I went out with Shelah for a rushed meal at that dangerously precious Flatiron foodie joint, Craftbar. Fennel pollen and sweetbreads in vanilla. We had the foie gras and the scallops and the sturgeon and would you believe it was very, very good. We went to the new Bill Murray which is also the new Jim Jarmusch. Murray is now so deeply entrenched in his aloof and recondite persona that he acts – and here I mean acts the way a protein catalyst acts upon the body, not the way a player acts upon the stage – as a black hole upon all surrounding narrative, feeling, context.

Desire - impossible to sate – is nothing but funny, reverse hunger.

They met by the folds of the mighty, dusty curtain that sectioned off the eighth floor ballroom of the Marriott hotel for the imminent annual convention of a minor association of pension-fund administrators and recordkeepers. Neither of which were they.

He was looking for an elevator. She was looking for a bar.

They went to a place called Albert's where she drank thirteen greyhounds with a straw.


I picked up the pieces of whatever dream I was dreaming and got out of bed.

The girl with her back to the wall, to the what do you call it. Token booth. Back to the side of the token booth. The cop, crowding her, his legs spread a little , his feet splayed as though to brace her. He had out a pad. A ticket pad. She was a little turnstile jumper and her eyes were filled with tears. She looked off to the side, through invisible bars his body conjured to the two-way stream of bodies moving freely. He pointed the ass end of his pencil to her chest in order to reprove her and she slowly turned her head back 'round again.

I dutifully read the Hertzberg in the New Yorker, as though I were submitting to a Revival litany: The invasion and occupation of Iraq have diverted essential resources from the fight against Al Qaeda, amen; allowed the Taliban to regroup in Afghanistan, that's right; fostered neglect of the Iran nuclear threat. Help me somebody. The editorial voice of the Left now, it is like a jackhammer: stubborn and tedious, but true.

I arrived at the Coffee Shop on Union Square West 15 minutes late to find my cousin Eleanor a.k.a. Winston or Winnie at the bar in rather close conversation with a corpulent Chilean named Patrizio. It occurred to me this is a big part of how she survives. She gets rich, fat, horny guys to buy her drinks.

50% Free Alberto VO5 Normal Shampoo Gentle, Balanced Cleansing for Every Day.

I passed out on the couch earlier and dreamt about the alphabet, perhaps even of organizing some abstract and shadowy things into alphabetical order. When I awoke, I had the impression in my emergent consciousness that it was remarkable even to remember the alphabet in a dream.

Came back from the Yankee game and had to rinse my palate of the cloy of that seventh-inning Lite beer with stinging, smoky whiskey. A couple of times we saw that enormous Hasid, P. and I, the same one we saw in the bleachers a couple weeks ago. That day he paraded across the walkway before the first row, directed toward his seat by a cop. Being accorded a regal deference befitting his enormous heft both corpulent and spiritual. His prayer tassel, whatever they call it, hung out his droopy pocket. Tonight P. saw him as we walked through the halls to our seats and I didn't; after the game, I saw him after the game, shuffling toward me with a vacant, whale gaze. Oddly, he wore a Mets hat. I thought I'd given him wide enough berth but he still rocked into me. His shoulder only brushed me but I had a sense of the tremendous power of inertia in his body. A sense of a thing that amplifies and reflects all the energy it encounters.

With hardly a glance we tumbled into fall.

Mom sounded chipper and alert on the phone today. Eerily herself. As though she'd popped right back from nowhere into our world of street sounds, errands and appointments. Yet she struggled for words to describe the mundanest things. I asked her what she'd been up to, right away regretting that I'd led her into this weird corner where she'd have to account for time spent in oblivion. "Well, I, I, I... you know, I've been – well – I've been... staring at the sky." She sounded resolute, almost pleased when she reached the end of the sentence, as though she'd not only remembered what she'd been doing but that it wasn't such a waste of time, all told. I made words of sanction and endorsement. She seemed to understand that Lis and Jake were visiting soon and what that's all about. "We'll have to, you know, um... cut... you know, cut cubes of meat. And make them, make meat sandwiches," she said. "Yes, Mom. We'll do that. We'll do what we like."

I flossed my teeth in a big old rush as the damn toilet continued to burp and run.

I'm stricken by that soft-numb palsy of exhaustion; it's like I'm shrouded in a heavy, gauzy veil. It's tinged with intoxication to be sure but mainly it's exhaustion. In fifteen seconds I'll be in my bed, inviting what mysteries may await me in my dreams.

I passed P. on my way from the bathroom to my bed and overheard this from the teevee: Has the universe always been here? When did it begin?

In Ireland the sky was a restless, gulping maw, letting bolts of scintillating sunshine through one moment and heaving furious ropes of rain the next.

Oh-five. Oh-5ive.

I just can't wait most days to get home and spit out my gum, take off my socks and shoes. Drink a whiskey. Sing the blues.

Scenes From the Airport and the Plane

An Italian woman with a United Colors of Benetton shirt and the weakest chin.

Glamorous, sophisticated, delectable. ABSOLUT MANDRIN blends beautifully with the lush sweetness of Cointreau along with cranberry juice and lime.

A solitary figure on the tarmac. As always.

There's highly ambient music playing on the gated plane, going AaaaahhhhHhhh.

They counted us all, on the plane, and thanked us via public address when done as though we'd had a hand in the counting.

As she approaches death my mom likes to say she lives the life of Riley. I don't think I'd ever heard her say that before. But when I ask her how she's doing, what she did today. Does she need anything. "Boy, I'm just living the life of Riley." And sometimes she seems to forget the expression for a moment. She searches for it and is satisfied to finally find it. "I'm just, I'm just, I'm just... umm..." And here she'll let her voice trail off, the ellipsis landing on a period. "Living the life of Riley!"

Is "naked stripper" an oxymoron or a tautology?

James Bond and Moneypenny make me think of Charlie Brown and Lucy. Moneypenny the ever-adoring maid, pining for Bond even as he jokes with her about the conquests he is making. Perhaps Lucy's the feminine revenge for Moneypenny or Bond the masculine one for Charlie Brown. Always tempted, always fooled. A woman maliciously, demonically holding something out that is desired, deeply desired; Charlie too weak to say no, too weak to obey his wiser, cooler instincts. Charlie Brown charging, ardent. Giving it his best, hardest shot, only to find the object cruelly and blithely removed. Finding only the void and thrusting into it nonetheless. The picture of antihero. But Bond – Bond whispering bitter nothings into Moneypenny's ear. Saying I have you with every gesture you make behind that Lucite desk or whatever the hell. You know I do and I do, baby. I have you because I don't want you.

And so goes our awful gender war.

Her face was sadder'n an idiot saving something worthless from the trash.


Jen resigned today and by noon her desk was transformed, hardly recognizable, barren but for the keyboard and monitor, a stray black wire hanging off the front.

Skulking around in front of the Hudson Deli with Britt, waiting for Jim, I saw a woman walk out and turn to me. She was young, attractive. Middle Eastern olive skin and dark curly hair. Beautiful open blue-green eyes and a small, round mouth opened softly to an O. I caught her eyes for a moment and loved her until the end of time; until the sun and the stars collapsed into a singularity and all matter, space and thought went vanishing always into the deep unreal. Then she brushed by me.

"I wish it finally decided to rain," said Britt.

I stare down the barrel of another working week.

Got my blood results today. My doctor so fat and good-natured, apologetic, heaving his burdensome corpus through the sterilized halls. He carried a plastic water bottle, taking several small sips. Do you drink a lot of water? Ah no, not as much as I should. Many small sips throughout the day. If anyone could be said to have blinding kindliness, it was him. He congratulated me immediately for being HIV-negative. Congratulations. Thanks! He shook my hand. A rather odd moment. Then he wheeled his chair to the examining table with a sharp creak and handed me a flowing ribbon of freshly faxed data, the medical me. Kidneys good, liver good. Cholesterol good, good. Actually quite good. When I departed I tried to fold the report into a size I could manage but it was oddly resilient; I folded it in half but it formed a springy, shiny-smooth pillow rather than the expected small blank rectangle that's doomed to be neglected. So I placed it gingerly in my front pants pocket this way, sticking out like a dandy's kerchief. And I bought a sandwich. And I got on the train. And I saw that the report was no longer there, it had risen from me like it was lighter than air. My name, address and detailed, present medical condition floating wispily across the block somewhere Midtown right about Broadway and 53rd Street.

As I read an interesting yet weighty article in the New Yorker about the new Pope, Ratzinger Benedict whatever, I found I was having a strange dual experience: I was reading the text on the page yet also slipping into a dreamscape set in the desert and involving knives. All of this, in the moment in which I experienced it, felt perfectly logical – both realities at once in fact. It was only after a few moments, when I became aware of what was happening and the very oddity of it I suppose, that I drew back in bewilderment and some wonder.

I took a movie of three black girls crossing Broadway at 14th.

Every day, every day I wear my shoes.

S. returned from work followed by a date with N., all pleated pants and splayed tie. He recounted with some disgust that in the face of her intransigence and her yawns an hour in – yawns followed by intimations of I should be going home – he decided fuck it, to throw caution to the wind. To talk about what an asshole he was to ex-girlfriends, how he would fuck a girl and come home to his girlfriend the same night, night after night; his favorite porn, the assplay porn and the girl-on-girl. And he found he was loose, relaxed. The words, once halting and defused by the examination of his inner censor, now flowed freely, unrestrained. Every new word uttered more confidently and effortlessly than the last. Booze, drugs. Cocaine, acid, heroin. Cigarettes. How he was dying for a cigarette and he didn't mind saying. And sure enough her eyes widened and she said that's crazy, tell me more. You should write a book. And as I told him, in his small, accidental experience lies a lesson for all of us men.

P. greeted me cheerily tonight as the man with the squeaky sneakers, Squeak squeak squeak! So I figured the Yankees musta won but actually they drowned in their own shit. It's funny sometimes.

I thought I'd vanquished the tyranny of critics by reading their reviews after I'd seen the movie, read the book, bought the CD. After I'd judged. Then I'd be the critic of the critics really. But what happens is instead of making up my mind they change my mind. As it has been written in that authoritative black and white I think, yes, I guess there were emotion and pathos and violence and despairing habits we recognize in ourselves in that character's fraught relationship with his father. Weren't there? Not just a tiresome, poorly played cliché. And then I try to come to my senses and remember, you have to be on your toes always.

A terrible waste is a thing to mind.

In the vain attempt to slow the ravages of time upon my countenance I've taken to washing with Neutrogena Deep Clean soap every night. In the little pump bottle. I love the act, the ritual, more essential even than the oils and the aloe it involves. And the terms. Neutrogena. Space-age, life-affirming. Swiss? Deep Clean. Yeah gimme the profound clean makes Lady Macbeth green with envy.