So of course there is little to say–I am now revisiting Lone Wolf & Cub, which makes me all emotional, like, with its simplicity and its rawness and its fluid violence, its authenticity–I was also getting pissed off at the new Nation as I was on the subway (mostly for what was going on within it). And on the way home, there was this cute little black boy, who couldn’t have been more than 2, but was already talking and gesturing and everything. Sigh. I must be PMSin’, the tears really do well up sometimes. Ugh. Not enough time to change the world. Maybe it’s arrogant to think people want saving, but I dunno… I guess it’s just making their lives as easy as mine were, back in the day.

Ah, well. Alric does not have good news on the dating front. But I am working on that. I feel as if he and Juliana could get along rather well, actually. I was woken this morning by a call from D, who’s a sweetie, who sends me these postcards with naked women, which I place on the fridge next to the postcards of naked men that my older friends who know me send me, who is still trying to help me out with girls. But yeah. Juliana and Alric? Stranger things have happened. But apparently chicks dig my politics.

I really need to skip more math classes. Induction is a great thing, like the first three times you learn it. You really don’t need to see it more often than that. I’m just a snob. But it is an amusing proof that all collections of n horses are the same color. Hrmm… And there is a philosophical thrust to it all, which is that in the case that any group of 2 horses are the same color, then… But I dunno.

In the modal logic, I am happy to report that I am reaching philosophically meaty stuff as far as existence goes. My sort of kneejerk admiration for Quine’s sort of deflationism is being deflated. This is actually meaningful philosophical substance with actual logic to go along with it. There might be a paper in here someplace.

Making plans with Joephet for tomorrow and the weekend somehow makes me very happy. Like I have something to actually look forward to. And yes: I am evidently going shopping with him this weekend, which I suppose we will hafta try and document in some way, as those who know me will find this rather difficult to believe. I am a very cheap dresser. Cheaper than any you could find at IKEA.

So there are some things one can only realize when one is standing guard as a break from the wind and the view for someone who has the functional role of a Joephet in your life, being lightly sprayed by the unending stream of much-complained about piss even as you are not looking, cuz you’ve seen that particular unit before, as the piss splatters on a Prizm you hope the guy walking across the street does not own. It is not clear what realization this is, but it is pretty clear that one should be pissing on a more expensive car.

And it started out relatively well, a bag of Cape Cod chips, and plannings with Alric to recoup the loss of last night, though not the $400 worth of drilling (teehee) that Alric did manage to somehow purchase. But waiting around so long for Joephet to show up was a little lame, and hot, but so it goes: falling in and out of sleep while reading Waugh is frightening: it makes one quiver like an English schoolboy about to be caned.

And after a dinner at Golden China with Joephet, which was a bit tense given what was discussed so drunkenly last night, it was off, late to Alric’s, where we managed to polish off a bottle of wine (we could have done more) and the first disc of Manhattan-based namedropping which now at last makes sense to us both. And yes, it is difficult watching this show as a Marxist. It is more difficult watching the show with a Marxist. And to Alric I grow closer, if only intrigued by how his attempt to make straight male friends in the city is stymied by the fact that his lunchdate casually mentions “this guy I’ve been dating for a few years” in the elevator ride back to the office. A lot of learning yet left for the both of us.

Out of loyalty I drag myself, sweating, swearing, my pencil broken, down to 46 Grand, for Joephet’s cousin’s birthday party, or somesuch. In any case, this is a drunken mess, in which Joephet loses his hat, and I am swallowing half of the bitterness that I could so easily spew (but it would be too easy…): and so I have little more to report, beyond perhaps the following attempt (for I have not much of an ear for dialogue, which makes my fiction suffer) at transcribing some Flip plans for what is to happen next in the evening:

“Yo, let’s just go to White Castle.”

“White Castle, their burgers are so small, yo”

“But they’re cheap, like fifty cents for a [gestures with hand, in a small square]“

“You need like six to get full”

“That’s like 3 bucks, though, so let’s go”

“Naw, 70 cents each, that’s 420. We should go to Chinatown.”

“For dimsum?”

“No, for 4 bucks you can get some fucking wonton noodle soup. That shit will fill you up.”

“I just want White Castle, I wanna go home, I’m tired.”

“No, you can get curry beef rice for 4 bucks, rice, man, they’re still open, and it’s like not far.”

Lather, rinse, repeat. Better Luck Tomorrow here we go again.

Fond and Fiercesome Symbiosis

OR

And this is beauty

OR

Winged Hoarse

OR

This Ethnic Slur

OR

One page at a time

OR

Aging Americans

OR

My Whitey something

OR

Chinese Exercises for Eyes

OR

Jwei Jwei (apologies to pinyin)

Epigraph:

‘Do you speak Chinglish?’

‘No’

‘Meh. Coulda been love.’

‘I love your hat.’

j’Well, will you abandon capitalism?’

‘No.’

‘Meh. Coulda been love.’

Instructions:

Imbibe:

two maker’s marks, chilled to perfection.

Hippo and peckerbird

OR

blackwoman redtaping entry for cleaning

OR

3K loan revisited

OR

every terminal ‘l” become ‘o’ (e.g. ‘possible’ become ‘possibo’)

OR

how pedophiliac senators show love

OR

something something

OR

unlikely, metaphysically impossible, impredicative

OR

superlatively drunk

So it is frightening, this sharp line, this bright line between my week, my weak. And there is Ben Keightley. And he is beautiful.

I am not jamaica.

And there was Miss Fegs. And I am party to tacit greek racism. For I worry about how she is viewed, and me in my closetedness. But is OK. And she mistreats new help. And it is fine. And she had two husbands, and now none, and it averages out to one. And there will be many more.

And there is Alric. And he is faggily incompetent, in his faggy enthusiasm for me, the highlight of his week (and he could use a platinum-blond streak or two), he locks himself out of red wine and sex and the city. And there is woe looking for a locksmith with the last four digits rubbed out, like an amputee who has only and only and only his thumb on his right hand, which is crucial, because Joephet is occasionally and intentionally (robot voice) inaccessible like the location of the minimal fixed point in Kripke’s theory of truth. I love math. I love joephet. And I part with Alric. And it is fine.

And I go to D’s filming, though he is trying to set me up with Chastity or Charity and Juliana. But they are dickless. And I am bored and intrigued. And i walk to Pegasus via Columbus Circles, which is appropriate what with the faint and malingering scent of horseshit and horsepiss, for that is all that gaysianness is. And that is OK.

And at Pegasus there is Karaoke again, without scoring. For how could I score without my Joephet, my boy, my pillow, my baby, my paratactical truth.

And I come home, sweating, my metrocard damaged (and now mailed) beyond repair, like my life without my pillow.

And I am here. And so on and on and on.

And on Colubmus Circle it would be so fucking easy to be bitter. And that is why I am not so, so, so. And so I hope.

So the past few entries have been just a tad out of synch for whatever reason–I have not been posting very promptly after writing. And I was away from internet access last night, so I wasn’t able to say anything, though I guess I did find the right sort of distraction from that work. I think I’m reaching a blah blah phase right now–it’s almost three on a wednesday afternoon and I’ve yet to check out the new comics for the week or the Onion. Still, the evening spent pleasantly with Joephet and going through old photos (new to me) with Betsy, marvelling, perhaps, at how little some things change, or sot hey apear: it’s strange, as there are so few photos of me from the college years, as I don’t think I had very shutterbug friends, and I certainly have never had a camera, trusting instead to memory. And of course I have such discontinuities: how many friends have lasted? Schisms sadly the usual mode. Ah, well: I should start turning on the matchmaking juices, it’s just difficult cuz Alric isn’t a Jew…

Also managed to dig up some lost gems via Joephet’s lit anthologies, which do not coincide with mine, which are buried deep in boxes against my wall anyway: I do miss freshman year and my writing class then. In particular, Walker Percy’s The Loss of the Creature (a title which I have forgotten for well-on 4 years) is I think the beginnings of my term “touristical” to describe a certain approach to experience. I really need to focus more, and might leave for school early, just to hit the library a little earlier than before. Ah, for bookshelves! I live in such squalor…

So it has been a while, and indeed I have done plenty to now recount.

Last night I spent with Lex and Hanna and Alex, old friends from school, Lex my old roommate for two years, and though the entertainment (Bad Boys II) was long and drawn-out (with needless state-sponsored terrorism against our Communist neighbor to the south), to say nothing of more of that all-too-familar brand of homophobic double-entendre, the company was as always well-met, long overdue. And so it seems that Lex and Hanna are to settle down together, in what feels like a happy move, somehow, Hanna at last working with the little kids she so covets. And this is a relief, they together perhaps again moving toward the status of Hope for Heterosexuality. It’s also nice, somehow seeing, however overdue, old friends by which I can measure myself, my progress, my core.

Ah, yes: also a nice jaunt to Alric’s, whose UWS apartment is actually rather nice, I must say. Though in characteristic fashion he has failed to realize that a package labelled “drape” contains but one. So his red-bedecked lightless shaft-pointing window is somehow less than halfway decent. Sex and the City, red wine, a sprinkling of girls, and fagulous commentary is well on the way.

This morning rolled out of bed to see Kenneth in Union Square, to dish about his little field trip to New Jersey to meet a man (a token of) his type. I tried to be all big-brotherly, which is kind of strange when your victim is a year older and used to be a drill sergeant. Still, right about now, I hope Kenneth is snoozing on his host’s couch, or at least fully clothed still. I suppose at some point I can ask him What’s the Frequency, Kenneth? and not quite be talking about EM-radiation. Who would have thought an NYUer could turn out so right?

Alric again this afternoon, unexpectedly at my computer by the time I returned, late, having malingered with Kenneth to make sure he wouldn’t brush his teeth beforehand… And this was pleasant, though it was perhaps strange when my roommate Errol had a friend visit, replete with servings of mung bean soup, a strange vibe, and Chinese music playing rather loudly. Very ethnic. But perhaps he’s beat old Alric in “breaking in” his old room. And this after only a few weeks. However: De gustibus…

Then off with Dannis (who frantically greeted me and almost knocked me over galloping from the shower, as I stood in the foyer, wondering why I’m not gay enough have a presentable apartment) all the way to Joephet’s fam’s place out in Little Neck. I am beginning to suspect that Columbia faggery would have been more bearable than the type that I avoided so scrupulously back in the day. But maybe I’m just overgeneralizing from one case. That’s how stereotypes are born, y’know. Whoever thought that bickering about haircare could be so amusing? A pleasant if misdirected ride, necessitating a full canter at a bus that was not where we had quite expected it. I can still hoof it in dress shoes…. Upon arriving, I felt as if I had walked onto the set of Better Luck Tomorrow, though in this case there was race/nationality solidarity in this house of karaoke-singing Filipinos. I cannot begin to describe that cooing scene now, and do regret that I didn’t take a whirl–I was too busy controlling myself in J’s presence, able only to furtively conference with him when about to leave. Thanks to Dannis’ tactical obfuscations, I made it back to the subway and then home safely, and before too long, though not before a little scary jaunt through downtown LIC. So it goes. Family, though, is family. And as insistent as they may be that you eat yet more succulent pig, I can’t help but smile at the thought. Ripe pickings. So though I’m alone again now, it’s but temporary: and not a bad space at that.

So I been lazy on this day my day off, which as expected has become this deep sink where there is to be no real math to be done, though I am somehow reading yet more short fiction, with the hope that perhaps some of it will rub off and I will gain the sort of fluency I will need to make some of my own. Not so much a matter of imitative strokes, but more the direction of orienting myself, as it were, as this is not something I’ve given much thought to. It’s also difficult, because old Alric, for all his ambitions in fictional directions (heehee: I’m going to have to blog that little one-liner), confesses not to often read women authors. Which seems rather important if I am to write biting SAPI fiction (At Alric’s suggestion, “Straight Asian/Pacific Islander” is more clear-cut, with the requisite counterpart “GAPI”).

See, I’ve been trying to blog about class-assumptions in fiction for some time now, but in all my attempts come across as something of a prig. But it’s a big deal, still. Like at the year-end reception for the teachers at my school at the Brooklyn Marriott, where some teachers were unable to identify all the cheeses present–Cheddar, Havarti, Brie. I mean, brie, goddammit! This is not rocket science. So the point is that any work of fiction–any type of discourse, really–has class-assumptions about it which can be difficult to somehow overcome–and this is the hesitancy that I feel, though of course it’s deeper than this one trivial manifestation–I just don’t quite know how to verbalize it yet. But I feel this way about most art, which is, I realize, somehow foolish, but perhaps no more foolish than some soaring praise of the universality of art and beauty and all that. I guess I recognize the barriers but have yet to rest upon their ultimate significance. And it’s not as if I don’t love a good Waugh story.

Uhhh…. So things with Joephet have settled down admirably, away from the previous untoward expectations and back toward a sort of close friendship, or as close as it can be at this relatively early stage, where my seniority is at least an order of magnitude less than that of any of his other friends. It’s just more balanced and realistic, and hopefully sustainable. Certainly not the arrangement I would have expected to be possible, but I guess you can’t be too pre-fixed in your ideas. For those yet curious as to what this actually means, I am not yet getting a haircut or shaving.

Off to Middle Haddam this weekend to see Bessie, alongside Alric and some other second-order acquaintances. I will be bringing modal logic, and just need to be away from the city for a bit, get going, see a river, and not come quite as close to drowning this time, perhaps.

The thing is I really need to get cracking on this comic strip: there is such quality material to be done, but it is somehow difficult for me to sit down without deadlines or an audience.

So late last night a great phone call out of the blue from D, who is dropping a line before his bujii Hawaiian vacation, and who has with him at his house this cool girl, with whom I might have been before acquainted at his May rock concert, if only I hadn’t been too busy staring at the fucking male performers, for she was one of the hairy-pitted slinky dancers on stage, about whom I remember little in the way of physical appearance. So D has in mind that this might be a sort of relevant introduction, and indeed it is occasioned by her mention of Marx, and D of course thinks I’ve actually read Marx, as opposed to just rolling around in class anger…

So in any case, after a bit, conversations had, and she is quite charming and enthusiastic, as was I, in that sort of honesty-not-needing-to-impress (“Well, to be completely honest with you, my Marxism begins and ends with class anger.”) sort of way. She is saying sensible, well-informed shit. Apparently, her work is currently wrestling (“personal issues or other people?” I quip. She deadpans, “other people.” This is a sense of humor I can work with), which makes me wonder if my old roommate Alric would date a wrestler. Hrm… A female one, at that… So in any case, I’m rather charmed and certainly engaged, but my Netherlands don’t get the fucking memo!

Why are all the commited leftists I know (and by this, I just mean someone who can talk the talk) women? Maybe it’s because they’re post-fashion, whereas most fags I know simply aren’t. Yeah… I do hazily remember some conversation with Joephet at some point about the Supreme Court or something gay like that, but that’s not very much for the time we spent together. Maybe that’s part me also. I guess it’s more about the ability to talk about things, rather than actual action: Joephet has donated, after all, more of his inexplicable income to charities than I ever have.

So it goes yet again. So I dunno if it’s dishonest to give it a try–I shouldn’t flatter myself, after all, into thinking that she’d like Chinamen–and surely there’s no harm in having another itinerant, well-educated, leftist, activist friend. But I guess this is why people come out, eh? Avoids confusions like this.