I thought I heard a dead man play

TV on the Radio is a pretty cool band. I liked their first EP and LP fine and even found some tracks to love on them. However at the end of their new album, "Return To Cookie Mountain,"there is a bonus track called "Things You Can Do." It is... affecting. Fela alive, it is marvelous, heart gripping, booty moving, soulful, bluesy, African. They steal from Fela Kuti even more outrageously than bands like Antibalas and their ilk, but by Jove, do they do their own thing with it. That singer fella's voice is wonderful and it sits on the track like iro (wrapper) on a Nigerian woman's ass. Musically, it's structured like the majority of Fela's music, starting in a soft and mellow Marijuana inflected groove. They don't stretch the intro for five minutes like Fela would have done but there is a small gap for you to appreciate and anticipate before the singer's voice comes in. Repititive, rhythmic melodies, the lyrics delivered with steady, unrushed pacing, and then... at 1.47, those horns, so sad and so grandiose, over and over again and my goodness, it's better than sex, or maybe it is sex because the crash at 2.20 feels a lot like orgasm. At this point, this song is pure rapture, all id, no ego, just pleasure, no thought necessary, emotion is all. The dueling horns, that relaxed, blues guitar doing naughty sophisticated things in the back, the piano in that sad but sweet little key I only ever hear in African music... Lord only knows how long it took them to master this.

I must be driving my neighbours nuts. I've been playing it on auto repeat for a half hour now, and I'm not sure when I'll be able to stop. Get this song, download, buy, steal, whatever. Get some speakers with half decent bass, put it on auto-repeat, sit in the dark and let this wash over you. And if it does to you what it does to me, come ask me about Fela Kuti and I'll tell you how you can experience this again, and again. Better than drugs,which I've never had; better than sex, or at least a less complicated pleasure; better than cigarettes, sublime as those can be...

A horrendous breakup and first date

One drink, two drinks, three and away we go.

Two weeks ago, three women gave me their numbers. And I broke up with the blonde. That went remarkably well. So well that we went out, got remarkably drunk (on a Wednesday no less), made out at bars and clubs from the LES to Chelsea Pier and woke up together in my bed the very next morning. Despite this unorthodoxy, it appeared that we understood each other and that was a sort of grand finale to things before we began a flirty but mostly platonic friendship.

Instead of this however, she stopped by the bar on Friday and in the most horrendous breakdown I've ever witnessed recreated a scene from "Fatal Attraction" or any movie of that ilk you please. Flowers were smacked around, threats were made, girl got drunker, all with me behind the bar flummoxed and trying to contain knowledge of the disaster to the smallest group of people possible, namely the other bartender and the couple to her right, into whom's meal flowers got smacked and the male of whom's hand she began to make out with. Needless to say, rounds of drinks were comped for that lucky pair once I cut her off and she departed in a storm of negative energy. I wanted someone passionate right? Ever noticed how passionate crazy people can be?

The Sunday after this, upon my return from a wedding in DC and needing a little psychic break from my visiting mother (who I love dearly and whose visit I thoroughly enjoyed), I snuck out for a date with one of those three women who gave me their numbers last week. I remembered her as tall, New York pretty (think expensive maintenance and elegant dress, enough to obscure the natural beauty or lack thereof of any woman), with the most horrendous posture, which however was not a signifier of a lack of self confidence as she thrust her card at me with the most assuredness of the three and breezed off like my phone call was a given. Well, I'm nothing if not easy and so call I did.

Dear readers, it's not easy being a cad in this city. Alfie makes it look all easy dating wanton women that are easy to seduce and are nice (for the most part). Me, I have to contend with ill mannered curs who upon being told my country of origin inquire as to whether I come from among the wealthy or the poor. I'll not comment here upon my socio-economic status growing up here, but I will say that if all the scion of the ultra-wealthy in this country are as unpleasant as this being, I'll be glad to never meet another Westchester export in my life.

Burned out from a bad day at work, she came to the date unhappy, pissy and directing a great portion of this negative energy in my direction. I ought to have departed. I knew I ought to. Odd enough, I wanted to stay. Not for her, but for the location, which had been of her choosing, and possesed, besides the most delightful bartender (a dandy with an affect that quite resembles Depp's pirate in that movie), two gorgeous and friendly college girls (one with the most astonishing head of brunette gorgeousness I've ever had the pleasure of observing) who made sympathetic commiserations with me when my date darted off to answer her crackberry.

Besides, I was hungry and in need of libations and so I stayed. Stayed for the most passive aggresive date any man has ever had the displeasure of going through. Charmed the bartender into accomodating my date's outrageous requests for modification of the menu. Endured conversation graceless enough to offend a New York bum, and like the tax man squeezing a penny from the (tax) sheltered rich, even persuaded a smile and some real feeling out of that woman.

And when, with the bartenders full sympathy, I paid the bill and departed with the lady, hoping to turn some of this passive aggressive energy into a sexual encounter of a kind I'd never had (as I do not make a habit of sleeping with people I dislike), what happens? She runs into some pretty boy she's sure she's met at some place before and abandons me because she is enjoying his company.

I must have displeased the gods something fierce that weekend. Perhaps I should have spent more time with my mother.

It got worse

The breakup that is. Abandoning the don't call me stance, Opera girl called for an operatic conversation that played out with me circling Union Square for over an hour after midnight on a Monday night. To find finality, I had to trot out "I think you're a wonderful person but honestly my feelings for you really don't run that deep." Basically she needed to hear that I just really didn't like her that much. For her to find finality, she had to confess infidelity and the subsequent lies of omission to cover it up, a fairly plain ploy at hurting me at a moment I was obviously hurting her. My ego is hurt a lot less than my faith in humanity. I know what I'm capable of. I'd just thought and hoped she was a better person than that. Humanity is disgusting.

Buy me a yellow rose

Did the blonde breathe, "I love you" before that kiss last night? I shudder thinking the thought.

Broke up with Opera Girl Saturday night. It was not fun. In fact, I'd venture to say it was the very apothesis of fun, by far the most harrowing and painful breakup I've gone through. I may not know what love is but heartache I'm familiar with. It sits with me now.

Of course we broke up because I don't want to be with her. Yet it saddens me greatly to think that she's out of my life, and it's all that I can do to resist calling her right at this moment (there is a very emphathic and angry moment when she detailed the things I was not to do, call her and make sure she's alright, email her, send her a friendster message. it is her intent to pretend I'm dead I believe. Does this confuse you? This ambivalence about being in a relationship with a person I obviously like so much? Imagine how much it confuses me. Better yet, think what it does to her.

I think perhaps I'm simply such a cipher in person that it is too easy for those involved with me to inscribe upon me whatever it is they want to see. I'm nice, I'm kind, I'm polite, occasionally I'm even fun. If the basics of decent humanity appear to be covered and I keep the rest of myself to myself, then they can just imagine me to be whoever they want to be. If I am nice to them, I must like them. If I hold them in bed, I must want to protect them. If I carry their bags, I must care for them. If all these things, then I must feel more for them than mere fondness right?

What is intimacy? Are you able to have it with one person only? Is it something you can only develop with those you truly, trly want to be with? Does it come easy or hard?

I can't say with any honesty that I love either of these women. I enjoy their company and like them both very much, one (who just left) above the other perhaps. I find much to admire, much to be entertained by and much to value in both of them. I care about them and hate to be the cause of any hurt in their lives. I would be very (and demostrably) angry at anyone else who brought pain into their lives. Does this amount to love?

Because I still do not find (as I told Opera girl in the calm after the immediate fury of the opera of our break up), to paraphrase some cornball romantic comedy that I can't remember, that either of them complete me. I'm not looking for perfection, I'm not looking for my female doppelganger but as much as I like each of these women, there are qualities in them that prevent me from wanting to spend all my time exclusively with them or envisioning long and rewarding relationships with them. The blonde has too many bad habits, big ones that grind on my nerves and it cannot be long till I tire of them. Opera girl? Could you be in a relationship with someone who's kisses you never came to love? However good everything else was? If you never merged physically in a manner that fulfilled you? How do you even tell someone you don't enjoy their kisses?

We broke up because she said she wanted to be with just me and for me to be with just her. We broke up because she said, "I think I'm falling in love with you" and I knew that it would be totally unfair to stay with her when I knew that there was no future and I didn't want a future with her, at least not that way. And yes, I do wonder if I made a mistake and if I've built up unreasonable expecatations about who I could be happy with and I really ought to call her and tell her I'm fine being with her and her alone but even more urgently I wonder,

Did the blonde breathe, "I love you" before that kiss last night?