7/16/01: The Musings I Haven’t Written
hang around my head miserably like the children I haven’t had. Every month another egg lost and that’s one more kid who didn’t have a chance to even be a zygote. And every day that I let slip by without putting something into the keyboard I lie in bed and think: I’ll get it someday. But it’s never the same as it would have been.
I had these plans. I wanted to talk about a night out with Julian, and how the light from the candle made the table look covered with cracks in its paint, like a Byzantine painting. And how leaving to go to the ladies’ was like the bridge to the song because the sound from the club couldn’t quite reach in there and it was calm. By morning most of that was lost, and then I wanted to write a musing about sitting at the club and wanting to write a musing. But that’s gone too, now.
I wanted to tell you about the guy in Bryant Park with the rat on a leash. You would have thought I meant a dog that looked like a rat, and then you would have realized: no, I meant that seriously. It was a rat. And how everyone in Bryant Park kind of came together as a community to discuss the shock and horror of the rat on the leash.
I also wanted to tell you about a recent expedition with someone who wanted to buy a fake ID, and how easy it was, and how I felt vaguely ashamed of myself for never doing anything so wrong as that in my own life. I’ve always been good and almost always kind of hated myself for it. Like the way you just sort of despise do-gooders in general. I also would have mentioned the Cherry-Flavored Anal Lube on the shelf at the place where we got the ID. But then I probably would have erased that part.
It’s not like I haven’t had time to get these stories down on paper. I’ve been sitting around the apartment most of the time, ever since I got let go. I think to myself: any minute now I’ll get up and do something worthwhile with my time. I’ll go to the Met, I’ll go to Central Park or Battery Park or go take a ride on the Staten Island Ferry or go to the Botanical Gardens or the Zoo or go walk along the beach at Coney Island or go play guitar in Washington Square Park and see if anyone gives me any money. Then I get exhausted by the possibilities, and I flip through all the channels again, to make sure I’m not missing anything, because I really don’t want to miss anything.
And then I really will leave the house, and I’ll be walking along, thinking about how I really would rather be at home playing South Park Mario Brothers or watching All My Children. I think how sad that is, and how I should write a musing about it.