Choire Sicha

Friday, August 15

At 3:30 p.m. Thursday I was attempting to purchase a green, a yellow, and a red bell pepper, and a single portobello mushroom. My intention was to fry them all. In a little olive oil and salt and pepper and garlic and butter and maybe a deglazing splash of vermouth. Lunch.

Here at the small town Long Island grocery store -- the only store in town, literally -- they still handwrite house charge accounts on little slips of paper. This ritual originated because, well, in my experience I've found it's chafing to keep money stuffed in one's wet speedo.

Unfortunately, my house account's last charge had been declined, the vampy Suffolk County high school cheerleader at the counter told me. "That can't be," I said, "it's on a debit card for my checking account, and I have literally thousands of dollars in there." I grumpily paid cash, called the bank. And as a matter of fact, I have forty-two dollars in the old checking account.

My first reaction when the mysterious money spring that is my bank account runs dry is: Who stole all my money, and who do I sue to get it back? And back at home also I thought: why won't the electric stove work? And exactly why would that refrigerator light bulb burn out right this particular fucking moment?

In a town of 300 houses there are always wars and rumors of war on the streets that can be overheard from inside one's home. The tall black transexual downtown, dressed in a nipple-revealing negligee, operated as a highly-inaccurate town crier. The first report was that the East Village power station had been taken out by a disgruntled Wahhabist with a hand-held rocket launcher. Not a soul believed that. The ensuing reports got duller and duller, and so we cooled off in the Bombay Sapphire-bottle ocean.

Then there was nothing. We went for a long walk in the forest, and back home along the beach. The sun began to set more slowly than I'd ever seen it. My cell phone battery was dead. The land line couldn't complete a call. My laptop battery was drained. There was nothing I could do for you, although I worried about you city folk a little, surely fighting Thunderdome-style to be Master of the Hot Pitch-Black Subway. Also there was nothing you could do for me. I was finally unmoored in a diminishing echo of un-returned phone calls, retarded business deals, and what has seemed an uphill battle to ever feel okay. Shabbos candles winked warmly around the house and then the Milky Way throatily spun up. For the first time in weeks, I felt really, really happy.

The lights came on while I slept, so I turned them off. This morning a single old woman is surf-casting on the empty beach. The dark blue ocean is as flat as a waffle. Catbirds squawk. I am destitute and inventive and nearly happy -- and stranded at the beach, unable to go home -- and my only regret is that I did not have a chance to loot Manhattan. ⊕

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Thursday, August 14

Pretty much everything I have written in the last two weeks is total crap. And I've written a lot. You're lucky: I haven't shown it to you, and I never will. Let's just say I was either becoming the gay Unabomber or a bitter homosexual Cathy Guisewite. Hard to say which is worse, eh? Anyway, as the years go by, I will filch any particularly un-crappy sentences and personally resonant scenes from this recent shitpile of teen drama.

However. Last night Bjork and Sandra Bernhardt came to me in a dream. We took a private jet to their plush leathery recording studio in Halifax. Sandy lengthily sang a Nick Cave song on the trip: "God don't care for your benevolence any more than he cares for the lack of it in others, nor does he care for you to sit at windows in judgment of the world he created while sorrows pile up around you -- ugly, useless, and over-inflicted."

When we arrived, they sat me down over Slurpees, and they told me exactly what was wrong with the novel I've been writing this year. They also told me to get my sci-fi blue Slurpee off their George Nelson incidental table unless I was going to use one of their Italian cork coasters.

These days, I wake up every morning feeling like someone kicked me in the gut all night long, my neck caked to my jaw with sweat. But as I came up for air this morning, an intellectual excitement grew. Bjork and Sandy were totally right. That totally is what's wrong with my novel. ⊕

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Wednesday, August 13

Great things about abstaining from dating:

You no longer feel that urgency to treat lingering STDs. Let 'em fester: no one's around to care if you have a few aggressive spirochetes.
No sleepovers equals no more dumb fags -- who also mistakenly believe that you're going to make them breakfast -- complaining about the volume at which you enjoy Black Sabbath at 9 a.m.
Masturbation should be a lovely and loving experience, but while busy dating, who really has time for proper self-adulation? Not dating means more special time with yourself, a few Essence of John Galliano candles, and a really expensive raspberry coulis dripping all over your buff manchest.
The gym locker-room is a great place to snub leering jock-strap-clad guys who look like the hockey team that beat you up in high school. Highly therapeutic.
Free weekends! Friday nights are for lolling about unshowered and unshaven, watching weepy Drew Barrymore chickflicks on cable. Saturday nights are for re-ordering your Official Shit List and pouring water on the neighbor's children who play on your stoop. Sundays are for voodoo dolls papier mached from the Vows section of the Times.
Less annoying ringing sounds all around: one has a tendency to turn off one's cell phone for yoga or for a movie alone and forget to turn it back on for a number of days. Who's gonna call? Your well-meaning friends? So?
You can really viscerally enjoy seeing the guy you last dated being described as a hotly-sought-after, highly-eligible bachelor by shit-tacular magazines -- for which said magazines will, incidentally, totally get what they deserve in the very near future.
All those time-consuming hygiene rituals can finally be retired. Socks can be worn for more days than you might have imagined. Found a comfy outfit? Just stick with it. That baggy "BEAUTIFUL ORLANDO" mouse-ears sweatshirt will suit you well. Of course deodorant, like Virginia, is only for lovers.
No more expensive romantic meals to cramp your eating style and your budget. A box of Dots and a Snickers for lunch, followed by the classic hearty $1.99 can of soup for dinner not only satisfies, it saves both cash and hours of your life that you'd never get back from those fuckers at Vong.
You can go on Zyban and chomp on Nicorette and quit smoking, because how much worse could it get than living single in a sweaty Manhattan walk-up, brushing your shedding cats, and desperately looking forward to finally seeing a Will and Grace rerun you don't know by heart?

⊕

Monday, August 11

From our vantage point miles away, the party looked like a spaceship had fallen in pieces from the sky onto the blackened strip of Fire Island beach. What remained shot emergency beacon blue disco beams straight up into the night. As we finally approached at two a.m., we saw the giant speaker towers stacked up high and thousands of emaciated homosexual men swaying fratishly, each clad in identical gold lame hot pants. At this late hour, we figured security wouldn't be carefully checking attendees for the hundred-dollar tickets. As we entered the front gate I unbuttoned my shirt, and Shane and I put our arms around each other. We pretended to be distracted laughing lovers, and cruised right on in for free and for nothing.

Thumpy gay anthems deafened and the muscley crowd surged the storm fences. Rain spit down through the whirling lights, and spray from the ocean flew up the beach on the strong incoming wind. On a stage behind a suite of flagdancers, a lone bleach-blonde man spent hours staring emptily into his hands.

I saw something on television the next day; the only extant recording of the many live television broadcasts of Judy Garland performing Somewhere Over the Rainbow. In this black and white film, she walks forward and sits at the edge of the stage. We cut to a single shot of only her, head and shoulders, for the entire song. She is dressed as a hobo. She is wearing short black hair and a dark beard is drawn on her face with what looks like coal. The song is performed very slowly, with subdued orchestra, and midway through her voice chokes from a repressed sob. Her eyes wet with tears, she can barely conclude the song at all. ⊕