Category: ultrapersonal

Oh, sweet Jesus, no. Now my cube-neighbor is starting to hum along with the radio. Can’t she understand that don’t want to be part of her New York State of Mind? Needless to say, the off-key humming travels over the cubical wall without any trouble whatsoever.

Please save me from Kenny G. And Luther Vandross. And whoever else is creeping over the cubicle wall from the radio tuned to some god-awful adult-contemporary or soft-hits or regurgitated-cud station. God, it can really suck to be a freelance contractor who can’t really getting away with telling someone to pipe down. Frankly, it’s better when she’s got the radio on than when she uses the headphones, because at least this way she doesn’t hum off-key to herself all day.

Aside from the horror of the music itself, the worst part is that it’s only the tinny upper register that really makes it into my cubicle. so all I get is the tenor sax or the keyboard fills or the star search wails. Oh, the agony.

On a more encouraging musical topic, I picked up a great maxi-single from Chicks on Speed after hearing it playing while I was at Other Music last saturday. (I was with friends who were on such a manic spending spree that I got caught up in the excitement and broke my long-running CD spending freeze.) The Chicks did these amazing deconstructed electronic covers of some of my favorite quirky songs from the B-52’s: Give Me Back My Man, strobelight, and song for a Future Generation. Totally fun and brilliant.

Just for kicks, write me and tell me what your capsule description would be if you had a part in song for a Future Generation.

Hi, I’m Sparky and I’m a Virgo. I love french fries and talking to cute guys!

Well, Halloween was mostly a bust, but I guess I was expecting that. The day was one of the most irritating of my entire life for reasons too tedious to get into (let’s just say I’ll never do a project as a favor for a client again), I was pooped, my tonsils and a wonky wisdom tooth are acting up (which is making me very nervous about next week’s trip to Italy), and I just wanted to go out and start slapping people. Fortunately, there were so many people wandering around in decent costumes, or at least fun attempts at decent costumes, that I lightened up a whole lot. Outside of the parade environment, there’s something I find really invigorating about people roaming around in costume, especially when they’re acting as if nothing is unusual at all. Sometimes that jaded New Yorker expression really pays off.

Come nighttime, I indeed slacked off and found myself unable pull together a decent costume, so like I do every year, I just dove into my steamer trunk and my dresser and put together a half-assed “Bad Boy scout” theme with a scout uniform shirt, some leather pants, and a few accessories. I don’t think anyone got it except for one perky Belgian guy. After some dinner and a little time-killing at the Phoenix, members of my party gave way to fatigue, so we called it a night. Oh well. Better luck next year, I hope.

I’m such a Halloween slacker. Just about every year, I fold under the pressure to think of something fun to do and fun to wear, and usually wind up just dicking around, all bored. Last year was a notable exception (well, my use of my authentic cop uniform was a little half-assed as a costume, but I went to a great party in the ‘Burg, where everyone inside and out was in costume), but I usually feel this inordinate pressure to be creative and whip together some clever, high-concept outfit and my energy and organizational skills are never up to the task. I’m thinking this year I’ll head over to the Lure for their Halloween ball, where I won’t need a costume per se, but I’ll still get a chance to dress up and watch the freak flag fly high if all goes well.

The big thing to avoid at Halloween, as far as I’m concerned, is the freakin’ Parade. It’s great in concept, but few things are more horrifying than trying to wade through thousands of people swarming the narrow streets of the West Village, all drunk and stooopid and carrying on because they’re in from Queens or the Jersey suburbs and they’re all hyper because they’re in the Village(!) and they can go totally crazy, and you can tell because they’ve got on crazy hats! It’s worse than Gay Pride, I swear.

I’ve got a lot of pals, for whom I’m eternally grateful. I’ve had them organized here by regular friends and friends I had primarily over the Internet, but as time has gone by and I’ve gotten to know some of the Internet folk much better, I’ve realized that’s just a dumb-ass distinction to make.

Homo Hair Angst. I combed and parted my hair this morning for the first time in about 5 years, just because this is the first time in 5 years I’ve had long enough hair to do so. I look like an idiot, and no there won’t be pictures. It’s back to the unruly, cowlicked spikes for me. To make things worse, someone just left me a message saying that I look like Al Gore. Maybe it’s time to just shave my head again so my morning hair care can go back to 30 seconds without any options.

But you don’t want to read about my computers anymore. I know you people, I know you just want to feast on the juicy details of my personal life. Vultures! Voyeurs! All of you! It’s OK, I understand, and I realize that things have been a little tame (lame) around here lately. It seems to be a regular problem for the weblog/diary set. At some point, we must come to grips with the amount of self-censorship we do knowing that we’re writing about our personal thoughts, but in a public forum. Although I try to be accurate about what I address, I’m actually not nearly as forthcoming as the existence of this site would suggest. Oh relax, I’m not eating babies or kidnapping Cub scouts or go-go dancing or knocking off diplomats for the CIA or anything (not that all of that doesn’t sound pretty fun), but I find myself often choosing not to mention something I’ve done or said because I’m anticipating that it may provoke a reaction from one or more people that I just don’t want to deal with. (Then there are also all the times that I’m just tired to write about something so I decide to skip it, but that’s another problem altogether.) It’s vexing, because I enjoy working things out in my head by writing them down in a somewhat lucid fashion, and it’s nice to get shit off my chest once in a while, but I can’t ignore the fact that maintaining the site has become more of a conversation with a bunch of friends and strangers than a private vehicle for catharsis (with a self-conscious wink toward a small handful of readers). Ah, the perils of success.

So here is my pledge: I’m going to try and stop pulling punches. I’m going to try and resume getting to the meat of things, instead of just carefully dashing off pithy asides and generating my own spin. I don’t intend to put my whole life on display here, since nothing helps out a story a like a lot of judicious editing. I’m not trying to play the exhbitionist, and I always want to leave more levels and facets unrevealed so that there’s a differnece between me and the public face I maintain on the site. But I want to get back to the spirit with which I began UltraSparky — the spirit of shameless self-indulgence, coy confession, and light-hearted insight.

In the meantime, if you think you’ve been missing anything, feel free to write me with your theories and specific questions. If you make a convincing plea, I’ll spill any of the beans you request.

A big ol’ bag of mixed feelings: I’m occasionally hit by an attack of conscience (that flares briefly then goes away) when I think about the sissy boys I who went to school with me, the ones who gave the rest of us a bad name and made us cringe with shame, thinking, “Well, at least I’m not like THAT.” Now that I’m an adult, no longer fending for myself within the treacherous social arena of an all-boys Catholic high school, it’s a little easier to think back and feel bad about acting the part of saint Peter (I’m talking about Catholic school here, so you’ll have to pardon the Bible/Jesus-Christ-superstar reference) and denying that I had anything in common with abuse magnets like Dennis, Jose, or the inimitable Fish. That flash usually fades, though, when I remember that as much as I felt bad about the harassment these guys got for not being able to hide their light under a bushel the way I was to do for a few years more, I still just didn’t like any of them that much. Dennis was haughty, Jose (who I really tried to be nice to, even when we went to college together) was kinda spacey, and Fish was just a totally annoying pest. I often got the urge to apologize on behalf of everyone else, but I usually squashed it because these particular guys (and a handful of others) drew so much attention because they were living out some of the worst qualities of bad stereotypes, and they were just not fun to hang out with.

But here’s something I also came to realize later on: The rest of us who had the luxury of coming out at our own pace (and I know you guys are out there — I’ve seen you on your dates, I’ve seen you in the West Village and Chelsea, I’ve met you at parties) ought to get down on our fucking knees and not only apologize for being part of the problem with our complicit silence, but also to thank them for drawing all the attention away from the rest of us and letting us deal with other adolescent problems. Dennis and Jose and Fish got all the abuse. They were the ones who were called fags. They were the ones everyone snickered about. They weighted the curve so much toward one side that those of us that could hide it escaped notice. In effect, we used them as human shields.