Today I finished The Road by Cormac McCarthy, and I'm embarrassed to admit it's the first book I've read this year, and only the second book I've read in the past twelve months. It had gotten fantastic reviews and is of a subject matter that I'm consistently drawn to, that of apocalypse or post-apocalypse, so I decided to give it a go and I'm very glad I did. It's interesting, as a writer, to read someone whose style is the antithesis of mine, and when reading something this brilliant, both in its overarching themes and in the fantastic and challenging use of language, it's hard not to compare myself to that, to judge myself and deem myself unworthy. I struggle to remember what my strengths are, but am also inspired to work a bit more at my weaknesses, or to rediscover what abilities I might have had in the past that I've since misplaced. Remind me to read more. It's not a book I could recommend in a blanket sense, because of the truly disturbing themes, and there's no better evidence for that than the face that both my brother and my mother, two of the most voracious readers on the planet, turned it away as too dark. But for those who derive the same pleasure that I do from such a challenging and potentially unpleasant experience, I can't praise this book enough.
Tangentially, I've decided to do something I've never done before, which is to release a fragment of an in-progress story before the entire thing is completed. I've finsihed writing it in my notebook and am in the process of typing it up, but the typing is usually the opportunity for a sometimes dramatic revision. But for some reason, since the day I wrote this segment, I've wanted to put it out there. This is just one section in a larger story and that story is part of a larger project I'm working on, a series of interconnected stories that may or may not lead somewhere.
Anyway, here it is:
We were on your bed, and silent: you didn’t speak and I couldn’t. I said everything I needed to say, what I thought I needed to say for a long time. I said it and you didn’t answer, or wouldn’t, and walked away from me, so I followed you, into the bedroom, and joined you on the bed, and waited for your response. I knew it would come eventually. The television was on, and had been the whole time, but suddenly the laugh track from the show we’d been watching was incongruous, voices echoing out of another life, mocking us. I lit a cigarette and for once you had no comment and my smoke seemed to have an uncommon weight, wafting slowly through the even heavier air, hanging languidly around us while we lay in that impenetrable air, in pregnant, impenetrable silence. That show ended and another began, one we’d never liked but neither of us moved to change it or turn it of, and eventually Harvey came to join us on in the bed, possibly aware of what was happening in the way that animals can be hyper-aware, but probably not. Probably not because he’d spent all of his life with us trying to get past the neglect he’d experienced before we found him, that night we’d found him underneath a car outside your house, just a few weeks after I’d started coming around, when I’d been around so often that your neighbors thought that I was your brother visiting from out of state. You named him Harvey after we brought him in, when he was still vaguely petrified of us, scared and defensive but also curious enough to follow us inside, and I never asked you why you picked that name, or how you chose it so decisively. Harvey padded into the room, into that quiet, and curled up on my stomach, as he’d learned to love to do, and began to purr while I stroked his neck, and then, finally, you spoke.
“Well, baby,” you said, reaching across the space between us to put your hand on Harvey’s underside, too rough, as always, or rougher than Harvey liked, though he’d learned to accept it and did not even react, still purring, oblivious, still purring. “Luke thinks he can find someone to love him more than you or me.”
Feel free to comment. You can be honest, I can take it.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Friday, September 12, 2008
Your Heart Is An Empty Room
Yesterday I saw your car, twice, for the first time in months. Today I saw it twice, but today was different: you were in it, both times. You probably saw me too. The second time, as you passed, I was listening to a song from an album you'd given me over a year ago that I had never really listened to before. I wonder how you'd react if you knew what was really going on with me. I wonder, and leave it at that.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
LGB
The airport has plenty of people but everyone seems subdued, despite a military presence I've never seen here before. Maybe it's because of the date, impossible to rule out, but maybe it's the sky grey and thick with impending gloom, or maybe, just maybe, it's me.
Single Wing
7:45 a.m., I walk back from the bus stop. Marcio is off to work. I watched him climb onto the bus and I watched him move through it and I watched it drive away from me. I realize that I always have to watch him leave, whether he's visiting me or I'm visiting him, I always have to watch him leave and he never has to watch me leave, just once, that first time, I think, he took me to the airport.
I'm a bit sad, as I have been trying to ignore for the last twelve hours, that it's time for me to go home and that my visit didn't turn out at all as I'd planned, but well aware that I'd have an equally potent sadness now if things had, in fact, turned out as wonderful and romantic as I'd hoped. They successfully cancel each other out, my real sadness versus the imagined one, and I walk home. At the base of the stairs to Marcio's apartment, I find a single butterfly wing, large and yellow, and I hold it in my palm for a moment, and wonder where the butterfly with one wing has gone, and hold it, fragile, in my palm, aware that it's a thing that I'll never understand. I let the wing flutter back to the ground and go upstairs. In three hours I'll be flying home.
I'm a bit sad, as I have been trying to ignore for the last twelve hours, that it's time for me to go home and that my visit didn't turn out at all as I'd planned, but well aware that I'd have an equally potent sadness now if things had, in fact, turned out as wonderful and romantic as I'd hoped. They successfully cancel each other out, my real sadness versus the imagined one, and I walk home. At the base of the stairs to Marcio's apartment, I find a single butterfly wing, large and yellow, and I hold it in my palm for a moment, and wonder where the butterfly with one wing has gone, and hold it, fragile, in my palm, aware that it's a thing that I'll never understand. I let the wing flutter back to the ground and go upstairs. In three hours I'll be flying home.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
And on the subject of Facebook ...
...which has already consumed more of my time than I care to admit: How am I supposed to feel about finding out that my mother has beat me to the punch on this one? And... am I morally obligated to add her as a friend? (Hi Mom!)
Saying Nothing
I just haven't got all that much to say, but I suspect once I start typing, this post will write itself.
I've been having a lot of intense dreams lately, and mostly I don't remember them well past my waking moments, even when I try to cling to them. I do remember one last week where someone asked Marcio if he still was in love with me and he said, in the voice that we use to talk to each other, "Hmmm... not in love." Maybe I'm feeling needy. I didn't tell him about it. This morning I had a dream or something like one in which it came to me that maybe I should go back to school and pursue a career in a medical field, maybe follow Peter into the fast-paced world of nursing. It's worth investigating, and I will, as my life up to this point has been one meander after another.
I got a bit of writing done today on a story I've been working on for a few weeks. I expect it'll be done in a few days, and it's always pretty exciting to near the end of a story even if I know no one's gonna read it. This is the fourth in a series of short stories, a project I've been working on since February, and the first large writing project I've undertaken since ... oh ... 1995? More on this: yeah, it's been pretty fantastic to be writing again, like connecting with an old friend who is actually a bitchy taskmaster, but one that I love dearly. Nothing in this world gives me the satisfaction I get from getting a story out and now that I'm doing it again, I wonder how I survived all those years that I wasn't. This particular story has a thread to it that is nakedly autobiographical, but I always include at least a bit of myself. Write what you know. Yeah. Once I get this project finished I might try to branch into something different, since I've tamped down the dirt of the well-worn path of my own aimless history in fiction more than enough times and maybe it's time to figure out if I've got anything else in my bag of tricks, more than just a lot of unnecessary commas and the occasional mixed metaphor.
I joined Facebook while writing this post. Gulp. I have to confess, it frightens me, but social networking always scares me in the same way that I always have to hesitate before walking into a new place, and prefer to follow someone else in. It may turn out like the other sites I've joined where I basically ignore it, but it could become a new way to waste a lot of time and earn the ire of everyone who knows me. Exciting!
See? Pretty long for having nothing to say, and especially long for saying nothing.
I've been having a lot of intense dreams lately, and mostly I don't remember them well past my waking moments, even when I try to cling to them. I do remember one last week where someone asked Marcio if he still was in love with me and he said, in the voice that we use to talk to each other, "Hmmm... not in love." Maybe I'm feeling needy. I didn't tell him about it. This morning I had a dream or something like one in which it came to me that maybe I should go back to school and pursue a career in a medical field, maybe follow Peter into the fast-paced world of nursing. It's worth investigating, and I will, as my life up to this point has been one meander after another.
I got a bit of writing done today on a story I've been working on for a few weeks. I expect it'll be done in a few days, and it's always pretty exciting to near the end of a story even if I know no one's gonna read it. This is the fourth in a series of short stories, a project I've been working on since February, and the first large writing project I've undertaken since ... oh ... 1995? More on this: yeah, it's been pretty fantastic to be writing again, like connecting with an old friend who is actually a bitchy taskmaster, but one that I love dearly. Nothing in this world gives me the satisfaction I get from getting a story out and now that I'm doing it again, I wonder how I survived all those years that I wasn't. This particular story has a thread to it that is nakedly autobiographical, but I always include at least a bit of myself. Write what you know. Yeah. Once I get this project finished I might try to branch into something different, since I've tamped down the dirt of the well-worn path of my own aimless history in fiction more than enough times and maybe it's time to figure out if I've got anything else in my bag of tricks, more than just a lot of unnecessary commas and the occasional mixed metaphor.I joined Facebook while writing this post. Gulp. I have to confess, it frightens me, but social networking always scares me in the same way that I always have to hesitate before walking into a new place, and prefer to follow someone else in. It may turn out like the other sites I've joined where I basically ignore it, but it could become a new way to waste a lot of time and earn the ire of everyone who knows me. Exciting!
See? Pretty long for having nothing to say, and especially long for saying nothing.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Rare Stand
Until recently, I've avoided taking public political stances. This is in keeping with my personality, generally, since I have a hell of a time ever making up my mind, as anyone who has ever had the unfortunate experience of asking me "So where do you want to go for dinner?" can attest to. I lack the courage of conviction because I, having lived in this body for thirty-six some years, know full well those convictions will probably weaken and sway and shift in possibly the opposite direction. Then I look like an idiot for publicly announcing that the show "Survivor" is signaling the end of western civilization when it it discovered that I have gone way out of my way, and spent quite a bit of money, to watch EVERY SINGLE EPISODE of the seminal reality series. Yes, even the reunion episodes. (More on this later, probably.) So anyway, this post is not about the weakness of my character, but rather about a rare moment of strength.
So here it is:
I strongly doubt I will change my mind about Sarah Palin. I imagine she's a nice lady even if the nickname "Barracuda" is a bit troubling. I'm sure she's a good, loving wife and mother, although I'm reasonably certain I'm glad she's not MY mother. I think her husband is kinda hot. I don't necessarily believe that she's an alien-baby-carrying, pork-chewing, secessionist, flat-earth book-burner on a mission to restore three thousand year old values to the other forty-nine states, just because some trigger-fingered journalist said so. Nope, I'll form an opinion about her policies when she actually tells us what they are, but I can say without equivocation, that her selection for potential Vice President was a shameless and cynical move by the McCain campaign. Yes, I'm certain she was chosen for her executive experience, and not for the fact that she is young (balancing the ticket against her grandfather, um, I mean Mr. McCain), female, (possibly capturing angry Hillary supporters, disgruntled that the democratic process actually might have WORKED), and much more right-wing than her running mate, who either has no firm opinion on anything or just can't remember what that what opinion is. The funniest explanation of her selection can be found here. I definitely could not have said it better, and given my personality, probably wouldn't have even tried.
Oh, and whle I'm off the topic, here's an interesting post by my brother that makes this entire seem thing seem irrelevant.
So here it is:
I strongly doubt I will change my mind about Sarah Palin. I imagine she's a nice lady even if the nickname "Barracuda" is a bit troubling. I'm sure she's a good, loving wife and mother, although I'm reasonably certain I'm glad she's not MY mother. I think her husband is kinda hot. I don't necessarily believe that she's an alien-baby-carrying, pork-chewing, secessionist, flat-earth book-burner on a mission to restore three thousand year old values to the other forty-nine states, just because some trigger-fingered journalist said so. Nope, I'll form an opinion about her policies when she actually tells us what they are, but I can say without equivocation, that her selection for potential Vice President was a shameless and cynical move by the McCain campaign. Yes, I'm certain she was chosen for her executive experience, and not for the fact that she is young (balancing the ticket against her grandfather, um, I mean Mr. McCain), female, (possibly capturing angry Hillary supporters, disgruntled that the democratic process actually might have WORKED), and much more right-wing than her running mate, who either has no firm opinion on anything or just can't remember what that what opinion is. The funniest explanation of her selection can be found here. I definitely could not have said it better, and given my personality, probably wouldn't have even tried.
Oh, and whle I'm off the topic, here's an interesting post by my brother that makes this entire seem thing seem irrelevant.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Easy Love
Next door, a dog plays enthusiastically, almost frantically, with a squeeze toy. When he triggers its mechanism, it says "I love you, I love you," robotically, always twice, and sends the dog deeper into frenzy.
Seven hours later, in a car, with the radio on, I hear the song "Easy Lover" by Phil Collins and Billy Ocean. Somehow this feels relevant.
Seven hours later, in a car, with the radio on, I hear the song "Easy Lover" by Phil Collins and Billy Ocean. Somehow this feels relevant.
Friday, September 5, 2008
A First For Me:
| What philosophy do you follow? (v1.03) created with QuizFarm.com | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| You scored as Existentialism Your life is guided by the concept of Existentialism: You choose the meaning and purpose of your life.
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Went Wrong
I still haven't figured out entirely what I want to do with this. I know I don't want to get to whiny and abstract, but is it ok to use it as a diary of sorts? I got in enough trouble for that in the past. But if I wait for the inspiration to write only about other things, I'll probably never write anything at all. So for now, the occasional diary entry.
I'm in Long Beach. The workers downstairs are on lunch break, and all I know about them is something I just heard, that one of them in particular has a fondness for redheaded women, but he compared them to wild cats. As long as the sawing and hammering stops for a moment, I can't say I care much if his fondness is for octogenarian triple amputees. It's another beautiful day and I'm going to head to a coffee shop soon, but I'll probably leave my laptop at home this time -- the walk yesterday was kinda rough -- and just write. A vague ache moves through me like toxins in my blood: yesterday went wrong.
I'll spare the details, even though they're so odd as to probably be actually amusing, [this part deleted -- just like I shouldn't shop when I'm hungry, I shouldn't post when I'm cranky] It will resolve itself, as the other fifty or so fights we've had in the past eleven months have. [this part too.]
Probably the most amusing part about this is that my response to his nastiness was to go spitefully clean his kitchen when he had asked me not to. Yeah, I'll show you, I'll CLEAN YOUR KITCHEN.
So I'm hoping the sadness I'm feeling will make for powerful writing. It usually doesn't, but I remain an optimist. This entry is much mopier than I'd wanted it to be, than I wanted to be, but I'm going ahead with it, and going to try again before the redhead-lover and his pals start jackhammering into my skull again.
I'm in Long Beach. The workers downstairs are on lunch break, and all I know about them is something I just heard, that one of them in particular has a fondness for redheaded women, but he compared them to wild cats. As long as the sawing and hammering stops for a moment, I can't say I care much if his fondness is for octogenarian triple amputees. It's another beautiful day and I'm going to head to a coffee shop soon, but I'll probably leave my laptop at home this time -- the walk yesterday was kinda rough -- and just write. A vague ache moves through me like toxins in my blood: yesterday went wrong.
I'll spare the details, even though they're so odd as to probably be actually amusing, [this part deleted -- just like I shouldn't shop when I'm hungry, I shouldn't post when I'm cranky] It will resolve itself, as the other fifty or so fights we've had in the past eleven months have. [this part too.]
Probably the most amusing part about this is that my response to his nastiness was to go spitefully clean his kitchen when he had asked me not to. Yeah, I'll show you, I'll CLEAN YOUR KITCHEN.
So I'm hoping the sadness I'm feeling will make for powerful writing. It usually doesn't, but I remain an optimist. This entry is much mopier than I'd wanted it to be, than I wanted to be, but I'm going ahead with it, and going to try again before the redhead-lover and his pals start jackhammering into my skull again.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Portfolio Grace
I arrived in Long Beach yesterday afternoon. It was one of the most painless trips I've had in recent memory... MUNI to BART to Oakland airport to Long Beach airport and my luggage was the fourth on the carousel and then it was a short cab ride to Marcio's house. He had, in our texting, expressed an unusual interest in the exact time of my arrival, so I wasn't as surprised as he might have expected when, as I mounted the stairs to his apartment, he threw opened the door and shouted "Surpresa!" But I was still thrilled. It was so cute.
The day went mostly without event. We hung out on his balcony and looked at our "babies," his now-massive collection of succulents. We napped. We had dinner at Taco Bell (a more romantic gesture than you might think), and we got groceries at Albertson's. We shopped online for a few things he needs, and watched half an episode of The Amazing Race because it was set in Rio. We cuddled and we slept.
This morning I began falling victim to my latest addiction and had to eventually drag myself out of the house. I had help: there's construction going on downstairs at the house where Marcio rents an apartment and the noise it generates goes between claw-your-face-off annoying and actually physically painful. So I walked to a coffee shop, specifically, Portfolio, at 4th and Junipero, because it isn't terribly gay and and therefore less distracting, the iced tea is yummy and the internet is fast and indefinitely free, with the idea that I would work here. "Work" apparently translates to responding to my emails, responding to comments on this blog, more of my addiction, and now writing this post. With this work ethic, you must be shocked no one has hired me in the ten months I've been officially underemployed. The least I could do, if I'm gonna fuck around, is work on my latest short story. But no, I grace you with my presence instead. And a bonus, trippy pic I took of myself in the bathroom here at the coffee shop. Because I can.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
September Song
Saturday, August 31st, 2002, New York City. I'm at the Eagle again. I'm here every Friday and Saturday night, drinking myself into one bad decision after another, trying to forget my apartment in Brooklyn that never quite feels like home. It's crowded and I'm standing next to a guy that I think is very hot, allowing the hairs of my arm to brush up against his, waiting for my chance to introduce myself, or rather, for the courage to say anything to him. While I wait for the never to happen, an interloper appears, a guy I'd met some months earlier during the only threeway I've ever had in my life that was three complete strangers. There were supposed to be more of us that night, but we went in two cabs and one cab got lost, separating us all from our connective tissue, and specifically separating me from everyone I was particularly attracted to, but I'd gone through with it and after it was over, I had breakfast with one of the guys, Thomas, who was not as clever, maybe, as he thought he was, but clever enough to keep my attention despite being emphatically not my "type." So Thomas appears and I am all set to avoid him but he is more interested in Bob, the guy who still stands next to me. Something awkward, profound and painful passes between them and I stand, invisible, observing, and feeling, even if I can't hear what they're saying. Thomas is clearly shaken by the interaction and leaves us without ever so much as noticing me standing right next to him. I thought he had a crush on me but apparently that crush was trumped by his feelings for this other guy. I give up on Bob, for maybe another night, another time, and wander back into the crowd.
Later I run into Thomas. He is as confrontational as I recalled, in his declaration that he is an artist, in whatever else he might have declared in his challenging way, in, perhaps, his need for my attention. I flirt but I am not really interested. Even though he's cut his hair and looks much better than the night we'd fucked around, I've pretty much gotten all I needed to get from him and think he might be pretentious, or worse, clingy. I think an artist doesn't need to tell you that he's an artist in the first three sentences out of his mouth.
Later, still, it's four a.m. or later, and I'm walking towards the subway. I can't afford to always take a cab home, even though the subways are spotty at this hour and it can take me over an hour to get home. I'm walking quickly, as I often do, and I catch up with Thomas and two other guys who I will remember nothing about except that they existed, at one time, in one time and place, to completely unknowingly shift the course of my life with their very presence. He thinks the fact that I've caught him suggests I'm flirting, and maybe he's right, but it's still really my intention to get home. I walk a bit out of my way with them, for the company mostly, but when we get to Thomas' house, some twenty blocks later, he asks me a favor. He needs to go get drugs for these guys, and they can't come with him, so can I sit with them in his apartment while he runs this quick errand? No, I have to get home, I say, but he knows I don't, and if nothing else, he has a charisma that makes it difficult to say no to him. So I sit in a stranger's apartment with two other total strangers and make small talk. It isn't that long before Thomas returns, gives the boys their crack and sends them on their way. He is going to smoke some crystal and he wants me to join him. I say no and he pushes and I decide to submit, as I sometimes do, to my passive nature and pretend that I'm just an observer in all this, and so the next thing I know I am sucking poison out of straw.
I've done crystal before. I've had decent experiences and some monumentally bad ones, but there's that part of me that's a ridiculous optimist, and so I hold out hope that this will be at least decent. I know I'll probably have to fuck him but I'm okay with that. If I'd known what would actually happen I would have rushed home, grateful for my empty bed. It starts out well, though. We sit in the kitchen and smoke cigarettes and talk about art about the nature of it, the process of creating it. He shares things with me and I wish I had things to share with him as well but he has no internet. He has the same computer I have, but no internet. He can barely pay his rent, and I feel grateful for what I have, though I don't stop to think that he clearly has money for drugs. We move into the bedroom, still talking. When I smoke crystal, I usually just want to talk, and find it physically difficult not to. His begins to use his heightened awareness on me, observing things that I do, criticizing my negativity. I see it, too. Practically every adjective I use, and especially the adverbs, is hyperbolic and unnecessarily negative. I start to feel self-conscious. I start to doubt myself. It doesn't occur to me to think that he's high and doesn't know what he's talking about. Now I can't stop talking and can't stop noticing every word I say. He wants me to stop talking and to have sex with him but I can't, I can't do either. Hours go by. He pleads with me to stop talking, but i can't, and now I feel like a burden, I feel like every awful thing I've ever thought about myself is true: I'm endlessly self-absorbed, selfish, negative, pretentious, skinny, ugly, useless, annoying. He wants to try to sleep so I take his keys and wander the city. It's afternoon on Sunday. How did this happen? Why did I do this to myself. I feel the city's heart beating beneath me, and it feels like one huge body made up of all these microorganisms, these people, and I am not one of them, and I don't belong here. I have no friends here. I have people I fuck and people I don't fuck, but no friends. I go back and try to lay with Thomas, try to keep quiet. I hear music that isn't really playing, a Toad the Wet Sprocket song, repeating over and over in my head. I close my eyes and I see places I haven't been, expansive rooms that look like airport lobbies. I can't interact with anything that I see. I try to get Thomas to give me affection, to affirm my bruised ego, but he doesn't, he won't. He's ready to have sex again and now that I've been here eighteen hours, now that I've been broken, I figure I might as well try. My dick doesn't cooperate but I manage to fake it. He wants me to cum but it takes me too long and he loses interest. We order food but I can't eat. We smoke pot and watch a Coen brothers movie. I watch the movie so I won't cry again. By the time I get home, it's Sunday night. Somehow I'm able to sleep, wandering through the shattered stained glass of my broken dreams.
Monday, September 2nd, 2002. I wake alone. I was gone a full day and no one noticed. Not even my cats seem to care. My spirit still aches from all the self-doubt I'd been sucking through a straw. I get on the computer because it's my doorway to the world, to world outside my apartment door. A guy in California that I'd been trying to connect with in chat catches me as I sign on to yahoo. The conversation starts out surface enough, but quickly runs deeper, then deeper still, and as Thomas had torn me down, Barton is building me up. Barton. Later I'll realize that Barton is also Thomas' last name, but I haven't put that together yet.
barton: you are inspired charlie
barton: do you know what it means to inspire?
We chat all day. Literally, all day. It's Labor day and he and his boyfriend have the day off. I look at his photos and I feel like I already know him, like I know him from somewhere, like we've met before, though we haven't. He sees something different, something equally powerful and intense, when he looks at mine. We connect our webcams and smoke together, and I meet his boyfriend and I meet his cats and I watch him cook. It feels like I've been crawling on my belly in a dark hole and now I'm somewhere clean and warm and safe. I don't want to let him go. He offers to bring me out to San Francisco for a visit and I decide to do it, against all common wisdom to the contrary.
September 19th, 2002, San Francisco. I walk down the long hallway after getting off my plane, and in the distance, I see Barton waiting for me. I will be a new person now. I will cut out my negativity like a cancer and I will start a new life here, a new me. I arrive in San Francisco and I never leave, except two short and painful trips back to New York to settle my affairs, or what has passed for them. My last night at the Eagle, two people tell me that I am the nicest person they have ever met in New York, and a former friend who I have not seen since March tells me that he was, and maybe still is, in love with me. I will never see him again. New York isn't going to let me go so easily, and San Francisco isn't going to accept me so easily once I decide to move. It turns out the broken Charlie isn't dead, only sleeping, and my attempt at a relationship with Barton and his boyfriend goes predictably sour. But Barton and I stay close, so close, intertwined, on the rollercoaster, our hands in the air.
September 1st, 2008, San Francisco. "You are bad for me Charlie Rogers. Please keep your distance," Barton's email says. I'd run into him and his new boyfriend at the Harrison St. Fair and I'd come home, slightly buzzed, and filled with emotion and love for the world, I'd tried reaching out to him. This is his response. It arrives on the anniversary, six years, of that horrendous day that I spent in Thomas' cramped and cluttered apartment. I have another boyfriend now, and so does Barton. Everything has changed, in the way that it always does and always will. I don't even know how to feel sad about it, except that I tortured him for years with my inability to emotionally commit, and if nothing else, he found a broken dirty doll of a boy and brought him to warm clean place where the boy could heal, and I was that doll, that boy, and I have finally started to find a way to become the person I was always meant to be. Barton should be around to see it, and he won't, and I'm not sure I would even want him to be.
I never did crystal again, and never saw Thomas again. I have no memory of who those two guys were, but I did end up introducing myself to Bob, eventually, years later. None of them know how they inadvertently sent me on this path, and it makes me wonder if I've ever sent anyone spinning in a new direction without knowing it.
Later I run into Thomas. He is as confrontational as I recalled, in his declaration that he is an artist, in whatever else he might have declared in his challenging way, in, perhaps, his need for my attention. I flirt but I am not really interested. Even though he's cut his hair and looks much better than the night we'd fucked around, I've pretty much gotten all I needed to get from him and think he might be pretentious, or worse, clingy. I think an artist doesn't need to tell you that he's an artist in the first three sentences out of his mouth.
Later, still, it's four a.m. or later, and I'm walking towards the subway. I can't afford to always take a cab home, even though the subways are spotty at this hour and it can take me over an hour to get home. I'm walking quickly, as I often do, and I catch up with Thomas and two other guys who I will remember nothing about except that they existed, at one time, in one time and place, to completely unknowingly shift the course of my life with their very presence. He thinks the fact that I've caught him suggests I'm flirting, and maybe he's right, but it's still really my intention to get home. I walk a bit out of my way with them, for the company mostly, but when we get to Thomas' house, some twenty blocks later, he asks me a favor. He needs to go get drugs for these guys, and they can't come with him, so can I sit with them in his apartment while he runs this quick errand? No, I have to get home, I say, but he knows I don't, and if nothing else, he has a charisma that makes it difficult to say no to him. So I sit in a stranger's apartment with two other total strangers and make small talk. It isn't that long before Thomas returns, gives the boys their crack and sends them on their way. He is going to smoke some crystal and he wants me to join him. I say no and he pushes and I decide to submit, as I sometimes do, to my passive nature and pretend that I'm just an observer in all this, and so the next thing I know I am sucking poison out of straw.
I've done crystal before. I've had decent experiences and some monumentally bad ones, but there's that part of me that's a ridiculous optimist, and so I hold out hope that this will be at least decent. I know I'll probably have to fuck him but I'm okay with that. If I'd known what would actually happen I would have rushed home, grateful for my empty bed. It starts out well, though. We sit in the kitchen and smoke cigarettes and talk about art about the nature of it, the process of creating it. He shares things with me and I wish I had things to share with him as well but he has no internet. He has the same computer I have, but no internet. He can barely pay his rent, and I feel grateful for what I have, though I don't stop to think that he clearly has money for drugs. We move into the bedroom, still talking. When I smoke crystal, I usually just want to talk, and find it physically difficult not to. His begins to use his heightened awareness on me, observing things that I do, criticizing my negativity. I see it, too. Practically every adjective I use, and especially the adverbs, is hyperbolic and unnecessarily negative. I start to feel self-conscious. I start to doubt myself. It doesn't occur to me to think that he's high and doesn't know what he's talking about. Now I can't stop talking and can't stop noticing every word I say. He wants me to stop talking and to have sex with him but I can't, I can't do either. Hours go by. He pleads with me to stop talking, but i can't, and now I feel like a burden, I feel like every awful thing I've ever thought about myself is true: I'm endlessly self-absorbed, selfish, negative, pretentious, skinny, ugly, useless, annoying. He wants to try to sleep so I take his keys and wander the city. It's afternoon on Sunday. How did this happen? Why did I do this to myself. I feel the city's heart beating beneath me, and it feels like one huge body made up of all these microorganisms, these people, and I am not one of them, and I don't belong here. I have no friends here. I have people I fuck and people I don't fuck, but no friends. I go back and try to lay with Thomas, try to keep quiet. I hear music that isn't really playing, a Toad the Wet Sprocket song, repeating over and over in my head. I close my eyes and I see places I haven't been, expansive rooms that look like airport lobbies. I can't interact with anything that I see. I try to get Thomas to give me affection, to affirm my bruised ego, but he doesn't, he won't. He's ready to have sex again and now that I've been here eighteen hours, now that I've been broken, I figure I might as well try. My dick doesn't cooperate but I manage to fake it. He wants me to cum but it takes me too long and he loses interest. We order food but I can't eat. We smoke pot and watch a Coen brothers movie. I watch the movie so I won't cry again. By the time I get home, it's Sunday night. Somehow I'm able to sleep, wandering through the shattered stained glass of my broken dreams.
Monday, September 2nd, 2002. I wake alone. I was gone a full day and no one noticed. Not even my cats seem to care. My spirit still aches from all the self-doubt I'd been sucking through a straw. I get on the computer because it's my doorway to the world, to world outside my apartment door. A guy in California that I'd been trying to connect with in chat catches me as I sign on to yahoo. The conversation starts out surface enough, but quickly runs deeper, then deeper still, and as Thomas had torn me down, Barton is building me up. Barton. Later I'll realize that Barton is also Thomas' last name, but I haven't put that together yet.
barton: you are inspired charlie
barton: do you know what it means to inspire?
We chat all day. Literally, all day. It's Labor day and he and his boyfriend have the day off. I look at his photos and I feel like I already know him, like I know him from somewhere, like we've met before, though we haven't. He sees something different, something equally powerful and intense, when he looks at mine. We connect our webcams and smoke together, and I meet his boyfriend and I meet his cats and I watch him cook. It feels like I've been crawling on my belly in a dark hole and now I'm somewhere clean and warm and safe. I don't want to let him go. He offers to bring me out to San Francisco for a visit and I decide to do it, against all common wisdom to the contrary.
September 19th, 2002, San Francisco. I walk down the long hallway after getting off my plane, and in the distance, I see Barton waiting for me. I will be a new person now. I will cut out my negativity like a cancer and I will start a new life here, a new me. I arrive in San Francisco and I never leave, except two short and painful trips back to New York to settle my affairs, or what has passed for them. My last night at the Eagle, two people tell me that I am the nicest person they have ever met in New York, and a former friend who I have not seen since March tells me that he was, and maybe still is, in love with me. I will never see him again. New York isn't going to let me go so easily, and San Francisco isn't going to accept me so easily once I decide to move. It turns out the broken Charlie isn't dead, only sleeping, and my attempt at a relationship with Barton and his boyfriend goes predictably sour. But Barton and I stay close, so close, intertwined, on the rollercoaster, our hands in the air.
September 1st, 2008, San Francisco. "You are bad for me Charlie Rogers. Please keep your distance," Barton's email says. I'd run into him and his new boyfriend at the Harrison St. Fair and I'd come home, slightly buzzed, and filled with emotion and love for the world, I'd tried reaching out to him. This is his response. It arrives on the anniversary, six years, of that horrendous day that I spent in Thomas' cramped and cluttered apartment. I have another boyfriend now, and so does Barton. Everything has changed, in the way that it always does and always will. I don't even know how to feel sad about it, except that I tortured him for years with my inability to emotionally commit, and if nothing else, he found a broken dirty doll of a boy and brought him to warm clean place where the boy could heal, and I was that doll, that boy, and I have finally started to find a way to become the person I was always meant to be. Barton should be around to see it, and he won't, and I'm not sure I would even want him to be.
I never did crystal again, and never saw Thomas again. I have no memory of who those two guys were, but I did end up introducing myself to Bob, eventually, years later. None of them know how they inadvertently sent me on this path, and it makes me wonder if I've ever sent anyone spinning in a new direction without knowing it.
Camera misconceptions
1. Just because someone is pointing a camera in your direction does not mean he is taking YOUR picture.
2. Not all people walking around with cameras are tourists. Why is it common to document the unusual but unusual to document the common?
3. The correlation is minimal at best between having a "nice camera" and being talented at taking pictures.
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