O ROTTEN GOTHAM, part 5

edie windsor decided to hijack the dyke march right ahead of where we joined it. we'd been waiting at the plaza that gives onto a view of the 23rd street corner of the flatiron building for probably two hours when we finally saw the vanguard of the march slowly pushing south down 5th avenue, and when the march had finally pushed close enough for us to get a good look at the banner bearers, edie and her parade crew stepped in front of them with their rainbow flag for a photo op. i had a camera out so i obliged them (and my friends), despite of what i later decided i thought about the image of the wealthy widow surrounded by her media and police detail under a banner that had been stopping traffic without permission down a manhattan thoroughfare inciting onlookers to raise their fists. the front of the march passed us, and i don't know whether or not edie kept marching ahead of it. for my part, i felt much finer at the center of the throng behind a crude cardboard sign that was lamenting the recently invalidated parts of the voting rights act while also reminding the marchers that marriage equality didn't equal queer liberation. a school age girl on the shoulders of a woman marching a few yards ahead of me had a drawing of what looked like it might have been lady gaga as the tooth fairy stuck to her back with blue tape. the girl (at the almost certain behest of the woman carrying her, who was wearing a sign of her own in protest of the traditionalization of her family) had written "democrazy" above the fairy's head, which i noticed for the first time as we were marching past the new school. i could speculate on which of them had the better chances for winning grand champion of the weekend (and among those only edie had made an appearance at the march), but it was humbling and inspiring just to have the overwhelming sense that everyone would be showing their sacred cows. i was humbled, i was inspired, and i was proud. the sheer beauty of the march kept stopping traffic, and we all finally finished the slow putsch to the park. jd samson overheard us making plans to head to the stonewall in from the bench next to ours but decided not to follow us there. we all opted out away from a picture with the fountain in the sunset.

we only had one drink on christopher street, because everywhere was getting crowded and because we'd had quite a bit of protest prosecco. we'd also stopped somewhere on franklin for an afternoon refresher before we'd left brooklyn to meet the march. before that, we'd put ourselves in the mood and in the mindset for debating edie's inclusion among the dykes by sitting down with judy chicago and valerie hegarty at the brooklyn museum. and before that we'd been at brunch, where there might have been more sparkling wine. (it was the weekend, and one of us at least was on vacation.) a little baby queen had been sitting next to us telling his female companion about how a friend of his, at twenty-six, should really be thinking about settling down. he could, feasibly, be marrying a boyfriend soon if he made the effort. and he wouldn't want to be one of those guys in his thirties creeping at the bars. but we had a full schedule, so i didn't want to take the time to tell him that he definitely didn't have anything to worry about from those guys in their thirties. they weren't looking at anyone like him. i did, however, give him my ass as i squeezed out from between our tables. to put him at ease. then we left, in a huff of our own questionable privilege and dubious inclusion, but nonetheless with our fists in the air.

O ROTTEN GOTHAM, part 4

the night before the morning on which i didn’t find an airbrushed tee shirt of a crying clown smoking a blunt at coney island, i went to the doctoral student’s place. he was still awake when i had finally made it on foot to bedford and dean from the wythe hotel (where i’d succeeded in making the portland transplant djing the rooftop party uncomfortable by my surprise appearance), and his relationship was still open at just past midnight that night. i don’t remember what he told me about what he’d done for pride weekend, but i do remember him telling me that he wasn’t teaching any classes over the summer. because he was studying for orals. then i remember there was some really great rimming. like i told the man himself after i’d looked over his bookshelves: i don’t know anything about poetry.

a couple of hours later, after i’d made my graceful (and classical japanese-ly poetic) exit, i stopped to ask a couple of girls on the street how many streets i had to go until i got to halsey, but they didn’t know. (they were out of towners too.) and the man on the bicycle riding slowly next to them trying to start up a conversation must not have known much of anything, because he obviously couldn’t read that one of the girl’s shirts was telling those of us back on bedford at two-thirty in the morning that she liked vagina. the other girl should have probably been given away by all of her rainbow swag.

the four of us must have seemed a funny little parade of our own to the no one paying attention until i spotted a couple of cops and walked ahead to have them tell me that i was already several blocks past my turn.

i hadn’t gone to the official parade earlier in the day because it had been time for everyone to finally make it to the beach. the last time i’d visited we’d all been too lazy, i think. so instead i’d just cut my lip on an oyster shell and let it bleed over two bottles of wine and a heaping sunday special plate of commiseration. this time, however, i was full committed, because i’d already trekked all over midtown to find myself a bathing suit that would be worthy of a hard femme towel fort. so we got on the train, got off the train, got some provisions and a terrible chocolate muffin, got back on the train, got off it, asked directions to the bus that was going to the gay beach, got directions, got on the bus, and got off the bus to see that you couldn’t even see the ocean from where the bus stopped at the beach because the weather was so bad. but when we were settled at the encampment we took of our clothes anyway. because we were at the gay pride beach party and we were going to have fun. the fuzzy tall guy who had given us directions to the bus stripped down too, but he and his friend were sitting too far away from the fort for me to fully appreciate him. i swam, and the ocean was rough but surprisingly uncold. i stumbled back up the beach, and the sparkling water back at the fort was perfect.

then i saw someone. i hadn’t tried to get in touch, even though i knew she was living in brooklyn, and it was probably unlikely that we’d just run into each other on the cloudy beach that day, but i wasn’t surprised that we did because we’d always just run into each other wherever we were whenever we happened to be in the same place, the last time at a bookstore on the other coast (maybe). before and after she’d gotten her graduate degree in poetry in missoula. (we’d never run into each other there because i’d never been to montana.)

she was one of the few topless queers at the party without a surgical scar. i told her that i was finally doing something about those old conversations, and she told me that she’d finally found someone to let her live in that empty place in the hasidic part of williamsburg that she’d been after. i should have gotten the address so that i could have gone to see her there before i had to leave on the chinatown bus, but i told myself that i didn’t need to just then because i’d probably talk to her again before we left the beach. but that wasn’t how it happened. and i don’t think that i’ll ever get her a copy of that spivak chapter on translation, probably so that we’d always have reason to keep running into each other. a buildup to dirty looks. for the moment, just eye rolling. the parade-goers could have their palatably planned families, and we, we would occupy this swathe of unwanted cloudy beach in our tiny swimsuits.

until the rain started. then we went back for the bus. and then we caught a second one instead of retracing our earlier steps via the train. but we should have dealt with the rain and waited for the express. the local was something else, and there was an announcement about the streets that had been closed in manhattan because of the parade. i didn’t want to hear about it, and i wanted the bus to go faster: not so much away from that beach, but definitely toward the promise of the evening, which wasn’t even anything very provocative. people like poetry, but this slut just wanted to get laid.

O ROTTEN GOTHAM, part 2

none of the boys of the smartphone chat boroughs came through on their offers to take me for a run in prospect park, so i went for one on my own. i wasn't not going to make it before i had to leave on the chinatown bus the next day, and that next day in the morning i needed to do laundry.

on my way to eastern parkway i saw a nice pair of black dress shoes in a free box, but i didn't come back across them on my way back toward bed-stuy. i did, however, easily reencounter the library, and i decided that i'd go back there with my coffee to catch up on my correspondence if the cute guy with the missing mandibular incisor wasn't working at lincoln station. (then, i was almost back to the intersection of dean and bedford before i decided that this other one was a stalk that i shouldn't pursue. ...for dealing with the poetry post grad, a veil of night seemed more poetic.)

after i'd showered and made it back through crown heights, the boy was not, in fact, there where i'd left him -- smiling -- behind the coffee counter, so to the library i did indeed go.

that evening i met my friend in midtown as she was finishing work so that we could go together to the high line. we walked up and down the northern half of the park from nineteenth before going down for the end of happy hour. "broken bridge ii" by el anatsui had still been hanging on one of the walls between twenty-first and twenty-second. i'd been introduced to the artist's work at the brooklyn museum when we'd visited there after getting coffee from the boy with the missing mandibular incisor a few days before, but because we hadn't gone any further than the entrance to the botanical gardens we hadn't gotten far enough down eastern parkway for me to find the library (although i knew, theoretically, about the entrance to the park).

over manhattans (because you can be sure they'll be boozy) i told her about the public library experience in brooklyn. sitting next to henry miller, i'd caught up on some correspondence, but then i'd run out of cards.

other things to do at the brooklyn public library: pace, laugh loudly at music videos, have a twelve count variety pack of chobani yogurt while arguing with someone at an information desk about internet access. and not have the book i might have been looking for if i'd had more time to stay at the library and read it,

(we got back up to do most of the rest of the high line before it really started to rain, and one of her bodyguards stepped in at the last moment to take the glob of spit that i spat at cher.)


"walls reveal more things than they hide." -- el anatsu

O ROTTEN GOTHAM

the intercity chinatown bus is full as a tick with humanity. (and the new yorker would have us believe that more likely than not it has late stage lyme disease.) i don't think it matters whether it's coming or going, or where it's coming from or going to. it has its characteristic stink (which is peculiar to each of its different collections of passengers), but as compared to other means of transportation on and off of manhattan island it could definitely smell worse. of more immediate concern for me, however, in the late evening of that third of july, was that the chinatown bus to columbus would probably be free of the rain and the rats that had made it too difficult to enjoy the very end of the end of my sojourn to the city in nearby seward park. there'd been a rainbow over la esquina in soho after i'd gotten through the end of the end of my goodbyes and then had waited out the ensuing downpours in a convenience store around one corner and then under some scaffolding around another; but by the time that i'd made the not-so-long walk to where the bus would be stopping on canal street i was soaked well enough with sweat and the magic was fading. it had been too hot -- and i'd been too tired -- for manhattan before happy hour. instead: a brooklyn laundromat, some dog walks, and some goat (bone) curry by the pound from a jamaican jerk buffet on fulton. i hadn't had it in me to stomach any more confused, latter day brooklyn exceptionalism at the organic italian steak house (i think he'd called it) down halsey back in bed-stuy, and there on canal i didn't have the wherewithal for another shirt change at another cool kids bar. so i went to the park to wait until i'd be able to board the sky horse. but the rain had started again by that point (and all of the surfaces where i might have rested my bags were already wet anyway), so the park turned out not to be an easy place to be with my luggage either. it was, however, a great place for piling trash, and the rats there liked that. mostly i couldn't see them until they were almost on top of my bags because my glasses were misted over with sweat fog. there's air conditioning on the chinatown bus, but only when the bus is running -- and the bus doesn't run until it's full. it gets hot in there with all of that teeming humanity, but you don't want to have wait for the mythical second bus. i was already sweating through the shirt that i'd changed into under the awning of the bus depot, but i stayed put in the open seat that i'd found next to a briefcase that was eventually going to be ousted from its own. seats aren't assigned until they're oversold, after which point they're designated out from under anyone who isn't on that first bus when the latecomers climb the stairs. that vitiate tick has its best in a designer handbag, and the rest in the plastic garbage bags that clog the overhead storage spaces and the aisle. it had been too hot -- and i'd been too lazy -- for manhattan before happy hour. sit tight! the bus starts, the air comes on, and the worst is over -- if you can fall asleep.

the bus went all the way to cincinnati (via dayton), but i didn't make it there myself until a couple of days later. and there, the day after the party, before heading to the contemporary arts center across the street we ate fancy tacos and drank white wine sangria while calmly discussing the boutique hotel next to the museum that had forced two hundred low income residents to relocate from the affordable apartments that had been allocated to them from the ruins of the rooms of the old metropole (the 1920s glory of which developers were sure they could restore). to keep downtown burning hot! let them eat art! the humanity...munch, sip, munch. o rotten gotham: your ruthless intransigence has had a painfully wide reach. but the pork belly in the tacos is, admittedly, hard to resist when you've had a taste.

SUMMER FUN SUN BUZZWORD BEACH COCONUT

"squirrel! ...don't eat THAT!" she bolted up from her chair beside the paper press and was screaming as she ran out of the house. but after she'd made it out the front door and onto the porch she might have been screaming mixed messages. "that isn't FOOD!" she shreiked as she pelted the squirrel in the mimosa tree with squirrel food. but there was the desired effect, and the beast dropped the rose. a neighbor tried to pass unnoticed along the sidewalk on the other side of the hedges, but i could see her through the big bay window that frames the rose bush under the mimosa tree as she quickened her pace. summertime, and the living is...distracted. and it tries to go unnoticed. meanwhile, all kinds of things are passing the cat palace by, but i haven't been paying much attention, whether i notice or not. i guess that robbie rogers can expect me in l.a. now. and i guess that everyone else can't expect much. distracted, i can't read books, because the theft of these stolen magazines needs justification. which happens in a chair on the lawn, on the opposite side of the walkway from the mimosa tree. i get sweaty, so i take off my pants. photographs. the neighborhood. later i'll get the pants back out of the freezer and press them so that they're perfect. i'll walk to the door of the bar imagining the looks, then i'll turn around, walk back to the palace, and carefully put my pants away. maybe i'll pick up a book. me, one hand, and the other one for anaïs nin. artists and models... goodbye, world! hello summer. pick me up at lax so that i don't have to take the bus to hollywood.

THE UNSPEAKABLE ACT

it might have been, but i got lazy in the evening after going to the exotic latino grill. so i didn't end up seeing "the unspeakable act" at the wexner center, even though i'd been planning to for a week. i'd just read the taxi, and when i happened to check the wexner center's film calendar i doubted that i'd ever have such a fresh and portentous opportunity to write something comparing two such distant works about a sister and a brother fucking. it might have been entertaining. but i think i might very well have been disappointed with the film, and not necessarily as a film but as a point of comparison, because from the preview i can't say that i'd expect the sister and the brother to get down to that "unspeakable act" (hunched shoulders, deadpan...the i word!), whereas the two in that taxi are going at it all day. then again, such a striking contrast might also have made the writing more interesting. as it is, it just might have been. that kroger got bought out of keystone light two days ahead of the end of its sale, and this cat really wants into this box of cobras. (they're probably dead by now, but i still don't want to have to deal with them.) that is, i already had enough to worry about while i was falling asleep from my burrito al pastor, and thinking about having to possibly ride through the rain to a disappointingly under attended and possibly just disappointing film was more than i felt like having to sleep on. plus, it might have been that i ended up pawning one of those typewriters after all to get my ticket. (i've been forced to splurge on milwaukee's best ice.) so all's well, i suppose. or it might have been. fuck. if it weren't for these cobras. she found them out. and what i'll probably have to do will continue to be unspeakable.

DISPATCH: PROPOSITION BIENNALE

"So, the Biennale is fancy, right? Every country sends an artist or two to represent its best creative minds. It's hosted in several places around the city, but primarily the ornamental gardens with these permanent buildings for each country.

1. Spain was first, of course. The magnificent art in their building was in the form of three piles of stupidity. Wood chips, dirt, bricks. BRILLIANT!

2. Belgium was actually great. I have been affectionately referring to the singular, huge piece in their building as "Meat Tree," which is pretty much what it sounds like: a huge, huge fallen tree sculpture made to look like it was cut from a thousand animals and held down with sand bags.

3. United States. Organized office supplies. A lot of string.

4. Israel. YES. Most impressive was a film of several people sculpting their own heads out of clay. These heads were monstrous and insane. One middle aged woman shaved her head, put the hair on her sculpture-self, put clay all over her actual face...and screamed into the microphone that she violently jammed into the clay head. SURPRISE TWIST! Everyone violently jammed a microphone somewhere into their self portraits! And they all moaned, cried, screamed, gurgled, whatever, into the microphone as the audio portion of their portraits -- in this film. THE OTHER video was of a fucking DJ remixing their moaning...endlessly. The third part was the actual sculptures, which were in some corner and absolutely not the point of the exhibit. And the final part was a giant fucking hole someone dug into the floor, and who knows why that was there.

5. The Etsy Pavilion, which is almost certainly not actually called that, was pretty great. Inside, a wealth of weird doll houses, a print of a fishsnailicorn, a huge mural that includes a skeleton flipping the bird, someone's sketch of their dad in drag, and some other shit I took pictures of.

Today and the next couple days are sort of the pre-party for this thing. It's all press passes and critics. Uma-Thurman-in-Pulp-Fiction haircuts with white linen tunics and big beaded necklaces, all of the mercilessly expensive glasses intentionally made to look cheap, all of the haute couture blazers in awkward sizes, all of the avant garde uncomfortable shoes, huge expensive cameras and film crews, self-important conversations about art left and right, exclusive promotional materials... AND YOURS TRULY AS THE REPRESENTATIVE FOR MIDWESTERN SLOBS WHO GET WEIRD IN HUMIDITY! I spent most of my time pulling out my weird little tourist camera and blocking the shots of the professional photographers for The Times or whomever. They loved that. But! Then it became clear that there were press packs! GUESS WHO DOESN'T NEED TO BUY EXPENSIVE ITALIAN SOUVENIRS ANYMORE!!! I went around scooping up all the swag bags and fliers and offending everyone by wanting their fancy goods for no reason. I have four tote bags with weird phrases on them so far, and I hope to get more.

The best part was actually leaving. A guy who looks like *****'s dad in a construction vest and ball cap silently hands you a tiny flyer with random letters on it. About fifty feet later, an identical man TAKES IT FROM YOU QUIETLY AND SPEEDILY AND BY FORCE IF NECESSARY. When you look back at them to try and understand what the fuck just happened, you can seen that the backs of their vests list the letters on the flier, one matching it, the other in the opposite order. My secret hope is that one of these men was actually *****'s dad. If so, dude, I am sorry your dad is so into rewarding people with material goods and then stealing away their brand new possessions almost instantly that he came to Italy to be an art about it. Growing up with that kind of values probably fucked you up pretty bad. (But seriously, that was the best, most simple, impressive, effective piece I've maybe ever seen. I watched them do this for a while, and the concept of give and take outside the gates of ALL OF THE PRIVILEGE and ALL OF THE FREE SHIT was fucking brilliant. People were really confused and annoyed, or conversely super entertained.

There was also an Indian guy lighting spaghetti noodles on fire and putting them in a row on the ground very, very carefully.

I found tiny, crustless tuna sandwiches with olives for two euros each, in a sort of cafeteria place that looked like a set for some kind of Pee Wee Herman nightmare. I ate three while I listened to some rich old lady talk about board meetings and traveling and charity events and lighthearted upper class problems about pretend stresses. I was really happy to see that her bajillion dollar white leather Prada jacket had some kind of red shit from the table all over the sleeve that was definitely going to stain it forever.

I came back to the apartment and almost immediately ate like twenty dried apricots in the bathtub, so I'm probably going to shit myself pretty soon."

recap.

THE LOST WEEKEND

every room of the cat palace is filled with top notch stuff that i could pawn, including, in fact, a veritable visual chronology of the development of the typewriter. plus, the big old house with the big old everything and the precipitate servants' staircase that shoots you straight up from the cats' bowls in the kitchen to the hallway that gives onto their four second floor rooms, well, the block it's on has been run back up in the past several years, but it's only several blocks' walk to the pawn shops on main. not so far to have to carry, say, an old underwood. still working, friend! but i'm saved that ignominy and the more daunting excusing of it that there's no way i'd be able to excuse when the time came later, because the kroger in the brewery district has six packs of keystone light on sale for three ninety-nine through june two. that's four twenty-six with tax, which i know because that's the number on all the receipts in the pile. after night number three there's a man in the alley digging for cans, and he saves me another uncomfortable excuse by accepting my pile of those. the cat palace is haunted by an insomnia ghost, and the alley is haunted by her attendant early morning trysts. there's a line of variable thickness that winds its way around exultance, reverie and concentration, and its unpredictable course makes it difficult for me to make progress with foucault. luckily, i'm saved by the shelf of violette leduc in one of the cases in the room with the canopy bed. she comes with me when i'm chased by the ghost to the bath, then she attends the trysts. the cats get morphine or bathwater. i get more keystone light. on thursday evening it felt almost like fall was setting in early, but by tuesday morning the stick of summer had come back heavy over the rose bushes in the front garden. when was their scent more rarified? amber and lavender. the to the right, across the highway, there's the inviting ramshackle of what's still left run down in olde towne, which would be nice for a ramble, but not at night. take a book in the afternoon, maybe. to the left, the junior league grows peonies for all the vases on the block. past that, the topiary garden and the main library. frustratingly, they don't have a copy of charles jackson's book, and hindsight is making that look like the perfect read. hindsight, pathetically would-be. a typewriter through the window. no excuse, but i've got time until i'll have to make one, and i'll save it.

WAY TO GO OHIO, part 14

i joined my proud people in the discharge of their seasonal festival by driving shirtless across town in a vehicle full of yard maintenance equipment. as i reminisce about an evening drive over the broadway bridge in a pickup truck full of vintage gurney, the great skies of the midwest are preparing to reward us with thunderstorms. if there's going to be all this moisture in the air, it could at least come down and clean up the streets. i've been keeping this yellow hanky decorated with white pikachus handy to wipe my face, so all the boys in the neighborhood know that i want their pee.

OLD WORLD UNDERGROUND WHERE ARE YOU NOW? part 4; or, HOW TO PREDICT A RIOT

after the pre-party, dinner and digestifs, there wasn't any question that it was time to go out for a beer. and although a pint (or two) of anti-hero would probably have been better suited to the tenor of the weekend as it had begun (and had been planned to continue), the revolution taproom was well out of walking distance from downtown, and it probably would have been closed by the time we were able to make it there otherwise (if it weren't closed already). haymarket, however, wasn't too far, and our hope for its association with a bit of radical history had its own special appeal. too bad, unfortunately, that the pub and brewery seemed only to have been named for the neighborhood, the name of which didn't seem to connote much anymore. i flicked off a taxi. there was a wait if we wanted a table, but we could seat or stand ourselves anywhere we wanted in either of the bars. at the end of the hallway with the windows that give onto the brewing tanks there's a quote from brecht. "theater without beer is just a museum." go left to the bathrooms; the bar is to the right. and although there's a bookcase full of books on political economy and performance next to a battlement of mixing boards and other sound equipment, the people in the bar (and in the adjacent second dining room) are all acting in a different play. in which the high school cafeteria gets off work and goes for drinks, as the poet observed. so a single beer each was all of the show we could take.

in the morning, the race was run without event. or: there was the event itself, with more than a few of the participants running to wrigley field for boston, but there weren't any bombs. we screamed, drank our complimentary kefir smoothies, and left. myopic books appeared to have disappeared or relocated by the afternoon, so there were three dollar breakfast cocktails under the damien stop of the blue line. there was ladieswear and there were art books. the illustration for which the artist hadn't been paid was just out in the magazine that i wouldn't buy for twenty-five dollars. i might have stolen it if i hadn't respected the mission and the mainstay of quimby's. i did want it, because it probably won't see an issue two. but... or, then again, i'd probably just gone soft, like wicker park. and the bloody marys couldn't have been very strong, because after three i was still well on my way to lake view. powell's didn't have either of the books i had wanted, but, luckily, they'll always have something i want. when it was time to meet for dinner, i'd been lost for long enough that i felt completely renewed. some respite. some sweet potato fries, a feast of seitan, and a vegan milkshake. afterwards, the one of the book stores we'd planned to visit on broadway was closed, but all of the design firms turned coffee shops and coffee shops turned designer were still doing their things, the thing that everyone's doing. and if i hadn't been encouraged to make good on my talk about crashing the wedding, i probably would have just put myself to bed.

so i went back to the room to change instead. and in the time it took my hair to dry i picked up the party where we'd left it to chase our disappointment in haymarket. then i went to dance, but my heart wasn't it. the high school cafeteria off for the weekend and come to pat backs around the open bar. and i was too full for cake. but worse, when i left the ivy room to pick up the glitter trail (to the fun to which i should have acceded on my way to dinner) i couldn't find a trace of it anywhere. so i helped a kid from pilsen find his way to where his cousin's boyfriend was spinning instead. and then i smiled as i was leaving the restroom and said that i'd had enough to want any cocaine. with the glitter trail lost, the city was the freehold of the closeted judges and the horny nows. until someone threw a bomb. and the sirens screamed. and a taxi swerved. and i flicked it off. then the driver rolled down his window and complimented my suit, to which unexpected approbation i responded by stepping back up onto the curb and dropping my pants. curtains! then, out of his cab now, he handed me a beer. here's to hoping! because otherwise it's all just a museum.

ILLUMINATIONS ("ILLUMINATIONS")

"[the] situation changed abruptly after the war: the inflation had impoverished, even dispossessed, large numbers of the bourgeoisie, and in the weimar republic a university career was open even to unbaptized jews. the unhappy story of the habilitation shows clearly how little benjamin took these altered circumstances into account and how greatly he continued to be dominated by prewar ideas in all financial matters. for from the outset the habilitation had only been intended to call his father 'to order' by supplying 'evidence of public recognition' and to make him grant his son, who was in his thirties at that time, an income that was adequate and, one should add, commensurate with his social standing. at no time, not even when he had already come close to the communists, did he doubt that...he was entitled to such a subvention and that [his parents'] demand that he 'work for a living' was 'unspeakable.' ... until his parents' death in 1930, benjamin was able to solve the problem of his livelihood by moving back into the parental home... it is evident that this arrangement caused him a great deal of suffering, but it is just as evident that in all probability he never seriously considered another solution. it is also striking that despite his permanent financial trouble he managed throughout these years constantly to enlarge his library." (from hannah arendt's introduction to illuminations, essays and reflections)

and from the man himself: "quotations in my works are like robbers by the roadside who make an armed attack and relieve an idler of his convictions." (walter benjamin)

and then something from mallarmé.

a century of progress.

q.e.d.

WAY TO GO OHIO, part 13; or, PORTUGAL FOR THE PORTUGUESE

my uncle sent me a link to an article at cnn.com on the eight best beer cities in america, and i thought that maybe columbus had made the list because he'd sent it the monday morning following the saturday night on which we'd visited the new beer and burgers place on indianola together. but (and of course, as i considered in hindsight) it hadn't. and that wasn't much of a surprise -- although an also-ran honorable mention on a list like that one definitely seems to be where the city has set its sights of late. the crest, on indianola and crestview, is one of five or six derivatively identical self-styled gastropubs to have opened in columbus in the past few months, five or six years after the gastropub trend had already started inspiring cringes outside of ohio's capital, which is now the self-styled capital of "no coast" brewing. the crest isn't affiliated with a brewery, but it's got the copper bar and all of the modern rustic charm of its forebears, the beer and fancy bar food places in all of those other cities that everyone with a small business loan in columbus must think they've been the only ones to visit. and because it's here and not in those other places, the crest also has a half dozen flat screen tvs. its beer list is good, but let's be honest: it doesn't take much thought or effort (or even expertise) to put one of those together anymore. and, anymore, with all of the not at all bad craft beer out there, it doesn't take much to make your list unique either. because the barley's chupacabra had just blown, i had another pint of the bear ass from elevator. i'll go back to the crest for happy hour some time to have some more (if they've still got it) for fifty percent off. i won't, however, go back to eat. the crest is new, and this past saturday night was warm, but the kitchen and the staff at a place styling itself as a gastropub (if a place with a menu like the crest's can style itself as such) should be able to manage a menu such an unambitious menu. the one burger and the three gastrosliders that we ordered took an hour and a half to get to our table, and our server was either too stoned or too scared of us to make even an overture to an apology. if it weren't for the coworker of his who was serving the table next to ours (whose training i assume must have come from a previous job), we'd never have gotten napkins. and napkins i needed, because the unexceptional patties between the gastrobuns of the sliders needed some condiment help. luckily, the crest's house hot sauce is good. there's a bottle on every table, each labeled simply "hot," and the contents of those bottles would seem to be the crest's only signature distinction amid a bustling assemblage of unremarkably pleasant and debilitating inoffensiveness. point, click, gastropub! the irony of the crest's self-styled importance is wholly unintentional and all but lost on the crowd. but i'm not knocking it. the stylings of the staff could stand to be better, and the menu could stand either stricter or more imaginative direction, but i'll be back to drink for half price at the copper bar. until columbus figures out what it does besides be happy not to be the worst of the also rans, it's something. probably nothing even worth writing about, but something. as the generative text (now concluded) on that wall at 88 east broad street contends (with its last): "better late than never." so, for my part, i'd like to go back and change. everything. the boys on the sex apps in the midwest have diversified out from masculine young professionalism into kowtowing to any semblance of creativity. and meanwhile, curation has been replaced by internalization in the vernacular. this is how the class wars of the twenty-first century were won, the funny battle cries for community, designed. but i'll win them all. win them over. i'll go back and be an architect. rewrite the show! before those other ones were written. but then i'll leave. wanted, i'll want to be elsewhere. armed with the national profession, maybe i can convince lisbon to take me back.

HOW TO HEAR THROUGH THE NOISE

with louie anderson gone from "splash," the sports world needed something big to pull it out of the doldrums. and that something big manifested as a seven foot tall nba player coming out of the closet. in the wake of jason collins' obama approved announcement, stephen colbert joked today that "he knew once we allowed major league soccer it would turn all the other sports gay." it's true. soccer in america is totally gay, which is why i was opining last night that of course there were homos in the mls (which was really just my wondering out loud where the gay crew players went to find sex). and before last night, i can't remember ever having heard the name robbie rogers, but his coming out came up around the subject, even though when rogers made his announcement (unendorsed by obama) he was no longer playing for the crew, or even in the mls. as i found out when i looked him up this morning (which is how i found out about the phenomenon of jason collins), robbie rogers took the opportunity of his coming out to quit the english premier league. in the interviews that rogers has given since he came out at his website, he's said that for the duration of his professional soccer career (which may or may not continue) he lived in fear of anyone suspecting his secret. i imagine it must have been terrifying, because he has total gay face. (i'll allow that the photos with the scottie came after he was out.) it's a shame that he felt the need to take himself off the field, but apparently that decision was encouraged by his coach at leeds, who didn't think that fans would respond well. european professional soccer is just as gay as its younger american brother, but it's much more outspokenly homophobic. however, as a blogger for nbc sports pointed out today, the important issue is obviously that basketball is given more recognition than soccer in the united states despite (per that blogger) the real significance of the total ratings for all televised soccer matches as compared to those for the nba. and the conspiracy of disrespect goes all the way up to the white house! rogers (who was an olympian) wasn't an active player when he came out, so his story isn't exactly analogous to collins' and might not have the same impact on american professional sports. but the comparison (and rogers' story has now gotten quite a bit of exposure thanks to its comparison to collins') has just rehighlighted what's essential about all of this news: everything to do with sexuality has nothing to do with sexuality. and soccer doesn't get the credit it deserves in north america. probably because it's gay.

THE STORY OF MY PURITY

it might have been that i was in seville and had been recently enamored of cultural catholicism and its apparent pertinence to my remapping of my own personal history. it might also have been that i was in seville from portland and that the book was about a guy who flees himself as he's become in rome and goes to paris to ruminate and dissipate. it might also have been that the protagonist was (about to be?) thirty and had found himself just starting to refigure things out. but i don't exactly know. i can't remember now (especially now that my memory has been blighted by my recent familiarity with the translation published by fsg) what i read in the jacket copy of the spanish translation that i first came across at the book store of el corte inglés on the plaza del duque. i only remember that i wanted to read it, and that after reading the first paragraph several times (and on several different occasions) in spanish, i decided, by whatever digressive inspiration or for whatever lack of confidence (and after a web search confirming that it was likely forthcoming), to wait for francesco pacifico's the story of my purity to come out in english.

if i was going to read the book in translation, i should read it translated into my first language. maybe my thinking went something like that -- even if thinking about that now makes me think about whether the book in spanish (or in spain) might have been "closer" to the original italian. i'd like to say that it doesn't matter anymore, but anymore i just don't know. and i waited regardless. then the english translation was published, and i bought it, although not immediately. but only a couple of days after i had, i picked up the spring 2013 issue of n+1 to find that -- by some sort of commutative property of intellectual interest -- the first chapter of stephen twilley's translation of pacifico's book had been published there as well. (the coincidence of the release of the translation and the heat of the discourse surrounding the election of the new pope probably had something to do with it too.) i didn't buy the magazine, but i did think that i should get around to reading the book, for which my interest had waned after the fruition of my anticipation -- and after i'd already made my own way through that first chapter.

and i did eventually get around to it, although it wasn't immediately. and the book was indeed interestingly timely -- although in a different way than it seemed to me that it might be when i first came across it in spain. the story of my purity is about a young, roman papist. his catholicism has been his quarter life rebellion against the middle left bourgeois lifestyle typified by the circumstances and social trappings of his journalist sister and his well enough to do father. he works for a reactionary catholic publisher, and his name is about to be given editorial credit on a forthcoming book indicting john paul ii as a subversive, frankist interloper. he's a faithful husband, but his marriage is essentially sexless, positioning it, ironically, among those secularly sanctioned unions that are unopen "to life." but piero rosini senses that something is wrong. and it's not just that he finds himself obsessed with his sister in law's perfect tits. from paragraph two of that first chapter, he's semi-actively trying to extricate himself from the social, spiritual and professional milieus that he chose for himself in his twenties, and he starts by making a pathetic request of his father for a loan to start his own publishing house.

he flails. and he equivocates. then he quits his job and goes to paris, where he heeds (the echo of) the call of the flâneur and is tempted by bohemia. he comes up against the monolith of contemporary european jewry (by way of brooklyn, of course), and he finds new friends. then the story of piero rosini's purity goes schizoid, and francesco pacifico's deliberations on the current conflict between moral relativism and the doctrinaire are increasingly personified by rosini's two selves: the one who goes to visit his wife in rome, and the one who elaborates an insane sexual artifice in order not to cheat on her in paris. ("modesty itself," as it's been said, "is a temptation" too.)

i can't remember now if i suspected any of that when i first came across pacifico's book in spanish. what the words were that won me over in the fall of 2011 i couldn't even guess. i can, however, say that francesco pacifico has a way with words. his articulation of the thrills of of self-doubt self-abnegation are sublimely acute and forthright. his descriptions of the tribulations of piero's purity are as colorful as the ostentation that it (ostensibly) doesn't allow itself. they are, as it were, beautifully explicit. but (and it's a big one), the story itself isn't much of an achievement. the question of whether the prodigal son will return to his father or to the holy father is a clever conception, and not unsuited to the times. but the core narrative has gotten too tired in its age oldness. however cleverly conceived or colorfully told, the story of my purity is just another coming of age story about a man from a dominant paradigm living on inherited wealth. (at least give us some madonna-whore!) where the book strays from the straight and narrow it never goes too far, and all of its roads, regardless, lead back to the cliched. and it doesn't at all devalue the family to say that pacifico's book could have been better if it hadn't forced itself into a choice between one and another sets of family values.

before piero rosini goes to paris, while he's still got his editor's gig, a young man contacts him about a book. a novel. piero is looking to expand his social circle beyond the church and so refrains from making clear to the man that the publishing house where he works doesn't publish fiction until after they've embarked on a friendship. (at one point they enjoy a sit together on a love seat with the sister in law and take advantage of the opportunity to rub themselves up against either of her breasts.) piero is all but sure that he can't get it published, but the man is writing a book about the gays: "a novel about a gay couple obsessed with traditional family models, who want 'a happy family fifties-style, a suburban town house.'" the idea, "is to make fun of gay people a bit." unfortunately, in pacifico's book, the idea isn't taken any further. maybe the brief mention was intended to raise the relationship between piero and his wife into different relief. he might narrowmindedly relish the opportunity to ridicule some homosexuals, but the joke would also be at his expense. i won't speculate on pacifico's inspiration for its conception, but i will say that the young man's book is the one that i might probably have preferred to read.

that book would surely be no less unsuited to the times. as the world was settling into the college of cardinals' decision on the new pope, the supreme court of the united states was hearing arguments on two laws regarding same sex marriage. a month ago, on march twenty-fourth, the new york times published an op ed piece by frank bruni that frighteningly articulated the story of our purity here, the distorted, conservatized narrative that has stolen the standard from the vanguards of self-expression and social justice.

"marriage has forced many americans to view gays and lesbians in a fresh light. we're no longer so easily stereotyped and dismissed as rebels atop parade floats, demanding permission to behave outside of society's norms. we're aspirants to tradition, communicating shared values and asserting a fundamentally conservative desire, at least among many of us, for families, stability, commitment. what's so threatening about that?"

in order not to seem so threatening (a defensive, negative way of saying annoyingly politically outspoken), we've gotten with the times and rebranded: as supplicant, de-sexed conformists, buttoned down in traditional, homogenized values. unfortunately, bruni's statements show absolutely no sign of being in jest, although the joke is at the expense of all of us. (never think of an elephant when you're wondering what's the matter with kansas.) francesco pacifico deserves at least some credit for poking the fun that he has, then, even if he was probably at the tail end of the analagous discussion in italy when his book was first published in 2010. and maybe he deserves a little more for very sexually writing a book about the generally desexualized political spaces occupied by the children of the sexual revolution. could an inkling of that have been the source of my initial interest in it? i can't remember, but in the interest of permissiveness i'll allow it.

EMPATHY

...is what i found went i went looking for selfish and perverse, which title i had found out in the meantime had been borrowed from beethoven by author bob smith. art and stuff, indeed! (when i'd questioned beethoven's credentials, sean magee had burned his social security card.) why, though, did i find sarah schulman where i went looking for smith in gay and lesbian fiction if alan hollinghurst is in one of the general aisles?

"overwhelming news and overwhelming personal confusion. plausible deniability, extreme money funneling, circuitous routes. not telling people or telling people that you're not telling."

then going ahead and just telling. sorry folks (dan savage was there too), it hasn't really gotten better.

WATCHING THE CLOCK, part 5

last night was the last night that i could have watched christian marclay's "the clock" outside of the wexner center's regular hours, and today was the last day that i could see it at the wexner center at all. but the weather today was too nice not to picnic, and last night after my improvised, anticipatory tinto de verano i was just too lazy. a pass on the weekly paper and a pass on the quarterly review. some (improvised, anticipatory) passes at the boys. i've really just been watching the clock until the history channel airs its new travis fimmel underwear ad. his character's son has the coolest do. and now i'm doing it too. improvised, anticipatory cultural catabolism. and at that i remember that i'd almost forgotten about that demagogic leather bar film by the remarkably marketably closeted james franco that was playing this weekend at the cleveland international film festival -- and that, well, i really didn't make any effort to go.

OLD WORLD UNDERGROUND WHERE ARE YOU NOW? part 3

at second glance, the lady at the drive through window at the starbucks on chili avenue in south rochester did not actually have a haircut that i like. but it was okay, and she'd done it herself -- which is to say that she'd stuck herself in rochester of her own volition, and although she didn't answer me when i asked her where she'd come there from, my bandmate answered our dykey barista la roux resoundingly when she asked us if we'd enjoyed the area. we made her an invitation to toronto, but she didn't take it.

i wondered, however, if she'd taken my debit card when we stopped at a perkins just past the border and i went in to use the toilet, not buy anything and realized it was gone. i might have noticed earlier if i'd tried to buy any of the postcards that i'd seen at the rest stop outside of niagara falls (our last minute run-in with rochester's last hope had been on our second coffee drive through, and the band was peeing a lot), but it's also possible that that's where i lost the card, in the parking lot when i remembered i'd wanted to take off my top layer before getting back behind the wheel. it might also have been at any of the toll booths along the highway in new york. but whatever, i'd just leave a credit card at the front desk of the hotel to cover the incidentals, and i'd call the bank after getting upstairs, where i would have already all but forgotten that barista.

toronto isn't the new york of canada, and i say so not to dispel any impressions that might be popularly held about the city, but because i found a comparison to be too simply multifariously made. new york is the new york of ontario, just like london is the london of spain, and although the tate and the reina sofia bear no comparison, london and madrid have them both, and both of them have the art gallery of ontario if they're willing to go to toronto. and although toronto may variously resemble both vancouver and chicago (which resemblances resemblances, for the record, aren't its unlikeness with new york), we only had twenty-four hours (during which we never went to the art gallery), and there simply wasn't time for making comparisons.

undeniably, however, toronto is a city of the sort that bears comparison with cities like new york, vancouver, chicago, madrid and london, and i say so only because of the glad day book store on yonge, which is where we decided to walk as we were walking east away from the thompson hotel toronto, the fashion and the gallery districts. there used to be a book store like the glad day on high street in columbus, until columbus decided to use what became its better gayborhood (i.e. nascent arts district) to try to become nothing more than becoming other cities. (ironically?) but fittingly, the glad day had sarah schulman's the gentrification of the mind on its featured display shelves, and everywhere else the shelves were filled with the sort of theory, photography, journalism, fiction and smut that used to distinguish an open book on high. toronto is a city like the rest of them, the likes of which haven't been seen in cities like columbus ever since those cities (ironically?) gave up on themselves and started trying to be like the rest of them.

there were other book stores i would have liked to have visited, but we only had (now less than) twenty-four hours, and before we could be concerned about being hungry we needed to be concerned with dressing ourselves for the rooftop bar and beyond (where the city would probably still have made sure that we had a good view of the cn tower). unfortunately, the queen didn't seem to have anything special prepared (although, granted, we didn't give her very much time). we didn't have much time for rest or freshening up back at the hotel, but we made what we could before going back out. and we hadn't made any inquiries into eateries in the area (or beyond), so we ended up sitting down in the bar at weslodge. (could she help us, the hostess had belatedly asked, and i'd told her that we were hungry, had seen a restaurant and so came inside.) the place wasn't bad, even if it was just a late, taxidermy-ed clyde common in custom leather tablet holsters for the wait staff. we had the beef tenderloin and the cornish hen. (i wasn't feeling the clams. they sounded okay, but...) and i might have preferred a roast chicken in little portugal, but at any rate i had the consolation of the conversation of those better heeled portuguese at the tables adjacent to ours and in the stools in front of the beards behind the bar.

what's else to say? touch down, look around, everyone's the same. but you know that dancers are disposed to fucking well. and so after we overpay for some bottles of steam whistle, bad service and a view included in the price of our room, i leave the band to enjoy the hotel and make my way to college and ossington. in the absence of the artist -- and without time to be concerned with finding bruce mcdonald and maureen medved, scott pilgrim or the arts districts so inspired -- i was happy for some fun. some easy vulnerability. courage and belonging, to the sticking point of an absconded community. and after the dances of three disco oracles and four hours of having fucked well, i left. o espirito santo on college. back to the hotel because we needed to check out in the morning, after which i only got one postcard written (all hail ms. toronto!), but we did eat arenas, because they're delicious and they're the new things to eat. then we were out. that was it. and toronto had been like any other city, although it was certainly not the new york of canada, nor the chicago, london, madrid or vancouver, bundle of high rise plate glass art galleries or not. but you play where the tour takes you. and who you are is who you'll be: the best haircuts, as they say, are taken.

CAPTIVES OF SEXUAL ABERRATION

the band, five hours after being pulled over in willoughby, ohio, pulled into the parking lot of the lao thai restaurant on university avenue in rochester. after the owner finally figured out reconnecting his credit card machine, gay uncle fester let us stay parked in the lot of the restaurant while we walked through the "neighborhood of the arts" to the bachelor forum. empty. so we walked back past the art cathedral at the memorial gallery, where the seminarian we spotted up the stairs and down the hall from the set of locked doors we tried turned out to be a cater waiter. on and off the inner loop, a police cordon, and the wrong way down all the one ways. kodak. xerox. genesee. motel 6 and little caesars. visibly parked, making late night money at the hess. art attempts everywhere, but they don't seem to have done much for the stuff. the original boomtown bust. but you play where the tour takes you.

LLORA CUANDO TE PASE

i remember nothing of michael robinson's half of his (guided) q&a with fellow experimental filmmaker laida lertxundi and their wexner center guide other than his statement on karaoke as prayer. even if i hadn't the emotional wherewithal to process the significance of the guide's leading (and meandering) statements-as-questions on the filmmakers' use of music in their films, i still felt a deep sympathy for robinson's digressive statement (in response to the last question that the guide accepted from the audience) on acts of recitation in song wherein a singer is expected to act out the emotion of his medium. i hadn't recognized any of the cover songs in circle in the sand, and so i hadn't speculated on their significance. neither had i paid specific enough attention to the soundtracks of lertxundi's films to mistake one of the songs she'd used in one of them for a song by roy orbison and then to speculate on the significance of that artist's vocal range with the range of the films (as did a professor in the audience). there were probably tropes of experimental film making (and appreciation) that i didn't understand -- which is probably what's keeping me from articulating any greater or more significant speculations on either robinson's or lertxundi's presentations now. (and i speculated as much after the q&a to the phd candidate friend of mine who'd told me that this was an event that i shouldn't miss.) i couldn't, however, deny that i'd reacted to lertxundi's films -- or that tears could signify a wide range of...emotional states.

Su cine cuestiona la manera en que los deseos y expectativas del espectador responden de formas cinemáticas de narración de historias, y busca modos alternativos de vinculación de sonido y música con imágenes de hábitats naturales, situaciones construidas, y entornos cotidianos. Sus películas, filmadas en Los Ángeles y alrededores, crean una geografía paisajística que se transforma en estados afectivos.

[reaction] affected states. bettye swann singing "my heart is closed for the season" over a shot of the paradise motel showing its no vacancy sign, los angeles city hall reflected in a window. but remember: no hidden stories. why michael robinson didn't use the belinda carlisle song with which he chose to share the name of the film of his that was screened at the wexner center on monday is absolutely overt: he couldn't find a decent cover. but he did give us neil young via linda ronstadt: "there was a band playing in my head, and i felt like i could cry. i was thinking about what a friend had said; i was hoping it was a lie." still (or as a result, maybe) "all i can do is lock up my heart and get over you." and boy oh boy. you'd cry too if it happened. any other day, ms. lertxundi, but not that one. maybe it was an event not to miss, but the brutality of my sympathy for what i didn't even have the particular erudition to discuss with the rest of the crowd just made me want it off the fucking screen.

SPRING FEVER, REITERATION

they're advertising something on north high street between 15th avenue and iuka. "art that rubs off on you," the banners read in combination, in succession, as you pass. ungh. that's gotta be one controversial -- and confrontational -- exhibition. exhibit one...or art appreciation 101: pretense, in late winter, full of the joys of spring.