Strange dreams that I can only vaguely remember: something about Josh Hartnett floating naked in an indoor swimming pool, and me without a remote control. The attic people who seek to get married, but when they go to the shore to contemplate the future together, find that with the receding tide there are park benches of tormented souls who are periodically jolted by a monkey from the Planet of the Apes in pretty multicolored bolts of monkey-electricity. I need to get a dental checkup, too.

I may be getting mired in ethnic literatures, meanwhile. Which again, would help, as I feel more and more the plight of the HAPI (heterosexual Asian/Pacific-Islander, which is a delightful acronym, as surely they are anything but). Something ought to be done about that, and I would be interested to see what the latest takes in fiction might be…

And now the rain is falling, which means that for the first time in memory it is actually not Beer Garden weather, which is tragic, but OK, as most of the neighborly crew are elsewhere. I think a Mandy Moore expedition with Lex is quite overdue, to learn How to Deal. Not feeling lackluster in general, but not been in a blogging mood. Maybe because my contentment of late is rather private…

So back again from a night at the Beer Garden, this time with Joephet and his fam and birthday boy Dannis. Not to mention Betsy. Or at least I try not to. A good set to have fallen in with. No subequatorial stirrings of note despite the proximity to Joephet, which is indeed well-due progress, I must say. So it’s going to be OK, and already is. Difficult to imagine a week ago, which was so marooned and desolate and without hope. Now there is sort of passing acrimony matched with nurturing friendship, which was probably the way to go anyway. New joke, “This is the monoGAMest I’ve ever been.” Must be the buzz talking. It’s a joke because of the acronym GAM. If this needs further explanation, maybe you should read the handbook. Am I hardcore, or do I just pretend? I guess a whiskey, a Lucky, and a Zippo are all that I need. But no, drunkenness is ineffable, even from the inside–and of course a roving eye is always good, though the lighting is not Web-quality: the red lights at the Web make everyone look white. But not quite right.

White makes right.

The 60s managed to win equal whites.

So it goes.

Last night another drunkenly beautiful carouse at the Beer Garden around the corner from my house, the stagger home always the most brilliant stretch in all Astoria, vaguely residentio-commercial, but in a non-threatening way, with the TriBoro bridge always suddenly looming, luminous in the distance. This time with Bessie–that frankness sipped by sipped, and after a day of hanging out, toying more and more with the possibility of going to law school as being a more effective way of reaching strangers, more effective than this current teaching business, which reaches only no-longer-strangers, but can’t yet shover the system further where it needs to go–after a year, I’m still idealistic (though, as the old phrase goes, “certainly not wide-eyed”), but it’s unclear how long that can last in the face of unsympathetic changes to the system and an economy that’s less and less friendly (more an issue for my students than for me, me with my iron-rice-bowl, as the phrase goes). The only issue is a matter of usefulness–I feel useful now, but to wait three years after the two I plan to spend still teaching before being greatly more useful is a strange thing. But I won’t be covering any rich ass… Too early to tell, I’m probably just heady on the enthusiasm Bessie always brings, and vaguely dissatisfied with my current idleness. I guess I’ve been thinking back to that time I went and helped my brother out with his legal-type troubles with the school administration. It was then, more than ever, that I somehow felt indispensable, and as if I was actually bringing to bear all the math, philosophy, and prose that had, until then, merely been disconnected elements. And we kicked some major whitey ass. That was just a defensive action, though. Time to get more offensive…

Speaking of offensive, though my Spanish spelling is poor, I am often reminded of the idiom, “fumando como un chino en kiebra,” which means, roughly, “smoking like a bankrupt chinaman.” That’s me.