I spent the night talking to people about what a blogger I was, always an embarrassing notion on the surface, before I stop and thinking about it that yes, that’s what I do, what I love to do, what I, as I told one lady who asked me just how many times I did blog a day— what I itch to do when I haven’t, the way your shoulders sort of tense up when you haven’t gotten running in awhile if you are a runner, or fucked in awhile if you are a, fucker.

I spent the evening answering questions like, ‘Was your blog a big deal before you worked at Tumblr?” and saying, “yes, I guess that’s why they hired me.” And then on my way out Peter, in a fit of us riffing and impersonating and berating each other— something two intelligent, quiet people who find each other, who sit next to each other every day, who really work together, in a way that only those pairs of people can do— well in one of those fits he whispered something in his friends’ ear and I demanded he come out with it and finally he just exploded like a man with Tourette’s that I was like a “contemporary Cathy,” which is obviously a phrase he has really thought through don’t you think? Then he and his friend began a series of ACK I LOVE CHOCOLATE etc while i stared at the sidewalk, with Peter backpedaling after he noticed I wouldn’t return his gaze. We all joked and I pressed the button to light up my watch and said I had a train to catch and I hugged them all goodbye and cried on my way up 1at avenue, because I was just drunk enough to do such a thing and just drunk enough to realize that no matter what you do, no matter how much you fortify or self-efface, someone can always make a joke of you, and I hoped that that was okay. What I mean is I hope to one day accept that that’s okay, because there’s not a whole lot you can do about it.

I made my way down to the L train and sat on a bench and opened Slouching Toward Bethlehem and thought, fuck, Joan Didion, now there;s a woman who was a badass, who didn’t diminish her intelligence or her ability to really draw and quarter a human being or a situation. My heart beat triumphant as I read through the pages, her cadence was like a fist pumping in the air, murmering badass with every syllable (I’m sorry, it’s really the only word I have for her).

A man walked up— it’s 2am mind you—, he picks up a grocery bag filled with takeout, lifts it up in the air, and asks me if it’s mine. The platform is filled with late-night people and they all look at me and I say, No!” abruptly and he tosses it, sort fo beautifully up in the air, into the subway tracks. A drunk college kid says, There’s a trash can right there and, “Go fuck yourself” the guy says to him as he sits down next to me and opens the New York Review of Books. So much for cultural signifiers, I think and wonder who would most appreciate this and then remember sadly that we no longer talk.

As the train comes the drunk boy’s friend, a girl, starts carrying on, in the volume one uses when they are very amused with themselves— when they think they are saying something so funny that everyone should hear.

“Lazies and gentlemen,” she says and guffaws, “Please stand clear of the dozing whores.”

I would normally appreciate the wordplay but she goes on to ask us to imagine boarding a train filled with sleeping prostitutes and the conductor saying that and ‘one of ‘em wakes up and charges you 5 dollars.” I roll the eyes of my soul and slink back into my book after accusing her of being, “pretty, but not pretty enough,” from the deepest, cruelest parts of my brain and  then we arrive without occasion because I am reading my JD and too busy making continual mental notes of what a badass she is to notice anyone else.

We get to Bedford Avenue too soon and so I wait at the bus stop to finish my chapter, think about emails I should reply to, consider what a joke I am or have become to some people, think about work and how great it is, wonder if I’ll be tired tomorrow, and cheer for Joan Didion. A man asks me how long I’ve been waiting and I tell him not long and then soon after he gives up and wishes me luck and puts back in his earbud and I wait a minute or two so that I don’t have to walk next to him and then I give up, too.

A black car slows and rolls down its window and asks if I’m going to Greenpoint. I am, I tell him, but I have no cash. I tell him this because I was just considering hailing a cab, just reiterating to myself that I have money now, that I can do these things, when he yelled out to me. I say no and he says it’s okay, he’s going that way anyway, andall the while I am staring ahead without looking at him while I walk and I say no, there is no way I am getting in his car, and he says, okay, How about you just give me a good hug and I take you for free?” “NO!” I really yell this time and he finally takes off and I walk and walk and walk without my headphones, just thinking.

When I got home I found a book from the people who want me to write something for them in the mail, and I think about how wonderful life is right now, if I only had the time for all of it, and I go into the bathroom and see that the toilet cover is down and laugh at how ridiculous my roommate is for making us do that and then I set the book down on the ledge of the bathroom sink and yank down my tights and collapse onto the toilet and pee all over it before remembering to lift up the seat.

3:03 am  •  22 October 2009  •  78 notes