Big Things

With this entry, I have blogged in every month of the year.

I seem to have fallen behind on updating my life. So let’s see:

Thursday night

Mom and dad, if you’re reading, which I hope you’re not, you might want to skip this.

Anyway:

Thursday night was another Wes night. He greeted me with a smooch and an arm around my waist, which was really sweet. The rest of the evening, in short: pizza, beer, TV, a four-hour porn tape (he’d never seen gay porn before), cuddling, Wes falling asleep as I lay against him, with my arms around him, listening to his heartbeat and feeling his chest rise and fall beneath my head. It was sublime.

Then he woke up, and we hooked up.

Porn should be consumed in small amounts. After four hours (heck, after about 45 minutes) it gets really monotonous to the point of non-arousing: you hear the same old grunts and groans and electronic drumbeats, and out of the corner of your eye, the TV screen is the color of flesh.

After about 45 minutes, porn starts to seem like Enya.

Friday night

Friday night I went down to central New Jersey to hang out with my friend Mack. We had dinner at TGI Friday’s, I got to see his puppy, and in the evening, we went to the Den. The Den is a really old gay bar in Somerset, New Jersey, and it’s sort of like a gay “Cheers.” You wanna go where everybody knows your name and everybody has either hooked up with you or knows someone who has or knows someone who knows someone who has. Well, not in my case, because I hadn’t been there in almost a year, but Mack — he’s gone to the Den almost every Friday night for the past ten years, because Friday night is the night to go, and he knows lots of people there.

There’s something cozy and appealing about that idea. Having a regular Friday night gig to look forward to, a nice way to end the week, going to a gay bar and running into a bunch of people you know. New York bars aren’t very neighborhoody, unless I haven’t found the neighborhoody ones yet. They’re always filled with people I don’t know. Maybe weeknights are different, but I’ve rarely been to a gay bar on a weeknight. If I lived in Manhattan, I’d probably do that, which I will someday.

As for the Den, it’s very tasteful and cleanly appointed. One room has a bar and a pool table and two TVs near the ceiling — that’s the “Cheers” part. The other room is darker, cruisier, with a bar and a dance floor and lots of men standing around by themselves. There rarely seems to be anyone on the dance floor; most people seem to hang out at the bar in the main room.

Saturday

I stayed over at Mack’s on Friday night and came home in the late afternoon. I would up staying home for the rest of the evening and night. I thought I might go out with a friend of mine, but he never called me back, because he was at Date Bait, I think. So I stayed in and watched Derek Jeter host Saturday Night Live. Eh.

Sunday

Today I’ve continued to hang things on the walls of my apartment. I’ve still got a ways to go before the place looks homey. I think I need plants. Plants are good. They’re alive, but you don’t have to walk them.

I went for a walk earlier and found a used book sale at a church a few blocks away. They sell used books every Sunday afternoon: a buck for hardcovers, and fifty cents for paperbacks. I bought a biography of Warren G. Harding, short stories by Francine Prose, a book on colonial America by William Cronon (Changes in the Land), and two novels by Philip Roth: The Ghost Writer and Sabbath’s Theater. Not bad for three bucks.

In the meantime, I’m not even a third of the way through The Power Broker, and I’ve read 360 pages of it.

Random hookups have become tiresome lately. Yet I don’t think I want a boyfriend right now, either. I think I need to find something between the two.

I also need some hobbies. Now that I don’t have to look for a new apartment or a new job, I have all this time to fill. I’m often filled with a restless energy and yet I’m too lazy to do anything with it. That seems paradoxical, but it’s true. Well, not lazy; it’s just that sometimes I don’t see the worth in doing anything with that energy, because I know whatever I do won’t leave me satisfied. Sometimes, envisioning something is less of a hassle than actually going out and doing it, but just as satisfying.

The thing is that I want to do something BIG, and so all the small things seem worthless. I could do the small things if they were just steps toward the bigger thing, but if the small things are ends in themselves, they sometimes don’t seem worthwhile.

But life is a succession of small things. Look at my best friend — he’s drawn, he’s learned to play the guitar, he’s written stories and songs, he’s going off to Antarctica next month. Big things? Maybe not. But still his life seems to satisfy him.

And yet I want to do big things. I want to challenge myself. I want to make something big.

Lately I’ve been attracted by the idea of getting involved in city planning somehow. Maybe it’s this Robert Moses book. But I was also very intrigued by this article about the redesign of Lincoln Center.

Maybe I should become an architect. Or an urban planner. I don’t know.

Or maybe I’ll join a choral group and start singing again. Or do some volunteering. Or work on a short story. Or all of that.

Oh, that reminds me: my novel! Hahahahaha. I was supposed to write 50,000 words in the month of November. I wrote 8,712. So much for that. But at least I tried.

Argh, all these little things. I want to do big things. Several big things.

I want my obituary to be fascinating.