The short film I worked on in the spring of 2003 is now making the film festival circuit. For a hilarious (and pretty accurate) recap of the plot, check out this site. And yes, I played the so-called "old lecher" who makes the "bear trap" quip at a funeral, of all places.
11:32 PM | link
A weekend up on Cape Cod for my step-sister's wedding was a welcome distraction from the urban chaos of New York, and the train ride between here and Boston gave me the chance to read a couple of this week's books, but upon my return I have yet to find that balance and am still, to use a weak metaphor, barely keeping my head above water. Ridiculously, embarrassingly behind on e-mails and quality postings. A voicemail waiting for me over the weekend informed me that I nabbed one of the assistant editor positions on the literary journal, happy for that even though it adds to my workload. Also happy to share that I will be participating in two upcoming LIVE shows, mark your calendar if you want to see me pulled from the safety of blogging in my pajamas, and thrust onstage:
The WYSIWYG TALENT SHOW
Wednesday, October 20, at 7:30 p.m. at P.S. 122
150 1st Ave. at East 9th St.
Tickets: $7
And four days later, my glamorous jet-set life whisks me off to Washington D.C.:
BLOGJAM: THE HOMO SPEAK
Readings by national queer bloggers
Music by BLOWOFF
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2004
8 PM - CLOSE
VENUE: DC9
1940 9TH ST NW, WDC
21 AND OVER
$6 COVER
MC'd by the one and only Bob Mould
Also featuring the lovely and talented:
Geekslut
Joe.My.God
Jimbo
Vividblurry
Wonkette
Chrisafer
Chromewaves
Waremouse
Maybe they'll let me read in my pajamas.
10:47 PM | link
Thursday, September 16, 2004
Thirty-three Days in New York
Once, when I was much younger, I brought home an English paper that I had written. Across the top my teacher had scrawled, in red pen, the score of 97. I showed it to my mother.
"What happened to the other three points?" she asked me.
The student life is ridiculous, and I was born for it. I was born to read four hundred pages a week, to read authors whose work I missed by majoring in - of all things - sociology in college. I was born to haunt libraries with my laptop, wringing meaning from past experience, gazing for hours, one could argue, at my own navel. To stay after class and listen, with hunger, to the professor tell me anecdotes about working at the kind of New Yorker that no longer exists. To sit at the edge of a party with a plastic plate of cold chicken in my lap while I argue with a fellow student about what makes good writing. To hit the campus gym at night and to wander back, past the hot dog vendor dozing in his booth, to my apartment where more books await.
Heavenly, but also hellish. Learning is not some pink-hued abstraction. Maybe small children learn without pain. But at thirty-three learning is the process of destruction, tearing down earlier assumptions, welding together with white-hot flame ideas which once stood separate, excavating a hole in the self you've built up, painstakingly and sometimes haphazardly, over the years. A self you've leaned on, though you knew its precarious structure. And if I'm self-indulgent tonight it's because that self is under fire, it's disintegrating, and I'm confused.
Confused in New York, which contains everything save comfort. I have no routine, everything and everyone is fresh, and I greet them with humming, crackling nerves. The only comfort I've found is the solitude waiting in the room with the closed door, the hum of the air conditioner in the window drowning out the harsh sounds. A pile of books on the table.
Three cups of coffee and my eye hasn't stopped twitching all week. Twelve essays by Edmund Wilson to read, or rather to study since reading sounds more passive than the work expected of me, the work that Wilson himself put into his writing; the ideas and the structure built around them, a piece of art that both inspires and depresses, for the cold light it casts across my own writing.
I don't understand the confident man. At moments I respect, then deplore him. Above all I envy him, and I study him for the hairline crack, and when I find none I try to imagine, without much success, what it feels like to be such a man. I'm always three points shy.
I'm my own arch villian. For too many years I let the insecurities keep me from passion. Even now, in the dream come true, they wrestle me from confidence. And I let them. By now they're old friends; I curse them while silently praising them for "keeping me humble". I hold on to them to ward off arrogance. I hold on to them to clothe the emperor.
And speaking of confidence: here they come, pouring from the depths of the 116th St. station, pushing through the doors of Butler Library, clambering down the steps of Avery Hall. They're pulling bags over their shoulders, brushing hair from their eyes, clutching cell phones to their ears. They're bending over omelets at the Deluxe, clustering on the steps of Low Library, sweating on the treadmills at Dodge. They're swinging bags of toothpaste and toilet paper from Duane Reade, avoiding the clipboards of Democrats for Kerry on Broadway, tossing footballs on the South Lawn. They chatter, they mill, they rest, sunbathing on the squares of grass lining College Walk. They're everywhere; the fresh-faced undergraduates of Columbia, their youthful confidence a personal affront to me, who cannot imagine the balls it takes moving to New York at the age of eighteen.
I've always surrounded myself with older people. I've told myself I did so because of the shared maturity and wisdom. Nitwits my age, I reasoned, could never understand my struggles, my elaborate battle scars. But I've come to realize in the past few weeks that there was a more defensive reason. With older companions I could perpetuate my self-image as a young man. And as this young man I could pretend that I still had all the time in the world; time left to accomplish the ambitious goals that I set out for myself, that I fantasized over, that lingered always on the fringe of the future. In the company of undergraduates the fantasies fade.
I know that I'm still young. Enough. These fears, of falling behind, of never catching up. They're old friends, too. They're comfort, they're familiar.
And the casual cruelty of the young, who refuse to flatter my ego by acknowledging my presence. Pipsqueaks. My vanity, bruised, finds refuge in the required reading of the fall semester. Back to Edmund Wilson, that arrogant son of a bitch. Wish I had read every single book ever published. Maybe then the three points…no matter.
So it's only in the periods of transit, from home to campus, from class to class, from lunch to library, that I engage with the throbbing mass of undergraduates. As my anchors to Columbia increase and strengthen I'm bothered less often by the invisibility I had felt settle over me after my move. The lack of eye contact, the absence of - say it - boys cruising me fed my self-pity. When you're new to New York, I reasoned, you do not yet exist. I had not realized the importance of people acknowledging my presence, had underestimated its effects; my life, my body, my face noted, acknowledged, seen.
I've been thinking about this absence of eye contact. It's not about rudeness; it's self-preservation. There are millions of people in New York. I don't think I ever really grasped how much larger New York was than San Francisco until I walked its streets, felt the relentless march of crowds passing, the ubiquitous couple wandering in front of me, blocking the sidewalk, the angry young man stepping on my heels.
It's self-preservation not in the sense of safety, but of sanity. One must learn to filter out some of these people. It's a denial of reality. With blinders on we carve out our niche; our lives gain more meaning and significance, we matter more.
I had promised myself that, on some profound levels, I wouldn't change. I swore to keep the sweetness, the Midwestern integrity, the relaxed air of the West Coast. I had resolved to keep my eyes open, to see everything, to take it all in. It seemed vital to being a so-called writer.
Why then do I walk down Broadway, realizing several blocks later that I've ignored nearly everyone I've passed? Why, for the first time in years, have I started wearing headphones? Didn't I swear I wouldn't? Didn't I resolve to listen to my surroundings, to observe, through all five senses, my new city?
But with my headphones, with my music, I can retain some sense, if only a fraction, of my inner life. I can narrow my focus. I can ignore the clipboards of the Democrats for Kerry, the pleas of the homeless on the train. I can keep myself sane. I can return to my room intact.
But then an email with a photo, or a phone call. And homesickness descends, a heaviness settling behind my eyes. And it's not some rigid sense of masculinity that prevents me from crying; it's not the tough guy within. I just haven't found the private switch. And so, every couple of days, I feel myself pulled down, into the small comfort of my bed. And I fight against it. I do the one thing that seems to work. I leave my room, I put on the headphones, and I walk.
I head downtown, along Broadway, my pace at a steady clip, passing nearly every other pedestrian not because I'm in a hurry but because speed pushes me forth from the crowd, out front, where I'm a little more alone. And the music, an old mix by Deep Dish, pumps lightning through my sluggish blood, adrenaline fueling emotion, neurons firing, serotonin flooding over the sadness, and I'm twenty, thirty, forty blocks from home. I pass Lincoln Center and veer right, where Columbus Avenue becomes Ninth, and I push along the edge of the Theater District, heading for an AA meeting on West 45th, if only to give myself a destination. And I pass a bar, glancing through the picture window, noting in an instant the all-male clientele, the rainbow flag tacked up over the bar, the man near the window who locks eyes with me. And he nudges the man next to him, never looking away from me, nudging once, then twice, then pulling hard on the man's shoulder, to spin him around, to make him look out on the street just as I pass from view.
This cheered me up in a way no book could. I will admit that this is the thing that brings me out of the college town of my neighborhood, down to Chelsea or the West Village or Union Square, feeling less ghostly once I've been seen.
There are two or three times I have felt at home in New York. They were moments when I stood with a friend on the sidewalk, on Broadway or downtown on 14th St, moments from descending into the subway, still talking, still things to say, the night quickening, warm fading twilight. And the crowds push past us but we hold our ground, and in that second, words rushing between us, I felt I belonged. I felt that in some ways I had always been here, standing on the corner with a friend, a home waiting for me uptown.
One of those nights my friend and I were on Christopher Street, the night before Labor Day, an electricity coursing through the air, the sidewalks choked with people, awake, expectant. And as we neared Seventh Avenue I saw a man emerge from the crowd, walking towards us with deliberation, his feet unsteady, his gaze unfocused. As we passed he leaned in to my friend, whispered something in his ear, then continued on, weaving back into the crowd.
"Did you know him?" I asked.
"No."
"What did he say?"
"He said, I care about you."
On the uptown train I couldn't stop thinking about the man, his story, where he had been drinking, the person he'd been thinking of as he stumbled past us. Feeling something so strongly that he had to whisper into a stranger's ear, to make contact. And I was jealous of my friend. I wanted, unreasonably, to hear such an intimacy whispered in my ear. A drunken man, a city, murmuring something pathetic and sweet to me, something to puzzle over as I made my way home.
9:14 PM | link
Thursday, September 09, 2004
At the end of my first week of classes, I am calculating the theorem that will enable me to complete the following weekly tasks:
- Roughly 400 pages of reading
- Respond with intelligence, in writing and in person, to the writing turned in by three fellow students
- The four to six hours required of one of the literary magazine's Assistant Nonfiction Editor positions, for which I am applying
- Attend at least two regular AA meetings for sanity and diversion
- Go to the gym 3-4 times
- Go to, on average, about 2 readings on campus and in the greater NYC area
- Sleep eight hours a night
- Eat at least three times a day
- Maintain this website
- Answer emails
- Have friends
- See a bit of New York
- Do freelance editing and other jobs for cash
- And get my own writing done, which honestly should be at the top of the list
Since math was not my greatest subject, this calculation may take awhile. There is a reason most people pursue education when they are young.
Considering the matter of perspective, however, I want to send out a special message of love and healthy sarcasm to Paul, my first boyfriend and my always friend, who is carrying a larger burden than would seem fair.
9:57 PM | link
Then there are the conversations you wished wouldn't last so long. At one point during the marathon two-day orientation session the woman sitting next to me, another Writing division student, muttered, "If I have to go to one more fucking Q and A session I'm going to kill someone."
If memory serves, this was the orientation for the School of the Arts. The Writing division is one of four divisions in the SOA: the other three are Visual Arts, Theater, and Film. Each division is often sub-divided. (The Writing division is comprised of students concentrating in either fiction, poetry, or nonfiction).
All of us first-year students in the SOA (several hundred altogether) had gathered in Miller Theater, on the first floor of Dodge Hall, for the school-wide welcome and announcements. It was also the week of the GOP convention, and several political quips of liberal persuasion were made from the podium. The Dean himself made a rather ballsy anti-Bush joke which, in almost any other context, I would have enjoyed. Certainly it's safe to assume that in an arts program in New York City the vast majority, if not all, of the students would be against Bush. But I couldn't help thinking that there was one lonely Republican who had just forked over a shitload of cash to attend an Ivy League school and who now felt side-swiped. But sometimes I'm naive like that, worrying about Republicans when they can clearly take care of themselves.
Although the School of the Arts is based in one shared building, there has historically been little socialization among the divisions. Second-year students were quick to point out that once classes started your life essentially becomes the Writing Program and little else. There must have been a few complaints by former students about this narrow focus, so in an effort to, I don't know, plant the seeds of collaboration, every new student after the orientation was assigned to small groups of ten students each, with two or three students from each division.
Each group was assigned a "mentor"; a second-year student who had volunteered to answer any questions we may have about life at Columbia and in the SOA. The idea being we could get the unofficial "real deal" from a fellow student who had crawled before us through the trenches.
My group's mentor was an actor in the Theater Division. Unlike most of the other students who, despite the heat, kept up a decidedly East Coast appearance, Our Mentor was dressed in shorts, a tank top, and Birkenstocks. He was also wearing a straw hat.
Maybe it was the hat. Seeing it brought me right back to my first days as an undergraduate; I'm positive that my orientation leader at New College also wore a straw hat. In Florida it made some sense. But here in New York Our Mentor's outfit struck me as just that: an "outfit", the kind of gesture that lends credence to "Theater People" stereotypes. Despite my acting experience, I took an instant dislike to him.
Each of the little "break-out groups" was free to gather anywhere on campus. We followed the bobbing straw hat on a circuitous route across College Walk, the pedestrian mall that bisects the campus, where we sat in the grass near Hamilton Hall. And that's when the getting-to-know you exercise took place.
Earlier, the same woman who cursed the Q and A sessions told me that if there were going to be "trust exercises" in our "break-out groups" then more people would get killed. She said all of this in a pleasant enough tone, and I found myself agreeing with everything she said.
Fortunately we were not asked to fall backwards into each other's arms. Instead, Our Mentor wanted us to go around the circle and tell three things about ourselves; two truths and a lie. The rest of the break-out group was to figure out the lie.
I was immediately resentful. It was bad enough that I was several years older than most of the other students in the SOA, and therefore slightly self-conscious. Adding small talk (which I'm terrible at) and ice-breaker exercises is guaranteed to induce nausea and exhaustion in me.
Nobody seemed particularly excited by the Two Truths and a Lie exercise, but everyone gamely offered up three things and we were left to figure out, for example, if the aspiring Stage Manager from Portland was lying about enjoying golf, making homemade wine, or sustaining a childhood head injury. (The wine was a lie.)
Most people in the group were non-actor artist types, so everyone was on the soft-spoken side (no Type A Business School students here). We'd all lean forward to hear each person's Three Things, after which a chorus of "What was that's?" could be heard.
In my most believable, put-upon voice I shared that I was "apparently, the only Republican in the School of the Arts" which silenced the group until Our Mentor said "Dude, you're from San Francisco." Obviously I made the right choice in applying for the writing, and not the acting program.
Our Mentor said "dude" a lot. He also said "awesome" and "amazing" and other words that I associate with scores of people I knew in California. I had hoped to escape people like that by moving to New York.
His mentoring capacity was also questionable. "Go ahead, ask me, like, any question." Every time he said this (about fifteen times) a short silence would follow. We were probably all burned out on Q and A's. Just to make him feel better I asked when the campus gym was busiest. "Oh. Hmm. I don't really know. But, like, if you're like me, I'm all about the elliptical machine and they only have, like two of them, so sign up for them as soon as you get there."
My attention naturally wandered to the other students and occasional parent walking past, touring the campus. Having gone to an undergraduate school of six hundred students, I was having some difficulty adjusting to a university of twenty-four thousand. I was also unnerved by the idea that I was going to a school with frats and a football team. In fact at that moment the team was wandering past; young, enormous boys sweating in the heat, obviously returning from practice. I'm not particularly turned-on by undergraduates, but it was hard not to stare at the collective size and, I have to say it, beauty of these athletes. I watched them with a combination of quiet lust and condescension, the same condescension with which they looked at our little group of wimpy artists sitting on the grass in a therapeutic circle.
"Yeah, well, who's ever heard of Columbia's football team?" I asked myself.
My attention returned to Our Mentor. An awkward silence had fallen, again, over the group. "Serious, you guys can ask me anything you want. Like, where's the best pizza, and where to get groceries... even, like, where to get your shoes fixed if you want."
One shy poet spoke up. "Actually I do need to get my shoes re-soled."
"Oh, hmm," Our Mentor said. "I was actually like kidding about the shoes. I don't know where to get your shoes re-soled. But if you want to know, like, which restaurant around here is the best for like dates, I can tell you. I went on an awesome date last night." Silence. "It's all good."
No, I wanted to say, it's not.
I was pretty sure by now that Our Mentor was gay, not that I really cared. I wanted to trade him to the other side. Instead I told the shy poet about the shoe repair shop around the corner from my apartment, on Broadway and 112th.
The rest of the hour continued like this. When Our Mentor volunteered to, like, take us on a tour of the campus I bailed, heading to Philosophy Hall for yet another Q and A session, this one about student health insurance. As I left I glanced over my shoulder. The straw hat was bobbing away towards Low Library, the diminished group of art students following like a line of ducklings.
5:50 PM | link
