i go through all this before you wake up
tomorrow at work, when everyone asks each other how their weekends were, i won't be able to tell them that i saw blade 2 saturday night, because i just can't. now that my ears have finally stopped ringing, i realize that it had some nice visuals. i think my hosting company deleted my mp3s, those rats (so look for dantewoo on audiogalaxy instead). someone insists on entering "puke and cry" into my search engine every week—the potatoes hiss. i go through all this before you wake up, so i can feel happier to be safe again with you. sat in church today and thought the music was too loud—sometimes i can't stand that drama queen classical music that the organist will sometimes start pounding out, but even when it's tedious, i feel a little more together in myself when i've gone. i try to think "thank you god for all the blessings of this life" over and over again. because it's true: no matter how out of control or in a rut life feels, i know i have a lot of them: an unbroken string of good job luck, good friends even if everyone is having crises, a generally healthy attitude, full head of hair, wonderful boyfriend, no plague or pestilence, a rent-controlled junior one bedroom in the east village, lovable family, yadd yadda. tuesday i'm going to see me'shell ndegeocello, and in a few weeks, zero 7.
posted March 31, 2002 in delivery, musicthe vice guide to gold digging
i want to stay at home and write!
trail behind him until you get to the local watering hole: the produce isle. there you can pounce on him with a line like, "how do you tell if eggplants are ripe?" after that it's an easy segue into how you are experimenting with a new recipe and won't he come over and try it? this trick is so easy that even straight people can master it. [...]"before going out on the safari, make sure your shit is pretty. shave those pits, put a little scent on yourself, and for god's sake do not go out in full slut gear. do yourself up nice like you shit pure milk chocolate.line that might work: "do you know where they keep the cocktail onions?"
lines that won't: "if i said you had a beautiful broccoli, would you hold it against me?" "i like my men like my canned beef stew: chunky!" "nice basket."
- camper english, "who needs the bars? want a good night's sleep? then hook up during the day!" instinct, march 2002
3. never hint at the same thing twice. don't ask for rent three months in a row. greediness will ruin a bitch."
- celeste arnold, "the vice guide to gold digging," vice volume 9 number 1
posted March 26, 2002 in delivery, print, sexmark spitz mustaches
"chelsea boys may live a little farther uptown than their ancestors and they generally have better bodies with goatees and shaved heads replacing shoulder-length hair and mark spitz mustaches, but since many aren't old enough to recall the fate of so many clones, they even have begun to share the same sexual abandonment that for so long has been enjoyed only by the dead ... and now that i've reached a point in my life where, like so many chelsea boys, i, too, am counting the days to the black party, i can admit that much of my disdain for the scene has always been that of an envious outsider."
posted March 25, 2002 in delivery42 opus posted March 22, 2002 in delivery
that wasn't so bad was it?
i went to a somewhat mandated work dinner for my department at guastavino's, right under the queensboro bridge. there were about fifteen of us, and everyone was talking about what restaurants they'd been to, what movies they'd seen, and what dream destinations they'd vacationed at. people actually said things like "you don't go to nobu for the sushi, you go for the food" and "i haven't even done the basics, like greece and turkey"—i wanted to be eating rice and beans or sitting in two boots theater with my boy. guastavino's was the kind of place that sex & the city opens with while carrie is saying new york something or other.
i went to my uncle's for dinner tonight. he and my aunty come into town periodically while they're traveling to or from europe. they live in hawaii normally. this is where i stayed when i first moved, pennilessly, to the city. we were joined by a cousin and his "friend" and another guy who's friends with another cousin who couldn't attend. it didn't take long to realize that all four single men in attendance were gay, except i was the only one that didn't own real estate. real estate was the topic of most of the evening's conversation, and one of them implied that he dyed his pubes green for st. patrick's day when he was in college (long ago) and the other called veniero's "venereal's," and my cousin was turning red from the champagne and i hoped that i wasn't the only one who felt embarrassed sitting there. going home i got a cab and vowed inside that i would go off on him if he didn't take the direct route home and he didn't and i did and he apologized, then when we got to avenue a said that wasn't so bad was it? and i said naah and maybe i don't need to be around people for a little while, i'm thinking.
posted March 17, 2002 in deliveryappointments
was something saying i should kill myself posthaste if the truth was that i was going to be mediocre? this was a thought with real pain behind it. to my wreck of a mother mediocre was a superlative—an imputation i resisted with all my might once i realized it involved me. i grew up clinging to the idea that either i was original in an unappreciated way or that i could be original—this later—by incessant striving and reading and taking simple precautions like never watching television again in my life.posted March 16, 2002 in music, print- normal rush, mating
"i learned that in life we make appointments," she summarises, "and when we make an appointment there's desire connected with it, which creates the possibility of disappointment, frustration and all kinds of negative responses when they're not fulfilled. so he says, 'go back to the root of the whole situation, don't attach yourself to an idea so strongly that you make an appointment'."
- edwin pouncey, "enduring love: interview with alice coltrane," wire april 2002
she kept on laughing
today on the l train coming home, i boarded and sat across from two white girls who were talking about not being able to get dave matthews band tickets. a white guy sitting nearby was all, "no way" and they were all, "it sold out in three hours" and i was all, i can't take this today.
on the next car, i was sitting across from a cute boy/girl couple in their late teens. the light brown girl had long curly hair and was holding tightly paper-wrapped flowers; the dark latino boy was scruffy and hoodied, and they were both smiling shyly at each other. the girl was saying, you're gonna get stuck on the train, and the boy was saying, no i won't, then when the train was about to close the doors, bye and ran out while she laughed. she kept on laughing while he waved and chased the train out of the station, and then smiled and looked around self-consciously since the train was otherwise quiet. at the next stop, she asked the girl with a book and a septum ring who sat next to her what the time was, and the girl with a septum ring didn't know exactly but guessed that it was 7:30. remember that? i thought about smiling back at her but that would've looked gay.
posted March 11, 2002 in deliverycrumbling identity politics
having succeeded in an industry skeptical of outsiders, mr. gerstner feels free to assess it. the computer industry tends to go astray, he said, when it "tends to reach to promise value in utopian schemes"—the paperless office, the cashless society, the notion that shopping web sites would bring the demise of bricks-and-mortar stores.
- steve lohr, "he loves to win. at i.b.m., he did," new york times 10 march 2002
... like watching that bald cult guy they found with his nikes in place and his balls cut off and actually understanding him as a person. you're seeing dysfunctional clichés (skins, junkies) tapping the snooze until all of a sudden they're middle-aged, abandoned by their wives and kids ... aryan-supremacist dads barbecue for their extended colored family. they date mixed-race girls and channel their aggression into raves while pretending they're still committed to their ideology. banal daily routines become comical as skins put on blinders to shield their crumbling identity politics from themselves.
- absinthenyc, "let's go all the way: immersionists who go so far in they can't get out," vice volume 9 number 1
posted March 10, 2002 in printstaying up late
i just climbed into bed and thought, it's like before i know it the whole week has gone by and i don't feel like i've had a moment to myself. tonight i stayed up late, enjoying the solitude, and recharge everything: my wallet (got a freelance gig from 3 months ago paid + a dental claims check paid), my phone, my electric razor, my dick (from stress-induced beating off today), my brain (from finishing lots of work), my hair (2 nights away from home with no conditioner), my face (alphahydroxy goodness).
posted March 07, 2002 in deliverycan i say yet
that i don't like my job
posted March 04, 2002 in deliverydream
that the boyfiend and i spent the night in a car parked at the gaseteria on houston and avenue b, then were driving backwards. by then it was more of a motorcycle than a car; i was in the passenger seat screaming my head off. afterwards i remember being pissed at him and not able to say so. this weekend there were two tiny squid lying on the sidewalk in front of le tableau, a neighborhood restaurant on my block. i walked by them twice, and then sunday night they were gone.
posted March 02, 2002 in delivery