Yo.
Outta here.

A coupla t'ings:

Flower Ladies
(Lovely names that you don't hear any more)

Fern
Daisy
Rose
Violet
Pansy
Hazel
Lily
Olive

Words in the English Language Ending in 'C' That Take a 'K' Before Adding a Suffix
(There are supposed to be seven)

Cholic (Cholicky)
Static (Staticky)
Manic (Manicky)
Tic (Ticking)
Picnic (Picnicking)
Panic (Panicky)
Bivouac (Bivouacking)

I'm never sure if I have these right. Years and years ago it was presented to me as a challenge ("Can you name the seven words..."


And This.

M R ducks
M R not
O S A R
C M wangs
L I B
M R ducks

M R snakes
M R not
O S A R
C M E D B E I's
L I B
M R snakes

And I recently started a Pallindrome Collection

Do geese see God?
We panic in a pew.
Ma is a nun as am I (I knew a woman who could make that boast.)
Rats live on no evil star.

The last one has always been my favorite. My last name lends itself to palindromes... k r a m e r /\ r e m a r k. 'Remarkable Elba Kramer' is a common one, but I know there's a better one out there somewhere.

Almost there. Damn productive day at work. Special Guy just called. His car got towed. Wasn't sure of the cross street for the tow pound. (West 38th Street). I'm sort of moved to say, "That's life in the Big City," but I haven't said that since I was in high school. In Holicong, Pennsylvania. I managed to get directions to the 'Starbucks on Germantown Avenue in Chestnut Hill' so I can pick up my friend the Baron of Philadelphia. He'll be staying with me whilst I head off to St. Louis next week.

So tonights a sleepover party at my house. I'm so tickled. And tomorrow I drive to pick up the Baron, and then go up to New Hope to find this erotique boutique on Mechanic Street that has a nice selection of whips I want to check out. Then the Pride March on Sunday. So it should be a nice weekend. I have absolutely got to impose on the Baron to let me have one wee night so that I can hang out with the Special Guy before I'm leavin' on a jet plane. Anyway, buttloads of work to do before I get out of here.

Oh man. Great time with the Special Guy last night. We met at the Original Espresso Bar on Christopher Street (site of the first laying on of eyes). Tongues dueled furiously between sips of iced coffee. Then we headed out to dinner, and were promptly caught in a downpour. Both of us agreed that it was 'kinda nice.' While taking refuge under the awning of the flower guy at Christopher and Bleecker, we necked some more. He bought me a single red rose (a first... no one has ever...). Then, he said, 'You wanna be boyfriends?"

"Oh man," I said, "I totally wanna be boyfriends with you."

The rain let up. We headed to K-Bar. Great dinner. Amazing conversation. He told me about his religious experience at the age of five. I told him about my dad standing me up when I got him tickets to see Jessye Norman for Christmas. He told me about getting picked up in a basilica in Florence. I told him about my karmic footstool theory. (Briefly, all of us have a karmic flaw that trips us up again and again, like the footstool that Rob Petrie would trip over on the Dick Van Dyck show. You can determine the footstools of people you know well, but all of us are ultimately blind to our own footstools. Nice, huh?)

Oh, and I established a ground rule. Special Guy has to like my friend, the Baron of Philadelphia. Baron and I go back 15 years. When I was with my Ex, every time I would get together with one of my friends I'd spend the next 3 days defending the friend against a fervrent attack from my Ex. So who needs that. Eventually I just decided it would be easier not to do the friend thing. After I split with Woe-is-him, Baron was my first phone call. He was thrilled and we quickly renewed our friendship, but Baron exacted from me a promise that I would never again let some man come between us. And that's fine. I'm wiser now. (Huh. Maybe I just caught a glimpse of my karmic footstool out of the corner of my eye...) But a few months ago, Baron was coming to stay with me for a few days. I told him that he'd have to fly solo on Sunday night because I had a date, and you could feel the chill coming through the phone. Hope this doesn't get weird. Nah.

Anyway, tonight, the Special Guy and I are gonna have a sleepover party. Red and yellow black and gray could very well be on the menu. And navy blue of course.

Life is good.

Heck. I should really be downstairs in Da Dropin' Cenner, but it is empty. It's about to pour, so people seem to be staying away in droves. Which is sort of annoying. If it were busy, time would fly. So I just sort of hang out. Hopefully a little surfing will make the evening pass a bit more quickly.

Usually hanging out is fine. But not tonight. Not with a date with the Special Guy looming.

8pm here at last.

Cool. Made it to work. Today's my late day. I staff the drop in center of my agency until 8pm, so that means I don't come in until noon.

Only eight hours and twenty-two minutes until I meet up with the Special Guy for our date.
Okay, I'll stop that. That will get pretty annoying.

Uh oh. A friend of mine who's visiting from Ohio stayed over last night. He's in the shower now. And I've got to (ahem) use the facilities. I'm soooo attached to my morning routine. Good to see him, but couldn't he just cling to the ceiling and stay out of the way until I'm ready to take on people? I think I'll have to break in on him.

Wahoo. Blogging from home instead of from work. What a thrill. Thanks G!

The Special Guy and I have a date tomorrow. Just dinner and conversation. Friday night he's gonna sleep over. Apparently he's a snorer. Which is not a problem. I can sleep through anything. Except when I can't sleep, and then I can stay awake through anything. Thankfully, my bouts of insomnia are exceedingly rare. I appreciate his warning about the snoring though ("I'll bring the ear plugs!" he said.) I returned that frank honesty by letting him know that I don't own an air conditioner. It might be a sleepless night of sweaty tossing and turning on my rubber fitted sheets. Given my last posting I'll see if I can find a link to this to tie it all together. Got it. Cool.

Here's what I'd like to see built on the site of the World Trade Center: A single structure that incorporates houses of worship for Protestants, Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, Reformed Jews, Orthodox Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs (I love Sikhs), and Muslims. Yeah, it would be pretty big. But it was religious fanatacism and intolerance that brought the world to this point. Regrettably, I don't doubt that all the waves of benevolence that swept the country in the wake of September 11th have now subsided to the point that the planning meeting for such a structure would quickly devolve into a shouting match. What the heck, build a mall. Make sure there's a good food court.

In fact, the repercussions of September 11th--from scoring political points as the November elections draw near in DC, to scamming FEMA for free air-conditioners, to the War on Terrorism seguing into a war without end akin to that described in Brave New World--just get sadder and sadder. People really are rotten to the core. Jean Calvin was kinda right about that.

Criminy. From whence comes this dark muse? Probably fallout from the approach of Pride.

I've long entertained a fantasy to do a remake of The Dirty Dozen, but with a different cast...

James Coco Charles Nelson Riley Rip Taylor Paul Lynn Orson Beane David Nivens Sherman Helmsley Don Notts Jim Nabors Al Lewis (he was Grandpa Munster) Rene Aubergenois Ricky Martin

Tragically, my cast seems to be going to meet their maker one by one. I'm open to suggestions for replacements. I guess my casting philosophies are pretty evident.

I am like totally lovin' my new Crystal Method cd Tweakend. Such good stuff. The cd is loaded onto my iPod, natch, but I've got it at home. I download some stolen music, but my rule is that if I have more than 5 songs by an artist, then I need to buy the cd because I'll probably like the whole experience. Except with Moby. Moby dicked us over. He like visited our agency and came away gushing... "You guys are amazing! I really want to do something to help you guys out!" Blah blah blah. So at that point he was just anuthah dj. Then he got a 9 story high billboard on Houston Street. And it turns out that a guy who used to work for our agency went to high school with him, they were big buddies, emailed all the time, etc. Now we got an eviction notice and had to move, and we had no money. We were faced with closing our agency. So our guy made an appeal to Moby. Finally, he wrote back something like, "I'm leaving for Europe, but when I get back, I'll definitely be in touch." And we're still waiting. Whenever I have a limewire session, I always take whatever Moby might be available and I never ever will put down $$$ for one of his cds. Spin that on your turntable, Mr. Bigshot DJ Guy!

So I was having a lousy commute this morning. I came down into the station at West 4th Street. On the west side of the street there's no turnstiles, just those revolving door/gate things. So I swipe my Metrocard, and it says "Please swipe card again." I swipe again and get the same message. And again. And again. And again. Fearing carpal tunnel from this repetitive motion, I did what you should never do and went to the gate next to this one. I swiped my card and it gave me the message that I had to wait 18 minutes before using my card again. So I go up the stairs and cross the street to the side where there's a token booth clerk. A heated exchange followed, ending up with me buying a token and going through the turnstile. I get down onto the platform and wait forever for an F train while a few vacant V trains (huh, never thought of that: 'V' for vacant) passed. Finally an F train comes in, packed to the rafters. I get in, and I'm vaguely aware of a nun on the train a few seats away from me. I settle in, open my paper, and an announcement comes on saying that because of delays on the line, this F train will be running express after Delancey Street. That was it. I said aloud, "Fuck the MTA!" The nun turned around. It was my college French professor. She was in town through the weekend. We're going to meet up for dinner before she leaves town. At least I wasn't wearing a tee shirt announcing my interest and or participation in some variety of sexual kink. I think that would be mortal, but erupting in vulgarity at the idiocy of the MTA is a venal sin at worst.

Y'know, (does "y'know" work okay for a transitional device?) it calls to mind the whole Amtrak issue. What buisiness does the Federal Government have running a railroad? They do a crappy enough job running local transportation. New York City subways have improved tremendously over the past decade, but still, with MTA and with PATH, you never get the idea that their goal is to get folks from point A to point B quickly and comfortably. PATH runs these Hoboken trains all the time that are at best only 10% occupied. I swear, after the Journal Square and Newark trains come only every 432 minutes after midnight, you still see these regularly running empty Hoboken trains. I have been kinda inclined to cut them some slack in the wake of September 11th since half their system and something like a quarter of their fleet of cars were burried under WTC, but that's just nutty scheduling. Who do the good people of Hoboken (a small municipality, but one now entirely gentrified) line up to felate in order to get this unbelievable perk? I'm sure if Amtrak were to shut down, there would immediately be private entities that would jump in and fill the gap. Already it's possible to get from NYC to Philadelphia by way of New Jersey Transit and SEPTA for about a third of what Amtrak charges.

I like our new IT lady at work a lot. I started liking her on her first day when she asked me where is good in the 'hood to get lunch. Before I recommended my fav vietnamese place, Pho Bang, I asked if she was a vegetarian. "No way," she said, "But I'm like vegetarians because that means there's more meat for me to eat."

Uh huh.

I am always instantly suspicious of people on food trips of whatever stripe. I think it's a surefire indicator of mental illness at worst and maladaption at best. I have never known a balanced, thoughtful, mature, intelligent person who was a vegetarian. Well, one. (How clever is that? If a buddy of mine who is a vegetarian should read that, I have room to assure him or her that he or she is absolutely the exception I was thinking of.) I know more than a few balanced, thoughtful, mature, intelligent people who were vegetarians but have since relented. I think it's a remnant of the childish view of animals as something other than 'red in tooth and claw.'

A co-worker arranged for me to have lunch with a friend of hers. I saw his picture on a cd he has out and I thought he was something of a hottie. Well, he blew it when he announced (and we're smack dab in the middle of Chinatown mind you) that he was only eating whole foods right now so he wanted a salad. From that point on, nothing he said could alter my opinion of him.

Okay. I'll fess up. I don't eat veal. For one thing, I don't particularly like it. For another, my Dad has these tales of when he was working in the dairy barn at college (I covered this in a previous post) and was there when they would come to take the calves away from their mothers to become veal. It was a bovine Auschwitz that he described. The only other meat I have trouble eating do to sentiment is pork. Pigs are such sweet animals. They bond readily. I would love to raise them if it didn't mean sending them to slaughter. Uh... and if I didn't live in BDJC (Beautiful Downtown Jersey City).

*sigh*

Can't stop thinkin' about the Special Guy.

Huh. I always wondered why so many whip makers are based in Australia. There's tons of them. It must be the growth industry. I bet it's because Australia was a penal colony. Whips were probably used all the time for punishment, and so in the national psyche, whip handling was associated with power, skill, and rank.

It's so much easier to buy a whip in a store than it is on-line. You can take it out to the parking lot, give it a throw, and see if you fall in love. I'm sort of a sucker for lots of plaits (the strands of leather used to weave the whip). But just got email from someone who recommended that 8 plaits (as opposed to 12, 16, or 32) would be better for me. I wonder if they say that because it's less work. Whip makers don't make the money that they should for the time, effort, and skill that goes into making a whip. So I imagine when they get an email from some chucklehead like me they steer them towards an 8 plait that they can bang out in a few hours instead of a 16 plait that will take several days of work.

Gosh, those people at Happy Tails Whips sure are helpful.

Vacation next week. Sooooo much work to do before then, and I feel like a high school senior with spring fever.

Next week I'll be in St. Louis, MO. Looking forward to that. I like the town a lot. I spent the summer between my junior and senior year of college living in a monastery there of English Benedictine monks, and teaching in the high school the monks ran. Teaching was miserable. I was totally unprepared for that. Church History, the Old Testament, and the Gospel of Matthew. My other work that summer was painting lines on tennis courts. Using traffic paint, a foul substance, in the blazing hot sun. The macadam on the tennis courts was so hot that I had to keep moving around because no matter what shoes or boots I wore, the scorching heat would penetrate the soles and my feet would start to burn. I preferred that work to teaching by a long shot. But being in the monastery was wonderful. The silence, the community, the good cooking, the solitude, chanting the offices. That part was pretty sublime. I had this experience of the dissipation of the separation between my conscious and subconscious mind. Everything flowed. I was considering signing up as a novice. I still think that I'll probably spend my twilight years in a monastery. Where better?

So I hope to pay a visit to St. Louis Priory next week (which I believe is now St. Louis Abbey). Too, I'm looking forward to riding motorcycles in the Ozarks, seeing what is considered to be one of the best Fourth of July fireworkes displays in the country, and getting cements at Ted Drewes'. (Wahoo! I found a link for that!) I'll be spending time with a friend of mine from college (Fertile One) and her husband. Fertile One is leaving behind a teaching career to become a massage therapist. That takes courage. And, I'll be staying with a guy who I had corresponded with for years on AOL. He contacted me a while ago and told me that he was coming to NYC for a conference, and I offered to put him up for a weekend. We totally hit it off. His is the motorcycle I'll be riding.

I find myself wanting to own a motorcycle. Of course, I'd have to wait until my dad shuffles off this mortal coil. He would greet that news with alarm and horror and would never sleep again with the worry. What a great way to get anywhere though.

Well, to work.

Oh man.

So yesterday I sent email to the Special Guy. To wit:

"Like I said, you're rocking my world.

"Maybe I'd better explain some what I mean by that. When I split with my ex, I couldn't figure out whether I had done all the (mostly) right things for a relationship with the (mostly) wrong person; or whether I was doing (mostly) wrong things for a relationship with the (mostly) right person. So I decided on sort of permanent bachelor status, being happy and fulfilled as a single man. Sort of a secular monastacism.

"And all of that was going fine.

"Then I met you. So damn sexy. Good heart. Smart. Feel like I've known you forever. Really really sexy. Such a hot man. I wanna jump on and never get off."

I was biting my fingernails up to my elbows last night. How's he gonna take that? Too much, too soon, too fast?

So this morning when I got into work, I had email waiting from the Special Guy. Short and to the point: "Jump, Baby, Jump."

Life is good.

Cool news. There's a Whip Enthusiasts group in formation in NYC. They plan to meet the first and third sundays of each month in Central Park and Prospect Park. They take pains to make it understood that 'this is an all ages, family friendly group. All are welcome, but keep in mind this is a whip event, not an S/M event.' Which seems to me to be somewhat overly cautious. Sort of like having censorhip sanitizing media for adults to a level acceptable for an eleven year old, just in case an eleven year old might be watching. I'm 37, and I want to watch and read things appropriate for a thirty seven year old. It's up to the parents of that eleven year old to make sure he or she is watching nothing objectionable, not the guv'ment. I hope they're more relaxed in person. Apparently the whole happy crew was at Folsom Street East yesterday.

Wow. What a weekend. Leather Pride Night was fun, although the pace of the work is breakneck speed. I did not make my softball game on Saturday. I hope we won. And Folsom Street East yesterday was so great. I was at the GMSMA booth for the better part of the day. It felt like everything in between the time when I was selling ACT UP tee shirts and selling Folsom Street East tee shirts was just a sort of dream. The volunteers I had working with me were excellent. The day was beautiful. The boys were hot. Sweet delight.

But here's the highlight of my weekend. Him. The Special Guy. He called me up (when was it? Friday?) and asked me if I wanted to go with him to a sex party in Weehawken. What could I say? Such an exotic locale... I've never been to Weehawken. Now, I'd never been to a sex party. I had no idea what to expect. I guess I expected a sort of porn movie come to life. Of course, it was a bunch of guys at a backyard barbeque with some slings in the basement that were never quite outside of anyone's consciousness. I knew a few of the other men there. Of course.

Digression: it's amazing how New York works. There are these fairly robust networks: visual artists, gay politicos, activists, leather. Even though they overlap to some degree, they exist independent of one another. But here's the thing... Once you're in one, it's like a small town. Everyone knows everyone else. "So I was talking to this guy I know, Peter..." "Yeah, I know Peter, he used to bartend at..." That kind of thing.

Anyway. I spent time hanging out with The Special Guy, in the backyard, and down in the basement. Both were great. He flows. He's like water. He's great to spend time with. Here's a weird thing. I have vasculitis. It's this obscure condition where the capilaries in my shins and feet break and I get these brown bruises. Looks awful. It turns out that Special Guy has the same thing. Now that is just bizarre.

So, The Special Guy has kind of rocked my world. I think I was kind of hoping that when we had sex it would go nowhere. No connection. No energy. We had a blast. Best time I've had in years. About 9 years, to the best of my recollection. I left the party before he did because I had to get to Leather Pride Night. He called me this a.m. to check in. He said that he didn't have a good time after I left. "I didn't want that. I want intimacy."

Wow. So where do I go from here? Fall deeply madly passionately? Remain true to my commitment to being a perpetual bachelor? My secular monasticism? Can I do this? What happened with my last relationship? Did I (mostly) do all the right things with the (mostly) wrong person? Or did I do all the (mostly) wrong things with the (mostly) right person? At one point, after I left, I asked him that question. I think my intent at the time was to get him to take responsibility for some of the things about him that I cited among my reasons for leaving. I don't recall that he did that. Natch. But, that really is the question, isn't it? I don't know that my therapist will be a lot of help in answering that. She likes me and doesn't like my Ex. Still, objectivity is her business.

Should I talk to The Special Guy about all of this? I think I ought to. I sense that he's feeling the same way about me as I am about him. He has a right to all the information necessary to make a good decision aobut whether or not to proceed. Lord knows he's been forthcoming with me.

I've never met anyone like him. Never. Is it possible? Freud held that falling in love was a variety of insanity. You can't be insane your whole life. So what happens when clarity returns? Will I find myself once again in a situation (a relationship) that makes me feel claustrophobic?

One thing's for sure, listening to Lucinda Williams' new cd is no help at all.