I woke up in bed, buried in the warm light of my blankets and the green reflected light from the building across the way, banana trees. I wasn't hungover, but I was aware that perhaps a normal person would be hungover, and so I tried to count how many drinks I had last night: a half-shot (drank from a straw) of some expensive whiskey while I was at work. Then I went to the Bowery. First I had a Guinness, then I had a La Fin Du Monde (the end of the world), then Dimitri gave me a shot of Powell's (or Powers, not sure). Then I ordered a PBR. Then they closed down the Bowery, and afterhours I drank a PBR and another shot of Powell's. That means I basically had six-and-a-half drinks in about two hours. Leaving the Bowery, I took a cab about two blocks to Stout, but I didn't find anyone there, and didn't remember why I wanted to go there in the first place, so I walked up to 7-11, bought a pizza, walked home, threw the pizza on the floor, and fell asleep. In the morning, after recapping the events of the night to myself vis-a-vis how many drinks I drank, I fell into the vacuum of facebook and stumbled on to Tao Lin's description of his recent arrest for trespassing at a coffeeshop, published in Gawker. As I read the Gawker essay, I was struck by Tao Lin's awareness of social and internal dynamics, in terms of both attentiveness and insight. Also, his memory seemed excellent. Though I do-not/would-not practice his particular philosophical project in the way that he practices it (his project seems excessively anti-poetical, or anti-rhetorical, possibly reductionist, though without a loss of cogency, but with the possible corollary diminution of the construction of piquancy, if this makes sense), I do think of Tao's project as excellent, with the Gawker essay standing to me as proof of the excellence of his life and the quality of his mind. Of course, I was and remain most impressed by his work ethic. This last may seem like faint praise indeed, but, from my perspective (that of laziness, a kind of idle melancholy, the pursuit of one low-level distraction after another [each pursued so as to kill a kind of deeper frustration/loneliness/dissatisfaction]), Tao Lin's practice of awareness seems quite valuable and impressive. Especially interesting to me is Tao Lin's focus, which contrasts with my own in that I think we are both extremely interested in the practice of awareness of the minutiae of our daily lives, especially regarding our lives in the world of people—except that while I simply let my awareness run through me, like water through a paper filter, Lin seems to actively codify and denote his observations, wrapping things up into narrative form constantly, which must serve to make his awareness more complete and also acts to render his life more real. I have made so many thousands of pointless, unwritten, idle observations, that it seems I no longer have the capacity to bring the value of life 'home' to myself. In many ways, especially recently, I am worried that I perhaps do not have as much attentiveness as I am thought to have / claim to have. I think Tao contrasts favorably with myself in this way. I thought about all this while making coffee, sitting at my windowsill smoking a cigarette, thinking about the fact that I had to go to work for a meeting, some “coaching” or some other soul-deadening thing.
At the end of Tao Lin's description of his arrest, numerous Gawker “commenters” appended scathing, putatively witty, (and to me wrong-headed) attacks on Tao's writing style—attacks which were, by extension, attacks on Tao's life at large. I was irritated by this, given my positive response to Lin's essay, though I didn't feel the need to make some kind of comment. I went to Tao Lin's facebook and blog, checking to see if he made any public comment on the viciousness or wrong-headedness of these “comment” attacks. He did not, though someone alluded to the attacks in a comment thread that sprang from Tao Lin's link to the Gawker essay on his facebook wall. It occurred to me that if I were him, I would have definitely wanted to address these detractors, because I am insecure and would hope to get some positive affirmation of the essay's value if it were being attacked. From there, idly browsing, I came upon Lin's Richard Yates gimmick/promotion/book give-away. It occurred to me that I would like to write something in the style of Lin's commentariat-panned essay, in terms of the concrete description of banal but valuable interpersonal things, and I knew that such a project, though professionally worthless, would be fun for me, also, would give me some focus, which might (I reasoned) lead to more focus in my life later on. I was thinking, again, of the night before, the night which was and is at the time of this writing, “last night.”
Last night, The Station was mostly dead, i.e. not busy. (it is a “lounge,” i.e. an open-air club). I work in the French restaurant attached to the Station, and had to stay late to help them with the end of the night food orders. It has been occurring to me lately, because I am lonely, and for other reasons, that I would like to know more about the people who work in The Station. In fact, it seems insane to me that I am so totally disconnected from their lives, that I have isolated myself / been isolated from the not-insignificant human lives that are being lived parallel to mine. Almost without exception, my colleagues in The Station are attractive, charismatic, young, and stuck in-the-middle-of-eventual-failure in their careers as actors/models. But I know very little about them: Nick, the bartender, went to law school and posts extremely conservative links on his facebook, usually sneering our-triumph-is-imminent conservative puff pieces. Justin, the prototypical masculine bar-back is definitely fucking one of the bartenders, but I don't remember her name. I think it is Courtney, but, that could be wrong. Melissa Tiano, an extremely attractive bartender, showed up to the Station on her night off with Jessica, an extremely small-bodied cocktail waitress. Jessica somehow reminds me of a flying squirrel, (or perhaps it is some other rodent, I'm not sure), inasmuch as she has a pinched aspect to her face and large eyes. This in no way makes her unattractive, but she has a kind of idiotic lack of awareness in her eyes, which is not to say that I dislike her or actually believe she is stupid—I have no feelings and cannot make any final assessments about her one way or the other. It is important for me to remember and highlight here that I am sure she lives a complex and wonderful internal life, full of the small tragedies and small victories that mark all of our lives. Besides, it is extremely dangerous to think of other people as stupid or unaware—this is almost always an observation that is seated in resentment, and is usually derived from the stupid mistake of judging with insufficient information. It is important for me to remember and highlight here that if you know someone well, they almost always offer more depth than is apparent on the surface, and really the only thing that matters if is you have a feeling of emotional engagement with them, which, if you have it, demands that you see their idiosyncrasies and patterns of thought and feeling in a way that highlights their value and complexity. Still, it is hard to avoid judging people. To continue the story: these two girls were there with two extremely large Armenian-looking guys. The guys looked like they had money. I said to Jessica, Are you going up to Drai's? She pointed to one of the Armenian guys and said something about they were just out for the night, and then kinda ignored the question, and kinda started talking to someone else in her little circle. For some reason, I felt it was obvious that they were going up to Drai's. I didn't really think about the fact that Jessica ignored my question, because it seemed fully possible that she didn't really hear me, and in any case was with a date and I didn't want her to feel strange by imposing an unwanted conversation on her. I kinda walked in a circle around the people, and asked someone else a question, maybe “what did you do tonight” or “how are you guys doing” or “it looks like you're having fun” or something like that. In any case, whoever I directed these words to did not give me an answer that engaged me on even a basic human level. So, I started talking to Nick and his date, because he is comfortable. He immediately invited me to join them at Drai's, which was, after all, where they were all going. I thought I sensed a stiffening in the aspect of the girls, as if they did not want me to know they were going to Drai's, or, more specifically, did not want me to join them. This didn't surprise me: they must think I'm a crazy asshole, though of course it hurt, somewhat, even as I believe in my mind that they had no thoughts about me the entire time, as I'm ludicrously paranoid, over-sensitive, and over-engaged, and constantly have to dial-down my wounded feelings and thoughts on account of my intellectual awareness that people really do not think about me one way or the other. I am, I think, some kind of creature whose thoughts and social behaviors are so constantly intricate and self-involved, that it is as if all I do is simply hollow myself out entirely, as if I am some kind of spherical fruit and am doing nothing but scraping the surface of my life clean from the inside. The entire time, the large Armenian-looking guys did not say or do anything. They must have been talking to the girls, but, all I sensed was that they were doing nothing and simply standing around numbly. Nick invited me to go with them to Drai's and at first I said no, but, then I realized that I had never been up to Drai's and wanted on some level to see what it looks like. I said this to Nick and he insisted that I join them: he is extremely inviting and sociable. I said that I would enjoy going. Then I realized that I didn't have my wallet with me. I said that they would not let me in, and hung around the edges of the group for a minute longer, Nick saying “well, we should just give it a try!” But by this time my awkwardness and my feeling of being placated or being seen as a 2nd-class social citizen had wormed its way into my brain, so I simply left. I went to the Bowery.
It was dead. Mack, the GM, was sitting in front of the Bowery smoking, drinking Guinness, and talking to his friend, the pop-culture obsessed graphic novelist, Josh. I shook their hands and walked inside. I heard Josh say, “He's more of a germanic character,” probably talking about some actor. Inside, Rick was talking to the bartender, Natalie. Besides this, there were two people sitting at the bar finishing up their late dinner. I started talking to Rick about my feeling that I wish to have more intimacy in my life, approaching the subject through an analysis of the question: “How are you doing?” I would like it if people were more interested in actually describing their internal states, and wish that the performance of banal social niceties could be displaced by aggressive, emotionally not-diffident, actively engaged conversations. I tried to segue from this to an actual conversation about our actual states of being, but, no one wished to make any disclosures beyond Natalie's announcement that she was tired. Rick said that he answers the question “How are you doing” with the response “good” because he is generally a happy person: he enjoys his job, and he enjoys his life. He said something to me about his afternoon, spent drinking beers at a barbeque and eating meat, “tons and tons and tons of meat.” I was thinking about the loneliness that I feel sure he must feel, sitting in the Bowery by himself after midnight on a Sunday night, talking to the young, attractive female bartender, and being ineligible to her as a sexual object. I have seen him “appear online” on facebook chat after 2AM on nights after drinking, and remain on there, online, looking at facebook, clearly looking for some kind of social stimuli or the appearance of something wonderful. It seems clear to me that he is lonely, though I knew I couldn't announce to him that I thought of him as a lonely person. It is strange and amazing to “appear online” on facebook after two AM on a weekend and watch all the people who appear there, clearly looking for happiness, waiting for a message, or a comment, or thinking about the clunky practice of e-seduction, treading water there for a few minutes, reading their newsfeed, and then disappearing into the gray nothing of offline and sleep. I believe there is a lot of loneliness in the world, though this may just be projection. Anyways, after Rick left, Natalie and I talked about our experiences of swimming in the ocean, the nature of fear when you're a passenger versus when you're driving, and experiences of exhilaration we had felt in our lives. Then she talked about a short film she was in. At this point, Dimitri came in with one of the guys from Jackass and was talking about the new Jackass movie. The night disintegrated at that point, and eventually, I went home.
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