But I got up.  And I laughed it off and I asked him to dance.  He looked me up and down, said “No.”  As he walked away he elegantly circumvented the puddle of vodka tonic I had just gone swimming in.  I went back to my brother, who had seen and who eyed me with pity, and I laughed about what had happened as if it were no big thing.  After all, put yourself out there a lot and you might get rejected sometimes.  And no use crying over spilled self, right?  It’s nothing, I repeated to myself, to lose my head over.

The very next day my brother  introduced me to a deliriously handsome gay guy in his building.  I appreciated the gesture.  I said “Hi” and shook his hand and that was the end of it.

Later on I asked my brother if he was serious about introducing me to that dude.

“What?”  Zack asked.  “You don’t think he’s cute?”

“Man oh man,” I said.  “He’s a 10.  Too cute.”

Now, I’m cute and I’ve always been partial to thinking, re: myself, that there’s just something about me.  I think I’m great!  But come onnnnn.  A 10?  What was my brother thinking?  Was he so heterosexual that he couldn’t properly apply the 10-point system to men?  Or was he aware that this guy was a 10 and just couldn’t rate me because I’m family.

Later on I got to thinking about the 10 Point Hotness Scale.  This guy my brother introduced me to stuck in my mind.  Not in any sexual way, of course.  The overwhelmingly beautiful are about as sexy as the overwhelmingly ugly.  But what must it be like to be a 10?  To have that too-many-teeth smile.  To be hot enough to get anyone.

Most people I know would call themselves 7′s, only because it’s the sole respectable rating one can give oneself.  Anything higher would be laughably egotistical and anything lower would seem like a plea for a compliment.

Upon further examination I came to the conclusion that there is really no such thing as a 1, 2, 3, or 4.  Anyone that ugly is probably deformed and thus exempted from cruel sexual objectification.  I’ve never called anyone a 5 either.  5′s are so plain that one just doesn’t think of them numerically.  Thus, most people that come under the scrutiny of the 10 point system are likely 6s, 7s, or 8s, numbers which represent the varying shades of the average, nice look of a human being.

And what is a 9, I couldn’t help but wonder?  Is a 9 just a 10 with an unsightly mole or birthmark?  Is a 10 always one glaring flaw away from being demoted to 9?  And yes, it is a demotion.  All numbers from 1 to 9 are evenly spaced.  The distance between 9 and 10, however, is much more vast.  It is, to some effect, unmeasurable.

Because the number 10 represents not hotness, not sexiness, not prettiness, and not cuteness.  It represents perfection.  That’s why it would only take one flaw to knock a 10 down to a 9.  A 7 can probably have a bad breakout one month without losing a point.  It’s far less delicate.

I went over to a friend’s place where we smoked 10 joints and watched 10 episodes of SATC and ate about 10 frozen waffles.  I left feeling great and returned to my brother’s apartment.  As I approached, though, I saw someone out front.  It was him.  The 10.  He was outside the building smoking a cigarette.  And then he went inside.

So very beautiful.  So very 10.  All of a sudden I felt like a 4 and I realized it.  1-9 are meaningless ratings.  The only one that counts is 10.  Perfection.  Too many teeth.  Every other rating is just relative.  Relative to how close we might be standing to a 10, or how much we might foolishly let the idea of perfection get under our skin.

I thought back to Thursday night and winced.  I had tried to laugh off the fact that I fell down in public and that I was rejected, but I could no longer do so.  I faced the fact that while it was funny in a Charlie Chaplain kind of way, it wasn’t funny.  It kind of sucked.  It kind of hurt, both my ass and my feelings.  I smoked one last cigarette and put away the embarassing memory and decided that I was done with the rating system.

I took the elevator up to my brother’s apartment, located on Floor 11.  As I fell asleep I took comfort in the fact that I was above it all.

In these books characters are able to escape the world of the ordinary by means of the ordinary.  A rabbit hole, a dresser or a storm is the gateway to a new world and a new quest.  Most importantly of all, the young character was the one, selected from among every other child in the world, to have this unique and magical experience.

When I was older my fantasies changed.  Though they were still outlandish, they had at least entered the realm of the possible.  I read Kerouac and Hemmingway.  I dreamed of someday escaping the mainstream.  Bumming around the country.  Socializing with other starving artists and writing poetry of scraps of tree bark.

Today the word fantasy conjures a different set of images.  More specifically, the kind of images that one deletes from their computer history seconds after viewing.  My non-latenight computer fantasies are even duller.  I want a cat.  I want a nice apartment.  I want respectable clothing and a steady job and a nice relationship.  Somewhere along the line I stopped wanting to have an adventure that would separate me from the rest of the flock.  Somewhere along the line I simply started wanting what everyone wants and what everyone is supposed to want.  A nice, ordinary life.  A comfortable life.  Stability and security.  Some money in my pocket and some more in the bank.  Maybe a briefcase.  Maybe some adopted Asian babies with nice Jewish names.

The transition into non-magical thinking has been seamless.  With graduation came new and unfamiliar concerns about money and housing and logistics.  With new concerns came new dreams.  With new dreams comes a new sense of self.  I hardly realized it as it happened but every so often when I find myself starry eyed over the fantasy of returning home from my nice job to my nice apartment to my nice boyfriend (in the fantasy he doesn’t even get a face.  I don’t have crushes on specific people anymore.  Just hypothetical boyfriend-prototypes) I have to wake myself up, wonder why I don’t dream of living an ex-patriot writer’s life in Paris anymore, and ask myself the dreadful question, have I become boring?

In high school, the thought of being ordinary is the worst thought of all.  Life in high school is pretty boring, after all, and most of us wouldn’t be able to make it through were it not for dreams of future glamour and grandeur.

When I open my closet, I hope to be able to find an outfit that makes me look cute in an understated way.  I don’t want to look fashionable or original with my clothing.  I just want to look nice.  And I certainly don’t hope to find a gateway to a snowy alternate universe hiding behind my cardigans.

But then I remember that despite it all, I’m somehow happy this way.  And I can’t feel bad about being happy.  From an aerial view I might just be another dot marching among the hordes of New York City commuters to my 9-5 job, but from down here things look good and feel good.  Most of the time.

And maybe, just maybe, the message of all those fantasy novels was reverse of what it seemed.  Maybe L. Frank Baum and Lewis Carroll weren’t trying to tell us that the ordinary needs to be escaped, but that the very things that are transcendent and special in this life are to be found in what we otherwise might view as our humdrum, boring, conventional lives.  Every closet a portal to another world, every rabbit hole an opportunity for adventure, and every person capable of being the unique and special hero of his or her own conventional and ordinary life.

And in the meantime, I still have some work to do.  A faceless boyfriend to put a face to, a cat to buy, apartments to hunt for, and jobs to apply to.  And honey, that is more than enough quest for now.

His name is Cigarette.

It’s a family name.

In less than ninety days, a new bill will go into action banning NYC smokers from canoodling with their smokey lovers in public spaces such as parks and on bridges.  While a cigarette-filled walk over the Brooklyn Bridge is a delightful New York Experience, I don’t much care about the bridge aspect of this bill.  It’s the parks.

Most of the smokers that I know plan on quitting someday.  I sure do.  And most of us don’t necessarily feel proud of being smokers.  Because so few people treasure their smoking as an essential and permanent part of their identities, there is a lack of a voice for smokers.  After all, when choosing a cause to fight for, why would I pick smoking?  It’s a deadly and disgusting habit, when you get right down to it.  I don’t really feel like fighting for it.

But this is America.  And this is New York City.  What I do feel like fighting for is freedom.  The decision to ban smoking in parks is, well, groundless.  Yes, second hand smoke can kill.  But it’s outside.  There is no lack of places to sit where people are not smoking.  Don’t like the smoke?  Move two steps away from it.

Lot’s of things are lowering life expectancy in New York City.  It’s hard to imagine that the smog from over ten million cars in NYC (and that is a low-end figure) is good for people.  Yet we’re allowed to drive.  We spend our days in dank subway tunnels.  We live and walk in crowded, dirty streets.  The city is filthy.  The germs are ubiquitous.  And New Yorkers are fine with this.

But not smoking.  Because smoking has become a moral issue.  People look at smokers and they are bothered.  Not from fear of second hand smoke.  But honestly, from a sense of “I know what’s best for you more than you do.”

Smoking taxes rise.  Smoking bans are passed.  The already poor of New York empty their pockets for their daily smokes, the NYC budget is fattened off the tax money, and smokers are made to feel like second-class citizens for making a choice that others deem unwise.

Banning smoking in restaurants and bars was about second hand smoke.  Banning smoking in parks is about shaming people for their life choices, and about creating a government that is free to enforce moral imperatives that are not based on the protection of rights, but on the opinions of arrogant activists.

I’ll never raise my voice to defend cigarettes.  Nor will I raise my voice to support Big Macs, or the sale of lottery tickets which rob the poor based on impossible promises, or to defend people who make out on subway cars and make that annoying smacking noise when you have nowhere to run, or to congratulate the ignorant masses of the world who make decisions that ultimately don’t help themselves or anyone else.  But I’m not going to lobby the government to issue bans on things that don’t affect me but come into conflict with how I, personally, live my life.

Because I’m not a prick.  And I’ve got better shit to do.  Hear that, Rob Reiner?

I should have known better.  Experience has told me that I can only really get out of bed when I absolutely have to.  If I can put it off, I most certainly will.  Snoozing is just way too easy, and my half-asleep self is very unconcerned with the chores my nighttime self comes up with.

Needless to say, I spent my lunch hour buying a thirteen dollar meal and then, after work, supped on a cocktail olive with a vodka/vermouth marinade.

My roommate and I, with whom I drank my early-eveningcap, got to talking and smoking and talking and drinking.  In the course of four drinks and 12 cigarettes on any given weeknight we can cover any amount of topics ranging from religion to race relations to boys we love to girls we hate and more.  But one subject that always manages to come up is the subject of exes.

I’ve never been in any very long-term relationships, but I’ve been in serious relationships and I’ve been in relationships that were very meaningful for me.  Still, not long term.  And one wonders what the use is of having a boyfriend for a mere six months if he has to linger as a torturous and painful memory for much longer than that.  And all exes bring up bad feelings.  Even the good ones.  Because if you don’t resent them, you miss them, or you miss and resent them at the same time.

Charlotte York, Sex and the City’s patron “Rules Girl”, says that you get half the total time of a relationship to mourn it.  But what if it takes longer to move on?  Are we then obsessive?  Stunted?  Delusional?  Believe me, in the wake of a great love and an even greater heartbreak, I have asked myself these questions and called myself these names.

Are we supposed to rush into recovery, or is it ok to hit the emotional snooze button?  We all have to wake up eventually, of course.  And the ten – fifteen minutes of sleep one achieves in “snoozing” is neither restful REM sleep nor is it productive morning activity.  Likewise, there comes a time in the course of any break up where we are no longer mourning, and yet also not quite moving on.  The half-sleep feels good enough.  And procrastination is an unparalleled delight.

At the end of the day, or rather, at the beginning of the day, it’s never my alarm that gets me out of bed.  The alarm can be silenced, snoozed, or thrown out the window.  But something always happens, something from within, to truly rouse me from bed.  Sometimes a cigarette craving.  Sometimes the image of a cappuccino from Variety will float above my head.  Sometimes I need to pee.  Other times I just close my eyes to continue sleeping and then realize that sleep has nothing left to give me.  That it’s time to wake up.  Time for something new.

Similarly, what get’s us over someone isn’t a buzzing alarm, isn’t an annoyed and bored therapist or friend or anything like that.  It’s wanting to feel like yourself again.  Wanting to meet new people again.

Rules like Charlotte’s “half the total time…” can give us comfort, and alarm clocks have their place in this world as well.  But when it comes to getting out of bed, or getting out of a funk, or getting over a hunk… it’s time to wake up and smell the coffee.

After all, the greatest wake up calls are those you can’t ignore.  The ones that come from within.  And as for the snooze button… I don’t think five more minutes ever ruined anyone’s life.

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I’ve always enjoyed the occult.  I was a practicioner of Wicca, neo-pagan feminist magic, when I was in fifth grade.  Since then I have probably seen a psychic at least once a year.  Do I believe in these things?  Yes and no.  But at certain moments in my life I find that I am at least willing to suspend my disbelief.

Of course therapy is an option for guidance.  But in therapy you have to talk.  And with a psychic you have to listen.  And with a therapist you have to pour over the past, the little incidents and traumas and successes that have somehow conspired to make you who you are today.  With a psychic you get a sense that you are not an accidental conglomeration of incidents, traumas, and successes.  Of neurons and fixations.  But rather a person on a mission.  Guided by spirits.  Safe.  Protected by the ~cosmos~.

I asked a friend of mine, whose mother is an amateur Tarot reader, how often she asks her mom for readings. “Well,” she said.  “Once every couple of months.  Every week when I was single.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Spirituality is for single people.”

By which I mean new age spirituality is for single people.  And unemployed people.  And anyone who is desperately uncertain and curious about the future.  It is a comfort to think that one can lift the veil and see inside one’s own karma and destiny.  It can be genuinely helpful too, I think.  But after my roommate Clare read my cards last night, I found that I felt the same way as before.  Frightened that I will lose my job.  Frightened that the other jobs I’ve interviewed for in the last weeks will want nothing to do with me.  Frightened that my fate, no matter what any horoscope or Tarot card says, will not show up on time.

Because no matter what the cosmos has in store for me, I doubt I’ll gain access to it through any New York City medium or deck of novelty cards.  And if I lose my job today, the only Cosmos that will bring this blogger any solace will be the ones you can get at a bar.

But if my bartender happens to not only be a mixologist but an astrologist as well, I’ll listen to what she has to say.  The platitudes of a psychic, that all things happen for a reason, that even being born into this world  happens for a Cosmic purpose (rather than just assuming that our parents drank one too many Cosmos one night) is a nice thing to think every once and a while.  And if you can suspend your disbelief for even a second and trust that the person offering the vague, comforting spiritual prognosis for 25 bucks a reading is actually the real deal… I suggest you do so.

After all, in this economy, in this city, in this world… reading the newspaper can be a bit… grim.  We’re lucky that the Newspapers at least throws us 30 words a day, right after the crossword puzzle, to assure us that there is a reason… and that everything will work out according to some perfect astral design.

One thing I’ve noticed about New York Culture (not so foreign to me, a native New Englander) is the love of talking about the weather.  Praising it, complaining about it, going on and on about it.  It doesn’t matter if it rains, snows, or if the sun is shining.  What matters is that the weather is never the same, for long.  It’s always new.

Sitting on my new sheets in my apartment the other day, I started using my semi-new iPhone (whose novelty grows less by the day) to find a new job and a new apartment.  I texted my friend to go and get a Dirty Martini, my new favorite drink, but he was busy going to see a new apartment.  He then mentioned that he had started reading the Bible, an undoubtedly old book.

What made you do that?  I asked.

Well, he explained, It was free for his new Kindl.

All around me I began to notice the perpetual pursuit of the New.  And I couldn’t help but wonder… are we ambitious or are we restless?  Are we getting what we deserve, or are we novelty junkies?  What is it about New York that makes us want New, New, New, New…

Perhaps it’s a side effect of the winter.  Long and harsh as it is, city dwellers are no longer free to revel in the simple joys of a walk through the park with a good friend and a cup of ice coffee from a cart.  Perhaps the warm breezes of Spring will draw us into the streets from the Apple Stores and we’ll be able to enjoy Same York as it is for a moment.

Perhaps in a city where everything changes so quickly we just subconsciously acclimate to the pace.  I know I’ve started walking faster, more angrily, as if I actually have somewhere important to go.  But in all this reckless and speedy pursuit of the New is a desire for the Old.  We may run through jobs and apartments but that’s only because we want to find our careers and our homes.

And once we have all that, well, it won’t matter how much things change around us.  We’ll have an enclave away from change.  The only question is… will that day ever come?  Or is the pursuit of the New a lifelong endeavor until we’re old and hit that most daunting and New rite of passage… Death.

Perhaps, perhaps.  But then again… maybe it’s not such a bad thing.  So I want new things… so I want a new job… so I want a new apartment.  Those are just things after all.  Material, which can be so immaterial when it comes down to it.  There’s still nothing better than sipping your new favorite drink at your new favorite bar with some of your oldest friends.  And that kind of novelty never wears off…

Oh man do I watch too much SATC.  But hey!  That’s one more thing I don’t constantly need updated!

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There are a number of bothersome things about this so-called scandal regarding these so-called “homophobic” videos.  Most prominent among them is that the act of publicly condemning the videos is, for most news outlets, selfsame with the act of showing them, or clips of them, for free, on every site on the web.

I don’t want to make allowances for homophobia.  In fact, the pervasiveness of homophobia is something I have really been noticing a lot lately.  I no longer think it’s ok or not a big deal to refer to something lame as “gay” or to say “fag” if you aren’t a Brit about to light up.

All the same, these videos were made more than two years ago.  If I recall correctly, “don’t ask, don’t tell” was repealed maybe twenty minutes ago.  How can a military man be condemned for making videos that embody the same homophobic attitudes as the military organization he represents?

Also, if society truly thought these videos were so offensive, why are we broadcasting them to every person with eyes.  The meaning of being “offended” has changed in the last century.  Something offensive, by the original definition of the word, is almost painful to hear or see.  Nowadays offensive is an abstract concept.  Most people only feel offended on behalf of an imagined third party, or feel offended because they think they ought to, or feel offended because the indignant sensation of it is pleasurable.

Is anyone actually offended by Honors’ videos?  And if so, isn’t it possible that (such as in the case of a racist/sexist/homophobic joke being told among friends) it is only offensive because it is being broadcast to anyone who wants to see it?  Maybe on the ship, among a closed group of individuals who knew Honors as a human being, it was just a joke.  Kind of like the one’s your uncle makes.  Oh man, my uncle is such a crochety old bigot.  But dammit, I love the guy.  And he always slips me a fifty over the holidays.
If we, as a society, are going to condemn Honors for videos such as these, let’s have the decency to at least pretend that our shock and awe at his bigotry is genuine.  Let’s pretend that we are so offended that we think these videos should be buried and never seen by anyone, let alone everyone.  And while we’re at it, let’s pretend that we’re a country of smiling, gay loving liberals and that Captain Honors is some sort of fluke in a generally gay-positive military.  And let’s also pretend that this homophobia isn’t present on every street corner, in every TV show (even Will & Grace) and in every movie.  And let’s also pretend that Glenn Close wasn’t mysteriously featured at the end of Captain Honors’ video.  Because that was just freaky.

She looks zombie-ish…

http://zeek.forward.com/articles/117111/