Two things I love: Waking up in a hotel, and canned coffee. Which makes today a good day, because I’m having one experience followed by the other.

I throw open the hotel shades and it’s Good Morning, Hawai’i. Palm trees, strong sunlight, and the beach is across the street. I can’t see it directly; obstructing my view are two large, slablike, sandstone-colored hotels. (It looks as if their architect, in a previous life, did time as an Egyptian Pharaoh.) External elevators move up and down on their surface like large glass beetles.

I started drinking canned coffee when I was living in Japan. You might think it’s gross, but drink it for a year and you develop cravings. They sell it in the Japanese convenience stores in New York and, I was happy to discover, every convenience store in Hawai’i.

First order of the day is to pick Beni up at her place, using the detailed map she drew on the back of the car’s rental agreement when I explained that Hawai’i has made me road-retarded.

I drop her off at work--then promptly get lost and spend twenty minutes zigzagging across Waikiki looking for the hotel. Back in the room, my laptop is waiting for me with work from The Corporation.

Well well well, if it isn’t my two good friends, Yin and Yang. You see it’s my first full day in paradise and I’m spending it cooped up in the Polo Inn, hunched over the laptop.

Outside the window behind me, people are falling in love, building sandcastles, hang-gliding, winning lotteries, riding unicorns and so on. And here I am inside, pasty-skinned, assembling files to make enough scratch to pay the rent. In the parking structure five stories below me, an expensive convertible sits unused. Way to think it through, Rain.

Rain’s Report Card

Financial Planning: F
Time Management: F
Wayfinding: D+

Comments: You’ve got as much of a future as the Y2K crisis.

I have no choice but to continue working. If I’d sucked it up last night I’d be more than halfway done with this shit by now, and this afternoon I’d be out there frolicking with mermaids and hanging out with Stitch and finding buried treasure. Oh well; maybe I should put the mouse down and waste an hour dwelling on what might have been.

Around 2pm I have to take a break, because I’ve got to pick Beni up at work and take her to traffic court. I know it’s not anyone’s idea of a vacation but I actually don’t mind. Plus I’m curious to see what kind of vehicular infraction she’s committed that she needs to go to court. Maybe she flew a mainlander down here and put skid marks on his back.

Still, Hawai’i’s not a bad place to be killed by a stalker. I’d rather be a corpse in Hawai’i than a CEO in...oh, never mind.

“Any idea how long the trial will last?” I ask.

“Shouldn’t be more than thirty minutes,” she says. Not enough time to go back to the hotel and get a meaningful amount of work done.

“If you find a spot, you can meet me upstairs,” she says, giving me the courtroom number. I drop her off in front of the courthouse and troll for parking.

Street parking in Honolulu is like my purpose in life: I can’t seem to find it. Po Bronson would have to write an entire series of books to solve my problems.

It dawns on me that I haven’t seen a single parking meter since I’ve been here. It’s like the parking meters went to war with the palm trees and lost, big-time.

I pull the car over in frustration, wondering what I should do. Half a cigarette later I realize I’m sitting in front of a sign that says PARKING in big red letters.

Aha, they have garages here.

I would’ve made a terrible Magnum, P.I.

Awareness: F

The courtroom is a quiet, stately-looking, wood-paneled affair. Everyone inside whispers and all the court officers are Asian. The two prosecutors are thirtysomething Asian women, hair tied in severe ponytails. The public defender is a thirtysomething Asian dude who looks like he’s tired but trying to hide it.

The judge is a matronly, soft-spoken Asian woman who wears her hair in a style similar to my mother’s. It’s scary to see someone who kind of resembles your mom but has the power to put you in prison for life. Not to mention the judge’s gavel looks a lot like the wooden spoon I became so familiar with for committing childhood infractions.

I wasn’t even that bad of a kid, just did the typical stuff. Foul ball through the window, had a couple fights, committed treason.

Beni’s got to wait her turn--the courtroom is packed with lawbreakers--so I break the laptop out and continue working on the files while the judge issues bench warrants in the background. I know, not exactly postcard material.

Hello from beautiful HAWAI’I! I’m currently in
court, doing work on my computer. The judge looks
like my mom. Bench warrants in Hawai’i are $300.

Wish you were here.

Postcard Writing: F

My hotel room has two side-by-side twin beds, like in I Love Lucy.

I’ve heard Waikiki has some of the best-looking hookers in the world. I’ll have to scoop one up and bring her back here. Then after she gets into bed, I’ll give her a chaste kiss on the cheek and climb into the other one in my silk Ricky Ricardo pajamas and go to sleep.

I know you’re supposed to snort blow off their tits but I think this is more original.

Some people leave stains, I like to leave an impression.

Driving through nighttime Waikiki reminds me of Vice City. Palm trees, light-colored buildings, and the other motorists--laid back and in no rush to get anyplace--provide nothing resembling a traffic threat. They’re so easy to get in front of, I almost don’t wanna do it.

“Make a left at the next light,” she says, distracting me from my thoughts of I need to jack that Trans-Am. If I was on a full vacation I’d be driving around aimlessly, but this time I’ve got a passenger and a purpose.

See, this most-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii came at a price, however small: I’d agreed to help my benefactor out with a series of tasks. Nothing reality-show-like, just mundanities--pickups, drop-offs and the like. What can I say? I’d rather be an errand boy in Hawaii than an errand boy in New York.

Hell, let’s call a spade a spade: I’d rather be an errand boy in Hawaii than a CEO in New York. I possess strong whore-like qualities. And after spending ten years watching my dignity die, even on Park Avenue while wearing a tie, this cabana-boy thing is a John I’m willing to bang.

So after checking in I had to drive Beni Factor to a secret undisclosed location to pick up some things, and from there drop her back off at her office, where she’d be putting in a late night. I had a late night of my own ahead of me, seeing as how The Corporation had given me a sizable take-home assignment the Friday before I left. Even whores can multi-task.

“You can pick me up around 2am,” said Beni, getting out of the car with a smile. “I’ll call you just in case.” She clacked into her building in her heels.

Now I found myself alone in a strange, tropical city at night with a spanking droptop and little in the way of real responsibilities. First thing I need to do is get my hands on a gun, I thought, then shook it off. My drifter fantasies are persistent but impotent.

Back to the hotel. I’ve always prized myself on having savant-like wayfinding abilities, but somehow I became befuddled after only one or two turns. The roads in Waikiki don’t obey grids, twisting and turning without warning. You’re facing south one moment and east the next, without having put your blinkers on.

I was lost inside of ten blocks. Suddenly the road gets all shimmery, I hear harp music, and realize I’m having a flashback.


FLASHBACK: TOKYO, JAPAN, 1998.

I’d just been accepted to the JET Program, a Japanese-government-sponsored teaching program where they select 2,000 twentysomethings from English-speaking countries around the world and fly them to Japan to teach English to schoolchildren for a year.

The three-day orientation conference in Tokyo was massive, with 2,000 expats--Americans, Australians, Brits, Canadians, New Zealanders--scattered over three different five-star hotels in ritzy Shinjuku. It was also Fuck-Fest ’98, with people hooking up left and right. Between seminars we’d go to bars, clubs, each other’s hotel rooms.

I met assloads of cool people from all over the world, and I’d never met more Americans from different areas of the country. It became like the military, where I was calling people by their last names and associating them with their regions just to keep them straight. There was McCarthy from Philadelphia, Delgado from Jersey, Chin from California, and on and on and on.

There was also a grip of Japanese-American cats from Hawaii, whom I liked right away because of their island accents, laid-back manner and endearing tribe-like qualities--these ho’s and bro’s stuck together like a huge and inseparable family.

The 2,000 of us broke into platoon-sized cliques. When we’d make plans to go out during the evenings, I was the defacto Squad Leader of mine since I’d been to Tokyo and could find shit. The Hawaiians, on the other hand, always showed up last and almost always got lost. If we were all together and the Hawaiians peeled off to hit a conbini (convenience store) several blocks away, I could rely on having to dispatch someone to retrieve them.

The group of us got chummy and teased each other. “You Hawaiians can’t map grids,” I’d said. “It’s like you can’t find anything unless there’s a waterfall or a volcano next to it.” One of them cursed me out in pidgin.

Now here I was in Hawaii, lost after an embarassingly short distance. I didn’t see any waterfalls or volcanos, just buildings, street signs and a grid I couldn’t get my head around. All the road names seemed to begin with “K” and sounded like something Pee-Wee Herman would say before cutting to commercial. I went straight, I went in circles. I went left like Al Franken and right like Karl Rove. I scrutinized palm trees to see if they were the same ones I just passed.

Finally, an hour later I’d completed my ten-minute trip, miraculously (and completely randomly) pulling up in front of the hotel.

Note to Self: When you go to pick her up...pack sandwiches.

Getting lost is exhausting, and so is staying up for thirty-six hours. Back in the hotel room, I felt trying one of those twins out was more important than The Corporation’s rent-paying project.

(“Trying one of those twins out.” I was referring to the beds, in case you started reading this entry at the end and were maybe thinking Mary Kate.)

I fell on the bed like you hit me with a hammer.

BDDDDDDDDDDDDDTT

[snore]

BDDDDDDDDDDDDDTT

[snore]

BDDDDDDDDDDDDDTT

[snort]

BDDDDDDDDDDDDDTT

“Huh what goddammit motherfucker where am I--” fumble, fumble “--hello?”

“Hi. Were you sleeping?” asks a woman’s voice.

“Sleeping? No! I’ll be right there,” I say, trying to remember where I’m supposed to be.

Ten minutes later I smell like mouthwash; my hair, if I had any, would be all fucked-up; and I’m getting lost in Honolulu at two in the morning.

Upshot: The roof’s down and the weather’s nice.

With the six-hour time difference, at this hour back in New York some poor slob is sitting in the seat I’d normally be occupying on the six-train. Enjoy it, sucker.

I think I’m supposed to make a right up here. Yep, definitely a right...wait a minute...shit...I should’ve gone left.

You meet people from New York, they all wanna get out of New York. You meet people outside the city and they all wanna come here. It’s what I call damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t geography.

Right now I’m the guy in the first sentence, and I’m damned-if-I-don’t. It’s 8am on a Sunday and I step outside my door, bleary-eyed but on my way to paradise. I stayed up all night to make myself tired. Today I’m supposed to spend eleven hours in airplanes, and I’d like to be unconscious for all of them.

At this hour Canal ain’t crowded, and I tow the carry-on along the gutter in no danger of being hit by a taxi. Five years ago when I was making money I’d take a taxi to the airport, but times have changed so I’m hopping the A-train. Takes longer, costs less. Tastes great, less filling.

The guy next to me on the subway platform is jerking off. The girl standing near us notices first and hightails it out of there. My wits are dim with sleep deprivation so it takes me longer to notice this guy is masturbating and, in the absence of the girl, staring at me.

I sigh and pull my luggage to the other end of the platform, shaking my head while Horny McYankabee shakes his. He’s whacking it so enthusiastically that if I owned a whack-off company I’d hire him on the spot.

JFK is a miserable little complex of buildings, but I’m more than happy to put up with them because every time I see ‘em it means I’m about to experience another city.

Seven kids. I’ve just boarded the airplane and behind me comes a Hasidic couple with seven kids. The youngest is a baby, and they seem to scale up in two-year intervals, putting the eldest at around twelve (assuming the age of the baby is zero).

I am in awe, absolute awe, of the father. He holds nine tickets in his hand, trying to figure out which seats are which while the children clamor amongst themselves loudly.

“Hey,” says the father, softly. “Is everyone listening to me?” All of the children fall silent, instantly.

He didn’t raise his voice or put the slightest bit of menace in it, but his entire brood is facing him obediently, awaiting orders. Fucking amazing. I’ve never seen parental control like this in my life, and I’m Asian.

“Okay, it looks like we have these two rows,” he says, indicating the row I’m in, and the one in front of me. Due to inattentive ticketing clerks I have been placed smack-dab in the middle of Swiss Family Hasidim.

I figure I’ll do the right thing. “You want me to move, so alla youse can sit together?” I say to Hasidic Superdad.

“Oh, so you want the window seat?” he asks.

“No no--”

“So you want to sit in the aisle.”

Jeez Louise, everything’s a negotiation. “No no, it doesn’t make a difference to me. I’m saying, if you all want to sit together I can move. Up to you.”

Hasidic Superdad turns to his wife, who gives me a sour look and nods grudgingly, like she’s doing me some kind of favor. I’m not sure what that was about but I move over anyway, thereby uniting the family.

Unfortunately my act of good Samaritanism puts me in the exceedingly cramped window seat, where I discover sleep is impossible. Well, if I don’t do anything else right today, at least I enabled Hasidic contiguousness.

I transfer at LAX without event, and on the second flight I’m seated next to a lanky businessman with a southern drawl. “You in the service back in Hawaii?” he asks. Takes me a minute to realize a) he thinks I’m going back to Hawaii, like I’m from there, and b) he thinks I’m in the military.

“Thought you might be a Marine,” he says, indicating my haircut. “We do a fair amount of business with them in my line of work.”

I would unfortunately spend the next half hour learning about his line of work, as well as enduring a checklist of why his ex-wife is a bad, bad person. I’ll spare you the tales of both. Why do strangers always assume you care what they have to say? I continued nodding politely and tried to sleep, eventually failing at both.

Five hours later it’s like the Aloha Bowl: Touchdown in Hawaii.

Coming out of the deplaning tunnel, I haven’t slept a damn wink, my neck’s got a crick and it’s hot like a club. I pull the hoodie off and make for baggage claim. Not because I checked anything but because that’s where the exit is.

Outside I light my first smoke in what feels like forever and unkink my neck. There are palm trees here. Staring at them, I call my contact.

She appears within minutes, says my name, smiles, and puts a lei around my neck. This is like some kind of dream. Less than twenty-four hours ago I was standing underground and wrinkling my nose, trying to discern if I’d stepped in human feces. Now I'm wearing flowers and standing in a summery breeze, blinking.

(By the by, if you’re awaiting a more detailed description of my benefactor...sorry. She funded this trip and I’ve got some privacy issues to uphold.)

She’s come with a small posse. The group of us exchange pleasantries and a few moments later I’m climbing into a car with four complete strangers, two dudes, two chicks.

Part of me was worried but most of me wasn’t; these cats were so laid back, if they tried to stab me it would be in slow-motion and I’d see it coming a mile away. I could drink a steaming cup of coffee while dodging their blows and avoid spilling a single drop.

“Thanks for picking me up,” I say to the driver, as he pulls us onto something called the Nimitz Highway.

“No problem ah,” he says. He’s deeply tanned and looks as if he’s never been angry in his entire life. I bet I could grab the wheel, steer the car into a ditch and he would just kind of grin.

We’re in the car for maybe two minutes before I see a rainbow. I guess they’re commonplace around here, but back in New York the only rainbows you see are printed on banners hoisted skyward by marching homosexuals. I gape and snap a blurry photo, quick and spazlike.

“First time in Hawaii, eh?” says the driver, in his pleasant local drawl.

“I was here when I was eight...uh...twenty-five years ago. Don’t remember much,” I say, cursing as my auto-focus neglects to cooperate with me.

Next we pull up in front of the car rental place, where my benefactor has arranged a rental for me. This and my meals will be the part of the trip I am paying for. She knows I’m flat broke and has reserved me a Dodge Neon, the cheapest car on the lot.

My hosts wait outside while I sort the rental papers out at the counter. I tap my credit card on the edge.

“Dodge Neon, automatic, A/C....” says the clerk, peering into his computer screen and tapping keys. Behind him, hanging on the wall is a picture of a gold convertible in front of a grassy field.

Don’t ask, don’t ask. Just don’t.

“Just out of curiousity, how much more would a convertible be?” I ask.

“Hmm, let’s see.” He types some more, looks confused for a moment, then looks pleased. “I can give you a special: It will work out to...eight dollars more.”

“Eight dollars total?” I say, in disbelief. A business major I’m not.

“Eight dollars more per day,” he explains, in the manner you tell a small child that policemen and firemen are not the same thing. “For the week that’ll run you an extra fifty-six dollars.”

Fifty extra bucks. Don’t do this, Rain, don’t. You need that fifty bucks. Fifty-six bucks.

“If you skip the insurance it will work out to about the same,” adds the clerk.

For god’s sake, Rain, for once in your life act like an adult, be responsible and live within your means. Don’t get the convertible, don’t get the convertible. You don’t need it and you can’t afford it.

So I pull out of the lot in the convertible. It’s a Chrysler Sebring, which isn’t exactly a Mustang, but I’m not exactly Steve McQueen.

A moment of staring at that photo behind the counter and a moment of brief, sullen reflection on my life back in New York ensured the Dodge Neon would stay in the back of the lot. Perhaps it would be rented out later, by some sensible-shoes-wearing motherfucker with a dental plan and a future. But here’s me, putting the top down, feeling the sun on my shorn pate and asking a woman I don’t know, “Where to?”

“To check you into your hotel,” she says. “Follow them.”

The rest of the group pulls off in their sedan and I peel after them, adjusting my seat and mirrors. I’d be used to this in a minute.

Today’s soundtrack: madness, madness, they call it madness
Today at 5:02pm: running into Sal the Barber on the streets of Little Italy



The past few days have been eventful...just not interesting. Meaning there were “events” but during any of them I don’t think my pulse rose above resting rate once. For those of you looking for a quick and interesting read, this is your cue to click onto someone else’s blog and/or porn.

Which reminds me--do they have porn blogs? They should, you could kill two birds with one stone.

The main event of three days ago was endeavoring to get the car fixed. For those of you just catching up, a few weeks ago I hit a pothole on Lafayette and my passenger-side airbags, like our troops in Iraq, unnecessarily deployed. It sounded like a fucking starter pistol. Bottom line is I need to cough up three grand to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Expenses are piling up and my income is shrinking like John Kerry’s lead, so I’m debating putting the whip on the market. But either way I gotta replace the airbags. If some knucklehead taxi driver T-bones me on Delancey, I don’t want a friend of mine to get a concussion because I couldn’t come up with some lousy dollar amount. Safety’s expensive but there isn’t any alternative.

For reasons too irritating to explain, I had to take the car to a body shop in upstate New York. (Long story short: much cheaper labor rates. Manhattan mechanics make lawyer money.) As luck would have it, the very town where I went to high school.

The mechanic who took the car from me had oil-blackened arms and a sour expression, a good clue as to what his nine-to-five was like. His face seemed familiar to me and after a moment I realized we’d gone to high school together, though we’d never spoken. Needless to say he didn’t remember me, and I don’t know what I would’ve said if he had.

His name was Luca, like the Suzanne Vega song, and his “office” was makeshift; it looked like the kind of thing you set up when the FBI’s after you and you might have to bail at a moment’s notice. Less furniture, more boxes. He pulled a cardboard carton out of a corner for me to sign the work order on.

On the way out I saw a sign that said FREE COFFEE with an arrow and my feet automatically stopped moving. There was a pot and burner sitting on a card table, but a cursory glance told me to pass. The coffee looked and smelled like it had been sitting there since shortly after coffee was first discovered. For all I knew this was the first pot of joe brewed in human history, still untouched after all these years. The Indiana Jones of Coffee is looking for this bitch.

Next I had to get back to the city. Having lived in this town I knew where the train station was, but I had only traversed these streets by skateboard and, later, Datsun. It’s the suburbs, where you don’t walk anywhere. Well, first time for everything.

On the way to the terminal something weird happened. I stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts, which is just about my favorite place in the whole world. Tim Horton’s in Canada and Dunkin’ Donuts in the ‘States. (I’ll never forget the time I found a Dunkin’ Donuts in Seoul, Korea; for me it was like GPS’ing the lost tomb of Tutankhamen.)

So I’m inside waiting on line, and ahead of me is an older, avuncular-looking lawyer-type of guy, and a well-dressed younger gentleman I’m assuming was his son. The two of them are talking and laughing and the older guy gives the younger this big, you’re-the-best-son-in-the-world-and-I-love-you-so-much kind of hug.

Post-hug they start discussing coffee. “Did you ever buy coffee here? The grinds, I mean? Their coffee is great,” says the older, confirming what I already know as one of this universe’s absolute truths. It’s not only great, it’s consistent: D&D coffee in Seoul smells and tastes exactly the way it does on 34th Street.

“No, I’ve always just gotten it at the counter,” says the younger.

“Well, you’ve got to try it, it’s just terrific,” says the older, and walks over near me, to peruse the bags of coffee grinds sitting on a shelf.

I realize I’m in the way, so I step aside to let him pass. “No no, it’s okay,” says the older, smiling and maneuvering around me. As he passes he puts his hand on my shoulder and gives it this...warm, loving squeeze. I know that sounds disturbing to you but it wasn’t in a homoerotic or creepy way, it was in more of an “I love my life” kind of way, like he was just a happy guy that did this to everyone.

A second cashier took my order, and I made it out of the store before the father and son. In the parking lot I spied this beautiful Porsche convertible with the top down. I remember in this town people used to leave their car doors unlocked.

After passing the car I turn around to check, and sure enough the older guy has just said goodbye to the younger and is making a beeline for the Porsche. Well, no wonder the guy loves life. I bet his airbags are working just fine.

I made the train station inside of thirty minutes, and thirty minutes after that I was riding the rails back to NYC. Trying to read that Po Bronson book, but the train was crowded and complete strangers, for reasons unbeknownst to me, were actually engaging in conversation with each other.

Aphex Twin is something I’d never put on while sitting around the house, but I’ve discovered it’s perfect for drowning out ambient chatter while trying to read in mass transit. Headphones, on.

When the train pulled into Grand Central everyone got up, and I saw that sitting in the row right before me was an attractive woman about my age, dressed in a business suit, hair in a no-nonsense ponytail. Perhaps this is why strangers engaged in conversation.

Our eyes met briefly and she smiled, which I found so unusual I almost didn’t smile back.

As the lot of us shuffled onto the platform, the attractive businesswoman and I ended up side by side for a moment, just a moment. Then the flowing tide of people took its course and we became separated. A sea of bobbing heads, all single-mindedly moving in the same direction, towards the concourse.

My friend Lam has this amazing ability: He’ll meet a woman he’s attracted to--a waitress in a restaurant, a woman on a bus--and miraculously run into them time and again on the street--without even stalking them! It’s like he sends out a homing beacon and these women wander about until they eventually are drawn to the exact corner where he’s standing.

But me, I lack this ability. This attractive woman on the train, I knew I’d never see her again, like the guy with the Porsche. Some people occupy five seconds of your consciousness, then they go off and live the rest of their entire lives without entering your periphery again. They go to work, take trains, raise sons, buy coffee. Fall in and out of love, celebrate birthdays, watch fireworks. The only time when our schedules will jive, without fail, is when we’re all six feet in the ground.

Then again, I ran into Luca again. I think we had Typing together, never spoke, and fifteen years later the guy’s fixing my car. Barring unforeseen calamity I’ll see him again when I go to pick the damn thing up.

It still seems none of this has any real meaning. But at least my car will have some real-ass airbags.

Sorry, I don’t know where all this nihilism’s coming from. In twenty-four hours I’m going to be in Hawaii, so hopefully in a week I’ll have some more upbeat, paradise-driven entries to post complete with trite pictures of palm trees and Polynesian-themed shopping malls. Unless my host really does turn out to be some kind of psycho stalker, in which case I’ll be lying in a bed like James Caan in Misery begging for my legs because I knocked a fucking penguin over.

Previous donors, look for an e-postcard from me sometime mid-week. If you donated but don’t find anything from me it’s because your account is full and it bounced, this happened to me a couple times.

If you’re a bored, wealthy industrialist or if you want to join the e-postcard list, hit this link

Dunkin’ Donates

and pitch a buck or whatever into the pot.

Snail-mail donations, judgmental letters of disapproval and packages of dead rats can be sent to:

N. Rain Noe
P.O. Box 1212
New York, NY 10013

But please be aware that I’ll post entries here either way, so no one has to donate anything (unless you want a silly little e-mail from me). This trip is paid for and I pass the savings on to you.

As always, in case I accidentally die on this trip and this is the last thing I ever get to post, I’ll put up a happy picture in order to be remembered properly:

Ciao.

Today’s soundtrack:
Jimi Hendrix’s Bold As Love (instrumental).
I was sick and didn’t even know it and this song is the medicine.
Today at 9:02pm: taking my dinner home in a bag



I know this went around months ago, but months ago I was too busy fighting crime to give this the proper attention.


name
Rain Noe a/k/a Ray Ray Montepulciano a/k/a Mr. Lucky

age
the nice, palindromic age of 33

where on earth do you live
Manhattan, Building #4

reason behind your LJ username
it’s nonsense

five things you want to do/accomplish before you die
- finish writing my will
- double-drop-kick someone who richly deserves it through a plate-glass window
- fire a handgun in anger, preferably while drunk
- steal a car
and of course,
- make a positive difference in just one child’s life

what makes you happy
ska, coffee, dogs, E-Z Pass, bacon cheeseburgers, dogs again (specifically, the fact that dogs have black lips)

what have you been listening to lately
The faint screaming sound my soul makes as it’s dying. For the sake of convenience I’ve converted it to MP3

interesting fact about you
When I was in college my girlfriend’s roommate was a manic-depressive. So one time my girlfriend came home to find her roommate sitting in the bathtub and smearing dog food all over herself. Sometimes I think “Hmm, I’d like to try that” and then another part of my brain goes “What the fuck are you, crazy?” and then I feel all bad.

Are you in love at the moment
Hey, let's keep this professional

favourite destination
I don’t play favorites, I love them all equally. Except the west side of Manhattan, which is my red-headed stepchild

favourite quote
“Stand clear of the closing doors.” There’s beauty, majesty and inspiration in those words.

RECOMMEND...

a movie
“Being Human,” 1993

a book
Guns, Germs & Steel by Jared Diamond

a band, song or album
So listen. A friend burned me this live, instrumental version of Hendrix’s “Bold As Love” and if you can get your hands on it somewhere it will change your fucking life. It changes mine all the time. When the needle moves to the right on the This Sucks meter, I put this song on and the needle moves back to the left.

your favorite LJ user
Don’t tell the others...but it’s you.

Today’s soundtrack: I never cross the tracks baby
Today at 12:02pm: trying to teach this yellow belt the difference between right and wrong



I am a random number generator. Watch.

42.

You see that? Wait, I’ll do it again.

17.

Blam! Who got skills?

233.

Ouch! Don’t be so mean.

6,841.

How does he do it?

I was reading the Film section of the Village Voice. I don’t really like the Voice but it’s free and sometimes over lunch I want to read something that isn’t coming through a modem. Anyways I saw the word “solipsistic” in three different capsule reviews on the same page. When I got home I looked it up, but I think it will be some time yet before I can use it in a sentence. In the meantime I hope it doesn’t apply to me.

Film Guy is putting me on a project, and in order to execute it I have to watch certain movies to understand points he brings up. Tonight my homework was to watch a movie about a talking pig. It’s interesting--fifteen years ago I had to read Animal Farm for homework, but at 33 I’m watching Babe. Is it any wonder I’m shaping up to be a poor excuse for an adult.

My auto insurance company says they’re cancelling my policy. Between that and the three grand I need to cough up to fix the airbags, if I can’t get it sorted out tomorrow I’ll just have to suck it up and sell the car. I wanted to live in a certain way but I have to face reality, which says I am not making it work.

To have a car in Manhattan is rare, and rather than feel bad about losing it I guess I should just be happy I got to experience it at all. It’s okay, and there are worse things to fail at. I’ll figure something else out for roadtrips.

Something that kind of bothers me is that the airbag thing happened while I was doing a friend a favor. Tommy Chops asked me to take him out to Home Depot on a Saturday. I left my Saturday available but he changed it to Sunday at the last minute. So we went out Sunday and I slammed into that pothole, which changed everything.

Well, whaddaya gonna do, I guess it’s nobody’s fault. Coulda, woulda, shoulda, blah blah blah. Once you’re in the shitter, culpability is moot. Just have to keep shoveling.

Today at Hapkido I made a frightening discovery: They have a new promotional card, and they put my picture on it. I’m not doing anything dramatic in it, it’s just a simple silhouette and it looks I’m striking a silly pose. But who needs this kind of pressure? Now if I get into a fight I have to win it. What will it look like if I’m on the fucking promotional material and I end up having my ass handed to me?

I think they just had the picture lying around and it looked photogenic. I’m far from the best guy at the school--I’m not even one of the black belts! During my last test I got tossed around by a fucking blue belt. In an actual brawl I rate my chances as only slightly above average, and this is on a good day when I’m wearing the proper shoes.

With my luck I’ll end up on the wrong side of a haymaker and get knocked the fuck out sometime next week, right in front of the school. I’ll be lying unconscious in a pool of my own blood in front of a blown-up poster of me in full uniform.

24,918.

I am blowing your mind.

Today’s soundtrack: I took the LIRR but I didn’t have a ticket
Today at 3:02pm: trying to get some writing done


All of these things are linked.

- Three days ago Manhattan was hit by torrential downpours.

- Two days ago in SoHo I saw a sidewalk inexplicably covered in a warehouse’s worth of antique furniture.

- Yesterday I learned a building was about to collapse.

- Tonight I saw something, for lack of a better term, wondrous.

Lemme go through one thing at a time.

The torrential downpours on Thursday. Residue from Hurricane Frances, I’m told. Good thing the full force of the hurricane didn’t reach Manhattan; I saw what Frances did to those poor trailer parks.

Say, how come hurricanes always hit low-income, (relatively) low-cost structures? You’d swear the insurance companies had something to do with it. Mutual of Omaha has some kind of Weather Control Machine with a Hurricane Guidance device.

After buying dried mangoes on Friday at the Wholesome Market, I saw a section of Wooster Street had been closed off to traffic. The familiar sight of police barricades and two bored cops slouching over them, legs crossed made me think they were filming a movie.

Yet after bypassing the barricades I saw no film crews, just a gargantuan grouping of antique furniture that spilled off of the sidewalk and into the street. There was enough furniture here for like, thirty Victorian living rooms, or “parlors” or “sitting rooms” or whatever the hell they were called.

Yesterday in Chinatown I ran into Fashion Girl and she watched me eat a chicken sandwich at Dragonland Bakery (she’d already eaten).

Shortly thereafter we ran into my ex-roommate, Shady. Guy bought his own condo and is currently like Ed Norton’s character in the first ten minutes of Fight Club--he’s obsessed with decorating his place. We accompanied him up to the MoMA store on Crosby, so he could buy the latest candela lamps.

Afterwards we wandered through SoHo, which I despise on a Saturday, and passed the now-empty building the antiques had been in front of a day earlier. Again, the entire block was closed to vehicular traffic. A burly fireman who looked like he’d rather be somplace else stood with his arms crossed, keeping an eye on the building like it was a four-year-old child at a playground.

“‘Scuse me, why’s the block closed?” I asked him.

“Building’s unstable,” muttered the fireman, pointing with his chin towards the former antique store. Ahhh. I remember reading something about this in the papers; flooding from the storm had somehow caused the entire building, which is older than your grandparents, to shift. Apparently it’s about to collapse.

“I wonder why they don’t just tear it down,” said Shady. “Whatta these guys waitin’ for? Why’s e’rybody just standing around? They should tear it down.”

“You think they’ll use a wrecking ball, or dynamite?” I asked.

“Definitely a wrecking ball,” said Shady.

“I’ve never seen a wrecking ball,” I said. “Just in cartoons.”

“They use dynamite when the building is structurally sound, but needs to come down,” Shady continued. “If the building’s unstable they won’t send guys in to set the charges, ‘cause it might fall on top of ‘em.”

“I’d like to see a wrecking ball,” I said.

Fashion Girl seemed disinterested in either option.

Tonight I was on my way back to the house when I heard some loud booms off to the west. They were thunderous, but distant; it sounded like God was firing off a .357 Magnum somewhere in New Jersey.

Remembering the about-to-collapse building, I figured I might actually get to see a wrecking ball, and ran back to the house to get my camera.

Five minutes later I’d made my way over to Grand Street and was walking in the direction of the antiques building, trying not to get excited. I wondered if it would be the diameter of a desk globe, or more the size of an easy chair. I wondered how they got up the momentum to swing it; did they just work the crane back and forth?

I heard the booming and quickened my steps, then saw something that stopped me in my tracks: The darkened sky was lighting up, in flashes. Not just a small part of it, either. Something caused the entire western half of the sky to flicker from dark purple to bright white, like a television screen. What the fuck?

At first I thought it was thunder or lightning, but the flashes were too bright and comprehensive; whatever it was was manmade. Next I thought it had to be fireworks, but the flashes were only white, and I’ve never seen a fireworks show that didn’t make use of color.

Even stranger, no one else on the street seemed to notice! Of all the people crossing the street and walking down the sidewalk, not a single one pointed, or paused, or even looked skyward. But the entire sky in that direction was turning white. I couldn’t understand it.

Thirty seconds after the flashing and booming subsided, I reached the block with the shifty building. A cop with hopes and dreams--hopes and dreams that weren’t to be found on this block--had his arms propped up on a barricade.

“‘Scuse me,” I said, causing him to raise his eyebrows in my direction, but remain otherwise motionless. “You know what’s going on on the West Side? Is there a fireworks show?”

“Huh?” he said.

“The sky,” I said, pointing. “The sky was flashing.”

He turned his head and looked over his shoulder at a sky that remained resolutely dark purple. “News to me,” he said.

Well, I knew there was something going on on the West Side, and even if no one else on the street reacted to it, I know I saw the sky flashing and heard big booms a few minutes ago. So I cut over to Canal and hoofed it for the West Side Highway. The sky remained dark.

On Canal Street cars were lined up to get into the Holland Tunnel like lemmings piling over a cliff, but after I banged a left onto Watts, there were no cars whatsoever. Just me on foot, surrounded by the glittery night blocks of Manhattan. Dark, looming buildings in rows, punctuated by little yellow rectangles, the inconsistent grids of windows lit from within. It always looks so warm inside other people’s apartments.

Something caught my eye, and I stopped in my tracks again: Off in the distance, one of the blocks was moving. Down at the end of Watts Street, an entire city block was sliding sideways, from right to left. And moving quickly, too.

I stared at it a minute, wondering what the fuck was wrong with me, when I realized that what I’d thought was a city block was in fact some type of massive cruise liner in the Hudson River. Multistoried and with more windows than the Plaza Hotel, and apparently under full steam. Must’ve pulled out from the docks up by the Intrepid.

I had to shoot this thing. At this range and in this kind of light I’d never get a good shot, so I started sprinting down Watts, blowing past a homeless guy fast enough that I couldn’t even smell him.

At the West Side Highway I just missed the light, and a line of SUV’s rocketing across my field of vision suggested jaywalking was not a good idea. Through passing traffic, I watched in frustration as the ship steamed away from me, getting smaller and smaller. The West Side Highway sees a large volume of cars, and the lights take forever.

By the time it changed, I ran across to the promenade and the ship was little more than a brightly lit speck all the way down by Battery Park City. How the fuck can something that big move that fast? I broke out the camera anyway, braced it against the railing and snapped a few doomed-to-fail shots.

A tourist couple strolled past me.

“Would you like me to take a shot of you by the water?” asked the guy, pointing at my camera. I was crouched down by the railing and had a miserable expression on my face.

“Uh--thanks, but no thanks,” I said. “Trying to get a shot of the ship.”

“Say, what is that monument?” the guy asked, pointing to the brightly-lit building standing at the end of a dock off to the right.

Everyone always thinks it’s some kind of monument. “That’s the ventilation tower for the Holland Tunnel,” I explained.

He seemed disappointed by this, then chuckled before walking on with his girl.

Today’s soundtrack: call out the instigators, because there’s something in the air
Today at 12:12am: trying to take a picture in a puddle reflection. Then a Parks Department SUV drove through the puddle, destroying the image with splash and ripple


Spent most of today by myself. At night I didn’t want to think about 9/11 so I went outside and walked around until it was 9/12. Found myself down at the memorial anyway.

If I had to do it all over again I’d have framed that photo up above differently. And backing up three years, I wouldn’t have gone into the subway that day. I would have stood on the corner with my morning coffee, looked south and taken a good, long look.

I’ve been morose for three days so tomorrow will surely be an up day.

Today’s soundtrack: Say a word for Jimmy Brown, he ain't got nothing at all.
Today at 4:32pm: Holding a stoop down on Broome Street.

This is what the view was like from up there. I just wanted you to see, in case you’d never been.

I’d been to the top several times, but I didn’t take this picture. Pulled it off some website while I was doing research for an article.

The last time I’d been up there was the ‘90s. You think it’ll always be there, so you figure sometime you’ll go back, maybe get some drinks up at Windows of the World.

Today’s soundtrack: oh, honey baby that’s a dead end
Today at 12:02am: metaphorically speaking, you are going to pay a lot for this muffler


I seek a connection with a woman, complete and total two-way understanding interspersed with good chow and what laughs are to be had.

In the absence of that, I seek corporal pleasures. Meaning sex. Sex of course runs the gamut from lovemaking to hardcore pound-fucking, and I’m down for any of it, but it is the wideness of this range that frightens women. That’s what I believe anyway.

In the absence of sex, when that fear of dying alone hits with profound impact I wouldn’t mind just making out with some chick in a bar. Not just any chick, but some chick.

That last sentiment, if spoken aloud and misconstrued, can really turn a woman off. Ironic, huh.

This is what I feel right now, so I write it. I am curious to see if I will feel this way next week. Whether I do or don’t, the subways will keep running, people will keep waking up in the mornings and going to work, and heading to bars afterwards to drink their faces off, and taxis will hurtle down the block towards the end of the day and all the weeks thereafter.

In this city, there are some connections that are easy to make. Namely, the six to the five at Union fucking Square.

Today’s soundtrack: today won’t start again
Today at 12:02am: floating up deserted Hudson Street like a ghost



Last night’s mission: Go to Hoboken to see Asobi Seksu.

To the east of Manhattan is the cleverly named East River, and beyond that, Brooklyn. To the west is the Hudson River and past that, New Jersey.

For a lot of New Yorkers the world effectively ends at the Hudson River. I used to be one of those people but I now realize it’s silly to demean Jersey. Jersey’s got diners and Ikea and bars where you can smoke and suburban angst taking place close enough to the city that it’s still got that edge to it.

Newark is no place you wanna raise children, but Jersey City’s coming up and Hoboken’s got bars with live shows. In ’96 I was dating some girl who lived in Hoboken, and I remember walking past a bar and seeing a sign that said Cibo Matto, Tonight! but I didn’t really listen to them then so I skipped it. Ah, regrets.

I ended up seeing them years later on the Lower East Side, when they were playing with Sean Lennon, who was all bloated and John-Belushi-style. I guess once you land a chick like Yuka Honda you can afford to let yourself go. If Yuka Honda loved me no matter what, I’d be eating pizza without using my hands and wearing pants only occasionally.

To get the PATH (the non-MTA subway that takes you to Hoboken) I had to walk down to the station at Ground Zero. Nine-eleven is the last thing I want to think about when I’m trying to go out and have a good time, but whaddaya gonna do.

The PATH train looks nothing like the six, it’s all small, like something that takes you from one end of an airport to another. It’s also cheaper, just three bucks round-trip.

Not many people going out to Hoboken on a Thursday night, just a few bleary-eyed commuters, so I had a whole row to myself and ate the last of the written-on bananas unmolested. I know it’s gross to eat on trains but I knew I’d need something in my stomach to soak up the gin.

Maxwell’s is the type of place where you can get a Tanqueray and tonic served to you in a plastic cup for five bucks. Plastic cups are funny because their very presence suggests this is the type of joint that a) can’t afford glassware, or b) tried glassware and it didn’t work out, meaning one patron had too much to drink and this culminated in another patron getting stitches.

I was in the stage/performance part of the bar, which is in a separate room from the workaday tipplers. Their part of the bar looked like any other bar in the country, but the room I was in was painted entirely matte black, with a small stage opposite the booze counter.

Guy at the door didn’t ID me, which I thought was strange. Then after I got my drink the bartender thanked me for tipping him a buck, which I thought was stranger. Next I noticed the lanky white kid who ordered after me got carded.

Lanky white kid...something struck me as wrong about that appraisal.

I looked around the black room and saw that the clientele was the opposite color, almost exclusively. I was the only non-white in there. Hard to believe this was a mere ten minutes away from downtown Manhattan.

Awesome and terrible, you could smoke in this place. Thank god for New Jersey. Throwing back a drink with smoke on my lips reminded me of when I used to hang out, the good old days, when New York was different, the actual city I came up in that no longer exists. Now I was reliving part of it in Jersey.

Being permitted to pollute your lungs and the lungs of those around you while dulling your senses with gin ain’t exactly a wholesome reward, but you take what you can get.

A sign above the bar said “EARPLUGS - $1” which I thought was curious.

I didn’t think it was so curious five minutes later, when Electrelane started playing and I came back to buy a pair. Fucking loud.

With earplugs in you can still hear live music quite clearly--and the bass rattling your ribcage? Yeah that doesn’t change--but you kind of feel like you’re inside a force field. It’s somewhat anaesthetizing and I like it.

Electrelane didn’t do anything for me; they don’t exactly have what you call “stage presence,” but after they got off Asobi Seksu came on.

The front woman is a petite Japanese-American chick and the guitarist, bassist and drummer are white guys. They laid into the first song without much ado, BLAM, and as the first waves of sound crashed over me I instantly felt like I was twenty feet higher. As if the room, not the people in it but the actual room suddenly stood up, altering the perspective.

The chick really rocks out. She’s jamming away on this keyboard and rocking her head and belting it out into this microphone. She’s got a voice like a J-Pop star, catchy, but without the saccharine qualities. Her entire body is shuddering with the beat. She throws her head back in between lyrics and it looks like she’s having an orgasm.

You can see she’s totally feeling it; I love when you get to see that kind of passion, and these sounds are coming out of her and the other band members. There was one song that started off mellow and then the guitarist and bassist just started ripping it, sending shivers up my spine.

Watching the front woman’s face, contorted in something like ecstasy, it’s no secret to me why rock stars get laid like they do. I remember picking up an ex of mine after she’d caught Radiohead at Radio City. She enthused about the show: “They were like...gods. I don’t know how they can make such a sound.”

At that moment I knew if we came back to her place that night and Thom Yorke was waiting in her bedroom, I’d be sitting in the kitchen staring at the wall while the headboard slammed into it from the other side. “Jesus, take it easy in there,” I’d say, looking around for something to eat.

Musicians have their individual instruments that make their individual noises. But it is fucking amazing to me how two instruments in skillful hands can collude to produce an amazing third noise. The soundwave from the bass and the drums wrap around each other to create a cloud of rolling thunder that shakes the floorboards. The bass and guitar tear into the air together until it sounds like a big-block Chevy is rumbling down the block.

I always thought human relationships, specifically romantic ones should be that way. I’d like my relationship with the woman I get with to be like that, but I’ve never seen it, even in others. That level of collaboration.

Most of the time you’ve got a guy who sounds like a guitar and a chick who sounds like a piano, and when they get together it sounds like a guitar and a piano. I want the other thing, that third amazing noise. Two instruments with individual sounds that when properly combined create something a guitar maker and a piano tuner could never have dreamed of.

During some of the more intense parts of their songs, Asobi Seksu would intermittenly cut this strobe light on. It was pointed directly at me so as it fired, my sensory load shifted and I was suddenly in this floating white space, in my force field, surrounded by music. A good feeling. I’m in a different place.

At the end of their last song they cut the strobe off and--ZOOM--the room dropped, and I found myself back in an all-black room in all-white Hoboken, regaining my senses while the guitarist’s last chord and the singer’s last note hit the wall behind me and disappeared forever. Gone.

At 11:41pm the Hoboken PATH station has only got a handful of people in it. A homeless guy shuffled over to the benches and he smelled simply goddamn awful, par for the course.

What shocked me was that after I moved forty feet away, I could still smell him! It was powerful enough that I wanted to gag. I moved to fifty feet and there was no change in odor. Unbelievable!

Seventy feet away from the guy, I at last was able to breathe in something like clean air. Fucking amazing. This guy was basically a biochemical weapon, like if you had him in your car you wouldn’t be allowed to drive through the Holland Tunnel.

I took a picture of the platform before the train came

and then I got on it and rode back towards midnight Manhattan, towards the rest of my life. On the empty train I thought about musical instruments and couplings.

Today’s soundtrack: you talk behind my back and spend up all my bread
Today at 12:02pm: At work, moving my “launch date” up



At The Corporation today, I finished my assignments before noon. I get paid by the hour. Fuck.

It’s been slow like this before, and all I had to do was wait and it would pick back up inside a month or two. But I usually had freelance to tide me over in the meantime. If things don’t pick up soon, I’m going to have to stare reality in the face and get another goddamn job.

I’ve stared reality in the face before. Then it pushed me to the ground and kicked me in the sternum. And let me tell you, reality wears boots.

So I put this Russian photo group () on my friend’s list and I love it. Because it’s all written in Russian and I can’t understand any of it except the punctuation. It’s kind of cool reading people’s comments ‘cause you’ve got no idea what they’re saying, but you can still tell if someone is excited or asking a question. Not to mention there are some good, and some great, photos.

This morning it was cats and dogs outside. I woke up to the not unpleasant sound of sheets of water pattering against the glass. Looked around to see if it was all a dream and I’m really a farm boy from Kansas but nope, I was still in my apartment, which by the way is a fucking mess. Coke and dead hookers everywhere.

The six-train station was flooded at Canal. Water was coming in through the ceiling so you had to use your fucking umbrella to get through the turnstile.

On the platform, if you looked down you’d see two tracks rising through several inches of water, with all this floating garbage in between. It looked like that ride at Action Park where you sit in a fake carved-out log that comes down a hill and splashes through the water, wetting everyone in a thirty-foot radius. But if that happened here all the commuters would be showered with empty Poland Springs bottles, orange plastic shopping bags, candy bar wrappers and dead rats. Or live rats, who knows, maybe they can swim. Either way it’s nasty.

If this rain keeps up I won’t be making the Slips today, which is fine because I'm actually going to some bar in Hoboken tonight to see some band. I read about them on coffee_snorter
‘s page, they’re called “Asobi Seksu” and the sample sounded decent, so I’m there. They’re on the bill with Electrelane.

Hoboken, I know. But I figure I’ll do something a little different, mix it up. Plus in Jersey you can drink and smoke simultaneously because they didn’t elect Bloomberg. Can’t remember the last time I had booze and cigarettes indoors at the same time so I’m looking forward to it. And the PATH train is cheaper than the subway!

I walked home today so I saved two bucks, but I’ll be dropping ten to get into the show. Is it any wonder why I'm in debt. Experiences are the most important, most precious thing to me and I’ve always been willing to blow dough (including dough I don’t have) on them. I already know I’m going to die poor but I’ll be rich in experiences, right or wrong, good or bad, smart or stupid.

Also “friended” this photo group called “Urban_decay” but I’m going to have to cancel them because they don’t live up to the title and I don’t care for the photos. I mean why is it called “urban decay” if they’re putting up photos of clean, shiny bridges.

Then again if I want to see urban decay I don’t exactly need to subscribe to a photo group on the web. Because I can always just walk out my door, go around the corner, head down the block...and buy a magazine about urban decay. Hahaha just kidding.

Some experiences are free. Take these dead hookers, for instance.

Okay I have to get this cleaned up before my landlord finds out.

Okay this is the best damn photograph I’ve seen in a while:

http://www.drivebackintime.com/galleries/chevrolet/5.html

Today’s soundtrack: a brand-new Cadillac and a winning lotto ticket
Today at 11:02pm: just when you think the city can’t smell any worse, they somehow concoct a new odor more offensive than the last



Walking down the sidewalk, a lot of people spit. Especially in Chinatown. Part of the “culture” I guess. Anyways I hate when people spit too close to me, I’m always bracing in anticipation of feeling that revolting coolness of wind-blown spit droplets hitting my skin.

Well last night it was drizzling out, and this guy spit right next to me. Bothered the shit out of me because with all the drizzle already lighting up my skin, I couldn’t tell if there was any collateral spittle.

At night the Slips are pretty quiet, I practically had the place to myself. Just me and some guy with three fishing rods, trying to land whatever pescatarian delights the East River had to offer.

The Slips are grimy, gritty and noisy, what with the overpass, and the train going overhead every five, but I like it. Yesterday I was down there twice. There’s perhaps something pathetic about having all these weird little routines, but I’ve noticed the older you get, the less you care. What are some of your rituals? I bet you do some weird shit.

Later I walked past some bar, the front of which was open to the street. A couple was walking next to me. Through the headphones I heard someone scream “Fuck you bitch, I’ll kick your ass” and all three of us looked over.

It was just two guys in the bar fucking around, playing pool or something. You see that? What once passed for strong language is now bandied about as the idlest of threats.

Today I saw Tae Guk Gi up on 34th. Before the movie started I broke a banana out of my bag and started eating it, hoping no one would notice it had writing all over it.

They turned the 9/11 beacons on again. Still bothers me they won’t actually put the lamps at Ground Zero, in the pit; they’re in the parking lot of the movie theater across the street. Also, I got up close and saw there are all these moths flying around in the beams.

The mechanics estimate it will cost 3,000 fucking dollars to replace the airbags and fix the seatbelt. After I hung up the phone I just sat and stared at the wall.

I’m already well into five figures in the hole because I live in the most expensive city in the world and while all my friends think I’m making it, I’m faking it. Living on credit, behind on my taxes. Work at The Corporation has slowed almost to a standstill and I lost another freelance gig last week, the second one in a month.

I’m not complaining, just telling. I’m the only one who made the decisions that led me here and I’ll stick with them until it becomes completely untenable.

I’m this close to applying for a job as a taxi driver or a manager at McDonald’s. Occupations like that sound like they would probably give me something interesting to write about, though I’m sure I’d feel like slitting my wrists every minute I’m on the job.

Until I crack and fill out those apps I’ve decided I’m going to try and sell every possible possession I can on eBay. Every single thing I can live without must go. It’s not healthy to be attached to things anyway, right?

Get this. Amidst this financial calamity, and out of the blue, a mysterious reader offers to buy me a ticket to Hawaii. Round-trip. I could get to write about Hawaii, on someone else’s nickel.

I asked this would-be benefactor what they wanted from me in exchange, and they said “Nothing.” Although of course they want to meet up, and since I’m not good with strangers, that should be...interesting.

Just about every one of my friends told me not to go. Saying this person could be crazy, you have no idea what you’re getting into, et cetera.

Still, it’s essentially a free trip. Sounds too good to be true, right? Like maybe they’re some kind of stalker that’s going to try and stab me once I get there.

What to do?

I thought about it long and hard, and I’m going. I said yes.

My reasons for doing so are as follows:

1) it’s a free trip to Hawaii
2) if this is a bad idea, I need to learn the hard way
3) if they try to kill me and I survive, I may get an interesting story out of it
4) if they try to kill me and succeed, I won’t care, because I’ll be too busy being dead
5) the night before I accepted, I had this dream where I was waiting tables in Hawaii and earning thousands of dollars, cash money

I know it’s bad to run from your problems, but if you are going to hide out for a week, Hawaii’s not a bad place to do it. I’ll deal with the mess when I get back.

Things are always up and down, up and down. In front of me is a computer screen and my future. Behind me is a box full of bills, a “lifestyle” I can’t sustain and an apartment full of things that need to find their way into other people’s homes.

Today’s soundtrack: we call it madness
Today at 7:52pm: sometimes in order to claim what is rightfully yours you have to bang a quick and illegal U-turn

I’ll give you my city one rectangle at a time.

The catch is, I give it to you the way I like it.

Sometimes friends stop by my place and I make them coffee. I don’t drink mine with sugar so I’ve got none in the house. Therefore my friends who do drink it with sugar have to either take it the way I do, or pass on coffee altogether. Some choose to pass.

None of this is by design, by the way; I just ain’t got any sugar in the house. You want coffee with sugar, there’s a diner right down the block.

Sometimes I think by looking at a photograph, you can actually
tell something about the person on the other end of the shutter.
Other times I think “You know what Rain, you’re no philosopher.”

The beacon is released. This particular cloud formation, a signal to me
that things will eventually go my way and all my problems will pass.
Eventually and before I stop breathing, that is.

This was taken at a really busy intersection.

This was taken on a busy block. A lot of
junk on the street, both man-made and man.

I’m down at the Slips just about every day. There's water, and I really like watching the birds. It’s so awesome they can fly. I always wonder what’s going through their heads, how do they decide where to go? They weave back and forth and all over the place, like “I’m going this way, I’m going that way, no wait I wanna go left, okay there’s nothing over here let me hang a right, now I want to make a U-turn and go fly under the Brooklyn Bridge.”

Today I watched this one bird wheel upwards in this huge arc, way above me, soaring in a decreasing radius until he eventually came to land perfectly on top of this extremely tall pole on the overpass above. The diameter of the pole was like a coffee mug, so the surface area at the top must have been tiny. I stared up at him, amazed, wondering how the hell he can do that. He totally ignored me.

Birds are kind of gross if you look at them closely but I still wish I was one. I’m sure not having opposable thumbs is a drag but they go wherever they want.

Today’s soundtrack:
if you make sure you’re connected,
the writing’s on the wall
Today at 4:02pm: jumping, spinning



It’s so rare I’m able to find pure fun, and when I get it I’m always ecstatic. Today at 1:30pm I headed out to PS1 for the last of their “Warm-Up” summer parties, this one with Francois K. (Body & Soul DJ) manning the decks.

They moved the outdoor dance floor this year, now it’s at the base of the steps. When the DJ started spinning there was only me and like five other cats on the floor, it was killer. This one heavyset black dude was jumping up and down and holding onto this plastic bag, grinning like he just won the lottery. A beautiful, smiley west-coast-style Asian girl was spinning around with this summery dress on. I found both of their moods infectious.

When I got there it looked like this

but after a short while it looked like this.

As the place started filling up, the DJ flexed and started driving the most sa-lamming-ass house I’ve ever heard in person. GodDAMN. This motherfucker worked the crowd up into a fever pitch, it was unreal. Everyone jumping up and down, hands in the air, bass so deep I was convinced the nearest subway cars were vibrating. People on the E-train hearing THOOM THOOM THOOM like a T-Rex with rhythm was on the platform. I haven’t felt like this since the SkaPara show.

During a break I spotted the summery girl sitting off on the steps, so when I went to get myself a water, I bought two. Made my way over to her, gave her one and started chatting.

“This is just what I needed,” she yelled, indicating the dance floor.

“I know what you mean,” I yelled back, as the house crashed over us. “I’m supposed to meet some friends here, I have no idea where they are and I don’t even care.” The music was that good.

“I’m supposed to meet some friends too, but I think they took the wrong train,” she said.

The black guy with the plastic bag I’d seen earlier was jumping all around the dance floor again, looking so, so happy. I smiled.

“That dude looks so psyched,” I yelled. “I find it really contagious.”

“That guy?” she said, pointing.

“Yeah.”

“Ummm...he’s autistic,” she pointed out. I looked back at him and for the first time really noticed his expression, the way his mouth hung open, his build, the plastic bag he was hanging onto like his life was in there.

“Oh,” I said.

Turns out Summery Girl’s from out of town, San Francisco. We shot the shit for a little. It’s so easy to talk to beautiful women when a) you’re not really looking for anything and b) you’re in a place like this, which isn’t exactly a pick-up joint, so the vibe is more relaxed. Whenever I talk to women in a bar I feel like I’m competing for something and being evaluated (which, of course, I am).

Which is not to say all male-female conversations will go smoothly in a place like this. In contrast to the friendly exchange Summery Girl and I had, Lam overheard this conversation between a Latino guy and two Latina mamis:

Eventually Film Guy showed up with his female roommate. This woman has, Lam and I both agreed, one of the most astonishingly beautiful faces we’ve ever seen. This is the kind of woman men used to burn cities down for. I’m not kidding. And she’s funny.

The house music got better and better--the DJ built it up like multiple orgasms, people were going crazy--but after a few hours the crowd got so thick nothing could be fun. We left around 7pm and the line to get in was all the way around the block. In the car my ears were still ringing.

The four of us headed over to a Korean joint in Sunnyside, where we killed two massive orders of kalbi and a plate of barbecue chicken. This is what summers are for. And what tastes better than post-clubbing food?

Afterwards we went back to Film Guy and Beautiful Roommate’s place in Astoria. It’s super-domestic and residential, and honest-to-god three-bedroom, a far cry from the moderately filthy converted sweatshop I live in with the factory floors and peeling, probably lead, wall paint. Film Guy’s bed in particular looks like something your grandmother would sleep in. (I’m not saying your grandmother would sleep with Film Guy, I’m saying he owns the type of bed she’d pick out of a catalogue. I’m sure your grandmother has morals.)

Film Guy and Beautiful Roommate have a good interaction, a great relationship. They seem to care for and take care of each other.

If you’ve got a good roommate or good friends, well, it’s the closest us single twenty- and thirty-somethings can come to having a family. We’re all in this city alone, but sprawled out on couches in a living room in Astoria, digesting barbecue and slowly getting our hearing back, for a moment we are not. At the end of the night we’ll all split up and go sleep in our individual beds, dreaming our separate and solitary dreams, but that’s not the moment that counts. Yet.

Today’s soundtrack: I’d be a mean so-and-so
Today at 12:02pm: bagging trash



My addiction to music is scary and way worse than, say, Charlie Sheen’s sex addiction. But I don’t care and I indulge it fully because unlike my other addictions I don’t think this one is killing me.

I need large doses of music to survive. If I don’t have it I’ll get sick, my ears will turn black and eventually fall off. My head is empty and I need to fill it with specific tunes.

Almost all of it is MP3s, in other words, purely electronic. (In my efforts to shed junk I’ve gotten rid of most cassettes and LPs.) So my biggest fear is that New York gets hit by some type of nuclear blast in conjunction with an EMP weapon, and I’m actually unlucky enough to survive. Because then I’d have to eke out a living in a destroyed city completely devoid of electronic devices, and I can’t live in a nuclear wasteland without any goddamned music.

I’d have to find a phonograph and some intact records and hook the whole thing up to a goddamned gas generator. In the likely event I couldn’t, I’d have to locate other survivors with good singing voices and manipulate them into belting out ditties for me. I’d be standing in huge craters of destruction, auditioning people to see who could sing “At Last” and perform reasonable covers of ‘80s standards.

Today’s soundtrack:
keep on knockin’ but you can’t come in
(Little Richard’s version)
Today at 9:32pm: post-dinner coffee on a stoop



Finally got Lam on LiveJournal. Sorry if you’re offended by his screenname, but what can I say, the guy likes eating endangered species. Plus it pisses China off. I think he and I are officially on Hu Jintao’s and Kim Jong-Il’s shit lists.

Man. I haven’t watched a single snippet of the Olympics, choosing instead to spend my evenings on the computer. I’m less concerned with USA and more concerned with USB.

If I was a student at the University of Southern California I could have dragged that paragraph out a little.

Do you like coincidences? I do. Yesterday I’m up on University Place at Mandoo Bar with John, discussing some potential work I may be doing for him. Mid-meeting my cell phone goes off.

Worried it’s my boss, I pick up. Instead it’s Jiae, John’s wife.

“What are you up to?” she asks.

“Sitting across the table from your husband,” I say.

“Tell him I said hello,” she says.

“John, your wife says hi,” I tell him, and he nods, mid-mandoo.

“So I’m calling because Lam and I are going to the beach tomorrow, and we want you to come,” says Jiae, in her matter-of-fact way. “Lam says you were a lifeguard.”

“I’m pretty sure I can’t go; can I call you back?”

“Sure, call me back.”

I just thought it was funny to be hanging out with one friend and another friend, who happens to be married to the first friend calls you unawares. I can accept that I may be the only one who finds that interesting.

One time I was in on line at a deli on Fifth, standing behind a guy who looked kind of familiar to me. He turned around and turns out it was my dad. I think we were both wearing suits that day.

I call Jiae back later, and she confirms what I’d thought she said: Apparently Lam has got it into his head that at some point I was a lifeguard. Wrong! I drove an ambulance.

“So you weren’t a lifeguard?” asks Jiae.

“No. In fact I’m the opposite--I actually endanger people in aquatic situations.” I like to go underwater and fill people’s pockets with rocks, or just hang on to their leg and see what happens.

“Anyways listen, I hate the beach,” I explain. “Unless it’s night out and deserted.”

“So I guess you won’t be going.”

“I’m gonna take a pass.” We click off soon after. That’s what I like, everyone’s too busy to dwell on stuff, and all of us are too old to waste our time trying to talk other people into things.

A lifeguard! Can you imagine. If I was a lifeguard, I’d spend all my time dissuading people from entering the water, thus eliminating the possibility I might have to save them.

Today’s soundtrack: kids on St. James, between Gates and Greene
Today at 7:32pm: dinner on the sidewalk



In the city you get used to hearing all kinds of noises. Honking horns, car alarms, revving taxis, sirens, a car backfiring, the whine of a bus, barking dogs, barking people. But as loud as each of these sounds is, and as distinct as they are from each other, they collude to produce a recognizable, even comfortable background din. Because it’s familiar, it’s easy to phase out.

Which is why an as-yet-unheard sound effect will always catch your attention. Tonight while sitting at a sidewalk café with some friends I heard a new, fresh noise that turned out to be the sound of a person getting hit by a car. It’s not a pretty noise.

I’ve heard and witnessed car-on-car accidents enough times for that particular sequence of noises--screeching tires followed by metal crunching metal, occasionally punctuated by breaking glass--to make it into the audio catalogue. But the sound of a metal vehicle slamming into human flesh and bones was new and sickening.

If the sound of it was bad, the sight of it was even worse. The pedestrian had been thrown violently into the air by the impact, and I looked over in time to see him on the way down, slamming again into the hood and rolling violently onto the pavement, absorbing sickening impacts with his skull on both surfaces.

I stood up to grab something--before realizing I had nothing to grab. After remembering I’m not an ambulance guy anymore I pulled my phone out and dialed 911. For a second it looked like the driver was fleeing the scene and Lam ran after him. Clair went to retrieve the shoe of the guy who got hit; the impact knocked him right out of them.

Other people ran over to help the guy, who looked like he was in pretty bad shape. Holding his head, which was bleeding profusely. I overheard people instructing him not to move (although he stood up anyway) while I spoke to the emergency operator.

The driver had in fact pulled over, and there were enough people around his car that this guy wasn’t going anywhere. A small silver car and for some reason I tried not to look at the driver, like I didn’t wanna see his face.

The victim was on his feet, and I couldn’t believe he’d gotten back up; if you’da seen this impact, you’da been sure he was dead. By the looks of him he was drunk as a skunk and homeless. People congregated around him, waiting for the ambulance. Clair said he was bleeding out of his ears.

After that there wasn’t much for us to do, so we went back to our coffee and desserts.

I walk all the time, half of it jay-, and it’s a miracle I ain’t been hit yet. I gotta be more careful. I’m occasionally ambivalent about dying but after tonight’s scene I’ve decided I don’t want to go in a kinetically violent way.