catch cloth

good deed for the day

2009-07-06T02:46:00.002-05:00

Plotkin left gluetraps and it turns out I really have been hearing a mouse crying in the kitchen all day. I couldn't figure out where the sound was coming from, and thought maybe it was all in my head. It wasn't.

Plotkin was the exterminator. He would catch them on the traps, let them suffer awhile, and then drown them in a bucket when he could be bothered. I don't like gluetraps. I'd rather poison them, except for the part where they die in the walls and smell.

This is the first place I've lived with mice. At McKibbin we had RATS; huge rats. They never came in the apartment, though. Not that I ever saw evidence of.

They scare me, and I am not cool with them running around and shitting, etc., but I've never killed anything in my life and I don't wanna start in case I can't stop. The whole thing breaks my heart and/or creeps me out.

I put the trap in an aquarium and vegetable oil on the trap. It is the tiniest thing. Its hind legs were sticking out and into the air, and I worried for a moment that it was in rigor, or dead with nerve spasms. When I touched the trap it sprung to life. I could almost see its heart pound out through its chest.

Soon the mouse's entire body was covered in vegetable oil and it stopped moving. I was worried again that it had died, from fright or from the vegetable oil, but then it put its hind legs down and pulled free of the trap, running into the shredded Sports section of The Daily Advertiser. I knew exactly where it was at first because the paper pulsed, no doubt from the exertion and terror, etc.

The paper is pulsing no more, but I think it is still alive. I put a french fry, three peanuts, and a hershey's kiss in the cage and surrounded it with stuff so the light doesn't come through as much. Let it chill out and get its bearings.

I don't know what to do with it. I mean, I caged it so I could make sure it got better and wasn't killed right away by whatever. I'm leaving town in two days and don't have anyone to fob it off on. It will take a couple of days to recover anyway, and then if I let it go in the apartment it will survive to breed more someday.

I wish I could talk to mice. Give them areas of free roam, and prohibitions so we could all live together.

poor old kaw liga

2009-07-02T23:45:00.004-05:00

this boy is kryptonite. i am lucky i have no lex luthor. instead this superman is gonna keep away keep away. tried to kiss cheek people tonight but they kept moving me towards their lips. people making out with their friends as they say goodbye. too much. it's too much display for too little advantage. show started late and could hear actors changing behind me and had to fight the urge to turn around and make sure they weren't going to kill me. assassins!

watched some videos. gio is so watchable but there is no message. almost a waste, but like fireworks. everyone talking about fireworks. fireworks and london. before i left found people to commiserate with me over the death of mrs. slocombre. on the way home cabbie was native english speaker. $6 but gave him $10 cos he seemed interested in our conversation but didn't intrude. stephen just slipped out the backdoor and i've got 20 pages to write before i sleep. good luck with that.

The Internets is Serious Business

2009-06-29T02:27:00.003-05:00

Googling myself and if you look hard and intuitively enough you can find Catch Cloth, the rules blog, both myspaces, my livejournal, my xtube profile, almost everything just from my name. All you would need is a reason to be interested.

I want to deny it all, but then I don't know who I was anymore than who I am. Some of it isn't even really about me - or from my point of view. I've never done cocaine with a Dominican cab driver; had him shine a flashlight a Filipino boy's asshole while I play with it in the backseat. I mean...there would be too much glare off the bulletproof glass divider. I riff on people I meet or observe and the things they say and feel and say they feel.

Let me also say that not everything I favorite on Xtube is something that turns me on. Sometimes I add things because people say something funny, or they are especially depressing, or peculiar.

Whew.
The internets are serious business.

If you are researching me as a consideration towards hiring me for whatever...it must be true that what I spew on to the web is representational of what's it my head; although how you interpret this I don't have a lot of control over. Is your interpretation me? Maybe. I've had ten relationships in my life and each one failed because my partner failed to misunderstand me. I don't want us to make the same mistake.

When I die it's going to be mostly this that's left, unless it's just me that dies and someone else picks up my torch.

I've had a strange life. Actually, I've just had my life, and maybe I react to it with surprise when there is none at all. Or maybe my perceptions of reality are what make it genuinely strange. I hope I am remembered as a faker, but the good kind of faker: a tremendous liar with hidden truths that are more peculiar than his fictions.

I guess this is what I find curious about me. I can lie to anyone and have them come out of our interaction believing that lie so completely that if provided a stimulus they will disseminate and act upon that lie. It's telling the truth where everything falls apart. My convictions are swept aside. My earnestness might not be believed. Everything only works when I am actively manipulating the situation, and when I actively manipulate everything is fine.

I feel like I do this for GOOD and ORDER, although I would rather be defended by others on this than make the claim myself. I can manipulate my way into fucking anyone. Almost anyone. It's when I let the defenses drop and try to be "real" that the world gets the better of me. Even if I don't want to be "real" I still get lazy after a while.

I labor daily under the assumption that manipulation, lying, and deceit are SINS. Today I am thinking that they are no more good or bad than one can say a gun or a hammer is EVIL within itself. Intent is everything and there is still all this programming to break through and I'm 32 and feel my brain hardening and I worry that I won't corrupt the world and put it on track towards better things.

If I can give just one point of view to just one other person goodly enough to read my rantings, then maybe I can affect their perception. And then it might spread. Without attribution, without conscious focus; a ramble becomes a stray thought becomes a koan becomes a different approach to reality.

This happens to me all the time. People on the subway, my roommates, bureaucrats who give out the hydrant permits: all of these people affect my perception (usually in ways they do not intend and without agenda) in small clicks - 360 clicks in a wheel and the world is new again.

So how can you fault me? How can you deny me employment because of what I say in my Myspace "About Me", when each phrase has the chance of pushing collective reality in some small way towards a minutely different direction?

Besides, how can anyone judge me? A boy once told me he couldn't imagine being my boyfriend because I was too much like a comic book character. My ex-roommate compared me unfavorably to Ignatius J. Reilly. I am an absurdity. I don't exist. I am a fictional character. Fictional characters don't have real life boyfriends.

Whatever. If this is about a job then you are something like show-folk and are barely real yourself. You and me might be equally damaged. Maybe you wouldn't like my style, but it is what it is.

In six months I will be 33. Jesus time. I've gotta streamline all this life I have into a new identity so I can actively control perception of my manipulation. No matter what I do. If I stay here or drive cars across the country or escape on a boat to Cuba I've gotta get all this together and start with the miracles soon, or start doing something I can do when I'm old.

whoamenslatten

2009-06-11T09:15:00.002-05:00

the last days of adolf hitler they were in this bunker under the earth with a ventilation system that made this constant whoam whoam whoam whoom sound. it was a backdrop to every interaction. every dream. every tinkle.

like, three days before he killed himself he completed a scale model of his hometown as he would remake it after the war. documentary with "hitler's friends" says they didn't take it as a cue that he was mad, rather that he must have some secret weapon to be making such plans while they were in imminant danger of being killed/captured.

and in the background while hitler makes the scale model, while strategy is debated, while the secretaries type up letters to people who are already dead; there is this constant sound in the background of the whoam whoam whoam whoom.

i think about this all the time these days. not to compare myself to hitler, but i feel like i am in this place making the scale model while death closes in. failure. the achievements of a non-essential man.

today's opiates only serve to make us restless

2009-05-10T04:54:00.006-05:00

I don't know if you have this where you live, but in Manhattan we have an OnDemand channel on digital cable called Response. You enter your viewer ID number with the remote and then you call the generated phone number and leave 15 seconds worth of message into a machine.

They give you a little thing to read on the screen. Mine was These are the times that try men's souls. In this time of hardship the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot shall shrink from the service of their country...

The system takes cues from random permutations drawn off your ID number, and combines this with the information it derives from your voice, using what they call in the brochure Aural Augery Imaging. They throw all this up against Jung's commentaries on the I Ching and sort of predict your future by taking the totality of your present state and staking out the highest probability outcome out of all likely possibilities. This is your Presence of Being, or POB.

Your POB is then paired with programming Response Network OnDemand has clearance for and the television show that will have the greatest resonance with you in your current state is selected and played.

What's totally amazing is how accurate the network is in determining what it is you need to see. There's no flipping involved. It's just there. The choice is made for you and it's always right on.

I'm finally going through all these boxes of everything from when I move or rearrange the furniture - like layers of Troy in the ground - and I just wanted something to have on while I sort old Schedule A's and call sheets by project and date. Response selected an episode of Night Court for me in which Dan Fielding laments that his whole life can be fit into cardboard boxes - that he eats TV dinners over the trash can alone every night.

Heavy.

gresham's law

2009-04-14T00:09:00.004-05:00

everyone has a certain number of words to get out each day. i've said almost nothing to anyone in three weeks, so here are all my words at once.

------

been looking up rash diseases online for hours trying to figure out what is wrong with me. scabies? bedbugs? if it's crabs then it isn't just crabs because i've had crabs and this is more than that.

the time table is weird. if it's scabies, then i picked it up doing crafty on IASA, which is seemingly possible cos it's a filthy job but i haven't fucked in 4eva. how would i suddenly get bedbugs? or scabies? or crabs? besides toilet seats...

but then it could be something i picked up in this most recent rental car. spent 10 hours a day in that car, so it's totally possible that an infection of anything could be that immediate.

anyway, driving myself crazy and then i stumbled upon this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyshidrotic_dermatitis

so now it is possible that i am having an allergic reaction to pennies. cos...see...during the five days i spent a lot of time dividing an enormous amount of pennies into different jars by date. over 15,000 pennies (and separating them from twice as many coins of other denomination) as it turns out.

THE REASON i did this is because:
1. For the two days after IASA and before Rhode Island I wasn't sure I even had money to pay rent.
2. It was something a character I was...am writing did and I was being all method.

Every job I have petty cash and am buying things all the time. I always let my coins accumulate and squirrel them away at the end of the night in my apartment because I am OCD and also cos the spare change from petty cash expenditures really adds up and can sustain you at a minimal level of existance for anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months, besides rent.

So...you know...using what's there. Anyway, pennies made after 1982 contain zinc which kills you if you swallow them, and can cause RASHES if you handle. Yesterday I put 7,000 of these poison pennies in the duane reade coinstar. I touched each and every one of those 7,000 cent pieces.

I mean, I'm allergic to everything. Random everything. I'm not allergic to poison ivy or oak. I am allergic to raw okra, latex, sunlight, tobacco, and penecillin. I've been allergic to soaps, colognes, and occasionally the sweat/phermones/whatever of certain sexual partners.

Maybe it's not the pennies. Maybe I have AIDS. Maybe I have skin cancer. The point is I AM NOT A DOCTOR, and I'm going to stop washing everything cloth in my room for the night and make an appointment at callen-lourde tomorrow.

that's what's up with me.

EDIT: No STDs. No cancer. Eczema. I have a eczema-allergies-asthma triangle. I am surprisingly healthy.

136

2009-03-19T05:35:00.002-05:00

We got MTV in 1989-90. Even then the complaint was that they didn't play enough music on Music Television. Now, of course, MTV is a wasteland of daylong marathons of bite-sized reality shows featuring real people no one cares about or would want to know; but back in the day, despite the dearth of music, we at least had Remote Control and Liquid Television.

In the 90s there was a once a week, two hour long block of music videos with the programming name 120 Minutes. Today in the shiny aughts you can watch 120 again on VH1 Classic (channel 136 in mnh), which is weird cos when I think of Classic VH1 I think of Peter Cetera and Phil Collins. In its day 120 felt like the antithesis of VH1, and even of MTV.

I suppose I'm lucky that the decline of MTV occurred at the same time in my adolescence that I desperately needed something normal to rebel against. Once I listened to Acetone's Cindy I never looked back.

But those were different times. We had internet (more BBS's, really, and sites made up entirely of text, milk was 10 cents and we walked to school in the snow, etc.) a year later, but it was nothing like it is now. If you wanted to hear, say, an obscure song by blur, then you had to go to a fringe music store and order it out of a large hardcopy book that was updated monthly. Then the shopowner would call England and you'd have your import single in 2-8 weeks.

Now I just type the name of the band into my little google box at the top and pages come up with the full song and music video, and this media plays at my discretion and on demand. I can save this media and it can all be free. Almost everything that is currently existing is there for you, and then everything from the past is only slightly scarcer.

My thought is this. Every weekend they would throw in some old music videos from the early 80s, along with all the new "buzzworthy" videos. In 1992 Video Killed the Radio Star was already over a decade old, and it felt ancient. Like it was part of the Torah, and we were living in Macabees. Anyway, this would be your chance to see a music video by the Kinks or Echo & the Bunnymen without having to order a VHS/CD/tape/LP from somewhere far away. Images of the world from before our individual awarenesses.

A Depeche Mode video, were it to be played on MTV today, would be well over 20 years old. The 1991 equiv of this would be a Grand Funk Railroad video, or Janis Joplin singing live. This did happen sometimes but it always felt ancient. Smells Like Teen Spirit is further away in time from us today than the Buggles were to me then.

So how will the succeeding waves of Youth react to this type of world? Will they take advantage of having access to almost the entire history of music and noise from around the world, or will the increasing variety of choice force them into finding one narrow niche and running down it with blinders on?

I mean, I feel like I had too much choice preventing me from committing to anything. And look at me. Instead of having a solid job and a house and broodlings, I'm a faggot in new york who can't even put a name to what his career is, if it is a career at all. For the next three weeks my gig is to drive stuff back and forth between the city and some place in rhode island. Four hours each way. In three weeks the job goes away and I go back to the void, waiting to be summoned again.

No choices. They give cheddar to the swamp rat and it runs through their maze. Set up your nest in a building somewhere and stay there until the developers force you out; again and again and again.

I need to leave and can not wrap this up properly, but it sort of feels like the world was more interesting (if frustrating) when you had to seek and quest for everything good and beautiful in this world to identify with and use for building your sense of who you are, than today where everything is just out there all the time like a table full of too much cocktail food and it's all like - "that's nice. that's nice." but nothing really grabs you and you end up just drinking too much and throwing up.

Why Me?

2009-03-17T15:44:00.002-05:00

Cangjie was given four eyes with eight pupils to help him see the differences in all things so that he might devise one of the earliest forms of writing. Fu Xi was given the hexagrams and their changes on the back of a dragon horse, and allowed to live 197 years to set things in order.

Why am I given the life of a mayfly and saddled with these addictions to flesh and the pleasures of? How does this help me restore order to heaven and earth? Instead of the divine I have emails and text messages and advertisements for ringtones. Is this life a joke?

you knew my name

2009-03-15T23:17:00.003-05:00

i said david spade had died in my facebook status update and i got all these messages from people asking if it was true, and sharing david spade stories. within like, the first 20 minutes. i should have said it was rob schneider.

FURTHER EVIDENCE OF MY LIFE IN A COMA
by the last week of work they were calling one of the actors "Gemma", which made me think of Ninja Scroll, and then last weekend Ninja Scroll was on TV!!!

last night i started writing out my awful vampire movie attempt, and right now Nosferatu is on TV!!!

If only I could turn this power towards getting me laid or rich.

muhah

2009-03-14T03:14:00.002-05:00

i'm going to make a trash can that is fatter on the bottom and smaller at the top. like a reverse of the traditional design, and flared. it will be so sweet. then when they try to take their trash out, they won't be able to get it through the hole. then they will see how wrong they were to buy my trash can. the fools.

Day Twenty-Three

2009-03-12T02:16:00.002-05:00

Spent the last hours of the job isolated from everyone else. Crafty is a lonely gig. You know absolutely everyone on crew instead of just your department, so there is even a greater opportunity for you to hate more people than normal, and vice versa. I wish I was smarter. I am too smart in a way, but obviously not smart enough to make the too smartness work in my favor. Should have kept my crazy beard and hair until the end of the shoot. That or go into jobs looking normal and grow into the crazy.

The wrap party is tonight. It's 3am and I'm about to wrap my kit into my apartment while downtown manhattan is relatively quiet, except for the drunks and homeless. Too cold for horseplay or happy people, thank god.

A boy I used to fool around with has been named a different city's "Sexiest Man", which is funny cos he was almost always too boyish looking on his knees with my cock in his mouth. I still get cravings for his scent and his fuck, but I think I know now that it doesn't do me any good. Our past is prologue to nothing and we are separated by what seems more and more like a wasteland to me with every passing day; mental, emotional, and physical. Sorry, Chicago.

I have lost ten to twenty pounds over the past few weeks. I even enjoy sleeping in the altogether and feeling my body against itself. The cheap price for cigarettes has risen to $9.25 a pack. Twelve bucks is outrageous but possible - twelve bucks used to be a carton. My purchasing capacity has decreased on par with my lung capacity. Praise Allah.

I fantasize about drinking more water and eating more sensibly; of smoking less or quitting; of going on food stamps so I am forced to buy vegetables at the grocery store. I had a stalk of celery two weeks ago and it wasn't so bad. Becoming famous or successful won't make all one's problems vanish: how laid does Phillip Seymour Hoffman get?

Day Thirteen

2009-02-24T23:41:00.002-05:00

By the time you read this Lent will have begun.

I am insanely jealous of Dustin Lance Black, the screenwriter of Milk. I just saw some photos of him and I have a good idea of...I can't say this the way I want to here so I should not say it at all.

HOWEVER -
i had to wiki him cos i was freaking out that he was younger than me, and he's not. almost three years older. still. to look that good and have an oscar for writing a movie about harvey milk. i am seething. i am 32. i am an ancient. tonight at the jubilee i saw a young gay couple or two young gay friends and i thought to myself, ah, those experiences are for the young people - meaning love, or being young and rich and white and gay in nyc, or just having time and inclination to make small talk with strangers - and i always do this, but tonight i caught myself. why am i leaving the field? because i'm 32? because i know however many souls i eat the black hole within just keeps getting bigger? what? why?

and here's this guy, 35 or under, and the hottest fucking thing in the gay world. gay world...
i gotta be bigger than gay. i gotta be something. i'm totally stuck. i feel like i haven't done anything creative in ages. just touching up other people's stuff or using it on them. work. high. sleep. work. high. sleep. work. high. sleep. work. high. sleep. work. high. sleep. high. gorge. sleep. high. gorge. sleep. work. high. sleep.

ETC

i am totally freaking out. i'm 32 and done nothing with my life and i can still remember that this isn't totally true but just dead inside. dead dead dead.

Day Three

2009-02-11T23:17:00.003-05:00

At wrap this older guy asks me what's shooting while I load the cargo. Asks me if I've had a lot of work. Tells me times are tough and I'm lucky. Told him I didn't feel lucky. He didn't get his hours to get in the union and he's getting out and going into sales. Nothing's shooting, he says. I hear this a lot. Maybe I am lucky.

Trust in Allah, but tie up your camel.

I was trying to think of what I would do if I got out, but I don't really think I'm in. It's this thing that I do, but I hafta hustle up other jobs to fill in the gaps, and all of them aren't directly related to film/tv. There's a lot of strange stuff out there. Plotkin's getting paid to visit an office 4 times a day and Jerome. I mean Jerome like Jerome from The Time in Purple Rain. Jerome jobs. What am I going to do when I get too old to hustle? That's a better question. Let's all think about this and come back next Tuesday for a brainstorming session on the topic.

melon baller

2009-02-05T17:47:00.003-05:00

For Lent this year I am working as Crafty on a low-budget feature. I started today. It is still Mardi Gras so the dates don't work out quite right, yes yes, but the penance will. I haven't really done this in over three years, so I am a little bit nervous. I am an old man now and even more grumpy and antagonistic than I was back then. I feel like I should record this process in some way, but it's so hard once production starts.

the light just went off. ding ding ding - it made a noise, too.
write down the date today. 090205. oh yeah, this will record the date. this is the day it came together. maybe. i gotta go.

Distance...Heart...Fonder

2009-01-31T06:48:00.003-05:00

My first movie job, way back in 2003, was as POC on an ultra-low budget film shooting in Pennsylvania. I got the job from the Producer, who I had met with friends at a bar a couple of weeks before, so when people ask how to get into the "movies" I always answer know someone. (And then they always say, Well, I know you, and then I hafta tactfully point out that we don't really know each other, they are just some douchebag in the street, etc.)

My first job paid me a per diem of...$15 a day, if I remember correctly, and then I got an extra $7 somehow, and my meals and coffees were taken care of with petty cash. The only reason I got the per diem is cos we were far outside the city.

My job was primarily to keep track of the housing arrangements. We were so low budget that we were getting around hotel expenses by finding locals who wanted to put up crew members for no fee. It was quite an operation.

I arrived on location in a 15 pass van which was ferrying other members of crew and a few actors. As we pulled up (they were a week into the shoot already) the Prop Master was screaming and cursing at Production - I quit!, etc. It was all very dramatic.

My direct boss was the Line Producer. He was into comic books and Sid Meier's Civilization series, so I very quickly latched onto him as a mentor. As the job progressed he looked more and more weary, and had less time to show me exactly what it was I was sposed to be doing. He also started making this sound with his throat when he swallowed, like a glurb or a gabrup. He wasn't even aware he was doing it until I asked him about it. Years later I came to understand this sound. It is the sound of sleep deprivation. I make it myself on days that become one very long day, but mine sounds different. It is the sound your throat makes as it tries to clear mucus and incorporates the vocal chords to vibrate it off the walls of your glottis.

Since I had to be awake first to arrange breakfast I was almost always cut before the day's shooting wrapped. I put myself up on the couch in this summer camp type place we were fitting 6 other members of crew into, and since I had the bathroom to myself at the end of every night, I would take a bath and finger my asshole while fantasizing about being fucked by the Producer.

Labor Day Weekend almost all of the crew went back to the city with a handful of exceptions, including the Producer and myself. He and I went with the Director to a drive-in showing of the Jamie Lee Curtis flick Freaky Friday, and I slept with him that night in his very swank room at the local B&B.

I didn't sleep with him because he was the Producer and I was seeking some advantage. Indeed, I slept with him with the mindset that by doing this I was preventing myself from ever working on a movie ever again. I didn't care. I wanted him so bad cos I thought he was hot and exactly my speed.

Ultimately it did not work between us cos he kept mistaking me for some German actor he used to date, and I was fresh out of my LTR with Courtney and wasn't interested in commitment. He and I still talk when he has time (he's moving on up) and I still feel a little stab of regret every time he has a boyfriend and it seems like things are going well for them.

When I have too much time on my hands he puts in the occasional appearance in my daydreams, and I wonder what life would be like if he had not been so neurotic, and me not so fickle.

---

This morning finds me 5 or 6 years older and sitting in a room in the West Village. My job is to sit in this room for 12 hours - doing almost nothing - for $150 a day. Although this is ten times what I made on my first job, I still complain about my rate. I complain that they are not buying my lunch receipts. This gig is so easy, and still I find things to go to war over. I'm trying to let it all go - to not be resentful over them not buying me lunch and coffee - by reminding myself how easy this job is for me.

These jobs feel endless. I wonder if there is another me in a parallel universe who has his shit together and isn't working these small time gigs. Maybe he's worked his way up through the ranks by riding hard, and he makes enough money to keep up a nice place AND have a relationship. For that matter, maybe he's not emotionally retarded. Or maybe he's the kind of guy who knows how to end a blog post well.

i know a secret

2009-01-25T20:40:00.004-05:00

if you wanted to fuck me we would have, so what's with all the teasing? i pretend to myself that i'm making good on my pledge; restraining myself from fucking you; while at the same time fully aware that i am fairly undisciplined and have very little self-control. manhandle me down to my knees and i am a bitch. last resort show me your hole and you know i'm gonna have to stick my dick in it just cos it's there. at least.

even these measures are drastic compared to what would be required.

and i guess i'm just lucky that no one is gonna wanna tempt me enough, you know? if i hafta fall in love with every person who pushes themselves inside of me, then it is prolly better that i wait until something that might work and be good for me presents itself. i don't know that we would be good together. it's not you! i mean, me with anyone at all is a little out of line. a relationship would mean major sacrifices.

but honestly when i am near you i am inwardly quaking with fear that you will say or do the thing that sets me off and i will forget my...my...there it is. i have already forgotten the word. all i can think about is what a slut you are and the things i would do to you if i had my druthers. but then i would probably bore you and in turn fall in love with someone who is bored by me. again.

there is no crime here

2009-01-21T13:55:00.002-05:00

The city should give thousands in USD cash to streetie castes so then there would be all these beggars and street people with a serious amount of money that they wouldn't know what to do with. They'd prolly try to shove it all into ATMs. Or hide it in alleys. Then when the crazies lose their money I would have a chance of finding it. That would be sweet.

I Am Legend

2009-01-20T19:47:00.002-05:00

I'm not claustrophobic. There's nothing I like more than sticking myself into small places. I'm dying to sleep in one of those Japanese hotel tubes. I don't believe in straight up Duality, so I don't define myself as agoraphobic - although I really don't enjoy parties - it's just I'm just not claustrophobic.

ACTUALLY, there are things I like more than sticking myself into small places. I like thinking about me, for example. I think about all the different parts of me spread throughout a myriad of puzzles and try to reconstruct the one essential me that I've been hiding. The Tristan no one else ever sees wholemeal. Not even a Tristan, really. Something else. And then the corners are made up of someone else altogether but equally terrifying.

I'm not sure who I am. That or I know it too well. What did Tom Baker say? I've been married three times and the trouble is I've never had a wife who misunderstood me. Something like that, but better; on the DVD commentary track for The Ribos Operation if you want some homework. I know who Tristan is for sure for sure. I've been Tristan for...14 years? For a long while. Tristan's easy. He's like a hoodie I can pull out for whatever occasion and it's okay.

It sounds like what you are thinking is that it is time for something else. You wanna go it on your own? You wanna try something new? Why are you talking to yourself on the catchcloth? Okay. Yeah. I feel worn, and I feel like some Tristan things are holding me back. I mean, I don't have any ready replacement you totally have replacements. yeah. i do.

There was a time I was so distraught that I begged for possession. I offered myself up to be pushed aside by something else. And I guess the question is, is that something else really just still me, or is it really something else?

I feel like you've talked about this before. On the livejournal. oh god i don't wanna go digging through that. what is the point of all this anyway?

make me feel good?
When I went home for the Hiatus I was sitting on a friend's porch - there was this party in my hometown where I knew only a handful of people and the others seemed obsessed over a cute and NEEDY girl in a wheelchair. She didn't really need the...fuck it. whatever.

So I introduce myself to this guy on the porch and he says You're not the Tristan who used to live there was some adjective before the "Tristan" and to be honest I don't remember what he said and I s t r i v e so hard for accuracy...LEGENDARY. That's what he said. You're not the legendary Tristan who used to live here?

I denied it and he said, Yeah. I didn't think you could be him. This guy was a crazy genius and you look totally normal. Maybe he didn't say "genius". Something about being intense and hallucinogens and satanic ravers and controlling people's minds and fucking girls and boys and goats and burning down a bar and the white slavers and just everything with the notable omission of my turn as Stefano, the drunken butler in our university's production of The Tempest --- which, i should add, was yet another job I have been fired from mid-production ---

so I asked him if he ever met this Tristan he was talking about and he told me that he had not. He had just heard about him. I don't remember who he said his friends were.

This was just one guy this trip. I mean, it was a nice xmas present to have this person confirm for me the Legend of myself that exists in the front of my mind when I am totally blown. That I will exist as some strange and misshapen story after I am gone, although to be honest only if I go soon.

I don't remember my point and I am done with this. Far too long. Here is a shoutout to Pey, who Kristopher told me reads this every day. Please tell Kristopher that I posted a story about his spiderman underwear that he hid, and that my Kilik easily took all of his custom characters.

It's just...fuck...sometimes I recognize that I'm Tristan Fucking Colefax doing whatever it is I am doing. Just walking down the street or getting on the train. And when I die these moments will either live forever or fade away, but they happened. And they are happening right now! In a few short hours I will walk the streets again. Knock on wood. Everyone in the world living right now can still get in on some Tristan while the getting is good. Make me an offer.

!!!!FAILED BLOG POSTINGS BELOW!!!!
4u
----

It seems like black families never win at Family Feud. Even if they make it to the final round. Sometimes their answers are really odd, like - Name something you have more than one of at breakfast. The mom said, Cereal. Who has two cereals for breakfast, besides young Chaz Babylon? No one got the number one answer, Eggs. I don't think it's the fault of the black families. It's just that this, like everything, is made up of white people. That's my hunch. Like with the SATs; white, affluent children are more likely to know the difference between a yacht and a regatta, for example. That show needs serious reworking.

---

I am employed again. Not making as much as I was, and it's a short gig, but at least I have something. Was feeling pretty down on myself the last week even though my firing was good-humored cos it's just...ah. I probably already talked about it. At every obstacle I weigh and prepare myself for the revelation that I am wrong. You start to wonder...well I start to wonder if I'm getting noticeably crazy and need to reel myself back in, etc. I second guess myself all the time. Although it keeps me honest, sometimes I wonder if it's not just holding me back. Anyway, today was my first day and on the way back to the train at the end of the day I noticed I had a sort of strut in my step.

---

On the subway home there was a boy with an interesting metal case whose face I could not see, but he was obviously young and gay. On the way up the stairs his ass was right in front of my face and I decided that there was no point in looking at the front cos I would never be able to live with that ass for the rest of my life.

Do I think in those terms? For life?
Yeesh.

broad assertion

2009-01-18T10:45:00.004-05:00

What makes me uncomfortable about transpeople is this: when confronted with the world, they don't find the fault to lie with the world but within themselves. This world is bullshit, and I'm the problem. I'm talking out of my ass of course, but I feel now (although molding oneself to survive in the world so you can chew your shape into the scenery over time is acceptable) that I spent years trying to figure out why I didn't fit into the world around me and the answer is irrelevant because I should have been hammering the world into shape around me.

It's the difference between the suicidal and the homocidal. I've never been one for aesceticism. I've never been a cutter. When unhappy I am far more likely to take it out on others than on myself. Some people martyr themselves. 50/50. I think most relationships are a match up between a suicidal and a homocidal. I wanna be a new kind of homo. I wanna pairbond with another homocidal without becoming suicidal. A predator team fucking each other through the asses of sucidial boys.

I'm sure there is more to it than this, but it really seems to be all about being whatever you are and then carving out your space however it is. Gender reassignment takes ages; you could be using that time to slaughter your enemies in their sleep. No one's got the time.

fired pt12

2009-01-16T06:03:00.003-05:00

i was wrapped early from the tv show i've been working on this past monday night. which is another way to say fired. this is the third network i've been fired from. i'm starting to feel that i am at least good at being fired. i've got it down. this was the 2nd most casual firing, and maybe the most friendly. when my immediate boss gave me the news i told him, This may seriously affect my decision to hire you in the future, and we laughed about this but then he drove me home from astoria to the seaport because like all good jokes it is true.

i was really pleased with my response. it's totally the awesome thing you think of to say after you've left the party, and i got it out in the moment. i can't be totally pleased with myself; even though i feel no blame comes to me from my actions, i still need to come up with $1000 for february rent.

i'm going to have to grow up.

catering tale

2009-01-08T09:50:00.002-05:00

night janitor came into the school gym we were using for catering last night while i was pushing everyone out of there. he noticed a spot of liquid on the floor and said, That's not water, is it? i looked closer and saw it was spottled with little pieces of matter. i wasn't sure what it was. he got down on his knees - big guy in his 40s - and stuck chubby fingers into the viscous liquid. then he put his fingers right up to his face, almost touching, and took a big whiff.

No, he said, it's grease.

12th night

2009-01-06T06:55:00.003-05:00

Today is the first day of Mardi Gras. I wish it meant something here. It's 7am and the sun is just starting to creep over lower Manhattan. Sitting at my desk imagining a promenade down Madison Ave while a band plays Big Chief pt2 and crying like a narcoleptic dog on the grass at the images in my head.

I wanna go home.
I wanna go back to my tribe.

waterboy

2008-12-03T19:31:00.002-05:00

this is the song where odetta got me. sw's apt sometime in the first half of 2007. i wish she had been president. or queen. that would be some kind of america.

delivery was $11.35 and all i had was a ten, two ones, and a five. i gave him $12 and made him wait in the cold while i fetched another dollar. what an ass i am. i should have given him $15 and been done with it. but why fetch two bucks to make it $14, when $15 is only a dollar more. ugh. and he called me amigo.

three things on my way home

2008-12-01T19:13:00.005-05:00

1. On the way home from Astoria tonight there were only three things in the sky I could see. The waning crescent moon and two stars, and I think those stars were actually Jupiter and Saturn. Someone told me it was happening on Thanksgiving, but I didn't even bother to look cos all the light pollution here drowns out the sky. The three sources of light made a right triangle, and it was pretty cool, the way they stood out against the normal black void that covers the city.

2. On the way home from the parking lot, I passed a guy who said the following to someone else: Yo! Lemme use your Metrocard. In my head I thought back at him - Fuck you, Fucko. I'm so glad he wasn't talking to me. Even hearing the words made me depressed. It was the authority with which he commanded the Metrocard from his squeeze, combined with the fact that for someone making demands, he doesn't even have it together enough to have his own Metrocard. If you're gonna bully someone, you should at least have your own locomotion so's you can make your bully rounds.

3. There is no better avatar for America's Decline than the Coach Purse. Everyone buys one when they get here despite how ugly they are. A bunch of C's in two revoltingly stale colors. Somehow this purse has launched its own counterfeit goods economy with Foach's and Goach's, and just, why? Why, Lord? Let's rip-off GOOD stuff for a change. The only thing I can figure is that it has some awesome interior pocket thing going on, or it's another one of those Sex in the City things. The real ones probably cost something outrageous for absolutely no reason. Better you should spend your money on plastic surgery, not that I'm about that, but...right? And then pick up some cheap vintage purse and redo the zipper. Imagine that; there you are feeling less insecure about whatever you've just had fixed, AND you've got a cute new purse.

our day will come

2008-11-27T23:18:00.000-05:00

six more miles

2008-11-20T19:35:00.003-05:00

returned james's phone call from my work cell while waiting for my food and he's coming into town. he'll be here monday for ten days. most of me is thinking it would be nice to see him one of the days i'm off - try to fit him in. and then this other part of me, this little niggling part of me that is still in "love" with him, is pouting inside my head that my love must not be true if i'm not instantly an obsessed milksop.

and my love probably isn't true. i'm not even sure what love is. i mean, my love of him is mostly about me. about wanting to own this fantastically beautiful and talented boy/girl, and have him on my arm as an accessory. a longing to feel self-worth because this divine creature is with/by/part of me.

the truth truth that keeps me sane is that it would never work or be real anyway cos he is an angel/daemon and i am a cartoon character, and neither of those occupations allow for real, intimate relationships. at least not with each other. the thought of me being able to successfully pair-bond with anyone feels so ludicrously impossible that it's sort of dampened my expectations about people and lowered my boy angst. the need is just another hole inside me that doesn't need to be fed or paid any attention to.

but there is this little tiny portion of my selfish love for him that might not be selfish. this longing to know him before divinity. as a kid. not pedo, but just as a human. the lost and lonely that's hinted at, and the glimpse of...

that last time was so awful, when we had nothing to say.

i'm a bore. a boar. with boarish needs. i objectified him, and it is likely that i still do now. the difference is tonight i'm a little toasty and listening to hank williams songs and fighting the windmills in my heart.

thought i was having a stroke last night, but couldn't tell if it's just cos of the stroke commercial and i'm susceptible to the advertising. felt like i could feel my whole left side going numb.

now that the sad country music has finished i know it's pointless to think about love or intimacy or hooking up with anyone cos i'd hafta trim my toenails first, and there's no way i'm doing that anytime soon.

fatherhood

2008-11-09T01:19:00.002-05:00

went over to wendy's new place today and saw micheline & jean's child for the first time. Vivian. they did not seem scared to let me hold it, and i sort of jerked it around for about twenty minutes while it bawled. it is only six weeks old. that kid cried and cried and then finally stopped for about five minutes. babies pick up on the moods of those around them (especially those they've already imprinted - parents, etc.) so i tried to feel loving and calm.

i hung out with richard and tulli's baby a few times, and this is no slight on freya, but i felt a totally different thing going on. i mean, i could never really hold freya cos it felt like tulli thought i was a ball of diseases harmful to her child, but i think it was also that freya was older and didn't really cry. having that baby cry in my arms tonight, and not being able to make it stop...it made me want one.

for selfish reasons, of course. part of me thinks that if i had a child i would finally hafta make something of my life - that i wouldn't let it starve and start saving, etc. i'd hafta stop smoking and taking psychoactive substances. and then the bonus would be that i'd get to imprint this individual and it could carry on my fight should i fall in the field. i'm 32. my parents are almost 60. my brother is showing no signs of breeding, and i know they would flip for a grandchild.

the big problem with this is that i'm gay, but boys haven't been interesting me as much lately. on the hbo job i found myself crushing out on the female PC Accountant. yes yes, i also crushed out on the male production secretary, but how could you not; the way his ass filled those jeans. i have thrusted my way to ejaculation inside vaginas before. i could do it. i assure you.

actually, the thought of being with a woman turns me on, but only as a procreative act. condoms = might as well fuck a dude. thinking about knocking up girls is giving me wood right now. the only way this would work is if the mother was able to take a large part of the burden - or i'd hafta get into a different line of work. i'd wanna be there, though. i would read to it, and imprint it with music & chess & logic.

i'm thinking the family structure would be a little different. in bushwick wendy & tracy live on the third floor, and jean, micheline, & baby live on the second. maybe we could find a place in the same building, and i could live above my child and its mother. work it out so i'm not paying more than $1200 in rent. i would hafta start moving up in the ranks - wouldn't be able to do it on a unit's wages. we wouldn't be married...or maybe we would? i'm gay, and it wouldn't be healthy to deny that, and my lifestyle is sort of mercenary - i would need my own place so i don't wake up the baby. or maybe the mother and i would fall in love, and i would be with her exclusively despite her lack of cock.

if i'm not continuing the relationship with the mother, then she will eventually turn to other men to satisfy her needs. i would need to keep her occupied, or strange men would be in control of my brood. if that's the case, then i might as well not be contributing. hmmm. how would i leave my child?

sometimes i think i am a cuckoo egg, and my father is not my father. i have the urge to lay cuckoo eggs. holding the baby, though,...it was the first time i thought about laying non-cuckoo eggs.

i would want it raised as cajun. maybe i could set myself up as a location manager for things shooting in louisiana, and we could relocate to the swamp. plenty of relatives there to watch the baby while the mother and i work. then, when it gets older, we could move back to the city.

i think the thing about holding the baby today was that it felt so imperfectly perfect.
maybe just hormones, though.

bigotry

2008-11-05T19:32:00.001-05:00

i can't think of anything less important to the world than modeling, fashion photography, or critiquing on either. except maybe what i do for a living.

anise

2008-10-21T15:15:00.003-05:00

i had ethan over today. thought it would be easy to talk to him cos he's always got the beard, but turned out he shaved it. his face is beautiful. heavy lids, strong nose, fascinating eyes. ETC. seriously beautiful. we talked about the journal entry he sent me. i probably said all the wrong things. i want in his head badly, and i don't think that's going to be the problem. it's when i try to transform headspace into bedspace that things will go awry. should leave it. already i miss him, feel the emptiness and hunger rising, and that's just crazy. so hard to concentrate on our conversation - his beauty is distracting. made it all the way through only looking in his eyes, or looking to the side when i needed to think. once at the end stole a glimpse of his tummy when he stretched. probably wouldn't work long term. i'm not into sharing or dancing or art. then again i'm not into long term, so i don't see what i'm beating myself up about here. the went into the bathroom right after i took a shit, so maybe that will kill this and it won't be my fault. ugh. i hate when i'm passive/agro. the longing is coming, and it is as unfocused as ever. why can't i get a winter without the longing, lonely, and lovesick? everything else about the seasons is aces, except for this growing dread that i'm missing out on something at all times, and worse, in the winter i'm missing out on this one particular thing and i don't even know where it is or how to find it.

he came cheap

2008-10-19T02:57:00.002-05:00

MIX time again and I stayed too long at the after party. I'm not interested in fucking in public, but maybe that's just something I tell myself cos I stuck around until just now. A few cute boys, but I need to find a different scene. Jordan got me high and then I watched Devon suck him off. Someone said these events are like "good times spent with family." Although I find it suspect that you would want to get your ass rimmed in front of your Grandfather, what I said back was, "These people are like my wife's cousins." Could not steal my body home and could not comfortably stay. Older guy jerking off with a PA in a leather chair, while a middle-aged woman talked to him about what looked like ordinary things. A standard conversation, but this guy's still beating off. I should have fucked someone so I could leave that load there, instead of carrying it with me home. There is romance lacking when I watch several guys sucking your dick and we haven't even kissed. Either I am screwed up or this world I exist in is.

for example

2008-10-18T02:21:00.003-05:00

now that i've painted my hand white i feel a little better, but it was touch and go there for a while. carlo's working three minutes from me on foot and asked if he could come by after to show me his new book. 10pm. 12am. i know he's gonna be forever and am kicking myself cos i'm waiting to take these shrooms. i go over there and it feels like it's about to turn into a fuck party, but it isn't yet. he's still working and i go home. 2am. it has turned into a fuck party, but he doesn't wanna play. he'll be here soon. he's leaving now. he's downstairs.

comes in and he starts taking off his clothes. i stop him. Just wanted to get comfortable. Sorry I'm on you about when you get here - waiting for you to leave so I can take these shrooms. oh. yes, he was going to stay and crash in my bed and probably stay here all day until it's time to go back to work. i'm not sure he conscious of his own motivations. i read his comic book and say i like it although i don't. my mistake. i never do it. people give me things to read because of my gut critique but this isn't in that league. he's not happy with this so i offer more. there's no strong narrative. you hafta hunt to discover who the protagonist is. etc. etc.

he doesn't like any of this, and he knows he can't stay over, and i...maybe i am mean to him. if i am, i have good reason, although i should let all of that go. i want to let it all go, but i can't stop knowing who he is. knowing what he is capable of and what he does. it's not that i'm not a user also, but these days...these days someone's got be cum in or cut up for me to get a hard on, and it's just not worth it in a way. he gets to stay close to work and i get laid, but these days i'd rather have the run of my room and not worry about a second void to try and fill. so he takes a small mean thing i say and blows up into a big deal - gets dressed and heads out the door as soon as he's finished his McDonalds. I'm really pissed off he says with absolutely no emotion. maybe i really hit a nerve, but it didn't feel like it. i didn't get the twinge. usually they give out a twinge.

this is a man i once loved, although at the time i was loving too easy.

anyway, after he left i painted my hand while picturing gio ploughing jeremy, despite carlo's reluctance to proffer any details of the fuck party and that brings us right back to where we started, with me getting it out of my system.