The Reluctant Receptionist

Amanda: have you ever been to lic bar?
me: no. bleak.
Amanda: i have been there, and i do not think it is “bleak”
me: bleak
Amanda: well, i don’t want to do it at our apartment, because there’s too much work involved. i think the beer garden may be the best choice. hopefully it will be nice that day
me: bleak
Amanda: (i’m pretending it’s not 6 days away)
me: bleak
Amanda: i hate you
me: oh sorry about that my keyboard was stuck. i kept typing “yes amanda that’s right”
Amanda: on the bleak key
me: and “that sounds great!!!” and all that came out was bleak.

me: gigs.
Sean: did you just write gigs.
me: yes
Sean: that is sooooooo gay.
me: gigs of porn
Sean: oh i thought it was short for giggle or something
me: now who’s the faggot

google’s too fancy. apparently i can use their new web albums thing to share pictures on here. good lord.

phong totally got me this morning using this site.

it’s pretty brilliant. do one yourself.

the conversation i just had with my dearest roommate amanda concerning my after-work errands:

“me: yeah, AND i have to go back there tomorrow to pick them up. this is all, mind you, before i go do cardio at the gym

Amanda: well, without the energy you produce running on the treadmill, the world might actually fly off its axis, so you better not skip

me: EAT ME, SMARTASS”

i cannot believe that i forgot to post this story from robin, a follow-up to the story about michael seeing a girl getting nailed in east elmhurst.

“so robert. this is to go along with the story of the people fucking outside of a window: lindsey and i were walking down fairmount just now after drinks. and there’s this apartment with a huge open picture window that you can see from mugshots and usually i’m in mugshots in the morning so you can like see this guys whole apartment but he’s doing boring morning things. well, at 11 p.m. we walk by and i say, wait, look at that woman running on the tread mill. that’s sort of weird looking. and so we’re stopped, watching this woman “running” and slowly we realize, no in fact, she is not running, and we’re like, surely not, surely you would pull the curtains right? well, no. at that moment the seemingly boring man enters the picture and we flee. it was, in a word, amazing.”

ah, city life.

a single friend of mine just got the following email from a guy he’s been dating. i just had to share it with all of you, because i could write fifteen columns about guys like this and never really capture how obnoxious these kiss-off emails really are. enjoy.

“I’m guessing you’re upset with me since I haven’t heard back from you while I was away, and I’m not sure whether you want for me to call you. I obviously have a very hard time keeping my commitments, and I apologize for that. I want for you to know that I do like you and still like being with you, but that I’m just not able to be in a “boyfriend” relationship. I think that you’re looking for a serious relationship right now, and you definitely deserve that. For me, I’m just not ready for that and I don’t think I can honestly be there in that way (for anyone). If you still want to get together or go out on dates, that’s still good for me, but I just want you to know where I’m coming from. Anyway, I’ll be going straight home after work tonight if you want to talk on the phone. If you don’t, that’s completely understandable too. I hope that this doesn’t mean the end, but rather a better understanding between us. You are entitled to decide. You’re truly a terrific guy!”

why don’t you say what you mean? you think he’s “truly terrific,” but you want all the perks of dating someone—someone to go out with, keep your bed warm—without any of the emotional baggage. oh, and that way you also get to go out and fuck whoever you want with no repercussions.

and now, with a single email, you think you can absolve yourself for any bad behavior. you are, after all, the good guy for being honest about your feelings.

bravo, guy that my friend dated. you’ve put into a single paragraph everything i hate about dating in new york city. bravo.

she said,

“i’m speechless.”

that’s really all.

(thanks, chris)

i have one of the worst memories of all time. my memory is so bad that i just nearly had to look up how to spell “memories.” it’s a good thing that i started keeping this blog a couple of years ago, because maybe it’ll help me stop losing entire chunks of my life. it’s like after a couple of years the memories just fall off in chunks, like a cliff in a mudslide. luckily, my friends’ memories are much better than mine, and they’re constantly reminding me of really hysterical, amazing things that have happened.

once i’m reminded i can remember them perfectly. it’s just that there seems to be some sort of disconnect between most of my memory and what i choose to access on a regular basis. maybe it’s because i live so much of the moment inside my own head. because i’m constantly (often over-) processing what’s going on right now. or maybe it’s just because i’m not as smart as we all think we are when we’re growing up.

regardless, a comment left on my blog a couple days ago reminded me of an amazing story from high school:

mandy (who i, thank god, just got back in contact with after about five years) and i decided, senior year of high school, to dress up as the captain and tennille for our school’s halloween costume contest. i remember the way we did it—me in white polyester pants, a cap’n’s coat, and a hat. i carried a recorder because we didn’t have a guitar and that was too big to carry around school. mandy wore this amazing sweater-dress and a belt that was so tight she couldn’t breathe. those are the details i can remember. the rest came from an email from mandy:

“I was explaining to Holly the other day about how you and I went as Captain and Tennille for Halloween one year and she didn’t believe me. And I was all like “ya-huh, cause we won a free movie rental at Hastings, and nobody understood our costumes except for the older lady teachers, who thought we were hilarious.” And in the end, doesn’t their opinion matter most. Unfortunately, I don’t think I have any pictures of our genius in action, but I’ll ask momgrover. The real story behind the C&T story, however, is how you got that Captain’s hat…Do you remember?
lovewillkeepustogether,
mg”

of course, i didn’t remember how i actually got the hat. i knew we got it at some squalid (and i don’t use that word lightly) store in ponca called “maxine’s on broadway.” luckily, mandy fleshed out the details this morning:

“You and I were driving around (probably eating snow cones, you “Rum and Coke,” me “Pink Champagne”) and somehow we thought of the idea of being Captain and Tennille for Halloween at school. So we knew my costume could be relatively ambiguous as long as I tried to pageboy my hair. But we knew we had to get you 1) A Captain’s Hat 2) A Navy Blazer 3) A flute-type instrument known as a Recorder. Lucky for us you already had #s 2 and 3. Anyway, we we’re driving over on that one side of town sort of past Liberty Elementary and we saw Maxine’s Costume Shop and decided to look for the hat there. We went in and started to look around and the SUDDENLY the craziest old lady, perhaps in the history of all time, jumped out from around the corner. She started nonsensically ranting about her costumes and the people who steal from her and then she forced us upstairs to look at these horrifying wigs. We told her we were interested in a Captain’s hat and she started digging in a pile of wigs and evening gowns and other trash that was just on the floor. ALL OF THE SUDDEN, she pulled from the giant pile of filth (covered in years worth of body fluid stains) the most WRETCHED sailor’s hat the likes of which we had never seen. There was more unspeakable matter on that hat then in all the whorehouses from Las Vegas to Bangkok. AND THEN, she started laughing crazily and PUT THE HAT ON YOUR HEAD. I literally saw you repress the memory of what was happening as it happened. Then to top it off, she wanted like $25 for it!!! Which I think you paid her! Anyway, we got out to the car and you actually gave me a hand sanitizer “spit bath” before using the rest of the bottle on yourself. You dropped me off and I looked at the hat in your backseat…it was the last time I would ever see it BECAUSE (this is what you told me later) your mom saw the hat in the backseat of your car as you drove into the garage and she wouldn’t let you bring in the house…you placed it in the garage and a short time later you came out to find it slowly making it’s way to the kitchen door in search of an ovum.

Good Times,
mg

P.S. I think your mom somehow got you a new, fresh, clean Captain’s hat.”

we’re looking for pictures.

last time i went to vynl, when i was with alyson, amanda, and alyson’s super-girlie let’s-go-shopping-and-play-sex-and-the-city friends, i was the oldest person in the restaurant by at least five years. well, maybe not the oldest person, but definitely the oldest fag. all of the other people were like sophomores at nyu, out for a crazy pre-21 night on the town with all of their hags. and then there was me, the stately older gentleman at 26.

now i’m 27, but when matty and i went there for dinner last night we were around the median age. and matty even said that when we walked in he heard some gay guy go, “oh my god, two really cute guys just came in.” now, i’m thinking that either

1. it was a figment of his imagination (btw, i told george that if he ever has the chance to build a brand, that brand should be “use your imaginasian.”)
2. they were talking about someone else
3. they were being assholes and matty just missed them rolling their eyes after they said it, or
4. they only thought we were hot because we walked into the restaurant with our dicks out.

for whatever reason, he heard it. we had a great dinner, and a great time catching up. i was trying to explain to phong what vynl is. it’s like a diner…but upscale…but cheaper than most nyc diners. but gay. just go to the website. you’ll get a better idea.

matty and i made plans for the shore, gossipped about our friends (and you know, girls, that there is a lot to gossip about), and rehashed happy memories of the drunken vacations we’ve been on together. i reminded matty about how, last summer at the shore, i would insist on sleeping for fourteen hours a night, to the point that frankie and tom were convinced that i had some sort of illness. he reminded me how tom, instead of being crazy drunken tom, kept getting drunk and then just going to sleep. so i felt a little vindicated.

it’s now wednesday, though i keep feeling like it has to be at least thursday afternoon. i have choir tonight, and apparently there’s a new tenor coming to join our section (because, yes, i’m singing tenor in our choir. please hold all laughter.) who’s, in our director’s words, “incredible.” i don’t want him to be too incredible, lest he threaten my job. it ain’t gonna be hard to show me up when it comes to singing high b-flats. let’s just leave it at that.