Pussy Monster

My sister Caroline graduated from Bronx High School of Science last week. They had a big (700 kids or sommat) ceremony that mom and dad and I went to over at Avery Fisher Hall, and Ira Glass gave the commencement speech. Don't be afraid to do something besides what your parents want you to do, he said, but be sensitive to the fact that this may hurt their feelings. The principal of Bronx Science gave several mini-speeches, mentioning in all of them how many doors the Bronx Science name would open for its graduates, which left me a little cold. "That woman," my mom whispered to me, "is a real bitch." All in all, though, the whole thing, with people waxing earnest about the joys of book learnin' and achievement, made me kind of wistful and wish I'd, you know, engaged a bit more in high school. But Caroline looked like she was having a fun time, and after the ceremony, she headed off to do fun things with her graduated peers.

Over dinner for Fathers Day at Jane, she told me she'd gone to a Lil' Wayne concert, thus further demonstrating that she is way cooler than I ever was. "He's really weird and kind of scary on stage," she said. "He wears all these chains and he's covered in tattoos. And there's this song he does that's not an any album called 'The Pussy Monster.' It's not even a song, it's just him whispering into the microphone. Look it up on YouTube."

I did. Here it is.

On a related note, Nina and I were woken up last weekend by at 2:30 AM by someone outside playing a song, super loud, on their car stereo, called "Money Make Me Come" (by Rick Ross -- I looked it up the next morning based on my recollection of the lyrics:

I needs a real bitch
365
Let her count the cheese
Let her see the pies

). That happens fairly frequently on my block, for some reason -- I fall asleep to the murmurings of the kids on the stoop downstairs and then at just the wrong hour of morning someone'll just really crank the Soulja Boy, waking me (and everyone else on the block, I'm guessing) up startled and annoyed. And it's usually just one, song mind you, as if the rest of album can be enjoyed at normal volume, but this single, man, this one's got to go to eleven.

The next morning we headed down to Coney Island to see the Mermaid Parade. Nina'd been before, but I hadn't, and I guess I was kind of expecting a real bacchanal. It turned out to be pretty tame. Sure, there were some titties out, and the amount of greasepaint and sequins some of the paraders were wearing was impressive considering the heat, but the majority of costumes were underwhelming -- eyepatches and bandanas ruled the day. So after a few minutes of gawking, we took a turn onto Ocean Av. and went to go check out the Aquarium.

You may not know this, babies, but the summer after 10th grade, I worked the shark tank down there on weekdays in order to satisfy the Brick Prison's community service requirements. It was actually a pretty blissful experience -- light years better than having to schlep meals to loathsome, racist senior citizens, e.g., which was one of the other jobs I tried briefly -- usually just me in the damp, cool darkness of the shark enclosure, watching the beasts swim by oblivious to me. Occasionally a troop of camp kids (developmentally disabled, more often than not) would march in and I'd give them a spiel of trivia ("Did you know there are sharks swimming around right now off the coast of Coney Island?"), but mostly I could just sit and read by the unearthly light of the water. My favorite part of the job, though, was manning the "touch tank," which I got to a couple times a week, because you got to get all up in the grilles of some horseshoe crabs. Those things are weird.

So Nina and I visited the shark tank, which clearly hadn't seen any renovation in the last decade -- same pieces missing from the sort-of-pathetic mechanical-interactive displays mounted on the slatted wooden walls. And then we ate some sort of gross museum food (the fish-and-chips called to mind the winners of the "Darkest Fish" awards) and visited this fancy new jellyfish exhibit they've got set up.

The real highlight, though, was what we saw on the way out -- the been a baby walrus born the summer before, and the aquarium was still hyping it (possibly on account of both the parents having been raised entirely in captivity). The thing was still pretty much a baby. It was a warm afternoon -- close to closing time -- and it and its mother were sort of spooning on a flat rock in their little enclosure, both of them amorphous and glossy and cafe-au-lait-colored. In the adjacent areas, a couple of penguins got chased around the rocks by an ornery seagull and an otter did some anxious-looking somersaults, but we were transfixed by the two whiskered, slumbering blobs. Over some rocks to the right, the father walrus was also sleeping, but alone and fitfully, tossing around and kind of rubbing at his face with his flippers as if swatting away flies. "Wake up!" a little kid kept hollering at him, but he didn't stir. We left and took a walk on the beach, down to the freezing water. A few mermaids with stamina were still milling around outside Ruby's (which seemed to have recovered quickly from its little problem with collapsing bathrooms).

The next day, we read on Gothamist that the dad walrus had died that night! No joke -- apparently he'd been suffering from a serious and unexpected bacterial infection for the preceding week. His fussing over his face could have been some kind of death agony, and we couldn't tell! Mayhap Nina and I were some of the last to see Ayveq The Masturbating Walrus alive.

More news: Nina's going to the Brazilian rain forest for a month at the end of next week. She'd been planning to do some kind of study-abroad program this summer through this environmental program at Columbia called CERC that does a bunch of different projects at a number of locations around the world, and what ended up working the best, date-wise, was going to the fuckin' jungle. (I think it's also definitely the coolest option.) She's been buying gear for her trip and fretting over tropical diseases for the past month. I think it's going to be swell, although just between you and me, hogosphere, the rain forest does sound a little a-scary.

I'm going to be joining her in the middle of August, though, for a week of post-rain forest chillaxing in Buenos Aires. I'm a little anxious, to be honest, even though it's not my first trip off-continent -- it'll be the longest non-stop flight I've ever taken, and have you looked at a map of Argentina? It's practically the fucking south pole! Does it feel different down there, like you're going to fall off the world? Nonetheless, people live there, I'm told, and apparently Buenos Aires has the highest concentration of psychiatrists in the world (more than New York? Really?), so I'm sure I'll make it out in one piece. I've already had my shots (hepatitis and typhoid) over at the travel medicine clinic in Hell's Kitchen. I asked the doctor administering them if I should get the yellow fever one, too, in case Nina'd been exposed before meeting up with me. "No," he said, in an accent that actually sounded kind of Argentinian. "Is not possible to get yellow fever from another person. But your girlfriend, she got the vaccine, yes? Yellow fever is quite serious."

"It's one of the hemorrhagic fevers," I said, "right?"

"Yes," he said. "There are many hemorrhagic fevers: Dengue, yellow fever; Marburg and Ebola, of course; and Kyasanur [Forest disease]."

More on that as it develops.

Last night after work Peter and I went to The Annex to see Freezepop, who were playing with a bunch of bands I'd never heard of. That's always confused me about Freezepop -- how do they land really catchy songs in two (or is it three) smash hit rock and roll video games but still manage to not be popular or successful? I mean, you know, The Annex, for fuck's sake. Here's why: They're not that great a band. The lady can't really sing, and she looks like Elaine Benes when she's bopping around on stage; maybe the two dudes can play their instruments really well, but it's sort of hard to tell, because the instruments are toys. "They're just playing with toys on stage," I whispered to Peter. "Is what he's doing on that keyboard hard?"

"No," said Peter. "Not particularly."

Still, the crowd was really enthusiastic (except for a few cynics by the bar who kept hollering at them to end their set) and they do have some pretty exciting songs that can't be spoiled by giggly, indistinct vocals.

Today I decided I was finally going to make it to a Titus Andronicus show -- I'd been meaning to see them for months now, but something always got in the way of me getting to their shows. They were scheduled to play two shows today, though, one in the evening at some place deep in North Brooklyn that I wasn't even tryin' to go to, but one in the middle of the afternoon at tis amphitheater in East River Park, which I hadn't ever been to. The organization sponsoring the event, the East River Music Project, wouldn't tell me where the place was, but a hasty googling revealed it to be near Grand St. and the FDR Drive, so I grabbed my laptop (something to do on the train) and headed into the city. It was a significant hike from the station to the East River, and when I got to the footbridge over the FDR, I couldn't see any thing resembling an amphitheater anywhere in sight. Since there were some industrial-looking buildings directly to the south, I decided to hoof it north towards the greener-looking bits, but after about twenty minutes of walking past ballfield after ballfield, I realized I had no idea where the place was. Plus, I reasoned, the show was probably over and the humidity was making me feel kind of sick; best to head back to the train. As I walked back to Grand, a light rain started to fall, which was nice. When I got back to the bridge, though, I heard the sounds of electric guitar -- it turns out the amphitheater was a block south of where I'd started from, just over the crest of a small, dome-obscuring hill.

The assembled crowd was sort of sparse, but Titus Andronicus were on stage and rocking out. I think I'd missed most of their set. It was starting to rain harder, and some of the less hardcore audience members were shuffling into the cover of the trees. "So, uh, how much do you guys hate this?" asked Liam Betson (who looks a lot like Evan Harper). "'Cuz we were gonna do two more, but it could be, like, one short one and one medium one, or, uh, two short ones." Applause and clapping, unclear for which option. They launched into their signature, eponymous song. Liam sings (and plays harmonica) while holding a cigarette, which is pretty neat. Towards the end of the song, he climbs one of the amp stacks, which is covered in a slippery-wet blue tarp, and leaps back onto the stage, a move befitting a crowd of more than, you know, fifty. They sound awesome, even in the rain! ...Which was becoming more of a serious storm at that point. I stowed my laptop bag under a bench. After the song, it became clear that they couldn't keep going -- some of the equipment was getting a real soaking -- so they pretty much wound it up right then.

I left, tucking my laptop into my t-shirt, with the remaining audience as it began to really pour. To no avail, I searched for an awning of any substance among the housing projects near the park. Ultimately I wound up cowering in front of a grocery store called Fine Fare with about a dozen other people, hipsters and not. The store gave me some plastic bags to wrap my shit up in, but the water was really coming down -- to the extent that when I tried to hoof it to the next island of dryness, I couldn't tell which way I was going and accidentally headed back in the direction of the park! My clothes also got completely saturated -- like, they literally couldn't absorb more water I was so wet. A nice old lady let me into the lobby of her building where I called Eve, who I'd sort of originally planned to meet, and strategized. She gave me the number of a car service, but, maybe predictably, five minutes after I got off the phone with her, the storm abated entirely and the sun came out again, leaving the pavement steaming.

I stopped at Doughnut Plant on the way back to the train for some lavender donuts, a taste for which was imparted to me by Nina. "Fap, fap, fap," she said just now. "That should be your last line."

Fap, fap, fap.

The Wedding of Razor Lopez

Like I've been saying. it's been crunch time at work. We had a big thing that was due on Monday, and we'd been working on it around the clock (literally, at times). Peter stayed in the office all night Wednesday to Thursday and promptly got sick; the testers woke me up at 4:00 AM Thursday morning to fix something. It was nuts. And Billy's wedding, with the accompanying bachelor party and rehearsal, was this week, too.

To be honest, I was kind of dreading it. I hadn't seen Billy in probably more than a year -- we kept making plans to hang out, have a beer, catch up, but they kept getting derailed. Given that he'd named me one of his groomsmen, I figured we'd need to sit down at least once before the thing, but apparently his job was crazy, too, so we'd had to just leave it that we'd see each other at the bachelor party.

I was pretty worried about that, too. I'd only ever been involved with one bachelor party, which I'd "thrown" for Joel when his best man punked out. We ended up going out for dinner with his wife-to-be at a Mexican place near the Brooklyn Navy Yards. The waitress gave me her phone number, which felt like a lot of responsibility, and then we went to go see some movies on a factory roof. Pleasant enough, but pretty tame. So when Bobby sent out the email, I suggested we go see a show. It was all I knew how to do.

"Have you ever heard of him going to a rock concert?" Bobby replied. Chris said, "My guess is that Billy would prefer the strippers." I was overruled. And I'd never been to a strip club. What if I didn't like it -- what if it was really depressing and I didn't like any of the girls? What if the girls could tell I was frightened and they got angry? With some trepidation, I got the name of a place from Joel -- he'd actually treated his no-show best man to a rager when that guy'd gotten married. "It's nice," Joel said. "The girls are young, blond, Brighton Beach types." Bobby made a reservation at a steakhouse down by the seaport where Billy works, and we all went out to dinner there first. We ordered a steak-for-four platter that brought a whole pile of sizzling, hissing cow to our table. I don't think I've ever eaten that much meat! Well, probably. I don't know. We drank a bunch of Jameson, neat. And after dinner we smoked cigars out on some benches on Water St.

I guess I'm not supposed to say what happened at the strip joint? Don't know how this works. Nobody did anything bad. It was actually really nice -- they've really figured out a bunch of subtle things that make a titty bar an order of magnitude better than, you know, a regular drinking place you go to with dudes. The temperature is just so, the waitresses were extra sweet and friendly, and, you know, asses and titties everywhere. And the girls are soaked in this perfume that should be nauseating, but is somehow not. That's not to say there weren't some creepy components to the experience: A couple of fat guys sitting across the T-shaped catwalk from us were monopolizing several of the dancers at once, slipping them hundreds and hundreds of sweaty dollars to buy their way up the lap dance hierarchy to allowed-to-touch-a-stripper's-lower-back. Chris overheard a snippet of conversation in the bathroom that sort of captures up the vibe that these dudes were putting out:

Guy 1: Man, I just spent $400 on lap dances. Sometimes I think I should just go find myself a girlfriend.

Guy 2: Yeah, but, man -- pussy: It's nothing but trouble.

Yeah, so we got a whole bunch of lap dances. That's pretty much the point, I think. Some of the girls were really good and really gave the impression that they liked you, but some weren't / didn't. I'm not going to lie, though -- at the end of the night, I was in Toki Wartooth-mode and was kind of fantasizing about coming back. It was a little weird. "How long does this last?" I asked Chris. "About a day," he said. He was right.

There was a really intense dude sitting at the head of the catwalk who looked a lot like Michael Musto. He was putting singles in practically every dancer's thong. I pointed him out to Bobby. "That's probably not Michael Musto," he said.

The next morning I got up and emptied six Amstel Lights out of my butt into the toilet. That evening there was a rehearsal for the wedding up at St. Mary's in Harlem. Billy's wife-to-be, Sarah, is the daughter of the rector -- the church is their house, really, so there's no way they weren't having the ceremony there. Sarah's dad, Earl, is incredibly friendly (and a dead ringer for Father Damien Karras). His requests for the ceremony were simple and few: That we say "and also with you" and "amen" at the right moments, and stand or sit as the proceedings called for it. No problem. Then we drank beer out in the courtyard.

The wedding went off the next day without a hitch -- except that Billy and Sarah's dog, Job, who'd been tasked with carrying the ring-basket down the aisle got predictably distracted by the assembled well-wishers and shrugged off his duty about half way through. There were some religious-y parts of the ceremony, Rev. Earl being, you know, a priest, but they were tempered by another church officiant giving a little speech, intended to assuage the fears of the less spiritual guests, to the effect that marriage is for sex and that religion is all about fucking. At the beginning of the wedding, Earl asked Chris to ring the church bell. "Ring it three times three, with a pause in between, and then nine times slowly." Chris initially balked, afraid he'd fuck it up and expose himself as a sloptard in the hands of an angry god, but after some coaxing, he rang it with gusto, pulling down with all his might like some kind of louche hunchback.

On Saturday after the wedding I headed back into the office. We all worked on Sunday, too.

On Sunday night, Matthew and I took a walk around the neighborhood to scrounge up food. The heat was stifling, but suffering it felt good. We got some Cuban sandwiches at Cafe Havana on 8th Ave. and went back up to the office. When I bit into mine, I managed to stab a sharp piece of the bread into the soft, tendon-y stuff under my tongue. It hurt like a motherfucker, and I must have cut something open down there, because within minutes all these little nubbins under my tongue swelled up, pushing my tongue up towards the roof my mouth. When I went to look at the affair in the bathroom mirror, it looked like a small, sublingual udder. Rattled and stinging, I sat back down at my desk and kept going.

We managed to finish almost everything we wanted to for Monday, but I'm still getting used to the feeling of having a life again. The air conditioner in the office broke at some point timed to coincide with the uncannily early June heatwave. Sweat.

The heat wave broke today after work, an angry, pre-storm wind throwing trash and leaves through the air across 4th Ave. I snuck in the door just ahead of the downpour.