What the hell was I writing about?

I don't know why I write. It's a linear practice, and I'm a spatial thinker. Spatial thinking is great for art and nothing else. You--the linear thinker I presume--see your digital watch and think to yourself "It's ten fifty," and you're calculating that you have ten more consecutive units of time to pass before your television program comes on, or you have to walk the dog, or pick somebody up or whatever. I see on my watch that it's ten fifty. I scratch my head. I scrunch my face up. I'm confused. I have to translate those lovely little consecutive units that are wicked easy for you to deal with into a piece of a pie on a real clock, the kind with hands. I see the little sliver of pie and think, "Oh, that's how much SPACE I have left till I have to do A, B and C."

Now, say we're both drawing. I school you. You know why? I can see everywhere all at once because my brain doesn't move in lines. While you're still stuck trying to make the outline of a shape correct--and if you draw it this way, it invariably never is--I've blocked it all out by light and it comes together easily.

But you have to think in an organized manner to write anything that follows the rules of linear time, anything that means something to the vast majority of people reading it, so it's just a constant struggle for me to put together stories. Here's a good example.

YESTERDAY

I recently signed up for a Nerve.com account. I did this for a few clandestine reasons, casing the joint and whatnot, but also, I wasn't totally closed off to the idea of finding dates via Nerve. A lot of my friends have been pretty successful finding people to date and even marry on web sites. Its not as gross as it used to be even a few years ago when I was doing Match.com and getting daily pics of erect penises sent to me. Granted, my profile was ardently sexual and bisexual, but my intent was good. You'd think after the Match.com fiasco that I had learned my lesson to keep the sexy talk off my profile page, but learning lessons aint one of my strengths. Perhaps that's why it's so fun around here.

As per the usual mildly dyslexic and clueless Bunny fashion, I neglected to pay any attention to the section that delineates wants, the criterion that keeps you off the wanton sex searches and on the meaningful friendship/relationship ones, and by default my profile went into every necro/paedo/homo/feco email bin on Nerve's big ole server. To top it off, I got all honest up in there, and wrote a profile about how much I like to fuck. I mean, I like to fuck a whole lot, and if you don't like to fuck, then one day, well within the complex confines of a relationship and feelings and stuff, you'll look down at your bleeding penis and say, "I should have never dated you!" and the backpeddling will be considerably annoying. It's best I'm just honest about it from the start.

I applaud my own honesty, but I'll tell ya, its best to lie a little in your profile. Lady in the street, freak in the bed.

What was this post about? Oh. Okay, hold on.

TWO WEEKS AGO

So not too long ago, I went to go see James Ellroy and Bruce Wagner read each other's work at Skylight books. I had developed a crush on Ellroy a few months prior when I stumbled upon a question/answer session at one of his readings and watched him abuse and berate the adoring stranger audience with such retorts to honest questions as "Shut the fuck up," and "Fuck you." I was agog. He called Bill Clinton a "sexual predator." He was so brash, so fierce, so opined.

So my friend Mark Ebner called and said, "Ellroy's reading with Bruce Wagner at Skylight," and I picked Ebner up and we went. It was fascinating again. When asked if he enjoyed Brian DePalma's take on "Black Dahlia" he grimaced and said, "You know, green is a really flattering color, and I'm making a lot green because of Brian DePalma's movie. Just read my expression and you'll understand what I think about the whole ordeal." Awesome.

Where was I going with this? Oh...

LATER THAT NIGHT

So after we went to the Ellroy/Wagner reading at Skylight, Ebner said, "I've got a plus one to the Southpark tenth anniversary party, you wanna go with me?"

I did, and I had a great time. Julien was there with one of his Beastly Bombing cast members. One of the stars of "How's your News," the guy who speaks all in jibberish, was there. He was sweet. He gave me a hug. There were lots of scantily clad beauties hopping around, dancing, flirting etc. I love it when they hop. They're fake Satans in spandex, but they're pretty.

That's what I remember--random, spatial snippets of faces, hopping pretty ladies and a little conversation with no timeline. Dammit.

So what's the point of this story? Oh...

TODAY

I got an email from a super duper dyke on Nerve.com today. I emailed her back, and said something like, "Thanks, but I'm not all that serious about Nerve," or some other such nice blowoff thingy. I prefer really feminine looking women to butchy ones because, what's the point, really? If I want butch, I can just go have sex with men.

So butch? Not really a fan...except for one night...

AT THE SOUTHPARK 10TH ANNIVERSARY

I was talking to one of the writers of the show, a guy named Tim who was super nice. He'd been friends with Mark Ebner for twenty years. He and I went to the same little techie school in upstate New York, so we were having a good time discussing its quirks, when we were interrupted by a butch lesbian. She poked Tim in the ribs and he said hello. They were roommates, apparently, and I assumed they worked together on the show or something, because they kept discussing technical things I didn't understand. She was shoving French fries into her face, which was void of any kind of makeup, or any other attempt to gloss over imperfections with synthetic slick. Her hair was swept back, not in an updo, but in a bandana. She was wearing the kind of pants surgeons wear in the hospital and a grey sweatshirt.

Now, she was awash in a sea of silicone. There was glitter and pricey perfume and product everywhere. All around her, the skin was perfect. The hair was stylish, coiffed, but not-so-perfect, the kind of bedheady look everybody in LA likes to wear their hair in right now.

The contrast was striking, to say the least.

This woman looked like a piece of crap. I'm not kidding you. In any other setting, I might have said, "Damn, girrrrl. Lip gloss or somethin'" but in that setting with all the conformity around her, pretty conformity, but comformity nonetheless, she was such a breathmint. She just was. I watched her with my feet up on a bench. On the other end of my feet were two gorgeous suede peep-toe pumps right in tune with the conformity. She was so god damned ballsy. She was so "Shut the fuck up," and "Fuck you" that I had to hit on her. Figuring that butchy lesbians generally like me, I didn't think anything of doing it.

She wasn't gay, which is okay. The next day and every day after that I would have been involved with her, would have been an ordinary day in which she wasn't surrounded by Stepford whores, and there would have been no conformity to compare her to.

So that's what I was trying to write about all along. The cool butchy girl at the Southpark party. It took me James Ellroy to get there. What a mess, eh? Drawing is so much easier.

Comments

Posted by: LilaChicaD at October 11, 2006 02:33 PM

Posted by: Tim Talbott at October 22, 2006 05:45 AM

Posted by: Tim Talbott at October 22, 2006 06:25 AM

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