ANXIOUS AUBADE no. 12 (a poem about meeting people)

(An aubade, traditionally, is a poem of leaving, or parting, particularly in the early morning.)

When I see someone approaching whom I can’t read or recognize,
I refer to the mantra of my stripper friend.
She recites a pep-talk of self-weaponization
for a person of average strength.
Her professional naked person’s psalm goes like this:
(I may be paraphrasing)

I have soft spots in my neck and my head.
I have hard edges on my teeth
and my knees and my nails.
If I bleed I can get blood in their eyes.
If they bleed I can open their wounds.
Are there scabs? Are there old scars to aggravate?
What are you REALLY talking about?
I have fear that makes the body quick and strong.
You have fear that makes the mind fragile and careless.
I have fear and you have fear.
Soft spots, soft spots.

(Strippers have the supernatural advantage of knowing how to be naked.
I admire her because I have no such strength.
I bundle up in the desert.)
She says that unavoidably, the mantra collides
with sense-memory of sex, recent or pined after:

Soft and hard. Stops and starts. Tease and release.
Like a mean kiss, a corruption.
Someone does something savage to you
and then something nice to you,
in a loop, a little death dispersed.
Sex is a power, a natural force made by any body
with the mass to exert gravity. 

And then the moment passes, because
you will never meet that person again.
Okay, hi, bye.
And then you’re by yourself, speaking out loud to no one.
She goes on:

And then I just dance til my mind settles.
My core style is jazz. I ain’t into ballet. Hard on the toetips.
But I try to pirouette like Prince, ‘cos his spins were perfect.
puppeted by a higher power on angelhair strings. That’s my shit.
I don’t act out what the song is saying.
Dancing is not literal,
it does not make words
or events make more sense.
I try to bring myself to the point when you’re committed to cry,
to come, to confess, and I spin there for as long as the song goes.
I have a few favorite songs that fit;
Lazy like lying in the grass, pointless and sharp points
a song meant to remove clothing to,
solely for the fun of letting them fall,
showing yourself, however you are. 

The old trick of picturing someone naked is a mnemonic gimmick
to let them across your lawn.
They are threat, and they could hold you together.
They could be someone you’ve met before.
But practically speaking,
they are wearing far too many clothes for you to know.   

Asian-American Guy Problems VS. American Woman Problems

This is the clearest way to explain it I think. #AsianAmericanManSplain

2 types of people with glasses. Yet a chasm of experience separates them.

Asian-American Man Problem	American Woman Problem
Nobody seems highly interested in dating me.	Every weirdo in every bar seems highly interested in dating me.
I live in a culture that considers me subordinate and docile.	I live in a culture that considers me subordinate and docile.
I am the least-preferred ethnic group in online dating.	I joined a dating site and got 20 pictures of genitalia in the first minute.
I don't talk about the racism because it's not sexy.	I don't talk about the sexism because gaaaaah it's too everywhere.
People assume I'm weird.	People assume I'm meat.
Since Mad Men came out I feel pressure to be an Alpha Bro I would never want to be.	Since Mad Men came out I feel pressure to date successful alcoholics.
I am the least-married ethnic group in America.	I've been married twice already, it ain't all that great.
I am very anxious about being nice but not seeming "too nice."	I am very anxious because everyone who's nice to me also has an angle.
On other hand, the police are usually pretty nice to me, based on a cultural profile I have no control over.	Police are usually pretty nice to me, based on a cultural profile I have no control over.
When meeting someone I have to devote energy to both appearing sexually interested and not seeming like the weirdo they are expecting. It's exhausting.	When meeting someone I have to evaluate both how much they want to use me for sex and an exit strategy even if I sort of like them. It's fricking exhausting.
I eat meals alone with my phone.	If this guy attempts to pay for my food, does he think I owe him a hookup?
I wake up alone.	I wake up next to some douche.
Every opportunity for love is kind of a big deal.	Ever opportunity for love with a non-stalker is kind of a big deal.
If I lived in New York I could get a date because they're more racially open-minded there.	If I lived in Los Angeles I could get a date because the lonely dudes there outnumber me 5 to 1.
Things might go easier if I was gay.	Things might go easier if I was gay.
James Franco, John Mayer, also guys with beards.	Katy Perry, also girls with nice hair.
People are very surprised if I karaoke Prince, even though Asian guys invented that karaoke shit.	People are very surprised if I karaoke a song that isn't pretty or flattering.
Although I have my own preferences, people expect me to just go for whoever's available after Don Draper has chosen.	Although I have my own preferences, they are distorted by the availability of dudes who will evidently humiliate themselves for my attention.
Because of TV stereotypes, people expect me to be really good at tech. I'm not.	Because of porn, people expect me to be really good at handjobs. I'm not.
Once, I was just standing around and made someone very uncomfortable by clearing my throat.	Once, I was just standing around and was invited to a threesome because I adjusted my shirt.
I recognize 100 different ways of being written off.	I recognize 100 different ways of being hit on.
I know who I want but she has never even considered the possibility that the Asian guy has functional baby-making equipment.	I don't know who I want, but I am pretty sure it is not all these people who want me.
I actually speak way better English than you.	I actually speak way better English than you.

Affirmative Action, Asian Dating, and Vomit. (OR, Why Being an Asian American Guy Still F**king Sucks.)

I was going to write this piece anyway, but now it is partially in response to this idiot.

The social highlight of my last week was when a pretty girl vomited on me in a karaoke room. Without going into the whole story, I was trying to get friendly with her without realizing exactly how many drinks she'd had, and then she got sad, and I'm like OK maybe you just need someone to hold you, and that was fine, and then her warm and wet weeping on my shoulder suddenly became warm and wet regurgitated shrimp all over my clothes. I am not exaggerating at all when I say it was the social highlight of the week. Also, it was the kind of thing that makes you look at all the couplings and relationships and sexual congress going on in the world and question, "how does that ever even happen?"

Being Asian-American and male is definitely the worst thing you can possibly be, ethnically, in the dating universe. People say, "It's all in your head." Asian-American males themselves say to "GET OVER IT," and do, by obnoxious overcompensation. But let's get back to my head. It is not all in my head. Would you tell a black man that police brutality is all in his head? Police brutality is, of course, much more terrible than not having a date. But the phenomena are equally true. The statement that a black guy is more likely to be in trouble from the police because of institutional racism is AS TRUE as the statement that an Asian-American guy is more likely to have no warm body to wake up to in the morning because of institutional racism.

Also, it's data in the frakking census. As a percentage of their populations, the least-married kinds of people in America are Asian-American guys and African-American women. I think it's safe to say that there is a whole network of institutional racisms contributing to the plight of that second group. With Asian-American guys, it's only one umbrella-able problem, which is not Asian-specific, but in any case it's that Women Like Trouble.

Me and my nongirlfriendfriend A., rocking the
Girl's Got Priorities Goggles.

Asian-American gals have plenty of good psychological reasons for preferring not to get with Asian-American guys, having to do with patriarchy in Asian nations ("I thought I just got away from that..."), sense of self, their brothers, their fathers, and also that America is still run by white people (give or take our embattled president). By the way, none of these good reasons are articulated well or truthfully by this girl (who, again, is either a moron or some sort of troll for the website, or both). ALL gals like an Asian guy if he's Totally Fuckin HOT, of course, but on average will hook up with the indifferent loud white dude over a normal Asian guy who is totally devoted to them.  Or the sensitive hipster who is not patriarchal and had the most amazing experience in Thailand, you should go on a retreat there (because that's what self-aware people do, go on retreats to find themselves in other countries...WTF).

There was a point here...OH, it's that I have no luck with chicks. NO, it's actually that women, like most humans, have a streak in them that craves danger, and will do things for "fun" that are totally against their long-term self-interest. Asian-American dudes, generally speaking, do not convey the sense of Trouble that women like. As the PUAs will tell you, there are good strong biological reasons for this trouble-seeking (the system works better, if ruthlessly, in the lion community), which invariably causes women to get with guys who are angry, abusive, and wrapped up in destructive self-obsessions of their own. Hence the endless cycle of "OMG I just want to find a nice man OMG who is this loser I've shacked up with."

If you haven't observed this in the real world, it is because you live on Vulcan.

The thing is, most guys feel entitled to sex. Women often confuse this sense of entitlement with confidence and are attracted to it, although entitlement has nothing to do with confidence (but it has everything to do with behaving like a douchebag). People of color are generally attuned to the reality that one is not entitled to things, and SOME (Some not all!**) Asian American dudes, being where they izzat on the spectrum, realize that one is not entitled to love; it happens if you are terribly lucky, but there is no natural law that says you can't die alone.

(Level of American-ness is important here: Asian Asian dudes from Asia have as big a sense of entitlement as any guy anywhere; they are all Alpha over there.)

Asian American guys overcompensate for their perceived disadvantage by acting Bro-ish: angry, loud, swaggery, selfish, fighting for position. OK, some of them are like this naturally. The ones who are just putting on a performance of that, ladies, that is all your fault. If you responded to the other thing, we would act the other way. 

....So anyway, that's basically what I said to the girl last Thursday night.

She responded with something like "Asian blahblahglah BROTHER blahblahgah."

And then she started crying on my shoulder.

And then she threw up on me.

Good times.

....This ended up having not much to do with this affirmative action case, except to say: people who oppose affirmative action like to point out that if it were not for affirmative action, the percentage of black students would drop dramatically (at the few schools that currently have affirmative action) to reflect the "true" makeup of qualified students. And to that I say: How could that possibly be a good thing? Don't we have affirmative action in the first place to slightly make up for THAT OTHER FLAWED SYSTEM WHICH HELPED SOME PEOPLE BUT HAD A FEW KINKS IN IT UH SLAVERY? But by all means, if the plan for a better America is to clamp down on those unfairly college-bound black people, do it, level that playing field. I will go to another county and find myself. 

**Some not all! Some not all! Not racist not racist not racist!

Is Anybody In Los Angeles Happy?

I used to have a co-worker who was a professional wrestler. His way of greeting people was to ask: "Are you happy today?" (as opposed to hi, hey, sup, etc.) Whether you answered truthfully or not, it was always a good conversation starter, and it gave the greeter a good idea of what he was in for, i.e., how much of a bitch you were going to be today. 

It occurred to me yesterday that maybe no one in Los Angeles is happy. I don't really know a person here who's happy on a regular basis. I know a lot of people who are living their lives and doing fun things, like being in movies and having babies and being warm and going to the beach. But it seems there's no one who's innately happy about it, today, in LA.

from http://melroseandfairfax.blogspot.com/
if it's a problem, lemme know

Elaborating: A lot of people are happy about something that might happen tomorrow. This is the big pull of LA. Tomorrow some shotcaller will recognize your whatever and then a house in the hills will fall onto your head and you will never have to do real work again.

A lot of people (like me) are very interested by their lives in LA, because it is culturally the most diverse place on earth and thus endlessly interesting. At the bleeding edge of Western Civilization. No place like it. No time to think about it.

A lot of people are pretty happy about being from LA, but in the way where they'll get drunk and then fuck you up for talking shit about a claimed sector of some neighborhood you've never even been to. And that's not really the kind of happiness I'm talking about.

I'm talking about the kind of happy you get from living in a certain place to the point where you actually annoy other people. And you don't notice, because you're so on the wavelength of happiness, you can't even sense the other thing. I'm talking about the civic joy of New York, whose residents are so narcissistically proud of their town that they think their mayoral race is big news in other cities, and also blindly believe they have the best Chinese food in America (They don't; Los Angeles does, and we should be happy about it, but it's so far to drive there.). I'm talking about the deep self-satisfaction of San Francisco Bay Area people, who walk around with a silly smug smile knowing that they live next to all the best food and the best gadgets and will never have a dull moment because of all the weirdos. I'm talking about the deep romance and history of being in or from Boston, the chilled-out grace of waking up in someplace like Austin, or in whatever that city is in New Mexico.

In Los Angeles, people act out in a way that suggests they're dealing badly with not being happy. Others mistake this behavior for obnoxiousness or stupidity. Most of it, of course, involves driving. For example, why was this Torrance woman texting in her car while driving with her child in her lap? Is that text solving some happiness problem she has that wasn't solved by having the child?

A lot of people in LA are happy, temporarily, to be out on the freeway driving fast, bouncing off the railings and other people, but only when they're not being slowed up by the other drivers who are (categorically) Asians, blind people, illegals, or faggots.

And, OK, then there's that "faggot" thing: I went to a perfectly nice party last week in Echo Park which was briefly interrupted by a street altercation between two guys screaming at each other about being "faggots" and how much they're going to fuck each other up. I wanna say these guys were just young, but honestly they could've been in their mid-30's.

Of course they didn't actually fight. They're not even happy enough about their lives to defend it with physical action. They just want to make sure that the other guy also knows how terrible a person they are.  I have no idea what they were fighting about, but most of the fights I see in Los Angeles boil down to guys calling each other fags and running away. And it's not even said with specific hate towards homosexuals, more like with an overflowing unhappiness directed at all humanity.

The stars are not happy for having "made it." Why does Lindsay Lohan keep crashing her car into things? Because she's so damned happy to be alive?

Rich people are not happy about being rich in LA. At the casino, on a regular basis I met customer/players who had tons of money and lived very cushy lifestyles, and they were all frickin miserable sons of bitches.

Kobe, staring at the ceiling. Yeah, it's the Staples Center ceiling.
But same concept.

Think about it: Kobe, with his dysfunctional team and less-than-seven championships? Not happy. NFL fans? Not happy. The Dodgers? Really not happy. People with families? Getting through life, but kinda worried about all the unhappy people, and then getting divorced. Actor/stripper/models from Ohio? Making a promise to themselves to push away all the people who suck happiness-energy from their lives. Film Industry People? Working on something that might make them happy, tomorrow.

And that is the saving grace of LA, by the way: People work hard, in their fashion. They hustle to make that cheese. The definitive quality of LA is striving. Folks have a dream and are working towards it with energy, with passion, and sometimes with creative inspiration. But without, I would argue, a lot of happiness.

On the other hand, we do have the best Chinese food in the country.

The San Gabriel Valley, and its expanding mini-chains, have the best Chinese food in America.
This is not arguable. It is a fact, and will be recognized as such by anyone who knows what they're talking about.

confidence game

When discussing with women the whole male-female thing, "confidence" is usually a big word. Women like confidence. Confidence is attractive.

When observing male-female interactions and pursuits in bars/casinos/the sidewalk, it is apparent that confident people are douchebags.

True confidence, whatever that is, perhaps not a bad thing. But the performance of confidence by people
who have been advised to show confidence, or are confident that confidence alone will advance them? Dude.

"I am confident that this is true. I am confident that your contrary opinion is wrong. I am confident that you want to be told what to do."

Also, women have been known to confuse "confidence" with entitlement. Because entitled dudes are confident, which is to say sure, that you owe it to them. But to be fair, the gals who make that mistake have been making their own bed for a while.

There is a kind of tunnel-vision confidence that it takes to exert your will over another person, and another kind that is needed to be a writer, adding excessive words to a world that already has sunsets. That second kind does not really get you laid as often.

So, what I'm saying is, fuck confidence. 

paperclips

The principle of resource waste and humankind's eventual doom is pretty well illustrated, I think, in paperclips.

There's no reason, especially in the modern online society, that anybody should ever need to buy a box of paperclips. Think about it, a box has at least a million paperclips in it. Your whole life, maybe you need two boxes of paperclips. EXCEPT there's few things that are easier to MISPLACE than a box of paperclips, 'cause they're so darned small, and also if you're throwing out trash it's very easy to think, "I will rid myself of the burden of this box of paperclips."

And then eventually you need a paperclip again.

Somewhere out there is a factory manufacturing tons and tons of paperclips, just to replace all the ones that were bought, and then lost, or thrown away, because they were thought useless.

And that is how the world's gonna end.

I believe this principle also applies to the penny.

10 thoughts I imagine the average asian girl literally must think through before she maybe consents to go out with me.

10. "Maybe he won't turn out to be just like my brother."
9. "I guess this white guy fetish is going to get me into trouble eventually..."
8. "It is possible, however unlikely, that he has gotten over his 'nobody loves me 'cause I'm an asian dude' problem."
7. "Physically, I could probably take him in a fight."
6. "Did he just say something to me or is there a hidden gnome in the wall that speaks in Mumble?"
5. "I guess having beautiful biracial children was sort of a hollow dream after all."
4. "At least he will not try to impress me with his knowledge of sushi."
3. "Think, what's the worst thing that could possibly happen....OK, but that happened to that one girl and she can still walk thanks to modern medicine....OK, survivable, I guess."
2. "Maybe he'll turn out to be just like my brother and I can have someone to talk to about my issues with other men's body odor and personal grooming habits."

And the Number One thing that I imagine the Average Asian Girl literally must resolve in her head before deciding whether or not to possibly get involved with Me.....is.....

1. "Everything would be all right if he were maybe just two inches taller."

a poem about lunch

i love going to school
i love those two kids kissing in the courtyard
i hate coming home
i miss the conversations
i like long, long silences
i love my misinterpretations
i like to think that
i missed a chance
and i changed very little
i hate my lunch
i like dopamine and depression
i love failing completely
i love anticipatable futility and
boy oh boy do
i love consequences
i hate the moment
i love thinking about
all the bad things that will happen
i imagine places on the memory map
i try to summon color and sensation
i like falling
I love working towards falling
i love the never-ending job
i want to work every day
until something happens to me.

a poem about love and photography

i don't have a picture
i have a picture of clouds
i rely on my watch
i have a schedule
i have dark movies in my head
that also feature absence
and anticipation.

i possess pictures,
like most people.
i like to look,
like most people.
your ghost face,
my fluorescence.

i prefer dreams
they come and go but
are more precious and discernable
as handwriting, a way of walking.
i love when someone says,
(of my obvious overtures)
"i can tell, i can tell"

Micronian Marathon

Doing it. Found all of the Robotech VHS tapes (probably inherited from Reuben, thanks man!). And a VCR to play them. Watching all of it. The whole series. Not fuckin around. Considering liveblogging it.

near miss

This is a part-overheard, part-pieced-together dialogue between the 20something girl and boy that were sitting in the booth next to my booth at the In 'n Out, where I was eating on my own:

BOY: So you're a player huh?
GIRL: Yeah. I got lots of game.
BOY: Play-a.
GIRL: Do you ever wanna get married?
BOY: (mumbles some inaudible-to-me response)
GIRL: I bet I can get that guy to talk to me.

She maybe indicates me as I am acting like my fries are really interesting. We are in each other's eyelines.

BOY: Wha?
GIRL: When I just went up to get a soda this other guy started talking to me. Look:

She gets up and walks to the soda station, walks around the ketchup 'n napkins station, walks past my booth, sits down again. She's wearing a very cleavagey tank top, jean shorts, and is really pretty. I definitely have been half-looking at her through my entire burger.

GIRL: Didn't work. That guy's smart.
BOY: Wha?
GIRL: Maybe you're my husband. (inaudible) Maybe he'll be my sugar daddy.

Their shaved-head white dude friend arrives.

GIRL: Hey, we're trying to hook up with that guy over there. What should we do?
DUDE: (something inaudible)

And then they all leave.

It would be aces to have Daredevil-level superhuman hearing at these times, because I don't know how much of that I just made up. I'm sure they said 80% of those words. But I don't know if she was also half-looking at me, or talking about some other guy, or what.

And what do you say in that precious, dangerous situation anyway?

I like to think she really said I was smart for not making a move on a stranger at the In 'n Out. I am just smart enough, in that modern way, to keep completely to myself.

psyching self up

wondrous, withering and replenishing,
approaching and imaginary,
within the realm of possibility,
true and trying, present and anticipatory,
a halo, an idea, a change in aspect,
a non-existent reason to live,
a reason to run,
a hand full of watermelon seeds,
at the end of the world, at want for nothing
but a device which might
witness and record this light.

just a fantasy, picture in a magazine

I was watching "Before Sunset" today and thinking about male fantasies. Not just the typical "I never thought this would happen to me, with two cheerleaders, in an ice cream truck" kind of fantasies, but the kind that are articulated in a subtle way in the majority of films, TV, and literature, which have always been of course totally male-dominated arenas. The fantasy in "Before Sunset" is something along the lines of, "A self-involved leering geek meets a really smart socially conscious woman who flirtatiously pours her heart out to him for hours while he replies with banal small talk." Julie Delpy's character is a kind of muse who inspires men with her wit and openness, but it's hard to see whether she gets any inspiration in return.
...I'm guilty of this too. Most movies and books are written by men, most "really strong female characters" are written by men, and men tend to use their artistic license to create an idealized female character from time to time, someone to foil, transform, or otherwise reward the male subject, whether by helpful wisdom, charming eccentricity, or sheer babeliciousness. As hetero-male fantasists, we indulge the option to create that woman who we'd really like to meet and hang out with who would maybe save our soul in the process. So we get characters like Buffy, or Clarice Starling, or the Bride, or pretty much anyone Lucy Liu has ever played. Characters who may be loved by women and men alike, and whose only fault is that they may be just a little too awesome.
...So my question is, what is a typically female fantasy? If you watch enough softcore HBO specials, you might get the idea that most females fantasize about barbarians and whips and chains and wolf masks and stuff. The skeptic in me thinks this is just women internalizing the society-imposed passive/submissive role, which is not dissimilar from the male fantasy expressed in "Before Sunset," that is, You Won't Have To Do Too Much. The Fantasy Object will be so cool she will take care of all the conversation and sexual initiation for you. Basically, at heart, neither gender wants to work too hard, which is cool.
...Or I could be wrong. I mean, I really don't know. It's easy to find a few examples of female-authored fantasy figures in books or movies, and just as easy to find in them some embarrassing concession to the male gaze. Is it only possible for a woman to get to an authorship position if she embraces the female chauvinist pig within her? Or is Ethan Hawke REALLY the ultimate babe that every modern woman secretly dreams about and it's just my problem that I can't see it?
(....this is the part where the blogger arrogantly poses a big open-ended question, with the blind presumption that the blog has some sort of readership, and that readership will feel so stimulated by the blogger's deep thoughts that they will have no recourse but to respond.)

i really would like someone unrelated to me to be nice to me right now

...because I feel sorta lousy. My family members can't be the only people who openly tolerate me. I like my job, but not because the people there have ever done or said anything pleasant to me, ever. I'm uninspired and languishing, like all my creative projects. I wouldn't whine about it so much except that I heard that complaining about middle-class privileged problems is a really great way to attract the opposite sex, or any sex for that matter. I feel blah. I want a hug. At this point I think I would pay someone to notice that I need a hug. Lame.

OK enough blogging about disaster for a while

I'm sorta lonely. I feel compelled to point this out on my blog because of its function as the new emblem of narcissism. The blog is the place where even people who aren't lonely come to be alone, and wallow in the self. Plus it's a great passive-aggressive tool for, yknow, trying to get people to care without really trying.
...I can go a whole day without speaking a full English sentence to anyone. At my job, I often try to speak as little as possible, so as not to contribute to the general din. If I do speak, it's usually in some kind of broken casino English, "Two thousand you got," "Sister we can't do like that," "Every day no problem," ad nauseum.
...I talk to voicemails. I whisper little things to my co-workers. I blog and write emails. I work on my movie projects, which involves regular meetings with the writer, director, editor, producers, and investors....that is, me.
...I miss community, I miss evenings in bars with friends who aren't married or planning their weddings to their dog or their children or whathaveyou.
...Today was a funny day at work because I was the only male on the swing shift out of 4 employees. Our company is male-dominated so that hardly ever happens. The whole day was spent doing an unusual amount of errands for my female coworkers and the predominantly female players; changing chips, fetching cookies, fetching turkey jerky, can you put this here, can you put that over there....it reminded me a lot of having a longtime girlfriend, or actually having 3 girlfriends, which I've never had. It also reminded me that women tend to ask for things that they want, whereas men tend to not ask for things and resent the fact that they don't have them. Generally speaking.
...For example, my face is sunburned, and I resent the fact that I have to go get aloe vera for myself if I want to have any. I don't even see my roommates enough in the daylight hours to ask them if there is any in the house. The last time I needed the stuff, I got it for myself. Whenever I need something, I pretty much get it for myself. Or I don't, and go without it. No one knows that I need it. No one has the option to worry about it.
...Of course, the grass is always greener, and I know I'm lucky to be self-sufficient and free and financially independent and all that stuff. I guess lately I'm suffering from that Not Very Hooked-Up Feeling. And I don't just mean in that romantic way, but in that "supplied with aloe vera and recommended reading material and snacks and all the other little tchotchkes that somehow find their way into your hands when you are a very hooked-up person" kind of way.

even in dreamland, chaste

I had a dream I was going to have >ahem< let's call it a reckless carnal encounter with an archetypal 20ish blonde girl....yknow, the type of person who is just beating down my door in real life...which is funny because usually my erotic phantasma involve people I at least sort of know, ANYWAY, there are three people lying in this bed, and me and the girl are about to embark on carnality, but then I feel kind of bad because there's this other guy in the bed and I think maybe he likes her too or else why are we all sleeping in a bed together? So I back off a bit.

In that moment of hesitation, the whole dream changed. I'm thinking, let's just go to another room. But we can't go to another room because my sister arrives. And then my mother. Just as quickly they disappear, and are replaced by a couple of my good friends, whom I'm ordinarily very happy to see. And then there is word of some sort of contagious medical crisis and we have to go to the Salvation Army and buy supplies before we leave town. Unnamed idealized cheerleader girl is still along for the ride and there is still the vague idea that a tryst is going to happen once we're all settled. But then someone in our ragtag crew has to go shopping so we have to wait for him.

Then, seriously, zombies attack. Mass chaos erupts. People in the streets, setting fire to buildings. We have to run away and jump into a truck as radioactive lumbering beasts are clawing at us. We speed away in the truck, hoping that it has enough gas to get us out of the city. Around this time I'm thinking that Melrose Place girl and I are never going to have a private moment and I should've just bitten the bullet when I had the chance.

Then I woke up. Really, it was like "The 40-Year Old Virgin" crossed with "28 Days Later." A big, fat, encoded, neo-Freudian mofo of a dream.

sometimes i decorate myself in depression
because it's easier than the other thing
depression is different from frustration
frustration is when that thing you could be accomplishing keeps not happening
depression is when that thing that will never happen keeps not happening
and i like to think that
depression is a luxury for
people who have done something

wee poem redux

speak up
now is the time to ruin everything
in a minute
the freeways of L.A. will laugh
at the idea of intimacy

i drive home in a hybrid
the braking system is so clever
it recovers the unfinished
surges in my step,
the unfollowed flourishes

medically safe and sound
with a heart barely buoyed by
strategic desperation
except inside i'm seasick
stomach full of conversation
inside i'm lightning
like metal in the microwave

the timing is perfect
we are both alive.

and you know you're in really bad shape when...

...the video for the frickin Bright Eyes song with all the couples in love on the same couch gives you that swelled up feeling like your heartsac is full of rainwater.

I mean it didn't get me in When Harry Met Sally. And the song is not that great. But in terms of ordinary-looking people looking overcome with love, it's a minor editing feat.

This suceptibility to corny/anthemic music is getting bad. I may have to have this checked.

By the by, that new Gay Cable Channel LOGO, on which I saw the above-mentioned Hedwig-directed weepy video, is great. How can you not love a channel whose programming consists entirely of obscure indie films, musicals, and the occasional Erasure video?

now we are three wee poems

Some people are all dolled up
Some people are solar and radiant
and some people are like being with the moon.
Some are skinny and wise
some are svelte and stupid
some think they're fat and some think they're right.
Most people stress me out
and if not, I soon learn how
even that bloody sun sucks when I'm driving into it.
But I like being with the moon
I like losing and reflecting and
coming up with ways to continue the night.