Car

The night flies past too quickly on the LIE – Bayside, Elmhurst, the World’s Fair, an adventitious smattering of businesses and churches with signs in Korean. Asian Christianity intrigues me. Korean Baptist. Laotian Presbyterian. Cambodian Congregational. Japanese Pentecostal.

Lanes are changed. I’m in the back seat of a Cadillac Eldorado, donated to Gerry by the family of a priest – don’t know the relationship there – and peering into the pocket sewn into the backside of the passenger seat. I reach in, thumb tucked between my middle and index finger, and roll back and forth the sand that’s caught in the seam at the bottom as Queens – service road Queens – trundles (trundles?) past in a whirl of shit nobody can understand. A borough without a fucking face.

“I gotta piss.”

Gerry drives close. He’s one of those guys who need to be right up the ass of the guy in front of him. He doesn’t complain, doesn’t pound on the wheel and “fuck, fuck, fuck” the way I do. He just sits there, like he’s drafting in the fucking Tour de France. I can’t do that. Car in front of me hits his brakes, fucked if I’m not slamming on mine, and fucked if I’m not keeping my distance. Crack the window and roll the sand is what I do here.

“I seriously gotta piss.”

“I’m not pullin’ over.”

I blame them for everything, the dancers. Put on some music – that electronic shit – and they jump around and wave their arms and kick their legs and gesticulate in ways that would embarrass a fucking ostrich. I’d prefer to blame Ed Koch for everything – or even Lindsay or Beame – but it’s these fucking dancers who’ll turn the city to shit again, to the point where Tompkins Square Park is smoking tires and anarchy again. They don’t burn tires there anymore, but they did once – and they will again if these fucks have anything to say about it, which they do because they’re everywhere.

“Use a fuckin’ Gatorade bottle.”

My feet are under the seat, its curved, cushioned bottom in contour with my shins. I never know what to do with my hands, except in cars. In cars, I have places to set them. Sometimes I drive with my right hand on my hip. Nobody can see this.

Getting the Kinks Out

Here's a little test. Right now, I'm sitting here in my apartment and I have to go to the supermarket. I guarantee you I'll find something there worth writing about. Here I go.

Break.

I'm back, and I have a topic: avoidance. I avoided things just now. I avoided the shithead slapdickery of this weird, foreign, out-of-state supermarket in favor of 7-11 and something to eat from a place with a drive-thru that's open late.

Why? Because I'm a guy who avoids things now. When I see a crowd, I walk the other way. If I see a line, I go home. You should see me in airports. Even if it takes me ten minutes to walk there, I'll sit at the gate that doesn't have a plane so I can avoid them. They're hell, is what they are.

So, nothing really happened because I did my best to avoid interacting with anyone who'd be irritating or stupid this late at night. I mean, I guess I could piss and moan about the jerkoff who came flying around the corner without signaling - and with his lights off - as I tried to pull out my alleyway onto a main road, but even he didn't bother me because I floored it and smoothed my way into the left lane before he affected my life or I affected his. I'm a very good driver.

Also, when you see something in a magazine or a book that doesn't look right, it's not always the writer's fault. Start doing this for pay and you'll realize how starched all this shit gets before anyone sees it.

Where

So, yeah, I'm a bullshitter. I promised I'd post more, and then I turned around and didn't do shit for...I don't know how many days. You won't hear any sob story from me tonight, though. Life is good, and I'm pretty much just counting down the days until I can move back to New York. That's coming soon, within a matter of weeks, and it's something I'm really looking forward to because I think I'll be capable of viewing the city from an entirely new perspective when I get home.

I've lived away from New York for extended periods of time before, but that was when I was much, much younger and had a lot less at stake in terms of not having left any kind of life I'd built up the way I have this time around. I took a big chance moving, but it seems to have paid off. I'll explain a lot more about what I've been doing when I move back home and things get settled a little more.

Suffice it to say that I've net some very interesting people, some of them rather famous, and I've done some interesting writing - which, as you know if you've been reading this site for a while, is something I'm still surprised to be drawing a paycheck from. It's a far cry from where I was and what I was doing a few years ago.

There's definitely more to come. First, I want to show my agent what I've been doing. That should be interesting.

Enthusiasm

I just checked my stats on Statcounter and I can’t believe how many people are still reading this blog. There’s been nothing new here in months, and nothing of substance for quite a bit longer than that.

So, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do to “reward” you people for sticking with me: I’m going to get this shit moving again.

Why? Because I’m kind of far from home right now, and missing New York like a motherfucker, and if there’s one thing this blog has always been about, it’s New York, all the way down the line. Writing here makes me think of New York, because this site was once pretty damned popular there as far as blogs go. I miss that, I miss home, and I miss the feedback I used to get when I’d put something halfway decent online.

I’ll be home before long, and I’m looking forward to making it a permanent stay, but for now I think I’ll document some of the shit I’m running into out here in America. The world west of Jersey is a pretty fucked up kind of place.

And, as it turns out, the Ed Hardy disease is incurable.