3/25/14

Tougher

Yeah so it's Tuesday, I get real stressed out on Tuesdays so I did a code and tapped in back in time and went and looked for someone, a file I had closed. We had stopped speaking, mutually, sort of friendly, sort of not. I felt sad, I'd been thinking of him fondly lately. He's doing well, I guess. He's in love with a doctor.

Is it mean to tell someone that you think of them as the one that got away? Is that cruel? It seems mean. It seems selfish. What if the person has a whole new life now. What right do you have to tell them something that would upset them?


The best part is always the waving at the horns on "good riddance, goodbye"

Might not even upset him, actually. Likely not. A fantasy of being a homewrecker. Too bad your family likes the Doctor. No, dump him and take back up with Billy. How would you explain me to the family "Yeah he was this totally awful guy I dated a few years ago and now we're back together"? It's a moot point. I just wonder, is it cruel or mean or wrong to tell someone: I think of you as the one that got away. You know. You know I've always loved you, carried a torch for you.

I think maybe it's not necessarily so mean. It's basically saying I'm sorry. I'm sorry things worked out the way they did. I wish they would have worked out differently. Or, maybe the better question to ask is if it's mean to say you're sorry. Probably someone feels pretty okay with how things have worked out so far. And besides, why bother bellyaching about the past?



"Don't fuck things up by getting sick, again."

Thinking about my old buddy Charlie today and missing him. If he were here he would definitely not stand for me throwing such a hissyfit. He'd take me out for milkshakes or something. Minigolf. He'd love most of my friends, and hate others, and he'd have crushes on all of them it'd be a wreck. Y'know, for someone who complains and freaks out as much as I do, I cut myself very little actual slack and I wish Charlie were still here to remind me that the exboyfriend is cute but not that cute and to get over it. Charlie would have been jealous. He would have reminded me that I'm stretched kind of thin and am overwhelmed, but the thing is keeping the way-- what do they call it? Keep the space? Hold the candle? Keep someone's memory alive? You have to do the stuff they used to do. That is, if you care about it getting done anymore.
I feel uncontrollably angry. I feel rage! It's energetic. I feel chaotic. I meditated this morning, my good-boy ten minutes. I wish, thinking back on it now, that I had spent that same ten minutes furiously masturbating, punching a pillow, or chainsmoking.

What's the point of being more present in your life if your life feels hopeless? This is my thing with the whole branding thing: what if you do the work of branding, of finding out who you are, and you find out you're a shitty person?

I've been having this struggle lately-- I feel like nobody wants to be my friend. And it's because I don't want to be my friend. I don't fundamentally feel like I deserve happiness and love and respect, and so I don't demand it. And I mistake flattery for love and I mistake resentment for respect. But it comes from me-- nobody wants to find out more about me because I don't want to find out more about me. I don't want to be me.

This is the school of acting that I subscribe to: it's not about putting on a mask to become a character, it's about taking off the masks you already wear until you find something that resonates with the character.

I have to think, statistically, I'm not such a fantastically awful person. But where is the proof of that. Where is the hopeful indication. Probably all around. Probably I'm just too freaked out to notice it. Do I sound bratty? Where's my parade. Feeling very much as if I am not good. I'm no one's favorite person. I am not anyone's "type". Nothing I could think of or say or do-- nobody is waiting on me to say it. I'm not fishing for compliments here, I don't want to be contradicted. I want to find out if this is really what my life is like, and therefore must be what everyone's life is like, and how come everyone else can sort of grapple with this and I can't? Is everyone fooling themselves? It seems like.

SO many people think they're so interesting. Get on my level, guys. YES, she had a rough day. She's had a lot of people lately (it feels like) tell her how awful and lacking she is. And she needs some people to be nice to her, to help her, to support her. But she doesn't know how to ask.

I would like it very much, the romantic comedy version. I would enjoy tremendously, the discotheque finale. The happy ending. I'd like very much for some knitted eyebrows to swoop in and save the day. To be nothing more substantial, for the answer to be no bigger than a couple fistfuls of flesh. Wouldn't. That. Be. Fucking. Great.

I'd much prefer it to be a thing that can be fixed by me just saying I love you, I love you, I love you but I don't know... It's weird. There're a couple guys in my life who it seems like, they just want to hang out with me every couple months to have me tell them how cute I think they are. How attracted to them I am. And I do this, happily. It sort of turns me on to be affectionate, it certainly, I think (and tell them) doesn't cost me anything. But the thing is, they never say it back to me. They don't actually like me, or they're not attracted to me. Or they just don't want me to know? I think, that's fine, I don't need that. But you know what I'm actually not a super self-confident person and I definitely don't think or know that I'm attractive, like actually, and I do need that.

I have three goals I set with my Analyst last week:

- Cry. Learn to cry, somehow.
- Get a boyfriend or at least start working towards more romantic relationships and romantic love in my life.
- Restructure my life in such a way that my workload and daily responsibilities don't make me so suicidal.

So, thinking about these guys in my life where I'm called on to just say I love you, I am attracted to you, You're my type, I think about you all the time. It makes me want to cry. But I can't. The funny thing is, these guys, they kind of look exactly the same. I have a type. I'll admit it. I want to be some body else's type.

3/18/14

We were talking this weekend, in Chinatown, about theories of pedophilia. We were at a tea house, the one he knew that made sugar-free bubble tea. He bought mine for me. I got mango with bubbles, regular sugar. We were talking about pedophilia. I told him that I sometimes joked that I'm the only gay man I know who doesn't want to fuck little boys. That's a joke, obviously. He told me about some theories, I forget whose theories exactly, Foucault maybe, which posit that the theory of the child is a kind of fallacy, a projection of adult fantasies. And that actually, so-called children could be thought of as completely autonomous, and they could in fact want to have sex with adults, with so-called adults. I'm boiling an eloquent point down to a sentence. Basically, that the whole question of adults doing it to kids is only one way to look at it; that there're other theories that think of it in more nuanced terms or whatever.

Right, I said. And how convenient. You know. How convenient to discover this theory that the kid maybe wants it. It's especially convenient if you want to fuck kids, right? To know about this theory. It's really lucky for you, to discover the theory, far out and radical as it may be that the kid wants it. That what you want is okay. Of course you have to think that.

And we were also talking about masculinity, and I expressed a kind of frustration I had (personal and political and larger) with this kind of masculinity that has to constantly assert itself. That only knows itself through conflict, domination and submission. The kind of masculinity that was concerned only with expressing, demonstrating power. He said "But that's what masculinity is."

I said no, it isn't. I said there's a myriad of other ways to be. To be masculine, to be in the world, in a way that we might call masculine. It's just that our culture teaches us there's only one way to be and only one awful way to measure it. It's like saying that that the only way to get around is in a Mercedes Benz. That could be the standard, the dream, the ideal or whatever. In the commercial. But as a matter of course, most of us have to find other ways to get around. I guess it's just that we don't talk about the buses we're taking. The public transportation. How we're all fine, right?

We finished out bubble tea and walked uptown and I met up with my cousin and we said goodbye. It was a beautiful day on Saturday.

3/9/14



I really identify with this video. I feel like that's me, you know?

Wildly unproductive weekend, but restful. Friday night I went to see darling boy Sam McKinniss read at Macie Gransion. I got there just barely in time to see him read, and then I high-tailed it back to Brooklyn to go to my old college friend's engagement party. I saw a bunch of old friends, and a couple old frenemies (yikes!) and had the best time hanging out with Miss Jiddy No-No and Miss Jess Paps. I came up with a new nickname for her: instead of Jess Paps I want to start calling her Dress Paps.

The DJ played "Lovefool" by the Cardigans and everyone loved it. I loved it. Then they played "Alright!" by Supergrass and everyone loved it. Then they played "Malibu" by Hole and everyone loved it. It felt so strange: this is going, pretty soon, to be considered Classic Rock. Oldies. But it already sounds old, right? But even the things it sounded like were trying to sound like other things. Everything, as I tweeted earlier this weekend, is always about something else, too. Everything is always lost in looking. I guess we all are?

So the party was fun and I came home, after having been drinking (ugh) on an empty stomach. I got a lot of falafel and ate it in bed and passed out by 1am. Saturday I went to the gym and I went to Thee Irish Horse's house to meet up with them and Lady Rimalower to rehearse/workshop some things we're all working on. They were totally tremendously inspiring and exciting. I feel really grossed out and frustrated with my show, MAPPLETHORPE. I feel like I need to be uglier and tougher and bigger. Actually it's just that I need to for real seriously write the rest of the show. And quit being so scared. OK.



After our get-together (Becca had these really amazing apples and crazy peanut butters: coconut almond cardamom? CInnamon? What.), I went to Miss Max Bernstein's house for Happy Hour. We ordered Indian Food and talked a lot about how she just got back from the Coast and loves it out there, wants to move back. We talked about love or guys or whatever, you know. I had quite a bit of Happy Hour and came home to pass out, again before 1am. What is wrong with me.

Woke up early this morning to go see the Duchess for her birthday. She did up her living room all in pink, with cat-faces balloons, vegan pastel candies, astrological sign coasters, super spicy potato chips, big pink pillow bed, oldies country music playing and Doris Day movies queued up. And sunlight streaming in, and the cats laying around, cuddling. X made this lovely cocktail out of sweet tea vodka, pineapple juice, coconut water and coconut cream. It tasted great, but it did smell, as the Duchess pointed out, exactly like a fresh pumpkin, when you cut into it to make a jack-o-lantern. It was nuts! Also, there was cotton candy. And then Maude and Jawn showed up with psychedelic red velvet and vegan brownie cupcakes, respectively. And then I had to go rehearse.

I went to BAX to rehearse and I don't feel like I did anything productive and I'm super angry with myself. I took a ten minute nap in the studio but I didn't fall all the way asleep so I'm half-counting it as meditating.

Then I went to the Whitney Houston Biennial in DUMBO. I had to wait in a long line and I was having a nic fit, but then I got in and the show was cool, and PACKED! And Annie Sprinkle was there. I didn't know anyone. And like, not to be a brat about it, but it was weird to be at a big big art show and to not know anyone there. It was cool, but then I saw people I know, like Andrew and Pozsi and Adam and Emily and it was cool. I had some wine and checked out the art. i didn't end up staying for Narcissister's performance. I bummed a cigarette from a cool girl outside and came home. I ordered Chinese from Red House and I'm doing this cute podcast video thing then I'm gonna eat and go to sleep. I feel weird and lazy and unproductive but I think it's sort of ok?

ALSO: I'm performing on Wednesday night at Wreck Room, at this WIRED party. I really want you to come. I'm on this thing of I want to be performing a lot, but it's also hard to get the actual desire together? Like I want to want. I do want to perform a lot. I'm glad I'm performing on Wednesday.

3/6/14

Such a Lazer Beam

Last weekend I did the "You Like Me" show of people performing famous American acceptance speeches. I performed Fiona Apple's speech from the VMAs. I think I did a pretty good job. I like acting. I like being an actor. It's so straightforward, in a way. The show was full of luminaries including Erin Markey, Molly Pope, Justin Vivian Bond, Perez Hilton, Michael Schulman, Rachel Shukert, Mike Albo... it goes on and on. I've wanted to do this show forever and so I was really vindicated to be asked. It was also at Ars Nova, which is pretty fancy. I noticed, leaving the theater after rehearsal, the condos along 54th Street. The plants in the windows. It reminded me of the ones my grandmother used to have. Like Bubby's. In a lot of the windows. These weird cacti with leaves. It made me miss her so much. I thought: lots of old people must live in these apartments, because these plants take a long time to grow.

I got really drunk in between the first and second shows. I think I kind of ran my mouth off a bit. It's because I'm actually kind of shy; I'm worried people won't like me, so I get nervous. And then sometimes I get drunk and just start trying to be as funny and charming as possible to get people to like me. It does not work, usually.

I got a text from a friend in the middle of the night last night that they went home to their parents' house and got high with their mom for the first time. But Mom thought it didn't work. I thought that was so sweet, to get in the middle of the night.

Last night, a different friend of mine showed me their list. They have a list, in their phone, of people who should stop, people who must be stopped. I was worried I'd be on the list. I wasn't on the list. There were some names I recognized and thought at the time "Yeah, I agree. That makes sense." but I can't remember them.

Last night I went to the opening of the Whitney Biennial. There's so much great work there. So many names that I remember seeing, and the work-- seeing it, and thinking "Yeah, I agree. That makes sense." but I can't remember them.

Downstairs at the Whitney, in the cocktail lounge, boy genius art star Travis was wearing very cute black colored textures, shorts over tights, and smoking an e-cigarette. I didn't know you could smoke those indoors, in a museum. But I guess you can do whatever you want. He had a whole pack of e-cigarettes. I took one and Christa, who was there, with a partially shaved head and a gorgeous black dress, took another one, and we e-smoked in the lobby, the lounge.

There was a DJ playing 60s psych rock. It was weird; he was dressed sort of like a Mod. It's not that I don't like that kind of music, I do-- doesn't everyone?-- but I just wasn't in the mood to hear it right then. Nobody was. Nobody was feeling the music.

Tonight I went to the Brucennial, the last one, and I saw Julia Norton's new painting and I saw a video Penny Arcade made about Jack Smith. I love them, those ladies. I wish I had seen both of them at the same time to introduce them to each other!

If you had told me, when I was 14, I would not have believed you. When I saw Penny Arcade perform at the first Ladyfest, in Olympia Washington, and I saw her really fuck everything up. I mean she made that crowded place go NUTS. People were furious! And happy! And everything in between, but mostly at the edges. If you had told me that some day I'd get to meet Penny, get to tell her how much her work meant to me, I would not have believed you. If you had told me that some day I'd go to an art opening and just casually shoot the shit with her while she showed me her video installation, I'd have thought you were lying. That she'd ask "Do you think they should put speakers for the video? It's too quiet." and then borrow my phone to call the person to come bring the speakers, I would not have believed you. I can barely believe it myself.

Then tonight I went to Analysis. Then I went to Aaron Tilford's new party "Lover" at the Monster. It's a soft-rock happy hour with $5 Tequila Sunrises and lots of Carly Simon. I almost didn't believe him, but it's real. It's kind of too good to be true? It's early, it's monthly, and it's free. It's my new favorite thing. He said he might have performances and I want to do a soft-rock song.

I want to perform a lot again right now. I think it's because I'm really angry and I have a lot of questions, I'm really confused. There's some stuff I still don't get and I'm trying to figure it out.

If you had told me when I was 15 that some day I'd go years and years without crying, that I would waste a lot of my life worrying, that I'd be so angry about so much, I would not have believed you.

Last night, a different friend described someone to me this way: "Oh, he's such a lazer beam. You know? When he's focused he's like--" my friend made a lazer beam gesture with his hand. I totally understood what he meant.

3/3/14

PIZZA CONFESSION

Alright, look. That guy who's eaten nothing but pizza for 25 years? That is a hoax. It's not true. You can't live like that. You would definitely become very ill and die. That guy did not eat only pizza for 25 years. It's a stunt. It's a performance art piece. It's me in drag. It's a performance I did. I had my friend take photos and I had someone else write an article about me and then I had other people tell everyone about the article. I just wanted to put that idea out there, into the world: that it's okay to eat pizza every day for 25 years and nothing else. That it's possible, that it's okay. That you can be cute and thin and have a "girlfriend". I decided it had to be a heterosexual because otherwise the gay thing would kind of overpower the rest of the story. So to keep it more universal or mainstream, he has a girlfriend. But she's cool with it! He's a vegetarian. He stuck to his guns. And he's fine. Some doctors say he's not but doctors are crooks. You can't trust anyone. He's fine. He does it every day. I just wanted to see, to show you all what that would look like. Was the idea I had.

FAG CITY TREND REPORT: 2014 ACADEMY AWARDS


  • Pregnancy, Moms of all ages.
  • Sparkly/metallic clothes.
  • Crazy Goat Eyes.
  • Making fun of Jennifer Lawrence, and making fun of women in general.
  • Thanking ghosts, talking to/for ghosts onstage. Representing dead people.
  • Pizza (ED. NOTE: THIS IS MY FAVORITE TREND!)
  • Nude dresses. Not beige, white people's "flesh tone". Sometimes embellished.
  • Designer collaborations, in general. A personal relationship to the clothing designer. Clothes designed as a personal favor to the wearer.
  • Fundraising. Frank discussion of finances.
  • Deliberately fucking up; either consciously or subconsciously mispronouncing people's names either to show a kind of so-called comic levity and/or to articulate thinly veiled racist sentiments.
  • Ellen DeGeneres' surprisingly caustic, nuanced and hilarious performance. She is a vegan.