the quarry

with a snap

The Aristocrats is maybe the funniest movie I have ever seen. I laughed so hard I was crying. I have a very high tolerance for being offended, and if you're the same, I suggest you run to the theater. RUN. Before everyone starts talking the hell out of this and sucking the joy right out of it.

On the other hand, if you are easily offended, maybe you should skip this one and catch something a little milder. I hear March of the Penguins is very good.

You know, when I was little, I wanted to be a stand-up comedian. I never really wanted to admit it, because admitting it would imply that I think I'm very funny, which I don't necessarily do. But as the cliche goes, I used to sit around my room listening to Richard Prior records and wondering what it must be like to make a roomful of people laugh. I really did. And still to this day, I really love seeing stand-up. I don't know why I don't do it more often.

I was supposed to go to yoga at 10, but I'm hungover. The movie was followed by swilling beer and gobbling wurstes. Probably not on my diet. Probably not a part of the healthier new me.

An old friend of mine who I met when I lived in Switzerland was in town this week. It was so strangely good to see her. It made me think about all of the other people out there who I've lost, sucked back into the world like a stewardess out an air hole, suddenly gone without a peep. I'm digging out some old email addresses. I'm sending some emails to say hello. I liked those people and who I was when I was with them. I have to believe that there's some chance in this world to do it all again.

I'm working today, which is disappointing. I'd much prefer to relax. This summer has been stressful, so unlike the last. This summer is starting to get to me.

friday

This has been a good week socially, a fair week mood-wise, and an absolute atrocity in the office. Not because I’m busy. I should be busy, but I can’t get anything done. Nothing. Not one little thing. I’m so distracted that it’s kind of amazing that I can even get to the end of this sentence. I am the poster child for ADD. And I say that with kindness and sensitivity, as someone who was once diagnosed by a professional neurologist as having the disorder. It's very real. Can’t. Focus.

I feel guilty and anxious. Maybe I need to gather more documentation on my diseased brain in case I get the boot. But mercury is in retrograde, so I can't be the only one? It must be impossible that this problem belongs to me?

This weekend, me and my ADD are going to struggle to do yet more work, for yet another job. Writing. Please, shoot me now. I’ll be happier that way. It will be easier on us all.

how can you sleep when the beds are burning?

a few posts went unposted but they were bleak and i was depressed. i owe it all to my woman cycle. thankfully.

it's so pretty here in westchester, within spitting distance of the city and yet somehow another world. b got angry at this false little place and its phony small-town facade, but i felt overjoyed to see trees and grass and happy dogs bounding around unfettered. i know it's not what i want, this surburban game, bound up as it is like a runner with a cramp, the better life nowhere to be found. i need something a little further.

i went up to my future university this week, and i found myself actually excited about school. excited and scared enough to puke. it's not as much of a commitment as i had originally feared, and i think i might just be able to make it through. i know there will be a lot of painful homework moments in between, but i have to believe i can do it. i'm going to be a librarian.

i never thought i'd be a thing, like a doctor or a cop, some profession that can be summed up with one simple noun, image-conjuring and universally recognized as a distinct, exact thing. i'll need some glasses and a bun. i guess i always thought that one thing would be writer and everything else would feel like failure somehow, but so far i am doing okay. so far this seems kind of right. you can still be both and everything and nothing and it's just a living anyhow. it's just a word and it doesn't need to define me.

i'm hungry and craving my two favorite substances in this world, margaritas and guacamole, which in tandem are unstoppable. add the sun setting over some vaulted treetops and you've got yourself an evening. as best as i can figure, this is how time is meant to be passed.

bq or plain?

I apologize for being grim. Things are looking up, way up. I got offered a job that I turned down. I only agonized about it for a couple of hours, and then I moved on. I moved on!

I’ve gotten the attention that I needed, in the form of wholly unsolicited flattery and affection from various personages who knew not of my dumps. I’m hungover and I’m watching The Cosby Show in my office, killing time until I can get drunk again. About an hour to go.

This week I was so tired. I could barely bring myself to climb steps. But today there’s a new lightness about me. I was fighting something off, and I won.

Friday! The word needs to be sung.

bleh

i hate the world today, and all of the people in it. i hate that i'm so tired. i hate that i'm so uncertain. i hate that i'm so tired of being so uncertain.

i'll tell you what i need. i need a house, and a husband, and a fucking baby. i need a dog. i need a deck and a yard and some stupid chinese food that isn't all celery and carrots. i need to not feel so cheated.

i don't know which is worse... the not knowing or the not being. but sometimes i can't sit at that desk one more minute. i can't come back here to this unnatural little box with my salty, rotten take-out, hoping for some small sign of life in my otherwise flatline day. sometimes it could all disappear so easily, in a puff, and there'd be nothing left to lose. 

i hate that i'm watching one tree hill. and i'm not even enjoying it. i can't even hear it over the ac. when did it become unpopular to enunciate? fuck you, chad michael murray.

like a butterfly, a wild butterfly

I feel like it would be irresponsible for me to post and not mention the terrorist attacks in London. Although I'm drunk and watching the last episode of "Hit Me Baby One More Time" and that seems equally irresonsible and callous and dumb.

Yesterday, I heard the news, and it was just like that and I wasn't scared. I got on the subway without a second's thought. Although my heart went out, in the most selfish sort of way, I felt like if it happened there, things here must be okay. This was what they could muster. For now, we'd be left alone.

I arrived in Times Square to find people, probably tourists, dumbfounded, watching the news unfold on the giant screens, standing on the street with their mouths agape, frozen, confused, in public and afraid. It was a familiar scene. I remembered the people on 6th Ave, on Hudson, looking up, incredulous, watching, barely processing, jaws stretched as though to scream. It was that all over again even though it wasn't so near, and my eyes stung at the sight of these people and their horror movie faces.

I'm eating fresh figs and recounting the whole thing as though it was nothing which it wasn't. It's so easy with the figs. But this morning the fear sunk in and I threw up almost and felt weak in the legs like a baby deer. I could barely bring myself to climb down the steps, to disappear underground.

I'm so sorry for you, people of London. We know how you feel.

This juxtaposition is killing me, the one and then the other, but Juice Newton is singing "Pieces of Me" and clearly things in the world are just not right. I wish this Typepad account would have a life beyond me, but when I die, my credit card dies with me.

the dawn's early light

good lord. it's nearly 5am. my eyes opened in the night, with a start, a gasp and a loss of air, and now i'm awake and there's nothing i can do. there is no sleep for me.

i feel rejuvenated from my recent trip to the cape, like a pen dipped in an ink well, dripping and fresh with promise. i reconnected with some things i wrote there. i reconnected with the things i thought. i'm not sure if it lives there, this part of myself, needing special visits to be set in motion, or if it's just this city that stifles me so. i'm useless here.

i wish i could sleep because i wanted to look nice because i feel like crap in the physical appearence -- not physical well being -- sense. i have a reason. i wanted to go to the gym, my alarm hopelessly set for 6am. a mere hour and ten minutes from now. yeah,

at the cape i swam, i rode my bike, i ate fresh fish and vegetables and berries. my skin was dewy with the ocean air. my legs took on a less ghostly hue.

here, my skin is dry and irritated. my hair is brittle and flat. my diet consists of salty crap and greasy crap. i lament the fact that i can't get myself into a stuffy smelly room to run in place on a machine for 30 minutes, overloading my senses with double soudtracks and multiple channels, never seeing the sun or breathing the real air. this, somehow, is a disappointment to me.

the sky is purple. and pink. i'd let her out into this day, into these glowing fractals, but i'm afraid it might be the end. the anticipation, the event yet to come, the things not set in motion, they have all but cancelled her repose.

that is the question

I’m sitting in my office watching “Personal Best” on Logo. And the short shorts. Oh my god, the short shorts.

We’ve long wondered whether our officemate is gay or straight. I mean, he seems very gay. The tighty stripey shirts, the peppy, sockless loafers, the Queer as Folk watching, Pride attending, RSVP cruise going, etc. For a while, we really had no doubt.

Until, one day, in a semi-interview, with an out-and-proud lesbian, he announced that he was straight.

Um, what??

I mean, it’s none of my business. But if you were not straight, that would be the exact wrong time to hide it. You see, where I work, being gay is a plus. A huge plus. Probably more than like 98% of all workplaces all around the world. And I love that about this place – but apparently, he does not?

I call him JA, which stands for Jack Anape. I won’t go into the hows and whys, because this is an inquisition into his sexuality and not a manifesto on the level of annoyingness towards which one person can strive. Today, I know he is gay, no matter what he says.

How do I know? Because of “Personal Best.” Because of Mariel Hemingway -- Tracy's face -- bouncing and sweaty in her short shorts. We’re talking, and it’s in our peripheral vision, and it’s not catching his eye. There's a team of young, shapely athlettes doing their high jumps, and the camera is focused right in on the crotch of their short shorts. Crotch after crotch after crotch go over the bar. Glimpses of panties. Inner thighs. Backs arched. Exasperated sighs of relief as their bodies pound ass-up onto the matt.

I’m beginning to doubt my own sexuality here! And there’s JA, not batting an eye, talking my ear off about real estate woes.

“Um,” I offer. “Are you watching this?”

He glances at the TV.

“Yeah, what is this, like the 70s version of soft core porn?” He looks away and returns the conversation to leases and clauses.

“It’s the 80s,” I mutter under my breath. So yes, most likely a gay -- just not a very good one.

weekend's end

Well, in the end, the weekend was lovely. Despite the fact that I worked for about ¼ of it. Sad sad sad. My inner workaholic is the biggest joke I can think of.

Being in the womb must have been my fondest time in life. I can't stand chlorine and I can't stand salt, but put me in some clear, fresh water and I am one happy baby. I like to swim out into the middle of the pond and pretend I don't have the strength to get back to the shore. This, I think, would be the nicest way to go, the way I came in, wet and dark and surrounded. Just because I'm claustrophobic doesn't mean I don't like to be held.

When you float on your back and the water is calm, that's when you know your breath the best. Fuck yoga. You breathe in, you're on top. You breathe out, you sink. It's that simple. The sound rushes through your ears and you know how close death is to life, stalkers and strangers, two knobs on the same door.

It's the only thought you can have, miles from the shore, too far out for saving. There is no one to be liked by, nothing to complain about, no idea to be believed. It's your senses leaving, one by one, until all you know is the feel of the water around you, moving while you stay still.

I need to live there all of the time. It's my home, somehow. It's who I am. I have no family, no friends, no job or house... just this overwhelming feeling of place, of purpose, of self.

Condos start at 179.

home

I've been avoiding this and I don't know why. I mean, sure, I've been busy. At work, we launched something really huge. You may have heard about it. I hope you've heard about it. I worked 14 and 15 hour days and spent every minute actually doing something. No daydreaming. No blank stares. No lengthy breakfast trips to the company cafeteria. And now I'm feeling spent.

I'm at the Cape, reunited with my bike, back in the house I love. I swam out into the middle of the pond. I hung out on the beach at night while our friends set off illegal fireworks. I watched the tide come in. I called my new friend to say hello, and in a sincere, non-Ricky-Ricardo-like way he said, "Honey, you're home." And I thought how this is true, and how sweet it is that he knows it of me.

(I'm feeling really listy. And listless. Ironically.)

I'm not sure why I don't feel totally at ease, why I can't fully relax. And that is a total lie. I know why. I know every last bit of why.

I have a great opportunity and it's freaking me out. I have basically committed the next three years of my life away. When I decided I wanted to do this, I was unemployed. I had no prospects. There were no jobs that sounded remotely interesting.

Now, there are a ton of jobs. For example, my boss asked me to commit to her through January, when my program starts. Another group I interviewed with for a full-time position was thrilled to hear that I'm now available for freelance work. And thirdly and maybe most importantly, my new friend is going to be staffing up soon, and wants to hire me. And I want to be hired by him. The work that they have coming up is exactly, precisely what I have been looking for for the past two plus years. It's what I do.

And now I think, am I crazy? Going back to school to become something I'm not sure I want to be? Somehow I never realized that I already had a career, and that, when I think about, it was one I actually liked.

I have no right to complain, because I'm really lucky. I don't really even mean it as a complaint. It's more just that I'm freaking the fuck out because I need another ten years, I need another shot at my twenties. I'm not sure what happened to mine. I'm not sure where mine went.

I'm at the Cape and it's a beautiful day. There's a strong-minded breeze, and when the curtains billow I get a glimpse of how the sky is so blue.