the saga continues

how to start your day? how about another sex-themed dirty laundry!Wrap it up


I've never understood why people have sex bareback. For those of you not familiar with the term (if, for instance, you've never had a proper gay-sex-education or you missed the now-legendary episode of Oprah in which a gay man tells her all about it), barebacking means having sex without a condom. I should rephrase my first statement: It's not that I don't understand why people bareback. I understand it perfectly. It feels good. What I don't understand is people who are willing to take their lives into their own hands for it.

I bring this up because I just moved to a new city where, because I don't have a lot of gay friends, I've been spending a little more time on, shall we say, gay singles' websites than I'd like to admit. I've been shocked by the number of mens' profiles I've come across who are looking exclusively for unprotected sex.

I don't mean that these are people who have the occasional slip-up: people who get wasted and take someone home from the bar only to wake up the next morning with nary a condom in sight. The people I'm talking about have profiles that say things like "Bareback-only bottom looking for now!" or "Read the profile: if you won't do it bare, don't bother messaging." Once I get beyond the ick factor-you know, that kind of I-need-a-shower feeling you get when you think about what these people are doing with strangers-I start to wonder: what is it that motivates them to engage in such risky behavior?

As my move to New York approached, most gay people I knew, regardless of age, nationality, or religion, told me, "Be really careful up there. So many people are HIV-positive." "Well," I always told them, "I wasn't planning to move to New York City and say, 'Thank God! I've moved to New York so I can finally throw caution to the wind! Unprotected sexual intercourse here I come!'" I'd lived in Baltimore for four years and been able to protect myself thus far.

The amount of guys that engage in risky behavior in New York, though--or at least those that advertise for it online--dwarfs the number in Baltimore, which blows my mind. After all, HIV hit New York first. Don't these guys remember? Is it because they aren't old enough to recall entire networks of friends being wiped out? Has our collective memory failed us so much that we're no longer aware that we lost most of a generation?

I always wonder to myself when I see one of these guys online--the "Drop your pants and go" guys or the "No rubbers allowed" guys--what brought them to that point? Do they care so little for their own health? Are they in it for the thrill? Or, I hate to even consider, the chase?

I don't write this claiming to have always made the right choices; I don't write it to condemn those who choose to risk their health, possibly even their lives, with the sexual decisions they make. There are just so many things I want to say to people when I see that they're seeking random, unprotected sex. I want to remind them about the struggle for our rights that we've had to go through in the last century, ask them why they're willing to throw away a life that others had to fight so hard for them to have. I'd like to remind them that there are ways for them to protect themselves, ways to avoid meeting a fate that so many others met before they knew any better.

These aren't the kind of messages you send on "gay singles' websites," however, so I'll say it here.

SWC

CHECK IT!

could this possibly be true? june 28, at long last?

(via towleroad)

hey i know you

ok, so first of all i have to say that something very new yorkish happened to me this morning while i was getting ready. hilary and i always, always watch the today show. i don't care how lame it is, how many "surveys" they have about "what [straight, old, white] women really find attractive." we watch it. and, frankly, i think katie couric is funny in a really over-it, smiling-but-making-fun-of-you way, which i like. and i'll probably stop watching the show when meredith viera, that wretched woman from the view, second in heinousness only to that brown sack of flesh star jones (wow, did i just type that?), takes her place. i don't know what i'll watch since logo only plays reruns of xena: warrior princess at that hour, but it'll be something.

anyhoo, on to my new yorkish experience. i'm running around the apartment getting ready, and some stupid american idol piece comes on. now, i don't watch american idol; never have. but i glance at the television to see what the talking head's saying, and the talking head is none other than a friend of scott's, nicholas, a member of the cabinet from read your blog, shelby. he's saying something, very serious-like, about how all the winners from american idol are southerners and what that means and why we should care.

no, he's not curing aids, but he was on the today show. and i know him.

scoring

i still obsessively read citypaper, even though i've now moved away from baltimore. what can i say, it's a good alternative weekly and it helps when i'm feeling homesick.

my close, personal friend anna ditkoff (remember her? i met her once.) had this to say about fucking scores replacing the atlantis:

"I have to admit that Scores had a few strikes against it in my book before I even stepped through the door. First, I’m still upset that Atlantis closed. It was a Baltimore institution, and while I only went there twice, I had good memories of the place. Sure, it’s weird watching naked guys in tube socks walk around the bar stroking themselves, but the guys were always so nice, asking where you went to school as they abused themselves into semihardness. Turning the spot into a traditional strip club with fake-breasted women taking their clothes off for men who are already more than adequately served in that area seemed like an insufficient substitute. Second, I had already been out just about every night that week. My lungs felt like burnt french fries, and my cumulative hangover had left me cranky-little-kid tired. All day Friday I vacillated between wanting to sleep under my desk or throw a flailing temper tantrum. Still, I took a disco nap after work, put my party clothes on, and went out to go look at naked girls."

read the whole article here. i love her.

hugs one dollar

i torture my dear roommates, amanda and hilary, with hour upon hour upon hour of logo television. well, not so much amanda because she's either working, commuting, or with her boyfriend 24 hours a day, mostly 1 and 2. we eat dinners together, but our dinners usually ignore the television, even though it's on in the background.

for those of you without digital cable, logo is the sole remaining gay cable channel. there was something called...i think q network or something like that, but it's gone the way of all flesh. so logo is it. it's mainly a bunch of reruns of five-year-old television shows with "gay themes" and "original programming" that takes place in front of a bluescreen. you didn't expect them to pop for an actual set for a gay channel, did you? because they're in front of this bluescreen, the hosts (one in particular, some reality show star who now hosts the travel show) are really, shall we say, enthusiastic. if you ever hang out with hilary, make sure you get her to imitate this man. "WE GO THERE!" she'll shout, flailing her wrists.

i subject them to so much gay television, i think, because my life now is less gay than it's been since...gosh, i don't know when. my senior year in high school? at depauw i was in the gay group, hung out with gay people (and amanda). by the time i left depauw, we had a whole gang of queers who'd watch each others' backs. then, somehow, i landed in baltimore's gayborhood. now i'm in new york, in a neighborhood that's decidedly not queer. it's more like, um, decidedly immigrant and greek. and we know how greeks and muslims feel about gays. they just LOVE us. can't get enough of us.

it's not that my roommates aren't a great support system; it's just that i'm used to having a lot of gay friends around. i have, i'd say, one gay friend here in town: scott. and scott has a boyfriend of like six hundred years (which is quite a feat seeing as they're both in their 20s) so he's not exactly looking for a new partner in crime. i know that i can't expect an instant group of friends, like chia friends, who i'll just sprinkle seeds for and water and they'll grow into perfect replacements for all the people i left behind at depauw and baltimore. i'm not, you may be surprised to find out, the most patient person, however. and so i'll go stand around at barracuda or phoenix wearing a sandwich sign that says something like "hugs $1" or "wanna be my friend?"

i'll be the most popular girl at ridge valley high.

my future husband

step 1) meet this man, jeff whitty, creator of avenue q

step 2) marry him

step 3) live happily ever after.

(via queerty)

yeah, great, i'll resend you that memo.

my current temp job requires a lot of tasks that my old job didn't. at my old job, for instance, i had to make a lot of phone calls, write some letters, and see a lot of patients in the clinic. you know, stuff that was a little tedious but never awful. and my coworkers were fun and if there was downtime we could go smoke (back before i quit again, steph) or talk about music (kari). at this job, however, i have to do a whole different array of things: heavy work in access, most of which includes entering peoples' information every time they call or visit and then running reports.

boring.

then, once a week, i get to run a big report. it's called the "weekly sales report," and it's like 45 pages of everything that went on in the office for the week: sales, visitors, charts, graphs, pies. lots of things i don't really understand but i'm somehow able to make look pretty enough for me not to get fired.

it takes most of the day. i call it my "TPS report." i've made this TPS report joke to several people here in new york, only one of which was in my office, and they had literally no idea what i was talking about. HELLO, people! TPS reports.

ah, temping.

PS, a messenger just came into the office (because, you know, this is new york and the mail clearly takes WAAYYYY too long) and called me "brother robert." i've never met him before, mind you. yet suddenly we're at some like tent church revival. brother robert. that has a ring to it.

GSW's

i cannot cannot cannot believe that i nearly forgot to write a blog about this. i suppose that posting funny pictures and videos of us on train platforms distracted me. you can't really blame me; the videos were great and saturday was a bit of a blow-out. but this is big and strange. you'll see when you read this week's column (i know you're all just chomping at the bit to read it, but tough! you have to wait until friday) that i've been going on "gay singles' websites." that's a nice way of saying manhunt.net. but i couldn't say manhunt.net in baltimore gay life, so i said gay singles websites. just between you and me, though, that's what GSW means.

so anyway, i'm on this particular GSW, and a guy sends me a message. i open up his picture, and what do i find? my first-ever summer camp boyfriend, cory. from when i was 17. like, the first guy that i held hands with and made out with a lot and swooned over, two weeks after i came out of the closet the summer before my senior year in college. and here he is, sending me a message on a gay singles' website in new york city.

i sent him a message saying, "i'm not sure if you'll remember me, but you were actually my first summer camp boyfriend." he not only remembered me, i was surprised and happy to find out, he remembered my friends' names, where i was from. and he looks the same. cory.

he's apparently a working singer in new york now; he's dating someone in hoboken (which i've started calling "the boken." i hope it catches on.). he took me out to a dinner at a mexican restaurant around the corner from my house because he lives down the street from me, apparently as a lot of oklahomans do. because, you know, when you're growing up queer in oklahoma you can hear it on the wind: "get ye to 33rd street in astoria, queens."

and so i might have a new friend here in new york, nine years and two thousand miles later.

where's my umbrella

we rainily celebrated hilary's birthday ("again?" i hear you asking. "yes," i say, "because much like my birthday, hilary's bday lasts a week and a half.") in manhattan on saturday night. i say rainily because, oh my god, like i thought it would never stop raining. we also, newbie new yorkers that we are, mistakenly thought that to get to the F train from the N train we had to walk two avenue blocks in the pouring rain. when we actually could've just transferred at 34th street. whatever.

phong was here this weekend, trudging with us through the rain. never ones to let a little thing like weather keep us from enjoying our new city, however, we galavanted around manhattan on saturday and sunday, shopping and eating. unlike some people i know, we don't actually believe that we're on an extended episode of sex and the city, so we didn't take cabs everywhere or have martinis in posh hotel bars. we drank beer on the lower east side and waited around for the N train (except that one time at 4am sunday morning when we'd just finished eating pizza and it was pouring rain and we were ten blocks from the subway. oh, and phong offered to buy us the cab. we took a cab then.).

because phong was here, we have not only photographs of the whole thing, we have videos. enjoy.

it's that big.

oh, corporate america. you're so strange sometimes. you're such a fickle, difficult lover. kind of like i imagine elizabeth taylor must have been. i mean the drunken mid-60s elizabeth taylor, not the new aids-cure-hero elizabeth taylor.

corporate america has decided that i should have the day off today, because we're technically not supposed to be in the office that we're in. some kind of construction code. i don't know. the point is, the vp called yesterday to say that the office would be closed, which is:

a) awesome, because it's really the first whole day off i've had, including weekends, since we moved here. and it means that i can actually spend the day, you know, unpacking the boxes that still litter my apartment. and maybe even--brace yourselves--put away my clothes.
b) crappy, because i'm a temp and get paid by the hour, not by the, um, salary. so this means that i'm getting paid for 9 fewer hours this week. and hello i live in new york city, where one french fry costs fourteen dollars.

i'm focusing on the a) and trying to ignore the b).

speaking of trying to ignore things, hilary and i saw our first roach yesterday. of course i spotted it as i was carrying our plates of food to the table. and then i saw it again as i was eating. and then it flew--FLEEEWWWWWW--from the ground to the wall and then from the wall to somewhere in the kitchen after dinner. and we lost it. don't ask me how we lost it, because it was quite literally the biggest roach i've ever seen, and i'm including when i lived with scott in spaha. this thing was TWO INCHES LONG. (for reference, that's bigger than jerry falwell's and pat robertson's dicks combined!)

i'm going to go buy some combat roach baits today, which is a joke because the thing is too big to actually get in there to get the poison. maybe it'll carry it on its back to its nest. no seriously. it's that big.

my big fat greek drunken evening

brace yourselves, dearest readers, i'm about to tell you something really shocking, something you're not going to believe or like: i'm not a spring chicken any more.

that's right, i said it. i can no longer do what i've done the last two nights: go out drinking until 1am and then get up at 715 for work the next day. ok, so it was actually two nights ago that i was out til 1am. last night we were home by 1030, but that's not the point. i still feel like i've been run over by a mac truck (you know, the kind of truck that carries makeup, as opposed to a mack truck). but oh boy has it been worth it.

after work yesterday i met scott at mary ann's (a mexican chain located mainly in the absurdly posh bit of the upper east side) for margaritas and tortilla chips. oh, and to get his keys because he and his boyfriend are going to ft. lauderdale on what they're calling their "big gay spring break." i'm spittin' jealous, but i'm taking care of his cat while they're away. and by taking care of, i mean checking in on twice because they've left it with a self-feeder and self-waterer. basically i have to go make sure the cat hasn't like destroyed the place, because she's needy like sascha was (is, i suppose, though she's no longer my cat).

then i met hilary, amanda, and our friends erin and tim (from peabster) for hilary's birthday dinner at this ridiculous place in chelsea called "markt." it wasn't extremely fancy, but it was definitely the kind of place i'd only go for a special occasion: it was bustling and a lil' expensive. here in the city i can only go out to dinner if it's like...um...a greek restaurant or a mexican taqueria. basically it has to be listed in the new york times as "cheap as dirt" or i can't go there. because even "cheap as dirt" means fifteen dollars a plate.

anyway, we had a pretty great dinner (with pretty bad service, but what does it matter when you're drinking belgian beer with friends?) and then i bought hilary a happy birthday pastry at omonia cafe, the greek bakery that has a picture of the cake it baked for my big fat greek wedding in the window.

opa!

therapy session

i went to the gay bar last night for only the second time since i moved here. now, i know that this may not sound strange, since i only moved here three weeks ago. but you have to understand, there was a time in my life when i was going to gay bars thursday, friday, saturday, and sometimes sunday nights. then again, a) i lived in baltimore, so it was a whole lot cheaper; b) i was dating a fairly crazy (ok, so really crazy) scene-adoring, house-music-listening, rave-dancing latino; and c) let's face it, i was in my early 20's and now i'm in my late-mid-20s. that's right, i said it, late-mid.

(speaking of which, happy birthday to hilary, who joins me rolling downhill towards 30 today! run over to snippets from science [i'm too lazy to insert a link here, so look to your right and there it is] and wish her many happy returns. or at least lots of men with long tongues.)

so i went last night to therapy, which is in hell's kitchen. apparently. i can't really tell the difference between "hell's kitchen" and "the rest of midtown," though i hear that hell's kitchen is the upper-mid-town-sort-of-west neighborhood. therapy's at like 52nd and 8th. so, yeah. that's where hell's kitchen is. anyway, i went there with matt, who many of you might remember from a little post i wrote about a certain playboy mansion grotto-style pool party held at frank's mansion last summer. matt's the guy i (allegedly!) was playing WASTED footsie with in the hot tub and then (allegedly!) hit on in front of my boyfriend. i kept forgetting his name, since i'd just met him, so i called him boston. since, you know, he's from boston. when i told hilary who i was going out with, she said, "Matt?" and i said, "you know, boston." she rolled her eyes, reminding me of the footsie incident.

we had a great time. i have to say, however, that while the music at therapy was good, it was simply too loud. i was literally trying to shout over remixes of beyonce and shit. hello, if i wanted to scream over dance music, i'd take drugs and go to the roxy. anyhoo...

you're welcome, part the fifth

ohmigod. (via towleroad)

fetch

last night i became one of those people: those people who have groceries delivered to them instead of going to buy them. i felt very posh, i have to admit, as i said, "thank you; those can go in the kitchen." i then took a long swig from my martini (dirty, with just a whisper of vermooth) and pulled my silk negligee a little tighter, as it had fallen off my shoulder. oh wait, that didn't happen. i don't wear womens' undergarments. nor do we have any vodka in the house, because, obviously, it would've been drunk already.

the fact is that i went ahead and used freshdirect for my groceries this week because, after two weeks of grocery shopping at "c-town" and "that korean greengrocer ten minutes from my house" and not being especially pleased with either the quality or the prices of my groceries, i thought it was time to try something else. i was having coffee with ben and two of his friends, one of whom recommended freshdirect to me. i laughed and told him something like "i'm not made of money" or "money doesn't grow on trees." some money saying. then he told me that actually the prices aren't bad--and often they're cheaper than the grocery store.

now, this "c-town" place is pretty awful--not like shopping in bosnia awful, but not like the canton safeway, either. it was about the size of eddie's (for those of you who live in baltimore) but was somehow more cramped. and the prices, though not ridiculous, certainly weren't a bargain. this is, after all, new york city. so i went to the freshdirect website at like 12 midnight on friday. how pathetic is it that i was comparison grocery shopping late on a friday night? very, but that's beside the point. the point is that freshdirect was, in fact, the same or cheaper. so i took a chance. and it worked. my groceries were delivered last night, intact, and yummy-looking. yes, i just said yummy.

i keep thinking of that episode of sex and the city where the 'girls' talk about the fact that in manhattan you can get anything you want delivered in less than an hour. that if you can pay for it, you can have someone do anything for you that you're too lazy to do: hang your pictures, move your office, clean your bathroom, buy your groceries, bring you dvd's. eventually i'll just be attila the hun, fartily sitting around my apartment while dinner and entertainment's brought to my door.

rowing song

i got back last night from what i've dubbed my whirlwind tour of baltimore. hilary and i, as you'll remember from my recent post bitching about the expense of amtrak, went home this weekend to sing at st. david's for easter marathon, er, i mean easter vigil/easter morning. seriously, people, we got the easy end of the stick this year: i'm trying to imagine what it'd be like singing a church service practically every night last week and then topping it all off with 9 hours of church in a 24 hour period. but i can't. every time i start to imagine i wet my pants and have to go clean up.

it was really nice being back in baltimore. don't get me wrong, i love new york. it's great. it's new yorkish. we ride the subway and go to bars and have great plans to catch up with old friends and go to shows and all kinds of fancy new york things. but at the same time, i have to agree with something that hilary said to me on saturday as we waited for our train, something that struck me as very poingnant and true: it still feels like i'm playing house in new york.

our apartment's starting to feel a little more like home; boxes are slowly, surely (albeit slower than my poor roommates would like) disappearing and we continue to move in and make our place our own. astoria has become my neighborhood, broadway stop has become my hub. still, though, i feel like it's all pretend--like i get up and put on my fancy clothes (i will never, ever, get used to wearing a tie and slacks every day) and go to work and sell four million dollar condos and then come home and go to my new gym and cook dinner in my new kitchen. and then we eat at our new dinner table and watch our new digital cable and then go to sleep and do it all again the next day. and it all feels made up, like someone else's life.

like my life is back in baltimore: my tiny, shit apartment, my job at hopkins, my neighborhood. and that my life here is just like a really strange vacation, one where you have to worry about jobs and rent and subway fare. this is all passing, i know, because it's part of moving. but last night on the train back, having said goodbye again to phong, watching the sun set out the train window somewhere in northeast maryland, i listened to patty griffin sing

The further I go
More letters from home never arrive
And I'm alone
All of the way
All of the way
Alone and alive

and i knew what she meant.

still kickin'

so, i might've left baltimore (but never in spirit), but they're still running my column. which is, to say the very least, awesome. so...

Bending the Rules

"Look," my roommate Hilary said to me while unpacking a box, "the Bible!" She held up a copy of a book everyone's read, whether they admit it or not, a book that women and gay guys either swear by or love to hate: He's Just Not That Into You.

"Do you honestly believe what that guy says?" asked our friend Amanda. "I mean, do you follow the advice he gives you? I read it and it just seemed awfully…I don't know, simple."

"All I know," Hilary responded, "is that it inspired me to completely change how I look at dating. I now have a very strict 'No Bullshit' clause when it comes to relationships. And you know how much bullshit I've had to put up with since I instated it? None."

A few seconds passed as I went about the task of unpacking books and cd's and knickknacks that I should've thrown away, but instead had chosen to bring with me to New York wrapped in pages torn from Out magazine. "Then again," Hilary said, smiling, "one side-effect of the No Bullshit clause is that it means that I haven't been out on a date in two months."
Hilary isn’t perennially single by any stretch of the imagination. It's just that, to put it mildly, she hasn't been offered the cream of the crop to choose from. And with the added factor of the No Bullshit rule, well, the pickin's get awfully slim indeed.

Our conversation made me wonder, though, when it comes to relationships, what’s actually bull—the unreturned phone calls, for instance, or the guy who takes you out to dinner and leaves his wallet at home—and what are valid concerns? I guess my question is: when do issues become mere excuses? Is there a difference between deadbeats and guys who are commitment-phobic? Guys with abandonment issues and guys that just aren’t worth it? And, more importantly, to what extent is it ok to make concessions?

I think that I--and my friends who've seen me through a few long-term relationships would probably back me up on this, though I'm not giving you any of their phone numbers because you don't want to know the stories they could tell—have a relatively high threshold for guys with issues. I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt more than most people. Of course, this has led me to more than my fair share of strange relationships. I've pretty much done it all: chasing after the impossible catch, grasping at straws for affection, the thwarted move-in, the finally-standing-up-for-myself breakup.

Even as I type this, I'm thinking to myself, God, Robert, what a doormat. I don't honestly think, though, that’s true. For the most part I've gotten what I wanted out of these relationships, even the ones in which I had to put up with the most.

Why, then, am I willing to make these sacrifices? Why will I put up with more than Hilary will? I'm a far cry from being a hopeless romantic: I don't necessarily believe that there are soulmates, or that finding one person is possible. I don't know if I believe that I'll ever get married (or gaymarried, as I've grown fond of calling it) or adopt children. Yet something tells me, no matter how jaded I've become, no matter how many times my belief in true love has been tested, that part of me wants all those things: the gaywedding, the kids, the soulmate. And so I go on, refusing to follow the No Bullshit clause, the rule that's saved Hilary from so many pains in her ass.

It's not that I'm more patient than she is or more of a pushover. It's just that I feel like to get to something good, you often have to make a few allowances. That to find something worth while, you've got to wade through a few feet of bullshit.

damn you amtrak

damn you, amtrak. damn you for being the quickest and easiest way to get up and down the east coast. damn you for being fairly reliable and efficient and on time. and most of all, damn you for upping the cost of your precious, wonderful tickets during holidays.

on a normal day, the tickets to baltimore that hilary and i just bought would've been 130 round trip. that's still pretty expensive when you think about it. this weekend, though, because apparently everyone on the east coast has to get somewhere for easter (even though with the exception of hilary i don't think i know many people who actually consider themselves christian), the tickets we just bought were 187 dollars. for a train! not some like magical japanese bullet train. the normal, coach-class train, where i'm fairly sure we're going to have to stand for at least part of the journey. and i'm going to hem and haw the entire way because i paid so much for the ticket and have to stand. it'd be ok except that we're only being reimbursed 160 for the tickets. so basically i'm kind of paying 27 to sing on easter. sweet.

i'll bitch and moan about this until i'm blue in the face, but it's totally our fault: we've been saying to each other, "you know, we really have to buy those tickets!" for two weeks. and then we go and wash dishes and hang out and drink wine and work and go to the gym and...don't buy the tickets. so we bought 'em a day in advance and ended up screwing ourselves in the ass. and not in the good way.

st. david's here we come. expensively.

damn.

so i don't care if tori's last album really, really bit the big one. i still love her, always will. and i'm so sad to find out that this site is shutting down in may. as dorky as it is, i spent most of college checking this page multiple times a day; it was my homepage on my computer until i got a new one last august (which, incidentally, just might've coincided with tori's new biting the big one album being released).

and if you search hard enough, you'll find a review of the first tori concert i ever saw, wayyy back in '98, and it's absolutely humiliating. happy hunting.

a different world

let me share with you what's happened at work today. i just have to. i work in the administrative offices of the sales division of a big, really fancy real estate company in manhattan. we've just moved offices, from the 3rd floor to the 15th floor, to an office with 180-degree views of the east river, and then north into harlem. it's ridiculous. if it were being rented, it'd be a 6 thousand dollar a month apartment. if it were being sold, it'd go for something like 2 million. instead, i sit here at a really fancy, gnarled-wood desk typing into blogger and answering the phone and scheduling viewings.

what's shocked me about corporate america, as opposed to medicine, is that nothing is too expensive: the orchid, the company's sort-of mascot, that we have in our office, for instance. it dies every 6 weeks, so every six weeks we get a new, $600 orchid. it's not like the size of a tree or a bear or a car. it's like, a foot and a half tall. we just got a pair of trees for the terrace--$1200 in all--and promptly left them behind.

so, when i was talking on the phone last night, they said, "what? they're making you move things!?" and i laughed. and then i told them, "of course not. when i say we're moving, i mean that i sit there and watch as a company comes in, puts everything into boxes, and then moves everything upstairs and then unpacks it." this is corporate america, after all. we don't move things ourselves, set up our own computers, or even hang our own pictures on the wall.

it's insanity and it's time i got back to research.

i's speakin english

since i know you don't all hover over my blog hitting refresh and then maniacally checking the comments sections, i'll share with you an email from"someone" in my office that an "anonymous" person posted there. i'll give you a hint. i've made a lot of fun of her on here, and she once joked about opening up a place called "[name]'s rib shack."

here we go; buckle your seatbelts.

"I am just getting back to planning this I was pretty much out for March.We all agreed to do something for ***** on 5-11 . He I had to ask him 2x before he finally said that he's is cool with that .Please tell me you that you guys are still good with that date and time . We need to decide who going to do what and who all should come ? He has work with so many so I will need guidiance....Me and Kim booked the Room."

incredible.

our reviews

you might remember that scott and i went to go see the rotterdam philharmonic play shostakovich (again, spelling can eat it) 3 and 4 on sunday afternoon. he forwarded me the new york times review of it, which was, to say the very least, glowing. you can read it here. it's very smarty smarty.

in response to scott's email, i mailed him my own review of the concert:

shostakovich--or was it tchaikovsky? i never can tell those two apart!--wrote two symphonies in his lifetime, both of which i had the distinct pleasure of reading through on sunday afternoon. i know exactly what the "leo" length piano stick is now, for instance. the orchestra played amazingly, except for those few times when the french horns sucked the big one. oh, and the way the director made his hand flail around like he was palsied? that was pretty distracting. otherwise, this is one tchaikovksy wind duet not to be missed!

robert is a regular contributor for the new york times.

and then he sent me his:

There was a "classical music" (as opposed to "realworld") hot guy sitting two seats in front of me whoseneck I kept staring at because it seemed bizarrelythin. I was holding down "church giggles" for thefirst 10 minutes because I was thinking of fat BritneySpears being lifted onto the stage to the stringsheavily playing the Toxic riff. I listened to somecrazy bombastic music that seemed pretty damn cool,except for periods during the 4th symphony when Iwould zone out thinking about how much I despisedvodka red bulls. I also seriously considered theprospect that Avery Fisher Hall was as hot as thesurface of the sun. It was pretty outside that day.I like kittens and rainbows.

skinemax

i obviously ride the subway about eighteen times a day now. when i spent that first summer here, living in scott's shoebox-sized, 80+ degree extra bedroom, riding the subway was new and exciting. i felt so very citified, so very look-at-me-riding-the-subway-if-they-could-see-me-now-that-little-gang-of-mine. nowadays, its luster has worn off a little. i still love, however, not having to drive. as you, my faithful readers, are already aware, i have pretty insane road rage. not like road rage where i get out of my car and stab a cabbie because in my mind he cut me off (apparently this just happened recently in williamsburg), but road rage that manifests itself in spouting an incredible array of profanity, racial slurs, hand gestures, and faces. i have a whole range of reactions perfectly tailored for the offense at hand. phong often complained because i'd give him a heart attack with my sudden outbursts, which often happened when i was merely a front-seat passenger.

nowadays, though, my honda sits parked at amanda's house in connecticut, where it gets rained on and gathers dust and sometimes gets driven by barbara on lil' errands. i have yet to put a for sale sign in its window, though i need to unload it as soon as possible so i can stop paying my insurance premiums. nowadays, i ride my beloved subway.

and let me tell you, literally not a day goes by that i don't see two straight people sucking face on the subway. it's not always full-on making out, mind you, but it's always extremely inappropriate PDA. the close-faced talk, for instance (where you stare right into each others eyes, nose-to-nose, and meet lips occasionally), or the boyfriend-to-girlfriend headlock. hilary and i have had many conversations about PDA, all of which have stemmed from being subjected to what's basically cinemax after dark on the N/W train.

plus, you just know that if it was two guys getting all lovey-dovey on the train there would be a public outcry the likes of which hasn't been heard since judy died. then again, i'm feeling dangerous: any volunteers?

goginhime

this weekend was a total "new york" weekend. like obnoxiously new-yorky. nearly as obnoxious as the fact that i keep blogging about having just moved to new york. i know that you all, my dear readers, are saying to yourselves, "WE GET IT, ROBERT. YOU MOVED. NEW YORK. BLAH BLAH BLAH. WHY AM I SO FILLED WITH DISDAIN? WHAT'S THAT SMELL? I HATE YOU, MOM!" but bear with me for a moment, because i have to talk about moving to new york again.

friday towards the end of the work day, bri, my friend from high school who lives in chelsea, called me to ask if i wanted to go to some party with her at the guggenheim. did i spell that right? who knows, and i'm too lazy to look it up. anyway, she asked if i wanted to be her plus-one to go to the googlinheim (or however it's spelled) because they do this dj'd 30-buck-a-pop thing that all these hipsters go to. obviously i don't turn down a free party. we got there and there was a line of people around the block. i kept making all these "where are steve rubell?" jokes that i'm not 100% sure bri got, since she kept looking around and being like, "i don't know, i'm sure he's here somewhere." anyway, since bri had these free vip passes we got to skip the long line and wait in a shorter one, where, when we got to the door, the people running the entrance kept saying "thanks so much for your patience; sorry you had to wait so long!" i'm thinking, who exactly do you think i am? because i'm a temp. the party was fun and there was lots of free beer.

saturday hilary and i walked around union square in the pouring rain and shopped and ate soft pretzels that tasted suspiciously like hot dogs and were sold to us by a woman with two teeth in her head. new yorky.

yesterday was the most absurdly new yorky day of all, however, because i got out of bed late, unpacked, met scott for brunch on the upper east side (because we're extremely wealthy and posh. oh wait.) and then went to the symphony. every time i think the phrase "went to the symphony," i pronounce it "symphonehhh" in my head, all english-like. again, the tickets were comped. because my friends and i are clearly extremely important people. i mean, really. if i weren't around, who would answer the phones of the rich and powerful?

i will never own one of these condos. sadly.

much like hilary's post from earlier today, i blog to you from my new temp job up here on the fancy upper east side of manhattan. ok, so people keep reminding me that it's technically "about three blocks away from spanish harlem," but you know what? i'm working in a building that's selling condos that range in price from astronomical to absolutely outrageous. so i say it's the upper east side.

i'm working in an office that only has four people in it, so that's great. it's for a big scary corporation, but it's not like in the corporate headquarters (re: i don't have a cubicle, i don't have anyone asking me about TPS reports, and i don't have to wear a suit to work every day--but i do have to wear a tie). so far everyone's perversely friendly. it actually got to a point yesterday where i was sitting around the office eating lunch with my new coworkers, chatting, and i thought to myself, "maybe these people are company moles who are only being so friendly to me to see if i'll like drop a bomb or say something that'll get me fired. and then they'll report back to the senior vp, and i'll be escorted out of the building like hilary that one time she worked in the federal building at that horrible job in baltimore."

apparently living in baltimore for so long has made me paranoid. or maybe it's all that schwag weed i've been smoking. oh wait i don't really"do" that, especially while trying to land a new full-time job.

then again, maybe people are just friendlier here. i've heard my whole life about how hardass new york is--about how hard everyone is, that they'll knock you over before they'd help you up--but baltimore was much less friendly. every time i buy a coffee or whatever and the person across the counter from me gives me a smile--or even says "thank you, have a great day" instead of handing me my change while looking piss-off-edly in the other direction--i'm surprised. that'll eventually fade, and i'll just take it for granted. until i visit balticore.

me and the senior vp of sales. we're like THIS.

it's been another completely insane day in new york. i suppose i don't really need to keep saying, "wow, now that was a work day!" or "what a crazy day!" after all, friends, it's new york city. jesus christ. as i told hilary two days ago, after insisting we give each other really corny mary tyler moore-style friendhugs, "we're really doing it!" and it's true. we really are.

i went to an interview this morning with a woman that my temp agent from yesterday set me up with. i knew going into it that it was in the brand-new, sparkly time-warner building in columbus circle. you know, the one that has the ridiculous mall in it. the one where ellen degeneres taped her show that one time. that one. so i go to the time-warner building for a meeting with a woman who's "probably going to like me and hire me right there on the spot." what i didn't know was that this woman was the senior vp of sales for her company, a real estate conglomerate that built the time-warner building in columbus circle. so here i am, robert from ponca city, in my lil' gray suit that mom bought me my junior year in college for my junior recital, meeting with a senior vp at this company. and she sent me, after thirty minutes, to another office on the upper east side, an office at which i'll apparently be temping until i can find something that will pay my health insurance.

what totally rocks is that, though it's temping, it's in an office with only three other people, one of whom is a working actress. get this. after she found out i went to depauw, she goes, "i know someone from depauw. her name's andrea skafish." me: slack-jawed disbelief. "you know andrea?" "um, yeah. she's my boyfriend's roommate." WHAT!? yep. emily's best friend andrea, the girl i met my sophomore year, the girl i did multiple hysterical musical theater scenes with, is the roommate of my new cool coworker's boyfriend. what's that you say? small world? yes, it is.

i'd like to say that the apartment's "really coming together," that it's "getting better each day" and that "my stuff's getting put away rapidly," but all of those things would be a lie. since i started working so quickly after getting here (not that i'm complaining, because it's a wonderful sugar-coated miracle that i got good temp work this fast), i haven't had a moment to unpack into the absurdly huge 2001-a-space-odyssey-looking wardrobe we put together two nights ago. i did, however, join a gym tonight and then work out. and, since we live in greektown, i was drooling all over a few of the men there. ok, so maybe not literally drooling all over because i didn't want to get my ass kicked. but i was definitely imagining what it would be like to...never mind. this is a family friendly blog.

update

so i just mentioned this temp job, right? the one that i'm at for the afternoon. it's at a big cable corporation that i used to use and complain about 24 hours a day that rhymes with "momcast." and they apparently own a cable channel that rhymes with, um, "schmee schmentertainment."

so i just have this man call and go, "hi. i'm calling with a suggestion. i own reno, nevada's only all-male nude review and i'm calling to suggest that you guys create a strippamentary [you know, like a documentary, but, um, with strippers]." he then goes on to tell me that he has all the support of local advertisers and radio, and that whatever reality tv show is currently filming strippers in reno is terrible and he can't believe it's been on the air this long.

i put him on hold, look over at this stranger on my left, and explain to her what he wants. "transfer him to LA," she tells me. and so i do.

update:

another woman just called, and goes, "is this E entertainment?" er, i mean, schmee schmentertainment. anyway, i'm like, "no." she's all, "it's not?? um, i'm trying to find who does the isaac misrahi show. connect me to them." really bitchy-like. i said, "do you have a name specifically?" "i'm just trying to find the isaac misrahi show." she was really pissed. i would be, too, if i had to call isaac misrahi.

my first post as a new yawker

dearest, dearest readers. it's been nearly a week since i last posted. why's that? well, to put it simply, because i moved to astoria, queens, have no internet and have no job. but i'll solve the internet thing tomorrow afternoon, as hilary and i sit like two children on christmas eve, anxiously awaiting the arrival of the time-warner cable man. as for a job, that's a little trickier. i had an interview yesterday at mannes school of music, but apparently there's someone out there who's a really incredible secretary with way more amazing secretarial skills than i have, because i just got an email that "they've decided to proceed with another candidate." and so my fantasies of getting a phone call this afternoon offering me a sweet, sweet full-time job are flushed down the toilet.

funnily enough, i'm writing this post from a desk on the 20th floor of comcast networks, where i'm filling in as a receptionist. that's right, receptionist. even when i started this blog, the, um, reluctant receptionist, i wasn't actually a receptionist. i'm literally sitting here at the front desk, right behind these double glass doors, answering the phone. so far the only person to call has been my new temp agent, who called to ask what kind of job i was looking for. i met her at 10:30 this morning. by 12 i was on my way to this fill-in job. apparently this woman is on top of it.

since i don't have a job, i'm being as cheap as humanly possible. this translates to not going out to eat--ever--or if i do, making sure that it's under five dollars. we're eating at home (eating well, mind you, but still at home) for the foreseeable future. oh, and drinking at home. hilary and i had cocktail hour last night at 11 (she with a gin and tonic, me with a corona) after we spent three hours trying to put together a wardrobe (which i'm calling a chifferobe as a nod to to kill a mockingbird and plan on asking people to come bust up for me) that i'm convinced was designed by the devil himself. i literally severely injured my foot with it and it nearly broke hilary's face.

i'm trying not to stare wide-eyed and open-mouthed at new york city, but i find myself unable to look as over-it as most people here do. i'm not, in fact, over it. i still can't quite believe that i'm here. it all seems a little bit like an amusement park at the moment, mainly because i can't seem to land a job. when you have nothing to do but try desperately to put together an apartment and go to temp agencies and cook dinner and go to the market, life feels weird. that's where i am right now.

and i can't help it. i know i make fun of baltimore, and i know that i needed to move. but i'm homesick. i miss my friends and my routine and i miss phong. this will eventually start to feel like home, i know, but it's not going to be immediate. i only wish it were.