Alan presents ... the opening pages of his novel

Pia: Sometimes what you’re looking for isn’t what you find. That’s so vague it must be true.


Spoony: It was a good time for me when I met her because I’d just won over a million dollars on Jeopardy. Oh, that isn’t as hard as you think. You just need a good memory, quick reflexes, and the ability to answer in question form. Also I had a sort of advantage because at the time I was employed, or self-employed, as a second-hand book dealer. I used to set up a card table across from Washington Square Park. It’s hard to get into Fear and Trembling when you’ve got to make change and keep an eye on your merchandise, but an almanac or book of movie facts you can pick up or put down and it helps the hours pass. Six years of that turned out to be ideal preparation for scoring big on a trivia-based game show. As long as they don’t ask anything really current, because those books are old. And generally they don’t, because their audience is old, too. There you have it, secret of my success.


Pia: One reason I cared so much about Noah was it was a long time since I’d been with a guy. Not since college. I never liked to be penetrated. It made me tense. So that was a problem.

For a long time I was like, fuck it. It was fine. Finally I thought, let me try again.

None of the guys around me would do. At a certain level of attractiveness, most guys are intimidated to approach you. The ones you get aren’t the most attractive. They’re the most confident or arrogant or dominant. Not what I was looking for.


Spoony: I had just bought a beautiful two-bedroom loft on Canal Street with half my winnings. The plan was to use the other half to live on for the next three or four years while I wrote my novel. I sold off my van along with all the inventory crammed inside it. I put my card table out on the curb.


Pia: I checked out Craigslist, of course. Most of the ads on there are only four or five sentences. You can tell a lot about a person from four sentences they write about themselves. Their defenses are right out there. It’s interesting, if a bit depressing.

I felt like answering them all to say: there’s a reason you’re lonely. I can tell. So shut the fuck up and embrace your loneliness.

That’s what I decided to do. Embrace it. So I checked out the section where people are just looking for hook-ups.

It was a lot less neurotic in there. People feel freer to be upfront. They don’t want to waste their time. Women will say they’re “large” or “curvy” because they know the guys who reply will be cool with that. They know those guys are out there.

You can say you’re looking for hung guys only. That’s your preference. Or your preference is Middle Eastern men who smoke cigars. I saw that one.

Spoony: Magda came along just as I was getting settled in my new life, and she seemed like the final missing piece. She was working on her dissertation in art history at NYU.

As a precondition to her moving in with me I had to take down everything from the walls, repaint the apartment in white, and put all my books along with anything else that could be considered unnecessary, including almost all of the furniture, into storage. So when I say that when I’m interested in someone I’ll do anything to get them to let me be part of their lives, those are some examples of what that might include.

But that was a big part of what attracted me to her, this mysterious, ultra-refined sensibility she had, like the princess character in “The Princess and the Pea.” I needed to study her up close. It wasn’t a relationship, it was a safari.


Pia: Just to see what would happen, I wrote an ad that asked for exactly what I wanted. To come over to a guy’s place, have him lick me until I came, and then leave.

I didn’t care what he looked like, how old he was, if he was married with kids. I emphasized two points. He had to keep licking for as long as I said. I wasn’t sure how long it would take me to come in that situation. I didn’t want to feel pressured.

And, point number two, I wasn’t going to do anything in return. No sex. No activities ending in the word job.

About myself I just said I’m female, Indian, and twenty-three.

I made it so blunt you’d have to be totally into it to reply. Or else totally out of your mind.
An hour later I had twenty responses. The next day I had to take it down, it was generating too much mail.


Spoony: My hair is kind of wavy so she suggested it would look better shaven clean. That was rough–everyone was going to assume I did it preemptively to cover up a bald spot—but I couldn’t say no. Then when my hair was gone she pointed out that my earlobes were uneven. The left one was more bulbous and hung a quarter of an inch lower. So I had it surgically corrected.

Whenever I had sex with her all my body hair had to be freshly shaven. That doesn’t do a lot for spontaneity. I used Nair in the beginning but it gave me an irritation, so I ended up having to do most of it by hand. I think that was the worst part.


Pia: I focused on the ones who sent pictures. My goal was to pick out the psychos by eyeballing them. Except everyone looked suspicious, but I couldn’t dwell on that. At least I tried to weed out the more obvious cases.

Anyone who sent a nude picture got deleted. I also got rid of people asking to see a picture of me. I’m an actress, so if I ever got a big role I didn’t want one of those guys recognizing me.

The one I ended up replying to was the youngest. A year younger than me. I initially ruled him out for that. I felt an older guy would be more manageable. Plus I’d feel less bad about it.

This guy got it by coming out and saying he just liked giving head. The no-sex part was the most important to me. Noah was the only one to show me he got that.

When I called him he sounded even younger. I went over my demands. He sounded sweet, but how did I know he wasn’t fucking with me?

I thought, let’s just get this over with. I was like, I’ll be there in an hour, OK?


Spoony: It was some kind of OCD that seemed to be progressive. She’d been doing her dissertation on Van Gogh’s drawings and suddenly she couldn’t deal with all those little lines. So she changed her topic to Cézanne for a couple of months until the little patches of bare canvas started to bother her. Last I heard she was applying to switch to Malevich. I never found out what came next. Ad Rhinehardt?

It’s always hard finding a way to end things without being too much of a dick, but she saved me the trouble. One day I found a note and never saw her again. It was just a sheet of paper with, right in the center, in her tiny, meticulous handwriting, the word bye.


Pia: When my cab pulled up I thought about introducing myself to the women working at the take-out dumpling place below where he lived. I wanted there to be someone who could place me at the scene in case I disappeared. That seemed important.

When he opened the door a scruffy little mutty dog came out and wouldn’t stop licking me, which was funny given the situation. That relaxed me a bit.

Noah seemed too normal to be into this. He wasn’t as dorky in person as his photo. He looked cool enough in a pale, skinny way. I could see him on a skateboard.

He still wasn’t in my league. He knew it, too. He couldn’t meet my eyes. It was like he needed sunglasses. I get that sometimes. He hid it by pulling the dog away and scolding it. It was cute.

Inside the apartment I was less comfortable. It was this tiny, dusty little studio. With furniture that must have been picked up off the curb. I saw a Green Day poster and one of a nude model with black oil poured over her body. It wasn’t the moment to examine the chain of circumstances that had brought me there. I made a mental note to look into it later.


Spoony: It’s always like that. OK, not like that. When I start asking myself how the fuck did I get into this, it isn’t usually because there’s this huge problem. Usually I just realize that there’s nothing there. It’s like that little monologue in Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, a book I always used to keep on my table at Washington Square. That may be a legal requirement, by the way. It’s where a character in that book is talking about looking at a nude statue of a woman with her legs open and–I’m quoting from memory–he says, “When you see a woman with her clothes on you imagine all sorts of things, and there’s all this mystery about sex, but when you look at it objectively all you see is this meaningless crack. Wouldn’t it be cool if you found a harmonica inside, or a calendar? But there’s nothing there. Nothing at all.” I think about that a lot, that moment of seeing nothing’s there, and what causes it, or else what caused the illusion that there is something–if it is an illusion–and then stops. I mean, the person doesn’t suddenly get less cute, or less any other quality that my obsession seemed to configure itself around. So what is it that makes me want someone until I have them, and then goes away? Maybe that’s one of those questions that can only be answered in question form.


Pia: I freaked out a bit when he offered me something to drink. Like what are you, trying to loosen me up with a few Heinekens before date-raping me? I said no a bit too sharply and it stunned him a bit. He seemed more scared than I was, which was good.

Except what if he was nervous because he was thinking of trying something? I was mad at myself for displaying vulnerability.

I said, “Go put the dog in the bathroom. And wash your hands.”


Thurston: I was probably doing what I usually do at my desk when I’m not checking email, which is staring down at Central Park and trying to make visual sense of it. Is the city a rectangular frame for the park or the park a mat the city’s been laid on top of? It’s a problem that only presents itself from sixty floors up.

I remember Wallace saying, “Can we disturb you for a second?” or some similar sentence that had the word we in it because there was a second or two of suspense as I waited for the other person to appear. She had to sneak around behind him. This petite Asian girl. She looked like a child beside him.


Pia: He kneeled in front of me. I made him come closer. He could probably smell me through my skirt.

I brushed the hair out of his eyes. His hair was so straight. His skull was a bit wonky. I like wonky skulls. He didn’t look like a frat-boy type. Despite the decor.

He still couldn’t meet my eyes. He seemed shy about looking down at my crotch too. He stared straight at my middle with a dumb look on his face.

I almost felt sorry for him. The fact was he was a stranger that I was about to offer my genitals to, so I had to be strict.


Thurston: It isn’t unusual to see models around the office, but at my end of it it normally means they’re lost. This one had a very sort of natural, girl-next-door look to her–that is, compared to the glamorous beings I’m used to seeing sometimes wandering through. It wasn’t clear what she could have to do with me, or with Wallace. I guessed he wanted to get my opinion on some high-level decision, like maybe an idea for trying out more realistic physical types for the catalogue. I tried to look thoughtful.

He told her my name and I nodded to her but she was already leaning over to offer me her hand. Which seemed unnecessary, because wasn’t she only being presented as a specimen? The dynamics of the situation seemed mysterious. I noticed she was dressed in a little pants-suit thing that almost made her look like an office worker. She had a lot of trouble with my first name. It seemed completely unfamiliar to her as a name. She even asked if it was American.

Wallace went on to explain who I am, director of English-language communications for the North American region, da da da. She said, “That sounds like an important job.” Which it is and it isn’t. It pays very well for a writing job and comes with a private office and everything. I have no staff but since I’m considered head of my own one-person department I report directly to Wallace. Not that I said any of that, of course. What did I say? I think I just made some little self-deprecating gesture with my eyes and waited to see where things were going. I was picking something up about the girl now, or not picking up but putting my finger on something I’d been processing from the beginning without analyzing it. There was an odd contrast between her appearance and the way she talked and carried herself. She looked Asian but she didn’t sound it. She sounded tough. Very friendly and personable, but there was a toughness there. Like street tough. You could even call it “ghetto.”

Wallace finally filled me in that this girl, Vicky, was our new receptionist.

Suddenly the situation felt, let’s say, unseemly. This girl was obviously wrong for that kind of a position in the main U.S. office of an international company. For one, I didn’t see how she could have anywhere near enough experience, and, in the second place, and without necessarily endorsing the class bias behind this judgment, she just wouldn’t sound right answering our phone. Wallace must have been able to see that as well as I could, so I could only infer he wanted her around for other reasons. No doubt these were voyeuristic rather than predatory or anything like that, but still it was strange and not a little uncomfortable to think he was subject to that kind of weakness, like coming across your dad’s porn collection. But of course that could all have been projection.


Morris: I was two blocks away when I intersected this protest march coming up the avenue. Traffic was backed up waiting to get through. Most of the slogans on the signs and banners going by looked pretty vague, and the few I spotted that were sort of more specific seemed strangely unrelated to one another. I’m sitting on my bike trying to make out what it’s all about, and at the same time keeping an eye out for a chance to safely cut across, when something knocks into me from the side and topples me right onto the pavement. I reached out to break my fall and in the process almost broke my wrist.

So I’m on the ground, clutching my wrist, when I see a cop standing over me who’s reaching out for it. Naturally thinking he wants to take a look in case I’m in need of emergency assistance, I hold it out for him and he takes it and twists it and yanks it around in back of me and clamps a handcuff around it. It turns out he was the one, or possibly it was one of his colleagues, who pushed me over in the first place, and now I was being arrested for disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and riding a bicycle in a pedestrian procession. It may help in following this chain of events to know that I’m black.

My first concern was for my video equipment. The backpack I’d been carrying it in was suddenly missing. That may not seem too important compared to other things like my freedom or my safety. But for one thing it had cost a lot and, for another, well, it was my livelihood. So I asked one of the cops about it and he sort of looked at me like I was crazy, and of course I never saw it again. My bicycle either. My wrist wasn’t broken but I had to get X-rays later on to make sure. The whole time I was locked up, which was overnight, I didn’t get as much as a Tylenol for it. Three months later when I showed up in court they informed me that the charges had been dropped.

In the detention van with me were two members of an anarchist group who had spoken up against my arrest and in the process gotten themselves arrested. I don’t remember the other one’s name but that was how I met Leah.

Thurston: I was wrong about her being wrong, by the way. She was a fast learner and eager to succeed and so naturally social that her lack of polish didn’t really matter.

She fit in very well among our small staff and even formed some unlikely relationships. The stiff visiting executive guy from Paris spoke with her warmly, and I always saw her chatting with the young Russian IT guy. She made overtures to me as well that I tried to sidestep in as nice a way as possible. It was nothing personal, I just I don’t like to get personal with anyone at work.

Probably because I kept a little distance, she treated me differently. She called Leah Leah, Alex Alex, Wallace Wallace, and even Jean-Roland Jean-Roland but she always called me mister, as in “Don’t forget your mail, mister!”

Morris: Leah had been the girlfriend of the guy in the anarchist collective who was the leader without being called that. It was like “we don’t have a leader, but if you’re corrupted enough to think we have to have a leader, then it’s him.” Anyway, after she left him for me there was certain amount of awkwardness at the meetings so she stopped going.

The fact that she’d just lost all her friends along with her ideological moorings may go some way toward explaining why she agreed, a very short time after we met, to marry me. It was strange of me to propose it. We were both too young and I think she still considered the family an oppressive institution. For my part I had never thought one way or the other about getting married. I’d never even gone out with anyone longer than a couple of months, I think. So that was a leap.

The only way I can sort of account for it is to say it simply occurred to me early on that this was a person I wanted to organize my life around on a permanent basis. I’d never had that kind of impulse before or sort of expected to have it, but once it hit me I realized that this thing I wanted was actually covered by an established custom.


Thurston: Here and there I overheard some basic information. She lived in Queens. She was Laotian. She’d been here since age four. She grew up among blacks and Latinos, which accounted for her accent. She spoke fluent if to my ear very non-standard Spanish to the Peruvian accountant and every Hispanic cleaning person or security guard she saw. When working after hours she put on a hip-hop station. Her boyfriend, Chris, was black. He’d been in the military. His picture was on her desk.


Reiko: Cool today. Very sharp and clear. So blue!

Signed up for Wood-Working I: Intro to Wood-Working.

Beautiful green rubber bands at Whole Foods. Got one on my salad. I wanted take more!

The Object is unique. There was no other like It in the store. There is no other like It on the earth. When first saw It, I knew we might have a connection.


Morris: We had no ring, no reception, just a civil ceremony. Marriage was the thing we were going for. We weren’t interested in sort of the trappings. Besides, at that time Leah was very concerned about waste. It wasn’t long afterwards that she joined an ecologically oriented group devoted to the issue. Their basic principle was that none of the group’s activities should itself generate waste. For instance, they didn’t have any literature to distribute because that would have involved the use of paper. They did very briefly have a website before deciding that electronic storage and retrieval of digital information was even more insidiously wasteful than printing. They couldn’t use email or phones or any sort of technologically mediated method to contact one another other for group-related purposes, so the only way to find out when the next meeting was scheduled was to have actually attended the previous meeting. Which meant that missing a single meeting was effectively to drop out. Without any leaflets or flyers or online postings it was difficult to recruit members to sort of replace the ones who were left behind. It was like the Essenes, an ancient sect who practiced lifelong chastity and consequently died out after a single generation.

Now that I think of it, that idea of a resource that’s sort of too precious to actually use, even if you aren’t able to survive without it, is exactly how I think of Leah.


Claudy / Megan:

“So how are you feeling?”

“Why? What do you mean?”

“Well, I got a text last night from you that said, ‘what kind of a club only plays the charlies angels theme?’”

“Huh. I wish I could reconstruct the circumstances of that.”

“And then at 3:20 AM I got another one saying, ‘is there any place open that sells animal crackers?”

“Dude, all I know about last night is I must have eaten Italian at some point because I keep stepping in puddles of undigested... uh, what’s that pasta that twists around like a strand of DNA?”

“I don’t know, fusilli?”

“Celentani, I think.”

“Oh, right. So you went back to your place?”

“Apparently.”

“Alone?”

“Apparently not.”


Morris: It was never her specifically. Or sex specifically. I don’t know exactly how this is going to sound, but I’m going to say it’s enjoying things. Whenever I try to analyze it I go back to this moment when I was seven, my seventh birthday as a matter of fact. I didn’t understand why my mother had to spend time baking a cake when she could just go out and buy one. The explanation I received that this would be a special cake made an impression on me. I got sort of very excited about the cake. More than the birthday itself or the party or the presents. So finally the cake was brought out and I did the candle-blowing thing and got my piece. And with that first bite I instantly sensed I was missing something. Here’s this beautiful, complex, ceremonially charged thing that’s been laid in front of me, but when I put a piece of it in my mouth sort of all I was aware of was this sugary, mushy stuff, and then that simply entered the process of digestion and that was that. I looked up to see what kind of effect it was having on the others around the table, but since I was the birthday boy and since they had been hearing me talk about the cake all day they were all sort of looking over to observe my reaction. I don’t think I looked disappointed exactly, but I must have looked more thoughtful than the occasion necessarily called for. Someone said, “I don’t think he likes it,” which only reinforced my thought that there must be some dimension of the experience that I wasn’t sort of properly attuned to. And then I heard my mother ask, “Do you like it, honey?” and I told her yes but in fact I couldn’t tell, and the harder I sort of thought about it the more confused I felt.


Claudy / Megan:

“I don’t think you’re understanding how much throw-up is in my carpet.”

“In or on?”

“In. Embedded in the fibers of my carpet.”

“Is all of it yours?”

“Maybe not. I don’t think my stomach can hold that much.”

“Is it just in one spot?”

“Oh no. There’s puke in the coffee-table area, puke inside the linen closet, and–here’s the weird one–puke under the bed.”

“Under?”

“Yup. It’s like my drunk self was playing hide-the-vomit.”


Morris: When I say I needed a new perspective, I guess I mean that literally. Without sort of going into all the dynamics behind it from my side with Leah, I got her to agree to let me set up a camera in the bedroom.

As I mentioned, I do videography for a living, so I knew what I was doing. I played around with the lighting to the extent that I could without actually turning the room into a porn set. After the first tries I was getting some excellent footage. It was theoretically very hot.

The only thing that kept it, for me, in actual experience, from being as hot as it should have been–or as hot as I knew it objectively to be–was my own part in it. Playing the videos back I couldn’t manage to avoid replaying in my head exactly what I’d been thinking while they were being shot, and that had basically been all about how the video I was now looking at was going to come out.

So in the middle of watching this bed-shaking climax I’d be focused on one little thing that was barely visible in the corner of the screen, one of my fingers playing with a nipple or something, and reliving my doubts over whether that action would make the scene look hotter or simply be distracting. Instead of freeing myself from my own thought processes, which was supposed to be the whole point, I was only sort of losing myself further inside them. And now they weren’t even playing out in real time.

The one way I managed to partly get around that, and I’m not saying I’m proud of this, was to upload selected clips onto amateur porn sites. I made sure the faces were obscured, of course. Knowing that other people out there were checking out those clips and projecting onto the version of me visible in them this rich, unselfconscious enjoyment that they assumed me to be partaking of somehow enabled me to sort of tap into it at second or third hand. Very meta, I know.


Claudy / Megan:

“I’m taking this call out on the ledge right now. That’s how bad it smells.”

“Claudy, get inside! Are you crazy?”

“Why, what do you mean?”

“I’ve seen that ledge, and it’s not like the safest place to be on the morning of a hangover.”

“I’m fine.”

“Really?”

“Well, not really, but balance isn’t the issue. Actually, I feel OK as long as I don’t try to focus my eyes. You know what the real problem is?”

“What?”

“Cleaning all that shit off my carpet. Is there like a service I can call?”

“I could send my slave over.”

“No thanks. Why, he’s, like, there now?”

“No, but he’s... on call.”


Morris: The idea of suggesting an open relationship or even a threesome was something I was turning over sort of constantly. I could never come up with a way to not make her think it was really about me wanting to do somebody else.

Plus even if I’d managed to convince her all I wanted was to share her, she still could say, you know, don’t you want to have me all to yourself? I didn’t know how to go about explaining that sharing her might be the only way for me to feel I “had” her in the first place.

In the meantime, sort of the only times I felt I could really see her were when we were out together and I’d catch glimpses of other guys checking her out. To make it even more frustrating, I could never be sure if they were looking at her or us. There’s a certain amount of gawking that interracial couples sort of routinely attract.


Claudy / Megan:

“Come on, I wouldn’t know what to do.”

“Just let him in and show him where the cleaning supplies are. In fact, I’ll have him bring his own.”

“Does he have to be naked the whole time? I’m not sure I can deal with that.”

“Why, you’ve seen too many penises this week?”

“Shut up. This is different. It’s awkward. And I don’t want to raise false hopes.”

“How about if he keeps his panties on?”

“Panties?”

“It’ll be like what you’d see at the beach. Just frillier.”


Gil: It’s naughty of me, I know, but I’ve always been something of a people-watcher. Being able to observe other people at close range without having to interact with them in any way is, for me, a real benefit of living in the city. Of course, there’s a downside too, which is that you’re exposed to a lot of people you’d rather stay the hell away from–oh, no question, no question! But I find it can also be very stimulating. And I have opportunities for it that, even in the city, most people don’t have.


Claudy / Megan:

“Make sure you tell him no expectations. He comes in, strips down if he has to, gets to work, goes home. End of story.”

“That’s cool.”

“You’re sure?”

“Totally.”

“I mean, you’re sure it’ll be cool with him?”

“Dude, he does whatever I tell him.”

“Yeah, but you won’t be here. I just want to make sure he’s going to be into this.”

“Trust me, this is going to make him so, so happy.”

“Really?”

“We’re talking two major fantasies. A: I’m lending him out like a piece of property. And B: he gets to have a complete stranger order him around.”

“But what if I’m not bitchy enough for him? That’s a lot of pressure.”

Gil: It’s a fortunate thing, really, and it came about in an unexpected way. The block I live on on the Upper West Side is all brownstones except for the two buildings at the corner of Riverside: the large prewar building where I live and the building directly across the street. Now where that building is there used to be when I moved in many years ago a lot filled with dingy little tenements. They were low enough that from my apartment I could look out and see a nice cityscape of my neighborhood on one side and the park on the other. I got sun half the year, my plants did wonderfully. Anyway, one morning I looked out and those little tenements were gone, demolished, with no warning–and I was glad, by the way, I didn’t miss them at all–but I was also, let’s say, apprehensive. Because I didn’t know what was coming. And then all summer I watched as they lay the foundations for a new building that spanned the whole block, watched them pour the concrete and all that, and there was noise and dust and commotion–that was a headache, let me tell you–but that wasn’t what really worried me. That didn’t affect me so much because I knew it was only temporary. But I watched the steel rising–first floor, second floor, third floor, fourth floor–and I knew it wasn’t going to stop there and leave me my sky and my sunlight, because you don’t start building in an area that size, in my neighborhood, and stop at the third or fourth floor. Economically you want to maximize your investment. So I wasn’t surprised to see them go on to the fifth, sixth–up, up, up. Now I didn’t panic right away. As a matter of fact I got a lot out of observing the workmen and following their methods and the way they associated with one another and so on, that was all very interesting. But I was losing my view and there was nothing I could do about it. It left me feeling very tense, you have to understand, because I didn’t know how I would feel when the building was completed. Was it going to change my whole perception of space and light? Would it be too oppressive? Would I feel boxed in? I mean, I love my apartment. It isn’t luxurious or anything but it’s very comfortable, and besides it’s rent-controlled. I inherited the lease years ago from a friend who was moving to Morocco, it was sheer luck, I could never afford to live around here otherwise. And I love my neighborhood. It has everything I need, and it’s very pleasant. Oh, I wouldn’t know where else to go within my price range if God forbid I ever had to move out. But here was this monstrous construction going on directly across the street from me and I simply didn’t know how I was going to be able to tolerate that kind of confined spatial arrangement. It was so different from what I was used to. So the whole half year it was going up I was very concerned, let’s say. Now fortunately they did a nice job with the architecture–very modern, very au courant in the best sense. I wasn’t worried about that. I was familiar with the work of the architect who designed it and he knows what he’s doing, so I wasn’t worried about the aesthetics. But it wasn’t transparent, if you know what I mean! So it took an adjustment, believe me. It wasn’t easy, not by any means. But what I told myself when it was finally completed, I said I’d live with it for another six months before making any decision. It was a very nervous time for me, as you can imagine. And in the meantime people were moving in, and I became interested, first of all, in how they were decorating their spaces. I could see it all because the architect used a lot of glass, they all do these days, and people have blinds they can pull down if they want privacy but they often don’t bother with that. I know I would but many people don’t mind, you’d be surprised. So I can see right into their homes, floor to ceiling, all one two three four five six of them facing me, like an ant colony. And I find them extremely interesting. Well, not all of them. Not the woman on the upper right–she’s an old fart, a miserable old fart. I shouldn’t say that, actually. I know her a little and she’s a cultured woman, her son is a professor I think at Stanford. But let’s say she isn’t very interesting to observe. And then there’s the couple right below her–a pair of breeders with two little children always tumbling around in the living room. I can’t see into their bedroom but I don’t think I want to. And then next to them there’s a single man in his 50s who’s grossly obese. Sometimes I see him walking around naked with his folds of fat and a small penis hanging down–oh! It’s like a Francis Bacon painting. The other ones, though, are far, far more interesting, let’s say, with one in particular that since the beginning of this year has been I can’t tell you what. It’s the sun in my sky. What goes on there is so interesting, and so mysterious, that I invested in a pair of higher-power binoculars just to be able to study it more closely. Oh, I don’t miss my old view in the least.


Reiko: Rain dropped fast then slow. Then fast.

First class in flower arrangement. It is pleasant!

Got pet bottle with dispenser for liquid soap. So neat and square. No more mess!

Left the class early. Rushing home to see the Object.

*

p.s. Hey. This weekend we get the great treat of previewing d.l. Alan's new novel. While I can't speak for him and his wishes, obviously, I hope you'll devote some time over the next couple of days to reading the excerpt and giving him your thoughts and feedback and questions or what have you, either generally or in detail, whichever approach feels right and that works best for you. Thank you for your attention and support, and many thanks to Alan for giving all of us this opportunity and great pleasure. ** Bollo, Hi, man. Yeah, Ron Padgett is such a lovely poet. And I hope your week flew by for the right reasons. Excellent weekend to you. ** Brendan, I hardly think Fontana has the copyright on holes, ha ha. Curious to see what your holes are up to when the time is right. Sounds kind of exciting. Well, cut the 'kind of'. ** Pilgarlic, Oh, ha ha, hope the Sevigny clips weren't too much of a shock. I wonder how many people would pay to see a Poco reunion. They don't seem to have accrued much legend and affection. But maybe a reunion would instigate a reassessment. That might be a reason to go for it. Awesome that you're writing that piece. It sounds pretty as hell. Yeah, here's hoping they snap it up and, for sure, a link to it would be required, my man. ** Paul Curran, Thanks a lot, Paul. It truly is horribly fucked up. It's even more crushing than I thought it would be. Anyway, yeah, ugh. Have a great weekend. ** Kevin Killian, Hi, Kevin! Thank you much. It's hard, it's really hard, it's a real punch to the face. And I really thought we were finally going to start the process of getting myself home to LA and with Yury at last. And now, I don't know what the fuck to do. Thank you a lot, Kevin, It means a lot. ** Wolf, Hey. Well, Vampire Cafe being in Japan at least gives vegetarian options a shot, right? Thanks about the visa shit, obviously. The unfairness of it, the being rendered completely powerless is really heavy. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, D. One more late happy birthday! Paris is heaven, but it's not my home. It might be half of my home at this point, but it's not enough for my heart. Oh, I got your email. Thanks! I should be writing to you about the Day(s) and dates this weekend. ** _Black_Acrylic, Thanks for the hugs and stuff, Ben. I'm glad to hear that you're actively on the new flat hunt. I hope it doesn't take too, too long. ** Dusty rose, I have one of those old, possessed laptops too. Mine keeps telling me the start up disc is full every other minute. I'm trying to keep it alive until the new Macbooks supposedly come out in March. Oh, I do kind of remember that now, for Spin, right. I'm glad whatever I said was okay. I think it was one of those things Spin would do where they'd call me up one morning, say they needed a thing about gay marriage by that afternoon, offer me a doubled fee, and I would dash something off and pray because I'm not a writer who can dash stuff off. Hope you get some good stuff done this weekend. Yeah, save the spontaneous, off track flights of fancy for the future if you can. ** Bernard Welt, Sux fucking indeed. Your love-bomb would be most welcome. Weren't those Padgett poems just so terrific? Yeah, I actually saw a release announcement for the Tim Dlugos book with a cover image and everything the other day. Very exciting! Oh, you bet, I'll do a big Tim Day to mark that occasion, but only if you allow a celebratory Day about your book. Tit for tat. Deal? Man, the protests and fleeing Democrats, etc. in Wisconsin is so exhilarating. May it spread and spread. ** Patrick deWitt, Thanks, Patrick. Yeah, that seems to be the deal even though Yury never did anything wrong apart from being Russian. I talked to Chrystel, and she said the sponsor thing I mentioned was an interesting idea, and that she will check if the sponsor -- Beatrice, for the record -- is booked up next year in terms of her sponsorship allowance or not. Hopefully, I'll have some info on that come Monday or Tuesday. Fingers crossed. And, oh man, thank you about the Grape Nuts. Sometimes it's the little seeming things, you know? ** Postitbreakup, Thanks, J. Oh, I won't tell Jonathan, but I guess I should tell you from the outset that Arturo isn't gay. ** Thomas Moronic, Thanks, man. And I have a feeling I'll probably see you before you see this. I want to hear about the Crispin Glover thing, obviously. See you so soon, maybe tonight even! I hope it stops raining by then. ** Pascal, Hi, P. Well, I'm really glad you're able to get some writing in. Very good news. Thanks, man, and have the weekend you most desire. ** Tomkendall, Thanks a lot, Tom. ** Bacteriaburger, Hi, Natty! It's really good to see you! Thanks for the commiseration. Yeah, it's fucking horrible, man. Any news on your book? I'd love to hear. ** Colin, Yeah, weren't those Padgett poems just so dreamy great? I'm glad you liked my interspersed plan. I liked that too. I liked the way they blurred and bounced off their surroundings and glued everything together delicately and infused the gathering with Ron's sensibility. What an awesome idea! I mean the top five poetry books of 1981. Wow, that's great, and what an honor that Little Caesar made the cut. I'll have to go back and check which titles came out in '81. I think I remember. That's great, thank you, Colin! Definitely link me up. And, yes, I got your chapbook, and it's just wonderful and so pretty too. Gorgeous work. I'll go check the review. Everyone, the splendid poet and d.l. Colin Herd has a really superb new chapbook of poems out called 'like', and it's been reviewed here at 'the other room' by the poet James Davies, and please go take a look. Wish I could be at your London publication event next week, and I'll put out an alert here about it to the blog's London readers when the time is a little closer. ** Math, Hey. Oh, I'm glad you liked the 'camera' vid. I was thinking no one would click on that one. Yeah, sweet, right? Fine weekend to you, my pal. ** Andrew, I'm so pleased you liked the 'Sevigny' vids so much. Awesome! I imagine you checked and saw that there are a lot more where those came from. When are they going to start doing Brit Pop action figures? Then someone could do a Todd Haynes 'Superstar--style film adaptation of my novel 'Guide'. That could work. ** Steevee, What a bizarre screening, yikes. The poor director. ** Alan, Ron Padgett indeed! Thank you again so much for letting the blog gang and readership get their/our grubby eyes and minds on your novel. I hope it goes really well. Enjoy your weekend upstate and, yes, that American Hardcore site will really help me pass the time. I'll get myself over there in just a little while. Thanks for that! ** Mark Gluth, Thanks a lot, Mark. I really appreciate it. ** The Dreadful Flying Glove, Hi, J. Thank you a lot about the Varioso! Niall is also an absolutely amazing performer. The Brussels restaurant is my idea of going to hell. The best I could do on the last Russian wax figure was ... Ronnie Dio? Can't be, right? Fine weekend, sir. ** L@rstonovich. Very good question. Butt plugs maybe? Your magic probably did something that will have a time release effect. ** Joseph/ Empty the Sun, I knew it was you. Not even Chloe can get everything she wants. That's comforting. I'm glad the Speed book made it. Sorry about my inability to do anything. I'm just too slow in the starting gate. Mm, no, Jim didn't give me that special book unless I'm completely spacing out, which is possible. If I am, it must be in LA, which sucks. Anyway, whenever I finally get the fuck get to LA for a visit, I'll find out and grab the hell out of it, if it's there. I want it. Your book. I need it. Oh, Michael Mann. If we're talking about camerawork and framing, I think no other American director can touch his genius. Technically, I think he's just insanely good. His films' insides are up and down for me. I really liked 'The Insider'. 'Heat' is just incredible. 'Ali' was pretty amazing. Others too. I thought 'Public Enemies' was quite limp, and 'Miami Vice' had some great showiness but wasn't so hot. So, I guess he's been kind of disappointing to me in the last couple of instances. What do you think of him and his stuff? Greer=YES. Add some exclamation points to that! Wait, you mean my favorite foreign film director? Is that what you meant? If so, well, Bresson. He's my favorite artist in any medium of all time. ** Misanthrope, Hey, G. Mm, I would say that I don't really think homophobia is a big factor in the denials. I don't know for sure, but my gut says no. It was the Russian thing originally, and now it's the denials on top of the Russian thing. Like I've said a bunch of times, at the time Yury first applied back in Russia, 80% of Russians' US visa applications were being denied pretty much automatically. The Russians and Eastern Europeans and so on whom you see there are likely, yes, sponsored by their companies, which changes everything, and they probably didn't apply at the accidentally wrong time like Yury did. Who knows, though. I'm sure Yury being gay does not help, but I don't think that's a major factor in the denials. Oh, God, I saw a preview for that new 'Big Momma' movie before 'Black Swan' the other day. It looks un-fucking-believably awful. Even here, where they strangely make and like really awful comedies, when that preview ended, the audience at the theater let out this loud collective groan. Good luck with that, man. Yeah, I'm thinking that those were expressionist wax figures. ** Okay, please give your time and attention and comments over to Alan's work this weekend, please. Thanks a lot! I will go have some kind of next two days now, and I will see you on Monday.