One Man's Struggle With Modernity

In Case Y'all Were Concerned...

2005-04-19T10:26:00.000-07:00

...I haven't gone away. It's just been so long that I need to put some time into the next update. I'll be knocking your socks off in a couple...

...like maybe everything was fine...

2005-03-10T15:04:00.000-08:00

"Boyfriend came around a couple of times that week for his things and, I guess, to finish the job. He was a confident prick. He listened to what she had to say, arguments that had taken her hours to put together, and then he would sigh and say it didn't matter, he needed his space, punto. She let him fuck her every time, maybe hoping that it would make him stay but you know, once somebody gets a little escape velocity going, ain't no play in the world that will keep them from leaving. I would listen to them going at it and I would be like, Damn, ain't nothing more shabby than those farewell fucks. I know. Me and Loretta had enough of those to go around. Difference was, we never talked the way these two would. About our days. Not even when we were cool together. We'd lay there and listen to the world outside, to the loud boys, the cars, the pigeons. Back then I didn't have a clue what she was thinking but now I know what to pencil into all those empty thought bubbles. Escape. Escape."

--Junot Diaz

What I Did Today

2005-03-09T15:09:00.000-08:00

[Hereinafter: the people discussed on this website are real. Their names have been changed to protect their anonymity and my liability.]

It happened. There's a cafe I like to frequent about five blocks from my apartment. At five blocks, it's about three blocks further than one need travel in order to get a delicious cup of coffee. I like it's remoteness; at five blocks it is not the neighborhood cafe, rather it is my cafe. Now I know it's sophomoric (and also desperate), but the baristas at this cafe are really good looking [I think I just violated every rule of The Fast Seduction 101 Player Guide (http://www.fastseduction.com/guide/) but I don't really believe everything I read on the internet anyway] . Don't get me wrong--the coffee is also quite good. So I've been sitting pretty flush for a while: I have my cafe, hot chicks work there, the coffee is good, and I get a little exercise by going the three extra blocks. The world is my oyster, right?

So today I'm heading out to my cafe and as I'm leaving my building I run into my buddy Jugs. Jugs is good people; Jugs is also the only man ever to have BEGGED me to let him orally satisfy me (Jugs may deny this, although he probably doesn't remember it. It was the end of the night of our last exam, first semester, first year of law school and Jugs was drunkenly flopping on the floor, pleading to all who would listen for a little gay love. I happened to be the only person in the room who possessed a penis. While preserving my heterosexuality in the face of an incoherently drunk, eighty-five pound, gay man is not the most difficult task I have ever faced, it certainly left an impression).

I like to have conversations with Jugs that serve as a litmus test for how well some of my centrist opinions on human sexuality will go over in the militantly progressive environment in which we go to school. I like to think of myself as brandishing an Anglo-Imperial libido (it is entirely a pity, in this regard, that I am half-Jewish). As a result, I need to field test the political correctness of some of my more dubious ruminations on copulation before sharing them with the academic community at large; Jugs, by virtue of our past intimacy recounted in the previous paragraph, is an ideal sounding-board for just these thoughts. (In fact, just last week Jugs made a provident intervention, cutting me off just as I was about to tell the President of the Hindu Law Students' Association that I believed in invading Asian countries, forcing the men into servitude and converting the village-women into personal harems. Thanks Jugs, you def saved me on that one buddy.)

So, just this morning I'd been wrestling with the warrior tradition in western culture in light of legal strategies to achieve sex and gender equality in the American armed forces, and here comes Jugs at the perfect moment. So I ask him to take a walk with me to my cafe. And that's when it happened: I told him that I liked this cafe because all of the baristas were hot. The words I had feared articulating for weeks were out there. I knew, by Murphy's Law, that having made this proclomation, today's barista was going to be some toothless, unshaved, skank. With my luck the cafe had probably fallen victim to some hostile takeover and was now staffed entirely by the underemployed understudies for Little Orphan Annie. I tried to regain my composure. As we walked I started explaining my ambivalence about the feminization of the armed forces as it undercut the distinctly verile semiotics that have historically characterized battle and warfare. I acknowledged the Constitutional problem to my argument and even conceded the faulty epistemology of an anachronistic patriarchy.

Just as we arrived at my cafe I was getting to the heart of my argument. Like an expert rhetorician I had built my argument up to deliver a devastating summation. As I opened the door to my cafe I took it to Virgil, Book IV, The Aeneid. Aeneas and Dido go up in the cave, natural disasters, they consummate, her kingdom grows lazy, AENEAS HANGS UP HIS ARMOR AND SWORD UPON DIDO'S BED POSTS...and then the Gods have to intervene because Aeneas has become such a pussy. He's emasculated: Ascanius is beginning to think his dad's a wuss, Jupiter's worried that Aeneas is never going to make it to Italy to found a great nation, and Mercury catches Aeneas playing foreman to one of Dido's building projects ("Are you/ now laying the foundation of high Carthage,/ as servant to a woman?"). And presto, Murphy's Law kicks in. I pause in my argument, turn to the barista, and ask for two coffees. And there she is, the least attractive woman ever seen behind the counter in my cafe. Just as I feared, I jinxed myself by admitting out loud that I frequented the cafe on account of its attractive staff. And it got worse. She turned to make pour our coffee, I went back to extricating the semantics of impotence as delivered to western society in Book IV, and then this mediocre barista shoots me a smile. She's like: "it's nice to know that someone else finds the classics so interesting."

Ethan Allen and Nathan Hale...Two Men to be Remembered Today

2005-03-08T14:49:00.000-08:00

"In the uncertainty before them, they committed their hopes to bold action and trust in themselves. They chose to die resisting, rather than to live submitting. They fled only from dishonor, and met danger face to face. At the summit of their fortune, they escaped only from their fear to their glory...Do not be persuaded by speeches about the value of defending your country, though such speeches of course are proper and fitting. You personally must realize the power of Athens, and feed your eyes upon her every day until love of her fills your hearts. Then, when all her greatness shall break upon you, remember that it was by courage, duty, and a keen sense of honor in action that men were enabled to win all this. No personal failure could make them deprive their country of their valor, but they laid it at her feet as the most glorious contribution that they could offer.
"For this offering of their lives, each of them individually now receives that renown which never grows old, and for a sepulchre, not so much that in which their bones have been deposited, but that noblest of shrines wherein their glory is laid up to be remembered whenever deed or story shall call for its commemoration. For heroes have the whole earth for their tomb, and in lands far from their own, where the column with its epitaph declares it, there is enshrined in every breast a record unwritten with no tablet to preserve it, except that of the heart.
"Take these as your model and, judging happiness to be the fruit of freedom, and freedom of courage, never decline the dangers of war. It is not for the miserable to be most unsparing of their lives; they have nothing to hope for. It is rather for those who have the most to lose, those for whom a fall, if it came, would have the most terrible consequences. And surely, to a man of spirit, the degradation of cowardice must be immeasurably more grievous than an unfelt death striking him in the midst of his bravery and patriotism! "
--Pericles' Funeral Oration (Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, Book II)

I'm a romantic. I don't try and sell myself this way to women, but nevertheless I am prone to late-night whiskey sessions, screaming Ahab's soliloquies out of my eighth floor window and into the night while hurling balled-up dirty socks at the occasional pedestrian on the street. It's edifying; it's William Wallace; it's the refusal to compromise that all great lovers and poets share.

And now I'd like to introduce all of you to two men who, last night, fueled the courage and intrepidity that smoldered in my bosom.

Nathan Hale: At the age of 21, Nathan Hale was one of only four Patriot spies operating behind enemy lines at the beginning of the American Revolution. Betrayed by his own cousin, Hale was hanged by the British, and his body was left to swing in the town square for several days as a warning to other Patriots. Asked by his executioners if he wished to express any remorse Hale ascended the gallows and uttered his immortal last words: "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."

Ethan Allen: While Nathan Hale was sacrificing his life en route to becoming the official Connecticut State Hero, there were some folks down the road in New York who were pretty pissed off at Ethan Allen. At the time of the American Revolution there were thirteen British colonies in North America, most of which had charters that extended unforeseeably into the continent's interior, all the way to the Pacific Ocean (in fact, it was not until Lewis and Clark that any party actually crossed the interior of the continent to reveal just how vast was the American interior). During the mid-18th Century the governor of New Hampshire started granting title to farm land in Vermont; this became contentious, when some years later the Crown ruled that in the Vermont territory belonged to New York, and the New Hampshire governor's grants were invalid. Allen became the leader of a citizen's militia known as the Green Mountain Boys, who resisted New York's attempt to control the Vermont territory, and who became the vanguards in the fight for Vermont's independence. Allen commanded the first victory against the British when he and his vigilante posse captured Fort Ticonderoga (and all of its cannon) on the shores of Lake Champlain. Arresting the Fort's commander in his nightwear, Allen declared possession of the Fort under the authority of "the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress."

Proving Once Again that a Penis Makes One Stupid...

2005-03-06T13:44:00.000-08:00

I don't know if Stephen Hawking's equipment works. I tried googling it to no avail (the only really juicy hits on this particular search come from high school girls who have offered various prices which they would have to be paid in order to perform "the deed" with Professor Hawking). Whether or not he is capable of getting it up, I would assume that at some point he realized that he's a skinny dude in a wheelchair who would have a better chance in life conquering theoretical physics than in perfecting his technique at "the flying buttress." And Kudos to Stephen...because he's probably never made an ass of himself like this:
http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/mis/62555952.html

For those of you too lazy to read the link, I'll briefly summarize. Posted on craigslist, by a self-identified professor named Gbenga. The subject line: Intelligent Conversation with violist at Hogs & Heifers...

Where do I begin? Who has the indignity to couple "intelligent conversation with violist" with "Hogs & Heifers" in the same sentence? What possible (read: libidinal) motivation does a professor named Gbenga have for attending a bar called Hogs & Heifers? Who goes to said bar and actually believes that the girl they're talking to plays the viola? Who writes: "You told me that you wish you were sober so that we could have an intelligent conversation. I probably won't see you again but would love to keep in touch. Toledo is not far from NYC."

I guess all I'm trying to say is that these are the same pubescent minds that we entrust to educate our children; these horny, game-less, clueless, moronic, pedants are the people who run our universities and determine how young brains are cultivated. So the next time you're at a dinner party, and the honorary chair starts in about his revolutionary work on Nephokinesis, relax, pour another glass of Burgundy, and remember Gbenga.

And to the ladies out there, I believe Tupac before me had a response to the parable of Gbenga:

Keep your head up
legs closed
eyes open.

I Remember the Period in My Life When I Wrote This...and I Miss It

2005-03-03T12:13:00.000-08:00

Bri's Random Thoughts
An August Night In Michigan

The best lay I ever had.
Hmm
Tricky
Thomas? No das.
5 people
Marijuan makes me want to fuck

Commitment phobes
I seem to find them

Hmmm
Best lay I ever had
Dylan
Yup
Sad fuckin reality

Never gotten sick
Not from alcohol
Men yes
Alcohol no
Vanilla stoli and diet

Car whore
Binge drinking
Research
Neuropsychology
Patients=People
Kenyon=rats, roaches, and reefer

Eww
Fuckin' A
Fuck a B, it has two holes

Fucked up drug-addicted assholes
Failure of the system
Whose fault is it?

People who are engaged piss me off too
Skeptical
Hey smartie
Well thanks

Respectable
Hmmm
Scotch
Respectable? Does that seem bad to anyone?
Other than teenage trailer park drug hoes that is
I like being respectable
I like responsibility
I like control
Control freak
You betcha

Getting better
Don't diss, it's the history
Gotta be that way
Very dominant
Type-A

Androgynous even
Ben was submissive
Didn't say a fucking thing to contradict me
Bad idea

Challenge
Sensitivity
Attraction
Empathy
COMMITMENT
That's the hard one

Intellectually challenging
Argumentative in a good way
Find reasons for actions
Disagree with me damnit
Intellect
Purposeful
Insecure attachments

Goddamn shitty parents
Ruining my romantic existence
Fucked up
Fuck you
For fucking me
Mwhahahaha

I have boring thoughts
Only sometimes
Random good ideas.

Tell Me If I Need An Intervention

2005-03-02T14:13:00.000-08:00

Protagonist: I have been sexually active for, roughly, a decade. I have, for the most part, enjoyed satisfying my libido. I've done the usual things in the bedroom: chocolate sauce, honey, "bark like a dog," handcuffs, "you are so (breath) beautiful," The Professor and The Freshwoman, "let's do it in my parents' bed," sodomy, etc. In all this time, however, I've always been remarkably vigilant about keeping my dignity above the fray of my hormonal inclinations.

Now I'm in a sticky situation (regrettably, there is no relevant pun to be made at this time).

Exposition: I'm new to this 'blog' thing. When I sit down with the internet I can never think of more than five different websites worth visiting (fyi: yahoo chess, nyt, vegasinsider, my porn site, and my email); the creation of this blog was not only an act of drunken brashness, but, when I'm honest with myself, it was also a leap of faith to get more out of my internet, my virtual world. And so I've been scouring (ineptly) the reaches of cyberspace to find out who is out there, to discover what people actually write about on these so called blogs.

Inciting Moment: About a week ago I stumbled upon an amusing blog. I poked around for a few minutes to ensure that my enthusiasm for this site was in fact deserved, made a dash to the bodega for a pack of Camel Lights, un-corked a bottle of Louis Jadot, and sat down with the archives to get a feel for my nascent discovery.

I devoured the blog. Month by month I went through the archives, rising and falling with my new "friend's" victories and tribulations, filling in the missing gaps in her biography, laughing like a brother alongside her on the good days, and silently being her oak through the rough times. I found levity in her struggles with the city, amusement in her characterizations of boys and men; her depictions of certain bars resonated within me in the way that only a co-patron can understand; her bold descent into the urban jungle re-kindled my appreciation for the neo-bohemian; her clever and manipulative attitude toward her own body reminded me that, like Tony Soprano, I too can use my girth as an aphrodisiac.

Conflict: By the time I went to bed I had read every word ever published on her site and was knee deep into my third bottle of Beaujolais. The next day I fidgeted through the daylight hours, disciplining myself not to look for a new post until a reasonable time in the evening.

(An Aside: Throughout this blog I may occasionally refer to a "reasonable time in the evening." To me those words serve as an idiom, meaning the time of day at which a non-alcoholic person might respectably consume a cocktail. This is the emotional epicenter of my day, and I use it to segregate the various modes of conduct in which I engage. There are things one does in his day before he begins to drink--teeth-brushing, coffee, the newspaper--and things he engages in after he consumes a beverage--anything that involves emotional investment).

I think it was Glenfiddich that night and my fingers trembled as I typed in her url (I would like to think it was the prospect of a new update that inspired my hands to shake, although realistically speaking it was probably a function of my physical dependency, and was likely caused by the anticipation of whiskey). As the page loaded I saw to my dread that in fact there was no new post on her blog. Having made no other plans for the evening I went through a cycle of emotions:
rejection--she stood me up;
paranoia--is she avoiding me?;
shame--my entire plans for the evening were to read the blog of a woman I've never met;
hurt--I just wish she had posted something, anything, even something lacking emotional significance;
and, finally, drunken anger--I'll track this bitch down one way or another.

Rising Action: And so that's what I did. I poured another stiff one, puffed defiantly on my cigarette, and googled her. It took a little detective work, throwing out the hits that referred to her namesakes and distinguishing the useful from the useless information, but I was able to dig deeper into the life of my new friend. I found pictures (she's quite good looking) and reviews of her past performances (even the critics had a few positive things to say about her). I remembered that just last week I was telling my friends how I need to start dating more Broadway women. I discovered that we went to the same university...and we were even there at the same time. I began to wonder if we had ever met: did she bum a cigarette from me at a bar here in the city or did we jostle in line at a keg party in college? Did we both catch the Alexander Hamilton exhibit at the Historical Society on the same day back in January? Did she bend over to tie her shoes one day in the East Village and I made a surreptitious peek to determine her preference in underwear?

I started to fantasize about her. I remembered the way her fingers slipped between mine as we walked on the pier, and the raspberry lip gloss that made her kisses even more sweet; the way she demanded back rubs after a Sunday morning spent consummating our affection; how I escorted her to her anorexia support group and sat in the car for three hours so that I would be there for her when it ended.

Now, dear readers, here is where you come in. I know how to contact this woman. I know where to see her perform. I cannot take my mind off of her and I am beginning to think that I am in love. Clearly the Climax and Denouement of this story are reserved for a future post. But, if one returns to the Protagonist section of this post, one recalls that never before have I compromised my dignity in the pursuit of sex (sophomore year of college and seven spring breaks are exempt from this analysis). So, for the love of God, please inform me if I've gone off the deep end. If required, save my impeccable dignity before you find me on Court TV as the newest internet stalker. Please, someone, help me think clearly about this. Don't forget, Climax and Denouement forthcoming...

A Bit of Self-Loathing

2005-02-28T16:39:00.000-08:00

KATHA

We shared Christmas in Philadelphia, 1991. Crusted hot
chocolate on Oriental lips because it was cold and we
lacked the patience for dawn. Your present an avocado and
olive omelet that you devoured in bed. We were broke and
you danced for me in the hotel window frame. Today when
I stand on the scale or peer down into blue tinted toilet water
I will remember you. And wonder if I will ever measure up.

One (of many) Thought(s) on Law School

2005-02-26T11:00:00.000-08:00

Preface: Last night I was drunk, and under the mis-perception that I had something profound to share with the world. So I posted it here...This morning, lacking the courage that whiskey inevitably delivers, I decided to proceed with this project. So without further ado...

Rumination: When I was a freshman in highschool my cousin (who was then attending a small liberal arts college in Ohio) visited my mother, sister, and I for a long weekend. He acted like an ass all weekend, and after he left I told my mother that I thought he was an obnoxious individual. With all of her Dr. Spock / Reviving Ophelia wisdom mother explained that college is a time when people become self-centered and self-absorbed; immersed in their own lives and oblivious to many of the things and people outside their immediate world.

Fair enough.

Law school, too, is an exercise in academic / alcoholic immersion. Thus the syllogism teaches that law students are similarly oblivious and immune to forces outside their immediate indoctrination.

It is oft remarked that law school teaches one to "think like a lawyer"; that this then becomes a skill which one retains for life, and this is what differientiates doctors of jurisprudence from the rest of the human community.

Allow me to address this conventional wisdom: the inevitable sum of all legal education is to convince one to be paranoid and self-interested. Write a better contract so as to avoid unforeseen consequences; look for the deeper pocket to make sure that the guy who fell of a bar stool gets as much money as possible; always invoke the 5th Amendment when talking to the police; whenever possible be a free rider; structure subsidiaries to avoid liability; etc., etc., etc.

Now, when I was in college I too thought there was nothing quite so significant in the world as Hemingway's inverted self-loathing through the form of Robert Cohn and that the author's perceived misogyny was in fact an acute examination of his own sense of failure as a man. Then I graduated, got a job, and realized that there are a lot of facets to life which extend well beyond the rampant promiscuity of Lady Brett Ashley. So too it should be with law school. As a law student one begins to see everything as an exercise in avoiding liability, maximizing profit, and acting out of paranoid self-interest (why else do they lock the smoking terrace on my building everytime it snows a centimeter?). And as law school recedes into the past and one moves forward with his life he begins to realize that not everything about the human experience is framed by the vigilant technicalities of the common law tort.

But here's the rub...At the height of this immersion in paranoia and self-interest (and, importantly, astonishing debt) "they" tell the law student that he also should use his degree to seek employment. And because, at that moment, the law student is convinced that the world holds no greater border than profit maximization and self-interest (imagine a three year conversation with Stalin about human nature), he who would otherwise be a novel and interesting individual, decides to become a lawyer. And, of course, this immerses the former law student into a new culture of self-interest and profit maximization, but without the tedious articles on social policy.

The Night Before V-EX Day

2005-02-25T21:20:00.000-08:00

A party where one can't smoke is like sex with a condom...unsatisfying and bad for my image.