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Hello Dc: Manic Nighttime Run

2008-10-08T22:38:00.000-07:00

The Iliotibial band is in every serious runner’s vocab. It’s a fibrous component of a tough muscle that runs from the lowest part of your buttocks, along the sides of the knee and connects with the calf muscle. Serious runners sometimes experience severe pain on the sides of their knees. This is called “ITB syndrome.” I’ve never experienced any such thing, until earlier this year.

It’s 12:48 a.m as I write this, and I’ve just run five and a half miles.

The distance from where I live to certain places I’ve measured on mapquest are 5 mile points. Sometimes I run to Dupont Circle, which is 5.2 miles. Sometimes I run to Tryst in Adams Morgan, which is 5.5 miles.

Tonight, I ran to Tryst.

Running at night for me isn’t for the sheer pleasure of it, or for the endorphin rush that comes when I hit the hill going up 18th street. I’ve always had nighttime “runs” of different sorts over the years. I ran tonight even though I ran two miles and cycled for another two earlier this evening.

When I used to skateboard, at 3 a.m most mornings I would find myself blazing around the city, listening to System of a Down on my ipod (3rd generation at the time), being eyed warily by cops. They must have wondered who this shirtless, sweating person skateboarding in forty degree weather was.

When I had a bike (I’ve lost three to the city and don’t feel like getting one anytime soon), sometimes I found myself riding to Georgetown at night, to the Golden Key Bridge, or as far as my legs would take me.

The weather never mattered to me, because as I said before I was never doing it for the thrill. It was to escape.

Earlier this year, I was running five to ten miles per night in twenty-five degree weather. The scenario would always be the same. I would be sitting down, and suddenly feel an overwhelming frustration with everything around me. The quietness of my room would start getting to me, and nothing could assuage my feelings. A good song, a tasty treat, or even the lure of sleep weren’t ever able to quell whatever it was I was feeling.

So like Forrest, I started running.

I started doing two miles a day, wondering if I had the stamina to do more. After the first day, I felt very unfulfilled. The next evening, I ran six miles.

It is an interesting feeling to run in a cold climate. The icy winds hit you mercilessly in the face and you have a distinct sense of being alive. Your lungs are on fire from breathing in air cool enough to freeze a soda, and yet you are sweating, your body fighting against the elements.

Sometimes on these runs, I would step up the activity, stopping every four blocks and do twenty pushups. I felt like I was in the army; an army of one.

Whenever I run, I realize how scary I must look. My face is tight with exhaustion, my body is wilted and I’m moving slowly at times. Every now and then I would say, “Come on man, keep going!”

I might clap a few times, or wave my hands to recharge, and push on. When I run, the road before me disappears and becomes a sea of thought. I know why I run. I’m running from the frustrating memories of the past, I’m running from the torturous things that have happened to me and I’m running from things that I can never escape. The image of a dead friend in a coffin. The flashes of a car hitting into me from an old car accident. The voice of my Grandfather just before he died, whispering to everyone gathered around him: “Sing for me.”

As I run, this is where my mind is. I’m running against time, and everything around me. I often run until my lungs give out, and I lean against a wall, heaving and gasping for breath, praying that I can breathe normally again. Other times I am like a machine, running ten miles and feeling no signs of fatigue knowing that my return journey is another ten miles.

I jog with music occasionally, and it has its own tales to tell. I may listen to the petulant crooning of Cold Play, the violent angry stories of a myriad dancehall artistes, or I may listen to nothing at all, just the wind on my ears and the sounds of cars as they flash by in a streak of color.

No matter how far I run, the inevitability of the activity hits me. You can’t run forever, and no matter how far you travel, you can’t escape yourself. I’ve sat on the beaches of Hawaii, walked the streets of Berlin and watched the sunrise from the window seat of a 747 over the Atlantic ocean. Yet, I still run.

Distance doesn’t equal happiness, nor does it measure out doses of pleasure in some weird ratio that the universe has developed. No matter how far one travels, or runs, you eventually have to go back home.

In the moment when my run is almost over, when I’m covered in sweat, my lower back aches, and I feel my knees start to hurt, I clap once more. “One more mile.” I chant, as sweat drips off my nose and leaves black dots on asphalt.

At this point the high is gone, and the thoughts that were behind me as I was running are now directly beside me, grinning and cackling like lecherous witches. I don’t’ mind, because like I said, you can’t escape yourself, and wherever you run to, you always end up where you start.

Hello DC: NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE

2008-10-08T22:36:00.000-07:00

People always ask a person who’s almost died, “What were you thinking about just before the moment happened?” With a small level of certainty, I can (sort of but not really) answer this question.

Sometimes when I go to Adams Morgan, my mind runs on my ex-girlfriend, who lives in the area. Last night was a particularly boring affair, with me hopping from bar to bar and talking to no one. Like most nights when I’m in Adams Morgan, I take the bus home. When my cell phone displayed the magic time of 1:30, I decide to leave.

Strangely, the street is blocked off on one side, allowing traffic to leave the 18th street strip, but not come into it. I watch a bus rumble by slowly, and wonder if it is ever going to come back. I pace around for a few moments, watching people float by in various states of inebriation. An older African-American lady is sitting at the bus stop, with a small plastic bag in her hand. A few feet in front of her, with her arms folded is a tough-looking Caucasian woman. The tough-looking lady is standing and the other woman is sitting down. I lean against a part of the support structure of the bus stop.
So far I’ve been distracting myself by watching people, but for a quick second, I wonder what my ex-girlfriend is doing. Is she sleeping blissfully? Warm in someone’s arms? Or not even home? This thought passed through my head for a fleeting moment, then…

Shots rang out.

There were four or five shots. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! This was no more than ten feet from where I was standing. In that area, people scattered like cockroaches in a room when the light comes on. A few people, not sure what to do, simply stood up, like deer caught in the headlights. Some immediately hit the deck, and others streaked across the now empty street. Strangely, I didn’t move. I was leaning on the post, sort of looking straight up at nothing when I hear the first shot. Then I looked beside me and saw the clamor of activity. Most likely someone had been shot. The noises sounded dull and directed. Somewhere, only a few feet away, a person was probably dead. Only moments before, I had almost walked right there out of sheer idleness.

I jogged a few feet away from the bus stop to Columbia road, near the ATM. That was probably a bad idea, because that’s where the noise came from. The gun-toting maniacs were probably running to Columbia Road as well, where the melee might continue.

A few dark bodies fled from the alley, and it seemed that every officer was now brandishing their weapons. A few officers fly out of the alleyway and run down a dark street, holding their guns. As I looked around, an odd quiet hit the air.

People who are genuinely frightened don’t lament or weep. They stand in shock, wondering what just happened, realizing their mortality. One wrong move and a stray bullet could end your life, or severely injure you. The cops looked edgy.

A person running a little too frantically was liable to be chased, and probably beaten I presumed. While observing all of this, I realized that I was the only person standing up (along with the police officer). Everyone else was hiding behind a wall, or lying on the ground. Even this guy I had jogged past, (he was at the second bus stop that faced Columbia Road holding his bike) was crouching on the ground, looking around warily.

The officer looked at me with indifference. I was standing there with my hands in my pockets, surveying the area. The shots didn’t frighten me. A part of me “felt” as if I should be frightened, but the trembling chaos didn’t enter me. I just think I’m one of those people that doesn’t frighten easily.

Once in Jamaica, I was almost hit in a head on collision by a SUV twice the size of my vehicle. It was driving directly towards me with no headlights on. The SUV hopped over an island in the road, and it was only 50/50 that I chose to swerve right and the vehicle went left. Shortly after, a police car came blaring down the road, chasing the vehicle. I didn’t feel frightened at that point either, but seconds after the cars disappeared, my left leg began trembling violently. I was afraid in some way, I just didn’t feel it immediately.

Tonight, or last night was different. I realized that should a shootout happen, a stray bullet could hit me, but that eventuality didn’t make much sense to me. Though I was near the epicenter of the event, and only feet away from where the shooting started, I was standing near all the police cars and heavily armed officers.

After a moment, I walked towards the crosswalk that leads to the McDonalds on the other side of the street. The African-American woman from before was lying on the ground with two young Caucasian women. She was crying from sheer fright. She was inconsolable. I don’t blame her. If I was ten feet away, she was no less than five feet. The two girls held her hand.

“It’s okay. They weren’t trying to shoot you.” The girls said.
One of them, a blonde with tear filled eyes kept looking on me. I recognized her, but I didn’t know from where. They told the lady she would be all right. I couldn’t hear exactly what the woman was saying, but it seemed she thought they were shooting at her, and she was also worried about how she would get home. The two girls said they would pay for a cab so that she could reach home.
I was standing there, watching them with my arms folded. They were crying and seriously frightened, and it must have seemed odd for me to be standing there so stoically. Maybe I will wake up tomorrow and wonder why I wasn’t frightened, and why the tear filled eyes of those three women on the ground didn’t move me to even say anything.

I wanted to say “The worst is over.” And touch the woman’s shoulder, and reassure the girls that they were safe because the police were right behind them, as were the police cars. But I didn’t say anything. I watched them in their humanity, consoling each other in the way that people do in a time of crisis.

I felt a piercing vulnerability at that point. I sensed that if I had been walking by there (as I almost did) or if I had been idly traipsing around, I could have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Bad luck, bad timing. It seems fit that minutes before this event happened, I ran into someone I knew and followed that person to a bar for a few minutes. If I didn’t, who knows?

The girls still haven’t gotten up. They are freaked out and scared half to death, and are still lying awkwardly on the ground. The older lady is still moaning and wiping her eyes.
For a fleeting moment I get a powerful urge to call my ex-girlfriend. For some reason, some aspect of the event made me think of going over to her place to take refuge. She was only a few blocks away I thought, and I’ll be safe there. I wanted to say to her, “Wow, can you believe that I was standing right by a place where some shots rang out?” A part of me saw myself going over there, standing by her door as she rushes out in the hallway and gives me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek, thankful that I am alive and well.

But then I realized what I was thinking just before this all happened. I was wondering if she was sleeping blissfully, if she was in the arms of someone else, or even home at all. It dawned on me there was no reason to call her, and there was also no place for me to go but my apartment.
Maybe the event didn’t frighten me in a way that made me run for dear life, or hide on the ground, quivering like a small animal, but for a second it took me back to a point in my life, when I felt I had a retreat, a safe haven from the world, in the arms of someone else. Maybe that’s the real scary part of the entire thing, the fact that I completely forgot that I was no longer with her and we no longer spoke, but hearing a few shots echo in my ears, and sensing my mortality, I felt a desire to see her and speak to her that seemed instinctive, dredged up from the recesses of my being that blasted me face-first back into the past.

In these situations, it is a great thing to reassure yourself that you exist by receiving loving words from someone else. A hug from a friend, a sigh of relief over a phone call, or a naturally heartfelt embrace, like the one shared by the three ladies lying on the ground. My desire to speak with my ex most likely represented my instinctive feeling to remind myself that I exist, and that I didn’t have to travel home alone to deal with the situation. Or maybe I just wanted someone to share the event with. Who knows.

I took one last look at the three ladies lying on the ground, and crossed the street. I hailed a cab and hopped in. “What happened around here?” the driver said. “Some shots rang out.” I replied.
“Really?” he said with an incredulous smile. “Yes, really.” I said.
“Where was it?” he asked. “

"Right by the bus stop. It was like five shots.” I said.

“Wow!” he said almost with too much excitement.

“Yeah, I was right there. “ I said, almost not even believing those words.
I told him where I lived and quietly watched the dark buildings go by in a blur as the cab drove to my apartment. I wondered again about that flash of desire to call my ex, and why it seemed so instinctive. As the darkness of the city loomed at me from the windows of the cab, I knew I didn't really have a safe haven. All I had was my own thoughts to console me, and the emptiness of my bedroom. I thanked the cab driver, tipped him and went inside, immediately greeted by the darkness of my apartment.

****

Hello DC: Saturday Morning in ADams Morgan

2008-10-05T09:58:00.000-07:00

: view from Coffee and Crumbs

I’m sitting in Coffee and Crumbs, a tea house off 18 th street somewhere near Adams Morgan. I’m looking outside a half-open door, watching people and cars flash by in blurs of dark color. On my head, are a new pair of cheap stereo headphones I just purchased from a CD game exchange. I’m wearing a black polo shirt, and stretchy gray pants. I wonder if I look like the typical 21st century floater. Floating from place to place, with my headphones on my head to dull my senses, my nice shirt and pants to make me feel good, watching life go by.
Its been a very interesting last couple of weeks in the good old Nation’s capitol. I’ve found myself feeling completely different about my environment. After coming from New York, people always asked me, “Which is better? New York, or Washington DC.” To this question, I give the same answer. “They are different.”
I went to New York for the day yesterday, and immediately I felt a surge of energy course through my body. I was walking faster, I felt generally more alive and well, and everything seemed faster, and more exciting. I even felt more attractive. I tried to pinpoint the reasons for this.
I caught a late bus out of DC at 11:30 p.m. I reached New York at 3:45 a.m. It was cold, and I got slightly lost in Chinatown. After I found a subway heading uptown, I learned that those trains, (the F uptown) were not running from September 5th, through October 26th. I ended up hailing a cab and heading up towards Union Square, where I had spent the last 3 ½ months before returning to DC.

I spent the morning shuffling around in my Aunt’s apartment, grabbing a few things that I had left behind when I came to DC. I watched a few episodes of Entourage, the Chris Rock comedy special Kill the Messenger and slept for an hour or two. I didn’t do anything, but I felt intensely invigorated. Maybe it was the fact that outside, were stores, nicely dressed people walking about, and the noise of the city that never sleeps. Maybe it was the fact that even though New York whipped my ass like most newbie’s, I had enough good memories there to have a nice sense of the place. Maybe I liked the high buildings, the claustrophobic atmosphere and the noise.
I was only in New York until 8 p.m. I would have left sooner if there hadn’t been intense congestion, which delayed the trip by over two hours. By 12 midnight, I was back in Washington D.C. Then, the contrast was obvious.
As soon as I returned to DC, I felt slower, more subdued. I got a sensation of space and darkness. It was quiet, emptier and less energetic. I caught a cab in Chinatown and went home. I looked at myself in the mirror and wondered how long the “New York effect” would last. Could I hold on to that feeling of internal power that comes with walking through New York’s streets? Could I feel a little bit brighter and happier in Washington D.C?
By 1 a.m I had made it to Wonderland, a bar I like to frequent. There, I had one beer and stood up watching people dance. I’ve noticed one thing ever since I returned from New York. I don’t talk to anyone. Most places I go, I stand up, have one beer or sip on water (if its available), then leave. I left the bar at 1:35.
Therein lies the New York Washington DC contrast for me I think. New York made me feel good, but it was a social nightmare of the highest degree. Imagine a land filled with gorgeous progressive women who are 100% dedicated to putting their careers ahead of relationships. Then imagine a similar place, where the women are less attractive but equally dedicated to career first.
Some people would say those are two nightmares, but who knows? I don’t necessarily feel powerless. I think, like DC, I sometimes feel spacious, empty and dark, filled with little gaps and winding places that few feet ever trod.
In New York, I felt that the atmosphere was sometimes like a huge block of ice that I couldn’t break. Around me it seemed people were screaming at me, “Give us ice! Give us ice!”, but all I had in my hand was a plastic spoon. I couldn’t chip the ice.
DC in a way feels similar at times. The block of ice is smaller, and depending on what day it is, I have a plastic spoon, and other days I have an ice pick. As it stands, I think all I have in my cabinet are a series of huge, plastic, spoons.
But DC also feels like an old bedroom. Every tactile sensation in this room sparks a memory good or bad. Walking down this street triggers a memory of you laughing with your boy, kissing your girl, or raging with anger.
But the past, the present and the future are all inherently inescapable things. I woke up this morning, staring at the ceiling. It was cold in the room, and I sat down to meditate. The silence around me was thunderous and I had to get out, to get away.

So what's the lesser of two evils? A temporary taste of fleeting self-power (as in New York), or that calm (albeit subdued) sense of self that comes with a startling familiarity? I have no answer. No tengo idea. Wakarimasen.
So here I am, sitting at Crumbs and Coffee on 18th street, typing this stuff up, looking outside, watching the world float by in a blur of color. While sipping on green tea.

Hello DC: Shorts Party in Adams Morgan

2008-09-12T08:33:00.000-07:00

I’m standing outside Asylum, a bar in the heart of Adams Morgan. I’m trying to pull up my pants to make shorts, because I’ve found a nice little party. I can see in the window the movement of lots of bodies; the windows is thick with sweat and I can hear the echo of indie music.
I see a guy I know, Mick and he gives me a one over before I go to the bouncer. The bouncer is a man with a gentle face—he could have been a hobbit any of the Lord of the Rings movies—and he has a long head of wavy, semi-straight hair. I could see him sitting on this stool thirty years ago, with a beard to accompany the hair, smiling at people with those fairy tale eyes.
Its been a slow night. Thursdays are like that sometimes (at least in DC), and I just came from Saint Ex where I was hanging with a few friends of mine. Since I’ve returned to DC a little cloud has been growing over my head. I’m not sure what it is. Part of me thinks it latent memories popping up and leaping to the forefront of my conscious mind, but I have a theory that involves pretending to be a superhero and eating lots of potatoes that might get rid of it.
Saint Ex is on 14th street and I walked the four block stretch to hit Adams Morgan, where I had no real intentions. Anyone worth their salt knows that Thursday night in Washington DC is much more happening during the lovely summer months. Now the nights are getting cooler and congress is in session, so all the happy-go-lucky Capitol hill people have to go easy on the booze and coke for a bit and actually process reality.
So, I’m ready to go into this shorts party. Intially the bouncer said “I think those pants of his are too tight to roll up into shorts.” I disagreed. After a little effort, my biker/hipster black pants became glorified shorts. They grabbed at my knees like a gleefully obese child, but they worked. I would only need them to walk in. I hand the bouncer my ID, and I’m in.
I’m hit with a wave of heat and a thick smell. This smell is common to almost every bar I’ve been in with lots of people dancing inside. Its like a slice of salami that’s been left in a plastic Tupperware case for a few hours mixed with beer suds. Depending on the night, and the number of people in attendance, this scent can be mild, or downright disgusting. Tonight, the smell is at code yellow: Tolerable.
The party is definitely indie for DC. That or a lot of college people are out and about. The first girl I see is wearing what appears to be her boyfriend’s t-shirt and her eyes are glazed with the veil of inebriation. To my left, two tall shirtless guy with beach bodies dance with bottles of champagne in their hands, sipping while doing a very Euro-gay movement to the rhythm. They aren’t the only shirtless ones.
Two more guys, dancing on a large leather couch with its back resting on a wall covered in mirrors are grinding like the women in front of them are tossing dollars bills their way. One is wearing swim trunks half the size of the doozy that Daniel Craig wore in Casino Royale, and the other guy seems like he’s tripping on drugs, because he’s look at the ceiling, rubbing his thigh and dancing in a way that suggest the ceiling is a woman he’s trying to bed and this is his only chance at getting laid.
Within seconds of doing this sweep of the room, a girl yanks my tie (I’m wearing my customary t-shirt and tie) and pulls me to her left (my right) as she walks by. I chuckle, but she really has a tight grip on the thing. She reaches back—I think to grab my hand—but she misses by a mile and just slightly touches my crotch. Then, just like she appeared, she disappears into the sweaty throng of dancers.
I stand where I am for a moment. The music is good, the vibe isnt’ bad, but I’m not feeling like letting loose. The cloud is still following me, sprinkling me with bits of rain like that unfortunate Carebear that was always depressed. Now THAT guy had issues. Imagine living in a happy cherubic land where you can get doped up on “good feelings” by rubbing your stomach and saying “CARE BEAR STARE!” and you are the one schmuck that gets stuck with a rain cloud that follows you everywhere? I wouldnt’ be surprised in that carebear had an E true Hollywood story involving prositutes, latent homosexuality and some connection to Kevin Bacon.
A bunch of guys that look like the perfect entourage for a low-key rapper are in the back. They seem drunk, and they are doing wild things, like tossing the balls from a ball pool located near the window into the crowd, and spraying Champagne and beer on everyone. This action startles me at first. People spraying the bubbly for no reason usually pisses people off, gets girls made about their hair being wet and kills the party. But not tonight.
These guys sprayed at least four bottles of Champagne all over the people immediately beside them and no one stopped dancing. It was like a strange sexual display, with people getting sprayed on and cheering by guys wearing dark glasses with huge, lecherous grins.
At this point, the shirtless guys have all united on the leather couch and are all dancing with bottles in their hands. The last time I’ve seen a display like this was at South Beach, where a friend and I happened to a see a purple box way in the distance as we walked down the beach on Spring Break a few years back. As we got closer to this purple box, it was actually a large structure. From this structure was music. Pulsing, pumping, trance music. I got excited because I was thinking “Beach party, yeah!” and as neared the thing we saw hands in the air, heard people cheering and I got even more excited. We walked past a port-a-potty where a long line of guys were waiting to pee. But then, not only were guys waiting to pee, but there were guys everywhere. In fact, there were NO girls to be seen. The purple box was a gay party.
At this gay party, every man was hairless and had a body that Brad Pitt would envy. It was a garish display of the Miami gay scene and also a reflection of what working out can really do for a guy. Either way, seeing those four shirtless guys on that couch, looking over a mixed crowd dancing and being sprayed with champagne was, somewhat awkward, but oddly familiar.
As good as the music was, I didn’t feel like dancing. I entertained light conversation with a few people and then left. Maybe I was tired from working out earlier in the evening, or maybe trying to figure out the narrative of a new book I’m working on is taking up more mental energy that I realize. Whatever it is, next time there’s a shorts party going on. I’m wearing shorts, and I just might end up shirtless.

Hello DC: Sex, Drugs and Alcohol

2008-09-12T08:28:00.000-07:00

“Hey Marcus, you wanna do a line?”

This is how my Saturday night ends. I’m in a plush apartment somewhere near U street. Its so big that there are two couches; one near the front door, a beige couch that can seat three, and then fifteen feet away, is a black behemoth that can seat at least ten individuals. I’m at the tail end of a long night—several clubs and bars included—and now I’m being offered the tastiest of late night treats… coke.
I say no, because I’m not a coke person. I’m not a weed person either. People find it funny that I’m from Jamaica and I’ve never done weed. I find this interesting. I know doing coke, or “blow” as its commonly referred to in movies, is mostly a Caucasian (or white people ) thing. People who make lots of money in high stress jobs tend to do a lot of blow. The ladies who live in this massive apartment are no different. They work for some massive business organization that probably pays them no less than one hundred K per year.
Me? I’m a lowly graphic artist who floats between interesting crowds. One guy in the group, a tall, burly fellow in a black t-shirt that reads “SECURITY” does a line. “Wow,” he says.” Its been like a year since I’ve done any coke.”
I stand there bemused. I’m in no way tempted to do coke—I’ve been in this situation many a time before—but I am feeling the effects of the alcohol I’ve been drinking throughout the night.
My night started out at Tryst, a small café in the middle of Adams Morgan. I was sitting there typing diatribes about my psychological issues with a good friend who lives in Atlanta, when I realized it was 10:15 p.m. I said a quick goodbye and hopped on the bus to go home. During this time, I received a text message:
Hey man, I’m on *** street and **** there’s a house party.
I think about heading to the spot but I’m unbathed and unprepared. Going home, bathing, heading back to the spot would take no less than 45 minutes. I’d reach there at no earlier that say, 11:30.
I’m heading out in a bit. I’ll let you know when I’m heading out. Is my reply.
I go home, briefly munch on some Candy Corn snacks (delectably disgusting) and then I don a vest, a pair of my favourite relatively tight pants, and an army green shirt, then I head out. While I walk to the bus, I’m listening to some hardcore dancehall music, which is the perfect fuel before going out. I hop on the bus five minutes later and feel my thigh throbbing. Its my cell phone buzzing. I answer, It’s my friend D.
“Hey what’s up man? “ I say.
“Nothing man, what are you up to?” he says.
“I’m on eleventh street.” I say.
“Oh cool, I’m on thirteenth.” he replies.
“Cool man, there’s a Rite Aid on thirteenth, I’ll ,meet you out front.”

I come off the bus and meet D. D is a relatively tall, handsome Asian guy—wearing a trench coat. “What’s up with the coat?” I say. “Hey man, I thought it was going to rain.” He says. I smell the slightest odor of liquor coming off him. Something rummy. Something strong. ”Were you drinking?” I ask. “Hell yeah man, I”ve been seriously drinking.” He replies. I chuckle to myself and we start walking. After exchanging the basic pleasantries (I.e a quick recap of some of my New York adventures), we head to a bar called Salam. This is an Ethiopian restaurant by day, weird indie bar by night. An Ethiopian man who looks like he’s sixty years old is checking ID’s. He looks at my passport and I walk in.
Salam is small—in that typical DC kind of way. A small bar is in front of me, somewhere music wafts through a door, and ten to fifteen people are milling about, having drinks. I immediately know this is not a place I’d like to be. D and I both grab drinks—Red stripes—and sip them as we catch up. I already know that I need to head to Adams Morgan, that smorgasbord of sweaty bodies, dive bars and impressionable women, but D hates Adams Morgan, but I’m intent on getting him to go there. After we finish our beers, we head outside and lean against some evil-looking railings.
“So what do we do now. Where do we head to?” I say.
“Let’s head this way, “ D says, pointing towards fourteenth street. (note we are on fifteenth, Adams Morgan is towards eighteenth).
I cajole him over a five minute period into heading towards Adams Morgan, making a careful note to mention this is probably the last time I’ll be in Adams Morgan for a long time (which is very true, since I’m leaving DC and probably won’t be back EVER) and we eventually start heading towards the A Morgan. D gets a text message. “House party at ***** off **** street. “ I pause as he says this. This place is unusually close to the abode of my ex-girlfriend who I really don’t’ want to run into, but I decide to go.
We walk for about twenty minutes and he in the wrong direction after we pass through the madness of Adams Morgan. Bodies are everywhere. Drunk girls roam the streets, and people walking with plates with pizza slices way too big for a human to consume traipse back and forth. It’s a blissful walkthrough.
I run into a back alley to take a piss. Luckily I miss a cop catching me sprinkle on someone’s garbage can by seconds, then we head to the house party. The party, like most house parties in DC (in this area) is mostly white. Guys in plain t-shirts and polos run about. Girls with glassy eyes, nice dresses and cheap heels walk oddly about, stilted by drunken gaits. I don’t’ feel very comfortable.
I don’t’ feel comfortable because I’m very used to this scene. I see two other black guys. One is very preppy with a calm look about him. He probably goes to GW or Georgetown.—the other is tall, with a small afro and a lightly muscled body. He looks like the archetypal Ivy-league black guy, and he floats into a room near the front of the house and talks to a girl with a large smile on his face. I scan the area, and see no one I’m interested in talking to. Most people are drunk, and the only person who speaks to me is a guy named Eric who’s playing beer pong. I have a few drinks and go back outside.
D decides to leave—he does this a lot, and I feel stranded. When D has a headache, isn’t feeling the party, or wants to go home, he does. This usually leaves me wingless (or wing-man less, and I don’t like it, because if you want to roll with your boy and have fun and he bounces on you, you become the sober guy talking to drunk girls… which ISN’Tcool.) So I start hanging with his ex-roomate, D2. I call him D2 because his name starts with D as well.
D2 says they are heading to Adams Morgan and I’m good to go. The party is very preppy, a little bit too white, and I everyone who’s there seems ready to leave, as am I. I have a slight buzz from drinking two beers and two cokes heavily laced with a whiskey I can’t remember. We start walking and run into two other guys—a tall, burly fellow wearing a shirt with “SECURITY” on the front (I’ve already mentioned him) and another guy, a short, stocky fellow named Matt. With two girls in tow, miss J, and another one who’s name slips me, D2 and his roomie S, we head to the A morgan. We don’t go very far. At the top of the strip is a club called Chloe. We go in. At first there is some hesitance to enter—the cover is five bucks—but we all go in. Its like a typical club. It’s a sprawling expanse of cheaply tiled space with two bars. The only girls I talk to are the bartenders and a waitress ( who I didn’t realize was working that night). I drink some water, a cranberry vodka and then we head out. D2 starts pitching to me the positive reasons for smoking weed.
“Look man, I want you to blaze tonight. I can’t believe you’ve never smoked.”
I try to explain that weed isn’t my thing, partly because I think I have an addictive personality, and I’m constantly searching for happiness—two things that I think would make weed (supposedly a happy-inducing drug) something I’d want day in, day out.
We walk for a few blocks and D2 continues to pitch me, talking about how weed positively changed his life, affected his outlook and is incidentally better than cigarettes. I believe him, but I’m not inspired to smoke weed. I can see myself being in Europe, lying in bed with a smoking hot brunette who’s wet with sex and has the kind of skin bronzed from years in the sun. I can see this women pulling out a very distinguished looking bong (or pipe) and saying to me, “Markus, vould you like to smoke vith mee?” then I’d say yes, and smoke with her a bit, then return to coital bliss. Me smoking with D2 on a random Saturday night?
No.
D2 warns me that the rest of the group will be doing blow, and that weed is the best choice. I tell him that I’d rather do blow that weed (this is true) and he says I shoudn’t. Naturally, I’m not interested in doing blow or weed, but I find blow more intriguing. Weed is in your mouth, blow is in your nose. Nose rules.
D2 tells me that where we are going (a girl’s apartment ) is amazing. When we enter (like I said before) she has two couches, nicely polished floors and a bedroom with gold sheets, and no less than twelve pillows. Her room looks like a miniature palace, not a place where someone sleeps, much less has sex. Having sex in that room would seem sacrilegious.
The counter (one of two ) in the kitchen has an assortment of alcohol on its surface. I grab some SKYY Vodka and mix it with some Coke (the soda!) At this point, a few people are trying to figure out the best way to do lines. “Use a twenty dollar bill” miss J says. This seems to work. A few Bank of America cards appear, and the coke is divided into tiny lines. These lines are less thick and obvious that the lines of coke that you see in movies.
Then the snorting begins. Again, this has no effect on me. I’ve been in rooms where people are doing blow/talking to me about world events. At this point, Mr. A, looks at me and says, “Marcus you wanna do a line?”. I politely decline.
A part of me is genuinely interested in the blow ( I mean, who the fuck isn’t interested in snorting some coke and flying sky high on a boring-ass Saturday night?) but I don’t listen to that voice.
Miss J has a hot, flat screen LCD TV. “I have free cable.” She says proudly. I actually marvel at this, because the apartment is at least sixteen hundred bucks a month or more, and the free cable almost feels like an oxymoron in a nice paragraph of prose.
D2 is sitting on the couch, staring seemingly at nothing. Mr S says he should like up his J (not to be

confused with miss J) and he says no. He shoots me a look, hitting me with a gaze from large brown eyes.” You wanna get out of here?” he says. I look around the room. One of the girls is on the couch, completely passed out. Miss J is watching Tv. She either wants to get laid or is floating on a coke high, and the other two gusy (high and drunk ) are also watching TV. Me in my semi-sober state wouldn’t’ survive another hour there. “Let’s go.” I say.
We head outside the apartment building and D2 lights up his spliff. We are walking on a public street in DC, and D2 is smoking weed. This is life.
We turn onto the main road and a guy on a bicycle and two other people walking see him. “Can I hit that?” one of the fellows says. D2 gives him the spliff, and he takes a huge puff. So does the guy on the bike. A converstation starts—where the guys on the bike are asking him where he gets his supply—then another person enters the fray. A guy who looks Italian, dressed in a dress shirt and ugly dockers is walking down the street with his arm around who I assume to be his girlfriend. He walks past us, then stops. “Can I hit that?” he says as well.

D2’s spliff has now united five people, all on a public street, in the middle of DC, where cops run abound. The Italian looking guy takes D2’s number, to figure out where to get some good weed. The other guys disappear somewhere near 14th, and I stop at D2’s house to take a quick piss.
I say goodby as I’m heading out, and start the long walk back to my apartment. I always pack my little ipod with me, to break the monotony of a long home walk, and I listen to hardcore dancehall all the way back home. I see the light on in my roomie’s room, (hers is right above mine) and I shoot her a text message. We have a light phone conversation where I basically say she has a dude in her room she’s trying to bang but hasn’t’, then I hang up.

I put on one of my favourite movies, Aladdin, and watch it idly. To anyone watching me, it would look like I’d actually done some blow. The alcohol has worn off (I need much, MUCH more to get drunk these days ) and I watch Aladdin on my LCD screen.

I’ve been in DC for 24 hours, and I’ve had drinks, Japanese green tea, horrible spaghetti, hung out with a Euro-girl, a few friends and offered coke. Let’s see what the next 72 hours bring.

Cheers.

Avenue C + Blonde Girls + Indie Music

2008-08-31T08:55:00.001-07:00

I’m leaning against a wall.

Above me strobe light casts a spasmodic, reverberating glow of multicolored light on pale bodies, all dancing to the frantic beat of The Killers. I’m in a club near Avenue C, a place called 40 C, and I’m standing quietly, watching everything and nothing.
As I close my eyes, I imagine myself running hand in hand with the girl of my dreams through a mystical meadow, naked and insouciant, as our body parts flap in the breeze like tissue paper caught under a car tire. This hasn’t been my first stop tonight. But for some reason, it feels like the thousandth stop in so many nights of my life.
An hour and a half earlier, I passed through a bar. As I walked in, a girl grabbed me by the arm. “Let’s get out of here.” She said. I sized her up briefly. She was tall, blonde, with dark piercing eyes, a long almost hawkish nose, and thin yet protruding lips. “I’m thinking of heading to this bar across the street,” I said. This wasn’t a lie—even thogh I’d just went into this bar for no more than thirty seconds—the bar across the street had better light and cuter girls.
She starts following me and then her eyes pop open like someone pulled the light switch in her head. “I have to find my friend.” She says. “When you see her, you’ll be amazed. She’s the most beautiful girl ever. She is amazing.”
This reference made me pause. Number one, why was this girl pitching her friend to me, and number two, why would I find this girl attractive? or even beautiful? Thoughts immediately came to mind of a tall, hideous woman, with sharp grating teeth and meaty breath. This thought flew away pretty quickly. We move through the thick crowd, wet with the smell of beer and sweat and went to the bar. There, I saw a girl with a head of large curls with dark features. Like her friend, she had piercing eyes. But I didn’t find her that attractive. Her friend (who remains nameless) says something to her and then grabs my arm again and heads towards the door. Then, a tall guy who looks like Mowgli from Jungle book (if Mowgli had grown up and started modeling for Armani) grabs “the beauty” and starts talking to her. We all go outside as a group and the friend (blondie) repeats the beautiful friend pitch. “Isn’t my friend the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen?” she said.
I look briefly at her friend, and she gives me a look that can only be described as “eww”. I find this repulsive. “Hey lady, I didn’t say you were beautiful!” They say they are heading to some bar up the street. Mowgli gives me an uneasy look and grabs the “beautiful” girl around the waist.
I have known this group of people for all of three or four minutes. They leave, I don’t follow them.

As they leave, two cute girls walk past me to go into the bar. One of them girl rests her hand on my shoulder. “g’night fabulous.” She says nocomittaly, and disappears down a pair of dark steps. I’m tempted to follow her inside and say hello, but I decide not to. I have no energy to do this. My social desires to interact with people occasionally get scooped out like old moldy ice cream and tossed into a back alley somewhere.
I have a quick drink at a bar across the street, a place called Max Fish, and watch people play pool. At some point I realize all I do these days is people watching, walking around like a wraith, all but invisible, if it weren’t for this pesky thing called a body I’m wrapped up in.
I end up at this spot where a guy I know asks me what I’m trying to do.
“What kind of girls do you like?” he asks. “Women.” I reply with a smirk. “But generally, tall ones, with interesting dispositions, but generally girls who like me.” I say this with a smirk as well.
“Well you need to head to Nublue, a spot on Avenue C between seventh and eighth.” He said. This was coming from a guy who owned a bar in the area—mandatory ponytail included—and I thought about it. Avenue C was a good ten minute walk from where I was, and this place might not even be jumping. But face with another boring night of the same ol' bars in the LES I decided to go. I walk slowly past a few clubs, seeing throngs of people outside talking, smoking and laughing.
When I reach Avenue C, I’m in a blank zone. I walked a block too far and ended up almost on Avenue D, had to sneak a tinkle in front of a bush (directly in front of what I think was a church), and then felt annoyed by the time I reached where I was supposed to be. I stop at a place labeled 40C, and ask a few girls in the line if this is NuBlue. “No,” a cute girl with platinum blonde hair says. The guy checking IDs, a flaming guy with straightened hair and pants that would make Dave Navarro blush tells me NuBlue (which, up to this point I believe is spelled “New Blue”) is a block down the road. When I reach, a (obviously black) bouncer sits in a cheap plastic chair, and gives me an indifferent look. Admission is ten bucks, and I don’t feel like making the investment. I ask him what kind of music is playing inside, and he says Brazilian and house. I’m still not tempted.
A few guys come out and tell me there are very few ladies inside. At 40C, the line was chock full of little indie chicks. I head to 40C.
This brings me back to me leaning on the DJ booth. After paying five bucks to get into the spot, I become lost in the noise around me. The girls here are dressed very nicely, but they aren’t any friendlier than girls anywhere else. Lots of guys with Pete Wentz hairstyles, float around with big smiles on their faces. It seems everyone has black hair, tight pants and an “interesting” fashion sense. I see one other black guy in the entire place, a man that looks like he’s in his forties sporting a head of thick locks and a sharp jacket. The music is very good, but this doesn’t inspire me to dance. I stand near one of the bathrooms for a few minutes, watching people interact. The indie crowd always fascinates me. People are more energetic and lively. The occassions are trumped up with energy and riddled with a hazy sense of the status quo. Everyone knows how to dress, people dance for the sake of dancing and the DJ looks like Edward Scissorhands. I can’t say it was surreal, but in some way it was cool.
At some point a song plays that I can’t name that takes me back to Barcelona. For a split second, I’m there beside my then-girlfriend, happy and blissful without a fucking care in the world. Then I blink, and I’m back on the dance floor, somewhere off Avenue C.
At some point, I end up leaning on the DJ booth disinterestedly staring at the people dancing in front of me. I find how sad this image must look—the tall (other) black guy in the indie club standing in the most obvious place in the club staring at nothing—and I think someone else notices it too. A girl beside me says something, and I realize it’s the girl I had spoken to earlier in the line. “Hey, didn’t you ask me earlier if this was NuBlue?” she says. I give a stilted response and entertain light conversation. She introduces me to her friends, but my social radar doesn’t’ inspire me to keep talking. She is cute, verily so, in a nice black skirt. She reminds me of Brittany Murphy, but that comparison doesn’t make me feel anything. She’s with two other friends and I my energy is low. I suddenly feel like sleeping, and lean against the DJ booth once more.
At some point, a woman talks to me. “I can hook you up with any guy or girl you want.” She says with a smile on her face. I’m not sure if should be flattered or wonder if I’m projecting a bisexual vibe. I ask her why she’s good at this sort of thing. “I’m freshly divorced,” she says, her eerie smile never losing its brilliance, “and I’m happy!”
I take this into consideration, nod, and lean against the wall again. I see the blonde and her friends leaving. She waves to me, and somewhere inside me, I curse briefly. The chick liked me.
After another ten minutes I leave. The music was getting better and the DJ was amped up, but I didn’t feel like staying, even after he shouted “Okay you sexy motherfuckers start moving! Two for one drinks for the next hour!”
When I went out side, ironically it was raining. It was fitting, as if the earth was aligned to my somber mood. I spend five minutes standing in a group of people that curse a lot. A drunk girl kept bouncing into me. She was literally inches away from me and acted like I wasn't there, and in that moment, I felt truly invisible. There I was, standing in a group of seven people, all talking around me, while I watched light reflect on falling raindrops on Avenue C.
I say screw it, and head out into the rain. By the time I reach my pizza place for my ritual slice, I’m soaked. I walk inside with a wet head of hair and a light chill running up my back. I wolf down the slice and go home.
Another wonderful night.

Like the Shadows, Dear Brutus...

2008-08-31T08:54:00.002-07:00

A man with tight plaid pants on shakes his ass to the groove of break beats. Behind him, a girl with long braids mimics his moves, aligning herself to his gyrations without ever touching him. I’m seeing this out of the corner of my eye, and as I stand in front of a shadowy column in The Darkroom, a club on the Lower EastSide, I find myself wishing I was somewhere else.

.
New York is many things. For some is spark of opportunity. Hidden between the folds of the highly contiguous buildings, packed streets and bright lights is a glimmer of hope. Hope of a dream of making it, doing what thousands (or more correctly hundreds of thousands have done in the past) which is make it big.
I’m not sure if I have these visions of grandeur. The pace of New York is getting to me. I thought girls in DC were flaky, but New York takes flaky o the Nth degree. I live in a world were people don’t answer their phones, sent stilted text messages to convey a point and only seem to want to say hello if they happen to see you online in Gchat.

.Quite disturbing.
Tonight, I floated between a few bars. I watched TV at this bar where the bartender, who is normally quite friendly, gives me a perfunctory hello. I’ve been going there for almost ten weeks and I sent her an e-mail, but something about me bothers her I’m guessing.

.
On nights like these I feel like the shadows themselves. I stand in the darkest corner, watching bodies float by like wraiths. Voices are obscured by loud music, and they all coalesce and sound like the humming of bees overlayed by whatever the DJ decides to play. Its all good and well to enjoy the night life, (I for one, go out mostly because I am bored), but its becoming increasingly pointless. I’ve found myself in various parts of the world doing this same activity; walking around, talking to people, listening to music, sipping on a nameless beer brewed in a factory I’ll never visit… and its becoming meaningless.

.
Tonight I met an English girl who is a designer for Urban outfitters. This brings the number of English women I’ve met since I’ve been in New York to probably fifty. She seems nice enough, telling me that “North England has the nicest people.” But I have no way to verify that. I have no sexual interest in her, even though she is cute. On nights like these I might say hello to certain girls to answer a pressing question. She didn’t look like an American (I thought her outfit looked ‘Mod’ style, and I was correct, but some would say it’s a lucky guess) so, I asked her. Therein lies the rub, dear Brutus.. or should I say Hamlet.

.
Sometimes I talk to break the monotony of my thoughts. At some point I was punching notes into my Ipod about what to write. Beside me, while I was doing this, a girl bounced into a tall fellow, spilling some of his drink on her arm. Of course, the guy she was with (quite wrongly) took offense to this most egregious circumstance and proceeded to confront the tall guy. What made this scene funny was the fact that the guy was French, and spoke broken English. The girl was fine, the guy didn’t spill much beer on the girl to begin with, but the French guy started going on off about something involving his “girlfriend and his sister” which I didn’t understand. Maybe he meant to say “lover” and got the words mixed up. Either way, the tall fellow laughed, patted the French guy on the shoulder and walked back to his friends, who were both a good three inches taller than he was. But you guessed it, the French guy returned, filled with the indignation that has been put on so many television screens in my lifetime. No fight broke out, but a part of me wished the French man would produce a glove, and slap the tall guy in the face, shouting, “Sur incompetent Americaaan!”
Sadly, my life isn’t that interesting. I knew tonight was a lame night because I didn’t even eat my ritual slice of pizza. New York, New York. Oh how I love this love and hate relationship I share with the big apple.
Tomorrow I’ll probably wake up blearly eyed, feeling better about my situation. I’ll forge on towards bigger and better things, or find myself in another shady bar in some other part of the city, standing as always in the shadows, watching life pass me by. Or maybe I won’t do that. I might be jogging down park avenue, looking at the opulence around me, and find myself thinking about the past. Screaming to myself, “What the fuck did I do wrong?”

.
I’ve completely changed. I can’t even play video games anymore to interest myself. TV is boring and I find myself wanting to be far, far away. Maybe I was meant to be a world traveler, one of those guys who grows a thick beard and roams the earth, leaving mostly children in his wake. Maybe that’s my destiny. Who knows.
Yesterday I watched Forrest Gump for what must be the tenth time, and I found myself almost tearing up at certain scenes. The first time I watched the movie, I didn’t really know what love was, nor did I have a strong grasp on the concept of death. Now, watching it after losing people in love and death multiple times, the move seemed completely fresh. I knew exactly how he felt when he was running. I’ve had my 'Jenny' on the mind too, and I’ve watched someone close to me die, seeing their life fade away in a few choked breaths while people around them screamed as if the resonance of their voices would trap the soul into the broken body.

.
I like the fact that even a simple man like Forrest Gump can find love, and find a wife. Since I’ve been in New York, I’m truly convinced that American television perpetuates the ideal of extreme beauty being the most desirable attribute of a mate (male or female) is wrong. Real life shows you that most people are average, and like average people. Above average is scary, a frightening visage of something you can't compare to. Run with the average joe and you are safe. Go with the smart intellectual, and things get fuzzy.

.
Either way, if we live in a world where Forrest Gump can get laid, then there is hope for anyone isn’t there? Who knows. Like I said before, I’m a fly on the wall. I stand in the shadows, watching people go by, hoping a big fucking swatter doesn’t mess with my flow.
Hah. Fly on the wall….

Silent Rave: New York

2008-08-31T08:54:00.001-07:00

: me at the silent rave

A man in a large costume that resembles a jar of mustard runs past me. As his yellow figure bobs oddly through a throng of sweaty, pubescent ravers, the crowd erupts into a cacophony of cheers. Somewhere, a voice shouts out. “Mustard man! Mustard Man!”. Then, a Japanese guy in a hat expertly designed in the figure of a chicken floats past. He spreads a pair of thin arms wide.
“Who wants to suck my cock?” he shouts. Behind me, a group of guys giggle. I stand in this chaos, snapping photos and floating quietly through the crowd. That’s the most interesting thing about this experience. Around me, hundreds of people are dancing excitedly. Bodies covered in sweat glisten under dimly lit New York street lamps. Tiny emo girls toss their dyed hair back and forth, strange shirtless guys do very homo erotic dances, and guys like the chicken man—there are a few of them around—all prance around, dancing to some quiet, unheard music. This is because they are dancing to their own music.
I’m at my first silent rave.
To see hundreds of people dancing with their telltale ipod headphones in their ears, all grinding to their own beat, is like seeing a music video on TV with the mute button on. But not only am I in this music video, but I’m an active participant, snapping photos, not trying to brush against too many of the girls present (many of them are teenagers). This would probably count as the second rave I’ve been to in the states. Like all raves, there are tons of very attractive women.
To my left, a Heidi Klum look alike wearing headphones straight out of an 80’s movie grooves beside her equally hot Asian friend. In front of me, a tall red head makes me think immediately of Berlin. All around, cute teeny-boppers, people with shaved heads, tatoos and t-shirts that read “I love NY” are all dancing.

Raving, in complete silence.
The silence is broken by screams which have no purpose. In rave music, people normally scream when the bass drops. Like most music, rave incorporates a specific tempo that keeps the crowd going for hours on end, ecstasy, cocaine or no. After a minute or so of the introductory song loop, a bass kick drops. This is where people scream and dance faster. Tonight, people are raving telephathically. The bass kicks in on one person’s headphones, and they broadcast it to everyone else with a scream. This spreads through the crowd like wildfire—people jump, run around and even mosh—and then the silence falls once more.
There is a natural tendency for human beings to feel threatened in the presence of large groups. If you’ve ever attended a large arena where a fight started, you might have “felt” a ripple through the collective consciousness of those present. You sense the anguish of those around you, you are caught in the bubble. For a moment, you and the crowd are one. Tonight is one of those nights.
I slip on my headphones and start playing a few trance tracks from a top 100 album I have. Almost instantly, I am in the bubble. As the sounds of voices, screams and bodies hopping around fades, I am part of the collective. All I hear are the snares, break beats and heavy basses while I look through my own personal windshield. Somewhere, a conga-line starts, and dozens of people begin sprinting in a sweeiping arc around the other ravers. For a second my radar gets tweaked. I get sensation of danger again. The groups of bodies darting through the crowd resemble the scene of a brawl. Bodies moving rapidly, touching, colliding. But the feeling subsides. These people are all here to have fun. They are happy being separate yet close.

A part of me wishes the rave was louder. At least I would have more to say.

Hospital blues and Darkroom Views

2008-08-31T08:53:00.000-07:00

I’m standing in the middle of a club, a hot place known as the Darkroom on the Lower East Side, and I’m not trying to hookup with girls. I’m trying to construct a narrative.

As weird as that sounds, sometimes I venture out, nicely dressed (usually with a tie or some odd accessory to accompany me) and I just stand up in bars, watching people interact and seeing the pluses and minuses of our social debacle. Since most of the bars I venture to mostly have white patrons, there is the inevitable observation about dancing, the odd hookups here and there and drinking. For most people it seems, alcohol is an escape from their problems, but not just that. It is an escape from reason. Not only are senses dulled, but also rational decisions.
“Maybe that guy sorta looks like Freddy Prinze after six drinks.” She says to herself. Maybe she doesn’t say this.
On nights like these, I watch the sharks float around—the guys that will talk to ANY chick—and I see how successful they are. They usually aren’t.

A quick grab of the waist, a stilted dance and a whisper in the ear of “Can I call you sometime?” never works. This might work if the girl is extremely drunk, but she’ll never answer the phone. You’ll call until your fingers are riddled with Carpal.

I haven’t felt like blogging for several weeks. I’m back in that mental void again. This week, I’ve had three or four dreams about an ex-girlfriend of mine that I really want to forget, and I’ve even had the unpleasant experience of being awake while my body is asleep. I have no idea what this means for me psychologically, but it was fucking frightening. I was dreaming that I was in my Grandmother’s house in Jamaica, which I have dubbed “The Palace”, and I walk home, to my apartment in NYC. (Hey it’s a dream, Jamaica and New York are a thought apart). When I reach back, I lay on the couch (where incidentally I am sleeping) and then I open my eyes. Only, I can’t move. The only thing I “think” I can move are my eyebrows, which do nothing to keep me awake.

Then I close my eyes again, and I’m immediately plunged back into a dream world. Only this time, I sense something very sinister watching me. I open the door to my apartment and the hallyway is eerily black. In the darkness, with my limited vision, I can see something moving in the background. Something dangerous. I run back to the couch and lay down.

Again, I open my eyes. I can’t move. All I can move are my eyebrows. I can’t scream and everything around me is still. It was frightening and weird. Until finally, I was able to get up, the 1,000 pound weight off my chest and the presence gone… for now.

I haven’t blogged in a while because I’ve falled into the aforementioned void. A funk which messes me up from time to time. I’m sort of enjoying New York, but I’ve been spending a few hours in the day visiting my Aunt in the hospital. This is a mentally taxing exercise. I hate hosptials, and I think going to one every single day is beginning to make me feel wired and filled with images of death.
Either way, tonight was the first night I went out in a while.
I haven’t felt the need to go out and try to meet people. I normally find this an annoying and disturbing process. Like many Friday nights, in the clubs I went to, there were large groups of girls dancing in tight circles, cock-blocking left and right. I was observing this of course, since I was constructing a narrative.
Inevitably, I met people. A small, very cute blonde wearing a white hat pulled me to the side at one point, but danced around me mostly. Her name was Amy. At some point her friend who was aptly named Mandy, (and also very blonde) said they were lovers. I believed them. In fact, for most of the night a majority of the girls in the club were dancing with each other, which lead me to think they might all be lesbians, or just fucking strange.
At another club, I met a girl named Milan. She was very cute. Like 30% cuter than Ashley simpson. I saw her reject a few guys. All my conversation with her was random. I was standing near her and lamented on hearing the “M.I.A” song for the tenth time that night. This comment peaked her interest, and she spoke to me for a little ewhile. But then, her two blonde friends (she was a brunette) left, so she was gone. Fleetingly.

I honestly don’t have much writing juice in me these days. I think I’ve said enough about my ex-girlfriend. I think I’ve said enough about the odd social situations I find myself in (good or bad) , and I think I’ve said enough about certain things I want to achieve.
I could write about the dozens of women I’ve met and kissed and messed with, but to what end? I’m no happier than a guy who failed his bar exam after three years of school and countless hours of studying.
I want to write for writing’s sake, like most writers, but that seems lame. No point writing unless on has an audience correct? Whoever reads my blog never posts. I somewhat do this as a personal reference for myself, but I also do it to stimulate the people around me.
I can’t say New York sucks, but I think I personally suck in New York at this point in time. That’s a joke by the way.

A part of me wants to talk about the Russian girl I met on the Subway, the Russian I met in Union Square and the Russian I met at this bar called Pianos. Or the three Aussies, the Swiss chick, the Candadians and the Infamous English. I could talk about how much i'm still in love with someone who has no desire to even seen me. But why? Why talk about your life if you are talking to yourself…
Alas. Such is life. Tortured dreams, and tortured events. Tomorrow its back to the hospital. May I have mental strength….

It Only Takes Three Stops To Know Someone

2008-07-21T23:15:00.000-07:00

There are only three stops between the LES (Lower East Side) and 14th Street, where I’m currently residing. Over the last six weeks, in the chaotic, fashionista, sometimes gay, sometimes unfriendly city of New York, I’ve had several of what I call the “three stop conversations” with a few women.
This involves me saying: (a) a quick hello (b) asking how long they’ve been waiting for the train.
The question is usually serious, and I have no ulterior motives. But the commonality with my “three stop convos” is that the women are always cute. Tonight I met a cute girl of ambiguous ethnicity named Hannah.
She had a quick wit, clear bronze skin, and said she taught English as a second language for a living. I had just returned from a terrible Karaoke session.
For those who don’t know, I’m a Karaoke junkie. Karaoke for me, is like heroin for Nikki Stix in his heyday in the 80’s.

Well… not really. Karaoke night at a bar called Piano’s is my Monday night outlet. I go there not to immerse myself in a Bon Jovi song, or let go of myself through performance. I go there to escape. I watch people dancing, singing and enjoying themselves as they pretend to be the Beastie Boys, Alice Cooper or Lil’ John. Most of the time I sit near the bar, sipping on a glass of water, and follow the flashing strobe lights with lazy eyes. I always put no less than two songs into the mix, but I always hear one picked. I don’t think the DJ dislikes me, but Daddy Yankee’s “Gasolina” is always a better Karaoke crowd pick than say… “Angel” by Shaggy.

So this is where I’m coming from. A slow Karaoke night, where for the sixth week in a row I sit, watching people. The song I performed was “I’m Blue” by Eiffel 65. After performing that song, I realize I’m getting older. EVERYBODY knew this song by heart in 1997, or 1998, whenever the song was an international hit. It was only today that I realize that was oh just…. TEN YEARS AGO.

So after sitting around idly on my stool, I decided to leave. I was hoping that a song I wanted, “Faith” by Limp Bizkit would be played, but alas it was not to be. Socially defeated by New York for what seemed like the millionth time, I headed home. I’ve been cock-blocked, phone-blocked, coke-blocked and now Karaoke-blocked.

At the train station is where I met Hannah. She was cute; about five foot four, with what seemed like Latino or Italian features, but she said she was neither. I was too tired to try and figure it out. She had golden skin, a nose that suggested a background not completely Caucasian, but I’m no anthropologist. “I like being racially ambiguous.” She said with a nice smile.

I gave her a weak smile in return. I could tell that she had a nice personality. She had a quick wit, used the “F” word with no reservation (but in perfect context) and seemed genuinely interested that I was a writer. Usually when I tell people I’m a writer, they immediately say “who do you work for?”. This time, when I said I was a writer, she replied with two raised eyebrows. It felt good, even for a moment.

Then I realized, I’m on the train with her. Earlier on the subway platform, seconds after asking her about how long she had been waiting on the train, I heard the rattle of the F train approaching. This created a situation. From the Lower East Side (2nd Avenue) stop to 14th St took no more than four minutes on average. If the train operator was hemorrhaging coffee, this could be three minutes.

In 1.5 minutes, I found out her name was Hannah. By minute three she was asking me:” What’s your name again?”. I didn’t mind. I can’t count the number of situations like this I’ve been in. I took a risk.
“I’ve had a few of these ‘three stop’ conversations before.” I told her. “Do you have a boyfriend?”
She looked on me with surprise and said no. (Actually every question I asked her seemed to warrant a sort of incredulous (though slightly muted) response).
I told her I don’t normally ask girls if they have a boyfriend. This is very true. Half the time, girls I meet have boyfriends and are extremely shady about it. Since I had 45 seconds left to talk to miss Hannah, I said why not cut to the chase. The train started to slow, and I saw ugly white tiles and columns flashing past through the train windows.

14th Street.

“So do you want to hang out sometime?” I said. Between minutes two and three and I said she was “interesting” a few times, played a slight game or two, and found out that she was a world traveler. Unfortunately, I didn’t get enough time to tell her that I travel a bit myself (though at some point earlier in the night I helped two Roaming Italians try and find a nice bar). At this point I handed her my card.
No one ever e-mails me when I give them my card. But you never know. Maybe Hannah will break the mold, maybe she’ll hop off the train and say, “Hrm, maybe I should acknowledge my curiosity regarding this tall, interesting writer fellow I had ‘three stop’ conversation on the train with.”

But that never happens. What happens is I go home, go to sleep and wake up. At some point the next day, I might remember Hannah, I might not. Its not that the meeting wasn’t important or meaningful (she WAS cute). But I’ve been in this situation dozens of times.

Dozens.

After a while you get desensitized to the nature of quick socializing, or even lengthy ones. If people don’t call you back, no feeling is there. If you meet the cute girl at the train station and nothing happens, you don’t feel that sense of regret you did ten years ago. You wake up, go to work and forget about it.

Being an adult is essentially being a zombie; its acknowledging the most base of your human emotions, compressed into the fragile paradigm of what we call reality.
However, I could be totally wrong. Hannah could shoot me an e-mail and shatter my newly developed outlook forever. Some random message in my inbox could prove to me that the odds aren’t always against me.

Sadly, I’m not a soothsayer. But I know the outcome. I’ll never get an e-mail from her. She, like dozens of women before her, will have my card somewhere in a purse, under a book or a bed, or safely ensconced in the confines of a garbage can near their residence. Then I, somewhere, will go to sleep, wake up, and go to work.

The Constantly Contiguous Conflict

2008-07-14T14:01:00.002-07:00

I’m listening to Christina Aguilera’s “Hurt” over my office’s Itunes shared network. I’m not sure if this is a sign of depression, of the slow recession of my testes into my stomach. But I’m sure it means something.

Yesterday I watched Home Alone 2: Lost In New York for what was probably the 18th time in my life. I watched it for two reasons. One, I’ve never watched the movie IN New York, (which is pretty cool in itself) and secondly, I wanted to revisit that nice, quiet place we like to call our childhoods.

The trappings of adult life are really all people say its cracked up to be. Flaky people, taxes, sexual frustration, shattered dreams, bad fast food and being hit by automobiles. Its all there folks, scattered amidst the chaos of what we like to call “daily life”.
Time itself seems to be flying. This year is shooting faster than a premature ejaculate in bed with Megan Fox.

Events from a few weeks ago seem like years ago, and the events of a few months ago feel like a world away. I’ve sat on a street side in Berlin saying to myself, “Did I really mess with that chick? And read some Pulitzer prize winning literature on her bedside table the next morning? “
Sadly, no one can answer that question but me. But I don’t’ think I’m depressed. Or even lonely for that matter. My mental state is a mixture of uncertainty and the sense of impending doom that comes with realizing not only am I (again) in a densely populated city trying to “find” myself, but it looks like we are possibly headed to World war 3.
World wars, those are things I don’t like to think about. That involves interrupted food supplies, no more traveling over seas, shoddy internet, and more Hollywood movies based on wars.

I was sitting on a rooftop on early Sunday morning discussing what I’ve labeled the “contiguous plight” with a few cool people I’ve been hangin with. My friend explained it in a few words. “In such a densely populated area, “ she bega. “With so many people pushing to be the best at everything, a lot of people are thinking short term.” I nodded. “People are saying to themselves, I’ll be here for maybe a year, two years tops, and then I’m out. I don’t need any relationships, I don’t need anything more than the occasional hookup. So its not easy to find people who are rooted in New York, who have a vested interest in a future in the city.”

I agreed with that statement. But that wasn’t just NY. It sounded like DC all over again. If Chicago is the city of Angels, DC is the city of flakes. An overwhelming number of the people in DC aren’t from Dc, and will be in the city for only a few years. Its all short-term, high-ambition drivel that keeps on churnin.

Does me knowing this make it easier to integrate elsewhere? I say nay. Like most people I desire the basic things. Food, a good movie and a girlfriend with enough of a sleazy side to keep my attention from week to week (with the occasional introspective thought tossed in the mix for good measure).

But honestly, at the end of the day that’s what we want folks. A wife that will bang us mentally and physically, a few kids to live vicariously through and a house big enough to house all of you and your egos.
It’s a bit sad when all I have to look forward to is the release of the upcoming will-be-megahit, Dark Knight.

In the last few weeks I’ve been tempted to write some very juicy blogs involving a few cute foreigners. Australians gilrs, English girls, Irish women and the occasional Bostonian.

But at the end of the day its me sitting here typing away for what? A strange document of my social activities? I don’t know. Let’s hope Batman can tingle my spine make me chase after my dreams too. Don’t call me Marcus, you can call me Bruce.

Make It So Numba One [Monk's Abbey]

2008-07-14T14:01:00.001-07:00

I've been searching for inspiration lately, and no I didn't find it in the face of a beautiful woman.

I've been floating in between that head space most artistic people reach at some point in their lives. In inevitable top o' the mountain. We hear the sonorous voice that could be any number of black actors ask us that question: "What are you doing?"

(if aforementioned sonorous voice said "What is real?" then it would be Laurence Fishburne. He was also Mr. deep voice in Fantastic Four two. Betcha didn't know that!)

My only achievement this week was completely frightening a cute girl in a bookstore named Abby. There she was, walking around with a cute yellow bag, looking for books. There I was, looking for a new book to read with a great excuse to say hello. I'll scratch the details, but the conversation ended with me asking for her opinion on something. Not her number.

She reminded me that this city is a place for artists. She's the third girl i've met who works in an art gallery, but the first who actually looks like a piece of art. She reminded me of a little porcelain doll. The kind that have organs, and studied Art History in North Carolina. Yes, I frightened her, with my high-energy Jamaican wit and obvious comfort with myself. That ladies and single reader of this blog, is the most frightening thing to a woman, the idea that a man is comfortable with himself. Especially if he isn't forty-something and flush with mutual funds and crazy levels of disposable income.

Frightening miss A didn't bother me that much. I was actually glad I frightened her in some ways. I was glad that I came off a little too happy, too endearing, because the truth is I haven't felt like that in days. I was experience what my friends and i like to call "frownzing".

Frownsing: (adj. frown-zing) the act of, or activities related to frowning. Contemplating life, being generally jaded, or driven to watch porn. Facilitates lower states of energy, higher solitary presence at movie theatres and the Taco Bell line. Watching Sex and the City.

So not only was I happy to have met a cutie like Abby, I was happy to scare her away. It justified in my mind that my reality was doing the right thing. I was projecting an air of confidence I didn't have, even if the cute girl who works at the art gallery MIGHT have given me her number if i had just turned down the man-juice a notch.

Randomly, but not coincidentally, after I left the book store carefully protecting my copy of Lost World, I leaned against a wall and started talking to my friend on the phone. We were talking about the usual madness. Women, success, money, not having either of the three, you know the deal. At some point, Abby walked past--wearing a black shawl or something--but it was her. I saw her look at me, then look forward.

I made no attempt to say hello, or "de-man-ize" myself by saying. "Hey Abby!". I could just as easily do that by shouting "Hey Abbot!" for no reason, and i'd draw more stares. Abby walked off into the distance, reasonably tall and attractive, gone to probably manically paint in some studio apartment somewhere. Then I turned around and resumed my conversation.

The abbey thing reminds me of something. One of the key features of New York is women, women women. In fact this phenomenon can become a little bit annoying. Not the fact that the city is filled with beauties, but the fact that they walk so bloody fast. By the time you stop a girl to say hello, she's half a block away. Its that bad.

In the last few days, I've been sharing my apartment with super-author Michael Crichton. He's been in my bed, on my floor and once or twice in my bathroom. I've been reading a few of his books. I just read Next and Jurassic Park, and I grabbed Lost World yesterday. I'm not sure if I'm the laziest book reader ever--I don't like searching through books hoping i don't find a lemon--or if I'm just in a dinosaur/genetics mode right now. Either way, I need to feed my mind so I can start up my writing process. I need to kick start myself like an aging guitarist needs coke before a show. I need that high.

I think six to eight good books should get me writing again. Earlier this year, I read about fifteen or twenty books in the month of January, and not only did I write some of my most interesting blogs, but I was writing constantly. Ideas came from the depth of my insides, and spilled onto my keyboard into MS word and on dozens of tiny scraps of paper. I need that again. Time to contribute to the creative commons. I can "frownz" later

On a side note, this "scary" side of myself is pretty humorous. I went to a bar on Monday night and some girl started talking to me. A few minutes later the shortest Asian guy i've ever seen pats me on the back and tries to tell me to lay off the chick. (I didn't even know her name). I didn't find the event funny until two days later, when I remember some random dude asking me about his Russian friend who was visiting town. "You can see where i'm going with this right?" he says to me. It was hilarious. Not only was he cock-blocking me from a girl who's name I didn't know. But he was also being semi-threating about this girl, who spoke to ME and whom I didn't even remember.

.Maybe I really am scary

.Maybe I walk into places and people wonder who the f*ck is this maverick come to steal and impregnate our women! On Karaoke night nonetheless.

I wish.

Cheers to better days and less cock-blocking from dudes.

Super Craptastic

2008-06-26T10:18:00.001-07:00

I'm looking at a girl who looks like female version of Alan Rickman.

I'm in the subway station at the 2nd Ave stop, Lower East side New York. I've been traipsing around these points every other day for the last three weeks i've been here, and the stories are numerous. But i'm not feeling happy. Something is grinding at my insides--the little voids in this social vacuum we call our daily existence. For all intents and purposes I should feel good. But I'm not 100%.

This makes sense in an odd kind of way.

I got the emotional wind kicked out of me recently, and certain aspects of it re-entered my consciousness, just at the point when I didn't need it. I was on the phone with my sister last night trying to work out the meaning of pointless communication.

"What's the point of keeping in touch with people who aren't interested in seeing you?" I said.

"Well, " she responded. "I don't know how to answer that.

"And why is it that when i'm far away from certain people they become so interested in what i'm up to... but if i'm in the area they are like ghosts in my life?"

"Well," she said." I don't know how to answer that one either."

I can't answer it myself. Its become a tired routine, between myself and my significant others. I can be in their periphery, a stone's throw away and I don't hear anything. My cell phone becomes dead weight, and i wake up early on Saturday mornings feeling like a horny Grizzly bear in a land filled with male Shrews.

I can't bother to try and rationalize the circumstances, the events, the back story or the whatevers. I've come to realize like most people, that most things don't matter. What matters is what you want with your life, what you choose to take from it, and everything else is just... scenery.

Scenery like a long car ride from state to state. You look at it, occasionally something grabs your eye, sometimes you might stop for a while and get engaged with something, or you might stop for a long time before you get to your final stop. But its all fluff. Its all jibber jabber.

What matters is the end result. Sort of.

I haven't felt like writing humorous anecdotes about the girls i've met in New York, and now there are too many to write about properly. This city is pretty fun--I've partied on a Monday--but at the same time it has the "vacuum" that all major cities have. That quiet divide in between what you have to do, and what you want to do. Everyone is busy, everyone is working, but sometimes in between the work and the train rides, the little conversations with the person standing in line to grab a Subway sandwidch, or helping the man across the street, everything stops. Then you remember you are painfully alone.

You can disguise this sensation in some ways. You can play loud music, read books, go running. Fool yourself into feeling a sense of company by sitting in the presence of others in Parks, or going to the movies.. but there are those days when you can't fool yourself. This sadly, has been happening more often over the last several months than I like.

Its not a depressing feeling, because its a reality. If a guy doesn't have a girl friend and maybe two people he speaks to every now and then its a little social conundrum. Especially for a guy who has no trouble meeting and interacting with people. Its like life's antithesis to the "cool guy".

But I'm rambling. ( I will never... EVER say "I digress". I hate those two words. *brrrr*)

Do I want the flashing lights? Do I want the smiles of recognition from the masses? Do I want to be known?

I dunno. I'm a simple guy. Sometimes I just want to know that certain people close to me have a vested interested in me. That's a start.

I'm afraid of become one of those super jaded people who roam through life always thinking a little devil is following them around and watching all their positive circumstances then they poke a broom in your back and shout out "YOU'RE FUCKED LITTLE MAN!"

Alas, I think i'm already there. Feeling jaded isn't feeling depressed. Its reading the news and not feeling anything when people go missing. Not worrying about tomorrow even if people are going to start wailing on you with terrorist fist-jabs, and thinking every woman you meet will eventually screw you. (not in that way pervs!).

I should take notes from good old Shakes:

"... take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them?" Okay this barely relates to what i'm saying, but I love a good Shakes quote.

The only solace I can take from the burgeoning jadedness that is life, is to realize I have ample writing fodder. I don't have to be the only one feeling empty and floating around "this mortal coil", so can my characters! and I can make them screw (not in that way) the chicks too! Sweet eh? The pen can give sweet revenge... but that's a nerdy fantasy that never helps anyone, especially if the chicks that screw you (we've been over this) don't read your books. Lost cause dudes and babes. Lost cause.

But i'll figure it out. I'll reteach myself to twiddle my thumbs with glee if it means buying a huge f-ing box of chocolate and a teddy bear the size of my ex-girlfriend and loads of anime to take me back to my innocent teen years.

Till then, the humorous anecdotes will continue I guess... with a morose undertone.

Cheers to unexpected e-mails.

New York: sOmetiMesIJustWanNaRaNT

2008-06-19T06:47:00.000-07:00

I just noticed something funny about Megatron.

In the recent hit movie “Transformers” there is a scene where Megatron says to Disney-uber star Shia LeBouff, “Run boy!”. I had issues with this. I think he should have said, “Run fleshy man-thing!” or he should have screeched in Deceptagarble, truly making those around him quake in fear.
Either way, I haven’t been writing much lately. This makes sense to me. For the last seven weeks I have been going non-stop. Trip to France, Berlin, and now the ultimate destination: New York.
As a writer, there are the inevitable conflicts which arise in these situations.
Do I (a) go out every night in the city that never sleeps, chasing tall, blonde women for pure sport? Or do I (b) get inundated in the night time scene that usually leads to meeting tall, blonde women? Or do I (c) become a true New York ‘artist’, and make a splash on the underground scene in such a way that it will eventually attract droves of tall, blonde women? As you can see, in New York, there is no escape from the TBW’s!

So far, that’s my main observation. There is tall EVERYBODY here. Tall Asian women, tall blonde women seemingly from the highlands of some Eastern-European formerly-soviet-something country, tall guys, tall buildings, tall cups of coffee. It is all here.
I like the buzz—that feeling of never sleeping and existing in a twilight state. I felt this way last night. My last memories are of talking to my cousin late at night about purpose in life, while trying to decide if I should go out or not as hot brunettes kept walking past. (they were Oh-Soooooo fashionable). But, when I woke up this morning, I felt like I was in a different place. I have expected a little garden gnome to be sitting on my bed, and then a voice from that other place would be like, “Let’s go Buddy.”
I’d say, “Wait, where are we going? I need to go to work.” The gnome would be like. “Fuck work, let’s partaaaay!”. Then the gnome and I would head to numerous strip clubs, go on a shopping spree, buy his and his g-strings for our debut at the “oldies night” in a shady part of the East Village and then end up on a boat to China, singing praises to the two Ukranian women who decided to tag along (they don’t’ speak any
English of course) and I would play guitar all the way to….

Beijing, where angry protestors would think I was somehow connected to the torch runners and eviscerate me in some Chinese back alley and then issue and apology the next day because they thought my guitar was a torch…. Or a harp. I think harps are banned in China too.

I’m ranting. On purpose.

.
I’m still reeling from the fallout of a “sort of “ heartbreak-but-not-really situation. My creative insides are spinning all around as I think of relationships of the past and I look towards the future. New York may have millions of nubile women, (and those who really like messing around in public places) but sometimes, standing betwixt people on the train to work, or just walking through a massive crowd on a Friday at Union Square, I float away and then it’s just me… and her.

Who is she?

Maybe she’s that person I’ve always wanted. Or maybe it’s a version of myself that’s a woman, I dunno. But there she is, standing there, tall and regal, smiling at me. Her eyes tell me that she loves me, and her body responds with touches, kisses and dirty feels. She is mine and I am hers. Then the image ripples and fades, and the real world returns. I’m standing in the middle of a crowd that I don’t’ know. Faces of all hues and compositions walk past, and there, I am truly alone.
That’s when the Gnome appears again, and we raid a Borders book store and argue with women wearing tattoos about the “destruction of the female temple” or some junk.
At this point the gnome would say, “Let’s hit up a strip club.” Then I’d say “No, we have to end this relationship. Its not healthy.” The gnome would then say, “Wow. I really thought we had something here. All those moments shopping, stripping and us in the g-strings getting grabbed by those senile old women who think we were theie boyfriends from the 1930’s. Those moments meant something to me.”
The gnome would want to cry but he couldn’t, simply because he’s a figment of my imagination. I’d go back to reading my books about global warming and start worrying about having a family that will eventually burn—not in God’s hellfire—but man’s sunfire.

.
Then I wake up, and my rant is blissfully over. I go to the kitchen and make tasteless eggs and eat them with equally tasteless bread. I look to the sky when I walk outside and say, “today, will be a good day.”

Then I stub my toe on a hydrant and shout. “ Ooooohhh fuckkk!!!”

.
Happy Camping.

New York: Damn they have Doggy Gyms here

2008-06-15T11:52:00.001-07:00

Two doorstops away from me, is a doggy gym.

This is officially the life that I am living. I’m in the middle of Manhattan, where the median income is a bazillion dollars, and everyone has their own personal driver, Cartier dining set and of course, a talking Gorilla. Welcome to the land of the wealthy, or at least the area of the wealthy. If I wasn’t fortunate to be set up in my digs rent free, I’d be living much farther than a stones throw away from where I work. In fact, most of the people I speak to where I work don’t live in Manhattan. I guess that’s reserved for people with the title “Vice President of…” but even so, they might not have a talking Gorilla.
I’m approaching my fifth day in New York, and I’ve made a critical error…
I WENT SHOPPING!
“Oh the horror.” I said to myself, looking at my shiny, really cheap blazer. “I’ve done it, I’ve broken the deal.” I say this because I planned to be really conservative during my time here. No t-shirts, no new shoes, nothing I think I don’t need. I’ve become a frugal man over the years… my biggest expense in the last two years (other than spending thousands on a trip to Europe) was my Ipod Touch, which I really and truly thought was a way to have wireless e-mail on the go. Unfortunately, the wireless generation are all internet savvy. The first thing people seem to do as they setup their internet connections is to completely secure it. Sure, my Ipod will pickup the 30 or so networks around me, but none are EVER free. If they are, I kid you not, its slower than my old 14400 baud modem that used to screech like a banshee having sex whenever I tried to connect to the internet.
So yes, I bought something. It wasn’t something I really needed, nor something I really desired. What I actually need is a sweater. The office where I work gets cold, and with a vending machine full of 25 cent sodas (yes I said 25 cents ) I can drink all the Ginger Ale I want. Naturally this soda is chilly, so after two ( I haven’t passed two in a day yet) I start to feel quite bristling. I like the word ‘bristling’…. I’m going to try and popularize it.
So yes, I went shopping, but I didn’t go ape-crazy and start frothing at the mouth looking for good deals. I reasoned to myself the blazer is cheap, fits and is highly wearable. If someone left me to my own devices I would wear either a plain black, brown or dark blue shirt every day of the week, with some nice designer jeans. I’m not picky. Me dressing up is me wearing a black, brown, or dark blue shirt with artsy, glittery designs on the front. It’s a huge step up.
Back to the doggy gym. I actually haven’t look inside, and I didn’t let the words “Doggy Gym” register in my mind. I really took note when a man walking past me looked at the sign, then me, then back to the sign, then me again, then smiled, stopped and looked inside. Apparently, it’s a place where the elites leave their little poodles and shitzus to run around idly while they work on wall street. I doubt I’ll be checking it out.

I like the energy here so far. I think its starting to grow on me. I know on almost any given night, I can find something to catch my attention for a few hours. The weekends must be insane here. I can’t even imagine what the fourth of July is going to be like. Now if I could find a meal that’s under 7 dollars in this area, I might be in business.

Also, I feel pretty short in New York. Surprisingly I didn’t feel as short in Germany (for reasons I can’t explain, since most of the guys I met were taller than me ) but here I think it’s the buildings. They are so tightly packed beside one another and so high that maybe my perspective is skewed. Also there are many, many tall women here. In my shoes I’m supposed to be around 6’2 and many people I walk past are taller than me. I remember people saying that when people are your height they seem just a little taller than you. Am I then, a tall-seeming person? Who knows.

As I write this, I’m supposed to be preparing to head out to the lower East side, which apparently, is a good spot on Thursday nights. I also hear its artistic, a tad cheaper on the side of drinks, and as one friend described, “the girls free up”. That’s a Jamaican term ladies and gentlemen, which I’m sure you can figure out the mean ing based on context.

If I don’t head out, I might just sleep. Last night I had not desire to go anywhere, or even eat for that matter. After spending nearly 20 dollars on three cans of tuna, two packs of spaghetti and a jar of tomato sauce, I’d had enough of New York for that day. I went to sleep at 7 and woke up at 4:25 a.m. Then I slept again until 8:45. Thanks a lot New York prices!

I wrote a long, petulant blog the other night about a situation I recently experienced with an ex-girlfriend of mine, but I couldn’t bother to post it. Maybe one day, but not now. I can’t bother to project those feelings into the universe. Better to chat about my little shenanigans in New York than to dissect the platitudes of losing love.
So here’s to the First Thursday in New York! * feeble shout *

New York day one: Dude I touched Stephen Colbert!

2008-06-15T11:51:00.000-07:00

I am a zombie.

Its 8:25, and I’m walking in a group of people all going the same pace. There are dozens of us; bleary eyed, tall and short, fat and skinny. We are all venturing to our respective jobs, lives and careers. We are the zombie nation.

I’m officially part of the New York collective. I’ve been living here for three days, which certainly hasn’t made me run to the rooftops and shout “I’m a New Yorker!” like so many do… but I’m starting to feel integrated.

I think I’ll starve here if I don’t figure out a plan soon. First, I’m not sure what the popular supermarket is here. There are so many little corner stores (with sandwiches that sell for …oh …six bucks) that I’m started to get frightened. Gone are the days I could run down to the Giant and buy ten cans of tuna for ten dollars, and five packs of spaghetti for three dollars.

I went into a Chipotle yesterday and was shocked to see that a chicken burrito is $7.16. Even Mcdonald’s is marginally more expensive, with the usually combo deals a dollar to a dollar fifty over the prices I’m used to.

Then transportation… but I won’t get into that. These things don’t bother me ( at least for the moment since I have food in my stomach and a place to live) but should the day come that I actually live here, I can see how a large portion of your disposable income could be sucked into this nodoz city.

Since I just came back from France and Berlin, being in New York feels like the third stop of a really long trip I’ve been taking. I’ve already indulged in chatting to random people, including a few hot school teachers, some friendly Greek women and an actress that goes to NYU (and has a boyfriend of course).

As luck would have it, I ventured out for an hour or so last night and went to the most DC-esque bar I could find. I feel sad about this. My social radar is so attuned to the bars in DC (i.e lots of wooden panels, beer taps and filled with ivy-leaguers). It was then I noticed one thing I didn’t really like about DC …at least where I normally went.

It was a little too Ivy-league. A little too college.

New York is supposed to be a treasure trove of artistic venues, filled with open-minded and artistic people with artistic places and stuff to do! ( can I say ‘artistic’ again?)

So we’ll see what happens. I’ll report on the upcoming weekend. I will venture forth into some artsy spots.

The Col-bird report

I’m working at Comedy Central for the summer, which gives me certain advantages. Like possibly meeting really cool people, and maybe getting the hookup for certain things. The nature of my internship is really really cool, meaning I can’t say much about what I’m doing.

For example, “ Yesterday I was assigned to ___________ for ___________ which is a ne__ tha___ fo__ on ________ hubba hubba!”

In other words, I can’t really say anything. Maybe one day in a tell-all book. But for now, I am a lowly intern… with his own desk!

So yesterday I got access to the Colbert Report and it was pretty cool. First you wait in an little area before the show starts, and then we were seated ( I was right up front) and we were entertained for a little while by a stand-up comedian. He did a good job of warming up the crowd. Naturally, (as the only black person there) as some point he referenced me as “the black guy” in a joke. It was actually funny, but the second time he called me “the black guy” I said, “I have a name.”

He asked for my name and then said I look like Djimon Honsou. “But he’s bald.” I said.

The comedian continued. “Doesn’t he look like the actor from Amistad?” he said to the crowd. Apparently no one had watched Amistad in New York. However, I knew I didn’t look like Honsou at all, so I made a mas o menos hand gesture. Then the comedian gave a name of a black actor I’m not familiar with. I helped him out.

“Sometimes I get the 7up guy.” I said. “Whoa, “ he replied. “I know him, do you know his name?” Godfrey flashed into my mind. “His name is Godfrey.” The guy said.

“Fine fine.” The comedian continued. “I tell the guy he looks like a good-looking celebrity and I get static!”

I laughed. Later he would walk around telling people where they were from. He pegged a few Aussies very well, took a while to figure out where this Lithuanian man was from, pointed out two gay couples (including one guy wearing an 80’s style headband) and then said I was an actor.

This is half-true… “acting” is a new addition to my list of talents… so I said. “Well… I’ve done some acting, but I’m a writer.” The comedian points on me and says, “Artist! See I know. Give it to me. Give it to meeeeee.”

That was his answer whenever he was correct.

At this point Stephen Colbert came out. By then we were rearing to go. Colbert looks more well built to me in person, and not as tall as I expected, but he is relatively tall, at least six feet. (He seemed to be around my height, and I’m 6’1). The show went without a hitch.

Its always cool to see people in 3d when you haven't seen them in person. Colbert seemed larger than life. He was very high energy, and naturally witty. Like most people in the audience, I was pretty excited to be there. We were instructed to laugh as loud as possible for jokes, which was easy, because the show is very funny.

I touched Colbert three times.

The first time he ran out like a gazelle, high-fiving everyone (including moi) to a roar of applause. Then, we have a few minutes to ask him some questions. I said to him, "I'm from Jamaica! What do you have to say to Jamaica?". For a moment his large, tv-start face furrowed. Then he replied, " I dunno... Top o' the morning!" in an Irish accent. The audience laughed.

"I don't know what i-- IRIE RASTAFARI!" he shouted, leaning back like a rockstar hitting the high note. It was HILARIOUS. At that point, he walked over to me and extended his hand. "Welcome." he said.

I shook Colbert's hand! Thats' touch number two.

At the end of the show, he shook my hand once more, as cameras captured random footage. Afterwards I left and headed home. I groaned at more expensive delis around and ended up dining at taco bell for dinner.

Its cool to be in New York. More later. The search for finding cool artsy chick ensues.

Europe: The roundup. Reflections, nauseau, rejections.

2008-06-15T11:50:00.002-07:00

I stumble into my room at about 5:30 a.m.

I see someone sleeping in boots in one the beds that was unoccupied for a few days. I squint, and realize those aren’t boots, those are feet. A giant is in the room. The individual begins to snore, and it sounds like a freight train with a nose. After I toss my clothes in a cigarette-smoke smelled heap in the corner, I try to go to sleep. The freight train keeps me awake. I’ve never heard someone snore that loud. It was the ultimate reflection of the big, bad, roommate. The guy was so big the sheets barely fit on him, and I swore the windows rattled a few times as he inhaled. I plugged fingers into my ears and somehow fell asleep that way.

I’ve been partying for almost fifteen hours straight, at this little gem I found near my hotel called Bar25. I found the place sort of by accident, as I was on my way to another spot called Yaam which is also close to where I was staying. I was snapping pictures on my bike while I was heading to Yaam, and I saw a lot of cute girls and oddly dressed guys going into what looked like a mechanics shop. It turned out to be a place where they had been having a party since Friday. The day I went there was Sunday afternoon.

For five euros, you could party for four days straight. I clocked a Sunday-Monday partying time block, but even when I came back (after sleeping for a few hours) I saw many of the same people at the venue, they hadn’t slept, bathed, or anything. Some were sleeping dangerously on a gangplank that was right beside a river, and other people jus kept dancing, dancing, dancing. Probably acid-tripping.

The kind of music playing was called minimalist , which is essentially dance music stripped down to beats and a few light ambient touches. Its not music you can dance very hard to, but you can definitely move to it for oh—five days or so. When I come into the place, I’m a little intimidated. Naturally, I assume everyone in there is German and speaks German, and I hadn’t gotten over my langugage barrier culture shock yet. My friend advised me that almost everyone in Berlin speaks English—later I would find out this is true—but I didn’t think it was true yet.

Girls had fantastic hairstyles. Many of them had short haircuts, mullets and assorments of dyed hairstyles. The fashion between the people varied, but there was definitely a style to the way many of the people dressed. It was interesting contrast to the Pub Crawl I went on a few days before. When I think of America, I think millions of people in non-descript t-shirts, khaki shorts and cheap, open-toe slippers. That’s the general idea anyways. This was confirmed to me while traveling. Every American I met was pretty much dressed the same way.

This is not to say that Germans don’t fit that mold, but the style of dress was different. Either way, I liked the vibe.

Many of the girls were tall and lithe. I’ve always liked tall women, and there were a few plodding about I wanted to say hello to. But alas, it seemed that many people knew each other and spoke German. As the night progressed, only a few random gay German men would say hello, and I would sit for most of the time people watching. I hung out with a few Irish girls who literally sat on a bench for about eight hours talking about nothing in particular. I met a few other people who lived in Berlin who all told me why it was an amazing city. These people were Italian, French, Canadian, English and Irish. After a few hours at the place, I noticed that many of the people who I thought were all German were actually from somewhere else! This hit home when a tall, semi-blonde guy with a barrel chest bounced into me as he passed me on the dance floor. “Sorry, mate.” He said in a thick Aussie accent.

This was an eye-opener. So I hadnt’ been talking to anyone because I thought they were all German, but pretty much everyone spoke English. When I realized this people were very drunk, and seem tripped out on something. With one day left, there wasn’t much I could do. A lady wearing a fake rose in her hair started following me around. She wasn’t my type, but she was very insistent, just hovering constantly. She told me about her young son, and how she had to leave in a few hours to take him to Kindergarten. She tried to give me information on where she lived, both of her phone numbers, and e-mail and even asked me if I had a map to show me where lived so I could find it. If I liked her, it would have been on. But there was something odd in her eyes. A darting, scary insecurity that bothered me. Also, I didn’t find her attractive.

At some point she followed me to by bike and as I was giving her a hug goodbye she tried to kiss me. I didn’t return the favor. As I rode home I remembered how bad I am at letting certain girls know I’m not interested in them.

The last day made me regret leaving Germany. During my stay at the Singer109 hotel, I met two lovely sisters from Brazil who I spoke to the most on my trip. One sister gave me the run-down on places to go, the other gave me a little tour of the place called Yaam, and incidentally shared a bike ride with me to get there. On the last night of my stay (I had hours to go before I headed to the airport) they were having a party in the lobby. I had a few drinks with the sister, learned how to sing happy birthday in German (both sisters celebrate their birthday on the same day) and played fooze ball with the older sister, who used to be a fitness instructor. That night I felt ver comfortable. More comfortable than I had for a long time while I was traveling. At that point I had a sense of at least five square miles. I knew how to find places, eat cheaply and take the train. I meet a few interesting Berliners and we share a few huge bottles of beer, Beck’s. I’m enjoying myself. We snap pictures and talk about nothing in particular. Everyone tells me to return and contact them when I plan to do that. A sinking feeling hits me; I was just starting to get a taste of Berlin when—

I’m on the plane heading back into D.C and my stomach feels like someone has twisted it into three knots. The last leg of long trips always seems to get me, and I’m not sure why. I was fine no the 8 ½ hour leg into New York, fine for the first 58 minutes of the 1 hr, 18 minute flight to D.C, but as the plane started to descend I felt nausea slapping me in the ass. I close my eyes for a few moments and then—

I’m back in my room. It smells musty. The windows have been closed for a few weeks and the room looks exactly like how I left it. Half clean, half dirty. I was in a rush and many bottles of lotion and hair products were all over the place. Guess I’ll bring those next time. I flop onto my bed and groan. I feel nauseous, but there is not food anywhere in the house. I get up and—

Rain hits me in fat drops as I walk down the street. Long streaks of lighting pepper the sky and I hope I don’t get hit by a stray bolt and make the evening news. I’m listening to some DJ Tiesto while I walk, which shares a nice relationship with the madness of a thunderstorm. I walk into a train station and fish a few quarters out of my pocket and slip them into the provided slots. A guy with both hands in his pockets with a “I’ve got no money on me” expression on his face does the usual walk around, feeling, feeling, feeling for money that isn’t there. I practice completely ignoring him and not making eye contact. I head to the train and now I know.

I’m back.

Germany day 4: The Czech Republics, Beaches and Underground clubs

2008-06-15T11:50:00.001-07:00

Its Sunday afternoon. I just woke up with my head in my hands. I’m fully dressed, in my outfit from the night before. I hear room door open, and my roommate walks in and starts using his computer.

I vaguely remember a moment a few hours before. I—

Burst into the room, obviously drunk and I struggle to take off my shoes. My roommate, a Japanese dude named Yoshi, asks the obvious question: “Are you allright?” he says. “I’m fine.” I reply, then I flop into bed. A few seconds after hopping into bed, I feel like my head is spinning and I run to the bathroom. Yes, Berlin was that good.

This blog is in two parts: Day and Night.

DAY

For me, the day was somewhat introspective. A friend of mine was in Berlin for a few hours and I hung out with her. We shared a meal at a Vietnamese place near Weinmeisterstralle and chit-chatted about life. We traveled on the train a bit, took some pictures and talked about humanity and monogamy. She explained to me that her brother had been recently cheated on by his girlfriend of three years, and he was a mess. I said “damn,” to myself when I hear that, but that’s life. Who can really trust anyone?

Either way, after I said my goodbyes to her I hung out in Alexanderplatz for a little while. The best way to describe the place:

The area is the size of a stadium with no stadium. For a stretch of roughly half a mile, is nothing but pavement. Two massive buildings are on this concrete tundra, and people look like ants as they walk to and fro. It is almost like staring at infinity, or God’s empty paddling pool, its that big.

Yeah… so I was sitting there for a while just thinking about my life. Here I am in Berlin, sitting by myself. I’ve achieved a great goal by coming here, and I feel happy to be here, but my mind runs on many other things. Occasionally, I think about my ex-girlfriend and wonder what she’s doing. I wonder if she’s sleeping alone, or with someone, or taking a shower in the middle of a summer morning. I want to talk to her, but I’ve been afraid to call her lately. I don’t like feeling needy. I need to disconnect a bit. A statement I came up with for a book I’m working on has become a theme for me of late, especially since I’ve been traveling. This was supposed to be a statement in a movie or something…. But basically two people are talking, and one person says. “You don’t know what love is like.” And one says,” Love can eat you, and love can sting you, but you’ll never know how small the world is until you are in love.”

This statement hit me profoundly (even though I came up with it). You can travel thousands of miles away from someone, but all you need is a thought to put them right beside you.

I didn’t mention it in my blogs when I was in France, but one night was really bad for me. A few years ago one of my best friends died, and it has affected me to this day. When I was in France, one on night in particular, I remember a conversation we had. “We are going to Japan.” He said, “We’ll travel, we’ll do it.” We had made plans to go to Europe as well, traveling, having fun sight seeing and living it up. That will never happen. I don’t know why that night in France that realization hi me so hard. In the middle of everything I was doing I started to feel like I was losing it—I wanted to network, to get into parties and have fun, but all I could think about was my friend.

Now I’m in Berlin, one of the places we might have traveled to. I don’t feel bad today, (not in the way I did in France) but sitting in this massive, expansive place can make a person think about things.

Sometimes I want to just forget everything I left behind. My past, my old apartment in DC, my past thoughts and memories. I didn’t’ really want to travel thousands of miles to sit and think about things I can't change. I guess this is the real spice of life, sitting in a foreign country thinking about all things Marcus.

I also think about my family. I wonder what they are doing, how things are in Jamaica, and if they have any idea what I’m doing in Germany. I think of the future, a possible family of my own… and the next step for in my life. I think on these things for a while, then, I realize I need a drink. Fast.

NIGHT

I'm at the beach, in the middle of Berlin.

I’m near Freidrickstralle, an area that reminds me of bad b-movies with great art direction. I’m meeting up with the English girl I met the day before, and some of her friends. On my way to meet them, I waited at the wrong street for a while. I saw a Pub Crawl taking place. Seeing all those tourists walking to a bar was like watching a 2008 American pilgrimage. I’m sitting on my bike sipping a beer—I still havent’ realized I’m in the wrong place yet—and I talk to a few fellow standing by the road. When they hear I’m from Jamaica, they seem to be in shock. “Dude, why are you in Berlin?” they say. I try to answer this question when another guy comes up and he also asks me the same question. Why are you in Berlin?

Eventually, I meet up with the guys. They suggest we go to this place called “The Beach”.

This place is like a dream, I’m serious. A huge shadowy building is in front, and almost all of its surface is covered in graffiti, in the shadwos and in the lights, are people, walking through sand, yes, sand and sitting on benches, under tents, drinking and laughing.

What’s dream like about the place is that (a) we have this huge old German building creating the perfect spooky grunge backdrop. (b) we have sand in the middle of a big city, plus trees and beach chairs (c) graffiti makes the area seem dangerous, but its all very chill.

I half expect to see a six foot seven German man in a leather jacket covered with trinkets point to me and then I get tossed out by a few smaller but equally swarthy cronies on the street. I would lay on the ground for a moment gathering my senses when a huge boot would kick me in the ribs and someone would shout in a BAD accent, “Go back to zer Amerika!”

Of course that didn’t happen. At this point I’m starting to feel a good buzz since I was pre-gaming (alone…sad I know) earlier. Liquid confidence gives me the balls to approach random German people, which I’ve found isn’t a pleasant experience. Germans seem friendly during the day, but at night it’s a whole different story. I see two Slovak looking ladies sitting down and I say my one liner:

“Halo, vie geht es inen?” (Hi, how are you?)

The give me a look that makes me feel like a wisp of grass that accidentally landed on the table. I say “whatever” and find my group. Vanessa is with her long time high school friend Rich and they seem to be getting very chummy. I get a few signals that I’m not supposed to be there when she keeps asking me which girls I want to talk to.

I’m not worried… this is Germany baby! I head over to a small bar where there is a large group of VERY blonde women. I BS and get a drink and initiate some conversation with two of them. They are from the Czech republic! They speak perfect English. It turns out they are on a class trip to Berlin and they will be here until Monday. I met a Monica, Martina, Elle and someone else. They were all tall, pale and almost platinum blonde. “We are from Prague.” Martina said. I want to go to Prague now.

I joke around with the ladies for a little while and get a few nasty looks from some of the Czech fellows sitting nearby. I dub the ladies, “The Czech Republics”.

After I chat with the ladies for a while I go back to Vanessa and crew. Massive, the Italian with an Aussie accent is part of the group now. He recommends buying drinks at a corner shop outside to save cash. I agree and follow him. A bottle of Beck’s twice the size of the one I bought in the company of the Czech girls for 3 euros is 1.50 at the stand. I talk to Massive for a few moments about German girls. He too agrees they are kind of hard to meet, but once you get in, oh boy!

At this point I’m probably drunk. I can’t tell for certain, but I started doing some crazy things. I get annoyed with Vanessa for a reason I can’t remember and spend the next hour in the company of the Czech Republics. Unfortunately, I met the teacher of the students (Monica) and breaking in to that group seems like a very shady exercise. The girls were 18 and 19 respectively. Plus massive German guys swarmed around, full of that “I am very tall and very strong” swagger.

I give up on the Czech Republics and head outside for another beer. This time I’m walking alone. The street is buzzing with life. I get a different beer, this one is a Berliner. The lady working the stand looks like a seasoned participant in life. She is in her late forties to early fifties, heavy set with red patches from overexposure to the sun and a hard face. She cracks it open. “Danke.” I say.

I’m walking back to The Beach and I see a tall attractive girl eating some pizza. I make conversation and she tells me about a club she’s going to. “You should come.” She says. A fellow pops up, a shorter guy (shorter than me, meaning VERY short by German standards) and this is Benny. At some point I whisper to the girl (who’s name is Marie) and ask her if Benny is her boyfriend. She laughs, a cute, twinkling German laugh. “He is too little!” she says, pointing at him. Benny hears the statement and smirks. Another guy comes along, also shorter than me. He is Yohan. Yohan gives me some vodka to sip on.

The adventure begins.

We take a turn off the main road, Oranienburgerstralle and go up a dark, quiet street. I’m definitely drunk now, and just going along for the ride. I learn that Marie spent one year in London, which explains her good English. She said she just finished school… high school! She’s 19. The group stops at gate that looks like it was stolen from the Bram Stoker’s Dracula prop set. Two men in black jackets speak in hushed tones to Yohan and Benny. They check their IDs and wave us in. I’m looking for my ID, but I realize I left it back at the hotel. The bouncer waves me in. I follow the group through a very dark parking lot and we enter what looks like an apartment building. After walking up a small flight of stairs, I can hear the music pounding through the walls. House music!

I ask Marie how much is the entrance fee. “Its about six euros.” She says. I nod after she says this, and I turn to the bouncer. “Halo my friend!” I say with a big smile. He is short, but very muscular. “Mi name ist Marcus, from Jamaica, first time in Berlin!” I say. “Thomas.” He says, shaking my hand. “I am happy to be here!” I say with more energy. Then I turn back to the group. The guys paid, and I look at Thomas and he waves me in. Free entrance baby!

Two things happen at this point. First, I feel amazed. I’m in a real German club now. There were no tourists in this place. The interior of this building resembled a mini cathedral. There were several dance floors all packed with people. The air was hot and wet.

The second thing that happens is I lose the group. I was following Marie around for a few minutes, then she disappeared. After that, I was on my own. I think, and I emphasize, think I bought another drink at this point but I can’t be sure. I vaguely remember having a conversation with a German guy who happily proclaimed he was 197 cm tall (probably like 6’6). The music was good, but I couldn’t really dance. I was people watching. I was inside, but I felt exposed. I’m this drunk Jamaican guy running around with a polo shirt with a tie on! This is where the night gets blurry.

So I lost the group and listened to some underground music for a while. I don’t think I attempted to talk to anyone seriously. I said hello to a few girls, but I needed some air. All the beer and Vodka was getting to me now.

I’m directed to an exit that puts me on a street I don’t know. The sky is a purplish-blue. Damn, its almost daybreak. I’m not walking straight and I’m lost in the middle of Berlin! I curse a little and stop almost everyone that walks past me:

“Ver is der Frederickstrasse?” I say. (Where is Frederick street?)

People point me in the right direction, but I walk around in a daze for a good twenty minute before I find “The beach” again. I go inside but everyone is gone. No Czech Republics, no English crew. I unlock my bike from the entrance of the beach and start riding home. I don’t know why, but I’m hit with an overwhelming desire to call my ex-girlfriend. For that moment, her voice was the only thing I wanted to hear. I think that desire saved me.

I could barely ride the bike straight and I had about a three mile stretch from where I was to my hotel. This mind you, is through winding roads and streets, between underpasses, ten lane roads, and over routes where these large (and deathly quiet) tram cars drive. Dangerous.

I fuel myself with thoughts of my ex, and this keeps me semi-sober for a while. Twice, I crash the bike. The first time, I almost rode into a wall and a did a poor braking exercise. The second time I had a full wipeout about two hundred feet from my hotel. Even though the sun is starting to rise, it’s still very dark. To get to my hotel I had to navigate through a narrow path filled with lots of trees and hedges. I was doing a good job. “yes, I’m almost there!” I said gleefully. In moments I would be inside my room, on Skype talking to the one person whose voice I wanted to hear. Then, I lost my equilibrium.

My front tire hit a hedge and the bike shifted into the hedge. I braked up, but badly and I fell to the ground. Now I’m on my back and the world is spinning. I try to get up but I can’t, I’m too wasted. I laugh.

“I’m in Germany!” I say to myself with a weak chuckle. I lay there for a minute or so, catching my breath. I think of calling my ex again, and I find a second wind. I get up and finish the ride to the hotel. I lock the bike outside and walk to my room. All I want to do is sleep, but somehow I take my laptop from its case and open it up. (The next morning I would see the laptop on the kitchen table and wonder how it got there). I call my ex but I’m not successful. She doesn’t answer the phone.

At this point the blog begins.

I flop into bed fully dressed hoping to sleep. The Berliner and Becks I drank don’t want to stay inside me, so I run to the bathroom. I go into the room and fall asleep immediately.

Wicked night.

Germany Day 3: Yes, all Germans are tall people :p

2008-06-15T11:49:00.002-07:00

Ladies and gentlemen, I can check a goal off my life list.

Last night I partied in a few German clubs, and danced to house music. I must have be sixteen when I first thought of doing this, so i'm happy to say that i've been able to achieve this goal... a measley ten years later.

I participated in something called a "Pub Crawl", which essentially gives you access to a lot of clubs, and bars for the price tag of 12 euros. A person who lives in the city (with nothing to do on a Friday night apparently) takes dozens of tourists looking to "see Berlin" on a hit-parade of popular bars and clubs. I took this experience with a grain of salt. The crawl gives you access to people to talk to and places to go, but I was a little annoyed with the usual antics of the Americans and Canadians I was hanging with.

No offense to Americans, but there have been two nights that I raised my eyebrow since i've been in Europe. The first was in France, when I went to an Irish bar for about an hour and felt like I was in Washington D.C again, and promptly left. The second was last night (or this morning if you are being technical). The nature of "American culture" is fascinating. Any large group of Americans has a lot of hooting and hollering and people trying to get VERY VERY drunk. Also 99% of the crowd was wearing plain t-shirts and shorts. I was the most dressed up person in a crowd of at least 60.

That aside, it wasn't that bad. After all, I don't hate Americans, and I live in the country! haha.

Some cool moments were dancing to minimalist music in a place called "Rudubar" this is near some street called "Brugerstalle" (Burgerstra-see). Our guides walked with back packs full of alcohol and gave it to us after every bar stop. So I bought drinks at pretty much every bar, then had shots after each bar... needless to say, I got a little drunk.

I'm staying by this hostel near a train station called Johannowitzburke, and I brought my bike I rented the whole way. IT was another character in the night, me and my bike. Lots of fun.I met a lot of girls but most of them were traveling in pairs, large groups, or leaving the next day.

Boo!

All in all it was a good experience. I had trouble talking to German girls in the club. I actually got "the hand" from a girl who was dancing directly in front of me! I've never gotten "the hand" from a girl EVER. But this is Germany... I guess a little bit of coldness is expected. All I said was "halo."

The night ended at this place called "The Matrix" which is the first place i've seen with large, white bouncers. Forgive me, but every bar i've been to in the states has massive black bouncers. This place had true German stock. When I was walking into the club, I started entering the wrong way. The bouncer barked at me in German and lightly (trust me, lightly) shoved me in the right direction. I floated to the side like a sheet of paper. I didn't want to know what happened to people who pissed those bouncers off.

Inside was like any other club, except a lot of the people were tall and blonde. This I found strange, because walking around Germany I haven't seen many "very" blonde people, but people are definitely taller here. Standing at 6'1 I'm not really at much of an advantage here.

So... I think I had one more drink that place, danced on some pole with a few girls and then headed home. I was TIRED... I wasn't sure if it was riding around all day on the bike, or some post-France lag that's affecting me. In the club I didn't even make an attempt to chat to any of the german girls. I couldnt' bother. I had a nice shirt on, that said "I'D FCUK ME", but for the entire night, the shirt seemed to amuse (and attract) more men than women. I didn't care. I was in Germany baby!

At some point I grabbed my bike and took the train back to Johannowitzburke. I turned on the light and whizzed home. The dude staying in the bed beside me is from Japan, and i swear, I was speaking to him in perfect Japanese for a few minutes before I crashed and fell into dreamland. I don't know why I speak better Japanese when i'm drunk, but it doesn't matter. I drunk Skype dialed the girl of my dreams and left her a voice message.

One day I will laugh and say, " I drunk Skyped this chick once!" to which another drunk person will say, "Dude, you drunk Skyped someone? Awesome!"

Here's to Saturday night in Germany.

Cheers mate!

Germany day two: It ist verboten!

2008-06-15T11:49:00.001-07:00

Germany day two: It ist furboten! + Yes, I’m Jamaican dammit!

I’m a little unhappy that I wasn’t’ able to talk about the small things I noticed in France. I did mention the toilet thing, where you pull a knob upwards to flush, but I didn’t mention that the bottled water I had in Cannes tasted horrible, and it was hard to find anything with rice in in… anywhere. It was all cheese and bread, and Englishman would probably say it was “god awful”.

The first thing I have to chalk up to the Germans is efficiency. When I was in France, I used a power converter to power my laptop. The first time I plugged my laptop in, noticed a strange sensation when I ran my fingertips over the surface of my Macbook. It was a buzzing feelings, like rubbing a vibrating surface. I researched this phenomenon on the internet and voila! It was a power conversion issue. Essentially what I was feeling was a mild shock. There was too much power coming into the macbook book and the metal surface was conducting it.

In different buildings throughout france I had the same problem. This even occurred when I hooked up a printer (macbook as not plugged in) to my laptop! On day one when I came to Germany and plugged my notebook in, I noticed there was no shock. What I received was proper, and highly accurate power conversion. There’s one for the Germans. In fact, this whole “efficiency” thing isn’t a joke. I’ve never received change so quickly in my life. In numerous stores, wherever I buy something, the price is calculated and my change is delivered within seconds.

Other than that, my day has been pretty uneventful. I went to a place to get a Bike today (Berlin is too f-ing huge to walk around). For the healthy sum of 38 Euros, I ge a bike of my own (including lights and a cool locking system) for five days. I was riding around a little today, marveling at how large and alien Berlin seems. Berlin reminds me of DC, if DC was three times as big. There is so much SPACE wherever I go. Space for joggers, cyclists and cars… everywhere. I ask a girl who looks like a tourist to take a picture of me. She’s a cool English chick who’s in town for a few days from Krakow, Poland. We snap pictures for a while and visit a few museums. We don’t actually see anything because every museum requires 8-20 euros to see their priceless artwork. I guess DC spoiled me.

At some point, she links up with her fried, aptly named “Massive”, who is an Italian fellow with an Aussie accent. I find the term “massive” funny because I’m taller than massive, but I guess I don’t want to dig too deep into that story.I’m starting to get tired of explaining why I speak “proper English”.

I really don’t know who spread the word to every person on the planet that ALL Jamaicans speak like the guys from Cool Runnings, Bob Marley, or any number of Rastamen on the North Coast, but they did a damn good job. Every person, even people who barely speak English, keep saying I sound American, or ask what the native language in Jamaica is.

The first few times I happily explained that there are different regions in Jamaica and people speak differently. But now, people are starting to say I sound American, which bothers me. Its almost like saying, “If you seak proper English without having an English, French, Aussie, or otherwise popular country’s accent, then you must be American.” As a Jamaican this makes no sense of course, but this seems to be what everyone believes. It seems people would rather run into Jamaicans they can barely understand than one who speaks clearly. Every American I’ve met knows immediately that I’m not America. Alas:

Stereotypes rule.

I went to this place called “Yaam” today which is like something out of a werid movie. I’m in the middle of Berlin and I’m standing in a place filled with sand, and walls covered in Graffiti that has the classic Ethiopian colours. There are African beers on the menu, people playing volleyball on the “beach” and Jah Cure was playing over the radio. It was weird. Jamaica really is the center of the universe!

Tonight the plan is to head to some pubs and do a “pub crawl”. I’ve heard for an interesting area to check out: Kreuzberg. Apparently there’s enough going on there to create significant mischief tonight. The plan ---

Whooops my roommate just walked in. They are going on a pub crawl. I’m out!

Germany Day One

2008-06-15T11:48:00.002-07:00

I’m in Germany.

This is weird, because its been one of my life goals to reach this place and just take it in. The first thing I noticed about Berlin when I stepped out of the train station to find my hostel was Graffiti. It was everywhere. Not just that, the place was deathly quiet.

This was intimidating for a few seconds. After all, this is Berlin, a place pretty much destroyed by the ravages of war a few decades ago. The place has that stamp. Many buildings are covered with overgrown weeds, huge bushes dot the landscape and the area has a sense of being lived in through the good and the bad. I can’t properly describe it yet, but I feel like I’m walking through a real live version of a first-person shooter. In the distance, is a HUGE spire of some sort with blinking lights. Everywhere I walk to, I see it, almost as if its watching me. If fact, I feel watched. This area I am in is so quiet.

There is no music playing in any apartments. I hear no music in any cars. There is nothing to indicate that people are living around here, save the few people I see sitting in a park, or walking quietly on the road. The people seem to be very quiet as well, very reserved. I’ve seen a few teenagers traipsing about, talking in rapid German in playgrounds and sitting by the remnants of an old swimming pool. It’s a weird transition from the beach laden confines of Cannes France.

Here, I’ve stepped into a world that truly isn’t my own. I feel like a “citizen”, a member of a massive state governed by a quiet, firmly ruling hand. I think I’ve seen too many war movies, and heard too many things about Germany through the lens of modern media to have a proper grasp of all things Berlin, but that’s what I feel right now. I’m sitting by a window in my hostel, and there is nothing that greets me, save an eerie silence that covers everything like a heavy blanket.

Maybe this is how people live in this part of town. Maybe I’m just in the quiet section. In a bit, I’m going to try and head to Waurscherstralle, a district that has a few bars and clubs. A place I can probably listen to some music, or grab a drink. It’s a bit scary to do this. After all, I am on my own and I don’t want to get lost in one of the biggest cities on Earth.

This place is flat…flat …FLAT.

We’ll see how it goes. The hostel is really nice on the inside. It feels like a first rate dorm, and has a gorgeous lobby with brand new tiles and a recreation area. But on the left side of the building, a huge outcropping of weeds dominates most of the building. School buildings, tables, and almost every apartment building in the area has graffiti on it. Yet, residents walk around nicely dressed, oblivious to the artistic mayhem. I know its because I’m a foreigner that I’m even noticing these things. Pretty soon, I’ll forget the smeared walls.

But the images are powerful; a open air table tennis table scorched with graffiti. An old couple walking through a small street with images twenty feet high on either side of the buildings beside them. A woman in bright pink leggings walking quickly through the underpass of a bridge. Powerful images. I’m a little upset because my connector for my d40 dissappeared. This is a place that warrants thousands of pictures. But alas, I have to measure my photographer’s instinct.

Here’s to Berlin. Day one.

Cannes Day 9 : Groggz...

2008-06-15T11:48:00.001-07:00

Yes, I skipped day, six, seven and eight because I didn't have any internet a the hotel and too much was happening to really document. This blog will summarize the most recent events.

Day 9

I’m in my first party and I’m getting a taste of the life. I’m in a villa owned by a few Lebanese billionaires, staring at one of those hundred inch plasma screens that cost the price of three or four kidneys. (Maybe five kidneys).

I tagged along with a friend for a party celebrating the 24 Hour Cannes Film Festival competition. On the way to the party we tried to walk through the Grande Hotel to get a shuttle heading up to the villa (aptly dubbed, “The Mint”) and we were stopped. My friend is a Cannephile, this being her third or fourth trip to the festival. As we walked through the hotel, a tall doorman said to me in a thick accent, “I’m sorry sir, I’m sorry, you can’t go through.”

These statements are now meaningless.

Since I’ve been in Cannes, I’ve become pretty ballsy. You have to be—getting in anywhere you have to walk like you own the place, know the bouncers and have all the women, even if you are sharing a hotel room with a couple of other people, and you live nowhere near the Croisette (the uber exclusive strip of shopping malls where the access to all the beach parties are).

I traipsed through the hotel like it was my own. I didn’t hear the doorman calling to me, and when he eventually did a light jog to the back door to stop us, I looked through him. It was weird, but it felt pretty cool in a strange way. It wasn’t a big deal, because we only walked a short way around the hotel to access the cars to the event. I am Cannes! haha.

The last few days have been literally a whirlwind. I didn’t really think I could do so many things in a day, but I really have.

I’ve directed a short film, which I’m pretty proud of. I’ve done a few shorts, but directing a short Film in France just felt different. Then I entered this film competition the Short Film Corner was hosting in association with a company called “Theauters.com”. I interfaced with this crazy artistic guy named Jesse who is a member of my program.

“I want to win this ten thousand dollars,” he said to me. I nodded. There’s nothing wrong with ten thousand dollars. “But,” he says to me afterward. “You’ll have to be in a scene where you run through the street… in your underwear.”

I did a huge Scooby Doo.

Aruu?

I thought about it for a second. Either this guy was really crazy, or really inspired. The competition was shooting a three minute film with a tiny and very cheap “Flip Cam”. Each entrant gets a camera (which they can keep for themselves afterwards) and you just run with a story.

Our story is badass.

It is essentially a roundabout story of cheating. A guy (me), meets a French girl somewhere, I hookup with her and her boyfriend finds out. There are chase scenes, fights, some serious Cinema Verite’, a dream sequence and the money shot—me chasing after the French girl in my underwear. It was amazing doing the film, even though some aspects of it were a bit weird. More than once a bus filled with French passengers drove past, wondering who this tall black guy in his underwear was doing in the street at 1 a.m, standing next to a young woman at a bus stop while a guy points at us with a teeny tiny camera.

At some point during the night, I said to Jessy. “I’m not shy about standing in the street in my underwear. Its standing in the street in my underwear in a foreign country that make me a little nervous!”

All in all, it was fun. Not only did I end up in bed with a French girl (who we recruited mere hours before the shooting started), run through French streets in my underwear, scare a crowd half to death by being chased in realtime, but I did some real acting for the first time I can remember. There was a sequence where I screamed, I did creepy laughs, and we were doing so well we even drew a tiny crowd.

At some point a tiny Japanese man tagged along with us to help out with the shoot. At this point I headed to aforementioned party.

If my blog isn’t making perfect sense, its because I’m all over the place. I’ve been waking up at 9 and going to be at 3 or 4.am each day for the last week and a half, and I have no signs of slowing down. I’ve been networking like crazy, and I’ve gotten on my first “list” in Cannes! A cute English actress I met sent me a text saying she has me on a list somewhere. What it is and where, I have ZERO idea. But its cool to get some sort of hookup.

Before I end the blog, I jus thave to say that networking feels very natural for me. These parties are just people saying hello, people pitching themselves, and people having drinks. The party at the Mint was sponsored by Perfect Vodka. The two drinks of the night, were the Red Carpet, and the Perfect Pussy. “I’m not making this up.” At some point during the evening Alfonso Ribiero (a.ka. ‘Carlton’ from the French Prince of Belair) shows up. He orders two Pussies and two Vaginas.

Exact words.

After the party I finished the film and fell asleep in a friend’s room. The next day I would see footage on his FlipCam of me asleep on the bed. What will tonight bring? Who knows. There has been so much happening that I haven’t the time to document it all. I’ve been so busy trying to meet people I haven’t really been watching any movies, but today I snuck in a viewing of Everyone dies but me a Russian film about teenagers that makes you want to cry, or put your little sister in a safe FOREVER.

Cheers to a good night. More details tomorrow.

Bonne Nuit.

Cannes day 5: Dammit!

2008-06-15T11:47:00.002-07:00

Cannes Day Six

I’m shirtless in a dark room with two young French women. One is dressed like a hip-hop dancer, with baggy pants and a hat turned to the side. They stand behind me, giggling in rapid French while I stand there awkwardly. One comes forward and I setup to the side. She looks on my shirt, which is resting on a massive ironing board and looks on the tag.

“Ah, ze polyester.” She says.

She adjusts a knob and smiles. They leave the room and I start ironing my shirt.

As it relates to Cannes, after only four days I’m starting to feel extremely winded. At first I was thinking this experience wouldn’t be that draining, or that intense. But there is so much walking, talking and interacting, it takes the life out of you. I learned this in a very funny way early this morning. Let’s just say eating lots of bread and drinking no water makes for some interesting bathroom antics.

Today (or yesterday) was pretty disappointing. I finally networked well enough to get an invite to a party on the beach. It was in front of the Martinez, pretty much the second most exclusive spot on the strip called the Croisette. My energy was almost gone at this point: I had been to three happy hours and had a little too much wine. Not the amount that gets you drunk, but the amount that gets you a little sleepy. Add to that the fact that I’d been walking around all day talking to numerous people and my energy was low.

I also learned that eating crepes all day are bad, bad business. Since I’ve arrived in France, I don’t believe I’ve had any meat. I’ve only been eating bread, cheese, and crepes, with a touch of the occasional glass of water. So I’m guessing my insides are yearning for some real nutrition. “Give us meat!” my stomach is probably screening.

Who knows. I’m beginning to get used to the area now. I’m very familiar with the Rue d’ Antibes, the Croisette as well. I’ve started memorizing routes, stopping at familiar food stands. The familiarity with the area that I have has bred a certain desire within me over the last few days. Missing that party burned my stomach. The opportunities for networking in a large party are almost endless. In fact, the main virtue of going to parties like those are to meet people who will get you into other parties to meet other people. I’m not mad that I didn’t get to dance near the beach in France, I’m mad that I didn’t get to meet the person I was probably supposed to meet. The nature of this industry is so fleeting it keeps you tense. Sure Cannes is a two week madhouse of pitching and partying, but each day adds up to the next. In only 8 days I’ve met at least two hundred persons, and I have a stack of business cards in my bag. I have to use tricks to remember everyone’s names, and make sure to follow up.

But I can’t be mad for long.

The internet at my hotel has been dead for two days, which is making my situation eve more tricky. I have no more time for regrets, no more time to pause and think about missing a party. I just have to figure out a way to keep in touch. The reason I missed my party was the onset of serious fatigue from the hustle and bustle. I fell asleep wth my phone on my lap, and when I woke up, it fell and smashed dramatically into a thousand pieces.

Well its in two pieces, but I have no phone! This wasn’t bad (this happened a day ago) because each day I meet at least twenty people who say “Give me a call later, let’s hang out.” I’m on a quest now to find stable internet, to keep blogging and still network and maybe catch a movie.

Anon.

Cannes day 4: Iron Mike and Networking bliss

2008-06-15T11:47:00.001-07:00

(Note to my faithful readers.. I actually have an extra blog I wrote, but I messed up the order.. so I'm actually on day 5 of my Cannes blogging ...but I can't really go back and add the day before.. I apologize... but trust me, the information wasn't juicy - Marcus )

Cannes day Four

I’m watching a series of red steps float on a massive screen in full 3d. To the backdrop of carefully crafted (and quite cinematic music) the steps eventually disappear, and a logo appears, the very distinctive logo of a Golden Palm, the symbol of the Cannes film festival.

I’m sitting in some pretty good seats, waiting for the premiere of a documentary that I accidentally went to see; Tyson. It is a new documentary on Mike Tyson’s life, narrated by the legend himself. I sit comfortably in my seat, wating for the movie to start, when a lithe Frenchman in a tuxedo comes on stage. He speaks rapidly, (I’m assuming he is talking about the director and the people who produced the film), then there is a lull in the crowd. Somewhere near the back, cameras flash rapidly and people stand up and gravitate to a shadowy section of the theatre. Standing there, barely visible and surrounded by bodyguards, is Mike Tyson himself. The years have been kind to the former heavy weight. His face looks the same but he looks at least fifty pounds heavier, a change artfully disguised by a large suit.

This is what you get at Cannes, a touch of the unexpected. An extra dose of things you didn’t think of even seeing. When I was sitting on the plane grumbling because my “breakfast” was a small collection of food that wouldn’t fill a shrew’s stomach, I had no idea I would be seeing Mike Tyson just a few days later. After the movie, I ran up to the stage to take some pictures of the man himself, as he humbly thanked everyone for coming out to see the film. As he exited the theatre, I stood nearby, directing two of my colleagues to snap him (with me in the frame) as he walked past. Both pictures were a bust. On my camera, I am a dark blur and Mike Tyson is nowhere to be seen. On my friends camera, Iron Mike is perfectly visible, but only my chin is in the frame.

Amazing.

Luckily, I took a picture of myself with Mike Tyson in the background when he was on stage, and we are both in the frame. Boo yah! The film was shown in one of the main theatres, The Debussy, which is good for laughs when you keep asking people:

“What’s the name of the theatre?”

Today the real action began. I’m in a position where I am forced to completely step out of my comfort zone. I’ve done this before—in social settings like bars, and sometimes the occasional school function. But this is something else. Each day there is a happy hour in the short film section of the Palais, and it’s a great place to network. As I walked in, with my plan of action fresh in my mind. I was surrounded by groups of people talking excitedly with one another. It was a buzz of French, German English, and several other languages. Everyone was pitching a film, talking about their short film in the festival, or trying to meet people for promotional purposes. It wasn’t chaos, but It wasn’t a walk in the park, even for a semi-socialite like myself. I see a blonde woman of medium height walking towards me, and I start some polite conversation. She’s a director from Australia, and this is her third time at Cannes.

“Are you going to any parties later tonight?” I ask.

“No, I’m tired of the party scene. “She says.

At this, I smirk. I haven’t been to one yet, but before the weekend is out, I’m sure I’ll have found my first Cannes party. We talk about her film for a little while, and we do small talk. She tells me about an Australian director who is coming to France the next day and doing a private screening of a film he directed. I’ll e-mail her and see if I can get an invite. My badge officially has me as a buyer of films, so I get more access than some of the regular patrons. I heard about this new Jean Claud Van Damme movie, but I have no idea how I’ll fandagle my way into that one.

After talking to Miss Australia, I mosy around, chit-chatting with a few people, but I’m really nervous. There are people from all over the globe here. People I’ve never interacted with. Everyone is pitching, everyone is busy. Everyone is type-A. Me, I’m from an island that can fit into new York seven or eight times with dreams of being a screenwriter. I know I have the personality to mingle and schmooze, but sometimes breaking that first piece of ice can be really hard. I sit at a table for a moment and listen to a conversation between (who I think) are two more Aussies standing near the bar. I’ve been doing this a lot lately, because it helps you figure out who you can approach. If I hear people speaking French, I raise the red flag because I don’t speak French. If I hear English, at the very least I can walk up to them and say “Finally, a little of my own language in my day!”

I haven’t done that yet, because it really isnt’ that bad. I ran into some people after leaving the Short Film Corner waiting to watch Third Wave a cool Stephen Soderberg movie that is entered into the competition for Cannes. In the line, I talk my best Japanese with two Japanese nationals who are buyers for a small company called Shin Nippon films. They are looking for small art house films. I get a few cards, exchange some small talk and as we near the front of the line, find out that they won’t let people in who aren’t properly dressed. To show you how serious they were, a man with two women (who literally looked like Supermodels) were standing at the side of the line for a few minutes, but they weren’t let in either.

Welcome to Cannes baby.

Its at this point in time that we (myself and the people that were waiting in line for the movie) decide to get something to eat. We head into a little restaurant off the Rue de Antigues and I balk at the prices. Fourteen euros for a three course meal with names I can’t pronounce or translate. I pick out the word “vegetable” “cheese” and “fish”. But everything else is jibberish to me. I tell my friends to contact me on my phone if they can. I buy a disgustingly sweet Nutella crepes in a stand near the restaurant and make a sad attempt to run game on one of the attendants. It is impossible not to try after a while. Every ten feet are extremely attractive women. It is a phenomenon that I haven’t yet wrapped my head around. Today I saw about three packs of women who closely resembled Selma Hayek walking around. I’ve never seen this kind of thing, and I’m seriously not the kind of fellow who ogles women. But twice today, I’ve turned my head. (yes, yes, I know. )

I run into one of my restaurant mates (he left the restaurant as well after balking at the prices) and we do a little traipse. He laughs at a large cylindrical structure on the sidewalk. It is a bathroom that you pay a Euro to use.

I’ve observed a few interesting things thus far. Toilets don’t have flushing handles, they have little knobs on the top of the toilet you pull up vertically to flush. In our room the bathroom is separate from the toilet room (which makes hand washing interesting). There is the kissing thing, where men and women kiss each other when they greet. Thankfully I haven’t kissed anyone yet. All that cheek action creeps me out.

Back to reality.

My networking game has barely begun, but I’m already starting to feel the “Vibe” of the nightlife. You watch a cool movie, then you head out to some hotel lobbies or go with people to parties. Its talk, talk, talk. While I’m traipsing with my friend, I hear someone call to me. It’s a girl I haven’t seen in a few years I went to school with. (the world is really, REALLY small!). She seems to really know her way around Cannes, and that gives me hope. I haven’t really had any drinks yet, but here’s a cheers to the weekend and to going to my first party.

Salut!

Cannes Day 3: Welcome to the real world

2008-06-15T11:46:00.002-07:00

Cannes day three.

I’m sitting somewhere in between the first floor of the main Palais, and the Riviera. These are sections of the massive Palais des Festival, which is where all the magic happens. To say Cannes is chaotic would be a lie, its more like a storm of chimps on red bull in suits trying to buy and sell films. Not that any of these people look like chimps, but the place is pretty wild.

I just left the Debussy theatre, one of many areas to screen films at Cannes. I watched Hunger, a tale of the hunger strike enacted by prison-bound activist Bobby Sands, in 1981. It took me a few minutes to realize I was actually watching a film at the Cannes Film Festival. There I was, sitting amidst the peers of the industry, taking in a film.

The way industry people take these films seriously, there was a cacophony of coughing as the film started, as people with small colds coughed out the last of their irritable viruses. When the movie started, there was pin-drop silence. For the entire movie. At the end the coughing started at again.

Personally, I was very tired. In my last blog I mentioned going out the night before and celebrity watching. Then I came home, fiddled with the internet a bit and then got some sleep to wake up at 8 a.m so I could sort out some issues I was having. So in the movie at some point, I dozed off. But I saw 95% of the film. I can scratch off a life goal of mine today:

“Applauded at the end of a Cannes film screening with rest of audience.”

That sounds pretty simple, but the logistics of getting into this place were maddening. I might go into the details of the accreditation process in another blog, but trust me. I had to jump through hoops and drop some serious euros to get where I am right now, and I don’t even feel ready.

Early this morning, when I walked into the Palais for the first time, I grabbed a few copies of magazines that are available to everyone in the area. There are thousands of copies of the Hollywood Reporter, Moving pictures and various other magazines. When I slipped a few of them into my bag, I said, “Dammit. I’m really in it.”

Days ago I was a student on the verge of graduating. My worries involved ironing my graduation gown, packing for this trip to France and worrying about how much my feet hurt when I shop for new shoes. Here, I am officially a professional. I don’t have time to worry that much. All the people here are trying to do the exact same thing. Get ahead. I’m surrounded by thousands of talented, super driven people from dozens of countries with literally thousands of different agendas.

Cannes is a Market based festival. Essentially people come here to promote, buy or sell films. Or they come here to promote, buy or sell themselves (not necessarily in that order :p) . So it is a rat race of the most powerful kind. Workshops run abound in Cannes, companies are EVERYWHERE and its non-stop. So a person can juggle visiting companies, catching a screening here and there and maybe catching a party at night. I’ve been told a good strategy is to head to some of the more exclusive hotels and hang out in the lobby and chat to people. This is a business. A relentless one.

So therein lies the question? How do I market myself as a writer? Are writers truly in demand, or are hot scripts in demand? When I received my badge, I got a cool little gray bag with ‘Cannes 2008’ all over it. Inside was information on the festival and market participants. The market participant book is twice the size of the Bible. This book had the information of participants in the festival. (and I thought looking into the face of eternal hellfire was daunting). So, I have to organize. I have to go through the periodicals(magazines, etc) and figure out which companies would like my product. I have a comedic script that I want to pitch, but get this. In my Graduation week (as madness ensued and I had no time to sleep) I didn’t adequately prepare some things for my trip. As it stands, when you don’t carry certain things with you to a foreign country, you have to buy them in that country, and man are the prices different. I’m leaking Euros.

The plan has to get juggled. Not only do I feel like I have to dress sharp (in Jamaica we say “Bush”) to seem like a true professional, but I have to do it every day. I’m not sure I have that many dress shirts :p. Either way, the battle begins. Tiny Jamaican writer, versus huge, well established international festival. I may not have a movie, or be able to get into the exclusive parties, but I have my little script. May I pitch it well!

On a side note, I bought a SIM card today from a phone store. The guys were not helpful at all. They spoke no English, the phone card’s instructions were in English, and I’m sure I don’t even know how to recharge the bloody card… but I had to get it. Its already getting impossible to link up with members from my program, much less contact people I will be meeting throughout the festival. Investment is key in these things. Don’t scrimp on those comfy black shoes you wanted to wear because they were slightly out of your budget, and get more dress shirts! Self-promotion baby!

Plus tard, ladies and gentlemen, Bush every day!

Cannes Day 2: Pictures with Celebs

2008-06-15T11:46:00.001-07:00

Julianne Moore. Mischa Barton. Gillian Anderson.

What do they all have in common with me? Well, I’m in pictures with all of them. Before you go running to your friends and saying that Marcus is a celeb, think again. I experienced the first taste of the paparazzi vibe.

A few of us from the program were idle at the hotel, sitting in the lobby. After chatting for a bit about which movie was better, The Village or Lady in the Water, we decided to try and head to a party near the Palais. Apparently, the popular house group Justice was playing at this exclusive party on the waterfront. A friend of mine Chris, received an armband that gets him into all the parties during the week, courtesy of the William Morris agency. A few other people decided to head out to see if they could go to the party as well. IF not, we’d have a nice scenic walk in one of the most beautiful places in the world.

So we walk the three mile stretch from our Hotel to the Palais, stopping occassionaly to see how Caroline is doing. Caroline is wearing three inch heels and needless to say, heels are evil. After another twenty minutes or so we reach one party. The music is pumping and bouncers wearing tuxedos are standing guard by a small walk way that leads into a series of white tents. The music doesn’t sound like house, and we walk further up.

What is amazing about this area so far is the quality of the women. Yes people can say that the way a woma n looks is relative, but the average woman here is slim, well toned/tanned and very well dressed. Its like the cutest/hottest girls were tossed into a basket and dumped into the ocean near Cannes, where they fought to get to shore in a sweaty mass of lotion and hair gel. The women I’m seeing are pretty attractive, but I’m not really excited by the number of attractive women around me. This is an area heavily populated with millionaires and important people. For now, I’m content just watch them go by. In the way a Lion with a full stomach watches a gazelle graze a few feet away.

We reach the Justice party and people are floored left and right. The man at the door is a tall, well tanned French man who looks like a 1982 Calvin Klein model. He takes one look at a person in our group, a tall guy named Ryan (who is wearing a sharp sports, jacket dress shirt, fitted jeans, designer shoes and glasses ) and says. “No, se impossible’ “.

Chris, who has the exclusive armbad, is shut down as well. To be fair, Chris was wearing a plaid shirt and a straw hat. Everyone going into the part was dripping in Gucci and all sorts of designer garb. Then somewhere to our left, we hear some commotion. Bodies were running to and fro and lights were flashing everywhere. A celeb was sighted!

We took a few steps to see what the fuss was about. A tall, modelesque looking woman surrounded by people with cameras walked by. “Who is that?” I asked. “That’s Mischa Barton.” A guy named Sebastian replies. “What show is she on?” I ask again. Caroline replies this time. “She’s on the OC.” Chris laughs. “Man, that’s wack! The OC isn’t even a real show!”

I watch her walk by, in a resplendent gray dress and she heads into a movie theatre outfitted with an Indiana Jones motif for the upcoming movie premiere. We talk as a group for a second, when in the corner of my eye, I see a flash of red hair and what appears to be a familiar face.

“Is that Gillian Anderson?” I say. “The x-files chick?”

Sure enough it was. “Let’s get a picture with her!” Chris says. We trot over to where she is, and I’m suddenly standing right beside her as the cameras start flashing. I smile with my arms folded, Chris shows the peace sign. The photographers keep shouting, “Liz!Liz!” (we don’t know why) and soon Chris starts saying “Liz! Liz!” as well.

We repeat this process when Julianne Moore comes out of the party. I squeeze in past a few photographers and stand almost directly beside her. As the cameras flash, I smile and Chris gives the peace sign. I realize that I’ll most likely never see these pictures. These could be going to magazines all over the world, but it is a funny exercise. Julianne Moore looks the way she always does; pale and ageless.

We take pictures with a famous French guy “La Rouche” I think his name is, and a couple who people are snapping but I don’t recognize. We miss a photo opportunity with a cute Japanese actress wearing a traditional kimono and massive setas. After that we talk about the industry for a while. I’m chatting with a cool guy I met named Danny, who wants to be director.

“This is what we want to be a part of eh?” I ask.

“This is fake, man. BS.” He says.

We dissect the issues surrounding the festival, the nature of film and talk about goals of success. At the end of the day, I’m not worried. At present I am nobody, but I’m at one of the biggest festivals in the world regardless. I might be on the outside looking in, but in a way, I’ve taken the first steps towards something. We take a cab back home and get this, the cab is a 2008 Mercedes SUV.

I reach back to the hotel, give Danny 3 euros for my share of the trip and see two more guys from the program chilling in the lobby. They’ve spent the evening chatting with two French girls and they seem to be very happy. I have to wake up in a few hours to head to the Festival to deal with a few house keeping issues. Tomorrow is a new day.

Plutar!

Cannes Day 1 - Vive le Crepes!

2008-06-15T11:45:00.000-07:00

Okay. So I haven't been able to blog about a few things recently.

Number one was my Graduation - too tired.
Number two was traveling to France the day after graduation - way too tired.
So the blog starts here :p

CANNES DAY ONE – POLICE, SHUTTLES AND CHILLY WEAHTER

I’m sitting in a room in the Cot d’Azur airport. I’m staring blankly forward—this is what I do when I’m trying to keep an innocent face—and trying to understand the French customs officer speaking to me… in French.

This would be one of my first experiences with the French. The first would be the passionate request of a French man for me to switch seats with him and his wife on the airplane.

“I would lie to sit with my wife.” He says moments after coming to the seat. I was a little hesitant. No, very hesitant because I really wanted to have my window seat, occasionally looking at the ocean while we flew over it at hundreds of miles and hour. Eventually I gave the guy the seat. Not before he mutters under his breath:

“Sur incompetente Americans!” after an air hostess gives him a bogus explanation as to why he and his wife aren’t seated together. I tried not to laugh.

Now, I’m back in the office. Not only do I have no proof that I was invited to the Cannes Film Festival (my reason for being in France) I have no copy of my hotel reservation. This is REALLY bad. The lady took one look at my Jamaican passport and immediately started scrutinizing me. (my fellow participans in my program, all Americans went through without a hitch).

It was a fun experience, as I tried to speak in Englsh and broken French to explain my purpose for being in France. I couldn’t’ remember the name of the hotel right away, but I did remember the website that had the hotels name on it, which didn’t help things at all. Then the name of the hotel popped into my mind.

Villa Maupassant.

A young French guy that resembled an actor from a movie I can't remember was very helpful. He could see the customs lady was breaking my balls. I would find out later that the French officials didn't even scan the passports for the American passengers, they just took a quick glance at it, then stamped. She kept asking me questions in casual conversational French while the young man translated. I didn't think I was screwed, but I was very annoyed with myself for forgetting to bring the essential things any Jamaican should when they are traveling: Reasons to show you aren't fleeing your home country.

After a while I explained to the woman that I was part of a group that had traveled to France and that I was to be picked up outside. The only problem with that was, I had no idea who was picking me up, how they looked or what they were wearing. We walked over to the customs section where I was grilled on why I was in France.

"I'm going to the festival." I said.

"Really?" the customs baggage lady (different from the customs lady ) said.

"Yes."

"Where is your letter of acceptance?" she asks.

"I don't have it."

I give a sob story about Graudating the day before and being extremely tired which is only half true. I normally have my information printed in duplicated hidden in both suiticases, with a backup on my thumb drive. I wasn't only tired this trip, I must have been on drugs as well. You travel eight thousand miles and have no hotel address? Come on dude!

I eventually get through customs and go outside. I begin looking around... and see no one even remotely familiar. In the pit of my stomach I can see how more and more I'm appearing like a Jamaican hoping to make a new life in the hills of Cannes with my French Cougar.

We eventually returned to the airport police office. The young man who had been really cool with helping me apparently double checked with the Villa Maupassant people and I was good to go. phew!

The bad thing was my shuttle had already left and the next one wouldn’t return until about ten a.m (which ended up being about Eleven a.m) either way. My entrance into France like many things, was with a bang.

It’s a chilly day in the Cot d’ Azur aiport, but I like the look of the area. Many of the buildings are tan and dot the hillside in a contiguous way. When the plane landed, for a brief moment I thought of Montego Bay—until I saw some massive mountains in the distance. I’m at the Villa now taking a break. I’m tryin to stay awake for the rest of the day to stave off the weirdness Jet lag can give a traveler, so I think I might get something to eat nearby.

Reflectionz

I’ve just graduated from University, and I don’t have time to really relish the idea of being a working professional, I just am. A colleague of mine ( who also Graduated just a few days ago) goes on a walk with me around the local area. We are trying to find out if we can get a phone, or a sim card for cheap, but the best price we find Is a store that sells them for 20 euros. The man doesn’t speak much English and my French is horrible, so I can’t figure out. I decide against getting the SIM for the moment, but as time passes I realize I might need a way to contact people.

I’m fighting against the effects of future Jet lag. This is a process that requires a person to stay awake in the manner you would on any given day, but you are technically staying awake for an extra six hours. When my friend and I stop at a stand to by some crepes, I am made all to aware of this fact. While I’m eating my phone alarm goes off.

For 8:30 a.m

French time is 12:30 p.m. I groan to myself because I have to stay up till at least 8 p.m that evening to trick my mind into getting into the new cycle. I spend the rest fo the day walking around a lot to get my bearings. Cannes is a scenic town, with sweeping vistas of nice mountainous regions, and lots of teeny tiny cars. The occasional Bentley or Ferrari drives buy pretty regularly, but many people have cars that can fit in a shoe box, or ride a bike.

I end up taking a long (possibly 5 mile) walk to the Palais Des Festivals which is the main area of the Cannes Film Festival. On my way there I run into a girl who was in my Cinematography one class. Small world eh? She tells me about studying abroad and how creepy French men are. (The rumors are true!)

I hang out for a bit, looking at huge Yachts on the Mediterranean and trying to stay awake. I’m sitting on a bench somewhere, I watch another monster Ferrari with a soft top roll by like a Lion chasing his dinner and I head home. Earlier in the day I bought some bread and cheese and its my saving grace. I haven’t had the opportunity to go to a supermarket yet, and for now I will be eating “du pan au fromage”. I’ll report on day two as it comes. You can also checkout my video blog. (whenever I can figure out how to set that up...)

Vive La France - Cannes Day 1

2008-05-13T17:41:00.000-07:00

Okay. So I haven't been able to blog about a few things.

Number one was my Graduation - too tired.

Number two was traveling to France the day after graduation - way too tired.

So the blog starts here :p

----------------

Buzzed and Blogging [Tasty Hotel Party Details]

2008-03-23T20:41:00.001-07:00

[Sunday, March 23, 2008]

I always thought certain things on TV weren't true. I've seen a ton of television shows with the starving artist type, a writer fresh out of a divorce or something especially hurtful a lot of people can relate to. On screen we see the writer, hair frazzled, dressed in dirty clothes drinking from a bottle. In this drunken state, the writer types away, hitting the high notes on incredible prose. I never usually believed these portrayals, because of course, the guy is an actor. The liquid in the bottle is probably apple juice, and the prose was written by a real writer locked up in a tiny apartment somewhere with a few vials of coke, a few red bulls and some imported ass. I didn't really believe those portrayals really, but last night it hit home.

In the blog I wrote before this, I can't believe how honestly I wrote about such a sensitive issue as it related to my ex-girlfriends. I had a lot to drink, (as any well to do birthday boy would ) and honestly, the way the blog was written surprised me. It sounded a bit prophetic, amazingly reflective and serious.

So maybe these portrayals aren't a crock of -ish. Maybe sometimes you need to be in a odd state of shock, or be dulled into a state of creative bliss with alcohol. Who knows. After reading the blog, I realize that I didn't write the blog feeling pained up, or even filled with regret. Mind you, I woke up the next day, challenged a little bit with those memories from the past that any Ex generates. Sexual longing, little moments of laughter watching a movie. The quiet drives to nowhere.

At the very least, I'm glad I write my thoughts down in a way that others can see, and that I can relate to. There are moods I've been in that I can never imagine a few months later, but when I read what I wrote about it, I'm like "Damn dude, what the hell was going on?"

I like the portrayal of a writer as a sort of crazy, semi-drugged up guy with a seemingly endless well of passion within him or herself. I've been there, writing for so long I don't' eat. I've gone to bars and stood mute for hours, watching social interactions to get better descriptive techniques in my mind. Writing is crazy. It is nonsensical. I know now why not everyone does it.

This has been my birthday weekend, and its been VERY crazy in some ways. One day, in a tell all book, I might give a few tidbits, but its the usual cocktail ladies and gents. Alcohol, Women and Drugs, as predicted.

But i'm a writer, and I've decide to put a snippet of what i'm writing here. Like I said, one day the full details might surface, or they may not. Anyone who requests more, I'll e-mail them the rest of what I have. [En-Joy]

HOTEL PARTY - PART DEUX - THE SNIPPET : -0

March 20th, 2008. 10:50 p.m

I spend the next hour or so talking to a cute girl from Boston. She’s leaving the next day, and I toy with the idea of trying to make out with her near the bathrooms but I toss it aside.

There is a bartender at the restaurant I’ve always wanted to hook up with, this gorgeous brunette that reminds me of a young Winona Ryder.

The crowd is a mixture of middle-eastern looking folk and capitol hill types. I hang with two girls for a while, Billie and Jordan. Billie is celebrating her birthday as well, and Jordan is one of her closest friends. I make small talk and snap a few pictures with my digital SLR.

I’m waiting on Amy to call me. After breaking open my emotional dam to Jen, I’m dying to see her. Her words gave me the final bit of strength in what I had to say. I was happy to be a priority for her tonight.

I end up being wrong.

Its almost 2 a.m and I realize I’m not going to get the call. I text her to see whats up, and she tells me she don’t think she’ll make it. My heart sinks to the floor. I can’t believe it, because I really needed the buttress of seeing her. I wanted a kiss, or a hug. I wanted to just see her and smile. That is all I would have needed.

Patrick comes over and rests a massive paw on my shoulder.

“We are heading out in ten minutes. Did you drive here? “ he says.

“No, I walked.”

“Okay. You can ride with us.” He says.

With that, it was confirmed. I was going to the drug party.

Bzzzzt.

Yoshi is hopping up and down in a strange way. “ I have to pee pee.” He says with a chuckle. I laugh. Patrick’s girlfriend hops out to grab some water from the seven eleven. Two other guys go to find their car to get parking. As we walk inside the hotel, I swear I can hear the a Quentin Tarantino soundtrack play in my head. The atmosphere was a hybridization of the 70’s era, laid to the back drop of contemporary interior decorating. The hotel has a lime green décor, and the walls are dotted with amateurish pictures of non-famous people. The place is clean and very hip. This is definitely a place do have an after party.

The room is great. I notice a few books laying by a wall that is covered in mirrors. A large tv-set attached to a swivel is facing the group. A small table in the left corner of the room is filled with DVDs, bottles of water and small snacks. We all file in and I slump to the floor. It’s a bunch of guys and one girl, but the vibe is cool. I’ve done this before, the party-hard then party-harder and get fucked up vibe. Everyone sits in a semi-circle of sorts, staring at nothing. A few of Patrick’s friends have this look in their eyes, a glazed looked that suggest a longing for something. It is a manifestation of group think, the leader and alpha male providing for his flock. Soon it happens.

[ end of snippet ]

Cheers.

Oh my Ex girlffriends

2008-03-23T01:30:00.000-07:00

I'm fresh from a party at the Japanese house.

The Japanese house is a place i;ve been partying at for a few years. Two fellows I know celebrated their birthdays. Twenty-seven and Twenty-eight respectively. I always enjoyed these parties. Over the years I've come to associate a certain feeling with the house; its smells, the people and the random circumstances that happen. Tonight, I ran into my ex-girlfriend Yuko.

My story with Yuko is like many stories of "weird love". Yuko was Japanese, and my family had a grand time asking about her. My mother would always call her "yako" or "yuka" but never "yuko". I would always have to explain to family members her name, and explain that she wasn't chinese, but Japanese.

The funny thing about my relationship with Yuko, was that it was built on a foundation of intense emotion. She was reeling from the ravages of a bad former relationship and I was just ready to be with someone qualified. We played video games in her apartment, ate late night dinners at many restaurants and talked each other to sleep late at night. In the christmas of 2004, I went home for a two week vacation. When I went to the airport, she dropped me there, in her very comfortable Jetta. I gave her a warm kiss on the lips. "I'll see you in two weeks." I said.

This was not to be.

When I returned to the states, Yuko wasn't there. It would be a full nine months before she came back to the U.S. During that time, I saw my grandfather die, and one of my best friends killed himself. When Yuko, finally returned in August of 2005, she didn't want to hear from me, or talk to me. It had to do with a brief liaison I had with a girl she might have met, but I'll never know. It didn't matter.

This was the weekend of Exes. On Thursday I spent time with another ex of mine, and it was an interesting affair. When you are around a person you love, who treats you like a friend, its like walking into a maze knowing you will get lost. The lips that touched your body are now afraid to even say certain things. The hands that caressed you early in the morning are afraid to touch you, and even words and gestures are limited. Its like being a pariah of sorts, a leper even. It is like the very things that made you close are the same things that keep you apart.

At my friend's birthday party at the Japanese house, I was surprised to see Yuko. Her hair was different. It was a brown color.
"I did it just before I went to Paris." she said.

I talked to her when I was buzzed, and the alcohol betrayed me. I spoke about things I had been doing over the last two years since we spoke, and for a while it seemed like she actually wanted to speak to me. "We should hang out sometime." I said. She nodded, and then when I told her I didn't have her number, she told me to e-mail her. That was a sign that it made no sense.

My other ex, who I saw on Thursday wasn't in the same boat, but it was almost the same thing. We took pictures and it was almost uncomfortable for her to put her hand around my waist. Whenever I spoke to her, certain expressions were stilted and certain things were never said. It is the conundrum of loving someone when they can't reciprocate. It is the ultimate representation of unrequited anythings.

It doesn't bother me that Yuko doesn't' want to see me. I haven't seen or spoken to her in almost three years. Whatever love or affections I had for her have dissipated into that place where my dead grandfather rests, and where the soul of one of my best friends lies. One can't help but remember how a person loves you.

You remember holding their hands as you walk down a nameless street, feeling blissful in each other's company. You kiss and talk about random things while eating dinner in a nameless cafe. You make love looking into each other's eyes, forgetting the world as your bodies caress each other.

These are the things that immediately spring into your mind when you see an ex. Does she think about the same things? I dont' know. It doesn't really matter. What is done is done. The past is the past.

Whatever love I have for someone will always remain within me, but I will never try to force their hand. I won't make petulant requests for their company, nor will I try to prove myself in some extreme manner. Rather, I will hold on to the notion that I was loved and that I was appreciated at some point in time. That means that in the future, someone else can love me and be affectionate towards me.

I'm twenty-six years old, and I'm still growing up. Fate itself seems to be teaching me a lesson, putting two girls I love a few feet in front of me, almost teasing me and taunting me. It is as if fate is saying that I am looking at the past, an unrealized ideal that I cannot comprehend, and old situation that has beauty within that I can no longer touch, or sense. Fate is telling me thatI had something wonderful, but now, I have no more.

The party was fine, with a mixture of drinks, interesting people and good music. But what am I left with after this weekend? A dull rememberance of the beauty of my past? Or am I looking forward to the unseen riches of the future?

I don't know.

I can't forget the girls i've loved, or the reasons why. When Yuko disappeared for nine months, the last thing I remember her telling me was that doctors found a microscopic cancer cell in her uterus. I was stressed out for months worrying about her, then I gave up. I had to let go.

With my other ex, I realized I loved her in a way that made me feel almost crippled. I wanted to hear her laugh, I wanted to see her smile. I wanted to smell and touch her. I didn't need her to tell me anything. Just seeing her was enough. Hearing her voice talk to me was more meaningful than any massage, or any kiss. But she wasn't there. She was far away, thousands of miles away.

So what have I learned?

I've learned that you don't always get what you want. You don't always understand the meanings behind what life throws at your. But at least you know that you loved, you lived, you existed. Whether or not your ex doesn't have it in her to kiss you anymore, or she can't stomach spending time with you because of a slew of reasons she created, it doen'st matter. I hold within myself the knowledge that I have loved, I have given, I have lived.

In the end, that's probably all there is, isn't it?

Twenty-six and counting. Cheers to a wonderful life.

Life 4 inches at a time [PreBday Thawts]

2008-03-19T09:41:00.000-07:00

Today is Wednesday, March 19, 2008.

Last year on this very day, I was in Barcelona, probably sipping on a cafe con leche. I spent my 25th birthday in Europe, far away from almost everything and everyone I knew.

Today, I'm sitting in my room, staring blankly at my computer screen. Naturally, this leads one to reflect. I'm not sure what to speak about honestly, but I feel like with any blog a person needs to say something before they usher themselves into another age bracket?

Maybe I could talk about love, growth, the economy or probably Global Warming. Who knows. I have no poignant thoughts on the brain of late.

Maybe I'll blog about nothing in particular, and write a little poem that reflects my state of mind.
One thing I realize about this blog thing, its pretty challenging at times. This thing is supposed to be a sort of online diary, a forum where anyone can hop onto your page and read what you've been up to. Much of what I've been up to, I don't want to say.

Maybe I'm too shy, or a little too reserved when I think of who might be reading these blogs. Does it really matter if I say whatever is on my mind? The most hits i've received in a day are 120. Can my life really be affected if an extra 120 people know a few tidbits about someone they will probably never meet?

Who knows.

I've toyed with the idea of writing another blog, the one were I can REALLY speak my mind. Rant if you will. Talk about my life's frustrations, things that are approaching that sometimes keep me awake, disturbing adult behavior, unrequited love, the works.

But who knows. These aren't things someone really has to focus on are they? We are in the age where people can find out almost anything if they search hard enough. I'm just doing people a favor, and putting it out there before the masses come calling.

I can say without reservation that in my life so far I have seen some pretty ugly things. The dark side of human nature, people and events. I try to ignore these things, but I realize that when some really f-ed up stuff happens to you, it can really sit with you for a LONG time. This sometimes makes me desire to be "normal". But what is normal anyway? I don't think anyone is normal. Half of my relationships are destroyed by the hangups my exes have over their former boyfriends. Do the wrong thing, you become that guy, and you are gone. Caput.

Everyone has their frame centralized based on what happened to them in their life, good or bad. Who is normal? The chick with the eating disorder because she hates herself or the guy who does lines to forget about his friend that killed himself? What is normal?

Each time I hear about people dying on the news I feel nothing. Worse, when people close to me have died and I don't know how to react. How can I? We are in this weird, desensitized world where no one generally thinks past how far they can tolerate discomfort.

I've also seen some amazing things. I've traveled, I've met beautiful people I care and love. I've seen one of the better sides of humanity, the value of family, good friendships, and priceless moments. I've sat on a beach in Hawaii, staring at the sunset, realizing how big the world is. I've heard my father tell me he loves me, looked a hurricane directly in the eye and dodged a few near death incidents. I've had broken bones, and a broken heart. Christ, I still have a broken heart. I've lived eh?

Even though i'm sitting in my room, alone and in my underwear typing this, I have to be thankful.

Yesterday I was walking home. I was feeling like a huge cloud was over my head. This happens to everyone in a major city if you don't have that many people to interact with. Its almost like everyone is a mannequin, and you are walking by everyone in slow motion. You don't hear any voices because you have your headphones on, drowning out the world. You don't see any smiles, or looking into anyone's eyes. You walk straigth ahead, like society's runway model, unaware of anything in the periphery, all you see is that walkway that leads to the photographers.

I was feeling like this. I had just returned from walking around aimlessly for a few hours. About fifty feet in front of me, I saw a man struggling to push his wheelchair up a small ramp that lead to the sidewalk. A passerby helped him and when the man regained control of his chair, I walked past. This man--I have no idea what ailment he had--could only push the wheelchair forwards a few inches at a time. His head rested awkwardly on his chest, and he was twitching. Even so, his eyes seeemed much brighter than mine. I, the person in full control of my faculties had darker eyes.

Immediately I felt ashamed of myself. I felt the need to cry surge within me as I wondered about what I was truly thankful for. What is wrong with you? I said to myself. Even if there isn't much going on right now, you can walk, you can talk, if you get lucky, you can get laid. You aren't living life four inches at a time.

This emotional charge has probably lead me in a spiral of thinking about the past. I've been in a few car accidents, and I've suffered some major injuries in my lifetime. These leave me in a fluctuating state of pain, which I find annoying, but i'm not crippled. Even though I tend to limp every now and then, I can still run if I need to, and walk a few miles every other day or so.

Whoever reads this, I might dismiss this as meaningless in a day or so. Regardless of that fact, it is all i can think about right now. The time your inner voice in the loudest, is when you have nothing to say, and no one to say anything to you. Add a Spring Break time period to that, and you have a regular existential birth about to happen.

Who knows what life means. So what if I was in Barcelona last year, and this year i'll probably be sitting in some Cafe in DC somewhere. I'm not unhappy to be alive. I don't really have that much to complain about. I've realized as I get older that a few things happen:

(a) you see the bad side of people you love, and you can choose to hate them, or get over it.
(b) you will experience the death of someone close to you, sooner or later. No one escapes.
(c) you will fail a few times at things you believe you could NEVER lose at. Life teaches all.
(d) you will have at least one or two major regrets. Things you can never change. Ever.
(e) you will have the choice to call someone to say hello, or tell them you love them, but you won't.
(f) you will either decide to focus on your career as the focus of your life, or take your own steps towards what your life will be. Either way, its fueled by the notion of death at the end of the road.
(g) you will have lots of fun if you so choose.
(h) you will realize your own meaning of life and death, sooner or later.
(i) you will be challenged to change a bad habit you have, or you will lose people very precious to you if you don't.
(j) you will realize the words of your peers when you were a child make perfect sense.
(k) you will fear having children of your own someday.
(l) you will have a moment where you can completely change your life, or stay where you are, knowing it will keep you trapped for years to come.
(m) next year, you'll realize these things all over again. :p

Okay that's not some comprehensive list, but its MY list... and you are reading MY blog...so there! :p

Anyways, lately I've been like "screw it". I'll tell my thoughts within reason. I've been hesitant at times to write because I think certain people might read my blog, but hey, I'm not that important. I get comments from random people in different countries. The people closest to me refuse to read my blog, so I'm safe. I'm still trying to get my sister to read one of my 76 posts.

So ladies and gents, so ends the rant. Maybe there wasn't much point to this. Tomorrow i'll go back to my usual witty re-telling of whatever I do on my birthday. Hopefully it will involve women, drugs and alcohol.

Peace

Nerdy Models, Touchy Feely and Dinner Parties

2008-03-09T22:54:00.000-07:00

SUNDAY 11:45 P.M

I’m in the middle of a Kitchen in Mount pleasant, and four people are touching my head.

“I love your hair.” My friend says. She is an adorable Serbian, with classic dark European features; almost six feet of height, dark hair and sharp eyes. A few other people are touching my hair as well, including a moody guy named Peter, and a quiet Asian-American named Rebecca. The hair touching exercise came from a height comparison between myself and Peter.

“We are both almost six two right?” he says.

“Well, I have on these sneakers,” I say. “They push me up to about six two and a half, but I’m really six one.”

I had been drinking a lot of wine, so I can’t remember why everyone started touching my hair. They said it was cool, and the attention was interesting. I was at a dinner party.

During the night, our conversation was interesting. It floated between talking about breaking paradigms of thinking, the discourses of our failing social system, mother-love complexes and being attacked by wild animals.

This weekend has been interesting, as many of my weekends have been. I went to a 90’s dance party on Saturday night that had a high ratio of women and gay men. So high in fact, that many of the girls were dancing with themselves, amped up on brownies, mixed drinks and the sound of La Bouche blazing through the airwaves.

SATURDAY >:

It seems at these parties I always meet a very tall, very attractive woman. Last week, I met a statuesque Serbian girl ( a different Serbian ) who looked like she used to model. She went to American University and habit of punching me as I spoke to her. Tonight, it was a girl form Minnesota who looked straight out of an Italian Vogue catalogue. She was at least 5’10, with dark olive skin, jet black hair and those large eyes that make you think of porcelain dolls, or 1960’s European movies.

I found it funny that she referred to many of the patrons at the part as “white people”. I laughed to myself whenever she said this. “White people eh?” I replied. “I have identity issues.” She told me.

During the night, in between drinking a little too much, scarfing down brownies and dodging the advances of a drunk and very gay Latino guy, we salsa danced and talked about her job in IT. I found her fascinating. Probably because she was the hottest nerd I’ve ever met. Take a prototypical model-chick. Put her in an IT job, and you had Kristen.

At the party I saw a classmate of mine I hadn’t seen in at least 10 years, who was now married to a tall white guy from the Bahamas. They were an adorable couple. During the night I realized I had been drinking too much because I kept talking about myself being a writer to everyone.

Writers hate talking about being a writer. We just like to write and hope people appreciate it.

Nothing crazy happened. I met a girl named Virinda who goes to George Mason University who immediately told me that her friends said she dates too many guys. “I’m not a whore she says.”

“I believe you.” I reply.

In reality, I didn’t believe anything. I was more than tipsy and there was this cute girl sitting on a couch by herself. Her dating numerous guys was actually a plus. Later in the night I would see her gay friend dancing in what can be described as “nasty” with her.

There were a few good moments. I was upstairs waiting on someone to exit the bathroom and I suddenly heard “Marcus! Marcus!” echo from downstairs. A La Bouche song was playing and it was my Jam. I ran into a throng of girls, all screaming as I appeared. That was a good moment.

Miss model-nerd left and gave me her card. I found it funny that the address of where she worked was in a place called “Milky Way”. Doesn’t get more hot and nerdy than that. Maybe I’ll see her someday.

At some point during the party I start snapping pictures and try to catalogue the chaos. Elli, the cool Greek girl, was celebrating her birthday. My friend Cathryn, who I’ve also not seen in like ten years, was having a blast. I also met a few cool Harvard students with heavy accents. One, I thought was Indian.

“I hear an English accent.” I said.

“Well, I’ve lived in London, but I’m not English.” She replies.

“Oh, are you Indian?” I ask.

“No, I’m from Bangladesh.”

“Ah…”

It has been a while since I’ve met someone from Bangladesh. Everyone make sure to remember, Bangladesh is beside India, and they are different people! Say otherwise and you’ll be in trouble :p

Her friend was an Aussie who also went to Harvard. I made a lame joke about being an Aborigine which didn’t fly. After I was sufficiently buzzed and found myself doing a particularly intense running man dance, I decided to go home.

---- ----- ---

SUNDAY 5:30 A.M

For a brief moment, I am in a movie. I’m sitting on my bed beside my cute friend, who is playing my guitar. With vodka in my system, I explain at length the mechanics behind learning basic guitar and try to motivate her to do exactly what I’m saying. As she sits there, occasionally sipping on a cup of water (which we later find out has mysterious white particles in the bottom) I realize I don’t want to try anything with her. I’m completely tired and buzzed to the point where all I can focus on is what is presently on my mind. In this case, it is teaching guitar. Its 5 A.M and I do a shoddy rendition of a song I’ve been playing for a while. I walk out into 30 degree weather in slippers and follow my friend to her car. I shoot her a text asking her if she got home safe. Then I fall into dreamland without wondering why I didn’t try to kiss her.

8:45 P.M

This is the day of the dinner party. So everyone at some point was touching my hair, I drank lots of wine and again found myself trying to understand why I’ve been very hesitant about certain things lately.

I’m trying to plan a proper Eurotrip, and thankfully, I know a bunch of European women now who all have places to recommend. My tall Serbian-glass-of-water friend says:

“Go to Croatia. It has the most beautiful beaches you have ever see.”

(Okay she said “seen”, but I’m just being an ass.”)

Another friend, the cool Asian, says I should definitely checkout cheap airfares to fly wherever I need to go. I think its cool. I think I might go to Greece and hang out with Zeus for a bit. I’m tempted to go to Cologne. My friend said the hottest women in history were there. A country chock-full of six foot blonde women with interesting sexual dispositions. Can anyone say “hrrrmmm..”?

Alas, the weekend is over. After a semi-chilly bike ride home, I’m back in my room, staring at this very computer screen. My fan is echoing in the background and I’m still wearing a fleece vest and my scarf. I want to sleep, but I feel like writing. Typing pages of prose until nothing makes sense and life itself it some weird kind of aberration. Should writing be effortless? Should women be less hesitant around me? Or should I shave my head? Who knows.

I realize tonight that I might be in a phase. A phase where I’m hesitant for subtle subconscious reasons. Or I might just be tense because of my impending foray into the real world. Whatever it is, I’ll deal with it, and hopefully meet some more Serbians with soft lips and tall glasses of wine for me to sip on.

Toodles.

GIRL ON GIRL = Entertain Me

2008-02-23T12:29:00.000-08:00

Its been one of those nights, the kind that leave you wobbly in the morning, filled with eighty percent smiles, ten percent regret and another ten percent of stuff you’ll realize later down. I’m at the GIANT food store in Columbia Heights, and my mini shopping cart reminds me that I’m not really that aware of what I’m doing. A quick peek into my basket would reveal a bag of Tostitos, shredded cheese, oatmeal cookies, Raisin Bran and some spaghetti. My head is throbbing a bit—Fridays will do that to you—and I realize I’m hobbling around with a post-inebriated gait. Ignoring the occasional glimpse I get from people (they must be wondering why the dude in the really cool jacket is walking so funny) I gather my things and prepare to leave, when I run into a friend of mine. He gives me a once over.

I don’t live in Columbia Heights. He does.

I’m sharply dressed doing afternoon shopping. He is in a hooded sweater with jeans and dirty sneakers. I save him from having to ask any questions.

“I’m still drunk.” I say.

“Nice.” He replies.

I briefly run through the events of the night. Girls kissing girls, me getting entangled with one of the girls who was kissing a girl, lots of drinking, hanging out with friends and eventually passing out on a couch.

“Nice.” He says again.

I notice that he has typical party material in his basket: Two cheap sodas, cups and some vodka. He tells me to come by his party later. I say “sure…” and wish him a good day. There are two parties slated for tonight. If I go, I won’t be drinking.

In the grocery line, I find myself staring at a place outside that says “Georgetown Valet” for what seems like an eternity, then I pay for my items and go. I sit on my bike, and my mind briefly flashes back my friend’s apartment. We were pre-gaming before heading to a bar (I was pre-gaming more heavily) and the conversation was about boys. It was me, Miss J and Miss M.

“So I met this guy.” Miss M says. “He is such a Jew… and you know I love Jews!”

She chirps a cute laugh.

“Yes, you are a Jew lover. But you know his mother will never let you marry him because you are Italian.” Miss J replies.

“Ah… my Jew boys, I love them.”

“What’s his name?” Miss J asks.

“Eli.” She replies.

I raise an eyebrow. Well it could be a Jewish name.

“Hrm, is he as Jewish as you know, Jesus?”

(she pronounces ‘Jesus’ as “Hey-soose”)

“No, no, no, “miss M replies. “He isn’t Mexican.”

I laugh to myself, watching the drunk conversation. We are almost ready to head out, and Miss M explains her rationale for the guys she dates. Apparently, as an Italian, she wanted to rebel against her parents by dating more Anglo-esque guys.

“I like pale, freckly boys with no hair. “ she says, flashing me a quick smile.

“No hair… you mean bald?” I ask.

“No, I meant no body hair.”

I laugh again, I really am a guy. She continues.

“Yes, every boy I’ve brought home my parents don’t like. All these blue-eyed hairless boys.”

She we go through a series of discussions about body hair, including information on how hairy her father is, which I find hilarious. She also mentions that her parents are “probably totally racist”. She said that when she told her mother she supported Barack Obama, her mother replied. “You know he’s black right?” Miss M says she then said: “Oh, he’s half-black mom.” To which her mother replied. “That’s half too much.” She then tells me a brief story about New Jersey and the migration of blacks into certain communities which threatened jobs and such. The information comes out in a stream—I drink all the while she tells me this—and for some reason I keep thinking about the Sopranos while she’s talking.

Miss J returns from her bedroom and sits on the counter of her kitchen sink.

“Don’t you rebel Marcus?”

I think about it for a second while the girls discuss another friend of theirs.

“You know,” Miss M says, “That friend of mine, in high school she had a black boyfriend, that was her rebellion.”

Miss J tosses the question back at me.

“Are you rebelling against your parents by dating white girls?” she says.

“Well I can’t say I’m rebelling per se.” I reply.

“I’ve always been an equal-opportunist, and I think who you date sometimes depend on who you hang out with the most.”

I make mention of my “Asian period” when I hung with a ton of Japanese people pretty heavily, a pleasant side-effect was a number of Asian girlfriends.

“So I think its relative…. But I must admit I probably shy away from some things that remind me of Jamaica. So in a way, socially I guess we all rebel in one way or another.”

By this point I’ve had two glasses of wine and three beers in the space of ten minutes.

HOME : I think about the conversation briefly as I carry my bike inside. Then I think about the bar.

BAR: The hours that followed after the pre-gaming session were a blur. All I know is that I think I was grossly overcharged for my tab (I had three Guinness’s and a PBR….wait I think my tab was right!) and then my friends bought me a few more drinks. I touched the hair of a bartender I know. It was normally blonde and it was an interesting brown colour. Kind of hot. People buy me drink while I do the same, which creates a nice sprialling effect for the next few hours which—

I’m in the Bar standing near the wall with my friend. We talk about the usual stuff, the week, work, life etcetera. I’m surveying the room, thinking of who, if anyone I feel like approaching. I approach anyone I want to generally, and with my growing buzz (which would lead me to certain ruin) my confidence was much higher than normal.

“I’ll be back.” I say to my friend, and head to the bar.

At the bar, I meet a girl named Erin, and accidentally call her cheap. (Note: Do not ask a girl if she works at a non-profit after she tells you she is buying the drinks because they cost much less money. )

I run into Liz, a girl I’ve been seeing at this very spot once a week. She gives me a perfunctory smile as I walk by. I run into miss J and miss M, who are hanging with this guy named Dave. Dave is wearing a full khaki suit, which I find interesting. The conversation lags a bit, then I return to my friend. The conversation goes into BS some more, then I’m ready.

A set of girls are in front of me, one or two of them give me a little smile. Suddenly, the crowd erupts into a roar of cheering and whooping. Apparently its someone’s birthday—and my buddy and I exchange confused looks.

“What’s going on?” I say to the group directly in front of me. A short girl who reminds me of an Elf replies.

“Its Beth’s birthday!” she says.

In seconds Beth arrives. I wish her happy birthday and she extends a hand to shake mine.

“I don’t shake people’s hands when its their birthday. Come here!” I give her a warm hug and chit-chat with her and her friends for a few. After that last Guinness, the night gets a little blurry. At some point during the night, a hand touches me on my back. It is Sam, a cute girl I met at a REALLY wack party last week.

“Marcus!” she says, giving me a hug.

“Sam!” I reply with equal gusto.

Another body floats by us almost a little too fast, its Tara, another girl I met at the same party. She’s Sam’s friend. I squeeze the muscle behind her forearm gently. Always gets attention.

“I sent you an e-mail this evening.’ I say to her.

“Ah, no way man! Nice try!” she says, and walks off.

The truth is, I did send her an e-mail. Regardless, my buddy decides to leave and I realize that I’m getting drunk. At this point I know I cannot safely ride my bike home, creaky and non-functional as it is. I touch miss J, letting her know that I’ll be crashing at her place. In the next thirty minutes, not only do I hit on Miss J, prompting her to say “If we do that, we won’t be friends anymore,” I hit on the girlfriend of a guy I know in a very roundabout way. She reminds me of an Actress on TV and I always remind her of it. I went just a bit too much this time. Then shortly before I left, a lot of girls started to kiss one another. (This tends to happen a lot at 2 a.m I realize). This time I wasn’t going to be left out. On of the really friendly ladies is Liz. With alcohol fueling me, I try to initiate a three way kiss with the girls, but the friend isn’t’ having it. She smiles at me then darts across the room and begins kissing another girl. I settle for Liz.

Soon afterwards, Sam tells me I should totally go for Tara and try to kiss her. I repeat this statement to Tara verbatim. She reminds me about the e-mail while grabbing her coat. I laugh. At this point I THINK I got a girl’s number… but for the life of me I can’t remember. I think I remember saying “So yeah, we should hang out.” But everything else is fuzzy. By the time I reach back to miss J’s place, (they almost left me) I’m hit full-on by the effects of drinking twelve or so dense beers in the space of an hour. What follows isn’t worth typing.

HOME – I’m drinking water and preparing to watch an episode of Stargate Atlantis. Two parties tonight? Hrm… can anyone say, “Rock n’ Roll?”

Phone Sex With a Robot

2008-02-18T19:37:00.000-08:00

My neck is acting up today. It’s a result of some whiplash—due to the presence of a bird in my room. Two weeks ago, I woke up to a shuffling noise in my room. As I opened my eyes, a thing flew over me, a blur I couldn’t really discern as I was still foggy. Regardless, I freaked. I fell off my bed, knocking over my space heater and slammed into the door, somehow managing to shout “Fuck!” at the same time. I spent the next hour trying to cajole the poor creature to get the hell out of my room, reinforcing the opinion that animals really aren’t that smart. Some might be, but this bird certainly wasn’t. I wonder how a person could explain the concept of glass to a creature who’s daily life consists of eating crap and crapping on things.

I spent most of the day in Chinatown, experiencing another one of those rainy days. I’m riding on my bicycle, which is now creaking magnificently, and I enjoy the wet drops seeping through my trucker hat as I enjoy the inner vista of Washington D.C. I go to Urban Outfitters—my latest treasure trove for interesting mental fodder—and pickup two books. I’ve been reading with a monstrous appetite lately. Since the start of the year I’ve read eight books:

Think and Grow Rich, The Game, The Road, Spook, Fast Food Nation, I’m Dreaming of Gwen Stefani, Working Stiff, 22 Jamaican Stories and Brave New World.

I pickup Secrets of a Model Dorm and Rules of Attraction. This is my stilted form of research into sharpening my writing craft. I’ve written a lot, and lately I feel the need to do more non-fiction than a bunch of fast-paced thrillers. The more I read non-fiction (especially those with lots of sex, introspection and random scenarios) is the more I know I can tell a GREAT story for example, this happened today:

February 18, 2008:

I’m sitting in my room, watching Tony Soprano eat ice cream. I think to myself it would be great to do something sexual with his wife Carmela. She has that constant look of stress and sexual tension built into her so well it seems she’s just dying to get laid, multiple times. My phone rings and I don’t recognize the area code. I answer.

“Hello.”

A woman speaks to me. Her voice sounds like the voice you hear in any elevator; computerized, young and hot.

“This is IP Relay.” She says.”Someone is calling you using their computer to communicate with you.”

I raise an eyebrow.

“Uhm.. who is this person?” I say, playing along.

“I am not allowed to tell you who the person is, but I can initiate a conversation.”

I smile for a second. The woman really sounds like a robot.

“What is this?” I ask. I am genuinely confused.

“IP Relay allows someone to talk to you while they are using an online service. They will type something, and I will read it to you while they type. You can respond, then you must say “Go Ahead” then I will type your response to the person.”

“Okay…” I reply.

“Is that a Go Ahead?”

“No….wait, I mean, okay to you, I still don’t know who that person is.”

“Are you going to initiate the chat?”

“Sure.”

“Is that a go ahead.”

“Yeah, Go ahead.”

I hear furious clicking of keys in the background. I wonder if she’s really typing. She has a flat monotone that doesn’t’ sound human. It is perfectly practiced and whatever questions I ask don’t seem to stimulate her emotionally. I wonder if she’s a new prototype from Japan.

“The conversation has been initiated. You may begin speaking.”

“Who is this?”

“Is that a go ahead?”

“Whoops, yes, Go ahead.”

More clicking. What would come next would be disturbing and also fascinating. The lady begins speaking.

“What do you mean you don’t know who this is? I let you come all over my face this weekend. How many deaf guys do you know?”

I froze. For two reasons. One, the lady said it with ZERO emotion but managed to somehow mimic it in a way that reminded me of any number of crazy ex-girlfriends. Two, Cum on who’s face?

“Okay, I get it. This is some kind of weird prank. What is this?” I say.

“Is that a go ahead?”

“No this is not a ‘Go Ahead’ I’m talking to you.”

“I’m sorry sir, I’m not allowed to speak to anyone while the chat is in session.”

“Well if you don’t tell me what this is then I’m hanging up. What is this?”

Silence.

I hang up, and look at the phone. This really is America, I think to myself. I pause my Sopranos episode on my computer and grab my bag, the day awaits.

End of daily log

We’ll see what happens. As the days go by and my scenarios get more bizarre, I also have to grow and change as a person… y’know, so the story can have meaning and what not. I just watched this film called 4 Months. It won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Now that was a film. Ballsy.

I wonder If that lady is going to call me back.

Giant Cum

2008-02-16T08:19:00.000-08:00

"Is that Paris Hilton on your shirt?" A guy says to me. I'm looking straight down into a urinal, watching dark yellow liquid escape my body through a convenient route. Without raising my head, I say "No, its just a random blonde chick." "Oh," he continues (he himself relieving his body of fluids as well), "I just came back from the Las Vegas Porn convention and I might have met that little chick who's on your shirt."

This was in the men's bathroom at Local 16, a bar on U St. It was weird enough that I had "urinal-side" conversation, but what are the odds that the guy beside me just happened to come from the city of Sin?

During the night, my shirt had been light conversational fodder, and I do mean light. Its a thin yellow shirt with an image printed on it. In full colour, it is a picture of an attractive blonde woman eating a half-finished donut. She is wearing a white shirt that reads "GIANT CUM" in large black letters. The shirt has been siting idle in my wardrobe for about three months as I couldn't really decide where to wear it. I toyed with the idea of wearing it when I was at home in Jamaica but decided strongly against it. A guy wearing a shirt that said those words, girl or not, would probably be taken as gay and promptly dispatched.

It’s Friday, and its my friend’s birthday. I receive a long text message somewhere between six and seven p.m telling me to come to Saint Ex, a bar off 14^th St. I fiddle with the idea of going (I am very tired from spending the entire day shuffling coffee and doing grunt work in Farragut North) and then I play an intense game of indoor soccer. A crushing defeat, a few wasted curses, one of which was “Fucking drop man! Mark you man! Come on! Come on!” which I blurted out three seconds before the end of the game.

When I arrived home, a warm, smelly mixture of sweat and raging hormones, I received a call from my friend Allison.

“Heyyy…” she says.

Her voice always sounds like she’s smiling, if that makes any sense. She says she and some people are traipsing about U st, and they were seeing what I was up to. “Give me a few hours to rest and then I’ll meet up with you guys wherever you are.” I eat a massive meal and try to sleep immediately afterwards. I spent thirty minutes staring at my curtain, realizing sleep will be impossible. I laugh to myself and play some music. This is a part of my Friday ritual—the wanton eruption of music from my speakers—and it fulfills two key things: One, it gets me in a good mood, no matter how boring or lackluster my week was. Two, it gets me a in a good mood, no matter how boring of lackluster my week was.

My track selections are based primarily on my moods from whatever events transpired during the week. I feel a sense of overwhelming Melancholy because some girl I liked pull the ol’ flakeroo on me again, I might start out with some touchy-feely Sugar Ray, segue into some disturbing yet pleasing Flyleaf then go ballistic and listen to some hyper-violent Dancehall music. At that point I am so charged that I am ready to run to the hills and have ten babies with a group of six-foot mountain women.

This never happens, but more often than not, I end up at bars talking to women in a five-foot four to five-foot eight range who are less than willing to be man handled in post-Mavado coitus.

So, like any Friday, I started playing some dancehall music. My mood during the week was somewhat flat. There was no crescendo, no up, no down. It was merely there. As such, a quick dose of dancehall always does the trick. After a few songs played and I heard “Boy get shot inna face”, “Boy get shot inna head”, “My gun…”, “Body on the ground”, Over and over in different songs, I turn it off. Hyper-violent music really does have its own time and place. I switch to the Garden State sound track and listen to some Shins. I felt much better. My no measure of the imagination was I in an excitable mood, but I put on my Giant Cum shirt anyways.

I hop onto my bike, a wobbly dangerous piece of Architecture and head out. I’ve been frequenting U St more it seems. Before it was almost foreign, merely that in between place from destination to destination. Saint Ex is where everyone is. As soon as I walk in, my friends try to zip up my shirt.

“Wow, your shirt says “Giant Cum”.” Allison says. Her friend, Christina, reaches over and attempts to zip up the jersey I’m wearing over the shirt. I laugh.

The conversation runs the gamut, from my non-fiction writing aspirations, using a journal as a tool to cross-examine one’s self with, a rotating story of how a friend spilled beer on someone’s shoes and other things. Downstairs, they are playing old-school hip-hop, which I do not enjoy. Allison and Christina make good fun of it, dancing in tune to the beats. I barely dance these days, much less to old hip-hop that I can’t relate to. Each time I hear “Engine Engine number nine, on the New York Transit line….” I cringe.

Not really because the song annoys me, but I’m in a bar with mostly preppy white guys who raise their hands as the songs come one, as if to say “Dude, that’s my joint!”. After a little while, my Serbian friend strolls in, tall and resolute with a swishy head of hair. I give her a perfunctory happy birthday kiss on the cheek and introduce her to my friends.

The night goes on like this for a while longer. A few people smile and point at my Giant Cum shirt, and I smile back.

We head to another bar, Local 16 briefly. They are playing house music, the kind I really love. I am however, insanely tired and my knees hurt. I won’t be the tall, sexy Euro-dancing Jamaican guy tonight. We sit at a table downstairs. There was a moment when I almost fell into conversation with the ladies about my current track record with meeting “qualified” women. After a few stops and starts, I successfully dodged the conversation,

Not before a few items slipped.

“Have you even been in love?” Christina asked.

“Of course.” I responded with gusto.

“Was she someone you knew?” she says.

“Yes, I knew her from school.”

“Ah…”

Allison interjects.

“That is SO true! I remember when I was in love it was someone I had known for a long time before. He was a friend before I loved him.”

Allison goes on to mention a survey done by National Geographic about cities with the most singles, citing DC and New York as having some of the highest numbers. We chatted on the topic a little more, with me trying not to speak about certain flagging aspects of my life in a bar of all places, Allison no doubt reminiscing about her possibly current love, and Christina looking at me in a way that suggest that if I were to continue speaking, she would probably feel pity for me. I made sure to dodge the rest of the conversation.

“Listen ladies,” I said, straightening up.

“It’s nice to talk about these things if they are a prevailing thought in your mind. For me they aren’t. I don’t want to start chatting about these sappy situations and then you all have good reason to pity me and feel all sorry-like.”

They both reacted at the same time, like a set of Birds being startled in a cage.

“Oh no, No!” they said.

“This is nothing,” Christina started. ”We girls talk about these things all the time.”

“In fact, just before we headed out we were talking about a similar subject.” Allison added. I nodded for a second, then completely switched the conversation. A few minutes later, it was Ben’s Chili Bowl time.

Christina somehow gets served in three minutes behind a line of twenty people. She brings a large, disgusting-looking bowl of fries over. It looks like a cat threw up and then took a large, runny dump on a set of large fries. I was offered.

“I’ll pass.” I said. After some more light conversation, it was time to go.

By now the temperature had dropped at least fifteen degrees, and again I regret my Alfie-isms. I have no gloves and I’m riding my bike back home. I follow the ladies a few blocks from their house and jet home. Inside, I wolf down a donut I bought at 7-Eleven just before I reached home and sip on some soda. Friday was OK.

I flop into bed and wonder if I should watch a movie on Saturday, or walk idly around Chinatown watching out for some of those President’s day sales. No matter, I say, wrapping the covers around me, watching the word disappear under my closing eyelids.

Love, Actually

2008-02-14T18:38:00.001-08:00

It's Valentine's day, and i've received three phone calls to commemorate this day of self-loathing or particularly kinky-sex, chocolate laced underwear and looking at the phone, wishing it were a little cat or some animal that would reciprocate your need for affection.

The first call was from my mother. Apparently, the father of my friend who was my roommate in my freshman year died from some strange complications after doing light surgery. The other two calls were both from one of my best friends. The first explaining to me his need to grab a drink after work, the second to mention being rejected by a girl who he wasn't even trying to talk to.

I think each Valentine's day leads us to think of the previous one. I'm no hopeless romantic, but I like these little days we give ourselves to be more loving, more considerate and more creative in the range of gifts we give. (I've never given any girl a rose.... EVER).

Last year this time, I got a text message from a girl I didn't know liked me. "Do you have a valentine?" it said. I smirked as I read the message, and didn't reply. In two days, she gave me a grisly account of having sex with the guy she chose to be her valentine in her shower. "Ah, " I said to myself. "Maybe there is something to Valentine's day after all."

To celebrate this Valentine's day, 2008, I got myself a copy of Love Actually and bought a footlong Tuna sandwich from subway. Yeah, its weird, but they don't have gourmet cheese and a bottle of wine at Subway. I chose this film, because it makes me feel good. Honestly, I have no desire to feel extremely lonely on this day of days, and in actuality, today is meaningless. Its a day like any other, with a label of love. I remember watching Love Actually in a theatre in Jamaica by myself. In Jamaica we have intermission, and I tell you, when the lights came on, every couple in the house was arm in arm, longingly staring at one another. I had to cough and act like my seat was a buxom brunette, ready to hug me with her slim arms and laugh in a way that tickled my neck.

Either way, I chose this movie because its one of those broader, more expansive love stories. I can either pick the adorable antics of the English writer and his Portuguese love interest, the weird "best-friend-loves-your-wife" situation with Keira Knightley and Hubby, or the very odd love found between two softcore porn stars. I like the soundtrack of the movie and how they shot England. After I watched this movie in Christmas 2003, I was ready to travel to England and live there permanently.

Now, watching the film for the second time, I can say that it stilled moved me in some ways. I like the screen shots showing people meeting each other. I have very fond memories of either meeting people, or being met at the airport. The montage of fathers hugging sons, friends and lovers made me feel like there just might be something left in humanity after all.

So, another day ends and this blog isn't really necessary, but I promised myself I had to write something for Valentine's day, after I watched my movie. The long weekend looms ahead and I feel like I just might take it easy. Watch a movie, eat another sandwich, and try to sleep blissfully, imaging that future moment that someone comes running up to me in the airport and plants a big wet one on my lips, for the world to see.

Dream?

A Jamaican and four girly men

2008-02-12T09:43:00.000-08:00

I’m Tony Soprano, a middle-aged man with a gravelly chest of hair, pummeling the life out of a Indian man in the middle of a jungle that seems vaguely familiar after having a massive ninja fight with four Thai girly men searching for the gay cast member of an odd reality show I’ve found myself in the midst of, when everything erupts into chaos as thousands of Chinese men in full grey overalls start attacking the Thai boys, which is after a brutal cycle of eating spaghetti in a place that seems like something straight out of the Jungle Book, being chased by a very rotund woman who runs like a cheetah, and smiling as my henchman (who happens to be Russian ) prepares to help me beat the life out of the aforementioned Indian man.

That was my dream, or at least what I can remember of it.

I know exactly why the dream was an odd mix of weird images and random circumstances. I’ve been reading this interesting book called Working Stiff, which chronicles the sexual escapades of a late-blooming brit named Grant Stoddard. I ate a large bowl of spaghetti just before my midday nap, was watching bit pieces of The Secret (a movie filled with scenery from everywhere) and listening to Erupt’s “Click My Finger” song, which explains the continuous feeling of a need to dance throughout the entire dream. What I cannot explain is a ninja fight with four girly-men, me suddenly morphing into Tony Soprano, the Chinese riot, or how the dream began.

I remember the last part vividly. After I started to dispatch of the four highly trained girly-men, a door blasts open, and a stream of Chinese guys rush in. Not tens, not hundreds, but thousands. The area (which is a hillside in some foreign country) is filled to the brim with men in gray overalls. Somewhere over a loudspeaker, I hear a voice say that the men are “free” (whatever that means), and as I’m looking at the crowd breakup, someone pinches my wallet. I curse myself, saying “Dude, this isn’t a movie!” because one of the thousands of similarly dressed men took my wallet. I then begin chasing a very suspicious Asian man with Shang Tsung-long hair wearing a green dress-thingy. It looks like he is a lost marauder from that band of desert-roaming pirates in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. I chase this guy (who is probably just the best representation my mind can make of a Chinese thief based on popular media) and it he leaps over a wall and I accost him. This is when I turn into Tony Soprano, beat him up, then hold on to the Indian guy, who was trying to steal my credit cards, business cards and whatever else was in my wallet, as I pummeled the thief. What was weird, almost hilarious, was when Soprano (or me) gets that tell-tale look of satisfaction that comes just before metering out a lot of punishment to someone “deserving” of it before they die, a massive Lithuanian looking fellow with icy blond hair in an Army guys’ crew cut appears from the underbrush, ready to dispatch the guy with me. This makes no sense—Tony Soprano is racist and doesn’t interact with blondes, unless they are prostitutes or his wife—and it is at point I wake up, wondering where I am, and what the hell I was dreaming about.

The last few weeks have felt like this. A bit chaotic, a bit confusing and a little off. I’ve been patrolling the city a lot, watching people, and getting inspired to write. I find it annoying that I am most inspired to create insightful prose when I’m far away from home. I rarely write anything in my room, which is a labyrinthine representation of packaged isolation. I feel like describing moments when I’m in Chinatown, blindly going from bar to bar in Adam’s morgan, riding my bike and fearing it will crash, or most recently, attending a sex-themed party (complete with pornography on the walls, sex candies and condoms in large dishes) and feeling disappointed the crowd was a bit stuffy. (Stuffy could be replaced with “tight-assed” if you wish).

An aspect of my confusion most likely lies in the fact that I am not inspired to write much, and this is fueled by many things. In fact, I have been hesitant to blog any of my thoughts because I’m beginning to see it as a pointless venture. Like much of my writing, it feels empty; a representation of other emptiness around me. Which faceless people read my blog? In what order? Of what nationality?

I have no idea. No tengo idea. Wakarima-freaking-sen.

But this doesn’t really bother me I realize. I just can’t bother to open up. I secretly planned to keep another blog, a private one that could keep an accurate record of my “deepesht, darrrkesssht, thoughts” but I decided not to. I could just buy a journal and call it a day.

This dream was wacky enough to prompt the ever-interesting-and-always-enjoyable bird blog, but there is more to tell, lots more. Tales of rejection, woe, the throes of the work force, racism, animal-based rejection (yes, this is true, even I couldn’t believe it) among other things.

A lot has happened in a few weeks, mostly good, some bad, somethings I can’t label yet. I think I’ll try and go back into the mindset I was in when I started this blog six months ago. It is an outlet for my thoughts to enter the Universe of the internet, where unlike going to a mountain top saying “God, are you there?" and probably hearing a bird squawk somewhere in the distance, I ge to see things like:

I want to go on adventures with you.

Oct 11, 9:14 PM

Is not nuh candy corn, ah di oil inna yuh back! Stop wid dis I’m-too-aloof-and pinky-finger-stiffened-and-gots-near-unattainable-standards-to-give the-bourgeois-the-time-of-day and kill off a ting! Time fi tear up bed sheet and ting.

Nov 9, 5:33 PM

Or maybe

See, we Asians are perpetually perplexed too–Asian girls we think are hella ugly always manage to be considered pretty. So maybe REALLY what is happening is that the average-looking white guys are getting the average-looking Asian girls (for Asians anyway), but you on the outside think that she’s a prize!

Maybe?

Oct 9, 6:37 AM

Either way, the blog will continue. I’ll have to gear up, get recharged and work some stuff out, but a writer needs to write. Alas I will blog anon.

The Super Pants Return!

2008-01-30T15:24:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting down, and breaking in a new pair of pants.

This amuses me, because breaking in a new set of jeans usually requires physical activity, a party or two, and a few thousand steps of walking. I recently bought a new pair of black fitted jeans (the word "fitted" is a gross understatement) and I've started the breaking-in process by wearing them and sitting at my computer desk. I was at my friend's house last night, watching Live Free or Die Hard on his massive HDTV, playing Gears of War and eating a snack I've concocted which consists of Tostitos and shredded cheese (mixed cheddar.) "I got a new pair of paints today." I say to him."Tight pants! Rockstar pants!"

He laughs. This observation is true because these are quite possibly the tightest pants i've ever worn (Purple versace jeans not withstanding). As soon as I tried them on, I knew they were me. They aren't as bad as the "Skinny" jeans I tried on at Urban Outfitters two weeks back. Although these are skinny jeans, for some reason they don't feel like fluffed up Spandex. They have a nice tight fit, have a little leg room and make me feel amazing. These are pants designed for men who wear briefs, but I dont' fall into that category and I can't see myself wearing no underwear (at anytime, not just wintertime). The pants are designed by a guy who named the line Bowie after the original pretty-man himself, David bowie. I didn't spend that much time looking at the rest of his line, I just saw these jeans at a GREAT price and decided to "cop" them.
My last affair with the first pair of pants I dubbed the "super pants" was in early 2007. I was heading off to Europe and French Connection was having a sale. I couldn't resist, as I had been searching for a pair of proper straight leg fitted jeans for a while. I had a venerable pair of black Dolce& Gabana jeans which put up a good two year fight. The Dolces had seen at least four tailors, had the crotch patched an equal number of times, and had a hole or two stiched up near the thigh. Now that I think about it, my D&G's were my first real pair of super pants. When I wore those I felt powerful and classic. Ready for any number of paparazzi pictures with me walking with a nameless soon-to-be supermodel. In retrospect, there are many things I should have never done in those jeans:

1) Play a heated game of Badmington while wearing dress shoes
2) Play a second set of said game
3) Learn a German rave-ish dance called "Jumpstyle" in the jeans.

Now my D&G's are lying on my floor. They are weathered and a little rugged with the tell-tale sing of faded black jeans. I still wear them on occassion, though they fit a bit loosely. The reigning set of super pants from FC still get regular wear, and they are well broken in. "Tight but not toight." is what I like to say, following the description of Goldmember from Austin powers. If he were to see me in my jeans, he would say. "They are toight! Toight like a Toiger!"

I am not entirely sure why I feel so drawn to a well-fitted pair of black designer jeans. I have an ongoing anti-blue jeans crusade ( fodder for another post) and I like to feel "snug" when I walk around. Either way, the current king will know soon enough that a new pair of jeans have creeped in to slowly dethrone him. As time passes and the jeans become more broken in, I will give them a test run, maybe even this Friday. However, walking to the bathroom I could feel the pants hugging my thighs like a lecherous woman and affecting the speed with which I walk.
Its a little sad when you begin to grade how tight your pants are by what you can't put in the pockets. For a few pairs of my pants, they cannot hold my:

Wallet, cellphone or keys... only chapstick.

I should call these the super-tight, superpants. A whole new category. Actually I think I have a name for them:

Pete Wentz Pants.

Yes! The super pants will remain as they are, and now these are the Pete Wentzes.

Ciao.

Salty drinks make Salty kisses

2008-01-27T00:09:00.000-08:00

Its funny how broken things can still be used.

Sometimes I walk around myself, feeling like a sad, emotionally broken creature, who still has use. I sometimes meet an attractive girl, smile with her and spend moments worthy of any number of Dawson's Creek episodes, then she might flake, and act strange. In moments like these, we broken individuals realize that even though we are emotionally winded and a bit jaded, we still have some use. We pick ourselves up, head out into icy winds and go to bars. We drink and entertain idle conversation, sometimes we don't mind when strangers look at us with lascivious expressions, lecherous gazes and leering eyes. So in a way, we are broken, yet functional.

Like my bike.

A few days ago I almost crashed my bike. It was a dangerous affair, with me almost falling face first on the street going at thirty miles per hour. The back wheel was bent out of shape and I was pissed. I was heading to the Giant to get some ice cream for an achy stomach and I almost ended up breaking a collarbone. Long story short, the bike still works. Its broken, yet functional. As I ride through the city I realize the bike isn't in such bad shape. It creaks and groans like Tony Soprano's mother, but it gets me from point A to B.

Broken yet functional.

I wonder sometimes if this is a theme for a lot of people I know. They are injured through circumstance, edgy from limited expecations and a bit frazzled by fortune. They are effectively wading through the marshes of daily life with their nose out of the murky water praying that a Crocodile doesn't make mincemeat of them.

Today was a day of traipsing. First I traipsed around Chinatown regretting my Alfie-isms. My thin French connection pants, sports jacket and scarf couldn't save me today. The wind chill brought temperatures down to the twenties and I felt like I was walking in a cloud of ice.

Later I would reach Adams morgan, stopping by Adams Mill for the first time. Even though I consider myself an open-minded equal opportunist, this bar seemed much whiter than any bar i've been to in a while. This had to do with the song selection more than the makeup of the patrons. As i've stated in a few blogs before, most bars I go to are 98% white. Tonight that statistic was 99.9% until seven or eight black guys walked in, (adding on to me being the 0.1%) and then became the 2%.

Regardless of the math, for about an hour, about 80% of the songs played I didn't know. When I heard the songs, I immediately thought of wheat field and people in large Suburban houses singing along to these songs as they played through a large, black radio. When the songs played I no longer felt like I was in the confines of a major city, I was out in Connecticut in the boonies, where anywhere to your left or right you were liable to run into a deer, get touched by poison ivy, or get bitten by a tick. I recognized a few key tracks, which populate what I call the "white DJ" list. I'm saying this with no bias. There are certain songs that are played in certain bars that are never played in other bars.

Songs with choruses like:

"Pour some sugar on me!"
"Oooooh! Living on a prayer!"
"I'm not here for your independennnnce!"

And the list goes on. Those are the ones I recognized. For a few minutes, I had a spirited conversation with two friends about not knowing that the last song was not sung by Kelly Clarkson, but by formerly hip-hop-ish punk starlet Pink.

I didn't mind the music either way. If I was in a bar with 99% black people, I'm sure i'd hear:

"...my drink and my two step"
"this is why we hot"
"i'm a upgrade yah!"

and the list goes on an on. Quite like a broken record. Broken yet functional.

It was Chrissie's birthday, and she was learning a hot pink shirt with the word "DANGER" emblazoned above the right breast. There was text on the back, but I never took the time to read it. I didn't feel like dancing, and spent most of my time watching three LCD screens flash
"Tom Brady's mystery injury continues." I like watching people drink themselves into supreme states of confidence. A short guy with an interesting haircut had been walking around with a smile all night. I nearly fell down laughing when he literally accosted two blondes.
"Why are you ladies so FUCKING tall??" he said in perfect pitch.
The girls laughed and they started talking.

I sighed. Only in a white bar. No, only in a bar this white.

I'm sure if I was to walk up to random girls and say that I'd be liable to get slapped. Especially since i'm not a short person that can use such profane declarations to my advantage. Eventually some Justin Timberlake started playing and I felt like doing my pop-n-lock routine, but alas, I had no energy.

After Adams mill, I took a quick run to Dupont circle. At this point I really loved my bike. Dupont always sounds like Africa distance wise when I think of walking there on foot, but on my bike it was only five minutes away. I went to Cafe Citron. I was a tad intimidated at first. I was the only black person in line, and everyone had tell tale Latino features. Jet black hair, off-white skin and spanish accents.

Inside, there was a mixture of latin-pop and latin-club music. It was a lot of fun. the place was packed, lots of people were dancing and I had a eight dollar margarita that tasted like a cup of salt water. Even though the DJ was playing remixed latin songs, I heard at least three popular songs remixed to latin beats:

"....I like to move it move it."

I can't remember the others, but they were there! Playing like a broken record. Broken yet... you get the idea.

Cafe Citron exposed more of the segregation of DC clubs. It seems everyone can find a place to group up everyone that resembles them, and sweat together as they walk past people that look a lot like them. I need to go to more latin clubs. I felt unnaturally tall in there, as the average person seemed to be no more than five foot six. At six one, I towered over almost everyone. I stood at the bar and beamed a smile at ladies dancing near to me. In my mind I was saying:

Come with me if you want to live.

In my best Arnie voice.

After Cafe Citron, I rode home, listening to FutureSexyLove for what seems like the tenth time in the last four days. I ride, navigating traffic lights, crazy cab drivers and the occasional pedestrian, singing words to high-pitched songs. Its too late to draw any stares from any passersby. Its too cold for people to be on the street gawking at this Jamaican guy riding a bike and singing along to "Sexyback".

I received at text when I was in Cafe Citroon, a Serbian girl I know told me to come to last call at Bossa--In Adams Morgan--which was a nice 18 blocks away. I shoot a reply.

After party?

She tells me there is something on 18th and Belmont, but then she says not to come. The party is wack. I pop into my room and feel a wave of heat cover my face. I toss my clothes onto my bed, flop into my computer chair and stare at the screen. Maybe I'm not broken and functional.

Maybe i'm just functional.

O Brave New World

2008-01-26T00:07:00.000-08:00

During the winter time, I refer to myself as Alfie.

In the movie Alfie, Jude law is a city-roaming Lothario who is a man of little means but is well established in the female community. Even though it is wintertime in bitterly cold New York, he wears nothing more than a dress shirt, a sports jacket and a scarf. I have the same style of dress during winter ( unless I'm walking ) so I refer to many of my outings as the "Alfie-flexes".

Tonight I was Alfie again, looking somewhat like Sweeney Todd in the beach scene. (If you haven't watched the movie, don't worry that's not a spoiler). For a Friday, tonight was pretty slow. Everywhere I went was a sausage fest, even the infamous Tom Tom was half-empty. Last weekend was much better, every bar was packed and I'm sure a lot of guys got laid.

I finished reading Brave New World today, and I was very impressed by the book. In it, author Aldous Huxley talks about a sort of anti utopia where people are medicated with something called Soma, and have almost every aspect of life controlled through an intense system of biological engineering. When I went into a few bars tonight, I myself felt like taking a "gramme of soma". But, we already have our soma.

Our soma is alcohol. It is our escape from the realities of the world, to sip of drinks that can eventually kill us, boost our confidence and make things dull and less painful. I don't normally drink to escape anything, but its hard going to bar after bar and not having at least one drink.

Drinking isn't fulfilling if you aren't having fun, and I realize that most guys tonight aren't fulfilled. They are the same group of faceless men, all sipping on beers and standing up staring at the women who are dancing in groups. I myself was lost in thought. Tonight wasn't a night to be a socialite, I felt quite introspective. It might have been a mixture of the cold and my lingering feelings of disassociation from earlier during the day, or something else.

I have developed a small obsession with cleaning my room. It is a futile obsession, merely because in a room with limited space, there are only so many drawers and closets you can put stuff into. But there will always be a few extra things hanging about; a grisly menagerie of poor planning poking you in the back all day long. While I was fiddling with my cleaning, I listened to a few albums that always make me sing along to them: I listened to Flyleaf once more, Spiritual Machines by Our Lady Peace, Chuck by Sum 41, and a host of dance tracks, including "blow my whistle bitch" by DJ Alligator.

I've been reading constantly for the last few weeks, which might explain my feelings of isolation on this Friday. After reading a good book--particularly one that deals with weird social issues in an antiutopian society where promiscuity is seen as a good thing--you can experience a small fallout. In one of my earlier blogs, I believe I described an effect called a "disconnect".

"Fallout" and "disconnect" are two different things. To disconnect is basically to experience a mental overload which thrusts you back into reality. (Think, typing 120 pages in 5 days, etc.) Fallout is simply exiting the frame of mind the book put you into.When I was reading Brave New World, I felt like I was looking into the future, a future written with sometimes jumpy prose and dense dialogue. For the few days I read it, I felt enamored by this weird world of strict order, strange rules and interesting societal castes and biases.

Immediately after finishing the book, I wanted to leap into The Road, a tale of a dystopia by Cormac McCarthy(a writing God), but I wasn't sure if I wanted to go from anti utopia to dystopia right away. I think reading those books back to back might affect my reality bubble and stir up some latent depression. But either way, today was a "fallout" day.

I sang along with songs, ironed dress shirts I rarely wear and ran four and a half miles. My tally for the week so far should be about 17-20 miles, since I've been running each day. The running might also explain my lack of impetus to party tonight. At 7:30 I went running from where I live to Dupont Circle and back. I returned at about 8:45 and headed out at about 11. The run was nice, but I think the music was also another factor in my changing mood. On my Ipod I creating a playlist called "jogging mix" which was all over the place. One moment i'm listening a hardcore dancehall track from the mid 90's, to the melancholy overtures of Sugar Ray. My jogging mix was more somber than upbeat. I will remember in the future to stick to heavy metal, dance music, or upbeat, super-violent dancehall to keep me charged when I jog 50 blocks.

But my shining moment came when I was running through Logan Circle, U2's "It's a beautiful day" blasted through my headphones and I looked up to the sky and felt happy to be alive. "It's a beautiful night." I said to myself, chuckling at the thought of Bono making custom versions of the song for joggers, with titles like:

It's a Beautiful walk
It's a Beautiful flight
It's a Beautiful Afternooon

You get the idea. But a good feeling washed over me as I heard the song (though it could have been the endorphins finally kicking in. I think they take longer in 30 degree weather).

Friday is gone, but Saturday is bristling with possibilities.

I'm Fully Alive...

2008-01-24T10:40:00.000-08:00

My staring at my 19 inch HANNS-G wide-inch monitor, and I feel like head banging. I’m listening to Flyleaf, the first-release of the band with the same name, and I’m feeling chills run through my spine… and everywhere else. At first, it was me trying to figure out some of what lead singer Lacey Mosley was saying, but it was mostly her voice. It has a haunting quality that reminds me of quiet churches and scary calliope music.

It makes me wonder about feelings in general. The track “Cassie” talks about suicide, but in a way that make me nod my head and go “Hell yeah!” without feeling suicidal myself. This is an album for people who’ve had issues, or for people who wished they did. Personally I don’t recommend having an album filled with dark, from-the-pits-of-my-soul-yet-kinda-scary music inspire you to toss your hands into the air, but hey, there are enough people with issues to go around no?

Sometimes I feel like I’m walking in a bubble, and everything around me is obscured by this semi-opague coat of the bluish bubble membrane as I walk, Bose headphones on, listening to crappy quality MP4s on my Ipod nano. I feel this way even more when I have odd dreams, today I had a scary dream about seeing a UFO (thanks a lot Anderson Cooper 360!) and then an odd dream about a bomb going off in a restaurant in a high school in Jamaica. They were both extremely vivid dreams that left me feeling winded when I woke up. I’m promising myself not to fall asleep in my clothes again.

I ask myself sometimes if its even worth it writing a blog in detail about little things in my life people will never read, but its part and parcel of the whole writer business. Should I ever become world famous, one day a super-hot girl (most likely from Italy) will approach me, and in her sexiest accent quote one of my blogs. “Yes Mistar Bird.” She will say, putting images of wheat fields and little old men on tiny wooden chairs in my mind, “When I read ah your ah blog, the Jesus and the cock a block, it a made me laugh.”

Okay fine. I doubt this super-hot Italian woman would sound like a super mario impressionist, but from what I’ve heard, thousands will read the blog, many will see it as a gateway into my mind and many will either like me, or despise me for my honesty. Today, I’m not even speculating about that, I’m merely existing, listening to my melancholy album and feeling the occasional spikes of “that good stuff” floating through my system.

I’ve been thinking about Type-A personalities lately. Wikipedia says a Type A personality is impatient, extremely time conscious and driven by goals. They are also very competitive. A type B is more relaxed and easy-going. But there are also type Abs that exist. I think I’m a type AB. When I’m working on something that fascinates me, I will work on it until I fall asleep at my computer desk (which I’ve done before). I will not eat or sleep, and I will demand a lot from those around me should they offer help (this never happens :p). I realized this when I was jogging yesterday. Its like 30 degrees outside, and I toss on some thin clothes and start running, blasting Linkin Park in my ears. My body was aching from the day before, and yet I trudged on, determined not to stop myself just because I was “in pain”. I dunno if that’s’ me being type AB or just being plain crazy, but alas, it’s a passing thought.

Just one of those days I guess. I will leave this blog with a quote from "Cassie."

Do you believe in God
Written on the bullet
Say yes to pull the trigger.
Do you believe in God
Written on the bullet
and Cassie pulled the trigger.

Quarter Life

2008-01-21T20:53:00.000-08:00

She was my Dillan.

A quirky brunette with blue-green eyes, and a disposition that made me want to kiss her everytime she did something odd, or funny.

She could dance and speak volumes about almost nothing.

She was my Dillan.

Nerd Nerd Nerd, Nerd's the word

2008-01-15T14:18:00.001-08:00

I haven't opened my mail "gleefully" in a while.

I've been on a reading binge of late. Reading is truly the writer's domain for inspiration. Like weed for reggae and rap artists and coke and heroine for rockstars.

I ordered a few books off Amazon that I'm itching to sink my teeth into. I already finished I'm Dreaming of Gwen Stefani, which surprisingly was a book less about the pop-star and more about boilogy, human choice and the concept of love. It was a quick and tasty read. I'm currently about 30% through Fast Food Nation, a book i've heard lots about but never read.

After a reasonably interesting Saturday night (realizing i'd made a VERY tall girl sensitive about her height, and trying to get a slice of icebox cake at a birthday party I crashed) I ended up heading over to the house of a friend of a friend to chill and play some Nintendo Wii for a bit. I've always been an adamant, die-hard Nintendo fan. When Playstation came out, I told everyone I hated it (though I secretly wished I had been able to play Final Fantasy 7, Street Fighter Alpha and a host of other games) and stuck to my trusty old N64. I've owned every Nintendo console before the Wii and my love... and subsequent die-hard status for Nintendo crashed after the Wii came out.

I'm old school, and what we old school gamers LOVED about the latest iteration in a new system was one thing and one thing only: An improvement in graphics. When I played then Nintendo Entertainment System, an ergonomically horrible controller and two buttons (A & B) were sufficient for the level of games they had. They all had something to do with hopping on your enemies head, or running in a straight line. When the Supernintendo came out, I was amazed it had a whopping SIX buttons for me to use, which made sense because the games were more complex and required more functions. Then came the N64, which had 7 buttons, one of which was a trigger. Life with Nintendo was now in full 3d, and as such there was a D-pad and a joystick. Each evolution made sense as we stepped upwards and onwards. Then game the Gamecube, which made me happy, because in my naivety I thought the N64 would have Gamecube quality graphics, but alas, I was young. The gamecube had a modified and interesting controller system, marvelous graphics and games that competed with Playstation and the then newcomer, Xbox.

then came the Wii.

After I heard that the Wii wasn't even graphically superior to the gamecube (it was basically the same chipset ) and that it was an "interactive" gaming system, my heart fell into my stomach. I was hoping for playing Mario in some ridiculous Open GL, with his hair bouncing as he ran around a dark cityscape, filled with little mushroom men flashing light sabers or something odd. Instead, I was told that I had to hold a wand and gesture towards the screen.

I hated it. This weekend, I realized my beliefs were justified. I played a bowling game and some tennis. The graphics didn't impress me, neither did the interactive waving of the Wiimote. I wanted a flashy controller, graphics that would be good enough to make me ignore beautiful women for days on end and so on....

I digress... I needed to Nintendo-rant a bit.

So i've been reading a lot of books. When I was Wii-hating that evening, a girl who lived at the residence, Chelsea was giving away books. I took a few (including Fast Food Nation) and felt excited to read them. I've never read a set of semi-feminist Adult Fantasy books.
"They are really fucked up." Chelsea said.

Today though, my gem arrived in the mail. It is the quintessential Scifi book: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

I know Huxley's book is chronicled in the annals of our modern history in a really cool way and after I saw him on the cover, he looks sort of like a brooding Clark Kent with bigger glasses and that "mad writer with class" type of hair. I was intrigued.

So I'm amped to finished my current book and dive into that one. Then maybe i'll try and read on of the Adult Fantasy books. Last night I found it a bit ironic that i'm reading a book on fast food, how it is prepared and how it is seriously affecting people's health, and I almost had a bad crash on my bike on the way to get some Ice cream at 1 a.m in the morning. My stomach was hurting and I felt some Breyer's would sooth me. Going at least 35 miles an hour, I heard something go KRAAATKKT and the bike fell 30 degrees to the side. Luckily, I have reasonable experience in dirt biking(which helps with reflexes with road biking) so I was able to stop the bike in a way that didn't cause me major injury. If I had fallen on my side with the bike going that fast, I would probably have a shattered rib or two and maybe a dislocated shoulder.

Somehow, in stopping the bike, the back wheel was bent completely out of shape. After mumbling to myself a bit, I hopped on, and went to get my ice cream anyways. I'm happy this happened, because I was about to sell the bike, and I would have hated for someone to buy my bike and have gotten seriously injured riding it. The bike is now a relic in my living room.

So, the reading continues and I'm diving in, eyes first.

Love! Love.... love.

2008-01-13T19:12:00.000-08:00

No, I'm not in Love. My mind however, has been reintroduced to the concept in certain ways.

After reading a book written by Chuck Klosterman, Killing Yourself To Live. I realized there were new ways to write. Traditionally, I always thought writing was about putting down details that spark the imagination, work the body up into a spicy lather that makes lines such as:

She was a tall brunette with a lithe body, sensuous lips and an ungainly gait. At first glance, Mark felt his heart flutter as she paused in the doorway.

That makes lines like this make you think of YOUR ideal brunette with a lithe body, not mine. But what If I was to write on paper the details about my ex-girlfriend's body? Or all of my ex-girlfriends? This would be interesting, not to mention extremely personal. However, how else does a writer search for ways with which to explain that which the mind cannot explain. A boxer punches meat, top-class lawyers do lines of coke and actresses date their line directors. Writers write.

I'm reading a new gem, I'm Dreaming of Gwen Stefani, and the author makes an interesting analogy about love and biology. Apparently people have certain predilections to choosing their mates based on characteristics as odd as the length of the middle finger and the circumference of the wrist among other things. Therefore he asks, "Can we really choose to love, if our genes tell us who to 'love'?"

This made sense to me. Going back to my aforementioned Klosterman reading, I was almost shocked by how open his book was. He spared almost no details, from talking about taking drugs (and not being a druggie) so his painful and strange relationship with a girl named Lenore (which is also the name of an underground Goth-cute clothing line/comic).

After reading the book, my mind was opened to the true nature of non-fiction. There was nothing stopping a man from writing whatever the hell he wanted, granted it was interesting enough for others to read. Even though Chuck writes in a very self-deprecating, just-above the masses in intellect sort of way, reading juicy details about someone else's life are always good reading, much more so if that person is actually interesting.

After reading that book in the summer of 2007, I started a non-fiction project of my own. It had no title, but I promised myself I would write each day about the month I was spending in Jamaica, chronicling all of my wacky observations, run ins with women and odd characters, and put it on paper.

The result after 3 weeks of writing, was 110 pages of witty prose, dealing with a lot of things, including the topic of love. It was a very intense and involved exercise; motivating one's self to write in the face of several of life's uncertainties, but at the end of it all, my search was the same.

I made two people read that first draft of the project, which I stopped because certain elements became too painful to write. I know that many writers are notorious for torturing themselves, writing about unrequited love, constipation and other things, but I couldn't keep it up, it was too much mental pressure. The two people that read my first draft were amazed by my brutal honesty, in fact, one of them, a friend of mind, said:
"You sure you want people knowing your business like that?"

To this I gave a simple reply. "Its just information."

In fact, what I realized about that sort of writing is that its not therapeutic. It is mostly observational, very personal and detailed and requires high mental focus. If I want to write about a trip I make to a local bar, its much more fun to talk about a "Tall man with massive hands asking me for a tuna sandwich" versus "A bartender with a snotty nose"...although those might work in either case.

I'm going off topic here... but the main thing that this sort of writing does is force you to not look back. Sure, I can hide behind the curtain that is my mind and my past and not speak to anyone and delineate on certain things in my mind forever, or I can jot it down and get some comments on it. The memories aren't going anywhere, and neither is the information, but what can change is how you observe aspects of yourself based on what others tell you. The only thing that would suck is if everyone completely agrees with what you wrote and you didn't grow. But that rarely happens.

This type of writing, and this type of searching I find very intertwined as it relates to love. Since I stopped writing the book, I have had several good lines of prose run through my head that I have never wanted to type. Though I keep a log of some of my thoughts, that project and its exposure level scared me. It was as if I was asking the world for an answer to that which has plagued man for as long as he can remember.

Love? What's it got to do with me?

Sometimes I feel like stepping this blog up a notch--writing about my "TRUE" thoughts--but I'm not sure how beneficial that is. I think a faceless blog with highly personal information ready by faceless people who don't comment but willingly read it is a bit scary. A book however, has a face ... and readerships usually find their way to the Author.

Anyways, the feedback I got from the two readers about the project was pretty good. One of them, a girl I know, said that my" ability to describe the depths of my emotional chaos was thrilling." She didn't use those exact words, but you get the idea.

Two months after I wrote the project I looked back on some of it, unable to draw anything from the stories, or the words. Writing is like that sometimes. A novel I worked on in 2004 that I haven't touched since then amazed me when I re-read a section of it. The characters were alive and real, the writing was on point and I had forgotten many of the plotlines. I didn't even realize I wrote the damn thing. This lets me know that I can't always second guess my need to write, which means i can't second guess my search.

So yeah, I might have a day or two when I need to write about something that stirs up the heart a bit, but that's life eh? In my short life, I've attempted to write three books about girls i've had "passionate enterprises with" (I can't classify all of them as 'love'), but I've only finished one book out of the three. I think its easier to fabricate a story with a few common elements from your life than writing down sequentially the ways your heart got wrenched into ten pieces.

This makes sense again. Love is interesting, a bit illogical and maybe writing is too. Maybe they are both lovers and in love. Writing and Loving. Forever intertwined, like a sappy mid-Sunday evening radio song, or a bad Mills and Boon novel.

who knows. Someday soon I'll hop onto a computer somewhere and finish that project. But I don't think i'm ready.

One day, I will be.

Hey don't Coke block me!

2008-01-12T12:17:00.000-08:00

I'm in Adams Morgan at a French Cafe, sipping on a tasty latte and waiting on my meal to arrive. My head is spinning a little--last night was a bit hardcore--and I find myself, as usual being a bit introspective.

Maybe i'm not that introspective, but I'm definitely winded. My knee hurts a bit from riding my bike up and down and I'm thinking about last night. I wanted to ring in the inaugural weekend for 2008 doing it up Wonderland style, but i was only in Wonderland for about fifteen minutes. A friend shot me a text at some point during those minutes:

"Come to Club 5, we have guest hookup!"

At that point, the crowd at Wonderland was pretty chill except for an extremely tall blond woman dancing with three other people excitedly on the dance floor. I see some of the regulars there, and they recognize me, which makes me realize i'm a regular as well. I've never said hello to any of these fellows, but each time I go to the W, I see them, and no doubt they see me. I can see why Wonderland is a stomping ground for some people every week, but this week nothing much seemed to be taking place.

I say hi to a few people and chit-chat with a new bartender. She's lived in DC for seven years and seems to like it. Interesting historical profile: Grew up in wealthy New York suburb, went to college in DC, been here for a bit. She seemed cool. Maybe in a few weeks I'll get a free beer or two from her.

The night would be interesting, primarily because of my new "mobile" status, with my bike the city is an open book (granting i'm not tipsy or extremly cold while riding). Last year, I wouldn't have entertained my friends offer to go to Club 5, because I would have to walk four blocks in the cold to the metro in Columbia Heights, wait on a train to arrive (anywhere from 5-20 mins), switch lines (another 5-20mins) then walk to Dupont (a good 5 blocks) and THEN i'd arrive at my destination which MAY or may not be jumping. With my bike, I could be in Dupont within ten minutes.

I sipped on my second beer and I was ready to go. I run into a buddy of mine and we catch up for a few minutes. He calls dibs on a girl standing behind a friend of his.
"She's Swedish." he says with a grin. I smile to myself, Europe, Europe. During this brief interlude his friend, a six foot four guy with very intense eyes starts asking me about Pirates of the Caribbean three and why he wasted his time watching it. This dialogue ran on for forty-five seconds and then I headed out.

A quick ride later, I was in Dupont. I headed into the Lucky Bar to wait until my friends arrived and watched people play pool. My phone buzzed and I headed over to 5. "Ah man," the text says,"My host is wiling and you have to pay to get in. But I have two drinks for you when you come in!"

I consider the options. It costs ten to go in (not a problem) but the drink thing was an added incentive, and I didn't feel like heading back to wonderland. Therefore, I entered five. I immediately recognize the girl collecting money. She is Jen, an sharply attractive brunette who bartends at a restaurant I go to sometimes. We chat for a few minutes, I pay and then go upstairs.

My friends are at the top--the reggae floor--and they are the center of attention. Not only are they highly sociable fellows, but they are twins, a doubly cool factor in the rapidly social atmosphere of DC clubbing. Just before I went upstairs I chatted to my gorgeous bartender friend (also named Jen) for a few minutes downstairs. "I like your hair," I say to her.
"Thanks!" she chirps. "I cut it myself." I nod, saying: "It's very mod style."
She laughs and poses like I have a camera in my hand. "This is mod and this is the bod."

Upstairs there are mostly guys traipsing about. As usual, the guys playing reggae are playing the same tired tracks from the early nineties, mixed in with Random Sean Paul songs and the "this is why i'm hot" remix(I swear he was playing a track from "The Trinity" that NO one ever listens to). I cannot mentally enjoy myself at DC clubs on the Reggae floors. They need a Jamaican spinning or it just doesn't make sense. My friend, twin number one, thrusts a heineken and a shot into my hands. (Actually he rested it on the counter beside me, but I wanted to use "thrust" in this blog :p)

I don't know what the second drink is, but its extremely strong. I already had a drink from Jen, and now I start to feel buzzed. I listen to some music for a while and dance a bit, occasionally going down to the first floor where they are playing house music. I love house and I'm ready to dance the night away, all buzzed and wearing a biker's jersey.

I come back upstairs after a while and start talking to a group of girls directly in front of me. They are all blond in the same way... a sort of dirty blond style. One of the girls reminds me of the actress who was the Rockstar in Strange Days ... her friend, a girl named Jessica, agrees.
We talk for a while and the girls are cool. Jessica tells me I have a nice spirit. I smile at this.
"We are going downstairs, you should follow us!" her friend (Heidi) says to me. "Sure." I say.

A guy in a kangol-esque hat who was talking to Jessica for a few rolls with us. He motions for us to go to a back area, with some seats. We sit beside a red couch that's directly beside a stripper pole. "I have a dollar," I say to Michelle, blonde number three, "Do something for it."
She laughs and shakes her head. Michelle is the designated driver, and has been drinking water all night. The other ladies are quite buzzed. Under the din of the club music I see the dude in the Kangol hat take out a small coke vial. He does a hit and offers some to miss J. She hits it and I sip on my beer.

I think to myself, "Is this guy 'coke blocking' me?"

I laugh. Heidi notices me smiling at comes over. "Are you chasing my friend?" she says.
"Shes' cool." I reply. "But alas, the man with the coke trumps me." I laugh.
"Fuck the guy with the coke." she says." He is nobody, coke or not. You.... you are cool." I laugh as she says this. Its not a big deal anyways. I watch bodies moving on the dance floor for a while. A hand touches me. I turn to see the ladies gone. The guy with the hat motions for me to follow him.

I see the ladies some distance ahead and follow them up. By now my buzz is quite real, and I'm ready to start dancing all European-like. The twins are still in full form, dancing hard and bouncing people with drinks. They are cool company. At some point I see hat-guy in a dark corner with a girl with a LOT of hair all over him. His generosity seemed to pay off :p

Jessica walks over to me and grips me firmly around the waist. I laugh. We dance for a bit and head downstairs. The music and the alcohol have made my moment perfect: the girl was extra.
I find a nice spacious corner and start hopping and spinning in that "I could be high, could be drunk, could be just really really energetic" sort of way. Jessica dances along in a similar fashion, occasionally holding my hands as strobe lights flash over head. I love these moments, when I feel almost as if I have transcended reality and entered a world of only flashing lights and throbbing bass. This moment last for about eight minutes, and then Heidi and Michelle reappear. They are ready to leave.

I say my goodbyes and head to the bar. I chat to Jen a bit (the place was packed, but surprisingly the bar was semi-empty) and tell the twins goodbye. I ride home with cold wind hitting my face, thinking about flashing lights and the bass pumping within me. I wonder if I looked European on the dance floor.

who knows.

Itty Bitty Comparisons

2008-01-11T16:02:00.000-08:00

The bubble has popped, and I wake up in the real world.

I rarely stay awake on an international flight, but recently I was flying over the Caribbean sea, deep in thought. I wondered if the clouds above me held some mystical realm where I could go, sit, meditate and play Nintendo Wii with cherubs wearing Mario Brothers t-shirts. But all I came up with was the quiet reflection that being in a massive work of art (i.e a plane) can give you. One hundred years ago, if you told a person that an object the size of several houses would be able to fly thousands of miles across the sea, while having all the amenities of a house, such as a bathroom, lights, carpeting and refrigerators to store food (and people), they would probably burn you on a stake.

When I fly, I am always appreciative of modern technology, even if flying of late gives me headaches.

However, the first thing I noticed when I was in the plane, was the girl sitting beside me. She was a short, very overweight caucasian girl. It was then it dawned upon me, that I had not been this close to a fat person in four weeks.

After I arrived back into the United States, it was that I could see that America truly IS a fat country. I'm not sure why this dawns upon me now of all times, simply because I never try to compare Jamaica and America; they are too different, one is too small and one is too big, and the culture is just skewed on both sides. Jamaica has post-colonial issues, America has post-colonial, racist, immigrant and whatever else kind of issue you can name as well.

But I can see that Americans are "fatter" people. In my blurry Christmas of extreme partying and too much eating and drinking, I didn't realize that pretty much every set of women I saw had a physique within certain borders. No one was really "thick", many women were petite, and most were very short.

As soon as I started my traipsing about in DC, I noticed the difference especially with black women here. Even if they are young, many have the tell tale large hips that women who are in their thirties in Jamaica have, and many of them are overweight. Many of the men are overweight too, and tall. People in America are generally much bigger, even without the weight. In Jamaica, me standing at 6'1 and a half, I'm a reasonably tall guy. When I wear certain shoes, I'm very tall. Shoes or not in the states, i'm very, very average.

This is why the bubble has popped as well. In Kingston, my stomping ground (and i'm guessing many other parts of the island) there is an immediate exposure that comes with being in a "small town" atmosphere. You see the same people in the same places, people give you funny looks all the time. Everywhere I go, I feel watched. By the jerk chicken man, the attendant at the jewellry store. EVERYWHERE.... I feel watched.

When I'm in the states its a 100% shift. Wherever I go, no one looks at me with any interest. I become another faceless black man on the street. This stood out to me today in particular. I was in Pentagon City mall, doing an excercise in what I call "social meditation" (more on that later) and I went into a Ritz camera shop to look at a few digi cams. I was wearing a tan jacket, a blue and orange trucker hat and gray pants. To my left, a young black man wearing almost full black sat down. "Do you have any ten dollar t-mobile cards?" the young man said to an attendant at the back. The attendant, looked directly at him and said. "Yes, if we have some, we have them."
I proceeded to walk up to the counter at this point. He turns around to me, looks me square in the eye and says. "Ten dollar t-mobile card?"

I laughed to myself at this point.

I think being faceless has its advantages and serious disadvantages. Sometimes I can hide in a crowd quite easily and walk around and think for hours on end about nothing in particular. I can roam the city for days and no one will say a word to me. Other times, it is a bit unnerving to be in the presence of such a large social atmosphere comprising of millions and not be inclined to want an interaction. I find it very interesting. That is not a comparison to Kingston culture, because that is a whole other kettle of fish... possibly for another blog.

So America is fatter and more isloated (in the cities) at least. It might be an island thing, but I can see how living in such a large city can make a person feel very isolated very quickly, even if you are quite familiar with the area itself. I don't mind it anymore. I have a reasonable sense of DC. In Jamaica, we have classism based on skin colour and money. Here it is mainly racism, in the sense of entitlement that doesn't have anything to do with money all the time. Having both views of these cultures has always made me have a semi-neutral stance on my surroundings.

I am not appalled that on certain buses there are mainly sick, poor black people riding them. I am also not bothered anymore that the area I live is being gentrified at a rapid rate. These are not things I can control, but they are merely things I observe.

I felt like writing this more than talking about how I successfully blocked no less than seven Express employees from making me sign up for a credit card while I was at the mall, even though that was fun.

Tonight is Friday. May I storm the streets of Adams Morgan like it was Normandy, walk with the focus of Napoleon and get jiggy like big Will.

Hello, Konnichiwa, Ni Hao, Halo 2008.

2008-01-01T19:33:00.000-08:00

Its the first of the new year and I'm sitting in my study, thinking about the last three weeks.

It seems to be a hazy blur of strong drinks and beautiful women dressed in cute dresses, images of teeth biting into jerk chicken and random run-ins with celebrities, rich-kids and long time friends. I realize that I have not spent a night home in almost an entire month.

This doesn't matter, because partying is good if you have something left to do after you expend all that energy. I spent the day with my family at a friend's house. We ate, we danced, we sang along to some popular songs. I spoke about the year and my plans with a good friend of mine and ate some more chicken.

Thankfully i'm not experiencing the crawl. The "crawl" is the sudden reentry into the normal pace of your life after living a brief (or extended) whirlwind existence. I don't feel the crawl right now in any way. I'm actually considering watching a movie (Black Dahlia ) and doing some reading. I'm retiring my "party-man" persona for at least one night.

Today was windy, and it felt as if the earth was yawning from the stresses and effects of 2007, ushering in the New Year. I felt somewhat introspective, looking out at the beautiful Kingston landscape, watching pink clouds hover over distant moutain tops, while soft oldies played in the background. Even though I don't particularly advocate the whole "New Years Resolution" thing, like anyone, I still feel like the new year has its beginnings.

In my last blog for 2007 I mentioned that a New Year is a continuation of the past, which is true, but when I felt that wind hit me today it felt like last year was washing itself away. There are many things I accomplished last year that I am proud of, and I have many interesting plans this year that I hope to accomplish as well.

I tell myself quite often that I am happy to be alive, happy to be sitting in my house on a cool January evening, drinking sorry and chewing a piece of pastry while I type on my blog. My friend told me something I liked tonight.
"Yes, youth, we just moving forward for the new year. Straight forward."

I agree. Forward is the place to go, and it is the only direction that exists. In a week I will be back in the cold, wintry atmosphere of Washington DC. But I'll also be smiling, hanging on to the last breath of 2007 and using it to fuel 2008.

LAST BLOG FOR THE YEAR 2007

2007-12-31T08:27:00.000-08:00

I'm looking up at a canopy of black, coated with little white, off-white and yellow dots.

I'm looking at the sky, and I'm standing at an open bar, somewhere in the middle of Kingston Jamaica, talking to someone I haven't seen in a long time. I asked her a question that can echo in the consciousness of anyone who hears it:

What have you learned about yourself this year?

She tells me about relationships, growth and knowing certain things she wants in a mate, how she wants to be treated and all the whys behind it. She mentions several other things, all of which I nod to when i'm listening. Then I respond.

"This year," I say, "Has been about emotional boundaries, hitting them and then crossing them." I say to her. "I have understood key things about circumstances, my willpower and my desires that I never realized before."

This is true. 2007 has effectively been a year that reflects a touch inside my consciousness that feel likes the hand of some unseen God has been guiding me in the dark. I'm a planner, and most of the plans I have made have come to pass.

But inevitably there are things you cannot plan for. You cannot plan for the actions of others, you cannot predict days when unrequited love stirs within you and make you restless, you cannot envision moments that can drastically change your life because you interacted with a cerrtain person, and you can never know what tommorrow holds.

I learned this through a few interesting circumstances. If someone told me in December of 2006 that I would travel to Europe three months later it would be literally impossible for me to believe that, but it happened. If someone was to tell me that I would write two full-length manuscripts in two different genres as well as a full-length screenplay, I wouldn't believe that either. If someone told me that in 2007 I would enter a brutal mental battle to fight for love, I probably wouldn't believe it. In fact, there are numerous things that happened that all seemed to have a touch of serendipity. A chance meeting with a girl at a bar who read a certain non-fiction writer, lead me to write my second project for the year. Me choosing a specific class with a certain teacher eventually lead me to some other artistic pursuits, which might change the course of my entire near future in a way that was both inspiring and a little scary.

But the year didn't hold mere circumstances with interesting outcomes. This was a year that many people I know were going through a crisis about their age. "I'm a quarter of a century now" everyone is chiming. But I never went through that. I like to think I'm in a small Village in a mountainous region in China, where everyone lives to be 120. Twenty-five is a cakewalk. I will never say "I'm two thirds of a century old! My word!"

However, I do realize after this year that many people are effectively changing because or their self-imposed age stamping. It seems this is a positive thing for most people. I've noticed with women that even though they are supposedly leauges ahead of men in maturity, the age 25 thing makes them chill out some more, or get extremely antsy. With guys, most of them talk about plans, "Doing what I'm supposed to", etc.

This is another thing 2007 has brought me, the viewfinder to the picture of my aging demographic.

When all is said an done, I can look back on the year and almost honestly say I have no regrets. Every circumstance good or bad, or things that have been done to me that hurt me, or things that I have done, or otherwise, have all lead me to where I am presently. They have all added to my consciousness, spun around millions of times in the ooze of my brain, and produced an end result that I can quantify.

I don't really have new years resolutions. I think many NYR's are too vague and leave people in a strange situation. I think a New Year is merely a continuation of what i've already started. Therefore, instead of saying, "This New Year I have to get ripped, make a million dollars and start that venture capital company", I'd rather just say "This new year, in all the plans I have already made, I will hold myself to 30%-50% improvement in all areas I possibly can. " This relates to my personality, my responsibilities and my readiness to do things I have been hesitant to do before.

THAT is the main thing I can say about 2007, that I can adequately gauge new aspects of myself I was never able to before and make sweeter decisions because of them.

But obviously, I am human and I cannot simply look at this year in terms of achievements and numbers. Even this morning I woke up with a tingle inside my system, a feeling that clenched my stomach. I was feeling connected to someone I haven't spoken to or seen in a long time. I felt her presence around me, and I saw her eyes in the early morning. Why did she rouse up from the pits of my mind? I have no idea, but I have learned this tidbit over the last few years:

It is not the why of a memory or a desire that is important, rather, it is knowing that once someone touches you living or dead, they will always be a part of you.

That realization makes me feel calm when I'm hit with these odd emotions. I honestly don't believe getting "tough" is the key to growth, it is more about actively accepting certain realities. Two ex-girlfriends of mine are married and another two are engaged. These things are not things to really worry or puzzle, but to accept.

But this morning, I felt a touch of someone again, as if she was right beside me sleeping blissfully. It is fitting that it is at the very end of the year this happened. I have no idea if it is a signal from the universe spurring me on to act, or if it is just a random memory that decided to resurface at an equally random moment. Like many things in my life, I no longer question the cause, but merely accept the result.

I like the dynamics of life; the passion that comes with biting into a circumstance and not letting go, the lingering feeling in your chest when you want something and you can't have it, and that emotional release when you are two steps away from getting what you really want. I like the desperation that comes with charging into the unknown, a slight sense of trepidation when you can't see the outcome of an impossible situation and I like it when your mind forces you to hope.
I like my mind's mental picture of the faceless woman out there I have not met, the laughter of my friends and family and the quiet moments when I stare at the clouds. I'm also intrigued by that which I cannot see or hear; the laughter of my future child's voice, the feeling I will experience stepping onto foreign soil in some distant locale and not knowing what is coming next.

I like it all.

2005,6, or 7 and all the years I have been alive have had these things in abundance, and they will not be going away.

To 2008, and beyond.

Bembe & Quad, my second homes

2007-12-28T13:16:00.000-08:00

I've heard of people going to Quad three times in a week, and I've always though these people were relegated to "ilder" status. I've been to quad numerous times, and I've always left with a grain of salt in my throat. Its a club with a familiar theme, the same music and most of the time, the same people. Why then, would people go there three times in a week?

Well, most people have nothing better to do.

There are no other clubs that operate in the way Quad does, therefore, the fallout of every major party will spill to one of two locations: Quad, or Asylum. I've since stopped going to Asylum for reasons I can't remember, and reasons I can't try to remember. All I know is that this week, I have entered that special group of people who have been to Quad three times in one week.

I'm not upset, its just that I never EVER thought I would fall into that demographic. Thankfully, each time I went to Quad it was not a thought spawned from the recesses of my consciousness. Each time, I was being a gratious host, and taking someone out after a few outings. I have no idea how I will be able to function in DC upon my return to the states. Firstly, I drive in Jamaica, and it is INSANELY convenient. Secondly, everytime I go out, the after snack everyone relishes is Jerk Chicken.... and the guys that sell jerk chicken (i.e Jerk Chicken men) are everywhere to the point where its impossible to find a large venue without a jerk chicken man waiting outside to serve hungry patrons after one party finishes and they start heading to another party.

But I must say, my last outing to Quad was really good. I went on Saturday and on Christmas night, and both nights were a little off. But last night, boy, it was so packed it had to be fun. I believe that when Quad is stuffed to the brim with people, it is truly the time to go. What better time to go to a club than when it is completely full of people all tryin to have fun?

Either way, I haven't observed anything particularly hilarious in the last two weeks worth mentioning. I have been going out non-stop, and I have a severe lack of sleep going on. But Christmas is family time, jerk chicken time and introspection time. My primary thoughts have been meditations on the very near future, a few career options that have presented themselves to me and feeling glad to be alive. I can feel this way now because I'm in the tropics, but when I re-enter that Winter atmosphere of DC, well, I might not be as peachy.

However, life goes on. In three days it will be a new year and like most people, i'm lookin gforward to big things right?

We'll see.

Stuffy Girls + Mavado = Merry Bloodcl**t Christmas

2007-12-24T08:55:00.000-08:00

www.I'm looking around, and I don't know where I am.

My friends and I are rolling around the neighbourhood of Norbrook in St. Andrew, Jamaica. We are on a quest, similar to that of Frodo Baggin's in his quest to deliver the rings to the volcanic mountain in the heart of Mordor. We are looking for a place called Cedar Grove, which could fit any number of LOTR situations. "There ye go," says a bush that can speak. "When you walk through the green fields of Manor Park, pass by the Norbrook Creek and you'll find Cedar Grove a few paces through an enclave of trees." Sadly, there was no talking tree to help us find this place, but a pizza man making a delivery at a housing complex would. Armed with our knowledge, we proceeded to drive the wrong way yet again.

We turn on a road called Park Drive and see many cars parked, but hear no music. I immediatley know this is a "big man" party. (i.e, businessman/doctor/lawyer drinkup). A few individuals confirm this. They don't know where the mysterious Cedar Grove is either, because they probably live up in Gordon town somewhere...near Mordor.

We eventually find the party and we laugh. Cedar grove is one street away from the house of a friend of mine... if only she had been in the country when we were on our quest to find the house...

We reach extremely early and get eyeballed by a few guys as we come in. Its a bottle-party, and for the uninitiated, it works on the BYOB rule. (Bring Your Own Bottle). Our bottles are stashed in the car, but I'm more interested in seeing if this party will be a flop or not. My friend goes to chit-chat with a few guys standing near the pool and I talk to the guy who lives on the premises.
"Its not a problem," he says. "Have a drink with us. Drink!". His eyes are a little glassy for 8 p.m, then I realize those guys have been drinking for a while.

This party will become an example of the strangeness of certain aspects of Jamaican society i've grown used to. My friend has been telling me for over a week that the guest list is filled with really hot girls and it should be a good event. For me, these parties are 50/50. It is usually an assortment of people from similar backgrounds who all know each other, who stand up, talk and pose. They occassionally use the bathroom, walk back to thier spot, and pose some more. It is a very boring, but extremely common. Just wait until you pay five grand for a party and see everyone do the same thing, THEN it will blow your mind.

I like to talk to people, and I like to interact with people I've never met before. But if you say "What's up?" to a guy standing beside you, then he looks you dead in the face and walks away, then you are in a really tough crowd. Luckily for me, I learned this little tidbit through my friend. "Even the guys are giving attitude?" he lamented. It was funny.

This is a version of the small town effect. If people don't really know you, they won't say hello, or otherwise interact in a manner that is past what I call "ATM behaviour". At an ATM, a person might look at you, give you a vapid nod and then walk away as quickly as possible. This party was similar, but the area was small. The Vapid nods ran abound, but there wasn't much space to walk briskly away to.

This party was the usual representation of this area of Jamaica; a smattering of ambiguously racial individuals, all of a similar hue, most of whom are well off. The split between the racial groups became quickly apparently. Near the pool where the speakers were, you saw more dark-skinned people in groups standing up, moving to the music. Near to the front by the entrance were all the ambiguously racial kids drinking up and chit-chatting.

Luckily for myself and my cousin, we left the party for about an hour to rendezvous with my sister at the airport. On the way there, we laughed to ourselves as my friend send me a text:
"Boy...tough crowd star."

I could see why. But this wasn't the first and last place I've seen this type of behaviour. It is a very encapsulated, anti-social behaviour i've observed for as long as I can remember, but now I'm more like Jane Goodall when I watch these people interact, than an annoyed socialite.

I test my theory about how stuffy these girls are by chatting to a girl standing near to me. She looks at me in the same way a lifeless mannequin would, trying to avert her eyes. I chose her for one reason: She has been standing in a small group of girls at the mid-point of the pool crowd and the entrance crowd for most of the party. As far as I could tell, not ONE guy approached her, tried to dance with, or even speak with her. Her friends all seemed to be content to stand where they were and not talk to anyone. So I said to myself, "Ah, let's see if these girls REALLY got dressed, left their houses, drove up here, all in an extreme effort to completely isolate themselves and NOT talk to anyone."

Sadly, I was right. I asked her a cute question about her age and I got about as much response as a mosquito biting the ass of a Rhino. Eventually I ended up telling her something to the effect of" Oh? That's how you always talk to people? hrm... I ABSOLUTELY CAN'T talk to a girl like you! Ciao."

Not that the statement really meant anything, but hopefully at least one ice-chip fell of her heart. So the night progressed in the same fashion, with my entourage getting mostly drunk, me chatting to a few of the more social girls in the party and trying not to drink too much myself.

High point of the night : Strolling in, being taller than most company present, sporting bottles of Vanilla Vodka, opening said bottles and doing shots while pointing at girls and telling them "If you want a drink, you'll have to tip me baby!"

The party begins to get dull and we leave and head to our favourite after spot, the infamous Wally's for some Jerk Chicken. Immediately a battle ensues. Our first statement to wally is, "Yeah man, Wally run the BIGGEST piece of chicken!"
To this statement my friend immeidately protests, saying that I am using my role as the driver to squeeze favourable opinion. I see Wally toss a massive piece of chicken on the chopping block and give it a few decisive whacks with a large meat cleaver. I grab the ends of the foil the chicken lies on.
"You lose." I say with a chuckle. My friend begins the protest again and then a dark grey SUV pulls up. A man with a shaved head and dark eyes looks directly at me. The car comes to a stop no less than a foot from where i'm standing. My cousin, who was in the background touched me.
"Yo, that's Mavado in there."
"Really?" I reply.

Sure enough, I glance into the car and see the Gangsta for life staring back at me. Contrary to popular belief, his myspace picture doesn't do him justice, he looks MUCH rougher in person. I felt like saying hello, or even raising a fist to salute him, but I felt an odd fear course through my system. After all this is the guy who talked about murdering infants and doing certain things twice a day.
"Yow, we want some fowl fast!" Mavado barks at Wally.

For the second time that night we are relegated to lower status. First by prissy chicks who like to dress up and not talk to anyone, and then by the Gangsta for Life. We couldn't help but laugh.
Wally forgets my chicken and immediatley starts to work on Mavado's order. Our eyes widen as we see Wally pull out two of the largest pieces of chicken I have even seen.

"Damn, " I say. "Wally, you give the man di "Real McKoy" piece of chicken!" My friend adds,
"Damn Wally, you have the Mavado stash waiting in the back!"
We all start laughing and then I look nervously to my left, hoping Mavado isn't pointing a gun at me as I say this.

Thankfully he isn't.

Wally chops up the two large pieces in record time and starts tossing Ketchup and pepper on the chicken. He puts back the pepper bottle and them Mavado speaks for the second time.
"Yow! Put more BLOODCLAT peppa pon di chicken! You tink a gyal you a serve?!"

Wally froze for a moment. He is always smiling, and I felt that he himself would erupt into laughter, but feared being shot as well. He put a few more sprinkles of hot sauce on the chicken and handed it to Mavado and his driver. Mavadao gave us a quick glance.
"Yeah, stand up you dun know!"

The SUV pulled off with a roar. The three of us pause for second and then start chatting excitedly. "Yeah, stand up, you dun know" is the equivalent of Mavado wishing us a "Merry Bloodclaat Christmas" or something to that effect.

The night in brief review:

We came from an event with some stush chicks, got trumped by Mavado in the chicken line at Wally's, and it was great. For the next few days, anything myself and my cousins were eating would be predicated by the statement:

"Yow! Put more BLOODCLAT peppa pon di chicken! You tink a gyal you a serve?!"

Christmas in Jamaica is awesome.

-= Back in the Warmth =-

2007-12-09T20:22:00.000-08:00

There has been a lot happening in my life.

So much in fact, that I haven't been able to do much for the last few weeks. There has been occasional introspection, the odd moment where I've been told Mike's hard lemonade isn't a "manly" drink, a few interesting situations at Random parties like being handed a brochure for a one man StarWars performance by a guy dressed like Chewie, among other things.

But now, i'm back home. Lately i've been in a strange situation. I sometimes think my landlord sits on top of a futuristic looking throne, figuring out ways to give us particularly cruel and unusual forms of punishment. The latest punishment do with a lack of heat. Thankfully, I am back into the warmth. Driving from the airport, I looked at the Rolling green hills in the distance, scanned the vibrant and verdant atmosphere, and I felt at peace. The last time I was at home I was tense for a few reasons, uneasy for a couple more, but this time I feel quite relaxed. Christmas songs have been annoying me recently, and if I hear "Feliz Navidad!" one more time I just might punch the next old lady I see. But hopefully that won't happen.

I've always tried to describe how Christmas in Jamaica feels, but I can never put it into words. It has something to do with it being a little cooler, seeing everything a shade darker, and knowing another year has come to and end. Maybe I'll write a long post about the things I've learned this year as a person and as a writer, but I could write volumes about what i've learnt about women more than anything. But ... that's another story.

I feel like writing something, maybe a short story or two to cap the year out, but I don't know yet. I'm going to watch another Chan Wook Park movie about vengeance after the actions of some really crappy movie. (By the way, Chan Wook Park is a Korean film director :p).

Either way that's it for now. No stories of weird situations and angst here. I may write some of those later. I would love to drop a tidbit about meeting a swath of European people, each from a different country who all knew each other while I pretended to be a black Scotsman.

Or maybe I'll tally the number of girls in the last few weeks who've said "Let's go out!" who dissappeared in a blur of voicemails. I dunno.

I'm in Jamaica and its warm. I don't feel like the cold is sharing my bed and trying to massage me in my sleep in a very uncomortable way.

till such time..

Karaoke and Vodaka Gummi Bears shots

2007-11-18T16:15:00.000-08:00

This weekend, someone would explain to me how much they hate the Ocean while working for an Ocean preservation non-profit.

I will be asked where a functional brothel exists in Washington D.C.

I will sip Vodka in a small cup filled with gummi bears.

I will also sing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”, in perfect Falsetto.

Thursday night was the start of my weekend. I was entering that place of disconnect again, this time not induced by writing thousands of words in a fat, 120 page manuscript, but this time it was because of a highly complex business plan I had to create without having much data to substantiate 90% of my projections. At about 11 p.m I splash some cold water on my face and twiddle with my mohawk—a hairstyle I’m employing of late—and I grab my Jacket. Before I leave my house, my roommate tells me about how a guy offered her his virginity while they were studying for a final. I laugh about this as I walk to catch the Bus. The Bus doesn’t show, and I find myself wondering if I should even go out. Its cold, and DC looks like a huge black cloak.

I decide to go out.

For the second time I exit one the wrong side of the Dupont metro station, putting myself three blocks North of where I’m trying to go. It dawns upon me that I have an aversion to “South” exits, but I have no idea why. The last time I came out the wrong exit, I was almost lost, cursing myself because I really wanted to sip on my 2 dollar rails at the Lucky Bar. Tonight, it was better and after a light jog through the dark park in the middle of Dupont, I was back in the scene. I like Dupont in the way that a person likes visiting a nice hotel. I don’t always go there, but its always nice to step in and out every other week or so. Going to the Lucky bar has become somewhat of a ritual for me on Thursdays, but tonight I truly feel like I’m in the real world. I’m going out to have a drink--a drink ladies and gentlemen—not going out to meet and greet women or spend odd period of time being the only black guy on the dance floor… I am going ot have a drink, to relax.

I am mildly annoyed as I enter the bar, simply because it is filled with people and they are not moving, yet they complain about the door not being able to open... the very door they are standing in front of. A few girls grab their purses and cell phones as I step towards them at the bar, and I’m tempted to look one of them squarely in the eye and say “I already have a cell phone… wench.”

But I hold my Conan-esque needs to vent inside and chill. The night would end up with me engaging the purse grabbers in intense conversation before I headed home.

Friday wasn’t a blur. I usually like Fridays to be a blur, so that on Sunday I can struggle to remember who “Michelle No.3” is in my phone. I wanted to head to Adams Morgan, that delicate little slice of weirdly social DC life that I love to peruse, but I decided against it. Something told me if I went to Adams Morgan that night, I would run into people I’d rather not see. I headed to my default location, Wonderland and it was all good. I sat under a set of large outdoor heaters that closely resemble those walking man-killers from The War of the Worlds. I spend an hour talking about Capitalism with two pro-capitalists and an anarchistically inclined libertarian. “ Capitalism,” I say “Is expansive. For Capitalism to exists it needs to use resources and expand to suport itself.” One of the pro-capitalists, a guy named Fox (who was literally dressed like Fox Mulder in the “X-Files”) asks me, “ So are you saying if Capitalism doesn’t expand it will fail?” I reply. “No, I never said it would fail, I’m just saying it is by its nature expansive.” The other pro-capitalist a girl named Ashely, says to me, “Well Captialism works because even in America, poor people have cable.”

At this I pause.

Normally when I interact with libertarians, I am intrigued by the somewhat black and white way of thinking their interests represent. A country with poor people with cable is a good thing, and because anyone can (supposedly) get an education, then by choice you doom yourself to a life of misery regardless of your background of financial means. I think about this for a few minutes as the conversation continues, then two tall bouncers who look like ex WWF wrestlers tell us we need to go inside. Then myself, David Duchovny’s stunt double and the pro-capitalists head inside.

I realize I don’t dance much anymore. I talk, smile and drink. This would be sad to some people, but it’s a measured form of socializing. Its fun. This is where I meet Ocean girl. She works for an Oceanic preservation non-profit but hates the fact that the people around her are so obsessed with their jobs it makes her hate, yet love her job. I laugh as she says this and speak for twelve minutes about her t-shirt, which says “B is for Bling.”

Friday night ends strangely. I step out of the bar to have a late night drink of tea with a cute girl I met a week before who lives nearby. She tells me with no qualms she is so comfortable around me that it has fueled her to learn more about me on a soley friendly level. “The physical, “ she explains. “Detracts from how cool it is to just learn about one another you know?”

I nod, grab my coat and leave.

Saturday I was charged to go to Adams Morgan and touch a few bars. This wouldn’t happen. I was hanging with my buddy who likes Indie chicks with a huge sense of style. In DC, Indie chicks aren’t that easy to find in quantities greater than a handful. I agreed with him that Indie chicks are cool, but I wasn’t into indie chicks ALONE. I wanted to traipse through a few spots, probably Brass Monkey, Grand Central, Spy Lounge maybe, but I didn’t have a wingman for a while so I took it easy. We stopped by Tom Tom briefly to checkout a Guatemalan-themed party on the second floor. I found it interesting that they were playing Snoop Dogg right after some salsa music. That night I would meet a cute Georgetown Law student.

We head over to a Karaoke party in Columbia heights. After seeing rats the size of cats dart left and right as we walked block after block, we see a house with flashing lights visible behind a thick curtain. I enter to see four or five guys dancing excitedly under the intermittent glare of a strobe light. We have a few drinks and sing two songs. I’m hanging with a cool girl I met coincidentally at Wonderland. She reminds me that she’s seeing someone for the second time that day. I nod, and smile.

My friend and I walk to Wonderland at 1:45 a.m, talking about the DC scene and trying to find all the places where Indie chicks are hiding. When we reach the W, its pretty packed. I see a few familiar faces, get a hug from a cute bartender and walk around. The night seems to be an international one. I meet a mysterious looking Greek girl and reminisce with an Italian girl I’ve met before. The Vodka and gummi bears shots I did an hour before are having their effect. I’m warm even though its cold outside and I’m not thinking about anything in particular.

My friend goes home and I leave soon after. On my way back home three guys sitting on some steps ask me a VERY interesting question. “Hey man,” one of them says. “Its 3:45 a.m and I want to get laid. Where can I go?” I laugh to myself and tell them if they wanted to meet girls, they probably should have gone to Wonderland. “Is it still open?”Another one says. “No.” I reply. They guys are call from Ohio, in DC for two weeks. One of them, a short, jolly looking fellow who seemed quite innocent asks me:

“So where are the whore houses?”

The guy who stopped me, a guy wearing a baseball cap stops him.” This isn’t Europe man, there aren’t whore houses in DC.” The guy turns to me.” So yeah, do you know if there are any brothels around here?” I laugh and tell them no. I give them some advice… they can go on the internet and search for DC strip clubs, because that’s the best advice I can give.

I smile to myself as I walk away. On my way home, I see some friends of mine taking luggage out of a car and I get a drop home. In my e-mail, is a message from a friend who’s in DC for a day. I try calling her but the number is Canadian and I’m still buzzed. I sleep and have a weird dream about having a biracial son.

I wish I had dreamt about a brothel.

Candy Corn Makes Me Horny

2007-11-08T19:11:00.000-08:00

I've found the latest aphrodisiac.

Candy Corn.

I'm not sure why Candy Corn of all things stirs my insides in a way that makes me wake up wishing I was in any number of pornographic films, but it does. The Candy I bought exactly one week ago has been sitting in my system, stirring up my desires and fueling my dreams in a strange way.

Then again, it might have nothing to do with Candy Corn. Sometimes when our minds are pushed to the limit, we can engage in what are called "mental extremes" which are spurred on by a sudden shift in emotional state. That might explain the hundreds of TV "sex after a huge fight" scenes, or the dozens of "bloody sex after i've killed a person" scenes i've seen during my lifetime.

I've had a huge deadline to accomplish this week, and I'm 99% done. In order to apply for a lucrative opportunity, I had to finish a film script i was working on in 4 days instead of 25 days. Between Monday and Today, I wrote about 80 pages, plus did multiple re-edits and still the bastard isn't finished. This is where my "shifting emotional state" theory comes in.

Yesterday I called Comcast, and laughed to myself briefly because the "hold" music sounded like cheezy 70's porn music. I wasn't on the phone all hot and heated with a Comcast representative, I assure you. I had to listen to that track for almost 5 minutes...which i'm guessing is the average length of a 70's porno.

Recently I watched this show with Robocop Alum Peter Weller called Screamers, which is an interesting sorta post-apocalyptic dystopia film where sentient aliens scream at a frequency that kills people.... in a nutshell. If you've watched any Peter Weller films, the man is like an 80's Charlton Heston, 100% man. What does a 100% man encounter in all his films? A saucy vixen of course. Even if it is on a mostly empty, frozen planet on the outer regions of some barely colonized area of space. In this movie it was a hot brunette. I personally didn't find her her that attractive, but the Candy Corn did. In an interesting scene in the movie, Peter Weller and this woman are speaking about escaping from the planet and heading to Earth and she removes her clothes (with no provocation) and proceeds to dab herself with warm water as they discuss these plans. I thought 100% man would have gotten some right there, but sadly, they don't have Candy Corn on planets covered in Frozen Tundra.

But this hasn't really been a "sexed up" week by no stretch of the imagination. This has been a week of shifting emotional states. When I write for more than 9 hours straight I tend to experience what I call "disconnect". I realize i'm disconnected when I`m typing and I realize I'm not even hearing the music playing on my computer, or noticing what's on the television behind me. When i'm in the mode of disconnect, if I go to sleep, sometimes I can wake up with such raging sexual tension I wonder if I was writing an explicit paper on the theories behind the origins of the "Money Shot" in pornographic films before I went into dreamland.

But at the end of the day, I always think its the Candy Corn. After all, I've gone into "disconnect" a few times this semester, and they have never had sexual side effects.

This has nothing to do with my Candy Corn tirade, but is it me, or has Vilo Ventimiglia's character in Heroes (Peter Petrelli) been shirtless in EVERY episode so far? I noticed that yesterday after wishing Masi Oka would be an asshole and sleep with the Japanese hottie and destroy the space/time continuum. Again, that was the Candy Corn speaking.

Heroes has been really annoying me lately, but I will save an entire post for that heroes rant. But since this is a Candy Corn post, I will mention, there has been only one Character who has been laid in Heroes so far who's significant other hasn't died or been written out of the show-- Adrian Pasdar's (Nathan Petrelli).

Anyways, I digress.

I am eating some Candy Corn as I type this. I didn't feel any effects today, so I believe it was all in my mind. When I woke up at 6 a.m this morning, ready to donate copious amounts of my manliness to any number of Sperm Banks, I theorized I probably hit a cycle, sort of like dogs in heat, but much, much more subdued. But i'm human, so I walked over to my computer, turned on some music and drank some water. I rubbed my head a bit, opened the curtains and hopped onto the computer.

I wrote more of my script, sipped on my water, and ate some Candy Corn. Even if the week was a Candy Corn induced high-low sexual madness period, at the very least the weekend is right around the corner. Which means I will replace Candy Corn with alcohol, and all will be right in the universe again.

The Drunken Anarchy

2007-11-04T01:48:00.000-07:00

Twice this weekend, I will travel to Dupont Circle.

Twice this weekend, I will meet women named Anna.

Twice this weekend, I will feel as if I am dreaming.

The first occassion was on Saturday morning. My friend Jane called me at 8:25 a.m I find myself with my head spinning, speaking in a croaky voice to Jane, who is bright and chirpy. I believe I am dreaming, because I have never spoken to Jane this early, and I have only spoken to Jane four times on the telephone. When I heard my phone ringing and saw Jane's number on the LCD, it didn't seem real. The sun was out, but my head was heavy and I felt last night's buzz still clawing at my back.

The second time I would feel as if I was dreaming was ACTUALLY a dream. At 2:45 a.m on Saturday morning, I'm walking from Wonderland back to the train. It has been a particularly productive night. A girl named Justine approaches me at the bar and makes a statement that a 5 foot tall, reasonably cute blonde girl would not say without alcohol in her system, or possibly the presence of a celebrity. "You're cute. We should exchange numbers." As buzzed as I was, I actually took this as an invitation to speak to her, but then she compeletly ignored me. When I called her the next day, someone named Erin answers the phone. When Justine does come on the line, she says "Oh! I'll call you back, I just got out of the shower." Silly as it may seem, some people think that people are completely idiots. Three hours later, I send her a text message saying:

You win. You hold the record for the longest post-shower drying period in history!

In the train station, I am spent. It has been a particularly long Friday, and I spend the night downing beers, talking with friends and women I've never seen. I'm walking with a controlled buzz, the kind I know will probably give me a headache the next day if I decide to go jogging, but also the kind that won't bother me in the least if I don't do any major physical excercise. I sit on a bench near three young women. They all glance in my direction as I sit down, semi-unaware of them. I am not thinking about women when I am on the bench. I'm calculating how many odd steps it will take to reach home after exiting the metro at almost 3 a.m. A friend of mine taps me on the shoulder in an attempt to scare me. If I was completely sober, I would have probably yelped like a piglet. The most I muster is a "huh? Oh, what's up man." He laughs and tells me that i'm drunk. I protest and begin speaking to the girls beside me about the night i've had, and how drunk people are the people who drink at home and don't call anyone. My friend hops on the train on the opposite platform, his massive silhouette dissappearing into the confines of a sleek metro train. The three women are all good friends. Two of them are Law students at George Washington, and one is visiting from California. I have some very interesting conversation between the 2 minutes it takes to get from Columbia Heights to Shaw Howard. In those two minutes, the girl from California guesses I'm from Jamaica. I find out the girls names are Heather, Katie and Leigh respectively, they also ask me about some candy corn i'm eating because they themselves bought some at the same CVS I went to earlier. I tell the ladies goodbye and hobble home. I mentioned to Katie that she should add me on facebook.

I have a dream that she does in fact add me on facebook, which is what led me to wonder if the call from Jane was real in the first place. On the train, when Leigh guessed I was from Jamaica, I winced. Earlier that night, I ran a test on a girl named Bridgete (yes, with one 't') who was into Celtic music. "If you guess where I'm from. " I say, "I will buy you a drink." She looks at me and says, "Jamaica!" with no reservations. I sigh and end up buying her a sprite. (Luckily for me she doesn't drink). She invites me to come and check out the celtic music on Thursday. It is somewhere near Chinatown, and i'm not sure if I'll go. Maybe when Enya comes to town.

I want to try and get a cute bartender's number, but I can't bother because I'm interested in sleeping more than anything. A few of my friends come and go, and I find myself floating around and talking to a girl from Georgetown named Ally who likes to dance with her arms around my neck. Her friend Anna (yes, another Anna) pulls her away when its time to leave. She looks on me longingly and gives me a wet kiss on the cheek. I smile and wave.

A young man in a brown sweater with diamonds on the chest constantly gives me high fives and fists for reasons I can't figure. He is wearing a Kangol hat and has the look of someone used to getting what he wants. Not in a Tony Soprano sort of way, but in the way that a guy who used to bully kids in school looks. He comments on my outfit briefly and I tell him about the time a bouncer almost molested me at a bar. This story is not true.

I meet the boss of a girl who works at Urban outfitters. Her boss is a dashing brunette with dark eyes and a breath heavy with a liquor I can't name. She approaches me, constantly saying: "Show me what the fuck you got?". We do a man-to-woman te ta te for a while. She dances seductively, but drunk women annoy me after a while... I'm not that type of guy. I feel like showing up at the Urban Outfitters where she works and shout out: "Show me what you fucking got!"

That would most certainly get me tossed into jail. As usual, I meet another girl visiting from outside of the good old Washington D.C, a southerner named Kelsie (or was it Katie? i forget.)
I make plans to head to Ibiza with a friend of mind. He says it is guaranteed that we will meet some chicks. I tell him its an "Asian Haven". His eyes don't really sparkle, because he's Korean.
Mine don't either. The last time I was at Ibiza I experienced the kind of culture shock I should experience in a foreign country, not D.C.

Ibiza was pretty cool though.

I flop into my bed and take a few deep breaths and find myself falling asleep. I toy with the idea of watching the latest episode of Heroes and decide against it. The world of dreams awaits me at 3:30 a.m and I have to wake up for an entire day of activity at 9. Its all good though. Good to be alive and well, function in a world of oddity and semi-disfunction /:.

No 1 Can Hear U Singing in D Rain

2007-10-26T11:47:00.000-07:00

Its raining and I feel like singing.

Its Friday, and so far I've shared the company of three women under three umbrellas. I wouldn't say this is a great feat, but it beats walking with my own umbrella by my lonesome. On rainy days I don't like to stay indooors. The columns of rain droplets peeing on the land always makes me want to walk around and look at puddles, wet dogs and soggy pieces of newspaper. As I write this, I am sadly not in the rain.

I'm in a computer lab sitting across from a guy who I think had a brief hookup with a girl I once dated. I find this interesting, simply because he probably has no idea if I hooked up with the girl he once hooked up with (though he did give me a lingering eye). Nonetheless, it is raining outside.

Lately my impetus to write has been mixed between my impetus to go out and socially interact. (yes, I said "impetus" twice in one sentence...I should be put on the Writers' Guild guillotine ASAP).

My last outing was over the weekend, the amazing Homecoming weekend. I'm calling it amazing because this particular weekend was great, because I spent it in the company of five people. Myself, my cousin, his friend, my other friend and my alter-ego, who I have dubbed "Vinton."
My alter-ego is that side of me that wears his hair mangly and half braided, who sneers at women and cheers guys on the more they look at women's asses. Vinton is the kind of guy you wouldn't invite to choir practice, a job fair at school, or a wet t-shirt contest.

Luckily Vinton doesn't appear as my alter ego through any phsyical changes within me. He is merely a voice, that gives credence to his existence. Say for example, myself and my cousin and his friend are walking down the road.
"Yes," my cousin says about a girl named Alice. "Alice is a good girl."
After a brief pause, Vinton would say in a hushed and scraggly voice.
"Good gyal? You mean she can get some good wuk."

(do I have to explain what "wuk" means?" )

Vinton's occassional appearance is good for a quick laugh or a skewed observation on a hot issue. All in all the weekend was pretty interesting. At homecoming events clubs hustle. I don't like knowing that last week I paid 5 bucks to get into a club that sold 3 dollar rails, and homecoming weekend it costs 25 (before 10 p.m) and drinks cost 8 dollars each. Things like that make me want to slap a bouncer in the face ... but I like my teeth.

There were moments I enjoyed during the weekend--dancing in the middle of a group while I was cheered on for my dancing among my favourite--but it was the company I enjoyed the most. Sometimes a guy needs to be a guy around other guys, for that explicit purpose. (I'm sure Vinton would say:" Guy? You need man in you life? " )

That was a guy's weekend. I didn't even make any attempts to meet new women or do the usual drinkup to the point of floating on air. I just had fun.

Today was diferent. Its raining in DC, and I feel like its a sunny day.

I'm bored and I decide to head to Filene's Basement to get some new jeans. I have lunch with a cute lacrosse player and we hop on the shuttle. She is going shopping for shoes.

After a thrilling conversation and a short metro ride later, I found myself at Border's near Farragut North. It was raining so hard outside of the metro station, only the large white letters of "Borders" was visible through the deluge. I didn't even remember what direction Filene's was in. My new pair of jeans would have to wait for another day to be tried on and purchased. I hobble through the rain, making sure to look expectantly at any cute women walking with large umbrellas, but I find no saviour on this Friday. I'm glad the walk is only one block. I walk through the store, wincing a little bit inside because this store has a potent memory in it for me. My ex-girlfriend and I argued inside and outside of the store for almost an entire hour about whether or not Alligators had tongues. As it stands, they do NOT have tongues... but that is a moot point. (I think crocs have tongues, or vice versa...you get the idea ).

I'm in the sexuality section and I grin to myself because a book about "Race, Image and Citzenship" is between the "Licoln Boys Club" (gay erotica ) and "Omnivore's World" (general health).I like seeing people read 35 dollar books for free. Everyone is quiet and soaking up their free literature. I almost step on two girls drinking coffee in the Self-help aisle. I'm slightly tempted to speak to one of them, a cute brunette wearing a horrible-looking red jersey, but they leave twenty seconds after I pass them. Border's isn't that cold, but I'm freezing because I walked into the place soaked. I head into the Border's cafe and sit and write a few stanzas for a song I made up while walking. (Therefore, I DID sing in the rain). After I peruse the formidable selection of mindless literature they have, I head outside and stare at the falling rain. It is captivating and hypnotic, being shrouded in the claustrophobic atmosphere of a city, slowly being drenched with fat droplets falling from the sky. I am one of the only persons without an umbrella on the street side, looking like a bull in a big... freaking china shop. After a while, I give in and walk towards the metro station as it pours, feeling the droplets hit my head, skitter through my hair and travel down the slope of my nose. Its wet and it feels good.

Potent memories of ex's and arguments about bogus topics aside, its good to be alive. Its good to be aware of the rain hitting my face, and feeling my body shudder occassionally. I'm thrilled by the prospect of reading, engaging and interacting. The gray sky no longer looks portentious and intimidating. The sky, like the buildings and people around me, is merely an extension of my reality. I can choose how I perceive it, among many other things.

I shudder once more, and wonder to myself if I should get an umbrella. I would certainly keep my head under something protective. "Nah..." Vinton starts to say, "What you mean unda? Bad man don't go "unda" anything...just pon top a gyal!"

Baby Blocking is Unethical

2007-10-18T06:01:00.000-07:00

Its one of those days again.

I'm on the metro heading towards Farragut North, i'm standing akimbo in a train moving at probably seventy miles an hour, testing fate. Okay, i'm not standing Akimbo, but I am look through the lenses of the train (otherwise called Windows) and I'm wondering why I'm even on the metro so early the in week. To me the metro is a sacred place, relegated for Friday, Saturday and MAYBE Sunday usage. During the week, it is not to bee seen or touched.

While i'm bustling about in the thick crowd in the Chinatown station, I'm running towards the train and a man with his infant child in a very cheap looking baby carriage veers in front of me, even though he saw me coming. "Ouch." I said to myself."The baby block." Now, the 'baby block' isn't nearly as bad as the Jesus Cock Block, but its oddly familiar. The Jesus cock block was weird and downright strange in how it happened, but this, this was unethical. It is not fair for a man who has lived life, had sex (i'm assuming this and also assuming the child was his) to put this fragile, thirty something pound baby in the way of a semi-tallish guy who weights 175 pounds. It is unethical to assume that I even care about babies and that I would stop before I slam into the side of the pram, sending pacifiers and baby limbs flying asunder.

Luckily for the man, I pause my sprint and and allow him to go past me. He hurries along, blocking at least two more people before the tell tale sound everyone hears before "Doors Closing" chimes through hidden speakers in the Metro train. I'm glad that I stopped, because I really didn't want to have to explain to Metro Police why I sent a helpless child flying ten feet after his father was walking with him in a "calm, cool and collected manner" towards the train. I know it wasn't like that, but naturally that's what any protestant (and unethical father) would no doubt say to the police while they glare upon me with contempt. There are many other kinds of Baby phenomena i've witnessed, two of my favourites being the "traffic block" and "baby angst".
The traffic block happens when the unethical parent doesn't just assume the casual passerby is acutely aware of their baby's existence and are therefore in awe of the small life form, the parent assumes that HUMANITY itself has a vested interested in her 9 month project. At this junction, a parent will merely stroll onto a street of busy traffic, red, amber or green light and smile at the ensuing chaos as individuals maim, injure and kill themselves to save the anonymous child. I've seen this happen several times and it always baffles me how condifently these parents stare at the face of death on these roadways, when the face of life is staring back at them, blinking and unable to speak without the use of "goo" or "ga".

Baby angst is the reverse of this situation, where a woman or man assumes that everyone knows what a daunting task parenting is and are therefore believes it is okay for everyone to be privy to their bouts of annoyance in any situation. "Since I had my son, " a man might say. "I've had no time to myself!" Then he would probably attempt to slap me and then apologize for his "baby-induced" anger, or "babe-rage". Whatever the case, I tend to avoid pregnant or baby-carrying women who work in restaurants or public places because should they give me bad service, an odd look or a feral growl of dissent when I ask for that second glass of water, it is simply "understood" that I cannot say anything becase it is due to Baby angst.

Alas, I digress.

Interesting Comment -

2007-10-15T15:10:00.000-07:00

I got a comment which had a link to a website based on my "Cloud Nine" Post. It was pretty cool, seeing someone quote some of my work. Click the pic to see.

Cloud Nine - Writing competition Entry

2007-10-14T14:20:00.000-07:00

I have a lot to write about, the last few days have been pretty crazy. Not only did I meet four girls in one night who all work to save the environment, flew to four states in less than 24 hours, but I saw a friend of my proclaim "Yay! White people" when Tupac was playing at a bar I went to recently. I also met a nymphomaniac cab driver. I'll blog about those things pretty soon. I'm posting a story i'm entering in a writing competition. Its only 2,000 words. A very quick read. Ciao.

Cloud Nine

By Marcus Bird

Cloud Nine

Nights like these, Vince thought, made cold people wrap their arms tightly around one another while bustling to some destination. Nights like these the sky is streaked with grey clouds that turn into a brooding, black coat. This was the night he smelled Michiko’s hair. He was by himself—an amazing feat considering he hated being alone—and always felt the need to express himself through people he knew. He went to a popular bar, called Cloud Nine which had great Wednesday night happy hour cuisine. It was in this place, eating a Caesar salad, he saw Michiko. She walked in, a bundle of foreign expression, an externality of the rawness of Japan’s populace and fashion sense. She wore a shiny gray jacket adorned with large yellow buttons on the shoulders and a thin yet form fitting black vintage tee; followed by a chocolate brown skirt and long Cat-in-the-Hat looking socks straight out of a rugby player’s closet. Vince was in mid-bite when she walked in. She looked perturbed, lost in another country, or searching for something. Her eyes were dark and mysterious. Even her hair, a large bob of luxuriant styling courtesy of some uber-expensive Tokyo fashion shop, stood out. As Vince stared at her, she glanced at him and held his gaze. He coughed briefly, turning his eyes, and finished biting into his salad. After a few more chews, he glanced through the corner of his eye in her direction. She was at the bar, standing by herself.

Something inside him stirred in a way that it had never done so before. Maybe it was her striking contrast to everyone else, or maybe it was her foreign touch, that spark of Tokyo-pop and extreme fashion that tickled his relatively conservative sensibilities. Whatever it was, it gave him impetus. He sucked his teeth to check for vegetable particles, and wiped his hands on a napkin. A few long strides took him to the bar directly beside her. As he asked for a drink, Michiko hopped up quickly, so fast that her hair flew upwards and slightly touched Vince’s face. A smell briefly wafted into his nose.

Bubble-gum and Cookies.

She squealed with delight about something and Vince turned to see her hug a young man, also of Asian descent. He was much shorter than Michiko, with a round face, spiky hair and gentle eyes. In a full black shirt and pants, he was also in contrast with Michiko’s outfit. “That’s the DJ.” The bartender said. The bartender was a young twenty-something year old guy with a small outcropping of stubble on his chin, a wide well-proportioned face with a permanent cleft in his left cheek. He always seemed to be smiling.

“Is that his girlfriend?” Vince asked.

“No, nothing like it. She comes here every now and then to hear him play house music.”

Vince looked over to where the two just were, and they were gone. He turned his head and looked across the room. He saw Michiko sitting in a plush couch near to the DJ booth, where the small man was setting up.

“That’s DJ Yoda.” The bartender said with a laugh. “I love star wars.”

He slipped Vince a Vodka Cranberry and turned around to polish some glasses. Vince felt the same twinge of that weird feeling run through his stomach again. Michiko was sitting quietly in the couch, in the soft shadows of the lounge. Her hair almost covered her eyes, making her face look like a beautiful yet disturbing mask. She flicked up a strand of hair with her finger and looked directly at Vince. At this point, a hand seemed to be pulling him forward, tugging him towards the mysterious woman with the funny socks. Vince found himself with his drink in his hand, floating over to Michiko. She gave him a bright smile, showing rows of small white teeth.

“Can I sit here?” he asked.

“Yes, please!” Michiko replied.

“I love your socks.” Vince said.

Michiko let out a loud laugh that sounded like the jingling of bells. When she laughed, Vince’s eyes flashed to any number of hypothetical bars in Tokyo, where she would be sitting with some equally quirky girls, laughing in a booth on the twentieth floor of a nameless building. Laughing that same laugh.

“Thank you, thank you!” she exclaimed.

Vince knew she was from Japan. He had been there himself for two months, walking through the almost maddening architecture of a contiguous landscape, filled to the brim with people. There was a certain look many of the locals had, a look that a person who lived there for some time could pick out immediately. Sometimes it was a certain slanting of the eyes, the shape of the nose, or even the walk, a particular gait reserved for certain boroughs. Then it was the fashion, the odd sensibilities that reflected a city of bright colors, flashing lights and time-your-watch-to-the-second trains. It was like technology and man had mated and produced a host of Michiko’s, happy to exist in a world laced with self-parking cars and rapid text messaging in Kana.

“I’m Michiko.” She said.

“I’m Vince.”

“Vince?”

She said his name in the usual Japanese way, adding “su” to the end. Vince was now, Vinsu?

“That’s’ right. “ Vince replied.

“You like Japanese girls? Eh? Vince-san?” she giggled.

“I like all girls.” Vince replied.

“Ah, so-dayo..” Michiko said.

Vince smiled to himself, “Is that so”… bounced around in his head as his mind translated her little phrase. They spoke for a few minutes until the music started. Michiko ordered a few drinks and Vince followed suit. As they downed drinks time seemed to slow, with the taste of alcohol setting the tone for each moment that passed. Eventually a crowd formed on the dance floor and Michiko's eyes brightened as she heard a familiar song. Without any hesitation she went into the absolute middle of the dance floor, rocking to the music with her eyes closed and hair swaying. Vince eased his way into the center with her, doing a semi-awkward motion of house dancing relegated to those who spend their days walking in the park.

Michiko was wild—dancing like a possessed squirrel—and Vince struggled to keep up. She had an odd rhythm to the pulsing house beats playing. She was half-hopping and half-shaking in a way that didn’t really work with the music, but in a way … it did. In the middle of the usual interlude in a house song—an instrumental break of about thirty seconds that leads to the reintroduction of the bassline—she gave Vince a hug. Her body was small and firm and Vince could feel her shape as she pressed against him. The smell of her hair mixed in with the smell of a strong perfume she was wearing. She kissed him on the cheek, with soft, tiny lips and laughed.

“Dance, Vince!” she said.

Vince felt the buzz of alcohol hitting his body in waves. The music sounded duller but the bass was everywhere, reverberating off the walls, rattling his teeth and scratching the insides of his ears. The club was full of people as well, many of them looking like moving mannequins in Vince’s increasing blur of disconnect. Sometimes he looked at the DJ, standing in his booth with a massive pair of grey headphones on. If he looked up, Vince never saw it. He was fully focused on his job, pleasing the crowd… pleasing Michiko. Michiko grabbed Vince’s hand and pulled him close to her. After dancing for twenty minutes, the lightest sweat was on her neck, it glistened with each flash of the strobe lights overhead. She reached up and over his shoulder and grabbed him, pressing her face against his. Vince felt her lips quickly force his lips open, and her tongue, small and searching, invaded Vince’s mouth. The kiss seemed to last forever, and Vince found himself becoming enamored by Michiko. Her weird sense of style, the way she smelled and how she kissed all seemed to be perfect indicators of something he wanted. Something he needed. They broke the kiss for a moment, and he looked at her in the frantic glow of flashing lights. Her eyes were still dark and mysterious, and Vince wondered how many other guys she had kissed in this way, or looked at with those eyes. She felt slim and supple in his arms, and Vince found himself beginning to wonder how her body looked. It wasn’t something he was thinking the moment he saw her, but now after that kiss and her subsequent gaze—it was impossible not to.

“Let’s go outside.” She said. Michiko bounded with surprising control over to the DJ booth and gave Yoda a kiss. In the brighter lighting of the booth, she looked beautiful. The light accentuated her features, showing the slight flush her cheeks becoming red and made her hair look so shiny it almost didn’t seem real. They exchanged dialogue for a few seconds, but for Vince it seemed like forever. He was still thinking about the moment after they kissed, when she had her arms around his neck, almost staring into his soul. After giving Yoda another kiss on the cheek, she walked back over to Vince. They walked across the marble floors of Cloud Nine, excusing themselves as they felt dancing bodies lightly brush them. They grabbed their coats from the lobby and walked towards the exit. A few large bouncers in dark glasses stood motionless at the doorway, not seeming to breathe as they walked past. A set of large transparent doors with an artist’s rendition of a series of clouds on it was at the end of the lobby. Vince pushed the door and they stepped outside.

The first thing Vince felt was the cold hitting his face, then he felt Michiko’s hand in his, and it was surprisingly warm. She wore a soft orange jacket that fit her form perfectly. With a zip going all the way up the front just below her face, she looked warm and comfortable. “I got this jacket in Shibuya.” She said. “It’s a nice place in Tokyo.” Vince nodded as she said this. He himself had enjoyed walking through Shibuya, shopping for shoes and t-shirts. They walked down the sidewalk, not speaking for a few minutes and then Michiko turned towards Vince.

“I like you Vince.”

“I like you too.” He replied with a smile.

The statement seemed half-sincere, as if she said it knowing that something strange was about to happen, or that she had some kind of power Vince was not aware of, like telekinesis. Michiko must have read Vince’s thoughts.

“I don’t have a boyfriend.” She said. “But I am new to this City. “

“Oh? The bartender says you are a regular at the Nine.” Vince added.

Michiko laughed softly, echoing the sound of softer jingling bells.

“Cloud Nine reminds me of one of my favorite lounges in Tokyo.” She said. “It was funny that the DJ who played there is actually Japanese! That was so crazy. Even though I’ve been here for two months, I’ve been to Cloud Nine maybe five or six times.”

“Ah, sodaro. “ Vince said.

Michiko’s eyed widened and a smile forced its way onto her face.

“You speak Japanese!” she said with excitement.

“Just a little.” Vince said.

She gave him a playful slap on the shoulder. They kissed once more and held hands.

“I live just a few blocks that way. Would you like to come over?” Michiko said.

Her voice sounded more reserved than before, and the tell-tale signs of her alcoholic buzz were wearing off. Vince could feel himself normalizing too. It was probably the cold.

“Sure, we can drink some ocha and watch terebi .” he said.

“Hahah! Drink tea and watch TV… very well!”

Michiko held his hand and they walked in the darkness of the night, heading towards her place. Vince felt the stirring in his stomach again and looked at Michiko’s hand entwined with his. It had been a long time since he had met anyone so interesting that liked him. He could see himself in Michiko’s life; probably at more clubs, eating at restaurants and sitting on a couch together watching television. He wondered if Michiko was thinking the same thing, seeing them through the designer panels of her Tokyo mind, creating an alternate reality with more gadgets and brightly colored clothing. They stopped by a row house with a bright blue door on the corner of a main street.

“Here we are!” Michiko said.

As they headed inside, Vince thought it was ironic that they met at Cloud Nine. In the morning, he wondered if he would know that he didn’t just go to Cloud Nine, but that he was on it. Michiko laughed again, a cascade of soothing resonation that made Goosebumps run up his neck, and Vince knew he would get his answer.

Explosion Implosion

2007-10-09T19:16:00.001-07:00

It's one of those days. The kind that make you feel like punching a wall, or taking a really long sleep.

I'm not sure what to blog about, because I'm a serious mixture of tired and frustrated stemming from a huge number of things that are probably more personal that I'd like to say (at least for now)... so I will just say Tuesday wasn't that great, but Wednesday can always be better than monday.