Something happened to me while I was writing yesterday. I finished the main character's screaming tirade at his servant, who failed him the night before which in turn led to a friend's death:
"I'm sorry. I tried."
"TRIED?" I screamed, down his miserable throat. "There's no such thing as try. You either do something or you do a terrible job doing something and make believe that you've done something by 'trying.' A failed try is still just a failure so do us all a favor: Don't try."
It echoed in my head and I wondered where I had gotten that from. My best guess is that it's from the song I've been obsessed with all month.
It doesn't pay to try all the smart boys know why It doesn't mean I didn't try. I just never knew why...
You can't put your arms around a memory so don't try. Don't try.
How deep is my obsession with this song? I researched it for days to the point of discovering whom it was written about. I found her on the internet and the two of us exchange daily emails about pain and life, even though she is, minimum, thirty years older than me.
But I got to thinking. I'm not trying. Therefor I'm not doing anything to fix things with Nikki. Therefor I'm failing. Why would I prefer to fail? Why would I chance to leave this relationship in purgatory, waiting for some magical thing to resurrect it? Because of course I like knowing that some girl out there might, possibly, want to be there for me--among other reasons.
This thinking is, to be rational, actually a form of failure that is no doubt hurting my chances at having any kind of relationship with her. Last night I decided that I was going to let her go, like the razor back whale. I dropped off a dress she had left in my apartment at her job. I found some of her old things around and put them in a bag so that I could say goodbye in person the following morning.
But when I got home from work last night, in my usual drunken--7AM way--texted her that I didn't think meeting was such a good idea after all. I slept through her next message and when I woke up she took my absence as not wanting to see her.
And instead--I swear this is not a metaphor-she helped her ex look for apartments. One of which is the penthouse that towers over me in the building across the street.
On my parents' dining room table there is a green-clovered tile that reads the following:
"Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.' -William Butler Yeats
I have to admit to a slight thrill when something terrible happens to me because it puts me at ease, for once, knowing the my impending sense of doom was finally right.
Taylor and Adrienne, part of my delight comes in knowing that in going low, I'm improving my depth. The funny shit is easy and as easy as it comes to me, the easier it is to throw away or the less it lasts. Weeks ago, before I had even formed the sentence in my head I was telling my parents about this crazy girl in the LES who somehow--just follow the story for a second--contracted gonorrhea. "And I was like, "Gonorrhea? Who'd you fuck? Oliver Twist?"
I used the line again later in the week when a dear friend of mine who isn't that much of a slut contracted scabies*. "Scabies? Who'd you fuck? Oliver Twist?"
The line was fresh to both of them, but when you're the girlfriend you hear the jokes over and over again and they get old, as all jokes do. All relationships need to develop and if you spend two years having the same relationship with someone and working on the same level, it becomes an old joke that you almost roll your eyes at when it comes around again.
So yes, Taylor, the silver lining is that this period feels like I'm improving my range. No one wants to read a novel that is a constant string of the same jokes, even if in the beginning you are drawn in by the warmth and humor. And, also, I'm improving my range on my own, which makes me feel good. The sense of loss and jealousy can be as surprising in a character to an even more delightful degree than a prat-fall or an intensely comic scene.
The above paragraph, incidentally, is why The Simpsons movie is actually good and more than just 4 back-to-back episodes.
*I realize these stories in tandem make it seem like I run with street urchins. The reality is that these diseases are somewhat common and transmitable even if you protect yourself. And we all probably know people who have these things and suffer through them alone out of embarassment or shame. I was laughing my ass off with the scabies girl the other day, via text, as she explained the process of washing every item of clothing and linen in her apartment and mowing herself down something she hasn't seen since she was nine years old.
Unemployment comes out of a fund that you pay into when you're employed.
What's disgusting is that I'm collecting unemployment and sueing another company for stealing from me and somehow there's this stern looking frown in the back of my mind that makes me feel like Oliver Twists absent welfare mom because I politely ask for my own money back.
Missing Nikki a little too much has bothered me all week. It just makes me pathetic and depressed and preoccupied. I haven't been getting the work done either. When we first got together I would leap out of bed in the morning, writing as though it were some kind of seduction dance. Then I read this on wikipedia:
Recent studies in neuroscience have indicated that as people fall in love, the brain consistently releases a certain set of chemicals, including pheromones, dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin, which act similar to amphetamines, stimulating the brain's pleasure center and leading to side-effects such as an increased heart rate, loss of appetite and sleep, and an intense feeling of excitement.
Because, yes, I wikipediaed love looking for help. My family doctor put me on a perscription to help me keep my mind grounded and it turned out to be a low-dose time-release of Amphetamine, which meant that I could focus completely and totally to being an obsessive ex-boyfriend.
And then yesterday I gave up. We texted back and forth about meeting up and I realized I would never condone one of my friends doing things to make them so willfully miserable. I cancelled. I cancelled because long ago when I first met her I was reading Moby Dick and I came across a passage that read like sound advice for the situation.
( Razor Back). --Of this whale little is known but his name. I have seen him at a distance off Cape Horn. Of a retiring nature, he eludes both hunters and philosophers. Though no coward, he has never yet shown any part of him but his back, which rises in a long sharp ridge. Let him go. I know little more of him, nor does anybody else.
There's a tremendous freedom in letting go. I sat down at my computer the next morning and did three times the work I'd done all month. I have a definate story about love and jealousy and why it doesn't always work out. I'm going to write it over the course of 4 months.
Me: "I just started some medication to help me with my problems."
Ex girlfriend: (in earnest) "There's a pill that makes you less narcissistic, more in touch with your avoidance behavior, less sensitive, and helps control your split personalities?"
Me: "No. It's for my seasonal allergies. But, uh..."
For some perverse reason I insist on learning something from all the girls I meet. I guess this is no different than wanting to learn something, say, from a Philip Roth novel that tells you, somewhat accidentally, all about popular anti-semitism 1938-1942 or a TC Boyle novel about a young research assistant and his troublesome life, who just so happens to work for the sex researcher Alfred Kinsey.
Maybe because I read these kind of books--but more likely because I'm trying to write two of these books--I always find myself creating conversations that create a learning experience. Long ago there was the waitress who first taught me to carry a tray which lead to the bartender who showed me how to make drinks. The valedictorian, somewhat embarassingly, informed me that Ezra Pound and Evelyn Waugh were both males.
Amy first got me into Shirley Ellis. The model showed me the actual industry-version of "blue steel." The librarian taught me how to be quiet. The economist explained money. The Navajo told me how to make fry bread.*
The Bible says that the two become one flesh, which I've always found gross. But when you break up, little pieces break off too. And these are all you're left with. Through time and distance I get to a point where I only have happy memories. You forget that the singer was completely distant or that the model was clingy. Instead I find myself in a strange conversations where I have my own private pang of joy and a rush of pleasant feelings in explaining the Consumer Price Index.
When I got home tuesday night there was a guy standing in my apartment door, hurling whiskey bottles at cars.
The night wasn't going well to begin with. After DJ'ing I ran into Nikki and some guy on the street. I'd like to pretend that I fell into another random, unbelievable coincidence but the reality is that without planning to I frequently walk to my bars via where she works. It's a main street and on the scooter it's the only one-way that takes me to work. I'd also like to pretend that I hadn't maybe accidentally found out about her and this guy via a missent text message. But either way it doesn't make me not a stalker.
One of the most perplexing things to me--and this happens every time--is why the fuck seeing your ex with someone else can make you want to be with that person. Clearly that is the worst time. I'd like the reason to be something magical and beautiful, but in the end it's probably just territoriality, which fades quicker than memories.
When I met Nikki she had a string of seemingly psychotic exes who would cause a scene if they saw us or convince her to meet up for tea just to tell her that I absolutely must be cheating on her. I don't want to become one of those guys, but this unbelievably irrational part of me comes out when heartbroken. I don't feel like myself and it is just draining enough that I can't really give a shit about anything else until the next time.
I hopped out of my cab a few blocks short of my house to save a dollar on the fare. But just as I did I heard a loud crash. A thud. A terrible scream. Someone was standing in the doorway of my apartment throwing empty whiskey bottles at cars. Upon a closer look I could see that they were my empty whiskey bottles. And then my vases, my soda bottles, water pitchers and coffee mugs.
He threw them straight at the cars parked out front and didn't touch my vespa. They shattered with varying degrees of clatter. The full soda bottles sounded wet and pregnant, not so much exploding but releasing upon impact under the yellow streetlamp. The light went on in my landlord's apartment as the violent creature ran into my room. I tore in after him and slammed the door, which felt oddly satisfying considering the night I had. My landlord ran into the street and the other landlords all opened their doors to the outside. "Is he gone? Where'd he go? Anyone get a look at him?" They searched the hood for some Brooklyn thug but he was in my room.
I wish I played baseball because I didn't have a bat to hold. All I had was a coat rack. Quiet, cautious, and completely sober from the experience, I crept into my room and found him asleep in my bed, wearing a shirt that Nikki designed. I flicked the light on and couldn't believe who it was.
Sometimes I get this surreal sense of comfort from feeling like I'm in a scene from a movie. Yesterday I sat and wrote on the edge of the water in Brooklyn at picnic table behind a grocery store with the waves crashing against the rocks below me and the Manhattan skyline just off in the distance. It didn't change the fact that I still got no work done, but I did feel better about it.
Drug dealers don't actually have territory. Crack dealers do in the ghetto, but crack dealers would be better off delivering for the deli. The real drug dealers in New York are runners for bigger guys. The guys actually running around the street tend to be nice guys with baby mama's and a desire to have a fun-loving reputation. More important than territory to these guys is having Clientelle.
David, my DJ on Sundays, set up special Monday night party for an unnamed person's birthday last night and invited me. Danny, a friend from high school, told me that Nikki's friend also had a birthday party up the street where I happen to work on Sundays, with David. Knowing that Nikki would be up the street I thought I was safe to walk in.
Nikki and I are fine with each other, but we've agreed to give eachother time. I haven't seen her in two weeks and when I walked into the bar I learned immediately that there was only one birthday party, Nikki's friend, David was DJ'ing it and Nikki was there.
When I stepped outside I saw the singer of a band I had booked for the following sunday and he would not fucking shut up about how off the charts the show would be. I didn't hear a word because I had lost my mind.
Just then I thought I recognized the low-slung brim of a friendly and prominent drug dealer. I wanted to change the subject in my mind and it's also funny to "bust" on these guys--especially when you're in a bar full of dirty kids with bangs and tattoos--when in walks a young guy with a godl chain who looks like an extra in a Daddy Yankee video who stays for three hand shakes and leaves. "Well look who it is."
The brim turned up and not only was it not the guy I thought it was, but it was clear at that moment that it was another dealer who was looking to improve his client database. "Sorry, not you." I fumbled for an answer and pointed to a guy walking down the street the other way. "It's a, f-friend of ours down the street."
The singer ran away and left me out there. "You got a light, cuz?" the dealer said. When I gave it to him he added. "If you're looking to party let me know." He raised and eyebrow and we all knew what was going on.
I ran into the DJ booth and tell David the whole story. We laugh and laugh and he says, "You're lucky I swear I almost got shot when I did that one time."
We went outside again and the guy was standing there right behind us. I turned my back to him hoping he would know that I meant no ill will, but that I was not shopping. He started to walk away when a friend I hadn't seen in a while commented on how instead of a three piece suit I had a scruffy beard and a wife beater on and she almost didn't recognize me.
I saw the dealer walk away, luckily. But another friend who looked equally dirty said a bunch of us should get together and go someplace fancy and WASPY like the Central Park Boathouse bar looking all trashy. David, fresh from my story inside, said "You know what happens when a black guy like you rolls in to a fancy party looking like that. Kids'll come right up to you and their first question is "Y'all selling weed?"
Thinking I had talked him up, the drug dealer turns around, "Yeah, whatchu need?"
I ran back inside and left as soon as the streets were clear.
Briefly in the language-ruining 90s it was fashionable to say something like "Columbus came upon America in 1492 CE (common era) rather than time it through Christ. Why in the failed attempt didn't someone get us to stop saying "fifteenth century" when we mean the 1400s? Why do we say a number just to make anyone listening hear it and subtract one?
It was my first time ever DJ'ing in England at a little spot in Brighton called The Free Butt. I was nervous because I didn't know or understand British music tastes. There's one record that I alway play. I grew up listening to it and it reminds me of mommy making pancakes and dancing around the kitchen.
This little Jewish tramp came up to me, she had a fresh tattoo on her arm of a lightning bolt. She was tiny and I was flustered at the sound equipment that I barely understood. She said something and I couldn't hear her because I had the headphones on.
I tore the headphones off when I heard this, "You got a fucken problem with Ruth Brown?"
"So you're the American bloke I heard was spinning tonight. No. I love Ruth Brown. My mum used to play her when we were kids. It reminds me of morning biscuits and dancing around the flat," she then introduced herself. "My name's Amy. Please play more. Anything produced by Ahmet." Her eyes lit up when I said I had Clyde McPhatter. "In that case I'll be right back to get the American bloke a drink. With a last name like 'Wineh-use' do you think li'l Amy doesn't know how to tipple?"
"Oh, uh, that's fine I don't drink."
"I'm sorry! I should have asked! Are you in AA? How was it? My management company want me to go. I told them no."
Because I was trying to play the goddam song for her I missed the last part. I pulled the headphones off again. "What?"
"They tried to make me go to rehab."
I said, "No, no no. I just don't really drink. Ever." Which at the time was true.
I put on Clyde McPhatter.
Somehow in the next hour she convinced me that if I learned to drink smart I wouldn't have a problem with it. And she said, "Trust me."
My set ended and there was great applause, but mostly because they wanted to get ride of the American bloke and get the drum and bass guy on. When I found Amy again she was teetering over to the DJ booth with a bottle of Smirnoff Ice and a shot of something blue in each hand. "I told the bartender they were for you and the other DJ. Shhh. Don't rat me out!" She pressed mine into my hands. We clinked shot glasses and she tapped hers on the counter before downing it with a mighty swig. "Did you know that Ruth Brown got fired from Lucky Millinder's Orchestra for bringing drinks to the band for free?"
"Every exit is an entry somewhere else."
"What is that? Shakespeare?"
"Close enough. Tom Stoppard. But it's true. Sometimes you have to get fired or break up with someone to move on to the next stage in your life." Just then I saw Blake, a guy I had met at the Rapture show earlier in the week.
"We have to get out of here," Amy said with a tremble in her voice.
"Go ahead, I'm gonna stick around. My only other friend in the UK just walked in. Do you know Blake?"
"I know Blake all too well. Now let's go. I've got a beta at my house of Ruth Brown singing '(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter mean.' Her crazy drunk ass drove us back to her dorm at the BRIT School in Selhurst, Croydon. She mind as well have dropped me off in fucking France because I was so terrified of her driving and the drinks in my nascent system made it so that I couldn't remember which side of the road she was supposed to drive on.
We were inseparable for the rest of the school year. It was actually a simple and fun, and therefore romantic time. But there was always the booze. We went to Prague together for a week just to find Absinthe. We drove to Dublin one crazy night because she swore that Jameson tastes better fresh.
In the car rides she would blast these hip hop beats and sing along for me. Her voice. Oh my god her voice is even better right in front of you.
But she is a nasty drunk. And like Jim Morrison her voice gets slow and unseemly when she's on the booze. I told her this once and she beat me senseless with the tambourine I has just bought her.
That was it. She had uncorked that part of our relationship. Every time after that when we would drink we would fight. It fed into itself. Broken bottles became a hazard. Our relationship went to hell. I got better at DJ'ing but she came to my going away party, drunk, hustled into the booth and snapped my Ruth Brown record in half. "I got a tattoo for you," she pointed to a freshly inked cowgirl on her arm. "It's of li'l Princess Brenda, my American queen. Ain't she bloody beautiful?" It was then that she noticed how many empty beer bottles I had in the booth with me. She picked up one in disgust, drank half of it, and spit the other half in my face.
I wasn't even going to say goodbye to her at the end of the school year. I'd heard the tracks from new record "Frank" and we both agreed it wasn't what she wanted it to be. It never even came out in the US.
She finished up in the studio when I was leaving and it was pretty obvious she was going to go back to her old boyfriend, Blake, the guy she married last month. But she was mad and Blake wasn't too psyched about me either and she wrote this nasty song "I Heard Love is Blind."
I couldn't resist him His eyes were like yours His hair was exactly the shade of brown He's just not as tall, but I couldn't tell It was dark and I was lying down
You are everything - he means nothing to me I can't even remember his name Why're you so upset? Baby, you weren't there and I was thinking of you when I came
What do you expect? You left me here alone; I drank so much and needed to touch
I'm not going to be petty and tell you about how she grinds her teeth or about she snores when she drinks scotch or how she smells when she gets nervous. It's been enough time and I'm only left with the cute way she adjusts her dress when she's on stage and her nervous smile when she realizes the camera is pointing at her.
She wrote a derivative and mediocre first record when she was with me. She also almost ruined her voice from screaming at me with whiskey-soaked breath. She and Blake got back together before my plane even touched down in JFK. They broke up again a few years later and in that lapse she wrote an amazing album. She didn't do the dirty jokes from last time, she didn't let some producer push her into doing the booty-bass beats that he swore would rattle the trunk of every car from Manchester to Croydon. She made simple and beautiful songs that would have made Ruth Brown proud. Because every exit is an entry somewhere else.
I get unecessarily attached to artists that I get involved with. Even though Amy and I broke up a long time ago I still think she has a beautiful voice.
Dinner conversation with a pre-teen Gacamo Casanova:
The Englishman, pleased with my reasoning, wrote down the following old couplet, and gave it to me to read:
'Dicite, grammatici, cur mascula nomina cunnus, Et cur femineum mentula nomen habet.'
After reading it aloud, I exclaimed, "This is Latin indeed."
"We know that," said my mother, "but can you explain it,"
"To explain it is not enough," I answered; "it is a question which is worthy of an answer." And after considering for a moment, I wrote the following pentameter
'Disce quod a domino nomina servus habet.'
This was my first literary exploit, and I may say that in that very instant the seed of my love for literary fame was sown in my breast, for the applause lavished upon me exalted me to the very pinnacle of happiness
Now that I'm getting older I have to be honest with myself about the things I can accomplish. For example, I now realize that I will not have time to become the anti-Christ. But, with enough work, study and sins, I may be able to strive for the status of anti-Pope.
Although I absolutely love New Yor City I'm checking out for a couple of weeks to stay in my true home: Kentucky. As in last year I am heartbroken and upset that I let myself be so, but I have a new novel to start and I will do so on the farm over there.
When I finish with this great wedding party I am going to disappear from New York and go to Kentucky for an unspecified amount of time. As in love I need a little break and if I decide to come back at all the mere idea that it is my decision will change the tone of my relationship with New York City. Either way? I can't wait to get to KY.
It's no wonder I can't keep a girlfriend. I have a really hard time being on planet earth. No matter what I'm doing I will find a way to drift off and be somewhere else. This probably explains my grade point average and career aspirations. For some reason I can become completely insane about something if it really grabs me. Writing is for some reason one of those things that I can get totally lost in and keep doing for hours. It brings me great pleasure. But all the other non-life enriching things I do also bring me just as much.
I like women and music and really interesting tattoos. I could theoretically spend the rest of my life DJ'ing non-stop if I were playing records in a tattoo shop with pretty girls and never write again.
But when I find something else that commands my attention I drop whatever I was doing, literally. When I first moved to New York I had this amazing DJ kit with a maplewood case to store my $400 needles, great rare records, and a pair of silver 45 adapters. I left them on the street in Brooklyn once on trash day and they were gone before I realized it.
Do not--as so many girls have--mistake my stupidity for disinterest. Sure our mothers would all say that if I really cared about these things I would take care of them. But with the lack of sleep and the brain that is tethered to my skull by the string of a helium balloon, I can't help it.
This week I thought I lost the key to my Vespa when I helped Ben out on a photoshoot. But no, it turns out I left my last remaining key in the bike for 6 hours in Bushwick. Later in the week I stayed out all night for Shakespeare tickets and when I met up with Ben at the iPhone camp out I brought my favorite jacket because it had my brand new camera in the pocket. I left it under Ben's chair and completely forgot about it until one AM.
It was gone.
I'd like to try and not be like this, but I keep forgetting to remind myself not to be so absent minded. I constantly offend girls because I forget that, No they can't meet up because they have that job interview I told you about a hundred times. And, Where the hell are you--you said you'd pick me up at work.
And so I'm alone, but I'm too lost in my own head to realize it.
