hello. i’ve had a lot to say but not a lot of time or internet access to write it in. i went on a strange midwestern roadtrip two weeks ago & then last week was the g-20 summit in pittsburgh. i didn’t actively protest but i did attend some protests, just to witness this strange moment in pgh history. it was nice to see people out and about; nice to see some new blood; nice to see some old friends.
it wasn’t nice to see the former love of my life running towards the riot cops looking totally crazed. realizing that she was here, in pittsburgh, and didn’t even try to say hi. i don’t know if she saw me, but it was heartbreaking. utterly heartbreaking, but i won’t bore you with the particulars. at least i could comfort myself with the fact that her hair looks completely and genuinely horrible. small comfort, but sometimes it helps.
i’m in the empty office. i want to be at home writing for my book or my zine. but i’m here because our particular corner of the country is experiencing crazy-high winds and the siding blew off my office. well, half of it did, and the other half is flapping in the breeze. i’m waiting for my boss’ handyman to come in. i’m waiting for a lot of things.
Filed under: l'amour
i would like to announce to the few people who read this blog that ray just ate half a cake and is high on sugar, and i got all huffy because he was watching a stupid-ass harry potter movie on TV and i HATE harry potter and ray yelled, “you’re like the huffington post–huffington osh!”
also, today at work i got an outgoing message that said, “you’ve reached the weenie residence” and i laughed at my cubicle like a 12-year-old boy.
…and here are some bizarre things that i saw. 
isn’t this AMAZING!?!?! it was at the gay bar.
isn’t this even more amazing??!! in case you don’t know, 516 is the area code for long island, ny, where i hail from! to think that ANOTHER book-mad long islander wound up in the totally random town of wheeling makes me really happy.
we did both.
(not pictured: the shoe hospital downtown [yes, a hospital for shoes, much like the teddy bear hospital {but more useful}], a witch supply store, following a bunch of over-the-top drag queens from a mediocre gay bar to a much better one, making out in a cage above the dance floor in said gay bar, having pretty much everyone we encountered be completely shocked that we came to wheeling. it is entirely possible that we are the only people who ever visited wheeling just for shits and giggles. i thought it was fun, but i was very glad to go back home in the morning, and very glad that i don’t live there [even though there are a whole lot of gorgeous abandoned houses that are probz dirt cheap].)
yesterday i went to the east end community thrift store for some frenzied pre-night-shift thrift shopping. while i was locking up my bike i saw a cardboard box on the curb, with a bunch of trash. it was empty, and written in imposing black letters on the top it said: “BILL. DO NOT OPEN THIS. I WILL KICK YOUR ASS. DONNA.” i am writing about this mainly because i didn’t have my camera, and i want to remember it. it was so interesting for some reason.
also, last week i had a very sweet interaction with my favorite crossing guard in lawrenceville. i love this woman. she’s so relentlessly positive, but not in a fake, annoying way. she works the corner near my lawrenceville job/ex-house, so i’ve been seeing her often for a long time now. she’ll say hi to me and yell things like, “i just can’t wait to go home and curl up with a good book! and some tea! that’s all i need.”
anyway, i was waiting at the light, about to climb up a hill to oakland and my stupid night job. she said, “where are you going on that thing, anyway?” i said, “oakland.” she was shocked and said, “all the way to oakland! on a bike! wow, i could never do that.” (oakland is about 2.5 miles away from that particular spot) then she declared, “you’re my heroine!” i yelled, “no, you’re my heroine!” she looked a little confused by that, and the light changed so i didn’t have time to explain that she’s my heroine because she is genuinely nice to everyone, how she stands out on that cold corner and doesn’t bitch and moan about it, how she is a beacon of positive energy in this sometimes relentlessly depressing city. so instead, i just said, “high five?” and slapped her five as i headed up the long, steep hill.
p.s. in accordance with the title of this blog post, i have a lot of other sweet things going on in my life right now, but i’m feeling strangely tightlipped about them, both on the internet & IRL. i’m not talking about them on the internet because i am superstitious about certain things & petrified of jinxing them. i don’t talk about them in real life because i can’t think of a single person i know who would really be all that interested, and that makes me a little sad.
p.p.s. i am hungry. i recently learned that curried lentils mixed with macaroni & peas is fucking delicious! on the more high-end scale o’ things, i had a fresh mozzerella sandwich the other day and it was so fucking delicious i can hardly think of anything else.
new year’s eve & day were strange & magical. the bar was set pretty low after last year’s life-ruining drama-fest, but by anyone’s standards it was still pretty fucking good.
ray came to visit & at 11:45 we set out for an abandoned industrial wasteland by my house with good graffiti. it was only fifteen degrees out, but we lit sparklers
and when midnight came i didn’t even notice.
and then when the cold started getting unbearable we wandered over to the blue moon in search of my BFF’s. they had abandoned ship long ago, but we did meet this incredible drunk gay man:
who initially started talking to us because we were hovering around the free buffet (all gross meat.) “don’t eat that! it’ll give you the worst gas!” he implored about the kielbasa/sauerkraut combo, which he’s eating in the pic. (he also referred to it as “little dicks with white pubes” !!) i did not photo-direct this picture at all, it’s what he automatically did when i asked to take a picture of him.
also, me and ray were taking pictures in the corner & he said, “yinz have great chemistry! i’ve been in the film industry for years and i know great chemistry when i see it. you should be in a play or a movie together. don’t let that go to waste!” at which point we kinda snickered.
here is us having “great chemistry” according to this be-sweatered prophet:
then this wacky dude went to attend to his lover, who was passed out on the bar & snotting all over. sweatered dude held his lover tenderly and said, “my partner is my best friend. isn’t that cool?” stroking his lover’s hair, even though he [the lover, not our new BFF] was so drunk he could not sit up, “there’s so few of us out there, and when you find someone beautiful, you need to hold on to them.” now: my dad is an alcoholic & my stepdad was a drug addict. i completely do not romanticize any aspect of chemical dependency, the families it destroys, the lives it ruins. but this statement, made in that particular moment in time, was more sweet than depressing. very poignant. it’s hard to convey.
i stole ray a cigarette & we met more bizarre old men (not pictured) while asking for a light. the bizarre old men were flocking to ray cuz he looks like such a cute little faggot:
and then we left & our be-sweatered friend hugged us both & said he could tell that we were both going to have an excellent 2009.
& the new year’s hat wound up on a steer at the manger down the street from my house…
and i have another event to share that happened less than 24 hours later, involving five of my favorite people, my kitchen floor, and two 90’s-dance-song-themed mix cd’s. but! i think i will stop here for now cuz this post has taken hours to do (not hours of continuous work, but hours of minutes-snatched-when-the-boss-is-distracted work, plus battling with the office’s slow-ass dsl) and the sun is sinking and i’d like to get home before it’s totally dark. xo!
the first real snowfall was super. i spent it with a cute boy. he fell off his bike on the train tracks, i slipped on the ice on 53rd street and banged my tailbone up. we ate almost-free brunch and free cookies. we made snow angels. we made out. my neighbors might hate me a little more now, but i don’t care, man, i don’t care!
lawrenceville is so quiet. this quiet doubles in the snowfall. it still, nearly a year and a half later, blows my mind that i live here. it’s so random.
sometimes updating one’s blog with mundane details of one’s life is kind of nice. perhaps i had something real to say, but i think i’m going to save it for the zine. perhaps i had something real to say, at some point in time, but i think i’d rather go home and make some bread pudding out of the stale-yet-delicious bread i got at my favorite thrift store on thursday. yeah!
Filed under: destroy that tape loop, gayz, l'amour, ne'er-do-wells | Tags: celibacy, love, single
“When I realized I was into girls, it was scary to let go of all the things I was supposed to be and all the things I was supposed to want. It’s like you’re a character in this book that everyone around you is writing, and suddenly you have to say I’m sorry, but this role isn’t right for me.
And you have to start writing your own life and doing your own thing. That was hard enough. But that was nothing–nothing, I tell you–compared to the idea that I could let go of the desire to have a girlfriend. Maybe not forever. Maybe forever. Certainly for now. I wasn’t letting go of love or sex or the idea of companionship. I was just rejecting the package in which it was being sold to me. I was going to say it was okay to be alone, when it felt like everyone in the world was saying that it wasn’t okay to be alone, that I had to always want someone else, that the desire had to fuel me…Some people find happily ever after in being part of a couple, and to them I say, good for you. But that’s no reason we should all have to do it. That’s no reason that every goddamn song and story has to say we should.” -david levithan (writing from a queer teen girl perspective in the short story “miss lucy has a steamboat”)
recently i’ve had the revelation that dating people has never made me happy. it’s made me happy in the short-term moment, but never happy all around, the kind you can feel in yr bones. at this time two, three, four, and five years ago, i was madly in love with someone who was madly in love with me. we had good conversations, good sex, we hardly ever fought. she said so many things to me that i’d dreamed of for years. and i was fucking miserable. everything i did was laced with the undercurrent of her. why isn’t she calling me back? what if she’s dead? where is she? why won’t she ever come to new york? blah, blah, blah.
we lived far away from each other and didn’t really have anything in common besides the fact that we were both radical queers who loved each other (and i guess we both like books, bikes and booze, but to very different degrees & for very different reasons.) and i gave up my life. just threw it away for the first three years we were together. the last year and a half, i tried getting it back. i faked like i could be independent and do my own shit. and no matter how much fun i was having back in ny, it was completely ruined by this undercurrent of longing. i could never focus on anything but her.
and it’s not just with this girl. it’s with every girl. it’s with everyone. because nobody is ever enough. nobody ever can be. and perhaps this feeling could be summed up by another literary quote, this one from robert pinsky: “I woke up feeling so sad this morning/because I realized that you could not,/as much as I love you, dear heart,/cure my loneliness”
and, by letting this notion go, i feel so free. so much better than when i was trying to make something work that isn’t working. i don’t feel remarkably lonely or sexually frustrated. i feel calm, productive, fulfilled, and maybe even happy.
the main thing that makes me unhappy about this new situation is other people acting like i’m so crazy for not wanting to date anyone, like i am some kind of frigid depressing cat lady, sitting in front of the home shopping network and crying every night. when my life isn’t like that at all.
i still laugh the loudest even though i’m sober now, i ride hard, i love hard (platonically), i write my goddamn book (and i’ve written ninety usable pages–about 120 pages total, if you include stuff i’ve edited out–this year. i couldn’t have done that if my time & energy were wasted in the pursuit of someone else). i live my fucking life. & it’s mine now, all mine.
late 2003, or maybe early 2004, before all the trouble began. another unremarkable night at the bar with my lover. the neighborhood she was living in was gentrifying rapidly, & we were at the last bar within walking distance that wasn’t completely overrun with yuppies just yet. i was an unemployed college student on winter break, no money & nowhere to go but her freezing punk house. luckily, we were crazy in love with each other & she had a good job at the cable company & her housemates were mostly my best friends, so it was all good.
i don’t remember a single thing about the bar. i do remember that we got really drunk, on her dime, and walked home holding hands. maybe we were singing, but probably just talking. i remember having a good conversation with an edge of sadness. & then we saw a huge pile of trash and stopped to pick through it.
christmas had happened really recently, and this particular trash pile had a fake tree that was thrown out fully decorated, as if the people who owned it said, “ehhh, i’m tired of this!” and tossed it right into the trash. i plucked the gleaming metal balls off and began hanging them at various places in my outfit–hat, buttonhole, scarf. and then my lover unwound the bright sparkly hanging from the tree (what is that called? it’s not quite tinsel–i don’t know) and wrapped it around me. we walked home giggling.
when we got home, a. was in the living room on the computer and c. was milling about. i opened the door and yelled, “I’M A CHRISTMAS TREE!” and they got it. completely unquestioningly got it. that was all i wanted. a. said something about how she was glad she had a life where drunk housemates came home dressed like christmas trees, i agreed, and then we all went to bed.
these past few days have been all about delicious smoothies (blueberry-hazelnut! kale-banana! both of which sound gross but are actually DELICIOUS), bike frustrations, good friends, good zines, not writing too much which sucks, etc. i have pretty much given up on my normal-person crush mentioned a few posts back because i discovered that she has a petty dealbreaker, and people with petty dealbreakers are afraid to love. did you hear me? let me repeat myself, in case you didn’t. PEOPLE WITH PETTY DEALBREAKERS ARE AFRAID TO LOVE! and i don’t want to fall in love right now, not at all, but i cannot get into even the casual-est romp in the hay with somebody if there is not at least some aspect of love involved. it does not have to be romantic. it does have to be there. otherwise it will just be unsatisfying and empty and i’d rather be at home dancing in the kitchen or writing my novel or watching “the simpsons” or something, you know? fortunately, i have a new crush on someone who’s a certified weirdo, very intense, and who i click with really well. we’ll see.
but, on some levels, that doesn’t even matter. lately the universe has been giving me all kinds of amazing writing to read about being single. cuz singlehood isn’t this terrible disease, cuz friendships aren’t just a way to kill the time until the next hottie comes yr way. cuz i don’t need anyone to complete me. perhaps the best of this writing was in the zine “hirsteria”, which i recommend that all of you buy right now. (justinn! if you see this and are freaked out and upset, please let me know and i’ll take it down! it was just something i really needed to hear and i wanted to share it with people, in case it’s what they need to hear too.)
here it is:
i read it aloud to pino while we were driving home from tram’s and it was a good moment. my voice, saying what i needed to hear, and maybe her too. driving down the hill. it felt nice.
