The Reluctant Receptionist

big news.

2006-09-19T14:37:00.000-04:00

i have some very exciting news for all of you. well, maybe not for all of you, but at least for me.

as of, well, now, the reluctant receptionist has a new home:

dearest readers, i give you reluctantreceptionist.com.

i hope this works robbi

2006-09-18T17:54:00.000-04:00

test 1 2 3, "anything but that!" sorry robbi, i needed to pop in a test post cause blogger is giving me a very hard time. :-)

horse

2006-09-18T09:46:00.000-04:00

phong was in town this weekend for a friend's wedding, which was an all-weekend affair: cocktail hour in midtown saturday evening; ceremony at st. ignatius loyola; cocktails rooftop at the yale club; reception until 11:30 last night. absurd. i can't even explain to you what this wedding must have cost. thousands and thousands of dollars. vera wang bridesmaid dresses. couture gown. it was extravagent but tasteful. i was at the reception last night, grand central in view from the window, and thought to myself, they've thrown themselves a dream new york wedding. i said to the girl next to me that when i get married someday it'll be cheez-its on paper plates. or a backyard luau (ten points to who gets that reference first).

among all of this nuptual splendor, i met all of phong's close friends from college. on top of trying to explain who i was (do i live in san francisco? if i live in new york, how do i know phong?), i didn't feel like also telling these people that i was a classical singer whose day job is in research at mt. sinai. it's too complicated. i find myself doing this more and more lately: i completely edit out the fact that i have a masters degree in classical singing. strangers that i meet in bars or at weddings just think that i do research at mt. sinai.

why? because as soon as i tell them that i'm a classical singer (my spiel when i first started my day job: "well, i have a masters in classical singing, but my day job is ___."), they ask, "oh, wow! so what kind of stuff do you do in new york?" and i have to tell them, "well, i've auditioned for a couple church jobs." because i haven't had a professional singing gig besides church since, um, fall of 2004. so what kind of stuff do i really do in new york? asthma research at mt. sinai.

of course, they then ask where i went to school and i tell them peabody conservatory i have to go through the whole rigamarole. but it's at least a little delayed.

i know, all of my musician friends, that you're going to tell me to get back on the horse. that i have to do dozens and dozens of auditions before even one person will say something encouraging. and, really, it's my own fault that i haven't gotten a real gig in two years. it's my own fault that i'm using a headshot that a friend took of me in college; that every day i wake up and think, "i'm going to call so-and-so for an audition!" and then i go to bed, having gone to work and gone to the gym and cooked dinner and read.

i just have to figure out which horse to get back on. :-)

happy friday!

2006-09-15T18:27:00.000-04:00

"i can't smoke one stick of marijuana.

i can't snort one snort of horse."

jerri blank lives.

2006-09-15T09:20:00.000-04:00

Baby Steps

"So who's this new guy?" my mother asked me recently. I hadn't called her in about two weeks; I'd been busy with work, with plans, with living in New York City. Anyway, we'd discuss innocuous things that didn't involve politics or George W. Bush. Or, God forbid, me being gay. Hearing her ask about a new guy in my life sounded completely foreign, like she'd just asked me what I thought of some party drug or the latest Madonna album. In the nearly ten years since I came out to her I'd grown accustomed to talking about safe subjects, having conversations that could be typed out and read verbatim every week, as if we were reading a script of the world's most boring sitcom: "How's work?" "Oh, it's fine. I'm really settling in. Boy, it was rough going there for a while." "I know, I'm so glad that you got that job." Every week was the same, but with subtle differences: my health would be better, or worse. Her hip would be giving her trouble.

I'd recently decided to push the issue with my mother. I wasn't going to edit out anything I told her. I wasn't going to continue living the life that I'd created for her over the last few years: that of a neutered, gay uncle; that of a man with a roommate or companion or friend. I had two options, as I saw it. I could either stop calling home altogether, just call it a loss, or I could try to speak with my mother as a human being, as I would with any of my friends, albeit cursing less frequently and completely avoiding the topic of sex.

I chose the second option and decided to lay it on the line. Our conversation started out following its usual trajectory: Yes, I'd been sleeping enough; yes, my roommates were just fine. When, every Sunday, my mother asked me what I'd done that weekend I'd usually give her the edited-for-mother version: gay bars became bars; dates never happened.

"So, what did you do this weekend?" my mother asked, predictably.

"Well," I told her, "my roommate and I went out to dinner on Friday night, and then I went and hung out with this guy that I've been dating." I waited for her frazzled response, waited to hear how she was going to deal with this new slant in our weekly conversation. I only heard the crackling of static in my cellphone as cars whizzed past. "And then I went out with Scott and his boyfriend Chris on Saturday," I hurriedly finished.

"That sounds like fun," she said, simply. I'd left out that we'd gone to a tiny, dirty bar downtown where I'd been told to look for a half-asian go-go boy named Dennis because he had the most amazing ass my friend had ever seen. You know, baby steps. And then, to my surprise: "So who's this new guy?" I realized that I hadn't really thought out what I was going to tell her; I never really expected her to ask. Who was this new guy? How did I explain to my mother, a woman who's married to her high school sweetheart, that things were still casual between us? How did I explain to her that in New York City people carry their neuroses around with them like sacks of rocks, that everyone in this town is slow to trust another person, slow to commit?
"Oh, he's just a guy that I met. He's pretty great, but we're taking it slowly." There, that's that. My mother made a noise that said, Yes, I know how that goes or Dating's a tricky thing and went on to the next subject.

So we weren't best friends. I never get it when people are best friends with their parents, anyway. But maybe I'd started to shine a little light into the part of my life that was real: not work, not money, not auditions or rent, but my relationships with people. And maybe it was something that my mother wanted to see.

the roundup

2006-09-14T10:11:00.000-04:00

first of all, the gossip last night at irving plaza: a-ma-zing. amazing amazing. exactly what i expected: beth ditto screaming her tits off, spitting on the stage, starting out in 4-inch silver heels and a dress and stockings and being nearly naked by the time the show ended. dripping sweat. if it'd been a shitty week (it had), last night's show turned all that around.

so here's the thing. i know that you're all chomping at the bit since i wrote my last extremely long music-i've-been-listening-to-the-last-two-weeks post. this is all fine and good, i imagine you thinking, but what records has robert acquired recently!? well, dear readers, stop your guessing. so, at long last (and if a single one of you cares)...

Basement Jaxx: Crazy Itch Radio

ok, so the last basement jaxx album, kish kash, was, in my opinion, a masterpiece in electronic music. it blended punk and dance and was organic and made you need to move. it had cameos by siouxie sioux and me'shell ndegeocello. it still blows my mind, three years later. this new cd...hmm. it just seems a little sloppier. it seems like the jaxx lost focus: the beats are still there; the sassy black girl lead singer is still there. but it's a disparate collection of weird, latin/south asian rhythms and songs that are too long and don't really go anywhere. good gym music? yes. pushing the envelope of electronic music and what it can mean? ah, no.

John Mayer: Continuumi just got this record yesterday from stefanie, my coworker, but it's already impressed me. i don't share my love for john mayer with many people, much like i keep my love for (two songs by) dave matthews band hidden. sure, it's a little adult contemporary. it's a little breathy and a little bit like bb king on downers. but, hey. the songwriting's earnest; he picks up a lot of how it feels to be a (late) mid-20-something. and his guitar solos are good. thumbs up.

Justin Timberlake: FutureSex/LoveSoundok, so i'm not exactly sure that i have any business reviewing this record, because i've never made it through the whole thing. the first few songs, most notably "futuresex/lovesound" and "my love" are pretty great. i don't agree with some lame p.r. people who try to claim that this is "electroclash," mainly because it's nothing but familiar timbaland beats with some extra synthasizers. the only downside to the first few tracks are timbaland's insistence on actually being in every track he produces. i don't need him to tell me to "take it to the bridge" or "take it to the chorus" every time the bridge or chorus comes up. shut the fuck up, timba. it'd be a better song without you. now please don't find me and cap my ass. the rest of the album, i'm sad to say, i've never heard, because he places two 7-minute-long songs back to back in the middle of the cd and i turn it off halfway through the first one. my jt saturation threshold is very low.

Liz Phair: Whip-Smartnow, i know what you're saying, readers. um, robert, this cd is about twelve years old. yes, readers, i know that. but i was busy listening to boyz 2 men when this cd came out the first time, so i didn't have time to get into it. and then i got distracted by her last two terrible cd's. but this cd is basically what exile in guyville, one of the best indie cd's of the 90s, could have been with a lot of money for production. all of the searing riffs are there; all of the bratty attitude of girliesound tapes and exile. but with really high production value. besides, the lines "Your kisses are as wicked as an F-16/And you fuck like a volcano/and you're everything to me" are worth the price of the cd.

My Brightest Diamond: Bring Me the Workhorse

imagine that pj harvey listened to a lot of edith piaf. imagine that patti smith lived in the weimar republic. put them both through a heady liberal arts education, where they not only study classical singing but also read a lot of 20th century american lit. now throw in a clean, loud electric guitar and a string quartet. there. it's shara worden, aka my brightest diamond. the cd's dark, moody, perfect for early fall and early sunsets. do you know that feeling in about the first week in october, when it's still warm during the day but when the sun starts to go down your arm gets goosepimples and the air is clear and crisp and you can feel the coldness in your nostrils? it's about the time that you see all of those creepy patches of fog at night in the cornfields in indiana. that's when to listen to this cd. my favorite lyric?

So I left her alone & I went on my way
& I was dreaming of Paris & Pierre Boulez
But she called to me with a beat of her wing
She called to me & said free me

yeah, it's good.

marn!

2006-09-14T09:51:00.000-04:00

two words, people:

CHING

CHONG.

(thanks, george.)

today's gossip

2006-09-13T10:17:00.000-04:00

it's a big week, dear readers, and i'm exhausted. not to mention a lil' broke. don't worry about me, though, i'll eat just fine. hot dogs and ramen are cheap, right? and i have protein shake so that i don't lose weight. yeah, i'll be good. hot dogs, ramen, and protein shake. it'll be just like when i was 21 and spent that summer here with scott. only i'll do less drugs. and by drugs i mean tylenol. yes, that's the ticket. tylenol.

we had to go to out to dinner last night with the visiting bigwigs at this place that i would've never chosen to go on my own. mainly because the cheapest thing on the menu was what i ordered: a cobb salad that cost $23. that's right, $23. it was one of those irritating midtown restaurants that cater to businessmen on expense accounts and idiot tourists who don't know any better. all the people i was there with ended up ordering $50 pieces of fish. a la carte. i'm sorry, and it may just be because i'm southern, but i feel like for fifty bucks you should get an entree, a side, a salad, and some bread. not some piece of overdone fish sitting in the middle of a huge plate with "aioli" drizzled over it. we weren't on expense accounts, mind you--this was "dutch." did i end up spending $40 on a salad and coffee? yes, i did. is $40 the entire sum that i allow myself to spend in an entire weekend? yes, it is.

ramen noodles, hot dogs, protein shakes.

in better news, i'm going with amanda, scott, caryn (who, ahem, writes for MTV news), and paul to see THE GOSSIP at irving plaza tonight. now, i've written about this band just a couple of times before. because they're pretty incredible. hannah, their drummer, is killer. beth, the lead singer, blows her tits off like no one i've heard in her generation. and she's this big, fat lesbian who throws herself around the stage with more soul than sunday morning in black church. scott made me promise that we wouldn't be in the mosh pit because he's never been to a rock show before. he's been to madonna, sure. but this is kind of a different situation.

i just chuckled and told him what i've said for the last couple of years: my mosh pit days are over. now i get to venues and head straight for the balcony seats and watch all those crazy kids bumping into each other.

that's trashy

2006-09-12T13:04:00.000-04:00

well, dear readers, it's a day for an afternoon post because we're having bigwigs from the NIH inspect our study site today. i thought that just maybe it'd be better if i looked like i was doing actual "work" instead of "blogging" (please note the unnecessary air quotes. it's my new thing.). i think, however, that they're in the conference room eating their lunches. and so i've snuck onto blogger.com. see how dedicated i am? yep, i'm willing to risk my job for you people. okay, so maybe not. if my job was like, "you have to stop blogging or you'll be fired," i'd be like, "ok." because i talk a good game but i'm actually a pussy.

speaking of horrible things happening at work, i have to share a story that happened to amanda's boyfriend yesterday. none of this is fabricated or exaggerated. lemme just say that. and, for those of you whose stomachs weren't strong enough for the cockroach story, you might wanna go here.

apparently, amanda's boyfriend (who will remain nameless but whose name starts with an e and rhymes with schmeddie), who's the facilities manager at this big lawfirm (as a day job, of course, because he's a writer.) gave orders to throw out a bunch of paperwork that he thought was trash. and apparently this paperwork wasn't trash; it was sensitive documents that shouldn't have been thrown away.

did he have to go to the trashcan to fish out the papers?

no.

did he have to go down to the trash compacting room in the building to fish out the papers?

no.

did he have to go home to astoria, where amanda met him to buy coveralls and boots and a mask, and then go back into lower manhattan at 8:30pm, to wait on the garbage truck's arrival and then follow it into new jersey, where it would dump the trash off at a landfill, and then climb into that landfill and see if he could salvage any papers he could find?

yes, he did.

now, dear readers, i thought about it. and i don't know if i've ever heard of something so horrible happening to someone i know, short of them having someone in their lives die. next to death, this is about the worst. that guy i knew who went to prison for statutory rape...that's pretty bad, too. but this: sifting through a landfill in new jersey, a landfill that looks like this......yeah, i think that's the worst thing i've ever heard happening to another human being. and i know him.

the long ride

2006-09-11T11:42:00.000-04:00

i feel like i should write something about it being the 5th anniversary of what the newsmedia immediately named "9/11." it's 9/11 in new york and i think that it's weighing on everyone's minds more than they're outwardly willing to admit.

don't tell anyone this, but i was secretly afraid that another attack would happen this morning. i got out of bed right when my alarm went off so that i could be ensconced at mt. sinai before 9 o'clock. i didn't want to be in the queensboro tunnel, the tunnel that a doctor here never fails to remind me "freaks him out every time he goes through it," when the fifth anniversary of the world train center falling down happened. i wanted to be at my desk, just in case.

this plan was foiled, however, when my train stopped on the tracks between my house and queensboro plaza. for thirty minutes. stopped. as we all stood there, having no idea what was going on, all of us repeatedly glancing at our watches as we became late for work, i bonded with a girl, my age but much more nicely-dressed. when we finally pulled into queensboro plaza, the crowd outside the train was four people deep. "why don't we move to the center," i told her. "i think that this is going to get really ugly."

"you're right," she said. "i just wish that they'd tell us what's going on when the train stops like that," she said, as our train once again ground to a halt in the middle of queensboro tunnel. the doctor would not have been pleased. "i mean," she went on, "we all know what day it is. just come on the loudspeaker to say that there's a train in front of us. you know, just to let us know that it's alright."

8:46 passed, and then so did 9:03. and the train started moving again and the girl and i got off at 59th street and we went up the stairs, without saying anything else to each other. and it's five years later, five years after i watched the news from my new house in greencastle and then tried to call scott because he lived here and worked close to downtown. and now i'm a new yorker who, like all of the rest, tries to pretend like this 5-year anniversary didn't make him nervous.

the hunt's over.

2006-09-08T13:07:00.000-04:00

in a move that's a big deal to me but probably won't be a big deal to anyone else who reads this blog or, really, even to anyone who knows me, i deleted my manhunt.net account this morning. that's right, i emailed manhunt.net from work to tell them to get rid of my account. to delete the account, my pictures, my "snappy" headline. all of it.

granted, i made a few friends on manhunt. and i did a lot more chatting with people than i did hooking up. but:

it's an incredible waste of time. i didn't stop watching as much television so that i could sit on my ass in my room chatting with strangers who are probably fat while staring at a blue screen, "messages waiting" flickering in the corner. i stopped watching television so much so that i could have time to figure things out; to be creative; to just be.
it leads to nothing but trouble. it's easy to say that you're going to stop hooking up online. until you log on and you start to have all of these people propositioning you, some of whom are actually very hot. then your resolve falters. i'd log on, just to kind of look around and see who was on--not that i even knew any of these people in real life--and suddenly conversations would start, plans would change.
i'm sick of meeting and/or sleeping with people who don't give a shit about me. not that i gave a shit about them. i'd started to feel a little bit of disdain for people who would proposition me online, even more for people i'd meet. being adversaries with sex partners? yeah, there's something wrong with that.
i've recently discovered that sex with a random hookup is actually worse than just getting off by myself. and it's a lot bigger pain in the ass.

ok, so there are four good reasons to cancel my manhunt.net membership. all of those reasons had already started to weigh on my mind a while ago. i decided a few weeks ago to cancel the membership, before i even met this guy that i'm pretty into. ok, so very into. and even though we haven't ever talked about being monogamous, and, since we live in new york, i assume that he's sleeping with other people, that doesn't mean that i have to keep wasting my time on manhunt. so, yeah. it's over. done.

don't look for my profile. it's not there.

simply recipes

2006-09-07T16:17:00.000-04:00

since i'm not only a big ol' homo, i'm a big ol' homo who really loves to cook, one of the RSS feeds on my google homepage is simply recipes, a wonderful recipe blog. seriously some good shit goes across the pages of this woman's blog. and you can imagine my delight when she posted the following picture of italian sausage, like none of us know what it looks like:

yes, friends, that italian sausage is packin' a true 8 and a half inches. if only i could say the same of all those queens online...

swinger

2006-09-07T10:24:00.000-04:00

though i generally consider the new york times a stodgy affair--who really wants to read about two extremely wealthy 30-somethings tying the knot in east hampton?--sometimes they really try to reach out to their younger audience. yes, bitches, i am still considered their younger audience. they've been doing quite a few stories on gay life lately, too. it makes sense, when you consider that new york city is roughly 65% homosexual. the rest are straight (10%) and puerto rican (25%).

anyway, the times just wrote a story on online ettiquette--specifically, when it's time to change your status from "single" to "in a relationship" or "it's complicated" on myspace. it's really scary that we all think about these things, but let's be honest. we do. when you're starting to date someone it's inevitable to look at their myspace profile, where it still says "single," and think, hmm, i wonder when or if he's going to change that. and then, mostly because these online sites say that we have to name whatever's going on, you have The Talk. so you're in a relationship, which means your myspace page has to reflect that.

something they don't address in the article is something that our little 44reception is guilty of: checking their match.com profile to see when they've logged in. what!? he's still looking for dates!? i can't really point fingers, however, since i'm guilty of doing the same thing on a website much more clandestine than match.com. let's just say it rhymes with schmanhunt.com. and it never leads to any good.

all of the things i'm saying here are said better in this article. go read it fast before the times tries to make you pay for it.

robyn, amber, deborah

2006-09-06T09:50:00.000-04:00

i've been spending the first part of my mornings lately in the office next door, chatting with two of my coworkers. we work in the same office, it's just that the offices are separated by a wall. so it's...well, it's two different offices. but part of the same office. fuck it, work semantics are boring.

the point is, i was chatting with my two coworkers and mentioned to them how much i hate gay dance music. in truth, i hate any dance music, but pretty much all dance music is gay dance music, right? unless, of course, it's like jamaican "dance hall" music and it talks about burning faggots. then it's another animal entirely. anyway, when i told my coworker how much i hated dance music, she said, disbelievingly, "why!?" as if dance music had been sent to us from some higher power. as if shaking our groove things (remind me never to say that again. ever.) to a thumping beat would lead us all to nirvana. now i know that a few of you out there, especially certain members of the cabinet, will disagree with me when i say this, but: dance music is repetitive and boring. there, the i've said it.

that being said, i've spent the last two days making a gay dance remix of scott's song "most of me." he's a musical theater writer who has a penchant for, let's say, sometimes-corny ballads. not that these ballads are at all bad; he just knows what an audience wants to hear. and every show needs some kind of uplifting ballad number. every year at the end of pier dance they play one of these songs remixed into a gay dance number. the lyrics always involve loving ourselves, loving each other, working together in harmony, and pride. at the end of pier dance this year, scott and i decided that we were going to have our own gay dance song, absurd enough to be played during the fireworks at pier dance.

so i've spent the last two nights after dinner (using all of this time i discovered when i turned off the television and stopped watching programs i didn't care about) taking this vocal track of our friend shanna singing and making it a gay dance song. and, if i must say so myself, it's definitely pier-worthy.

so look out paul oakenfield! er, um, oakenfold? whatever. look out, i'm comin' for your job.

if you feel like battling rapidshare, you can download the world's hottest new dance track here.

speaking of justin timberlake,

2006-09-05T11:24:00.000-04:00

am i the only person that's TOTALLY grossed out by the idea that all of the sex he talks about having on his new cd is with cameron diaz?

BLEAK.

it must be my futuresex/lovesound.

2006-09-05T10:21:00.000-04:00

holy god, what a weekend. a three-day, last weekend of the summer kind of weekend. last week a lot of people asked me, "what are you doing for labor day?" and i'd meet them with a blank look. do something? for labor day? well, let's see. i'll be sleeping late for three days in a row and probably drinking friday, saturday, and sunday. just like it's a weekend. but, you know, a weekend that lasts three days. it's not like i'm going to spend the weekend at my beach house or throw some rooftop barbecue. i guess that technically i could throw a rooftop barbecue, but it'd be really dangerous because our rooftop isn't really designed for guests or a weber grill.

all told, i logged about six hours in the park between saturday and sunday. and by the park i mean central park, not that rest stop on the jersey turnpike where you can usually find me. sunday, scott, chris, and i lounged on those big boulders in central park, where we heard a homeless, aged black man scream, "i need a JOB! and i need some GRITS! i need some GRITS and i need a JOB!" grits and a job. that's really all you need in life. then, of course, we got drunk at xes, a gay bar in chelsea. as chris said, "is there a cocktail at the end of this rainbow?" scott and i looked at him, saying "of course."

yesterday's homeless adventure in central park occurred during a picnic--catered by columbus circle whole foods--with amanda and hilary. this crazy with a z homeless guy plopped himself down right in the middle of this family with a baby. you know they were pleased. he then took the lid off of a tub of potato salad, which he then proceeded to eat like an ice cream cone. then, after eyeing us for about an hour, he came over and said that he "needed us to make a very important phone call for him. his sister...blah blah blah blah" and i don't know what he said because i was too busy pretending to read out magazine and wishing he'd just walk away. finally he said, "so, what? you want me to leave?" to which i said, "yes, sir, i do." amanda was horrified.

saturday i saw the illusionist with noah at a theater in the lower east side. don't bother seeing this movie--ahem, i'm sorry--film. it was filmed in vienna, which was the real star of the movie. that's how boring it was. looking at vienna was more interesting than the plot. and i've never even been there.

2006-09-01T09:47:00.000-04:00

Blind Faith

"How are things going with Tim?" Benjamin asked me as we walked hand-in-hand down Seventh Avenue. We were nearly to Chelsea, where no one in his right mind was going to give us grief for being so affectionate with each other. This was how we always walked: arm-in-arm or holding hands. It just seemed like the natural thing to do. We hadn't been involved for years, since that fateful night in college, really, but we always sprang back to the way things used to be. Ben looked over at me, the conspiratorial look that was always there glinting in his eye, and waited.

"They're, I don't know, going," I said. I was hesitant to give an answer, guarded in what I'd tell him about this new man that I'd just met. Things with Tim seemed to be different. I didn't meet people anymore who made my heart beat faster; I didn't get nervous when I dialed their phone numbers or got ready to meet them for coffee. I hadn't for a while, in fact. And then I met Tim, who had started to work into my head in a way that I'd nearly forgotten was possible. So when Ben nonchalantly asked me how things with him were going, I didn't know how to put it. But I knew that I wasn't ready to share.

"OK," he said, "it sounds like you're not impressed. So what's the problem?"

"There's no problem," I told him. And then I told him about the butterflies I'd been having when I thought about Tim, about the way that I couldn't seem to get him out of my head. I braced myself for the inevitable, the look that says Uh-oh, someone's stupidly fallen in love again or Who's the flavor this week? I should've known by that point that that wouldn't have been Ben's reaction. He was the only unflenchingly romantic gay guy that I'd ever met. He'd been with his partner for four years. If anyone was going to be in True Love's corner it was him.

"I just don't know how to deal with this," I said, releasing his hand and crossing my arms over my chest. "At the end of every date we have, I just want to see him again. This guy's funny and smart and he reads and writes. I've been so in control in the last few relationships that I've had. I've always had one foot on the ground, I guess, and feeling like this just really scares the shit out of me."

If there was one thing I'd learned about dating in New York City, it was to not put all of my eggs in one basket. Everyone seemed to have their eye on the door, looking for the next big thing, the next person that could do something for them. Or maybe that's just how I perceived it because I still felt like an outsider. I'd learned, though, not to expect monogamy--either emotional or sexual--until you'd had a conversation agreeing to be monogamous. For better or worse, I assumed that people who I dated were seeing other people. To be fair, I usually was, too.

But when I met Tim, still following the rules of New York City dating with its perpetual casualness, suddenly I was sick of being casual. Something very rare had happened: I had stopped looking around at what else was out there and started looking in only one direction. His. And that scared me. I'd learned to say, even when I was so secretly excited, that things were just ok; that things could be better; that we'd see what happened.

"This is your problem in relationships, Robert," Ben said, proud to have diagnosed another one of my quirks. "You always have this Doomsday prophecy." I didn't want to hear it, but he was right. I was always waiting for the end, predicting the worst. "But I want you to try something. This time just go with it. I know you're jaded and that you have a hard time believing that things could actually work out for the best. But hear this: sometimes you need to have faith. Faith that you can be happy. Faith that sometimes relationships do actually happen, and that this could very well be the start of a great relationship."

I'd never been one to have blind faith in anything--be it the good of man or the kindness of fate--but I thought it was time to give it a shot. I'd put both feet on the ground and face whatever was going to happen dead-on.

a late-night present for all of you.

2006-08-31T23:07:00.000-04:00

honorable mention

2006-08-31T11:59:00.000-04:00

look who's a star!

porn update

2006-08-31T11:26:00.000-04:00

well, dear readers, your overwhelming response was "yes, be an extra. and then tell us what movie it is." so i've just emailed the man back telling him when i'd be available.

i just better have all my clothes on. the last thing i need is to be shirtless next to a PORN STAR.

robert's book club

2006-08-31T10:50:00.000-04:00

every now and then i stumble across a book, a work of fiction usually, that changes the way i look at the world. while i'm reading it, after i'm done reading it, i realize that my slant on things has changed a little bit. it's as if i tilt my head just to the left and things are elongated. these books have little bits of truth about life, things that i'd never really thought about or been able to put into words before, right there on paper. one of these books is tuesdays with morrie.

totally. kidding.

it's michael cunningham's the hours. now, to those of you who have only seen the movie and will therefore tell me that

it wasn't about anything
it was boring
you didn't get why these women were so depressed all the time, or
you didn't see what all the fuss was about

i say read the book. if for no other reason, read the book for clarissa's scene in which, remembering her life's favorite moment, when a man she was in love with came up behind her on a back porch on a cold morning at the end of summer and put his arms around her, she says "i thought that was the beginning of happiness. what i didn't realize is that it was happiness."

do i have to spell out the lesson here? yeah. life-changing.

another must-read is the book i've just finished, one that i've talked about here before: middlesex. for some reason i saw this book laying around my apartment for a while and thought that it was some boring 19th-century romance novel. i couldn't know that so much of it would wake up my brain in so many different ways. that the author could fill it with bits of the human experience that we're often too embarrassed of to admit even to ourselves. that, less than a month after i'd been thinking to myself about the finality of life and the soul and the brain, the author would articulate the same thing: that the brain is just an organ like any other, the soul a manifestation of it, and when the brain fails...

but enough. in the hunt for my next great read, i picked up the heart is a lonely hunter. i'm afraid that, even though i'm trying to apply all of my high school AP english reading methods (ah, yes. symbolism. what do these overalls on this dusty road really mean?) i'm just not into it. i'm halfway through and at this point i don't really care if i finish it. noah had the same reaction. at least it's not just me.

i need your advice.

2006-08-30T14:39:00.000-04:00

ok, readers. time for a vote. seriously, hit that comments section. i just got an email from the new casting director at lucas entertainment (that's michael, not george.):

"Hey Robert,

Are you interested in shooting with us in a non-sexual role?

We're planning a big-time fashion show scene for the period of
September 22-24 (Friday-Sunday), and you look like you could be a perfect
candidate for a runway model. If you're in town this week I'd love it
if you could come in to the office for an interview. Again, this role
is non-sexual."

obviously if they think i'm a perfect candidate for a runway model they have no idea that i'm actually four feet tall. i can't decide if it'd be a funny enough experience to make it worthwhile. what do you think?

run, forrest

2006-08-30T12:33:00.000-04:00

a lot of my job consists of going into projects in the, um, less desirable parts of new york and taking environmental samples. how do i do this, you ask? well, i get into scrubs because i don't want to wear my own clothes. then i get on my hands and knees, attach a special adapter to an oreck vaccuum cleaner, and then vaccuum these peoples' hovels. another thing that goes along with all of this is interviewing them. i ask questions about their history, whether or not they smoke, or if they use a humidifier.

you know, the easy things.

i came across a woman today, however, that literally blew my mind. she was so slow that she told us the wrong address of her house. the house she's lived in since, presumably, birth. it's her mother's house. let me give you an example of the way this morning's interview went:

me: how many colds has the baby had since we last talked?
her: cold?
me: yes. colds. how many colds has the baby had?
her: i'm not cold; i've got this jacket on.
me: no. the baby. how many colds has the baby had?
her: the baby's right over there.

and then this gem:

me: do you use a central air conditioner at any time in the home? [i can see that she doesn't.]
her: when it gets hot i turn the knob.
me: so do you use a central air conditioner?
her: sometimes it's hot in here.
me: so when it's hot do you have a central air conditioner that you use? it would have a thermostat on the wall and cold air would blow through vents in the wall.
her: [pointing to the room air conditioner] i use it when it's hot.

there was a white castle across the street from the project. my two coworkers and i stopped in after the visit and then greedily ate the whole bag of fatty goodness as soon as we got back to the office. we'd earned it.

modelsearch

2006-08-29T12:54:00.000-04:00

sheesh, it's totally a day for random, short blogs. oh well, get over it.

in news that i keep forgetting to report, terry won this chicago pride contest for "sexiest drunkard in his underwear on a float" or something like that. which means that he not only gets to have a photo shoot to be in (i assume) the promo material for next year's pride, he gets tickets for two anywhere he wants to fly. and let's be honest, people. he's going to be flying to nyc. and i'm absolutely certain that he's going to bring his new husband.

best of all? he's an ad banner:i might have a bi-weekly column, but dammit, i've never gotten to be an ad banner. i need to work on that.

oh, amy.

2006-08-29T11:05:00.000-04:00

what happens when you mix a brilliant downtown improv comedian and a hip, gay interior designer?

this happens.

spam

2006-08-29T09:17:00.000-04:00

sometimes, amid the dozens of spam messages i now get in my gmail account each day, all of them promising me a "b!gger C1ck" or pharmacy-direct viagra, i find a real gem. witness, dear readers, the paragraph that was at the bottom of a spam email i received this morning from a gentleman named stravros mazza:

Artifact or no I was just nine days away from my personal destiny. When I had first heard the thirty-day deadline on the poison I had not been too concerned. Thirty days is a lot of time. I thought.

is it spam or is it anne sexton? it's anybody's guess.

air quotes

2006-08-28T13:25:00.000-04:00

well, dear readers, it's another early afternoon post today, mainly due to my being "busy" at "work." i've decided to use "air quotes" a la britney spears in her now-infamous cryfest interview. "you know, y'all, just cuz i have a 'baby' doesn't mean that 'paparazzi' should be following 'me' around." these quotes are indeed unnecessary because i have actually been busy at work, mainly sucking up dust samples from high-rise projects and looking for hints of cockroach infestation. you know, the fun things.

across the street from work, meanwhile, ellen degeneres' show is setting up camp. there are people lined up for five blocks to see the taping. the stage that had been set up when i came into work is now booming beyonc e tunes, as she sound checks for her performance on ellen. when i walked to duane reade this morning i saw her in sweat pants, strutting around singing "deja vu." i'd recognize that hair anywhere.

this weekend was the big gay pool party at frankie's, most of which which i'm proud to say i remember. i thought i'd gone to bed around 3. apparently i went to bed around 4.30. what happened in that dark hour and a half? it's anyone's guess, i'm afraid. well, not anyone's guess. i'm sure that the boys have some sort of report for me; i'm just not sure i want to hear it. when you consider the fact that last year i was so drunk that i blacked out starting at, oh, 11:45pm, i really feel like a grownup.

so responsible, only losing an hour and a half of your night.

i think it's the hot tub that does it to me. it couldn't be the pitcher of orange juice-laced vodka that i was swilling while in the hot tub. definitely the hot tub's fault.

the next day, we ate breakfast at a diner in extremely suburban philly. it was so suburban, really, that i'd call it rural. there were eight of us, all homosexuals, all hungover, all rowdy. when shania twain's "man, i feel like a woman" came on the radio i saw the wait staff shoot each other worried glances; mothers covered their babies' ears.

i spent the rest of the weekend at robin's apartment in art museum, philly. much like my old place in baltimore, if you walk three blocks in the wrong direction you're in trouble. her block is adorable; there's a city block-sized garden across the street. then, when you walk two blocks over and one block down, there are vagrants and crack vials. for some reason i didn't worry as much about myself in downtown baltimore as i do her in downtown philly (which could be a total lie since my time in baltimore seems like a hundred years ago now). maybe that's what's called being a big brother, worrying about your little sister. my little sister who's now a first-year law student.

BGPP!

2006-08-25T13:55:00.000-04:00

well, readers, it's already somehow 1:50 in the afternoon. i've finished an extremely (un)satisfying lunch that consisted of four lukewarm chicken fingers with kraft barbecue sauce (i'm constantly amazed by olfactory memory; as soon as i opened the packet of barbecue sauce i thought of my grandmother's pantry, where she always had [has?] a sam's club-sized jar of kraft barbecue sauce. i never liked it. still don't.) and a small salad slathered in bleu cheese dressing. that's right, BLEU cheese. the price for this lunch, and for not having to go outside since it's pouring rain? $9.50. thanks, mt. sinai. seriously. thanks.

speaking of the pouring rain, tonight is the 2nd annual big gay pool party at frank's house (manse) in philly. last year's festivities included highlights such as me prancing around in a black speedo, playing footsie with mattie in the hot tub (in front of my boyfriend), and being so drunk that i can't remember anything after, say, 11:30pm. apparently i smoked a whole lot of cigarettes; i came out of the bathroom, threw myself down onto my air mattress, and screamed "I CAN'T FIND THE BATHROOM!;" and then screamed "WHERE'S GEORGE!?" even though he was laying next to me. it would seem as though i go completely blind when intoxicated.

i also make faces like this, which i think this year i will try to avoid.

seriously, i'm going to remember this year's BGPP. mark my words. and if i don't mention a single word about it in my blog on monday, don't mark my words.

in addition to the BGPP, i'm going to see robin in philly tomorrow. she's just moved there to start her law degree at temple (that's right, my baby sister just became the smart one in the family. i was pretty proud of my master's in music until now.) and i'm going to visit her and judge her apartment i mean provide her with love and support.

since i sold my beloved honda, i once again have to travel by trains, planes, and automobiles to get there. ok, so just trains and automobiles. but still, i have to take new jersey transit. wish me luck.

the 'tross

2006-08-24T10:00:00.000-04:00

i was reunited last night with my friend michael, whom i got to hang out with like four times before he up and left for summer stock. now, of course, he's leaving for another gig in florida in two weeks. i will never understand these traveling musicians, these troubadours who actually get paid to sing or play. members of equity. suddenly i'm the constant, the one who doesn't move. they all know where to find me: at my desk at the hospital, or at a project in the bronx, vaccuuming on my hands and knees.

michael and i met through cory, my first camp boyfriend ever. i've been a bad friend, nauseous because of my medication and tired from staying up too late and watching too much tv, so cory and i haven't hung out in a month and a half. but he paid me back last night by not coming to the albatross, or the 'tross, as i've lovingly started calling it, for its next-to-last open mic night. the open mic night at the 'tross, dear readers, is called "loose lips." this should tell you something.

loose lips is hosted by two local drag queens. what do drag queens look like when you get out of manhattan? well, they look pretty much the same as they do in the city, but their wigs are cheaper and they're a lot nicer. they're nicer to each other; they say hi to you when you come into the bar. they'll listen to a lesbian named liz who just finished crying her way through a 4-page poem about the "razor blades in her insides" and give her their phone numbers. hell, i think we all wanted to give her our phone numbers or maybe even put her on some kind of night-watch.

so it was a sadly short loose lips last night. only three acts signed up, including the drag queens. these were:

the two aforementioned drag queens, roommates, one of whom is a cute latino(a) from texas, performing a rap song they made up. it was a lil' kim-ish ditty about how the boys want to see their candy. the backing track they used was a karaoke recording of "99 luftballons." rapping drag queens in a nearly-empty dive gay bar in queens.
a man who's "performance" was--i think, though i never really got it--reading emails he received from a company with whom he was seeking employment. only he didn't read them, his aging blonde lawyer friend with a baseball hat did. he just stood on the sidelines, sipping his vodka tonic, twirling his thumb ring and grabbing at pages that were too private for even the 'tross. then the same lawyer friend read a bunch of quotable quotes from 'tross regulars, none of which i got.
liz, the teary lesbian, read her epic poem. it was a tale of "not wanting to be like those other girls, in their silky shoddy shirts/twisting twisted twister tales of razor blades/that cut cut cut me from the inside." some of the 10-person audience was uncomfortable when she started falling apart. i was kind of amazed.

a week from wednesday is the last 'tross "loose lips." and i plan on going. hell, i might even read an old column, since apparently you don't have to have any kind of "talent" or "gimmick" or "shame" to get up on stage. we'll see.

an AVALANCHE of music! har har.

2006-08-23T09:33:00.000-04:00

in the last few weeks i've been the happy recipient of a deluge of new music of all kinds: folk, electronic, rock, and then some that doesn't fit into any of those categories. when i get a new cd i like to have at least two weeks to listen to it obsessively. if it's good, i mean. when i got the new dashboard cd, dusk and summer, a few weeks ago, i didn't really need to spend a couple weeks on it. i listened to it a few times, really forcing myself to try and like it because--let's just call a spade a spade--i want to have chris carraba's babies. after this cd, though, he's just going to have to keep quiet while we try to conceive.

anyway, i've gotten so many new cd's lately--should i keep calling them cd's even though i've stopped buying cd's? since i sold my car i have literally no use for hard copies of music; i've finally given in and just started using itunes music store--that i decided to log a few of them here to share with all of you, my legion(s) of dear, faithful reader(s). so, without any further ado, here's my extremely-short-and-not-at-all-official-as-i-reserve-the-right-to-change-any-of-these-opinions-at-any -given-time-or-upon-any-number-of-further-listenings review:

Patty Griffin: Flaming Red

i just got this record (that's right, bitches, i said record) last night (while i slept, no less), so i haven't really been able to listen to it yet. just listening to the first three tracks, though, has already blown my mind. if you're familiar with patty griffin's other cd's, you'll know that they're all really, um, acoustic guitar-y. the first three songs on this cd, however, are like patty griffin "plugged." but it's not annoying plugged like, say, when dashboard confessional decided to flesh out their (his) sound. it just seems like a natural progression. the songs are the same as her first album in structure and content, but the cd "rocks," as they say. and c'mon, you get lyrics like this:

Hey Tony, what's so good about dying
He said I think I might do a little dying today
He looked in the mirror and saw
A little faggot starin back at him
Pulled out a gun and blew himself away

whoa.

Sufjan Stevens: The Avalanche

as all the reviewers have already said, this album really could've just been called illinois 2. but that's kind of ok, because the original illinois touched me in places that i don't let many people touch me. but it's still a b-sides album, which means that it lacks the coherency and flow of the original cd. i guess that i wanted this cd to reprise some of my favorite moments from the original ("the predatory wasp of the palisades," for instance, which somehow transports me in time back to a fall in indiana every time i hear it), but it never really does. it uses the same wonderful palette to create songs that are nearly as good as the ones that beat them out for inclusion on the album. but they're still b-sides.

Ani DiFranco: Reprieve

ani's latest cd came out just a year after knuckle down, which surprised me since she just announced last year that she had been diagnosed with tendonitis and would be forced to stop playing the guitar for a while. now, this woman puts out a cd literally every year. she has since 1991. this prodigious output means that inevitably every cd's going to have a few duds. knuckle down was an exception to this rule, i thought, so i was expecting a lot out of this new work. i was a little disappointed, though, because i think that the intricate song and melodic structures she was fleshing out on knuckle down kind of disappear on this cd. it's almost like she's taken a step back, after her last cd was so perfectly, slickly produced, each song streamlined and poingant. of course there are some standouts, most notably "shroud:"

I had to leave the house of television
To start noticing the clouds
It's amazing the stuff you see when
You finally shed that shroud

that's right, i'm leaving the house of television. sorry, food network.

Christina Aguilera: Back to Basics

i can't really give a full review of this cd because i've only listened to ten tracks. the ten tracks, specifically, that scott decided should've comprised the album. somebody should go over to the met, pluck him from his cubicle, ahem, i mean corner office, and make him a music producer. or at least a christina aguilera advisor. because the ten tracks he picked are each pretty incredible pop gems, all of which follow her new "look at me i'm going to call myself baby jane and make everything sound big band-y!" plan, without sounding repetitious or cloying. the beats are fresh and make me shake my small, scrubs-clad booty on the subway. and let's just not beat around the bush anymore: a few of the songs feature a gospel choir. anything with a gospel choir is going to get my vote, be it christina aguilera or "i don't like the drugs." after a while i did want to scream "I GET IT, CHRISTINA. YOU LOVE YOUR HUSBAND!" but maybe that's just because i'm a jaded asshole. she won me back, though, with the lyrics "he's a one stop shop/make my panties drop" and "he's a one stop shop/with a real big *uh*" oh, christina. how dirrty.

so i've gotten more cd's but that's seriously all i can write today. and i'm sure none of you have even read this far. let's just see if that's true: the holocaust is nothing but a fiction made up by jew-owned hollywood! whattdya think of them apples?

mmm

2006-08-22T09:16:00.000-04:00

has anyone else noticed the amount of attention they've been giving to what jonbenet ramsey's suspected murderer eats? what's this guy's name again? frank kameny? no, that's a 50's gay rights activist. hang on, i'm going to go look it up.

ah yes, john mark karr.

anyway, i know at least two full meals that this man has eaten. the first--champagne, beer, chocolate cake, and i presume some kind of entree--was consumed on his business class flight from thailand. then yesterday, in prison, he apparently ate a bologna sandwich. both of these fascinating tidbits of information were provided to me by the today show. oooh, a bologna sandwich! champagne! cake! these must be the mark of a child molest-y serial killer. what do they all mean, these foods, when taken together? was jonbenet partial to chocolate cake? champagne? she was, after all, a young beauty queen, which means she was accustomed to a life of glamour.

i don't know the whole story here, as i haven't bothered reading a single article about the man's case. i don't know why, for instance, he was in thailand to begin with. or why he gave himself up. or how he knew the little girl he murdered. if he used to, say, snack on his victims when he was done, and he was in thailand because they have ritualistic cannibalism over there (let's just say for argument's sake that they do, k?), i can see why it's important that now he's been downgraded to bologna sandwiches.

otherwise, get back to me if he's convicted.

a happy new york story

2006-08-21T09:44:00.000-04:00

something happened yesterday that, before it happened, existed only in my nightmares. no, dear readers, i wasn't hate-crimed on the street; no one broke into my apartment or pulled a gun on me on the subway. what happened wasn't, i suppose, a direct threat to my well-being. that's not exactly true. my emotional well-being has taken a direct hit.

so i'm sitting in my living room yesterday finishing torch song trilogy (as a side-note: if you haven't seen this movie yet, go rent it. it's old, it's by harvey fierstein, and it's unbelievable.), getting all weepy and enjoying my cereal and coffee and having the house to myself on a sunday morning to get all weepy and enjoy my cereal and coffee. torch song ends, having hit a little too close to home when it comes to harvey's relationship with his overbearing mother, and i swirl my coffee around in its mug, then take a last gulp.

there's something in my mouth that feels like plastic; like a bit of candy bar wrapper. for a moment i think that i might as well just swallow it--when's the last time somebody died from eating a candy bar wrapper?--but i change my mind and spit the wrapper into my hand.

it is not a wrapper, however, dear readers.

it is a

COCKROACH.

A DEAD COCKROACH.

A DEAD COCKROACH THAT LOOKS LIKE THIS:
in my mouth. a dead cockroach in my mouth. i fling it onto the oriental rug and spring up off the sofa. i don't scream, i don't cry. i'm just dumbfounded. i shakily go to the bathroom and swish a full mouthful of mouthwash, way more than the bottle tells me i should be using. i go back to the coffee mug, go back to the dead roach on the rug. in my mug is another dead cockroach. they'd been having, i don't know, cockroach synchronized swimming or something. while i drank my coffee.

and no one is home. i'm alone in my house with my two dead cockroaches, one of whose texture i can still remember in my mouth. i call hilary, her phone is off. i call amanda, who's on the train. i call terry, who's in bed with his new boyfriend.

this is it, readers. we have done everything in our power to get rid of these roaches: we have diligently cleaned; rid the house of any paper laying around; gotten traps. the next step is the roach gel. oh, and calling my landlord to tell him that he needs to pay for an exterminator.

because i drank a roach yesterday morning.

how to know your man is hooked on crystal

2006-08-18T13:05:00.000-04:00

by drag queen hedda lettuce, via queerty:

HOW YOU KNOW YOUR MAN IS HOOKED ON CRYSTAL

1) He can fuck for hours but alas never seems to achieve an erection.
2) When you head over to his apartment for a romantic evening his door is slightly ajar and upon entering he is naked on his bed with his ass in the air getting plowed by 5-7 gentleman callers.
3) When you are fucking him it feels like you are fucking an open window.
4) He is missing his two front teeth.
5) He has picked out all his eyelashes and eyebrows and has glued them to an ashtray and has given it to you for a birthday gift. Your birthday was 6 months ago.
6) He swears Madonna is communicating to him through a filling in his mouth.
7) He has redecorated his apartment by boarding up all his windows with duct tape and cardboard boxes.
8) His breath smells like gasoline.
9) He has overdosed and died.

2006-08-18T11:50:00.000-04:00

A Different Place

“Do you still love Alan?” Matt asked me. It’s a question that had been swimming around in his head for a while, I think. It had been there, moving in circles, trying to kick its way out from behind his eyes. After all, this was our fourth date and we hadn’t so much as made out. This just isn’t done in New York City. You either hop in bed on the first date or you assume that it’s not going to happen. Something seems so Victorian about getting to know each other before you start a sexual relationship that everyone here just expects sex on the first date. Matt and I had been on several dates; we’d held hands, even, but we hadn’t kissed on the lips. I’d avoided the deep, penetrating eye contact he kept trying to make. He had the studied eyes of an actor, always trying to convey something to you without words, thinking that he could hold you with his gaze.

And he’d clearly had enough. Determined to get to the bottom of things once and for all, determined to divine the reason that I’d avoided physical contact over the course of our two-week relationship, he went for what he knew was the jugular: Alan, the man I used to live with. Two years after breaking up, we still talk on the phone twice a week. He’s more like my brother than any man I’ve ever known. And here was Matt, a man I barely knew, a man who didn’t know anything about my history or my friends or family, cornering me about a past relationship.

“I don’t know,” I told him. “I guess so.” As he stood up, obviously pissed off, I noticed for the first time how cold his room was, his little air conditioner working overtime against the heat wave we’d been having in New York. He looked back at me and said, on his way out of the room, “I think you need to figure that out before you try to start another relationship.” And like that, it was over. I either didn’t have what Matt needed or I wasn’t willing to give it. I left, thinking more about Alan than the man whose apartment I’d just been ushered out of.

What a question: Do I still love Alan? And the obvious answer, the one that pops out of my mouth before I can swallow it down, replace it with the one I’d like to say: Yes. I don’t think I ever stopped, in fact. Even after we said things to each other that we can ever take back, after he’d taken his bed and his cat and moved away, I still loved him. Do I wish, though, that we were still together, that he’d call me tomorrow and tell me that it was all a big mistake? Absolutely not.

The truth is that Alan and I seem to have done the impossible. We seem to have come through a breakup to find a relationship that’s stronger than lovers. We’ve found an ease with each other we never had when we were dating. This is the man, after all, that’s driven me to the hospital and seen me through deaths in the family. Like it or not, the two of us are wound into each others’ lives. So there’s my answer. Yes, I love Alan. I also love my mother, but I don’t want to date her, either.

Why, then, has the longest relationship I’ve had since him lasted a grand total of four months? Why, when I know that our being friends is the best thing for us, should he be the standard against which others are judged? Maybe it’s because I’m too impatiently awaiting the connection with another person that he and I share, maybe because I’m subconsciously seeking not just a new relationship, but his replacement.

The truth is, I suppose, that it’s a little bit of both. I won’t try to forget Alan or deny that still means so much to me. He’ll still be there, in my heart, and eventually someone else will join him. And I’ll move forward, carrying my love in a different place, but knowing that it’s there.

an ipod in booze

2006-08-18T10:07:00.000-04:00

let me tell you something. there's money to be made in booze. and last night's after-work romp to the hudson hotel with a coworker for her birthday proved it. as if it needed proving.

my coworker decided that she wanted to go somewhere fancy for drinks. now, i go plenty of fancy places for drinks: the cock, for instance, or even therapy if i'm feeling extremely wealthy and preppy. this doesn't happen often, as you can imagine, so i do most of my drinking at the cock. why? because even though these places are more expensive than baltimore (more expensive, really, than anywhere else in the world except tokyo, london, paris, and boston), they're cheaper than any other bar in the city. well, any bar in manhattan. i wouldn't go to like some bar in staten island. hell, i wouldn't go to staten island.

so since i do my drinking in divey gay establishments, i don't often see how the other half live. you know, the other half who can do things like go to the hudson hotel bar (which, by the way, is fashioned after that scene toward the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, where the floor is all lit up and there's all that clear furniture. i don't really know anything about this scene because i haven't seen that movie since 6th grade, when our crazy possibly-lesbian definitely-mean science teacher whose name i can't remember showed it to us.) and drink $15 martinis.

fifteen dollar.

martinis.

that's not even to mention the $400 bottles of champagne they list on the menu. yeah. so when the bill came--and it was my credit card on the chopping block--and the grand total (including gratuity, which i thought was very gauche for a bar that tries to pass itself off as fancy. like, if you think you're serving rich people don't you expect them to tip you more than 15%? yet i digress) was $319, i tried not to fall out of my chair. luckily i was with a bunch of adults, all of whom started throwing wads of money at the bill. and i'm going to go deposit all of that cash and immediately pay the tab off. but still.

$319. that's like...an ipod. in booze.

rip nancy

2006-08-17T09:56:00.000-04:00

first of all, i'm still not over that cute little blonde girl getting kicked off PR last night. what's her name? it's not angela, because that's the crazy woman who hides her crow's feet behind those chunky black glasses and sticks rosettes and bubble skirts on everything she makes. hilary? no, that's my roommate. i can't remember her name and since she's now history i'm not going to bother to look it up on bravotv.com. so we'll call her nancy. nancy's a cute name, right? she looks like a nancy, with that slick bleached hair and lil' pug nose.

anyway, i was just sick to my stomach over the fact that the judges eliminated nancy last night instead of vincent. like, it has never been clearer to me that the producers are the ones making the last call here. they're only keeping that crazy sack of shit on the show because he's, well, a crazy sack of shit. at least last season's shit-starter (or the "puck" of the group, as i like to think of him) was santino, who had some real talent. and he was totally likeable by the end of the season, especially with that "what happened to andre?" bidness. but vincent? i don't care how they edit him, he's a gross, malicious man. lucky for us he lives in new york and we might have the opportunity to bump into him somewhere.

on the same hand, little nancy or whatever her name is lives in new york as well; and she's our age; and i'm sure she likes gay people because, c'mon, nancy's clearly down. you don't get that hairdo from a straight woman. so we're with you, nancy, wherever you are. we believed in your talent and your perkiness and totally didn't think that your ugly yellow paper dress made your "zaftig" (tim gunn) model look like she was "plus sized" (heidi). besides, as sam said, "plus size meaning what, exactly? that she's a size 2 instead of a size 0?"

yes, sam. that.

next week's challenge is, we think, that the designers have to design outfits for their mothers. "what happens if your mother is a huge lady?" sam asked. "they don't get a big enough budget for all that fabric."

"i'd love it if my mother was my model," i said. "she only eats chardonnay."

it's no atlantis.

2006-08-16T14:03:00.000-04:00

and, adding to the growing list of crazy fucking shit i miss about baltimore...

that's some shit

2006-08-16T10:31:00.000-04:00

after finishing the 40 year old virgin last night with amanda (i'm sorry, but i was not expecting this movie to be as amazingly funny as it was. seriously, go rent it.) and a triple-shot of nyquil, i went to bed at 11.30. and, almost miraculously, my sickness has vanished. ok, so not exactly vanished. i still have a stuffy nose and my voice sounds pretty bad, but i'm not knock knock knocking on heaven's door anymore. oh wait, homos don't go to heaven.

in other news, i've been contacted via myspace by the only other homo that i went to high school with. though i'm sure there were others (just by looking at his myspace page i see another dude that must've been to high school with us, two years younger, that i don't recognize whatsoever. and trust me, i would. because he's hot. and that's a rare thing at ponca city high school.), the only person in my class that i was pretty sure was a raging homo was this guy. whenever i tell people i came out in high school (in 1997, in fact, right after ellen came out on ellen.) they don't seem to get the gravity of the situation. inevitably they're east coasters who have been out since they were 13, or, like, "were never really 'in,'" but being a gay 17 year old in a town of 25,000 people on the plains in oklahoma...that's some shit.

so this other guy, the guy that myspaced me yesterday, always pops to my head when i tell people that i was the only out gay guy in high school. because i'm not exactly sure that's true. this guy definitely could've been out to his friends; i'd never have known. his friends were cheerleaders and the rich guys who lived down the street from me. they drove their big, expensive trucks or their tricked-out honda civics or their mustang convertibles to the country or to each others' houses, where they got fucked-up on beer. i, on the other hand, was friends with the music kids, the drama kids, the eccentrics. with very few exceptions, these two castes don't mix. so even if this kid was, in fact, out, he wasn't available to me.

so he says to me in a myspace message this morning, after totally skirting around the issue yesterday, "so, wait a minute... you said that ty is "cute"... does that mean you're... uhhh... maybe i better check out your profile." of course i had to pause for a second--this guy lives in ponca city, sees my parents all the time. i've gone so far away from life in that small town that i was hesitant to reopen a connection that wasn't one of the few i already had. but then, having been out of the closet nearly ten years, and seeing as he is obviously also a big homo, i just told him. not that i had to, since right there on my myspace page it says "GAY!!!!!!!!" in big pink flashing letters.

pictures!

2006-08-15T16:08:00.000-04:00

finally, finally, finally posted pictures from last week. click here.

2006-08-15T10:52:00.000-04:00

so, all of you baltimoreans (and dc-ans), click this link, then buy a ticket. then go see kel and be amazed. deal? great.

yeah.

2006-08-15T10:41:00.000-04:00

my resolution upon coming back from avalon--you know, the one where i swore that i'd sleep at least eight hours a night, more if i could, because my main problem pre-vacation was that i was absolutely exhausted--is shaping up really well. i didn't stay up until midnight two nights ago watching the 40-year-old virgin. nor did i meet up with an acquaintance from college last night at therapy for a drink, which of course spiralled into a drink plus two vodka martinis. oh wait, yes i did. my resolution to rest, to not let new york city run me into the ground, has gone by the wayside. and so, once again, i'm sitting at work an exhausted wreck. oh, and what i've been insisting to myself is "allergies" seems to have traveled downstream into my lungs. it couldn't be those vodka martinis. no way.

tonight, though, i'm going to bed at 11. no, seriously. 11pm. i'm going to be a good boy, and set my coffee out the night before and brush my teeth and ten-thirty and not drink or smoke or swear.

in other news, i successfully traded for the on-call cell phone (that's right, on-call cell phone. which i forgot to turn off last night and rang at 5:30am, a whopping four hours after i'd gone to sleep.) so that i could attend frankie's big gay pool party, aka bgpp, in philadelphia next weekend. oh, and, you know, see my sister since she just moved there. god, what an exciting post...yeah.

resurrection

2006-08-14T09:20:00.000-04:00

hellllllloooooooooooooo, dearest readers! (i hope that when you read that sentence you read it in the voice of dame edna, because that's how i thought it in my head when i was writing it. you did? oh, good.) if you ever want to feel loved, let me tell you something, you should try disappearing for a week. by wednesday, i had eight people call me to make sure that i was alright. you know, that i hadn't stepped in front of a subway car or finally jumped off the tallest building here at work. or, i guess, that i wasn't in the hospital with another crohn's flare.

i was somewhere much, much better than dead or in the hospital: i was in avalon, new jersey, at tom's family's summer house. first, let me describe the location: avalon is on the jersey shore, just north of stone harbor. it sits on a strip of land separated from the mainland by a bay, which tom's house overlooks. the back deck faces westward, which means that i got to see seven sunsets over the bay. yes, i am lucky.

i spent the last week:

riding around on tom's boat or being dragged behind tom's boat on either an innertube or (unsuccessfully) water skis
laying on the beach, next to the ocean
laying on the beach, next to the bay
laying on the deck, next to the bay
swimming (in my speedo, obviously)
reading middlesex, which is currently changing my life and made me cry twice on the train back to new york because of the following passage: Though he'd never been religious, he realized now that he'd always believed in the soul, in a force of personality that survived death. But as his mind continued to waver, to short-circuit, he finally arrived at the cold-eyed conclusion, so at odds with his youthful cheerfulness, that the brain was just an organ like any other and that when it failed he would be no more.
drinking whiskey sours, our "drink of the week," as tom called them.
sleeping ten hours a night, to the point that my fellow houseguests made fun of me and said that i had mono

and, after all of those eight things, i am four shades darker. i am rested. and, i suppose, i'm ready to be back at work. happy monday!

2006-08-04T09:42:00.000-04:00

Making Noise

We had just finished making out in the park. Not actually making out, I guess, but something that closely enough resembled making out that it made people notice when they walked by. One man in particular had cast us a lingering glance that wasn’t a smirk, but an earnest smile. It was a smile that said, Oh, you kids.

We didn’t have anywhere else to go, really, so we’d escaped to the park even though it was a sticky summer day. We had a few precious moments before the rain started—steady, soaking rain, the kind that makes an umbrella useless—and we were using them well. I held Andy’s head to my chest as we sat there, feeling his coarse hair, thinking how funny it was that I, of all people, was being so intimate in public, and how funny it was that I was enjoying it. I’m the person who doesn’t hold hands at the shopping mall, the person who’s too self-conscious to kiss goodbye at the train station. When Andy looked up at me, though, his look said Aren’t we being bad? Don’t you just love it? And I forgot all of that other stuff.

“Come on,” he said, his head still in my lap, “let’s go.” We’d started walking toward the edge of the park when I heard a teenager shout, “Stop being such a fucking faggot!” He said it with laughter in his voice, making fun of his friend. I can’t write the other things he said; use your imagination.

As we continued walking up the hill, toward the edge of the park, I couldn’t help being conscious of the boys behind me. They were still loudly taunting each other. I like to think that I could hold my own in a fight. I have, after all, spent a sick amount of time at the gym. But no amount of working out changes the fact that I’ve never actually been in a fight, much less had to defend myself against teenage anti-gay hate crime-ing juvenile delinquents.

For this reason, I am extremely aware of my surroundings. And when two teenagers, both of whom outweigh me by probably 50 pounds, are throwing anti-gay slurs back and forth at each other, I take notice.

Just go ahead and walk around us, I kept thinking, forcing Andy to match my pace as I slowed down. The boys passed us without a word, but I thought to myself how lucky we were that they hadn’t walked by us five minutes earlier.

“Is it wrong,” I asked, speaking for the first time since I’d heard the boys behind us, “that when I hear people talking like that I still get freaked the hell out?”

“Nah,” he said, “but I guess I’m used to it.”

With Andy, though, it isn’t really an issue of being used to it; it’s an issue of never having to worry about it. He could pass for straight if he had to. I’m sure he does most of the time. I, on the other hand, with my fitted shirts and wild ties and tight jeans, don’t.

And so I wonder, will I ever get over this jumpiness? I do, after all, live in New York City. Gay people—in Manhattan, at least—are attacked so infrequently that people take to the streets in protest when one is. So why do I still find myself looking over my shoulder all the time? Why is it that my heart beats a little faster if I’m alone on the train with a group of teenage boys?

I could lay out plenty of reasons: that I grew up in rural Oklahoma, a place where gay people really do have to watch their backs; that I’m a pessimist, always expecting the worst from people. But I think that the reason I’m wary is very simple: gay people still get assaulted all the time. And, contrary to what the attackers’ defense lawyers might say, it’s not always because we were hitting on the wrong people. It’s often just because we were in the wrong place at the wrong time, holding hands with our boyfriends, wearing our rainbow shirts, whatever.

Our nation’s current political climate, I think, fosters this violence. We live in a country where our leaders perpetuate institutionalized bigotry (think the Defense of Marriage Act, for instance), which sends people the message that it’s OK to discriminate against us. And it’s not a great leap from discrimination to violence; once you’ve dehumanized someone it’s a lot easier to hurt them.

I’m not a political writer; I’m not the most informed or politically savvy person. But I do know what it feels like to fear for my personal safety, even in a place like New York City. And until I can do what every straight couple takes for granted—whether that means getting married or making out in Central Park without the fear of getting beaten up—I’m going to make as much noise as I can.

how i spent my morning

2006-08-03T10:51:00.000-04:00

i often avoid doing certain things. i don't know why, because they'll be neither uncomfortable or really that big a pain in the ass. for one, i avoided going to buy an air conditioner for literally two months. i chose to sweat in my sweatbox heattrap of a room, literally drinking myself to sleep, instead of figuring out how to get to a store and buy the a/c and then put it in. in the end, it was my coworker john who had to say "ROBERT, we're going to buy you an air conditioner." of course, he's a wonderful homosexual from from long island, so it sounds a little different when he says it. with his prodding, i found a PC richard just down the street from my house, asked amanda to go with me, and voila--i had an air conditioner to sit there in my hallway until i could lure a straight man (stadler) over to install it for me.

much like the a/c purchase, i avoided making an appointment in radiology for about a month and a half. one of the joys of crohn's disease is that you get to have all kinds of yummy tests done every now and then. for some reason, though, i carried the order around with me for six weeks. every day i'd think, "today is the day i'm going to make this appointment." and then i'd get busy at work and leave the hospital, having not made it. once again, when john got wind of the fact that i hadn't made the appointment yet, he called me every 15 minutes until i could tell him the date and time of my "small bowel."

yep, small bowel. the second i've had to do in my life. it's where you have to drink what feels like two gallons of barium (essentially school chalk that's been pulverized and made into a paste) and then flop around on an x-ray table. the highlight of this test (i mean, if i could choose just one, since it's obviously a party) was the radiologist who performed it: an old jewish woman with densely-rouged cheeks and a lavender jersey old-lady dress which perfectly complemented her white orthopedic sneakers. and i don't mean old jewish woman like 60. oh no. 60 is the new 40, or something like that. i'm talking like at least late 80's.

so picture this: me in a nightgown (that i accidentally put on backwards, until old jewish doctor lady says "why is your gown on backwards? turn it around, we don't care about your bottom.") on an x-ray table, laying down, being fed barium through a straw by an 85 year old woman. this is how i spent my morning.

weather.com

2006-08-02T09:41:00.000-04:00

ever since weather.com told us that the day of the pier dance there would be "steady, soaking rain" (how editorial does weather.com really need to be, i ask. i did, however, work this inside joke into my latest column.) scott and i have been throwing around jokes about ridiculous headlines involving the weather. specifically about how they've been covering our latest heat wave. in an email yesterday, scott said:

I wonder what the weather writers came up with
today considering I looked at accuweather this morning
and there was a graphic of a thermometer bursting...it
said 99 degrees but "realfeel" is 112. Maybe
"death-inducing, molten-lava-like, heat"?

the answer is on the cover of today's am new york:

"SCORCHING: Temps soar and it's only going to get worse today"

and, from Page 3:

"Crazy heat won't retreat!"

whereas weather.com just says:

"GET THE FUCK INDOORS YOU CRAZY FUCKING ASSHOLES. WHAT, DO YOU WANNA DIE OR SOMETHING?"

fleetwood mac reunion tour

2006-08-02T09:26:00.000-04:00

well, friends, the day has come. today's the last day that i'll see sleater-kinney perform live, unless their "indefinite hiatus" is actually just a hiatus and not a breakup. of course, if their "indefinite hiatus" ends in fifteen years i'll be 41 and long past my years of going to rock shows. so this truly could be the last time i see this three perform live.

and that's a damn shame. it's not that they're the best band i've ever seen live--unlike some bands who you really don't understand until you see them play, i think that s-k really does shine in the studio. now before you get all up in arms here, let me explain myself (to those one of you who actually care about this band): when they play live they're not quite as tight. their sound often feels like it's going to come unhinged at any moment--like the three of them could just careen off a cliff, spinning in three separate directions. when you combine this precariousness with the fact that they've lately had a pension for psychadelic 10-minute jam sessions--possibly my least favorite of all music genres, i find jam sessions absolutely unbearable--i just think that their cd's are a little more enjoyable.

this isn't to say that they don't put on a pretty fucking incredible show. corin tucker fucking wails, carrie brownstein jumps around while playing her badass guitar, and janet weiss, um, hits the drums super hard. i plan on dancing my pants (actually shorts, since it's another 100-degree day here in new york) off. amanda's going with me tonight; i don't think that she's ever seen s-k before.

i remember when i went to see them the second time in baltimore and i dragged terry along with me. i do mean dragged, because he thinks that corin's voice sounds like a cat being passed through a meat grinder. (i'm like, uh, duh, terry, that's why i LOVE it!) we stood toward the front of the stage, surrounded by 17-year-old wannabe riot grrls (hello you're a teenager in baltimore, maryland, not a riot grrl). terry had been nervous about what to wear since up to that point he'd been more the "fleetwood mac reunion tour" attendee and not so much a punk rocker.

ah, memories.

it might be worth it

2006-08-01T11:18:00.000-04:00

well, readers, it's another week of literally trying not to drop dead here in new york. if i thought that the last motherchristing heat wave was bad, this one promises to be worse. just like everywhere else in the country, temperatures are soaring up to, oh, i don't know, 103 degrees. with a heat index of 115. ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN DEGREES. when you're walking down the strip in las vegas and you feel heat like that--and it's true, by the way, that it's a dry heat and that it doesn't feel as hot as a, um, wet heat (ew, wet heat. how porno sounding)--it's almost exciting. like, "oooh, i can feel this sun totally crisping the skin on the back of my neck like bacon!" but it's only cute because you know you're only going to be out in it for five minutes, or however long it takes you to walk across that bridge from the MGM grand to new york, new york. you walk from one casino/shopping mall to another and they're so air conditioned that you don't really mind the 115 degrees.

when you're stuck swimming through the new york summer air, though, it's a very different proposition. you're not walking to and from a casino/drinking establishment/swimming pool. you're walking from the revolting, sweaty, smelly train station to work, through a sea of revolting, sweaty, smelly people. and you know that you're one of them. (it doesn't help, i suppose, that i was distracted this morning and completely forgot to put on my certain-dri. OOPS!) it was nearly comical, though, how the train station felt this morning. the whole thing was absurdly hot. like, hotter than outside and outside it's 100 degrees. and the spot where i stood--where i stand every morning since i moved two train cars down to avoid the crazy latin woman--felt like there was a heater blowing onto it. there's actual hot air actually blowing on me. actually.

and so i just had to kind of laugh, as i stood there with sweat dripping down my face. dripping down my spine. much like when you're in new york and caught out in a monsoon-like rainstorm, there's just nothing you can do. you get soaked and chalk it up to the list of thigs that suck about living here. but then you think about that open-bar out magazine party last thursday and decide that it might just be worth it.

quit yer bitchin

2006-07-31T09:47:00.000-04:00

continuing what's suddenly become "robert's amazing summer full of plans, parties, and visitors," alyson was in town this weekend promoting her new book. oh wait, no. forgive me. we saw the devil wears prada (or, as my mother calls it, "this wonderful movie called the devil wore prada.") yesterday, so i suddenly thought that all of our lives were fabulous and event-filled. alyson was merely in town visiting us, but it was a fantastic visit.

when i was younger and my mom would have her out-of-town friends visit--and i mean much younger, like 9 or 10--i never understood how they could just sit around and talk. sit around on the living room sofa, sipping sweet instant coffee; sit around on the sofa in the formal room, sipping sweet instant coffee. they'd just sit. and talk. with alyson's visit, i realized that this is what we do now. we sit around on the living room sofa and talk. but without the instant coffee because it's 203948239 degrees in new york.

don't get me wrong, we didn't just sit. we went to the met (opera and museum), had burgers at this ridiculous place in "le" parker "meridien," ate popsicles (mine: the "big stick," and you better believe i had a good time ordering it) on the upper east side. we went to dinner in the east village and had drinks at some straight bar before i dragged a whole group of people to the phoenix.

speaking of the "whole group of people," it was like a fucking depauw university reunion at this east village gay bar. it's me, scott, amanda, alyson, and our friend clark, whom we hadn't seen since graduation. he apparently lives here now. he also apparently used to bartend at a gay bar in phoenix (the city, not the bar), but was bellyaching the whole time we were at the gay bar about how uncomfortable he was. ya see, clark is straight. conspicuously straight. still, though, if you've bartended at a gay bar you can quit yer bitchin', as they say in the old west. or is that the trailer park? whatever.

last night, part 102,938,102,989,753,983

2006-07-28T09:52:00.000-04:00

so i did something last night after work that heretofore i'd only seen on sex and the city, something that always seemed so ridiculously new york-y and impossible and oh-my-god-how-chic: i went to a party where your name had to be on a list to get in. well, ok, i went to a party where someone else's name was on a list but they took me as their plus-one. did i feel extremely fancy? yes, sir, i did.

the party was something that out magazine apparently throws every month to celebrate the release of their new issue. it was at some absurd multi-level club in chelsea called, um, guest house. or something. it didn't really look like a guest house, unless your guest house has a padded-leather ceiling with red chandeliers and 400 homos in sleeveless d&g shirts. i know mine does. oh, and the bathrooms at this guest house place were a model for all clubs: individual stalls with doors that go all the way down to the floor. now, i know that none of you out there are crohn's sufferers, but let's just say you notice things like this. and appreciate them.

i was absolutely convinced, standing in line with sam, that we'd get to the door and the man at the velvet rope (who, by the way, was wearing a black see-thru tee-shirt and had the perkiest yet largest nipples i've seen on a man) would be like, "hmm...nope, i don't see you on the list. NEXT!" but he wasn't. sam gave him his name and, miracle of miracles, he opened up that clicky thing on the rope. sam said, "me plus guest." i said, "i'd be guest." nipples didn't laugh.

basically, fancy party. the bar was open as long as you drank some sort of bacardi limon drink. now, i haven't really drank bacardi since the disastrous "let's see what happens when three people drink a handle of bacardi while nads-ing robert's chest" night my senior year of college. (remember that one, emily?) but when it's free, um, i'm gonna choke it down. and by choke i mean guzzle.

i met the editors of out magazine and was able to honestly tell them that i have a subscription. i talked to them about the new editor-in-chief and the direction of the magazine. then i met the man who apparently owns the whole damn thing: the advocate, out, all of it. he was very nice and his husband was extremely tan and wore shockingly white pants. best of all? when you start drinking at 7 and you're going home at 10:30, a little drunk, you get an awesome night's sleep.

my prediction

2006-07-27T14:40:00.000-04:00

ok, so i don't know how many of you are watching project runway this season, but it's already off to a fucking saucy start. i was a little concerned, after last year sucked us in, that this year would, um, blow. but i'm into it. the show, i mean, not blowing.

so, if you're watching PR, as you know you should be if you're reading this blog, you know that next week's episode is going to feature the "shocking elimination that shakes the very foundation that is bravo television" or something like that. whatever it is, they've been teasing us with it since june.

i'd like to put in my bid for what the big secret is, just so that if i'm right i'll have the, well, knowledge of knowing that i was right.

has anyone else noticed how much time that adorable gay redhead from oklahoma (we'll call him, let's see, hmm, what could we call him...john artz) is spending with robert the ex-barbie-clothes designer? well, i have. ever since last week's challenge, when they were partners, they've been all cutsie-pie we-get-along-so-well. little jokes. little eyes.

what does all this mean, combined with the fact that they're the two best-looking homos (i'm not counting keith because he's a total asshole)? it could mean but one thing. say it with me:

they're doing it.

so here's my prediction for wednesday: tim gunn gets word from the producers of the show that robert and kayan/kaye/kate were bumpin' pussies when they thought the cameras were off. little did they know, project runway sees all! well, clearly, this is against the bullshit code of conduct they signed before they started taping. one--or, gasp, both--are going to be kicked off because of having gay sex. ironic, seeing as every person on the show is gay and it's on bravo. i will also be devestated because i'm rooting for kayan/kaye/kate because he's an oklahomo.

the only question is, did they flip a coin to see who gets to be the bottom?

two weeks!

2006-07-26T10:32:00.000-04:00

one of the small blessings of my new(ish) job is that i get pretty generous time off. they combine sick days and vacation days for a grand total of 2.5 days a month, no matter how you wanna spend 'em. since i'm literally never out sick (except for, you know, those pesky times that i'm in the hospital), that means that i get 2.5 days a month all to myself. this adds up to one magical, wonderful, unbelievable thing. i'll say it loud and in bold:

i get to take a week off in august to go to the jersey shore.

that's right, dear readers, i get to take a week off from work to go to the beach and then help my sister move into her new apartment in philly. i don't think that i've had a week off from work since...well, ever. that is, ever in the long and difficult two years that i've actually been a paid member of the workforce. we're not going to count those 24 wonderful summers that i spent either a) lounging around my parents' house; b) lounging around scott's apartment; or c) drinking my way through various summer opera festivals.

so i'll go to the shore, hitching a ride with frank in either his new volvo or his new mercedes (i'm secretly hoping it's a mercedes so that i can put on my big sunglasses and ride in the back seat, pretending that i'm someone very, very important.), and then i'll swing through philly, tan as the day is long and probably a little hungover, to meet robin and the girls. when i say girls i mean the entourage of people that go around the country helping each other move. seriously. robin has been to las vegas and louisville to help friends move. now apparently they're all driving out with her to philly to move her in there. when i moved to baltimore i drove out with my honda, my computer, and my television. then again, i moved to new york with the biggest truck you've ever seen plus hilary. so i can't complain too much.

TRASH!

2006-07-25T09:40:00.000-04:00

ok, so there's this smell outside my apartment. i know exactly what it is. the greek restaurant downstairs (one of a hundred thousand greek diners in astoria, none of which have a specialty but serve gyros, kabobs, hamburgers, pizzas, and cheap cuts of steak with equal aplomb) leaves its garbage, a horrible, stinking, rotting mess, at the foot of its basement stairs. now, if this basement were only reachable through the building, they wouldn't do it, i'm sure. even the crazy greeks that run the place would be run out of their own space by the hulking stink-bomb. however, this is new york, which means that basements open up not into the houses, but onto the sidewalk. so our dear greek restaurant flings open its metal trap doors every morning, letting the smell of rotting lettuce and onion and cast-off meat and cast-off food waft into the muggy new york summer.

waft, specifically, into our front hallway, the door to which is always open since we share the building with a greek realtor, a woman i affectionately call constantina constantinopolis, even though her name is something else. not something less greek, just different. the smell then reaches our apartment in two ways: it goes up our stairs and sneaks into the apartment when we open the door; it also snakes up the building into my windows, which are right above the offending trap-door.

i asked amanda last night if the smell bothered her like it does me. i've gotten to the point, dear readers, where i have to hold my breath all the way from the corner until i've shut the apartment door behind me. just a whiff of the garbage smell is enough to turn my stomach. scratch that. just thinking about the garbage smell is enough to turn my stomach. "well," she said, "i think it's gross. but i definitely don't think it's that awful. and i really can barely smell it inside the apartment."

i, on the other hand, can smell it all the time. it's possible that it's because of my new medicine, one of the side effects of which is loss of appetite and nausea. i mean, sure, it makes sense that if you're on a medicine that makes you nauseous and then you smell horrible rotting trash all the time, you're going to be a lil' sensitive to it.

i've been given bougie little room sprays by my coworkers, after having complained to them of the smell, and use them when i get home and before i go to bed. granted, it then reminds me of that commercial that says "what's worse than the smell of fish? the smell of fish and flowers." what's worse than the smell of rotting greektrash? the smell of rotting greektrash and "moonlight garden."

so, you new yorkers, come by sometime and give me your opinion. i'll make you dinner: gyros, kabobs, hamburgers, or pizza. your pick.

feel the illinoise

2006-07-24T15:44:00.000-04:00

well, dear readers, it has been such a crazy day that i'm just now getting around to blogging about our trip to chicago this weekend. mind you, i apparently had three hours earlier to put up all of the pictures onto my sister site, but hey. what's more important: wordsy words words or pictures of me, brian, and terry shirtless? i think we all know the answer to that question. and it ain't words.

to make a long story short, i have completely fallen in love with chicago. ok, so maybe i should make that short story a little longer. chicago's a little smaller than new york, which makes it feel more manageable; terry's neighborhood, specifically, is really beautiful. it's got fantastic, chicago-y architecture and not once did we have to drive around looking for parking for 45 minutes. sure, you have to walk through kind of a scary ghetto to get there from the train, but if you walk in the other direction for ten minutes you're on the gay beach. on gorgeous lake michigan. which, if there aren't warnings about dangerous bacteria levels, is clean and beautiful.

there seems to have been themes to this weekend's visit: "wow, i cannot get over how clean it is here;" "wow, it totally doesn't smell like rotting garbage, piss, and feces in your front yard!" or "wow, this hamburger doesn't cost $17 with an extra $4.50 for french fries." seriously, folks, it's a damned good thing that i visited chicago after i moved to new york, because if i had seen how terry was living when i was still stuck in baltimore (no offense, my dear baltimore friends, but you know what i mean), it would've been like the knife twisting in my side.

all in all, it was a wonderful visit. i only get to see terry twice a year these days, if i'm lucky, so that was good. his apartment is adorable and inspired me to, you know, go ahead and hang the pictures that have been sitting around my own apartment since april. on top of that, we got to see some touristy things, meet terry's friends, see lyday a ton, meet her wonderful boyfriend (i won't say fiancee...YET), and hang out with newly-brick-shithouse brian. the only person i missed (besides, you know, that branch of my family that i didn't call...oops.) was ben. and, dammit, i'll make that happen sometime soon.

i've decided that i need to go back to chicago in the dead of winter. or i needed something like a rape or mugging to happen to me. you know, just something to really make me despise the place. because right now i'm ready to pack up and move, no matter how much i love new york.

phaotaos

2006-07-24T13:46:00.000-04:00

if you like this picture, you'll love the rest of them. let's just say we took chicago by storm.

from chicago!

2006-07-21T19:22:00.000-04:00

hot off the press (or, you know, terry's computer in chicago)!

Lesson Learned

“I just don’t like feeling like this lovesick homo that’s chasing you all over New York City,” I said to Charles one day. I shifted my gaze downward, studying my new skull and crossbones Converse, not wanting to see his reaction. I picked at the molded rubber, bits of it already falling off even though I’d only bought them a few months earlier. This was one of the expenses you don’t think about when you move to New York: going through a pair of shoes every three months.

“Why do you say that, Robert?” he asked me, clearly a little bewildered. In the months he’d known me he thought he’d learned what to expect. This, I could tell, had caught him off guard, as if he’d just seen a new side of me. As if a new door, one he hadn’t noticed before, had just opened. “You know we’re friends, right?” he said. “You know that I care about you, and that I want to be around you. That’s why I ask you to hang out all the time. Why would you say you feel like you’re chasing me around?”

I did, in fact, know that we were friends. I also knew that I’d been attracted to him since the day we met: attracted to how wild he was, loving way I felt like I was on a roller coaster every time we went out in the city, flapping along in his wake. For weeks I’d wanted nothing but to know what it’d be like to kiss him, even just once. To feel the fire, the spark, that I knew would pass between us.

But it wouldn’t happen; none of the late-night conversations or lingering hugs would lead to anything, I knew. Not because there wasn’t a connection between us, but because he had a girlfriend.

See, I’d been down this road before, being infatuated with a straight guy. Having spent most of high school in some unrequited love affair or other, I’d sworn off it completely, knowing full well that it was a waste of everyone’s time and energy, most of all mine. In high school, where there were no other options, no other gay people who’d admit to being gay, I went from one crush to another, always with my best friends. They always ended the same way: with a statement that I was really great, man, and if they wanted to be with another dude then I definitely would be at the top of their list. But you know, bro, that’s just not how they felt about me.

The last one, the most intense, taught me once and for all that it was better to be single than heartbroken. I’d sit for hours on this boy’s back porch, smoking cigarettes in the cold Oklahoma night while his mother was at her boyfriend’s house. Under the glare of the unshaded light, I tried to make my cigarette last a little longer, tried to prolong my time with him. Inevitably I’d sidle right up next to him, making sure that at least our legs would touch, and complain about the cold. And inevitably he’d put his arm around me, pulling me close to him. This, giving me the touch I so desperately wanted, might have been worse than freaking out, pushing me away. It gave me unending hope for the future, hope that someday his brotherly affection would change, hope that he’d turn his face to meet mine.

And so, eight years older and wiser, when I found myself in a very similar situation, one in which feelings that shouldn’t have been there in the first place started taking over, I wasn’t exactly sure what to do. I’d chase him around New York for a while, I thought, knowing that I’d sometimes I’d be nothing more than an accessory, the funny gay guy he and his girlfriend hung out with.

This time, I thought, I’d shift my focus, look for what I needed from someone who could give it to me. I was too old to beg for scraps; I’d been freely given too much affection to ask for it from someone who didn’t want to. I’d keep the line drawn between friend and lover. And I’d be more careful.

oh shit

2006-07-20T10:41:00.000-04:00

it's been quite a while since i've shared with you all a morning goods link.

so, once again, you're welcome.

big apple to the windy city

2006-07-20T10:25:00.000-04:00

let's just say it's been an easy work week. yes, i had to come into work on saturday because i was on call. (you heard me right. on call. i don't know when or how i got myself into a place in my life where i'd ever be important enough at a job to be on call, but there you have it. then again, it's not like i was delivering babies myself, so i guess i might not be so important after all. if they could hire a chimp to push the right buttons, he could be on call here, too.) but i'm taking a half-day today because i worked saturday. so that means that i really only worked three and a half days this week.

i woke up this morning and the first thought in my head was, in these words, "mmmmmmmm, you get a half-day today. and you go to chicago tomorrow." that's right, dearest readers, hilary and i get to have a little mini summer vacation (or, as they'd call it in england, a mini-break) in chicago this weekend. it's going to be a whirlwind: we get into chicago at 9am tomorrow (which means that we ohmygod have to fly out of lga at 8.) and from there we have a whole week's worth of activities that terry's planned for us. not to mention, um, the gay games are going on this week in chicago, so there are more queers packed into that town than a chelsea gay bar where they're giving away free cosmos wrapped up in signed liza minnelli t-shirts.

as a side-note, when hilary heard about the gay games she asked me, "the gay games? do we have to, like, compete in them? like is it some kind of bar thing?" "no, hilary, it's like the gay olympics." "oh, i thought that it was like potato sack races and stuff."

anyway, i'll be seeing, in the course of two and a half days, terry, emily, ben, and brian, four people who i'm very close with, who all live in chicago, who all read this blog, and who basically don't know each other. like, they know of each other. so again, whirlwind.

wish me luck on the flight; i've got my drugs handy!

how to be a waiter, lesson 1

2006-07-19T14:16:00.000-04:00

i know that none of you are going to believe this, because i hardly believe it myself. but prepare thyselves, dear readers, for a startling revelation.

ahem.

i can be a little bratty in restaurants. i know, i know. if you've been following this blog from the beginning you're probably saying to yourself, but robert. it's clear that you're a kind, caring, giving individual, the kind that helps old ladies across the street without even trying to get them to pay you or even stealing their pocketbooks. we know that you treat a waitperson with the same dignity and respect with which you treat all the rest of god's creatures. and usually, dear reader, you'd be right.

see, i was a waiter once. i worked at a restaurant called the mount vernon stable (and saloon). for those of you who don't live in baltimore, let me paint you a picture. it's basically, like, if TGIFriday's and Applebees and Harrigan's were all rolled into one, and were individually owned. and then you plop it down in the middle of baltimore's gay neighborhood, giving it a nearly exclusively gay clientele, none of whom know that the owner is a horrible armenian bastard who hates gay people. so this is the restaurant i worked at. here's what each shift was like:

lunch: get to the restaurant at 10:30 to prep, aka do half the cooks' jobs for them. run around like a madwoman for four hours, fetching asshole business people, all of whom expect to be treated like the queen of sheba, their nasty $7 sandwiches. walk away, exhausted and a little less human but $21 richer. i shit you not, dear reader, that's the most i ever made on a lunch shift.
dinner, or, gay hour: have ass pinched at least 5 times a night, without fail by older homosexual gentleman with a gray beard and leather vest. pride rings/bracelet/necklace optional. be the butt of more nasty gay jokes and come-ons than you could imagine (unless, say, you're brian and worked at the gay bar in baltimore, in which case you can totally imagine). walk away with 5 times what you made at lunch, completely stripped of your dignity.
late dinner: and i mean late. like, the kind of people who roll in for dinner at 11:30 because the kitchen, due to the incredible greed of the bastard armenian owner, is open until midnight. fetch countless people, people that you have spent the last two years avoiding talking to on the street, plates and plates and plates of ribs. ribs slathered in barbecue sauce. ribs that come with a side of horrible homemade cole slaw that you have to glop out of the huge cole slaw container yourself. with their ribs, inevitably, they will order a mug of hot water (no tea). when you bring them the hot water they will first complain that it's not hot enough and then they will demand lemons from you. if you're left a tip, it will be less than 10%. after the last patron has been cleared from the restaurant (usually around 1:30am), vaccuum the entire place. walk away, broken.

so, see, i did that. i did that for a whole, um, five weeks. so i can be nice to wait staff. seriously. i can be nice until i'm confronted with a situation like at lunch today, in which my waiter didn't acknowledge my presence for 20 minutes. in an empty restaurant. and then i forget all about numbers 1, 2, and 3. and it ain't pretty.

the blair witch

2006-07-18T14:14:00.000-04:00

listen, everyone. do yourselves a favor and spend the rest of your workday reading this. (via queerty)

brrr it's cold in here

2006-07-18T09:45:00.000-04:00

i almost hate to devote a whole blog entry to this, because i know that every new yorker's blog in, um, new york is going to be about what gawker called this MOTHERCHRISTING HEAT WAVE. that's right, motherchristing. it's really fucking insane, people. like ok. oklahoma, god love 'er, is really hot. it's so hot, in fact, that i would often refuse to go outside during the day. i remember a summer spent with mandy (my friend, not the barry manilow song) during which we did nothing during the day but sit in her dark room in the air conditioning. we'd only venture out after the sun went down, and even then it was just to go to the air conditioned perkins and smoke cigarettes.

what's different down there is that even though it's a (literally) scorching 112 degrees with 80% humidity, everything is air conditioned. everything. you go from your air conditioned house to your air conditioned car. and then when you park it, you walk the 10 yards to whatever restaurant or store you're going to, and you're met with a rush of cold air when you open the door. this, dear friends, is part of the reason we're all experiencing an inconvenient truth. it is also absolutely wonderful in the middle of the summer.

in new york things aren't air conditioned like this. i suppose it's because if everyone blew out their a/c's like i'd like them to we'd face permanent brown-outs (that sounded really gross in my head when i typed it. ew, brown-outs.). no one has central a/c, for instance. we all have these useless room air conditioners. they'll cool down a room the size of a closet until it's 90 degrees outside. then they'll do nothing but blow hot air at you while you're baking your vegetable lasagne in the next room. it was probably 85 degrees inside our apartment last night. and that's with two room a/c's.

so, yeah. let's just say that this heat wave might just kill us all. hilary informed me last night that a "cold front" is supposed to come through tomorrow. what does a cold front mean at this point?

that it's going to be a scant 86 degrees tomorrow instead of 95. oooh, hand me a sweater!

daily show rox

2006-07-17T12:33:00.000-04:00

(via queerty)

i think i have sunstroke

2006-07-17T09:43:00.000-04:00

so it was a full weekend. it was a full weekend that went all the way to bedtime last night, and feels like it's kinda bled into this week, which is only a three-and-a-half day week because i'm taking a half-day thursday and friday we GO TO CHICAGO! that's right. at the end of the week we'll be out of hot, sticky, smelly (and wonderful) new york and in hot, sticky not-so smelly chicago. we're staying with terry, even though i'm not sure where or how, unless terry, hilary, sasha (the cat), and i all sleep in a big pile on his bed. wouldn't be the first time.

ok, so the weekend. friday was pretty normal: drank way too many beers in the east village with sam after meeting up with scott and chris. now, what wasn't normal about all that was falling asleep on the train going the WRONG DIRECTION and ending up where i started at 3.45 in the morning. that sucked. saturday, after i rolled out of my beer-haze, i came into work (i know, lame) and then went to the siren festival at coney island. now, let me say two things about coney island:

it's farther away than you can possibly imagine. i'm sorry but if that's still considered new york city, i don't understand how. it takes like an hour to get there from manhattan. riiiiight.
it's really, um, gross and trashy. with lots (and i mean LOTS) of gross and trashy people.

but here's the deal: scissor sisters were headlining the siren festival. i was afraid that it would be super crowded and i wouldn't even be able to see them, but those fears were unfounded. we fought our way through the crowd, stood about halfway back, and i could see all i needed to if i stood on my tip-toes. i could hear all of it, and they sounded great. i danced my face off for their entire hour-and-a-half set, which i'm sure made the non-dancing hipsters around me hate me. but who cares? they're hipsters.

yesterday was another big day: the beach at sandy hook. now, you new yorkers who haven't been to sandy hook should all take note (at least you gay new yorkers, that is). it's a less-than-30-minute ferry ride (on a very fancy ferry with an fully-stocked bar) from east 34th street. that's right, a beach that takes less than an hour from subway to towel. here's the thing, though. it's a, um, nude beach. yeah, nude beach. like "oh look, that obese gentleman doesn't have any clothes on!" nude beach. what was most bizarre about the nude beach, once you got over the fact that all these people were -completely, horrifyingly- naked, is how quickly you forget that you're naked. now, there's a joke that all gay people have seen their friends naked already. and it's pretty true. so being naked with my friends on the beach was like, "oh look, you're naked. whatever."

i've just never had to worry about sunburn in certain areas, however, and will probably never recover from having to sunscreen those places. safety first!

west 140th st.

2006-07-14T10:36:00.000-04:00

unlike my last job in baltimore, where i had to meet with ghetto (and i'm not saying that in a classist, asshole way. i'm saying that in a very literal way, as in, these people are from the ghetto.) moms and kids in the clinic, i have a much more hands-off job here in new york. it's a related study, mind you, but i just don't have as much patient contact. this is both a good and a bad thing. it's good in that i get to wear jeans and a t-shirt to work every day, even though i've decided to try to look, um, a little more "professional." as soon as i can make myself get out of bed ten minutes earlier so that i can iron my shirt.

what's bad is that it means a lot more desk time than my old job. and it's also a shame because even though our demographic here is the same as it was in baltimore, the poverty in new york city is a little different than the poverty in baltimore. i've already written about this, so i won't blab on too much about it. long story short: in new york, even the people who live in projects and haven't had a job for ten years are still a little bit more put together than the people in baltimore. in baltimore it's like a scrabbling-in-the-dirt kind of poverty. it's poverty where people just walk around dirty because they can't afford to wash their clothes, or because their parents are too high on drugs to wash their extra-long white t-shirts. in new york, it seems, at least with our asthmatic moms, they might be poor but you can bet they still have their hair and nails done before we see 'em.

i write this because i'm getting ready to go back out on a home visit, one of the few bits of patient conact i have. we go into these peoples' homes, observe them, and then suck up dust samples. none of this struck me as odd until the other day, when i was riding the train with amanda to connecticut. we came up out of the tunnel at 125th street, and i looked over at some project that i'd just been inside last month. if you'd told me five years ago that i'd be going into projects at 140th street in harlem, new york city, i'd have said that you were crazy.

of course, five years ago i thought that after i got done with grad school i'd just go on to a young artist program. as it turns out, there isn't exactly a spot in a young artist program for every person that graduates with a masters degree. there's more like one spot for every two hundred people that graduate with a masters degree. and, as of yet anyway, i haven't been the one picked out of those two hundred. and so i go into the projects, armed with a special little vaccuum cleaner, and suck up dust samples from inevitably dirty bedsheets and chairs and rugs.

don't worry, though, i'm totally using my degrees: i'm singing "o sole mio" while doing it.

yes, there's a park.

2006-07-13T11:10:00.000-04:00

i love manhattan. seriously. i love that things here (in lower manhattan, at least) are cleaner and fancier. i love that you can walk 10 minutes in any direction and find a pretty good place to eat. i love that they do things like movies and shows in the park, that you can go to the biggest apple store in the world, and have your pick from fifteen different gay bars in any given neighborhood. and, in an ideal world, i'd be able to live here--on the whole third floor of a building, with a huge living area, sizable kitchen and bathroom--for six hundred dollars a month. alas, the apartment i now live in in queens would cost three times what it does if it were across the east river. and so we live in astoria.

all of that being said, though, i will never cease to be amazed by how little people who live in astoria know about, um, astoria. these displaced manhattanites--myself and my roommates included--are different than the rest of the long islanders. there are people, i'm sure, who live their lives in astoria and never really go to manhattan. you can find them on wednesday nights doing open mic night at the 'tross. trust me, it's not a pretty sight.

though i admittedly spend most of my time in manhattan--choosing to go out mainly in manhattan, i mean, since i obviously work most of the time in manhattan--i have also taken time to explore some cool things in my own neighborhood. now, most of my options are greek restaurants and coffee houses. trust me, if you've been to one greek coffee house you've been to 'em all, no matter what they're called. the other night, though, i went with sam to a cool place called cafe/bar. or cafebar. i don't know. it's a place that amanda said was too hipster for her boyfriend. it's not all that hipster-y (i don't think anyone would bat an eye in the city), but for astoria it's really, really scene. and it's a pretty cool place. and it's, um, a whole lot cheaper than going out to dinner in manhattan.

when talking once to a friend who used to live in queens, she literally didn't know where she used to live. she spent so little time in the 'hood that she couldn't even remember her intersection. like her time in queens was nothing but a bad memory to be sloughed off and forgotten once she could escape to manhattan. my manhattan friends really do view it with such disdain that i've started to think it's funny.

one of our other friends (who, um, reads this blog and is totally gonna know it's her so she'll remain nameless. hey girl!) who still lives in astoria ran into hilary the other day when she was on her way to the astoria pool. here's the conversation they had:

anonymous friend: where are you headed to, hilary?
hilary: to the pool!
af: what pool? huh?
hilary: the pool at astoria park. it's free and totally gorgeous.
af: wait, there's a park?

yes, dear af, there's a park. it's about a third of the size of central park, which means it's gargantuan. and it's down the street from you. i like manhattan as much as the next guy, but c'mon. there are times you don't wanna take a train to go for a run. oh wait i don't run.

so get out there--explore your 'hood. it'll make going into manhattan feel that much fancier.

peachy

2006-07-12T09:13:00.000-04:00

first of all, i have to write a post telling you all to run, not walk, out and buy the new peaches cd. it's called impeach my bush and it came out yesterday. i'm listening to it right now. it includes gem lyrics such as

i'd rather fuck who i want
than kill who i am told to.
let's face it, we all want tush.
if i'm wrong, impeach my bush.
impeach/bush.

and

the tent's so big in your pants, baby,
if there's a housing crisis
there ain't anymore
need a place to go,
you better open the door.

oh, and there's an entire song devoted to the hanky code. if you don't know what this is and you're a gay man, you better go look it up.

if that weren't enough to make you all want this cd on your ipods, it has some of the hottest electronic beats since the new goldfrapp cd. granted, that was only about six months ago. but still. when we're faced with a summer full of crappy new beyonce and justin timberlake songs, we need some hot electronic sex music. and i'm voting for peaches.

what's great about this new cd is that, like the new gossip (standing in the way of control. buy it.) and the new-ish sleater-kinney (the woods. their final album. buy it.), it's the first time her sound is really polished, but it's an example of the best thing a polished studio sound can do for an artist. it's like she took her bigger budget and her fancy producer and made the best peaches cd she could, unlike other people--like, um, say, paris hilton or liz phair--who take their fancy producers and make the most boring-sounding radio-friendly shit you've ever heard.

anyway, more later. but for now, i got some rocking out to do.

thanks.

2006-07-11T15:08:00.000-04:00

since i had two negative responses to my blog yesterday (one in jest, from brian, and one totally creepy and hateful), both of which said basically the same thing, and because i have really nothing to blog about today since it's a pretty blah day here at the medical center, i thought i might address them.

the one that said the most to me was one of brian's comments, and it can really be said of all my writing: that i take a seemingly unimportant event and blow it completely out of proportion, write a whole blog entry or column about it. i suppose, though, that this is how i see life. life really is just a whole lot of little events that are all stitched together. it's not every day that somebody wins a competition or has a baby or breaks up with their boyfriend. but every day i ride the n train. every day i get coffee and then sit at my desk. when you look at it on a grand scale, my life would seem interminably boring. taken the way i write about it, though, where a look on the subway or the kindness of my duane reade pharmacist is worth writing a whole entry about, it fills up your day.

and i've always been someone like that, someone who notices (and yes, probably blows out of proportion) the small stuff. that book? that one called don't sweat the small stuff? yeah. i say, if i didn't sweat the small stuff, what would i sweat? not that i have to sweat anything, but you get what i'm saying. if you overlook the small things in life, you're likely to miss the small blessings you get, too.

ok so i don't want this to turn into some oprah fucking winfrey diatribe on why we should all remember our spirits, but bear with me.

in a life that's lately been a little hard--a new job, a new city, trying to forge new friendships, being in and out of the hospital and being in and out of stomach pain and trying new doctors and new drugs--it's easy to feel pretty isolated and beaten down. but then, the same part of me that makes me obsess over a conversation or an idea is the part of me that lets me notice certain things: how good the air can feel early in the morning; the way the people at my pharmacy know me by name; the fact that i don't have to ask for a hug from my roommate when she can tell i'm discouraged about my new medicine.

and so, yeah. i'm self-aggrandizing and overly-sensitive and probably a whole lot of other things that might not be so great. but throwing it all onto this blog, knowing that it's my friends all over the country who are reading it, helps me.

so thanks. and thanks, anonymous asshole from yesterday, for making me think about all of this.

seriously.

2006-07-11T15:01:00.000-04:00

we all know i love attention, but c'mon. seriously.

teefeses!

2006-07-11T09:24:00.000-04:00

let's all welcome phong to our little world, shall we?

ouch

2006-07-10T16:41:00.000-04:00

i thought that you'd all like to see this. it's a comment that was just left on the post below this one, anonymously, of course.

"The following comment is directed to you and your blogs as a whole, not just this specific entry.

You are quite possibly the biggest, most narcissistic, self-obsessed, 20-something loser I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot of them in my life.

Get over yourself!!!

You are nothing special -- just as with any other of these stupid 20-something bloggers, I ask myself: why would anyone want to read what you have to say? The answer: nobody does. Certainly I didn't -- and that's 5 minutes of my life I'm never getting back...

Again: get over yourself! If not for yourself, then for the sake of all your so-called "friends", all the people around you who are too afraid to tell you the truth, that you're just a conceited, self-absorbed, total jackass."

sheesh. it's just the interweb, people.

pushy

2006-07-10T10:49:00.000-04:00

i just had a conversation with laura about train etiquette because of a riotous (but extremely long) article from new york magazine that hilary posted on her blog. we were sharing our personal pet peeves when it comes to the subway (hers: when someone won't move out of the way and allow you to hold onto something. mine: when someone's blocking the door of an empty train so that they can be sure to be the first ones off at the next stop.), and i discovered that my solution to both of them (to all of them, really) was just, "well i'd just shove them out of the way." someone's blocking the door? shove 'em. someone won't let you grab onto something? shove 'em. that pesky baby is taking up the last seat on the train with its stupid baby-carrier? shove 'em. i don't know when this all started, me being a pushy bastard, but it's pretty much limited to train travel. i don't walk down the sidewalk pushing over old ladies, but get us moving 35 miles per hour underground and it's every grandma for herself.

i write this because amanda and i went to her house in fairfield yesterday to celebrate hers and her aunt judy's birthdays. her aunt judy has a dog named kayla, a shih tzu with bows in its hair (bows that, judy tells me, come from a nice lady in oklahoma.) and its own room. it sits at the table with us during dinner and responds to commands like "go show auntie barbara your birthday bow." the dog is pushed around in a pram specifically designed for dogs. this isn't the point of this story, but you get the idea.

to get to amanda's house you have to ride an extremely crowded metro north train. i don't know why it's always so crowded, but by the time we get onto the train we inevitably have to fight for seats together. and they're usually those horrible seats where four people have to face each other, trying desperately not to bump knees, looking apologetic the whole time. as we were boarding the train yesterday, i moved out of the aisle into a seat, just momentarily, mind you, to let a man pass me. i hear a voice from behind me say, rudely, "someone is already sitting there." i turn on my heel, just like my mother, and say "i'm not sitting there. i'm moving out of the way to let this man past me." i said it very matter-of-factly, as if to say this is not a topic that is open for discussion. of course, the words were out of my mouth before i noticed that the little bitch giving me attitude was an 11-year-old black girl. oops.

and so, pushing my way onto the intensely crowded subway car this morning, i thought to myself, new york is making me pushy. it's making me be one of those people who shoves their way into places just because i feel like i have to. for the first three months i lived here, moving around the city was a very zen thing (like the old question, how many babies fit in the tire?). i just went where i had to go, listening to my ipod, letting the people swarm around me. lately, though, i find myself getting caught up in the flood. i gotta slow down.

right on

2006-07-07T11:30:00.000-04:00

i don't read the times a whole lot, but when they had a review of the madonna concert i missed, i gave it a click. and i found this little gem:

"No matter: by the time she sang "Hung Up," the ecstatic, Abba-sampling hit from "Confessions," the draggy middle was all but forgotten. When pop stars sing about clubs, they're often singing about leaving them: the whole reason they go is to find someone to leave with. But there's not much that's flirtatious or suggestive about "Hung Up." It sounds, on the contrary, like the work of someone who has realized that there is no after-party: the party is all there is, and what happens on the dance floor isn't a means to an end, it is the end.

You don't go there to leave, or to somehow transcend it; you go there to stay as long as you can. Maybe it takes a 47-year-old pop star to figure that out."

stop waiting for the after party; party while we're here. yeah, right on, nytimes.

2006-07-07T09:41:00.000-04:00

Displaced

"I just feel so alone even though there are all these people constantly around me," I told my friend Perri recently. I know that it’s a cliché, like when people say "Having a child changes you" or "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger," but I can’t think of a better way to put it. I don’t care if it’s clichéd, it’s the truth.

"I know what you mean," he said. "But I've been here since I was 11 so I guess I'm just used to it." There are all these people—on the street, in restaurants, in bars, at my gym--all fighting for a place, all trying to claim a space as theirs. Walking down the train platform I always think that they look like rats escaping a fire.

And here I am, amongst them, never really alone, yet feeling more alone than I ever have in my life. Rationally, I know that it's just part of moving, that everyone goes through it at some point. I know that I need to find my place and that it takes time. When I moved to Baltimore I went through the same thing. It took a couple of years, but it became home; it was me and my adopted family against the world. But people moved on, because Baltimore always seems like a place for transition, a stepping stone on the way to somewhere else. I hated doing it, but I decided to leave, too. I moved somewhere that makes people say, without fail, "Oh, I'm so jealous!"

And yet every time someone tells me how much they wish they could move to New York, how much they wish they could get out of Columbus or Dallas or Phoenix or whatever second-tier city they're in, I think to myself, be careful what you wish for. I watch programs about rural life and imagine myself leaving the city, packing up my computer and books and going somewhere easier, somewhere smaller.

But then I wonder, would I be any happier? Is it actually New York that's making me feel lonely, or something else? Do I feel like a stranger because everything is new, because everything here is so intense, or because I'll feel a little displaced no matter where I am? It's possible that I could be anywhere and still feel that hint of disappointment, that feeling that I'm not quite sure what I'm doing there.

I'd like to think that it's maybe just my age. When my friends and I turned 25 we threw something called the "quarter-life crisis party." The quarter-life crisis is something you would've heard about on Oprah, where mid-20-somethings hock the books they’ve written complaining about how hard it is to find their way in post-modern America.

We 20-somethings come to New York or L.A. chasing dreams, only to find out that there are millions of other people already here who are also 26 and from the middle of nowhere, and who have dreams just like ours that they're hell-bent on making come true. And so I lose sight of why I'm here; I get bogged down by the way the sea of people in front of me look like rats. I find myself joining them in the fight for space and getting so caught up in it that I forget why I bother: for the adventure, the excitement, the chance to make it.

And someday, whether I've made it or not, I’ll get out. I’ll move away, maybe, and raise a family. It might be station wagons and soccer practice or ballet lessons, but at least I will have done this first. So that someday, on my way home from the grocery store, I can think about the time I was 26, walking through St. Mark's Place on a windy night, the sky orange and spitting rain. When I'd just moved to New York and thought that anything could happen.

cosmo girl

2006-07-06T10:05:00.000-04:00

here's yet another blog post about how, as i creep towards thirty (yes, bitches, CREEP), i become more and more like my mother. it's not just the marta-isms that i find escaping my lips, it's her mannerisms.

i feel like complete and utter shit today, but not because i was out at a rager party last night, high on ecstasy (we were just talking about ecstasy in my office, actually, and decided that the opposite to ecstasy would be a pill called "misery." "would anyone actually take that?" i asked. "yes, i think some poor moron out there would actually be stupid enough," laura said.). i'm exhausted today for two reasons:

i'm on a new drug for my crohn's disease, an immunosuppressant. now, my fancy-pants doctor tries to tell me that he would call it, if he got to choose, an "immuno-modifier," because it doesn't so much suppress your immune system as it does change how it behaves. call it what you want, dude, but i can literally barely dredge up enough energy to sit at my desk and then drag myself to the train at the end of the day. not to mention things like singing and weight training, which we all know are more important than work. oh, and there's that little thing about the new medicine making me extremely nauseous. like, ew just looking at that bagel makes me wanna ralf nauseous. let's not even talk about what the restaurant next door's stench of rotting garbage does to me. immunomodifier my white ass.
after dinner last night i went out for coffee and dessert (baklava, of course, since i live in greekville) and am 100% convinced that the waitress slipped me caffeinnated coffee. this is how i'm like my mother: because of one cup of coffee at 9pm i rolled around in bed until three o'clock this morning. and of course, i'm like cursing the skinny, pretty greek waitress, wishing i knew some sort of voodoo hex that would never let her sleep again. "it makes sense," i thought to myself at 2:30 this morning, "that she'd fuck up my order. she was a terrible waitress. what if i'd had some heart problem? what if i couldn't have caffeine or i'd go into toxic shock? wait, isn't toxic shock what you get when you leave a tampon in for too long? how do i know that? because i used to read cosmopolitan on the bus with my friends on the way to orchestra competitions before they knew i was gay?" this is what happens when i have a cup of coffee at night.

and so today i'm sitting at my desk, glad to be inside because (SHOCK) it's raining again in new york. do you think anyone would notice if i took a nap?

a lot of americans are gay people

2006-07-05T09:18:00.000-04:00

one of the great things about living with hilary is that she's an avid reader. which means she buys a lot of books. which means that when she finishes those books they go right onto her shelf, where i pluck them up like it's my own personal lending library. granted, a lot of the books have pink covers and are called things like girl power: being strong enough to find a boyfriend and i'm me and you're you so let's have a baby (just kidding, hilster. she's a hardass and reads things like american psycho, which is next on my list.).

anyhoo, what i've most recently picked up is nick hornby's new novel, a long way down. it's written from the perspective of four different people; they all pick up where the other left off. it's a cool way to write a book and it's good so far. i won't give away too much, but it starts when the four of them run into each other as they're all trying to jump off the same roof. ok so that's actually all i can give away because i've only read forty pages. but i ran across this quote (on page 37) that i wanted to share with you.

"My own feeling about JJ, without knowing anything about him, was that he might have been a gay person, because he had long hair and spoke American. A lot of Americans are gay people, aren't they? I know they didn't invent gayness, because they say that was the Greeks. But they helped bring it back into fashion. Being gay was a bit like the Olympics: It disappeared in ancient times, and then they brought it back in the twentieth century. Anyway, I didn't know anything about gays, so I just presumed they were all unhappy and wanted to kill themselves."

watch this. now.

2006-07-03T15:05:00.000-04:00

he takes a whisky drink, he takes a vodka drink.

2006-07-03T09:42:00.000-04:00

if you ever want to be confronted by exactly how much you drink, just put together your recycling for the week. this is what happened to me last night. for the last few weeks i've been gone during recyclingzeit, so it's been amanda and hilary that have had to rinse out all the bottles and milk cartons and fold up all of the boxes and tape them together. the only time i've recycled is during a month-long period in sixth grade when my gradeschool made a big deal out of "earth day" (remember that?) and a recycling plant had just opened up in ponca city.

since then, though, i haven't been a huge recycler. i've pretty much chucked anything and everything into the garbage. what you discover about new york city, though, is that they force you to recycle. if you have bottles or boxes in your trash they just won't take it. apparently new york has a population of 8.1 million people. i didn't know this until lunch with ryan and vicki and hilary yesterday. i thought it was a really big city. you know, like maybe a million and a half. it certainly doesn't feel all that much bigger than baltimore to me, i suppose because i spend all my time in like three neighborhoods. EIGHT POINT ONE MILLION PEOPLE. all of oklahoma, just for an example, has 3.4 million people. that means that the number of people in new york divided by the number of people in oklahoma equals a grand total of i don't do math. (thanks for the gag, brian.)

anyway, 8.1 million people's garbage has to go somewhere, and so they make us recycle, and last night i had a very augusten burroughs-ish moment: putting bottle after bottle after bottle into the clear blue plastic bag (absolut mandarin, check; magic hat summer ale, check; multiple 40's of bud light, check; multiple 22's of bud, check; bombay sapphire, check; it's like that chumbawumba song.) and thinking, oh my god, all of the booze that was in these bottles went through my body. mind you, it was a few weeks' worth of bottles. but still. it looked like we'd had some rager of a party the night before. but no, they were all mine. and though i joke that i drink so that i can sleep because my room is so hot (not anymore; ryan put in my a/c yesterday because he's a big, strong man), i wonder if i've just been drinking because, well, i'm bored and lonely and i can.

people give me a worried look sometimes because i say things like, "yeah, but you know, i'd spend a lot of time in baltimore drinking 40's by myself at my apartment." because that fall when terry left and i was suddenly faced with all of this time by myself in my smelly, decrepit apartment, i didn't mind being by myself so much if i was a little drunk. sitting by yourself watching tv? lame. sitting by yourself watching tv drunk? much better.

when i was 18 and got drunk on wine with my mother in england, she sat me down the next day and said, very seriously, that i should only have one drink a week until i was in my 40's. because alcoholism runs in my family and it's a slippery slope. at the time i was a binge-drinking college student. now, though, i can see what she meant. and so i'll be a little more careful.

what happens when roommates are left to their own devices (and have a new hat)?

2006-07-03T09:25:00.000-04:00

this happens. (and the hat's hers.)

constantly revolving

2006-06-30T10:33:00.000-04:00

my coworker laura stays a member of yahoo personals, she says, for the sheer entertainment. it's only big, black men that send her messages. i tell her it's because she accidentally joined "blackmen.personals.yahoo.com." just read this little nugget, though, from her latest suitor:

"Hi, i'm jules, I just moved from London,UK a couple months back but i'm originally from North Carolina, have also lived in Germany and Italia as well. I really have a very creative/romantic side nearly 24/7 especially, when i am / or not inspired! I have always considered myself ultra romantic in every sense of the word! I love venturing around the city and being spontaneous whether its a weekend getaway, dancing billiards, art galleries or a walk alongside the hudson. I enjoy composing music and writing sonnets/poetry in my leisure times I try to stay active as much as my energy will allow, even more importantly, I am very interested in making a contribution to making difference with my gift of creativity in whatever medium I can apply my creativity towards. Poetically speaking,.... I consider myself a self-God, a piercing bright light of an embers fire, constantly revolving in every direction, seeking wisdom, truth, purpose... I am victoriously sound in mind, body and life-force. and illuminious kaleidoscope of dreams that scream reality!!I am one who respects one's self and others. As far as whom i would like to date. I am wanting to move mountains either in her heart or her mind for she is a mirror replica of a rose with fresh thorns and at the same time,a soft, delicate and yet emerging in utlimate feminity. She is also someone who enjoy s being who she is and what she's becoming. For she knows who she is and she will come to me so and when it's my time, I will welcome her with open arms!"

WOW.

listen.

2006-06-30T09:34:00.000-04:00

okay, readers, ready thyselves for yet another dashboard confessional blog entry. i'm sorry. really i am. but i just have to say this.

there's a song on the new album that, if you can actually stop imagining yourself married to chris carrabba and moving to florida with him to live in his big house and go swimming all day long and then eventually settle down and adopt a chinese baby girl that you'll name ling carrabba, wait what was i saying? oh yeah. if you listen to the lyrics of this song, you'll hear that it's written from, in my opinion, a young veteran of war, who's returning home after combat:

It's the simple things Dad,
I'm not hurt
I'm not dead
I just should be where my friends are lying
And I didn't hate those that I killed
But they're all dead now
And I'm here alive
With satellites
And Friday nights
And no one to judge me
For the things that I've done at all
So how can I live with that

it reminds me of something i saw on, of all things, kathy griffin's show. she went to iraq on a uso tour and said something like, "these people are teenagers. when i think of teenagers i think of the brats in laguna beach. but these people have an age in their eyes for someone so young." or something. most striking to me is that this war we're in, this quagmire, if you will, has so permeated our culture that riotously strong anti-war sentiments are showing up in places like kathy griffin shows and dashboard confessional albums.

it's one thing, i mean, for the people you expect--bob dylan or neil young or ani difranco--to come out against the war. even the boss (that's bruce springsteen, you know). but kathy griffin? chris carrabba (my future husband)? and the way they're saying it, the things they're doing, they're not just doing them because it's what's cool in hollywood right now. like the way everyone wore red ribbons ten years ago.

so if we're all screaming about the war, and all of our artists and even our comedians are taking a stand against it, why isn't anyone listening?

haneous

2006-06-29T14:09:00.000-04:00

big, totally gross, news, people! okay so it's only big and gross if you watch a lot of logo, the gay cable network.

my two least favorite people on logo--nay, my two least favorite famous homosexuals--jason bellini (the host of CBS news on logo who always looks at the person he's interviewing like they just laid a gigantic turd on his front lawn) and will wickle (ex-big-brother celebrity who now hosts the useless travel program round trip ticket and relentlessly screams "WE GO THERE!") not only share a network.

they are life partners.

they've combined evil, hateful forces to be the next gay-pseudo-power couple. no one is safe. in the words of read your blog, shelby: HANEOUS!

two things

2006-06-29T09:15:00.000-04:00

well, dear readers, i'm spending this thursday just like i've spent the last two thursdays (or fridays): hungover at my desk. what's funny is that i choose to stay in on friday nights lately, preferring instead to watch a netflixed movie or cook or go out to dinner, so that i can get up on saturday and enjoy my day. instead of limiting my "going out" (or, more accurately, getting drunk on a back porch) to saturday, though, i've been staying up late either wednesday or thursday night. because, you know, that's so close to the weekend. lately it's been beers on cory's back porch followed by trips to the 'tross. last night was no exception, minus the trashy dive bar.

instead, cory and i drank strong beers, and then instead of listening to my head and going home i listened to my heart and had another drink and played "piano bar" with cory, which means trading off turns at the piano while the singing torch songs. sometimes i just love being a homosexual. when i write sentences like that, i always think about the impending george w. bush-led gay holocaust and all of the internet evidence they'll have to use against me.

anyway.

walking to work this morning i was listening to the new dashboard confessional cd. now, i know what you're going to say. i'm not a seventeen year old midwestern junior in high school girl, so i have no business listening to this cd. and you'd be right. chris carrabba, however, will always be my rock and roll boyfriend. hilary and i are friends, for one, because of our mutual lust for him. and nowadays he might be nothing but another teeny bopper punk fake-o, but there was a time when he put out the most heartfelt, earnest, angsty, wonderful music. music where you could hear his cords ripping over his accoustic guitar. before things like the mtv unplugged special, the one where you can't hear him singing over the legion of teenagers singing along, happened. before he played in arenas.

the writing is still the same, for the most part: rip-your-heart-open teenage angst. what's different is the way i hear it. it seems so juvenile to me now. even the first couple cd's, the ones i listened to literally on repeat for three months, seem so emotionally overwrought. it's as if i can't remember what it's like to feel what he's singing about, as if i've made myself grow right up and out of the heady emotions in which i used to swim.

i think that's enough to think about at 9:37am.

a loss

2006-06-28T09:13:00.000-04:00

well, folks, yesterday we got some pretty awful news, at least for those of us who love really fucking good rock and roll:

"After more than a decade of making impassioned, empowered punk rock, Sleater-Kinney have decided to go on 'indefinite hiatus.'"

yep, one of my favorite bands is done. apparently, the show i'm seeing in august at webster hall is their next-to-last. should be interesting.

what sucks about s-k breaking up is that, far from what most 11-year-old bands do, they just put out the best album of the career, if not one of the best rock albums i've ever heard. in an era pockmarked by avril lavigne, ashlee and jessica simpson, and a horrible new liz phair, s-k was one of the few remaining rock bands i know that actually surprise me with their invention, their talent.

but, like most artists i know, their talent comes with more than a hint of darkness. it's the way, i think, that artists learn to balance that darkness, harness it, that makes us able to survive. the most talented people i know--the composers, writers, musicians--are happy people for the most part, yet share the same dark undercurrent, a sliver of mercury that runs just below the surface. they create by tapping into it, use it for their humor, their pathos, and then are able to put it away.

i was just talking to ben yesterday about being able to write better when i'm in a darker mood. he agreed that his invention is better when he's feeling dark. i suggested that maybe, before i write, i should just put boys for pele on repeat for half an hour. because writing about kittens frolicking in wheat fields under a rainbow sky never really has been my forte.

done and done

2006-06-27T09:46:00.000-04:00

well, folks, i finally did it: i bought an air conditioner at PC richards last night. i went to pc richards (for those of you not in the upper-mid-atlantic, it's like, um, circuit city. but it's owned by a guy named pc richard) because, unlike mr. city or mr. buy, i've actually met pc richard himself. he came into my temp job at the real estate company with his big crazy jewish wife because they'd bought one of the four million dollar condos (and had supplied the whole building with gas ranges). he was very friendly. he gave me his card, which i still have because i think it's funny. it has his real phone number on it. i was tempted to call him and say, "mr. richard? may i call you peter? well listen, peter, i just bought an a/c at your astoria, queens branch! how are you!?" this would immediately be followed by "no. robert. you know, the temp with the really gay tie/shirt combination. no, not that one. i quit about two months ago."

anyway, after much him-hawing about the details, such as:

how i would get to a place that actually sold air conditioners
how i would choose an air conditioner
how i would deal with the inevitably pushy, scary straight man in the a/c department
how i would physically carry the a/c unit from the store to the corner
how i would hail a cab while guarding my newly-purhcased a/c, which would be sitting on the corner
how i would choose to go to target, home depot, sears, or pc richard, and then if i should go in manhattan or queens

...i finally just googled pc richard. i found out that not only is there a pc richard in my neighborhood, it was within walking distance. apparently amanda and hilary already knew this. why they didn't share this bit of information with me while i was having daily, sweaty panic attacks about how i was getting to target i don't know.

so last night, after i'd called amanda at work to make sure she'd go with me to pc richards, we ate dinner then made the short trek to the store. within ten minutes i was the owner of a new, shiny but cheap room air conditioner. amanda and i pretended to be husband and wife by "shopping" for air conditioners with our arms around each other. while i was checking out she said, "honey, i'm very impressed by the way you picked out our new air conditioner." and i said, "that's why you married me!" where are our wedding rings? um, we, uh, didn't want to damage them air conditioner shopping.

next up: installing the room air conditioner without hurling it out the window and through the roof below. i'll let you know if this happens.

email correspondance between robert and his new crohns doctor

2006-06-26T14:53:00.000-04:00

robert: Not that I'm a huge drinker [har har], but what are the restrictions with alcohol and 6MP? [my new crohns drug.]

doctor: Single malts and tequilas only. No known interactions. Drink responsibly.

robert: Thanks!

all the muscles you can stand

2006-06-26T11:07:00.000-04:00

okay, dear readers, i finally have it together enough to blog about the weekend. it's only taken me three hours to wake up and prop myself up at my desk. and yes, i'm at work. i've been at work since 9:30. wow.

so yesterday's "steady, soaking rain" turned out to be one five-minute rainshower. other than that, it was beautiful weather: cool, breezy. the kind of cool breeze that you need when you're on a pier with 5000 shirtless gay men. oh yeah, that. so i went to pier dance yesterday, which is officially my first circuit party. it's definitely going to be a once-a-year experience: i can't do it to my body more than once a year. these people who follow the circuit, who partied, for instance, from friday night until this morning, i will never understand. and you can see them at pier dance, their eyes wild and tweaking. they didn't look like they were having a particularly good time so much as they just looked angry, desperately making out with each other. circuit parties. good times.

yesterday's new york pride star sightings included (but may not be limited to, since i was in no position to remember): that hateful guy who does "cbs news on logo" (you know, the one who looks like he smells shit every time he interviews someone); ari gold, HOT jewish gay r&b singer; and jenny from the block herself, who sang a set at the end of pier dance, and whose hair was bigger than my apartment. we were hoping for xtina to make an appearance, but since the rumor mill said the guest was to be bananarama, j-lo was a great surprise. and i could see her, which was the most surprising thing, since i was blocked by all that muscle.

speaking of which, all that muscle. like, after yesterday i no longer need to see pecs or arms. i've seen enough to last me for the rest of my life. pier dance was SICK with muscle queens. i'm immune. at least until next year.

dammit

2006-06-25T11:08:00.000-04:00

happy new york gay pride, everyone:

"Rain showers this morning, becoming a steady, soaking rain during the afternoon hours with a few rumbles of thunder possible. High 76F. Winds ESE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall may reach one inch. Locally heavy rainfall possible."

yay!!! a STEADY, SOAKING rain!!! since when did weather channel.com start using adjectives like "soaking?"

look, i'm a writer!

2006-06-23T12:53:00.000-04:00

All Aboard

“I want to ask you out on a date,” Steve said to me. “What are you doing Saturday?”

“Haven’t we already been on a date?” I asked. “We hung out every day last week. Do you really have to ask me out officially?” I was new at dating in New York, but I was fairly sure that it was like dating anywhere else. Anywhere else, that is, on the East coast, where everything is either permanently casual or speed-dating. So Steve asking me out seemed like an unnecessary formality.

“No, I mean all day Saturday. I’m planning a day for us,” he said excitedly.

Oh.

When I imagine all-day Saturday dates, very specific images fill my head: big brown wicker picnic baskets splayed open on blankets, their contents being fed to me, my eyes romantically locked with my lover’s; or running through a field holding hands; or making out next to or underneath a waterfall. These are the all-day Saturday dates I imagine, not that any of them have ever happened to me. I spend most Saturdays with people I’m dating at the mall. Or drinking. These are activities I feel comfortable with: shopping, beer consumption. They aren’t grandly romantic, but they never fail to bring two people together.

Adding to the stress of my first big, romantic date was that Steve wouldn’t tell me what we were doing. I was to come to his house, just down the street from mine, and we’d go from there. I don’t do spontaneous very well. I need to know, for instance, what kind of shoes I should be wearing. Every activity has a corresponding shoe; if I don’t know what I’m doing, how can I possibly pick the right one? It’s not just shoes, though, it’s everything. I like to know what’s happening at all times so that I can be prepared. Steve’s instructions—to meet at his house, not knowing if we were going horseback riding or snorkeling or fly-fishing—made me nervous.

It wasn’t until we were on the train that he finally divulged the first part of his plan for our date: a picnic in the park, complete with a blanket and the perfect setting. I like picnics and I was comfortable with Steve, but if this had been a first date I would have been in my own personal hell. There’s just so much pressure when it comes to being romantic.

When we finished eating, he let me in on the next part of our day together, which was to be row boating at the Reservoir in Central Park. Now, to my straight-girl roommates, this would be a date made in heaven. In their minds, the only better date would be if they were whisked off to Cartier’s in a helicopter. If no helicopters were available, however, it would be a boat ride. And here I was, on the boat.

I’m not like my straight-girl roommates. The idea of getting on a boat that I’m going to have to figure out how to row made me feel ridiculous. Conspicuous. Stared-at. Whether or not people would actually be looking at me, I knew I’d feel like I was wearing assless chaps and a big pink sandwich sign that said something like “Please do not feed the homosexuals.” And here we were, in Central Park of all places, actually rowing a boat.

It’s not that it wasn’t nice--once I got over myself and my neuroses and just enjoyed Steve’s company I had a great time. As with most things that I’ve dreaded but have eventually forced myself into--that trapeze class, for instance--it turned out to be something that I was glad I’d done, though I probably never need to do it again. What, then, was my problem? Why couldn’t I deal with Steve’s undeniably thoughtful, well-planned day for us?

I am, apparently, too jaded for grand romantic gestures. There was a point in my life when I would’ve thrilled at the idea of someone planning a day with me. Could it be that years of expecting too little from men has made me unable to expect anything? That I have no idea how to respond to so much because I’m used to accepting so little?

Why should I feel ridiculous because a man wants to make me happy, wants to take me, for at least an afternoon, out of the shell I’ve built for myself? I’ve spent 26 years in this shell, so maybe it’s time to try something different.

Like a boat ride in Central Park.

my review.

2006-06-22T14:54:00.000-04:00

i just got back from doing something hysterical: vacuuming (i know that's spelled wrong but i'm too lazy to look it up) dust samples in my coworker's apartment in columbus circle. it's part of work certification, but still. there were pictures taken of me wearing latex gloves, intently vacuuming a lounge chair. and, of course, since we were in columbus circle anyway, we had a ridiculous lunch at this third-floor cafe in the time warner center that overlooked the circle. and coffee and dessert. basically a two-hour wonderful lunch break. and my coworker insisted on picking up the tab. someday maybe i can pay back peoples' generosity. let's hope.

for the last two days i've been having these very "i'm in new york now" moments. today's lunch, for instance. we took a cab from work to my coworker's house--something i never do, because cabs are more expensive than, you know, waiting 45 minutes for a train--which already felt luxurious. but then to be in the time warner center, having lunch at this fancy cafe, followed by another cab ride through central park, was nearly too much. too unbelievable, sometimes, that i'm from ponca city, where, as natalie maines says, my friends from high school married their high school boyfriends and moved into houses in the same zip codes where their parents lived.

well, my friends didn't do that. my friends all got the fuck out, too. the people who stuck around were acquaintances.

i went to see threepenny opera last night, so let me write a short review (dear new york times: please feel free to use this in sunday's paper. just pay me if you do.)

ahem.

'the roundabout theater company produced a spotty rendition of threepenny opera last night at studio 54, a venue that's seen more fags and blow than david gest's living room. alan cumming did a wonderful job of being alan cumming pretending to be evil, playing a cross between cabaret's emcee and sleeping beauty's mellificent. "i can't believe how awful nellie mckay is!" exclaimed one robust, hairy jewish audience member seated next to me. "doesn't she make her living singing??" "yes, she does," i happily replied. "but i really like her performance because it's proven to me exactly how batshitcrazy she really is!" the real shining star of the evening's performance, besides cyndi lauper's rapidly-shredding vocal cords, was isaac mizrahi's costuming, which could best be described as "1984 suburban punk." not content to let us figure out that every fucking person in the show was decidedly ambisexual by virtue of them all making out with each other all the time, isaac decided to put all the men in platform heels while he put all the ladies in shiny doc martens. god forbid alan cumming play a character that won't fuck anything that moves. we get it, alan. you're a sexual person. you love the mens, you love the vag. now try playing a character.'

by robert m.

never fear

2006-06-21T14:22:00.000-04:00

never fear, dearest readers, i'm not in the hospital again. i know that most of you assume this to be the case if i don't blog until nearly three o'clock in the afternoon, and i don't blame you. it's true that the only two weekdays i haven't entered a little gem into this journal were the times i've been in the hospital. crohns hasn't attacked again (no thanks to my doctor, who still hasn't call me back. the fucker.), though, so don't you worry about me.

more importantly, i'm going to see threepenny opera tonight with stadler and his girlfriend, who shall henceforth be called vicki. it'll be my first broadway show since i saw cabaret with amanda when i was 18. i know what you're going to say. i know that i live in new york and i should be taking advantage of it, going to see all the shows i can, that i can get student rush tickets, that i'll regret not going to see things like sweeny todd before they leave the great white way. i know that. but i also know that i love going home after work, eating dinner, and going to the gym. oh, and then i like to watch some gay tv on logo.

when ryan proposed tonight's little trip, though, i couldn't turn it down. though threepenny has gotten amazingly bad reviews--it's too long, choppy, poorly-acted, poorly-sung, etc.--i've wanted to see it since i heard it was on. mainly because of the completely fucked-up cast: alan cumming (loony), cyndi lauper (a bow to my queens pride), and nellie mckay (ew!). the first question everyone asks when i tell them i'm going is, "oh, did you get the tickets for free?" no, people, i am not quite hooked up in new york the way i was in baltimore. i'm working on it. until then, i pay for my theater tickets, even when it's for bad theater.

i have to get home right after the show, though, to get some beauty rest: nyc pride is this weekend.

obstacles

2006-06-20T09:27:00.000-04:00

every morning when i walk to work people try to shove things into my hands. not money or gold bullion, mind you, or even hamburgers. no, it's menus, pamphlets about jesus, pamphlets about massage parlors, fliers for geico. oh, and let's not forget free copies of a.m. new york or new york metro, two papers i always refuse because i'm trying to trudge my way through a non-fiction book called the devil in the white city. at ten pages a day i should be done, let's see, in february.

refusing these pamphlets and papers is always a little awkward, though. most of the time i don't really care: the people trying to hand me the flyers look hateful themselves, especially when they're the ones handing out the jesus flyers. i just whiz right past them as they attempt to shove the pieces of paper into my hands. i sometimes wonder if they're just trying to trick me into taking it, like if they tickle my hand with the flyer it'll respond like a venus fly trap, grasping anything that touches it.

i feel bad, though, for the nice-looking people, the people who pass out newspapers or menus and clearly have no choice but to try to pass out newspapers and menus, people who are just trying to make an honest living. this is where i get uncomfortable. how do i respond to these people? do i say "no, thank you," to every single one? i'd be hoarse by the time i got to work. instead i smile at them while making no hint that i'll be taking a paper, keeping my arms tightly to my sides.

and then i get to work, exhausted.

handshake and a smile

2006-06-19T14:48:00.000-04:00

i spent a delightful evening last night, reminiscent of my days in spanish harlem. no, dear readers, i wasn't running away from puerto ricans screaming "faggot!" at me in spanish. i was laying there, drenched in sweat, trying (fruitlessly) to sleep even though my room was literally 85 degrees. i had memories of that summer at scott's house flooding back to me: rolling around, even a sheet too heavy, dripping sweat onto the pillow. it was that kind of night again, the kind of night where i take a sleeping pill and still lay there, awake, miserable, until 4am. of course it's my fault: i haven't bothered taking a cab to target to buy an air conditioner. mainly because i'm too embarrassed to get into a cab and say "take me to target on queens boulevard" and then try to call a car service from target, carrying an air conditioner. but here in new york that's the kind of things we do. because we don't want to lay there bathed in our own sweat.

speaking of being awake until 4am, i had another audition today. the wonderful thing about my job is that i was able to take it in the middle of the day--it's flexible enough that i can just make the time up by coming in early and staying late. the audition was for a really nice guy who runs a company called american opera projects, a group that stages new chamber operas. now, is this exactly up my alley? yes it is. is it something that would be awesome to be involved in? yes. am i expecting to be cast, since i sang well? not really.

i don't say this to be pessimistic at all; my musician/actor friends will know exactly what i'm talking about. you just go, do your best, and then kind of wait for the rejection letter in the mail. all the people at my job were excited for me today, saying they were a little nervous for me. i told them, trying not to sound too jaded, "i'm not nervous. it's just something i do."

which is true. i take a lot of auditions, most of which lead to nothing. auditions aren't exciting or special. they're about as exciting as waiting in line at starbucks, but at least at starbucks you know you're going to leave with a delicious tall skim latte. all you leave auditions with are a handshake and a smile. if you're lucky.

a sandwich sign and assless chaps

2006-06-16T09:40:00.000-04:00

first of all, let's just talk about one thing: it's friday. the week went fast, a few good things happened, and, again, it's friday. it's going to be a good day.

i was on the train this morning and a woman got on who was very put together: perfect hair and makeup, sassy outfit, shoes that matched her handbag. did i just say handbag? yes i did. paging carson kressley. anyway, her look just says i spent some time on this, motherfuckers, and you all better notice. so i noticed. i mainly noticed, though, because it is eight-thirty in the morning. eight-thirty. to look like that, that early, means that she's gotten out of bed at probably 6am. because she's not just leaving her house at 8:30; she's already on a train in manhattan. it takes me over an hour to get to that point, and i'm a slob these days.

something about living in new york has had the opposite effect on my wardrobe that i thought it would. i assumed that when i moved here i'd have to really step it up a notch; you know, because there are all these hot-ass david barton gym faggots and celebrities running around everywhere. and i couldn't imagine myself in my ripped jeans and 8-year-old vintage polo. apparently, though, i was wrong. if anything, i've started caring less about my appearance. my friend perri, who works with me, tells me that he "rolls into his clothes." though i know that's just a figure of speech, i've spent several minutes over the course of a few weeks imagining what perri would look like rolling into clothes. i picture him dropping to his bedroom carpet, aiming for a laundry pile, and rolling around until his limbs have somehow found their way into arm- and leg-holes.

i feel to an extent like i've started rolling into my clothes. i wear the same pair of jeans to work every day for five days in a row. i pick a pair on monday; when i'm not wearing them (my apartment is hot and i immediately change into mesh shorts the instant i get home) they live at the foot of my bed. on saturday they go to the laundry and i pick a new pair for the week. in grad school, or even at hopkins, i wouldn't have done such a thing. nor would i have even considered wearing out of the house any of the hand-me-down, sometimes ill-fitting t-shirts i've been favoring lately.

it's not depression that's making me do this; it's not giving up on looking good. i think it's because there are just so many people here all doing their own thing, it's obvious that no one actually notices what you're wearing. sure, i still make an effort if i'm going out with friends or going to the gay bar, but even then i can't help but feel like everyone is so caught up in their own thing that it doesn't really matter what i'm wearing.

maybe i should really test this theory, really go to extremes. maybe i'll start doing things like wearing andre-from-project-runway-style short-shorts. or maybe a sandwich sign or assless chaps. the thing is, in new york, no one would even notice.

watch out

2006-06-15T20:01:00.000-04:00

i just wanted to make sure that everyone and their MOM reads the comment that nakia left on today's blog posting.

"I am being very serious when I say that so help me God if someone touches you I will have the whole South Bronx Dominicans looking for their asses. My cousin is a cop and if you ever need help or a ride home, just let me know. He will pop a cap in their asses."

power to MISS KIA!

i'm not that political...till you piss me off.

2006-06-15T10:07:00.000-04:00

those of you who don't live in new york (or obsessively read gay blogs like i do) might not have heard about what happened over the weekend, but it's a little upsetting: a gay (drag-ish) performer named kevin aviance was jumped by four teenagers in the east village on his way home from the phoenix. he was released from the hospital a couple days later, his jaw wired shut. now, depending how you feel about kevin aviance, his jaw being wired shut may actually be a blessing in disguise, but that's beside the point. the point is, violence against gay people doesn't just happen in montana and south dakota and rural oklahoma (sorry, home state, it's true).

last night at the albatross (caw!), astoria's own dive gay bar, a man got up on stage (it was open mic night, aka dykes with mikes) and talked about the kevin aviance attack as well as another attack that apparently happened last weekend in astoria, at 34th street and broadway. now, i live at 33rd street and broadway (for all you would-be stalkers out there!), and the fact that there's been anti-gay violence a block away from my pad makes me just a little nervous.

once the first man was done speaking, the drag queen/hostess took the mic and continued: "now, i don't know where you all are from, but i'm from texas. it's not safe to be gay in texas. i came here because i knew it was somewhere i would be safe to be myself. so please, take action. make sure it's safe to walk home from here; for me to walk home from here. in heels." her words really did strike a chord with me. i don't look over my shoulder as much here as i did in baltimore, or even indiana or oklahoma. there's generally such a live-and-let-live (or don't-fuck-with-me) vibe in new york that i'm never really concerned about being jumped or attacked or pummelled with spray paint cans (a la kevin aviance). clearly, i need to be a little more careful.

the more i've been thinking about this recent spat of violence, though, the more i've realized just how much the climate is changing for gay people in this country. in the late 90's and early 00's all kinds of progressive things were happening, thanks in no small part to clinton/gore. sure, he signed "don't ask/don't tell," but he also never would've pushed for a federal "protection of marriage" amendment.

things are getting pretty uncomfortable for gay people here; it's something you can feel as soon as you leave the liberal bubble of the northeast. we're suddenly facing government-sanctioned discrimination, which does nothing but send a message to every would-be homophobe that it's ok to hate us. our government is setting an example of which it should be ashamed. and every faggot, every drag queen, every butch dyke that is attacked and left bleeding in the street can thank george w and his cronies for fostering a climate in which it could happen. and when they're done thanking him, they can send him their hospital bills.

a lil blog about crohns

2006-06-14T13:36:00.000-04:00

since, dearest readers, i know that you're all chomping at the bit to know how my first crohn's doctor's appointment went (wait, you did actually know that i saw my new crohns doctor for the first time yesterday, right? you didn't? what kind of friend are you? screw you!) yesterday, i'll write a lil' blog entry about it.

first of all, doctors offices are never quick. at anything. even though i got to my appointment fifteen minutes early, i wasn't seen until forty-five minutes after it was to have started. now, had the nurse not profusely apologized for making me wait so long (i know, i was shocked, too), i would've been amazingly pissed off. but, since i had my book with me and, let's face it, i don't have a lot of choice when it comes to rescheduling a crohns visit, the wait wasn't terrible.

the good news is that my doctor seems to be really on top of his shit, no pun intended. and he has the bedside manner of a hollywood actor. as he was talking to me about his favorite operas, the study i'm working on, blah blah blah, i was like, do you think i'm access hollywood? but it's better that than my recent experience with the horrible dr. constantine anagnostopolis, the insane greek doctor i saw literally twice during my entire recent hospitalization. basically, the doctor reiterated what my doctor at hopkins had said: that my current therapy clearly isn't working (two hospitalizations in as many months? that's not normal?) and that we're going to step up my medication.

unlike my last doctor, though, he took a long time explaining exactly how the drug works, what the alternatives are, how they're going to determine dosage. basically giving me a hand in my own treatment, which is refreshing after two years of taking sixteen pills a day and achieving mixed results.

so, bottom line with the crohns: surgeries: 0; unfortunate (or smelly) accidents on the subway: 0; new drugs to try: 1; spirits: high but cautious.

unleash the beast

2006-06-13T10:01:00.000-04:00

i used to wax my chest. those of you who don't know me will say "oh, robert. what does that matter? a lot of people wax their chest hair!" but you don't understand. i have, basically, the chest hair of a 40 year old man and have since i was 17 years old. to wax my chest was an incredible undertaking that took upwards of 45 minutes. the worst time, the woman doing the waxing kept saying "oof, i'm glad this is you and not me. this must be painful!" i wanted to scream "YES, it's painful. now shut the fuck UP and rip the hair out of me!" instead i grimaced and smiled and nodded. it was me at the end of my body-hair rope: i'd tried shaving, nair-ing, sugaring. every time it came back fast, irritated, thicker. my body just would not accept that i needed to be smooth, like all the men with their shirts off in the clubs in dc, the men in the magazines. or like the man i was dating, a man as naturally muscular and smooth as a fucking marble statue, a man i felt like i was chasing the whole time we dated.

even though i trim my chest hair now (i thank god haven't [yet] grown enough back hair that it's a big problem. but the time, my dear readers, will come.), i haven't had the urge to shave it off in a few years. i keep it trimmed because, let's face it, nobody really wants to look like magnum PI anymore.

a great thing about living in new york, though, is that there are legions of men here who love guys with hairy chests. love. like, um, it's one of their biggest turn-ons. most guys on everyone's favorite, um, internet "dating" site say things like "your hairy chest is so fucking hot." only one has said something to me about only "being into smooth dudes." yes, he said dudes. and i wanted to say back to him, "so you'll be too busy trolling the playground to meet up for coffee? that's ok."

for the first time in my life, though, i have a better body image, a better attitude about my chest hair and how i look. i suppose it's because of the sheer number of men in new york, the fact that if someone doesn't like you there are plenty more who will. as i said to scott at christopher street pier on sunday (which i didn't blog about, but trust me, it's insane. imagine more muscles than an issue of inches and speedos and homos all oiling each other up. fun.), "if you don't like chest hair we ain't gon' fuck." yeeeeeah new york.

my home now

2006-06-12T11:06:00.000-04:00

as i walked to work today (still sick with a cold, but getting better, it seems, day by day; i'm still on the nightly nyquil plan.) i was thinking about moving, about starting a new life here in new york. specifically, i remembered what it was like to move to baltimore from depauw, to have left behind all of my college friends, everything i knew, even the midwest. and i find myself feeling very similar things now that i did then: a feeling of loneliness, i suppose, of displacement. in baltimore, i had a very strong, close-knit group of friends. well, until the last few months i was there and everyone had moved. in new york, though, i have just a few close friends and i haven't really found my niche. what i have to keep reminding myself, though, is that this is all still new; that this will eventually feel like home, just the way baltimore came to.

i remember talking to emily on the phone the fall i moved to baltimore, before i met any of the people that would become my closest friends. i'd stand there in the underground parking garage of 1010, the wretched highrise i lived in the first year i was in baltimore, talking to her for hours, because i was homesick, because there was really no one else to talk to. we talked about boys (i was going through a messy breakup), and about feeling a little like a stranger in a strange land, much the way that i still feel in new york.

it's only been two months here, after all. and, for only having been here two months, i've already settled in quite nicely. i'm slowly finding my place here. and, someday, astoria will feel like home; things will stop being completely new everywhere i turn. i'll have my favorite restaurants and my favorite bars and feel a sense of place and stasis just the way i did in baltimore.

when a coworker of mine got my cellphone number, he said, "what the hell area code is that?" "baltimore," i told him. "why don't you get a new yawk numba?" he asked (he's from long island, bless his heart.) "i don't know," i said. "well, ya need to. yuh not in baltimore anymoah. new yawk is yuh home now."

i know it is.

dirty hangover

2006-06-09T09:46:00.000-04:00

shh, dear readers, don't talk too loudly. even though i have to work this morning, i went last night to astoria's (rapidly becoming more famous) beer garden with cory (my first-ever camp boyfriend who randomly lives in astoria), his boyfriend, and his friend michael. afterward we went to albatross, a gay bar that literally could be any dive bar in baltimore. and for this reason it feels like home. and now, since i'm a lil' hungover to be writing a blog, here's this week's dirty laundry.

Adonis

“Yeah,” my roommate Hilary said to me, freshly in from a run, “but your definition of fat is way different that most peoples’ definition of fat. You think someone’s fat if they don’t have a visible six-pack. But guess what, Robert. You might just have to get over that. I mean, what if you meet a really nice guy?"

"Um, obviously,” I told her, "I'd give him a chance. But you date straight guys, and for straight guys it’s totally different. Straight guys are supposed to have beer bellies or back hair. It’s expected.” Instead of justifying this clearly weak argument, Hilary merely rolled her eyes and turned around to walk out of the room, peeling off her sweaty running shirt as she went. This discussion was over: Hilary, one; Robert, zero.

My conversation with Hilary had taken a wildly different turn than one I’d had with Adam, a friend (and ex-boyfriend), earlier that day. He’d been dating a guy for a few weeks and had informed me, nonchalantly, that he’d put him on a diet.

“Excuse me?” I said, hardly believing what he’d just told me.

“Yes,” Adam said, laughing, “he’s on the Abs Diet. Because I told him he should be. I don’t want to sound like an a**hole here, but he’s the, um, least in-shape person I’ve ever dated.”

“Well,” I said, “just let him know that your ex-boyfriend is coming to visit next month. Tell him that I work out five times a week, that I’m extremely hot and judgmental, and that I insist that everyone I hang out with be shirtless at all times. We’ll call it ‘Shirts-Off Weekend.’ That’ll motivate him.” They broke up two weeks later.

All kidding aside, my conversation with Adam made me think: how superficial is it OK to be when you’re dating someone? So much—at least at the beginning of a relationship—is based on chemistry and physical attraction, it seems like it should be a top priority. Along with personality, a sense of humor, and having a good job, of course.

And if so, why is it bad to admit that you’re not attracted to someone because they, for instance, could use a few weeks on the Abs Diet? I think that anyone, if they’re being honest, no matter how good their intentions, would tell you that they have a specific type they’re attracted to. When it comes down to it, we’re all a little superficial when we meet someone at first, all a little surface-oriented.

My problem, though, is that I live in New York City, a place unlike anywhere else when it comes to dating. In New York, there’s always something better just around the corner, always someone with a better body, a hotter face, a more sparkling personality. The sheer number of gay guys here makes it nearly impossible to settle for something less than you think you deserve.

But if I never give a guy a chance because of stupid, superficial things--a hairy neck or bad shoes--if I’m so convinced that there’s an Adonis just around the corner somewhere, how will I ever actually get to know someone for who they are? It’s a terrifying thought to me, that I might waste my 20’s chasing some ideal man when there were all these great guys along the way, guys who I never got to know well enough to appreciate their imperfections.

The best relationships I’ve had, the ones that have ended in lifelong friendships, weren’t based solely on physical attraction. They were with men who were flawed, but whose flaws, whose quirks, somehow fit them perfectly, made them who they are. It’s humanizing, I think, to recognize someone’s faults, and to admit your own. Which is why, in this city, we all strive to be as perfect as possible, and get so used to looking only on the surface. Because once you see me for who I am, in a hospital bed or first thing in the morning, you know me much more deeply, and that makes most people uncomfortable.

So I’ll try for this: to see a person beyond his ass or his chest or his face or his hair. To see someone for who he is—human, just like me, with a mother and a coming-out story and a medley of insecurities. And maybe then he’ll see me the same way.

congratulations

2006-06-08T10:12:00.000-04:00

for the second time in my life now i'm entrenched in a battle for crohn's medication. a battle, specifically, with my new insurance carrier and the fact that i once again am rapidly running out of medication. yet each time i've tried to switch insurance--both when i went on hopkins insurance and now--it takes literally weeks for my information to go through. i end up on the phone, trying to get people to pull strings just so that they can tell me, you know, a group and ID number, so that i don't have to spend $450 cash on my crohn's medication. again.

so far everyone has been very friendly and helpful. it'd just be nice if they'd be friendly and helpful without me having to make extra phone calls to make sure they're doing their jobs. the saving grace is that my pharmacy here--just a duane reade, but they're so efficient--is extremely friendly and helpful. when i went to get my first refill, knowing it'd have to be transferred from baltimore, i started what i thought would be a horrible process a week in advance. it took a matter of hours. "all we have to do," they told me, without my even having to ask, "is call down to baltimore and get the prescription. it'll be ready this afternoon."

in baltimore, mind you, at the rite aid i went to through grad school, this would've been an incredible production number. more often than not, i'd go to pick up my prescription only to find out that it hadn't been filled because, say, they didn't have the drug but hadn't bothered to call me to let me know. then, when i'd talk to them, after waiting in line for literally 25 minutes because laquisha was too busy chewing her manicure and talking to her friend about her date with da'quan, she'd be a total fucking bitch to me and act like it was my fault she hadn't filled the prescription.

it's bizarre to think that people would be more friendly, more efficient in new york, the city most people regard as extremely tough. but at duane reade (and countless mcdonalds, clothing stores, and restaurants) the customer service can't even be compared to that of baltimore. so i think, maybe, it should be "baltimore: if you can make it here, congratulations."

on the move

2006-06-07T12:35:00.000-04:00

i can't believe i forgot to post this earlier, but i'd like if all of you send some powerful, positive thoughts to phong today: he started his move to san francisco this morning!

congrats, phong, i know it's going to be wonderful.