Ragtag grab-bag
So many questions! Glasses or contacts? Do I have my tonsils removed this November? Or do I take a free trip to Thailand with Miki? Or both? should I splurge on the next tattoo? Can I handle the possibility of getting involved with someone who lives in another state? Can the Country Mouse and the City Mouse each learn to appreciate the other’s way? should I even be thinking that far in advance?
I just wanna take a long nap.
I don’t mind being 29. In fact, I was speaking with Gina today about how I think I may have been born in time to enter the design field at just the right moment. My education and experience as a designer started the old-fashioned way: I drew type by hand as a regular homework exercise, I used gouache and Letraset and colored paper to make comps, and my first job involved specifying type for professionally set galleys that I pasted down by hand for a 180-page book which I planned out on a Mac. And when I started working as a typesetter for B.U., I learned how to use a serious, complex typesetting system on which no assumptions could be made. Every decision about typography and page layout had to be considered, so I learned discipline and craftsmanship which served me through the dark times of the desktop publishing revolution. But at the same time, I was right there working with Macs and the Web as they exploded, and I was in a great position to learn as they developed.
So I am old enough to have learned the craft that preceded me, and young enough to be open to — and a part of — the possibilities that are swirling around us now. And lucky enough to have been able to learn how to use the best elements of both approaches. I love me!
Well, I said I wanted a blow-out. I said I wanted the last birthday of my twenties to be something to remember. But I didn’t expect a week-long bonanza of guests, food, music, and mating frenzies.
My party last Saturday was a lot of fun, to be sure. Who knew I could lure so many people out into the ‘hood? But half of them are still reeling from the experience — and I’m not even talking about hangovers. I don’t mean to sound immodest or anything, but the whole crowd was extremely cute overall, and I got a lot of people in one room who’d never met before. Flirting and intrigue were bound to happen. Aaron Spelling should know about all this. No, he’s too old-school — call Kevin Williamson!
I’m glad that I had people stay until Monday, also. I tend to get sulky when I’ve had a lot of fun with guests, and then I suddenly find myself rattling around the place alone once everyone leaves. It was good for the roster to trail off over the course of a couple of days.
But you might have guessed that. I like the feel of it, the look of it, the smell of it, the way it can conform so easily to the body beneath it, and all that other stuff that you can read at any of a million other web pages out there. This shit turns me on, but it’s such a delicate balance. I can’t buy into the whole notion of an attraction to leather (OK, I’ll say it — a fetish) being synonymous with S&M or or any of the other rigorously codified culture that seems to have sprung up around it. I love creative and intense sex, but all that’s just not my scene. [Ed. note, circa 2024: Seems like I just needed time to embrace a more comprehensive approach to kink and fetish, which. took a little more time.] I can get past the goofy anachronism of a lot of the standard leather “look” because something about it still works, but so many guys go so over the top that it backfires. Leather can go from zero to cheesy in about two seconds if a guy’s not careful. Or it can go from zero to damn sexy in about as much time.
Did I have a weird, supressed childhood fascination with the Fonz? With Roddy McDowall as the Bookworm on “Batman”? Do I have some issues with either latent or coveted machismo? Was I subjected to contraband Tom of Finland drawings at an early, impressionable age? Maybe it was those Ghost Rider comic books. Who knows? I sure as hell don’t. I just like to revel in it once in a while. And anyway, if think this is extreme, you should hear about my inexplicable fascination with nerdy, skinny guys with glasses.
My birthday is coming up shortly enough. This time around, I feel like I owe it myself to have a real blow-out of a time for the last birthday of my twenties. Despite my massive party-phobia, I’m planning a big birthday/housewarming shindig that will hopefully lure scads of my most beloved pals all the way out to the murky depths of East Williamsburg. We’ll see. I still remember the big Christmas dinner fiasco of 1996…
I just got back the other day Tuesday from visiting my parents in sunny Florida. It was wonderful to spend some time with them, but a little strange to see them living in a house where I wasn’t raised. The whole time I couldn’t completely shake the feeling that we were all staying in a hotel. But they’re happy as kittens in a sunbeam as they live out their retirement dreams, so I have no reason to complain.
Thumbs down to Continental Airlines, however. Those pricks left Miki and I sitting on the runway in a plane with no air-conditioning for two-and-a-half hours. And we never got more than a soda and some pretzels the whole way down, even though their unexpected delay nearly threw me into hypoglycemia fits. We could have gotten to Europe in the time we spent on that plane!
This will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me, but I’ve got too many things going on at once. I’ve got to relax at some point. Or at least focus on just one or two things at a time.
Luckily, I found time (somewhere in the middle of the five jobs) to finish unpacking my books and clothes last night. The artful arrangement of empty boxes continues to grow, and I have access to more and more of my stuff. I think this is the slowest unpacking job I’ve ever done. At least I have the space to spread out to I can get to stuff while it’s still in boxes.
So much for ambiguity. Alas, I can’t say I didn’t see it coming. It’s usually pretty obvious when someone’s not as into you as you’d like him to be. What a pain, though, when it IS really obvious that he thinks you’re cool and fun. So you know you’re going to be friends — possibly even good ones — but you have to deal with all the weird stuff until your disappointment fades away. And I thought I was on to something this time, too. Damn.
Minor Celebrity Sightings of the Week: I was out at The Cock last Saturday and saw internet personality Jonno, who’s cute but stockier than I thought. I also touched Rufus Wainwright’s butt as I squeezed out of the bar.
Aside from that I guess it was a busy week socially, but I’m feeling a little down about it because of the ambiguous goings on with the first really interesting guy I’ve met in a while. I hate when shit like that brings me down. It seems like such a silly thing to throw me into such a big funk that gets me all lazy and depressed.
Not to mention the ever-looming school tuition issue. That’s a real spirit-booster. Wow, I can’t wait to go thousands of dollars further into debt so I can take a few more classes. This master’s degree better be worth all the hassle and the debt. But ask me about it again when I’m in a better mood and better able to rhapsodize about the importance of education.
Thank goodness I finally bought the South Park soundtrack. Thats’s been making me quite happy. “It seems that everything’s gone wrong since Canada came along. Blame Canada! Blame Canada!”
The result of too much time and film. All self-portraits, all taken in haste in order to finish rolls of film.
My first reaction to the death of my older brother Bobby when I was thirteen was one of sheer confusion. I remember when I found my sister sitting and crying on the steps to our house, and when she explained that the police had found Bobby’s body in a patch of woods near our house, I just wondered how I was supposed to react. When I walked into the house, I encountered a room full of family members either weeping or comforting those who were. A lot of the details of the next few days are pretty fuzzy, but I still have a few impressions of how I dealt with the situation.
The confusion didn’t really go away. I know that on a gut level, I wasn’t that sad about what had happened. I wasn’t close with my brother — he scared and aggravated me more than anything else. He had a lot of problems, and even at the age I was then, I figured out that he couldn’t go on forever if he kept treating himself the way he did. I could tell, however, that I was expected to be upset, even though I was more numb than anything else.
