8/24/11

Sleepless in the Nothing

Last night after work I went home and instead of going to the gym, I took a long walk from my house in East Williamsburg over the bridge to Manhattan. I got some dumplings in Chinatown for dinner, and walked up to 14th Street to catch the subway home. It was such a beautiful day, and I wanted to have some more sunshine since Summer is almost over. I felt really quiet and meditative. I didn’t even listen to any music or anything, the whole time.

I want to blame Mercury Retrograde, duh, but I can’t. I’ve just been feeling kind of shitty lately. Maybe not even bad, just sort of blank.



Sleeping in the Nothing as it were. I really loved Kelly Osbourne's first album, Shut Up, and had some of my first and formative sexual experiences while listening to it. (I'm that young - it's that old). her second album, though, I never really got into. I liked the single, "One Word" of course. It totally got panned, which is something I usually like but I never gave it a shot. My buddy Cotton in San Francisco is convinced that this record was an attempt to seduce a gay audience. It's apparently a disco record and also the Golden Gate bridge is inexplicably on the cover. For some reason. It's a shame that gay people couldn't rally around Kelly the way we have rallied around other people.

Gay people have such a fucked-up sense of generosity, because we're so continually told that we don't deserve anything. So to give to someone else is a real chore for us. It's a total task.



But sometimes you have to do chores. Tasks. Like, Yvonne Rainer's legendary/iconic/boring/long Trio A. Where you make a dance out of everyday motions. Like turning tasks into art. That's nice. Gay people should do this. Maybe this is what turned Yvonne Rainer gay. (You don't turn gay you just are).

Anyway last night was great, at dusk. I sound like such a creep, but I was really into the late-summer good moods everyone was having. NYC is so great because it throws you directly into everybody else. I mean, "everybody else" being "the people who live here, too" which sometimes can seem pretty shitty. But last night it was great. I kept overhearing snippets of people's conversations. So many glamorous people eating at tables on the sidewalk. Breadsticks and cloth napkins and sunglasses and polos and tans and water with ice cubes. Talking about what they had each been doing that day, and what they were going to do next. And then a bus would drive by and spray them with black smoke. I love New York City. It's so expensive to eat out, only the very rich can do it.

I was really conscious, for some reason, of how shitty I looked. When i got home from work, I changed my shirt. I was wearing these really old black Cheap Monday jeans which were at one point quite tight, but the elastic has worn out and now they're kind of baggy. And this brown t-shirt that a girlfriend gave to me, after having knicked it off a lover she'd rather not remember. (But then I'd wear it, this old comfortable brown shirt, and it would probably remind her of him). But then I got to the Williamsburg Bridge at dusk as the sun was setting and I saw a patch of sparkle on my shirt I didn't realize that I had also worn the shirt on Saturday, the night after my performance at Southpaw, and I had used this shirt to wipe off the silver eyeliner I had worn onstage for the show. It was weird. I felt kind of gross. Like sort of ragged, maybe.



So obsessed with this bag. I wish I had gotten it together to get one, but I think they're making them for men, for the Spring, in black. Which sounds nicer, I guess. I like the orange color, though. But then by next spring that orange might not even matter. Colors come and go in and out of style so you have to make sure that you are wearing the right ones. Or I guess holding them. Kinda into something being "played-out," though, because I feel like in many ways that is what I am: played-out. That bag though, is so cute. So simple and mean, in a way.

So, okay. Wearing a lame outfit and feeling gross and dirty and ragged and bad-looking. But totally grooving on the mind/body/spirit of NYC. In that mood where everyone is beautiful, where I am seeing the majesty in everyone's walk. I was so overwhelmed by the constant contact with people that I realized I was avoiding actually looking into anyone's face. Finally, making my way through the East Village, I made a conscious decision to stare everybody right in the eyes, for like, a second. To just make eye contact with every single person I passed.



Now, two things about this:

A) I remember hearing or reading somewhere that Madonna did this, also, in the East Village. In the 1980s when everything happened. But I think she did it with the idea that, like, she wanted everybody to remember seeing her, because she knew she was going to be really famous one day. She seemed like she wanted to connect with people to intimidate them somehow. Force herself into their faces. I did NOT do it like that, I did it because I honestly wanted to see people. Maybe to see if there was anyone I recognized or something?

B) This is also sort of an exercise in the law of diminishing returns, because I have really terrible eyesight, so I was "looking" but not necessarily "seeing" everybody, in the face, exactly.

And anyway the exercise came to as abrupt of an end as it did a start, because as soon as I looked up, I saw this guy I used to think was cute and I felt like a total slob and really gross. We said hey hi how're you how's it going and kept walking. I thought 'Do I have my earphones in? That would be such a good excuse for not stopping to say hi.' I did not. We passed each other and I felt myself blushing, and then I ran into another guy I used to know, one who in fact dumped me a very long time ago. It took us a second to recognize each other and then we said hi and did not stop either.

My next thought was to get a popsicle but then I decided to wait until I got home. I took the train home and I got a pineapple popsicle, but then I was suddenly too sleepy to eat it.



I've always loved this video and this song. I feel like it's really apt, for me, lately. I don't know. I think Lily Allen is cool. I just got back from rehearsal for this play I am going to be in. Joseph Keckler is in the play and at rehearsal tonight, which was at this really huge fantastic Off-Broadway theater, he was wearing these really cute sparkly silver and black Dolce & Gabanna sneakers. I could never pull something like that off but they were really good.

Ok I have a popsicle to attend to.

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