can't sleep. I despaired myself awake from a dream in which I had flown my car cleanly off of a highway and slammed it into the ocean, where it violently shuddered and shook from the chop-choppy waves and salty sea air. just as I saw water pressing finely against the window, I opened my eyes and looked into my pillow. I woke up and I am the only person awake in the whole world. I put on my bathrobe, tiptoed past my sleeping parrot, stepped over my saint bernard, inched past scottie sleeping on the couch in my living room, to the outside, where the moon has iced half the earth, and everything looks sugary and quiet and clean. I ran to the park, my feet rasping against the asphault and the burrs and the cold all around. I sat on a dead tree and rubbed my legs and watched my breath powder the air, before I wandered home, still no signs of life, still no signs. I am all alone. I hope that you are not.
last night, as I played grand theft auto: san andreas (quite possibly the best game ever), I started to wonder about masculinity after CJ practically ripped the door off of the expensive car I was trying to hijack. the tough exterior of testosterone, and its enshrounding fiber of darwinistic ferocity, seems to hold a soft, pulpy core where men are capable of bawling like babies. but what on earth would I know about being a man? I like men more than I like women, generally, but I don't even really like men very much. I have been verbally and physically harrassed by them, but on the whole I am not bothered. I think that women can love their war-mongering men and hold them at night, because they know. they know that hypermasculinity (that sneer, the shrug, the swagger) arises from and protects the most unlikely of things: two naked, vulnerable testes, curled up like hairless mice. the diaphonous orbs of reproduction, delicate, defenseless. and behavior arises from these strange things that is inexplicable, and jealous, and violent, but isn't it a larger metaphor for what can (usually) be found on the inside? I have kicked scottie in his testicles, on his birthday. he reached out to tickle me, and wham, my leg shot up and nailed him. I hate being tickled.
"I hate that story!" scottie complained as I retold it, earlier tonight, to him, and shaun, and anthony. anthony had just returned from new york city, and we were drinking tecates and goofing off and bothering scottie, who is naturally sweet and good-natured.
"I hate it when you guys talk about that!" scottie exclaimed. "I mean, I can almost feel it, and it doesn't feel good." that night, on his birthday, after the horrible kick, he crawled to his room groaning and crying. I took him a bag of wine and apologized profusely.
"get out," he growled, and I still don't think he has forgiven me.
if you enjoy ice cream creatures or electronic music, as I do, then you will like the new compliation put out by papergoose, which includes a previously unreleased ice cream creatures track. and there are two songs that I listen to that ease the dismay of the election, and they seem particularly apt when thought of in that context. they are Contronatura, by stereolab, and Ohio, by modest mouse.
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