Was fun. If anything I need to find a way to just keep working on it every day. I got to a part that I really liked (which needs work) and enjoyed reading most of it. When I read it now it's clear that I said to myself months ago, "Ah, fuck it, Summer Brendan will figure out a way to fix this."
Summer Brendan is tired and he doesn't want to spend his mornings alone writing out entire scenes in long hand.
1) I'd like to say that I need some inspiration. Anything. I need a book to appear on my shelves that will inspire me. It should be something simple.
It also occurred to me while I was chosing a book to read in bed tonight that most of the writers that I've always admired didn't really think of themselves as being that great. Miguel Cervantes was basically making fun of the genre that came before him. Shakespeare was something else entirely.
2) Perhaps I just need a new medium. I have no idea. I emailed a guy about doing private lessons in writing and he said to send him ten pages and we'd go from there ($50/hr). Then he said, "I’ve taught a fair bit of creative writing, and have workshopped novels in my classes, but am not a novelist myself. (In fact, I struggled for a couple years to get one off the ground, which is now on the semi-permanent back burner)."
And I was like, What the fuck? I think I'm going to put your on the back burner, Professor. I have no idea how writers survive without writing or how they call themselves writers.
3) There was a time when I believed that everyone I knew would very soon be famous for what they do. I though that all the waitresses would be actresses and all the musicians would be megamusicians. It turns out we're all just older now. I don't know where that puts us, either.
It has been fabulous Brooklyn weather this week. Nick and I walked from our house to Grand Army Plaza to see the Murakami exhibit (closed) and continued walking all though the outer reaches of Prospect Park.
It's a long, long walk. I love long walks. The opposite side of Prospect Park is a strange and somewhat unfair place. On the Park Slope side you can enter on every block and play out doors. On the blacker side it is surrounded by barbed wire.
At the edge of the blacker side is a Popeye's Fried Chicken and a Wendy's. I had to pee so Nick and I went into the Wendy's.
After maybe ten minutes of waiting in line at the bathroom a black guy with dreadlocks behind me said, "Somebody in the men's room?"
"Yeah. Has been for a while."
A few more minutes went by and he said, "You check the door?"
"Yes." I shook the handle again just to prove it to him.
"Hold on." He went to the black guy behind the counter, "Yo! Men's room??" He returned and commanded me to shake the handle.
I did. In mid-jiggle a buzzer went off and the seemingly occupied bathroom was miraculously vacant.
"See?" he said to me as I walked out two minutes later. "And they said Obama couldn't be president."
This morning my phone rang and I ignored it. Like always. If I don't have your number in my phone there is a large chance that I don't want to talk to you. Creditors, work, etc.
But then I got a text, "Can you go to Mexico from June 16-20 and bar tend? All expenses, flight taken care of. Plus per diem."
For a long time I've been kind of down on education. Right now I'm deciding if I should go to graduate school--just because I don't know what else to do. No one ever had to teach me how to be a DJ or a bartender. I certainly didn't sign up for classes.
The other day I got summoned to MTV studios to do an awards show. I'm becoming the opposite of spoiled these days. I'm old. I'm too old to be doing certain things. This is one of them. The only reason I agreed to do it was because it was on my day off.
The awards were given out by many of the heroes I've had over the years. But most of them were the older versions of people who had hit songs in the eighties that gay men still love. Like most things I've done in the past year: it turns out that anything done on television is devoid of magic of any kind. This awards show was shot in a studio done up to look like a small intimate cocktail lounge.
The people sitting in the seats were all people who were waiting to be on camera to read the prompter. They were shivering from the AC that the cameras need to keep the lights cooled and the moisture down.
I asked the choreographer, "When do we start?"
"On the second 6."
"The second 6 of what?"
"8."
I counted on my fingers. It occurred to me then that in order to be a dancer you only need to be able to count to 8.* I also learned, quickly to count from "2" so that I don't make the mistake of counting two-syllable sev-en twice.
The audience was freezing. Periodically a production assistant would come by and fill their plastic cups with Gatorade. ("How about a fucking drink, huh?") This made them madder and full of electrolytes. The dance sequence was timed to begin with us in the audience at their prop-cocktail tables. I had to lay across the lap of a once-famous black comedian and pretend to be passed out (until the second six of eight: i.e. until the count of 14).
When I snapped into pose (3,4.5,6!) I kicked the table by accident. A plastic martini glass of cold Gatorade spilled down the crotch of a respected clean-cut African American comedian. "Mutherfucker!" someone who might be Wayne Br@dy hollered.
Of all the bullshit jobs I've ever had: no one has ever expected less of me than as a back up dancer in full make up.
*I know many people who study the art of dance. It takes talent. My first fake-sister was in the Hartford Ballet. My cousin is a very talented dancer. When she gets back from Spain I want us to choreograph something together. That would be a fun new family business.
On my layover in the Denver airport in May I discovered that I could smoke indoors. This was exciting, but I, of course, like to pretend that I'm not a smoker but that I enjoy one with a good drink. I didn't have much time so I said to the waitress, "Bring me any beer at all. Surprise me."
The girl next to me looks over and says, "That's an interesting order." She was a very attractive woman with long brown hair and a tight-fitting girl-oxford shirt. I always wonder whether women know when they buy tight button-downs that even though they have a decolletage (cleavage) that ends at the fourth button there is also a much more exciting gap between the fourth and fifth button. Sometimes I wish I were born as something else so that I didn't find so much pleasure in surreptitiously seeing two square inches of human flesh.
She asked me what I was doing in Denver and I was then on my way back from L.A. and so I may have mentioned to her that I was the next big thing (I'm not anymore). She asked me about my music and I told her I'd put it on her iPhone.
Girls who talk to you in bars are an odd sort. Sometimes they're great. Sometimes you really respect a woman for standing up and talking to you. Sometimes they're complete sluts which is great because you are also a complete slut. The majority of the women I meet who initiate conversations in bars are the kind of girls who don't get out much. I don't know what they do all the time, but they are not in bars.
I knew there was something about this girl and so when I took her iPhone and added some of my music I also downloaded all her pictures to my laptop. There were several topless photos of her on there.
And I find myself wondering whom she meant to send them to.
My favorite thing about people is that we're all much more disgusting in private than we let on.
Last night was my 26th birthday. This morning I woke up feeling it. I was talking about it with Leigh and I realized that I'm starting to lose some of my memories.
Eighteen- my brother got me a tattoo for my birthday. My parents took me to the only vegetarian restaurant in Connecticut. I didn't want my brother's girlfriend to come because at the time I was jealous of her because she got all his attention. Now they're married.
Nineteen- End of my first year of college. I woke up from my first-ever one night stand and turned to the girl and said, "It's my birthday! I gotta go since my Dad's coming to pick me up and take me back home." I never pictured myself as a one-night stand guy and so that meant that a few girls in college probably think of me as a stalker. The greatest thing about where I went to school is that there was no cell service. So if you wanted to call a girl to make out you could keep calling her all night until she got home and she wouldn't have 30 missed calls from you.
Later that summer I went down to Philly to stay with her one night during the NOW convention but I couldn't get in touch with her while I was there. I was working a table for the human rights group I volunteered for . This was back when I cared about saving the world, rather than just hoping Obama would do it for me.
So there I was. 19, stuck in Philladelphia alone. I made friendly with the NOW interns, one in particular. We got Chinese food and talked in Love Park. Then when we went back to the convention hotel the other interns said I could stay with them.
At about two in the morning we were making out in the dark on the floor with five other people crammed into the room. She whispered, "I don't want to do this anymore." The other five interns all awoke at once.
After the next day: I never saw her again.
I wrote about this story once in creative writing class and one girl in my group crumpled up the pages and just wrote, "Fuck you," on the back.
Twenty- I cannot remember at all. I was about to ship off to school in India. Then they had a war and I ended up going to England instead.
Twenty-one- I didn't really drink then. My dad and my brother took me out to their bar at midnight. My girlfriend's father said, "Now that's strange. Why didn't they just have a beer at home at 10 instead? That way everyone didn't have to stay out late."
His wife replied, "You're English. Don't try to understand the Irish."
Twenty-two- In that magically happy weekend at the end of college girlfriend and I took a drive out to a waterfall out in the country. That might be the first time I remember having outdoor sex. When I got back all of my friends were not to be found. I was heading to the dining hall to have dinner alone when one of them stopped me. They had planned a surprise party for me. Pete got me a ceramic cow creamer like the one I had as a kid.
Twenty-three- I can't remember. I do remember that I had just gotten fired from a job, but I had already spent all the money I made there on a trip to Vieques in Puerto Rico. I was living in the loftiest loft in the world (I had a twenty-foot library ladder to get to my room which was suspended in the air.
Twenty-four- Annie, Ben, Pete, Danny and Theo planned a surprise party for me while I was DJ'ing. They met up around the corner and came in with silly hats on and surprised me.
Twenty-five- Nikki got us a room at the Chelsea Hotel, which is the happiest place on earth. We had a bathtub full of ice an beer. Everyone brought booze and we stayed up till seven. The weather was perfect and we spent most of the night smoking on the balcony over twenty-third street. We planned on going out but it was so great there that we stayed in.
Somehow Conrad got loose and ran around the hotel. He wrote "Happy Birthday Brendan" in sharpie on one of the paintings in the hallway, stole the number off our door and by the time we left he had drawn a comic strip on the brick facade.
When everyone left I opened a bottle of Champagne and watched cable TV which I think of as the greatest luxury. Nikki and I slept in separate beds. I woke up hammered four hours later at check out time. I stumbled out of the building and went home. Nikki left on a business trip and when she came back we broke up.
She texted me today to say Happy Belated Birthday. And I kind of wanted to text her back and say, "Thanks. Sorry for going completely fucking crazy and following you to Minneapolis that time. Can I have my windbreaker back?" But I'm twenty-six now. I am way to old to be doing things like that.
Twenty-six- My homeless girl brought me some canned food. My roommates and I cleaned out the back yard. We had friends over. Theo and Ben came. It is nice to grow older and still have the same friends around. There's a big difference between the people who remember your birthday and the people who just know it from Myspace. Now that I'm twenty-six that difference is important to me.
When you get rained out of work, read Yeats. This one is a very special poem. Last winter, when I was teetering on the edges of insanity, I met up with Theo at St. J's. He wanted to introduce me to a friend of his, a very lovely girl with a very lovely Irish name.
Two things happened on the way there.
1) I met up with my singer for the first time. She and I hung out in her apartment, talked about life, and what we wanted to do as artists. I lay down on her hard wood floor and she sang what would later become the songs we would do together.
We drank cheap wine out of pint glasses she had stolen from our bars. I sat up after her last song and made her play it again.
I pulled a piece of paper out of my pocket. "Are you going to read to me?" she clapped like a little girl. "Yay! What is it?"
"It's the prologue to this novel I'm working on. Have you ever seen Romeo and Juliet?"
I read it aloud and everything seemed perfect. Every sentence fell just right. Each line complemented my natural cadence. Every paragraph felt like a full breath. She laughed at the funny parts. She begged me for more when I ran out of pages.
The Mercutio I had written then was my perfect Mercutio. He was not dead. He spoke in perfect sentences. He said everything just right. He wasn't a hack. He wasn't a cheap stunt from a frustrated young novelist who had run out of ideas. He was brilliant, hilarious, handsome and tactful. Whenever he seemed too full of himself: a perfectly well-rounded character would step in and embarass him.
My heart pounded as we finished the last of the wine and we agreed to step out.
2) While I floated on this cloud of perfection my dear friends were all down the street in the same bar with my ex girlfriend. The same bar where I was heading.
When I saw her my heart exploded. Seriously. It was awful.
I don't know what I said to her but I do remember that I explained the whole of my new project. How it would look. How it would sound. How I was going to put it out as a literary record because I was sick of playing other people's games. I also may or may not have told her that I wanted to do a sound recording so that people like her--meaning people who do not read or finish books--could enjoy it.
It did not go well.
So I walked down the street to meet Theo and he introduced me to a very nice girl. I think that somewhere out there are mature adults who go from one bad situation, take a deep breath, and try to make themselves fresh for the next one. I am not one of those people.
For some reason I insist on carrying my problems around with me and, whenever possible, unloading them onto strangers.
I could have very easily walked into the bar, caught up with Theo, and then introduced myself to this nice girl, made an impression, exchanged information, etc. Instead I launched into a lecture about something or other. The apex of the discussion was concerning the trinity of gambling, booze and sex and how often then are interchangeable in poetry and literature. For example, there's this one Yeats poem where a woman is trying to cheat on her husband so she sits him down with a glass of wine and has him gamble.
THE HOST OF THE AIR
by: William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
O'DRISCOLL drove with a song The wild duck and the drake From the tall and the tufted reeds Of the drear Hart Lake.
And he saw how the reeds grew dark At the coming of night-tide, And dreamed of the long dim hair Of Bridget his bride.
He heard while he sang and dreamed A piper piping away, And never was piping so sad, And never was piping so gay.
And he saw young men and young girls Who danced on a level place, And Bridget his bride among them, With a sad and a gay face.
The dancers crowded about him And many a sweet thing said, And a young man brought him red wine And a young girl white bread.
But Bridget drew him by the sleeve Away from the merry bands, To old men playing at cards With a twinkling of ancient hands.
The bread and the wine had a doom, For these were the host of the air; He sat and played in a dream Of her long dim hair.
He played with the merry old men And thought not of evil chance, Until one bore Bridget his bride Away from the merry dance.
He bore her away in his arms, The handsomest young man there, And his neck and his breast and his arms Were drowned in her long dim hair.
O'Driscoll scattered the cards And out of his dream awoke: Old men and young men and young girls Were gone like a drifting smoke;
But he heard high up in the air A piper piping away, And never was piping so sad, And never was piping so gay.
My heart was racing because Mercutio was still a project that I believed in. Nikki was still an ex that I believed I would end up with. And this poor girl stood there politely.
When I went outside to smoke she turned to Theo and said, "Why do you hang out with such an arrogant asshole like that?"
This is really pathetic but my favorite part about my new job is not-working. I work three days a week and if it rains I don't have to go in. Curiously my brother and I are in the same situation. I wish I payed attention more in school so I could understand what it is that the two of us love so much about sitting inside on rainy days.
He gets to play with his two wonderful children. I get to sit around my apartment and read about Dante's Italy and the post-St. Francis era and then go watch Entourage. From the outside you might think that we were waiting for something. Who knows what.
Really the best either of us could hope for is to become English teachers in our public high school. The we could have summers off. Then we could sit inside on rainy days whenever we wanted.
Yesterday I helped Ben and Jo move into their new apartment. I really, really enjoy helping people move. For one thing, it's a declaration of actual friendship, which is rare in this little city.
Especially now while we're still vaguely young. We don't move because we got a big promotion or we're having twins. We move because of landlords and roommates. I hate to break it down to labor cost but that's what happens when you move: you spend all your money on brokers and down payments and boxes.
A long time ago when a girlfriend threw me out, Pete showed up one sunday to help me move into my new loft in Williamsburg. A couple months later when girl and I reconciled Pete showed up again and helped us both move into a new apartment together.
Ben had just visited his parents and brought back some furniture. It was actually fun. We're both old and busy now and we never get to hang out like we used to.
His parents were really great to me when we were kids. They were the first people I ever met who ate goat cheese. They had a wine cellar. When Ben's mom discovered that I wanted to be a writer she made me packet on how to write personal essays. Wonderful people.
It was really fun for me to be 25 and hauling around the couch that was in Ben's parent's playroom. This is the couch we sat on while rented VHS movies played in the background as we attempted to touch the breasts of girls who were probably best friends.
To be honest: I really have nothing going for me right now. There are no agents that I'm waiting to hear back from. I haven't written in weeks. Today I woke up and I literally couldn't think of a reason to get out of bed.
I wish I could save up these years for now and enjoy them later when I have children. Frustration is a natural process of writing. Stagnation is something else. I honestly think Mercutio is going to be the best novel I've ever written. But telling myself to keep sending it out there is another thing.
I'm very lucky, however, to have many wonderful friends. I think we all help keep each other's lives in perspective. Most of us are pretty sure it would help to go to Grad school. I'm jealous of people who get to leave work everyday at 5 and go pick up prescriptions.
It came out!. I wish I had a better quality version to see. The frame rate is really low and it's hard to tell which one I am. But I guess that's what TV is for. Enjoy.
