I done shagged so many women, I'm starting to think maybe I ought to leave a few unshagged??

God, she has a smile that could power Manhattan. She's just some girl I run into around school a lot, no one I know well, yet. I wonder what is the appropriate response when meeting all these creatures of loveliness. It is frequently posited that the need to possess (beauty, wealth, whatever) is one of the central and destructive aspects of masculinity. I find little in my experience to contradict that suggestion, at least not where beauty is concerned. Like many before me, I find myself falling in love a thousand times a day, and inevitably I want each and every one of these women. I want to date them, I want to sleep with them, I simply want them to hover around me and be pretty and intelligent; doesn't matter, it's all possesion. I should probably be thankful I'm so inept around women. Possessing that much beauty each day would surely destroy me.

I remember my cousin getting to this problem. About twelve years older than me, he once lived with us when I was a kid. A Casanova without compare, he somehow managed to combine joblessness, average looks, below average intelligence and a general aimlessness in life to come up with a package that seduced beauty after beauty into his bed. Not empty beauties either, smart women with real prospects and great backgrounds. Still, I remember the first day I saw a weak spot in his game. After years of watching him work, I went him to deliver a package to a girl whose exact connection to us I don't quite remember. Absoutely ravishing, we found her outside her place washing her car in the most ridiculous cut up jeans ever worn by a woman not named Daisy Duke. She was in college at the time and living on her own in a pretty sweet apartment. I remember being sufficiently impressed. My cousin was similarly smitten. At least that was the impression I got. And he definitely got right to work, with his patented line of aggressive play, questioning and flirtation. By the time we left, there was no doubt in my mind that she would shortly be girlfriend 16 or 17 or whatever frigging number he was on at that point. Yet, asking him about her a couple of weeks later, he made the most intriguing comment; one that didn't really ring true but none the less remains with me till now. He said, "I decided not to pursue it. I just wonder if it's possible for me to meet a girl and not necessarily insist on getting her into bed with me or approaching her in that particular frame of mind." To be frank, I'm fairly certain he got shot down. Be that is it may though, it's fascinating to imagine him suddenly thinking that at that point. Like, "I done shagged so many women, I'm starting to think maybe I ought to leave a few unshagged, no matter how ridiculously good looking they are."

It's like coming to goodness by tiring of sin, an idea I've been pondering lately. It's an odd route to maturity, but it fascinates me. I wrote this little fiction on the topic while riding a bus from Boston a couple of weeks ago:

I wonder if it's possible to come to righteousness by tiring of sin; doing the same thing, one time, two times and eventually pausing through a fear for your soul. Not a fear of God or punishment or any such thing. Those of us loved by the Lady Luck need fear no God nor waste gambling time worrying about heaven or hell. Yet, looking in the eyes of one cuckold after the other, shaking their hands and breaking bread with them, a man's heart may sicken and he begin to seek an honest woman and shirk the company of indecisive bitches eager to possess all (domesticity and danger) and pay none(cuckold or the fooled swinging cock). Can you steal, steal and sicken of the loot? Shank em in dark alleys and gank em on bright streets and find one day that you feel for them? Do you write it off as a temporary softness of the heart? Or do you allow yourself to wander towards goodness, like a reformed gladiator freeing property that he paid so much good coin for?

Anyway, all this rambling just to wonder if it's possible to meet a pretty girl and not want to or attempt to possess her in some form. I mean I do have lots of female friends who are incredibly pretty, and if I'm not dating them, it's probably because they were already dating someone when I met them and I discovered their extreme neuroses before that relationship ended. Having found their dirty secrets out, I no longer have any desire to own that particular set of problems. Sure, we can be friends but at the end of the day, they go back to their men and I don't have to deal with their insanity. It's like being am uncle and being able to play with the beautiful baby, but not have to deal with it when it poops or any of that icky stuff. And of course, there are the ones I did date and have found that we work better as friends than as lovers. But, like I said before, even their friendship is a form of possession. And I wonder what will happen when I do finally fall into a real relationship. Will I be required to cast my eyes down every time I see some woman of Scarlett Johanssen beauty? How do you ignore the Angelina Jolie look alike who sits across from you on the train everyday? How do married men handle this?

More rambling, I love to ramble

I am a huge believer in teams. One can do nothing without other people to support them. Well, perhaps there are people who can, but I don't really know in what industries those would be. Loose teams, people who are as good at what they do as you are at what you do; that's the way to get shit done. For example, I don't see any reason for an actress of talent and intelligence to ever stop working, whether at 29 and past ingenue or 59 and past femme fatale. You want to stay working, you become friends with good writers and get them to write roles that fit you. You develop relationships with great directors and get them to place you in unexpected roles. This is only an idea, but it's the way I've always figured I'd do anything, if I ever did anything. I'm a great idea man, unmatched when I'm really inspired. But I'm also lazy, sloppy in execution and a lot more about the big picture than the gritty details. Obviously, these are going to be barriers to acheving anything. But I think I could compensate. If I have this fabulous idea that needs drawings to start out, I understand that I am so artistically inept that I fail at drawing stick man and know that someone else must be involved. Well, find someone in art school or graphic design who needs the practice and would be excited to be part of some random and engaging project (say dear reader, know anyone?). I've started trying to press all of my friends into these things. I sometimes lament that I've done so little up to this point, that I didn't create a company out of my dorm room and acheive international revere and fortune by 23. Then I read something like this Vera Wang article and realise that she was subsisting on daddy's money at 38. So no rush then. It'd only take a decade to build any career, musician or Microsoft owner, from scratch to stratosphere. I can start now, fail in five years, start and fail again, and do that over and over before acheiving success at 55. Truth is, there is no rush. I have little else I want to do with my life. Here's my life's goal, stated simply and truthfully. I want to do something great, doesn't matter what, except that it's positive. And while I'm at it, I'd like to live a good life, have friends, have lovers and get some level of joy out of living. I suppose when I say I want to do something great, I mean I want to build a business that has an impact on the world, or write a truly great novel, record a totally incredible album, make a revolutionary movie, that kind of thing. I think if I could do something like that, I'd be truly happy. And I know it wouldn't be the end, it'd only be a beginning. I'd have to try and do something else, which might fail, but at least I'd have that first success to cherish. Or I could fail first and fail frequently, and I don't think it'd necessarily be the end of the world. I'm sure that's bound to bring my depression bubbling up, but thus far I've never failed to get back on the horse, no matter how rough the previous landing. So I think I could do it. I want love in my life, even if I don't necessarily believe in marriage. I think I'd be great at raising a kid but I don't know if I'll ever do it. I wouldn't mind just raising other people's; either as part of a village or by adopting. I acknowledge that these are unorthodoxies that may well send my mother to an early grave. I will try to help her adjust as best as I can. I think life is completely random and it doesn't matter much whether you take one road or another to your destiny. It might be worth just doing what you think will make you happy while keeping to your beliefs. I'm scared that I will be proved wrong in all of this. I worry about life's harshness and the things it does to people, especially to dreamers. I worry about living a small life, although I can imagine finding happiness in smaller things and not particularly needing greatness. I love stories about those offbeat people, written off by the world, who nevertheless manage to pull off miracles and great feats. I love to read those stories and watch movies about people like that. There has never been a film where the protagonist is defeated at the end, when I don't hope with every breadth that he or she goes back home, and rests for a bit, then in their own roar back into the world, ready for redemption and to try again. I understand that implies a childish faith in the recuperative of the human spirit and probably shows that I've never experienced any true pain or defeat. I'm fine with that. In fact, I'd like to get to that pain and defeat, sooner rather than later. I want my low point as soon as possible. I want to touch the bottom so I can stop worrying about it and focus only on the top. I should stop rambling, do some laundry and get to bed. There is work to be done.

Optimism

At 24, I favored my shirts a size too small and finally felt like I owned an adequate number of jeans. The day I turned 24, I bought new cologne cause I wanted a luxury I could both enjoy and share. At 24, I was full of hope, convinced I was at a starting point; on the diving board about to dive into the endless pool of my possibility and potential. At 24, most of my friends, casual or close, were female. Celebrating the occasion, I found I'd somehow amassed a majority of Asians among those friends and nary a black one, a somewhat odd thing for a man with neither an Asian fetish, nor a shortage of melanin in skin. At 24, I cared about fashion and beauty, movies and music, people and reality, learning and teaching, and lots of other things beside. The day I turned 24, I was very fond of my family in it's entirety and particularity. For some reason, turning 24 seemed momentous, odd for such a ordinary number. Anyway numbers are meaningless and I'm happy and hopeful. I'm learning things and trying things and hope to get over my flaws or get on despite them. It feels like the year to move from being a dreamer to being a doer, so little projects or big projects, bring them all. Ooh, for my birthday, I got a DVD I really love, the Mark Romanek director's reel. The best friend is great at being the person with the coolest (and sometimes only) gift each year. I can now watch Johnny Cash's Hurt video all day and all night, and have great background visuals for my next gathering. At 24, I'm loving and learning to entertain. And, of course, there is love, or the perpetual search for it. Well, the year started with poor judgement on my part, but even in this, I'm hopeful. Fingers crossed, shoes shined and Nina on the stereo. It's gonna be a good year.

I inveigled the folks to my blog thingy

Holy batman and gatman, awesome new word of the day, from this article: inveigle.

Main Entry: in·vei·gle
Pronunciation: in-'vA-g&l sometimes -'vE-
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): in·vei·gled; in·vei·gling /-g(&-)li[ng]/
Etymology: Anglo-French enveegler, alteration of Middle French aveugler to blind, hoodwink, from Old French avogler, from avogle blind, from Medieval Latin ab oculis, literally, lacking eyes
1 : to win over by wiles : ENTICE
2 : to acquire by ingenuity or flattery

Craziness. I suggest you use it liberally.

In which I all but dare karma to bite me in the ass

The scene: an apartment in Harlem, NYC. Our protagonist is pacing and talking to himself out loud, as he is wont to do.

Flint: The food poisoning is way too heavy, definitely can't use the food poisioning. [Shakes head in frustration and then heads resolutely to the bathroom, flushes and then sits down right outside the door, picks phone up annd dials the already lit up number.]
Flint: Hello? Brazilian. Hey, how are you?
Brazilian: I'm good, went to the Empire state building today, finally doing all these tourist things before I leave. I went shopping afterwards and I'm home now. How are you?
Flint: Err, I've had better days.
Brazilian: Oh? Are you okay?
Flint: I'm sorry I didn't call earlier. I had dinner with a friend in some random place last night and it really didn't agree with me. Spent the day hugging the bathroom
Brazilian: Oh, that sucks. Do you need anything.
Flint: No, I'll be alright. I'm drinking seltzer and holding on. But I really can't do anything tonight. How about we see each other on Sunday or something?
Brazilian: Ok, that's fine. If you need anything, give me a call.
Flint:Thanks, you're too sweet. Take care.
Brazilian: Beijos, bye.
End Scene.

Right then, back to watching the Sopranos and stuffing my face with pizza, as one does when they're in a funk the night before their birthday (which the Brazilian has not been told about or invited to join in since the whole relationship is slightly dodgy and under wraps). Yes, I am aware that my soul is in dire danger here, but hey. If you're going to make an excuse for ducking out at the very last moment on a friggin Friday night, it'd better be really good. Now I have to invent an entire scenario involving some strange ethnic food consumed in some less than ideal locale of the city, kept deliberately vague so as not to hurt any real and existing business, etc. Sigh. This is the second time I've used food poisoning. The first tim was when I wanted a day off work so I could read some novel (Jonathan Strange and Dr. Norrell?) that was rocking my world. I'm anticipating that karma will catch up with me somewhere 15,000 miles above sea level on a flight where I'm sitting next to some pretty girl who won't understand why my stomach sounds like a demented three penny opera and my general area smells like something Ozzy regurgitated.

Damn, must have been whiskey in those cups

I'm afraid I have to report yet another night of drunken debauchery when I ought to have been studying. This one came with the unfortunate side effect of a hangover, something rare and unwelcome in my ouvre. Anyway, out at Lit last night, I commented to my friend that the hipsters really ought to be commended. It's not everyone that can raise maladjustment to an art form and find enough people who were similarly unable to get along with anyone in high school to actually create an economic and social force of such power that daily newspapers and unemployed bloggers complain about them regularly. So three cheers for maladjustment, and three cheers for Jack Daniels. Actually, maybe you can hold those for the moment. My head doesn't want me doing any kind of cheering now actually. There's this person that comes out some nights. That person isn't really me, but he does inhabit my body. Cheerful and cheeky, he manages to stifle the reserved aspect of my character and do really random things like dance with the go-go girl on stage (I think she had fun), and get conversations on with everyone, male or female, with a pulse in the nightclub. I rather enjoy being that fella. It's kinda cool to let the rebel without a cause schtick go and be rebellious without a pause. I'm not sure that previous sentence made any sense. On the other hand, I'm not sure my head has ever made this much noise. I think I'm going to go lay down now. More postings, on varied topics, to comes later.

Living alone sometimes sucks

I just finished my second meal of the day that has come out of a can. This tells me that I am getting even lazier at feeding myself and really must make more effort. This is particularly as one of those meals was a Chef Boyardee thing and upon opening it I realized that it contained nothing I couldn't make myself within a half hour. Living on your own can be rough. So can living on your own without a TV set. Before I ate, I was going completely spastic, bored, hungry, tired of my computer and too stupid to know how to handle any of it. Luckily food helped and I am now happily staring at my computer again. Would have been nice to turn away from this screen to another temporarily or maybe even have some human company. Speaking of human company, I've decided that I need a girlfriend. Haha, you laugh at me. I've been proclaiming this for the last 900 years at least. Yet, it never really works out. Conversing with The Wing Man (and best friend, henceforth to be the known as TWM), we agreed and I acknowledged that it is probably not helped by my constantly dating the wrong people. Take the Brazilian for example. I can't date anyone who disparages hip hop. I don't get pleasure from that many things and I really can't accept negativity towards the few things that do. Anyway, I only got with her cause it was convenient. Our time together is naturally limited as she leaves the country for good at the end of March. Even with this, I'm bored with her and contemplating creating and delivering the big, "I'd rather be at home furiously masturbating to internet porn than be here sleeping with you" speech. Then there is this really cool girl I went out with a little while ago, who unfortunately happens to live in Syracuse. Syracuse! I think that's somewhere beyond Egypt but closer than Australia. This is where I'm supposed to insert a point to this post. I am going to exercise my right not to. See you later on when I remember the other things I was going to drone on about.

Monster Post

I never post, so here is a monster post to make up for that. I will try to post more often in the future. I'm getting back into the mix of things, and regularity and schedule are good for me. I've been pretty guarded about revealing much about myself on here, figuring it best to leave any clues for friend's of mine who might stumble across this. Fuck that. For one thing, it overestimates their online adventurousness, and for a second, fuck em anyway. If they find it, I'll just shut it down and start a new blog away from their prying eyes, one with no readers at all to really ensure my privacy. Anyway...

Saw a couple of really good movies this weekend. Brokeback Mountain might be the movie of the year. I've yet to see A History of Violence or Syriana, so it's possible that one of those is better, but Brokeback is definitely much better than almost everything else I saw last year. A slow and tough movie, the brutal humanity of it makes it truly fun to watch. Heath Ledger finally proves himself an actor, going all Brando on us with a full scale transformation of the way he talked, walked, basically existed within the movie. It was actually pretty distracting in the first twenty minutes or so. The thing about performances like that though is that if done well, you stop noticing it so much and fall into the plot and story as things move along and I think they pretty much succeeded in that. Gyllenhaal didn't have as great a transformation, essentially playing a variation on himself, and I wasn't so enthralled with his performance until later in the movie, when he plays older and has my very favorite scene in the movie. "You sit down! This is my house! This is my child! And you are my guest! So sit the hell down or I'll knock your ignorant ass into next week!" That's old Jack Twist finally demanding respect and doing it in style. The old man sits down and Jack wins our respect as well. I'm sick of and will no longer be sympathizing with wimpy fucking characters in movies, novels, whatever no matter how they much represent the geeky, reserved, hesitant aspect of my own character. I read Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man last week and I was so fucking cheesed at the character the entire time. No matter how much I identify with his fears and issues, I really can't deal with characters who refuse to act, or to think, or to question. I can't live life like that and I can't stand it in anyone, fictional or otherwise anymore. Send word to Jim Carrey's Eternal Sunshine character about this as well. Back to Brokeback though, I'm still marveling at the fact that this movie was directed by the guy who royally screwed up the Hulk movie. Good going, Ang. Oh, and my other favorite moment in the movie is watching Alma Del Mar (Ledger's wife) when she sees Jack Twist (is that a great name or what?) driving up. If the devil himself had ridden up, hallowed in spikes and riding a red hot poker, that woman would not have been more fearful. It was great.

Now if I could just have disposed of the weird dude sitting beside me, who started breathing really hard at the very first sex scene and then wouldn't stop all the way till the end of the movie. Dude came with two women too. I truly hope neither of them is sleeping with him, or life may come to imitate art a little too much for their comfort. The other movie I saw yesterday was The Warriors, which was totally transcendent. I love finding all this stuff, movies, music, books that has been there and wonderful for years, but I'm just discovering. I read Ralph Ellison for the first time in 2006, listened to the Clash and the Beatles for the first time in 2004 and only came to truly appreciate Bogart in 2005. I'm glad to see that there is much else for me to discover in the world. Art makes existence worth it. It's impossible for me to watch The Warriors or anything like it and remain completely disillusioned with life and living it. This is no way means that I relinquish any nihilism I may possess though. Anyway, at this point, I'm going to end this post and move the other things I want to talk about into a separate one.

A freeform masturbation of words onto the page - I highly suggest ignoring this post

I am not naturally inclined to form thoughts into whole treatises and essays. Thus I keep writing first sentences into this artificially constructed space and then finding my mind blank or far too full to organize and chop up into some convenient and trite piece for the entertainment of those who may occasionally dip in here or simply to allow me to digest my ideas and come out with simplistic solutions or conclusions that might be used to direct my future actions. The same goes with comments on other people's blogs. If I read you, chances are that I've started to write a response to your posts several times, seen the very first line of it and decided that I come off as a smirking, stupid, obnoxious, uninformed, grade A idiot and decided against posting at all. I wonder if it is possible to conceive an artistic lament for all the comments lost by a blogger's unwillingness to appear stupid, or in any other negative light. Yes, I really am that shallow. On the other hand, it does point to a deeper problem. When asked what it is exactly I write, I'm often forced to reply, "fragments." I've not the discipline to distill my informal writings into finished pieces. Being a sheep, as most people are, I am of course able to complete assignments in classes and hand in work assignments, albeit with extreme difficulty, and some of these are indeed very good. If I were able to push to completion anything I did outside of a class or work, perhaps that stuff would be very good too. Thus far, it has been impossible to tell. One way to remedy this of course is to take classes in the stuff I'm interested in writing, thus giving my structure and deadline demanding brain artificial constraints that my excellent conditioning in high school would prevent me from ignoring. I succesfully did that with photography last year, finally taking a class which allowed me to test empirically any talent or potential I might have in that field. Talent has not in fact been confirmed, but I was sufficiently intrigued that I intend to try out an advanced class before concluding in the negative. Unfortunately, classes are expensive and time limited, thus it is unlikely that I can take a class in every single thing it is that I wish to explore. This then leaves me back in the position of the dreamer, attempting to become a doer. I've begun the process of dissociating myself with indecisive characters in novels and movies, my frustration with their inability to act overcoming my basic identification with their general neuroses or fears. I've no intention of dying Hamlet. Right now I'm reading Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and I find myself constantly frustrated with the protagonist's unquestioning and unwillingness to think around corners. He reminds me a lot of Edward Norton's character in American History X, too willing to accept each new dogma that comes his way without engaging his critical faculties. I find myself frequently yelling, internally (mostly) at a fictional character and worrying that he, like Norton, will not begin to think until he has been forced to pay some extremely high tolls for his slackness on the highway of life. I may have been accused of gullibility in the past, but this at least, I've never been accused of not asking questions or coming to my own conclusions about the shape and color of the world. I may conclude that earth is a cuboid and the sky pink and purple, but at least those would be conclusions of my own reason.

Okay, I am done with that now. But having mentioned pink, I would like to point out that I recently purchased one a Western (cowboy) style shirt covered in flowers and done in two shades of pink and that contrary to what you might imagine, this shirt does not make me look like a raging homosexual. I think I will wear it when I celebrate yet another year of my (thus far) pointless existence on this geoid. If someone takes a decent picture, I will post it. That is all. Good night.

Resolutionish

I don't do resolutions the way most people do. Instead of a laundry list of things I'd like to change, I generally decide on some abstract thing that I'm thinking would make my life better and almost unconsciously work through it. For example a few years ago, I decided that I needed to be more honest in my relationships. That included letting those I dated know if things weren't working out, avoiding compromising situations or dating two people seriously simultaneously. I pretty much kept to and have continued to keep to that with the side effect that I date a lot more. See the example of the freshman for an illustration of how this works. Meet girl, go on two or three dates. Decide for whatever reason that it's not going to work. Inform her and then go home and twiddle thumbs while waiting for next girl to enter your life. No prolonged hitting of the booty while she tries for a relationship or letting things get any more confused, just get out once it's obviously not going to work.

Last year's resolution was to leave boring parties early. That was to curb my budding alcoholism. Nothing gets me on the sauce like being bored in public. I always figure a few more drinks would definitely make these folks more interesting. What always instead is that I wake up with one interesting and humiliating story to serve up my therapist in a few years. So my resolution was supposed to help with that. And it worked, worked so well I'm thinking of extending it to include simply going to fewer parties. This party monster needs to show scary face at fewer events and spend more time doing productive things rather than killing brain cells by the bottle.

The other resolutionish thing I'm trying to do this year is learning to plan. Ye ole Flint is not a planner. It runs in the family. We may all be the worst planners on the planet. Starts with my father who has succeeded in life despite lacking that faculty but still regularly misses flights and has to be reminded of everything a dozen time, moves on the my mother who has run two or three shops and is constantly owed and owes money and not just in that "net 30" way either. I'm talking about borrowing from one person to pay off another and other borderline irresponsible ways of handling her finances because planning it is simply beyond her. My siblings aren't much better and I certainly am not. When the going gets busy, Flint gets befuddled. This is a partial explanation for my long term abandonment of this blog. Once the activities start to pile up, I get butter-fingered and a few things have to get dropped. This blog unfortunately was one of them. What happens when I'm really busy is that I try to handle everything as it comes. Then things start to build up and I start to realize that approach won't work and I must formulate a plan to deal with the rest. So lacking the faculty to do that, I usually decide what's least important, drop it, rush through the more important things and hope that by so doing I cover everything important and still have a little time for what isn't. As my disastrous performance in the final exam I had to take last year and my prolonged absence from this blog would indicate, this obviously does not work. Thus I will read some books, take a seminar, simply think on it and figure out some way of learning to manage my life better. After all, the success of my folks despite their inability to do is not necessarily an indication that I will be similarly successful without it.