All Hallows' Eve Eve

Big weekend ahead. Halloween. I can't remember what I did on the day last year. If I cared enough to search back on this blog I might be able to find out. This year there will be a play and dancing, costumes and mayhem. Halloween is a holiday I almost dislike. It's an amateur hour somehow more formidable than even New Year's Eve. But the spirit of it, the scantily clad women and drinking, the supernatural danger, the sheer depravity of it all, make it worthwhile. San Francisco is a city that knows how to dress up, and better than most. Louisiana might have us beat but I've never been there to confirm. All my knowledge is anecdotal, and perhaps exaggerated, based purely on a few photos and the sordid hoodoo history of the bayou. Now I want some ghostly gumbo, some chain-rattling cornbread, a giant bowl of zombie jambalaya. Instead I'll stop off at the local supermarket and get a disgusting bag of candy corn, a party-sized brick of Hershey's chocolate, maybe some bite sized Snickers. Candy corn are awful. They're just high fructose corn syrup and artificial food coloring. I think they're made almost entirely out of wax. Madame Tussauds nipples.

Me and my femme fatale are to wear animal onesies. I’ll be a pink bunny and she'll be some sort of cute, Asian inspired animal that doesn't really exist. I hope whoever imagined her costume fit the fictive creature with working reproductive organs, because we're gonna make sweet love like rabbits. No, I think we'll have to shed our new skin and shapeshift back into our human form to perform the deed. I'm waiting on Q to confirm that he's gotten me on the list for tomorrow night's dance party. If he hasn't I'll need to find another party, which would be unfortunate this late in the game. Luckily there will be plenty of parties. All of tomorrow's parties, in fact.

Tonight I'll go out to dinner with a few friends, to a shitty Italian restaurant that hardly qualifies as authentic. I've never been there, but if I've learned one thing while living in San Francisco it's that we don't have good Italian food. I could also just grab a quesadilla and meet them at a bar after they wrap up. Decisions decisions. I woke up very early today, but I need to stay up late. If I don't, I won't sleep in tomorrow morning, and then there's no way I'll survive the night; especially when you consider daylight savings. Who is it saving, exactly?

Well, the outside world is beckoning me. More later.

8% Battery, 92% Piss

I wanted to write tonight but I'm tired and I only have 8% battery. My power cable is too far away for me to get up and get it. I'm writing from my cozy love cushion; my mattress. I would never buy a used mattress...people fuck on them. They are stained with semen, perspiration, and tears. Through our skin, when we sweat, we excrete trace amounts of urine. This is why pillows begin to yellow over time. Who wants to sleep on someone else's old piss? If I had my way, I'd buy a new mattress every time I changed lovers. Things would quickly become prohibitively costly though. Instead I'll continue to suffer the indignity of sleeping on the stained passions of my past. Those little rorschach inkblots of love hidden behind my sheets. 

A new art piece arrived today.  I'll need to decide where on my walls to hang it. Actually, I still need to decide where to hang the one from last week. 

All in due time.

Voice Lessons

Public speaking is a terrible thing for most people, myself included. All the staring eyes, expressive and sharp, become mirrors, doubling and squaring, exponentially increasing all that anxious self awareness inherent in the center of attention. I'd always regarded it as one of the most undesirable parts of being an adult; to openly bear the brunt of other peoples' judgement. That was, until last night.

Last night, I was the lone male in a room full of women, all of them strangers, where I was forced so far out of my comfort zone that I would have welcomed an impromptu, nationally televised speech before Congress instead of my fate. I knew things were getting weird when we were told to mimic animal noises and parrot them back each other. Just for fun, see how silly you sound while trying to imitate the sound of a woman meowing, yelping, cooing or wooing. Multiply that with soul-crushing emasculation and drown it in a sea of wet femininity. Surely things couldn't be worse than this, I thought naively.

Soon we were made to stand in a circle, partnered up, with half of the women facing out and the other half facing in. We were taught to recite a Hindu chant. It was perhaps 30 seconds in length. We were to sing the chant to our partner, while staring straight into their eyes, with a hand held over their heart. Yes, tits were sort of a problem. So I stood there, twitching with discomfort, enduring the longest 30 seconds of my life. Then the circle rotated. I was forced to suffer this fate a dozen times over. I felt like the protagonist of a forgotten Greek myth. There was no end to my torment in sight. Without having ever experienced this phenomenon, it is impossible for you to understand the profound discomfort of it all. First, there is the knotted mess of gender dynamics, burrowing long claws into my back like a deranged koala, whispering warnings and screaming impropriety. Then there was the sheer number of times I had to perform the ritual. The end seemed impossibly far away. There was the feeling of the vibration on each woman's chest as she sang, the extreme awkwardness of being placed in such an intimate setting with a stranger, and the debilitating vulnerability of singing to someone. All of this, though, failed in comparison to the eye contact. My eyes moved like a misbehaved dog's, darting and averting, guilty and downcast, quickly glancing back to see if my master was still watching. I could feel the content of each person's soul. It was to rummage through the junk drawer of another's heart. One woman whispered that she felt bad for me, because I was the only guy there. I felt bad for me, too. The intensity of it all was almost breathtaking and I begged for it to end. Finally, it did.

It couldn't get worse than that, right! Nothing I could think of could be worse than that. It turns out I hadn't yet been divorced of my naiveté. It got worse.

The instructor told us we were each to sing, a cappella, for one minute, while everyone else in the room sat, stared, and "beared witness." Holy shit. Panic whipped through my nerves like static and I felt my heart start to race. I need to run, I thought. Fear filled my sails. Just get up, pick up your hoody, put on your shoes, run down the stairs, grab the door handle, pull it open and don't look back. Those were too many steps. It was that moment where I'd realized the cruel intention behind removing our shoes. I was trapped. Ok, stay clam. When it's your turn, just tell them you aren't comfortable. Perfect.

The first woman volunteers to start. After her minute's up she calls on the blonde beside me. After five seconds of pained silence, anxious breathing and a few umms, she declared she couldn't. Yes! Yess! I fucking rejoiced!! I wasn't the only one. The teacher wouldn't let her off that easy though and told her she'd come back to her at the end. It was over for me, folks. I contemplated faking a stroke, or an asthma attack, even an orgasm to get me out of there. There was no savior in sight. It was hopeless. This was the closest I'd come to a living nightmare. All of my bad shroom trips combined weren't as bad as this. After a torturous ten minutes it was my turn. I eeked out a shitty version of the intro to Take a Walk on the Wild Side by Lou Reed, forgot the words, and then butchered one of my favorite Iron and Wine songs. After everyone was done we held hands, our heads hung low, heavy with shamed liberation, and sang one last song.

Until next week.

Oops, I Did It Again

Last night I did a thing I'm not proud of. It's something I'd always wondered about but had been too afraid to try. We were drunk and it was late, after midnight. My friend told me he wouldn't do it, that it was disgusting and wrong and shameful. He said if I tried it he would leave. But it had to be done. I wasn't sure he'd cooperate but it was a chance I was willing to take. I reached into my pocket and entered my location. Within minutes the car arrived. We stood in the street, at Fillmore and McAllister, and when the car pulled up he refused to get in. He told me he'd call his own car, that he wanted no part of it, and he stormed off down the block. Alone, I opened the door, hesitating, wondering whether the driver would judge me. "Hello," I said, "don't drive off just yet. I have a question for you and it might seem strange." He looked at me in the rearview mirror awaiting my request; not nodding, not smiling, not blinking not anything. And then I said it.

I need you to take me to the McDonald's drive through. 

He didn't say anything at first. The car was idling in the middle of the street, blocking traffic, if there had been any. Was I too forceful? Had it come across as a demand instead of an earnest plea? Damn it, I'd insulted him, ordered him to take me there like he was my goddamned chauffeur. Wait a minute, he was my chauffeur! What had I felt bashful about? I have needs and desires like any other man. I get hungry! There's nothing wrong with that. But what if he was judging my dietary habits? Did I look fat in this shirt? Technically this was the second time in less than a week that I found myself at this very drive through. And this time I intended to order something much more obscene than before. My standard Big Mac, fries, Oreo McFlurry and apple pie wouldn't be enough tonight. No. Tonight I would order two Big Macs, a large fry, twice as many apple pies and an Oreo McFlurry. Clearly I wasn't fucking around, and if this prick was going to try and tell me he wasn't driving me where I wanted to go, he was gonna have it. In the rearview mirror the shiny resolve in my eyes met his like lasers and I waited for him to try and tell me no. Every inch of my being was insistent, unflappable, ferociously calm and unwavering. I was the golden god of the golden arches.

Something about his mirror was strange. It was too long, and the image was too sharp. It looked like a 4k flat-screen television in Best Buy. How hadn't I noticed this before? I wondered if he was a cop. His clean-cut Asian face stared back at me expressionless. Could I be arrested for this? Could he? Sure it was true that I'd met my daily burger allotment; I'd had three sloppy joes for lunch and a bar burger for dinner. Yes, this was definitely criminal. Fugitive fat cells in my blood breached the blood-brain-barrier and commandeered the ship. There was no other explanation for my actions. I was a victim, at the mercy of an insatiable, cellulite heart. What was I doing here, pudgy faced, sitting in the back seat of a stranger's car, exposing my dark desires to him like a fast food exhibitionist. Oh god, this was awful and awkward and I regretted everything. My friend was right to leave me. Why hadn't I listened to him? Oh god. This was terrible. I was terrible. I'd made him terrible by association, by asking him to do a thing that was terrible. If I could take it all back I would. In an instant!

Suddenly he smiled. "Sure," he said, "you are stoned?"

Yes....yes I am.

I wasn't sure what gave it away but it didn't matter; my dreams were coming true. I was having it my way, and lovin' it. The hot bag in my hands made me warm and fuzzy. Suddenly I loved him. I bought him a sweet tea, because he was sweet to me. But the bag. The hot, sweet smelling bag of taboo indulgence. Its aroma spiraled up into my nose and made my mouth wet. The thought of getting home and devouring its contents made me giddy. Unable to take it anymore, I got out of the car and started running madly to my door. My feet thundered up the stairs and I was panting like a dog. I kicked off my shoes and dove headfirst through my door, splintering it badly. With one hand, in a single, swooping motion, I rolled a joint and smoked it. With the other hand I brought the delicious sesame seed bun to my mouth and opened sesame. A rhapsody of satanic flavor and lecherous texture consumed me. The force of my hedonism catapulted me somewhere depraved and immoral, but the world seemed a better place.

The rest is a blur. I fell asleep in my bed with the lights on, a smear of special sauce on my lips.

Flies

Since yesterday things have been odd. There was the sunset today. The sky looked like someone had thrown a ruffled velvet blanket over it, to soak up sangria the sun spilled. And work was weird. A lot of people weren't there. The food seemed more ambitious, too.

Someone was shot and killed a few blocks away. The buses weren't on time. The day felt alien. Even the sunset, as beautiful and unusual as it was, seemed to happen too early. I hadn't showered. I always shower before work. I could smell the oil in my hair when I took off my hat. The day evaporated before me with the quickness of isopropyl alcohol. Then, just now actually, there was the fruit fly.

I hate fruit flies; loathe them. They are a perfect nuisance. I once unleashed an unintentional genocide on them as I tried to vacuum hundreds out of my living room, back into the great outdoors. What I'd failed to consider, as I sucked them out of the room, was the motor inside the vacuum. When I opened the door to free them I discovered they'd all been instantly torn to pieces. My stomach turned. I realized I'd put them all into a blender; the painful irony being I'd deliberately vacuumed them up to avoid killing them. I felt so terrible I couldn't eat. Since then, I've grown accustomed to openly murdering the little suckers, on account of them being so profoundly annoying; flying into your eyes and mouth, your ears while you're sleeping, open wine glasses, and anywhere else you wouldn't want them.

Tonight though, I stumbled across one that had fallen into my beer. I thought I'd scoop him out with my finger and then quickly and mercifully kill him at the height of his drunkenness. But then I had a sudden change of heart. After all, he was no different than me. From my kitchen I extracted a fork and saved him from the brew. I left him aside to dry and told him everything would be okay, but warned him that should he reenter my beer I would have to take it upon myself to swallow him whole. I have yet to return to the drink to see if he's called my bluff.

I'll update tomorrow.

A Big, Silly Grin

An art exhibit. The sign on the door said - private event. It was incomprehensibly hot inside. I was sweating severely, practically melting, raining saltwater onto the floor. I walked in, turned, and she was there. I touched her and she jumped. I smiled, we kissed. I'm trying to figure out what it says, she said. I was trying, too. We walked around in a square and stared at the art on each of the four walls. Da Vinci believed that visual art was the highest form of art because there's no barrier to entry; assuming, of course, that you aren't blind. Unlike literature, one doesn't need to know how to read, one needs only to see. Seeing is a form of feeling, it's presence unfolding in realtime. It's all in the eyes.

Hers were discerning, mysterious and warm.

We left and walked the street briefly. There was the possibility of graffiti. When she stepped, the metal ball inside the spray-paint can swayed, giving her footfalls a lilting, percussive quality. We waited for our Uber driver, Juan, to arrive. We fell out of step with time and altered reality as we walked toward his car.

A heavy fog, set low in the sky, caught fire from the soon to be setting sun as we passed the Palace of Fine Arts. Juan seemed lost so we told him to let us out. Walking, alone but together, into the mist, we stumbled upon a Lion King boneyard. We glided through the misty whiteness, floating like phantoms, laughing, whispering, brushing against each other's arms. The air was sweating around us, painting the beach in an eerie fog. The sun reflected softly against the water. A dog ran into the waves. Silhouetted children chased after. People beside us laughed. Hungry seagulls pursued the outline of a running woman. Waves crashed slowly against the shore. Distant hills were encased in a ghostly mist which rose up out of the ocean. It steamed up off the water and drifted through tall trees. We talked and laughed. And laughed. And kissed. Sand got into our mouths. It crunched, and we kissed with exfoliated lips.

A persistent wind carried in more fog and the sun became a pale sphere. It looked like a smooth, brightly glowing craterless moon. Was it day or night? Where's the line in the sand? She was intoxicating. I felt stoned. We kissed. I said something and she called me an idiot and I wanted to kiss her again. I smiled. Her eyes were wet with laughter.

We stared at the sky, interpreting rows of raked clouds.

Our hands danced as we lay in the sand. The sun was setting. It was swallowed by a hissing sea, bubbling in the places where the light had touched it. Steam and cotton-colored smoke strangled the blue. I sought her elusive eyes under darkened sunglasses. The temperature dropped. She lost circulation in her arm. We got up and walked and watched the glow of the smoldering horizon. Colorful cotton candy clouds.

A bar. A drink. A kiss. Goodbye.

Walking home, a big, silly grin.

Schrödinger's Sunrise

Waking up early has become one of those odd pleasures. Something about the time seems stolen, ransomed from the dreams of still sleeping people. Sometimes the hour hides in mist and thin fog. Other times it paints the beige building outside my window in a soft orange-pink that's almost salmon. The sunlight glows in the glass windows and reflects back through mine in small square pools. Not a car passes. There isn't any conversation. No trace of another human being's existence. For a moment, the world seems to stand still, caught at a chance moment of meek vulnerability. Then the birds sound out, a car door closes, then starts. Soft-eyed people make their morning pilgrimage toward the smell of roasting coffee. Running water can be heard through the pipes in the walls of my apartment. The birth of the day. Watching it all happen makes it more personal, as though it only happens because I'm looking; Schrödinger's sunrise.

Last night I drank responsibly and put myself to bed at a reasonable hour. I received a few calls from close friends who wanted to talk about their feelings; one from New York and one from Bacchus country. The first friend was drunk on much laughter and self-aggrandized bravado. He esteemed his wit above all else and demanded I remind him of the following things: $7, $9, mauve, taupe. From this, he told me, he would reconstruct verbatim the clever exchange that impressed him so. In the morning he said I would be awed by his unmatched faculty for creative rigor and the tenacity of his memory. This morning however, after having sent him the requested, and much necessary "poetics," those ingredients for his breakfast masterpiece, he replied: what the fuck are you talking about. Clearly he'd forgotten how he told he would "pimp me," how he would "sell my mauve ring out for $7 to the highest bidder." He'd forgotten the line that made him laugh most - you don't even know the difference between mauve and taupe, you're not gay enough. Perhaps after reading this post it will all come back to him. One can hope.

My second friend, calling from New York, by contrast was drunk on self doubt and insecurity. He was wrestling with the threat of love's leaving. There's a girl - there's always a girl [because, after all, nothing occupies a space more completely than the love of a woman] - that he's been courting for just over a month. He was worried she might be wavering, that her affections could be flagging. I recommended he see other girls while chasing her, to distract him, to conceal the strength of his devotion to her; from himself and from her. It is far too easy to scare love away in its infancy. More skittish than squirrels or birds, nascent love needs to be treated with an almost unhealthy sangfroid. Any sudden lurching or telegraphed desperation is almost always ruinous. At the onset, love needs to be tantalized. It needs to be precious and precarious. There is no noble love but that which recognizes itself to be both short-lived and exceptional. Often it is capricious and cruel and given to chase. But always, when it senses the threat of being unrequited, it swells exponentially, obsessively, and becomes a need more insatiable than even the deepest hunger. I told him to listen to Hungry Eyes on repeat every moment that he isn't with her, and when he is.

I need to go shower. I'm going with Coco to Russian River soon and I smell like dirty beer sleep. We'll drive and chat and drink more beer and eat pizza; the finer things. I'll regale her with stories of my exploits since we last met and hope to make a few more while we're there. Last time we went we stumbled upon a very special international tasting, synchronized across the globe so that we were all drinking the same beer at the same time, bridging enormous distances to share the same moment/experience. It was strange and magical. Who knows what adventure awaits us today.

Of Her, Dreaming

We'd become entangled, locked at the lips. Temporarily inseparable.

Green stars spilled over the ceiling and swirled in slow spirals. They look like sperm, she said. They sort of did; galactic and green and swimming. In the dark, on the wooden floor beside us, a burning candle perfumed the room with vetiver, vanilla, and honey. As our skin touched, our bodies shared quiet secrets. They were effortless companions, complicit, sensitive and knowing. The cherrywood speakers hummed and velvet sounds sighed, deepening the air. Heat from my hand ironed smooth the small goosebumps on her arm.

I felt a deep comfort with her there. It was as though I were alone, but not lonely. Words were whispered between us, and tired laughter like twilight birdsongs faded into silence. She smiled, softly, and laughed, and I knew it in her eyes. I knew it in her kiss, and in the softness of her touch. I knew it in her sinking, shallow breath, and the safety of her sleep...in the foolish hopefulness of her perfect dream.