Today’s soundtrack: I was lost, the losing dice were tossed
Today at 7:02pm: shivering on foreign street corners



I came up here in August and she drove me around. I thought it was a date.

We had cigarettes and dinner at a place called Shanghai Cowgirl. I can’t remember what we ate but I remember it was warm so we sat in the courtyard out back. I was happy to talk to her.

After dinner we continued our conversation in the car. She drove all around Toronto. I love driving around cities at night. At one point she put the car on the highway, to show me the drive she takes when she’s stressed. City turned to forest in a short while. Back in New York if you want to see foliage-lined highways you have to slog through New Jersey or the Bronx first. Toronto has no such thing.

On that summer night we ended up in the dark parking lot of a beach sometime around midnight. Parked the car and the two of us walked down a pitch-black trail towards the water. Unfortunately it was more spooky-dark than romantic-dark. By the time we reached the sand she seemed freaked out, and I started to recall horror movies I’d seen that began like this.

Later she drove us back into the city, and we parked and talked. I thought the moment was right (I never could read women) so I made a move and it, you know, yeah, bad idea. Bullet holes in the fuselage.

I met her the first time I came to Toronto. Alex and Suz took us to some bar and she was there. She recognized me from a website column I used to write and we started talking. After we left the bar I figured I’d never see her again.

Now it’s my third time in Toronto, I ring her for the hell of it and she seems down to hang out. I’m surprised, on the phone she actually sounds enthusiastic.

She picks me up at my hotel and we go to some little café for coffee.

“So how’s things,” I ask.

“Okay,” she says. “How about you?”

“Can’t complain.”

“I just moved in with my boyfriend,” she says, and begins telling me about that. Apparently it’s something of a disaster. She likes the guy but the proximity is killing them. I listen patiently, withholding advice.

“Did you ever live with a girl?” she asks.

“I did,” I say.

“How did it go?”

“Went to hell inside of two months. But there were...circumstances. We were overseas. It was kinda complicated.”

“Are you guys still friends?” she asks.

“She won’t talk to me,” I say. “Hasn’t in five years.” She hate me, like I’m Anthony Mackie.

“What do you think I should do?” she asks. I dodge the question. Some questions you should answer, questions like What time is it or Do you have any more coffee or Which way is Canal Street. Other questions you leave alone. Best you can do is use your words to maneuver them into figuring out the answer themselves.

After the coffee’s drained and she’s gone I’m standing on the corner of Bloor and something, freezing my ass off. It’s dark out and city traffic passes me in a steady stream.

Eventually my own car drives up and stops at the curb in front of me. It’s a weird sensation.

Kirk hops out of the driver’s seat, and I hop in. Kirk gets in the back with Lam and Tony. Francis is riding shotgun. I shut the door, snap my seatbelt on.

“How’d it go?” they ask.

“Went okay,” I say, putting the car in gear.

Today’s soundtrack: East New York style stick ‘em, hahaha stick ‘em
Today at 12:02am: foundering


Back at the hotel, we do the things five guys normally do in a hotel room: We make an Abu Ghraib pyramid, then hold bed-making contests. (Kirk eliminates Henry in the final round. Hospital corners.)

Saturday evening is the midpoint of my “vacation,” and I’m still buried under the German project. Outside the hotel room window, the Canadian sun has gone from rising to setting. My laptop has grown so warm it’s practically sweating.

There’s no way I’m working tonight; we’ve got a party to go to, and after last night’s misfire I need to redeem my weekend. To put the project to bed I’m tempted to switch over to a little industry trick called “Shoddy Worksmanship.”

Problem with that is, as a freelancer your next step could be your last. Meaning I’ll just have to suck it up and work on Sunday.

Party peephole linda house.

The bar is dark and the drinks are cheap, if kinda limp. I’m not a frequent tippler but I’ve noticed Canadian cocktails have less booze in them than Mormons.

The place is swimming with cute chicks. The name of the joint is Uno Mas, and fittingly, Alex introduces me to one, and another, and another. Half of his introductions went like this: “This is ______, she’s an ex of mine.” Apparently a prerequisite for being a hot chick in Toronto is that you’ve got to date Alex. You can’t believe the kinda talent this guy pulls down.

Uno Mas fills up quickly. The DJ is technically competent but, unfortunately, subscribes to the popular notion that contemporary hip hop is good. There’s no room to dance besides; so I mingle some, then do my New York thing, which is to stand in the center of the crowd and pretend I’m invisible. (Works like a charm, let me tell you.)

Lately I’ve been spending most of my social time online, and now I’m paying the price; social skills are like muscles and mine have atrophied. Without the face-to-face practice I have regained the social awkwardness of my maladjusted teenaged self. At least back then I had the garbage of ‘80s music to soothe me.

Few weeks ago, back in New York my friend Fashion Girl was recounting a story: She was at a club with some friends and one of the guys hanging out with them was thirty-seven. I don’t remember the story but I remember thinking thirty-seven is too old to be hanging out in a club.

Here I am at thirty-three, and I feel too old.

It’s not the people; though I’ve seen my share of girls in here who look like they’re eighteen, the median age appears to be late twenties, with a few of my contemporaries sprinkled about like aged cheese gratings.

It’s definitely me--none of the other fellas seem to be having any problems. Francis flies multiple wingman missions for Kirk and Lam while Tony disappears, presumably to talk to girls.

One thing I really dig about Toronto chicks, or Canadians in general, is that hardly anybody asks what you do. In New York it’s the first or second question out of people’s mouths. At least here they make an effort to actually get to know you.

Nevertheless, I suck at sustaining bartalk. After my third lame quip is drowned out by the speakers I gravitate towards the booths; I got nothin’.

Alex’s current girlfriend--who is, predictably, hotter than Phoenix in July--takes a seat next to Francis, while I chat up her friend. Lam joins us for a bit, then disappears after his mild case of Tourette’s makes him say something he’ll regret. I hope she wasn’t offended.

An hour later I’m sitting in the same spot. The people have been rotating, to the point where I’m forgetting names. The talk stays small and I can’t seem to connect with anybody. I can’t understand why I’m so off.

I look around. Lotta people having a good time. Raucous laughter, drinks flowing, people dancing, girls flicking their hair around. Why do I feel so displaced?

It looks like something is over for me. Which wouldn’t bother me so much if I knew what was next.

[In case you haven’t guessed, I’m already back and have been updating after the fact.

Once again I interrupt these travel updates, this time with my “Remember me happy” picture; I’m off to Ohio for a college gig. Hello, Bowling Green. If the hotel room has internet I’ll try to put something up.

Also: Regarding Bachelor Cooking, there’s been no progress on the eBay dispute. Sorry.]


[I interrupt this travel update to bring you an important message:

There is a small handful of people who make me laugh out loud on the internet, and this is one of them:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/caffeineguy/118615.html]

Today’s soundtrack: now I’m a man, made twenty-one
Today at 12:02pm: squatting in a desk chair while a hotel maid vacuums around me



I spend most of Saturday holed up in the hotel, working the Wacom. The German project is like a high-maintenance girl disguised as low-maintenance--more work than you thought.

Tony, Lam, Kirk and Francis are out somewhere in Toronto yukking it up and I’m stuck inside like a kid with piano lessons. I drove nine hours to do work. I’m aware this sucks, but I’m also aware this is how I pay my rent. I am freelance-on-demand, and it beats being nine-to-five and solvent.

Turns out last night, while I was working in the hotel room the fellas were out hitting up a strip club. Doesn’t bug me that I missed it because I’m not really a strip club kind of guy. (“Skanks for the memories,” to quote Dave Attell.) I can’t get into the artifice of the whole thing, and conversations I’ve had with strippers have been somewhat less than spellbinding. Maybe I just don’t know what to say.

It’s got me wondering, though. Because while we’ve got paper singles in the ‘States, in Canada all they’ve got is coins. There’s even a two-dollar coin. So what do they do at the strip clubs, tuck these metal coins into “Lace” and “Devon’s” G-strings? Those strippers must be all chafed. Or maybe they have those change-belts like the ice cream man of my childhood.

Maybe if I have daughters and I name them Lace and Devon they won’t become strippers.

“Lace! Devon! Call Scarlett and T-Bone and get down here, dinner’s ready!”

Mid-morning I have to take a break, because I’m having trouble working knowing there’s a whole city full of Tim Horton’s out there.

Tim Horton’s is to Canada what Dunkin’ Donuts is to the Tri-State Area. I loves me some Dunkin’ Donuts, and Tim’s is even better. Canadian counter service in general is way better. Most of the people who work the counter of a Dunkin’ Donuts, like that one up on 34th or the one on Broadway in Elmhurst, you could stagger in there with a knife in your chest and they’d watch you bleed to death without flinching.


ME: Help! Pull this knife out of my chest!

Dunkin’ Donuts Clerk: There’s a line.

ME: There’s a line to have knives pulled out of your chest?

DDC: There’s a line to buy donuts, asshole. This is Dunkin’ Donuts, not Dunkin’ Emergency Room.

ME: I can’t stop the bleeding...for the love of god, gimme some napkins!

DDC: Napkins are for paying customers only.

ME: Please help me! I--I’m starting to black out!

In contrast, counterpeople in Toronto are pleasant by default. I hit the Tim Horton’s on Dundas happy as a clam. The countergirl there was really nice, I bet she’d pull a knife out of my chest and sew me up afterwards.


ME: Socialized medicine is great!

SHE: Hold still, sweetheart; I’m almost done with the sutures. Would you like another glazed?


Plus the coffee at Tim’s is killer.

In terms of drinking chain coffee in Toronto, there’s Tim Horton’s and you’ve got some joint called Timothy’s. I was saddened to see Starbucks has spread all over Toronto like a venereal disease and I vowed not to spend any of my dollar coins there. Hell, I’d rather tuck it into a stripper’s change-belt.

Back at the hotel, I slave away.

Today’s soundtrack: collide in bloodshot eyes
Today at 10:02pm: searching for the fake smile and coming up empty



On a Friday night in subzero Canada, the last place I expect to find myself is in an ice cream shop. But here we are, all eight of us. Alex is bringing us to some bar and Kirk and I want coffee before the booze. Our bodies are bound to hate us later but we’re still a little fucked-up from the drive.

Baskin-Robbins was the only java we could find on the block. The heavyset countergirl’s got a Slavic accent; her partner-in-cream looks Arabic; in the background I hear Japanese. S’what I like about Toronto: It’s not terribly different from New York, at least not in those ways that matter.

The group of us head down the block to the bar. It’s an upstairs joint. Out in front, on the sidewalk we drain the coffee and suck the life out of cigarettes.

“What kinda place?” I ask.

“It’s a hostess bar,” says Alex. Great.


Things I have experience with:
- Hostess cupcakes

Things I don’t have experience with:
- Hostess bars


For those of you who don’t know--oh raise your hand, it’s nothing to be ashamed of--a hostess bar is a place where pretty girls talk to you and pour your drinks and act like they like you...and they’re on the check. Depending on the place, if you’re flush with cash they will assist you in ejaculating. I understand that there is a demand in society for this type of thing, but as miserable and as good at lying to myself as I am, joints like these don’t figure into my solutions.

I ascend the steps knowing damn well I lack both the money and the inclination to pay for this sort of thing, and that I’ll just be sitting there. Well, I think, maybe it will make an interesting story.

I’m wrong, of course. (If you’re reading this blog with a TV on in the background, I totally suggest you now turn your full attention to the TV.)

Eight guys. The Madam seems excited to see us; I can practically see dollar signs where her pupils should be. “Let me get a table ready for you,” she says. Her accent’s Mandarin.

The bar is dimly lit, medium-sized, and looks more like a restaurant than a bar; it’s mostly tables against the wall, made of deuces pushed into configurations for four, six or eight. A gaggle of girls sit at a table in the corner, with a smaller gaggle sprinkled at the bar-counter.

For hostesses they’re rather plain and ordinary-looking; I expected hot bimbos. Perhaps two of the seven are what you’d call conventionally attractive; the other five, uh, have nice personalities, I presume.

The eight of us sit and order drinks, and out of the background noise I detect what sounds surprisingly like Japanese. The Madam’s accent made me think everyone in here would be Chinese, but a couple seconds of strained listening confirm that the gaggle of girls in the back is giggling in Nihongo. I point it out to Kirk, since he and I are the only J-speakers here.

“You wanna get ‘em over here?” he asks.

“No thanks,” I say, and we get into a conversation about the notion of paying for sex. Why should you pay for something when if you apply yourself, you can get it for free, et cetera. The timeless argument.

“You pay for it anyway,” he says. “Dinner, drinks....” For a second I'm hard-pressed to come up with a counterargument.

“Oh, let me introduce you to the girls,” says the Madam, with obviously feigned enthusiasm. She hustles over to the back of the room and interacts with the gaggle. I can’t hear what’s being said or in what language, but by the body language it’s clearly haranguing.

Five girls shuffle over to our table, with no feigned enthusiasm whatsoever; all of them avoid eye contact, and make faces like they just found out they have cancer. Single-file they approach our table and each say “Hi” with a quick wave, then immediately about-face and return to their table, where they continue chatting with each other gaily.

“What the hell was that?” I ask, amazed. It’s not like I wanted to talk to these girls, but let me tell you, it stings when you even get rejected by girls that are paid to pretend they like you. Every time I think I’ve hit bottom, I find another level underneath. I’d go to Hell and discover trapdoors.

My understanding of hostess bars is that all the seats are within separate, enclosed rooms, like a proper karaoke joint. But in this bar there’s only one enclosed room, behind us, and it’s apparently filled with rowdy businessmen or similar. At one point I hear the Madam bark “Keep it quiet” at them--in Mandarin-accented Korean. It’s like the eastern half of the U.N. in here.

The waitress looks at me like I have three heads.

“A what?” she says.

“Tanqueray,” I say, enunciating carefully. Her blank look tells me she’s never heard this word before.

“You got any gin?” I ask.

A girl walks out of the enclosed room. She buckles her belt and adjusts her outfit, apparently having just put it back on.

The Madam has left a bunch of plastic cups with dice inside them on our table, and Francis makes the mistake of asking a passing woman what they are for. “Oh, let me show you,” she says, pulling a chair up next to Francis. She’s tarted-up and doesn’t look a day over forty-five.

The dice are for some type of drinking game, so Francis buys her a drink, and she starts teaching him. For a moment they try to rope me in but I’m having no part of it. I’d rather drink gin alone in my apartment sitting in front of my desk with most of the lights out while my phone rings until it hits the voicemail.

At this point Kirk, against my wishes, brings a couple girls over to the table. “This is Rain,” he says, pointing. “He just moved back here from Japan,” he lies, grinning.

Fucking A. One of the girls (a good-looking one) then sits next to Kirk, while the other (one of the “personality” girls) sits next to me. Conversation in Japanese ensues.

My Japanese is disappointingly bad and I’m surprised by how much I’ve forgotten. I have to switch back to English inside of five sentences.

Okay, when I said some of these girls had nice personalities I was being tactful. Let me trade tact for honesty and tell you this girl had no personality. The conversation was excruciating. It went from smalltalk to nanotalk. German scientists would have to use high-powered microscopes to detect any meaning at all in our conversation.

I felt like Biz Markee because I asked her her name she said “blah blah blah.” (The rest of the line didn’t apply.)

I broke out early, partly because of frustration and partly because I wanted to get back to the hotel and bang out the German assignment. Working on vacation sucks--I know, I did it in Hawai’i--and I wanted to finish as much of the project as possible.

I foolishly thought I could finish the entire project in a sitting, and for the second time that night I was dead wrong.

Today’s soundtrack: if you twist and turn away
Today at 9:02am: breaking the seal on a fresh set of hotel sheets



At 8:30am we stagger into the hotel, exhausted. We’ve only been on the road for ten hours but I feel like I haven’t slept since the Carter Administration. I am not a young man.

The hotel’s called the Comfort Suites and it’s a pretty nice place. I once stayed in a hotel for $2 a night when I was backpacking in Asia. This isn’t that kind of place.

Still, we’re splitting the room four ways--five, once Francis’ plane touches down--meaning I can actually afford it. Plus the fellas agreed to pay for gas since my indigence is no secret.

We get our money’s worth out of the hotel room immediately; soon after dropping our bags, the four of us are horizontally unconscious. Tony folds the sofabed out and it’s his. Lam and Kirk split a bed (I don’t mean to start any rumors, but I’m pretty sure they were sleeping one on top of the other) and I take the one by the window. Outside the window Toronto’s workday unfolds, with trolleys making stops and people on their way to work. It’s a city.

We get up around 3:30p and walk down to Queen Street. (In New Yorkese “Queen” translates roughly to “St. Mark’s.”)

Looks the same as I left it in August, but colder. Much, much colder. I still can’t understand why the Toronto tribe or whatever native group founded this place decided to settle here. You’d think after a couple days of winter they’d be like “Fuck this, we’re nomads” and they’d move on. No human should have to endure temperatures like this. Throw some gin in me and I’m a fuckin’ martini.

From Queen Street we made our way over to Spadina, which sounds like a blood disorder but is in fact one of Toronto’s main boulevards. It’s also where their Chinatown is. New York has got three but Toronto only has one. I’m not comparing, just saying. Anyways I can see their Chinatown looks like the one in Manhattan in that it appears to be filled with mostly Vietnamese. Since I don’t see any Born To Kill tags I assume it was a peaceful handover.

I have a plan for avoiding expensive meals on vacation, the same plan I execute back home, which is as follows: Buy lots of fruit. Apples are cheap, three for a dollar, and they fill you up. Then when you show up for dinner you say you ain’t hungry, and when the check comes there’s a blank space where your meal should be. I know that sucks, but I’ve been up before so now it’s time for me to see what being down is like. Henry Rollins said something like “Go without a coat, and you know what cold is.” Right now I’m fucking freezing in more ways than one.

The goddamn apples here are three for three dollars! What the fuck! These shits better have Ecstasy inside them. Even with the exchange rate that’s well over what I pay back home. But I need them, so I get them. Who knew Toronto Chinatown would be so expensive.

Strike that, apparently it’s not. After I bought the apples I came across a second fruit vendor, where the apples are three for two dollars. God, dammit.

The bad thing about being from New York is that you tend to impose the qualities of your home city onto other cities, and are invariably disappointed when they don’t measure up. For example, one thing we’re not used to is restaurants being closed at like, 8:30. Why would a restaurant do such a thing? What restaurant doesn’t have the decency to stay open until midnight, if not daybreak?

We drive out to a highly-recommended burger joint on Avenue Road, eager to scarf its wares and perhaps catch some of that mad cow that’s been going around Canada. We missed the SARS rush but maybe we can cash in on this disease. Alas, the burger joint is closed and it’s only 8:30pm. Fucking savages.

We wait there anyway, because we’ve got a plan to stick to.

Presently Francis rolls up in a taxi, fresh from the airport, and now we’re five. I think he’s salty ‘cause I didn’t pick him up at the airport.

He throws his bag in the trunk of my filthy whip, which is covered in grit and grime from the snowy drive up. (Francis is salty but my car is saltier.) Then the five of us are off to meet up with Alex to see what sort of fuckery he’s got in store.

Toronto Ho

Today’s soundtrack: don’t roll those bloodshot eyes at me
Today at 12:02am: splendor on the New Jersey Turnpike

Our evening, part one:



Run!

Our evening, part two:



I love night driving, but it rarely makes for a good photograph.

Six-thirty in the morning and I’m in fifth gear, doing about a hundred and twenty. In kilometers, unfortunately. We crossed the border shortly before sunrise, leaving the ‘States and its backward-ass system of miles (5,280 feet--what the hell is that) behind us.

One-twenty k.p.h. is only about ninety miles an hour, and it’s not like I’m speeding; I’m at the back of the pack. Everyone on Queen Elizabeth Way seems to be in a bit of a hurry at 6:30 in the morning.

Somewhere between Buffalo and Hamilton the goddamn wiper fluid goes frozen. My wiper blades are oilier than Fonzie’s hair so all they do is smear. There’s several types of precipitation hitting the windshield and I can’t do a damn thing about it.

I’m not sure whose idea it was to drive up overnight, probably mine. The first six hours were fine, the next two, challenging, and for the last hour I gave up and let Kirk drive while I snored in the passenger seat. Guy can drive a stick and seems coordinated so what the hell. I’m not the kind of person who cares if you drive my car; I’m the kind of person who cares if you wreck my car.

Nearly twenty-four hours earlier I was waking up in Manhattan, groggy and in denial. Today’s a shoot day and I’m tired. Haven’t been sleeping much on account of my new side gigs. Lately I’ve been desperately out of scratch, so I shook the freelance tree and a bunch of weird shit fell out.

I don’t like working odd jobs any more than you do, but The Corporation’s going through a major re-org and I have a feeling they’re going to scrape my name off the door. I haven’t had a rent-paying check from them in about six months. Which is why I now manage a photo studio, edit an upstart magazine and am assisting a friend in the crafting of legal documents (ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies).

By 8am I had the studio up and running, crew showed up around nine. It was an eight-hour shoot so I sat behind the curtain like the Wizard of Oz, tapping out aforementioned legal documents while a West Indian fashion designer barked instructions to models on the other side in furious patois that made it impossible to tell whether he was angry or not.

The strobes would go off intermittently, pop, pop, pop, like flashes of thunder punctuating the deafening (and awful) hip hop this crew liked to blare. Sometimes at these shoots I think I’d have rather been on the beaches at Normandy, getting shot at by Nazis while my friends take turns stepping on mines.

John from Theme Magazine managed to get us into a screening of Appleseed (check out the trailer) on the night of our drive up. It’s playing at the Asia Society, up on Park. The plan was to catch the flick, then hop in the whip and get our tax dollars’ worth out of these interstate highways. Next morning we’d be relaxing in Canada.

But on my way out the door, the monkey wrench. Phone rings. I pick it up.

“Rhain?” I hear a desperate voice say, in a bit of a German accent. (Forgot to mention I’ve been freelancing for a German design firm.) “Ve haff anuzzer assignmint for you.” It’s 6pm on a Thursday.

“When’s the deadline?” I ask, sighing silently. I need this money.

“Sunday night.”

So on my way up to the anime screening I stop off at The Germans’ to pick up the assignment. Their office is so clean it looks like a fucking space station.

The meeting’s only ten minutes. I receive precise instructions along with a stack of thirteen drawings I have to bang out. But I love working for these Germans because there is absolutely no ambivalence in their assignments, the directions are meticulous, and more importantly they cut their checks on time. I’ll do the work in the hotel, and if things go right I’ll only lose one day of my three-day vacation.

The line outside the theater is thick; Appleseed has apparently drawn every anime geek from the Tri-State Area. Luckily Tony and Kirk got here early to snag seats. Moviegoing in New York is much less stressful when you’ve got operatives on the inside.

I skip the line, since Tony’s already inside with my pass, and soon we’re sitting dead-center in row ten, maybe the best seats in the house. A pretty girl even sits two seats away from me, apparently alone. I’m trying to think of something to say to her when a big, greasy anime geek plops his ass down right between us. His hair smells. His knee is touching mine.

I expected Appleseed to be like Ghost in the Shell 2, with beautiful visuals and a shit story you couldn’t understand. But the visuals are better, and while the story was kind of lame at least you could follow it. The graphics are fucking mind-blowing. I’d definitely recommend seeing this if you need eye candy the way I do.

We get out around ten-thirty p., then hop the six downtown and pick up sandwiches at Subway. By 11:30pm we’re rolling through the Holland Tunnel.

We stop frequently for gas and piss breaks, and also so I can smoke. I hate stopping in the hick towns because something always happens. Been living in this country my whole goddamn life and I’m sick of getting stared at in Burger Kings and shit.

At a convenience store in Bumfuck, Pennsylvania the straw-chewing cashier accuses Tony of stealing a hot dog. I know she’s not on the internet but Cashier Lady, this paragraph’s for you:

Give me a fucking break, lady. Take a good look at my friend Tony--he’s dressed nicer than the Mayor of this crappy can’t-find-it-on-Mapquest burg. Works at a PR firm in Manhattan and what, you think he took the day off so we could drive out to your shitty little Gas ‘n Sip to boost some fucking Oscar Meyers? Sacajawea couldn’t find your town if she had GPS. Get out of my face.

Besides, if anyone’s gonna be stealing hot dogs...it’d be me.

Four-hundred miles, eight, nine hours of night driving. Stuffed into my tiny-ass car: Me, Lam, Tony, Kirk. Our conversation starts off with guy talk and rapidly devolves into the Dark Zone so I’m afraid most of it is unprintable. Most of our humor involves feces anyway.

I wake up in the suicide seat around 8:30am as Kirk is making a left. The sun is well up. Outside the window, no more highway; I see city blocks.

“We’re here, huh.”

“Yup,” says Kirk, pulling up to the hotel. By the corner I spy an actual junkie and figure I’m imagining it, since I just woke up. But no, the junkies are real, which is too bad. Going to Canada to see junkies is like going to the Bahamas to see snow. Defeats the purpose.

Today’s soundtrack: in some motel room there’ll be a radio playing
Today at 8:42pm: Lost and leftovers



Okay, admittedly that whole ingesting detergent episode wasn’t a stone gas at all. But I’m back and I feel fine. My ex said I might pee bubbles later but I think she was joking. Actually I think I already do pee bubbles. Anyways.

Due to the extraordinarily high female demand for Kirk, I’d taken the liberty of digging up his personal website, which had all sorts of embarrassing personal photos and resumes and which he hadn’t updated in four years, and was about to post the link here. Unfortunately he stopped me, but as a concession he has ported his blog over to LiveJournal. So, here it is. His world travels are on there.

I’m also putting up a FAQAK (Frequently Asked Questions About Kirk):


Q: Is Kirk single?
A: If by single you mean, Do his venereal diseases keep women at bay? the answer is yes.

Q: Can you give me Kirk’s home number?
A: Hey! I am not the kind of guy who would ever sell my friends out. (Unless I could profit from it in some way.)

Q: Where can I see more pictures of Kirk?
A: For five bucks I can help you break into his fire escape and you can take them yourself. He goes to bed early, we wouldn’t even have to make a night of it.

Q: Where does Kirk come from, and what does Kirk want?
A: Kirk comes from the Bay Area in California, and he wants to not date a psycho.


To sum up: Kirk is single, disease-free (far as I can tell) and a helluva nice guy. If you’ve got the time, he’s got the beer. He lives in New York now but will be returning to the Bay Area sometime next year (something about penicillin being cheaper out there).

Fucking A! I just accidentally swallowed a bunch of dishwashing detergent. I was eating dried mangoes (my favorite) and I rinsed all the sulfites off and put them into a bowl. I only have three bowls, two were dirty and one was on the counter. I thought I washed it and forgot I had poured a bunch of detergent in there to soak it. So I put the mangoes in there.

I ate the mangoes while I was surfing the web, so I wasn’t really paying attention. A quarter way through the bowl I noticed they tasted funny, but kept eating because I’m really smart. Halfway through the bowl I stopped to inspect them and discovered they were all coated in detergent!

First my chest started tingling slightly, then it turned to mild burning. I got on IM to locate an ex-girlfriend of mine who’s basically a doctor. She’s a genius--I don’t mean that euphemistically, I mean an actual genius--and she knows everything about medicine. (Some of you may be saying “Well if she’s a genius then why did she date you,” and you can of course go to hell.) She said I should drink lots of water and make myself vomit.

Did the water thing, then spent a lot of time over the toilet, failing to vomit. But the other day I scrubbed my bathroom really thoroughly and looking into the toilet now, I’m very impressed. I really did a good job. You could eat sushi or snort blow off the lip. I’ve wanted to hire a maid to clean my bathroom ever since I turned thirty but I’ve never had the money.

As the burning became more acute I jammed my finger down my throat and did the trick where you look straight up. Nothing but wracking dry heaves. With the noises I was making I’m surprised my neighbor hasn’t called the cops.

I decided to downshift on upchucking. I got back online and told my ex I was a failed puker. She said I gotta flush it out, with something that would go through me, like tea, Gatorade or even coffee. I chose coffee because it tastes the best but in retrospect I probably should’ve drank Gatorade.

As I write this, I feel a little better. Maybe it was the coffee. The burning is less. I am going to go make another cup now.

Okay the coffee is on the boil. I’m not even sure why I’m writing about this. Maybe because my life is empty and I’m consistently amazed at how I can overestimate my intelligence. There was that period where I kept electrocuting myself, now this. I’m going to have to buy household cleaners with childproof caps and have friends dispense them. I’ll only be able to clean when friends come over.

The burning is still less, this is good. Man. It felt like having a UTI in your chest. Actually I don’t know because I’ve never had a UTI, but I know all about them because of another ex (not the genius). I even know about TSS because when Yuka and I used to go grocery shopping together and her English wasn’t so hot I had to read the tampon packages to her.

Wow. I totally freaked out there for a second, didn’t I? Yes, yes I did.

Today’s soundtrack: police and thieves in the streets
Today at 12:00am: cursing



I get to the restaurant at 8:10pm and no one’s there. The place is empty except for a single guy behind the bar wearing a plastic porkpie that says HAPPY NEW YEAR on it. Shaping up to be a grim night indeed.

Inside the restaurant I discover there’s a downstairs. Downstairs I discover my friends ain’t there either. I go back up to the street--in New York you spend a lot of time underground, and basements are to cell phones what impotence is to penises--to make some calls.

Can’t get through to Tony, who is tonight’s Social Director. (It used to be me, when I still exhibited alpha male characteristics, but lately we all take turns.) I get Tony’s voicemail after one ring, meaning his phone is off. Next I ring up California Kirk, who picks up on the third ring. I hear bar chatter in the background.

“Where you guys at?” I ask.

“Me and Tony are at Angel Share, getting a drink,” he says. “Where are you?”

“I’m at the restaurant,” I say, trying not to sound exasperated. “It was for 8 o’clock, no?”

“Yeah, but Lam’s running late,” says Kirk. “We’ll be down there soon.”

We click off, I sigh and lean against a railing. New Year’s is not a big holiday for me and I’m super-low on funds, so I wasn’t even gonna come out tonight, now this. I hate waiting and my cash situation is depressing. Some small part of me (the part that feels like making a time-out symbol and lying down when I accidentally get nailed in the head at Hapkido) actually feels like going home.

But your friends are your friends, and it’s not like I’ve got many, so I stick around. Besides, with twenty minutes to kill this is a great time for me to catch up on my pacing-back-and-forth.

Three people come up from downstairs to smoke out on the sidewalk. Mid-cigarette the three of them look at me and laugh all at the same time. I’m not sure if the joke they shared was unrelated to me, or if I was actually the punchline. I tell myself it’s the former and try not to let it bother me. I don’t have much fashion sense but I don’t think I look especially funny.

Earlier I’d called my friend Maya to see if she wanted to join us, especially since the name of the restaurant Tony had picked was “Maya.” Thai joint. Anyways she couldn’t make it. But later I found out, strangely enough, that the owner of Maya also runs a restaurant uptown called “Rain.”

“Rain,” I hear someone call. Tony are Kirk are getting out of a taxi, both wearing collar shirts and jackets. Uh-oh. I look down at what I’ve got on, which is just a notch better than what I’d wear if I was about to change the oil on my car. Maybe I did look funny.

The three of us get our table, and Lam joins us twenty minutes later. It’s a Guy’s Night Out. Would be nice if the four of us had molls but that’s not the way the dice went. Anyways the nice thing about sitting around a table with three other guys is you can speak frankly about chicks and dating and all that stuff. I think our female friends would be horrified if they heard half the stuff we said, although much of it is your basic male boilerplate about sleeping with each other’s mothers.

If this holiday was a lit cigarette on a counter about to fall into a bin of papers, I wouldn’t lift a finger to stop it. Yet it’s a big deal to Kirk, since it’s his first New Year’s in New York.

“I’m happy to be here with you guys, sitting around a table with friends,” he says. Then the three of us tell him to go to hell and beat him for showing weakness.

When Karin said “Penthouse party” I thought she meant Bob Guccione, but the e-vite said it was hosted by a guy named Weston. Before we head over there we decide to stop by my place, so I can put some decent goddamn clothes on and not be the scummy guy no one wants to let into the party. And I’ve got this powder blue tuxedo with a a frilly shirt I’ve been meaning to debut.

In actuality I just put on a leather coat and a lot of brown, and we head for the subway. The party’s on 51st between 7th and 8th, so we hop the B-train, which lets you out at Rock Center on 6th Ave, just a block east. Big mistake.

We get out at Rock Center, which is close enough to the Times Square epicenter that the streets are all fucked-up. Every street between 6th and 7th Avenue is blocked off by police barricades and we’re on the wrong side of the equation. It is now 11:38pm, so chances are slim we’ll make it to the party in time to see the ball drop. So much for Kirk’s big New Year’s.

“Where’s the first street we can get across at?” I ask a cop.

“Fifty-ninth,” he lies. We don’t know he’s lying, so we take off up 6th Ave. The foot traffic is ridiculously dense and it takes us forever to walk a single block. Kirk manages to find a taxi (outsider’s luck, I swear). But of all the taxi drivers in Manhattan, we manage to get the one son-of-a-bitch who drives like there’s a mule tied to the bumper. We’re fucking crawling. The clock ticks on.

We get out at 59th to discover it, too, is blocked off. And we’re out of streets; preventing us from going any further north is a little obstacle called Central Park.

Next, Kirk and I become separated from Tony and Lam by the jostling crowds.

It’s 11:44 and we’re never going to make it. The only thing that could add to this moment is a clap of thunder followed by pouring rain.

After using cell phones and a highly visible statue to reunite the group, we break east for 5th Avenue, to jump the N/R-train. Only in Manhattan can you get to your destination faster by moving in the opposite direction. Two stops down the N/R crosses over to the west side and will let us out at 49th and 7th. We run.

The four of us stand dejectedly on the platform, waiting.

The train arrives at last.

We get out of the station at 7th and 49th--to discover the streets are again blocked off, and access to 51st is impossible. I call Kim to tell her we’re close, but far.

“It’s between 7th and 8th, right?” I ask.

“Ninth and 10th,” she says.

Fuuuuuuck.

We hoof it up to 57th Street, which is mercifully unblocked, and start heading for 9th Ave. Which takes a while because Avenue blocks are a bitch. If you were standing on 56th Street you could probably shoot someone on 57th Street with little difficulty, but if you were on 6th Ave and wanted to shoot someone on 7th you’d need a scope.

The sole moment of comic relief comes when Kirk, who apparently doesn’t have good night vision, mistakes a random sprinting white man for Tony, and he begins running after him, abandoning us.

The four of us running down 9th avenue at 11:57pm. I feel like Steve Buscemi in Reservoir Dogs after the jewelry heist.

At 11:59pm we locate the building, and look up to see the balcony crowded with people all cheering. The ball is on its way down.

We hit the buzzer, but belatedly realize no one can hear it inside the apartment, because of all the cheering. We’re stuck on the sidewalk.

So at 12:00:00 the four of us are standing at the bottom of one of Manhattan’s canyons, removed from all party life. Staring up at the penthouse balcony, where the cheering partygoers can see the fireworks over midtown. I was hoping when the ball dropped I’d be in a place where I could kiss a bunch of pretty girls and spread this cold around, but instead it’s us four on the sidewalk. (And at dinner I’d already seen to it everyone would catch my cold by sharing food.)

Eventually someone lets us in and we take the elevator up to the penthouse.

It’s a party of lawyers, so I’m not exactly a tornado of mingling. But the penthouse is stunning. It’s a duplex with three different balconies and decks, each with the kinds of views you only see if you’re Spider-Man. Tall buildings, twinkling lights, tenement rooftops. The west side actually looks nice. All the pimps, junkies and hookers are so small from up here.

I’ve been to lawyer parties before, and I can tell you they’re usually a stone drag. Guys in shiny ties talking shop and doing supposedly hysterical re-enactments of Boss Asking for a Fax and other party favorites. At least this one is gender-balanced.

I run into a chick I know and several I don’t. The girl who peed on my seat is there and I feel like telling her I know the pH balance of her urine.

Francis has been there for an hour, and according to Kim has met everyone in the place. He introduces me to a cute girl, and she gives me one of the worst brush-offs I’ve ever gotten from a female at a party: “So how long have you been here for?” I say, trying to make polite conversation.

“Yeah, yeah,” she says, ignoring me and turning to scan the crowd for someone more interesting to talk to. Christ. As usual, I won’t think of the snappy counter-insult I should’ve spat out until hours later. The French have a phrase for this: L’esprit de l’escalier, the wit of the staircase. Clever bastards.

“Kack,” says the Japanese guy. Kirk has just introduced me to some five-minute friends, a bunch of Japanese girls visiting from out-of-town. The one Japanese guy in the group, like most Japanese, pronounces Kirk’s name “Kack.”

“The whole time I was in Japan, everyone’s calling me ‘Cock,’” says Kirk, wincing. (I was ‘Lain,’ which isn’t as bad.) If anyone named Kirk Black is reading this, know that in Japan, your name is pronounced “Cockblock.”

A couple hours later the lot of us are holed up at Kim’s apartment, which is enormous and homey, watching Entourage. She whips us up some ramen and apple chicken and it’s like being in a fucking restaurant. Her roommates, however, are decidedly unthrilled to see the five of us sprawled out in their living room.

We put our coats on shortly before 4, thank Kim, and the five of us guys are out on the sidewalk. Francis decides to walk the twenty blocks to his car. Kirk and Tony decide their night isn’t finished yet, and hop a taxi to the East Village to close some bar. Lam and I make for the B-train.

Inside the station we have the quintessential New York Disgusting City moment: At the bottom of the staircase is a giant rat, picking through a steaming puddle of orange vomit. The rat was big enough that you’d have trouble killing it with a tennis racket. He spots us and jets across the platform, abandoning a perfectly good pile of booze puke. Rats are shy sometimes.

On the platform we spot the puker, who has marked his territory in several places and is having a go at the garbage can. A crooked-eyed thug stands nearby, watching him. For a second I think he’s waiting to roll the puker, but then he reaches out to steady him, indicating they’re friends.

The train takes forty-five minutes to come, which is annoying for us but must be excruciating for the rat; his vomit is getting cold.

Back in my apartment before sun-up. It’s quiet here and doesn’t seem significantly different than it was when I’d left. I shower the subway germs off and get ready for my first sleep of 2005. Starting tomorrow I begin wasting checks with erroneous dates and, hopefully, making something of myself this year.

Today’s soundtrack: isn’t fair for you to thrill me
Today at 9:02pm: examining my dinner options



So I was reading something with Prince, I think it was Entertainment Weekly and in it he goes “It’s a stone gas, baby!” (Meaning it’s a good time, you square.)

I like that so I’m going to start saying it, so much that my friends will rue the day I read that damn interview. I will say it at work, on the subway, before and after I brush my teeth, and I will interrupt Hapkido sessions to loudly announce it to the class.

I’ll say it after I get shot down in bars and after I trip and fall on the sidewalk, destroying a cake I’m carrying. I’ll say it when I answer the phone and again before I hang up, even to telemarketers or those Chinese people who keep calling here asking to speak to Dr. Yang. It’s what I will say after the police burst into my apartment and find me sitting in the middle of the room surrounded by fifty snakes and a parakeet I’ve trained to load and fire a small carbine. Everything will be a stone gas. So thank you, Prince, for setting me on my new course of positivity.

PAL: Prince doesn’t read your blog, douche.

ME: It’s a stone gas, baby!