in the early hours of monday morning i dragged myself through the lobby of the hotel to the elevators; and with my face in my phone i missed the man who was sitting next to that other guest in the not so spanish revival armchairs to my left. he had caught wind of her being in the city from down the coast and had come to the hotel to tell her that if she said the word he would drop everything. upstairs, i dropped my phone on the nightstand and fell asleep; and when i woke up my head hurt.
the ladies had remembered to bring ibuprofen, but it was their offer of breakfast and their encouragement over my french toast that got me through the later hours of the morning. yes, i answered readily and sincerely and reminiscently. i'd had a good time. it was worth it, and the headache was enough without adding to it pangs of conscience. but it had all still given way to a morning adventure in depression soundtracked with groans by allie brosh. that sunday feeling. that san francisco feeling. and at noon, the ladies left me in a cab for the airport to spend the rest of my time and that feeling correctly alone.
i thought i should make the most of it, but cindy sherman at the moma was too much. i walked to the mission. i went to taqueria cancún. but i turned right from 19th street to go south down valencia and keep myself from being tempted by the ersatz nostalgia in the mugs at ritual. i wrote my postcards at a different café. a pile of flummery on a dozen pictures of the bay bridge, because i still hadn't seen the golden gate. and i handed it all to a postman walking on duboce between valencia and market. then i found my way around the confusion around the mint, across divisadero and over to haight. the postcards at the booksmith were nicer than the ones i'd bought downtown, but six times as expensive. so i bought just the one for myself, a drawing of a map of folsom and harrison streets between 5th and 8th -- the periphery of the fair and the site of the techie bear picnic.
then it all stopped, before all of it came on again all too quickly. i came out of the book store, looked up and had my breath caught. i'd come, again, and unexpectedly, back to the lighthouse, this time a mexican restaurant. and i took a picture of el faro de san francisco, but it wasn't enough just to send it to the trianera in prague. several weeks earlier, the woman who wouldn't be getting a stolen mug from ritual had sent me a picture of the lighthouse at cabo vilán along with the story of a story. in the story, a middle aged man had, as a child, known an old man who collected photographs of lighthouses. once upon a time, the old man had fixed them. and whenever he finished a fix he took a picture, and on each picture he wrote the adjective which he thought best described each structure. along with the picture and the story of that story (summarized for me from a certain book by albert espinosa), the woman included her explanation of the arrogance of the lighthouse at cabo vilán. so with everything else that i remembered about those other lighthouses that i'd seen, i took a moment and made a decision. exactly because it was crammed in amongst the other shops on haight and didn't have the striking advantage of standing alone, el faro de san francisco was lonely.
i walked, past buena vista park, past alamo square, back toward downtown. and i met him just past six at civic center plaza. we ate ramen, which he had suggested and i had told him i would love. because, i told him, as it had turned out, i wasn't going to get to eat it next month in japan. earlier, he had asked me if there was anything specific i wanted to do or see in san francisco before leaving that night and i'd said no. at the library bar, he asked me why i hadn't said the bridge if i hadn't seen it. and how could i not have seen it? it had, i told him, crossed my mind, but on foot or on public transportation with the three hours we had to spend together i'd thought it imprudent. on the way to his apartment, i told him the story of how i'd told the ladies about my san franciscan walk of shame. even having been its real life hero, he said, he found it hard to believe the retold story itself. and i told him that when i told the story of that night, he would, in fact, have found his zipcar membership card where he looked for it in his wallet in the mood the bar. in that final hour, which, on the twenty-fourth of september 2012, was the first full hour of darkness, we would have driven together to the golden gate.
i could always come back, he said. i could use his apartment as home base. but i would have to promise to pet the cat, and maybe sing to her. i couldn't think of a way to blithely explain the weird claustrophobic loneliness that i always felt when i came to san francisco. or, at the very least, that i always felt when i was leaving. so i promised to sing. "one night only" followed by soft, anguished fandangos, starting with the one that inspired the title for that espinosa book (although that part i didn't share). and back at civic center plaza i ended my open microrelationship with my weekend boyfriend.
on the train to the airport, where all the planes were taking droves of de-harnessed homos away back to all parts, it wasn't better or worse, but it was surely there. for better or for worse. and i would find the city the same again the next time, happily indifferent. and i would sing it to that cat. ay. paquito... si tú me dices ven lo dejo todo. pero dime ven.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Saturday, September 29, 2012
THAT'S WHY THESE LADIES LIKE IT CAMP
i would like to dispel a myth, namely the apparently widely held conception amongst the believers in the liberated homosexualities of the new century that everyone at the folsom street fair is doing it up and down the sidewalk (and not "fucking," because that can't be widely enough construed). i would like here to correct this misconception because i had also been operating under the spell of the myth and have been obliged to explain on multiple occasions in the days since last sunday's fair how that crab and all of the antibiotic resistant gonorrhea ended up getting spread if in fact folsom was not a great big public bacchanal -- although the truth is also that i might just have missed it.
i was there, of course, to star, but in a supporting role, and in the morning i was needed as support. a prescription called in from across the country, and i was off down market to pick it up. i dallied. i was one beer under, the song was good, and i didn't think that the hour until the prescription was ready was up. so i went searching for ghosts at the edge of the financial district. but no luck, no ghosts: the salad place on sansome street was closed. i was, however, almost unnerved when i turned around and came up against the flatiron building, not the green one near the transamerica pyramid, but still a reminder of the literal edifice of the publishing industry that i had left unvisited in new york. but i also still had a prescription to pick up, and panty hose to buy, which weren't for sale at the pop-up cvs where the script had been sent. so i crossed market and bought the hose and the watermelon gum that i needed at a walgreens. i forgot, however, to get a paper, so i stopped at a starbucks on the way back to the hotel. i tried to cut the line by just leaving cash at the register, but that wasn't happening in the smiling confusion of san francisco, so i waited, only then to see the stacks of courtesy papers in the lobby of the hotel.
i elbowed my second beer out of its wine glass and onto the floor as i was lacing a corset. numbers three and four went quickly down on the street, although at the street fair i don't think i remember seeing a single person going down. but as the tallest member of the entourage i was responsible for guidance. still, it wasn't like i wasn't looking. although maybe i wasn't. we located, we walked, they had photos taken, and i applied sunscreen to chests. we walked all the way down and out, refreshed ourselves and made one of our meetings. the other ones were back at the fair. so we walked back up, but by the time the other meetings had been made it was nearly evening, and i was given permission to leave. my eyes had been open, but i had hardly seen a thing. the fallout, maybe, of my obligations to my supporting role. on my way out, i did catch the end of a performance that involved some kinky boots and whipping (and at the very end an unmistakably tender hug), but nowhere had i found a place where i could have safely learned to sound before i arrived at the party on 8th street at the edge of the fair.
and the party was over. so the ones who were left and i went somewhere else. but the techie bear house picnic wasn't much fun either. of all the things to eat, they were going to eat fish. i didn't join them, however, as i was occupied in conversation on a couch. to be sure, though, i never felt the slightest inclination to scan the qr code that was above the passageway to the dining room on a wall at ninety degrees to the one decorated with a pink cow head and a giant painting of a brown my little pony (the current generation) plowing a purple one up the ass (the perspective, of course, from behind). i was occupied in conversation. and to be sure, it's easy to talk about privilege when you're sitting on that couch.
i continued that conversation later, back at truck, after the techie bear picnic had finished and the hosts had left to gayly gad about somewhere else. i'd left them a present. folsom was nearly desterted at ten thirty, but the bars were full of gym bunnies flirting in four hundred dollar once a year harnesses. folsom is nice, she said, don't get her wrong, but it doesn't feel as inclusive as it should, nor as representative, the same with pride; and i told her that i thought i agreed. it hadn't even been the bacchanal. but it was nice, i said, to meet a woman like her at a bar like truck. i was happy for both, and we shared a hug that was full of unmistakable tenderness. it was already several hours into the dance party at the public works, and the thirty dollar cover wasn't going down for the later i showed up. so since no one i knew and had gotten in touch with via text seemed to be there, i decided to stay where i was. plus, the crowd at truck had acknowledged that i was looking good in those latex hot pants. i didn't care that i had to make the explanation of my battered wife beater to almost everyone individually. the fallout of supporting the entourage, but simple damage control.
and there, at truck, i smiled at the face of my own peculiar fetish pride as the boys and the old radical fairies felt my ass: one of the performers took the stage naked with her dick and her balls tucked expertly between her legs and behind her as she sauntered around collecting dollar bills in her every available crevice to the ecstatic inquietude of tori amos singing "leather." (previously, the guy dressed as a green bubble anemone had done his butoh freak out while gradually popping his costume and then having cartons of sugar poured over him in the bar shower, but a friend wouldn't believe me later when i told him.) we talked after the show, the naked leather performer and i, then we danced with her cohort, then i followed them at one thirty to last call. it's possible that the bacchanal was still to be had at the after party, but i declined the invitations. i must have been on beer twelve.
back across market and through the tenderloin. she couldn't have seen my bloody feet because i hadn't taken off my shoes to see them yet myself, but she was all sympathy. "it's cute...but baby, you look cold." i was close enough to home, though, i told her, i didn't need any crack. i'd been smelling that shit all day in the street. "child please." she rolled her eyes with her head, off in the other direction. unmistakably tender.
i was there, of course, to star, but in a supporting role, and in the morning i was needed as support. a prescription called in from across the country, and i was off down market to pick it up. i dallied. i was one beer under, the song was good, and i didn't think that the hour until the prescription was ready was up. so i went searching for ghosts at the edge of the financial district. but no luck, no ghosts: the salad place on sansome street was closed. i was, however, almost unnerved when i turned around and came up against the flatiron building, not the green one near the transamerica pyramid, but still a reminder of the literal edifice of the publishing industry that i had left unvisited in new york. but i also still had a prescription to pick up, and panty hose to buy, which weren't for sale at the pop-up cvs where the script had been sent. so i crossed market and bought the hose and the watermelon gum that i needed at a walgreens. i forgot, however, to get a paper, so i stopped at a starbucks on the way back to the hotel. i tried to cut the line by just leaving cash at the register, but that wasn't happening in the smiling confusion of san francisco, so i waited, only then to see the stacks of courtesy papers in the lobby of the hotel.
i elbowed my second beer out of its wine glass and onto the floor as i was lacing a corset. numbers three and four went quickly down on the street, although at the street fair i don't think i remember seeing a single person going down. but as the tallest member of the entourage i was responsible for guidance. still, it wasn't like i wasn't looking. although maybe i wasn't. we located, we walked, they had photos taken, and i applied sunscreen to chests. we walked all the way down and out, refreshed ourselves and made one of our meetings. the other ones were back at the fair. so we walked back up, but by the time the other meetings had been made it was nearly evening, and i was given permission to leave. my eyes had been open, but i had hardly seen a thing. the fallout, maybe, of my obligations to my supporting role. on my way out, i did catch the end of a performance that involved some kinky boots and whipping (and at the very end an unmistakably tender hug), but nowhere had i found a place where i could have safely learned to sound before i arrived at the party on 8th street at the edge of the fair.
and the party was over. so the ones who were left and i went somewhere else. but the techie bear house picnic wasn't much fun either. of all the things to eat, they were going to eat fish. i didn't join them, however, as i was occupied in conversation on a couch. to be sure, though, i never felt the slightest inclination to scan the qr code that was above the passageway to the dining room on a wall at ninety degrees to the one decorated with a pink cow head and a giant painting of a brown my little pony (the current generation) plowing a purple one up the ass (the perspective, of course, from behind). i was occupied in conversation. and to be sure, it's easy to talk about privilege when you're sitting on that couch.
i continued that conversation later, back at truck, after the techie bear picnic had finished and the hosts had left to gayly gad about somewhere else. i'd left them a present. folsom was nearly desterted at ten thirty, but the bars were full of gym bunnies flirting in four hundred dollar once a year harnesses. folsom is nice, she said, don't get her wrong, but it doesn't feel as inclusive as it should, nor as representative, the same with pride; and i told her that i thought i agreed. it hadn't even been the bacchanal. but it was nice, i said, to meet a woman like her at a bar like truck. i was happy for both, and we shared a hug that was full of unmistakable tenderness. it was already several hours into the dance party at the public works, and the thirty dollar cover wasn't going down for the later i showed up. so since no one i knew and had gotten in touch with via text seemed to be there, i decided to stay where i was. plus, the crowd at truck had acknowledged that i was looking good in those latex hot pants. i didn't care that i had to make the explanation of my battered wife beater to almost everyone individually. the fallout of supporting the entourage, but simple damage control.
and there, at truck, i smiled at the face of my own peculiar fetish pride as the boys and the old radical fairies felt my ass: one of the performers took the stage naked with her dick and her balls tucked expertly between her legs and behind her as she sauntered around collecting dollar bills in her every available crevice to the ecstatic inquietude of tori amos singing "leather." (previously, the guy dressed as a green bubble anemone had done his butoh freak out while gradually popping his costume and then having cartons of sugar poured over him in the bar shower, but a friend wouldn't believe me later when i told him.) we talked after the show, the naked leather performer and i, then we danced with her cohort, then i followed them at one thirty to last call. it's possible that the bacchanal was still to be had at the after party, but i declined the invitations. i must have been on beer twelve.
back across market and through the tenderloin. she couldn't have seen my bloody feet because i hadn't taken off my shoes to see them yet myself, but she was all sympathy. "it's cute...but baby, you look cold." i was close enough to home, though, i told her, i didn't need any crack. i'd been smelling that shit all day in the street. "child please." she rolled her eyes with her head, off in the other direction. unmistakably tender.
Friday, September 28, 2012
MEAN HOS, part 2
in the morning, at breakfast, we talked about the night before, and the story circled back around to storytelling. "a mermaid," the flamenco guitarist from istanbul had said, "is just a woman with one leg, and we have lots of those in turkey." and that's what i told them. my life -- her words not mine -- had been so interesting. but the thing was, we told her, it's just putting yourself into the situations in which you find yourself talking about mermaids in certain company, and the interesting makes itself from there -- and especially in the telling, as had been the case with the story of the night before. if we hadn't been talking about the ironic nuance of the most successful walk of shame outfits (the better the night before, the worse -- which is to say better -- the next morning), my morning's outfit might not have been as poignant. he'd dressed me in the fruit of the dogpatch so that i would have something clean for the walk back to the hotel where my bags were staying. then he'd joked that i would look homeless walking with my clothes under my arm in his neighborhood. i couldn't, as they say, have cared less...it's just that i liked his alternative more. so i walked the northeast corner of the tenderloin over geary and down o'farrell, waited in front of the mirrors between the lobby elevators and then greeted the ladies dressed as a certain kind of san franciscan, carrying my clothes in a custom commemorative bag, both sides decorated so that i had always to be showing one to the street: written large in black sharpie, "slut" and "whore," "folsom 2012." and i wore that walk large.
walking north from union square, i couldn't shut up about how i'd apparently never seen san francisco in at least half of a half dozen visits. not much of a story, but i saw tippi hedren run across union square before forcing the ladies to pose in front of the zara store so that i would have something from san francisco to send to the woman who wouldn't be getting the second mug that i didn't steal from ritual. then, although the crowd on stockton street never broke we came out of it, and just in time to see one of the ladies' mothers performing one of her hits in disguise and a tulip skirt. but at where we turned onto columbus, we were already too far into north beach to see city lights. and we didn't stop moving until we saw the piles of crabs under the one big one at the wharf. tomorrow, all the mens from all the cities would get a chance to fuck them off of each other in the street, but for time being it was just fuck it and on to the quarter machines. and i saw alcatraz, but not the bridge. apparently, i'd never been to san francisco, but i didn't mind that we didn't have time for anything else before getting ready to go to san jose to see the photographer, because our next destination would have been valencia, which in all of the times that i'd apparently never seen san francisco was the place that i'd never left. diuretics for lunch.
back at the hotel, back in a taxi, and in line for the train to san jose with the wigs and the rest of wardrobe. sped to the photographer's studio from the station in san jose. makeup, corset tying, boot lacing, ab crunching; then another pose, another outfit, our signature playlist luckily still on her phone. mean hos. canes, umbrellas, garters, all fours. praise be to editing software.
it's legal to drink on caltrain, he'd told us, and he left us at the station with a bottle of asti after he'd sped us back in time to just make the last train. our car didn't have a luggage rack, so wardrobe was crammed in the floor space between the ladies' seats and the ones in front of them. what would be made to sound more interesting with each subsequent retelling was slouched, sweaty, sore and hungry, chatting about beach squats in sausalito with the man who came through for tickets. she hadn't had time to pull her mask before we'd needed to pack back up and get to the train. i hadn't had the benefit, and could only hope for benevolent editing. the other assistant hadn't been forced in front of the lens. this vampire makeup...she flicked her fingers open at her face, so i popped the asti and poured us a toast to alexander skarsgård. at twenty-three of twenty-four stations, we probably looked like a bunch of real silly girls, but at the one, as we cackled out toast, we were people who could have been in our story. lipstick on a too big red plastic cup. a mean ho is just a person who's willing to take a taxi to the station to lace up and get in front of the camera, and on the last train back to san francisco the night before the fair, those were the only kind of people that a mean ho wanted to know.
walking north from union square, i couldn't shut up about how i'd apparently never seen san francisco in at least half of a half dozen visits. not much of a story, but i saw tippi hedren run across union square before forcing the ladies to pose in front of the zara store so that i would have something from san francisco to send to the woman who wouldn't be getting the second mug that i didn't steal from ritual. then, although the crowd on stockton street never broke we came out of it, and just in time to see one of the ladies' mothers performing one of her hits in disguise and a tulip skirt. but at where we turned onto columbus, we were already too far into north beach to see city lights. and we didn't stop moving until we saw the piles of crabs under the one big one at the wharf. tomorrow, all the mens from all the cities would get a chance to fuck them off of each other in the street, but for time being it was just fuck it and on to the quarter machines. and i saw alcatraz, but not the bridge. apparently, i'd never been to san francisco, but i didn't mind that we didn't have time for anything else before getting ready to go to san jose to see the photographer, because our next destination would have been valencia, which in all of the times that i'd apparently never seen san francisco was the place that i'd never left. diuretics for lunch.
back at the hotel, back in a taxi, and in line for the train to san jose with the wigs and the rest of wardrobe. sped to the photographer's studio from the station in san jose. makeup, corset tying, boot lacing, ab crunching; then another pose, another outfit, our signature playlist luckily still on her phone. mean hos. canes, umbrellas, garters, all fours. praise be to editing software.
it's legal to drink on caltrain, he'd told us, and he left us at the station with a bottle of asti after he'd sped us back in time to just make the last train. our car didn't have a luggage rack, so wardrobe was crammed in the floor space between the ladies' seats and the ones in front of them. what would be made to sound more interesting with each subsequent retelling was slouched, sweaty, sore and hungry, chatting about beach squats in sausalito with the man who came through for tickets. she hadn't had time to pull her mask before we'd needed to pack back up and get to the train. i hadn't had the benefit, and could only hope for benevolent editing. the other assistant hadn't been forced in front of the lens. this vampire makeup...she flicked her fingers open at her face, so i popped the asti and poured us a toast to alexander skarsgård. at twenty-three of twenty-four stations, we probably looked like a bunch of real silly girls, but at the one, as we cackled out toast, we were people who could have been in our story. lipstick on a too big red plastic cup. a mean ho is just a person who's willing to take a taxi to the station to lace up and get in front of the camera, and on the last train back to san francisco the night before the fair, those were the only kind of people that a mean ho wanted to know.
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
HELLO WEST COAST!...AGAIN; or, THERE...AND BACK...(AGAIN)
it wasn't the same, but i knew going into it that the weekend wouldn't be the same if it turned out to be (the same, that is). and from the very beginning: i'd only ever arrived in the city by car, and i'd only ever ridden bart from the airport once before, long before, when the car was dead in berkeley and we'd had to ride the train out to the airport because we'd made a promise to her mother that we'd ask after her wallet at one of the airport hotels. so even that first ride was something new, and even if only because this time i wasn't making the trip at night and could see -- and could see that i was back on the west coast. i didn't, however, opt for the entirely unprecedented experience of stepping off for whatever adventure i might not find in south san francisco or in daly city, and i left them behind with almost nothing more than the terse regard i'd given them for the reminder that they'd given me of where i was. but i'd been reminded of something else as well, because the reminder of where i was -- or, more correctly, of where i was approaching -- had caught me off guard with an early suggestion of the diffuse melancholy with which i'm always left by (or that i seem to always feel when i'm leaving) san francisco. not a feeling of loss, exactly, but a certain feeling of losing out; and this weekend wasn't, it seemed, going to be different in that respect, although it wasn't going to be the same.
and it had already started out differently, and not only because i'd flown in or because i'd ridden bart from the airport to the city, but because i got off the train at the same stop that i always had whenever i'd ridden from downtown or the east bay, and the difference wasn't that i walked up the stairs to 16th and mission alone, but that the people i wasn't with in that moment weren't the same. then i walked up mission to taqueria cancún, the same place i had always stopped before walking over to ritual on valencia, and the people who weren't with me there again weren't either the ones who were my sense of losing out since the last time. i definitely needed a burrito.
and then i can't say that i needed another coffee, but i had one, because how else was i going to be able to steal another mug from ritual? the one i'd gotten the last time had made it to spain from portland and then to portugal from spain, but it stayed, chipped, with a friend in montenegro because it was already all of the weight of its journey and had, as i realized only in the moment that i hefted it and decided not to add more contraband to another border crossing, gone as far as its story needed it to go. so it stayed as the beginning of someone else's, and then, in the story that i had been telling, i flew across the country to steal myself another one. it turned out in the meantime, however, that i was going to need two (which is another different story), and i'll say here that the difficulty i foresaw in getting back to ritual in that same particular weekend for the second was what kept me from taking the first. all or nothing. in the moment, though, i might have admitted that i just hadn't positioned myself appropriately to be successful without raising suspicion (especially with the cupping going on), and i was going to need to execute a perfectly clean operation if i wanted to make sure that i could pull of another one later. as i took a photograph of the mug i'd been given for my coffee in order to send to the friend to whom i had gifted the one i remembered having taken the last time with much less deliberation (although, admittedly, aided also by a now absent accomplice), i regretted not having the foresight just to pay for a pair and lie about their origin. insult to injury that i'd ended up simply paying for a featured coffee that i didn't consider to be very good.
to taqueria cancún and to ritual, but not to dolores park, not even alone, because this weekend was going to be different, and the park would be full of ghosts, smartly accessorized underemployment enviable repartee, especially on a sunny friday afternoon, a foggy picture of the fag, the lesbians, the trans man and the pansexual beauty queen. but this weekend's photo shoot was at a different location, and besides, the park was still on the meh list, at least until sunday. i did, however, brave truck. i'd had a coffee after all, and anyway the bar was in the opposite direction of the park on a more straightforwardly sentimental path toward the hotel, the foggy picture of an after party and a too late first date. one of the ladies had texted to say that they were on their way there, and i wasn't half done with my beer when i got a second message to say that they had arrived. so i said goodbye to the bartender, who hadn't worked at the bar long enough for my ever to have met him before, and to the only other two o'clock customer (or friend of whomever), having at least had the time to be told what was going to be happening at the bar for the rest of the weekend. then it was quickly down past the banners on folsom (because i'd taken an extra moment to finish my drink), a zag onto 10th and another onto market before recognizing the civic center for the very first time in however many visits and crossing into the tenderloin, on the back end of which i found the ladies and dropped my bags where they would be staying in that second floor room at the intersection of taylor and o'farrell.
and i don't think that i was very successfully communicative of the extent to which that certain sense of losing out, that melancholy, had absolutely -- and already -- diffused to solidly permeate the three hours i'd spent without them. of course, they hadn't been there, with me at that after party or in the picture at the park, and that might have been the real barrier to my conveying the strangeness of knowing that...i didn't know, actually, but what i can tell you i know now is that i was sweaty and i smelled and i was all of a sudden self-conscious. apparently, that certain sense of whatever i was finding difficult to articulate was randomly conducive to excitability, and that, apparently, was confusing. i needed to shower. then the picture gets foggy.
maybe it was only because the two of us had been recounting the part of the christmas saga that we'd shared in madrid, but when our long way back from unbelievably bland mexican and from the coffee place next to the corset place on linden being closed took me back through the civic center with the ladies in the dark, city hall was unmistakably spanish. the one who could see it agreed. we hadn't noticed or remarked on cool super discount at the southeast corner of taylor and eddy streets when we'd passed it earlier because she (the one who had agreed) had been telling us about how when she'd gone down to pick up her wig that stefan had been on the phone and on top of that busy with everything else and just hadn't been having it but had helped her with what grace you could imagine he could have mustered nonetheless. and on that earlier walk down taylor we'd agreed that that interaction should be a portent. then just before that, although i'd feared that the rest of my first attempt at this story had just left them confused while i showered, the other one had told me that my account of finding the leather pride flag flying over the mission armory had had the verve of a patriot's description of his love for his country. so i supposed that here, in some sense, and nonetheless concurrent with that lingering sense of losing out, i had a sense of home, however diffuse and melancholic.
i was, however, still afraid of being called out as the poseur as i followed the ladies around to the events. i was on solicited hire, yes, but unquestionably inexperienced. eagerness was, well, to be taken aside. luckily though, it got me company back to truck that night and then later the party invitation that i'd been hoping to elicit all day. for a glass of whiskey with him and his cat. luckily too, he had experience (and tea), and he told me that most everyone at the street fair would be posing, so i would fit right in if i wanted to, although it wouldn't matter to him either way because he wasn't going. (it would turn out that he had other plans.) was it that, then? on what, exactly, was i already afraid of having lost out? i didn't know -- exactly -- and hence the general nature of the problem...although he didn't ask. he'd lost out once in italy, but had he been to lisbon? that city had always reminded me of here. no, he said, he hadn't been, but he was definitely interested. and with that, it began again, that feeling that, later, the memory forgetting that in the moment it was somewhere else, levels stupid accusations of infatuation. but in fact no, just more of the same, only going forward with the stories, happily alone in the arms of the city, although like new and, like always, this time different.
and it had already started out differently, and not only because i'd flown in or because i'd ridden bart from the airport to the city, but because i got off the train at the same stop that i always had whenever i'd ridden from downtown or the east bay, and the difference wasn't that i walked up the stairs to 16th and mission alone, but that the people i wasn't with in that moment weren't the same. then i walked up mission to taqueria cancún, the same place i had always stopped before walking over to ritual on valencia, and the people who weren't with me there again weren't either the ones who were my sense of losing out since the last time. i definitely needed a burrito.
and then i can't say that i needed another coffee, but i had one, because how else was i going to be able to steal another mug from ritual? the one i'd gotten the last time had made it to spain from portland and then to portugal from spain, but it stayed, chipped, with a friend in montenegro because it was already all of the weight of its journey and had, as i realized only in the moment that i hefted it and decided not to add more contraband to another border crossing, gone as far as its story needed it to go. so it stayed as the beginning of someone else's, and then, in the story that i had been telling, i flew across the country to steal myself another one. it turned out in the meantime, however, that i was going to need two (which is another different story), and i'll say here that the difficulty i foresaw in getting back to ritual in that same particular weekend for the second was what kept me from taking the first. all or nothing. in the moment, though, i might have admitted that i just hadn't positioned myself appropriately to be successful without raising suspicion (especially with the cupping going on), and i was going to need to execute a perfectly clean operation if i wanted to make sure that i could pull of another one later. as i took a photograph of the mug i'd been given for my coffee in order to send to the friend to whom i had gifted the one i remembered having taken the last time with much less deliberation (although, admittedly, aided also by a now absent accomplice), i regretted not having the foresight just to pay for a pair and lie about their origin. insult to injury that i'd ended up simply paying for a featured coffee that i didn't consider to be very good.
to taqueria cancún and to ritual, but not to dolores park, not even alone, because this weekend was going to be different, and the park would be full of ghosts, smartly accessorized underemployment enviable repartee, especially on a sunny friday afternoon, a foggy picture of the fag, the lesbians, the trans man and the pansexual beauty queen. but this weekend's photo shoot was at a different location, and besides, the park was still on the meh list, at least until sunday. i did, however, brave truck. i'd had a coffee after all, and anyway the bar was in the opposite direction of the park on a more straightforwardly sentimental path toward the hotel, the foggy picture of an after party and a too late first date. one of the ladies had texted to say that they were on their way there, and i wasn't half done with my beer when i got a second message to say that they had arrived. so i said goodbye to the bartender, who hadn't worked at the bar long enough for my ever to have met him before, and to the only other two o'clock customer (or friend of whomever), having at least had the time to be told what was going to be happening at the bar for the rest of the weekend. then it was quickly down past the banners on folsom (because i'd taken an extra moment to finish my drink), a zag onto 10th and another onto market before recognizing the civic center for the very first time in however many visits and crossing into the tenderloin, on the back end of which i found the ladies and dropped my bags where they would be staying in that second floor room at the intersection of taylor and o'farrell.
and i don't think that i was very successfully communicative of the extent to which that certain sense of losing out, that melancholy, had absolutely -- and already -- diffused to solidly permeate the three hours i'd spent without them. of course, they hadn't been there, with me at that after party or in the picture at the park, and that might have been the real barrier to my conveying the strangeness of knowing that...i didn't know, actually, but what i can tell you i know now is that i was sweaty and i smelled and i was all of a sudden self-conscious. apparently, that certain sense of whatever i was finding difficult to articulate was randomly conducive to excitability, and that, apparently, was confusing. i needed to shower. then the picture gets foggy.
maybe it was only because the two of us had been recounting the part of the christmas saga that we'd shared in madrid, but when our long way back from unbelievably bland mexican and from the coffee place next to the corset place on linden being closed took me back through the civic center with the ladies in the dark, city hall was unmistakably spanish. the one who could see it agreed. we hadn't noticed or remarked on cool super discount at the southeast corner of taylor and eddy streets when we'd passed it earlier because she (the one who had agreed) had been telling us about how when she'd gone down to pick up her wig that stefan had been on the phone and on top of that busy with everything else and just hadn't been having it but had helped her with what grace you could imagine he could have mustered nonetheless. and on that earlier walk down taylor we'd agreed that that interaction should be a portent. then just before that, although i'd feared that the rest of my first attempt at this story had just left them confused while i showered, the other one had told me that my account of finding the leather pride flag flying over the mission armory had had the verve of a patriot's description of his love for his country. so i supposed that here, in some sense, and nonetheless concurrent with that lingering sense of losing out, i had a sense of home, however diffuse and melancholic.
i was, however, still afraid of being called out as the poseur as i followed the ladies around to the events. i was on solicited hire, yes, but unquestionably inexperienced. eagerness was, well, to be taken aside. luckily though, it got me company back to truck that night and then later the party invitation that i'd been hoping to elicit all day. for a glass of whiskey with him and his cat. luckily too, he had experience (and tea), and he told me that most everyone at the street fair would be posing, so i would fit right in if i wanted to, although it wouldn't matter to him either way because he wasn't going. (it would turn out that he had other plans.) was it that, then? on what, exactly, was i already afraid of having lost out? i didn't know -- exactly -- and hence the general nature of the problem...although he didn't ask. he'd lost out once in italy, but had he been to lisbon? that city had always reminded me of here. no, he said, he hadn't been, but he was definitely interested. and with that, it began again, that feeling that, later, the memory forgetting that in the moment it was somewhere else, levels stupid accusations of infatuation. but in fact no, just more of the same, only going forward with the stories, happily alone in the arms of the city, although like new and, like always, this time different.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
YOU CAN LIKE THE LIFE YOU'RE LIVING, YOU CAN LIVE THE LIFE YOU LIKE
tonight, the paris review is hosting a screening of "withnail and i" at the brooklyn book fair, and we're not going to make it. the ultimate coming of the cold in the midwest means the coming of a grey, unpopulated bleakness, but the transition period has its inspirational poesy too (the one noted by cernuda in "ocnos" -- although in regards to the same season in the very different south of spain), and even though it also often means colds. infected sinuses, more specifically. and so we're not going to make it to the screening of "withnail and i." we can't tell which of the discarded tissues in the house full of discarded tissues were used for snot and which for semen, which beyond what we've had to admit would only be the added confusion of having to change out itineraries to take us through new york for the film, might also present some interesting hygiene issues at folsom later in the weekend.
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
WAY TO GO OHIO
let's say his name is kaylon. let's say that's his name because it is, and because i'd say that i doubt i would have come up with it on my own. and let's say that i went on a date with him, because i did, and that was because he'd asked me if i wanted to get a drink with him and given me his phone number within ten or so lines of opening a chat with me, which i found refreshing...or intriguing...or something that was charmingly enough out of the ordinary to pique my interest. also, he'd sent me a shirtless picture of himself immediately after his salutation and his compliment on my glasses, and his blurry torso (or whosever it was -- because i hadn't asked for any other pictures, and his profile picture was more of the same) wasn't bad. so i started exchanging texts with an idea that i'd conjured around a blurry picture of a not at all bad torso who lived near my friend's place in olde towne east. let's say his name is kaylon, because i'd say that there aren't any innocent to protect.
we made plans. ...and i showed up to them on time. and when he called, after almost an hour of my sitting alone with my beer next to the fire pit on the patio had passed, i told him that i was going to finish my drink and leave. that, no, he shouldn't come. did i think that he'd stood me up? i didn't care. and i told him that i was sure he had an explanation. but the truth was that i was annoyed, and i didn't think that a date with him was going to go very well after an hour of my stewing in my mounting annoyance, an hour that ended in an even more annoyingly stammering phone call (although i'm only telling that last bit just now). but he still wanted to come, he said, and he hoped that i would still be there; and i told that he probably shouldn't, but that i wasn't going to down the rest of my beer and run out of the tavern just to avoid him.
so he showed up. and i, i was texting my friend to tell her that i should already have ditched the date. and i motioned to him with my finger that i was busy. i should have left for the first time after he started arguing with me about not having called when i arrived. i'd sent him a text to tell him that i was on the patio, i told him, but if we were going to argue etiquette, i said, then i'd argue that making plans with someone for a specific time at a specific place means that you should show up there and then without having to be called. really. luckily, ben saved us from having to argue any further.
let's call him ben because that's his name, and he works across the street at yellow brick pizza. he'd been sitting by himself next to the fire pit and had asked if he could join our table. i'd told him that we were navigating a crisis, and he'd said that in that case then he should definitely help us and had pulled over a chair. after introducing himself, kaylon jumped on the opportunity to say (to ben) that he was a pastry chef and that people should forgive him for falling asleep and missing appointments because he had to be awake so early for work. i was, of course, enraptured by the charm of his passive aggression. then ben introduced himself to me and asked about the crisis, and i told him that things had already started to improve with his company and that i was so excited for what was about to happen that i wished i could be live blogging the progress of the resolution. he didn't seem to gather the reality of my sincerity -- and neither kaylon my sarcasm.
oh well. because ben had already started telling the story of his cast. he'd been at a big pagan festival in the woods. a lady had been giving him a hand job, then right as she whispered in his ear that she was queer she got scared away by a bear...and ben woke up with a broken foot. then he asked what we were up to, and i ruined it for myself by telling him that we were on a painfully awkward date, but that he had gone further than i could explain to better the situation. that's when he apologized and excused himself, and i regret not having followed suit.
kaylon said that maybe he could be better informed but that he wasn't political. (and he certainly was not 5'8".) so i had said that maybe it was better we changed the subject. i liked the place, obviously -- and i liked yellow brick across the street. but there were better ways to go about revitalizing a neighborhood than just clearing it out, moving higher rents in and installing retail and restaurants mimeographed off the coasts. but, he insisted, sometimes a city just had to do what it had to do. to make a neighborhood "nice." because did i know that this was once the nice part of town? and having lived there all of a year or so, he could tell me what the problems were. he didn't want to stereotype, he said, "but i think we both know what race it is." i suspected that it might be ours. and after turning away to bite my right shoulder for fifteen or twenty seconds, i stayed. there wasn't going to be much gotten from conversation, but i wanted to try for a clearer look at that torso. and as i felt absolutely compelled to confess to everyone i met the next morning, i subjugated my dignity to my dick, which ultimately just suffered more awkward ignominy before eventually taking its cold shower in the thunderstorm that broke as i finally found my way to walking away, completely ungratified. no innocent to protect.
way to go ohio. i still haven't read that article from the sunday magazine (perhaps in part because of an avoidance mechanism engendered by the city pictured on the cover), but apparently the state is doing relatively well...macroeconomically speaking. and it would be problematic to conflate the state of the state with the state of the city of columbus. by all appearances, however, the latter isn't doing so bad either. macroeconomically speaking. and people do seem to be proud of their city...and all the more so the more that the city does what the rest of them have done. but columbus doesn't seem interested at all in developing an indigenous movement of its own. late hipster irony is still coming into its day here, and that might actually be a good thing for the praise singers: an insular socius that nonetheless derives all of its cultural inspiration from the outside is easily rationalized deterministically. relatively well off, delightedly provincial, fashion neutral and socially conservative with an overt touch of latent racism. ladies and gentlemen, a portrait of the swing vote (shot, of course, using instagram).
on the side of a building at 88 east broad street, there's a sentence forming. "columbus never came here, but when the city sleeps, what our dreamers discover," it's started. and there's been a series of contests for residents to choose the words to follow the original five, which went up one by one beginning in the winter. the project is part of a larger one called "finding time," which was planned for downtown for 2012 as part of the celebrations for the city's bicentennial. i've no idea what the people of columbus discover when they dream. but it would appear that they need some help saying so themselves. and what columbus is being helped to say about itself couldn't have been better announced from over that (perfectly characteristic) downtown parking lot: the artist who conceived and is judging the project is in brooklyn. back to the blurry torsos.
we made plans. ...and i showed up to them on time. and when he called, after almost an hour of my sitting alone with my beer next to the fire pit on the patio had passed, i told him that i was going to finish my drink and leave. that, no, he shouldn't come. did i think that he'd stood me up? i didn't care. and i told him that i was sure he had an explanation. but the truth was that i was annoyed, and i didn't think that a date with him was going to go very well after an hour of my stewing in my mounting annoyance, an hour that ended in an even more annoyingly stammering phone call (although i'm only telling that last bit just now). but he still wanted to come, he said, and he hoped that i would still be there; and i told that he probably shouldn't, but that i wasn't going to down the rest of my beer and run out of the tavern just to avoid him.
so he showed up. and i, i was texting my friend to tell her that i should already have ditched the date. and i motioned to him with my finger that i was busy. i should have left for the first time after he started arguing with me about not having called when i arrived. i'd sent him a text to tell him that i was on the patio, i told him, but if we were going to argue etiquette, i said, then i'd argue that making plans with someone for a specific time at a specific place means that you should show up there and then without having to be called. really. luckily, ben saved us from having to argue any further.
let's call him ben because that's his name, and he works across the street at yellow brick pizza. he'd been sitting by himself next to the fire pit and had asked if he could join our table. i'd told him that we were navigating a crisis, and he'd said that in that case then he should definitely help us and had pulled over a chair. after introducing himself, kaylon jumped on the opportunity to say (to ben) that he was a pastry chef and that people should forgive him for falling asleep and missing appointments because he had to be awake so early for work. i was, of course, enraptured by the charm of his passive aggression. then ben introduced himself to me and asked about the crisis, and i told him that things had already started to improve with his company and that i was so excited for what was about to happen that i wished i could be live blogging the progress of the resolution. he didn't seem to gather the reality of my sincerity -- and neither kaylon my sarcasm.
oh well. because ben had already started telling the story of his cast. he'd been at a big pagan festival in the woods. a lady had been giving him a hand job, then right as she whispered in his ear that she was queer she got scared away by a bear...and ben woke up with a broken foot. then he asked what we were up to, and i ruined it for myself by telling him that we were on a painfully awkward date, but that he had gone further than i could explain to better the situation. that's when he apologized and excused himself, and i regret not having followed suit.
kaylon said that maybe he could be better informed but that he wasn't political. (and he certainly was not 5'8".) so i had said that maybe it was better we changed the subject. i liked the place, obviously -- and i liked yellow brick across the street. but there were better ways to go about revitalizing a neighborhood than just clearing it out, moving higher rents in and installing retail and restaurants mimeographed off the coasts. but, he insisted, sometimes a city just had to do what it had to do. to make a neighborhood "nice." because did i know that this was once the nice part of town? and having lived there all of a year or so, he could tell me what the problems were. he didn't want to stereotype, he said, "but i think we both know what race it is." i suspected that it might be ours. and after turning away to bite my right shoulder for fifteen or twenty seconds, i stayed. there wasn't going to be much gotten from conversation, but i wanted to try for a clearer look at that torso. and as i felt absolutely compelled to confess to everyone i met the next morning, i subjugated my dignity to my dick, which ultimately just suffered more awkward ignominy before eventually taking its cold shower in the thunderstorm that broke as i finally found my way to walking away, completely ungratified. no innocent to protect.
way to go ohio. i still haven't read that article from the sunday magazine (perhaps in part because of an avoidance mechanism engendered by the city pictured on the cover), but apparently the state is doing relatively well...macroeconomically speaking. and it would be problematic to conflate the state of the state with the state of the city of columbus. by all appearances, however, the latter isn't doing so bad either. macroeconomically speaking. and people do seem to be proud of their city...and all the more so the more that the city does what the rest of them have done. but columbus doesn't seem interested at all in developing an indigenous movement of its own. late hipster irony is still coming into its day here, and that might actually be a good thing for the praise singers: an insular socius that nonetheless derives all of its cultural inspiration from the outside is easily rationalized deterministically. relatively well off, delightedly provincial, fashion neutral and socially conservative with an overt touch of latent racism. ladies and gentlemen, a portrait of the swing vote (shot, of course, using instagram).
on the side of a building at 88 east broad street, there's a sentence forming. "columbus never came here, but when the city sleeps, what our dreamers discover," it's started. and there's been a series of contests for residents to choose the words to follow the original five, which went up one by one beginning in the winter. the project is part of a larger one called "finding time," which was planned for downtown for 2012 as part of the celebrations for the city's bicentennial. i've no idea what the people of columbus discover when they dream. but it would appear that they need some help saying so themselves. and what columbus is being helped to say about itself couldn't have been better announced from over that (perfectly characteristic) downtown parking lot: the artist who conceived and is judging the project is in brooklyn. back to the blurry torsos.
Monday, September 10, 2012
"MY MEMORY TRANSLATES EVERYTHING INTO SOMETHING ELSE"
several days of rest (distance, testing, rehabilitation) still weren't enough for me not to feel what i felt at seeing a picture of the skyline of columbus, ohio on the cover of the sunday magazine yesterday. (or maybe they were exactly the amount of time necessary for the inspissation of that foggy sense of terminal disorientation -- and for boring myself into grasping at superficial symmetries.) one week earlier, we'd bought the paper at a market on lexington before having gone next door to have to flee the other clientele at joe coffee. there wasn't anywhere to sit and start the puzzle besides, but neither did we care to find out from the homo visiting from boston whether what he'd just recommended was, "like, a bar or a party" (as the two masc ues travel workout guys sitting across from him had just asked). the tall, beefy blonde behind the counter had laughed when we'd made an indiscreet joke about his other customers at the register just earlier, but we all knew that i wasn't doing myself any favors in making a lucrative marriage with that attitude -- and that those big, hairy arms of his were going to be hugging a big, hairy legacy endowment while i was still dreaming about getting mine (as it were). and that's what they call big city love.
i'd had my day of rest and my ice cream after fornino, and sunday was to be for getting back to business (two days ahead of time with the holiday!), which was probably going to mean just finally making it to the museum (where i really should have gone two days before). it had worked out, however, because she really wanted to see the yayoi kusama exhibition and, in addition to not having been able to go on friday, she had told me that she probably wasn't going to get around to going if she couldn't go with someone else. so we went to the whitney together on sunday after i had gone for a walk with my godson (on again off again weekend boyfriend and former tenant), the toy poodle called francis. i would have helped myself to the magazine if i'd found a copy at verb, but it had taken me long enough just getting coffee and i didn't want to take the extra time to look. we still needed to get bagels, and there would be a line at the bagel place too. but it was worth the second wait, because we had to wait again to get inside the whitney, and we got hungry while we were on line.
she knew kusama for her installations and had bought some books on the artist the last time she was on tour in japan. all of the rest of us liked her because marc jacobs did. the polka dot tentacles in the vuitton display windows, the profile in the paper, reminders (and more reminders) from friends with more self-determined taste, and we all finally made it that sunday. and we made a line. but my friend and i made the line just in time to get behind the woman from queens with four free guest admissions, so we would have to wait, but at least not to pay. and when we had made it through the line and around the second corner, we were standing right in the beeline of the couple of seniors that didn't want to wait until three-twenty to see the (already sold out) kusama installation that required separate admission from the general exhibition on the fourth floor and gave their tickets to us. plus, we had those bagels, which had taken over for friday's vietnamese sandwiches in my purse. not bad.
the exhibition wasn't bad either. kusama was prolific, and of the materials on display at the whitney, perhaps the most interesting were the personal items of kusama's that were on display to document her own documentation of the progress of her career from her youth through the time she spent in new york. the japanese american artist. and in an adjoining room, a slide show of photographs showing kusama dressed in a yukata and carrying a paper parasol as she walked through the city, an evocation of the same juxtaposition that was manifest in the staging of the exhibition itself at a museum dedicated to american art. kusama, as the sensation goes, currently resides in the same japanese psychiatric facility to which she voluntarily committed herself in 1977. her art, in retrospect, has been as much the changes in her process that were forced by the evolution of her social, psychological, geographical and spatial conditions as her output during any specific period -- the last examples of which i think the exhibition would have done well to do without. i think that i could, in one way or another, appreciate either virtuosity or revolution in every room of the exhibition until that last one, and both she and i were happy to leave it quickly behind us and exit to the elevators.
the waits, i think, were worth it, but especially because the world's current fascination with yayoi kusama did me the favor of introducing me to sharon hayes, a collection of whose "speech acts" was being exhibited one floor down. "i march in the parade of liberty," the poster to the left of the elevators said, "but as long as i love you i am not free." and next to it, a bank of speakers delivered a recording of hayes' speech, the one that she delivered to an absent ex-lover on street corners throughout the city for the "event" described by the poster. i sat and listened to the entire voice over that accompanied a 33 minute film of the 1971 christopher street parade shot by women's liberation cinema and was reminded to remember the inherent politics of fucking. the means of reproduction. filling the park with the indignant contradiction of queer love. and when we left joe coffee and walked to the park to kill time until our time slot for the kusama installation, our indignance at the lack of more protest back at the coffee shop, at the branded reproduction of the liberated but impotent homosexualities of the new century, was so informed. that's how i remember it.
and i remember that the installation was unexpectedly anxiety inducing. we had to wait again, to go in one by one for our one minute each, and inside, although those fireflies on the water were dazzling, they were a lot to take in, and it was hard not to look at ourselves in all of the mirrors, and when we moved to look away into all of the lights in all of the refracted distances it was hard not to be distracted by the movement and not look back at what had caused it (which was us, of course, but each of us alone and in our turn). and in my turn, when my minute was up too quickly (which i knew it would be because i spent the entirety of it waiting for the door to open behind me and catch me off guard, and the waiting to wait before that was what had made us so anxious to begin with), when the minute was up i turned around too quickly on the catwalk and nearly had to grab a fistful of the dangling lights to keep myself from falling into the water, which, of course, wouldn't have kept me from falling into the water and which would have completely destroyed the installation. as it was, the person with the minute after mine was going to experience the fireflies in motion.
yesterday, before i got up to see that there was a picture of us on the cover of the sunday magazine, i'd been telling him about mine and her experience in the park between joe coffee and our escape from manhattan after the anxiety of the kusama installation. her in her shirt and tie and me with my purse with her half of an egg and cheese bagel inside of it. her with her coffee and me with the soda that the tall, beefy blonde had recommended. and all of the sunday tourists looking up at us to smile. because in that moment they realized it was ok, because, apparently, what they hadn't realized was that the dykes and the faggots were dating each other. he said that he'd laughed the first time he'd heard that, when he'd read it in my blog, and i told him sarcastic funny-like with a period after the one laugh in lowercase that the post wasn't written yet, although i might have written it already if i hadn't been wasting my time with him. ha. and whatever, i said, all good writing was just plagiarism with creative punctuation, thinking that i should definitely redact that line from the final version of the story.
"way to go ohio" is what it said over top of the skyline of columbus on the cover of the magazine. but seeing that picture with a different view of the skyline outside and down the street to the south only made me think of new york. and with everyone outside on the street dressed just like in the parade footage from 1971. i march in the parade of liberty, so i wish that to get to the crossword puzzle i wouldn't have to go through this picture. but then, remembering the sharon hayes exhibition that we'd visited one week earlier, i remembered what i'll say i'd forgotten until that morning when i knew i'd have to rewrite this whole thing so that it would be different from the one he'd already read: the big banner that was the thing that had most immediately and viscerally endeared me to the artist. "my memory translates everything into something else," which is to say, in my case, nothing new.
i'd had my day of rest and my ice cream after fornino, and sunday was to be for getting back to business (two days ahead of time with the holiday!), which was probably going to mean just finally making it to the museum (where i really should have gone two days before). it had worked out, however, because she really wanted to see the yayoi kusama exhibition and, in addition to not having been able to go on friday, she had told me that she probably wasn't going to get around to going if she couldn't go with someone else. so we went to the whitney together on sunday after i had gone for a walk with my godson (on again off again weekend boyfriend and former tenant), the toy poodle called francis. i would have helped myself to the magazine if i'd found a copy at verb, but it had taken me long enough just getting coffee and i didn't want to take the extra time to look. we still needed to get bagels, and there would be a line at the bagel place too. but it was worth the second wait, because we had to wait again to get inside the whitney, and we got hungry while we were on line.
she knew kusama for her installations and had bought some books on the artist the last time she was on tour in japan. all of the rest of us liked her because marc jacobs did. the polka dot tentacles in the vuitton display windows, the profile in the paper, reminders (and more reminders) from friends with more self-determined taste, and we all finally made it that sunday. and we made a line. but my friend and i made the line just in time to get behind the woman from queens with four free guest admissions, so we would have to wait, but at least not to pay. and when we had made it through the line and around the second corner, we were standing right in the beeline of the couple of seniors that didn't want to wait until three-twenty to see the (already sold out) kusama installation that required separate admission from the general exhibition on the fourth floor and gave their tickets to us. plus, we had those bagels, which had taken over for friday's vietnamese sandwiches in my purse. not bad.
the exhibition wasn't bad either. kusama was prolific, and of the materials on display at the whitney, perhaps the most interesting were the personal items of kusama's that were on display to document her own documentation of the progress of her career from her youth through the time she spent in new york. the japanese american artist. and in an adjoining room, a slide show of photographs showing kusama dressed in a yukata and carrying a paper parasol as she walked through the city, an evocation of the same juxtaposition that was manifest in the staging of the exhibition itself at a museum dedicated to american art. kusama, as the sensation goes, currently resides in the same japanese psychiatric facility to which she voluntarily committed herself in 1977. her art, in retrospect, has been as much the changes in her process that were forced by the evolution of her social, psychological, geographical and spatial conditions as her output during any specific period -- the last examples of which i think the exhibition would have done well to do without. i think that i could, in one way or another, appreciate either virtuosity or revolution in every room of the exhibition until that last one, and both she and i were happy to leave it quickly behind us and exit to the elevators.
the waits, i think, were worth it, but especially because the world's current fascination with yayoi kusama did me the favor of introducing me to sharon hayes, a collection of whose "speech acts" was being exhibited one floor down. "i march in the parade of liberty," the poster to the left of the elevators said, "but as long as i love you i am not free." and next to it, a bank of speakers delivered a recording of hayes' speech, the one that she delivered to an absent ex-lover on street corners throughout the city for the "event" described by the poster. i sat and listened to the entire voice over that accompanied a 33 minute film of the 1971 christopher street parade shot by women's liberation cinema and was reminded to remember the inherent politics of fucking. the means of reproduction. filling the park with the indignant contradiction of queer love. and when we left joe coffee and walked to the park to kill time until our time slot for the kusama installation, our indignance at the lack of more protest back at the coffee shop, at the branded reproduction of the liberated but impotent homosexualities of the new century, was so informed. that's how i remember it.
and i remember that the installation was unexpectedly anxiety inducing. we had to wait again, to go in one by one for our one minute each, and inside, although those fireflies on the water were dazzling, they were a lot to take in, and it was hard not to look at ourselves in all of the mirrors, and when we moved to look away into all of the lights in all of the refracted distances it was hard not to be distracted by the movement and not look back at what had caused it (which was us, of course, but each of us alone and in our turn). and in my turn, when my minute was up too quickly (which i knew it would be because i spent the entirety of it waiting for the door to open behind me and catch me off guard, and the waiting to wait before that was what had made us so anxious to begin with), when the minute was up i turned around too quickly on the catwalk and nearly had to grab a fistful of the dangling lights to keep myself from falling into the water, which, of course, wouldn't have kept me from falling into the water and which would have completely destroyed the installation. as it was, the person with the minute after mine was going to experience the fireflies in motion.
yesterday, before i got up to see that there was a picture of us on the cover of the sunday magazine, i'd been telling him about mine and her experience in the park between joe coffee and our escape from manhattan after the anxiety of the kusama installation. her in her shirt and tie and me with my purse with her half of an egg and cheese bagel inside of it. her with her coffee and me with the soda that the tall, beefy blonde had recommended. and all of the sunday tourists looking up at us to smile. because in that moment they realized it was ok, because, apparently, what they hadn't realized was that the dykes and the faggots were dating each other. he said that he'd laughed the first time he'd heard that, when he'd read it in my blog, and i told him sarcastic funny-like with a period after the one laugh in lowercase that the post wasn't written yet, although i might have written it already if i hadn't been wasting my time with him. ha. and whatever, i said, all good writing was just plagiarism with creative punctuation, thinking that i should definitely redact that line from the final version of the story.
"way to go ohio" is what it said over top of the skyline of columbus on the cover of the magazine. but seeing that picture with a different view of the skyline outside and down the street to the south only made me think of new york. and with everyone outside on the street dressed just like in the parade footage from 1971. i march in the parade of liberty, so i wish that to get to the crossword puzzle i wouldn't have to go through this picture. but then, remembering the sharon hayes exhibition that we'd visited one week earlier, i remembered what i'll say i'd forgotten until that morning when i knew i'd have to rewrite this whole thing so that it would be different from the one he'd already read: the big banner that was the thing that had most immediately and viscerally endeared me to the artist. "my memory translates everything into something else," which is to say, in my case, nothing new.
Friday, September 7, 2012
HOW TO KICK A DEAD GIFT HORSE -- ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE COUNTRY; or, PROVERBS, CHAPTER 1.5
on the third day, i rested. god, as they say, didn't sleep with everyone in rome in a day, and he needed to take at least one for himself to admire his handiwork while rehydrating and watching television. (glory be to the extra long weekend.) but that didn't mean i couldn't eat. to the contrary: baby, as they say, gotta eat. first, however, baby had to finish up his all night interview with TED (spreading ideas and absolutely nothing else), which might have ended more promisingly had the light of morning not shown baby the abysmal quality of TED's books.
the saturday crossword maybe isn't the best for your rest day, but verb had it for free, and the morning was young. unfortunately, i'd spent nearly all of my battery getting my interview materials together amidst the hilarity of having depleted the last reserves of rum in caracas, and when it died i figured i shouldn't be incomunicado (as they say) with the other set of keys in case there was business needing doing that wasn't going to have any other way back into the apartment. an excuse to sideline the crossword with only three clues answered? perhaps...but i would take it with me. and i took my cup from verb too, to the apartment and then to the southern restaurant where i ordered a mug of coffee anyway because it made the doughnut cheaper. you do the math -- because i didn't. it was my rest day plan to chase all of the rum in caracas with all of the coffee in williamsburg until my kidneys forced me to drink all of the fizzy non-alcoholic campari something that we found at the cheese shop when she was buying ingredients for pesto later in the day. either way, that is, i was coming out ahead. a dollars worth of one, a cup of coffee's worth of another, as they say. and in the end, even with the extra breakfast sandwich that we got for the table to share, everyone came out pretty well, including our servers, including tip. if there's one thing worse than cool, it's expressed authenticity. (with age, no resignation to collective wisdom, as they say.) refreshingly, the cool southern place didn't claim to be authentic. and, even better, it was deliciously cheap.
one stop later at blue bottle (you know, that one place in new york that the coffee bar you're in reminds you of?), she and i didn't get much further with the puzzle, but we did have a good time staring at it until someone had the giant fucking balls to flaunt the less than day old amnesty of the torch passing and get in line at the bar wearing a powell's tee. unfortunately, big balls or cute dyke-y recent transplant cashier or not, no one was going to have his or her face sat on at that place this morning after that low blow.
so she and i went down to the pier. we weren't there for smorgasburg, but neither were we immediately hungry (and the guy who told me it wasn't to miss was also the one who told me that larry lawrence was the bar to go to, so, you know). plus, we could see all of the food carts from where we were sitting on some steps in the shade, and it wasn't hard to imagine what was on offer. the new white street food refugees had escaped the flames and gotten asylum before the torch passing proceedings and the enactment of the amnesty. bored again with the scene, we played hot lava monster, hopping shade patches as far as we could down the pier, at the end of which we were welcomed with a pretty view of the skyline of old new york. could that ever have been public housing? then, turning back, a view of the authentic loft living experience of new brooklyn. did she know about "flag wars"? i asked. she didn't, so i gave her a run down. but as we were hot lava monstering through authenticity town back towards the streets of walk-ups strung with the flag of puerto rico, i was thinking less about that movie than adriana camarena's article in this summer's issue of n+1. "street food" is about the changes taking place in the mission district of san francisco, but one of camarena's most poignant statements goes for anywhere and everything on the way from christopher street to the castro, over to the mission, and back again to williamsburg: "we think of gentrification principally in terms of real estate, race, and class, but i more often find that food is the thermometer reading the temperature of gentrification." food for thought, as they say.
or so i was thinking. and at my next interview, when he asked me if i was a foodie (because we'd been talking about the strudel he'd had at smorgasburg and i'd told him about the southern place and the pesto she'd made for late lunch), i asked him in turn why he thought we needed a baby word for being hungry. and, well, i don't think i got the job. and rightfully so, because it wasn't really the occasion for misplacing the acute guilt i was feeling over what camarena describes (and well and in depth) as her "class and identity contradictions." you'll have to just believe in mine. or, as they say, not. the point is, who am i to talk. breakfast was still fifteen dollars. and, i mean, i shut myself up eventually by stuffing my mouth full of clam pizza at fornino. but i was only quiet over dinner. because then i made us stop for ice cream. in my defense, however, it was my day of rest, and i needed it, and replenishment, if i was going to keep on talking the talk, as they say, the next morning when i was going to have to walk the dog and bitch about the flea market. yes, the food carts would be gone, but damn if white people didn't like buying other people's marked up trash, which will remain trash...until i can afford it...
the saturday crossword maybe isn't the best for your rest day, but verb had it for free, and the morning was young. unfortunately, i'd spent nearly all of my battery getting my interview materials together amidst the hilarity of having depleted the last reserves of rum in caracas, and when it died i figured i shouldn't be incomunicado (as they say) with the other set of keys in case there was business needing doing that wasn't going to have any other way back into the apartment. an excuse to sideline the crossword with only three clues answered? perhaps...but i would take it with me. and i took my cup from verb too, to the apartment and then to the southern restaurant where i ordered a mug of coffee anyway because it made the doughnut cheaper. you do the math -- because i didn't. it was my rest day plan to chase all of the rum in caracas with all of the coffee in williamsburg until my kidneys forced me to drink all of the fizzy non-alcoholic campari something that we found at the cheese shop when she was buying ingredients for pesto later in the day. either way, that is, i was coming out ahead. a dollars worth of one, a cup of coffee's worth of another, as they say. and in the end, even with the extra breakfast sandwich that we got for the table to share, everyone came out pretty well, including our servers, including tip. if there's one thing worse than cool, it's expressed authenticity. (with age, no resignation to collective wisdom, as they say.) refreshingly, the cool southern place didn't claim to be authentic. and, even better, it was deliciously cheap.
one stop later at blue bottle (you know, that one place in new york that the coffee bar you're in reminds you of?), she and i didn't get much further with the puzzle, but we did have a good time staring at it until someone had the giant fucking balls to flaunt the less than day old amnesty of the torch passing and get in line at the bar wearing a powell's tee. unfortunately, big balls or cute dyke-y recent transplant cashier or not, no one was going to have his or her face sat on at that place this morning after that low blow.
so she and i went down to the pier. we weren't there for smorgasburg, but neither were we immediately hungry (and the guy who told me it wasn't to miss was also the one who told me that larry lawrence was the bar to go to, so, you know). plus, we could see all of the food carts from where we were sitting on some steps in the shade, and it wasn't hard to imagine what was on offer. the new white street food refugees had escaped the flames and gotten asylum before the torch passing proceedings and the enactment of the amnesty. bored again with the scene, we played hot lava monster, hopping shade patches as far as we could down the pier, at the end of which we were welcomed with a pretty view of the skyline of old new york. could that ever have been public housing? then, turning back, a view of the authentic loft living experience of new brooklyn. did she know about "flag wars"? i asked. she didn't, so i gave her a run down. but as we were hot lava monstering through authenticity town back towards the streets of walk-ups strung with the flag of puerto rico, i was thinking less about that movie than adriana camarena's article in this summer's issue of n+1. "street food" is about the changes taking place in the mission district of san francisco, but one of camarena's most poignant statements goes for anywhere and everything on the way from christopher street to the castro, over to the mission, and back again to williamsburg: "we think of gentrification principally in terms of real estate, race, and class, but i more often find that food is the thermometer reading the temperature of gentrification." food for thought, as they say.
or so i was thinking. and at my next interview, when he asked me if i was a foodie (because we'd been talking about the strudel he'd had at smorgasburg and i'd told him about the southern place and the pesto she'd made for late lunch), i asked him in turn why he thought we needed a baby word for being hungry. and, well, i don't think i got the job. and rightfully so, because it wasn't really the occasion for misplacing the acute guilt i was feeling over what camarena describes (and well and in depth) as her "class and identity contradictions." you'll have to just believe in mine. or, as they say, not. the point is, who am i to talk. breakfast was still fifteen dollars. and, i mean, i shut myself up eventually by stuffing my mouth full of clam pizza at fornino. but i was only quiet over dinner. because then i made us stop for ice cream. in my defense, however, it was my day of rest, and i needed it, and replenishment, if i was going to keep on talking the talk, as they say, the next morning when i was going to have to walk the dog and bitch about the flea market. yes, the food carts would be gone, but damn if white people didn't like buying other people's marked up trash, which will remain trash...until i can afford it...
Thursday, September 6, 2012
GOLDEN
it was new. just new -- but also old, although not in the sense that anything bore an apparent age relative to the things anywhere else. and the change of scenery hadn't done anything for the pressure in my temples -- although it could have been that the similar climate meant similar airborne allergens. suffice it to say that, thankfully, i didn't feel at the center of anything that morning, the world nor much less. but the walk from williamsburg to downtown brooklyn was pleasant. alone (and, in my solitude, far from the center of the world), i was able to walk my cup from oslo across north portland and not at all regret gambling my hope for a couple more hours of dryness against running the steps at fort greene park. (at the time, i was still hopeful of visiting prospect park and archipelago.) unfortunately, after i'd happily given a cold shoulder to brooklyn heights and turned to walk myself down under the manhattan bridge overpass -- and even after ditching my empty oslo cup and taking the time to put another three dollars toward the progress of my headache -- the melville house bookstore wasn't going to be open until noon. and unfortunately too it wasn't going to take very long to take pictures of the building used for the exterior shots of the humphrey loft. (at the time i was still hopeful that some of the lies of television might still turn out to be true.) it was nice that the powerHouse store wasn't far (and that the man who came down from the offices to find something on the tables was showing so much of his chest -- of his chest hair), but even two times around everything wasn't good for much more than fifteen minutes, and so i ultimately had to give in and let the japanese tour group follow me and my tenugui (my imperturbability, my sweat soaked calm amidst the melee) to brooklyn roasting company for killing the last hour. and there, the faggots sitting like straight people, the alien baby about to make its way out of the middle of my forehead, the faggots talking straight about mitt romney's failure to commit to his heart of hearts and all of the other fucking people we married were, for better or for worse, a fitting prelude to my finding melville house still closed at fifteen past twelve. back in spain maybe, but not here. unacceptable. today, i was the center of the world, and the center was on its way back to manhattan. and it was a shame, because before i left i would have bought that new edition of "jacob's room" from the art of the novella series.
but up onto the manhattan bridge overpass and onto the bridge, which i took slowly because my sweat rag wasn't going to absorb much more, and my slowness gave me more time to contemplate why the cyclists in the bike lane got to be completely shaded and the pedestrians had to take the full force of the sun. we did, however, have the better view of the growing freedom tower and that time to wonder about the post-traumatic stress that would soon enough be recollected at ground zero from the rest of the slowly approaching island. or that's what we should have been contemplating, she told us later when we met at her office. the bridge sent me to chinatown, so of course i looked for vietnamese, and it was just as i was being unable to eat my second sandwich that she sent me the message asking if i had made it to the museum. i hadn't, of course, even made it into the bookstore, and i told her so, so she told me just to find her at work, since i apparently wasn't far. and that's what i did, through what she later told me was the demur of that diffuse but still lingering trauma, to the beautiful office where they stood at their workstations barefooted to end modern slavery and where i waited over coffee and my criticism of monocle next to my purse full of bánh mì. she noted the smell when she tried its weight later, but the shop boys in soho didn't seem to have a problem when asked after where it was from. and what's more, if i hadn't had the leftover sandwich halves on me, i wouldn't have had anything to offer to share with my new boyfriend on the train back under the water. too bad he lived in the east village and got off before i could make my proposition and do it for him. spurr. that was the name of the brand of his jeans, i told her. and she said she was okay with them as long as they weren't from uniqlo or zara, but i was happy for the distraction because i hadn't been as productive as i would have liked. hopefully, whoever found my charged up metrocard had made it to the whitney in my place.
and then there was tim; and it didn't matter about the book store or the museum or the metrocard (or the new one that i would lose later that i made after the shower so that i could make another meeting in manhattan). let's call him tim, anyway, the man of the night and of that one hour in the lobby of the ace hotel. portland was burning, and everyone had gathered to toast having escaped the flames. except for tim, who went to boarding school in massachusetts with a girl from beaverton and who had taken his new book on oregon wine country to his analyst that afternoon. tim was headed west. and on his way from his analyst to his mom's place on 76th and 5th he had stopped at the ace to pick up the torch we were passing. the other celebrants could have done without (although this wasn't obvious to tim), and he probably should have offered to pay for all of our eight dollar cans of beer, but i was won over by his infuriatingly brazen naivety. an arts district, tim, just means that gay people used to live there, i told him, and he took it in stride -- or in ignorance -- and asked me, then so how was gresham? it's true that dj huggy nonsense was doing his best to make sure that no one could hear, but i'm sure that tim said gresham, and i was all the more ingratiated by his persistence through the noise. it could only have been better had it been lady dottie. better for me. it was bad, apparently, for the others, who told me that the musk of the midwest had been wafting even stronger over the hotel lobby than it had been from the sandwich purse. but then the party stopped for the full moon, which was rising over what looked to be a corner of madrid somewhere on broadway. and the center shifted. but it was still me. and since tim took the torch without paying for drinks, someone was going to be responsible for buying me all the birthday rum in the world at the venezuelan place back in brooklyn.
but up onto the manhattan bridge overpass and onto the bridge, which i took slowly because my sweat rag wasn't going to absorb much more, and my slowness gave me more time to contemplate why the cyclists in the bike lane got to be completely shaded and the pedestrians had to take the full force of the sun. we did, however, have the better view of the growing freedom tower and that time to wonder about the post-traumatic stress that would soon enough be recollected at ground zero from the rest of the slowly approaching island. or that's what we should have been contemplating, she told us later when we met at her office. the bridge sent me to chinatown, so of course i looked for vietnamese, and it was just as i was being unable to eat my second sandwich that she sent me the message asking if i had made it to the museum. i hadn't, of course, even made it into the bookstore, and i told her so, so she told me just to find her at work, since i apparently wasn't far. and that's what i did, through what she later told me was the demur of that diffuse but still lingering trauma, to the beautiful office where they stood at their workstations barefooted to end modern slavery and where i waited over coffee and my criticism of monocle next to my purse full of bánh mì. she noted the smell when she tried its weight later, but the shop boys in soho didn't seem to have a problem when asked after where it was from. and what's more, if i hadn't had the leftover sandwich halves on me, i wouldn't have had anything to offer to share with my new boyfriend on the train back under the water. too bad he lived in the east village and got off before i could make my proposition and do it for him. spurr. that was the name of the brand of his jeans, i told her. and she said she was okay with them as long as they weren't from uniqlo or zara, but i was happy for the distraction because i hadn't been as productive as i would have liked. hopefully, whoever found my charged up metrocard had made it to the whitney in my place.
and then there was tim; and it didn't matter about the book store or the museum or the metrocard (or the new one that i would lose later that i made after the shower so that i could make another meeting in manhattan). let's call him tim, anyway, the man of the night and of that one hour in the lobby of the ace hotel. portland was burning, and everyone had gathered to toast having escaped the flames. except for tim, who went to boarding school in massachusetts with a girl from beaverton and who had taken his new book on oregon wine country to his analyst that afternoon. tim was headed west. and on his way from his analyst to his mom's place on 76th and 5th he had stopped at the ace to pick up the torch we were passing. the other celebrants could have done without (although this wasn't obvious to tim), and he probably should have offered to pay for all of our eight dollar cans of beer, but i was won over by his infuriatingly brazen naivety. an arts district, tim, just means that gay people used to live there, i told him, and he took it in stride -- or in ignorance -- and asked me, then so how was gresham? it's true that dj huggy nonsense was doing his best to make sure that no one could hear, but i'm sure that tim said gresham, and i was all the more ingratiated by his persistence through the noise. it could only have been better had it been lady dottie. better for me. it was bad, apparently, for the others, who told me that the musk of the midwest had been wafting even stronger over the hotel lobby than it had been from the sandwich purse. but then the party stopped for the full moon, which was rising over what looked to be a corner of madrid somewhere on broadway. and the center shifted. but it was still me. and since tim took the torch without paying for drinks, someone was going to be responsible for buying me all the birthday rum in the world at the venezuelan place back in brooklyn.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
HOW TO GET GOING WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH
the lady was definitely having a bad morning. among her worst, maybe, as after she'd been yelled out of the seat that she thought was hers she'd spilled her complementary orange juice all over her own (and her lap), where she was then forced to sit, wet, behind the awful conversation and matching promise earrings of the gay christian boy band until one of the sky waitresses could get to her with a napkin. and although my own morning had begun more than promisingly, us airways seemed determined to thwart everyone's (on average) okay day, having made its best effort at me by putting tel aviv on the cover of the inflight magazine. new york was new york, but it wasn't the trip to the mediterranean gay disco on the beach that i'd promised everyone someone would be coughing up for my birthday. still, enough...: even if my miles hadn't been sufficient for keeping up appearances by sending the gift to myself, i had been flying enough to have found a comfortable space for personal reflections at the ends of the terminals at ronald reagan international. that said, i wasn't at all put out when my attempts to focus my way away from tel aviv were interrupted. i don't know with what she thought she might be able to help, but it was nice that she offered, and that she offered with her princess diana pocket knife. wondering then why i'd been given such a hard time by the tsa over my night creme was an easy way out of chasing the failures of my benefactors. worrying wasn't going to change my itinerary, and maybe the princess would even be my escort to la guardia.
no such luck, but my preoccupation with ground transportation had easily helped me put everything else out of mind. (we'd arrived safely, anyway, and since the boy band had sagged its pants onto a different flight we hadn't had any need for the knife.) it was, however, lucky that the princess had let me keep half of what we panhandled at the terminal before we parted ways, because the q33 doesn't take dollar bills. and it didn't apparently take no for an answer either, because no matter how many times i told them that javier was dead and that i was just wearing his clothes, all of his friend on the bus through queens wouldn't stop asking after their immigrant native son. exasperating, yes, but for one of his shirts i was able to trade instructions on getting (away from inside of the chase scene under the train tracks) to the 7 and to the g. and from the stop at metropolitan avenue i walked (and only for a little while in the wrong direction), until my stupid grin had to answer the phone and tell her that her neighbors were going to be looking at her funny the next week for having seen her with the simpleton, plagiarist (and defeated -- if smiling) chapero de postín. she obliged me by laughing (some redeeming patronage for the moment), and told me that she'd see me as soon as she could get to me after work. but where was i going, i asked, and before we chased our tacos with palomas or saw the center for wayward cats or hopped the debris at the water to get a better view of the skyline i took a walk along the path of progress, down bedford avenue toward the meeting place.
and when she met me at black brick an hour later, as i was doubting myself alongside ramón durán under the scrutiny of javier salazar as to whether or not i could in fact be anything i wanted to be, she was gracious enough to extend another kindness. if not the rest, my luggage was apparently up to my aspirations. unfortunately, it wasn't in me to respond with commensurate grace. as i told her, the march of progress had taken me no further than paying three dollars for a cup of fucking stumptown drip. ever forward. all the way back.
no such luck, but my preoccupation with ground transportation had easily helped me put everything else out of mind. (we'd arrived safely, anyway, and since the boy band had sagged its pants onto a different flight we hadn't had any need for the knife.) it was, however, lucky that the princess had let me keep half of what we panhandled at the terminal before we parted ways, because the q33 doesn't take dollar bills. and it didn't apparently take no for an answer either, because no matter how many times i told them that javier was dead and that i was just wearing his clothes, all of his friend on the bus through queens wouldn't stop asking after their immigrant native son. exasperating, yes, but for one of his shirts i was able to trade instructions on getting (away from inside of the chase scene under the train tracks) to the 7 and to the g. and from the stop at metropolitan avenue i walked (and only for a little while in the wrong direction), until my stupid grin had to answer the phone and tell her that her neighbors were going to be looking at her funny the next week for having seen her with the simpleton, plagiarist (and defeated -- if smiling) chapero de postín. she obliged me by laughing (some redeeming patronage for the moment), and told me that she'd see me as soon as she could get to me after work. but where was i going, i asked, and before we chased our tacos with palomas or saw the center for wayward cats or hopped the debris at the water to get a better view of the skyline i took a walk along the path of progress, down bedford avenue toward the meeting place.
and when she met me at black brick an hour later, as i was doubting myself alongside ramón durán under the scrutiny of javier salazar as to whether or not i could in fact be anything i wanted to be, she was gracious enough to extend another kindness. if not the rest, my luggage was apparently up to my aspirations. unfortunately, it wasn't in me to respond with commensurate grace. as i told her, the march of progress had taken me no further than paying three dollars for a cup of fucking stumptown drip. ever forward. all the way back.
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