This morning I woke up and thought "I really don't think Mercutio is going to work out as a novel." And I had nothing more I could do about it. So I went back to bed.
1) My sweetheart has decided that she wants to move to Boston. This is a complex issue, since her grandmother has decided not to co sign on her student loan. Sweetie has decided that she will finish her degree at Harvard Extension School.
This is very upsetting because I would likely be expected to move to Boston--which I do not want to do. This isn't because Boston is a terrible place. It has nothing to do with the fact that Boston is gay.
Wicked, wicked gay.
2) This heat is getting to me. I have been less than twenty pages from finishing these new Mercutio edits for a few days now. I just need to get through them. It's not even that I'm doing anything else. I'm just a little low on momentum now.
1) Reading Mark Twain's rambling orally dictated crazy old man autobiography:
When the manuscript has lain in a pigeonhole two years I took it out one day and read the last chapter that I had written. It was then that I made the great discovery that when the tank runs dry you've only to leave it alone and it will fill up again in time, while you are asleep--also while you are at work at other things and are quite unaware that this unconscious and profitable cerebration is going on. There was plenty of material now and the book went on and finished itself without any trouble.
Ever since then, when I have been writing a book I have pigeon-holed it without misgivings when its tank ran dry, well knowing that it would fill up again without any of my help within the next two or three years, and that then the work of completing it would be simple and easy. The Prince and the Pauper struck work in the middle because the tank was dry, and I did not touch it again for two years. A dry interval of two years had occurred in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
It's very calming to read other writer's autobiographies. It turns out all of them had lots of trouble. Most of them took entire days off because of domestic troubles.
However, most of them were rich to begin with. Most of them were landlords in some capacity.
2) I am becoming out of shape. It happened quite suddenly. This winter I was very poor and didn't have money to eat. My homeless girl brought me food from the church. I became skinnier than my normal skinny. Then I went on tour and let other people buy me dinner all the time. It was heaven.
When I got back I discovered that I was very tired. I finished a novel. I gave myself a break. It became my habit to sleep in on my seven mornings off. Then I got a new job where they fed me. So I ate.
Now I sleep until I am done sleeping each day--usually somewhere around 10:30.
Yesterday's schedule:
10:00 Awake, edit Mercutio
12:00 Finish editing. Watch Daily Show and Colbert Report in bed.
2:00 PM Awaken to discover I had been napping. Borrow bike to go get sandwich.
3:00 PM Read in coffee shop.
4:00 PM Receive phonecall from friend. Did not know friend was coming to the city.
4:10 PM Drink four beers with friend at Austrian Bar down the street.
5:30 PM Bid goodbye to friend. Because I have to go to work, where I drink many more. He has to leave to meet up with friends for a baseball game.
5:35 PM We both agree there is no harm in having one more.
My new stories are terrible. I think that when I was younger I felt like there were hundred of people who wanted to know about what it was like delivering pizza or dating someone else. That time is gone.
I hope it comes back later because, frankly, I have a keen interest in knowing what it is like in most jobs. Mostly because I would like to have one of them. Currently I have a very high paying job that I hate. I would love to hate my low paying job again.
But anyway. This happened at my lowest paying job:
Running into your ex's ex-best friend.
"Ohmygod! Brendan, I didn't know you still DJ'd here."
I had no idea who this person was. At all. She was a cute girl somewhere between the ages of 22 and 34 (26? No. I'm 26.).
I couldn't decide if we had gone to college together. (It was distracting enough that I missed the insanely easy transition from "She Drives Me Crazy" to "Need You Tonight" which meant my DJ skills were of a lower grade than iTunes.)
"I haven't seen you since your birthday at the Chelsea Hotel." That was a bout two years ago, which means that she was somehow involved with someone I dated then. I asked her what she was up to.
Turns out she represents some of the people I vaguely work for. I was about five second away from having a meaningful connection with someone that I once knew somewhat well. When I realized. The divide.
I have no hope of connecting with this girl because her only goal in life at the time is to report back to her friend that she saw an ex-boyfriend and that he was an asshole. No matter what you wear: she cannot report that you looked cute.
The only thing to do is remember her name and something about her. (I couldn't)
2) Health Inspection, cops show up to your party, vice squad arrests the promoters, the local police come and ticket you for not having a cabaret license.
Whatever the case. It is your job as DJ to play "You Gotta Fight."
to the boy i met on the L train Sat who left his shoes - w4m we shared a bottle of jim beam on the train. things got a little hazy and i'm not really sure why or how but i woke up and found a pair of size nine all black converse with white laces that you are probably missing right now. they make you cute and miss you terribly, let me know if you want them back?
The Story Behind the Post
On Sunday I met up with a dear friend before The Hold Steady. She was laughing because the night before she met a guy on the train and they went back to her place. Whiskey followed and in the morning she awoke to find no boy in her bed, but a pair of shoes on the floor.
The theory that we hammered out was that she may have sent him to the store for beer or rubbers and passed out. No one knows for sure.
And then he wrote back.
hey, how are you? that was totally me. I'm not too sure what happened either but i do remember walking home in my socks at one point. k get back to me. thanks for not throwing my shoes out.
In many ways I believe that the legacy of Emily Gould--who is an otherwise intelligent girl who heckled me for ten minutes before turning to the next fish in her barrel--is that we have been given hope that nerds might look good in bathing suits.
I was stalking a few of my exes just a moment ago and I discovered that the girl I was hopelessly in love with sophomore year of high school is now the vice principal of a junior high school. This took extra stalking because she took the last name of the man she married during a ceremony that I wasn't invited to.
The last time I rode Amtrak to DC I had two cartons of cigarettes and exact change for the subway ride back home. I ate the peel of my orange and wrote some.
This time I'm staying in a bed and breakfast from the 1780s.
rating: 4 of 5 stars Pete graciously nabbed me a review copy of this book. I had planned, for several months in fact, how much I would hate it. The author had been in the news--quite a lot, in fact--touting the life of a young literary minded person living in New York. I remember reading about how he was 33 and living off $20k a year and I thought, "Get a JOB, mutherfucker! I make $20g's on fucking side gigs and you can't church out more than just a few short stories. How about a novel there, Truman Capote? I've written three in the time it took your main character to acclimate to online dating!"
But I loved this book.
It is a slim volume of several main characters that are all semi-overeducated over-thinkers who are doing nothing with their lives. The writing is terse and clear. The stories are well laid out and none of them fall for the conventions of short story writing that make it either infuriating for just boring. I couldn't wait to read the next page or the next story.
Frequently I laughed out loud.
A large part of the book is set in my own neighborhood and of course it is delightful reading about people your own age walking down your street.
There is also a certain circle of people in Manhattan who are quite involved in trying to figure out whether they are the basis for a character. I thought this activity was stupid until I was alerted to the fact that I am satirized on page 223.
Today Theo alerted me to some very exciting news.