Sometimes You Want To Go...

There are two places where they know my name in LA: The Le Parc Suites Hotel in West Hollywood and Trax Bar at the Amtrak station. This does not speak well of my coolness factor.

I'm tired of coming up to LA. I'm tired of cranky and immature co-workers up here. I'm tired of doing a job that I don't really care that much about, even if they do treat me well.

I'm lonely, and you've heard this tune before, but I am and there it is. I'm sick of myself getting all psyched up at the prospect of meeting women and then not. I can deal with this. I'm not unhappy, but I don't know... something's off. At one moment tonight it came over me like a crushing weight, and then it was gone. God I'm tired of my own wining.

I am dreaming of a city...

...and it is a city that does not exist. It is not the city where I live, though sometimes it is where I live in my dreams. It is not New York. It is not San Diego. It's more like San Francisco, but it is not there either. It is not any city in the real world, but when I woke up today I realized this truth about it: it is the same city every time.

I've never been to the same place twice in this city, this city of my dreams, but I am sure it's the same city nonetheless. I know because each time I dream of it, of being in it, I can feel the shape of it in my mind. Each time I've been lost in a different part of the city, a new part, but I've always known where I was relative to the parts I'd been lost in before. This road leads to the stadium. I walked back and forth on it one afternoon for several hours looking for my friends. Down that way is a hill dotted with large houses and secret, winding, wooded paths leading down to the river where I once became lost while chasing (or was it running from) someone else. This entrance leads to a complicated section of on and off ramps, where I've driven in circles trying to find the right highway.

The City is vast. It is peaceful, passive, yet it in passivity is held a certain fear-- that I could loose myself forever in this sleeping city, never to return from my dreams, and the city would slumber on unaware. This is the city of my dreams.

Mission Control!

(Open Mike Night)

I don't know why, but watching this makes me inordinately happy and I've been playing it over and over all day.

Steam Heat

I lay there in her bed with the sheet half over me, sweltering, yet oddly comfortable. My head ached a little from the drinking and my stomach lurched now and then, but not alarmingly so. My left arm stretched over my head, lightly brushing hers. From time to time she stirred-- a shallow sleeper. I forgot what it was like, those old, Upper West Side apartments in the winter. It's either on or off, the heat. No thermostat, and when it's on, it's on.

Met A Girl Friday

She works for google.

Oldest Friend

I love you.

You are not a cheater. I know this, even though you once confided in me that, before you met your husband, I was the last guy you didn't cheat on. We were sixteen when we dated. Now, you have told me, I hold that sole honor again. When I hear this, I do not judge you, in the true sense of that phrase. I don't think ill of you for a moment or rush to characterize you. You are not a cheater, I know this. I've known you since we were eleven. People change, I know that. You've changed, but not in this fundamental way. So why then?

I remember that day, fifteen years ago. You came to school upset. You had broken up with your boyfriend. I was still in love with you then and young enough that your pain over someone else hurt me. By lunch you were gone. My friends came back from the nurse's office. He had left a note for his mother, our biology teacher, and then driven off school grounds in that shitbox car he loved. Pills and alcohol.

He was legally dead by the time they brought him into the hospital, but they managed to revive him. You came into his room and the first thing he told you was, "It's your fault. I did it because of you."

For most of the next two years he held you hostage with that. He cheated on you and you took him back. He treated you like shit. God, he was better to that fucking car. I watched while you tried to get away so many times, but then you'd close your eyes at night and see his lifeless body and next time he came crawling to you, you'd take him back again. What did that do to you, old friend? I can't imagine.

He's gone now and you’ve moved on. Through the years there was a lot of sadness and guilt, but I watched you grow up and watched you fight through it and search for happiness. I am so proud of you, of who you've become, of what you've overcome. You deserve to be happy. If this one is it then hold on and fight for it for all you are worth, but if it is not, then don't stay for a second longer than it takes you to figure that out, even if it breaks your heart. Hearts heal.

I’m sorry for what was done to you. Maybe I wish he hadn’t woken up at all. I know that’s awful, but would that have been somehow easier? Does he even have anything to do with all this anymore, or is it something else?

Be happy. I love you kid. It wasn't your fault.

Till Sleep Takes Me by Force

I woke in my bed at 8:15AM on Tuesday, February 4th. I packed. I did some work. I voted. I went into the office and did all I could and then rushed home to get a few more things before my friend picked me up for dinner and a ride to the airport.

Since boarding the blissfully empty plane at 8:30PM (I had the whole row of three to myself), I have napped 5 hours, met my mom in Boston for breakfast, napped another hour on another plan, gone into the NYC office for work, played a game of squash, taken my first shower in 36 hours and changed my clothes, done some more work, taken my fiend out for drinks and dinner and then sat around talking and reading blogs.

I am tired, but not a bone tired, or a weary tired, just a sleepy tired. There's lots I'd like to tell you, but I'm going to bed.

Nothing Breathes Here in The Cold

nothing moves or even smiles.

I don't know why I feel so cold. Maybe it's the lack of sleep. It's not a physical cold exactly, but nearly so. I was going to say, "it's not a body cold", but that's not true. It is a body cold, it just comes from somewhere deep down that I can't locate.

Maybe it's just that I'm tired, I don't know, but maybe I'm lonely. Maybe it's winter and I'm lonely too; lonely enough to look hopefully at each and every pretty girl when I go out; enough to stay up all night on the couch holding hands with women twelve years younger than me, listening to sad songs like I was in college again. This doesn't upset me so much, I've been lonely before-- I can do lonely. I can forgive myself for being hopeful, even when that hope sends me to all the wrong places. A little hand holding with twenty-year-olds isn't yet so terrible at my age. I can handle all this, I can last through the winter, but like I said, it's not a physical cold exactly. What if the winter passes and it is still there, worming into my veins; nipping at my bones? What if I don't know how to get warm again?

Nothing Is Everything I'd Hoped It Could Be

Ah, the nearly unbearable luxury of crawling back into bed with the curtains drawn at noon on a Saturday. Later I will work out. I may even clean my apartment. It may turn out to be a productive evening after all, but for now I'm going to lie in bed, maybe watch movies on my laptop, maybe read and, most likely, sleep.