I just wanted to leave a note here that I’ve been writing some poems and such on my official site, my name dot com slash blog.
They are really nice, I promise.
Categories: Ennui
I had a very strange dream last night. In the dream, I was a member of a group of traveling players who were staging Shakespeare’s King Lear. I was one of the actors, and was very surprised when the production began to find out that it was really a stage adaptation of Wuthering Heights, with the confused King Lear randomly wandering the moors behind us during our scenes.
I can only conclude that this dream was the result of too much studying in preparation for the subject GRE. I must sincerely apologize for my failure to update in the past month. I think this is the longest that I’ve ever gone without updating.
While I did do some very fun things in the interim, most of my time was spent doing endless vocabulary drills for the subject GRE. After that, I spent an entire week poring over the Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ugh. I’m going to catch up on everything that’s happened. At some point. Somehow.
Categories: Ennui
On Sunday, I went to the city desperate to get some shoes, because all the shoes I had were wearing out. I Ended up in Macy’s and picked out some boots that are really awesome (in black). After that, I met Michael and we went into Uniqlo.
I was to meet Jason at the Film Forum later that day to see Weekend, the Jean-Luc Godard movie (NOT the gay interest romance of the same name). The movie was just so all over the place I didn’t know what to think. There were some absolutely incredible scenes, like this one:
There are a ton of car crashes and dead bodies in this movie, but the whole film is set in this hyperreal universe where characters occasionally ask each other if they are in a movie and violence is a mere Hollywood trope. I was going to see the movie anyway, but when I pulled up the New Yorker‘s review of it on my phone it cemented my resolve to go. Any film that is a “sublimely contemptuous rage against consumerism, against a way of life that draws its values from advertising and current movies (including and especially Hollywood) and that both depends on and reflects their ideological assumptions” I must support.
There are some scenes that drag, like the endless leftist monologues in the middle of the film, but the trenchant social criticism makes the movie worth a view.
After the movie, we went to this Italian pastry shop on Bleecker Street that I had walked by countless times but never went into. They actually had a good pasticiotti.
Categories: Ennui
The empty 47-50th Streets station at 5 a.m. on Tuesday.
Friday was an experience. I happened to be by the flagship Apple store and saw the gigantic shrine that people had erected to Steve Jobs. I wonder how long they will be there. Google has already rescheduled its Nexus Prime launch to the 20th. It’s actually sort of a blessing in disguise, since I can barely afford a new phone as it is.
After work I was wandering around Christopher Street and ended up running into Abishek, an old associate from when I first moved to New York. He figured prominently in the story I wrote for my freshman English class. He’s the only person I’ve ever gone over to their house and discovered a Douglas Hofstadter book. That certainly was a major turn on.
Michael and I were wasting time at Columbus Circle and ended up meeting KJ there. I was really tired, but Jason had bought tickets for The Human Centipede 2 (something I would surely not pay money for) and we were waiting until midnight. We were playing around with gadgets in the Samsung store when KJ arrived. We went out for some gourmet pizza at Angelo’s and then had some coffee drinks (desperate to perk up) at Argo. We reached the point where we were watching cute cat videos online, so we decided to go downtown and bother Alexandra at The Bean.
The new Bean location is the twilight zone version of the old coffee shop. It’s all shiny and new and full of people. I can’t really get used to it. (As I write this, my cat is pitifully meowing outside. He just never stops. I could give him food, I could pet him for an hour and he would still meow.)
I was originally just going to pick up the tickets from Jason because he had a date, but apparently that fell through and he did end up going, so we bid everyone adieu and walked over to the IFC center. Jason was in rare form: he had brought almond joy, nut and chocolate granola bars, and chocolate cream cookies to the screening. (If you don’t know, there is a strong element of corporophilia in the films.)
I don’t even think I can comment on the film itself, all this have to link to Roger Ebert’s non-review of the first Centipede flick, where he refused to give it a star rating. I am totally against torture porn movies like the Saw series, but I feel like The Human Centipede takes it a bit further. Movies like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the Saw series, I feel, have a bit of a tongue-in-cheek humor to them. No one takes the Scream series and their ilk as 100% serious. There’s always this campy undertone to horror films like that which is what gives them their appeal. I mean, if you can get through the apocalyptically bloody finale of Peter Jackson’s first film, Dead Alive, without a chuckle, then you might as well jump into the casket.
Movies like The Human Centipede (I’m more talking about 2, but it applies to the original too) are almost asking us to take them seriously. I mean, all fiction involves the suspension of disbelief, but I feel like Tom Six (the director) wants to be taken seriously as a director. When I was watching the film, I felt like I was in the superposition of states where I was on the one hand absolutely horrified by what was going on on the screen but comfort in the fact that it was so absolutely outlandish that it was not even possible. I’m just not sure how to feel about franchises like this. In the first movie, there were moments where I empathized with the characters, but I feel like that’s not the appropriate reaction to the film. It’s almost as if for Tom Six characters are just puppets to put through extraordinary ordeals and murder at the drop of a hat. I can’t object to this on the principle of censorship, because I am absolutely opposed to such things, but I keep coming back to the last line of Roger Ebert’s review of The Long Kiss Goodnight, where he ponders “what a lot of time and money to spend on something of no real substance.”
the crucial difference is, even though it pure, pristine schlock, I enjoyed watching The Long Kiss Goodnight. I did not enjoy a single moment watching The Human Centipede 2. I suppose part of its appeal is that it is an unflinchingly disgusting film. In that respect, it’s the opposite of what I expected. The most disgusting parts of the film are not (as one would expect) the creation of the eponymous centipede, but the copious shots of the morbidly corpulent, sweaty, unhygienic main character. At the end of it all, I thought to myself: is Tom Six Sitting in a house somewhere laughing about this movie? I certainly hope so. The far more disturbing implication is that he wants The Human Centipede 2 to be taken seriously as a sort of art-horror film on par with Eraserhead. But I digress.
Saturday was my mom’s birthday, so we went out and rode horses at this stable about an hour drive into New Jersey. During the hour-long ride, I must say I was far more interested in riding our guide (pictured below).
I was so tired after all of these antics that I didn’t really do much but work on Sunday and Monday. On Tuesday, I had bought tickets to a violin concerto by Frank Peter Zimmermann at Lincoln Center for my mom’s birthday. Before we went there, we went to Ollie’s for great Chinese and to Le Pain Quotidien on 72nd for tea and pastries.
Mom at Ollie’s
I had bought our tickets a long time in advance, so I we fantastic seats. This was our view:
The concert was incredible. We were so close that we could hear the performers breathing, something I never expected.
I went back with mom and dropped her off at the car, then took the bus back into the city to meet my friends at Happy Ending for Disco Down. I was expecting to pop over to Le Souk to go to this event that an acquaintance was throwing, but it turned out that Happy Ending was embarrassingly empty that night. Alexandra said it was because all of the New York schools have midterms this week, which makes sense. I did meet this pretty cool guy who I was dancing to Metric, Pulp, and Depeche Mode with. He started talking about how he used to work at Lincoln Center and then said some odd thing about saying that I was the kind of guy that he would have made out with when he first moved to New York.
“I like your style…very classy.”
“Thanks, I just came from Lincoln Center and didn’t have time to change.”
“Oh yeah? I used to work at Lincoln Center.”
“Really? What did you do?”
“I took photos.”
“Ah, nice.”
“So, you come here often?” [I know—terribly cheesy, but I couldn't think of any other way to say that.]
“I used to, years ago, when I first came to New York.”
“Yeah?”
“You really look like the kind of guy I’d just make out with when I first came to the city.”
“But not tonight?” [I'd had more than a few drinks]
“I have a boyfriend.”
Cue the record-scratching sound.
What the fuck? Later when I was in the Grand Street subway station at 4 a.m., I saw him reloading his MetroCard, so I said hi again. He gave me some line about my being charming, and then made a beeline for the train when it showed up. I just don’t understand people.
I texted Barry again this week and he said he’s up for dinner when he comes back to visit. Abishek wrote on my Facebook wall saying that it was great to see me, so I sent him a message saying that we should have lunch sometime. He never responded. Hmm.
I feel like Facebook is so fake. Remember that girl Aicha (Aisha? Aïcha?—she spells her name like forty different ways)? She left me a comment on my wall that was like “omg we have to hang out sometime.” I texted her asking when she was free, to no response. That kind of stuff really rubs me the wrong way. Why bother to leave the comment if you’re not sincere? This is why I try to limit my Facebook time to perhaps an hour a week so I can actually spend time with my friends rather than posting on their walls about nothing.
I should go to sleep soon. I haven’t been studying for my GRE at all. That is what I need to do on Thursday. I have to say, having this new headset really motivates me to write. The old one I was always afraid I was going to run out of battery, and then it would come unpaired, then it would start beeping for no reason. So much hassle. With a wired headset, you just plug it in and it works.
Time for me to put on Pip Paine (Pay the £5000 You Owe) and read more Wuthering Heights.
Categories: Ennui
Have you ever reached a moment in your life where you stop and try your hardest to think about what possible sequence of events could have led to what you are currently doing? Realizing that you are in your underwear in the back of Nowhere Bar trying to win against a dyke pool shark is certainly one of those moments.
I started my evening by heading over to the theater Michael is working at. I got a vegan sandwich at Think Coffee around the corner, and wandered back with an iced Americano. We didn’t really have any plans that night, so we accompanied the theater’s owner, this wonderfully eccentric woman who has lived downtown forever, on a tour of some of the gallery openings that night in Chelsea. Her demeanor reminded me a lot of Kathleen (my aunt) who was equally obsessed with art, but Kathleen never got clean.
We ended up at this gallery sharing an elevator with Cazwell and Justin Vivian Bond. I thought Justin Bond was legendary, but most people I shared my excitement about meeting her were like “who’s that?” We met KJ at that party and ended up briefly walking the High Line (bathrooms needed to happen) before walking to the L.
Jove texted me out of the blue wondering what was up and he invited me over to his new place in Bushwick (East Williamsburg my ass), so I went to his place off the Morgan stop. It was absolutely beautiful. A brand-new building with rooftop access. I was so jealous. Still, I get the impression that he just doesn’t go out. He’s one of those hetero normative people that wants to have cute nights where they bring their dogs over to each others’ houses and watch television. Perhaps I’m being too harsh, as I have always held a torch for Mr. Meyer. All that domesticity just puts me to sleep. If I had an adorable loft it would be crammed with books and flyers and all sorts of stuff. I find orderly, Martha Stewart approved houses to be suffocating. I definitely love his taste (he has an apricot colored couch), but even though I feel an intense camaraderie with him it seems like economically we’re on different planets.
I very much enjoyed talking with him and Adrienne, his roommate. He even made me orange chicken, so I guess I can’t say anything snarky. I mostly miss him and wish we could spend more time together.
On Wedneaday, I had texted Barry (the guy I’d met at R Bar) and asked him if he was doing anything in the city before he went home, and he had answered that he was hosting a party at Nowhere Bar Thursday and that I should drop by. So once Jove started feeling sleepy, he walked me to the subway station with his dog, and I headed back to civilization.
I got off the L at First Avenue and walked over to Nowhere bar, not quite sure what to expect. I got a vodka soda and perched myself on a stool in the back opposite the pool table. I didn’t see Barry right away, so I sipped my drink and took in the crowd. Nowhere bar has this crowd that’s impossible to define. Maybe it’s because it’s so far off the beaten path, but every time I’ve gone in there it’s been a completely different cross-section of New York. This time it was a pretty benign mix of younger folk. The one thing that I didn’t remember about the party was that when he texted me he said it was an “underwear party.” There were only a few people in underwear so far, and I hoped it stayed that way. I went to get another drink and noticed Barry. He was in his skivvies, a light trunk affair, and a pair of glossy boots. His friends, who I’d met on Tuesday, exhorted me to join them in disrobing, but I demurred. I discovered that nowhere bar had $2 PBRs, which was probably the worst thing ever. By my 5th or 6th beer, I’d checked my pants, shirt, tie, and coat. I was chatting with Barry’s roommate (the person he was staying with while he was in the city) and she was rather fun, as well as one of Barry’s friends who I ended up drunkenly snuggling up with in between taking shots at the pool table.
Speaking of Barry, he eventually led me to the back of the bar and we made out on one of the sofas back there. I kept asking him why he still had a shirt on, and he kept saying he wouldn’t look good with it off. The whole event was sort of over at two, when we realized that most people were not in underwear any more.
I walked down 14th street pondering things. Did I just do that?
I wondered if Michael was still out, so I called him. He was at Lit, so I went down there for a while and danced. Jeremy was DJing and the girl from his band that looks like Sarah Palin was there too. Around three, I decided it was time to go home.
I woke up that morning. “Was that a dream? Did I meet Justin Bond and go to an underwear party?” Oh. That was totally real.
It’s time to monitor my drinking.
Categories: Ennui
As is usual on Tuesday, I went into the city and met Michael. We were wondering if Kelly was going to be at R Bar, so we walked over. We ran into Bruce instead and a gang of his friends. We hung out at the bar for a little while munching popcorn until Bruce came back in and introduced us to his friends. One of them I’d been sort of giving the eye to introduced himself as Barry and complimented my boots. Soon we were all off to Happy Ending for Disco Down. His friends were all from Atlanta and were supposedly looking to live in the city (isn’t everyone).
Alexandra wasn’t hosting that night, so we said hi to Dayna and got a few drinks. A couple hours later I was a bit trashed and ended up dancing with Barry to some 80s songs. He later told me that they were all going to Urge, that bar next to The Cock. We went over there and I talked to him for a bit with my arm around him. I behaved myself pretty well, given that Twig had given me two drink tickets before we left Happy Ending. I did, however, get his number. Eventually Barry and the gang hopped a cab back to Bed-Stuy and Michael and I continued to Kenmare.
I had never been to Kenmare, but it was a pretty fun environment. I was absolutely trashed, but we ended up talking to some of the people we knew once it was over.
After work the next day, KJ, Michael and I went to sushi and then I headed home.
Categories: Ennui
t
I’m finally back in front of my computer screen with an actual full night of sleep behind me. Let’s get you up to speed. How about we start on Saturday.
I wasn’t really feeling like doing anything too crazy, so I ventured out to try and see Too Much Light Makes Baby Go Blind, this interesting-sounding show in the East Village. I had a snack at San Loco and walked over to the theater, but realized that it was inside the same building as this terrible bar that I had almost gone to with a friend when she lost her ID. I didn’t want to relive that night, so I walked over to Think Coffee on Bowery and dug into my New Yorker.
Soon enough Ash came over to visit me, as she’d been ushering for this show Michael was stage managing nearby. She told me all about her recent antics, especially this hilarious event called the Slut Walk. I mean, I totally agree with the point of the walk, which “challeng[es] rape culture, victim-blaming and slut-shaming, and work[s] to end sexual and domestic violence[,]“ but the name lends itself so well to jokes that in an hour we were adding the word “slut” to everything for comedic effect. For example, the Metropolitan Museum of Slut, Slut Square, and the subway station Broadway-Lafayette-Slut. We all chatted at Think for a while before walking Ash to the 6 train. Afterwards, Michael and I went to Café Mocha for some coffee and desserts while we tried to decide what to do. We both had to walk to Union Square, so we decided that we had to go over and pay KJ a visit at Beauty Bar. I wasn’t feeling it at all until Jeremy started DJing, and somehow we ended up staying there until 3:30 a.m., screaming the lyrics of “I Wanna Be Sedated” with strangers.
One of the things about 14th St. is that an IHOP just opened (to my knowledge the only one in the city). We had had a lot of drinks, and when one is in that condition the word “pancakes” has a special urgency. Despite KJ’s usual reticence, we all quickly came to the conclusion that we needed pancakes as soon as possible. As was to be expected, the food was horrible and expensive. Still, we were glad we’d gotten it over with.
We knew that there was an afterparty downtown, and since we had already stayed up too late for sleep to be an option we tottered down Second Avenue towards the venue. Though we were all quite exhausted, the ambience in the space was one of exuberance. The DJ had this wonderfully novel habit of blending songs together that one would never think could work as mashups. We stayed for a couple of hours until it was broken up by the NYPD. at KJ had fallen asleep on a heating vent at that point, but she perked right up when she noticed the flashlights. We walked back to Union Square to drop KJ off at the L train.
Well, it was about seven a.m. at that point and we weren’t really sure what to do. I’m not sure why, but we decided to just kind of wander around the city. Since the High Line was closed, we walked up the West Side, seeing a cruise ship come into the harbor.
By that time, the High Line was open. It was almost completely empty. We even saw a monarch butterfly!
We eventually ended up at Balthazar Bakery, this New York institution that for some reason I had never visited. Friends of mine would always talk about how amazing the place was, but I had just never had any reason to go. I got a loaf of wheat bread, a loaf of sourdough, and two cups of Stumptown coffee. Michael and I sat on the bench outside in the intense early-morning sunshine. We watched the city wake up while our coffee cooled. Cabs kept dropping families with beautiful blond children off in front of Balthazar’s restaurant, ostensibly for their continental breakfast. The restaurant section is legendary for its French cuisine, and I felt not a little jealousy at these 5-year-olds that were probably going to grow up blasé to artisan croissants. I did eventually go home and taste the bread, which was fabulous. However, for actual breakfast we went over to Amy’s Bread on Bleecker and feasted on scones and twists.
The whole morning we were sort of waiting for all of the stores on Broadway to open so that I could find some new shoes. I’m incredibly picky with my shoes, which is perhaps the reason that all of mine are totally worn out. When TopShop and AllSaints finally opened, we looked around but didn’t see anything too exciting (save for hilarious silver lamé boots at TopShop). We had this really friendly employee at Ben Sherman (they were playing Metronomy as we walked in, to our delight) who I couldn’t tell if he was trying to sell me $125 chinos or was just hitting on me. I did find a great trenchcoat at TopShop, but that was it in terms of shopping. We eventually left the Broadway area and parted ways. Michael had to go to work at the Gene Frankel and I had to go meet KJ and José for dim sum in Chinatown.
I got to Jing Fong, the restaurant we were to meet at near Mott Street, a bit early. I hung out among the signs advertising foot massages and cheap electronics and texted to pass the time. I got a number from the two overly-friendly girls at the podium after ten minutes or so, and soon enough all the participants arrived. José was fetching as ever in a chestnut blazer paired with terracotta jeans and listened patiently as we described our crazy night. We were waiting in a pretty large crowd of people for our number to be called. An older Asian man in a suit was collaborating with the two girls at the podium and would announce the numbers with the theatrical flair, almost as if he were the host on a low-budget game show.
Once our number was called, we stepped onto the escalator up to an absolutely gigantic dining room which held at least a hundred tables. The walls and ceiling were covered with incarnadine wallpaper and giant crystal chandeliers hung from above. It was a fun dinner, where in between flagging down the matronly dim sum cart pushers for vegetable dumplings (shrimp, I learned, is a vegetable) we giggled about Cakefarts and various other Internet ephemera.
After dinner, José, KJ, and I went out to Williamsburg to see this art exhibit at a friend of ours had curated. Laura, this wonderfully gregarious girl that we met at a month or two ago at KJ’s house, coordinates this organization called THROAT, which was holding an art show in the back of a truck that they had parked a few blocks off of Bedford Ave.
There was some interesting work, especially this video work that exhorted the viewer “Don’t trip and drive!” and some inspired drawings by the KJ herself. We hung out with Laura and this other girl (who is awesome but I can’t remember her name) for a while, eventually getting coffee. We all decided around that time that sleep was the best idea ever, but before we all went home we wandered over to Desert Island, this comic and zine store near the Lorimer stop. Halfway there, it started to absolutely pour down rain, so we ran most of the way to get there.
Desert Island had some really odd zines and even more exotic records. This one LP was apparently a recording of a Philip K. Dick story mashed up with something else, but I didn’t want to part with $25 to find out. We all parted ways and headed home on the L. José got off at Union Square to meet some friends in Soho, and I continued on home. I finally got to make some delicious toast with my Balthazar wheat bread. I was in heaven.
Categories: Ennui
Trains were running weirdly all weekend. The F was particularly unreliable.
I had a lot of fun this weekend. I saw that The Bald Soprano was only playing for a couple of weeks, so I got cheap tickets the last day of the preview and went. It was in the evening at this theater between 6th and 7th Avenue on 55th St.
The set design was interesting. There were all the normal English things that you would expect on the walls, but they were all hung upside down. I had read a synopsis of the play, but I didn’t want to read the play itself before the show. There’s something about not knowing what’s going to happen next that I think really enhances a live performance. I have to say, it was magnificently acted. The absolute absurdity of it all was front and center.
The poster for Shit Year, outside the IFC Center
After the play, I went down to West 4th to meet Yevgeny to see Cam Archer’s film Shit Year. he had already seen it, but told me that it was an interesting film. It’s certainly a flawed movie, but the scenes just get right under your skin. Also, the main character is the bitch of the century, which I can’t help but relate to. It’s about this actress who sort of gives up on her career after realizing that she’s only lived life through her characters. While she’s in this play, she shacks up with this young, absolutely gorgeous guy. It’s sort of a movie that would normally be the last 15 minutes of another movie. This film is obsessed with endings, and this extremely nonlinear film fixates on not only the end of her career, but ostensibly the end of her sanity. There are these wonderfully odd sci-fi scenes where this kind of consultant is trying to create a perfect imitation of her ex-boyfriend.
I must admit, during parts of the film I just felt lost and was wondering if it was going to end in 2 seconds. However, it’s one of those movies that are packed with such powerful images and feelings that it’s just impossible to get them out of your head. There’s this one shot where her boyfriend plays her this really romantic song that he wrote for her. The camera is slowly panning in, and the main character (even though no one is looking) starts crying. By the end of the song, she wipes away her tears. “Fuck you,” she says.
As an actor, she’s really not sure whether her relationships with anyone are real. It felt quite eerie in one scene where she’s talking with her brother that she’s not close at all with, and she just point-blank asks him “Why weren’t we close?” I’ll definitely have to watch it again.
Yevgeny and I got some late-night dinner at French Roast, then I walked down to the Lower East Side to Alexandra’s place where they were having a birthday party for one of our friends. The whole crew was there: Dayna, Miria, Kelly, etc. While we did not all have matching towels (don’t ask), we all were wearing Miria’s adorable vintage hats! There was one group photo taken, but it was way before I got there. We drank and talked and smoked the night away. We ran out of soda, so I switched to vodka waters…which was very odd. I can’t remember what we were talking about, but we all just got the 2 a.m. giggles. Alexandra and Kurt got home, and we had those two laughing too in short order. Kurt is very interested in literature, and I was only too happy to oblige in talking incessantly about Proust. That gave way to a series of dirtier and dirtier stories, with such quotations as ”Her body was like a bulldog with two dead rats nailed on as tits,” and “So you lit the semen on fire?” The whole time, we were eating these four kinds of cheese, and making cheese art. We made what we called the salami Mona Lisa, and then Miria ate it!”
The Salami Mona Lisa, before it was consumed.
Eventually it got so late that we all decided to go to sleep (Miria was gracious enough to let us stay over), so we piled in her massive comfy bed and had another attack of the giggles while M. and I endlessly iterated Onderdonk products to her. The next morning, M. went to his show and Miria and I went to breakfast at Sugar. I’d never hung out with Miria in a non-club context before, and was overjoyed at how awesome she was. After breakfast, we all had plans to rendezvous at the New Museum to see Ostalgia. M. and I had already gone weeks before, but really hadn’t had time to see everything. When she and I got there, we got some tea at the café and had a long and delirious laugh at the name of North Korea’s missile program, the “Dong-1″ and “Dong-2.”
Before going up, we ran into Kurt, Alexandra, Dayna, and Dayna’s friend whose name escapes me (Evan?). We made a nice circuit of the museum, and I got to check out some of the things that I didn’t have time to see the first time around. Afterwards, Miria, M., Evan, and I went to Whole Foods for lunch, where we ended up talking for an hour or so (after taking time to dream in the cheese aisle). When we all parted ways, M. and I met up with another friend and took the Ⓝ train down to meet KJ and some of her friends at this bar in Brooklyn called Commonwealth. They geeked out talking about Dr. Who while KJ and her friend (who I met on a couple of other occasions) caught up.
We all ended up taking the Ⓕ (mysteriously running on the ⒶⒸⒺ line) back to Manhattan and walking over to Home Sweet Home, where we spied Dayna outside. There was some band playing in there that looked like they desperately wanted to be Iggy Pop and the Stooges. It didn’t really seem to be happening, so KJ suggested that we all go to Veselka, this fantastic Ukrainian diner on Second Avenue.
Many things happened while we dined, including things that cannot be unseen. M. showed cakefarts to the two who hadn’t seen it, and KJ’s friend showed us the horror that is erotic falconry. All in all, it was a very fun weekend.
Categories: Ennui
As was to be expected, Friday was kind of a bust. Now, don’t get me wrong, there were certainly hours of fun that night, but it didn’t last.
I knew that something was amiss from the moment I arrived. My driver told me to stop as I was leaving the bus, and asked “Did you know one of the quarters you gave me had gum on it?” I apologized profusely, but when I was walking to the subway and thinking about it, I distinctly remembered picking out each quarter from my change pile. There was no gum on any of them, and there was no gum in my pocket. Maybe he was just screwing with me? It was an unsettling omen that the rest of the night was probably not going to work out as planned.
My goal was to go down to Think Coffee and start Wuthering Heights. I’m not particularly interested in the Brontës’ work, but I anticipate a ton of questions on the GRE about them. I need to be able to pick out their style from other contemporaneous works. After reading all of the lengthy supplementary material in the introduction, I was on about page 4 of the novel when M. called me. His friend Alyx, who I’d met ages ago, was in town and she wanted to have a fun night before she had to leave.
We went to Sugar for dinner, and spent the meal cracking jokes, one more lewd than the next, culminating in me lasciviously eating the frosting off of a cupcake (I guess you had to be there). There was also this recurring joke about drums and her mom’s period (Alyx was in stitches at one point where I was paraphrasing Joseph Conrad’s journals as if the Congo was of menstrual origin).
After that, we walked down to Motor City, which was rather full. Then we took a cab over to Lit, which was absolutely full. The downstairs was sweaty and disgusting. It was about this time that Alyx looked up when her last bus was (she was staying in Staten Island), which happened to be in 25 minutes. We had the most clueless taxi driver who didn’t know where Astor Place was, but we guided him to our bus stop, where we said our goodbyes.
After her departure, the night took a turn for the boring. I think we went back to Lit, which was horrible (hip-hop hour had arrived) and then tried to find the new location of The Bean. I think as a last resort M. and I walked to The Boiler Room, which was still crowded at 3 a.m. We gave up and walked to Broadway-Lafayette for the subway. On the way home, there was this incredibly annoying drunk white girl who kept saying all this really racist crap. I could tell all of her friends were totally embarrassed by her, but she just kept going on using the N-word and asking people how to say things in Spanish.
It’s funny, in the beginning of the night I kept giving people directions: 1) Which way to Broadway-Lafayette? 2) Which way to Allen St.? 3) Which way is Chinatown? 4) Do you know a liquor store around here? But by the end of the night, all the drunk girls were being annoying as hell. This one group of girls were walking incredibly slowly in front of us and then for some reason thought we were talking about them for some reason. I clarified that with a tart “We weren’t talking to you.”
“Good luck getting any with that attitude,” one of the drunk girls retorted.
“Barking up the wrong tree, sluts,” I rejoined.
There was also this annoying slut at Lit earlier in the night who was banging on the bathroom door and screaming “HURRY UP! HURRY UP!” after I’d been in the bathroom for perhaps 30 seconds.
This is why I never go out in New York on a Friday or Saturday, save for to a coffee shop. The coffee shops are always deserted on prime party nights, which I love. In fact, I might actually go out to Think later this afternoon. I bought a ticket for The Bald Soprano today at 7:30, and am incredibly excited to see my first Theatre of the Absurd play. These are the kinds of things I moved to New York for.
Categories: Ennui
I just woke up about an hour ago. I had this really unsettling dream that I was still living on the farm that I grew up in and was about to graduate from college. However, all of my friends had left town (which is actually true). My dad is living with some woman somewhere inland in Northern California now, and I suspect he must be renting out the house.
In the dream, I went into our barn and was looking out from the opening in the attic with the pulley for bringing up bales of hay. I don’t mind a pastoral existence, but the problem is that most people who like living in the country are neoconservative imbeciles. I mean, of course there are exceptions like Arcata, but places like that attract burners and wannabe hippies, who (and I can say this from experience) are, by and large, not interesting people at all.
This morning I’m thinking of this conversation that Dayna and me had outside of R Bar about Bowie’s “China Girl.” She was telling me that it wasn’t David Bowie who wrote the song, but Iggy Pop. That puts a whole new spin to how I interpret the song. I mean, who else could come up with these hauntingly ambiguous lyrics:
My little China Girl
You shouldn’t mess with me
I’ll ruin everything you are
I’ll give you television
I’ll give you eyes of blue
I’ll give you men who want to rule the world
Did I mention I got my new voice recognition headset? When I took it out of the box, I realized that it’s almost exactly the same as the old headset I had a million years ago in Crescent City. It was a very well-designed headset even then.
I think I missed a fun night out at Lit last night, but considering that I’ve never had a fun night at Lit, I wasn’t too bummed that I had to stay home and work on editing these articles.
Oh! Last night I finally finished The Canterbury Tales. I don’t really have much to say about it. There were only about three tales I could mine some entertainment value out of. Well, I should get to work.
Categories: Ennui