there’s a spider in my bed that eats me alive every night. I scratch myself to death in my sleep, but in my dreams it feels so pleasing. I masturbated in my sleep once to the face of the Lebanese guy at the artsy video store around the corner from my itsy bitsy hot box of an apartment. His name is something I still can’t pronounce, something like four syllables, and his shirts have safety pins instead of buttons. I’ve talked to him before. He says he’s an illustrator but he likes his video job for cultural collateral. The conversation went like this:

Him: “What video did you rent?”

Me: “Last Tango in Paris. Ever see it?”

Him: “No.”

Me: “Someone told me I dress like Maria Schneider in the film, so I have to see it.”

Him: “Can I watch it with you?”

Me: “What time do you get of work?’

Him: “Five minutes.”

So I waited for him to get off work, and we got completely drunk at The Snowglobe, a dive bar with a dyke bartender who didn’t charge us but I left $12 (should have been $30), and then we made out on my roof. The next morning we woke up in my bed. I had something in my eye, maybe a prehistoric type bug that only exists on rooftops. He saw the note by my toothbrush that says, “You feel better thin.” Afterwards, he took me for eggs. Maybe I didn’t actually masturbate to him in my sleep. Maybe it really happened but I only thought I was asleep. I watched the video alone and to my horror found that Maria Schneider was naked most of the movie. I suppose the guy who told me I dressed like her had seen me naked. Most men I know have seen me naked. It should probably stop.

I tried loving a finance banker from Staten Island based on the fact that he didn’t have a tape deck. In the heat of passion, he tore off my dress on an $800 Moroccan rug (half price, he said) and I couldn’t help but think of my father, who insists on going barefoot on high quality carpeting. My father says I welcome ruin. He’s proud of me. He’s a philosopher but only smokes schwag.

One day he came to the café with a new fixed gear bike for himself to “get in shape” for the summer.

“I’m gonna get so fit. So tan.”
“I was thinking of taking a yoga class,” I said, stabbing an olive in my Bloody Mary with a plastic sword.
“Kaylynn, you should get in shape. We’ll both be in shape and so tan.”
“I don’t get tan.”
“We’ll be so tan and so in shape. We’ll be an unstoppable couple – I mean, not that we aren’t now, but –”
“What are we gonna do this summer, fight crime?”
“We’ll be totally unstoppable,” he maintained.

It was a dissolvable relationship but the sex was good. At least I thought so. Once he told me I felt “dry”, like parched, I guess. Like something shriveled in the sun.

My overhead light stopped working. It’s the light’s fault, not the switch that I relentlessly flip, hoping for change despite the rigid opposition the apartment has to it. I type in the dark and occasionally the ceiling will buzz like the death of a criminal in the chair, and a light will flicker on in his memory but back off just as soon as he’s forgotten. It makes my lack of light source even more imperative to let a complete stranger, a Con Edison man, inside to meddle with my electric strip.

But I still pay electricity bills.

http://roustabouttheworld.blogspot.com/

so check his from time to time.

just another reason to make the phillipiens a vacation destination.  some people kill for perfect sinatra.

go here for the nyt article and photos.

GENERAL SANTOS CITY—After a day of barbering, Rodolfo Gregorio went to his neighborhood karaoke bar still smelling of talcum powder.

But Gregorio, 63, a witness to countless fist fights and occasional stabbings erupting from disputes over karaoke singing, did not dare choose one beloved classic: Frank Sinatra’s version of “My Way.”

Instead, putting aside his glass of Red Horse Extra Strong beer, he grasped a microphone with a habitue’s self-assuredness and briefly stilled the room with the Platters’ “My Prayer.” Next, he belted out crowd-pleasers by Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck.

“I used to like ‘My Way,’ but after all the trouble, I stopped singing it,” he said. “You can get killed.”’

The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling “My Way” in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled.

But the news media has recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.”

Urban legends

The murders have spawned urban legends about the song and left Filipinos groping for answers.

Are the killings the natural byproduct of the country’s culture of violence, drinking and machismo? Or is there something inherently sinister in the song?

Whatever the reason, many karaoke bars have removed the song from their playbooks. And the country’s many Sinatra lovers, like Gregorio here in this city in Mindanao, are practicing self-censorship out of perceived self-preservation.

Karaoke-related killings are not limited to the Philippines.

In the past two years alone, a Malaysian man was fatally stabbed for monopolizing the microphone at a bar and a Thai man killed eight of his neighbors in a rage after they sang John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”

Low tolerance

Karaoke-related assaults have also occurred in the United States, including at a Seattle bar where a woman punched a man for singing Coldplay’s “Yellow” after criticizing his version.

Still, the odds of getting killed during karaoke may be higher in the Philippines, if only because of the ubiquity of the pastime.

Social get-togethers invariably involve karaoke. Stand-alone karaoke machines can be found in the unlikeliest settings, including outdoors in rural areas where men can sometimes be seen singing early in the morning.

And Filipinos, who pride themselves on their singing, may have a lower tolerance for bad singers.

Indeed, most of the “My Way” killings have reportedly occurred after the singer sang out of tune, causing other patrons to laugh or jeer.

“The trouble with ‘My Way’ is that everyone knows it and everyone has an opinion,” Gregorio said.

2. my hair is not red, not brown, but black, or as clark from garren salon says, “neutral cocoa”

3. watch this

3. after days at staring at pillow packaging, i have decided that “white down” should change their name to “down time”

4. i got a purple package from my mother.  she asked me to post a photo of it and because she is one of the only people who checks this, i will.  it looks like a yuppie piniata burst in my room.

5. the wait for cody to move to new york continues