This isn’t the New York Times. This is a weblog. I am interested solely in hyperbole, ridiculousity, hystericity (is that a word? hystericalness? See? I don’t even stop to SPELLCHECK!), and retardation: mainly my own. This website is a sexploration of narcissism. Mostly, it’s a joke. It’s meta-meta. Or whatever. It’s not!

One thing Choire taught me, a very long time ago, is that it’s OK to unbutton myself verbally if I want to. So, fuck it all, it’s time for a verbal striptease.

I have been so fucking down on myself and frustrated these last few days, and the reason I haven’t written about it here in more detail is because when I’ve written about these things here in the past, it’s all tended to come off whiny and earnest and depressing. Depressing thoughts in blog entries are best when mixed with a little sugar, or sometimes irony, which is basically spiced sugar, or sour sugar, I’m not sure which, but anyway, depressing thoughts are more palatable that way. Pure, unvarnished depressing thoughts are best shared in private, perhaps in therapy, which is something I didn’t realize during my first go-round at blogging. Anyway, that’s just my opinion, except when it’s not my opinion. And sometimes I’m good at mixing my depressing thoughts with a little sugar and spice, and sometimes I’m not. I do know that I’ve read genuinely depressing entries by other bloggers before, sometimes for a week at a time, or more, and by the end of that week, I usually want to either slap the blogger or shoot myself. I’m not sure which. Certainly, it’s up to anyone to write whatever they want to write. It’s just that I don’t want to be that depressing guy. But fuck that, it’s time for ridiculousity, hystericity, and retardation. Exclusively my own.

I’ve been too much inside my own head lately. With Good Friday off, I had a three-day weekend, and during that weekend I met up with just one person. One. My phone barely rang. It’s not that I don’t have friends; it’s that they don’t call me. Or something. I should take the initiative, and find things to do and invite people to them, but I’m kind of shy, particularly when it comes to other gay men. Even if I just want to be friends with them! Straight people have this nice little dynamic, wherein they have friends of one gender and romantic interests of another gender; me, my friends and my romantic interests are usually of the same gender, which could create confusion. Besides that, I feel inhibited by where I live. Walk the ten minutes to the PATH train. Wait for the fucking PATH train. Ride the crowded fucking PATH train. Et cetera. I have about seven different complaints about the PATH train:

1) too many recorded announcements in the stations, most of them by this guy with an annoyingly friendly sing-songy voice;

2) no place to sit while you’re waiting;

3) the trains don’t come often enough;

4) on Friday and Saturday nights they spend too much time waiting at Hoboken;

5) they move too slowly;

6) the cars are too old;

7) the “bing-bong” every fucking time the door closes, even if it opens and closes and opens and closes because someone is trying to push his or her way into the car, is the most excruciatingly annoying sound God has created on this earth.

What do you know, that turns out to be seven.

I want to live in Manhattan. Duh. And when my lease ends on November 1, I’m doing it. I swear this time. Really. I’m scared, though. I’m scared of too much noise, and I’m scared of feeling claustrophobic in a small apartment. Please slap me now.

On Sunday I browsed around the classical music section of Tower Records near Lincoln Center, and then I walked around the Upper West Side alone. As the afternoon wore on and I grew more bored and alone, I felt more and more frustrated about having to cross a river in order to get home and not living in Manhattan. So that evening I resolved to ask my landlord if I could end my lease on June 1, five months early. I figured that this would give me the impetus to get off my ass, swallow my fears, and look for a place in Manhattan. Someplace in the West Village or Chelsea, preferably for no more than $1300.

And then later I decided I didn’t want to ask him that, because it would be just another sign that I’m irresponsible and act haphazardly and don’t know how to plan ahead or act like an adult, and also I began to worry that I wouldn’t be able to find a decent new place and I’d wind up moving into some craphole where I’d get depressed and break down in tears every night. I also began to worry that my parents and my brother would rail against me for making such a stupid decision, and for being incapable of living as a functional, responsible, adult human being. My parents don’t talk like that anymore, but my subconscious thinks they still feel that way about me, or at least my subconscious wants to think they still feel that way about me, because my subconscious has so little confidence in me and my ability to fend for myself that it would rather imagine it is being judged than be left cold and alone in this world.

My brother, whom I love, bless him, is about to start a job in which he will earn the same salary I earn, even though he is four and a half years younger than me and doesn’t have a law degree. He is also straight, and he has a steady Jewish girlfriend who my parents think is great, and he’s outgoing and outspoken, and he doesn’t care what other people think, and he dresses well and has lots of friends, and he’s taller than me, and he doesn’t understand why I’m working as a government lawyer when I could be making a hell of a lot more money at a law firm. The fact is, I don’t want to work at a law firm; I don’t even want to be a government lawyer. I feel humiliated by the amount of money I make; I haven’t had a raise in the year and a half I’ve been here; and my work is excruciatingly boring. In fact, I don’t even want to be a lawyer at all. I went to law school because I wanted my parents to respect me, I wanted to be normal, and I wanted to make lots of money. The first two goals turned out to be stupid, and I haven’t achieved the last one, because I came to realize what was involved. I want to go back to school, get an M.S.W. and become a therapist.

As for my brother, about the only way in which I’m better than him these days is that his weight fluctuates, while I remain slim with a high metabolism. It’s humbling. I was always the older brother and the academic star, and he was the one whom my parents always yelled at for screwing up in school. And he turned out to be the shrewd, fearless one, while I turned out to be the confused neurotic fuckup.

I have no clue why I’m so scared of everything on this planet, but that fear is the cause of all my problems. I’m scared of making decisions, because any choice I make will be the wrong choice and will inevitably result in my brother — who has taken lessons from an earlier incarnation of my dad on how to treat me and whose opinions, I now realize while writing this, I fear and resent even more than those of my parents, because he’s younger than me and because he represents peer opinion and because I’m competitive — will inevitably result in my brother telling me what a fuckup I am.

This hasn’t been very well organized, but ridiculousity, hystericity, and retardation don’t have to be. I could have been a lot more tongue-in-cheek about all of this, but the sugar would have diluted the acid. Can sugar dilute acid, or does the acid eat it up?

Whatever. I just hope I made Choire proud.