friends don't let friends...

How did people drunk dial before cell phones grew so popular? Did they have to wait till the morning after? I drunk dialed a few times this week--first, from the Heritage Wine Bar in Pasadena. I ended up there with a co-worker after a really bad meeting. Two glasses of syrrah and a basketful of bread later, I was shouting into Beatriz's phone, "Listen carefully because I'm a little bit drunk: karaoke. The Brass Monkey in Koreatown. It will happen."

It didn't happen for her, but we did manage to field a team of four--two folks from work, myself, and Kevin Bacon. (Bacon for short; she's a vegetarian and likes Irony.) I covered 70s Brit punk with the Clash, and somebody did an is-she-on-heroin-or-just-really-dedicated-to-the-craft-of-karaoke version of Tina's "Private Dancer": "... a dancer for muuuuney / I do what you want me to doooooo..."

Drunk Dialing #2 was Thursday night. I was at Akbar, getting hit on very aggressively by a bisexual girl who wasn't hearing "no" very well. There have been times I would've dug this immensely, but Thursday night wasn't one of them, and I stumbled out the door.

Alone on Sunset Blvd. again, the taste of beer in my mouth and whiff of Marlboros in my hair, I pulled out my phone and woke up the vegetarian Bacon. Her cheery voice thrilled me. My car careened the 15 miles to her house without ever slowing to a complete stop, and waiting on the broken sidewalk outside her building, boy, I was saved.

dilemmas

I've had scary three-degrees-of-separation experiences with the girl I'm dating. We met pretty randomly--OK, Tom set us up--but we discovered the following:

1) My ex contacted her and asked her out through match.com just after our first or second date.

2) After I watched Brokeback Mountain with a group of law school students, we discovered that a friend of hers was in the group. They were planning to meet for coffee just a few days later.

3) I met her at my friend Cathy's birthday party two years ago. My now-ex and I chatted with her now-ex and her for almost 30 minutes, apparently. I vaguely remember talking about Meow Mix in NY with some gay girls that I wasn't too engaged with. Cathy figured this out last night.

As Scooby would say, spooooooooooky. So now I'm torn about what name to use as her pseudonym.

Should it be......................Scooby?

Or Kevin Bacon?

Highlights for children

Listening to Morrisey right now--God, his voice is so great. A combination of wisdom and lust.

Weekend Highlights:

* Omar is being stalked by an old customer at his part-time job. "With my happy demeanor and pretty face, I'm surprised it doesn't happen more."

*At my friend Wilder's 30th birthday, an actress I know talked about lunching with her ex-girlfriend recently. "I told her, 'Yeah, it really bothered me in our relationship that you wouldn't open up and be vulnerable.' She said, 'I know I did that sometimes. Did it make you feel bad?'. I told her, 'No, it made me feel patronized.' "

* Same birthday party. A little dog belonging to the owner of the house ran around, wearing a green sweatband on the "wrist" of his front paw. He looked ready to do some aerobics.

* Same actress, about super-organized people: "Those people who show up on time and know all their lines and are always polite, they're bland as hell. I'm late and flaky, but goddam, sometimes I'm brilliant. In the last 10 years or so, it's been popular to be very together and on time and organized. Things'll change. We will rule again!"

* A queer girl at the Bigfoot Lodge: "Our waitress smells so good. Like shampoo and sex."

* Jennifer Aniston in the movie Friends With Money: "Yeah. I got problems."

* A twentysomething guy with messy blond hair, zeroing in on my date as we walked out of Bigfoot Lodge: "Hi, I'm Tom, I just had to say hello, I'm over there with my friend...". Startled, she politely shook his hand, but I pressed my palms against her back and didn't break my stride. "Keep walking, sweetheart," I muttered, "keep walking."

* Beatriz and I lost each other while shopping at the Cabazon outlets. It was all my fault, naturally, but it took me 45 grumpy and wind-toussled minutes to find her. She tried to cheer me up by telling charming celebrity stories: In college, she passed out inside a NYC dance club. While her friends stepped inside to gather their stuff and leave, Debbie Harry and the bass player Blondie found her sitting on the curb. They called her sweetheart ("You OK, sweetheart?"), fetched her water, and made polite conversation. Also, she met Gloria Steinem at a Dallas airport once—they talked about college classes, and the feminist icon loaned her a copy of Newsweek.

* One more reason to love Beatriz: sometimes, with chatty strangers on airplanes, she gives out the wrong name and tells people she’s an accountant. Why? The truth sucks them in. “They get all interested in my job and want to talk the whole fucking flight. Screw that, I’m not their mother.”

The Slowdown

I blogged every day for a minute there, didn't I? Pretty prolific for someone whose site is still 100% reader-free.

I had a pretty uneventful week, which contributed to the slowdown. I did take the Metro Red Line to Hollywood & Highland to see the Dresden Dolls do an in-store show at the Virgin Megastore--an energetic performance (yaaaay) of only 6-7 songs (booooo), for a crowd overrun with...here's an email I wrote:

...the crowd was overrun with very sincere, very eyeliner-wearing emo boys with black hair in their eyes and skinny jeans on their hips. One kid kept miming the drumming and piano playing, because he just couldn't help himself.

So I did venture out. But I actually had to pull out my organizer to see what else I did this week.

This is OK; my social life tends to swing up and down, like the old Dragon Swing ride at Knott's Berry Farm. Some weeks I'm going out so much that my head's spinning, and I'll think, God! I'm popular; I'll start to complain, Paris Hilton-style, about the demands placed on me. Other weeks the phone quits ringing and I'm in my house with Ferdinand the cat, eating ground-turkey Sloppy Joe's, wondering where the hell is everybody?

(By the way, no pseudonym for Ferdinand the cat--he was, is, and always will be.)
If I'm in a healthy mood when such slowdowns hit, I start to work out more. If I'm emotionally needy, I start to call my phone list in alphabetical order, seeing what they're up to. Usually, they're up to nothing ("Um, I was just paying my gas bill..."), but I'm always suspicious that somebody's out there having a fabulous time. Or even a miserable time--but something! I can't stand when nothing's going on.

My therapist recently informed me, "You kind of like drama." That's why I pay him the big bucks, folks. But I sort of knew this already--you can see it in my track record of who I'd like to kiss. I admitted it Monday night to a girl I'm dating, who quickly answered, "That's it--get out of my bed. Right now." We can all hope she was kidding, but she's a sweet girl (with a breathtakingly level head on her shoulders), and I hate to think I'm bringing any bad vibes to the scene. Mostly I'm just too analytical for my own good, which happens to anybody. Errr...right?

So tomorrow we will run faster, Gatsby, stretch out our arms further...Two birthday parties this weekend, as well as an outlet shopping trip to Barbazon. (Cabazon, whatever.) And an illustration teacher at my work just informed me that his girlfriend dreamed we'd have a major earthquake on Sunday--so there's that to look forward to.

Alternate name for Jägerbomb: LIQUID COCAINE

Birthdays, while a good excuse for a party and a Jägerbomb, also have the potential for resulting in a spate of inapproriate tears. Birthdays are just emotional, y'know? I observed this Saturday night with my friend and old coworker, Magdalena (the pseudonyms just keep on coming...it's kind of fun, like discovering your best friends living in an alternate universe). Magda hosted her 27th birthday party at a restaurant/club in Alhambra, with an excellent dinner followed by a reserved VIP room. The best part of the VIP room was this sign: A group of about 15 friends and family, including her shake-ya-booty mother, ate dinner and drank alcohol before dancing hard to raggaeton/ Kanye West / Bell Biv DeVoe mash-ups, concocted by a DJ who kept shouting, "This is how we do it on Saturday nights!". I was kinda ready to kill him, but he redeemed himself with a few slick moves on the turntable--including a dance remix of Nirvana's "Come As You Are." You, sir, haven't lived till you've heard Kurt's voice rumbling over an electric drum beat, "Take your time/ hurry up/ choice is yours, don't be late..."

Yeah, ye-ah-ah, yeah!

The collection of close friends and family members was probably overwhelming for Magda. The margaritas and Jägerbombs, the mother (who's divorced and still good friends with Magda's father--the most confusing type of divorce, I think) and sister, the clouds of cigarette smoke and flash of men's gold necklaces, it's probably all a bit much on the day you're turning 27, and you're still paying for school, and you're single by choice and wanted by the wrong kind of asshole guy.

Magda opened the martini glasses I gave her. They were packed in a tan box we kept joking was a cake. ("Happy birthday; here's your cake.") She very slowly pulled out one glass to look at, and I said, "Remember? You said you needed some?" and she nodded, brushing at her eyelashes, and I said, "Your eyes are red," and she said, "I know," and we sat quietly for a full minute. Birthdays, indeed.

My name is Ackleykid, and I'm a geek.

I spent five hours at the Natural History Museum the other day, visiting the Bog People. The Mysterious Bog People lived in northwestern Europe during the Mesolithic period about 12,000 years ago; the museum is displaying six bog "mummies" preserved by the bog environment, including the remains of a 16-year-old girl that scared the hell out of Beatriz. I quote the web site:

Although she perished approximately 2,000 years ago, the woolen cord with which she was strangeld is still intact. Whether her death was a killing or part of a ritual is one of the mysteries surrounding the Bog People.

Pretty fucking awesome, yeah?

The Natural History Museum also has some great dioramas of African and North American mammals (including my favorite, the okapi, the closest living relative of the giraffe, discovered only in 1901). I thought the museum might be a little elementary-school for me, but as you can see, I'm just the right emotional maturity age.

Let my lusts be my ruin, then, since all else is a fake and a mockery. -Hart Crane

More than I lust for people, I lust for friends and experience. The other night I went out to Akbar, a mostly boys queer bar in Silverlake. I sat with (cleverly disguised pseudonyms from here on out...) Omar and Beatriz, who are both tall, lanky, Latino, dark-haired and dark-eyed--at 25 and 30, they're probably my hottest friends. Not exactly Antonio & Salma hot, because my taste runs geekier than that--but they both move sleekly in their bodies and both have great taste in music. Call it brainy-queer-hot.

Digression: My friend Jack, who's about as straight-boy-who-watches-ESPN as my friends get, asked me recently, "Are there any lesbians who aren't cute in LA?" [By the way, hate the word lesbian--digression for another day.] As you can imagine, I almost choked on my soda. "Uh, yeah...they're everywhere." Jack said, "All the girls I've met through you are so cute." I nodded, and said, "Yeah, my friends are cute. I gotta keep the herd pure--I might have to date one of them eventually." Little-known fact, there are only about thirty-six lesbians between 25 and 35 in all of Los Angeles, and half of them are moving in together as we speak. End of digression.

So we drank (all three of us) and smoked (Beatriz is one reason I'm sucking down 10 cigarettes a month these days) and checked out the boys (Omar). Then Beatriz said she was tired. I patted her leg and kept chatting up Omar; but her head nodded forward and snapped up again, like a truck-driver crashing a big-rig at 3 am on the 5 freeway. It was time to go.

Omar stayed to drink water and sober up. The next day, I called him to chat and he said, "This girl kept looking at me, and she came up to me and started talking and said--" (high voice denoting estrogen) "--'oh, you're so nice, I wish I could call you up and chat all the time.' She asked for my number. I said, 'How 'bout email?'. She said, 'Oh, you don't have to give me your number if you don't want.' I said, 'Well, I'm here a lot...maybe we'll just run into each other!" Such a nice blow-off.
How does this always happen to Omar? I went to a Tegan and Sara concert at the Wiltern with him, and when he was walking back to his car he ran into Sara and made friends. They chatted on the sidewalk and, I'm sure, one day will have babies together. Omar meets people, both good and bad, wherever he goes.

Anyhow, after leaving Omar to be harrassed at Akbar, I drove Beatriz back to my house (where her car sat) and made her stand in my front lawn with me while I smoked one last cigarette. The full moon shone on my little house. The gardener had just visited, so our grass smelled clipped and new. Despite a violent rainstorm being only two days away, it felt vividly like spring. Beatriz and I talked about the little night bird who serenades my street after midnight, but mostly it was quiet.

"I'm gonna fall asleep on my feet here, I gotta go," she said finally.

We one-arm hugged and she walked away while I stood on my front porch, smoking and breathing. It was nice to be home.

letting some things go

I work at an art school that employs several nice guys on security detail; they certainly don't deserve to work with a lying smartass like me. The security guys walk around in grey uniforms, occasionally chatting, carrying walkie-talkies and making sure things are "OK in here." I was standing in our kitchen area the other day, washing my hands, when Danny approached and opened the lid to our First Aid box.

"Everything OK in there?" I said, stealing his line. He was OK with it, though.

"Yep," said Danny, snapping the lid shut. "Just making sure we got all our supplies."

"You know what we could really use? One of those heart defibrillators. You know...'clear!'."

"Oh, I'd be afraid to use one o' those..."

"No way, man, it's easy. You just take a one-hour workshop, use it anytime."

"You used one o' those before?"

"Sure. They're great. You can use 'em on your pets, too, if you just set the dial on low."

"Hmmm. Dogs, cats?"

"Yeah. Not hamsters, though. You gotta let some heart problems run their course."

Danny never called me on my crap there. I'd like to honor his rather stupendous tolerance. And quote poor overused Holden one last time:

I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera.

Richard Kinsella's queer, 21st century sistah

That digression business got on my nerves. I don't know. The trouble with me is, I like it when somebody digresses. It's more interesting and all. - Catcher in the Rye, Ch. 24

This isn't my favorite Holden quote; and, to be honest, it's not Jerome David Salinger's most beautifully phrased thought. But I always liked the idea--poor Richard Kinsella should be allowed to talk about his uncle's goddam farm if he feels like it, and people should quit shouting "Digression!" at him in Holden's Oral Expressions class just 'cause he slips off topic.

Here's my actual favorite Holden quote:

He put my goddam paper down then and looked at me like he'd just beaten hell out of me in ping-pong or something. - Catcher, Ch. 2

I've gotten that look from a few people before. But I digress.

I've been hesitant to start a blog, even though all the cool kids are doin' it (or were doing it. . .like myspace, it's a little worn out at this point), because I have enough trouble keeping my goddam private life to myself. If you hold a conversation for more than 12.6 seconds with me, I'm suddenly going over the details of my latest, biggest crush with you--what do you think, no I mean, really.

But I'm not letting anyone know about this blog, so hopefully I'll get the patio space to write anonymously for a year before picking up 12 loyal transgender Bengali dwarf readers living in exile in Tibet.

But I have a few goals for this space.
1) I'd like to explore a few details of my life without fear of backlash from LA-based friends and lovers. (There are so many of them!)
2) I'd like to bone up my writing skills, which used to be stellar and are now a little too (overly) reliant on parentheses; I'm a big semi-colon abuser (as well).
3) I'd like to remember some nice goddam moments that happen to me.
4) And, of course, we'd like to free Tibet. Me and Richard Gere is all that country needs.

I want zero readers for 100 days--much like the free pass given to the President on his first 100 days in office. Until that time when we can actually dialogue, my Bengali lovers, I'll say peace and good night.