7/26/17

POWDERED MINT

I think maybe I dreamed it. I keep post it's next to my bed and my desk. The phrase powdered mint came to be written there a while ago. I know I've talked about it and maybe mentioned it here.

Or the notes that never make it here.

I think it's also a beautiful phrase too.

But yesterday Saturday I set myself to task to find some. I didn't try that hard but I went to every Indian spice store in Murray Hill and no one had it. They had loose dried mint, and ground mint leaf, like for tea. The two smaller spice stores swore they had it but then realized they didn't. Had never heard of it. But were polite about it. One store said I could come back and the guy would grind some for me. But no. The their smaller store the guy gave me a pastry as soon as I walked in and swore they had it but ultimately admitted that they only had leaf mint.

The bigger more famous spice store didn't have it either. Powdered watermelon? Sure. Powdered white chia seeds? Of course. Powdered kiwi? Check. I asked one of the guys working there if they had powdered mint and he looked at me as if I was a totally fucking crazy person. Of course not. He said. Mint? No. Shook his head, annoyed at my ridiculous question.

I want it so finely powdered that I just have to add water to make a paste. I want to add it to coffee grounds.
I want to add it to oatmeal overnight with frozen mango paste and chia seeds (black, whole).

But no. नहीं / nahin.

Powdered mint remains for me a pipe dream. I wanted something the consistency of matcha.
Which is what I ended up using instead.

The weekend was good. Quiet. Bored/tired. Full of sleep and errands. Chores. I went to a party with Erin and it was so glamorous and hilarious to be at an academic party, talking and laughing with college professors. Being the date of a Broadway sensation. You know.

The beau and I went to that fancy new Taiwanese restaurant that opened near my house.

I napped a lot and didn't bug anyone. I got I guess sleep.

And now I'm going to the Monster to see Lady Bunny's afternoon DJane set of funk and disco. That's what I want.

Perfect. Utterly. Like Ptown. Early. Mostly an older mostly mixed racially crowd of fags. Rich and poor seeming. Getting down to the classics.



This stuff this vibe used to make me feel gross. Too faggy. I thought I'd be violated here.

But I'm not so cute anymore. Not a chicken any longer. Now I'm turkey. I guess in some way I always as huh.

Lady Bunny wears plays "Macho Man". She wears a bedraggled wig. And why not? It's Sunday evening at a free party at the Monster.

These are the spaces that excite me now. These are the good parties.

And it's not nightlife. It's early and it's death. Old records before sunset.

Let the young have the night.

We guard the sunrise and we guard the twilight.

I get up before the sun to go running.

I dance before sunset. Drinking tequila. With my old gay brothers fathers uncles sisters moms. My sons.

I think macho man was a joke. Now I'm in on it. Now it's so provincial. To even hint at it. We can't talk about masculinity anymore. Not so cavalierly.



This is why I came. Because lady bunny is a serious dj.

Djane.

She comes out to dance on the floor. She's a phenomenal dancer. Of course.

I want to see her solo show.



I feel yeah like at ptown. Old queers. Not all old of course.

Now I'm almost 33. Now I'm an old queer.

I was gonna say the only drawback is that the drinks aren't cheap. But they are! They're two for one. I lost my drink ticket but the bartender was nice about it.

Who has all this energy to dance so much on a Sunday afternoon?

I want to do a Sunday afternoon party. No food no barbecue. But chill music. Weed smokers. Maybe food. Candy. Curated. Give someone $300 for food. See what they come up with.

Make playlists instead of DJ.

Dispense with the frontal cortex.

God Lady Bunny is the best.

I love being in a room of queers to whom disco inferno means something.

They make fun of us. I mean even now that we're assimilated. They think we're weak. We have to pretend to be to fit in. They think we're sad and weak and broken. They think we're distracted. They think we're not working hard or something. They think we're a market.

But we've survived everything. We've always been here and always will be. We joke about death. Dance to songs about disco inferno.

We've seen death.

Who was the one who told you that a) you were beautiful and b) your beauty would fade?



This song always reminds me of Stella Starsky who I saw perform this song in ptown. In her show American baroness at Afterglow Festival She s an archetypal cool genius. If she likes this song it's worth listening to.

You know.

Once, a little over ten years ago, around that time. About that long ago, I went through a disco phase. I was sad. It was winter. Or summer. And disco saved me when I lost hope. Like it does for so many other people.
Okay okay I want whatever lady bunny has. She dances SO MUCH. How cool. What prescription is that.

Maybe I'm due for another disco phase.

Disco is like gay soul music.
But that comparison is fucked up and I'm sorry.



I never thought I would be so in love as I am. I never thought I'd be so rich. I couldn't conceive.
Right. And a piano bar upstairs. How chic and sad.

Our mausoleum. You don't know but in the basement we're still celebrating. We're not sad deep down inside. It makes me think of the new blow song.
About the fire inside.

I like seeing guys in their 50s, 60s feel each other up. I mean it.
The heat makes me so crazy. Like bewildered. The same way the extreme cold does. Makes me an animal.



It was so dark that you couldn't take pictures, in the basement of the Monster. You had to be there, it's kind of genius right. Impossible to convey; I'm not even really trying to.
On the morning of the new moon in Leo I'm waiting for good news. Everyone on the train is a math whiz.

Think about the way it must have affected artists, architects, dancers. A cancer of the faculty, the theater department. Imagine no one was there to tell you how gorgeous precious marketable easy you were. Hey ugly duckling let me get a dime bag and a copy of your demo tape.

We fear going crazy, fear being spied on, fear our robot kids e raised them but now they're unrecognizable and We worry they won't take care of us when we get old.

They'll recycle us. They'll dispose of us.
A kid fucking screaming wailing on the train as if being tortured
I mean case of the mondays.

While people helpfully suggesting ways to rearrange ourselves to better fit into crowded train.
The time of month, the end, when I'm hopelessly broke. Like really.

7/17/17

SEVENTEEN

It's Seven Seventeen Two Thousand Seventeen. Summer is a Device.

Some songs about being 17. Are the Boredoms doing some kind of durational performance somewhere today? I would have loved to see.

What does the candy bar on the shelf say? What does the jewel in the glass case say, when it calls out? What do the actors say? TAKE ME.



The first time I heard this song was in college. I think my room mate freshman year Tommy was playing it. I was only vaguely aware of Ladytron.

I didn't know there was a music video.
The lyrics to this song strike me as particularly true today.
Probably I knew they were true then too.

"say they'll let you know"
that really is how it is.
only a fool thinks they really will let you know.

you know when you're young enough and cute enough.
you know when you've got the job.

or you train yourself to know. but then
or someone trains you, but then you maybe think that knowing is just a quality.



Songs about disappearing.
Trimming.
I took a course.

I bought a new bed. One of those memory foam mattresses that come in a box. I miss a spring mattress. My current one, who's caused me so much pain over the years has been kind to me lately. Or I've found exactly how to avoid the broken springs. I guess I mean what's more important that sleep? "Nothing" PLD says. So I got it. I'm scared.

Trying to occupy myself with novelty/new things. I can't keep running. I can't just wake up every morning and just keep mortifying myself just mortar and pestle self I can't keep just getting up every morning and pasta pesto myself. I just wake up and exercise until I can't breathe and then only then decide how I feel about proceeding.

So now I leave myself just six hours to do a pastry of myself. Window shopping errands et cetera. Not quite unmoody not just yet.



Someone on the train playing a video game on their phone with the sound on.

We're all watching.

My childhood friend and I played Nintendo (SNES and, to a much lesser extent Classic) taking turns. So did my brother and I. I rarely write about this: the obsessive video game playing. Eventually limited to weekends. But the taking turns, the watching each other play video games seems to me a crucial aspect of the experience. Maybe I wish I woke up and played Nintendo today.

Window shopping. The sales and the new collections.

Gaybar autocorrects to crybaby.

I was trying to escape to write there in the shade.



I can't believe I've ruined so much: the world, the environment, my parents' credit. I tried this class mobility thing but I failed. The world wants me to be tough and authoritative but I'm chicken feathers all without one gut.
Try to make it real. But compared to what?
I'm not invited anywhere. I feel myself butchered. Made bacon.
I'm the source of all disappointment. I feel like I let everyone down, in all ways.
Desperate for a friend.

Okay some old guy at the bar asked if I had red hair as a kid. I said no. He said he was trying to picture me with flaming red hair I could get away with it artificially. Yeah I guess I suppose. Something reeks him or me. I was hoping he'd be cool but no. I'm just sweaty and wasted.
Getting fed to bugs. I'm just blood.



What can I withstand. This boredom. This painful anxiety. This uncertainty. Doubt.
Desperately want someone to explain what to do.

I can't tell the difference between the radio and my library.
What's being broadcast to me,
what's me being stalked by the algorithms.
What's me diving in my own past.

I'm so lost I could sell magnetized needles. Just go north, become a girl. Just keep flapping. Eat more, better, smarter, less. Rot while alive. Give yourself a break. Name yourself something good. Strengthen your brand. Convey your value. Add value. Add value. Add value. Blow smoke, cough in my face. Give me a greeting from another planet. Impress me with your tricks. Make your hunger a selling point. Your plumage. Add value.

I wonder if I just should have kept telling you how strong virile sexy human horny valid you are. Should we just have turned ourselves into sea monsters. Should we run into the muck.

How would I support myself without the lie I've been telling, been told etc. the multiple ones. I wish I was the kind of artist (writer whatever) who could just spent the summer making stuff. I can't even spend my free time making stuff. I've been stripped of stuff to make. It's a problem. A class thing? A talent thing? Talent is about class. It's not anybody's fault. It's either nobody's fault of partially mine, to an extent I can't measure and therefore find overwhelming. The unknown factor, solve for x if x is how much it's me making it up, overreacting. Is there another way to act.



People sometimes remark that I look so young. I have two things to say about that:

A) forgetfulness. lotus smoothie before bed
sleep posture
body calls - do you know my instructor?

stay present, get presents
everyone's a hitchhiker.

I mean my friend just stay keyed in
to that box inside. Set your watch by the first heartbreak.

and radiate outward and
make no secret of it.
Where you're from.
Stay sad teen.

B) SNAIL SECRETION. I thought it was gross when I first heard about it but let me preach the gospel to you. It's vegan because the snails aren't harmed and they consent to give the slime (I guess) and it's the consent that also makes oral sex vegan (I guess). But honestly I am a white guy in his 30s who smokes and gets too much sun despite his best efforts and he looks good for his age. And it's because of the snail secretion. The snail secretion and the forgetting, staying sad.

Maybe he just forgot how to age. To grow up. There's a line in BLACKWAVE about how hard it is for queer people to age. And that's true. But something else too. A fear of differentiation.

I've heard some people say that they (some people) are their own best friend.
But I've never believed that, them, those so-called people.
I feel myself sticky sick and unlovely. I didn't make it to the party so I can't expect anyone to come to mine. I can't accept anyone to come to mine.



Do we need a Cinema of anxiety. Music of disassociation. Dance of biosphere collapse.
Make genetic damage into art.
I'm calling you. I called you. I left a message. Add value.

I tried to say how much I miss you. What else. Remember that time we smoked a j by the Vietnamese sandwich place in some and had basil seed juice you had a boom box I think this is the song we were listening to over and over again was:



Walking uptown through the San Francisco fog. I get all the days mixed up. That place that experience is where i still am probably. Refusing cigarettes to all but THE MOST CHARISMATIC junkies on Haight street. Looking for old indie 7"s. I would love to find Sally Skull, old Slampt stuff. You know?

I have almost every record I want though. That was on my list. I've been very fortunate and patient. You get what you want sometimes. If what you want, if you're fetish object is the Heavens to Betsy "Direction" 7" on Chainsaw. Or the Cat Power Dear Sir 10" on Runt. How often do I even listen to those? I keep falling down on the train.



Azealia Banks interview in XXL
.

She says "Everybody’s been narrating the Azealia Banks story except for Azealia Banks." I want to become a book. I mean I want to write a book, of essays, including one about why we should always defend and celebrate Azealia Banks and girls like her. Maybe it should be a fan letter or a play or fanfic. I think she's so great and underrated in so many ways. Her "Seventeen" is maybe better than the original, huh?

Thinking today of being seventeen and how to stay that way. How unfortunate it is to be that way, to have to stay that way.

Truly? I cannot recall being 17. I can remember being 16 and I can remember being 18. There may have been some upsetting jealous teenage feelings during that in-between year. Maybe some of this is what's burnished me or something.

7/11/17

Chaperones

Men tickling each other on the train.



A girl reading a script.
No, a teacher's manual for a language school. What language is she gonna teach? She has a ponytail. Maybe French.

Met for drinks and talked about records. Bands we wish would reunite. For me The Need, Free Kitten.

Department of Health wants me to do a survey on my way out of a gay bar. About STDs or something. I'm not part of this.
The bar was full of drunk straight kids dancing to Spice Girls in a circle. What am I doing with my life.

Really the ultimate reunion tour would be the Spice Girls.

My lover and I took a playwriting workshop this weekend. Subtly awesome, engaging, funny, poignant.

We went to a party Saturday night, GAY HEAVEN which of course came after GAY HELL. The hummus was great and I learned a minor scandal about the GAY HELL hummus. Not a scandal per se but you had to be there.

I got a sunburn and am furious with myself.



I went to an art opening even though I didn't really want to. They were out of beer but I put a maté soda in my bag. The paintings were actually pretty good. Big fucked up abstract oils. Nightmare surreal gore etc.
The soda exploded in my lap on the train.
No worries. No worries. No worries.

I'm coming down to the wire. I want to make a website get a book deal and go on tour.

I want to be a writer in residence at Comme des Garçons.

I want to get out of here. I don't mean New York I mean I've taken up running and (have I mentioned this?) the last time I was regularly running though a neighborhood I was in Alameda and I was ready to get out.

I'm ready for this generation to finish. I'm ready for this time period to wash over me.

Do you want to come with me?

I'm ready for all the TV shows to end. For the movie to come out.

I run through the neighborhood.
Bugs fly into my mouth.



I want to give the feeling, I want to write the feeling, perform the feeling.
I want to evoke the feeling, surround myself with it.
Be with people who feel the feeling.
But do I want to feel the feeling? Not terribly.

This full moon fucked me up and everyone is fucked up. Anyway. It's the time of year when bugs eat me.

I'm not trying to cultivate a character, I want to be in the world. It's both.

I'm so obsessed with this thing of calling someone a loser as an insult. I feel like Beck, a very 1990s feeling: I am a loser. C'est moi.
As if to say what's so bad about being a loser?
It takes all kinds. It's a valid way to be.
Like I can be a loser and still be worthy.

I think I'm fighting the good fight.

I am acting like I can withstand everything. I've put myself there as of to prove that it's a place to inhabit, to speak from.

I mean should I just do stuff? For any reason other than I feel like it?
In a way the mosquitoes flatter me. They think my blood is sweet. And may be they're right.

My logic is as follows: if I don't expect kindness, if I don't demand my own happiness, then every kindness is unexpected. Each moment of joy a form of grace. That's what it is.

All I do is catch myself by surprise. All I do is write checks I can't cash.
Am i waiting for the world to punish me?
Am I angry that the world hasn't yet?
Am I not understanding the ways in which it already has?

I've always been here. I'll stick around and explain how we got here. I'll be the concession stand.



I woke up at 4:30 am. Mosquitoes bit my arm, my thigh, my back, the back of my neck. I didn't see or hear them I just woke up in pain. I put on antihistamine gel which only made it harder to wake up an hour later.

I need a new air conditioner and a new mattress.
A $500 day which I don't have.

Everything's falling apart!

I went jogging and did exercises and that made me feel a bit better.

Trying not to be so fatalistic, to lot focus so much on suffering.

Dressed unusually formal for work.
Unseasonable. Unstylish.
Professional.
Again: trying to trick myself.



A girl on the train filling out s job application by hand. Copying references from her phone and writing them down on the form.

This weather reminds me of the school year, even though by now schools out for summer. It's that-- I keep forgetting about it-- that early summer anxiety. I get it in springtime too. I mean, eternal right.

Something though about summer coming more fully together, some great unfolding. A spreading.

I'm always so excited to see my psychoanalyst when we haven't met for a few weeks but then I get there and can think of nothing to say, I just look forward to the process.

The radio would keep me company. If it had to.

That Björk lyric:
"I want to go on a mountain-top
With a radio and good batteries
And play a joyous tune and
Free the human race
From suffering
I'm no fucking Buddhist
But this is enlightenment"
To me it seems right now to be important that it's a radio. Not a microphone. She's not saying she's singing the joyous tune necessarily but just playing it.
I want to go to the mountain top with a radio and good batteries too but imagining beyond that... I'm not so sure.

Truly riffing. Absolutely boring, like drilling.
Bored as in pierced, cut through.

The girl? Who was filling out the job application on the train? It wasn't even her pen she had borrowed it. How sweet.



Jane Weaver, who are you? I love you.

Being ruined, I mean my sunburn.
Is there a way of being where we don't have a we?

Am I just making my problem everyone else's?
Isn't everyone?
Isn't that all anyone does?

Feel unsettled but don't know if it's just because of the physical pain (my pains!) or because I'm worried about my apartment my mattress my air conditioner. Am I just looking for things to worry about?

Cruising apocalypse.
Something's out of whack. I feel misaligned.
I want to eat salad for dinner.

(And I did, I stuffed myself full of leaves).



Reading about the apocalypse. How things are gonna get so bad so soon.



Chelsea Manning tweet about automation.
So why bother ? Why live the way we do, going to work et cetera?
Trying to imagine the upside here. Of being the ones to inherit heat death.
It seems unfair.
That we'll have to bury everything, see everything burned.

But maybe it's not unfair maybe we're lucky.
How lucky I am to be of the generation that will usher life off the planet.

Maybe every generation felt this.

But now it seems less preposterous to contemplate death, mortality, the end.
Now it seems that those of us are better armed.
Those of us who've known the dead, who've been contemplating death for years.

How lucky we are to be the generation that grows old and senescent at the same time as the planet; life on the planet.
We're the custodians of this next transition.

We're the chaperones.




7/6/17

Me And My Arrow

15 million people in the world and me. AND you.



Went upstate with my lover last weekend. We rushed to Grand Central it was a madhouse. Got to Beacon, got the ferry to Newburgh where we were staying.

So many reasons not to remember. To forget. To sleep.

I've so often wondered if anything was even worth reporting, measuring, relaying, remembering. Blogging.
It's not about documenting it's aspirational. I've packed myself beyond comprehension. I've taken too many mirror pills, supplements, that reflection is impossible. That's how I've survived the pressure to change. By becoming the vehicle itself, for change. Not he driver. The chrome rims.

I've discovered so many good bands. Every Tuesday I download a handful of new albums. Right now Beverly, Whirr, lots more. I can't remember or keep them straight.

I can have this debate with you all b y myself.

So many instances I cannot bridge the gap. So many problems in my life stemming from, exacerbated by my inability to communicate. Or at least that's how it feels.



But there's so many things I need to talk about! And so many things I need to hear, so many things I've yet to understand.
I let a crowded subway car pass. I don't need to bother.

I walked in the muggy night and told my father all of my secrets, the recent embarrassments and shames.

I do and don't want to talk about it but I feel like I've been using myself as an example, hoping other people would too. Maybe it's not the best most universal tool in my kit.

Woke up this morning fired up and ready to write.

I extended my vacation one extra day, one extra night. I was stressed so I stress ate. Stress slept. And I woke up and meditated and feel like I want to take on the world.

Want to disabuse other queers about their feelings. Want to point out how narrow-minded obsessed and dangerously egotistical we've been. My community. The people I'd expect more from. But isn't that what family is for? To teach you to accept someone despite their faults?
Who else can be family.

I've dealt with bullies my entire life. So have you, probably. I've seen and correct me if I'm wrong here, how and where bullies come from.

I've seen someone go from loving me to wanting to hurt me. And then telling me it's the same thing. I've struggled to try to understand that.

I have sympathy for the bullies. So much that I usually just let them be.

But the bully is in me, too. And it's in you too. And we have to rehabilitate the entire world. It's a tough job but...

They say the most beautiful phrase in the English language is "Cellar Door." I disagree. I have two alternates.

I think the phrase "Dress Rehearsal" might be the most beautiful phrase in the English language.

Actually today right now I think the most beautiful phrase in the English language might be "You know what you have to do." I don't "know," personally, myself. It's an aspirational phrase.

But so then to the work. Do I really need to talk about it? How can I proceed here.

I was really feeling the Pride parade this year. Maybe because I saw my amazing boyfriend marching in the parade. But no. Event before he came I was choked up (seriously!) with the feeling of urgent, desperate love. Like many people (or not that many, actually) it feels as though we've reached a critical mass of people who want to share their feelings of exclusion their forbidden love rage and selves. We're sharing over this queer thing more than ever before. And it makes me want to sing or whatever.

But therein lies the problem. It's not enough. The goal posts have changed as they should. And even some of us like myself who thought we were fighting the good fight... it's not good enough anymore maybe. Perhaps it was never good enough. It used to be that my pointing that out (that it's not good enough, big enough to do that obsessively onanistic blind eye pleasure seeking) it used to be that my pointing that out made me an unredeemable asshole. But now I think maybe this criticism is better heard. But my goodness! Not today.

I'm working on a new zine and one of the pieces is about this, this feeling of turning into bully. Having some unrequited feeling go sour within you. To write about being rotten. It's okay.

The piece is about fear. The fear of feeling bad. Feeling bad is nothing to be scared of. Well, no nevermind scratch that. Feeling bad is EXACTLY something to be scared of. Maybe I'm worried that we're designing the future for who we want to be not who we are. Maybe I think I need to catch us when we're being self-centered. When we assume and operate from the idea that we all want the same thing. Maybe I want to be like that snotty little faggot from that Catcher in the rye book and keep us from going out of bounds, falling down, rotting from inside.



But I think I can do better. I don't know about you. I mean I do know about you, of course I do. I know you can do better too. But I'm using myself as an example, for right now.