I can’t believe how ignorant men can be. I can’t believe how much insult they’ll tolerate just for the sake of getting their rocks off. I can’t believe what you can say to them and how you can walk away from their hard-ons, and they’ll still come back looking for more. I can’t believe you can tell them, “Look, I’m not in the mood,” but then they’ll try to bump and grind against you anyway. When they rub up against you with their boners, I can’t believe you can ask them, “Just what do you expect me to do with that?” I can’t believe they don’t realize you’re not listening to their answer. I can’t believe you can slap their crotches and spit, “Christ, almighty – are you hard again?!?”
I can’t believe you can take a slug of beer, or Vodka Tonic, or Sex on the Beach, or anything liquid – and spit it into their half-open mouths as they come to kiss you. I can’t believe they don’t understand that spitting into their mouths means you’re not into whatever they’re up to. I can’t believe how men can take anything – literally anything you do – and somehow find a way to get turned on by it.
“Whattya doin’?,” one guy asks me when he calls.
“I’m painting my bathroom,” I say, “and I’m covered in latex splotches.”
“Ohhhhhhhh,” he says, “Sounds hot.”
Hot. Everything’s hot to them. I can’t believe how they can find a way to make everything hot. Everything.
“Ohhhhhhhh,” one guy says to me as I’m giving him the finger and walking into the bathroom, “you’re so hot.” I can’t believe he thinks my giving him the finger while I’m about to take a piss is hot. When I come out, he’s fully hard. He’s jerking off. He says, “You’re so hot.”
“No I’m not,” I say, “I’m an asshole.” And I go to change the music, or to make another drink, or to cut another line, or something…
“No,” he says, “you’re hot.” I’m not even looking at him.
He keeps jerking off. I keep looking the other way. Finally I ask, “You close yet?” (I need to know ‘cuz I need to figure out when I’m gonna walk the dog.)
He asks, “You gonna help me?”
“Not likely,” I tell him. And I change the music, or make another drink, or cut another line, or something… I can’t believe a guy is sitting on my couch and jerking off when I’m not even remotely concerned.
But he’s a man, and I can’t believe how ignorant men can be. He keeps jerkin’ it. He keeps fondling his balls. And even though I’d rather he didn’t, he keeps talking…
“You’re so hot.”
“Can’t you find something else to say?”
“Whattya doin’?”
“I’m (changing the music, making another drink, cutting another line, or something…)”
“You want me to come?”
“I want you to go.”
“You’re so hot.”
“I’m not hot. I’m an asshole.”
“You’re a hot asshole.”
“If it’s that important to you…”
“I’m gonna come…”
“It’s about time…”
“I’m gonna come…”
“You already said that.”
“Christ, you’re hot.”
“Yeah, I’m hot. A hot asshole. You gonna come?”
“I’m gonna come…”
“Thank the Lord.”
“I’m gonna come…”
I can’t believe how many times guys will say the same fucking thing, just because they’re about to come.
“Well hurry up,” I tell him, “and don’t make a mess.” I can’t believe how much of a mess some of these guys can make…
“Uhhhhhhh…..”
It’s always the same thing. It’s always, “Uhhhhhhh…” I can’t believe how boring guys are when they come. It’s like, they’re trying to fill empty space.
And then they shut up. Then, they leave. They wipe off, get up, pull up their pants – and leave. They always leave.
That, I believe.
Friday, May 06, 2005
Friday, April 29, 2005
I Ain't Gonna Beat Myself Up
It would be easy to scold myself for the way I’ve behaved over the past five months. I’m not gonna deny it: I’ve done nothing but party. Oh, sure, I’ve managed to check a couple of items off the home improvement list. But aside from that, my life since I started collecting Unemployment Insurance last December has been all about sleeping ‘til noon; figuring out where to go on any given night; priming myself with Martinis and pot; meeting cute boys who are way younger than I ever thought I’d be interested in; taking them home; and scoring coke to snort with them before we fuck.
It would be easy to view this binge of hedonism as a waste of time, but I’m not gonna go there. For long, I mean. Or more precisely, that’s not how I’m gonna let it stand on my permanent record.
Sure, I beat myself up every day, now that the golden goose is about to hit menopause and stop laying – but at the end of the day, I’m not having it. I’m not going to look at my first opportunity to live in New York without having to report to a demeaning position as some bourgeois snob’s assistant as a waste of time. In fact, the more I chastise myself, the more I realize how important this whole period has been.
Woulda, coulda, shoulda – how productive is that game in the long run? Ultimately it’s just another form of procrastination. The more I beat myself up for procrastinating, the more I’m procrastinating.
All I know is this: When I finally got a chance to sit in the apartment I’d been working on since February of ‘04, really getting a chance to look at the environment I’d created for myself, I became overwhelmed with how much I’d gone through just to get to that point. And I collapsed. I collapsed into someone who slept until noon and wondered what kind of things he should do now that he finally had the time to think about who he wanted to be now that he was in New York and didn’t have a day job.
Despite the neighborhood; despite the smelly chicken store next door; despite the crackhead in the hall and the dealers on the street corner, I decided I liked my new digs. This was an important revelation, because if I had decided I didn’t like the new digs – if I suddenly started to view them as some sort of desperate measure or mistake – then I could’ve triggered a major depression from which I might never have emerged. Luckily, I liked what I saw, in spite of the obvious flaws, and so I was able to turn my thoughts inward instead of projecting them onto my environment.
Turning my thoughts inward – THAT’s what started a low-grade depression, leading to prolonged partying. I thought I had it all planned. I thought I’d give myself December and January to just “check out” and party. But the party kept going… through February, through March, and on into April. But I have to say, here at the end of April, the partying has tapered down and I’m ready to face whatever’s next.
D’ya hear that, universe?!? I’m not afraid of having to get up at 6:00am again, if that’s what it takes. Of course I’d rather not have to do that, but on the other hand – I’m not so keen on continuing to sleep until noon. And until I’ve wrangled the appropriate connections in NY; until I’ve determined an exact plan of action; and most importantly, until I’ve secured the financial means to do whatever I want – well then, there’s nothing better for me to do than go land another JOB.
It doesn’t have to last long. I don’t have to take it seriously. But I’ve only just begun to establish my NY identity. I have a lot of work to do just to get to the point where I’m launching anything. In the meantime, I need to earn cash flow; I need to wrap up the home improvements; I need to take a writing workshop or two; and I need to apply for grad school.
I have a plan. Just because I didn’t set the world on fire in December doesn’t mean I’m going to fall on my face in May.
I’ve always been the sort of bird who foresees, vaguely, where he’ll be within any given amount of time. There’s always a +/- ratio, to be sure, but my inner voice is pretty dead-on. Truth be told, I knew all the way back in December that I wouldn’t emerge from this break into the long-term “place” I’d like to eventually inhabit here in New York. Instead, I foresaw it as exactly what it has turned out to be – a break, meaning an opportunity to take stock and get back into the headspace I inhabited way back in L.A., before I had to make this sudden move. It would be ridiculous to be hard on myself for not having taken over New York simply because I had six months of bare-bones checks in the mail to live off. Sure, other people might have played it differently, but guess what? At least half of that probable set would’ve partied even more, or watched even more TV, or even succumbed to total drug addiction. There’s no sense comparing myself to others, now is there? Especially if those others are only probabilities…
I played it the way I played it. May hindsight provide me with eventual 20/20.
It would be easy to view this binge of hedonism as a waste of time, but I’m not gonna go there. For long, I mean. Or more precisely, that’s not how I’m gonna let it stand on my permanent record.
Sure, I beat myself up every day, now that the golden goose is about to hit menopause and stop laying – but at the end of the day, I’m not having it. I’m not going to look at my first opportunity to live in New York without having to report to a demeaning position as some bourgeois snob’s assistant as a waste of time. In fact, the more I chastise myself, the more I realize how important this whole period has been.
Woulda, coulda, shoulda – how productive is that game in the long run? Ultimately it’s just another form of procrastination. The more I beat myself up for procrastinating, the more I’m procrastinating.
All I know is this: When I finally got a chance to sit in the apartment I’d been working on since February of ‘04, really getting a chance to look at the environment I’d created for myself, I became overwhelmed with how much I’d gone through just to get to that point. And I collapsed. I collapsed into someone who slept until noon and wondered what kind of things he should do now that he finally had the time to think about who he wanted to be now that he was in New York and didn’t have a day job.
Despite the neighborhood; despite the smelly chicken store next door; despite the crackhead in the hall and the dealers on the street corner, I decided I liked my new digs. This was an important revelation, because if I had decided I didn’t like the new digs – if I suddenly started to view them as some sort of desperate measure or mistake – then I could’ve triggered a major depression from which I might never have emerged. Luckily, I liked what I saw, in spite of the obvious flaws, and so I was able to turn my thoughts inward instead of projecting them onto my environment.
Turning my thoughts inward – THAT’s what started a low-grade depression, leading to prolonged partying. I thought I had it all planned. I thought I’d give myself December and January to just “check out” and party. But the party kept going… through February, through March, and on into April. But I have to say, here at the end of April, the partying has tapered down and I’m ready to face whatever’s next.
D’ya hear that, universe?!? I’m not afraid of having to get up at 6:00am again, if that’s what it takes. Of course I’d rather not have to do that, but on the other hand – I’m not so keen on continuing to sleep until noon. And until I’ve wrangled the appropriate connections in NY; until I’ve determined an exact plan of action; and most importantly, until I’ve secured the financial means to do whatever I want – well then, there’s nothing better for me to do than go land another JOB.
It doesn’t have to last long. I don’t have to take it seriously. But I’ve only just begun to establish my NY identity. I have a lot of work to do just to get to the point where I’m launching anything. In the meantime, I need to earn cash flow; I need to wrap up the home improvements; I need to take a writing workshop or two; and I need to apply for grad school.
I have a plan. Just because I didn’t set the world on fire in December doesn’t mean I’m going to fall on my face in May.
I’ve always been the sort of bird who foresees, vaguely, where he’ll be within any given amount of time. There’s always a +/- ratio, to be sure, but my inner voice is pretty dead-on. Truth be told, I knew all the way back in December that I wouldn’t emerge from this break into the long-term “place” I’d like to eventually inhabit here in New York. Instead, I foresaw it as exactly what it has turned out to be – a break, meaning an opportunity to take stock and get back into the headspace I inhabited way back in L.A., before I had to make this sudden move. It would be ridiculous to be hard on myself for not having taken over New York simply because I had six months of bare-bones checks in the mail to live off. Sure, other people might have played it differently, but guess what? At least half of that probable set would’ve partied even more, or watched even more TV, or even succumbed to total drug addiction. There’s no sense comparing myself to others, now is there? Especially if those others are only probabilities…
I played it the way I played it. May hindsight provide me with eventual 20/20.
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Ordinary Flashes
We’ve all heard that when we die, our entire lives flash before our eyes. Some of us have even experienced this phenomenon, usually during potentially lethal accidents. And most of us have come to believe in this phenomenon, to the point where we expect it when the time finally comes for us to face the Grim Reaper – or at least when we have a serious accident. I think I believe in this phenomenon. I think I’m planning on experiencing a life-flash during my final moments on earth.
But has anybody else experienced mini-flashes, particularly as they’ve approached middle age? I have. It’s been happening for a while now, and there’s no apparent end in sight. I don’t mean to exclude other age groups. If you’re in your 20s, or even your 80s, or anywhere in between, and you’ve been having these flashes, well, we’ll just have to discuss your case separately. But in my case, this didn’t start happening until I hit my mid-30s. And I have a strong suspicion that it has something to do with entering the middle years.
What am I talking about? I’m talking about having sudden unexpected memories, completely unrelated to any matter at hand as I’m having them, for no apparent reason. Like, I’ll be running to catch a subway so I won’t be late for my 9-5 gig, and although my conscious mind is focused on running for the train, my subconscious mind – for some strange reason – wanders onto the shore of the Connecticut River in 1979, when I was a Freshman in high school. Michael McLaughlin is there. He’s my best friend. It’s 85 degrees on an August afternoon. We’re building a raft out of rusty barrels and driftwood, for no real reason other than we’re looking for an excuse to get naked amidst the mud. (Well it’s hot, for Chrissake, and we’re working in the mud. Nobody’s around. And we’re teenage males. We’ll find any excuse we can to get naked.)
My point is, here I am, 40 years old and living in New York. I’m running to catch a subway but my mind is on the Connecticut River in 1979. Nothing I’m looking at has triggered this recollection. Nothing I’m thinking about has anything to do with Michael McLaughlin or being a Freshman in high school. But for some weird reason, I’m remembering Michael’s akward naked body, splattered with river mud as he hammers 3” nails into a series of 2X4’s. Scrap 2X4’s, as akward in shape as Michael and myself are. I mean, were.
OK, so maybe that’s not a good example. Maybe it’s just a sexual fantasy of some sort. Maybe any memory having to do with naked teenage males won’t adequately describe what I’m trying to say, because anything having to do with naked teenage males can be easily categorized as mere erotic fodder. Fine. Be that way, you Freudians, you.
But what about this scenario: I’m at my desk at the previously-mentioned 9-5 gig. I’m multi-tasking like you wouldn’t believe. I’m on the phone with a hotel in Europe, making reservations for my boss, and I’m simultaneously surfing the web for cheap antibiotics for my dog, who’s suffering from a urinary tract infection. My mouth is enquiring about total Euro amounts but my brain is calculating total U.S. dollars including 8.5% New York State tax. And somehow, even though I would never think I’d have the mind capacity to think about something else at the moment, my mind wanders off to the time when, not that long ago, I ate a Prix Fixe lunch at a local French restaurant – throwing budgetary caution to the wind.
“Well, that’s a work break fantasy,” you might say, leaving it at that. Or maybe you support your argument by drawing a parallel between my being on the phone with Europe and my having recently dined at a French restaurant. I suppose you wouldn’t be wrong, or at all off-base. (It’s becoming apparent to me that you have the easier task at hand in this diatribe. Perhaps it’s easier to draw corollaries when these wandering thoughts aren’t happening to you.)
But how old are you, might I ask? Are you anywhere near middle age? It’s OK if you’re not. I’m not trying to distance you. But I am trying to say this: I think there is a mid-life version of seeing your life flash before your eyes. And instead of happening suddenly, I think it occurs in brief flashes and spurts. If I’m the only one who’s been experiencing this, just let me know, but I think I’m onto something.
I think I understand why, as I’m drifting off to sleep, I suddenly find myself walking the streets of Paris just as I did when I was an exchange student in 1985. I think I know why I can be having sex with a hot man who should for all intents and purposes be the complete and utter focus of my attention, but for some reason I’ll choose that moment to mentally wander back to the day I painted my first apartment in Portland, Maine. I think I know why the past has taken to creeping into my present. It’s because I now have enough of a past to think about.
My ego would like to say I have enough of a past to “matter,” but let’s face it – it’s only enough to matter to me. But matter it does, apparently, as I go about my middle-aged life. My past, now that I’m in the middle of life, wants to matter. It’s craving context.
I can’t say that I blame it. I want context, too, both for my past and for my present.
Am I the only one who feels this way? Am I the only chronology fetishist out there? Or are other middle-aged folks feeling the tug of the non-sequitorial personal past tense, too? When I’m having one of these moments, if I have enough time to fully recognize them and then process them, I tend to think a few things. First I think, “Oh, my God, why am I remembering this right now?” Then I think, “Jesus Christ, I can’t believe how long ago that was.” Which inevitably leads to this conclusion: “Lord, Greg, but you’ve got a past. You’ve got so much past, it’s amazing you’ve still got a present.” And this eventually leads to the inner challenge, “So just what’s gonna come of all these experiences?”
Hopefully by now you can see why these recollections aren’t just a minor curiosity for me. I hope, if I’ve expressed myself adequately, that you can see how they lead me to self-questioning. They’re not just passing fancies; they’re attempts at self-understanding. They crave context. But more importantly, they crave meaning. I mean, doesn’t it rattle the brain? What’s the significance of two teenage boys building a raft, naked on the Connecticut River, in 1979? What does it matter that I blew the budget one week in 2004 and dined on a Prix Fixe menu near work?
What does anything any of us does matter, especially after we’ve had half a lifetime to do it in?
The memories are piling up, and they’re all trivial. It would appear that this life – now half over at best – has a multitude of remembrances, but they’re all banal. They’re regular. As much as I would like to believe they’re special, I have to admit that the bulk of my recollections are normal. They’re downright procedural, as viewed within the context of the development of a late 20th century American male. Yeah, they’re chock full of details, but what does that matter? The details all lead to an ineffectual present. They’re the details that make up my curious but ultimately ineffectual life. I can’t believe so much detail can go into so much uselessness.
This is the way I have come to think, now that I am middle-aged. This is how I view the culmination of my experiences as they appear to date. I see myself as the product of a multitude of memories: some wild – but most ordinary beyond need of description. In my youth I thought I was special, but age has shown me I’m just ordinary.
And I keep having these flashes to remind me so.
But has anybody else experienced mini-flashes, particularly as they’ve approached middle age? I have. It’s been happening for a while now, and there’s no apparent end in sight. I don’t mean to exclude other age groups. If you’re in your 20s, or even your 80s, or anywhere in between, and you’ve been having these flashes, well, we’ll just have to discuss your case separately. But in my case, this didn’t start happening until I hit my mid-30s. And I have a strong suspicion that it has something to do with entering the middle years.
What am I talking about? I’m talking about having sudden unexpected memories, completely unrelated to any matter at hand as I’m having them, for no apparent reason. Like, I’ll be running to catch a subway so I won’t be late for my 9-5 gig, and although my conscious mind is focused on running for the train, my subconscious mind – for some strange reason – wanders onto the shore of the Connecticut River in 1979, when I was a Freshman in high school. Michael McLaughlin is there. He’s my best friend. It’s 85 degrees on an August afternoon. We’re building a raft out of rusty barrels and driftwood, for no real reason other than we’re looking for an excuse to get naked amidst the mud. (Well it’s hot, for Chrissake, and we’re working in the mud. Nobody’s around. And we’re teenage males. We’ll find any excuse we can to get naked.)
My point is, here I am, 40 years old and living in New York. I’m running to catch a subway but my mind is on the Connecticut River in 1979. Nothing I’m looking at has triggered this recollection. Nothing I’m thinking about has anything to do with Michael McLaughlin or being a Freshman in high school. But for some weird reason, I’m remembering Michael’s akward naked body, splattered with river mud as he hammers 3” nails into a series of 2X4’s. Scrap 2X4’s, as akward in shape as Michael and myself are. I mean, were.
OK, so maybe that’s not a good example. Maybe it’s just a sexual fantasy of some sort. Maybe any memory having to do with naked teenage males won’t adequately describe what I’m trying to say, because anything having to do with naked teenage males can be easily categorized as mere erotic fodder. Fine. Be that way, you Freudians, you.
But what about this scenario: I’m at my desk at the previously-mentioned 9-5 gig. I’m multi-tasking like you wouldn’t believe. I’m on the phone with a hotel in Europe, making reservations for my boss, and I’m simultaneously surfing the web for cheap antibiotics for my dog, who’s suffering from a urinary tract infection. My mouth is enquiring about total Euro amounts but my brain is calculating total U.S. dollars including 8.5% New York State tax. And somehow, even though I would never think I’d have the mind capacity to think about something else at the moment, my mind wanders off to the time when, not that long ago, I ate a Prix Fixe lunch at a local French restaurant – throwing budgetary caution to the wind.
“Well, that’s a work break fantasy,” you might say, leaving it at that. Or maybe you support your argument by drawing a parallel between my being on the phone with Europe and my having recently dined at a French restaurant. I suppose you wouldn’t be wrong, or at all off-base. (It’s becoming apparent to me that you have the easier task at hand in this diatribe. Perhaps it’s easier to draw corollaries when these wandering thoughts aren’t happening to you.)
But how old are you, might I ask? Are you anywhere near middle age? It’s OK if you’re not. I’m not trying to distance you. But I am trying to say this: I think there is a mid-life version of seeing your life flash before your eyes. And instead of happening suddenly, I think it occurs in brief flashes and spurts. If I’m the only one who’s been experiencing this, just let me know, but I think I’m onto something.
I think I understand why, as I’m drifting off to sleep, I suddenly find myself walking the streets of Paris just as I did when I was an exchange student in 1985. I think I know why I can be having sex with a hot man who should for all intents and purposes be the complete and utter focus of my attention, but for some reason I’ll choose that moment to mentally wander back to the day I painted my first apartment in Portland, Maine. I think I know why the past has taken to creeping into my present. It’s because I now have enough of a past to think about.
My ego would like to say I have enough of a past to “matter,” but let’s face it – it’s only enough to matter to me. But matter it does, apparently, as I go about my middle-aged life. My past, now that I’m in the middle of life, wants to matter. It’s craving context.
I can’t say that I blame it. I want context, too, both for my past and for my present.
Am I the only one who feels this way? Am I the only chronology fetishist out there? Or are other middle-aged folks feeling the tug of the non-sequitorial personal past tense, too? When I’m having one of these moments, if I have enough time to fully recognize them and then process them, I tend to think a few things. First I think, “Oh, my God, why am I remembering this right now?” Then I think, “Jesus Christ, I can’t believe how long ago that was.” Which inevitably leads to this conclusion: “Lord, Greg, but you’ve got a past. You’ve got so much past, it’s amazing you’ve still got a present.” And this eventually leads to the inner challenge, “So just what’s gonna come of all these experiences?”
Hopefully by now you can see why these recollections aren’t just a minor curiosity for me. I hope, if I’ve expressed myself adequately, that you can see how they lead me to self-questioning. They’re not just passing fancies; they’re attempts at self-understanding. They crave context. But more importantly, they crave meaning. I mean, doesn’t it rattle the brain? What’s the significance of two teenage boys building a raft, naked on the Connecticut River, in 1979? What does it matter that I blew the budget one week in 2004 and dined on a Prix Fixe menu near work?
What does anything any of us does matter, especially after we’ve had half a lifetime to do it in?
The memories are piling up, and they’re all trivial. It would appear that this life – now half over at best – has a multitude of remembrances, but they’re all banal. They’re regular. As much as I would like to believe they’re special, I have to admit that the bulk of my recollections are normal. They’re downright procedural, as viewed within the context of the development of a late 20th century American male. Yeah, they’re chock full of details, but what does that matter? The details all lead to an ineffectual present. They’re the details that make up my curious but ultimately ineffectual life. I can’t believe so much detail can go into so much uselessness.
This is the way I have come to think, now that I am middle-aged. This is how I view the culmination of my experiences as they appear to date. I see myself as the product of a multitude of memories: some wild – but most ordinary beyond need of description. In my youth I thought I was special, but age has shown me I’m just ordinary.
And I keep having these flashes to remind me so.
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
I Need a New Drug
It seems as though each new town I move to raises the stakes in terms of which drugs I do. In SF, it was all about pot. I did brownies, mainly. Once I’d made my break from the drudgery of 9-5, I started a marijuana excursion that would eventually bring me up to a brownie a day. Talk about the high life… But it was the way of the Bay Area – the pursuit of higher consciousness and all. Plus it helped me do my job. As a full-time sexworker, regularly ingesting a chemical that increased my sensual awareness and sexuality proved to be an effective career booster. THC was downright motivational. My love affair with pot went further than that, though. It got to the point where, through the lens of the herb, I couldn’t see anything but ridiculousness in just about everything our "Goddamned Western Patriarchal Society,” as I had come to know it, had created. Pot brought me to the brink of camp implosion. I became too cool to be happy, or to do just about anything other than continue being cool.
My getting drunk in San Francisco was limited to once a week and was attained with just a few beers or several glasses of wine. On festive occasions I would hit the hard liquor, in the form of Margaritas at a Mexican restaurant or Scorpion Bowls at the Tonga Room in the Fairmont, but that was about it for alcohol consumption during the SF phase.
In LA, I studied bartending, which put me on a direct course to Martiniville. The brownies persisted in affecting my consciousness, but they took a back seat to alcohol – the infamous curse of the working class. Soon after my stint with bartending, I re-entered corporate America, in the form of being an Executive Assistant for three female Ad Execs. That job steered me onto the course that serves so many of this great nation’s working class. Alcohol, the one and only church- and state-sanctified mind altering device, became my security blanket. Up until then, I had never thought I’d travel the same road as my functioning-alcoholic parents, becoming one myself. All through the years in San Francisco I thought I’d beaten those odds. I figured, “Better a stoner than a lush.” But thanks to the wonderfully isolated and overly critical city of Los Angeles, which provided me with ample time to wonder where a sensitive simpleton like myself could fit in, I was able to uncover a latent Irish gene. By the time I was ready to leave not only the job but also the city, I had been deemed a drunk.
And a drunk I was when I arrived at JFK in June of ’03. A drunk AND a stoner. That’s a California combination quite unprepared to meet the nitty-gritty, “This-is-it-so-roll-up-your-sleeves” New York mentality. But somehow I made it work. Cruising the East and West Villages at night, swaying back and forth from touristy overindulgence, I fit right in. As a tourist, that is. And there isn’t much difference between a new arrival and a tourist. That rule applies to all three cities I’m talking about. So I was able to ride out my initiation to New York via my two previously-established addictions. Pot got me high for the train ride in from Park Slope and booze kept my hands and mouth busy all night long.
Now I should mention here that the previous descriptions are not entire. Or should I say, they don’t list all of the chemicals I had induced up to those times in my life. Indeed, I had tried not only pot but also mescalin in high school; I had dabbled in acid during college and had also done my fair share of it in SF. SF had also introduced me to crystal meth, but at that point the stoner in me found it repugnant. I also felt this way about heroin. When I started losing as many friends to heroin, in the form of “speed bumps” (combination crystal and smack), as I had lost to AIDS over the previous years, I decided to leave SF for LA. I figured at least LA – the home of gay meth – had the ability to handle the vicious compound without rendering it lethal.
And so, right before I left Los Angeles forever, I faced its biggest demon head-on. I got into meth. Not on a weekly basis, or even a bi-monthly. But monthly, definitely. Just about every four weeks I rolled into the mood for a total pick-me-up. I had gotten into sexwork again, after over close to two years of not doing much of it, and the field had become infected with the insatiability of crystal. More and more potential clients were asking, “Do you party?” And that didn’t mean pot, or even cocaine.
I didn’t mind answering, “Yeah,” because I was curious. Despite my having declared a “No Tweeker” policy in San Francisco (and being able to adhere to it), I couldn’t help but notice that the face of the tweeker had changed over the five years I’d lived in LA. Sure, they were still tweeky, but they were more productive and less conspicuous – as messes, that is. In other words, you could spot them but they weren’t being the total hospital cases that they had been in the early years of meth. They looked cagey but not helpless. They had what LA strives to always have. They had style. Was it the town’s influence or was the drug changing? It was a little of both. Even though LA pushes for stylistic perfection, the drug had been noticably refined.
The meth I’d done in SF sent me reeling into a world of unrelenting and insipid thoughts. It was as if my inner Mother Critic (not to be confused with any nurturing Mother figure) had been given the mental floor, indefintiely. Thoughts like, “Maybe we should…” and “What if we…???” prevailed; indeed, they never ceased. It was a state of consciousness in maddening contradiction to every New Age Bay Area platitude I’d learned during my 10 years in the city. I was NOT in the moment. I was NOT at peace. I was NOWHERE NEAR omniscience or Nirvana. I was just busy with petty details. And that was when I was high. When I crashed, I wanted nothing less than escape from this thing we call life.
LA meth, while it did often send me on a similar high, didn’t bring me down to such a drastic crash. The life cycle of the drug had been modified – smoothed out – so as not to leave the participant suicidal (unless perhaps they’d been doing it for days on end and had suddenly stopped). And something about me had changed by the time I was exploring crystal in LA. I was once again performing petty duties on a daily basis, so entering that area of thought had become routine, which meant it no longer posed such a threat to my sensibility. In fact, meth became my task-oriented friend. Whenever I found myself faced with a mountian of filing or a garden that needed hoeing, I found myself wondering if Tina, as she had come to be known, might be able to lend a helping hand.
Damn if she didn’t! With my new friend Tina, I was able to take on any extensive project around the house. All I had to do was factor in two days for recovery (the second day is really just an extension of the first – it’s the day after the day after that’s a downer) and I was all set. But you see, this is because I’m one of what I hear is a minority within the gay male world. I’m one of the task-oriented tweekers. That means I prefer to use crystal for projects instead of for three-day long binges at bath houses. Apparently the majority of gay men find Tina to be more suitable as a dance partner and a sex facilitator.
Boy, but how I do NOT envy the majority of gay men.
Anyway, lest you think my move to NY has rendered me a crystal queen, I should let you know, it hasn’t. While I have embarked on a few crystal trips, it has (almost) always been for the purpose of getting projects done. After all, turning a tiny studio apartment on the edge of Bushwick and next to a live poultry store into something inhabitable – even by bohemian standards – isn’t easy. While the paint is drying, or after the wood has been cut and the sawdust swept up, that’s when I sit in the tub and ponder as only a tweeker can. Something about having been productive for 24-48 hours up until that point makes it easier to come down, so I do, without thoughts of suicide. Because I have the fruit of my labor to keep me content.
No, the drug I’ve encountered here in NYC isn’t crystal – it’s good old fashioned coke. When I started visiting with the intention of exploring for potential relocation, it came as quite a surprise to my West Hollywood conditioning, to be honest, when NY guys would offer me a line. “Oh, cocaine,” I would say, “how retro.” I wasn’t being completely bitchy. I was truly warmed over with nostalgia for the days of Studio 54. It appeared to me, as it still appears to me, that New York doesn’t want to let go of that era.
There’s something precious about cocaine. I can’t put my finger on it. So brief, yet so high. So crisp in comparison to pot. Sure, that’s what the Tina freaks insist about their drug of choice, but Tina is such a commitment. With coke, you can have your intensity and still go to work the next day. Coke is the mocha cappuccino of narcotics. When done in moderation, it lifts you up without rendering you useless. And its reputation for brevity is a myth. If you’re sensitive enough, you can feel cocaine for hours, not just 20 minutes.
Coke puts you in touch with your inner achiever – politely, as opposed to the gruffness of crystal. Coke opens your eyes and enhances your sensuality. Coke lifts you up where you belong. Coke is OK. And when you do it all night, it leaves you so damned horny you can’t think straight. (Or even “assimilationist gay,” for that matter…)
I’m no fool. I know that when I came to New York, coke didn’t find me. I found it. The intensity of the city made me instantly crave a higher high. And like I said: for me, that higher high can’t be found in crystal. I had to have the real thing. I had to have what I’d put off doing the entire time I lived on the west coast. Thank the gods ‘80s retro is alive and well here in NYC, 'cuz I’m ready for it. I’ve been wanting to take this ride for 20 fucking years -- since the '80s themselves.
LA can never come close to NY. Neither can my beloved SF. Here, I have a need that I never had in either of those towns. And I can’t be the only one with that need, ‘cuz I keep getting offers to do more lines…
So I need a new drug. And I’ve found it. Let’s just hope, despite the odds, that it doesn’t dominate my psychological landscape the way the previous fuckers have. After all, I still have them to fall back on.
My getting drunk in San Francisco was limited to once a week and was attained with just a few beers or several glasses of wine. On festive occasions I would hit the hard liquor, in the form of Margaritas at a Mexican restaurant or Scorpion Bowls at the Tonga Room in the Fairmont, but that was about it for alcohol consumption during the SF phase.
In LA, I studied bartending, which put me on a direct course to Martiniville. The brownies persisted in affecting my consciousness, but they took a back seat to alcohol – the infamous curse of the working class. Soon after my stint with bartending, I re-entered corporate America, in the form of being an Executive Assistant for three female Ad Execs. That job steered me onto the course that serves so many of this great nation’s working class. Alcohol, the one and only church- and state-sanctified mind altering device, became my security blanket. Up until then, I had never thought I’d travel the same road as my functioning-alcoholic parents, becoming one myself. All through the years in San Francisco I thought I’d beaten those odds. I figured, “Better a stoner than a lush.” But thanks to the wonderfully isolated and overly critical city of Los Angeles, which provided me with ample time to wonder where a sensitive simpleton like myself could fit in, I was able to uncover a latent Irish gene. By the time I was ready to leave not only the job but also the city, I had been deemed a drunk.
And a drunk I was when I arrived at JFK in June of ’03. A drunk AND a stoner. That’s a California combination quite unprepared to meet the nitty-gritty, “This-is-it-so-roll-up-your-sleeves” New York mentality. But somehow I made it work. Cruising the East and West Villages at night, swaying back and forth from touristy overindulgence, I fit right in. As a tourist, that is. And there isn’t much difference between a new arrival and a tourist. That rule applies to all three cities I’m talking about. So I was able to ride out my initiation to New York via my two previously-established addictions. Pot got me high for the train ride in from Park Slope and booze kept my hands and mouth busy all night long.
Now I should mention here that the previous descriptions are not entire. Or should I say, they don’t list all of the chemicals I had induced up to those times in my life. Indeed, I had tried not only pot but also mescalin in high school; I had dabbled in acid during college and had also done my fair share of it in SF. SF had also introduced me to crystal meth, but at that point the stoner in me found it repugnant. I also felt this way about heroin. When I started losing as many friends to heroin, in the form of “speed bumps” (combination crystal and smack), as I had lost to AIDS over the previous years, I decided to leave SF for LA. I figured at least LA – the home of gay meth – had the ability to handle the vicious compound without rendering it lethal.
And so, right before I left Los Angeles forever, I faced its biggest demon head-on. I got into meth. Not on a weekly basis, or even a bi-monthly. But monthly, definitely. Just about every four weeks I rolled into the mood for a total pick-me-up. I had gotten into sexwork again, after over close to two years of not doing much of it, and the field had become infected with the insatiability of crystal. More and more potential clients were asking, “Do you party?” And that didn’t mean pot, or even cocaine.
I didn’t mind answering, “Yeah,” because I was curious. Despite my having declared a “No Tweeker” policy in San Francisco (and being able to adhere to it), I couldn’t help but notice that the face of the tweeker had changed over the five years I’d lived in LA. Sure, they were still tweeky, but they were more productive and less conspicuous – as messes, that is. In other words, you could spot them but they weren’t being the total hospital cases that they had been in the early years of meth. They looked cagey but not helpless. They had what LA strives to always have. They had style. Was it the town’s influence or was the drug changing? It was a little of both. Even though LA pushes for stylistic perfection, the drug had been noticably refined.
The meth I’d done in SF sent me reeling into a world of unrelenting and insipid thoughts. It was as if my inner Mother Critic (not to be confused with any nurturing Mother figure) had been given the mental floor, indefintiely. Thoughts like, “Maybe we should…” and “What if we…???” prevailed; indeed, they never ceased. It was a state of consciousness in maddening contradiction to every New Age Bay Area platitude I’d learned during my 10 years in the city. I was NOT in the moment. I was NOT at peace. I was NOWHERE NEAR omniscience or Nirvana. I was just busy with petty details. And that was when I was high. When I crashed, I wanted nothing less than escape from this thing we call life.
LA meth, while it did often send me on a similar high, didn’t bring me down to such a drastic crash. The life cycle of the drug had been modified – smoothed out – so as not to leave the participant suicidal (unless perhaps they’d been doing it for days on end and had suddenly stopped). And something about me had changed by the time I was exploring crystal in LA. I was once again performing petty duties on a daily basis, so entering that area of thought had become routine, which meant it no longer posed such a threat to my sensibility. In fact, meth became my task-oriented friend. Whenever I found myself faced with a mountian of filing or a garden that needed hoeing, I found myself wondering if Tina, as she had come to be known, might be able to lend a helping hand.
Damn if she didn’t! With my new friend Tina, I was able to take on any extensive project around the house. All I had to do was factor in two days for recovery (the second day is really just an extension of the first – it’s the day after the day after that’s a downer) and I was all set. But you see, this is because I’m one of what I hear is a minority within the gay male world. I’m one of the task-oriented tweekers. That means I prefer to use crystal for projects instead of for three-day long binges at bath houses. Apparently the majority of gay men find Tina to be more suitable as a dance partner and a sex facilitator.
Boy, but how I do NOT envy the majority of gay men.
Anyway, lest you think my move to NY has rendered me a crystal queen, I should let you know, it hasn’t. While I have embarked on a few crystal trips, it has (almost) always been for the purpose of getting projects done. After all, turning a tiny studio apartment on the edge of Bushwick and next to a live poultry store into something inhabitable – even by bohemian standards – isn’t easy. While the paint is drying, or after the wood has been cut and the sawdust swept up, that’s when I sit in the tub and ponder as only a tweeker can. Something about having been productive for 24-48 hours up until that point makes it easier to come down, so I do, without thoughts of suicide. Because I have the fruit of my labor to keep me content.
No, the drug I’ve encountered here in NYC isn’t crystal – it’s good old fashioned coke. When I started visiting with the intention of exploring for potential relocation, it came as quite a surprise to my West Hollywood conditioning, to be honest, when NY guys would offer me a line. “Oh, cocaine,” I would say, “how retro.” I wasn’t being completely bitchy. I was truly warmed over with nostalgia for the days of Studio 54. It appeared to me, as it still appears to me, that New York doesn’t want to let go of that era.
There’s something precious about cocaine. I can’t put my finger on it. So brief, yet so high. So crisp in comparison to pot. Sure, that’s what the Tina freaks insist about their drug of choice, but Tina is such a commitment. With coke, you can have your intensity and still go to work the next day. Coke is the mocha cappuccino of narcotics. When done in moderation, it lifts you up without rendering you useless. And its reputation for brevity is a myth. If you’re sensitive enough, you can feel cocaine for hours, not just 20 minutes.
Coke puts you in touch with your inner achiever – politely, as opposed to the gruffness of crystal. Coke opens your eyes and enhances your sensuality. Coke lifts you up where you belong. Coke is OK. And when you do it all night, it leaves you so damned horny you can’t think straight. (Or even “assimilationist gay,” for that matter…)
I’m no fool. I know that when I came to New York, coke didn’t find me. I found it. The intensity of the city made me instantly crave a higher high. And like I said: for me, that higher high can’t be found in crystal. I had to have the real thing. I had to have what I’d put off doing the entire time I lived on the west coast. Thank the gods ‘80s retro is alive and well here in NYC, 'cuz I’m ready for it. I’ve been wanting to take this ride for 20 fucking years -- since the '80s themselves.
LA can never come close to NY. Neither can my beloved SF. Here, I have a need that I never had in either of those towns. And I can’t be the only one with that need, ‘cuz I keep getting offers to do more lines…
So I need a new drug. And I’ve found it. Let’s just hope, despite the odds, that it doesn’t dominate my psychological landscape the way the previous fuckers have. After all, I still have them to fall back on.
Sunday, March 27, 2005
Time for Timer
Late Baby Boomers and early X-Genner’s might remember a certain Saturday morning cartoon character who looked like a chunk of cheddar cheese with spindly arms and legs. He appeared in between shows like Scooby-Doo and The Super Friends, filling up what would otherwise have been dead air. I’m sure his producers claimed he performed Public Service Announcements, but neither myself nor my cohorts were ever very convinced that we couldn’t live without his recipe for “Sunshine on a Stick” or the dietary recommendations of his virtually eponymous “Hanker for a Hunk of Cheese.” But this we did know: when the previous show was over and you heard his scratcy voice, it was defintiely “Time for Timer.”*
I never really knew what that meant, but after hearing it a few thousand times, it took on a meaning of its own. I came to view it as a moment of reflection. A time out. A chance to learn something new that I could potentially put to use in my own life.
So even to this day, whenever I sense the need for a moment of reflection, I hear that little bugger’s scratcy voice, and if conditions prove right – I take Time for Timer…
There is less than a week left in March, 2005 and I have no idea what I am going to do with my life. Sure, I’ve got ideas, but they’re muddy. They’re mired in uncertainty, ignorance and self-doubt. The uncertainty relates to my inability to be sure of any course of action, as in, “Do I really want that?” The ignorance pertains to my being new in NY, and not knowing whether I can earn enough per month with any given plan. The self-doubt needs no explanation. It’s the same-ol’, same’-ol’ that’s haunted me all my life. [Insert parent-blaming, pseudo-sociological and/or homosexual oppression psycho babble here? I’d rather not, thank you. I’ve been around all those blocks enough times to realize I’m responsible for my life at this point.]
I realized, during a meth-induced self-therapy session in the bathtub a few days ago (the water having been drained but my naked self still sitting there, pondering out loud… some people sing in the shower; I process in the tub), that I was holding back from even imagining my perfect life here in NYC, as if I’d finally become irrevocably convinced that I didn’t deserve anything remotely close to it. The four months of partying had been my subconscious saying, “Live it up now, ‘cuz when the Unemployment runs out in May, you know you’re just going to have to land yet another crappy Admin job to make ends meet…”
BLECH! Talk about “stinkin’ thinkin’!
Truth is, if I had some sort of plan – one that I actually believed in – to put into action right now, then it wouldn’t be too late to have at least part of my ideal NYC life up and running by the time the UI runs out. The key right now would be to find some form of self-employment (that needs little start up capital) or some freelance (e.g.: 1099’d) gigs. Or something completely under the table. But what do I have to offer?
Say “hello” to self-doubt.
This much I know: between the market being flooded, having recently turned 40 and just plain being over it as a lifestyle, sexwork will not serve any purpose other than an extra $500+ per month. Which is great. I still enjoy it on a part-time basis, and I can mold my lifestyle so that “pocket money” comes from that source.
So, where’s the other $2,000 – the minimum I need to stay afloat – going to come from?
Can you believe I can exist on that little? Can you believe I’m having trouble figuring out how to manifest it??? (Did you already meet my friend, self-doubt? Sorry. Busy party here in Demon-hood.)
The possibilities include: bartending, teaching ESL, tutoring, or taking some 30K per year Editorial Assistant job somewhere back in publishing (10K less than I earned on the sales end).
And what of combination platter options? What about $1,000 per month bartending combined with $1,000 per month teaching/tutoring? Sounds OK, but I think the scheduling would become nightmarish… The thing about bartending is the schedule it throws you onto. I’m OK with it, but only if I’m doing nothing but it and whoring (and taking writing workshops and fostering that aspect of my life).
Hmmm. This is the same conclusion I came to during that bath tub therapy session: bartending is the answer. That + whoring = the lifestyle Greg would really like and could really use AT THIS TIME. It doesn’t have to be a career plan or a long-term solution. It doesn’t have to be the feature show. But for now, it would keep the party going – safely – and it would keep the bills paid. And the party I’m referring to isn’t the chaotic ride we’ve been on these past four months; it’s the steady one that introduces me to NY nightlife and the gay, theatrical contacts I so desperately need to meet.
Wait, wait: I think I hear a scratcy cartoon voice saying, “Hey, kid! Whip up a bartending resume and hit list, before time’s up!”
OK, Timer.
[*Go to http://www.angelfire.com/retro/gartwo/ if you want a peek.]
I never really knew what that meant, but after hearing it a few thousand times, it took on a meaning of its own. I came to view it as a moment of reflection. A time out. A chance to learn something new that I could potentially put to use in my own life.
So even to this day, whenever I sense the need for a moment of reflection, I hear that little bugger’s scratcy voice, and if conditions prove right – I take Time for Timer…
There is less than a week left in March, 2005 and I have no idea what I am going to do with my life. Sure, I’ve got ideas, but they’re muddy. They’re mired in uncertainty, ignorance and self-doubt. The uncertainty relates to my inability to be sure of any course of action, as in, “Do I really want that?” The ignorance pertains to my being new in NY, and not knowing whether I can earn enough per month with any given plan. The self-doubt needs no explanation. It’s the same-ol’, same’-ol’ that’s haunted me all my life. [Insert parent-blaming, pseudo-sociological and/or homosexual oppression psycho babble here? I’d rather not, thank you. I’ve been around all those blocks enough times to realize I’m responsible for my life at this point.]
I realized, during a meth-induced self-therapy session in the bathtub a few days ago (the water having been drained but my naked self still sitting there, pondering out loud… some people sing in the shower; I process in the tub), that I was holding back from even imagining my perfect life here in NYC, as if I’d finally become irrevocably convinced that I didn’t deserve anything remotely close to it. The four months of partying had been my subconscious saying, “Live it up now, ‘cuz when the Unemployment runs out in May, you know you’re just going to have to land yet another crappy Admin job to make ends meet…”
BLECH! Talk about “stinkin’ thinkin’!
Truth is, if I had some sort of plan – one that I actually believed in – to put into action right now, then it wouldn’t be too late to have at least part of my ideal NYC life up and running by the time the UI runs out. The key right now would be to find some form of self-employment (that needs little start up capital) or some freelance (e.g.: 1099’d) gigs. Or something completely under the table. But what do I have to offer?
Say “hello” to self-doubt.
This much I know: between the market being flooded, having recently turned 40 and just plain being over it as a lifestyle, sexwork will not serve any purpose other than an extra $500+ per month. Which is great. I still enjoy it on a part-time basis, and I can mold my lifestyle so that “pocket money” comes from that source.
So, where’s the other $2,000 – the minimum I need to stay afloat – going to come from?
Can you believe I can exist on that little? Can you believe I’m having trouble figuring out how to manifest it??? (Did you already meet my friend, self-doubt? Sorry. Busy party here in Demon-hood.)
The possibilities include: bartending, teaching ESL, tutoring, or taking some 30K per year Editorial Assistant job somewhere back in publishing (10K less than I earned on the sales end).
And what of combination platter options? What about $1,000 per month bartending combined with $1,000 per month teaching/tutoring? Sounds OK, but I think the scheduling would become nightmarish… The thing about bartending is the schedule it throws you onto. I’m OK with it, but only if I’m doing nothing but it and whoring (and taking writing workshops and fostering that aspect of my life).
Hmmm. This is the same conclusion I came to during that bath tub therapy session: bartending is the answer. That + whoring = the lifestyle Greg would really like and could really use AT THIS TIME. It doesn’t have to be a career plan or a long-term solution. It doesn’t have to be the feature show. But for now, it would keep the party going – safely – and it would keep the bills paid. And the party I’m referring to isn’t the chaotic ride we’ve been on these past four months; it’s the steady one that introduces me to NY nightlife and the gay, theatrical contacts I so desperately need to meet.
Wait, wait: I think I hear a scratcy cartoon voice saying, “Hey, kid! Whip up a bartending resume and hit list, before time’s up!”
OK, Timer.
[*Go to http://www.angelfire.com/retro/gartwo/ if you want a peek.]
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Look, This Ain't Gonna Be As Neat As We'd Like It
This is a journal blog. I could try to get my journal entries all in order and over-edit them before hitting "publish," or I could do what I'm really supposed to do as a writer and get right to it. No perfect chronology required. If one comes up somewhere down the line 'cuz I'm finally inthe mood to get it down, fine. But for now I've gotta sort out my thoughts. So bear with me and you'll pick up the pieces of the jigsaw puzzzle that is my life as we go along.
Nyeah.
Nyeah.
It Only Takes a Minute, Dude (to change your ways, to change your ways)
Happy Spring.
Here in NY they’ve got a new radio station, “The Mix,” 102.7 FM. Been listening to it. They play dance hits “through the decades.” They bring out a lot of the stuff I came out to back in ’83. Weird to hear that shit on a NY radio station these days…
One of the oldies they love to play again and again is “It Only Takes a Minute, Babe” (to fall in love/to fall in love). It wasn’t the chorus that caught my attention as I heard the tune last week whilst getting ready to go out, or something. It was one of the first verses. They talk of some girl who’s “spending time in the unemployment line...” Then there’s a line, “Winter’s gonna turn to spring, and still you haven’t done a thing.”
OUCH.
What all that has to do with falling in love, I’ll never know. But the line stings just the same, ‘cuz it’s hitting home right now. Here at 92 Moore St., while love isn’t high on my present list of priorities, finding steady income and getting my artistic ass in gear once again are at the top of it. And at the beginning of winter I had a chance to start, but winter has turned to spring, and – well, you can see where this is heading…
This feels like one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I have to rise up from the over-partied inertia I’ve fallen into over the past three months. 90 days, in business terms. Which wouldn’t be that bad, if I can put an end to it now. That’s the hard part. I can see what I have to do, but I’m resisting doing it. Guess that’s the nature of inertia.
I finally made a schedule the other day, for the rest of March. It says I should be getting up at 10:00 to walk the dog, then journaling at 11:00. Today, the first day of the new schedule, I got up at 10:00; I pissed, and then immediately went back to bed until my regularly-scheduled wake-up time of noon. So now I’m journaling at 1:00 instead of 11:00.
Y’know what? I’m not gonna beat myself up. At least I’m journaling. After this, I’m supposed to shit-shower-shave and then go to the gym. And again, y’know what? That’s exactly what I’m going to do, unless the phone rings with massage biz.
Winter has turned to spring, and yeah, it feels like I haven’t done a thing. But I’m sure if I analyzed it well enough or even resorted to rationalization, I’d find something to claim to have accomplished during the bleak winter of ‘04/’05. Let me put it this way: When I think of what I went through beginning May, ’03 and running up through November, ’04 – I can’t believe I didn’t have a breakdown of some sort. I ran on sheer will that entire time. I made a transcontinental move on a budget of $3,000 plus another $3,000 in the form of a fully-drained, taxable-at-40% IRA. I came here with just a suitcase, surfing friends’ couches until I landed a (and I can’t believe I did this at this point in my life, after living alone and loving it for close to 10 years) roommate situation. Then I landed another 9-5 job, which I hated from the get-go and which would have been viewed as high-pressure and stupid by any sensibility, let alone my artistic one. I slaved away for egomaniacal bourgeois fools for close to a year and a half, after having already done that (and vowing never to do it again) for two years in LA. And while I performed said slavery, I also managed to find an apartment of my own (no easy feat in NY when one is new to town, has bad credit and has a dog), and renovate it to a manageable status via doing construction and painting every weekend for six months. In other words, with the exception of one or two weekends “off,” I worked 7 days a week for over six months. If I wasn’t donning the white collar and tie Monday through Friday, I was donning the overalls Saturday and Sunday. I never stopped. Like I said, I was running on sheer will.
First came me, with a suitcase. Then came the roommate scenario. Then, six months later came the dog (I had left him with my ex until I could get him to NY). Then came an apartment of my own. Then came the renovations. Then came the furniture that I had been storing in LA. Then came my 40th birthday party, complete with folks from the west coast. It was the move that took a year and a half.
And then, mercifully, came the end of the fucking job.
So when I got the opportunity of living off Unemployment for six months, I shut down. What a surprise. It was the holidays, after all, and I had to go to MA anyway (another set of emotional circumstances – also draining), so I argued: why not celebrate? And celebrate I did. All through December and January, and then into February and even into the beginning of March, it was party-party-party. I fell into a party vortex that I am now having some difficulty separating myself from.
Despite my inner critic’s desire to be hard on myself and wish I’d “hit the ground running” in some sort of manner that would have contributed to artistic pursuits or self-employment opportunities, I feel like I’m right on track. Sure, other people might have gotten right to something. And then again, still other people would never have left the bed. I have been processing NY in my own way, which is the only way I have, Goddammit. I needed time in the party realm to learn about the nightlife, which is a big part of my genre and milieu. I still have much to explore. I still have much to do.
During the last days of the fucking job, as we call it, whenever people would ask me what I planned to do next, my retort was: “Well, first I’m going to escape to my own thoughts for a while.” I meant it. And this is how I went about it.
NEXT.
Here in NY they’ve got a new radio station, “The Mix,” 102.7 FM. Been listening to it. They play dance hits “through the decades.” They bring out a lot of the stuff I came out to back in ’83. Weird to hear that shit on a NY radio station these days…
One of the oldies they love to play again and again is “It Only Takes a Minute, Babe” (to fall in love/to fall in love). It wasn’t the chorus that caught my attention as I heard the tune last week whilst getting ready to go out, or something. It was one of the first verses. They talk of some girl who’s “spending time in the unemployment line...” Then there’s a line, “Winter’s gonna turn to spring, and still you haven’t done a thing.”
OUCH.
What all that has to do with falling in love, I’ll never know. But the line stings just the same, ‘cuz it’s hitting home right now. Here at 92 Moore St., while love isn’t high on my present list of priorities, finding steady income and getting my artistic ass in gear once again are at the top of it. And at the beginning of winter I had a chance to start, but winter has turned to spring, and – well, you can see where this is heading…
This feels like one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I have to rise up from the over-partied inertia I’ve fallen into over the past three months. 90 days, in business terms. Which wouldn’t be that bad, if I can put an end to it now. That’s the hard part. I can see what I have to do, but I’m resisting doing it. Guess that’s the nature of inertia.
I finally made a schedule the other day, for the rest of March. It says I should be getting up at 10:00 to walk the dog, then journaling at 11:00. Today, the first day of the new schedule, I got up at 10:00; I pissed, and then immediately went back to bed until my regularly-scheduled wake-up time of noon. So now I’m journaling at 1:00 instead of 11:00.
Y’know what? I’m not gonna beat myself up. At least I’m journaling. After this, I’m supposed to shit-shower-shave and then go to the gym. And again, y’know what? That’s exactly what I’m going to do, unless the phone rings with massage biz.
Winter has turned to spring, and yeah, it feels like I haven’t done a thing. But I’m sure if I analyzed it well enough or even resorted to rationalization, I’d find something to claim to have accomplished during the bleak winter of ‘04/’05. Let me put it this way: When I think of what I went through beginning May, ’03 and running up through November, ’04 – I can’t believe I didn’t have a breakdown of some sort. I ran on sheer will that entire time. I made a transcontinental move on a budget of $3,000 plus another $3,000 in the form of a fully-drained, taxable-at-40% IRA. I came here with just a suitcase, surfing friends’ couches until I landed a (and I can’t believe I did this at this point in my life, after living alone and loving it for close to 10 years) roommate situation. Then I landed another 9-5 job, which I hated from the get-go and which would have been viewed as high-pressure and stupid by any sensibility, let alone my artistic one. I slaved away for egomaniacal bourgeois fools for close to a year and a half, after having already done that (and vowing never to do it again) for two years in LA. And while I performed said slavery, I also managed to find an apartment of my own (no easy feat in NY when one is new to town, has bad credit and has a dog), and renovate it to a manageable status via doing construction and painting every weekend for six months. In other words, with the exception of one or two weekends “off,” I worked 7 days a week for over six months. If I wasn’t donning the white collar and tie Monday through Friday, I was donning the overalls Saturday and Sunday. I never stopped. Like I said, I was running on sheer will.
First came me, with a suitcase. Then came the roommate scenario. Then, six months later came the dog (I had left him with my ex until I could get him to NY). Then came an apartment of my own. Then came the renovations. Then came the furniture that I had been storing in LA. Then came my 40th birthday party, complete with folks from the west coast. It was the move that took a year and a half.
And then, mercifully, came the end of the fucking job.
So when I got the opportunity of living off Unemployment for six months, I shut down. What a surprise. It was the holidays, after all, and I had to go to MA anyway (another set of emotional circumstances – also draining), so I argued: why not celebrate? And celebrate I did. All through December and January, and then into February and even into the beginning of March, it was party-party-party. I fell into a party vortex that I am now having some difficulty separating myself from.
Despite my inner critic’s desire to be hard on myself and wish I’d “hit the ground running” in some sort of manner that would have contributed to artistic pursuits or self-employment opportunities, I feel like I’m right on track. Sure, other people might have gotten right to something. And then again, still other people would never have left the bed. I have been processing NY in my own way, which is the only way I have, Goddammit. I needed time in the party realm to learn about the nightlife, which is a big part of my genre and milieu. I still have much to explore. I still have much to do.
During the last days of the fucking job, as we call it, whenever people would ask me what I planned to do next, my retort was: “Well, first I’m going to escape to my own thoughts for a while.” I meant it. And this is how I went about it.
NEXT.
Monday, March 21, 2005
Sunday, March 20, 2005
Too Much Background Info
I found myself saying to a friend on the phone the other day, "The thing about me is, in order to be understood, I require too much background information." It wasn't as narcissistic as it sounds, because the background info I was referring to has more to do with certain jumps and leaps in consciousness that I consider myself to have made over the years than it does with the obligatory nitty-gritty stats and details that folks tend to spew at each other when they first meet, or when they're referring to others.
OK, I guess that's still narcissistic, to think that people have to understand your alleged development in order to truly understand you...
What I meant by what I said to my friend (if you're still with me -- and I would much appreciate that, not out of narcissism but because I do tend to make a point in everything I write, so who knows? -- maybe you'll get a kick out of my point) was that I have a hard time embarking upon typical introductory conversations. Whether I'm at a party, or a bar, or heck -- even at a job interview, I can't stand having to explain myself.
Whenever I meet someone new, if they express any interest whatsoever in finding out who I am, I find myself sighing and wondering which is the fastest route to the explanantion. Do I laugh myself off and declare, "Shit, I'm just an aging slacker," or do I take a more, "Well, this has been my journey so far" stance, thereby requiring more time -- and effort -- for everybody -- to explain said journey? Usually at that point in the conversation, I look for a distraction. I comment on something the person is wearing, or I ask what they're drinking. Many times I've been know to simply make a beeline for the bar. (Screw whatever they're drinking. They can refill it themselves.)
The truth is, if there was an easy way for me to satisfactorily tell you who I think I am, I would have found it by now. But despite having been rasied on television and radio, and despite having been influenced by the media all my life, and even despite what I consider to be a pretty good ability to slap a sound byte onto just about anything or any situation, I have yet to be able to come up with a reasonable sound byte to describe myself. I guess that's what we have other people for. But I'm not all that eager to hear what my cohorts' soundbytes sound like, because I'm pretty sure they sound negative. They can't help it. My cohorts, that is. God knows the majority of the sound bytes that come out of my mouth are bitchy. Y'think I'm the only one?
On the other hand, there's nothing (or at least, little) my cohorts could or have said about me, however bitchy, that I haven't thought or said about myself. I am my worst critic. Maybe that's why I can't come up with a satisfactory way to introduce myself. Perhaps all that excessive prerequisite introductory information is a crutch of sorts, that I hide behind to keep from presenting myself to the world. I mean, it's not as if I don't expect folks to have some sort of byte ready for me when I ask them about themselves, now is it?
Gee. I guess I see my narcissism and I raise myself one introductory sound byte.
But I'll need some time to reflect on that.
--- end report ---
OK, I guess that's still narcissistic, to think that people have to understand your alleged development in order to truly understand you...
What I meant by what I said to my friend (if you're still with me -- and I would much appreciate that, not out of narcissism but because I do tend to make a point in everything I write, so who knows? -- maybe you'll get a kick out of my point) was that I have a hard time embarking upon typical introductory conversations. Whether I'm at a party, or a bar, or heck -- even at a job interview, I can't stand having to explain myself.
Whenever I meet someone new, if they express any interest whatsoever in finding out who I am, I find myself sighing and wondering which is the fastest route to the explanantion. Do I laugh myself off and declare, "Shit, I'm just an aging slacker," or do I take a more, "Well, this has been my journey so far" stance, thereby requiring more time -- and effort -- for everybody -- to explain said journey? Usually at that point in the conversation, I look for a distraction. I comment on something the person is wearing, or I ask what they're drinking. Many times I've been know to simply make a beeline for the bar. (Screw whatever they're drinking. They can refill it themselves.)
The truth is, if there was an easy way for me to satisfactorily tell you who I think I am, I would have found it by now. But despite having been rasied on television and radio, and despite having been influenced by the media all my life, and even despite what I consider to be a pretty good ability to slap a sound byte onto just about anything or any situation, I have yet to be able to come up with a reasonable sound byte to describe myself. I guess that's what we have other people for. But I'm not all that eager to hear what my cohorts' soundbytes sound like, because I'm pretty sure they sound negative. They can't help it. My cohorts, that is. God knows the majority of the sound bytes that come out of my mouth are bitchy. Y'think I'm the only one?
On the other hand, there's nothing (or at least, little) my cohorts could or have said about me, however bitchy, that I haven't thought or said about myself. I am my worst critic. Maybe that's why I can't come up with a satisfactory way to introduce myself. Perhaps all that excessive prerequisite introductory information is a crutch of sorts, that I hide behind to keep from presenting myself to the world. I mean, it's not as if I don't expect folks to have some sort of byte ready for me when I ask them about themselves, now is it?
Gee. I guess I see my narcissism and I raise myself one introductory sound byte.
But I'll need some time to reflect on that.
--- end report ---
Sunday, March 06, 2005
So
So:
Just be forewarned that I like to start off entries with either "So" or "OK." Maybe I'll even begin with an "Anyway." Why? 'Cuz these tiny lil' interjections, as they're know in Parts of Speech Land, lend a conversational tone. Or so I like to believe. Hey, if they get me out of my forehead and a little closer to the middle brain, then I'm using them exactly as I should be.
I'm using them just as this 40-yr-old Irish Catholic prick from New England -- turned Castro Clone performance artist -- turned L.A. down-and-out -- turned Brooklyn hipster revitalized --would tend to use them, as predicted not only by the laws of probability, but more specifically, as those laws just happened to affect me.
OK: So,
Do I sound defensive? Well if you were around in the San Franciso law firm where I worked for two years as a paralegal, way back in 1990-92, and you saw all the red edits on the creative writing papers that I was fool enough to let the lawyers see during that tenuous and life-altering life stage -- then you'd understand. It was supposed to be CREATIVE, you see, but they just couldn't wrap their brains around a journal entry that started out with an interjection. My precious lil' interjecs were persistently crossed out -- in red. The comment was always, "Superfluous."
Why was I showing creative writing to the lawyers I worked for? Because they were paying for the course. You see, when they offered to grant me some benefits in the form of writing courses, for the purpose of Continuing Education, I took advantage of their inability to be more specific from the get-go. Fancy that. Lawyers forgetting to be more specific. I'll never forget the look on my boss' face when I told her which course I had chosen from the Berkeley Continuing Ed. catalog: Short Story Writing. She'd already told me, whilst chowing down some Kung Pao chicken somewhere in Chinatown, that I could take "any writing course I wanted." Once I'd made my choice, there was no room within the realm of human decency for her to renegotiate. The Kung Pao had sealed her fate. Perhaps if she'd had ordered Mu-Shu Pork, or something less akin to her gastronomic predilections, she would've caught herself. But as fate would have it, on that day, I had the Kung Pao advantage. Which, for some other guy at some other time in some other law firm, might have been the Beef and Broccoli advantage, or some other such menu-named phenomenon, hence my reason for citing the laws of probability.
OK: All I'm trying to say is, I like to start with "So" or "OK," and I think that should be OK. 'Cuz it lends a conversational tone. OK?
If you're looking for the blatant sex scenes and rowdy shenanigans of an aging disco queen/punk rocker (yes, the two can actually overlap), skip down a few entries. This is the background material that my OCD demands I spew forth. Even if nobody reads it.
So:
--- end report ---
Just be forewarned that I like to start off entries with either "So" or "OK." Maybe I'll even begin with an "Anyway." Why? 'Cuz these tiny lil' interjections, as they're know in Parts of Speech Land, lend a conversational tone. Or so I like to believe. Hey, if they get me out of my forehead and a little closer to the middle brain, then I'm using them exactly as I should be.
I'm using them just as this 40-yr-old Irish Catholic prick from New England -- turned Castro Clone performance artist -- turned L.A. down-and-out -- turned Brooklyn hipster revitalized --would tend to use them, as predicted not only by the laws of probability, but more specifically, as those laws just happened to affect me.
OK: So,
Do I sound defensive? Well if you were around in the San Franciso law firm where I worked for two years as a paralegal, way back in 1990-92, and you saw all the red edits on the creative writing papers that I was fool enough to let the lawyers see during that tenuous and life-altering life stage -- then you'd understand. It was supposed to be CREATIVE, you see, but they just couldn't wrap their brains around a journal entry that started out with an interjection. My precious lil' interjecs were persistently crossed out -- in red. The comment was always, "Superfluous."
Why was I showing creative writing to the lawyers I worked for? Because they were paying for the course. You see, when they offered to grant me some benefits in the form of writing courses, for the purpose of Continuing Education, I took advantage of their inability to be more specific from the get-go. Fancy that. Lawyers forgetting to be more specific. I'll never forget the look on my boss' face when I told her which course I had chosen from the Berkeley Continuing Ed. catalog: Short Story Writing. She'd already told me, whilst chowing down some Kung Pao chicken somewhere in Chinatown, that I could take "any writing course I wanted." Once I'd made my choice, there was no room within the realm of human decency for her to renegotiate. The Kung Pao had sealed her fate. Perhaps if she'd had ordered Mu-Shu Pork, or something less akin to her gastronomic predilections, she would've caught herself. But as fate would have it, on that day, I had the Kung Pao advantage. Which, for some other guy at some other time in some other law firm, might have been the Beef and Broccoli advantage, or some other such menu-named phenomenon, hence my reason for citing the laws of probability.
OK: All I'm trying to say is, I like to start with "So" or "OK," and I think that should be OK. 'Cuz it lends a conversational tone. OK?
If you're looking for the blatant sex scenes and rowdy shenanigans of an aging disco queen/punk rocker (yes, the two can actually overlap), skip down a few entries. This is the background material that my OCD demands I spew forth. Even if nobody reads it.
So:
--- end report ---
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