Choire Sicha

Friday, June 20

a love poem.

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Thursday, June 19

Wait! Soundtrack! Okay, I'm almost disappeared. But if you were watching me walk up Park Avenue in the wet night, the haze of off-duty cab lights making trails, you would want to hear my soundtrack.

[mp3, ©Calexico, 4.8MB, Cascabel (in-studio performance at KGNU).] ⊕

Wait -- one more thing. I totally walked past Dale Bozzio last night. Why, I haven't seen her since I was 11 years old, at the Ventura County Fairgrounds one eternal California summer night. She rocked then and she rocked now. She has more hair than anyone. New wave forever. She is my good omen. Now: I disappear. ⊕

Let's have a real earnest moment together, writer to reader, shall we? At midnight tonight I'm going to go off the radar, kids. I'm going MIA. I'm going under deep cover. Maybe only for a few hours -- I might be here all fresh and perky Friday morning. Maybe I'll be gone for a week. Fuck, I might never come back.

[Before I go: as this weekend is the summer solstice, here is one of my favorite poems ever: Sharon Olds, Summer Solstice, New York City. Okay, read that and then come back.]

A little romantic adventure -- er, strike that -- a great romantic adventure begins tonight. As in all matters of the heart, we can't know what'll become of it. Perhaps the perfect gentleman in question will meet me in the great black emptiness of New York City tonight and off we'll go as friends and co-conspirators. Or it might be that by this time next year I won't be able to see my toes over my own swollen fetus-laden belly.

(Okay, I know that's not possible. My pelvis is really small. (An aside: Dale Peck said to me recently "Is the skin color of an adopted baby the china pattern of the gay set?" He has a point. (Related aside: Dear Gays, we already know those white babies cost a lot more. Stop flaunting them. They're not Prada sunglasses.)))

I'm sorry, I got distracted. I can't leave our tender moment alone, lovely reader. So: knowing me, I expect you'll hear at least something about this adventure. There is a chance, however, that I will never speak of the events of tonight. In that case, if loveless silence resounds in these parts, in the years that follow you must imagine me typing my little scribblings in my foul East Village walk-up, loveless, unbathed, with an awful haircut, an obese angry cat hunched on each of my shoulders. Yes, there will be scabs all over my shins. I will be snacking down on carbs. In this version of my future, I will become known as the scary unloved and unstable fag with the vicious and scatalogical website. Okay, more known for that than now. But: I will decompensate, quickly. Of course you would enjoy that horror show unfolding, you cruel people. Good for you. That's New York City, baby. Love it or fucking lump it. If you don't like it here, go back to America. Town without pity! Et cetera! Voyeur beware!

But, back to the now. As far as we can smell, love is all around, and there is no need to fake it. There is some chance that we'll actually find out that two kids from the hinterlands -- now all grown up, having weathered the insane storms of the fully-lived wild world -- can together find love.

Your happiness, dear reader, depends on that.

[An important nonsardonic postscript, on freedom as love. A story about that: "when the clutch fell out of the truck an hour outside of laramie; sara and i did a hit of ecstasy because we had them with us and why not, middle of nowhere, and we were on I-80 and it seemed like the genius thing to do..." --first put aside everything. Young mystics be free tonight. I believe in love.] ⊕

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Wednesday, June 18

Speaking as a Citigroup stockholder, I couldn't agree more.

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24 hours to go. I'll be singing this all night. [2.6 MB, mp3] ⊕

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Tuesday, June 17

Date me and get your hair cut for charity. Okay, wealthy and good-hearted readers. One (1) dinner with me (Choire Sicha) at a certain exclusive English-run members-only club here in New York City (it rhymes with snow-blow, for the dense) is being offered to one lucky winner in a benefit for Visual AIDS this Wednesday night.

For those uninterested in such, wait! There's more! If you come on down to the B-Bar this Wednesday between 6 p.m. and 1 a.m., you can get your hair did by fancy fancy hairdoers for only $40.00, all of which goes to charity. First come first serve, so remember, the entire Conde Nast cafeteria will decamp to the Bowery that night; don't forget your scratch-proof face guards. No cover charge to get in, and a percentage of the bar will benefit Visual AIDS, so bring a friend and get hammered to help artists with AIDS. All the information is here.

You can learn more about the good works of Visual AIDS here. I respect them highly.

So, if you've ever wanted a great haircut for cheap, or if you've always wanted to stalk and kill me, this is your magic moment. And if you succeed in the latter, remember, you're just adding two column inches to my Times obituary, and maybe getting me on the cover of the Post, so let me thank you from beyond the grave. Let me also add that I'd rather be killed than have dinner with a really boring person, so, you know, this whole thing could go horribly wrong either way. So come on and do me it for charity!

If you're out of town, and you'd like to put in a standing bid for me to get me out of the raffle, you can call Visual AIDS at 212.627.9855.

Fine print: I reserve the right to bring along a guest star on our date, promised to be even more entertaining than me... if the bid is high enough. Your donation is tax-deductible to the extent dictated by law. Killing me is still illegal in New York City, although, if the City finds some way to make money off that, perhaps that may change. Finally, I will not actually "do" you, as at this moment I am taken, off the market, not available, have eyes only for one man, etc. ⊕

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Monday, June 16

Letter from New York City's President

From time to time, my office receives petulant letters from recent visitors to New York who live in the quaint villages and hamlets of America. New York is so smelly, they write. My vacation there scared me, they whine. I was beaten up by your police officers, they claim. They often ask me for a refund or an apology. Our office policy is to Fedex them a tasteful Tiffany envelope of human feces scraped from my East Village stoop.

Ever so rarely, I receive a letter with actual grammar and real content worthy of my response. This letter is one such marvel.

→ read the letter and our official response. [published june 16, 2003]

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Making me laugh:

"I think I must be some kind of castaway on a shore of The Sea of Dirty Martinis."
"I'd like to propose that we all make a commitment to focus exclusively on the Jayson Blair Crisis."
"When I was little I used to watch my mother touch the eggs and I had no idea what it was she discerned from them by doing so."
"For me, summer means a summer nights inquiry."
"Your faggot's on the fire escape learning to smoke and wondering what gravity could do."

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New writing here: A Letter from New York City's President. So, I know you guys think that just because I'm busy completely insanely freefalling in love that I was going to get all nice on you. Thought I was losing my edge? If so, let me quote New York's little princess-that-could, Amy Sedaris: when the lunch bell rings, why don't you eat me? ⊕

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Sunday, June 15

I'm a socialist. I socialize. I can't remember at all what I was watching when I fell asleep last night, but when I woke up, the TV was all David Hasselhoff and Sarah Fucking Brightman squealing their way through Jekyll and Hyde: the Musical. Am I going to die? What a horrible omen, what a terrible way to awake. I don't have time to die right now, I have some really important things to do.

Two octaves below and back in the awful delightful real world I was pummelled by Kiki and Herb last night. Please to go visit them at the Cherry Lane Theater on lovely Commerce Street, one of the most pleasing streets in Manhattan. It was the most upsetting comedy I'd ever seen. Don't be confused, this is no cabaret act, no drag show. It's war out there in America. We are at war, my sweet. And everyone you know will die, and unexpectedly. (And have a lovely day, it's lovely outside today, the ginkgo trees are remarkable and luscious and green right now, go visit them, it's a day for holding hands with someone who amazes you while we all still have bodies, I'd like to do that.) ⊕