You're Pretty Hot - Wanna Make Out?

This is the picture taken by the company president that now hangs on the bulletin board - for your reference, you understand...

I took this one myself


Someone else got this one:


Was my head attacked by your grandma? Is that what you're thinking? Not my grandma, no. No, my gramma is a beautician a Bee-Yoo-Tishin, if you ask her. She used to give me haircuts and I'd sit under the blowdrier in her Bee-Yoo-Tee Shop with all the gossipy smoky old Appalachian ladies. I don't think she'd forgive me for going bald or not voting democrat.

Nah, I got kissed on by the next best thing to grammas and that's actors. The company party was had and there was a whole murder-mystery show with all kinds of singing and dancing and all the actresses had their turn sitting on my lap and singing to me and kissing my head - for luck(?) Break a leg in your scottish play you ladies.


Affection in a blurry time. See.

So how it went down is this - On Thursday after our study-interval I kiss goodbye my little favorite, the Red Hero and go home saying - "I'll miss you this weekend, I have work events." Which is true. And then friday I did work - rather a lot of it in fact, a busy day with out-of-town employees all in town for a party and for routine phone/computer maintenance. I maintain. After, it's home and without my ordinary, usual, favorite Friday-Night Highlight I take a bold stance and determine: Dancing.

So I take the red-train and go dancing all night, like all through the night till dawn at the new-wave event. They've no Laurie Anderson but they throw down the Gang of Four for me - it's a good, really just fine time. I'm trying to point out just how much I've walked to someone, and danced, when the clock strikes midnight and the app switches over to the big ol' pumpkin zero. Back to dancin, thanks. I leave when you have to leave, end up missing the last red-line and walk to where I can get the 26.

It's bittersweet you know? I never had any business in CLV HTS - where I live now - that's, secretly, I don't mind telling you, a piece of why I like it here. Lakewood - I have to walk past a building I helped to build and felt like I probably kind of owned and would certainly, one day own. I think with a shake of the head and no small amount of acrimony of how grand a rent-seeker I'd have been, and how I squandered my 20's thinking my future was made for me. Goodbye shitty building on W117th. I wanted to have you and would have done alright if I did, but I understand if you prefer to stay with the bank, he's got more money than me, I understand... I understand...

The bus is slow and I am exhausted and buzzed and happy, I take it down to public square and wait on the healthline in the wee-est of hours. It's crowded out and cold.
The old terminal tower is mist-clothed and grotesque in the beer-rye-bottle-eyed gaze of the weary dance-commuter. I wait in the cold and everyone else does. It's a long trip back to University Circle, I walk home past the great black cube & the cemetery gates, through little-italy all silent & abandoned, tourist gathering lights still lit, the music still playing out of the storefront speakers.

Home and collapse just ahead of dawn. Wake to forage and then sleep again, and then wake to dress and go to the company party. It goes late, there's dancing after the deus-ex-machina is revealed. The winning guesser failed on the first try - naming not an actor but me, little, sweet & kindly me - as the murderer. And why shouldn't they, dungeon-master that I am. The planting of misleading clues, the tricky cajoling of peculiar questions, the flirting with actresses - these are my moves, they place me in a state of perpetual suspicion. What will he do - that's what I think people think when they think of me. Also, that fucking guy, fuck him.

Sunday in solitude, eating & sleeping, resting and working on the presents for Christmas - I'm trying to do well & right and good. Trying - pictures to come, sure! And otherwise lamenting the lack of a proper weekend companion, thinking up way I make a date and fail to make two others. Then sleep, and work and homework & visiting my old-man friend & writing some books... And thinking hard about today and tomorrow & what will come & how I'll make it appear.