I am concerned about devoting too much time to morbid self-attention but I have been worried lately about not having enough humanity or grace or compassion, which is obvious, and probably true of everyone to some extent, but my stress here comes from very simple, minimum signs. For example, I see couples walking down the street together, one member of the couple wearing flip-flops, and the other member not seeming to care or engage in break-up procedures, in spite of the fact that the flip flops slap and then drag against the sidewalk with every step.

It’s always possible that I could lock myself in and drink too much and before I know it I'm forgotten so tonight I tried to outsmart myself saying I would give myself a reward if, first, I hung out in a group setting. I checked out Die Hard 1 from the library and refrained from opening a bottle of whiskey all week, hoping that with a drink or two I could get over all that bullshit with Maclane’s wife changing her name at the end and enjoy the excellence of the Carl Winslow cop buying 13 packs of Twinkies followed shortly thereafter by having a corpse thrown onto his windshield.

I have not watched Die Hard yet. Notes from the night so far:

a hug in which the two clasped together lifted one foot off the ground at a time, and repeat, even though it had only been a week since they last saw each other.

Person A getting off of her cell phone and then walking behind person B who was having a conversation with person C. Once in position, person A proceeded to initiate movements with her arms behind person B’s back, suggesting to person C that the arms in movement might be his arms acting abnormally, perhaps a third and fourth arm; or, regardless of number, inappropriate arm movements for a regular conversation. Example of the arm movements: octopus-style waves.

A few remarks of minimum humor repeated with more stress a second time, even though I smiled politely in the first place.

Multiple people singing along to familiar songs playing in the speakers, examples including “Jump Around” and a boring song from the 90s likely performed by soundgarden or pearl jam.

Being nudged with an elbow.

Receiving the advice: “maybe you need to dance like no one is watching,” in spite of there being no dancing. I understand the dancing in this instance was more a metaphor, probably even an appropriate one, for moving more loosely and indifferently and not being so uptight in life.

The phrase “what’s crack-a-lackin?” (variation on “what’s cracking?”)

Movie watching with comments all around, for example “Oh I love him I loved him in __ have you seen it? Amazing movie.” Additionally, someone whispering with semi-regularity in my ear questions such as, What did he say? and Wait, what just happened?  

This weekend I woke up sick like I haven’t been in years following a night of strong drinking without fully recovering from some sort of sore throat cold. There was a brawl at Twilite and I was too drunk and tired to pay attention and an ashtray broke at my feet. I poked at the broken glass on the carpet with the toe of my shoe. A cop came by and asked questions which I let others answer. I like the punishment of drinking too much alcohol, Christian in its balance and surety, though it usually leaves me red eyed and miserable, not vomiting the only thing I’d eaten that morning, a grapefruit half and carrying around a blanket in the summer. The previous weekend I walked home angry from X Wives, and woke up with an anger hangover which seemed to override the effects of alcohol.  I’ve seen those chemicals mix together badly before, and even though I usually have respected the results, I didn’t mind being sick. I watched TV all day because I felt weak and my head hurt. Mostly the Sopranos season six. Also Clinton’s concession and endorsement speech with emotion that I will chalk up to sickness and jump.

It was a good enough time to be sick because it gave me an excuse not to go to Pride the next day. True, my number one complaint about that event, the temperature, was mellow and much lower than it has been historically. I read a lament recently that Pride isn’t as fun when you don’t make out with random girls, and that comment was one of the first to make me remember why Pride might be appealing in the first place beyond a political or maybe intellectual level. On the contrary, though, the only physical affection I’ve received at Pride has been sweaty, unnecessary hugs after paying 10 dollars, listening to terrible music, waiting on bright pavement with garbage around my feet for expensive beer. I’m there politically, and don’t want to challenge the event’s importance. And it does make me feel a little, well, proud, to see gay pride moving in Salt Lake City. I can see how it would be an emotional event to be a lesbian seeing, I can’t help it, prides of lesbians at a place besides Mo’s or Paper Moon. But being sick was fine.

Went on a date with a vegan last week. She shifted gears right away from polite hellos and formalities to advice and psychoanalysis . I like neither being psychoanalyzed nor receiving unsolicited advice but I didn’t shut it down. The right to inflict suffering on me was due to her, and my debt to pay, for flaking out on her quite a few times over the years. She let me know that she remembered that and said, among other things, that ambiguous people don’t always get what they want. She added that I need to find a better outlet for my "carnal desires." She also said that I looked “less slovenly” than the last time she saw me.  In some ways this describes a date with my dead grandma, and I was bored for much of it, but endured because her thoughts were in line with my self-assessment that I require a lot of forgiveness and am often thoughtless and self-absorbed.

The lecturing and insight came and went away fast, just shifting gears, and I don’t think that her sole purpose was to unload all of that. We had dinner and played pool at Brewvie’s, where they played 80s music the whole time because the employee (maybe manager) seemed to enjoy it and collected empty pitchers in time to the beat of the 80s. The Cure played multiple times, which the vegan enjoyed, reminiscing about the multiple times she had seen them live in the state of Utah and other western states. It has been a long footnote of my life in which I’ve tried to either force myself to like that band--sometimes, as on this date, faking relatively well—or justify why I don’t really care for them. I still haven’t really reached a justification that appeases anyone, except that the music is boring and the voice is dramatic. Not just the recent albums either. Besides, Smith's sex symbol status has to be at least a little compromised on account of being old and happily married. I think Disintegration is a good song, but won’t say the same for many others people think of as classics or prime Cure. Love Cats is an example that played at Brewvie's. I point to the chorus, in which the singer says multiple times how wonderfully (etc.) pretty the lovecats are, and expresses a favorable opinion re: having the other lovecat over for tea followed by enjoying each other with cream. At one point the purportedly mutual love is described as “the grooviest thing,” which rhymes with cream.  

I like vegans a lot, the intensity of the fondness motivated less by ethical or cultural agreement than by my need to counterbalance stronger feelings against fat ugly assholes who commonly rail against vegans and vegan practice (that is: eating somewhere other than KFC). The fact of a bucket of chicken being consumed in a single night, with amped vigor and pleasure to spite the vegans, should not give anyone moral or punchline authority.  

Sometimes I start to articulate my taste in music pretty basically, but it tends to descrescendo into an unrealistic small space everytime: Some amount of subtlety appreciated. Musical talent unnecessary. Keep it relatively fast. Minimal talking between songs. Trumpets, unnecessary. Harmonized vocals? If you have, say, Jenny Lewis in the band, don’t let any one else sing. But aside from the music I like that my spontaneous requirements cross out, I find myself humming along to indefensible pop music and Smith’s and I stare myself in the bread aisle mirrors, puzzled but not ashamed.

The vegan was amused by a picture we saw in which a squirrel was pulling apart its fur and revealing a Superman uniform underneath. She liked Superman, and I have been liking him okay lately for the first time in my life because he seemed lonelier in that recent movie. Her reasoning was different, specifically that he was “the ultimate man.” I got the impression that she had a very romantic and traditional idea of what the ultimate man was and that impression bloomed as she let me pay checks and seemed to lag behind so that I would open the door for her. 

My old friend took a screwdriver and removed the door handle from the passenger side of his car because he wanted to be sure that if he went on a date his date knew he would be the one opening the door.  This was obviously exasperating for me, but beyond that, take that custom a step further and it seems to be largely about situating control and limiting mobility. Then again, I come from a mother who will actually, even after 30 years of marriage, wait in the passenger side of the door for my dad to walk all the way around, even if where they’re going is back on the other side. And I really don’t think keeping her in her place is what they’re all about, certainly not on any conscious level. At the same time, they’re Republicans who don’t think gay marriage amendments are personal or mean-spirited.

The vegan is good looking, enjoys low key activities and not cocaine, and my dating luck has not really been consistently good in a while. But I can’t remember the last time I was enamored of someone not at least a little bit more self-destructive, even when I haven’t consciously thought about it that way.  

I am too embarrassed to check but I remember using this journal in the past primarily after long, then-infuriating conversations with a now-drowned girl.

When I was younger the night seemed wild, less predictable, or maybe just less custom.  More sinister because I climbed out of windows or at least, post-17, walked quietly out of habit. My first summer in Salt Lake City was a slow humming, lonely summer in which I was in a sad space in the timeline post-Mormon repression and realizing that I was simply not that good at seduction, not that I’ve really moved forward to a new state now. That summer, night started to just get tedious because I had nothing to do with my time. I would get a little writing done but despise myself as a result. I would start drinking and think about making a phone call or two but then dislike myself for that, as well. Most of the people I knew still lived in Utah County, and that wasn’t the person I really wanted to be. I didn’t know how to shake up what I was doing, and wasn’t sure if I wanted to. I had a job, my life was quiet, the night was warm. And there are people who engage with strangers and people who know only the people they’ve been forcibly introduced to, dating back to childhood.

In May I took a job in Colorado Springs wearing khakis and looking like an Old Navy commercial reject. In between buying back books at the Air Force Academy I read The Crossing and listened to a Belarusian named Halina talk about her Chihuahuas back home, including cell phone picture visual aids and the occasional  impersonation of their movements. I get bored of McCarthy’s style pretty fast, realizing he’s written some of the more stunning passages I’ve read, and haven’t finished the book to this day, though it’s made me think at more than one juncture about the strength and cleverness of wolves.

On the last night in Springs I was anxious and bored in my hotel room and spent several hours in the adjacent Hooters, the only drinking establishment in our hotel’s parking lot, which was a pedestrian island because it was surrounded by freeways. I watched the Jazz game by myself while a woman in a devil’s costume brought me beer and sympathized, or pretended to sympathize, as a Nuggets fan, with my visceral hatred of the Lakers, which I became more open/belligerent about with alcohol, and the subtext for which obviously being all about sitting in a Hooters in Colorado Springs by myself at age almost 24. The Jazz lost that game, it was an extremely depressing night. All I really enjoyed about the trip and job, outside of the pay, were the drive to the airport, the airport, the flying, the free books, Halina’s accent, the flying back.

That first Salt Lake summer I spent the morning between tired and energetic looking at a mediocre view until birds in the alleyway started to chirp. Some of them congregated around the dumpster, some of them hopped around the pavement, but most of them were on the ground. The ones that did fly I would follow for as far as my eyes would let me.