Drunk

Yet again.

Oh, bloggers. What to talk about? How about my ability to avoid typos despite intense inebriation? That's always been impressive.

How about my hair? Impressive as well. Quite long. Golden and whatnot. An admirable feature. It keeps me from looking thirteen, so all the better.

My relentless insistence on total anonymity? Impressive yet the more. The very fact that I can be this impaired and write coherently without completely giving myself away seems worthy of a gold medal or something.

I don't really know what else to say. Drunkenness is supposed to yield honestly, right? Well, here it goes:

I'm horny. It's a sad but true fact. In this City of desirable youths, of which I am unquestionably one, I am left hungry. What gives? I'm thin, I'm blonde, my hair could wrap around the Equator, and, what's more, I'm WHITE.

Have you any idea how valuable whiteness is to a young gay man? We're like the Megan Foxes of our demographic.

And nothing.

Woozie remains awesome.

Drunken links are clearly the best.

My name is BB. It's not, but it might as well be.

Fuck, am I drunk.

The City of Fate is a strange place. I wish Woozie were here. I'm really devastatingly lonely from time to time. Only from time to time. My internship helps. Work helps. Networking events, such as the one at which I got hammered tonight, help.

Sometimes I turn myself on. Is that weird?

Sometimes I look in the mirror and see that thin waist and that non-existent stomach and that fresh face and that golden hair and I just go insane. It's the height of narcissism.

Of course, I doubt I could be a true narcissist; I cannot fire myself as others can fire me. It's true.

I don't love Anne. She gave birth to me. If she died tomorrow, I wouldn't care. That may be wrong, but it's true. She's the single most selfish person I know. She was absent. If not for her colossal failures and lack of stability, my parents may not have gotten away with their crimes. I bet that heinous cunt has never thought of that, though.

Bitterness is awkward. I really don't get why I don't disown her.

Woozie just called me a boner face. We're chatting on instant messenger.

Slowly but surely, I'm building something here.

I have to go to bed. Goodnight.

The Audience

It was weird to have them all here at the same time. I was well acquainted with each, of course, in some cases more happily than others, but their personalities and overall temperaments had conspired to keep them from visiting together.

I guess this was one issue where their interests converged.

"I can tell you're feeling it," the brunette standing closest to my kitchen counter smirked. Her deceptively pretty blue-green eyes gleamed from beneath her brown fringe and her lips were contorted in an expression that was more a purse than a smile.

I cast a cold glance at Cruelty, whose designer jeans and fashionably side swept bangs made her all the more contemptible to me.

"I'm not feeling anything," I pronounced.

Her smile became more savage.

"Well, that would be in keeping with what you are, wouldn't it?"

She was taunting me behind her garish makeup. Somehow, being tormented by someone who lacked the ability to properly apply eye shadow was doubly infuriating.

"Oh, honey," she winced. "You're never going to be more than this disease. I figured some time in the real world would be just the thing to show you that."

Her face now arranged itself into a picture of fake sympathy. Of course it was foolish of me to think I could have a normal life. She, who had caused the condition, was just being a good person by reluctantly informing me that I should give up. It really pained her to do so. It was just so necessary.

"Have you thought about killing yourself yet?" she asked brightly. "You know that you're forty times more likely than the average person to do that, right?"

The grin was back, as reptilian as ever. She was goading me.

"You'll remember Misery, of course," she said, gesturing with her hand to the ragged young woman who was sobbing in the corner next to my refrigerator. "I arranged your introduction the day you were born."

Misery and I had, in fact, been acquainted for as long as I could remember. I'd never seen her face, though. I didn't know if she had one. Hers was always a variation of the same pose: huddled over, her alleged visage buried in her knees, weeping.

"Why did you do it?" I asked Cruelty. I was trying to hide my emotion, for whatever front I put on for her the truth was that I had been feeling everything lately. It played heavily on my mind.

"Well," she said, once again with the air of a wise person who must explain an unfortunate fact to an inferior. "Some people just don't deserve anything but shit. And you're one of them. I could see that even then."

Her face was so animated as she spoke the toxic words that I wanted to bash her skull in.

"It was mean," I declared.

She threw back her head and cackled.

"Oh, 'mean?'" This seemed to supremely amuse her. "Was it 'mean?'"

She wiped the tears from her eyes and threw me a pitying look that did not quite conceal her vindictive pleasure. It was a funny joke that I, of course, just lacked the capacity to understand. Poor, stupid BB. In that instant she reminded me a great deal of my mother.

"You have a little boy's mind to go along with a little boy's body," she exulted. "Maybe that's why real men just aren't interested and you'll never have anybody. Unless you want to let your neighbor the pedophile have another crack at you."

"I think I'll be fine, thanks," I managed with as much dignity as I could muster.

"Oh, but you won't be fine," she smiled broadly. "That's the beauty of it. You'll never actually be fine. How long do you think you can really go on before you end it?"

She looked at the other individuals in the room.

"You see, the condition itself isn't terminal," she projected, speaking as much to them as to me. "A neat little gem I concocted. It destroys absolutely everything but can't actually kill you."

Her voice went husky as she turned with satisfaction back to me.

"I can think of no purer definition of Hell."

I looked at her in defiance.

"If Hell is measured in orders of tacky mascara, then I can think of a much purer definition," I said. "And we're in the seventh circle."

The old man standing by the sink suppressed a chuckle that Cruelty stared down with a murderous glare.

"Laugh away, Fate," she hissed. "I'll have my way with this adolescent yet and you'll help me do it."

Her fierce face turned to me.

"You are a stupid invalid who no one will ever love," she said. "Who the fuck did you think you were by coming here? Do you think you deserve any of this?"

She swept her hands in the air, indicating not only my apartment, but, I knew, my internship, my prospective job, my friends, and every bit of happiness I'd managed to achieve.

"Honestly," she continued. "Do you think you'll get to keep it?"

My chest burned as I leaned forward and sank my eyes into hers.

"Listen to me you worthless cunt," I fumed. "I don't think I'll keep it. I know. No matter what you try to throw at me, no matter how hard you make it, you will fail. Now get the fuck out of my apartment."

The teal of her irises gleamed with liquid fire as she backed away.

"And take her with you," I spat in the direction of Misery. "She has no place here."

Cruelty turned to me, her face a grimace of anger.

"I'll be back for you," she growled. "I'm taking you one way or another."

With that she turned and stalked down the hall. Misery alighted from the floor with a shriek as Cruelty's hand caught her unkempt hair and dragged her from the room.

The three of us remaining in the kitchen were deathly silent as the front door slammed and the two wretched beings stormed down the stairs. After several wordless moments Fate turned to me.

"BB, I--"

I cut him off with a raised hand.

"No," said. I could tell that my eyes were wide with fury. "No. Just leave."

Fate was rarely flummoxed and usually brushed off my admonitions for him to go, but something about me that day silenced him at once. He nodded and backed straight through a third-floor window.

There was just me and one other now, all alone.

I turned toward the west-facing window as she approached and put her hand on my shoulder. I waited for her to say that everything was going to be alright but she'd never been one to lie, and certainly not to me. Her fingers were tender on my collar. The sun was so bright.

"Do you think he'll help her?" I asked finally.

She hesitated.

"I don't know," she answered after a moment. "He might not have a choice."

I turned around and looked into her face.

"Why not?" I wanted to know. "Why can't he fight back?"

Good sighed and brushed a blonde lock away from her face. She looked wearier every time I saw her.

"Don't be too hard on Fate," she said. "He has a more difficult job than anyone realizes. You don't know how often he has to do things he hates."

"Good, I need to know something, and you have to be honest with me."

She smiled. It was her way of saying, I always have been, which she was too polite to actually say.

I took a deep breath.

"Do I have a chance?"

Her expression grew resolute.

"You have a chance," she said. "You have more than a chance. Just keep fighting. Always keep fighting."

She ran a finger down my cheek.

"And don't ever let yourself turn into her."

"I never will," I promised.

We sat there together for a very long time. I thought about how beautiful the sun was and wondered if she was thinking the same thing.

In the City of Fate

I am aware that I lead a strange life in many ways.

Most people do not, for instance, pack up a bag of clothing and head out to a strange city they've only visited twice before. Most people do not, upon their arrival in that city, begin an internship at a prestigious literary agency, start work at a movie theater, embark on a search for a guitarist, and commence fielding prospective employment opportunities from advertising agencies. None of it is that weird where I'm concerned, though.

These are just the kind of things that happen to me.

One month into my stay in the City of Fate my journey has branched out in several directions, some of them unexpected. My time at Book Agency is going well, or at least I imagine it is. It's kind of hard to tell, really; Literary Agent is either more abrupt or less socially conscious than I anticipated, and his lack of feedback on assignments has been a source of frustration to me and the other intern working under him. At points I've asked specifically for clarification and on more than one occasion gotten snappy with him in response to his misinterpreting me.

While the more seasoned professionals among you may deem such conduct to be inadvisable, he seems to enjoy it on some level. One of the first things he told me when I came on was that I mustn't be afraid to push back at him.

He really had my number when he mused, "Somehow, I don't think that's going to be a problem with you."

Literary Agent continues to accept materials from me without comment, but he also continues to send me boatloads of manuscripts while burying the other intern, Sun Dress Girl, in marketing research. I am taking this, optimistically, to mean that he trusts my judgement with regard to literature. The only time he tends to voice any opinion at all is when he has a significant objection.

"Okay," he responded to a letter I recently wrote beseeching a famous actor to write a memoir and then let the Book Agency represent it. "This is way too bland. Give me specifics: why does the world need to hear this story?"

In these rare moments of criticism Literary Agent is blunt without being rude, and so at present I'm content to plug away and hope I'm moving in the right direction.

Of late, my efforts to perform well at the Book Agency have been distracted by my exertions in another profession: sweeping.

I receive a great deal of personal satisfaction from my work at the Book Agency but I do not, sadly, receive any money and so have been obliged to seek sustenance elsewhere. The effort to find work, carried out as it was in the nation's largest city, proved more difficult I imagined, and my initial inability to land a job nearly resulted in my returning to Southern State early. After about a month of searching, however, I was able to secure employment in, of all places, a movie theater.



Those of you who are longtime readers will remember that I worked in Western City Movie Theater, an establishment near Mountain Town, for nearly two years. It seemed to make sense that, when in pursuit of easy labor and quick money, I would turn here to a movie theater as well.

Mid-Island Movie Theater is populated by people of the same age as those in Western City Movie Theater, though the general hue is somewhat darker and the attitude more gregarious. That's something I've noticed since coming here: for all the good press that the South gets about its hospitality, I have found people in the North to, on the whole, be better mannered, more courteous, and more familiar with the basic rules of civility than their Southern counterparts. The people here are nicer.

One excellent way to gauge this is to examine how those individuals in a socially superior position treat those in a socially inferior position. During my time at Western City Movie Theater I experienced some truly audacious handling from patrons who knew no demographic commonality; from semi-literate rednecks to insufferable nouveau riche professionals, each group seemed to have a set of representatives united only in their entitlement and rudeness. By contrast, most of the people I've seen here have demonstrated a surprising amount of maturity.

If there is a line, they wait in it. They don't berate some helpless underage employee with their idiotic whining, because they know that the staff are working their hardest and that complaining won't speed anything up. When they are helped, they express gratitude. When asked how they are doing, they engage (as opposed to simply ignoring the greeting and intoning the name of the movie they're seeing, which is how I once got "Drag Me to Hell" in response to "How are you?").

All of this leads me to believe that we've overindulged Middle America. Everyone, from elected officials to movie studios to television networks to pop singers, has pandered to these people, and the objects of the fawning have become the cultural equivalent of spoiled children as a result. I've never been one for corporal punishment, but if it were up to me we would correct these infants with a heavy hand.

Whether the customers I interact with are courteous or not, the money I'm receiving from the Mid-Island Movie Theater should prove helpful in paying my rent, which I became responsible for on June 15th.

After two weeks of sleeping on Gay Writer's couch, I moved my things in the middle of June to the apartment one floor down that had been vacated when its owners embarked on a six-month trip to Africa.

I knew the place was nice by City of Fate standards, but didn't become aware of just how true that was until I hosted a friend this afternoon.

"Holy shit!" she exclaimed when she walked through the door. "This is huge!"



"Really?" I laughed. I had no basis for comparison.

"Yeah," she said. "How much is the rent?"

The actual rent is $2,500.00, but what I'm paying, thanks to a deal negotiated by Gay Writer, is $600.00.

I like it well enough.

I have a spacious living room (with eminent furnishings that have given me an unearned reputation for good taste), a full kitchen, a bathroom, a master bedroom with perhaps the softest bed that has ever existed, a washer and dryer for convenient laundry, and a guest room for when I host.

At first, lonely in a new city and intimidated by having so much space to myself, I was loath to leave my neighbors' couch. Almost immediately upon moving into my new quarters, however, I began to appreciate the benefits that solitary living offered. For one thing, the perennial feeling of awkwardness I'd had upstairs was gone; the Runner and Gay Writer welcomed me into their home without reservation, but when you don't go out because you have no friends you begin to feel like a third wheel in a married couple's house. Another plus is my ability to make my own schedule. Up until the move, I was cautious at night, timidly quiet lest I should wake anyone. Now I stay up until all hours, typing away on my keyboard, watching movies, making food, and even occasionally doing vocal exercises (something I indulged in several nights ago at the strident time of 2:30a.m.).

My departure is probably for the best on several counts. Gay Writer got a bit too friendly for comfort one night, attempting to make a move on me while his husband lay asleep down the hall. He then justified the conduct by telling me I was "just a boy," informed me that there was a "difference between love and sex," and explained that while he might be gay he was "still a man."

It was all quite charming.



In the meantime, this apartment will be mine until the middle of August and possibly even longer.

Before I wrote professional opportunities off during my job application blitz I sent in materials to an advertising agency. I dismissed the possibility of employment there when I didn't hear back from them for several weeks, but about a month following my initial e-mail, after I'd already started at Mid-Island Movie Theater, I received a message from the company inviting me to call them. When I did, the greeting given me was enthusiastic.

"Hey, I was really impressed by your samples and cover letter," a company official told me. "We're looking for someone to serve as a full-time copywriter and we'd be pretty negotiable on giving you a salary that's enough to live off of in the City of Fate."

My interview is on Tuesday. Depending on how that goes, I might not be leaving in August after all.

You Have Seen Nothing

You have seen nothing until you've seen a homeless man ask a subway passenger for change and then indignantly bang on the wall beside the passenger's head when he realized the man was asleep.

You have seen nothing until you've seen this same homeless man, with an air of supreme entitlement, request money from the startled passenger.

You have seen nothing until you've seen the homeless man's irritation, as if the passenger had been wasting his time by daring to sleep when the homeless man was petitioning for funds.

You have seen nothing until you've seen a homeless man, angry that he could not reap the fruits of someone else's labor, exit the train in a huff.