Statues and Miniature Golf

[mallorys_camera]

In the course of a long phone conversation with Clark last night, he made reference to Robert Heinlein's definition of love. It's a good definition so I will repeat it here: Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.

(I think the quotation must be from Stranger In a Strange Land, which is really the only one of Heinlein's novels to deal with interpersonal relationships.)

By that definition, I only love two people: Max and Robin.

And one person loves me: Max.

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Plenty of people like me, though. Meaning they would prefer to see me happy rather than sad.

On Wednesday I met up with BB, and we tromped around a part of Greenpoint we hadn't explored before. Near Box Street, we came upon a vacant lot littered with plaster statues. The statues were really incredible, almost like the frozen victims of Pompei. I couldn't imagine how they had come to be there, why the artist had abandoned them like that – he or she had poured such obvious love into their creation.

You see how the vandals have already tweaked this guy's dick off. Or maybe it was the termites.

This kind of urban exploration, sifting through the garbage and the flowers, is really one of my favorite things in the world to do and BB is the perfect person to do it with. He knows how to annotate.

Back at his flat we ate, we chatted, we got high, he tweaked the computer. He got a sudden leg cramp so I gave him a massage.

BB is a big guy with a heavily muscled back. Bit of a challenge finding those intercostals. I wondered what he would do if all of a sudden I had started tracing his spine with kisses instead of fingers. I wondered if that was really what I wanted to do. Honestly? It didn't say No to me and it didn't say Yes to me. It didn't even say: This will change your relationship. I suspect that if we started having sex, it would be one more thing that we would add to the venue – eating, chatting, getting high, urban exploration, and fucking or sucking or fingering – but that the essence of the relationship would remain the same.

"We have moved into the sibling zone," he laughed. "You know, really, I need to find you a husband."

And I thought: Yes! That's right. I'd like to get married again. I really want one person to be my primary playmate. I want to be tracked. I do not want to negotiate.

BB did something extraordinarily nice for me: He loaned me a computer so I can play video games! Huge 20 inch screen iMac on long-term loan. I was up till three in the morning playing the Sims. I'm breeding my Job so I can torture him with plagues and locusts because Goddam! I am a spiteful and malevolent God.

In other news, I worked out an arrangement with the CA tax crew. I'm going to have to work more to fulfill my end of the bargain. Which hardly seems possible: I work so much already. Except that when I'm working, half the time I'm not working. I'm reading news, I'm chatting or texting with pals, I'm watching other lives scroll across Facebook. Big news there is that the kinda, sorta pal with Stage IV colon cancer has Fallen In Love with a really sweet-faced woman with a luminous countenance. We're talking full-blown romantic LUV here, the kind where invisible rose petals rain down from heaven, the happy couple is encircled by the kind of hush that in nature comes only before a thunderstorm, and great cosmic lessons are learned. I am happy for him, and I hope he doesn't die.

Anyway, I could probably be more productive if I stopped allowing myself to be distracted. At this point I don't think I have another choice, at least for the next few months.

On Sunday, I accompanied the housemates to a concert at a park that doesn't exist according to Google maps. This is the same tyranny that Simon Winchester pointed out about Microsoft Word's dictionary: Power is always most manifest in selection; if the words don't exist in Microsoft Word's dictionary, pretty soon people stop using them and then they really stop existing. If the park doesn't exist in Google Maps, pretty soon people stop going there.

We'd gone to hear the symphonic brass band-cum-orchestra. They mostly did show tunes. It took me three days to get It's a Hard Knock Life out of my head.

The strangest thing about this park was the cluster of what I took to be decorative Halloween gravestones from a distance. I strolled over and they turned into little markers depicting the history of the Universe. Nearby was a booth manned by a nervous guy in over-sized Poindexter spectacles who smiled at me hopefully as I approached.

"What is this?" I asked.

"Well, it's a miniature golf course!" he said.

There was a rack with what looked like croquet mallets but no miniature golf clubs that I could see.

"It's a game," he added helpfully.

"Right. Well. Yes. Miniature golf."

"And you can buy a book too. See? Here's a book that tells all about it."

I'm not sure what this set-up was, some entrepreneurial project gone horribly wrong or an educational project that nobody in the world cared about but Mr. Poindexter. But the little markers were quite charming, and if I'd had my wallet on me, I would have emptied it out and given him the entire $4.37 or whatever it was that stood midway between me, penury and my next paycheck.

Probably a good thing I didn't have my wallet on me.

Comments

[robby.livejournal.com]

You're just living with the wrong tribe.

[ccjohn.livejournal.com]

Never seen anything like that. I get that it opens with a hunting party because life like that, you have to be hunting food almost every second you're awake. But there was one woman, painted red, with the men in the first shot, then we don't see women at all, last minute or two, women mothering kids and staying close to home, that's it. The lack of women is so extreme I can't make sense of it. Hunting party hunting party repeat repeat right got it, wait one girl out with the guys, painted bright red, camera ignores?

Tribe'd be great. I find someone from my tribe, you'll be the first to know. She likes the idea I think, frisson yeah but I'm too unlike anyone not to be somehow lying. It's so much worse. I'm not lying. It'd be a rest. We don't rest much.

[ccjohn.livejournal.com]

Savage irony. It'd mean the most, with her to rest and be a person. We have a unique understanding. No one was supposed to pass the tests. I'm not supposed to be possible. The statue's of us both. The picture here, should be. Sorry Patrizia talking about someone else I know.