Today is the day I realized something is WRONG. I’m such a sensitive ball of indecision and self-questioning these days I can’t move forward on anything. I got a “I’m erasing your contact info” email from this girl I hooked up with recently. Because I’m “not into communicating.” Nicely done, psycho.

What happened there? Well it’s actually a pretty funny story if you’re on the outside of it. Here we go:

So I have a friendquaintance™ who works in my industry. Did I tell this story already? Who cares, you’re gonna read it again. My part of the business usually pays for his part, so he got his bosses to let him take me to lunch. After a couple of weeks of rescheduling and dancing around actually doing it, we met up one Friday afternoon at a really interesting old “nice” restaurant near Union Square. It’s apparently famous for being the “first” “fine dining” “restaurant” to “allow” it’s customers to dress casually. Note the quotes? I love sarcasm. I love irony. Do whatever you want with the implications of those quotes.

So during lunch he asks me if I’m going to this party he’d heard one of our mutual friendquaintances was throwing at her apartment. I responded, “Why of course not, I only ever hear about those parties AFTER they happen. And by ‘hear about’ I mean ‘see the amazing fun in picture form on facebook’.” He apologized sheepishly and confessed to also not really being invited. Seems he had run into this girl randomly a few days before and she had mentioned a party, with few details.

So I returned to work, determined to find out about and actually attend this party. Because I’m a newly super social amazingly positive guy now. I really amn’t. How did I accomplish my mission? Well through a combination of subterfuge and direct confrontation, of course. I gchatted a friend I knew would most certainly have been invited to this shindig, if it existed, and asked him if he was “going to the party.” He was like, “yes, of course, are you?” To which I appropriately replied, “HAHAHA I fooled you! I didn’t even know for sure there WAS a party!!!”

Wow my stories are long. We haven’t even gotten to the girl yet, have we? Ok, I met her at this party. A few weeks later we met up for drinks, and it was great but also weird. She kept freaking out at random moments. I noticed that the freak-out was generally at the same time as I was making gestures of affection. Like with my hands. You know. Gestures. Anyway she would tense up, back away and actually express that she was suddenly freaked out. She would go on to say that she knew it was weird to freak out and that she apologized and it would pass. I would later find out that at those moments I had done something to make her think that I was gay. As in homosexual. Never mind that she took me home that night (no sex).

All this she confessed the next time we met. We had drinks, she told me she wasn’t sure I was straight, and that night i went home alone because come on. A guy can only take it up the ass so often, right? Anyway, we still made out a little, but the cracks were there in the newly molded relationship. Big cracks with red flags peeping out. I don’t think I’m cut out to be with the type of girl who interprets a guy brushing hair out of her face as a declaration of gayness. It’s affection, for fuck’s sake.

Fast forward to having sex at my place. That night we had gotten drinks, and then food, and then despite my protests of a super seriously tense workday and my insisting that I would be really stressed out all night, she guilted me into going to her place. And then when I just couldn’t relax, we went to my place. We got there super late, and I was super nervous about not getting enough sleep. But of course at that stage of a relationship, a guy is expected to only think and feel with his dick. We all know this. We all know that sometimes it’s just not going to happen, though. Am I strange? I’m an adult with a heavy dose of being rational, I was crazy tired, feeling a little pressured to perform, and all I could think about was how unprepared I was for the deadline looming the next day. So. We made out, we went to bed, we had sex, it was bland and I was not super into it. I stopped. We made out a little and then she was like “I want to do it again.” I took a deep look inside me and decided I didn’t have it in me to get it up again with the current level of weirdness between us, her lack of wiggliness and aversion to the expression of passion (at one point she told me I was making too much noise... real turn-on), and my intensely tired state (it was now 2:30). I said, sorry, I can’t. She said, “Oh my god you really ARE gay!” To the naked man with his arms around her in bed, post sex. Really good move.

And now I’m the asshole. She just emailed me to tell me she’s deleting my contact info and she has unfriended me on facebook. There was more weirdness that sort of pushed me away in the days following the sex debacle, but the point is I’ve been ignoring her.

The point is today sucks. Saturday. My day to unwind. Instead I’m getting dumped AGAIN and staring at the computer. Not eating. Not cleaning. Not writing (this doesn’t count). Not calling this freelance gig back. GUH. Something’s wrong!

Tags: dumped, party

Oh man. Ohhhhh man. So here’s an interesting thing. Depending on how I tell this story, my Friday night was awesome, or it was bizarrely pathetic. I will now attempt the awesome version.

As you know, this Friday was the Friday before a Saturday Halloween. So. Sort of a lot of pressure, on account of there’s not much excuse for not dressing up or doing something because you have aaalllll day Saturday to get yer shit together. Except noone really wants to throw something together that last minute if they don’t have to, right? Right. Hence, Friday night. In fact, the special lady and I had attempted the trip to the costume shop (Ricky’s) on Thursday, failed, and instead pigged out on burgers and mac and cheese at Odeon. I highly recommend that. Much more fun than last minute costume shopping.

Ricky’s on Friday was a mad house. Line around the block (ok only halfway, but the rest of those people were packed into the super stuffy sweaty panicky basement, frantically scrambling for last minute costumes, or wigs, or blood). I almost bailed, as I was feeling a little reely from my recent successful swine flu vaccination and flu shot. I prevailed. I got a creepy latex dead pig’s head mask and some skeleton wings. Swine Flu, and people actually got it. Success... But that’s Saturday! What about Friday, jackass?!?!

Ok, I take my bag of costume parts up to 34th St to meet the lady friend and a work friend of hers at this place. What was it called? Maru? Something incredibly 90s trendy. The bar top normally cycles continuously through the rainbow spectrum (red is especially annoying), awful top 40s dance pop, and asian fusion food. And the only European whiteys are the ones you come in with. Pretty awesome, actually. The bartenders are super nice, sweet actually, and they have this deal. For $35 you get a bracelet that lets you drink anything within reason all night until 12. We got there around 7:30. Fast forward to 10:30, after some truly terrible fried calamari (think frozen onion rings) and some really good yakitori’ed shrimp and pork belly, we three drunk white douches were trying out their high end private karaoke room FOR FREE.

Now, I’d like to play this off like we scammed them with some bullshit story, but the truth is our story was legit: we wanted to get a room for New Year’s Eve karaoke madness. So they took us up, fired up the crazy remote controlled disco lights and handed us the toaster-sized control pad. Problem: the karaoke book was only about an inch of laminated pages thick. And of that, only about 5 pages were English songs! DAAAAANG. So we fired up a Britney song, pounded it out, and took the elevator to the OTHER super trendy Korean owned private karaoke room establishment in the building. We gave them the same story and got the same treatment! Awesome! Except they had even fewer English songs. I think we did a Gwen Stefani song (by “we” I mean “they”) and left.

Here’s the part that makes it tragic: they were utterly unbooked for New Year’s Eve. We could have had a sweet pad in Korea Town with an awesome view and basically unlimited drinks for like $300. But there weren’t anywhere near enough songs to fill even an hour of time. Even so, my sweet lady had her checkbook halfway out. It was that awesome in there.

End of the story: Another hour of free drinks, taxi, and we held onto my costume! Yes!

Tags: koreatown, karaoke, halloween, ricky's, odeon, archive

So I think I’ve managed to keep the updates so few and far between that I’ve lost all my (2) readers. Sorry, you guys.

It’s been pretty fucking humid lately, and I’ve noticed a new problem with the house. RUST. rust? Yeah, my apartment is rusting. I noticed it on my toothbrush holder first, like 2 months ago. These little blackish spots had been appearing in the well that the bottom of the brush rests in, and I thought it was mildew or mold or something equally disgusting I would scrub it off, but it would come back a few days later... long story short it’s rust. There’s rust on most of my “stainless steel” appliances, too. Even the faux steel veneer on my frigidaire junk. Of course, in the course of trying to scrub it all off I realized there’s some caked on gunk on the handles of everything. I don’t think I’ll ever get it off. Until maybe i sell the place.

Another victim of the humidity: my orchids. I have three orchids here, and I’m not sure how many of you know what the deal with these things is, but orchids are fucking hard to take care of... apparently. You get them with these beautiful flowers in bloom and some vague “don’t water too much” instructions. And they do fine for maybe a few weeks. And then the flowers shrivel up and fall off one by one. If your home is incredibly humid, that is. The one I have at work in the AC and the dry air is doing fine... even though I accidentally burnt it in direct sunlight.

Lastly, I went out with some friends to celebrate this guy’s 30th birthday this weekend... the old lady and I were expecting to be like one of maybe 10 guests and the least close/connected to them. But other than the guy’s roommate and wife, there was only one other person. Interesting. I’m not sure what I think about that. I like to think I don’t have any friends and that it’s because of my specific situation/personality. But man. 30. I may have actually had more people at my 30th... although I can’t remember at all what I did. I remember what I didn’t do, though.

Tags: frigidaire, stainless steel, orchids, archive

Well boy do I have some great stories to tell. And it’s been so long since I’ve posted here that it’s probably safe to tell and assume that noone who might be hurt will read this. But maybe not, so apologies. Also, I will be reevaluating this blog’s whole purpose probably soon. Because it’s seriously lame not to update it with fun shit and stories and links and photos and whining bullshit.

So here’s some updates: I am another year older. Had a birthday party for myself, which is I guess what adults end up having to do when we get to a certain age. I’ve never seen a TV show portray anything like that, though... which means I am a loser. Anyway it was at Melody Lanes in Sunset Park, which means bowling. Out of about 40-50 invitees, I got maybe 10 people to show up. What’s weird is the assortment that came. I clearly don’t have deep membership in any big unified groups of friends. I’m pretty cool with that now.

The fucked up part was all the seriously lame excuses that people gave me for not coming. One person said that I had invited too many of her exes (none showed up), another one said last time she bowled she broke a nail, so would be avoiding it this time. My favorite was from a pretty good friend in which she decided not to come because the “subways were too messed up” that day. That night she ended up 4 stops away on a train that was running fine later that night, according to her facebook pictures from that night. In the end we were probably only 5 long blocks apart, but I was too pissed to do any reaching out.

Why have the posts dried up, you may wonder? Well I’m seriously dating a girl. That’s right, I’m pulling the cliche move where I drop everything and everyone to get rolled up in new romance. Only I’m trying really hard to keep that from happening. Problem is I can’t fucking get people to hang out! That and I’m not trying as hard to make it happen. Hopefully things will get more social now that the weather’s heating up for real.

Tags: bowling, birthday, excuses, archive

Well I’ve been pretty quiet on the blog front lately. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want this blog to represent, and how to keep it interesting. It’s basically become a dumping ground for all the crazy lame shit that happens to me daily. And as that it has definitely let me blow some steam that I otherwise can’t blow, not having a sympathetic live ear to fill.

But I wanted this blog to be a sort of guide to coming of age in geography- and hip-obsessed NY. With plenty of funny depressing shit, but also some useful crap and some pictures and stuff to keep it interesting. I had planned to make a logo out of the bridge i live under, and enhance my stories with images.

Unfortunately it’s been nothing but crap crap crap lately. All the bosses at my job have been asked to retire and one’s even going to jail. My union prescription plan won’t cover my acid reflux meds anymore because i’m too healthy (once i get the cancer they will let me have them)., also I keep getting stood up by friends and girls. What’s the word for a member of the opposite sex who could maybe be your friend or maybe she’s interested in romance but it remains ambiguous? Someone needs to come up with one. Because they have been seriously canceling shit.

Last weekend I had 4 last-minute cancelations! FOUR! And living far away, it takes a lot to get things all coordinated and shit. A last minute bail generally means I’m already there because I have to leave an hour and 30 in advance. And here’s where having paperback books that actually fit in your pocket becomes the most important thing in the world. One can always find a place to park it and read.

Kentucky Derby is coming up. I have to find a party/bar that i wouldn’t mind being alone at the whole time. It’s my new rule: never sign up for something unless I would be fine doing it alone, because chances are I will be.

Tags: archive

I think I’m going to go ahead and give in to my hermit tendencies now. I may go so far as to drop my facebook account. I had a particularly frustrating day. I have basically instituted a policy of accepting every invitation i get from everyone. I expected this to result in more socializing and maybe even more good times.

Instead it’s just a sack of disappointing. Today was a prime example. A girl I met invited me to Prospect Park to hang out with her and some friends. When I asked where she responded that I should call her when I get there and she’d tell me where they were. I went. I called. She was at home. Ok. Fine. The park was really nice and no big deal being stuck there alone because I had a book, the sun, the breeze, and hundreds of people enjoying themselves.

Then, I went to a birthday bbq for a friend (acquaintance). I grabbed a six pack on the way. When I got to the address, no-one answered the buzzer, the friend didn’t respond to calls or texts. I went back home carrying the beer the whole hour 15 it took.

I have a large stack of old pictures and old letters here from my childhood home that I rescued from storage recently. I think I will post some of the letters here on the blog. They are really something else. In the meantime I’m gonna wallow in memories and nostalgia. They should keep me occupied on the brief times when I want company. Some of the letters are really awesome. There are quite a few letters wondering why I’ve stopped responding. I have a lot of bad karma built up if these letters are any indication.

Quick question: If you were in a band 12 years ago, found some pictures, and posted them to facebook, would you be upset if your bass player and former best friend untagged himself from them?

Tags: plans, nostalgia, archive

So one of the stories/fables that I heard as a kid which sticks in my brain these days and has always held a certain fascination is the one with the line “the prince has horse ears”... as a recurring refrain? maybe it’s the title? Here’s where wikipedia could ruin the romantically blurred fog of my memories and shine some clarifying light on the question. So I’m gonna not go there.

The story goes that in some kingdom, there’s a prince who’s always got a hat on, or long hair, or both. He is befriended by someone (maybe a barber) who gains his trust and this prince shares a serious secret. His hair or hat or crown is hiding the fact that his ears are horsey. Like he has hairy Spock ears. And this new friend swears to keep the secret. Except that it starts eating at him and eating at him. He’s basically about to burst with this hidden knowledge, but he is very loyal and trustworthy so he fights the urge to spill it, to confide the secret in some third party. But he can’t take it, and has to tell, so he goes out into a field of reeds and whispers “the prince has horse ears”.

And well, it bites him in the ass. Somehow the reeds hold the sentence and i can’t remember how (maybe a flute made of the reeds), but they release their secret in the presence of a gathered audience, revealing it at the worst possible time to the worst possible crowd that this guy is a freak.

I feel like the internet is that field of reeds. There’s no way to keep things a secret in it, but you really want to believe you can. And that’s too bad, because there’s basically no way to spill the beans in a healthy yet confidential way. I suppose that postcard thing, postsecret, and others like it are the closest thing.

I have some doozies I’d like to. Is this part of growing up? Keeping painful secrets forever and from everyone? Because it sucks worse than almost anything.

Tags: secrets, archive

Well this is going to be short... For once. Am I right?! Eh? High five! Zing!

Went to a great show last night. It was part theater/comedy and part actual musicianship. Les Funky Bitches Fantasique at the Sidewalk Cafe. I went because some friendly acquaintances were in the show and the audience. And there were possibly going to be a lot of them. In fact, there were only two. But they’re top of my list of friendly acquaintances (has anyone come up with a word for that? did I in a past blog? I should now... associates? no.) that I like and really enjoy being around. So it was a great time. I encourage you to see the group perform on like a second date. Perfect second date.

And my mom arrives in 4 hours! We’re gonna chillax, have a nice dinner at a steakhouse here in the neighborhood, probably clean my apartment, go for a walk. She’s here to be my date to the big awards show I’m part of tomorrow. In which I may win two awards, but probably not because super super awesome things only happen to me once per year, and they usually wait until the end. Or did I just make that ridiculous shit up? Yes. Yes I did.

Tags: archive

Recently I’ve grown aware of the fact that the internet is fueling inside me a quiet desperation paired with a low smoldering rage. And I don’t think that’s good. Of course by “internet” I don’t mean the whole thing, although there would be some truth in saying it’s eroding my quality of life in subtle ways. But in other ways it’s been liberating, so I won’t throw the baby out with the bath water....

Or I should say, I’m keeping the bathwater and throwing out the baby. The baby would be facebook. Why facebook? Well here goes a rant: As people who know me may be aware (and one friend pretty insensitively posted on my “wall”), I’m obsessed with the concept of friendship, and the state of having friends. I’m probably not professionally qualified to judge exactly what it is in my psyche that’s got me tweaked about it all, but I’ll take a stab. I’m indulging myself by posting this here because I think there may be evidence that it is something common to many men my age, and may soon become a mass cultural phenomenon. My evidence?

The movie I Love You Man, about a guy who doesn’t have any guy friends close enough to be his best man at his wedding. There have been others that hint at similar problems, although I think this is a first to make it the central theme. So the phenomenon I’m inventing here is dudes in their 30s who don’t have guy friends. I’ll add “who don’t have many real friends” to that, just because it’s likely the dude with only gal friends has probably slept with many of them, and as I’m coming to understand myself, that leaves certain snags in the relationship which prevent the friendship from being as carefree and rewarding as I fantasize about them being.

Anyway, I don’t think I understand what real friendship is. Because I have very very few deep friendships that stand up to any sort of stress. In fact if I were to be totally honest, I’d have to say I don’t think I have any. But maybe I actually do and I just don’t know what that means. Here’s the thing, Facebook lets me see that there are tons of people who I would love to be spending time with who are having parties and doing things together without me. And it’s KILLING me. But this isn’t anything new to me. I seem to have always had a hard time getting friends to consistently include me in plans.

My mother always said that I should be more active and invite people to things instead. Which has planted the seed of self blame which has matured and borne tons of fruit. Fruit in the form of neuroses, fears, suspicions, anger, dejection, etc, etc, blah blah. Because she has a point. I don’t make plans. Because I mean who likes rejection?! In fact I DO make plans and they are always rejected. But then again it’s not like I try very hard. I’m scared shitless by the thought of picking up a phone and asking some dude if he wants to hang. So shitless that if I get voicemail I leave a half-assed vague message (or sometimes very specific, but passive, like “I’ll be at the Cake Shop tonight for a show, what’s up?”) and leave it at that. Or the mass text asking what’s going on this weekend. People seem to never respond to those. The thing is that I would respond. I would respond to every single query by a friendly acquaintance (I need a word for friends you can’t fully depend on but like to see) as to what my plans may or may not be, and generally would welcome their attendance. So I feel like it’s ok for me to do it too; and feel bad when no one answers.

A would-be friend recently told me, when I straight up asked her why she hadn’t invited me to a potluck dinner at her place, that I wasn’t on her A-list and would have to try harder to hang out with her more before I could expect that kind of participation in her life. The problem with that is I take that seriously (and I had been trying, in fact). I feel like it’s my fault she didn’t want me there (2 closer friends of mine were there). So where does that leave me? Desperately trying to do the right things that will make people want to invite me to their stupid birthday parties and dinner parties and concerts on facebook. And feeling crushed when I’m not. Even though I know that I’m both expecting way too much from people and giving far too little.

In the meantime I’m going to attempt to not visit facebook except to answer emails. Good luck with that, me.

LINKS!
This is a fascinating article on friendship from some BBC magazine.
Where I go to figure out what I’ll be doing alone this weekend.

Tags: facebook, quitting, archive

Well, so why does today suck, you might be wondering? Yeah? Ok... first, the medical bullshit. So I recently got billed for my last visit to the stomach specialist, which was a follow-up to my upper endoscopy, which revealed I have acid reflux... The bill had a charge for a test that wasn’t done. And now i’m wondering if I should report these assholes to my insurance provider, because they have cut me a check for the amount and they also put a nice toll-free number on it for reporting insurance fraud. So I called the doctor to see how he would react.

And this is why I sometimes love but mostly hate this fucking city. You are forced to constantly and actively fight for yourself. It happens when you get a sandwich at a deli, it happens when you buy an apartment, and apparently it happens when you see a specialist about your recent diagnosis of GERD. The other guy is ALWAYS testing your boundaries, trying to squeeze you for as much as they can, or trying to get away with doing as little as possible, and it can be a good way to build up some more aggressive skills. But it gets OOOLLLDDDDD. Especially when people who are supposed to be taking care of you get pushy.

So the guy was like, “So what, it was like 3 dollars more?” And I’m like, no it was six. But that’s not the point. So he asks, “Well then what do you want to happen?”

Fuck. If only I had prepared a list of possible ways they could make this up to me beforehand. I wasn’t ready for him to put it back on me, but it’s a pretty classic maneuver here in the city, so I should’ve been. Anyway, my response was that if i ever actually DO have to have this test done, they need to do it for free. “Ok, sure.” he said. “Is that all?”

Asshole. Of course it won’t be that simple in the unlikely event that i really do need the test. First off, I will have gone to a different specialist because I’ll be damned if I EVER go back to that prick. Which brings me to the other part of that whole episode that has got me all upset: I called my general practice doctor to see if he had received all the test info from the stomach guy (the tests they actually ran) and the receptionist put my doctor on the phone.

He said, “Your guy left me a note about your endoscopy.”

Oh... yeah, he didn’t have much to say to me about it. -me

“Well, there’s a note, and it says...blah blah blah hiatal hernia blah blah”

WHAT?! Hernia?!?! Well they didn’t tell me about that.

“Oh, it’s relatively small, he says. Not worth getting fixed.”

So my “specialist” who I have seen twice now forgot to mention that there actually is a specific CAUSE for my acid problem. ASSHOLE! So now I’m not sure what to do. Pay him or report him? I’m leaning toward reporting him. But that feels like a surefire way to land me some negative karma. I’m torn.

In other news, facebook has started suggesting events that multiple friends are going to. This seems like a good idea except in the cases where I wasn’t invited.... which happened today. This chick i invited to my st paddy’s day thing next week (which i have canceled due to lack of interest...that empty page of attendees was making me fucking depressed) and who was at a party i went to this weekend invited basically everyone on her friends list EXCEPT me.

And I’m sure it’s because I made her friend cry. Which I would go into but I’ve already beaten that horse to death elsewhere. Basically, this girl likes me but I’m not rich enough for her so she keeps me at arm’s length. She also has some serious emotional issues (having confessed to me once that she has cheated on every guy she’s ever been involved with). And when she asks me my opinion on her situation I tell the truth. I even candy coat it to protect her delicate feelings, but it doesn’t matter. She acts like I’ve called her a terrible monster and gets weepy and righteously mad at the same time. It happened at the party. Her friends hate me now (again). Life gets messy sometimes.

Tags: hernia, plans, archive

Ok, I just gushed out my day in an email and decided to just rip it off and paste it right here. So suck it, losers! (kidding. obvs):

“So guess what I did today. I "broke up" with an online date girl. I should paste some text from the email so you can rate my effort. Or some from her last email so you can see why it was inevitably going to end badly. I think this way I get to be a very small asshole and she gets to feel righteous for a week and then forget about it all. Wanna know what event precipitated this admittedly already-in-the-works dumping?

Ok, I'll tell you! So we email each other while at work, right? yeah, so she asks me what I'm doing this (past) weekend. And, because I have a pretty full lineup, I tell her exactly what I'm doing. It was basically booked thurs and sat nights. So I suggest dinner either early and limited on sat or sunday (she has some sstuff going on friday and sat nights). She says, yes. I ask which she prefers. She says sunday and I say good, sunday. Then on friday she texts me something like have a good weekend and i text her on saturday that it's gorgeous outside whoopeee. no response, which I'm personally a fan of, except I know it's probably significant. So sunday comes and I have brunch with some friends and then i text her hey, are we having dinner? no response. So I email, hey, in case your phone is dead, are we having dinner? and then i call (i hate calling, but to be the one with the justice on his side i'll do it) and leave a message: hey, i'm thinking you're not into dinner, but i still am, let me know. so she calls back and it's 7 by now, and i don't answer. because it's her turn to leave a damn message right?

Only she doesn't. She doesn't! I mean why the hell call in the first place?!?!?!?!?!?! Veeeery significant. So I reluctantly call back and she answers. She's all on the offensive: "I am sort of used to actually communicating with the people I'm spending time with" or something like that, "So when I didn't hear from you on the phone I assumed it was off....." painful silence "So I ate already"

And I said oh it's fine and then she began to launch into what seemed like a wind-up for a tirade against me (I'm sure about how I'm not sending clear signals or trying hard enough to keep her interested... I've gotten that before and it turns me WWWAAAYYY off), so I cut her off with some stuttered "it's ok's" and "you don't have to explain's" and she shuts up....

and then apologizes and says if i want some cold pizza i can come over. And I double down with, naw, it's cool I have some leftovers i can eat. And then it's awkward for a while and then we stumble through a reschedule. [and now that I'm writing all this i think i'm going to paste it word for word into my blog, along with this comment... and while I'm editorializing for my blog in an email to you, I will also point out that i think my ex knows the address to my blog, which sucks because i don't want her to read about my exploits, such as they are, and get hurt]

And then I realize it's time to end the thing. And then I also realize that I don't have to be the perfect gentleman and always end things on the phone or in person. In fact, an email saves everyone the discomfort and has the added benefit of being more likely to happen sooner, you know? Like having to do it in person makes it SO MUCH EASIER to put off the messiness. So I composed a lovely email and sent it to her, making sure it would get there when she didn't need to focus on work or whatnot because I can't help being condescendingly sensitive.

GAAAASP. done. I hope you enjoyed reading that. but seriously it felt pretty self indulgent.”

Tags: breakups, email, archive

I’ve got several things to touch on with this post, but I doubt I remember them for more than the next 4 minutes, so here goes a list:

Maintenance payments:
These are the thing that keeps home ownership from being the unequivocal “good thing” that we all believe it should be. For all my rent paying readers (hahahahahaha: readers! with an “S”! HAHA. ok.) who may not know, it’s a monthly fee that pays for shit like the super (who charges to fix stuff in your apartment, btw) and heat and water and gardening. And it is ALWAYS going up. We just got another increase. I can’t handle it. My monthly maintenance is more than my car payments used to be (I sold the car to be able to get this place). And we’re getting hit with--now follow this one closely--two one-time assessments of 200 bucks. Assessments are how the building gets more money from you without raising the maintenance fee. It just gets collected in one lump sum. Twice. Assholes.

Karaoke:
Went to a friend’s birthday thing this weekend. What do you call it when people meet up at a bar for a person’s birthday? It’s not exactly a party, is it? Anyway, we started at this place called the Dove Parlour, which was overblown and maybe not all that great. But then the party relocated to Planet Rose. And here’s the thing; it’s a karaoke bar. In fact it has no other reason to exist or be frequented. It’s almost like people blow in off the street solely to belt out a song and then they flitter off again. The people in the place are all there waiting for their selections to come up, and along the way they get rowdy for crowd pleasers, singing along to the hits. Anyway, I popped my karaoke cherry. It was magical. It was definitely like the first time you try sushi and realize there was nothing to be afraid of in the first place.

Let me pause here to get a little philosophical. Or at least introspective. I was hanging out with a different style of person from the usual that night. There were absolutely no hipsters per se along for the ride. Everyone was in general characterized by a pointed lack of guile, very little irony, and possibly (i’m inferring here) musical taste that could be classified as unsophisticated. This is part of my project to shift the type of person I spend my time with away from the ultra image conscious hipster stock I’m used to. And it was incredibly awesome. I wouldn’t have sung in a group of my old friends. Never ever in a million years. Too much judgement happening. This group at Planet Rose was incredibly positive and it was a good feeling. I heartily recommend it.

Technorati:
I don’t really know what it is, other than a blogging ubersite that keeps a list of active blogs and makes them searchably accessible to a buuuunch of people. So I got on it and listed HIE with them. I also added he ability to leave comments, and an RSS feed for those of you who know how to use them. It only has my recent posts, though, so it will take some time for it to flesh out. There’s also a button to add it to your faves on technorati. I have no idea what that means.
But please leave a comment if you read this to let me know you’re out there... that means you, my one reader.

Tags: technorati, karaoke, coop, archive

Well I’ve had quite a few blog-worthy developments in the last few however long it’s been, and I can’t say I’m all that hyped about writing about them. And maybe that’s what I’m going to write about. Or whatever.

So. Since Feb 3, blah blah a ton of shit has happened. I got on the okcupid for a while. Which if you couldn’t figure out just by the name is an online dating site--distinguished by it’s status as completely free. Dudes don’t have to pay to send the ladies emails. Not only that, it has a facebook-like chat interface thing, so people can constantly harass each other. There’s a whole mes of other titillating time wasters on it and I’ve gotten a friend of mine hooked (so sorry), but I have since closed my account (sorry, mystery prospects, you’ll have to never meet me and be ok with it). A few plainly bad dates and one crazy stalker later, and I think I’m ready to fucking throw in the towel on the dating thing. I think I might have mentioned the whole dating thing last entry... that’s how much I pay attention to my own words.

I made it through Valentine’s Day without giving some nice girl the wrong idea as well, but I may have pissed off a few (passively). Oh well. I refuse to take someone out on that day who I’m not semi-serious with, or at least seriously infatuated with. It’s special. Reserved for last minute dashes to bed and breakfasts upstate and endless gifts delivered from mail order catalogues specializing in edible arrangements.

And then there was the housewarming brunch. Quite a terrific success. I had people come all the way out to Bay Ridge to celebrate my new home, exactly (almost) one year after I signed my papers and got the keys. I have to say I was a nervous nervous wreck the whole week leading up to it. AAAnd the first hour, when no-one showed up. And then people began to trickle in. Thank God. I made a shit-load of tiny pancakes called ebelskiver. They were a hit. I almost made the mistake of not buying alcohol. Thank God for S, who convinced me to jog to the liquor store the night before on the off chance they were still open (they were). Long story short, there was even a second half to the day with pizza ordering and Rock Band playing.

After all the lead-up to it and the cleaning and the painting (had to finish) and the fretting over who would come and who should be invited, I have much less inner compulsion to get my face out there in front of people. Unfortunately that’s the wrong damn attitude to have now that I’m finally making progress on having and keeping a social network of good people. Super hard to do in Bay Ridge, and near impossible if you love being a hermit like i do. This weekend: acrobatic theater in the upper west side. I hope I can keep the smile going.

Tags: filler, friends, archive