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted to medieval European art. It’s in Fort Tryon Park, which is all the way up at 200th Street and Broadway. You take the A Train to get there, just like Duke Ellington did, but a lot farther north than Harlem; I’d never been that far north in Manhattan, at least not that I can remember. It was like another world.

There were only about ten of us, which was a great number. I’d met only one of them before, so I got to have some good conversations with some intelligent gay guys who obviously were interested enough in art and culture to make the trip up there. It turned out that one of them lives just a few blocks away from me in Jersey City, so afterwards we rode the PATH back to Jersey City together. He was a nice guy — not a dating prospect, but someone new to know, you know?

And two or three of these guys are going to the Limelight tonight. The Limelight is a club that’s located in an old gothic church. (Does that count as ironic? Would it be ironic if the congregation used to burn gay people at the stake? Not that they did. I’m just trying to grasp the concept here.) Sunday night is Limelight’s gay night, and I’ve never been there, so I figure why not. I thought that I didn’t quite fit the mold — me not being a big smooth beefy muscular guy — but these guys don’t really fit it either, which makes me feel better. It’ll cost fifteen bucks, not including drinks, but I gotta live a little, right? One of them told me to give him a call if I’m going to go, so I think I will. I love three-day weekends.

As for now, I need a nap.

Limelight

It’s 4:30 in the morning as I begin to write this. I just got back from the Limelight. I have a chatroom open, I’m eating some leftover rice because I’m starving, and I’m sitting here at my laptop. (That last part must have been pretty obvious.)

Limelight was fun. I went with Jay, one of the guys I’d met on the Cloisters excursion. Jay reminds me of a very straight law school roommate of mine, which is kind of weird. (Oh, and Jay isn’t his real name. You know, it gets harder and harder to think of aliases for people whom I mention here…)

Limelight is in an old church on the corner of 6th Avenue and 20th Street. We were waiting on the line, which was wrapped around the corner, and it started to drizzle. Jay had an umbrella, and after it had been open a while, two guys behind us huddled underneath it with us. They were a couple. They’d been out on Fire Island for the weekend but had gotten tired of it and had decided to spend the rest of their time in Manhattan. They were very nice guys, and after we’d all got inside, we were on line at the counter to pay, and the louder of the two of them spontaneously paid for Jay’s admission. Not mine, but Jay’s. Me, I had to pay the twenty-five bucks, god dammit. Twenty-five bucks! Jay sort of made up for it by buying me a beer, which was nice of him. That was the only drink I had over the course of the night.

The place was packed, and it seemed like 55 percent of the guys were shirtless and smooth. I spent some of the time on the dance floor, which was the church sanctuary minus the pews, and some of the time on one of the upper balconies, looking down on this writhing organic life form, each buff body one of its molecules; a smoky fog floating above the crowd, various laser lights playing off of different people. In between the flashes of a strobe light I could see guys making out on the floor.

Dancing in a sweaty crowd and watching two muscled shirtless guys kissing and feeling up each other’s bodies, right in front of you, is enough to drive you mad.

Before I’d left my apartment, after getting out of the shower, I was looking at my upper body in the mirror. I’m lucky to have a slim, nicely proportioned body without ever going to the gym (which means that if I did go to the gym, maybe I’d see some good results). The only drawback, as far as I’m concerned, is that I’m too hairy. Some people like that; I don’t mind it. But it means that at a dance club, I can’t take off my shirt, because no guy with a hairy chest ever takes off his shirt at such a place. It’s just another sign of the feminization of American male culture. Smooth bodies just look cleaner, more antiseptic.

Anyway, I’m wondering if maybe I’ll get my upper body waxed. It’s an idea. It would be interesting to see what it feels like, and it would be nice to be able to go to a club and take off my shirt and not feel self-conscious about my body.

Anyway… good night.

Nothing New

My parents invited me over for dinner tonight. (I now feel like an adult — my parents invited me over to the house where I grew up.) Beforehand, I spent the afternoon in the city. I wasn’t really sure where I was going to go, but I went to the West Village and walked around for a while, and then I took the train up to the Upper West Side. I wound up walking west along 72nd Street, all the way to Riverside Park, which is a park along the Hudson River. I walked all the way down to the boardwalk and looked at New Jersey on the other side of the river. I looked north, saw the George Washington Bridge in the distance, and beyond that I could see the river winding its way north, north, all the way to upstate New York. I always get dreamy-eyed when I think of the New York hinterlands, 200 years ago, young robust Americans sailing northward, past town after town after town, all the way up to New England. And before that, the forested land was filled with Indians… I wish I could have been here back when all the land was undiscovered, waiting to be explored.

I walked past people who were fishing. I walked past various couples, gay and straight, sitting on benches and reading. I saw two elderly Jewish women leaning against a rail, wearing sunglasses and having some sort of conversation, smiles on their faces in the sun. This all got me very philosophical. I thought to myself that it’s wholly possible that my life could still be enjoyable in 30 or even 40 years. Maybe time won’t run out. Maybe I should delay some gratification for later. Maybe I should get a higher-paying job now, even if it means I’ll have longer hours, because then I’ll be able to live in Manhattan and have more money to spend. I can be “normal.” Though I know I’ve had this conversation before, and I know that normal isn’t really normal.

I left the park and walked around the Upper West Side for a while. I wound up in Central Park, where I saw more couples, and again I started to think about the future. I started to think about all the good things that lie ahead. All these things I look forward to experiencing. The rush of falling in love. The stability of having a steady salary. Having a summer place where my boyfriend and I can go and stock up our nice kitchen and spend money on things we like. All in the future. It’s all possible.

Later on, dinner at my parents house. My dad spent much of the day cooking. Delicious grilled chicken. It was quite a sight, though — the two little chickens were standing upright on the grill, each propped up on a beer can. And by “propped up” I mean that there were two beer cans standing on the grill, and each can was stuck up a chicken’s butt, keeping the chicken standing upright. When the chickens were ready to eat, and my dad took out the beer cans, my brother said something like, “I’d hate to be those chickens.” I smiled to myself and said nothing.

Afterward, my brother drove me home. We were talking about salaries, and it turns out that my brother’s twice-monthly paycheck, after taxes, is only 30 bucks less than mine, and I make $6,000 a year more than he does. And he has no loans and he’s currently living with my parents.

What the heck am I doing? I don’t know. It seems like it should be so simple for me to get a job with a law firm if that’s what I want. I don’t see why I can’t just make myself bite the bullet, work hard for a few years and then have a good amount of money saved up, or at least have my loans paid off, if that’s what I want. I don’t know why such things seem to be so complicated for me. I don’t know why I keep saying “I wish I were doing this” or “I wish I were doing that” and then I don’t take the steps necessary to get there. Sometimes it’s because deep down I don’t want to do it. But sometimes it’s just because deep down I’m scared. If I didn’t have this “time sickness” — if I could somehow feel secure in the fact that there will be time to do other things in the future — then I would be able to delay some gratification. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

This, of course, is not a new topic for my blog. Ad nauseum, right?

Were he still alive, John F. Kennedy would turn 84 years old today. Makes you realize two things — how recent in time his assassination was, and how young he was when he was killed. If he were still alive he’d be younger than both Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford. R.I.P. JFK.

Cruised

This morning I had a follow-up appointment with the surgeon so he could make sure my lip was healing okay. Everything’s fine, and the stitches are gone. Hooray!

To get to the doctor’s office in Hoboken, I had to take the PATH train in the direction opposite my usual trip to work. After the appointment, I had to take the train all the way to my office in Newark, passing by the stop where I live. This required me to take three separate trains, which pretty much defies logic, but it’s true. (This map of the PATH routes may help: I live at the Grove Street station, and I work in Newark, and the doctor’s office was in Hoboken.)

It was about 10:00 in the morning. I got off the first train and waited for the second one. When it arrived, I walked into the nearly empty car and saw a guy sitting at the end of the middle section of seats. From the corner of my eye he seemed cute, so I decided to sit directly across from him. There was a middle-aged couple sitting at one end of the car and there was a woman sitting at the other end of the row from me, but that was it. The guy looked at me as I sat down. I glanced up from my copy of the New Yorker, and he was still looking at me. His blue eyes were framed in a pair of steel-rimmed glasses. He had short black hair. Gray t-shirt and a pair of dark blue nylon athletic pants. Nice forearms. And he had a suitcase. He must have been on his way back from the airport after a long weekend trip.

I looked back down at my magazine and tried to read. Then I noticed that the guy’s hand was resting on his crotch. Not on his thigh, not near his crotch, but on his crotch. I find dark blue nylon athletic pants an incredible turn-on to begin with, but this drove me nuts. I counted for a few seconds, then I glanced up again, and he was still looking at me. I looked back down at my magazine and pretended to read. I was too nervous to sustain the eye contact. The eyes are a direct window into your soul; they hide nothing; staring into someone’s eyes leaves you completely defenseless. But as I was looking down at my magazine, my lips turned up into a little smile, which he must have seen.

The train stopped at Grove Street, where I live, but I was continuing on to work. He was getting off, though, and I thought: I’m already late for work — what’s another hour? Then I thought, well, this is weird, he’s got a suitcase, and he’s going home to his apartment after several days away, he probably has to check his mail and listen to his answering machine and feed the cat, and I really should get to work, and anyway, maybe he was only flirting and just wants to get home, and if I get off the train he might think I’m stalking him.

But after he got off the train, and the doors closed, and the train began to pull away, he turned to look at me, and he smiled shyly.

Dammit. I should have at least got off the train and waited ten minutes for the next one. In fact, I could have waited there for the third train of my trip, instead of waiting for it at the next stop. Should have at least given him my number. But I was nervous and excited and I couldn’t think that fast. I should have been more impulsive.

Schematic

I’m having one of those days. I’m working on this particular case and I just can’t focus on it. It has to do with solid waste disposal facilities and something called “host community benefits” and it’s actually a consolidation of four separate cases and there are reams of paper. The case is a greasy pig and it keeps slipping out of my concentration. I read one paragraph and the words mean nothing to me, and I wind up staring off into space.

What’s bothering me? I’m not exactly sure. It’s something existential. Right now my life feels like a greater-than sign (<) -- going off into the future aimlessly, no narrative lines converging, no goals, just drifting off into endless entropy. I feel like I have no center. But things don't fall apart as much as they just sit there loosely in an emulsion, nothing really connecting to anything else. I think I need to get away. Well, next weekend I’m doing just that; I’m going to spend that weekend in West Virginia with a close group of my friends from college. We’re renting a cottage or something at a resort. I think I’m going to rent a car, take off work early that Friday, and drive south and west. I can’t wait to get out of here for a while. Existential. My existence. That topic is kind of too big. It reminds me of something from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Arthur Dent can’t fathom the idea that the Earth has just been blown up, so instead he tries to wrap his brain around the concept by thinking smaller, telling himself, “There is no more McDonald’s. There is no longer such thing as a McDonald’s hamburger.” Or something like that.

I first wanted to go into therapy when I was in high school. I was fascinated by my inner workings. A mean person might call this self-absorption, but maybe that’s what it was; but it wasn’t narcissism, it was self-criticism. Basically, I wondered why I was so often anxious or unhappy. I wanted to open myself up and look at a diagram of myself, some sort of schematic drawing or blueprint, and pore over it with a psychiatrist-slash-architect who could tell me where things had gone wrong, and how I could be fixed — a few corroded pipes up here, a weak foundation down there, no problem, we’ll hire a crew and take care of it, you’ll be as good as new.

One of my high school English teachers, Charlie Miller, would give a particular assignment to his classes called an I-Search paper. It was essentially a free-form paper, and it could be of any length; you were basically supposed to write about your life, ask questions of yourself, produce a snapshot of Who You Are at that particular point in time. Presumably it could be used as a time capsule in future years, when you could go back to it and see how you’d changed. But he didn’t assign an I-Search paper to the class I had with him. That class was called “Visions of the Tragic Hero,” and we read The Brothers Karamazov and Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Oedipus Rex, but we didn’t get to do an I-Search paper. I regretted that, because I’d really wanted to do one. I do have a journal that contains lots of detailed entries from my high school years, but it’s not quite the same. I wanted to be able to sum up my life in some sort of grand diagnostic document.

I had a fascinating experience a few years ago. After college, I worked for a few months in the UVA Medical Records Department. One day I looked up the ID number for my own medical records, went back into the rows and rows of shelves, and took out my file. Inside the manila folder — along with one-page records of various visits to Student Health for the flu or a bad cold or whatnot — were a couple of pages of notes taken by a UVA psychiatrist from a meeting with me during my first couple of weeks of college. I think she was a psychiatrist, anyway. When I began college I was incredibly homesick and upset and hopeless and I couldn’t see myself continuing to live, so I ran through the gamut of meetings: my RA, my dean, and then my senior RA, who accompanied me to the emergency room of the UVA hospital one evening so I could meet with the aforementioned psychiatrist. After our meeting she referred me to a doctor in the mental health section of the UVA Student Health Department, and he in turn referred me to a therapist, because I asked him to.

Anyway, four years later, I stood there in the UVA Medical Records Department between a couple of shelves and looked over the psychiatrist’s notes from that long-ago evening meeting at the hospital. Reading through her scrawlings was a strange experience. What did another person think of me? How did I come across to her? What words had she chosen to describe me and my problems? I searched her notes for Answers, hoping I might find a hint of that grand schematic diagram I’d longed so much to see. It was all in vain. It was indeed interesting to read, but I didn’t find the answers I was looking for.

That’s all I want sometimes. The solution manual. They made one for the Rubik’s Cube, and that’s a pretty hard puzzle. I don’t see why they can’t make one for me too. I’m just as tough a nut to crack.

This left me with a beautiful ache and a reminder of what it feels like to long for someone so intensely that it hurts. (You may want to read this earlier entry first.)

You Can Talk Again

My comments are functioning again! And there’s even a counter! How? I easily installed Reblogger, which I found on a Blogger discussion board. I don’t know how well this will work, but it should do until BlogVoices is back up. Whenever the heck that happens.

Wax On, Wax Off

Okay, you and you and you and you. So I guess there are plenty of guys out there who don’t mind hairy chests after all. So, no, I don’t think I’m going to get my upper body waxed. I guess I really don’t mind my hairy chest. But I’m still curious to see if it would look more defined were it smooth.

We homosexuals evaluate our own bodies differently than heterosexuals do. After all, when a gay man looks in the mirror, he’s looking at a potential object of his own desire; if you know what you want in a guy, then you know what you want in yourself, right? Men know men’s bodies. That’s why guys give better blowjobs.

From whence this aversion to body hair? I’d like to blame Hollywood and Calvin Klein and Bruce Weber and so on. But would they not have perpetuated the smooth body image if smooth bodies weren’t inherently better-looking to begin with? Or have we just been inculcated with that belief? Have we just been led to believe that everyone wants a smooth man? Have we leafed through so many catalogs and seen so many movies or gone to so many clubs where we’ve seen smooth shirtless guys dancing together and kissing each other that we think that that’s what everyone wants? Do we think that if you don’t fit that ideal, then nobody will want you?

What about goatees? Nobody in an Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue ever has a goatee. Some of the guys in the boy bands have goatees, but they’re the “dangerous” ones. We want the thirteen-year-old girls of America to swoon and scream over the baby-faced and wholesome Lance Bass and and Nick Carter; if they start dreaming about Howie D or Joey Fatone, well then, moms and dads of America, you’d better lock up your daughters, because the next thing you know they’ll be dropping out of school and shooting up with heroin. American pop culture today hates anything edgy. If it’s not straightforward and unironic and squeaky clean, if it has any subtle shades of meaning or any hidden mysterious depths, we don’t want it. Go back to Europe.

Hairless equals youth. We are obsessed with youth. When I was 25, I dated an 18 year old. I dug younger guys, and because I did, I thought everyone else dug only younger guys too. I thought nobody younger than me would want me. And when you go into chat rooms and you see some guy whose profile says he’s “looking for dudes 25 and under,” that reinforces the stigma. I still dig younger guys. But now I also dig guys who are a little older than me, and I didn’t used to, so for me that’s progress.

We reminisce about our youth and we fear the future. We want no hidden depths, we want everything to be out there in the open. We want to be able to see all the rocky outcroppings and slopes and depressions and curves. Plain. Shiny. Squeaky clean. The past is known; the future is a fog, a mystery, unknowable.

The next time I go to a club — if I go — all the shirtless guys will be smooth. But that’s okay. Because who the hell cares what they think? Screw ’em. By this point I’ve had enough people tell me that they like hairy chests or that they like my body for me to realize that it’s okay.

Of course, look what I just wrote: that I’ve realized my body is okay because other people have told me it is.

Well, okay. And you know what? Somebody likes your body, too. If you’ve got acne, if you’ve got a little too much hair, if you’ve got a little paunch, that’s okay. And anyway, if someone likes you, they like you, and it won’t matter if you don’t meet the impossible Queerasfolkian standards of the modern gay world.

Remember the wise words of Mr. Rogers.

High School Reunion

This weekend is my ten-year high school reunion. I’ve been psyched about it for the last two weeks. Until recently, everything I knew about high school reunions came from TV sitcoms. But this is for real!

I went to high school in Tokyo, Japan, but it was an American school, and when we voted on the reunion location, New York City won. Obviously that makes it easy for me to attend. My graduating class was about 100 people, and I think about 25 are showing up; it’s going to be a pretty informal, weekend-long affair. Friday evening we’re meeting up at a bar; Saturday afternoon is a picnic in Central Park; Saturday night is the big dinner, and then Sunday morning are the goodbyes.

I’m excited about it, and at the same time I’m feeling very self-conscious about how I come across. I’m not worried so much as just really curious to see what people will think of me.

When I was in high school my big activity was theater. I was always acting in a show. My social crowd was a strange combination of theater people and computer geeks. Junior year was the highlight — there were probably about 20 of us that ate lunch and hung out together, an equal number of guys and girls, some of whom were dating, and it was just so much fun. But a couple of the “cool” people referred to us as the “nerd herd.” So what did we do? A couple of us made up blue t-shirts that said “ASIJ Nerd Herd,” listing all of our names, in two columns, one in English and the other in Japanese. And I actually wore this thing sometimes. Jeez, what a dork.

Things got worse at the beginning of senior year. Most of the females and romantic couples in our group had graduated, so we were mostly left with a bunch of computer geeks and just a few random theater folks. The computer people included two guys who ran around all day in gray trenchcoats. (This was pre-Columbine, of course.)

To top it off, after two years of being cast in every show, including some major parts, in the fall of my senior year my friend Rob and I didn’t get cast in the fall play. So I couldn’t even balance my geeky social circle by interacting with those theater people who happened to be outside that circle. The fall of my senior year really sucked ass. I wasn’t that much of a computer geek, but these people were my friends, so I had to hang out with them. I just wasn’t as enthusiastic about D&D as they were.

Secretly I always wanted to hang out with the cool people. The “cool people” were actually a combination of intelligent sports players and fashionable smart people — sort of similar to the “preppy” group you always see in those 1980’s high school movies. They were all pretty social and had fashion sense. Being a smart person, I could connect with some of them; we knew each other and we seemed to like each other, and had in common both intelligence and a strong work ethic. We could talk about the latest calculus test, but then we’d go back to our own social groups. I never actually socialized with them. And yet paradoxically, some of my geeky friends were more comfortable talking with them than I was.

I really wanted the cool people to notice me and to like me. I wasn’t comfortable hanging out with the geeky people, and I didn’t want the cool people to think I was comfortable with it, so I tried to cast myself as this independent-minded eclectic guy who wasn’t beholden to any particular social group. But that didn’t work too well, because I still had more in common with the geeky people and I could never pass as one of the cool types. Yet at the same time, I didn’t fully enjoy hanging out with the geeky people. I worried that they were holding me back. I didn’t want to be typecast. I was so conscious of how I appeared to others.

I was voted Most Intellectual of my high school graduating class. I was president of the Thespian Society and I was the head of the yearbook’s writing staff. And I had my geeky social crowd. Did people typecast me? I don’t know. I don’t really know what people thought of me back then.

Anyway, here I am in June 2001. Today I have a goatee and a sharp pair of glasses and a little bit better fashion sense than I used to. And I’m an uncloseted gay man. When I graduated, in June 1991, I hadn’t told a single person about my sexual attraction to guys or about my numerous male crushes and obsessions. Not a single person. After I came out a few years ago, I decided to out myself in the annual class newsletter. Each year you send in a little blurb about yourself, and two years ago I finally decided it was time to say something.

I may still be intellectual, but I don’t really feel like a success (which is okay, because I didn’t get voted Most Likely to Succeed). I’m really really curious to see what people will think of me. I’m hoping that the gayness and the goatee will make me seem more interesting than I used to feel. I still have these lingering social insecurities from high school. I still want the cool people to like me. This weekend I want to be able to socialize with them as equals. I want people to see me as relaxed. I want people to see me holding a bottle of beer. And I’m curious to see if Mr. Attractive Jockboy, who now works in Manhattan as an investment banker or something, will notice me, not that it’s likely and not that it matters.

There will be plenty of people there, of course, and everyone’s going to be curious about everyone else. It’s not like I’m going to be special. Also, as my dad once said to me, “People don’t care about you as much as you think they do.” I think he meant that in a good way. People will probably be wondering too much about how they’re coming across themselves to notice all the subtle changes in my personality and demeanor over the past ten years.

If there are any. I hope there are. Yet at the same time, I see that these fears and insecurities and desires and this deep consciousness of how I’m being perceived — these things I had back in high school — seem to be coming back in full force as the weekend approaches. And yet I’m probably just chasing ghosts.