Last Night
Friday, May 16, 2008
I spent yesterday making attempts to get an old girlfriend to come into town. We'd talk about old times (I imagine sitting on the couch, leaning into the cushions: remember that time you made us wear personalized Bon Voyage T-Shirts and we got so drunk and happy we ripped them from each other's bodies out on the dance floor at Danny's? etc.) and possibly do wrestling. On my way to the Scharf/Boaz/Downing reading she called to say she couldn't make it. She leaves the country on Sunday, not to return for a good month. Bon Voyage, my little Iron Shiek. Ran into A. on the subway, heading toward a meeting with agents he looked none too ecstatic to attend. Loneliness.
The reading was sparsely populated by people of the best quality. I walked right up to poet Eugene Ostashevsky, mistaking him for poet Aleksandr Skidan ("Aleksandr, good to see you again buddy!" Great ignorant backslapping. Beat. "You're not Aleksandr." Evenly: "No, I'm not.") They're both worthy Russians, to be sure, not to be offended, yet it's possible I was distracted by two potential hostiles (women, yes, one of whom I'd asked out earlier in the week, to moderate ridicule) who came to my reading for a) friendly gossip and b) to see their old friend Greg blossom after so many years in cold storage, publicly and embarrassingly, as he has been threatening to do on a daily basis, possibly bending down on one knee and proposing an open and frankly sexual marriage to the one or the both of them, right there at Solas: which, to hardened gossipers, would be like manna. I love them, hate them, watch them throughout the evening. The reading was fine. Brandon's multimedia take on Tennyson/snakebite prevention/flaming-motorcycle-sport killed.
Then, off to Decibel with my little friends. We drank plum wine for hours and have a night of magical erotic talk. Is this boring? Which size and with whom and what swagger and what technique and what trajectory and where did it land and did it please you? No, I decide, not boring. I wanted to spit the inexpressible: I told them I imagined them imprisoned on the top of a mountain in a bamboo cage with the buzzards surrounding them. I evoked the mule I would ride to the top of the mountain to save them, the bramble whips cutting my face. I want to wear them over my ears like earmuffs. We all became buddies, forged bonds I expect will last a lifetime. Oh lord, it was platonic. Come home with me ladies, I'll tie one to the other, using only your limbs as rope, and climb up to the topmast. No? They assure me sometime soon I'll get my swagger back. Until then, it's hugs, little pats on the back, off they go. Bye, buddy. Bye bye buddy. I take a long walk.
Back home, Gabe showed me his new drawings, the best things he's done since he's come to New York. Here's a guy who looks like John Berryman, pulling a drunk out of a bar, captioned: IT HAPPENED. A man reading a newspaper: IT HAPPENED. A guy who looks like Clement Greenberg, staring at a clock: IT HAPPENED. This is great, I say. I should be doing work of this quality, instead of wallowing in trajectories, topmasts, etc.
posted by Greg Purcell @ 1:16 PM,
