Night life

It was my pleasure, then, to spend last Tuesday night entertaining a voluable Quebecois flight attendant, for whom the language barrier did not deter his ability to keep me in a full and upright position for most of the night. He was certainly a charmer: a winning smile, a lithe frame corded with muscle, bright eyes that sparkled with laughter -- and there was much laughter as we tumbled and fumbled our way through hours of passion. He had, in short, that certain je nais sais qois (roughly translated, "nice ass") that I find so alluring and, for a French man, a remarkable command of Greek.

Thrills in the basement

If ever you need a thrill, there's an emotional roller coaster in my laundry room.

Happiness is finding 50 dollars tucked into the pocket of a pair of blue jeans just before you pop them into the washing machine.

Disappointment is realizing that the blue jeans in question do not belong to you and, by inference, neither does the 50 dollars.

Confusion is further realizing that you have no idea to whom the aforementioned blue jeans belong or, for that matter, how they found their way to the floor of your closet, waiting to be laundered.

Contentment pretty much arrives when you have made your peace with the foregoing facts and added to them the supposition that, at some unknown point in the past, a person with a 28 inch waist joined you for activities undefined and departed, apparently so satisfied with the outcome of said activities that they were unconcerned to have left your home without both their trousers and 50 dollars.

Hot, heavy and wet

This has been one of those weeks. You know the kind I mean?

First of all, it's hot. Really hot. You know, how Bette Midler says in the prologue to The E Street Hustle, "the air is hot and heavy and wet, and you just can't get high."

Secondly, if there were a theme to the week, it would be "Reversal of Fortune," for me at least. It's weeks like this that make one marvel at how quickly one can traverse from goat to golden boy and back again in other people's esteem.

Thirdly, there's been a lot of silly shit going on. On Tuesday, out of the blue, a total stranger e-mailed me 37 pictures of herself, naked. Wednesday morning, I woke up to find a soccer ball in my bed that had not been there the night before. And just yesterday, I swear I saw ducks and wolves dancing the Lindy together.

Yes, friends, it's weeks such as this that lead me to wonder how much longer our alien overlords are going to permit this sort of whimsy.

In which I’m a bit distracted

Classes have begun and temperatures are pushing 100 degrees and it's quite humid and my campus office has south and east facing windows and shirtless boys are walking past wearing cutoffs and backwards baseball caps and toting ragged backpacks and occasionally brief rain showers catch them off-guard and they walk around soaking wet and curly blond locks plastered against a forehead combined with a rippled abdomen, corded calves and crooked grin are very distracting is all I'm saying, really.

Home remedies

A partial list of things I have done to date which have failed to remedy my chest cold:

• Freebased Nyquil into a crystal, smokable form.
  
• Imbibed large volumes of Bud Light.
  
• Spent total of two hours over four days in the steamroom at the gym.
  
• Engaged in oral sodomy (homopathic medicine).
  
• Prayed for a swift and merciful death should said cold proceed unto the weekend.
  

Looking at all of Eric

What was it?! What was different about him? There was nothing to which I could point, no single characteristic that set him apart, and maybe that was it right there. The other men in my life -- the many I had known, the few I had loved -- were a part of my memory as anecdotes, events, single fragments of time that distinguished themselves somehow from others. But looking at him now, after all this time, there weren't any fragments. I saw Eric as whole cloth, one moment in his company inseparable from all the rest. I had only a holistic view of this man, only a single perfect image in mind. Fragments you can misplace or forget. For better or worse, I will never forget Eric.

Annual summer chest cold

Summer is proceeding right on schedule, evidenced by the arrival Saturday of my annual chest cold. For a bit, I'd dismissed Thursday's body aches as the consequence of a new upper body routine at the gym. The tickle in the back of my throat on Saturday morning I was willing to ascribe to...well, overdoing it a bit on Friday night. I was delighted to have a tasty Cuban dinner with Jazzy Jeff and Stinky, convivial conversation, good ale and mole with plantain chips, ample entrees, a perfect way to catch up with two old friends celebrating August birthdays.

I'd intended a post-prandial early retirement, but although Stinky had to depart to meet other friends arriving from out of town, Jeff wasn't tired and I was amiably disposed to at least a cocktail or two. Well, two became three and three begat four...it was around 4 a.m. when I wandered home. By mid-day Saturday, it was clear a week spent scurrying from air-conditioned environment to air-conditioned environment with long patches of heat and humidity in between -- coupled with a Bacchanal in a smoky, surprisingly chilly strip club -- had taken their toll on my respiratory system.

I've spent the past two days in cocoon mode: pushing fluids, sleeping a lot and poring over Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. At the rate I'm reading, I'll manage to finish up the fourth Potter book just in time for the release of the fifth. My pace has been, basically, sleep for an hour or two, get up, make a cup of tea, read three or four pages, lose consciousness, repeat. I'm still all achy and drippy, and with my work/sleep cycle now hopelessly askew, the busy week to come is going to be hellish.