TMI?

I don’t quite know how to describe the day I’ve had. It was a strange Saturday.

At 2:00 I met up in the city with my friend Nick. For several hours we walked and walked and walked as the weather changed from cool and breezy to sunny and humid. We walked up Fifth Avenue and he bought a shirt at J. Crew. We walked over to Union Square and considered going to the Heartland Brewery but decided it was too straight. The strap on my messenger bag was making my shirt stick to my skin. We walked all the way over to the East Village, but none of the bars were open yet, because it was only about 3:00 in the afternoon. Then we walked all the way to Chelsea, up hill and over dale, trying to find a place to kick back with a drink. Eventually we settled on a very early and cheap Mexican dinner at Maryann’s on Eighth Avenue. We each had a Corona. Halfway through the meal we realized that it was Cinqo de Mayo. Total coincidence.

We sat there and talked about our lives. Like me, Nick has a therapist, but he’s quitting in two weeks because he feels he’s solved his problems. He’s only 24, and I seriously doubt he’s figured everything out in his life, but who am I to tell him otherwise?

Then we switched to my life.

I’ve been feeling paralyzed lately. I have the same problems I’ve had for the last couple of months, and they’re not life-threatening or incredibly horrific, but they suck. My apartment is too expensive, and I don’t know where to move to. I’ve applied to work at the New Jersey attorney general’s office in Newark once my clerkship ends in August, which will be a $7,000-8,000 salary increase, but I’m not at all excited about it. And I have debt coming out of my ass. Some isolated events in my life are enjoyable — for example, last night’s Blog Summit — but running underneath everything, like a sewer flowing underneath the Great White Way, is this general malaise.

I’m stuck. Dammit, I’m just plain stuck. Paralysis has set in. I haven’t been looking at apartments, because I’ve been scared of being taken advantage of by a broker and scared of having to make a choice. My current place has major drawbacks, and I’m sure others will as well. I’m unhappy with Jersey City, scared of Manhattan, and contemptuous of the New Jersey suburbs. When do you settle, and when do you just say no? I don’t know how to make decisions, so instead of making them, I just let the malaise continue. Week after week goes by and nothing changes. Things aren’t at all bright enough for me to be excited, yet they’re not so catastrophic that I’m shocked into taking action. I’m just sort of accepting my circumstances and trudging on. That’s not a wonderful place to be. And yet I’m too scared to do anything. I feel like I’m swimming in sludge.

Nick basically told me to give my dad a big symbolic Fuck You. And he asked me, what is it that you really want to do with your life? I told him the truth: I want to write. Then write, he said. And move somewhere else. Apply to the Iowa Writer’s Workshop or something. Freelance.

I began to think about leaving this place. Moving far, far away, away from my parents, away from New York. Just buy a car and hit the American Road. I could move to a moderate-sized college town. Or I could move to another city, someplace that has a sizable gay community but doesn’t have New York’s high cost of living and extreme ways of life. On the other hand, as the song says, I’d miss New York before I could unpack. New York sometimes kicks my ass, and yet I don’t know if I’d be satisfied anywhere else.

Sitting there in the restaurant, I was filled with the urge to do something really big, just make a huge, sudden, drastic change in my life. But I couldn’t figure out what it could be. And I felt like I was stuck to a piece of flypaper.

After the meal, we walked all the way back to Union Square and into the Strand Bookstore, where I looked for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay but learned they were sold out. Then, after browsing for a while, we walked even further east, back to the East Village, to hit Wonderbar.

Instead of hitting Wonderbar, Wonderbar hit me.

It was 7:00 when we walked in, and there were only five other customers. We sat at the bar. Nick ordered a Corona and I ordered a bourbon and Coke. I watched the bartender take out a Corona. Then I watched him take out a glass and fill it with ice. He filled the glass 3/4 of the way with bourbon. Then he topped it off with Coke. Um, wow, I thought. I guess I’ll be getting more than my money’s worth. I stirred the drink with the tiny straw and took a sip. It pretty much tasted like bourbon.

Over conversation, we checked out the other patrons and sipped our drinks. Eventually we ordered a second round. The mad scientist behind the bar mixed my second drink the same as the first. What was he thinking? Did he even have a bartender’s license? Anyway, I sipped my second drink and Nick sipped his second Corona.

We were talking and talking, and at some point I realized that I was far gone. Nick realized it first. You know you’re gone when someone points out that you’re slurring your speech and you think they’re wrong.

We were talking about my history of Internet hookups and he told me how sketchy and dangerous he thinks this is. I told him that I’d done it a number of times over the last couple of years, and that nothing sketchy or dangerous has ever happened to me. He wasn’t convinced that it’s safe. He said that he himself can’t separate sex from love. Yet he gets his action in the sauna at the gym on his lunch hour. What’s going on here? But I was still feeling ashamed of myself and my sexual behavior.

We continued to talk, and I turned back to my other problems, and my dad, and everything else. My head was spinning. I was feeling dizzier and dizzier and more and more burdened. I couldn’t think straight. I was feeling ashamed of my cowardice, of my laziness, of my failure to take any action that could make things in my life better. I was ashamed of my drunkenness. I was feeling like a totally incapable human being. And Nick wasn’t helping. He was egging me on, kind of kidding around, but Nick can be a bastard without even realizing it. And I don’t know if he realized the extent of the shame and embarrassment and self-loathing I was feeling at that moment. But he smartly ordered each of us a club soda.

After that, we decided we’d better leave, so we did. It was almost 9:00. We walked all the way back to Union Square so I could buy Kavalier & Klay at Barnes & Noble. As we walked, we continued talking, and though I was trying to talk myself out of my funk I wound up talking myself deeper into it. We got to the store and the book was full price, but I really wanted to read it, so I bought it. Yay. Then Nick offered to buy me some coffee, so we went over to Starbucks and I sipped an iced mocha. The caffeine and sugar must have coursed through my system, and although I’ve never really been affected by caffeine, I started to feel more alert and energetic. But my face felt warm. My ass had been kicked by the sun, by the endless walking, by the stress, by the bourbon. I needed to just go home and collapse. So we parted ways and I came home and drank two glasses of water and on an upset stomach I wrote my previous blog entry.

I sit here thinking, what am I doing? Why am I writing about all of this here? Could this possibly make anyone think any better of me? I’ve realized that one of my goals in keeping a blog has been to make connections with other people, and I’ve met some great folks, last night being a case in point. But on the other hand, what could they and anyone else possibly think of the complete basket case who’s writing these words? I mean, I’m a fucking mess. A week and a half ago I went out for drinks with a guy who’d been reading and apparently admiring my blog. The next day I e-mailed him my phone number. He hasn’t called me once. But his domain name is still showing up in my referral stats. Great. So I’m worth reading but not worth talking to.

Is it possible to know too much about a person? Subconsciously, I think I’ve hoped that my blog would bring a love interest into my life. Just be honest and truthful about myself and people will be all touched and moved and impressed by my honesty and self-awareness, won’t they. But how could someone love me after seeing all my mangled up, chaotic insides? Is detailing all my neuroses just a stupid, stupid idea? I mean, what the hell am I thinking?

Dear God! Why am I the way I am? Why do I make mountains out of molehills and molehills out of mountains? And why can’t I stop feeling this way? Why can’t I stop being who I am?

Cripes! I’m just a mess and a half.