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?

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.

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.