November 16, 2009
Those last two posts where… self-indulgent.
Also, I was drunk when I wrote them.
It’s mostly sarcasm.
A friend of mine was thrifting today in the Gramercy district and in following her around, I found dentist chairs and an exercise video of dancing grandmothers.
November 13, 2009
Which is basically the same as a prostitute but with better make-up.
I need friends that don’t have their own escort company. Granted, I had no idea he was a sleaze. I just knew he was from Brooklyn.
Also, last week I had to spend the night in a grimy pay-by-the-hour motel.
So I got home at 1am after I may have been drinking on other people’s bar tabs in Manhattan. And might have accumulated bad karma by not giving the homeless man the “tongue kiss” he asked for. But in any case, I came home and tried to unlock the door, but it jammed half-way between locked and unlocked
FUCK.
Because I live in the ghetto.
In the, oh the houses don’t look too bad OHWAITTHATMANISSMOKINGACRACKPIPE but these trees are pretty and that Bodega looks unassuming enough ISTHATAWHOREGIVINGA14YEAROLDBOYABLOWJOB well I guess all grocery stores in the Bronx have barbed wire fences surrounding them SHOULDN’T THATKIDHAVEBEENINBEDANYWAY?IT’SASCHOOLNIGHT kind of way. And on top of that, I didn’t want to be stuck outside of my house in the middle of the night because the men in my neighborhood say things to me like “YO GIRL. When are we going out?” Me: “Never.” Thug: “You sayin’ that cuzzz I’m black, nigga.” Me: “No, I’m saying that because you’re fat.” Which in the daylight is not scary, but at night “YO GIRL” means “I’m going to rape and kill you because it’s night and that means IT’S OK TO DO THAT.” Which I know is totally wrong because a fat thug could rape and kill me any time of day and I wouldn’t be able to stop him. But anyway…
So the door was jammed and because I’m weird and so I don’t have any friends in my neighborhood and also because I don’t make friends easily with people who don’t know how to use elementary grammar and who think the top of their underwear is an accessory, I went to the Bodega next to my house to ask the men who run the store to help me get my door open. The nice, intelligent man behind the counter had to stay there, so he sent Tony, who from what I could surmise, gets paid to stand near the door of the store and wear a bluetooth headset and sneakers. He greased my key up with kitchen oil and proceeded to spend a half hour trying to get the lock open while I called the people I lived with who SLEEP THROUGH EVERYTHING. After we decided that the door was a hopeless case, he told me that I could come home with him and that he’s lonely and doesn’t have a woman around and at which point i said I HAVE LEPROSY and he didn’t know what that is, so I just said that I’m too old for him. He’s about 35. He said that I look like I’m 16 (which is CREEPY because he still wanted in my pants) and I said that actually, I’m 40, I just have really good skin.
We went back into the Bodega and by now it’s 2:30am. I started crying. Because I’m a little bitch. I didn’t know where I was going to stay or what to do or who to call because all of my close friends are in different cities than NYC. The men in the Bodega insisted, INSISTED on putting me into a cab and sending me to as they said a “hotel” after literally taking me by the arm and putting me in a cab, I agreed. I said thank you and was off. Telling them that I would pay them back once I was no longer a starving artist. They didn’t look like they believed me, but they also looked like I owed them one of my girlfriends for sexual favors or something.
The cab pulls up to the “hotel” and it was NOT A HOTEL. It was where whores and out of town businessmen go for a quick, gross screw.
AWESOME.
I paid for the room, with money that wasn’t mine. The lady at the desk asked me how long I’d be there, at which point I found out it was a pay-by-the-hour joint.
I got to my room and was hit with the smell of cigarettes and old shoes. The floor was black and white checkered, the overhead light flourescent, the headboard black lacquer with greasy handprints, the kind an overweight tranny would leave from getting fucked from behind after she ate a burrito, the shower was not in the bathroom, but in the main rom and was big enough to fit a queen-sized bed inside and had it’s own overhead light source, and was still wet from the patrons before me. Also there was a mirror over the bed. I spread my coat out over the bed to sit on top of BECAUSE I DON’T WANT HOOKER GERMS and turned on the TV. The channel it was left at was amateur latin porn.
I managed to fall asleep and woke up a few hours later to hear the cops doing a drug bust in the room next to mine.
I left early in the morning and walked, hung over, along the train tracks to home. The people I live with had the door open. Apparently they got it un-jammed earlier that morning. And wanted to know why I had called their cell phone so many times last night.
I didn’t asnwer because I was too busy running to the bathroom to take a four hour shower and try to forget about those disgusting handprints.
November 12, 2009
There was a girl.
Or perhaps we shouldn’t start there.
The subway ran right outside the bedroom window. Every seven minutes the ungainly JMZ would rattle the panes, leaden paint chips fluttered away from the edges of the sill. Sometimes She was still in bed with droplets of last night’s sex on her belly when She came to, but more often She was already at the basin washing her hands. She looked like powder in the mirror. Colorless cheeks. Full lips that were frothy, white in the corners. Her eyes were almost too big for her face, but dark and wet. She was beauty if beauty fell sick. She was the last perfect morning before death. The last bubble of energy that serves more to show that the end is here than as to indicate a recovery. Luminescent only in comparison of what was and what will come.
The holes of her eyes stared the rest over in the mirror above the basin. When had the morning come?
She dressed slowly. Her limbs pulled through layers of gauzy clothes- a knee-length grey skirt, a few faded shirts, a mossy sweater. Shoes slipped themselves on her feet and She pattered down the four stories to street level and the door slammed in her wake.
The morning was cold. No sky was visible, only vast hills of gray clouds and somewhere, the glow of a hiding sun. The tension of rain unfallen tinged the air, but She was already too far into the subway tunnel to notice.
Always the third car from the end, second to last seat against the far wall. Always. She sat with all her weight, but still seemed to the others in the car as if She might float away.
She read for the duration of the 23 minute trip.
She got off at 25th St and 5th Ave and walked four and a half blocks until the cemetery’s flesh-fueled green was visible among the car washes and Dunk’n Donuts of industrial Park Slope. She blew through the ironwork entrance and ran for a moment until She fell as the base of The Tree and sat, pulling at her hair and shaking, wet eyes towards the carcass of the sun, and cried as She did every morning that She woke up unremembering.
He gave everything a name. The lightswitch in the bedroom was named Eliza. Faucet handles were called Oren and Greta. The cutting board in the kitchen, honeyed and worn was Adolph, but She refused to call it that, so more often it went by Addie. The only things difficult to name were people. Hardly easy to pull out a single, cohesive identifying trait and spin that into an appropriate name. Especially with any one person close to you. That’s why She was always and simply, She.
He watched her sleep. She was beautiful against the wine sheets. Sometimes She smelled of lavender, but it was nicer when she still smelled like toothpaste from her nightly brushing. He could rarely fall asleep before She. It was too tempting to wait up until her thin eyelids closed over her embered eyes and the webby veins that played over her paper lids lead his thoughts down paths he only found on her skin.
She woke up screaming.
October 15, 2009
But for now, I’m just going to write a list of things that I will write about. Later. When it’s not 5:34am and I’m not sick in bed next to my boyfriend who has been snoring since 3am. Granted, he’s sick too, and it’s that snoring that isn’t really snoring. I can just hear the snot move around in his nose when he breathes.
Now he’s grinding his teeth.
Can he tell I’m blogging about him?
Also CAN NOBODY ELSE SMELL THE INSIDE OF THEIR NOSE WHEN THEY’RE SICK? And doesn’t it smell like mucus? And isn’t that comforting?
Also, when I brought this up the other day, he told me to talk about mucus less often. And that I sound like a crazy person most of the time. And that’s when I mentioned that I want a coat made out of live cats.
Also, DXM DOES make you high. No wonder kids robotrip.
OH YEAH. The list. Things I will write about:
Hotornot.com: rating everyone either a 1 or a 10. Also, why I got mad at Guy when he said I’m a 10.
My cats watch me sleep. I’m really careful about filling their food dish now because I’m pretty sure they’re sizing me up. Do cats attack? Like while you’re sleeping?
I KEEP HAVING DREAMS ABOUT HITLER.
So I have these new friends. And they have AIDS.
My boyfriend just sleep-punched me.
September 16, 2009
When I was sixteen, I once saw myself as a widow by suicide in a cinereal cobblestone city… When it is too cold for September and autumn threatens to be gone before I have forgotten summer, that image reappears, singed into my temporal lobe.
September 15, 2009
Was New York City a mistake?
I can already feel this place sucking the energy out of me.
The streets throb.
I need to spend some time sitting on the Brooklyn bridge and remembering why I came here but I haven’t the time.
September 13, 2009
There was a girl.
Or perhaps we shouldn’t start there.
The subway ran right outside the bedroom window. Every seven minutes the ungainly JMZ would rattle the panes, leaden paint chips fluttered away from the edges of the sill. Sometimes she was still in bed with droplets of last night’s sex on her belly when she came to, but more often she was already at the basin washing her hands. She looked like powder in the mirror. Colorless cheeks. Full lips that were frothy, white in the corners. Her eyes were almost too big for her face, but dark and wet. She was beauty if beauty fell sick. She was the last perfect morning before death. The last bubble of energy that serves more to show that the end is here than as to indicate a recovery. Luminescent only in comparison of what was and what will come.
The holes of her eyes stared the rest over in the mirror above the basin. When had the morning come?
She dressed slowly. Her limbs pulled through layers of gauzy clothes- a knee-length grey skirt, a few faded shirts, a mossy sweater. Shoes slipped themselves on her feet and she pattered down the four stories to street level and the door slammed in her wake.
The morning was cold. No sky was visible, only vast hills of grey and somewhere, the glow of a hiding sun. The tension of rain unfallen tinged the air, but she was already too far into the subway tunnel to notice.
Always the third car from the end, second to last seat against the far wall. Always. She sat with all her weight, but still seemed to the others in the car as if she might float away.
She read for the duration of the 23 minute trip.
She got off at 25th St and 5th Ave and walked four and a half blocks until the cemetery’s flesh-fueled green was visible among the car washes and Dunk’n Donuts of industrial Park Slope. She blew through the ironwork entrance and ran for a moment until she fell as the base of The Tree and sat, pulling at her hair and shaking, wet eyes towards the carcass of the sun, and cried as she did every morning that she woke up unremembering.
September 9, 2009
When I was little I was afraid of everything.
As I got older the list narrowed down to spiders, dust, dirt, the number 7, broken dishes, strangers, friends, talking on the telephone, pants, mismatched socks, counting, school, breathing, not breathing, and pudding.
The term obsessive-compulsive has such a stigma.
I was pretty normal.
I didn’t start washing my hands 36 times a day until I was 16.
I used to get stuck in doorways. The doorway in my bedroom was especially tricky. I would sit on my bed, tense and pallid and prep myself for the battle I was about to face. While I knew, logically that the doorway could not do anything to me, the disorder that was wracking my sixteen-year-old brain told me that if I didn’t cross the border just right, my mom would appear from her room in a rage. The fact that she would often unpredictabley do just that for, seemingly no reason, did not help me remind myself that this was completely and utterly irrational.
I would approach the doorway. A shiver shot down my spine. I would try to rush through the space because perhaps if I crossed it fast enough, my brain wouldn’t notice what I was doing. As soon as I crossed the threshold in my illegal hurry, my heart threatened to beat its way out of my chest. I would run back into the threshold and attempt multiple times to cross. This manifested itself in me rocking my body back and forth in a clumsy dance with the imaginary lines of inside the doorway and out. Eventually, I would break through. Sometimes it took minutes, sometimes hours. Sometimes, the only thing that broke me from my compulsions was my mom’s voice actually calling me.
I felt like I was falling apart. Days were filled with little black pockets and buzzing electricity. Everything was bigger, and smaller than reality.
That feeling is the only constant in my life.
Everything is overwhelming. Do other people stare at the view from their window and want to cry because the clay-colored sidewalk is so perfectly aligned with the deep grass and the canary leaves resting on top of the blades are so random? Sitting at the bare kitchen table in the fourth place I have lived this year, I can’t bear to tear my eyes away from the skyline, from the treeline, from the Victorian houses, from the hordes of strangers and strange ones who are walking along the sidewalk.
Everything is unbearably beautiful.
And excruciatingly sad.
The sun is setting. It’s 4:25 pm. November is a dark month. The sky is lavender and the buildings are in orange shawls of gloamy light.
September 8, 2009
How does one write about New York City? I am hit over and over with the overwhelming feeling that this is It. This is the beginning of the rest of the whole of whatever it was that I have anxiously wanted to be a part of ever since I had any concept of a school as an something to describe a group of intellectuals or crazy people who do what they do because they need to purge their systems of some thing that both fuels and corrodes their ability to wake up the next morning and continue to exist. My first inkling of such a school was during my school of the impressionists phase in middle school. Then it was the school of realists. Then The American Authors. The French New Wave, beat poets, and the beginning of punk rock.
Burroughs’ Junk (well, the fiftieth anniversary edition reconstructed to supposedly be his exact, original first work, now labeled Junky) is getting under my skin like the habits he wrote about. My (not so) little neurotic ideas that shoot out, as if visible (or rather, they seem as though they must be visible, perhaps as surges of unwarranted, useless electrical energy emanating from my skull), scream that I will never be able to write about, painting about, or satisfy this perverse obsession with the community of drug culture, beat culture, and generally, subculture unless you immerse yourself in it. In ways I want to. I think every writer has had the desire, at one point or another, to live in a meth lab.
But where do I find that? 103rd and Broadway is no longer Burroughs’ 103rd&BroadwayJunkCentral. I’m sick that St. Mark’s Place is gentrified and that the Dom is now some oriental market and there is a Rite Aid within walking distance. I’m sick of pretention. Sick of seeing it in art. In music. Sick of seeing the pretention that was originally meant to poke fun at that very thing twisted, or morph into the original thing that it barreled against. I hate these tourist-attracting punk rock stores that sell homemade looking tee-shirts (you’re supposed to make those at home when you’re sitting around exhausted after an acid trip with five other people making music with pots and pans and that thing someone found on the street and there’s a dog [with fleas] and someone’s cooking something inexpensive and compulsively writing is more important that washing your hair regularly) and shoes that I want to want but can’t help grimacing when a girl with uninspired tattoos and black hair and red lipstick buy the very same ones. I’m sick of being excited about these scenes and then finding them to be all scene and no substance. Where is the real New York? (You’ve only been here three weeks, relax. You found a bit of Real New York last weekend. Yes, that was wonderful, and a start, but it’s difficult to rely on one old-acquaintance/new-friend whose company you appreciate far too much to be the only gateway to something this big. It’s difficult to allow myself to find any gateway. None of this feels real yet. I find myself staring at the river or going glassy-eyed in the subway because it is just too much. As an artist, or a writer, or a human, I feel as if I am supposed to be able to take it in, all of it and process it and produce something that is like it but more illusive and finessed. I feel like I ought to be a windmill: take the obvious, the wind, harness it into something magical, strange, and important: energy. I should be able to filter the world into art instead of becoming paralyzed with the feeling that it is all there but only for a split-second because then it is different, even minutely and it is all so transient, but at the same time, always, always going to be there.)
Artists nowadays are into these lab-created drugs and pixilated art and perhaps this only seems so because my generation came too late for my sensibilities, but I’d rather be a (generally) sober artist among the junked-out and cracked-up artists than a (generally) sober artist surrounded by the pretentious and polystyrened art (and maybe I’m bitter because they are born out of trust funds or their mother never beat them or I perhaps this is all the anxiety that comes from never knowing a real art world- from making my living off of paintings of houses and other people children and dogs and FUCK THAT) that is being produced by our wired era. I am drawn to lost artists who are absorbed in their struggle or addiction or obsessions, or so out of touch with the greater world that they can portray their tiny corner of it with such tangible grit that it becomes a portrait for the human condition, and therefore an accurate, wrenching rendition of something so human that it cannot help but to be worldly.
What the fuck do I know anyway? I haven’t discovered “The Art World”, but I’m not going to look where the other artists are. I am going to find it in the laundromat, on the streets of the Bronx, not Williamsburg, I will find the crack addicts and whores and the alleyways covered in old graffiti and maybe bloodstains and the leakage from trash that piles up because there are so many of us, and there I will paint the beautiful ugly things because without all of this, the trust funds, Starbucks, and Art in capital letters with all the hype and funding and roundabout artists statements about color fields and fiber optics would not fucking exist.
