what is the word

Whenever I am sad from now on I shall think of my friend Jesse's Friendster picture. That is all I have to say today.

Watching The Golden Girls is one of my great guilty pleasures, & watching The Golden Girls here on location in Miami is like, a thousand times better than watching it anywhere else.
The obsession started when I was a little kid living in Barbados, where it was one of the only American shows we got -- that & Days of Our Lives circa 1975. The Golden Girls was on sort of late, so it was one of the last shows I could watch before bedtime. It always gave me this sort of warm safe feeling inside. Back then I used to get really anxious about school & stuff & I'd have trouble falling asleep, so it was good for me to watch something pleasant before bed.
Today, watching The Golden Girls still gives me that same old feeling, & not just because of its killer theme song. It's so reassuring. It gives me hope for the whole human condition. Death isn't nearly so frightening as old age: the prospect of growing old (quite possibly alone, almost definitely frail, feeble & tired, hopefully of "a fading prettiness," if possessing any prettiness at all, & at worst, destitute & forgotten) is a terrifying idea. The Golden Girls, however, live pretty great lives for any age. They live with their best friends, they have families (tho they don't have to spend too much time with them), they work occasionally, they go on dates, they dress well (shoulder pads & sequins not withstanding -- at least they're trying) & when one of them has a problem, they sit around the kitchen table eating cheesecake & working it out together. They're always going out on the lanai for a drink or something. They love calling it the lanai.
I got to meet Rue McClanahan (Blanche) once, last summer, at the Williamsburg dog parade. She was completely fucking terrifying. She was such a diva, rhinestone sunglasses & tropical parasol set against the sun, the star judge of the dog show. I approached her during a lull in the proceedings & told her how much I enjoyed her work. I made very sure to call her "Ms. McClanahan." She was quite gracious, but when I asked if she would mind being photographed with me, her manner became more authoritative.
"When I'm not judging, you may take a picture," she commanded.
"OK," I said uncertainly, backing away a bit.
"I'm not judging now" -- very impatiently -- "so you can take the picture now." A little sigh of annoyance. "Where is the camera?"
Panicked, I grabbed my friend Jay, who was nervous too & fumbled for his Nikon. Rue dictated the shot, motioning for me to sit beside her, under the parasol. I was shaking & trying to smile; as soon as Jay pushed that button I was back on my feet.
"Thank you!" I said, practically halfway across the park already. "Thank you so much!"
The photo came out well; you can hardly see the terror in my eyes or how much I was shaking. The one I'd really like to meet is Bea Arthur. You can tell she's the sort of old school entertainer who'd be a real class act. Drag queens love Bea because she offers them a standard of womanhood men can attain; Bea loves them right back. In fact, you can tell she loves all her fans & would never boss them around or try to intimidate them ... not like some Golden Girls I know ...

If I weren't trapped here in paradise, I swear I would have gone to DC this weekend & gotten my march on.
Paul sent me this; you should watch it & sign it.

Miami is for material girls. The Delano Hotel, with the beautiful people flanking its long warm vanishing pool, was the grandest of all & I was happy there, wearing the shortest possible skirt & drinking the cheapest possible beers. My friend & I had our picture taken in the pool, shin-deep in the warm water & holding our shoes in our hands.
After a couple of stops at some perfectly adequate bars, for some reason we found ourselves at the annoyingly trendy B.E.D., which was way too cold & way too crowded. I left almost immediately after, feeling a bit sheepish for leaving South Beach before 2 a.m.
& today I swam at the pool again, & there were palm trees all around in a ring, but anyway I was thinking about the tulips in New York.

Life is a bowl of cherries down here in Southern Florida. It's hot as hell & I swim every day. I lay out by the pool smoking & reading Tender is the Night & it is very, very hot. Is anything hotter than Southern Florida? Well, yes.
Everybody in Miami wants to know what New York is like but more insistently, they want to know what someone who lives in New York (I don't know when if ever I will dare to call myself a New Yorker -- possibly not for another fifteen years or so) thinks of Miami.
Getting drunk at a dive called the Barracuda with my new friends, I told them I thought that women in New York had beautiful faces & impeccable clothes, & most of the time their bodies were just ok. The girls in Miami have killer bodies, every single one of them, but by & large their faces are cute, at best. To say nothing of their fashion, which is a lot of tight white pants, pastel or metallic sandals, & Louis Vuitton bags. They really like things to match. It isn't a bad look, actually, tho you'd better have the Miami body if you want to pull it off.
I spent the better part of the evening trying to decide from whom I should run away faster: my middle-aged, slightly oily pool partner Tito, who kept showing off his mediocre French & Italian when he found out I used to live in Switzerland; or the not-pretty-enough Norwegian girl who lifted up my skirt while I was lining up a shot & kept sticking her big fat boobs in my face while she leaned in way too close to tell me about how much time she wanted to spend with me while I was here. I stuck it out with Tito because he was a really good player & he had his own cue & we were running the table.
So I ended up talking, or rather listening, politics with my friend's boyfriend for ages, & finally leaving when my bag of weed arrived, which was the reason I'd stuck around so long. Back at the hotel I stuffed some shreds of it into a cigarette & ended up falling asleep incredibly stoned. So stoned I had dreams I was stoned, very much uncomfortably stoned. So I've definitely got more than enough grass to get me thru another week of semi-lingual pool players & wasted Norwegian hoes. Altho if I can make it out to the monkey jungle, I might need another bag.

Lately this punk rock voter movement has been all over the place. If Jello is down with it, I am down with it.

It seems that my drink of choice in Miami is the Gimlet. I have had five of them since I arrived. Last nite I had two incredibly strong ones at a bar called The Bar & surprised myself by how buzzed I felt walking back to the hotel. I had spent the earlier part of the evening infuriating the saleswomen on Miracle Mile by trying on dayglo minidress after dayglo minidress before deciding, finally, that none of them held a candle to my dream dress. Then I stumbled upon (& subsequently out of) The Bar, a dark little place that was the perfect setting for my gimlet drinking & random scribblings. In New York I would normally never bring a notebook to a bar but here I didn't feel like a total jackass about it. Besides, I didn't have anything else to do. They were playing nice music at The Bar. They played Just Like Heaven twice. It was the reason I took out my notebook in the first place; it just made me want to. I always say my favorite Cure Song is The Love Cats but it isn't. Really it's Just Like Heaven. Of course it's Just Like Heaven.
So I sat there for awhile listening to the Cure & mulling over the question of whether boys are a grand waste of time (they aren't) & taking siplets from my gimlets, getting a little drunker & wondering why gimlets hadn't been my drink of choice all along, considering my fondness for words that end in -let.
So I kept drinking these gimlets & they played Just Like Heaven again & I wondered why it is that drowning is such a romantic death.
Drowned her deep inside of me ... in her tomb by the sounding sea.
I always thought tuberculosis was an incredibly romantic way to go. The unearthly pallor, accentuated by a bright red spot on either cheek, the weak cough producing droplets of blood in a handkerchief. But drowning seems to inspire more poems. Maybe because nothing rhymes with tuberculosis.
Today, gimlet-less, I was thinking about it again & I realized Annabel Lee didn't drown at all; she was murdered by jealous angels who sent a cold wind down to kill her. So actually, in terms of romantic deaths, I guess that pretty much takes the cake.

Hotel living so phenomenal, like living somebody else's life, or your own life on the lam. Coming home at one a.m. in the quiet elevator, sinster metal ashcans in the hallways suddenly striking you with terror, feeling like some lowlife is behind you, stalking you in the seedy dim light. & then to swipe your card in the door, slip thru & deadbolt yourself in -- utter security after half-feigned terror.

& it will be golden and eternal just like that. There's no need to say another word.

The AC, the TV, the disposable cups individually wrapped in plastic, my $6 bottles of quite decent Shiraz awaiting me. The giant beds, better if you were here. Evening spent in an outdoor bar, somewhere in the Grove, here in Miami, but everybody only wants to talk about New York. Vodka gimlets outside by the palm trees; I have no thirst for scotch here, tho I thirst for good conversation like I thirst for you.
Well, not just like.
Falling asleep to the television, an old film of Madame Bovary. The overly dramatic lines mingling with your dreams: "Do you know, Charles, why that clock strikes? To announce the death of another hour."

It's too much; it isn't enough.

There are bright hard bits of glass on the sidewalk outside my apartment. I don't see them glittering till I am almost upon them & I have to dart away in my thin moccasins.

These days there are couples everywhere, always, on the subway platform, running towards home to get out of the rain, at the grocery store picking up steaks & dessert. There have always been couples, but lately there has been more canoodling than usual. I despise canoodling. I even hate the word; its natural habitat is on the society pages, but it sometimes ventures out into oral conversation. Canoodling should only be done by wealthy celebrities in the corners of expensive restaurants, preferably over a plate of pasta, noodles actually, & a bottle of wine. Twenty year-old kids in Williamsburg are not allowed to canoodle at the Ale House. As a matter of fact, they can canoodle there if they really want, since I don't ever go there, but they ought to stay away from the places that are really worth going to. Canoodlers should stick to the Rain Lounge, that Indian place across the street (on Bedford; not the one down North 5th next to Sparky's -- that's mine), the video place next door, & Galapagos.

Here's what I wrote in my journal two years ago today. Pre-blog days.

jumping over the gap in the floor like its a pit of alligators snapping at my heels. waiting for the water to boil.
fuck nearly 4 am already? cant seem to get to bed at a decent hour in this town. if you can call new york city a town.
evil cramps this evening. curdling up inside me white and grey and stark. dark white pain, the color of dirty linens. played about fifteen games of pool tonite with jeff & two boys named mike & john; the former had corn-rows but was sleepy-eyed & kept complimenting me on my "finesse." i am outside myself, once again waiting for my food to cook & thank god i am not pregnant. altho i curse these cramps. food COOK! -- cos i cant write.

I was a canoodler then; I didn't know any better. That summer my co-canoodler & I took picnic lunches down to the river. We talked about heroes of literature -- which characters we felt most affinity with. He was Arturo Bandini and Iceberg Slim and someone I've forgotten. I said Franny Glass & Anna Karenina, so long as I wasn't going to end up under the train. We canoodled by the river & we ate our sandwiches & drank bottled Aranciata & he composed limericks for me & I tried to recite The Eagle by Tennyson but I couldn't remember one of the lines. ... the wrinkled sea beneath him crawls, something something mountain walls, and like a thunderbolt he falls.

We weren't bothering anybody with our canoodling in those days, we weren't walking along Bedford Avenue with our hands in each other's back pockets or tonguing each other on the train at rush hour. Then again, how do I know? Maybe the boys smoking weed on the cement blocks further down the river's edge were completely repulsed by our behavior, tho I doubt it.

I don't canoodle anymore. These days my heart is bristled & barbed. I'm still the same, I like having fun, I like playing pool with boys at bars & I like meeting people & getting to know them. I'm still Tramp Bear for God's sake. But staring into someone's eyes over giant cups of tea at brunch (could that only have been three weeks ago?) is for pansies. I don't have the sentiment for it right now. Which is why I think it's perfect timing for me to pack off to Miami day after tomorrow. Goodbye, broken glass! Au revoir, Brooklyn! Ciao, Manhattan! I'm off to the land of shuffleboard & old ladies & pink flamingos & plastic surgery! Shall pick up my heart when I return.

I see the number 237 everywhere. It freaks me out. That was the number of the hotel room in The Shining where all the freaky shit went down. So ever since I first saw that movie, ages & ages ago, I've been noticing that number whenever I see it. It's not that that movie particularly scares me. It's more that 237 is fucking everywhere. It's the number of milliliters in my shampoo. It's the number of words in a story I just edited. It's the page I'm on in whatever book I'm reading. It seems to be the time whenever I look at a goddamn clock.
It has reached a point where I have decided that one of two things has to be happening. The first & more likely explanation is that because I have an association with that number (an association that, at least in the beginning, was characterized by anxiety & fear) it tends to jump out at me whenever it appears.
The second explanation is that some numbers naturally occur in nature more frequently than others. There's a website, somewhere, somehow, that very beautifully displays the patterns of numbers, but I can't remember where it is. I'm out of my element here because it would be an understatement to say my brain is unscientific. I mean, ones and twos and threes clearly occur more frequently than four hundred fifty-fours and six thousand one hundred twenty-twos. I mean, I'm pretty sure they do.
& in terms of three digit numbers, 200 and 300 have got to be more common than 237.
But what about 237 as compared against its neighbors 236 & 238?
So one day about a year ago I got a notebook & started ticking off every time I noticed a random 236, or a 237, or a 238. Needless to say I got bored of it after about three or four notations -- not enough to prove anything. So for awhile I still had these theories in my head, without any sort of hard evidence. Now, it has suddenly dawned on my unscientific brain that Google exists & I can figure this out fast.
Long story short, I googled the numbers in question. & the results are ...

237: "Results 1 - 10 of about 11,100,000 for 237. (0.12 seconds)"

OK. That's a lot of hits. Then I googled the other two numbers.

236: "Results 1 - 10 of about 11,000,000 for 236. (0.16 seconds)"

238: "Results 1 - 10 of about 11,100,000 for 238. (0.24 seconds)"

Interestingly (ok -- interestingly to me; incredibly fucking dull to anyone else) 236 gets about 1,000,000 less hits than 237 or 238, who are tied. But it took Google twice as long to come up with results for 238 as it did for 237.
So what does it all mean???
I think it means I need to get stoned & rewrite this post. I feel like that would be hilarious. It would have to be better than this. I bet after 237 bong hits I would arrive at some sort of hallucinatory epiphany about numerology. Or not.

"The Staten Island ferry reminds me of when I was very much in love with this man who I had to hide because he was married and it was such a scandal! We always had to go to Brooklyn and we had to go to Staten Island and we had to go to places where our friends would not see us, because of course when we broke up, we really hadn't broken up. Every place we went had to be where nobody we knew would see us. So when we played tennis, it had to be in New Jersey. And music! Music was very much a part of our lives, so we would go to the Metropolitan Opera or to Madison Square Garden, but we would sit up quite high, wear dark glasses. It was such a scandal! My parents were quite scandalized! And of course he was kind of a famous man, so it had to be handled very delicately and very carefully ... but it lasted many years, and I suppose everyone knew and just thought it was awful. It was 40 years ago, but a day never goes by that I don't think of him a little bit. I live on the thirtieth floor, and I can see all the bridges and the East River ... all the way to the Bronx! And whenever I think about the outer boroughs of Manhattan, it's like a hug that I remember, a firm hand on my back, a confidence. The most attractive man I ever knew fell in love with me." Polly Mellen

If you've been reading this blog, you know that I drink too much, sometimes steal things, can't hold down a relationship, stay out way too late, don't appreciate sports, & am a little boy-crazy. Well, to add to the list of my so-called character flaws, I've now discovered I'm a lousy faster. I've been following this goddamn diet all day long (why exactly, I seem to be too weak to remember) & all I want to do is eat. I'm 99% sure that in about fifteen minutes I'll be going to do just that. What I wouldn't do for a cashew right now, or a droplet of caffeine.
Anybody want to buy some grade B maple syrup?

So in my constant quest to broaden my horizons (i.e. try not to be so scornfully dismissive of the wide world of sports), I went with my friend Joe to see the Mets at the opening day of Shea stadium. It was a miserable day, very cold & drizzling intermittently. We had seats in the nosebleed section, in the very last row all the way at the top of the stands. I'm not afraid of heights normally, but there's something about baseball stadiums that strike terror in my heart. It's so high & so steep, & everywhere one is surrounded by the type of people who are clearly the most susceptible to mob mentality. I'm talking about grown men in baseball jerseys with someone else's name on the back. I know it's socially acceptable, but it sort of weirds me out. Some of them were even wearing the hard plastic baseball hats, even tho there doesn't seem to be a reason for those as casual wear. As I lighted cigarette after surreptitious cigarette, the paranoia that everyone in baseball paraphernalia was a ballpark official & was going to bust me eventually dissipated. I mean practically everyone had Mets gear on, except Joe & me.
But mob mentality it was, definitely, surreally. It seemed like no matter what happened a great shout would go up & everyone would pitch in. At one point, as I huddled in the cold, too freezing & apathetic about the game to stand with everyone else, I heard a chorus of "Show us your tits! Show us your tits!" followed by hoots & whistles.

- What happened? I asked Joe.

- Someone showed their tits, he replied.

So I stood up, since this was better than baseball, to see a lively looking woman several rows below us, facing the crowd & smiling. She had a red sweater on, & after a few rounds of "Do it again! Do it again! Do it again!" she lifted it up, & rather dexterously pulled down both cups of her black satin bra, revealing a pretty nice set of tan looking tits.
She got taken away by security, but not before a rousing chorus of "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!" from the drunken fans to my left.
After that the highlight of the game was a scary looking accident that happened in our section. This guy wearing a blue rain poncho that looked like a garbage bag was coming up the slippery stairs with a tray of food & beers. When he got to his row, which was just across the stairs from ours, he was handing something to his buddy & fell over, backwards, into the row below his. It was a terrible looking fall, very dramatic & far-reaching, as he fell backwards & rather sideways across three people -- a guy of about twenty-five, a woman who appeared to be his mother, & a younger woman who appeared to be his girlfriend. When it first happened no one was paying attention to the people who got fallen on; the guy who fell was clearly injured & remained sort of motionless for awhile there. This didn't stop the drunken fans at my left from laughing & jeering, but at one point I saw the guy's bloody elbow sticking out of the blue garbage bag & I swear I glimpsed bone.
The weird part was that the twenty-five year-old who got hit was not taking it well. By not taking it well, I mean he was crying like a baby. Obviously, I don't know how injured he was, & it could have really, really, really fucking hurt, but the way he was crying was odd. He just put his head in his hands & cried for ages. Every once in awhile he'd rub his neck (which I guess is where his boo-boo was), & his mom & girlfriend took turns comforting him, but it was a strange, childish reaction. At one point, after about half an hour of these theatrics, Bloody Blue Garbage Bag went over & appeared to be trying to sincerely apologize. But the crying guy was not having it, because in a second BBGB was back up & going sheepishly back to his seat.
But that wasn't all. The crying guy's hissy fit lasted the rest of the game -- at least two more hours. He sort of stopped crying, but he maintained an incredibly wounded expression & every once in awhile he would rub his neck, scowl harder than ever, then put his head in his hands with great fanfare. For the whole game.
I wasn't exactly being stoic myself; I was freezing & like an idiot I hadn't worn socks under my moccasins & I kept pestering Joe about when we could leave. "We stay til it's over," he kept saying. Then he'd motion at the baby. "That guy is still here."
So we ended up staying the whole time, right up until the end, even tho by the bottom of the 7th people were leaving the place in droves. Joe said we couldn't leave, & that furthermore, so long as we stayed we were better than the people who'd left.
It was worth it tho. I learned a lot. Did you catch that "bottom of the 7th"? It sounded natural, didn't it?
The only thing I regret is that Mike Piazza wasn't playing. Everybody hates him or something now, I guess, but I kind of think he's hot. Yow, check him out with that gum!

Am I the only person completely repulsed by this? The picture of him with The Dunst is particularly barf-worthy.

There's this guy I see a lot around the neighborhood, & if you live in my neighborhood I bet you've seen him too. It is impossible not to notice him. He clearly wants you to notice him.
I've seen him about four or five times, & whether it's a bright, warm Sunday afternoon, a bleak Tuesday morning, or, most recently, a happening Friday nite, he is wearing all black, some sort of strange breeches, a long coat, striped stockings, round little grannie glasses, possibly a hat, & full-on goth makeup. He is always alone.
Sara & I were in a car last nite, on our way to dine at Moto, & we spotted him heading towards the subway. We both burst into exclamations over how often we see him & what an enigma he is. We decided it would be great to figure out just what his deal was, but that, ultimately, we were far too terrified.
Sara's proposed tactic was to follow him around one day & note his activities. She hoped that perhaps he had some sort of job that required him to wear that outfit -- like the boring truth is that it's actually just his work uniform & his personality isn't creepy in the least. We both felt we would be reassured if we were to see him in the company of a girl -- one whose look matched his. But we knew, deep down, that this was doubtful.
My plan was to approach him & pretend to be a Time Out New York staffer, doing one of those street fashion profiles. I'd take his photo & ask him the requisite questions. You know, like, "Where'd you buy that shirt?", How much was it?" & "Describe your personal style." Personally I think his style is best described as "Goth Quaker" but I'd love to hear his suggestions.
It just proves my theory that only inappropriate people seem to choose the goth look. He isn't even a proper Goth. He's like some warped, Western male version of the Japanese Victorian vampire thing. & if Japanese women can't get away with it, why on earth should he bother?

The annoying thing about trying to find online photos of hottie Sebastian Bach is that not only do you come up with a lot of pictures of the older, fatter Sebastian Bach, but you get rather a lot of pictures of Johann Sebastian Bach as well. I'm sure his music is great & all, but who wants to see pictures of him? Every rendition looks the same; ie some version of this -- not exactly easy on the eyes.
If you want to talk about dreamy composers, I have to admit I've got a thing for Brahms. It started when I was about fifteen & really into the sensitive, long-haired type. One day I was flipping through this book of my dad's, a sort of encyclopedia of classical music. The section on Brahms had this grainy shot of him looking very serious, with that tortured artist air about him. I was so into it. Frankly, it still has that same effect on me, except his balding pattern bothers me a bit.
Sebastian Bach is sort of trying to have that look here, but he truly is fucking hot so it doesn't matter. & he clearly has no problem with hair loss.

Today is so boring, I am looking at mixed nuts online. Seriously.

If someone loves a flower, of which just one single blossom grows in all the millions and millions of stars, it is enough to make him happy just to look at the stars.

He can say to himself, 'Somewhere, my flower is there...'

(Somewhere my flower IS there, & he better be wearing tighty-whities.)

I'm sorry, I'm a little late on this. But this is funny. I do live in Williamsburg & I do love it there. But the writer of that post, in spite of all the ugly, hating comments he inspired, is hilarious.
"Why do you have to prance about like a fucking deer in a glen?" That's gold.

I have been looking at taxidermy online for about the last hour. I am definitely going to give myself nightmares. I'm not sure how or why someone as creeped out by animals as I am can be so into taxidermy, but there it is. I wish I could post all the great photos I found, but I think I'm too scared to look at them again. Here are a few.

I had a pretty shitty birthday this year. My birthday celebration, on Sunday, was wonderful. I had dinner with about 15 of my friends at Good World -- lots of yummy Swedish food & wine & good conversation. But my actual birthday, which was yesterday, was more on the not-so-great, actually pretty terrible side. I don't really know how it happened. I woke up in kind of a bad mood, & I didn't want to follow thru on any of the plans I had drunkenly made the nite before. I had told a couple of people I would do various things with them, like have lunch or see a movie or get stoned or help them move. But then the day came & I didn't want to do any of those things, & it was my birthday so I just figured I didn't have to. So I spent the day by myself, doing things for myself. The mistake I made was to go see that movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I thought it was amazing, very beautiful & touching. But at a certain point in the movie, where Joel & Clementine are in the empty house in Montauk together, I just started crying & I kind of didn't stop until the movie was over. The worst part was that I never really lost the urge to cry after that, all day long. I kind of walked around by myself for awhile, treating myself to things, not because I wanted to, but because it was my birthday & I felt like I should. I spent about an hour in the Strand, feeling tearful & indecisive over what books to buy. Finally I picked up some Chekov & a little volume called Living Well is the Best Revenge. Then I went over to Virgin & bought a Holly Golightly record. I didn't feel any better now that I owned these things & I still felt sort of sad on the train going back to Brooklyn. I thought I would have some sushi but first I stopped by Sweetwater for a beer. I ended up at the bar next to one of those old men that thinks because he's old & was in Vietnam you're supposed to be interested in every goddamn thing he has to say. He was about seventy & well-dressed in a cable-knit sweater & tweed jacket, with close-cropped white hair & an annoying way of leaning over & winking at me after every few sentences. He found out it was my birthday so he was buying me whiskeys, which was the only reason I didn't leave. I had about three whiskeys with him plus the beer I bought when I came in & I hadn't eaten anything & then I was pretty drunk. So I went over to Bedford & had a bowl of chirashi by myself & that wasn't really making me feel any better either. Then the English guy I've been seeing invited me out for a drink at the Abbey, & I hadn't seen him in awhile so I was suspicious but I went to meet him anyway. I probably had two sips of my drink before I asked him what the deal was & he told me he was seeing someone else & he didn't mean for any of it to happen. Within about one second I just stood up, collected my purse & my sad plastic bag with the record & the books & said See you later.
I'd been wanting to cry for hours & then I was, crying right outside the Abbey & trying to get away as fast as I could. He chased me out & stopped me; put his arms around me on the street & I sort of sobbed into his jacket for a minute & there were words exchanged but I don't know what they were. I felt awful; I wanted him to leave me alone & I went home. I knew I was being dramatic but I didn't care. He called again when I got home & we spoke for awhile & I calmed down a lot, but still I felt like there was no point in us talking about it anymore & I hung up pretty soon.
So somehow I managed to ruin everything for myself. I probably should have had the dinner on Monday, not Sunday. Then it would have gone down as a great, low-key, special day with lots of friends around me. Instead I spent half the day crying & drinking with people I don't like & spending money I don't really have. On the other hand, I feel like having a bad birthday might mean the rest of the year is going to be good. I don't know why I think that; I guess I just hope so.
As a post-script, none of this should be taken to mean I didn't love Eternal Sunshine. It ruined my day, definitely, but I thought it was amazing. Kate Winslet's hair deserves its very own Oscar, Jim Carrey was perfection & the movie should get a special award for surviving Kirsten Dunst's irritating performance with its integrity firmly intact.

I've been listening to Emmy Lou Harris a lot lately, & specifically, the song Luxury Liner. I've been listening to it, sometimes three or four times, just before I go to bed & then putting it right back on when I wake up in the morning. I like the rest of the record too but it's hard to get past that one track. It was one of my favorites when I was a little kid. Now it won't stop going thru my head. I was thinking about the words & the more I think about it the more it makes sense to me. It's like it's my goddamn theme song or something.

Luxury liner forty tons of steel
No one in this whole wide world knows the way I feel
I've been a long lost soul for a long long time
Yeah I've been around
Everybody ought to know what's on my mind
You think I'm lonesome so do I so do I
Well I'm the kind of girl who likes to make a livin' runnin' round
Yeah & I don't need a stranger to let me know my baby's let me down
You think I'm lonesome so do I so do I
Luxury liner forty tons of steel if I don't find my baby now I guess I never will
I've been a long lost soul for a long long time
Yeah I've been around
Everybody ought to know what's on my mind
You think I'm lonesome so do I so do I

Last nite a friend of mine who hasn't gotten laid in awhile referred to sex as "coitus." Anise & I were witnesses & we burst out laughing. He didn't even use it with its usual companion, "post-". The three of us were sharing a table at Plaid, watching this band Certainly, Sir & I had been telling them a story about my love interest & the awful comment he'd made in his oh-so-polite British accent. We'd just been laying in bed together & we had our arms around each other, when he made the ridiculous insinuation that I might be too thin. I thought this was a profoundly annoying thing to say, for a couple of reasons. For one thing, everybody knows you can never be too thin. For another, if he's hoping that any extra pounds I might pack on as a result of his suggestion would somehow give me big tits & ghetto booty, he is pretty sorely mistaken.
Anyway, that's the story I was indignantly telling when this friend of mine, the guy who needs to get laid, said, "First of all, I would never make negative comments about someone's body right after coitus, & for another ..."
But whatever he was going to drunkenly say next was lost in a sea of giggles & derision from Anise & me.
"COITUS?" I said. "Do you also refer to oral sex as cunnilingus?"
More giggles.
But seriously, "cunnilingus" (ironically, one rarely hears the word used orally) has sort of a sneaky slimy perverted undertone to it that I sort of find sexy. There isn't anything sexy about coitus tho. It's rather like having your eighth grade P.E. teacher, frosty-permed & track-suited, telling you what you already know about the birds & the bees.
Point being that my tongue-tied friend needs a little coitus in his life. Just enough so that the word is banished from his brain & replaced by its more nonchalant, worldlier cousins fucking, screwing & doing it. Any of which I would way rather have than actual coitus (shudder).

True confessions.
Yesterday I stole a tube of lipstick. What a fucking out-of-nowhere thing to do. I was at the Nars counter at Sephora, wavering between two particular shades of purple, & I realized I had to have them both. I only wanted to pay for one, so I bought the one I liked best, & I palmed the tester of the other one. I stole a tester. If my karma gets me for this transgression, it will probably be in the form of herpes. But I don't think that punishment truly fits the crime. Herpes is a bit harsh isn't it, as an exchange for a tester. Especially when I shelled out $23 for the one I actually purchased.
I found out yesterday my friend Belkys refers to me sometimes as her "ugly maker." This sounds like a compliment, & I'm sure she means it as one, but when someone calls you their Ugly Maker, it makes you feel a bit strange. I didn't like it at all, especially considering Belkys is like, the least ugly person ever. I have an Ugly Maker, my friend Jessica in Texas. I didn't realize I'd been thinking of her as an Ugly Maker until Belkys gave that feeling a name. I could be completely naked, & blind drunk as well, & if I were sharing the bar with Jessica, I promise you nobody would give me a second glance. I have seen men stop their cars to check her out. Men with women in the passenger seat. Jessica is a beautiful girl, but she's also a great friend, so from now on I vow to stop thinking of her as my Ugly Maker.
I guess I can't think of any other confessions right now. I suppose I could go through the other five deadly sins, since apparently I've taken care of Greed & Envy for the week. I've got Sloth down cold.
This site helpfully lists the Seven Deadly Sins, which is useful for ex-Catholic schoolgirls like me who've gone far, far astray. It also matches each sin with its corresponding punishment in Hell. Turns out Greed gets you thrown into cauldrons of boiling oil, NOT a raging case of herpes. That's a relief.

Oh my. This little baby's birthday is on Sunday. Coincidentally, that's the eve of the birthday of yours truly.

There are loads more of them here. Looking at pictures of kittens online is doing wonders for my wine hangover. They're so fucking cute, I want to crush every one of them.

I am calling my blog "FUCK BUSH" for today. Just for today tho, & just because I have the hots for TRUEBOY.

I have seen the future of summertime, & it is me wearing my new moccassins & this little number:

If you'd like to help my fantasy come true (or if you've got the compatible fantasy of seeing girls show off their legs in the summertime), send money! That shit is $200.

I did fuck-all last nite. I wanted to go out but no one was around. So for dinner I had half a bottle of wine & a couple of Smiles & some cigarettes & I watched Breathless. It was a pretty great movie. I kind of thought that Jean-Paul Belmondo, the main guy, was hot, but he also kind of reminded me of my friend Booger, who really isn't hot at all. Jean Seburg was absolutely incredible tho, & amazingly hot, no question about it. I loved it at the end, when they're both just sort of walking around this apartment, talking to themselves, & she's called the cops on him & he still won't leave. That actually happened to me once. It's a long story, but I called the cops on this guy I knew, right in front of him, & he didn't bolt or anything. He just stayed there arguing with me about it until, eventually, a couple of policemen showed up & escorted him out. It was a lot less dramatic than Breathless. He didn't call me "degolasse" or anything. In fact, we're still friends. It's funny how much friends can forgive, after enough time & alcohol & everything.