Showing posts with label masturbation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label masturbation. Show all posts
Monday, October 4, 2010
The Porning of Sweet with Fall and Fish Part 2: The AVN Show
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Thursday, September 23, 2010
Someone Left the Treehouse in the Rain
If you don’t remember the move from separation to singledom, let me remind you that the three-week cleanup of the Treehouse was complicated by a leaking roof. Perhaps it’s appropriate that on the way from singledom to cohabiting, the leak has returned.
Before going to Orlando to celebrate Dylan’s birthday, I called the landlord’s son to let him know the closet was leaking again. At that point, it was a small drip, avoidable by scrunching my clothes to the side and putting a bucket down. After ten days of back and forth, the roof became about as effective as swiss cheese.
The kitchen ceiling also leaks from several spots. The sound of dripping water is so loud, it wakes me at night. Of course it keeps me up, but that’s not what I mean. I’m saying I finally manage to drop off despite the wet stench of the place and the frustration of having everything I own piled into half of a tiny studio, and the sound of rain inside the house is loud enough to wake me.
The house was built in 1925; it needs a new roof, not more handyman patch jobs. That’s the minimum which needs to happen to make the place livable, and my landlord could pay for it with by selling the Escalade he drives in Miami (he lives in San Bernardino, CA) or the chunk of gold around his wrist. Meanwhile, I no longer feel safe in my own home. I’m sleeping with a bat near my bed. I know that makes no sense – what am I going to do, beat the water to death? – but it helps me get a few fitful hours of rest.
Oh, and stop charging the poor woman who just moved in below me rent. All that water flows downward, you know.
Before going to Orlando to celebrate Dylan’s birthday, I called the landlord’s son to let him know the closet was leaking again. At that point, it was a small drip, avoidable by scrunching my clothes to the side and putting a bucket down. After ten days of back and forth, the roof became about as effective as swiss cheese.
My clothes, shoes, and spare linens have been removed from the closet, where mold grows luxuriantly in the back corner and water trickles from several spots. The closet fixtures I purchased and installed are now rife with mold.
The kitchen ceiling also leaks from several spots. The sound of dripping water is so loud, it wakes me at night. Of course it keeps me up, but that’s not what I mean. I’m saying I finally manage to drop off despite the wet stench of the place and the frustration of having everything I own piled into half of a tiny studio, and the sound of rain inside the house is loud enough to wake me.
If you’ll remember, the water damage in the kitchen is not new. Clearly, the prior tenant experienced similar problems, as the new wall panels and rusted drip pans on the oven can attest. And their realtor has the nerve to call me and ask what the landlord can do to keep me from moving out.
The house was built in 1925; it needs a new roof, not more handyman patch jobs. That’s the minimum which needs to happen to make the place livable, and my landlord could pay for it with by selling the Escalade he drives in Miami (he lives in San Bernardino, CA) or the chunk of gold around his wrist. Meanwhile, I no longer feel safe in my own home. I’m sleeping with a bat near my bed. I know that makes no sense – what am I going to do, beat the water to death? – but it helps me get a few fitful hours of rest.
1200 Wallace Street in Coral Gables, FL, 33134, reeks of mold and festering water damage. It’s August in Miami, but I’ve opened the windows to let the stench escape. Since it’s rainy season, the ceiling never stops dripping. The water went from brown to white, laced with glue from the tar paper the well-meaning, ineffective handyman keeps layering up there.
There’s no Becky. I can barely stand the conditions here myself, and I’m not about to subject her to them. We’re getting through this because we know we’ll share a home soon, and we’ll be able to discover each-other all over. I can’t masturbate, even though I’ve got all the makings of a first-rate prison fantasy. You know the one, where I’m a guard at a women’s prison? That’s caged heat, baby. The dripping water, the smell, it’s like special effects. When it rains, I can imagine Becky and I getting hot and heavy on the front porch of some tropical hut during a rainstorm. But there’s no way to reconcile disgust and self-lust, so even that momentary peace is lost to me.
Now I’m run down and feverish just when I need to be packing up. Ever cleaned your dishes in the bathroom sink, rinsed them in the shower, and dried them in your living room, while running a fever, as roofing glue drips down your neck? It’s exactly as fun as it sounds.
Mr. Rojas, the keys to your Escalade wouldn’t get me to stay in this dank hole another day. If you have an ounce of humanity, you will replace the roof before you give the key to the Treehouse to some other poor sap.
Oh, and stop charging the poor woman who just moved in below me rent. All that water flows downward, you know.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Rent to Own
I’ve been a renter since I left my parents home at the age of nineteen. My Aunt Jeri rented her apartment in Syracuse before moving back to the reservation. She had nothing to show for paying forty years of rent, and she upbraids me for renting from time to time.
When I ask friends who own houses and condos what they pay monthly on their mortgages, it’s always a fraction of my rent. I know I’m making fiscally unsound choices, but try coming up with a 10% deposit on a house, or 30% deposit on a condo (chuckleheads with homes have prevented me from getting one of my own because of their stupid choices; Florida homeowners tried to use condos as income-generating second properties during the housing boom, then defaulted on their loans in droves, so banks require 30% of the selling price to buy a condo; 10% on what a condo costs is feasible, but when I learned banks want 30%, I stopped saving; if I had 30% of what a condo costs, I’d use it for 10% down on a house; now for the end of a sentence interrupted so long ago, you forgot the beginning) on a bookseller’s salary.
There’s freedom in renting. If the air conditioning breaks, you call the landlord and he or she has it fixed. If a hurricane destroys your apartment, you rent another that’s still standing. If the roof leaks… well, never mind.
As a renter, you can bob and weave. I’ve experienced Miami in the peripherals of Kendall, the very heart, and now the Spanish garden that is Coral Gables. I’ve always wanted to know what it feels like to wake up, take a walk, and do yoga on the beach. I haven’t made it to Miami Beach yet, but who knows what could happen down the road?
Renting also comes with a number of perks. You get the voyeuristic, felonious thrill of opening mail for people who aren’t you. You get to play detective with carpet stains. You get to find layers of paint around electrical outlets and speculate on the previous tenant’s design choices.
You also get neighbors living in much closer proximity than with a house, folks with whom you’re not obligated to actually speak. Get into a volume war with every sound system in your complex, because at least your music doesn’t suck. Hack into your neighbor’s wireless internet connection without worrying about the signal strength, and do it guilt-free. Masturbate to the sound of your neighbors fucking and imagine they are gorgeous supermodels because you’ll never have to see them.
Oh, it’s a glamorous life, my friends. But please, home owners, don’t be jealous. After all, you get to fix your own plumbing problems.
When I ask friends who own houses and condos what they pay monthly on their mortgages, it’s always a fraction of my rent. I know I’m making fiscally unsound choices, but try coming up with a 10% deposit on a house, or 30% deposit on a condo (chuckleheads with homes have prevented me from getting one of my own because of their stupid choices; Florida homeowners tried to use condos as income-generating second properties during the housing boom, then defaulted on their loans in droves, so banks require 30% of the selling price to buy a condo; 10% on what a condo costs is feasible, but when I learned banks want 30%, I stopped saving; if I had 30% of what a condo costs, I’d use it for 10% down on a house; now for the end of a sentence interrupted so long ago, you forgot the beginning) on a bookseller’s salary.
There’s freedom in renting. If the air conditioning breaks, you call the landlord and he or she has it fixed. If a hurricane destroys your apartment, you rent another that’s still standing. If the roof leaks… well, never mind.
As a renter, you can bob and weave. I’ve experienced Miami in the peripherals of Kendall, the very heart, and now the Spanish garden that is Coral Gables. I’ve always wanted to know what it feels like to wake up, take a walk, and do yoga on the beach. I haven’t made it to Miami Beach yet, but who knows what could happen down the road?
Renting also comes with a number of perks. You get the voyeuristic, felonious thrill of opening mail for people who aren’t you. You get to play detective with carpet stains. You get to find layers of paint around electrical outlets and speculate on the previous tenant’s design choices.
You also get neighbors living in much closer proximity than with a house, folks with whom you’re not obligated to actually speak. Get into a volume war with every sound system in your complex, because at least your music doesn’t suck. Hack into your neighbor’s wireless internet connection without worrying about the signal strength, and do it guilt-free. Masturbate to the sound of your neighbors fucking and imagine they are gorgeous supermodels because you’ll never have to see them.
Oh, it’s a glamorous life, my friends. But please, home owners, don’t be jealous. After all, you get to fix your own plumbing problems.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Happens Every Day
I’ve just finished reading Happens Every Day by Isabel Gillies. Check this out:
“Josiah made me feel badly about our fights. And I did feel badly that we fought, but I also thought it was explainable.”
Gillies didn’t feel bad; she felt badly, indicating not negative emotions but that the mechanism which allows her to feel is broken. Including this “and,” she also began three sentences with conjunctions in one paragraph. I know, I know - writers bend this rule for emphasis and style. But come on.
“Professors may get paid well under a hundred grand a year,” Gillies writes, “but if you take advantage of the little perks here and there you start not to feel so bad about that number.” She had referenced salaries in the sixties and seventies a few times earlier in the book, but this line stuck in my craw. She also puffs herself and her Oberlin, Ohio neighbors up for not having “help” in the form of nannies, cooks, and cleaning women (which she admits they would if they’d stayed in New York City) as though they deserve medals.
“As we passed the airport in Cleveland…the DVD player that was built into the car went dead. Lots of people, parents of young children especially, when they read this might call out aloud, ‘Go to the nearest Wal-Mart and buy a $120 DVD player!!!’”
Actually, those of us who grew up sleeping six to a bed on holidays and tumbling around in vinyl backseats on five-hour drives to our nearest relatives on a regular basis thought, “Wow, your car has a built-in DVD player?” Followed quickly by, “Don’t you know any freaking car games? Because my parents sure did!!!”
According to John Dufresne, you get “maybe three” exclamation points in your career; Isabel Gillies used all of them in that one sentence. I used my three to illustrate how annoying I found her sentence.
But Gillies also has an endearing, self-deprecating wit. She gives her husband a long speech trying to reconcile things, a series of choppy sentences expressing her feelings, then she writes, “I wish sometimes I could just say one or two knockout sentences instead of twenty mediocre ones, but it’s how God made me.”
I picked up a memoir about a dissolving marriage knowing it would call up emotions I’d have a hard time facing, so why was I focusing so much on our class differences? Why did I pick her grammatical choices to pieces? It was easier to ridicule and distance myself from this woman than to admit that she’d written some of the most painful, intimate details of my heart.
I don’t have children, so I can’t know how it feels when the other half of your child rips away. But I know how it feels to love someone until it overflows from your pores, to be so toppled by someone’s brilliance that their thoughts and opinions shape everything in your life, to be so deeply happy that you can’t believe your luck. I know how it feels when that leaves.
Izzle wrote about the panic. She explored the helplessness. The dizzying speed with which it happens and the indifference of the turning world. She talked about life losing its context, about trying to find happiness and beauty in the tiniest things, about throwing herself on the mercy of her friends.
Exactly.
You think you’re done with the pain, that you’ve gone through it and come out stronger. Then you realize you are still going through it.
Losing context; that’s stuck with me the most.
I recently talked with Becky about the five things which most define me. A year ago, I had my list ready. Writer. Male. Mixed-Race. Lover. I felt the thing which most defined me was “Husband.” Without that, I’ve floundered to find who I am. I'm still Mixed-Race, but does it come before Writer or after? I’m not sure. I’m still a man, too. After those three… American? Divorcee? Survivor? Chronic Masturbator? Avid flosser?
Becky worries about the rekindling of something between my ex and me. I worry whether this new version of me will share my values and beliefs. It's a very odd feeling, realizing you don't trust yourself.
“Josiah made me feel badly about our fights. And I did feel badly that we fought, but I also thought it was explainable.”
Gillies didn’t feel bad; she felt badly, indicating not negative emotions but that the mechanism which allows her to feel is broken. Including this “and,” she also began three sentences with conjunctions in one paragraph. I know, I know - writers bend this rule for emphasis and style. But come on.
“Professors may get paid well under a hundred grand a year,” Gillies writes, “but if you take advantage of the little perks here and there you start not to feel so bad about that number.” She had referenced salaries in the sixties and seventies a few times earlier in the book, but this line stuck in my craw. She also puffs herself and her Oberlin, Ohio neighbors up for not having “help” in the form of nannies, cooks, and cleaning women (which she admits they would if they’d stayed in New York City) as though they deserve medals.
“As we passed the airport in Cleveland…the DVD player that was built into the car went dead. Lots of people, parents of young children especially, when they read this might call out aloud, ‘Go to the nearest Wal-Mart and buy a $120 DVD player!!!’”
Actually, those of us who grew up sleeping six to a bed on holidays and tumbling around in vinyl backseats on five-hour drives to our nearest relatives on a regular basis thought, “Wow, your car has a built-in DVD player?” Followed quickly by, “Don’t you know any freaking car games? Because my parents sure did!!!”
According to John Dufresne, you get “maybe three” exclamation points in your career; Isabel Gillies used all of them in that one sentence. I used my three to illustrate how annoying I found her sentence.
But Gillies also has an endearing, self-deprecating wit. She gives her husband a long speech trying to reconcile things, a series of choppy sentences expressing her feelings, then she writes, “I wish sometimes I could just say one or two knockout sentences instead of twenty mediocre ones, but it’s how God made me.”
I picked up a memoir about a dissolving marriage knowing it would call up emotions I’d have a hard time facing, so why was I focusing so much on our class differences? Why did I pick her grammatical choices to pieces? It was easier to ridicule and distance myself from this woman than to admit that she’d written some of the most painful, intimate details of my heart.
I don’t have children, so I can’t know how it feels when the other half of your child rips away. But I know how it feels to love someone until it overflows from your pores, to be so toppled by someone’s brilliance that their thoughts and opinions shape everything in your life, to be so deeply happy that you can’t believe your luck. I know how it feels when that leaves.
Izzle wrote about the panic. She explored the helplessness. The dizzying speed with which it happens and the indifference of the turning world. She talked about life losing its context, about trying to find happiness and beauty in the tiniest things, about throwing herself on the mercy of her friends.
Exactly.
You think you’re done with the pain, that you’ve gone through it and come out stronger. Then you realize you are still going through it.
Losing context; that’s stuck with me the most.
I recently talked with Becky about the five things which most define me. A year ago, I had my list ready. Writer. Male. Mixed-Race. Lover. I felt the thing which most defined me was “Husband.” Without that, I’ve floundered to find who I am. I'm still Mixed-Race, but does it come before Writer or after? I’m not sure. I’m still a man, too. After those three… American? Divorcee? Survivor? Chronic Masturbator? Avid flosser?
Becky worries about the rekindling of something between my ex and me. I worry whether this new version of me will share my values and beliefs. It's a very odd feeling, realizing you don't trust yourself.
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