status report

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[pic deleted--he didn't ask to be sucked into this]

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[i debated posting about this yesterday and elected to talk about potato chips instead, and i'll probably talk about something equally crucial tomorrow. but right now i'm drunk so fuck it--let's talk about exactly where we are on the downward spiral.]

see that [hopefully sufficiently-obscured] hot boy up there? let's call him brad, since that's close enough to the name i know him by.

brad and i first hooked up a year or so ago, and have since kept each other on medium-low rotation; i.e., he calls me or i call him every 3 months or so--works out fine.

and sex with brad is consistently good--by that i mean (a) he's just affectionate enough without overdoing it; (b) our kinks interlock well; (c) he not only doesn't tweak, he actually gets hard and hot and shoots when i fuck him; and, finally (d) after just enough (but not too much) post-coital cuddling, he gets up, hoses off, gets dressed and gets the fuck out. oh, and (e) he looks just like that pic.

guess what i'm saying is, by my (or most anybody else's) criteria, brad is pretty much the ideal fuck.

and yet the other night when he called, wanting to get together tonight, i blew him off with an excuse, just like i have everybody else these last few months. way i feel right now, i didn't wanna fuck him, i don't wanna fuck anybody. not now, not ever.

and that, friends and readers, is how it is right now.


sober update: i'm gonna have to come up with a policy--do i, for the sake of integrity or at least the record, leave maudlin, self-pitying posts like this up when i come back the next day, or do i take 'em down--or do i, as i'm doing now, come back and massage them into something slightly less cringeworthy (and consequently less truthful)? i'll have to think about that.

enough doom & gloom--let's talk about something really important

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so what was your reaction when you first looked at the above pic? if it was a combination of revulsion and intense curiosity, you are not alone.

these things hit the vending machines at work on wednesday and, as it's the first new snack to appear there in ages, the news swept through the cubicles like wildfire. at first we circled cautiously amid mutterings about what kind of idiot would dip a potato chip in ketchup, until one brave soul ventured forth and jabbed a dollar at the machine. the resulting bag was examined, opened, and--as the intoxicating aroma of ketchup-drenched french fries permeated the air-- passed around, and voila, just like that, everything changed, snack paradigms shifted, a whole new universe of flavor possibilities emerged and took hold. at least half the office is now obsessed with these damn things; we simply cannot stop eating them.

after doing a little research, i'm astonished to find that they've been on the market since the middle of last year--and i'm just hearing about them now?! all i can say is, somebody dropped the marketing ball on this product, because, if our little focus group is any indication (and trust me, we're about as middle-brow as it gets), these things would need very little exposure to capture the jaded tastebuds of america.

and yes, god only knows what unholy combination of petrochemicals it took to create this little taste sensation; as i sit here crunching away i'm trying not to think about it. all i'm sayin is, if you can find 'em, grab 'em--you will not be sorry.

can anybody tell from my last post

that i'm currently reading bret easton ellis? and god knows if he can't make depressed ennui interesting, i don't know how i ever expect to.

thanks, though, to those of you who emailed me--especially my attorney friend (screenname pending), who keeps warning me that, presumed anonymity or no, it's precisely shit like this that gets people fired.

and no, going shopping, out for dinner or on a road trip would not make me feel better--the fact is, doing things that are supposed to be fun makes it worse. that's the whole point, actually.

they've always loved me at work

why, you ask? first, because i'm the go-to guy, the one who rides in to the rescue at crunch-time (just doin my job, ma'am); and, secondly, because i make sure they never have to worry about me--unlike so many of the prickly prima donnas who populate my workplace, i'm unfailingly calm, good-humored, reliable and accomplished, and i make it a point to get along with everybody. my yearly reviews are always excellent, my raises always in the upper percentile.

and you know what? i love them back: first, because i know i'm one of comparatively few americans lucky enough to have a job which not only demands little of him, but for which he's both overqualified and overpaid; second, because i'm thankful to work for a company that makes so much money they can afford to keep highly-salaried people like me sitting around doing mostly nothing just for when they need 'em; and third, because they're always so grateful when i fix something.

oh, and my schedule suits me perfectly--i'm allowed to show up at noon, and my week doesn't start until wednesday, leaving me only three days where i'm forced to actually interact with people, and saturdays and sundays spent mostly in glorious, sweats-and-flipflops, web-surfing solitude.

and then there's the final reason i love my job--it's the last remaining thing that gives my life any kind of structure.

see, on those days i don't have to work--when i don't have to meet anybody's expectations--more and more, i go into full-depressive mode: i rarely see anybody anymore (except maybe v sometimes) and i don't crawl outta bed until 4 if i can help it--and then only if i'm hungry. but come hell or high water, on wednesday at eleven, i'm up and moving, the mask of normality firmly back in place, and off to work i go. i sail in with a big smile and, to the inevitable questions of "so how were your days off?," i blithely come up with some bullshit, some approximation of what my weekend might've been like had i been normal like them.

it's all a lie, of course--at work, i'm nothing more than an actor playing a role. but since i've been doing that almost all my life in one way or another, it's relatively undemanding--and work's the one thing that's keeping me from spiraling into the abyss right now. so everything's cool, right?

well, actually, no--now there's a problem, one thing i haven't been able to control. it was formally brought to my attention today that i have more unused vacation/sick time than anybody else in the company, and the time is drawing near when i have to use a big chunk of said time or lose it. which means, of course, i have to take some time off--to do otherwise would just be too damn weird.

and when our h.r. director leaned across her desk today and urged me to take a long, well-deserved vacation, i guess the facade slipped a little, because she fell back in her chair, wide-eyed and a little shocked, and i realized i must've snapped at her. i recovered, made some soothing noises, told her i'd give serious thought to where i wanted to spend my glorious holiday, but i could tell the damage was done--despite five years of carefully-maintained equanimity, they now know something's wrong.

and on top of that, this is all i need right now--a big stretch of bleak, unstructured time. fuck.

sucker rally

so our fearless leader announces that, as his solution to our credit crisis, he's gonna give the fed sweeping new powers to regulate the financial markets (thus continuing his tradition of rewarding incompetence with promotion--hell, at least he's consistent), and this news, in conjunction with a couple other tepidly positive indicators, causes wall street and the world to react with credulous, pathetic and unseemly joy. the dow's up 400 yesterday and the asian markets soar amid a growing belief by experts that the worst of the credit crisis is over--everybody's like "whew, dodged a bullet!"

have they all forgotten that the next wave of subprime-paper rate resets/ensuing defaults is coming up in the next several months--and then there's the one after that? have they all forgotten that americans are tapped-out and broke, and have no more ready cash to spend us back into seeming normality? have they all forgotten that our dollar is being propped up by nothing more than a wing and a prayer, and that if iran makes good on its promise to flood the world with cheap euro-denominated oil then we're pretty much done?

i mean, is everybody fucking insane?

a recently-recovered memory (or, why i still love los angeles, part 1)

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sunny saturday morning maybe fifteen years ago, i hit a yard sale in west hollywood--one of those countless little stucco bungalows on harper or sweetzer or la jolla or wherever. anyway, i pick up this old sony pro walkman marked $10 and, while debating whether to buy it, one of the two women conducting the sale--attractive, early-to-mid-thirties--says, in passing, "i dunno if you remember 'the knack', but their frontman wrote all the songs for their first album on that little machine--it's a good buy."

having lived here long enough to have developed an immunity to such bullshit, i think, "yeah, right," set it down, prepare to move on. it's at this moment that the woman's friend yells from across the yard, "hey, sharona--how much you want for this lamp?"

i still have that pro walkman in a box somewhere.

thanks, adam--i needed something to smile about this weekend

so i'm talking with a friend of mine

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and he mentions an article he read in which some psychologist or other claims a direct correlation can be made between a gay man's level of promiscuity and the number of self-help books he owns.

i scoffed at how ridiculous that was and then went home and hid all of mine.