In Which the Drum Monkey Tries For an Assignation With the Fabulous Erica

I do like this photo. So... vaginal, as if he's sliding down the birth canal, fully formed and all grown up.

Max turns 24 today. Happy birthday to someone whose existence is a gift to the world, and sure I'm his mother, but you know what? It happens to be true

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When I say, “I’ve done nothing all day,” I mean that literally. I was housebound due to the storm which dropped about eight inches of snow slowly and relentlessly throughout the day. No use wasting taxpayer money on snowplows till it stopped, right? Which it didn’t do till around 6pm. Upshot is that I couldn’t walk anywhere, I couldn’t drive anywhere and I got bad cabin fever.

I have a shitload of work to do. Didn’t do any of it. Instead I brooded about Erica, my tai kwon do instructor, glacial, elegant, blonde. Mistress to a famous billionaire.

At one point in my life, I could have petitioned her like a saint or a queen. “Erica,” I could have said, “Tell me what to do. I’m a wind up toy, a tin monkey beating a tin drum. I’ve hit the brick wall and I don’t know how to turn around.”

Can’t do that now though.

Until last year I would have assumed I could do it. But last year taught me my position in people’s hearts is not inviolate.

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First part of the week was good, and then I just sort of… bottomed out. Not sure why. Some possibilities:

Wayne is moving to NYC for a job. I will miss him a lot, I realized, his astringent sensibility with that waft of green apples. The endless movie deconstructions. The jokes.

It’s back to the well on the dating and romance thing, assuming I even want to continue the dating and romance thing. Haven’t talked to the philosophy professor since Valentine’s Day. We had a pleasant time but I haven’t felt the urge to call him since and apparently neither has he. This whole Internet dating just feels wrong, wrong, wrong. Why can’t I meet people the way I used to, by drifting into the periphery of their lives in a cloud of casual acquaintance? Then one day you exchange quips and you think, Damn! This person is interesting. You follow up and before you know it, bam! you're in like or in love.

Had an unfortunate – well. I wouldn’t exactly call it a romantic encounter though I’d found the guy attractive. Until he said something so utterly boorish and insensitive to me that the scales fell from my eyes. Huh! I’m invisible to him, I’m a walking, talking Kleenex. Bud nipped – snip! Emotions weren’t hurt but my vanity sustained a slight owie -- not an entirely a bad thing, of course.

None of these three things in themselves, or even cumulatively, would have made me feel this bad. I think the mood had more to do with the fact that all week long I’ve been avoiding doing any kind of meaningful work. Fucking off like this is gonna bite me in the ass sooner or later. I should care – but it’s a kind of drifty, dreamy fatalism and passivity. I’m floating towards that maelstrom. Erica could help me plot an escape, but she's unavailable. I suppose I should learn to channel my inner Erica, like Giulietta Massina summoning Susie in Giulietta degli Spiriti...

Ima hafta shovel a shitload of snow first thing in the morning. Sigh...