"Once the morning glories talked to me in their language, and it was intelligible to me."
Ugh. I am so exhausted today. I can barely keep my eyes open as I type this. I am currently playing soccer mom. I had to pick up my little brother from school and we walked to the post office together. This is where this photograph was taken:
Work last night was rough. There was too much mail. I didn’t even have to time to change the playlist I was listening to on my iPhone and I think I might have heard Ladyhawke’s “Magic” thirteen times. That is enough to make a stable mind reach psychosis; what if someone has an already scattered mental state to begin with? I could write a thorough explanation but my mind is frazzled, disordered, and unable to form complete thoughts. I couldn’t even explain the difference between an indirect and direct object in my French class this morning. I knew the answer but my mind wouldn’t let the muscles in my tongue express it. I watched the Independent Spirit Awards on Saturday and I’m glad they acknowledged Melissa Leo in Frozen River as “Best Actress.” I never knew how scattered she was as a person. Just a little bit batty. I love her in every movie she’s in. Everyone keeps talking about Mickey Rourke’s comeback, but I am not sure it is much of a comeback, it seems more like a reunion tour and he will soon return back to where he was all those years ago, aging and becoming more and more cynical about Hollywood and life in general. His speech was stupendous. Particularly when he couldn’t remember Marisa Tomei’s name and called an assistant “gap tooth.” His misguided and uninhibited speech was beautufil especially that part about missing his recently deceased dog. Man, that guy is endearing. What was his whole thing about Eric Roberts needing a comeback? Weird. John Waters and Zooey Deschanel on stage together? Oh my, they need to make a film together.
...
I seriously never want the sun to ever come up again. In the darkness I dwell and inquire about the idiosyncrasies and complexities of my seemingly banal existence. I receive ghostly text messages from a presumed stranger that speaks of corporeality, in riddles and iambic pentameter. He rescues me from Sixth Avenue hustle and bustle. The blinding neon lights and the platinum blonde hair tied up in a ponytail, peacoat, trench coat with oversized buttons to keep the February chill from creeping through. Handbags, tote bags, and little purses. Nike, Puma, and XXXX. The last days of winter are awfully confusing. One moment I'm numb, the next morning I layer myself up and end up sweating up a sauna, but my fingers and nose still remain to frozen in the city air. The ghost who haunts my phone through text reveals himself a few hours later. I miss that kid desperately. He makes more guest appearances in my mind than most people. Brilliant and endearing. I remember kissing him and another boy at the same time upstairs in the rainforest at The Delancey. I couldn’t tell the tongues apart. But the water kept falling, the faucet kept leaking and the boys all relieved themselves in the trough downstairs in the bathroom. Urine following the same current down into the same drain with the slippery marbles and the boys who are just outside the stage dancing their joker’s dance, and walking on blades and broken glass. I read epitaphs like people read obituaries over morning toast and jam. Dejected postcoital exasperation. Cum drying up on your stomach and the waistband of your boxer-briefs.
3:44am.
Long Island. The Gays are given a Wednesday night to copulate and grind grind grind on a beautiful dance floor. R invites me out then takes it back. Jack and I decide to go anyway. On the list. My bank issued new debit cards because someone hijacked their system. I cannot remember my pin. I see the lesbian that TA’d one of my English classes out on the dance floor dancing to a remixed pop song. Revenge and Domestic Tragedy. I don’t understand why her clothes have to be so large and that baseball cap has to go. I have 3/4 quarter sleeves and everyone is smoking in the club. It is illegal and no one seems to mind. The flat-screen TVs are playing performances by JT, Britney, and Beyonce. They all seem to be dancing and singing to the beat of every song playing in the club. Is pop really that derivative? Probably. But who can deny such glossy, sugar-coated melodies? On the way to Nassau, Jack was pointing out all the jems found on the new Kelly Clarkson album. Each song seemed to sound like a different artist. Here is Kelly Clarkson sounding like Peaches. Here is Kelly Clarkson sounding like Katy Perry. This is her as Lady Gaga. I understand a particular sound encompassing an entire album but when each song sounds like a different person, that is a bit more fragmentation than I can handle. It is a schizophrenic album. Here the boys are in the Abercrombie and Fitch costumes. Gelled spiky hair, I think they refer to them as blow-outs, fake tans and some bling. J and I wonder when this trend will fade, it has been around for almost a decade. These boys would be much cuter if they left their hair alone, stopped tweezing, plucking and adding layers of logos upon logos. We watch everyone around us converse with one another. Everyone seems to know everyone. Incestuous almost. J spots a puppy-eyed boy sucking on a lollipop I try and I try to avoid a boy I once knew. From behind me, a boy runs his fingers through my hair and immediately apologizes when I turn around. “Oops. I thought you were my ex-boyfriend. I’m sorry.” With a half smile I respond, “It’s fine. I hope my resemblance of your ex isn’t a bad thing.” “No, not at all. It is definitely a good thing. By the way I’m _____.” “It’s nice to meet you. I’m B____.” Awkward silence and I turn to J to help me ease away from _____. Oh, this is all so boring.
I should just fictionalize everything and then anything would seem a bit more interesting.
An excerpt from Susan Stryker’s Transgender History:
...as I looked out over the sea of several thousand faces. Even after being in the transgender scene for so long, I found the crowed a bewitching spectacle: brilliantly tattooed, biologically female queer femme women and their trans guys who used to be their dyke girlfriends; straight-looking male-to-female transsexuals with nail salon manicures sitting side by side with countercultural transsexual women sporting face jewelry, dreadlocks, and thrift-store chic; lithe young people of indeterminate gender; black bulldaggers, white fairies, Asians queens, Native two-spirits; effeminate trannyfags and butch transsexual lesbians; kids of parents who had changed sex and parents who supported their kids; rejection of the labels their society had handed them. Some people walked around in fetish gear, some in chain-store khakis or floral-print sundresses from the discount clothing outlet; most wore the casually androgynous style of clothing that is the cultural norm. Vive la différence, I thought as I stepped up to the mi[crophone] and surveyed the beautiful range of human diversity spread out on the grass before me. Live and let live
I don’t know why this passage struck me so. It possibly moved me because Stryker spent the fifty pages prior explaining transgender in a dizzying theoretical language and actually defined terms like cisgender, genderqueer, and gender comportment. It was such a relief as a reader, to end her introduction with faces and unity.
I really don’t want to go to my French class at 8:30 in the morning. It is already 4. Perhaps I shouldn’t even sleep. Who knew Jesse McCartney could write such a beautiful pop song like Leona Lewis’ “Bleeding Love,” How did he write such a good song? I have spent numerous hours of my life watching acoustic versions of the song on Youtube and recently found an epic version by Thos Henley.
Thos Henley- Bleeding Love
With lyrics like this why wouldn’t you want to listen to The Antlers- Bear:
We’re terrified of one another, and terrified of what that means, but we’ll make only quick decisions, and you’ll just keep me in the waiting room, and all the while I’ll know we’re fucked and not getting unfucked soon, when we get home we’re bigger strangers than we’ve ever been before, you sit in front of snowy television, suitcase on the floor.”
And if you’re looking to dance to a song about the consequences of sex without a condom try Lykke Li’s cover of Kings of Leon’s “Knocked Up.”
Lykke Li- Knocked Up
I don’t know why I have been uploading so much music lately in this here journal. I just feel as if some of these songs need ears, as much as I think your ears need them. It is 4:33 in the morning and I should be sleeping but I think I might have drank too much coffee today. Speaking of coffee, with the help of Twitter and a friend, I discovered a new coffee shop in Brooklyn. I was inquiring about electrical outlets at Gimme Coffee, a coffee shop in Williamsburg that I have been to once before on Twitter with above mentioned friend. Three minutes after Ed responded to my question, I got an email notification that Gimme Coffee was following me on Twitter and responded with its own answer! Yes, the coffee shop not only discovered me on Twitter but it actually conversed with me! How surreal is that? There goes Justification #78! Twitter is not only another social networking site which makes meaningful connections with other people, but it also establishes meaningful connections with coffeehouses, stores, and inanimate objects! If you are looking to follow your favorite fictional character, there is a chance they are tweeting right now as you read this. I currently have the misfortune of following (and being followed by) Sookie Stackhouse of True Blood fame. She tweets about falling in love with vampires, her mundane life as a waitress in Bon Temps, and even posts songs she is listening to. It is eerie. Not only is it the fictional Sookie from those fictional novels written by Charlaine Harris, which was adapted by Alan Ball for a HBO television show, played by the amazing Anna Paquin, now we as Twitter users can read her interior monologue/commentary written by who??? Is it Alan Ball? Or an intern at HBO working for college credit? How many more mutations of the same fictional character can we have/consume? I almost screamed when I got the Twitter notification stating that Patty Hewes (Glenn Close in Damages) was following me! That woman would slit my throat if she actually read my mundane updates. Since, I am always looking to justify the reasons why I use Twitter, I came up with Reason #79. Twitter kills idle time. During all those moments of idleness what could be more productive than tweeting (with an attached photograph) of the woman who left the house wearing two different shoes? Stuck at a red traffic light, on the bus on your way to work or school, at the airport waiting for your connecting flight, or standing on line waiting to order your lunch are all reasonable times to tweet. Why not tweet that thought you want to elaborate at length at another time? Twitter offers an escape from those idle moments, in those non-places.
Your aunt, not just any aunt but your godmother calls you while you are sleeping and leaves a voicemail. The voicemail is nothing poignant but she asks you to call her back when you get a chance. On your way to Brooklyn, you put your headphones on and dial her number. She tells you about a news report she heard on the television about women’s bodies found in New Mexico and Colorado. Don’t worry too much about it. Go on to Brooklyn and hang out with your friends. The authorities think all the women were killed by a serial killer and that was his/her dumping ground. We all need closure. We haven’t heard from your mother in over two years. No phone call. Not contact whatsoever. You should talk to your grandmother about it, perhaps they can send dental records to the authorities. This could be absolutely nothing but we all want to know we all want to make sense of this all. Images of dusty bones and skulls with light brown hair flicker in your mind like one of those gruesome crime TV shows. You’ve had nightmares of this possibility. But you continue driving westward, Bjork’s Vespertine is in the stereo and it distracts you from the realities in different time zones. But your best defense mechanism is repression and that is what you do until you don’t even notice your mother even disappeared, that your mother is still in her apartment in Phoenix, writing in her journal, or watching the soap opera network. I arrive in Brooklyn and decide to go to Second Stop Cafe on Lorimer instead of Gimme Coffee after realizing that Second Stop brews (Portland-based) Stumptown coffee. The same Stumptown coffee you had in Seattle last summer that made one of the most delicious soy mochas you have ever had. There are no vacant tables to sit at when you walk in but you order a coffee anyway. Just before you order, the barista looks bewildered at the cash register, because he accidentally hit a button that prevented him from taking my order. He was scruffy and wore a winter hat placed lazily on his head. I inquired about the beans and confessed my love of the Stumptown coffee shop I found myself in last summer after eating at the French restaurant next door in Seattle. He was so enthusiastic about Stumptown coffee and he informed me that it is wonderful to be in New York City right now during what he called a “coffee war.” Stumptown is supposedly opening up a shop in Red Hook and is actually going to roast beans there? He was so passionate about coffee beans I lost him a few sentences back. He said that Second Stop Cafe is affiliated with Stumptown owners and Stumptown visit the store regularly. His textbook knowledge of coffee and the supposed open frontier for coffee in the land of New York was endearing. I pour some soymilk into my ceramic coffee mug and ask a girl sitting at a table by herself if I could join her. She said sure. I pulled out Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues and started reading about lesbians growing up in Buffalo, New York. Buffalo does not sound like a good place now and certainly not back in the 50s where this novel begins.
[Insert a 24 hour intermission where I tell myself, “Self, let’s take a nap for two hours and then wake up and accomplish all the necessary things to accomplish on a Friday evening!” Those two hours eventually turn into six and it is already time for work]
12:19 is boiling water for green tea and macaroni and cheese and listening to my little brother play Garfield on his DS #
12:20 @octoberxswimmer I wonder...how did that cat stay culturally relevant? #
12:55 is why must they close the Virgin Megastore in Union Square? #
12:59 @michaelmcfadden jeez. how many times is that b*tch coming around town? #
13:17 @23r it is silly. one of the few reasons why i returned the sucker. #
13:42 @vintagelife I should be excited when capitalism fails; but all those indie record shops do not have the collection that virgin did. #
14:18 @nicholascook you can almost pass as a vegetarian these days! stay away from the "soy nuggets" #
14:56 is going to watch an episode of the L word #
15:10 @octoberxswimmer Helena: "[Dylan] colonizes my thoughts." I need to steal that line in the future #
15:32 did the L word just reference Vera Farmiga in Down to the Bone? Brilliant. #
00:39 @vintagelife I said pussywillows dotty! #
00:41 @blackandhip oh man. how many flights? #
00:46 @TattooOfSun really? I can't wait to watch the second episode. #
00:47 @bdubois omg! #
00:48 @lolwtfaids what about tara on buffy?! #
00:49 @TattooOfSun weird. she's crazy in real life. #
00:51 @db you should probably see that off-broadway play Telephone. it is all about this quote. perhaps a bit more poetic #
00:54 @nicholascook at least I got a hug the night before you declared official hug day! #
00:56 @nowirecoathangr where do you go? #
00:56 @mattbuchan exciting opportunities?! #
00:59 @Isak aw. #
01:20 @ryanpfluger you've been having too many good days lately! #
01:21 @tofumugwump I can't seem to help talking to myself! it is very meta and Vonnegut of me #
01:22 @nowirecoathangr which album? #
01:23 @ryanseattle I want vivace to exist in new york! #
01:29 doesn't like when naps turn into sleeps #
02:00 is Yelle is playing on one of those late night shows. she is so adorable. I wish she'd teach me French #
02:43 is forget about bat for lashes' glass and daniel check out pearl's dream and good love! #
02:48 @michaelkmak je pense le francais est tres difficile! trop beaucoup TENSES! #
04:00 watching Gossip Girl and Dan says: "our family went from Family Ties to Faulkner in one cocktail" #
04:21 Blair to Serena about going to Brown: "Maybe we can get a jumpstart on your veganism. Have some celebratory seitan at Angelica Kitchen." #
04:30 @octoberxswimmer mmm...I wouldn't mind some angelica kitchen right now! #
I was listening to Damien Rice’s O at work last night and forgot how brilliant that album is. It also made me want to watch every movie his songs appeared in (like Closer and Stay). Now I am listening to Nada Surf’s “Inside of Love” on repeat because it is summing up my mood as of late.
For some reason I cannot stop looking at this photograph of Heath Ledger and Rose Bryne:
So where does this narrative lead? Are you looking for some direction? Orientation? A proper location to set your bearings? I don’t think there is use for a compass here. We are in a Pynchon world now. Used car lots and an underground mail system that sorts letters with meaningless text. Communication for communication’s sake. Kind of like my compulsion to document. But I will try and mend the holes and finish this wearisome assortment of words.
At the coffee shop, I read, and the line about two lovers changing the pronouns of a contemporary love song to make it fit for them was very charming because I have done the same thing. The girl I am sharing a table with is reading an article about “muddy” psychology. I am not sure what that means but the red ink in her margins is very distracting. What else is distracting is a man at another table who keeps snapping photos with his phone. Why do phones do that anyway? Why have the “sound” of a camera taking a photograph when it is not necessary? It is nearing 5:30 and it is time to pack up my belongings. Blue highlighter, pen, novel, and notebook are put back in my bag and I place my coffee mug with the rest of the dirty dishes. Here is where Twitter Justification #80 resides. It is time to meet up with N to go see the play Telephone at the Foundry Theatre in the West Village. N is a friend from Twitter. Twitter Justification #80: Meet New People. I’m listening to Casiotone For The Painfully Alone on the subway and I start to feel weak and faint. The metal pole I’m clinging on to helps me from falling to the floor. I realize I haven’t eaten anything all day and when I rush off the train, I look for something to shove in my mouth. A bakery would be perfect. So, there I am walking down 7th Avenue and a bakery appears, the same bakery I have eyed quite a few times before. I order this amazing honey and walnut pastry from a very friendly guy who guarantees I will like it. Casiotone is singing “He cries in the darkness until the end credits roll...man that’s the only way to cry” as I continue walking to Commerce Street. I am too busy shoving this honey and walnut goodness in my mouth I almost trip over a median in the road. At another intersection a woman gives me unexpected bedroom eyes and I don’t know how to shake those brown eyes off. I turn down Commerce and this block is beautiful. Almost fairytale-like. It looks like what the city is depicted like in movies. Movies like You’ve Got Mail. Those bad movies that are always on television, the ones that pull you in with chance encounters and quirky ways of saying I love you in a bookstore. Those movies that construct a love that seems so attainable, that depict a New York so beautiful, that offer an escape from the mundane reality shows that are on the television at the same time. But here I am, in the setting of one of those films, standing outside the theater. Just a few minutes later N arrives and offers his hand for a handshake. There is about an hour before the play starts. A dog jumps around excitedly and N wants to pet him. We end up picking up our tickets which end up being just the program itself. The program looked as if it were xeroxed at Staples. We take a seat in the lobby. A lady thinks I am in the way, and says excuse me and we are confused what she was asking to be excused. Another lady, this one quite older, asks if she can rest her handbag on the bench we were sitting on. She kept thanking me over and over again and it made her inquiry even more awkward than it had to be. Peacoats with a NYT pin on them. You tell me you designed an application where the T spins. Texas. The difference between Austin and the rest of the state. Punching numbers into your fathers key as if it were a calculator when he worked from home. I cannot remember what you were wearing on you feet but your jeans had neat stitching. I’m glad to know that I am not the only who inquires what is in someone else’s bag. I just need to remember to ask someone before I start going through it. Sorry Kyle. One of the women working at the theater seemed to yell at us to be quiet at exactly the same time you were speaking. I felt her eyes penetrating through us. I try and defend Dollhouse and Buffy the Vampire Slayer but fail miserably, realizing just a few minutes before I was talking about how good Gilmore Girls was. I offer you some of the greatest pastry on earth and I think you agreed that is might be the best tasting pastry on earth. The lobby is swamped with people, people I didn’t expect to come and we squeeze through the doors to find a seat. The theater is beautiful. Brick everywhere. You pretend to play bongos on three bald heads in front of us. The furthest one away is abnormally shiny. You’re taller than I expected. Not fitting comfortably in the seat. The man at the end of the row awkwardly stands for too long as we let people pass down the row.
Telephone begins and I realize that I am never going to be able to put this play into words. In three parts the play is set in two different centuries. Beginning when the telephone is first invented and when its purpose is not completely clear. Philosophical meanderings about death and ghosts. The difference between listening and understanding. The second part was Babette a seemingly scattered and schizophrenic woman wrapped in a corset pondering the things every human ponders, but hears other voices in the distance. She seems to try and justify her delusions, thoughts of grandeur, and the fact that she has a telephone in her stomach. Something she only refers to a few times. She is not just master but slave. Her unintelligible but poetic rambling went on for so long. I wasn’t sure she would stop for a breath. I waited for her to trip over a word, but she kept the words flowing, flow, flowing, a constant hum into the empty spaces of the theater. We were on the other line, receiving her poetic stream of consciousness, almost like these words here, listening, not fully comprehending. but listening, perhaps not understanding, but what were we to do without a context? without knowing her before? what year is it? Perhaps that was the point, context and relevance doesn’t matter in a world saturated in a constant exchange of salutations in emails, conversations, bank tellers, and TSA employees at security checkpoints. communication. At what point are we to stop sharing? Stop comprehending. The difference between savoir and compendre. Miscommunication and disconnection. The last part of the play was visually stunning. It mostly takes place on a dark stage with lights shining on faces, backs turned, lips moving...while fragments of different phone conversations are played. Modern life expressed through modern technology. A girlfriend who cannot love a man the same way she used to, sounding bored, fatigued, disconnected, another boyfriend sounds dejected, they are all so different but fill in the golden silence that telephones create. Pregnant telephones and pregnant pauses. Awkward to sit through the sound of a supposed silence, with static and the whimper of someone who can’t fake the feelings anymore than the next person. I read an article that said the play was an “experience rather than a narrative-immediately into the subconscious.” We walked out of the theater in silence because all that was heard were feet stammering up the stairs and out the doors. I remember the woman who was putting lip balm on during the deluge of neurosis from the second act of the play. She is a woman who cannot comprehend without fidgeting for something to relieve her own subconscious. She reminded me of the piece of gum I had in the pocket of my jeans, that I instantly craved. I did laugh too loud at one of the lines during the play. I think Babette was talking about giving birth to a child through her mouth.
I’m really not digging this linearity. But after the play we walk down West 4th to look for something to eat. I know Red Bamboo is not too far from here, and I suggest it, but suddenly take back the suggestion because it is a vegetarian restaurant and I wouldn’t want to enforce my diet on someone else’s appetite. I also fear suggesting things that people will dislike. But we walk there anyway. Conor Oberst’s solo album is playing on the stereo and you try and restrain yourself from singing along. The tables are turned a half hour later when Death Cab For Cutie’s The Photo Album comes on and I have to suppress my urge to sing along to Ben Gibbard; along with repressing emotions that are so intricately entwined with this record. Ex-girlfriends and make-out sessions in my 1987 Chrysler Fifth Avenue. Things seemed simpler back than even if I was slipping from reality on your living room couch with my head rested on your lap. Confessions of a middle school actor and clarinet player met with confessions of a french horn player and a talent show that required leopard print and balloons for breasts. The wait staff is not as awkward as I presumed. Explanation of teeth. I didn’t think there were so many stories about enamel. I even spotted a Toms of Maine bag earlier and wondered if they had their own storefront in the city. Tripping over words and faux sweet and sour chicken and faux philly cheesesteaks. The lack of accents on both our parts. Coworkers almost become sister-in-laws and Upper East Side apartments surrounded by barking dogs and an alley with too much noise. I like your misaligned beauty marks. Crabby cancer, Gregor Samsa, the sharing of neuroses and anxieties. It was one of the first times I have ever felt someone really understood panic at its most devastating and paralyzing. Likes to sing Cher at karaoke. Reading posters on the wall and forgetting what you read. No alcohol. Awkward use of tweet, tweeting, and twitter. Au revoir underground at the Union Square subway station. A handshake turned hug. Down two flights of stairs. 8 minutes for the next Brooklyn bound train. Six people are dancing to Rihanna on the subway platform. I drowned them out by listening to the same Bon Iver song (Brackett, WI) over and over again. That gliding guitar and bass just kills me with each note. As I ascend onto Lorimer Street, I realize how eerily warm it is outside. I virtually knock on Pfluger’s door but he doesn’t answer. I grab a cup of coffee from the 24 hour deli and head back home listening to Yeasayer leaving voicemails on my sister’s cell phone because she makes me smile a particular smile only she can get me to contort.
/at 7:04 Sunday morning I finally finish this. When did it even begin?
Work last night was rough. There was too much mail. I didn’t even have to time to change the playlist I was listening to on my iPhone and I think I might have heard Ladyhawke’s “Magic” thirteen times. That is enough to make a stable mind reach psychosis; what if someone has an already scattered mental state to begin with? I could write a thorough explanation but my mind is frazzled, disordered, and unable to form complete thoughts. I couldn’t even explain the difference between an indirect and direct object in my French class this morning. I knew the answer but my mind wouldn’t let the muscles in my tongue express it. I watched the Independent Spirit Awards on Saturday and I’m glad they acknowledged Melissa Leo in Frozen River as “Best Actress.” I never knew how scattered she was as a person. Just a little bit batty. I love her in every movie she’s in. Everyone keeps talking about Mickey Rourke’s comeback, but I am not sure it is much of a comeback, it seems more like a reunion tour and he will soon return back to where he was all those years ago, aging and becoming more and more cynical about Hollywood and life in general. His speech was stupendous. Particularly when he couldn’t remember Marisa Tomei’s name and called an assistant “gap tooth.” His misguided and uninhibited speech was beautufil especially that part about missing his recently deceased dog. Man, that guy is endearing. What was his whole thing about Eric Roberts needing a comeback? Weird. John Waters and Zooey Deschanel on stage together? Oh my, they need to make a film together.
...
I seriously never want the sun to ever come up again. In the darkness I dwell and inquire about the idiosyncrasies and complexities of my seemingly banal existence. I receive ghostly text messages from a presumed stranger that speaks of corporeality, in riddles and iambic pentameter. He rescues me from Sixth Avenue hustle and bustle. The blinding neon lights and the platinum blonde hair tied up in a ponytail, peacoat, trench coat with oversized buttons to keep the February chill from creeping through. Handbags, tote bags, and little purses. Nike, Puma, and XXXX. The last days of winter are awfully confusing. One moment I'm numb, the next morning I layer myself up and end up sweating up a sauna, but my fingers and nose still remain to frozen in the city air. The ghost who haunts my phone through text reveals himself a few hours later. I miss that kid desperately. He makes more guest appearances in my mind than most people. Brilliant and endearing. I remember kissing him and another boy at the same time upstairs in the rainforest at The Delancey. I couldn’t tell the tongues apart. But the water kept falling, the faucet kept leaking and the boys all relieved themselves in the trough downstairs in the bathroom. Urine following the same current down into the same drain with the slippery marbles and the boys who are just outside the stage dancing their joker’s dance, and walking on blades and broken glass. I read epitaphs like people read obituaries over morning toast and jam. Dejected postcoital exasperation. Cum drying up on your stomach and the waistband of your boxer-briefs.
3:44am.
Long Island. The Gays are given a Wednesday night to copulate and grind grind grind on a beautiful dance floor. R invites me out then takes it back. Jack and I decide to go anyway. On the list. My bank issued new debit cards because someone hijacked their system. I cannot remember my pin. I see the lesbian that TA’d one of my English classes out on the dance floor dancing to a remixed pop song. Revenge and Domestic Tragedy. I don’t understand why her clothes have to be so large and that baseball cap has to go. I have 3/4 quarter sleeves and everyone is smoking in the club. It is illegal and no one seems to mind. The flat-screen TVs are playing performances by JT, Britney, and Beyonce. They all seem to be dancing and singing to the beat of every song playing in the club. Is pop really that derivative? Probably. But who can deny such glossy, sugar-coated melodies? On the way to Nassau, Jack was pointing out all the jems found on the new Kelly Clarkson album. Each song seemed to sound like a different artist. Here is Kelly Clarkson sounding like Peaches. Here is Kelly Clarkson sounding like Katy Perry. This is her as Lady Gaga. I understand a particular sound encompassing an entire album but when each song sounds like a different person, that is a bit more fragmentation than I can handle. It is a schizophrenic album. Here the boys are in the Abercrombie and Fitch costumes. Gelled spiky hair, I think they refer to them as blow-outs, fake tans and some bling. J and I wonder when this trend will fade, it has been around for almost a decade. These boys would be much cuter if they left their hair alone, stopped tweezing, plucking and adding layers of logos upon logos. We watch everyone around us converse with one another. Everyone seems to know everyone. Incestuous almost. J spots a puppy-eyed boy sucking on a lollipop I try and I try to avoid a boy I once knew. From behind me, a boy runs his fingers through my hair and immediately apologizes when I turn around. “Oops. I thought you were my ex-boyfriend. I’m sorry.” With a half smile I respond, “It’s fine. I hope my resemblance of your ex isn’t a bad thing.” “No, not at all. It is definitely a good thing. By the way I’m _____.” “It’s nice to meet you. I’m B____.” Awkward silence and I turn to J to help me ease away from _____. Oh, this is all so boring.
I should just fictionalize everything and then anything would seem a bit more interesting.
An excerpt from Susan Stryker’s Transgender History:
...as I looked out over the sea of several thousand faces. Even after being in the transgender scene for so long, I found the crowed a bewitching spectacle: brilliantly tattooed, biologically female queer femme women and their trans guys who used to be their dyke girlfriends; straight-looking male-to-female transsexuals with nail salon manicures sitting side by side with countercultural transsexual women sporting face jewelry, dreadlocks, and thrift-store chic; lithe young people of indeterminate gender; black bulldaggers, white fairies, Asians queens, Native two-spirits; effeminate trannyfags and butch transsexual lesbians; kids of parents who had changed sex and parents who supported their kids; rejection of the labels their society had handed them. Some people walked around in fetish gear, some in chain-store khakis or floral-print sundresses from the discount clothing outlet; most wore the casually androgynous style of clothing that is the cultural norm. Vive la différence, I thought as I stepped up to the mi[crophone] and surveyed the beautiful range of human diversity spread out on the grass before me. Live and let live
I don’t know why this passage struck me so. It possibly moved me because Stryker spent the fifty pages prior explaining transgender in a dizzying theoretical language and actually defined terms like cisgender, genderqueer, and gender comportment. It was such a relief as a reader, to end her introduction with faces and unity.
I really don’t want to go to my French class at 8:30 in the morning. It is already 4. Perhaps I shouldn’t even sleep. Who knew Jesse McCartney could write such a beautiful pop song like Leona Lewis’ “Bleeding Love,” How did he write such a good song? I have spent numerous hours of my life watching acoustic versions of the song on Youtube and recently found an epic version by Thos Henley.
Thos Henley- Bleeding Love
With lyrics like this why wouldn’t you want to listen to The Antlers- Bear:
We’re terrified of one another, and terrified of what that means, but we’ll make only quick decisions, and you’ll just keep me in the waiting room, and all the while I’ll know we’re fucked and not getting unfucked soon, when we get home we’re bigger strangers than we’ve ever been before, you sit in front of snowy television, suitcase on the floor.”
And if you’re looking to dance to a song about the consequences of sex without a condom try Lykke Li’s cover of Kings of Leon’s “Knocked Up.”
Lykke Li- Knocked Up
I don’t know why I have been uploading so much music lately in this here journal. I just feel as if some of these songs need ears, as much as I think your ears need them. It is 4:33 in the morning and I should be sleeping but I think I might have drank too much coffee today. Speaking of coffee, with the help of Twitter and a friend, I discovered a new coffee shop in Brooklyn. I was inquiring about electrical outlets at Gimme Coffee, a coffee shop in Williamsburg that I have been to once before on Twitter with above mentioned friend. Three minutes after Ed responded to my question, I got an email notification that Gimme Coffee was following me on Twitter and responded with its own answer! Yes, the coffee shop not only discovered me on Twitter but it actually conversed with me! How surreal is that? There goes Justification #78! Twitter is not only another social networking site which makes meaningful connections with other people, but it also establishes meaningful connections with coffeehouses, stores, and inanimate objects! If you are looking to follow your favorite fictional character, there is a chance they are tweeting right now as you read this. I currently have the misfortune of following (and being followed by) Sookie Stackhouse of True Blood fame. She tweets about falling in love with vampires, her mundane life as a waitress in Bon Temps, and even posts songs she is listening to. It is eerie. Not only is it the fictional Sookie from those fictional novels written by Charlaine Harris, which was adapted by Alan Ball for a HBO television show, played by the amazing Anna Paquin, now we as Twitter users can read her interior monologue/commentary written by who??? Is it Alan Ball? Or an intern at HBO working for college credit? How many more mutations of the same fictional character can we have/consume? I almost screamed when I got the Twitter notification stating that Patty Hewes (Glenn Close in Damages) was following me! That woman would slit my throat if she actually read my mundane updates. Since, I am always looking to justify the reasons why I use Twitter, I came up with Reason #79. Twitter kills idle time. During all those moments of idleness what could be more productive than tweeting (with an attached photograph) of the woman who left the house wearing two different shoes? Stuck at a red traffic light, on the bus on your way to work or school, at the airport waiting for your connecting flight, or standing on line waiting to order your lunch are all reasonable times to tweet. Why not tweet that thought you want to elaborate at length at another time? Twitter offers an escape from those idle moments, in those non-places.
Your aunt, not just any aunt but your godmother calls you while you are sleeping and leaves a voicemail. The voicemail is nothing poignant but she asks you to call her back when you get a chance. On your way to Brooklyn, you put your headphones on and dial her number. She tells you about a news report she heard on the television about women’s bodies found in New Mexico and Colorado. Don’t worry too much about it. Go on to Brooklyn and hang out with your friends. The authorities think all the women were killed by a serial killer and that was his/her dumping ground. We all need closure. We haven’t heard from your mother in over two years. No phone call. Not contact whatsoever. You should talk to your grandmother about it, perhaps they can send dental records to the authorities. This could be absolutely nothing but we all want to know we all want to make sense of this all. Images of dusty bones and skulls with light brown hair flicker in your mind like one of those gruesome crime TV shows. You’ve had nightmares of this possibility. But you continue driving westward, Bjork’s Vespertine is in the stereo and it distracts you from the realities in different time zones. But your best defense mechanism is repression and that is what you do until you don’t even notice your mother even disappeared, that your mother is still in her apartment in Phoenix, writing in her journal, or watching the soap opera network. I arrive in Brooklyn and decide to go to Second Stop Cafe on Lorimer instead of Gimme Coffee after realizing that Second Stop brews (Portland-based) Stumptown coffee. The same Stumptown coffee you had in Seattle last summer that made one of the most delicious soy mochas you have ever had. There are no vacant tables to sit at when you walk in but you order a coffee anyway. Just before you order, the barista looks bewildered at the cash register, because he accidentally hit a button that prevented him from taking my order. He was scruffy and wore a winter hat placed lazily on his head. I inquired about the beans and confessed my love of the Stumptown coffee shop I found myself in last summer after eating at the French restaurant next door in Seattle. He was so enthusiastic about Stumptown coffee and he informed me that it is wonderful to be in New York City right now during what he called a “coffee war.” Stumptown is supposedly opening up a shop in Red Hook and is actually going to roast beans there? He was so passionate about coffee beans I lost him a few sentences back. He said that Second Stop Cafe is affiliated with Stumptown owners and Stumptown visit the store regularly. His textbook knowledge of coffee and the supposed open frontier for coffee in the land of New York was endearing. I pour some soymilk into my ceramic coffee mug and ask a girl sitting at a table by herself if I could join her. She said sure. I pulled out Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues and started reading about lesbians growing up in Buffalo, New York. Buffalo does not sound like a good place now and certainly not back in the 50s where this novel begins.
[Insert a 24 hour intermission where I tell myself, “Self, let’s take a nap for two hours and then wake up and accomplish all the necessary things to accomplish on a Friday evening!” Those two hours eventually turn into six and it is already time for work]
12:19 is boiling water for green tea and macaroni and cheese and listening to my little brother play Garfield on his DS #
12:20 @octoberxswimmer I wonder...how did that cat stay culturally relevant? #
12:55 is why must they close the Virgin Megastore in Union Square? #
12:59 @michaelmcfadden jeez. how many times is that b*tch coming around town? #
13:17 @23r it is silly. one of the few reasons why i returned the sucker. #
13:42 @vintagelife I should be excited when capitalism fails; but all those indie record shops do not have the collection that virgin did. #
14:18 @nicholascook you can almost pass as a vegetarian these days! stay away from the "soy nuggets" #
14:56 is going to watch an episode of the L word #
15:10 @octoberxswimmer Helena: "[Dylan] colonizes my thoughts." I need to steal that line in the future #
15:32 did the L word just reference Vera Farmiga in Down to the Bone? Brilliant. #
00:39 @vintagelife I said pussywillows dotty! #
00:41 @blackandhip oh man. how many flights? #
00:46 @TattooOfSun really? I can't wait to watch the second episode. #
00:47 @bdubois omg! #
00:48 @lolwtfaids what about tara on buffy?! #
00:49 @TattooOfSun weird. she's crazy in real life. #
00:51 @db you should probably see that off-broadway play Telephone. it is all about this quote. perhaps a bit more poetic #
00:54 @nicholascook at least I got a hug the night before you declared official hug day! #
00:56 @nowirecoathangr where do you go? #
00:56 @mattbuchan exciting opportunities?! #
00:59 @Isak aw. #
01:20 @ryanpfluger you've been having too many good days lately! #
01:21 @tofumugwump I can't seem to help talking to myself! it is very meta and Vonnegut of me #
01:22 @nowirecoathangr which album? #
01:23 @ryanseattle I want vivace to exist in new york! #
01:29 doesn't like when naps turn into sleeps #
02:00 is Yelle is playing on one of those late night shows. she is so adorable. I wish she'd teach me French #
02:43 is forget about bat for lashes' glass and daniel check out pearl's dream and good love! #
02:48 @michaelkmak je pense le francais est tres difficile! trop beaucoup TENSES! #
04:00 watching Gossip Girl and Dan says: "our family went from Family Ties to Faulkner in one cocktail" #
04:21 Blair to Serena about going to Brown: "Maybe we can get a jumpstart on your veganism. Have some celebratory seitan at Angelica Kitchen." #
04:30 @octoberxswimmer mmm...I wouldn't mind some angelica kitchen right now! #
I was listening to Damien Rice’s O at work last night and forgot how brilliant that album is. It also made me want to watch every movie his songs appeared in (like Closer and Stay). Now I am listening to Nada Surf’s “Inside of Love” on repeat because it is summing up my mood as of late.
For some reason I cannot stop looking at this photograph of Heath Ledger and Rose Bryne:
So where does this narrative lead? Are you looking for some direction? Orientation? A proper location to set your bearings? I don’t think there is use for a compass here. We are in a Pynchon world now. Used car lots and an underground mail system that sorts letters with meaningless text. Communication for communication’s sake. Kind of like my compulsion to document. But I will try and mend the holes and finish this wearisome assortment of words.
At the coffee shop, I read, and the line about two lovers changing the pronouns of a contemporary love song to make it fit for them was very charming because I have done the same thing. The girl I am sharing a table with is reading an article about “muddy” psychology. I am not sure what that means but the red ink in her margins is very distracting. What else is distracting is a man at another table who keeps snapping photos with his phone. Why do phones do that anyway? Why have the “sound” of a camera taking a photograph when it is not necessary? It is nearing 5:30 and it is time to pack up my belongings. Blue highlighter, pen, novel, and notebook are put back in my bag and I place my coffee mug with the rest of the dirty dishes. Here is where Twitter Justification #80 resides. It is time to meet up with N to go see the play Telephone at the Foundry Theatre in the West Village. N is a friend from Twitter. Twitter Justification #80: Meet New People. I’m listening to Casiotone For The Painfully Alone on the subway and I start to feel weak and faint. The metal pole I’m clinging on to helps me from falling to the floor. I realize I haven’t eaten anything all day and when I rush off the train, I look for something to shove in my mouth. A bakery would be perfect. So, there I am walking down 7th Avenue and a bakery appears, the same bakery I have eyed quite a few times before. I order this amazing honey and walnut pastry from a very friendly guy who guarantees I will like it. Casiotone is singing “He cries in the darkness until the end credits roll...man that’s the only way to cry” as I continue walking to Commerce Street. I am too busy shoving this honey and walnut goodness in my mouth I almost trip over a median in the road. At another intersection a woman gives me unexpected bedroom eyes and I don’t know how to shake those brown eyes off. I turn down Commerce and this block is beautiful. Almost fairytale-like. It looks like what the city is depicted like in movies. Movies like You’ve Got Mail. Those bad movies that are always on television, the ones that pull you in with chance encounters and quirky ways of saying I love you in a bookstore. Those movies that construct a love that seems so attainable, that depict a New York so beautiful, that offer an escape from the mundane reality shows that are on the television at the same time. But here I am, in the setting of one of those films, standing outside the theater. Just a few minutes later N arrives and offers his hand for a handshake. There is about an hour before the play starts. A dog jumps around excitedly and N wants to pet him. We end up picking up our tickets which end up being just the program itself. The program looked as if it were xeroxed at Staples. We take a seat in the lobby. A lady thinks I am in the way, and says excuse me and we are confused what she was asking to be excused. Another lady, this one quite older, asks if she can rest her handbag on the bench we were sitting on. She kept thanking me over and over again and it made her inquiry even more awkward than it had to be. Peacoats with a NYT pin on them. You tell me you designed an application where the T spins. Texas. The difference between Austin and the rest of the state. Punching numbers into your fathers key as if it were a calculator when he worked from home. I cannot remember what you were wearing on you feet but your jeans had neat stitching. I’m glad to know that I am not the only who inquires what is in someone else’s bag. I just need to remember to ask someone before I start going through it. Sorry Kyle. One of the women working at the theater seemed to yell at us to be quiet at exactly the same time you were speaking. I felt her eyes penetrating through us. I try and defend Dollhouse and Buffy the Vampire Slayer but fail miserably, realizing just a few minutes before I was talking about how good Gilmore Girls was. I offer you some of the greatest pastry on earth and I think you agreed that is might be the best tasting pastry on earth. The lobby is swamped with people, people I didn’t expect to come and we squeeze through the doors to find a seat. The theater is beautiful. Brick everywhere. You pretend to play bongos on three bald heads in front of us. The furthest one away is abnormally shiny. You’re taller than I expected. Not fitting comfortably in the seat. The man at the end of the row awkwardly stands for too long as we let people pass down the row.
Telephone begins and I realize that I am never going to be able to put this play into words. In three parts the play is set in two different centuries. Beginning when the telephone is first invented and when its purpose is not completely clear. Philosophical meanderings about death and ghosts. The difference between listening and understanding. The second part was Babette a seemingly scattered and schizophrenic woman wrapped in a corset pondering the things every human ponders, but hears other voices in the distance. She seems to try and justify her delusions, thoughts of grandeur, and the fact that she has a telephone in her stomach. Something she only refers to a few times. She is not just master but slave. Her unintelligible but poetic rambling went on for so long. I wasn’t sure she would stop for a breath. I waited for her to trip over a word, but she kept the words flowing, flow, flowing, a constant hum into the empty spaces of the theater. We were on the other line, receiving her poetic stream of consciousness, almost like these words here, listening, not fully comprehending. but listening, perhaps not understanding, but what were we to do without a context? without knowing her before? what year is it? Perhaps that was the point, context and relevance doesn’t matter in a world saturated in a constant exchange of salutations in emails, conversations, bank tellers, and TSA employees at security checkpoints. communication. At what point are we to stop sharing? Stop comprehending. The difference between savoir and compendre. Miscommunication and disconnection. The last part of the play was visually stunning. It mostly takes place on a dark stage with lights shining on faces, backs turned, lips moving...while fragments of different phone conversations are played. Modern life expressed through modern technology. A girlfriend who cannot love a man the same way she used to, sounding bored, fatigued, disconnected, another boyfriend sounds dejected, they are all so different but fill in the golden silence that telephones create. Pregnant telephones and pregnant pauses. Awkward to sit through the sound of a supposed silence, with static and the whimper of someone who can’t fake the feelings anymore than the next person. I read an article that said the play was an “experience rather than a narrative-immediately into the subconscious.” We walked out of the theater in silence because all that was heard were feet stammering up the stairs and out the doors. I remember the woman who was putting lip balm on during the deluge of neurosis from the second act of the play. She is a woman who cannot comprehend without fidgeting for something to relieve her own subconscious. She reminded me of the piece of gum I had in the pocket of my jeans, that I instantly craved. I did laugh too loud at one of the lines during the play. I think Babette was talking about giving birth to a child through her mouth.
I’m really not digging this linearity. But after the play we walk down West 4th to look for something to eat. I know Red Bamboo is not too far from here, and I suggest it, but suddenly take back the suggestion because it is a vegetarian restaurant and I wouldn’t want to enforce my diet on someone else’s appetite. I also fear suggesting things that people will dislike. But we walk there anyway. Conor Oberst’s solo album is playing on the stereo and you try and restrain yourself from singing along. The tables are turned a half hour later when Death Cab For Cutie’s The Photo Album comes on and I have to suppress my urge to sing along to Ben Gibbard; along with repressing emotions that are so intricately entwined with this record. Ex-girlfriends and make-out sessions in my 1987 Chrysler Fifth Avenue. Things seemed simpler back than even if I was slipping from reality on your living room couch with my head rested on your lap. Confessions of a middle school actor and clarinet player met with confessions of a french horn player and a talent show that required leopard print and balloons for breasts. The wait staff is not as awkward as I presumed. Explanation of teeth. I didn’t think there were so many stories about enamel. I even spotted a Toms of Maine bag earlier and wondered if they had their own storefront in the city. Tripping over words and faux sweet and sour chicken and faux philly cheesesteaks. The lack of accents on both our parts. Coworkers almost become sister-in-laws and Upper East Side apartments surrounded by barking dogs and an alley with too much noise. I like your misaligned beauty marks. Crabby cancer, Gregor Samsa, the sharing of neuroses and anxieties. It was one of the first times I have ever felt someone really understood panic at its most devastating and paralyzing. Likes to sing Cher at karaoke. Reading posters on the wall and forgetting what you read. No alcohol. Awkward use of tweet, tweeting, and twitter. Au revoir underground at the Union Square subway station. A handshake turned hug. Down two flights of stairs. 8 minutes for the next Brooklyn bound train. Six people are dancing to Rihanna on the subway platform. I drowned them out by listening to the same Bon Iver song (Brackett, WI) over and over again. That gliding guitar and bass just kills me with each note. As I ascend onto Lorimer Street, I realize how eerily warm it is outside. I virtually knock on Pfluger’s door but he doesn’t answer. I grab a cup of coffee from the 24 hour deli and head back home listening to Yeasayer leaving voicemails on my sister’s cell phone because she makes me smile a particular smile only she can get me to contort.
/at 7:04 Sunday morning I finally finish this. When did it even begin?