Friday, July 18, 2003

 

ENTRY 042


This week has had an air of unreality about it, beginning with a voicemail I had on my cell phone when I got home from seeing Yolanda and the Thief (which is a terrible movie) at the Film Forum. It was from the guy who was recently my almost-sex partner; he said the reason he hadn't called on Sunday as promised was that he was mugged at gunpoint the other night. I called him back and got the details; no, he wasn't hurt. He said he wasn't scared when it happened, but pissed. I asked if it was the night he left my place at 2:30, and he said no, it was the following night. And it happened on his block! (I'm crossing Bed-Stuy off my list of potential places to live.) I was trying to be empathetic with him, but it was hard because he's very sarcastic all the time, and I feel like I have to make a joke about everything. Not that I didn't talk about how I was glad he's okay and all that. It reminds me of this guy I went on a date with sometime last year and who employed that same kind of constant facetiousness; it becomes wearying. Then he hung up very abruptly; basically it was, "Okay, have to go, talk to you later."


I'm not going to waste my time interpreting the whole thing. If I were that accomplished a linguist, I'd be too busy translating for the UN to bother with guyspeak.


On Wednesday I had coffee (which means the other person had coffee while I ate something) with Mr. You-Know-Who-You-Are. It's the first time I've met a reader of the blog, so I guess I was a little on edge. I'm not sure these days if I even come across well; I suppose the not knowing qualifies as neurotic. If you think you're neurotic, are you automatically so? All I know is that it's been rough and I wasn't feeling my best last night. I hate being a negative influence and I hope that isn't what I am to people at this juncture. Especially since I talked to Mr. You-Know-Who-You-Are for about three hours, and found him intelligent and pleasant and engaging. That's either a sign of friendship potential, or of his being masochistically nice. Or both.


I wish I could clear my head and get my fucking shit together. I think I need to be back in therapy. I think I even said that to him last night. What is my fucking deal?


When I got in, Marc called to tell me that I'm going to be an uncle; Cleo's pregnant. They've been talking about it for a while, but I didn't expect it to happen this soon. I'm absolutely happy for them. Pretty mind-boggling, too, and it really makes me feel like I'm getting older, especially following on the heels of my 25th. I'm not much of a kid anymore. And I realized that this will be my incentive to, as I said before, really get my shit together, because I want to be a role model for this kid. It's not just about me now.

12:28 AM

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Sunday, July 13, 2003

 

ENTRY 041


I neglected to mention last time that I went to see the 3D version of Kiss Me Kate at the Film Forum on Friday. I'd seen the Broadway revival that played a couple of years ago, but it was my first exposure to the 1953 film version. I enjoyed it a lot; it's one of the better movie musicals I've seen, and the 3D was pretty cool. The scene in which Ann Miller sings "Too Darn Hot" while doing her customary tap-dancing extravaganza has her throwing all kinds of things at the camera, which showed off the 3D aspect to excellent effect. The only minor annoyance was that, after the brief intermission (the movie is under 2 hours, so I can't think why they'd have a break unless people tend to get headaches from watching 3D films), the 3D was off. That is, the background elements were looming out, while the foreground elements were staying flat. I realized that the two side-by-side projectors used to create the composite 3D image must have had the two reels reversed in the wrong order. I figured that maybe if I put my 3D glasses on upside down, then that would correct the error by reversing the order of the lenses over my left and right eyes. Sure enough, it worked, although I probably looked pretty stupid.


Last night Jane and I went on one of our infamous bar-hopping excursions. I'd suggested one or two bars, since she often proves indecisive. She's also developed this slightly vexing habit of asking, "Is it gay or straight?" when I mention a bar or a party. Since she'd insisted we would go to straight bars as well as gay ones, we started off at the [straight] White Horse Tavern. Jane reminded me that it was the establishment out of which Dylan Thomas crawled only to die out front on the sidewalk. We stayed for less than 20 minutes, as Jane thought it was too crowded--and not as pretty a crowd as she'd hoped. From there we went to Chumley's, another [straight] literary hangout that originated as a speakeasy in 1922, with dust jackets hanging all over the walls. This bar, too, was deemed "too crowded," so we got in Jane's car and drove to the East Village, which typically works out better for us anyway. We headed first to Standard, a nice little [straight] lounge on 1st Ave. that I'd visited with Peter last summer. Jane seemed to be cool with the atmosphere, so we had a couple of drinks there, including the strongest damn gin-and-tonic anyone has ever mixed for me. Golly damn! Even Jane, who does well with her liquor, thought it was powerful. We spent the latter part of our stay whispering about these guys in almost-matching striped shirts; she thought they were gay, I insisted they weren't. Her reasoning was that they hadn't once looked at her. Hmmm. We're not going to unpack the meaning of that statement. By the time we left, though, she said one of them had checked her out, so she'd changed her mind.


The next stop was [gay] Starlight, against which Jane has had a grudge ever since some dumb lunkhead muscle guy shoved her (prompting her to scratch him with her nails). The place was even more crowded than I'd remembered, but we finally managed to shoulder our way to the bar to get a drink before heading to the loungier back room. They were playing all kinds of silly fun stuff, like "I'm a Slave 4 U" and "Work It." Jane and I were sort of grooving in place as we drank our Rolling Rocks. There's this little stage where embarrassingly exhibitionist types were dancing, including this one seemingly [straight] straight guy who kept beckoning to Jane to join him; she refused, even though I was prodding her to go up there. She was finding much amusement in watching this other nutcase guy dancing all freaky-like/spastically. Then she said I should date him.


From there we walked up a couple of blocks to the [gay] Phoenix, which had this weird sort of rotten-egg smell that hit us the moment we walked in. My drink tasted funky, too--kind of like it had been mixed with some of that gross liquid that floats to the top of yogurt if you leave it in the refrigerator for a while. Don't ask me what the deal was, because I couldn't begin to imagine.


We weren't there long before deciding to call it a night. Jane told me I could go ahead and drop her off, then drive her car up to my apartment and return it to her the next day. This kind of freaked me out, because I've never driven a car in NYC. But I shrugged and said, "What the hell?" I made it home okay, although the brakes took a little getting used to; I didn't realize how sensitive they were, and gave myself minor whiplash before I figured it out. I have to say it was fun driving around the city--a new experience for me. But I still don't mind not having the responsibility and expense of a car anymore.


Oh, I have to share a brief excerpt from an email sent to me by one of my lovely blog-readers, concerning the previous entry: "okay, the fuck-me Boy in your bed? too tired for sex--in his mid 20s? Jesus, the world is ending..."


That's all right, as long as I get laid before it does.

10:54 PM

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