January 2006
I write things in my head,but when I get to a computer
I don't feel like writing.
Reading Anne Rice's Blackwood Farm,
thoroughly enjoying it.
And this is another offline weekend ...
School days, school days ... Hamilton is too crowded to spend much time online
The Sleeptalker appeared for the first time since before the holidays, arrived at the Dark Corner on the evening of the tenth. As suspected, he had found a new patron and had been living there. According to his version of the story, the patron had been "too demanding" so the Sleeptalker left. He is incredibly successful in finding these men but just doesn't really understand the concept of being a rent boy. If you get free lodging, food, clothes, money, etc., there's a price to be paid.
If you want to dance, you have to pay the piper.
I worry about him. He'll be thirty-one years old soon and even though he looks many years younger, there is still a limit to any rent boy's career because of gay men's preference for youth. And what will happen to the Sleeptalker when he can no longer rely on these sporadic, temporary bonuses? (If they can be called that.)
Felix recently wrote about how he loves the cycle of the changing seasons. I know what he means, but I just don't want to be cold anymore. The chill pre-dawn hours we have here now are more than enough a taste of winter for me.
A reader asked if I'd liked Anne Rice's Blackwood Farm. Yes, very much. It's one of my favorites. I was much surprised by the ending, how she killed off one of her major characters. If she ever does that to my beloved Lestat, it will be the last of her books I read.
Reading. Well, I just finished a remarkable, massive novel, An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears. It's really four novels, the same events being told by four of the participants. It's all set in England in the mid-1600s, just after the restoration of the monarchy. So in addition to the main plot there are many asides which are both interesting and amusing. Like the man who was said to be "quite fastidious" because he insisted on taking a bath at least once every three monoths.
And although I haven't yet read his mega-seller, I've now read all of Dan Brown's other books, after having found Angels and Demons on the dollar-shelves. He certainly isn't shy about concocting utterly improbable plots. (I can't remember a case of a major best-seller taking so long to make it from hardcover to paperback, as is the case with The Da Vinci Code).
The Sleeptalker made another visit to the Dark Corner, arriving after I had already settled down to sleep. He had a bicycle again, said when I asked, "I found it." Hmmmm.
The best thing about finding abandoned food is not that it's free, although that's very nice. No, it's being relieved of the decision about what to eat. I often find myself walking around, feeling slightly hungry, money and foodstamps in my pocket, and I just can't decide what to buy. So an abandoned plate-lunch box is most welcome. Much of the stuff is not what I would've bought, had I made up my mind, but I'll eat almost all of it. Major exceptions are the local dishes, chicken long rice (too slimey) and lomi lomi salmon (too much onion).
Now old Grubby has disappeared. I think that makes me the senior survivor of the early morning mall gang.
The Monday holiday will, of course, be an offline day.
I spent Tuesday afternoon with the Sleeptalker, first on campus, later at the mall. He is sleeping under a bridge on Nimitz Highway and had walked from there to campus, a rather long trek. (That "found" bicycle was evidently "lost" again.)
I told him I wished he wouldn't appear a day or two before Third Wednesday. "I like seeing you when you're poor," he said, "so I don't have to feel bad about you spending money on me." Instead, I get to "feel bad" because I have none to spend on him.
He was in a bouyant mood, verging at times on the hyper or manic. Not drug-inspired, if what he said was true. And he jumped from one topic to another and back again so continuously that I felt rather exhausted by the time we bid each other farewell after sunset. He told me I could sleep under the bridge, "but I don't think you'd like it." I don't think I would either. He had been reading some book on angels, one of those writers who think angels are among us. He asked me several times if I was an angel. I told him I really didn't think so. And as we parted he asked again. "Let's put it this way," I said, "I'm as much of an angel as you are."
Maybe not.
a gray, wet, windy week
I wish I were in Delhi
still falls the rain ...
year of the dog
(arch back, raise fur, hisssss)Just teasing. Nice doggie.
And, at last, intervals of blue sky and sunshine outnumber the clouds and drizzle.
february
the tales