I don't really hate god. I don't even know what it is! I'm just borrowing from Fred Phelps because it helps chip away at what little power he has. Plus it makes me laugh.
I've been speaking with the Brooklyn DA's office about providing a background deposition about George Weber's sex life and history, to help them build their hopefully already-solid case against John Katehis. John is trying to plead self-defense which is bullshit because A) he stabbed George 55 fucking times and B) George was a masochist, 100%. He never would have been the aggressor in ANY sexual situation. I'm also suspicious about the duct tape. George liked rope and he would have been especially safe with a new guy. This makes me wonder if it wasn't the first time they met up. I'm trying not to think too much about the whole thing, I've processed it as much as I can. In a way it's like a chapter of my life finally closing but before the door is shut for good I want to help make sure that demon kid is locked away.
In lighter news, I saw Morrissey perform at Carnegie Hall other night. He ripped off his shirt at one point and was shockingly buff. He sang "Death of a Disco Dancer," which will always have a special place in my heart because I slow danced to it once with Joe, my college housemate who died of cancer after we graduated. That same night I ended up hanging out with the actor who plays my favorite Gossip Girl character and had to listen to a tirade about "faggots" coming from the backseat of my truck. But later we met up with another of my favorites from the show, one who was really sweet and genuinely excited about my book and even wanted to get an early copy. So yay, maybe my book will end up on a coffee table in the background of the show someday!! Better that than Ann Coulter's new book -- that was the weirdest product placement I've ever seen on GG. And why the hell did they work it into the script?? A certain leggy blond Nazi must have a rather powerful friend at the CW.
Tomorrow I'll be attending the Nylon 10th Anniversary party. I will try not to get drunk and accidentally push Peaches Geldof off the balcony.
A few posts down I mentioned that I heard about a 16 year-old kid who had posted videos on XTube, posing as an 18 year-old, so I took down the link to another XTube video because I had concerns about how old the people featured in it really were. Later I went back to reading about the kid and how he had killed a man. Then I saw a picture of that man. I know him. Intimately. A long time ago, when I was a very different person, he was a steady source of cash for me. I'll leave it at that. I found this out an hour and a half before I had to leave for the big gala benefit. What should have been one of the biggest nights of my life floated in front of me like a blurry parade. It had no meaning, no resonance. I can't remember the name of a single person I met. I'm really lost and fucked up about this and my shrink is on vacation for the next two weeks and I have to interview the most vapid, insipid and self-absorbed F-list celebrity in an hour and I'm pretty sure that I am just going to pretend we have a bad connection, hang up on him and crawl back into bed.
Tonight is my big major debut as the author of my first book. I have no idea how or why, but somehow my publisher got this huge institution to consider me worthy enough to host as a literary host for their annual benefit gala and award party. I'm on a list of co-hosts that includes Wally Lamb and A.M. Homes. I have to host my own table at dinner and entertain these huge donors and major lit types. I am fucking terrified. I've never even done a book reading before. And to make it worse I woke up this morning and my brain is playing one of its awful tricks on me again, making me doubt myself in every way possible. I have two hours to pull my shit together and fake my way through this night. Best case scenario - I have really fun stories to report tomorrow. Worst case scenario - I eat some pills, get tanked and hit on the married President of a rival publishing house before puking outside the Ritz and crashing my truck on the way home. God help me.
Kelly Bensimon - Congratulations, you wretched excuse of a human. You've done the impossible and made the rest of housewives look like somewhat likable people. Team Bethany all the way.
The Recorded Voice When You Call Time Warner - You sound like a smug, nasty old church lady who thinks that just because your husband is the organist you can piss all over the rest of the congregation. I get three words deep into your self-satisfied, smirking voice prompt and I want to hurl my cell phone against the bricks and scream scream SCREAM!!!!! Please die.
I stumbled across a gay porno last night made by this guy who goes by Chrezzz, aka Tobey aka Christian. It does nothing for me sexually, since these guys look uncomfortably young, but they are so adorable in a My Little Pony kind of way. It's really intimate, weirdly innocent, and once it gets going becomes totally mesmerizing and more like an art film than anything else. The music at the very beginning is awful, but around 1:14 this really awesome Go-Gos meets surf rock meets heavy breathing kicks in and makes the whole thing really fun. Watch it here. If this guy really wants a porn career I bet he's going to go far, but I kind of hope he gets it out of his system and goes into real filmmaking. He's a tiny genius. UPDATE - I took down the link to this after reading that a 16 year-old kid who is suspected of murdering a radio announcer had an Xtube page claiming to be 18. NOT COOL and now I just feel creepy and gross for posting this since these guys really do look ridiculously young and I should have realized that site has no real way of determining someone's actual age. Ugh.
It's the one worn by ladies who either graduated from or are currently enrolled in Miss Porter's School for girls, home of the evil secret society of rich girls called the Oprichniki, named after a 16th century Russian torture squad. Thank you NYT. I am now officially obsessed.
Sorry I've been such a bummer lately. It's really up and down, and now suddenly I'm in an up moment. I just got a CD in the mail from a guy I went to college with named Nick McCarthy. He was a junior when I was a freshman and he was one of the most beautiful men on campus (evidence above).
My friends and I called him Nick Cave because we only ever saw him at The Cave, which was a once weekly open mic event in the basement of the liberal arts building at Purchase. Mostly it was a bunch of people on heroin, drinking and rolling around on the stage in the dark, reciting bad poetry. But sometimes bands would play, including my favorite, US Hairforce. Nick played drums, and they sounded so much like how it feels to be on drugs that they were my soundtrack through all of college. They disbanded after a few years and all I had were a few shitty audio cassette recordings of them, and the past few years I've been afraid to even touch those tapes for fear of disintegration or breakage. But thanks to Facebook I found Nick and he sent me a CD full of US Hairforce songs that I've been blissing out to ever since the mailman came.
And they don't even make me trigger happy. Just nostalgic, and sad about all the people who were so insanely instrumental to my development who are now dead because of drugs. Oh no, I'm back to being down!! Up up up up up!
I just got a dose of what I forgot is the worst part of getting sober - sudden, random crying bursts that come out of nowhere. It is fuck all embarrassing. Especially for a big burly man like me. But then, as quick as it started, it's gone and you're back to just feeling like a razor blade is scraping across your bones.
I haven't thought about Herman Hesse in years, but a friend brought him up the other day. I remembered how obsessed I was with Demian when I was in college, especially the line "nothing is more distasteful to man than the path that leads to himself." It sums up the past week nicely, but also the past six years, which is how long I've been eating opiates. I've only just recently realized the effect I love is less about dulling my senses from the outside world than it is about keeping me from my own thoughts. I think this is why I've had such trouble with the whole 12 step-program and why I've always rejected it as an option for me. The whole idea of one day at time is bullshit. It is one second at a time. Every single second of the day I have to fight with myself not to pick up the phone. That's a lie. Every single second of the day I have to fight with myself not to open my lock box and take what's still in there. This is what's so evil about painkillers. They trick you into keeping you from yourself while you're on them, and then when you are off them, they still keep you from yourself because you're too busy fighting off the urges to spend any time figuring out how to stay off of them for any real length of time. Obviously I had a major slip-up this week. I spent all of it inside, eating Percocet. I don't even like Percocet. A friend of mine was making an analogy about something else that fits nicely with how I feel about that brand - it's like when you're having sex and you're almost there, but you can't have an orgasm no matter how hard you try. With Percocet I am constantly chasing the full high but I can't quite reach it, no matter how many I take. There's too much acetaminophen in them I guess. Add to this the fact that I upped my Lexapro dosage on Monday (doctor approved, not on my own), and my body waged full on chemical warfare with me all week. I spent a lot of time thinking about the man above, who was my first real, true, hardcore love. We were even going to get married. Before I discovered Vicodin, he and I got messed up once by smoking pot and eating tons of Tylonal with codeine that he had gotten from Canada. I only remembered this recently, after going through some old journals. I've always equated my first experience with opiates with having my own full bottle for the first time. But I guess technically that one night with him was my first. Besides trying heroin with him once too. Maybe that's why I am still so in love with him. We broke up and got back together countless times. The last two: he dumped me because he found out I had a steady side job turning a trick. He rightly called me a whore and walked out, after we had gotten wasted at a Sonic Youth concert in Central Park. We got back together on the Fourth of July a few weeks later, when we ran into each other at a party on the roof of a sugar factory in Williamsburg. The Secret Machines were playing and fireworks were going off when we locked eyes and just started making out and it was so beautiful and, I don't know, young. I swore I would never turn another trick again. I dumped him for the last time not long after, on the day of the blackout. I had recently gotten my first bottle of Vicodin and we had been downing them in earnest and I had secretly gone back to making money with my side job and I knew I couldn't make a commitment to anything true. He told me this was the last time, that he meant it for real, and that if I did this there was no going back. I counted out 15 Vicodin, put them in a plastic baggie and gave them to him as a consolation. I hate myself so fucking much right now.
In a terrible mood and seriously depressed for some reason today. I miss human interaction. Here's a picture I love, just so you don't have to look at that stupid man down below anymore.
