Thursday 12/27/18
I am dominated by lethargy and not rousing myself. A lot of it is this living situation, this apartment. It's entombing. To be in my house, to have everything meticulously organized, to be able to move freely, pace briskly, move about with alacrity and purpose, would make several thousand percent difference in my life.
Meanwhile: It's not really a culprit in anything at the moment, it's just something that is there and does not measure up to my problems of far greater consequence, the solutions to which--or finding them--are literally larger than matters of life and death, though the possibility of life, and the possibility of death, are housed in there as well--the chance for life; the avoidance of death--but these dating apps are no help of late.
The detritus. The constant flow of detritus. Just from yesterday: a woman, fifty-one, writes me. I'm not going out with you if you're fifty-one. Unless you're like Galileo in terms of intellect and in peak condition and always going and able to go at blazing speeds and do so much. I don't really see myself as someone with an age, as it is one of the continuums I stand outside of, but I go at a very brisk pace, and while I'm not looking for someone to come along on everything with me, I don't think a fifty-one-year-old is going to be able to handle my pace and they might get hurt.
There are early twenty somethings who have had to spend the next day in bed and on the Advil, and that is after scaling everything back. I also intend to make it past 100, provided I get past these people who are trying not to let me escape their harbor blockade, and I want to be outlived by the person I am with (in the physical sense; the art will live past the end of days, and I am the art more than I am this flesh-and-blood corpus at a desk right now), as it is partially in their care that I want to leave the estate of my work, provided they are this world beater and amazing person and remarkable soul I am looking for who has also traveled this journey--part of it, long stretches of it, ideally, for them, the better and great parts of it--with me. And I do intend to be going up and down that Monument at eighty, it's just that I won't be living full-time in the city, so it won't be as often. I'll get a Stairmaster at other residences. Or maybe I can find a Monument substitute, though I can't think of what that would be in Rockport. So, the fifty-one-year-old woman writes me this: "Hi there hru." Hru? Hru? What the motherfuck is this? Is it something that Gary Gnu's H-based cousin Harry Hnu might say? Hru? Do I seem like someone who is going to enjoy getting an hru from you, whatever the fuck it means?
As previously mentioned, my profile requests that you do not send me a one word note, or a "joke" saying "this is not one word." Only got that one from 1800 geniuses. So what do people do instead? Because they are incapable of simply saying something real, human, and without artifice--that's all I'm asking; real, human, sans artifice--they default to imbecilic psych-babble questions. Like this: "If you could learn one thing, what would it be?" Who fucking cares? This is not interaction. "If you could have one mentor in history, who would it be?" Right. My friends know how much I love the whole mentor-mentee thing. Lots of respect there. I'm not someone you want to be telling about your mentor as someone who believes in actually having ability and who is only going to be looking at you increasingly gimlet-eyed, try as I may not to register molten disgust on my face. Did Keats need a mentor? Did Shakespeare? Van Gogh? Lennon? Do you know why they did not? Because they were actually good at what they did and when you have true talent, you find your own way, and that is the only way it can be; only you--you you you--can unlock and figure out the mysteries of your ability so that it can become the realities of art. "If your cock was in a salad, would it be a radish or a crouton?" I didn't get that one. But it's the same idea. This is all we can manage? Stock flighty questions, like off of some daft personality test? We can't just be real, be human, and have an exchange? Just say something you think or see or feel. And I give you stuff to work with, believe me. No one can do that.
Forty-year-old woman writes me, asks me what I did for Christmas. I don't care if you send the same thing to 3200 people, but make it interesting. Nonetheless, I answered. I said I went to a film and worked on a new short story. She replies, "A film...fancy." Is it? Going to the cinema is fancy? Fucking croutons. My little profile says what my job is. She then asks if I've ever been published. Like, what, that morning? But she doesn't mean that morning. She means in my life. It says my job. Then she asks if I only write short stories. So I know that you are thrice over a moron, and we've only begun. Of course, we have also, at this point, stopped, because I cannot handle anymore.
I'm in a photo with my sister on this app. So I get this: "I have news for you your (sic; of course) rebounding." Oh. Because that must be my girlfriend, and I've slapped a photo of us up on a dating app, 'cause we be needing a third, or else I just cannot recover from the blow of having lost my last GF and I cannot even tell that she's still such a part of my life I stick up photos of her without even noticing it. Look, I'll probably--who I am I kidding; definitely--dole out some lascivious video assignments, but no thirds, and really, what is wrong with you if you can't naturally conclude that that's a friend or a relative? Doesn't that make so much more sense? I get this a lot, from really insecure people, who were obviously cheated on, who now are not just jealous, timid people, but accusatory ones embroiled in a bizarro projection fest.
Do you know what happened to me with the cheating thing? Molly had told me to put my entire life in her hands, including my financial life. To go for what I was going for. She had my entire existence in her control. And she encouraged this. Right down to the last cent. And she was having an affair. And it took four years for us to learn about that. But while she was having it, she created an entire world of lies that took a long time to plan, and she had a team of lawyers, and she destroyed me, and it was worse than Gone Girl, and she took my house, health, everything, while living a double life, so she could get clear of one life and live that other with a man who had no idea, and still has no idea--though the world is going to know, and Many Moments More: A Story About the Art of Endurance will contain all of it--the monstrosity of the creature he is with, and what she did.
And I don't project this shit. I'm not a jealous person. I know whomever else you're on to next is going to be a comedown. They are just going to be an average person, because that's what most people are. And there is not going to be a second of a day, having been in my world, that you do not think of my world, and me. And the loss is ultimately yours. Here, the mere walk across town, to the museum, on a random day such as this, is a life-changing event. You never see the world the same way again. And, ultimately, I'll find what I'm looking for. But seeing a photo of a woman with a male friend? Great. I hope you'd have male friends. I hope you enjoy spending time with them. Do I seem like someone who is threatened by anyone or anything? I know what I am. But I do get this this "Who's the girl?" question a lot. I wasn't expecting to. Why do I have the photo? I don't own a lot of photos. Usually I'm just on my own. And it's a good photo.
