You Wear Awesome Things

Tainted by the approbation of the vile Jakob Lodwick (whom I won't link for all the tea in China). (And, let's face it, the fact that she works for French American Apparel.) Still next-level.

The Track

Slim is going to make his fortune in gold futures. We have decided to purchase a thoroughbred racehorse and name it Cuckold Robbins. We are going out tomorrow night to celebrate the decision to do so.

Incidentally, I cut my finger pretty badly last night in an incident involving an avocado pit, my new Samurai-sword-technology chef's knife, and my own stupidity.

I was very prepared to sew the wound shut myself, and resigned to going to the hospital if I had to, but Slim administered some first-aid after rushing home from a session with a friend's band, and said it would be okay. (Apparently his arrangement did aid in transforming what had been "a plodding stoner nightmare" into, um, some other kind of song.)

flashback

Someone asked me to find the following, which is from the late, unlamented sadiegazette, a chronicle of my time in Paris.

The personages are me and Moishe, formerly known as David.

The Chosen
On Saturday, following a festive tea at Le Loir Dans La Théière, David suggested, as we were all in the Jewish Quarter, that we attend Shabbat services. I was amenable, and accordingly found myself the only woman in a kitchen/storeroom, observing an Orthodox service from behind a curtain. As everything was in Yiddish and Hebrew, I was rather out of my depth (despite the fact that I'd respectfully dawned my béret), and the book I had in my bag, Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory, hardly seemed appropriate. David managed to slip me a French Talmud after a few minutes, which kept me busy for a while. I'd always thought being behind a curtain would be sort of like a harem, where you could watch all the goings-on unobserved. In fact, I had very poor visibility and had rather a dull time of it.

It was much worse, though, when they bid me come out into the synogogue and sit by myself at a table across the room while all the men ate a Dairy dinner (I was still full from the cake I'd et earlier.) Uncomfortable as this was, however, it was better than David's position, facing a white-bearded rabbi. What's more, I found a book of Torah commentary with English translations and happened to open it to the point where they give injunctions against witches (you shall not suffer them to live, incidentally) and bestiality (an abomination.)"

On the Town with The Petite Sophisticate

Saturday night, went with Maeve and Slim to see an irony-free double act on the Lower East Side. The first performer was a friend of Slim's from college who now goes by "Adrian Lunar" and is very mysterious and romantic and into muses. Slim made the major faux pas of addressing him as "Jerry" and there was a moment's shocked silence.

Slim kept producing this graph of gold prices over the last twenty years from his pocket and making people look at it. Adrian Lunar was not very interested in it.

The place was packed with what Maeve accurately described as "douches and whores." Of the lame gentlemen who approached us (Slim was, per usual, somewhere else, hobnobbing with various people from Wesleyan), one was wearing tie-dye, one had his hair in a bun, one farted vigorously, and another used the opener, "Nice glasses. But," (turning to Maeve) "you're not half-stepping either!"

"Slim's surrounded by sluts," said Maeve at one point. "He seems to know them all!" He did.

Afterwards, the two of them wanted to go for a drink back in Brooklyn. I didn't, so I formed a plan in the cab.

"I'm making a run for it," I told Maeve in an undertone as we pulled to a stop. I leapt from the cab and into the subway, and barely managed to swipe my MetroCard before Slim clattered down the stairs. Of course, then the 'G' took about twenty minutes to arrive, so I was easily discovered behind a pillar.

Anyway, it turns out everyone, but everyone, was at the bar: Charlie, Moishe, Maxine, etc. Maeve said she went to get a drink and felt something rubbing against the fur of her sleeve. "And of course," she told me the next day,"when I turned around, it was GK4."

"Oh, it's you." he said. "In that case, I can do it openly."

Speaking of grandfathers, I recommend checking out the Fiddler on the Roof component of The Jews of New York online for the brief moment at exactly 7.33 minutes into the segment in which Rabbi Haskel Besser sings a snippet of "If I Were a Rich Man."

Slim and I watched it Friday; he'd asked me to sit with him until the markets closed, as he was recovering from a case of brain fever. Because he'd been up for four days straight, he fell asleep about eight, and I followed not an hour later.

His roommates got home around two a.m. and proceeded to make a racket, clearly audible through the paper-thin walls. There was a shouted exchange in which they asserted that it was too cold to hang out downstairs; insults were exchanged; Slim then marched in and said something like "Sadie's very tired and she can't sleep! She has to work tomorrow!" which is as good a way as I know to make everyone hate you, but I wasn't wearing any pants, so I couldn't really correct the impression.

Truth is, I'd already been awoken by a phone call from GK4, who was in the process of walking out of a play during its second intermission, to his parents' displeasure. "I could tell a kid was about to be molested and this wise old Indian was about to show the extent of his powers, and I had to get out of there," he explained.

The Bad Times

Prior to his suicide, my maternal grandfather was totally obsessed with a vague apocolyptic happening called The Bad Times which were perpetually around the corner and which govered his decisions to build seven sheds on his half-acre property (for the family to live in), add a deep freeze of game to the house, melt down various metals into ingots, buy numerous plots of worthless land in Arkansas, and never open a bank account. "When the Bad Times come, they'll be eating each other," he'd say gloomily. I've long thought that the failure of the Bad Times to materialize hastened his demise.

Slim is very much a man after my grandfather's heart, down to his affection for man-made diamonds and apocalyptic scenarios. He has instructed me to lay in the following:

-Large sack rice
-Various dried beans
-Powdered milk
-Bottled water
-Camp stove
-Canned tuna

(He wants to join the CostCo in order to acquired the provisions in sufficient quantity.)

He also gifted me, in addition to my knife, with a book called Wilderness Know-How.

Modern Love, Cont'd

Talked with former fiance GK4 last night about his parents' visit, an upcoming date of his, our friends' love lives, his law school application essay, which I've agreed to read over.

During the conversation, Slim was engaged in an impassioned discussion of his own, about the gold market and the upcoming recession.

GK4 and I got to talking about a trip we'd made to Vienna.

"We had some fun times, didn't we?" I said.

"Well, of course," he said. "We're in love with each other!"

("Look," I could hear Slim saying from the kitchen. "All I'm really focused on right now is making sure I've laid in enough provisions to get me and my girl through this,")

"Um, no, we're not," I said patiently.

"Well," said he, "the more I think about it, I don't think I can find anyone who understands me or shares my interests-"

"GK," I said, "we grew up together, and obviously we informed each other's tastes, and in a sense probably no one will share that level of commonality or shared references for a long time."

Then he started talking about how, when the Bad Times do come, he, Slim and I should all live together and I should have both their children. So, in other words, everything was back to normal.

Later that night, in the midst of some Cute Time, I said to Slim,

"I'm sorry I don't have any money for you to invest in gold futures. But you can have my heart."

There was a silence.

"Maybe you'd better hold onto that," he said.

Breaking News!!!!

On the move: former fiance GK4's parents, the GK3s, in from DC to see that David Mamet play.

Also on the move: Moishe's mother, in from England to attend a conference.

Extra

Two things in today's Post:

ANOTHER letter from Kenneth Zimmerman of Huntington Beach, CA. Must remember to monitor his activities closely. Maybe they just don't get that many letters.

More importantly, that 101-year-old lady who was mugged last March testified early, as prosecutors fear she won't make it to the trial. Writes Peyser in today's "She's Old Glory":

But when prosecutors asked her to identify Rhodes, whom she called "colored," she was startled.

"You mean he's actually here?" Rose stood to her height of 5-foot-71/2 - and looked around.

"There are two people in this room I'm looking at," she said, before settling her gaze on the defendant. She asked the judge to compel Rhodes to smile and show his "large, white teeth."

He did.

"I would say it's definitely him," she said.

Defense lawyer Paul Montgomery wanted to know who else Rose believed might be the mugger. She pointed to a Post reporter, Ikimulisa Livingston, not a guy.

I was talking yesterday with a friend about why Heath Ledger's death has hit everyone so hard. She advanced the theory that we feel betrayed; that a public figure, our property, should have a private existence apart from what we knew of him - plus the added sense of betrayal at someone's seeming 'normalcy' covering the usual Hollywood antics, in effect another disappointment.

Well, all I know is that GK4 passed Michelle Williams' house last night on his way home and saw a cop smoking a cigar.

Breakthrough

I have often wondered what it is in a dog's brain that makes it move from one room to another. Last night, half-asleep, I decided it is the same impulse that makes us roll over in bed.

The Golden Touch

Slim is clearly suffering from a classic case of Brain Fever, a condition rarely seen outside of the 19th century, but frequently brought about by excessive thinking.

After going missing for three days, he surfaced to announce that he had discovered The Key to All Mythologies, a system of graphs and charts that would allow him to predict trends in markets with absolute accuracy. He also hadn't eaten or slept in 72 hours.

I started receiving incomprehensible texts like the following: "I'm attempting to find a favorable entry point to short the index (leverage!) There should be a short squeeze soon, although I may have ill-timed but a fraction of a percentage shouldn't matter one way or another."

Speaking in tongues such as these is a troubling sign.

The timing was unfortunate, as I was sick in bed during his absence and feeling very much in need of care. I have some pills I'm supposed to take if I freak out, but I'd never filled the two-year-old prescription, so I called GK4 in tears to see if he had anything. Although I think he had vague intentions of comforting me, instead he started prosing on about his therapist ('he thinks I need to actualize rather than self-actualize") and "Judy Garland: Live at Carnegie Hall" which is all he talks about these days.

"You really are the most unbelievable narcissist," I told him.

"I was trying to divert you!" he protested. "Well, no...that's a lie."

Am furious. Have had no luck finding silk lounging pajamas. If I were a celebrity, now hundreds of pairs would come pouring in. Instead a band is having a band meeting next to me at Cafe Grumpy and guffawing loudly.

Have put out feelers on a potential match. I am like the Millionaire Matchmaker, only, one hopes, slightly less like an Italian man in drag. The clients: a former co-worker with an elementary school acquaintance. May involve a dinner party which, as I wrote the fella, "would alleviate all awkwardness save that occasioned by my own semi-deliberate strangeness!"

I Will keep you posted. if this pans out, will probably start an agency, using the kewpie-axe graphic from my blog.

Am bound and determined to buy a vacuum now. The dustbuster is quite ineffectual against the squalor that's built up lately. Last time I tried, the guy said to me, "I can't in good conscience sell you a vacuum cleaner for under $300."

Don't wish to cause anyone a moral dilemma, but am hoping to spend about a third of that.

Talke with my dad this morning, who's been interviewing a reclacitrant lady judge.

"Sounds like pulling teeth," I said sympathetically.

"It's like pulling Mastadon teeth embedded in 500 feet of granite," he replied.

The Magnificent Ambersons

(Note: this dates from, I think, June? I think the date I mention is with Slim!)

Okay, making good 'Ambersons' progress. For those of you who don't know, or just have vague ideas of Orson Welles being furious, it's about the decline and fall of the midwestern monarchy in the face of the industrial revolution. Among other things. The main character, George Miniver, is prince of the town and a spoiled brat who runs wild in his pony cart and roundly abuses everyone.

I've already done some annotating; I underlined the following passage, an encounter between Georgie and a man he's driven off the road with his cart.

"Georgie, without even seeming to look at him, flicked the long lash of his whip dexterously, and a little spurt of dust came from the hardware man’s trousers, not far below the waist. He was not made of hardware: he raved, looking for a missile; then, finding none, commanded himself sufficiently to shout after the rapid dog-cart: “Turn down your pants, you would-be dude! Raining in dear ole Lunnon! Git off the earth!”'

Awesome, no?

I went for a walk a minute ago (incidentally, in tightish jeans, although nothing remotely resembling a halter top) and since I was passing the local bookstore, I figured I might as well pop in and pick up a copy of 99 (The Ginger Man) just to have it in the on-deck circle. In the grand tradition of independent bookstores, this one is rather inclined to smug superiority for no very good reason, and there was a guy in Birkenstocks shelving very self-importantly right in front of "DU-" who sighed audibly and acted very aggrieved whenever I tried to peer around him for my title.

"Git off the earth, you would-be dude,' I thought.

I went up to the information desk where a girl was on a personal call and seemed irritated by my presence.

"We don't have it, but we can order it," she said at length. I didn't want to; I'd much rather have just gone to Barnes and Noble; but I was weak.

"Okay," I said reluctantly, and filled out a call slip. Theoretically I'll have it in two days.

Another thing about Ambersons - the love interest, Lucy, is a year older than George. Reassuring, that, as I have a date with a 25-year-old this week and was feeling like a cradle-robber.

Thurs child: far to go

I attempted to report a local nail salon yesterday for what I termed "EXTREMELY unsanitary conditions." This was out of character for a number of reasons; I'm in general a softy, lazy, and not really bothered by filth. You could also argue that she who is lured by a sign for a $15 Manicure/Pedicure gets what she deserves. Or maybe you think by "unsanitary conditions" I mean "man manicurist." Well, maybe those things are true. But it takes a lot to revolt me. Let me put it this way: imagine if I ran a nail salon (and keep in mind that there is, as I write, a frozen mouse affixed to a trap on my deck.) That bad.

So, I called 311. I was very impressed by their friendliness and efficiency, even if their job is just to pass the buck to other orgs - in this case, the State Licensing Board, which requested that I have a form mailed to my home which I would in turn file myself. I am really not that invested in ruining those people's crappy business; I'll just assume that other punters are smart enough to figure that a $15 mani/pedi is code for fungal infection. (No, I don't have one - I left before the pedicure component.)

Guess what? I joined the Greenpoint YMCA yesterday. Was rather bitter to find that the class schedule I'd looked at online was apparently out of date; "stretching" and "step aerobics" appear just once a week each. And "aquatics" seems to be explicitly for old people. (Which might work out, as my only bathing suit dates from 1954 and takes about a week to dry.) Have affixed the schedule, rather optimistically, to my refrigerator.

I have a bad habit of having ID pictures taken when I am sick. My Y ID is a particularly hideous example of the genre.

"My god!" cried the girl taking it when the photo appeared on the screen. "Your eyes are blood red!"

We retook it.

"Better?" I said hopefully.

There was a silence. "You can take it again," she said.

The third effort manages to make me both waxen and shiny, splotchy and pale; I am grinning grotesquely and my hair looks like a lion's mane. That was the keeper.

Bad Sign

Crying because they are playing "Wild Horses" at Cafe Grumpy. Need Brewer's Yeast. STAT.

Best Medicine

Did a search of those foods best for alleviating depression. (Not sure Lexapro counts as a "food" but privately think it might be most effective.)

The top five foods for beating depression

1.Fish oils
2.Brown Rice
3.Brewer's Yeast (Ed: No.-SS)
4.Whole-grain oats
5.Cabbage

Also recommended: raw cacao,dark molasses and brazil nuts.

(Cannot imagine that the depression induced by eating molasses and brewer's yeast wouldn't far outweigh hereditary mental imbalance.)

Other non-food things to do

* Get plenty of sunshine. Natural sunlight is a proven cure for depression.
(Note: walked to Cafe Grumpy. Is reasonably sunny.)
* Engage in regular exercise at least three times per week. Exercise lifts and mood and alters brain chemistry in a positive way.
(Note: walking IN SUNNY WEATHER to Greenpoint YMCA to sign up for Step Aroebics.)
* Experience laughter. It's good medicine.
(Note: not receiving good medicine. But then, no one in Cafe Grumpy is terribly amusing. And I'm not quite reduced to guffawing at my own wit.)

Ate instead:

Macaroni and cheese with cubed ham and peas; stewed tomatoes; homemade chocolate pudding (which contains 'cocao.')

They did something to the font and I don't know why and I don't know how to change it. I am plunged back into despair.

Wed's Child (full of woe)

Now I feel really guilty for submitting that snide Heath Ledger sighting to Gawker Stalker two years ago. Everyone is shocked, shocked. Calls and emails started pouring in yesterday (mostly out) and even my dad called to commiserate. (Okay, so maybe that was actually the only call I received.)

I texted Slim, “Did you hear Heath Ledger died?!”
He wrote back, “Yes, but I'm not sure who that is.”
GK4's “OMG!!!” was far more satisfactory.

Have to stop going off my meds. I am feeling really low and it's kind of alarming. Would hate to get to the point again where I have to run stairs in the Flatiron Building for a quick Seratonin spike! I'm going to take two pills (inadvisable - in fact, proscribed) and take a walk. Scientologists would like the second part. (Do you think Christian Scientists resent the common disdain of meds, given that they're Hollywood crackpots, or do you suppose they're just glad to have the message out? Although I suppose if you don't believe in God's will/healing power, it's not really their message.)

Let's see if I can be funny.

No, I can't.

I have been very sour lately anyhow, making lots of sweeping condemnatory statements, like,

“Everyone knows The Decembrists are just Easy Listening for smug, 18-year-old pseudo-intellectuals.”

At Moishe's party, GK4 somehow arranged it such that he and I split the astronomical bill, a gift I can ill-afford right now. He further inflamed the situation by breaking into slurred, incomprehensible French, which never fails to incense me.

“A, that's not a language,” I snapped. “B, speaking gibberish won't diminish the gaping hole in my bank account!”

Good times. I'm guessing no one is really mourning the loss of my voice.

Yes, I still have laryngitis, and as such was not able to join in a speaker phone conversation last night, forcing Slim to read aloud notes like, “at this point the act of display takes up a lot of emotional & mental historical space - disadvantages of youth etc. etc,” which led to many long silences and considerable confusion.

I look awful, too. Waxen: check. Rat's nest: check. Vintage “Kentucky” baseball tee: check.

My despair will not allow me to have any oatmeal. Well, maybe it will.

Speak No Evil

Have lost my voice - combination of sickness and singing along very lustily to "Dayenu" at Moishe's 26th birthday party at Sammy's Roumanian. Did a vigorous Hora, danced the Lindy Hop with GK4,former fiance. Maxine and I also took the floor solo to "Oh What a Night (December 1963") and weren't even bothered by the creepy group of businessmen who took our picture with their camera phones. Some other middle-aged guy wandered in for directions and ended up dancing next to Slim in the Hora, and asking Buckingham to marry him. I also rubbed a little schmaltz in GK4's hair, with his permission. And this after only scoring a 75% on Facebook's "Which Celebrity is Jewish?" quiz.

Modern Love

Slim will not "friend" me on Facebook.

Glasses

My glasses are causing me some problems. For the last three months, I've been holding them together with the wire from a twisty-tie, which I replace every few weeks. However, the specs are clearly not long for this world.

The problem is this: I cannot find another pair exactly like these, and at this point I am nothing without them.

"Those glasses are notorious!" someone shouted at me from across the street the other day.

"Love the frames," say strangers on the subway.

Hipsters, formerly snide, now cede tacit respect to anyone willing to submit to what my mother refers to as "voluntary disfigurement."

When I switch to my more subdued "interview glasses" people feel betrayed. "But...what IS Sadie without her big glasses?" said a neighbor to me at the laundromat last week.

It is true that my face is very scary and sad without them.

Monday Monday

Being Polish, nobody in my neighborhood seems bothered by the arctic temperatures. While a down vest and several back episodes of Project Runway managed to get me through three days in East Hampton without heat, I've developed a very romantic hacking cough since getting back, La Boheme-style, and am a little concerned that my throat is insufficiently insulated. February may see me in an early grave - forgotten and unsung.

Yesterday marked six months with Slim, which I calculated from the date of a July blog post. (Well, eight months if you date these things to our first meeting, or the Missed Connection he sent me. One of these days I ought to write that up for posterity, since I guess the graphic novel I made Slim for his birthday doesn't really count.) Just sayin'. I celebrated by going to a Martin Luther King dinner party. I was totally prepared to do a very earnest, a cappella rendition of "In the Name of Love" or, alternatively, read a sermon of Martin Luther's in the original German, and was sort of disappointed that we just ended up talking about yoga and eating vegan macaroni and cheese. Was seated next to a guy who turned out to be the roommate of this guy I got into a very unbecoming fight with in April ('you have just forfeited the privilege of my company!'), who turned out in turn to be the ex-boyfriend of that gal GK4 datd over the summer, with whom I had a drink and who mentioned my soft tummy...

"Bite-sized world," I said to him.

"Smaller all the time," said he. We lapsed into silence.

Then when I was leaving, and everyone else was still at the table, I managed to get my scarf stuck in the door, and had to come back, rather ignominiousy, and free it.

If You See Something, Say Something

Maeve said to me, "Google "cats" and "wigs." That's all I'll say."

I did.

Sadie the Goat

"In 1869, in lower Manhattan, amid blocks of seedy slums, pawnshops, rescue missions, and gambling dens, there lived a young woman known as Sadie the Goat. New York was the largest and wealthiest city in the country, but Sadie's was not a wealthy part of town. Tuberculosis and diarrhea were the leading causes of death. Ragpickers went door-to-door trading anything from old food to broken furniture. Horses dropped thousands of pounds of manure on the cobblestone streets every day, and nobody was responsible for cleaning it up. Lines of drying laundry hung out the windows. Garbage piled in mounds in the gutter, sometimes several feet high. Sadie's neighborhood, the Fourth Ward—the "Bloody Fourth," known for its frequent violence—was the site of the densest population crush anywhere in the world.

She spent much of her time with a street gang. Mugging people on the streets of the Fourth Ward, Sadie would headbutt her victims in the stomach [hence the nickname] and then let her gang fleece the unfortunates of cash and goods. It was small change, but it was something to do.

Sadie was a regular on Water Street, the Fourth Ward's main drag and a favorite of sailors and those looking for underworld fun. A travel guide of the day called it the most violent street on the continent; another warned readers absolutely to steer clear after dark. The Fourth Ward Hotel kept a trapdoor to dump corpses into the East River. The street had no shortage of saloons and their unlicensed cousins, called "blind tigers," which served the locals, slumming gentry, and the criminals who preyed on all alike. On the corner of Water and Dover Streets was one of the roughest taverns of all, the Hole-in the-Wall, the favorite basement hangout of Sadie the Goat.

By far the scariest bouncer at the Hole-in-the-Wall was Gallus Mag—a six-foot-plus Englishwoman with a truncheon tied to her wrist and a revolver tucked in her belt. Mag had a unique way of dealing with rowdy drunks: smacking the lout with her truncheon, dragging him to the door with his ear held firmly in her teeth and, if she was in the mood, biting off the ear before tossing its owner into the street. The ears were added to her collection, which she kept in a pickling jar behind the bar. One spring night Sadie ran afoul of Mag, and the next ear in the pickling jar was Sadie's."

-Susan Synarsky's Girl Pirates on the High Seas

Ancient Love

"How do you think cave people had sex?" I asked Slim this morning.

"Haven't you ever seen Quest for Fire?"

"No."

"Well, it's mostly rape. But then in the last shot he turns her over and looks into her face."

"And lovemaking is discovered."

"Yes."

Lifestyles of the Poor and Obscure

Slim and I are in East Hampton.

(He is singing "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" in the other room.)

Wanted to live-blog for you from the Jitney, but I got carsick instead.

A guy rapped on the door early this morning because he had noticed some temperature fluctuation in the house and wanted to make sure it was not being burgled of wicker furniture and theatrical posters, ostensibly. He seemed much flustered by my greeting him in my brief jersey romper.

Oddly enough, someone knocked on the door of my Greenpoint apartment at 7.30 yesterday morning. I made Slim answer. He returned to say,

"It was on old man. He wanted to know if I had the keys to his pizzeria."

Update

GK4 just texted me:

"Forgot to tell you, (my date) asked if it was my only tie."

Sex in the City

GK4, former fiance, had a date last night. I have been discouraged from chronicling this, but I will say that he made the (to my mind) questionable decision to wear a tie bearing the seal of the Episcopal Church (purchased three years ago by my mom at Saint John's annual rummage sale.)

Time Travel (Again)

Ho-hum. Saturday night and all’s well. Just got back from Buckingham’s band’s show, which I almost missed due to an ID which, admittedly, has been expired for five years. Still, this place was like Fort Knox: would have felt worse except for the outraged guy shouting, “I’m 35 years old! I have gray hair!”

Maeve texted me, “Hold on. I has a plan.”

Sure enough, the manager appeared and escorted me in. (I’d been standing around ignominiously in the cold for about twenty minutes, so it really wasn’t that impressive.) Seems he knows Maeve and Charlie from their neighborhood watering hole, so I’ll certainly stop mocking them for spending every night there playing quarters.

After work, my old roommate Mirah and I had pizza and Valpolicello at the spot a block away from the shop. (Maeve couldn’t come because she’s on the Karl Lagerfeld diet and had to have three hard-boiled eggs instead.) Mirah has been very busy avoiding John, the landlady’s son, who is notoriously creepy and ubiquitous besides. Back when I lived with her he was forever dropping by and being insinuating and, on one memorable occasion, suggested we might like to watch scrambled porn together. I seem to run into him whenever I go anywhere, and the worst part is that he always kind of snubs me and says something like, “well, I’m here with some people, so I should really get back to them.”

Also discussed: intimate love. We got coffee and a petit four at the bakery next door. The waitress said my outfit was “really smart-looking” but I think she was in high school. (I was wearing: black boots, black turtleneck, high-waisted tweed skirt, turtle pendant.)

Once at the show a very sinister guy with an Amish beard was staring at us, so both Maeve and I were glad when their roommate Warren showed up from his nearby AA meeting. (He is burly.)


I texted Mirah from the venue, “Maeve got me in. But John is here.”

And, yes, he snubbed me.

News to Me

Just found Slim's Facebook page. He lists his status as "engaged."

Intimate Love

(Note: From Friday)

Hi friends!

Up to my usual tricks, which is to say: matchmaking, having migraines, eating pudding.

The match: two young men of impeccable family, going to a movie. The pudding: butterscotch. The migraine: somewhat abated, but unpleasant enough to necessitate the cancellation of a drinks date and my attendance at a much-anticipated party. Slim – now working a late gig – gave me a very helpful head rub before he left. Besides the pudding, I have Letter From an Unknown Woman to console me for the loss of fun.

(Really out of stuff to tell my psychiatrist. Want to switch to this other guy everybody goes to who sounds wildly irresponsible and gives everybody as many amphetamines as they want, but only makes you come in twice a year.)


Before I fell ill, I had lunch with Roger at the Morgan Library’s restaurant, not far from his office. (I wore: a wrap dress, high boots, my trench coat and, because it was rainy, the extra-big brown fedora. The heel fell off one of the boots as soon as I got home, but it held out until then – a real trooper.) Roger was recovering from flu and a cruise on the Adriatic, so we just had half a bottle of wine. He recommended Duff Cooper’s biography of Talleyrand. (I ate: beet salad, chicken fricassee, coffee, half of miniature-cookie plate.)

“You’re lucky to have missed John Graham’s performance piece,” he told me confidentially about a college friend. “It was just a film of him, half-naked, breaking furniture for an hour.”

He’s going shooting with GK4, former fiancé, next weekend. GK4 and I were on the phone for a while today while he looked at Celebrity Baby Blog. We like Keri Russell’s little baby a lot. Slim likes this gruckimish baby with stick-up hair.


Speaking of Slim, he has a sprained ankle; he hurt it on the stairs of the G coming to meet me for our date Wednesday night. As a result, he’s gotten Toll House cookies, Superman III (the one with Richard Pryor) and as many Financial Times as his little heart desires. The other day, at the Salvation Army on Manhattan Avenue, he happens to have picked up American Letters of the 20th Century and since he’s been bed-ridden we’ve been doing lots of readings. I’ve taken the women (Ayn Rand, Lillian Hellman, An Ex-Flapper), while he is Mark Twain, Old Man, and Ronald Reagan.

Here is what Woodrow Wilson wrote to Edith Galt:

“I hate to argue the matter in my own interest, but…I am absolutely dependent on intimate love for right and free and most effective use of my powers and I know by experience what it costs my work to do without it.”

Obviously, am now referring to anything sexual exclusively as “intimate love.”

Also now in the lexicon: “boy-husband,” courtesy of the Ex-Flapper. (And if you assume there’s some context that makes it less odd, there isn’t.) I tried calling Slim my “boy-boyfriend,” but it doesn’t really have the same ring.

(I ate: cold Chinese food. Oh, and pudding.)

As ever –

SS

Freedom of the Press

GK4, former fiance, made me erase what I wrote about his upcoming date, even though there is ZERO chance of this gal reading it.

The Magnificent Ambersons

Okay. Okay. Am doing it.

So, here's the thing: I have a really, really big fine at the Brooklyn Public Library. I think it's from The Illusionist, or some other DVD you wouldn't necessarily pay to rent but at the library it looks pretty good but it's annoying that that's what the fine's for. Anyway, my local branch has this kind of creepy librarian in very, very tight hip-huggers and a ponytail who, a long time ago, waived a fine for me in a very significant and insinuating way and now acts like we have a special secret. And the thing about this branch is, they don't have a book drop, so you have to hand it to the librarian, which in addition to being awkward if it's late, in my case necessitates contact with the creepy guy. I tried to determine his hours so as to go when he wasn't there, and soon learned that his hours are: always.

I decided to splash out on a new copy. Or, at any rate, a used one. I hit the Strand the other day with this in mind, and of course they didn't have it (although I did get this really good new cookbook, Eric Kayser's Tarts) and it was filled with teenage litterati. Since I was eager to jump into my self-improvement campaign, I bit the bullet and hied me away to the Court Street Barnes and Noble. I was faced with the choice of a really nice Penguin edition with a Winslow Homer painting on the cover, and the crummy, salmon-pink house paperback from the "Classics" table, that looks like it's for assigned summer reading. The price differential was five bucks, and the choice was clear. I took my crappy copy to the front of the store.

While I was on line for the register, a group of fratty guys materialized behind me, and one of them started talking on the phone very audibly, while his friends all stood around sniggering.

"Yeah, there's this chick in front of me in line," he said, "and she's running around the store in this weird little dress. I'd like to see her in some tight jeans and a halter top."

Not at all sure

that Slim corresponds to this. From MC's, obvi.

A True Boyfriend - 29
Reply to: pers-538964227@craigslist.org
Date: 2008-01-14, 3:04PM EST


A True Boyfriend


He Will:
• Stay on the phone with her even if she's not saying anything
• Tease her and let her tease you back.
• Stay up all night with her when she's sick.
• Watch her favorite movie with her.
• Give her the world.
• Let her wear your clothes.
• When she's bored and sad, hang out with her.
• Let her know she's important.
• Kiss her in the pouring rain.
• When she runs up at you crying...the first thing you say is...
"Who's ass am I beating today baby?"

If you don't repost this in three days you will lose the one you love or like.

If you do repost this in the next three days the one you love or like will :
1) Call you
2) Kiss you
3) Love you
4) Text you
5) Message you

If you don't repost this in four minutes
you will lose the one you love.

Guys forward as: I'd be this boyfriend.
Girls forward as: A True Boyfriend

Lit Crit

Said Slim the other day, apropos of nothing:

"You know, there are a lot of things left unexplained in The Fountainhead. Like, what does Howard Roark do in his downtime?

Better Idea

Will retrieve my recorder from parents' house and charm mice out of apartment.

Fresh Perspective

Buckingham says I should get the landlord to hire an exterminator. Had not thought of this.

FYI

The figure of the Moomintroll appeared first in Tove Jansson's political cartoons, where it was used as a signature character near the artist's name. This "Proto-Moomin" was thin and ugly, with a long, narrow nose and devilish tail. Jansson said that she had designed the Moomins in her youth: after she lost a philosophical quarrel about Immanuel Kant with one of her brothers, she drew "the ugliest creature imaginable" on the wall of their WC and wrote under it "Kant". This Moomin later gained weight and a more pleasant appearance, but in the first Moomin book The Moomins and the Great Flood (originally Småtrollen och den stora översvämningen), the Immanuel-Kant-Moomin is still perceptible. The name of the creature comes from Tove Jansson's uncle: when she was studying in Stockholm and living with her Swedish relations, her uncle tried to stop her pilfering food by telling her that a "Moomintroll" lived in the kitchen closet and breathed cold air down people's necks.

I's a Pig

A round little, pink little pig. Piggish lunching behavior which I shall not detail but which I am heartily regretting right now. But I mean it more in the way Wolf Larsen is always using it in The Sea Wolf to indicate man's general gross selfishness and beastliness. More on this later.

Deleted text about GK4's date

Last night had a drink with a friend, who smuggled in an outstanding new puppy.

Also in animal life: there was a bite-sized mouse on the glue trap when I got home. I freaked out and hurled the trap, mouse and all, onto my little deck, knowing full well that the wee, timrous, cowering beastie would die of exposure and exhaustion (even though it didn't snow as promised.) There is no excuse for this kind of reckless cruelty. I gave a quarter to a really mediocre busker on the subway, but don't feel that this has begun to redress the balance.

Clarification

Slim has asked me to clarify his terrible behavior in re: his dad.

"Explain that I panicked because everything he said was true," he said.

“It has become uncool to smoke, to put it in the adolescents’ parlance,” says Major Bloomberg.

As re: smoking, perhaps you are wondering what my New Year’s resolutions are. Well, most of them are far too grave and all-emcompassing to enumerate here, but I will say that, come 2009, this gal will have a driver’s license!

While one might imagine that cigarettes, and indeed sobriety generally, might figure in Slim’s plans for the new year, he has declared that his only ambition is to brush his teeth with his left hand every night, so as to improve general dexterity and brain function. (Also his resolution for 2007.)

Major breakthrough with the hostile woman at Grand Slam Wash who clearly despises me. When I went to collect my laundry today, she handed me the bag without my even needing to produce a ticket stub! Of course, it was done in sullen silence, and of course I pushed my luck by commenting timidly on the weather, which earned me a derisive sneer.

The other two ladies are extremely friendly. One of them told me, in confidence, that I’d put the other ‘Sadie’ in the neighborhood quite out of joint; apparently that little madam had been in the habit of sweeping in grandly without a ticket and giving nothing but her first name. My presence has spoiled her schemes.

I wonder if it’s the Sadie who went to Bronx Science. When I was growing up, she was the only other one in town, and I was always hearing tell of her. Then, in college, she happened to be dating someone in my French class, and when she came to visit we finally met, and talked about how we’d always heard about one another, and how annoying it is to always be called “Sophie” or even “Sandy.” Nowadays, of course, we’d really have something to talk about – the legions of toddler Sadies prancing all over Park Slope with their friends Max and Rose, and no hint of grandmotherly namesake whatsoever.


Am watching Casino Royale. Over the summer a suitor said I reminded him of Vesper Lyhnd. GK4, former fiance, just called (to say that he had absolutely no interest in The Wire, everyone be damned) and he hooted with laughter when I told him that and said, ‘you think the Treasury Department would send you to represent the country?”

Well, maybe not, but Slim said he could see it, as I am a great one for barbed banter, as well as, of course, an internationally renowned beauty. Anyway, I’ll take it, as I haven’t received such a good compliment since I was 16 and someone said I reminded them of Elizabeth Shue in The Saint (which seemed pretty flattering in the mid-90s.)

“One relationship doesn’t cancel out another.”

(Note: confusingly, this was written several days ago.)

(That's from this movie I'm watching, The Girl with Green Eyes , Irish, from the 60’s, very ‘real’ and depressing. May-December stuff, and Lynn Redgrave.

Feel all kinds of dissatisfaction with my life and my love life; it is very depressing to come home and find the place squalid; very hard not to resent certain people’s drug abuse and seeming indolence, even when they have been filling papers with theorems about international inflation, interspersed with the quote, “General Zog does not take orders. He gives them.”

He’d had a talk with his ex today. She knows about my existence now – as of about two weeks ago – but at that time she said she didn’t want to know anything about me, and since, although they speak semi-regularly, they never talk about anything more personal than the state of the economy (she’s a financial writer.) It does seem to me that there’s something infantile about the whole arrangement, and obscurely disrespectful to me, not that it has much to do with me. But, you know, I’m a great believer in lancing. Although obviously my own choices in these matters are unusual and questionable. My parents don’t think much of them.

He called a little later to say the fortune teller down the block was offering readings for only $2. I have a suspicion, though, that you’d need to pay more once you got there, to learn anything worthwhile. Besides which, a fortune teller in Rhode Island, who’s burning candles for me, said that if I go to anyone else it wouldn’t work. More than anything, the experience with her was so sort of sordid that it’s put me off the whole thing. Anyone would only tell me again that I need my aura cleansed, and I can’t afford anything like that. Besides which, I’m pretty sure I could do it myself with a little work.

I’ll need to borrow the cats, Owl and Abelard, from GK4, former fiance, to help with the mice. Slim is allergic so he’ll have to go elsewhere. I left my phone at home today and Slim fielded a call from GK4, who’d apparently been in some sort of altercation in a bar over the Redskins. Slim recommended he take up boxing.

Raining, and warmer. I think I need an older man.

Correction

"Liz" objects to her pseudonym.

"Well, what do you want to be called?" I asked.
"Buckingham!" said she.

Um, okay.

Dull Post - don't bother

Even by their habitual self-satisfied standards, Cafe Grumpy's patrons seem unusually delighted with themselves today. Also playing some kind of trace/hip-hop mash-up.

Had a little too much wine last night. Not sick; just humiliated by maudlin behavior: may or may not have told Slim I'd marry him. Perhaps not by coincidence, he woke up from a nightmare last night in which he was "battling an evil witch."

I had nightmares myself. First, I was on some road trip to University of Vermont (it gets worse, though) and no one else in the car would stop to try any regional cuisine. ('Don't worry,' Slim had to say to comfort me - I was weeping - 'when we go to Vermont, you can have all the crackers and milk you want.') THEN I dreamed my brother had killed our neighbor, and made his skin into a hot air balloon (well, the head was him and the body looked like a strike rat) but the balloon wouldn't ascend and just sat on my family's roof, incriminatingly. And I tried to cover for him by claiming that the balloon was made, not of human skin, but of a new kind of papier mache I'd crafted from instant oatmeal. Am still awaiting reassuring phone call from Charlie.

Reason I was drunk: Slim and I had a date last night. In an attempt to do justice to the meal, I didn't eat anything all day and so of course couldn't hold my drink at all. We took a cab home and after I slipped out the driver said to Slim,
"never let that happen again. Your lady should never have to get out of the cab first."

(Also: saw Bonjour Tristesse yesterday and am considering a gamine crop.)

"The revelation causes Lance to laugh in disgust, calling Z-Man "an ugly broad". Z-Man immediately decapitates Lance with his sword."

Courtesy of GK4, former fiance

"Batali motioned off into the distance. “These butchers over here? They’re f-cking drowning. So we’re gonna do a steakhouse for hipsters. We’re gonna have cheap steaks. Twenty-five-dollar steaks.” He held up two fat fingers, pinching them close. “F-cking little steaks.” He burst into a guffaw. Ducasse smiled demurely. Both sets of handlers checked their watches, rifled through planners. “All right, baby,” Batali said. “Arrivederci.”"

And

"We made our way toward a stall crammed with frilly gold frames. “Chef! You’ve come to see your painting,” exclaimed a tiny woman with a gray pixie cut, air-kissing his cheeks. She shifted a canvas of a nude man to one side, revealing a turn-of-the-last-century work, Les Buveurs du Sang. In the foreground of the painting, a slaughtered cow sprawled awkwardly, while behind it a line of men and women in top hats and petticoats lined up to drink its blood, hoping to be cured of consumption. The work was masterful, the effect grotesque."

Mouse Situation

It was very good luck that Slim should stop by my apartment this morning, as I was in a panic at having found a mouse with its tail stuck to a glue trap, somehow wedged between the wall and a fancy jar of Italian tuna. Since my handling of the situation had amounted to crying, wailing, and trying to will myself to behead it with the new Samurai-technology chef's knife, his arrival was a boon. He detached the tail, washed it, and carried the mouse in a jam jar to the nearby park, where it will obviously die within hours.

Yesterday GK4, former fiance, stopped by the shop, looking like he was keeping a big secret, although I think he wasn't. Couldn't go to work, he said, because he had no hot water.

"What's that on your chin? A cut?" he said to Liz.

"No, it's a pimple," she said.

"Oh. You could use some cover-up," he said.


Sunday night, we had a goodbye dinner for my uncle at the local pizzeria (mobbed, as it was recently voted "best" by NY Mag.) I allowed Slim to come, and there was minimal spaciness. My parents even bestowed a lukewarm "he's very nice." I acted like a bratty termagent in, I guess, an effort to make the whole world look better by comparison. I pouted, I screamed, I picked fights with everyone. Oh, and I wept.

Saint Rumwald Cont'd

Rumwold was a medieval infant saint in England, said to have lived for three days in 662[1]. He is said to have been miraculously full of Christian piety despite his tender age, and able to speak from the moment of his birth, professing his faith, requesting baptism, and delivering a sermon prior to his early death. Several churches were dedicated to him of which about six survive.

Saint Rumwald

Feastday: August 28
650



A largely legendary saint who was a prince, the son of King Aldfrith and Queen Cuneburga, in the kingdom of Northumbria, England. He is said to have been only three days old when, upon his Baptism, he declared the profession of faith and then died. While venerated for centuries in parts of England, he is considered to be the subject of highly dubious traditions.

Corpus Bones!

I know I should be reading some great novel of the 20th century, but first I have to finish Catherine, Called Birdy, 1995 Newberry Award winner. It's a little after my time, but after learning of my fondness for older children's fiction (as long as it's not boy-style, ie Hatchet or Where the Red Fern Grows), Maeve brought me her copy from Massachusetts.

Update

Per uge, ('use' doesn't look right, and 'uje' looks disgusting and also kind of Slavic), I haven't had internet for a while, and have been committing long posts to Word in absentia. I'll try to get it together to go to Cafe Grumpy tomorrow a.m. and post 'em.

Meanwhile, I'll fill you in on some plans.

Last year, fresh off my v difficult breakup and in some attempt to gain purchase that didn't involve an eating disorder (because who has the energy, really?), I decided to go all autodidactic. At the time, I penned the following. (The hollowness/pain comes through clearly, but you get the idea.)

"I can read. I mean, I'm reasonably literate and have had a normal education and everything that implies. But I recently realized that I was a grown up, and that I was never going to be required to read anything again for the rest of my life, and that it was up to me - to me, who doesn't understand why alchemy doesn't work! - to determine the course of my education for the rest of my life. I guess I always assumed that by the time I was an adult, all that would be kind of taken care of; I'd have read and learned all the important stuff and could devote the rest of my life to niche pursuits and the latest chic fiction. Instead, I find myself with gaping holes in my education and a TBR list that gets longer every day.

The other thing is, I kind of don't remember what I've actually read, as opposed to what I've pretended to have read, or started and never finished, or listened to on tape, or saw the movie version of...in short, I need a system, and fast. I decided, therefore, to start this project: read through some list of great books and keep a journal, just for accountability's sake.

I looked through a lot of lists of books (there's no shortage on the net), and decided to stick with the classics: modern library 100. Once I get the English under my belt, maybe I'll go global, but let's keep it simple for now. Okay, wish me luck."

Like most things about '07, it was a dismal failure. (I got stymied on 98, The Ginger Man, which was awful.) But it's January, and I am newly resolved. Wish me luck.

The Way We Were

I have mentioned that Slim and I met in a bar, right? Straight-up singles style. It's actually a good story because it dates back to that period when I was incredibly hostile.

I was just looking over some of my 'archives' and realized that I could figure out the date of the first time he and I slept together because I remember something else that happened that day, which I blogged about.

Also a good story, as it involved my propositioning him (Him: I was just thinking we should grab lunch this week.
Me: Yeah we could do that. Or you could come over here and have sex with me.)

and then my drinking half a bottle of Scotch, and then his showing up all hopped up on Adderall, and having gum in his ear (don't ask), etc. etc...

the rest is, as we say, history. (Depending on who the victor is, we'll see who writes it.)

Truth, beauty.

Slim says to stop talking about being unattractive. Didn't realize it was a theme; can see how it might reflect poorly on his judgment.

To see the townsfolk suffer so

From vermin, was a pity.



Rats!
They fought the dogs and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in the cradles,
And ate the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladles,
Split open the kegs of salted sprats,
Made nests inside men's Sunday hats,
And even spoiled the women's chats,
By drowning their speaking
With shrieking and squeaking
In fifty different sharps and flats.

...as Browning would have it. Okay, mice, but it's an infestation, for sure. They seem to be positively gorging themselves on that green poison that looks like it's mixed with bird seed, but it doesn't seem to have curtailed their activities ('droppings'-wise) one iota, and they don't seem to have any difficulty skirting the glue traps I position so strategically. Obviously the kitchen looks as sterile as...well, something clean -- but I still need to disinfect thoroughly every day. And this from a confirmed slattern!

Not particularly eager to die of Bubonic Plague. Might make large bonfire around building, Pope-style, and sit on throne in center.

Time Travel

As you might have guessed, the previous post actually dates from 2007. Because I am at the whim of whatever neighbor has insecure internet (today's broadcast brought to you by, I believe, Banana), I took the unusual step of writing up that last account on Word, while the emotions were still running high.

All is now okay. Slim (known at the Met as General Zog, for his resemblance to said Superman nemesis)has been working like nuts. They're putting on 'Hansel and Gretel' and Slim says, "the witch is played by this tenor in drag, with these pendulous breasts. He makes the stagehands visibly uncomfortable."

Happy New Year.

Am really at end of my rope with GK4, former fiance. I don't mind talking with his shrink. I don't mind the endless late-night conversations about his shooting himself (well, sort of.)I was happy to receive, for Christmas, the perfume he bought for that chick he was obsessed with who blew him off. I don't even mind his ex-girlfriend insisting we get a drink and then mentioning casually that she's heard I have a soft tummy. (Okay, I sort of did mind that.)

BUT. Yesterday we had plans to see 'There Will Be Blood,' with mockery in mind. The E took a while and I was about five minutes late. As a result, we couldn't find seats together, and GK4 was absolutely furious, and insisted we leave, and wouldn't be mollified even after I bought us tickets for the next showing of 'The Orphanage.' When the first Spanish title rolled out, he punched my leg, hard. Then he tried to hold my hand.

(A large man snored audibly throughout.)

I was kind of irritated and told him his conduct had been 'inappropriate.' He explained that, like the leprechaun from 'Finian's Rainbow,' he has lately been in love with every woman he's around.


Last time he visited me at work, I showed him the picture of Slim with the FT on his lap.

"That's him, all right," he said unenthusiastically. "He really doesn't need to have that paper unfolded all the way; it seems like in half would have been more than sufficient coverage. Really," he continued, "there's nothing more disgusting than one of those really long, thin penises."

When I expostulated indignantly, he said innocently that he was "just saying."

Go to Hell. Go Directly to Hell.

That’s a text I just sent Slim. Here is what happened:

When Slim returned from the west coast, he brought with him the little white cashmere sweater that his father, Dr. M., had very kindly bought me for Christmas with the nice note, “I’m looking forward to getting to know you, Sadie.” I was very touched, and after dinner (a semi-foolhardly exploration of southwestern flavors) I called him to say thank you.

He was extremely charming and said, ‘you should know that your boyfriend is smitten like he’s never been smitten before! His mother and I can’t believe it.”

(They also liked my marmalade, which, it seems, was not tainted by the circumstance of having been made during our last big fight, Like Water for Chocolate-style.)

Well, I was very delighted, and immediately and slyly relayed the conversation to Slim (who, to his credit, was doing dishes.)

“I was just lonely, so he got the wrong impression,” he said cavalierly. Then went on to say that his dad had said something very similar to all his girlfriends, being a southern charmer.

I was furious and said coolly that he needn’t go to any special pains to keep me on my toes, as he leaves me in constant assurance of his general inconstancy and immaturity, and that quite frankl he needn’t do me any favors as the door was open etc. etc. and lord knows I am not so desperate to have him around…etc.

Then he was very contrite and made many attempts to make it up to me, but this morning I found myself still coolly furious and I sent the above text.

Await further developments.

As re: Christmas, well, I received a fine chef’s knife (the kind that uses Samurai technology) plus some warm boots, plus copies of Crumb and Spellbound. (Although I coveted my brother’s Sorrow and the Pity.) As re: Charlie, he gifted me with a flowered housecoat from Marietta Fashions.

GK4 was doing a lot of talking about shooting himself while he was home (he has a whole batterie of firearms) so I took the precaution of calling his shrink (again.)

GK4 says he received: “2 books of doggerel, 3 bottles of booze, a belt embroidered with pheasants, and 2 cat toys.” (Makes my rather pointed gift. C.S. Lewis’s The Problem of Pain, look pretty fun.) His grandparents assured him that these belts are all the rage in New York.

He asked what Slim had given me, and when I told him the boxed “Girl Group Sounds” 4-CD set (cunningly packaged in a striped hatbox) and a pocket knife inscribed with my name, GK4 said, “are you tempted to open that knife and plunge it into the soft tissue surrounding his heart?”


“Um, no,” I said cautiously. “I think I’m going to get off, now.”

(He also described my gift of The Power Broker as “a big kilo of coal in (Slim’s ) stocking.” )

Big hit: audiobook of The Fountainhead. Charlie and I listened to it on the way home and were absolutely gleeful. Never has a book been so well suited to the audio format.

(Just talked to Slim; everything seems to be okay. Although I haven’t made up my mind.)

Did not receive: Birthday Cakes cookbook. Slim did not receive requested cashmere bow tie, either. From me he did receive, in addition to Caro, hip flask and scarf knitted with my own two etc.

Later

Think everything is okay. He is very tired and went to bed at six-thirty at his own place. I’ve taken the opportunity to watch Walking the Bible.

In other news, I met my dad at La Bonne Soupe for lunch, then saw Sweeney Todd at the Ziegfeld. Fed GK4’s cats, Owl and Abelard (were ours jointly). Fielded call from GK4 himself, who asked casually,

“So, have you had sex recently?”

I have read that allergies and sinus problems are an indication of psychic ability (general sensitivity, I suppose), but I can’t pretend that information is much of a comfort lately; that sharp, shifting ache has been with me constantly – and everyone else, I suppose. So excuse a somewhat fractured air. (Also, am watching Walking the Bible, as mentioned.)

(As re: psychic phenomena, am reading Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black; also have decided to learn a little something about Joan Grant, although the fact that she had three marriages gives me pause.)

By the way, isn’t Penny Dreadful the most terrific name? If I were a Gotham Girl, or a drag queen, or even a DJ, I’d use it so fast…as it is, I’m wishing I could change my Gawker commenter handle, which is pretty weak. Maybe “Penny Dreadful” would be better than “The Petite Sophisticate?”

(Being a Bedouin looks complete crap. Still better than being an Inuit, though. Oh, wait, they just explained that they’re closer to God than people in cities. Fair enough.)