Is This A Comedy, or What?

Reflecting: Why doesn't anything feel good?


Gosh this is such a good record, though.

I'm writing a story to send to a zine in Germany. Who should I write it about?

Yo that song, ANONYMOUS, by Sleater-Kinney.
That's great, too.








I didn't even realize I did this as I was typing it. Whoa!

The Boy Is A Bird

Friday night I went to the opening for Ves Pitt's new exhibition at the Christopher Henry Gallery. The show featured larger than life size portraits of really gorgeous freaky performance folks. Dynasty Handbag, Pixie Harlots. An iconic image of La JohnJoseph sat directly across the room from a portrait of moi. Then ran over to the La Mama Gallery where I saw Matt, Marina, Alan, and Ginger at the Duck Soup opening.

Got home and met up with Jiddy and her fabulous entourage. We lounged around my apartment listening to (what else?) Grace Jones, drinking sake and smoking, picking out outfits. Once we had settled all the details (dance moves, outfit changes, directions) we all hopped in a car to GlassLands Gallery for our performance at the Secret Faggot Party. The show was so much fun! The other acts were really great, especially House of Ladosha. We got some positive feedback and saw lots of gorgeous freaky queers, new friends and old. Met my penpal / new best friend Daniel, he got groovy with Hunter and Jiddy and I in an alleyway. Jiddy wore her party outfit (lace stockings and acid-washed denim short-shorts, honey) even though it was fucking arctic. Drank two glasses of white wine and found myself drunk. Ran into an old friend whom I thought I'd had a falling out with. Turns out to have been a big misunderstanding and now we're friends again. Don't you just love when that happens? Left the show in an amorous hurry. Forgot to ask for my payment. Showbiz!

Saturday woke up early to a celestial hangover. Made breakfast of toast avocado and sausage (it's important that you know that I eat enough Omega-3 fatty acids, I want you know that my brain is functioning). Hustled over to the Tim Hamilton sample sale, where I got some really nice clothes. I decided I don't want to talk about clothes any more right now. Anyways, I look cute. Came home to meet potential room mates, though no real leads just yet. Bobo and I watched most of Wall-E. The hype is real, I admit it.

Slept, ate, debated, and then decided to go out Saturday night. Drank Long Island Iced Teas danced a very little bit. Listened to girl rock, very loud, and very late. You know that genre Foxcore? Sort of like that, I guess. The phrase "secretly butch" is of import, I think.

Sunday we got a couch and a living room coffee table. I am trying to focus on the positive. There're some things to think about, I guess. Still looking for a room mate. Worried

I've got some things I'd like to talk about. Some experiences I'd like to use as ideas. For the zine, y'know. For some song I'm working on, for this new piece I've been thinking about. Really, I talk like I have this creative life in my head because when I see other people do it, it seems appealing. What's the word? Pose. In California when I was in high school (I was a punk rocker, a riot boi) being a poseur was the worst thing you could be. Now in New York, posing is considered quite successful. That's all good and fine, I guess. I live on a grid, so do you.

This could feel good.

What's New?

When I was in the sixth grade I was best friends with this girl and we both had crushes on the metal dudes at our school. This was in my California suburb in the mid-1990s. These guys were in a band, I don't remember what they were called but it was like Anthrax-- the name of a chemical. One of the guys in the band, Tim, had a huge crush on my best friend and everyone knew it including her, but she just wasn't into it. I, however, was totally into the guy but I didn't know it at the time. Actually now that I'm thinking about it he wasn't actually in the band but he hung out with them. Tim and I would walk home from school together and he would tell me how much he loved my best friend all the time. I just wanted to go over to his house so we could watch music videos. He and his friends had hours of MTV2 on VHS (the bitch is real). These are the kids that would discover pot first. Once, even though I had been sworn to secrecy, I told Tim a salacious story about my best friend.

At my best friend's house recently, she had another girlfriend over for a slumber party. For some reason, maybe her parents knew about it, Tim and his best friend Mark, who played bass in the band came over late at night to hang out. There was some pretext of a sober virginal double date or something. But we weren't even kissing yet, really. Really young. At some point my best friend and Mark were the only ones up, the other two kids having fallen asleep and been rejected by the respective objects of their desires. My best friend was watching a movie sitting next to Mark and slyly, without making eye contact, sort of masturbated him, over his underpants and (obviously cargo) shorts with her foot, while she was wearing a sock. He didn't cum. Or, she couldn't tell and she didn't ask told me "Cum isn't the point Max, the point is you that can never tell anyone about this, especially not Tim. You're the only one who knows."

I think I made it something like 20 hours from the time she told me until I told Tim while we were walking home from school together. He started crying and told me that it broke his heart. I didn't tell him because I wanted him to be sad or not like my best friend, I told him because I thought that if he saw that I was on his side and told him things even things I wasn't supposed to, that he would like me. My best friend found out in something like 15 minutes and called me to curtly say "You can't keep your mouth shut, so I'm never speaking to you again." And I was totally devastated. The next morning she came up to me in drama class, in full damage control mode, and said "Ok. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to act like you didn't tell anyone and we're just going to act like this whole thing never happened, okay?"

Everything as fine after that. She bought a copy of Switchblade Symphony's cd-single for "Drool" and I was so jealous cause I couldn't find it anywhere and she got it at fucking Hot Topic and I was livid that she had it and I couldn't have it. And somehow she knew that i wanted it and gave to me. And I still have it and I still listen to it all the time.

Buckets / Drops

Ever since my stomach got better (but it wasn't just my stomach, all of my tubes all over my body including blood tubes-- veins), I've been starving. Ravenous. Eating extra meals every day to make up for lost time. I liked that, for about a week you could almost see one of my abdominal muscles, but fuck that. I'm hungry.

On that note:

THINGS THAT ACTUALLY ARE REAL AND LIVE UP TO THE HYPE AND ARE NOT A TOTAL DISAPPOINTMENT AND DON'T MAKE ME WANT TO KILL MYSELF TODAY (a partial list):

• New York City
  
• Róisín Murphy
• Me, sometimes
  
• THE PRETZEL CROISSANT AT CITY BAKERY

So expensive. So worth it.

Fuck, man. If this is the only good thing that happens to me all weekend I'm fine with that.

l'homme que j'aime

Today I feel much better. I don't know what else to say about that other than I hope it sticks. I so rarely get sick, but when I do it's pretty bad. I'm feeling basically 100% better. Like magick. Thanks to acupuncture and moxibustion, I guess. Witchery.

My horoscopes are highlighting a) change and b) my libido. Both welcome distractions from the last few weeks. I have been Completely Fucking Miserable. My dad is in the hospital, but it's not very serious. Just worrying. Feel like I'm in a den of vipers! Feel sharp things all around me. I am being very conscious to avoid things that look painful. So much energy and concentration, on choosing the lesser of two evils. Okay. Jenny is still leaving, Jaime is still leaving after her. Incredible difficulty with managing stress. Have so much to work on. Whichever ends soonest: that's the one I want.

I got a copy of Dec/Jan Interview magazine, which I am in. (Stay tuned, I plan on making the biggest most obnoxious deal about it when it hits newsstands 12/2). Also, found out that the interview I did for AXM Magazine is now online. You can see it here.The photo is from my little interview. Stuart Sanford took the picture and I think he is just so fabulous and sweet and nice and funny. His pictures are great. As La JJ says (another of the wonderful ginger-haired faggots in my life, the original in fact): "His art is very much in the style of now, isn't it?" I agree.








Tomorrow night, after going to Ves Pitts' opening at the Christopher Henry Gallery because he is another amazing photographer I am lucky enough to know and a photo of me is in the exhibition), I am going to perform at this amazing party in Brooklyn. Please come.

I would like for some distractions to happen. I like the idea of having to PREPARE OURSELVES to be happy. I am certainly out of shape and out of practice. Since my stomach is now cooperating with me, I have been ravenous. It's like I am learning to eat all over again. And I sort of am learning, I have new systems in place. This is a productive and apt metaphor for the feeling I'm having. It's close to optimism, but with the caveat that we don't know things will get better. I'm such a downer. What I want to say is: I'm paying attention, or trying to. I'm working very very hard and though I have nothing to show for it and may never get well and never get rich and never get out of debt or famous, would you like to go grab a drink some time?

Here is a nice video of a pretty song that accurately sums up what I'm going for, girls:

The thing that has always bugged me about Star Wars and Star Trek and all these intergalactic war-slash-adventure movies is that in outer space, y'know, there's no sound. These explosions and rockets don't make any noise out there.

I feel like I'm riding in an ambulance in outer space. Futile cause it's quiet. None of the traffic gets out of my way. I don't even know where the space-hospital is.

It blows my mind, people on the street. Holding hands. Saw a guy in sweatpants this morning with a puppy tucked into his sweatshirt, drinking Starbucks and wearing flip flops. Who are these people that have so much leisure time? I want desperately to be so idle. To spend my mornings doing what I feel like.

Every morning for the last two weeks I wake up and ask myself how sick I feel and that really fucking sucks.

holding pattern. no blood, no emergency room. "mother mother" bonham. i need a new watch, something with a television in it so i'll have something to look at to make me want to pass the time.


still need room mates, still don't have the time to meet anybody. okay.

okay. okay.

anthems for invisible countries that don't exist.

i'm singin em.

W4B

Hello girls.

I should maybe say hello ghouls. We're in a graveyard, I realize. I'm in the back of a butcher shop, this is where I'm hiding. Count ONE MISSISSIPPI TWO MISSISSIPPI THREE MISSISSIPPI FOUR, come find me.

On the train yesterday morning on the way to my modeling gig a homeless man sat next to me and started screaming at me threats and scary things. I wrote in my notebook COME GET ME. Now I feel like I'm playing that game? Sardines? Hide & Seek? I used to play that with my neighbors when my family lived in Los Angeles. Those were the days. When I was 8. I feel like I'm hiding but I'm the only one playing.

I mean to say: HELLO GIRLS HELLO GHOULS

We're in a graveyard.

Literally nothing is going right. I cannot control how I feel or what I do or what I think or even what I'm alllowed to put in my body. I am most definitely NOT feeling better, still sick. Maybe forever. This is what it's like now.

Any conversation I have with anyone involves something going very wrong. There are too many things to count and I am very scared. Welcome to the Jungle. What's the word THE GREEK WORD (so many Greek words! I should get a new book I should travel and learn a new language huh?) for when you see a murder and then you are complicit in the murder? MIASMA? I feel like I am complicit because I am watching horrible things happen. And then I share them with you all on this neat little blog. Gawd remember LIVEJOURNAL? Or DIARYLAND? Now THOSE were the days, if you ask me. No one ever asks me. Alright!

When will it be enough, I wonder? What's my cue?

I guess the rule of thumb is WAIT FOR BLOOD.

For what it's worth I don't think we'll have to wait very long, girls. Let's get this show on the road!

morning

And I'll show you a TV that you can't turn off. There are no commercials it's one long music video with a laugh track and everything is in black and white. (I mean gray). Video of trains crashing in such slow motion that it goes on forever. Permanent glass shattering more. Oh y'know I'm easy you wouldn't even have to tape my eyes open tie me down to make me watch it I would LOVE for it to go down like that I would volunteer to go in front of television tubes like that. I want something I can plug into and just forget, honey.

There are too many colors here. There's too much noise here too many singers and too much news too many details. I'm counting fingernails on infants I'm counting boxes of nails. Let's clip one and hammer another. Yeah yeah I said I wanted wild I know I begged the jungle to be nice to me and I got eaten and I got sick and I won't stop so get me out of here get me to drier higher ground. I feel scales growing on me I smell smoke I see birds escaping we don't have to agree but I know that all things finite flammable and gorgeous are not worth fighting over. Say hi to me on the street. Check underneath me see if I'm leaking. Rotate. Burn. And all for some tiny compliment, some wrist. Look at where your hands are you think you're writing something you fucking creep look at your hands you're not doing anything ain't got no strings to hold me up. Thinks he's cute.

I'm half crazy (guess which half) with desperation for you, still, like a tidal wave inside a thimble it doesn't mean anything it means heavy hard small and it hurts. An imaginary gravity I'm being pulled but you can't see it right? Like I make it up right? Like I don't have to keep falling. I'm half crazy with desperation for some dumb old orbit the same every day since I was 15 or 16 or 17 the same green blue gray eyes it won't stop. Like my chest is full of overripe fruit I want to get firmer greener more alive but your amorous little mouth and your cool new boyfriend are proving me rotten. So go, so sick, so half with desperation and half without any nutrients I'm driving myself insane. I'm starving my brain to get the chemicals to flow backwards, I'll wind up with the mind of an infant screaming insatiable, colic sudden deaths you want to see me helpless want to watch me learn to grasp at the sad facts of the world I wobble on my feet like a newborn just like you want me to, do you like me when I drool?

Full stop agonize. I've neither had a full night's sleep nor an actual meal in the last week. I think (hope) I have some kind of virus. Doc isn't too worried.

No fun. No thinking.

I need a new room mate. I need two new room mates. Help.

I want to make (another) list of things gone wrong / bad. But I don't know if it'll help. I've been keeping a running tally, my "List Of Complaints" on my computer. I like when I forget to add something, sort of. Maybe it's better that way? My biggest complaint is that I'm still sick.

I've lost 8 pounds in the last week. And not the fun way. I am prescribed the B.R.A.T. diet for the next week, at least. Today I am getting fitted for my modeling shoot this weekend. Strange.

But there are so many things that are bugging me. Almost all other people, other boys. I'm glad to not have much of a social life, lately. I've been doing a lot of laying down, groaning.

And I'm also sad that Miriam Makeba died.

title of love song

YOU NEED TO KNOW

Was Your Past Time

Some Eternity that was. Some Hell, huh?

What I wouldn't give for some fucking punctuation in my life! To emerge from the last week as if waking up. Like "Now you can stop freaking out, it's going to be okay." I want some assurance. And I want that assurance to be: feeling good. I keep waiting. My cold is gone. My stomach is more or less better. I'm still pretty miserable, but I think this might be a chemical truth of me. My 'me'-ness involves some misery. Dig. I just want to go to bed and ride it out. It's almost done. (I guess this without knowing it).

I feel as if I have been built wrong. Like I am missing arms, internal organs. Some intrinsic mechanism of understanding, that software that comes bundled with every other human being I know, I seem to lack. The software I'm talking about is the ability to deal with anything. I don't have that. This is why the Octopus has been kind of totemic to me. (You might not know this about me, so I will tell you. Themes of my teenage years: Octopuses and Zombies, chosen for what I perceived to be their extraordinary resilience).

My room mate Jenny is moving out. We moved into our apartment, the only place I've ever lived in NYC, three years ago (Summer of 2005). Her cats, Quinn and Ilya, are a major part of my life, both blessing (Quinn) and curse (Ilya). She owns nearly everything in our house, has been the sort of House Mom, doing all the renovations. I sleep on a bed loaned from her. Although we hang out outside of our house only sometimes, living with her has been a pretty central part of my life. We have witnessed each other's ups and downs over the last few years and she has been, whether she knows it or not, My Family in New York. And while I understand her reasons for wanting to move on, I am pretty heartbroken.

I don't know what to do about anything.

To start: I am excited about Obama. It feels like anything else is second to this. I am pretty excited. Watched the victory speech this morning and shed a tear.

I'm still sick. I feel awful. In addition to being physically uncomfortable, I'm beyond nervous. I hate getting sick and try to avoid it. I have to perform on Thursday (a reading) Friday (rock show) and Saturday (go-go dancing). I really don't want to cancel any of these things, but I have a legitimate cold. I can't really concentrate on anything and feel worryingly weak, and a number of circumstances make missing work impossible. There are few things that reliably make me feel better. Like, almost none. But exercise is one and I didn't get to go to the gym at all this week. And that really sucks. I feel pretty hopeless. And also it just began raining and I don't have an umbrella and I have a big new zit growing on my face.

It feels like I'm being a buzz kill, but I'm not going to judge myself for admitting it, especially not on my blog. Despite the enormous good in the world, I am absolutely miserable.

Last night I dreamed I woke up on a satellite. (Y'know that song by the Need? 'Pony 4 Honey'? "Step Up to the Saddle. Wake up on a satellite. Come home to Mama. Wake up on a satellite"). It occured to me that it was an abandoned satellite and that no one knew I was there. I felt some kind of machinery turn on and felt it move and turn around, towards Earth. In the dream I had my cell phone in my pocket, and I got a call. I hoped at first that it might be someone to help me, or at least explain what was going on. It was a someone named Jake or something, some generic boy. I ignored the call, much in the way I've been ignoring calls from boys for a while now. The satellite, which wasn't built for human travelers, hurdled towards the earth and started heating up. It became clear that I was going to die and I wondered for a second where I would hit the earth. I woke up out of breath and with my stomach too distended to move.

These things. We keep them.
I am hoping that a small change happens.

Such! Overwhelming!

Yesterday was a black it didn't happen.

I'm looking at my old journal. I used to be so much more superstitious, I wrote a lot about how everything means something. I talk a lot about it to my friends and it's true: my personality has changed in a fundamental way over the last year and a half. I do not feel good and haven't in a while. I don't know what to do.

I think I'm getting a cold. I can't, though, get sick. I have to work and have to write a bunch of things and have to perform on Thursday and Friday and go-go dance on Sunday and I want to start crying. How can I complain about this? Everything is hard.

I am trying not to make it pretty. Not to romanticize the parts of my own craziness, the parts that catalog every thing anyone has ever said. But there is such! overwhelming! evidence! Some kind of pattern! Normal people do not lose days. Normal boys can have a conversation without wanting to jump out of a window. There's a word for boys like me. My stomach hurts. Again.

Heartening that as we speak, our country is electing Barack Obama.

Love Me Yet

Bought Kathy Acker's Bodies of Work, not sure if I had read it before, senior year of college. About Burroughs. That's a nice pair of words, 'About Burroughs', isn't it? I have a terrific stomach ache, and so much work to do.

In a horrible mood today. All weekend. It might not be a mood, it might just be how I am from now on. Good Morning Buddha I am ready for your close-up. A suffering machine.

Realize now, nightclub, that no one cares how smart you are and especially no one cares how sensitive you are. No one wants to hear about your ideas, how you feel about how you're treated. How remarkably significant your lot in life is.What to do, then, with all these nerve endings bundled up like exposed wire?

I don't go up or down. I move laterally, like a sidewinder snake. What do you call them? Sandy, they live in the desert. Y'know, lots of things do live in the desert. We think of these places (on the world, in our hearts) as dead. Like a tundra. But it sustains life too, in the permafrost. So yeah I am like a desert animal I am like algae which grows in boiling water, frozen dirt. I'm not so special, I mean, we all are special. We all live, all the time together.

I am not resenting people for being nice to me. But what am I supposed to do? Top or Bottom or shiver like some wounded bird? You want to wash the crusted blood off of my feathers. Feed me from an eyedropper. To let you witness and capitalize on my pain or something. As if I had a private pain in the first place. Jeez.

I think I will feel better when my stomach does. I hope so. My friend asks "Do You Love Me Yet?" That is as beautiful a sentiment as I can imagine today. Fiction and power and optimism and sleight-of-hand. So I will make that my little slogan for the foreseeable future: revealing ourselves to be always ready for love.