Lip Gloss Larry and the Splade

Everything sounds better lately with a cigar-chomping, 1930s studio exec accent. Fer instance, note this example from my Brofriend, whose name I was attempting to come up with: “You're not famous till you have a name kid. Now get the hell out of my office.” Or [to secretary]: "Pick up my dry-cleaning then put my wife on hold and tell my girlfriend to can it."

On the train in to work today, a man came in, swayed up and down the car, his light jeans tucked into his sneakers, with an odd square patch cut from his pant leg on his thigh. He swayed on back my way and plopped down on the floor against the center pole. Then he slid entirely down, onto his back. All the while, he babbled in a frisky Eartha Kitt-style voice. Like hers, but with a falsetto (if such a thing is possible). In his hand was a nearly empty tube of lip gloss, cherry red, which he slathered back and forth on his lips while he said things like, “So I called my drug dealer, Harvey…” and “Why do all the good people die?”

What alarmed me was the paper medical bracelet on his wrist. Not to mention the lolling back and forth he did as he applied his lip gloss and babbled. As per usual, nobody got up, nobody laughed, nobody acted as if there was a drug-addled maniac doing anything remotely bizarre in their midst.

Onward and upward.

Did you know that thing that is a spork but with a serrated edge like a knife is called a “splade”?

Yes, I Was

I sent this to a friend to show him where I was last night.

His reply?

"You were in the opium den in a dickens novel?"

I snorted invisible milk out my nose.

And Now I Wait and Hope for More

I sit in my office. A colleague enters.

[enter colleague.]

"I've been having dreams that I have long, floppy octopus arms."

[colleague flops arms appreciably.]

"In one dream, I was using my useless long, floppy arms to try to get a girl out of a well. I couldn't. Last night, I was using my useless long, floppy arms to carry wood above my head. It didn't work so well either."

[exit colleague.]

Work, work, work. Hm, hm, hm.

[enter second colleague.]

"I realized just now that I needed to get pictures taken out at BAM, so I thought I'd call my friend and see if she could run over and do it. Then i realized it's 5 o'clock, and she's probably not still in Brooklyn. But then I thought, well, it's an hour earlier there. And then I realized, um, no, Brooklyn is not in a different time zone from Manahattan."

[exit colleague.]

Work, work, work. Hm, hm, hm.

Oh Cool! It's Just Like Gang Rape!

Twice recently I have found myself in the position where I am talking to a man/boy in an evening out, and his group of man/boy friends suddenly crack up. Each time, it seems one man/boy made some sort of lewd gesture about me and the others clearly liked it. Each time, I was somehow utterly devoid of having a clue. Last night, it happened, and one guy, as they all* laughed and I swiveled from one to the next, realizing I was suddenly surrounded, said, “Don’t you feel like Jodie Foster in ‘The Accused’?”

I wander my house today, desperate without coffee, starting to mumble aloud that man/boys (no offense to all my man/boy actual friends) are like puppets without heads when they drink. (I don’t know what that means, actually, but I feel a little reckless with a metaphor today.) (Suck it.)

[*These men, I will add here, are my colleagues.]

The Far End of the Doppler Effect

The sky is as blue as blue is today. And I have so many thoughts that keep being narrowed to sharper points by odd confluences--I love when there is a topic simmering in the back of the mind and something you read just illuminates it that much further…

To be less vague, a series of incidences involving gender have occurred. A joint art project I seem to be embarking on with MotN on the nature of gender ambiguity, a random blogger assuming I am a man, a review (by Dave Itzkoff) in this weekend's NYT Book Review I just picked up on Alice Sheldon, aka James Tiptree Jr., science fiction writer. Everyone assumed Tiptree was a man, although there were certainly questions being asked as to her gender.

From the review: “…Sheldon would join the CIA as a counterintelligence analyst, earn her Ph.D. in experimental psychology and operate a chicken farm in New Jersey--they were restless and uncertain times for her. She began work on a major treatise on aesthetics, then abandoned it. Her marriage, though harmonious, had turned sexless, and she frequently found herself consumed by intense crushes on women that she could never bring herself to act on.”

Whatever. I liked the first part of that paragraph very much though: a chicken farm? Nice.

Reading the many guises Sheldon embraced felt enlivening. (Minus the Benzadrine she preferred. More deadening, really.) Between the sky and the endless possibilities of living, I am bursting out my body right now. Sfortunamente, I must get this bursting self to the office. There, I will devote myself to the daily task of attuning my head to the news. I'll consider it my own personal chicken farm. Buon giorno, tutti.

The Natives Are Ever-Restless, and Entirely Static

Last night I woozily listened to an autodidact on the train.

"Yeah, yeah, you guys have that Picadilly Square. And you had the Beatles. And then there were the Rolling Stones, sure."

The guy was pure Brooklyn. His accent was exactly pulled from its streets, like gum he'll never scrape from his shoe.

"Yeah, New York. How long have I been here? Forty-nine years, unfortunately. It's a disgusting place. The trash everywhere. Here, you call 1-800 numbers and they rush you off the phone. It's disgusting. I call 1-800 numbers in Texas and other places and it's not like that. What's Logan airport like? It's no JFK. Is it better than Heathrow?"

The young man next to him with the suitcase between his legs stared at the ceiling and nodded politely, smiling a small smile. He responded to all the man's questions, even though the man possibly had Asperger's.

"Oh, I'd love to live in London. What's the subway like there? I bet it's clean. Then you guys had that TV show. What was that show...? I have a job and all. I hate this city. The people are horrible."

What really stood out after so much chatter was when the young Briton said, "Well, you must have stayed here all this time for some reason."

Silence, except in my head, which said loudly and clearly to me that this man has stayed here all this time precisely so he could sit on this train and complain to a foreigner until he's nearly ejaculating with the pleasure of his own disgust. This man, I am quite sure, will never leave New York.

I am Metatextual

Here are my phone’s stored text messages. They reach back a year or so. Think of this as an exercise in connection: sender to receiver, writer to reader, phone to phone, computer to computer, snark to snark, life to life. Then think of "Howard's End" to understand the only motto I've ever lived by. Throw in an olive, and imbibe.

Texts to me:
Me too. I think that is pretty much the only thing that is keeping me from falling asleep right now.

Wishing you were awake….

Absolutely! Let’s do it again soon.

Effing guys in bands. That’s original.

R u making out with [redacted]? Dirty.

Waiting for RAF flight back to Baghdad. Delayed bcz sun drove cabin temp to 75 C

Hi from between Basra and Umm Qasr

So tell me…are we having fun yet?

{wordless staring}

you win for best birthday text. Again, thanks for the smile

Just thought I’d say hi beautiful.

Having sex in bathroom! So good!

Pussy

And you too! So glad you are in my life.

Still here? What’s crackin?

Miss you. Even if you’re closed.

Does this mean u don’t want the lump of coal I got 4 u?

Hello poodle. In a meeting. Love you.

Liebeskind is trying on tennies at Paragon Sports.

Ecco mi qua.

Hey smidgen, there’s a surprise for you between the mattresses.

Reading ur blog u are an amazing writer

U2 little lady. We were smart 2nite. Cause 4 celebrati6on. Soon…[Redacted] wondered where my friend was

Hey girl reporter, luscious girl reporter.

Just thought I’d say hi…mcbickle. Hi.

Leaving my friend


My texts:
Can I buy you a drink at bar [redacted]? Here with a friend. I just saw Jupiter’s moons.

You know you don’t need money to see me. Last I heard, I’m low-cost. Which is different from low-rent.

Your father is a genius

Apparently everyone thought we left to make out. I told them we totally were. See you Sunday.

We are today. At a private art collection in the country.

That beat the pussy message. Thank you

My computer is still freaking. [redacted], what’s the answer? In life, not computers.

You called me pussy, bitch!

Stuck in an elevator. For real

The World Has Gone Bananacake

From "A Night Out With Adam Carolla: Is a Scallop an Animal?" By JAMIE DIAMOND, The New York Times, August 13, 2006:

"Mr. Carolla has a long rectangular face and Mr. Dameshek has a round face, and when the two men sit side by side, they make the number 10."

Jamie Diamond, at The New York Times, you should be ashamed. Editor of Jamie Diamond, at The New York Times, you should be even more ashamed.

Or rewarded! I like to laugh. Thanks!

Make That Extra Crispafloppy, Please

1. crispafloppy

The description for bacon that is cooked to the point of being floppy with a little crispiness.

"This bacon isn't crispafloppy, it's flopacrispy."

(From the "Urban Dictionary." I'm too lazy for links, kids. Sorry. Kinda.)

It falls right between "crisp tee" and "crispay," and is not far down the list from "Crisco Cock Call." (Don't ask.)

I came upon it by accident, and remembering how here would be irrelevant.

Believe it or not, my health is again in jeopardy, in the way that train rides to and from work feel awful (blonde children asking daddy if we are "out of the tunnel yet" 57 times makes me want to whack said children upside the head while in this ear-crackling state*), not in the way of not being able to get out of bed, at least. Either way, Dr. Din is again on the case.

For now, I'm sending out thanks into this ether for the support of all my beautiful friends. You know who you are and what you did and you all rock for it.

If I could give each of you a found object in thanks, I would. (Hm, it seems I just might.) Yesterday, I delivered a clear glass vase to the Romanian as I wandered over to his apartment to see his most fantastic new prints. (The man, I tell you, is a wonder, and I feel privileged to have been able to participate in a few pieces). I picked up this vase and thought to myself, "This is exactly what I think of when I think the word 'vase.'" It was like a child's drawing of a vase: bulbous at the base and narrow toward the top, with a great lip. Only I pronounced it "vaz" in my head, only to switch quickly back to "vase." My brain sort of stuttered: "vaz," "vase," "vaz," "vase." Damn word. Anyway, I gave it to the Romanian, who is a wiz at keeping plants alive while they remain remarkably dead.

On the way to his house, vase tucked precariously beneath my arm, I saw two people walking toward me carrying objects of varying sizes: lengths of wood, a sketch pad, maybe a lamp. I realized then that this is what we Brooklynites do: We pick things up off the streets and transport them to our houses. Then we remove objects from our houses and put them on the streets. The cycle of belongings is Zen-fabulous.

[*No children were whacked upside the head by me during, before or after the writing of this entry. Honest. Desire and action are two separate concepts, people.]

"You're Getting Married in a Meat Locker?"

His things are gone.

I see now the golden Italian movie poster that has been half hidden for years behind a blonde wood Ikea armoire he wanted to buy. I see that I had left the poster peeking from behind that armoire all this time possibly knowing that it would be revealed at some point or another eventually. Knowing that there was never really any need to relocate it from behind a piece of furniture so I could read the entire phrases, like “Domani Si Balla,” or “Il Conte Tacchia,” instead of just “alla” and “acchia.” Because someday it would be entirely visible exactly where it is.

The light echoes strangely now, with so much less stuff in the rooms. Everything has a slightly darker cast, probably because there are fewer surfaces to bounce it back.

In news of the weird, I tell you now that my sister wants to get married in a meat locker.

The light may seep strangely around my apartment, but the world is as happily odd as ever. I do not lose faith.

Why I'm in Lust with This City, Part 452

A man got on a crowded A train this afternoon.

"Do you want to hear some music?" he announced.

"No," came the swift reply. "It's too hot."

And then, "Yeah. It better be good."

A deep drumming rumbled up from farther down in the car, and the Africa-hot ride suddenly made that much more sense.

Killing Me Softly

So it's a shit-kicking week:

1. A woman told me I'm not gay enough to date. While we were on a date. A second date.

2. I lost my bank card.

3. My book is in the shit-can toilet.

4. Two of my best friends got engaged.
[I am aware that this is normally good news.]

5. My sister got engaged.
[I am aware that this is normally good news as well.]

6. It is 657 degrees.

Items of general additional irritation:

7. Bank employees gain pleasure from making you wait on lines, which makes those of us waiting on lines inordinately angry.

8. Credit card companies make you make automatic payments and then call you to make them again because they somehow never processed the first ones.

9. Ex-boyfriends are still not moving their boxed-up shit-can crap from someone's apartment.

10. Doing freelance work requires hunting down accounting departments with a rifle filled with bird-shot and preferably a wild-eyed vice president at your side.

General sources of amusement:

11. .

12. .

13. Exactly.