jacktellslies

I've not been dancing in months.

I'm atrophying. I get the distinct feeling of late that I'm meant to be hibernating. I'm perpetually exhausted, surly, and demanding that Beth, shoeless and crying, bring me dripping piles of (faux)meats and bread, butter and beer by the bucketful. Fishmongering is rather physically demanding, but that's always the case, and it doesn't always push my body to become a useless fob watch that I never bother to wind.

It's also left me feeling unreasonable resentment towards the DJs of this town: nothing could possibly be queer enough for me just now, no transition even close to well matched.

I'm pining for the trashiest of London fag bars, Berlin street corners at three AM. In turn, I'm struck with the feeling I don't usually allow myself anymore, that time and space are cruel, that the vastness of distance is crushing. What a useless feeling! Missing people who are here because one day I'll miss them, longing so intensely for places that I'm going. I live in South Philadelphia, jagged and winding cathedral of brick and broken glass, in street market temples of spark and ash, under an ever burning post-industrial sky! My friends are brilliant and morally lax! And tonight, possessed by caffeine, by red wine and rum and lipstick, we go dancing!

i had dreams i felt. i'd needed an operation, and the doctors were too much like me at my cutting board. they took everything out to get to the things for which they were looking. after the operation i sometimes thought the immense pain in my torso was only the result of everything having been moved around so much, and at times because i thought they'd failed to put anything back at all. when i woke i was bloody and cramped, but with the sort that fills me bellow my navel, the kind that i sort of like. it didn't shift to the tight, between the legs cramps until i'd been at work for some time. i like those much less.

today isn't quite my new year. it usually feels more like a new year sometime around halloween, even though this halloween was awful. were i a better heathen than i am, i'd better utilize the opportunity to create a more auspicious end and beginning, or i'd at least do a better job of using anyone's holiday as an excuse for a party. but i'm a bit ill again, and i mostly just want to be at home and quiet. i might try to get a bit drunk, and robert promised to kiss me.

today lindsay and i posed a serious question: why can't the people who live here tell the difference between failure and music? they are quite different things, really.



the above was written moments before brandon, lindsay, robert, and brandon's charming and sweet straight girl friend amanda convinced me that i should come out with them, just for one drink, just to one place. i spent the evening in two steven starr restaurants. we walked past both lines to get in to the continental when brandon simply opened the back door and let us up the kitchen stairs. a boy waiting in the cold yelled, "hey, can you get in that way?" and lindsay, in classic form, simply yelled, "no." we drank and danced and a cocktail waitress in doc martins brought us our drinks while we danced, which impressed me very much indeed, and we flirted with all of our friends, dressed as and gangster girls and playboy bunny drag queens and whatever hot thing bill was supposed to be, as a great many of them work in both places, and i paid for nothing. (i'll spot some people back today.) we were the first people dancing, and we danced with each other and with girls and a friend of mine, a tiny and cute thing named billy, was on stilts, on the floor all night and still dancing better than most of us can off of them. we went to jones, where newel was a hot little greaser thing in his starman hair and a tight white t-shirt, black vinyl trousers and absurd stompy gothy boots, a black and a white studded belt, and his light up belt buckle, like the one i have, where the words, "drink more!" scrolled all night while he barbacked. we wore the hats left on the table, and we danced at our table and at a dance floor we decided should exist, and we drank a bit more of the free champagne than we deserved thanks to newel's influence, and, for some reason i never quite understood, due to confusion or more of said influence, we found ourselves in possession of a free round. midnight came around, and i kissed robert more than once as he is a lovely kisser, and i kissed newel, who kisses like a boy, so i put an end to that immediately. he danced to michael jackson, though, and the entire restaurant yelled and clapped for him, and he pointed us out to every person to whom i saw him speak, and it was adorable. when we'd had enough of that we found our way back home, my arm around the hip of brandon's straight girl friend. (she had a lovely waist.) once there, megan made us mojitos and tea cups of champagne and where i left my remaining saki on the stove. i kissed bill when he got home, and hugged everyone who found their way into my house, and i succeeded in my quest, getting drunk enough that i pulled megan upstairs to convince her that kissing me was clearly a good idea, and that talking and missing one another and crying was obviously an even better idea, because we did a bit more of that. i am a fool, i am a fool, i am a fool. she always made me such an honest thing, but now when i speak to her, it is one or the other extreme of a truth. i hate her or i love her, and neither of those things is quite right, now, but i cannot find the middle space, which is strange for me, as that is usually where i exist. much of this happened in my bed, which was convenient, as very shortly thereafter i fell asleep in my clothes. now i can hear the mummer's parade from my window. i should do something about my hangover and go watch for a bit. so. it was a good end and a good beginning, i think., and a fantastic excuse for a party. i'll keep this new year, rather than the last one.