The second night in the tent isn’t much better than the first, just longer.

Around 8:30am I’m awakened not by a screaming alarm clock or the rumbling of the subway, but by temperature. Sunlight is filtering through the tent again, putting sweat on my face and a curse on my lips.

I roll over to see if I can continue sleeping, but shifting my body weight alerts me that bladder-wise, the needle’s on F. I sigh, grab my dry socks (I’m learning) and escape the tent like a stealthy fart.

Outside by the pond I stand in some bushes until the needle’s on E again, then I zip up and look around. Just like yesterday morning, the sun is shining, birds are singing, the pond is still and serene. No concrete, no throngs of commuters, no coffee cart guy. No tie around my neck, no Metrocard in my pocket, no god, damn, coffee, in, my, system.

I trudge up the hill, which suddenly seems three times the length. If I had money I would’ve brought Sherpas to carry me and offer cryptical but sage bits of homespun wisdom on the workings of the world and harmony with nature. In return I would show them how to brew a decent cup of joe and more importantly, to bring it to me every morning.

“Good morning,” someone says to me in the kitchen.

“Wherza coffee,” I almost mutter, but instead say something polite on my way to the percolator. Nearly everyone is already up and Lara’s making fritattas. Soon there’s a big-ass country breakfast spread all over the kitchen table, and I’m stuffing my face like I was raised in jail.

The training commences an hour after breakfast, but I sit out the first session because I’m totally wiped. I hadn’t been sleeping well all week and two nights in the tent isn’t something I’d recommend if I was my doctor. Then again, neither is smoking.

During the sparring sessions Jordan, the Wu Shu guy, observes something unfortunate about all of us hapkidoists; since we are barred from punching to the head in our dojang, we have all developed the terrible habit of leaving our heads wide open in our guard position.

I, in particular have developed a spectacularly nasty habit of leading with my head, a sure sign I’m gonna get my knot rocked in the street. Jordan drives the point home by peppering my forehead with taps during our bout. I’m thinking, in order to truly be prepared for beef I oughta wear a helmet around back in the city. Or fix my position.

“Okay I need everybody to gather at least three rocks for the sweat lodge,” says Lila, in the late afternoon. As a sample she holds up a rock approximately the size of my head.

Lara and I head into the undergrowth behind the house to find some, then we carry those heavy bitches all the way down the hill to the pond. I briefly contemplate making a “got my rocks off” joke but it doesn’t get past the censors.

(Humor-wise, I can’t score any hits with this crowd. Over dinner one of the girls remarked she had seen a movie starring Bill Murray in a dramatic role. “I can’t remember the title, but it was a movie based on one of W. Somerset Maugham’s novels,” she said.

“Yeah, I’ve read that one,” I said. “Caddyshack.” Not a giggle.)

During one of the breaks Jordan, Adam and I repair to the “treehouse” in the woods. I put “treehouse” in quotes because it’s literally bigger than my fucking apartment, comprised of two separate platforms joined by a bridge like that one in the end of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

You reach the treehouse by means of a fully retractable drawbridge on one end and a ladder on the other. I mean this treehouse should be featured in the next Lord of the Rings. I’m surprised there aren’t elves up in this bitch making cookies.

I later find out Lila’s husband owns a construction company, which is why the treehouse is so grand, and well-built. I’m told the drawbridge is to keep animals off of it at night.

Surprise, surprise. I am shocked to discover Jordan is, like me, a smoking martial artist. Up in the treehouse we trade tales of what idiots we are for doing it, then he shakes a couple menthols out of his pack and we have at it. Male bonding occasionally comes in strange forms.

As the sun sets, Jack gets a fire going down by the pond. All of the rocks are placed in the center of it, beneath the burning logs, and they’re left to cook for several hours.

So here’s the deal with the wooden dome. Lila throws a bunch of tarps over it, and now it’s a completely enclosed, tiny hut. After it gets completely dark out Jack digs the rocks out of the fire with a shovel, and they’re actually glowing red from the heat. Lila opens a flap in the hut and Jack dumps the rocks in a small pit in the center of it.

All of us strip down to bathings suits or good ol’ nakedness. The hut can only fit six, and the first group disappears into the hut with a jug of water from the pond. “It’s pretty intense in there,” Lila tells me. “Make sure you bring some water in with you to drink. You’re gonna sweat a hell of a lot. It’s a really good cleansing process.”

Five minutes later the first group wriggles out of the hut, dripping with sweat; the firelight makes them look shiny. I’m in the second group and now it’s our turn. I’m a little apprehensive but I figure I’ll just go in last, so I’m near the door if it’s unbearable and I need to duck out. You know, the whole occasional pussy thing.

“Hey, you guys mind if I go in last? I want to be near the door just in case,” says Jane. “I’ve done one of these before and I just wanna make sure I can get out if I need to.” Well, there goes that idea.

Lila disappears into the hut, followed by Miriam. The opening is tiny so I have to get down on my hands and knees. I take a deep breath and crawl into the flap.

I am instantly engulfed in pitch-blackness, and a torrent of searing heat hits me like a blast furnace. Holy fuck. Fucking intense is right.

“Be very careful!” I hear Lita’s voice warn from the far edge of the hut. “Make sure you stay well away from the rocks! Go left and move around the edge of the hut until you reach me,” she says.

Well, easier said than done--the hut is tiny inside and there’s about two feet between the fire pit and the wall of the hut. The air is practically burning my lungs. I try to stick to the wall of the hut but the tarp is coated in searing droplets of water that convert contact into flinching. The rocks in the pit announce their location by emanating the kind of burning heat they must have in Hell. I’m worried a stray limb will scrape the rocks and melt right off of my body.

Embarassed that I’m scared, I force myself to crawl along the inside of the hut until I reach Lila, and Tom comes in behind me. With glum desperation I realize I am the furthest from the flap, and a quick exit will be impossible--if I want to get out I will have to order a couple people to get out first. I try to stay calm and take deep breaths, though inhaling feels like doing shots of Stolichnaya through your nose.

Once all six of us are inside, I say “Holy fuck” a couple times and try to relax. I’ve been in steam baths and saunas before, but that’s pussy shit--this is the hottest I’ve ever been in my life.

“Okay, you guys ready for the steam?” says Lila. I can’t see anything in the pitch-blackness but I knew she was dumping the pitcher of water over the rocks, because all of a sudden came a loud hissing--followed by the scariest fucking sensation I’ve ever felt in my life:

A sudden, shocking blast of even more heat engulfed my body, and it suddenly felt as if I was on fucking fire. The nerve endings on every square inch of my skin, from the top of my head to the tip of my penis, told me my body had just burst into flames. I couldn’t believe I was still alive, that the human body could withstand something like this. If I had eaten a raw egg before I came in here, there’d be a fucking omelette in my stomach by now.

I concentrated on taking deep, deep breaths because--well, because what the fuck else could I do in there, write a fucking play? After a few moments Lila dumped some more water on the rocks and I felt my skin burn off a second time and I think my heart stopped for a little while. A couple minutes later we all crawled out of the hut.

It was kind of like being born again; you wriggle out of this thing and you’re covered in your own slime. Ectoplasm, whatever. I was totally shiny.

Lila and Jane jumped into the pond, and that seemed a sensible thing to do so I followed suit. I’m sure the water was icy but in my current state, I felt I was heating the entire pond just by being in it. I think if I dipped my penis in a pot of water I could bring it to a full rolling boil.

The sky was dark and cloudy that night so no stars, but I floated around on my back for a while, thinking profound and important thoughts (I can’t remember what they were) and staring at the darkened treeline.

After floating around for five minutes I thought about going into the hut again--sometimes when I’m scared to do something and then I try it, I want to do it more--but I felt kind of woozy and suspected I might pass out during the steam part. With my luck I’d fall face-forward onto the rocks, and no one would know what was happening in the darkness, and at my funeral the pallbearers would be like “Why is this coffin so light?” and another one would say “ ‘Cause Rain’s head and arms melted right off, it’s just a torso and some bird legs in there.”

That night Joe, one of the black belts, took my place in the tent so that I could get to sleep in an actual bed in the farmhouse. I thought sleep would come easy, but it didn’t. When I finally did fall unconscious, I woke myself up soon after with my own panicked yell; I was having a nightmare about a crazed homeless guy trying to slash me with a boxcutter and I couldn’t fend it off in time. The homeless guy, he was so quick.

I’m a little high-strung these days; I need to spend more time at the dojang.

(5:30am, we’ve just arrived in Vermont.)

The tent was actually not a bad size, meaning I’d seen smaller apartments in Japan. I laid my sleeping bag next to Miriam’s, removed my belt and socks, and slithered into it hesitantly, like an occasional pussy should.

This is only the second time I’ve used this sleeping bag (or hell, any sleeping bag) and I was disappointed to find it didn’t come with a big pillow inside. I removed my flannel, rolled it into what I call a Seattle Grunge Pillow and shoved it under my neck.

A noisy platoon of frogs surrounded our tent, slowly but surely, and started in with their god-awful ribbiting. Sounded to me like they were communicating with each other, coordinating some sort of attack.

I double-checked to make sure I’d zipped the tent securely shut, and a moment later did the same with my eyes. As I drifted off to belated and glorious unconsciousness, I was surprised to discover the ground was actually not that uncomfortable, although I’ve had more satisfying naps on the six-train.

Three hours later I’m awakened by the most unusual thing: Sunlight. There’s not much of it in my bedroom back in Manhattan, but here in the great outdoors there’s plenty, filtering through the white part of the tent and making my face uncomfortably hot.

I sit up and see the girls are still conked out. Miriam, lying next to me, has got a sock laid over her eyes like a blindfold and is sleeping placidly. That seems like a good idea but when I reach for my own socks, I find them damp because I threw them in an especially wet corner of the tent. Dammit.

Jane wakes up a moment later and the two of us unzip our way out of the tent, stepping into bright Vermont sunlight. Birds are chirping, the pond is gleaming, and running through my head is the sentence Where’s the fucking coffee. The two of us trek up the hill to the house, where my car is parked.

As we’re pulling our bags and the pineapple I brought up out of the trunk, I hear soft footsteps and turn to see the biggest black dog I have ever seen walking directly towards us, as if to greet us. She’s huge, fluffy, and clearly outweighs me. I love dogs and pet her friendly head enthusiastically before realizing she smells like a type of strong cheese I once tried in Germany.

“Hey there, hey there. Shall we go into the house?” I say.

“Sure,” says Jane, stuff in tow. In actuality I was talking to the dog, but I think that would be a rude thing to point out.

My hapkido-mates start coming out of the woodwork, from other tents on the property and bedrooms from within the farmhouse. Lila’s coordinating breakfast and there is a beautiful pot of coffee being brewed.

There are nineteen of us total. There’s

- Lila, the ripped, model-beautiful, Swedish-Columbian super-fit mother of two who makes G.I. Jane look like a couch potato;
- Jessica, the Taiwanese-American girl with a background in capoeira;
- Tom, her brother, who kicks faster than anyone can see;
- Jack, the physically gigantic club bouncer--I’ve always suspected he picks up cars and throws them when he’s angry;
- Laura, who’s descended from New York’s old-money Vanderbilt family;
- Ivana, who emigrated from the Ukraine to NYC by herself as non-English-speaking teenager;
- Lara, a half-Japanese half-Korean girl I’d be scared to fight;
- and on and on.

There is one Filipino-looking guy I don’t recognize, though I recognize his non-hapkido martial arts style: Wu Shu. He’s fucking good, too. I later found out he’d studied it for upwards of twenty years. Later he would teach me to do my own crude version of the butterfly kick (think Liu Kang’s finishing move). Turns out he’s Lara’s boyfriend.

An hour later we’re spread out on the front lawn while Lila teaches us some escrima stick techniques (think Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon’s prison scene, right before he got his hands on the nunchakus.) After an hour my hands are slightly bleeding from welts but I feel good about it.

Lena gives us a little orientation speech about the grounds. “If you go down to check out the horses, watch out for the fence, it’s ‘hot,’” she explains.

“‘Hot?’” someone asks.

“Electrified.”

Twenty minutes later I spy Jessica down by the pasture, standing alongside the fence and examining the horses. “Hey,” I ask the group, “Jessica was there for the ‘hot fence’ speech, right?”

“Yeah, I think so,” someone says. About ten minutes later Jessica comes back up the hill and joins us.

“Say, you know the fence is ‘hot,’ right?” I ask her.

“‘Hot?’” she asks.

“Electrified,” I say, as if it’s common knowledge.

“You mean the fence that I climbed under?” she asks, wide-eyed. Woops, guess she wasn’t there for the speech.

We train intermittently throughout the day, and I take some shifts letting my ass get to know the rocking chair on the front porch. The air is clean up here and everything seems to be a different shade of green. You’d never think there were so many different types of green. Reminds me of how Eskimos have eleven words for snow or whatever.

When the sun goes down Jack shows me how to get a campfire going, then a couple of the fellas barbecue up some chicken and burgers. After we chow down everyone starts forming into impromptu conversation groups, but I head out to my car to listen to the stereo and get some A-time. I’m a shut-in now; I’m not used to spending this much time around this many people.

It’s pitch-black behind the house but the stars are out, the sky up here is just filled with them. I stare straight up for four songs, until my neck hurts.

Back in the city the only types of stars you see are the annoying kind who require traffic be redirected so they can film a fucking scene without interruption.

Around midnight I climb back into the tent with Jane and Adriana. Twenty minutes later Miriam enters and accidentally kicks me in the head on the way in. The frogs start piping up again, but I’m exhausted and soon after being kicked I fall asleep.

I take crappy pictures when I’m tired.
Come to think of it, lately I’ve been taking
crappy pictures when I’m well-rested.

Today’s soundtrack: all of my systems are down, down down down
Today at 1:02am: On I-95, doing the clutch-brake-gas dance.


Thursday night usually finds me flat on my ass in front of this computer, but this time I was in Brooklyn, having a god, damned, cigarette outside my car. It’s about 10:45pm and I’m picking up three women from my dojang whom I actually don’t know very well, and we’re about to spend six-and-a-half hours in my little-ass VW.

Mission: Head up to another student’s “farmhouse retreat” in Vermont for a weekend of martial arts training.

Packing the trunk, I develop the firm hope we don’t get pulled over--in addition to backpacks and sleeping bags we’re carrying a variety of swords, blunt weapons and weird, pointy Japanese things sure to make a State Trooper wonder if he can fit all four of us in the back of his cruiser.

We hit the road around 11pm, and FDR Drive is smooth sailing. But we’re only twenty minutes outside of the Bronx when I slam on the brakes to avoid rear-ending the longest goddamn line of midnight traffic you ever did see. New York: Love it or leave it, but if you choose the latter it won’t be easy.

An hour or so into the trip, Lila, the hostess of the weekend, calls us from the farmhouse in Vermont. “Please follow the directions I’ve given you very closely,” she urges, sternly warning us that based on her previous experience with inviting guests out into the wild, failure to adhere to the directions will result in us driving clean off the face of the earth.

“You guys will be sleeping in the yellow tent,” Lila reveals. “When you get to the house you’ll see a pond, fifty yards downhill. There’s a six-man yellow-and-white tent right next to it. It rained for the past couple days and it’s a little muddy out, so make sure you guys close the fly to keep the water out.” I tell her I’ll do so, and wonder to myself what a “fly” is.

The good thing about traveling with a bunch of thirtysomethings is I can play hours of 80s music and we all know all the words.

Six hours later I know the women a little better and all of us have had the distinct pleasure of urinating in bushes by the side of the road somewhere in Massachusetts. By 5:30am we’re pulling onto Lila’s “driveway,” if you can call it that. “This is some Discovery Channel type of shit,” I mutter as my little urban hatchback bounces and slogs up an interminably winding horsetrack thick with underbrush.

After what seems like miles we reach the top, where a tidy, fresh-looking farmhouse sits placidly atop a grassy hill. Dawn is upon us as we pull our sleeping bags out of the car. The yellow tent and its attendant pond is easy enough to locate, and after stepping carefully down the wet and grassy hill, we’re there.

Miriam undoes a couple zippers on the tent face and enters first, followed by Jane and Adriana. “It’s wet,” I hear Miriam say, though her tone is not one of rejection, but game acceptance. Jane and Adriana seem to have extensive experience with camping, and while I’m not sure about Miriam, she has the easygoing, go-with-the-flow attitude of the daughter of hippie parents.

Wet. I’d already had reservations about sleeping in a tent; though in my twenties I prided myself on my ability to sleep anywhere, that talent, like my memory, and the ability to sustain hard-ons for unreasonably indefinite amounts of time, has gone to pot with the advent of my thirties.

“Yeah, so, listen, I’m gonna try sleeping in the car,” I say, doing an about-face.

“You sure?” the girls ask from inside the tent.

“I’m sure,” I say, heading back towards the hill. On the way I pass an unusual-looking structure made of wood. What look to be fresh saplings have been bent and lashed together into a small dome, roughly half the size of a Volkswagen bug. I wouldn’t find out what it was until later.

Trudging up the hill towards the car, I found my feet coming to a halt, and my brain struggling to ascertain the reason. I looked back at the tent, where the other three would be unrolling their sleeping bags about now, and a question popped into my head:

Q: Jesus, Rain, what kind of pussy are you?

A:

a) a judicious pussy
b) an urban pussy
c) an occasional pussy
d) a big, fat, hairy pussy
e) a pussy who enjoys asking myself multiple-choice questions
f) why, you’re no pussy at all! You’re a trooper!


I chose ‘f’ (even though the real answer is ‘c’) and trudged back over to the tent.

I thought about how episode six of Band of Brothers, “Bastogne,” depicted the troops sleeping in freezing, snow-covered foxholes without proper winter clothing, enduring German artillery raids and what looked to be a miserable cigarette shortage. Perhaps a little summer dampness alongside a placid pond on an idyllic Vermont country farm wouldn’t be so bad.

‘f,’ man, ‘f.’

Don't touch anything while I'm gone. Listen to your Aunt Yuka and behave yourself and I'll try to bring you back some pictures.

That black box under my bed, don't touch it. And that mystical amulet that glows with an amber hue in the hall closet, don't touch that either. Same goes for the enchanted crown in the bathroom. Lastly--need I say it? The ring in that envelope on the mantle, keep your mitts off it. After I get back, if I find out you used any of these artifacts to take over the universe you are in big, big trouble.

Today’s soundtrack: alimony alimony payin’ your bills
Today at 9:12pm: paying bills online


Okay I take back what I said about enjoying teaching. Today was crappy and I was of little assistance to anyone. Then in the second class I had this smart-alecky Russian kid who’s picking it up pretty quickly, start to get all uppity.

Also, and I know I’m gonna sound like a pussy here, one of the ultra-sweaty students poured a couple pints of his toil-juice on me and it started to, er, get to me. I think I did a good job of hiding it though. No one wants to hear an assistant instructor be like “Dude I would help you, but you are gross.”

When I got back to my apartment I heard voices in the kitchen. It was:

- my roommate Shady
- Shady’s girlfriend
- Reiko (our old friend from back in the day, just moved back to NYC)
- Photographer Mike and
- Mike’s sidekick/fellow photographer Tomi-kun a/k/a Tommy.

As I dumped my gear in front of the washing machine, Tommy pointed out I’ve got bags under my eyes. (Ain’t been sleeping right lately.)

Tommy’s this talented Japanese photographer Mike brought around a couple months back, and since then he’s been crew. He cooks a fuck of a lot so we frequently get to enjoy it.

Usually he cooks, one of us pays for the chow and the other does dishes or picks up dessert, you get the idea. The other night we had pork chops a la Tommy, which we’ve started calling Tommy-chops. The guy’s good with a camera and good with a frying pan. I just bought 24 legs of chicken and now Tommy’s whipping up some Japanese dish called Nam-ba chicken. If they’re anything like the Tommy-chops this will be a killer meal.

Right now Shady’s girlfriend, Cee (jewelry and textiles designer) is catching up with Reiko in our living room doing girl-stuff. Cee is showing Reiko a bunch of jewelry she did, they’re so cute together. They’re both like me, early thirties, but still both very girl-like.

My roommate started taking Muay Thai and he just came back from class. Tomorrow him and Cee are leaving for Norway for ten days. Cool, right? I want to go to Scandanavia. I been to Copenhagen quite a long time ago (man it was nice) and Finland is big on my travel list, right after Cuba.

I need to get out of the country for a spell. I go overseas every other year, and this is the year. I’ve heard the Finnish are famous for disliking conversation but I wanna check out Helsinki. I want to smoke Cuban cigars and browbeat Finns.

Talk to you later, I gotta help Tommy cut the chicken.

Today’s soundtrack: (miscellaneous and meandering bassline)
Today at 5:32pm: Happy at the mailbox.


My CD finally came in the mail. Atlantic Jazz Best of the ‘60s, Volume 2. I lack a thorough knowledge of jazz but years ago I was freelancing for Karim Rashid, and he had a drawer thick with CDs and I used to pull this one out a lot and feed it into the changer.

The album’s pretty solid front-to-back. I mean it’s not gonna change your life but it used to take the edge off my workdays like a good cigarette on a brisk autumn afternoon. One of those days where it’s starting to get cold but you’re glad and you pull your jacket around you a little tighter.

Back then I still lived in Brooklyn and I had my old car with the roll-down windows and these three slammin’-ass Cuban sisters lived downstairs. Their apartment was homey, super-comfortable and warm in the winter in a way mine could never be. I remember they used to make a big deal every time it snowed.

So anyways there’s a track on the CD called Bagpipe Blues by Rufus Harley and I had to have it so I ordered it used online. I get Music Jones worse than a pregnant woman’s pickles-and-ice-cream cravings. Get a song in my head and I just have to hear it. I think the worst thing about going to prison would be not having access to my MP3s. I mean, you know, the worst thing after that whole anal rape business.

It’s funny how music can bring you back.

Last time I talked to Natalia and them they were on their way back to Miami. Some people stay, some people go. I’m gonna stay; the only place I ever went back to was New York.

Today’s soundtrack: dead into my phenomenon, dazed with the quickness.
Today at 3:02pm: Breathing exercises.


I take martial arts, so I have a master. I guess it’s weird when I think about it, but overall having a master is good and I highly recommend it. Good ones like mine are like coaches, and their lessons go far beyond the boundaries of kicks and punches.

My master comes from a long line of black New-York-based martial artists; back when I was seeking out a style, studying under a master that was a person of color was of paramount importance to me. The master-student relationship involves trust, bonding and the transfer of large amounts of knowledge, and I can relate to a racial minority far better than I could to someone whose relatives had cabins on the Mayflower.

I study hapkido* but the curriculum also incorporates some jiujutsu, which my master studied under Soke John Davis, founder of Kumite Ryu Jiujitsu. Soke Davis came down from his school in Harlem to deliver a two-day “street tactics” seminar at our dojang and it was pretty goddamn intense.

Soke Davis is like a black Buddha. Short, squat, round, always beaming, smiling, laughing. Benevolent but tough, wise and wisecracking, with the dialectical marks of a person familiar with the streets. He’s also lightning-quick--I mean scary-quick--and he moves like a tiger.

He used me as the demonstration dummy for several techniques and as he tossed me around the mats it seemed like I had been transported to another dimension; in what seemed like only one second to me, Soke had pulled half a dozen techniques and mock-fashionedly broken my arm six ways ‘til Sunday. All while delivering friendly (and frequently funny) commentary. He asked me to choke him or throw punches at him and each ended up in swift disaster for me.

For someone with that much mass to move that goddamn fast simply defies laws of physics and nature. The man is truly a master. If you watched Soke move and were given the choice of fighting either him or Mike Tyson, you’d be like “Alright Mike, let’s see whatcha got, put ‘em up.”

Soke’s followers are hardcore. He entered the dojang with a phalanx of clean-cut and hard-ass lookin’ black men from uptown, several of whom spoke in thick Ebonics but all of whom bellowed a crisp “OSS”** when called on. Several of these guys also demonstrated techniques; each seemed perfectly capable of disarming a S.W.A.T. team.

At the end of the seminars I gave Soke a 90-degree bow and thanked him. He stuck out a hand to be shook and broke into a toothy grin of the sort that make you suspect there are no problems in the world. This is a man for whom adversity and particularly physical violence have simply ceased to be a threat. Soke seems to me to be something I have not seen in a long while: An uncomplicated and happy man.

I trained on my rooftop today, under the sun, sweating, alone and content. It felt good. In the middle of it I spotted a Chinese woman from the sweatshop next door watching me through a window but I pretended not to notice. She stayed for longer than I was comfortable with but what are you gonna do.

Next weekend I’m off to Vermont for an informal Hapkido training weekend. Today was only one day, and Vermont will be only three. It will take me years and years and years, but it feels good having something to shoot for.


*If you’re actually interested in what it is...do a web search. The web can do a better job of telling you what it is than I could.

** “OSS” = Japanese martial arts utterance of respect.

Today’s soundtrack:
It's Too High To Get Over (Yeah, Yeah)
Too Low To Get Under (Yeah, Yeah)

Today at 8:02pm: At my kitchen table discussing the Brooklyn real estate market with Shady and Hapkido Betty


If I could have a theme song--music that would follow me everywhere and be clearly audible to others--it would be the last thirty seconds of Michael Jackson’s “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’.”

I’d walk down the street and people would just hear

mamasay mamasah mamaboosah
mamasay mamasah mamaboosah

A tourist stops me to ask directions, and suddenly they’re drowned out by

mamasay mamasah mamaboosah
mamasay mamasah mamaboosah

A burglar wearing a striped shirt and a mask like Robin’s runs past me. Seconds later an out-of-breath cop runs up, asking me which way he went. But all he gets is

mamasay mamasah mamaboosah
mamasay mamasah mamaboosah

The closer I get to my neighborhood, more and more elderly Cuban dudes in hawaiian shirts, straw hats and sunglasses come out of their buildings and start following me. They surround me like a posse, clapping, shuffling and shooing people away from me.

mamasay mamasah mamaboosah
mamasay mamasah mamaboosah

I want a fucking cigarette.

Today’s soundtrack: We all know what your name is
so you better lay your money down.

Today at 9:02pm: Carrying my dinner home in a plastic bag.


Listening to a new Radiohead CD is like taking antibiotics; you’re not sure how long it’ll take to make you feel okay.

“Hail to the Thief” finally came in the mail for me. It would have come a fuck of a lot sooner if my case worker at Amazon had their shit together; it’s like my order was processed by a monkey.


AMAZON HANDLER: Yambo! That ‘Rain’ customer is complaining about the delay again! For fuck’s sake stop playing with your feces and put the goddamn CD on the truck!

YAMBO THE AMAZON ORDER FULFILLMENT MONKEY: Yeeeeek! Yeeeeeeeeeeeekk!

AMAZON HANDLER: (dodging feces) Bad Yambo, bad!


Where was I. Oh yeah, so I listened to the CD without much interest; it’s like smoking cigarettes, no one really likes it the first time around. It’ll sink in eventually.

Speaking of cigarettes, my smoke-free and joyless existence continues. I’m told depression is a side-effect of quitting. The surgeon general doesn’t make a big deal about that because feeling down in the dumps beats the fuck out of having emphysema. Right?

Right?

Right.

Floating my boat 7/15/03:

Led Zeppelin, “Living Loving Maid”
Lynyrd Skynyrd, “Free Bird”
Ronnie Dove, “Someday (You’ll Want Me To Want You)”
The Fixx, “One Thing Leads To Another”
Terence Trent D’Arby, “If You Let Me Stay”
Etta James, “If I Can’t Have You”
Fishbone, “Ma and Pa”
Cornelius, “Another Viewpoint”

We have a nice new sidewalk outside my building now. The Highway Dept.’s on a tear, they’re ripping up the whole neighborhood. New sidewalks everywhere. I can’t chew gum fast enough to replace the black spots they had on the old sidewalk.

It’s not for lack of trying, though. I keep a pack of Nicorette handy at all times but you gotta be careful with that shit. Several times I chewed it too rapidly, overeager for the fix, and got chest pains quickfast. The delivery method leaves a bit to be desired; it’s like drinking a glass of nicotine, too much too fast.

Due to a scheduling glitch, every Tuesday I’m now teaching two classes in a row at Hapkido. It’s tiring but I think today went okay.

There were some new white belts having the usual difficulties, which I did my best to ameliorate. It’s a good feeling when you help them get it right. There’s this one skinny white kid who looks like he just gets the shit kicked out of him at school--he’s got that frail, Harry-Potter-Book-One-look--so I wanna bring him up to speed quick.

Yesterday I was in class and some guy with long fingernails took a piece of my skin off during the grappling and I got to see my blood again. Why can’t people just cut their goddamn fingernails?

I have to admit I kind of dig the teaching. I act stern and focused and yell out the numbers in Korean and give the right answers when asked. I know what came before and I know what comes next.

There is some thinking required, but it’s all within strict parameters. There’s no personality, just plenty of sweat. Overall, class is hard on the body but easy on the brain, and that’s what I like.

Cut your fingernails.

Yeah, I let it go for a bit. I don’t know how you People With Hair live like this, it’s disgusting. Like having an animal on top of your head.

Today’s soundtrack:
somebody told me
boy everything she wants, is everything she sees

Today at 11:02pm: making iced decaf



They’re tearing up the sidewalk in front of my building. I thought the old one was fine but someone at City Hall didn’t so they tore it out this morning. You open the front door and there’s just a big crater.

I wonder what our nice new sidewalk is going to look like.

Something’s been happening to me lately and I feel like a different person. Like a lot of other things I’m experiencing at this age, that’s neither good nor bad, just...there. I don’t know what I expected my thirties to feel like but it sure wasn’t this.

I haven’t been participating in society at all; I’ve even avoided several important social engagements. And even though things have continued happening to me I haven’t felt capable of sitting down here and writing them to you. I wonder if it’s the cigarettes, or lack thereof?

Been quit well over two months now and I just don’t feel like myself without the smokes. Already my friends are finding me less engaging in conversation. I’m facing the awful truth that nicotine provided at least 51% of my personality; RJ Reynolds was the majority shareholder in my social appeal.

In my early twenties I figured I’d remain rebellious well into my thirties. Figured for sure I’d be owning things you can only get in Mexico and riding the motorcycle I knew better than to touch in younger years.

Well not only do I not own a motorcycle, I drive a fucking Volkswagen Golf. It’s the unsexiest little econobox you can imagine. The only thing remotely rebellious about my vehicular conduct is that I’m behind on the fucking payments. The most radical thing about me is that my hatchback installments are in arrears.

Anyways. I am going to have to start smoking soon or something. I can’t write, I can’t enjoy myself, I can’t do anything. It’s the nic goddammit, I need the nic.

On the upside, I bought the Band of Brothers full DVD set for my pops last month for Father’s Day. He told me he’d already seen it and asked if I could exchange it for something else.

So I took it home and watched the whole ten hours, and goddamn was it good. Holy shit it was good. I liked it so much I bought the book (by Stephen Ambrose) afterwards and the book was killer. (Other highly recommended reading for boys: Blackhawk Down by Mark Bowden. Trust me. Unless you’re a girl.)

Other good stuff I’ve seen lately: I downloaded a shitload of Space Ghost Coast to Coast episodes and finally saw Old School.

Space Ghost is hit-or-miss but the hits are fucking funny. The “Baffler Meal” and “Snatch” episodes in particular made me forget my misery.

Old School was pretty uneven, but Will Ferrell had three scenes in this movie that made me laugh until water came out of my eyes. Vince Vaughan is just okay but they didn’t give him enough to do.

So yeah something has to change soon. I don’t know what, and I hope I don’t start smoking again, but something’s gotta give here. Cigarettes are okay, right? I mean they’re not like heroin or anything, right? There’s no gangs having turf wars over smokes, right?

...Fuck.

Download the Stray Cats’ cover of “Sleepwalk” and fall asleep to it.