It’s too arguable (or convenient, for my purposes)—that at her core, humanity seeks relevance, and fears its prevailing absence. Human individuals, on a case by case basis, want only to ensure their rightful resonance in the heartstrings of their sisters; this statement taken as untenable premise would leave you (or I) open to dismantlement. Its downfall as a premise, of course, is its tenability.

Culturally or speciesally applied, insights might be extracted from the acceptance of an issue like “We all want to be felt as fully as we feel.” Apply the same mantra to individuals and you get stories. Bad stories, sometimes. Tired stories. And other times, maybe, good ones. Does the mantra’s truth come into the story’s quality?

But of course we are all bad politicians. We all go back on our own (stated) desires in one way or another. Sometimes these ways prevent us from achieving our desires, other times these episodes of self-sabotage prevent us from enjoying them. Let’s reduce desire, for now, to the dubitable/domitable bliss of reception. Will I let you love me? Not until my braces come off. Will I let you love me? Not until I know this ‘me’.

And in the meantime we get by. There is a flagrance to our self-sustenance. A projected permanence to our stability. But, one hopes, this is a lie. One hopes, too, that each of us about our little lie. For when can’t it all come down—the fifty seven wood blocks that comprise our tower of psychological equilibrium? Doesn’t each day represent a quivering hand extracting a square from our upward trending grid? And if not, we do well to remember that, either way, daily growth or destruction, no one rebuilds themself.

Which is why I freely admit that I’m easily losing, and easily hurt. Less easily lost.

(crossposted @ boulder-denver08.blogspot.com)

(UPDATE: For those of you who don't know, I am in Boulder.  I am cataloguing my adventures, in the ways I know how.)

Their names I don't remember with any precision. C-names. Candice. Callie. Cassandra. It was the beginning of the night, in strip club terms, eight, and there were just three girls in the eighteen plus side of the bar. I was dressed up by my own standards. Meager standards, in a way. Blue jeans, a sleaveless black t-shirt with a broad textured design on the chest, and over that a dress-fit red button-up with flared cuffs. I was with a friend, a girl, which can be a perk at strip clubs, if to you a perk is extra attention from strippers. Of course it's not always the right sort of attention. The strippers, when we arrived and approached the club to have our pre-entry cigarette, were outside, giggling, joking, being girls with jobs; talking shop. On a bench. They were all robed of course, except one in a bikini. It is not hard to sit idly by girls whose nakedness is concealed by a thin curtain. In fact, it's almost hard to pay attention to them. You know you are going to see them naked soon enough. Instead I found smoking difficult. The lungs, you understand, would not cooperate. I get green-lighted or red-lighted on various substances. It's some kind of spiritual thing. My (own, personal) Jesus correlates directly to my biology, and they were both saying NO to smoke that night. Not so for my friend. We sat. Eventually I decided to go in. It would be fun, I decided. To sit for a while alone. Locomotion, for me, invokes a feeling of power. Being stationary charges that pwoer up. I am comfortable with moving. I like to move. I moved past the sitting strippers and into the club, fishing for ID as a travelled. Finding it. Showing it. Asking for forty ones. A surprising wad, that. As I went to sit down at the bar, a girl passed me from behind, put a hand on my back, and informed me that I was the only one in the bar but that she'd be dancing now. Okay. This girl was short, and her outfit concealed a wonderful, overround waste. A one-piece that dipped far enough down to fold over her pool of extra body, but not far enough to conceal any view of heaven's oval. Her tits were easily flipped out of this contraption, and they were pornstar tits. Round, with room for many pencils between them; they fell out leaning as if windbent in their respective directions; big but not puffy nipples. Her dancing skills were... well, it looked like she was still practicing. When her ass was in front of me I couldn't help but notice vague red marks all up and down her cheeks. I puzzled over these for a moment, trying my best not to laugh, as I was the only one in the bar and the whole staff seemed to be watching for how I'd behave. This girl, Candice, also seemed cagey around that seminal act of rubbing her tits in your face. You got the feeling it was that part of the job she disliked. Like when you, as a clerk, have to stock shelves. Her intial caginess might have had to do with my intial awkwardness. It'd been a year since I'd been in a real strip club, and the proper attitude, calm abandon to the stripper's breathy regard, was alluding me. No matter. She danced; I flopped ones onto the table out without crimping them; it was all very haphazard. She introduced herself as, I think, Candice, and asked me questions, but she must have got the impression that I didn't want to talk because she somwhat poutily continued dancing afterward. Next was Callie. I remember her name was Callie because I once named a horse Callie. Callie the horse and Callie the stripper were similar in ways, possibly in more ways than I'll ever know. Callie the horse was a yearling when I bought her as part of an experiment to raise a horse, train it, and sell it. Up to that point I'd mostly been doing quick turn-overs from horses I bought at the auction. My question was whether or not you could make more profit selling a horse you took extra time to raise. That's what I said my question was. In reality I wanted to have fun with a younger horse than my auction horses. Callie was a name I thought of after a long time of searching Internet databases for cool horse names. It's sometimes difficult to name a horse, and you're goddamned lucky if the name you picked sticks. Callie stuck. But usually horses get named, nicknamed, nicknamed again, and finally one day you start calling the animal something, something that may not make sense, and that turns out to be its name. Its real name anyway. So where was I? Callie the horse was a filly, so there is similarity number-one right there. Callie the horse was also very slight, very small in the chest, very tall (eventually; first: tiny, but always slender), and, more esoterically, Callie the horse was a creature whom you had to camp out with, in her own world, so to speak, before you could make any connection. Well, yeah, the stripper was a lot like that too. Skinny. So skinny that when she performed that lovely, delightful move, the tits-in-face move, you couldn't feel her skin on your face, because she would've had to lean too far forward. At the angle from which she was approaching, the only thing she could muster was to sort of graze your hair with the large space between her hardly existent tits. I liked her. Not a lot, mind you, but I liked her enough. Of them all, hers was the most difficult sexuality to discover. It certainly didn't transfer through her hair-grazing chest brushes. Neither when she ran her hands along your shoulders and breathed in your ears. Especially not when she gracelessly somersaulted along the stage. Again, she looked like she was practicing. Had to be practicing. She was wearing glasses. I couldn't help but notice that her asshole was as easy to see as her vagina. Probably due to the boniness of her ass. It was around this point I started crimping my ones. Thirdly was a girl who I will refer to as Cassandra. I think that was her name. Who cares, right? By now I had had an opportunity to sit back and watch two girls dance. My friend was now sitting beside me, and I was somewhat energized as my cover came with a free drink, and that drink had been a Red Bull. I was crimping my ones, facing the stage, my chair was pulled up, and my stomach chakra was as quiet as a day that's perfect for baseball. Cassandra was a tattoed girl, big boned but not really all that big. She had a presence that said bulk but a body that denied it. There was a roundness to her that I liked, a pulvination that bordered being truly positive. Not a trait, that third curve, I would fall in love with, but that's not what I was looking for. I precipitated that Cassandra would be less particular with her bestowal of skin-to-skin favors than Candice and Callie had been. I couldn't have guessed how much less. I placed two crimped ones right away in front of me because I've noticed that the girls will be much more willing to engage you while they are still mostly dressed. Again, how fully I wasn't prepared for. She came over, you know, as strippers do. With what was to me at least an unexpected amount of fluidity. She swiped the two ones away with firmness that indicated good things. The previous newbs had been sort of ignoring my ones. Brushing them off casually, as if to negate the fact that crimped ones at a strip bar necessitate a transaction. Yes, one dollar bills do. Hey, I didn't make the rules. Anyway, she brushed them aside and pulled me ahead quite firmly. Another good sign. The girls who put you right in place always have something in mind. Okay, so, then the next thing I know her feet are behind my head, her ass is lined right up in front of my face, and she has slammed my head, using her heels of course, into the very crack of her ass, with what I'd call about sixteen pounds of pressure, and is slapping both cheeks against my nose. I can still feel the nylon strip of her panties now. The smell was mostly of sweat. Like an armpit. But there were perilous hints of vag and poo and much older sweat and stripper perfume in there too. Everyone who witnessed this had a laugh. I put another two ones down. This time it was her chest, and instead of rubbing her boobs in the front of my head, she slapped me with them. Slapped me with them. Well anyway. I settled down a bit and just started watching. After Cassandra Candice was back up. I like strip clubs because they are my place to watch. It's bad for your health to watch people, especially girls, on the street. To observe. Unless you feel right about it. But at a strip club you'd make the girl feel bad if you were looking anywhere but her. So that's what I do. I look, and I place money, and I wait for my rewards. Why do I like to look so much? What am I looking for? Candice, who had introduced herself the first time round, was now a little aloof. I watched her dance, and this time when she went to rub her round ones in my cheekbones she chewed gum in my ear. Why do I like to watch so much? Because I can. What am I looking for? Candice's second time I was looking at how she considered herself. I was trying to see what part of her body she could look at all day, and say yes, this part of me at least is perfect. I found it, too. From just above her knee to just above her calves. This was her area. Where she looked gotta-haveable. Again I saw those reddish marks on her butt cheeks. Like an army of tiny bondage ants had whipped her. Like she'd been sitting for too long. Nakedness must be conducive to ascertaining such marks, and darkness is supposed to be conducive to conealing them. No matter. These are not the things that I'm looking for. I'm looking most intently for whatever it is in the form that I am witnessing, the female body, that compels more than just the animal in me. I am also, in a sense, witnessing the animal in me. Witnessing and asking, What about the animal in me compels more than just the animal in me?

Why do I like to observe naked girls displaying themselves, trying their best to be appealing, activating sexiness at wildly varying levels of comfortability? Why?

Because I do.

(crossposted on boulder-denver08.blogspot.com)

Last night I had a dream where I was living (I want to say working, though as a student) at a school. The aesthetics inside the building (I never saw the outside) were both retro and futuristic. The age of my avatar ranged from ten to seventeen moment to moment, though the effects manifested interiorly, and not physically. The walls inside were all concrete, and the consequences for disobeying the many rules were extreme.

One day the administrators, vague folk with odd names like Sheyenne Flarety, segregated the boys and the girls. The boys went to a room filled with games, yet you weren't allowed to play a single one. The girls went to a large lunch room where the boys could see them through a thin corridor. They, the girls, all seemed so lonely, and desperate, and beautiful. And in this way time passed: the boys struggling to concentrate on benign tasks while simple yet alluring games surrounded them. The girls, looking siren-ish on their side of the fence. Eventually I did the only thing I could do. On a pretense of discovering the "controls" to one of the games, I slipped through the corridor, evaded the administrators, and was rushed, there was a feeling of water, into the girls' dorm.

There I found one or two boys who had already made the discovery of girls, and I quickly abandoned the pretense of searching for access to the boys' games. My avatar, the interior I was experiencing, now took on seventeen year old characteristics. I ignored the girls who had already found their boys, instead seeking ones nearby who looked lost in the wake of their girls' new attachments. The first girl I found seemed nice at first, until I realized she was rather large, and her eyes, which were entirely brown, no whites and no pupils, were cow-ish.

I got up and move across the room, drawn, of a sudden, to a red-head with blue eyes; also, that color, filling her eyes entire. The blue of, say, bubble-gum flavored ice cream. I sat brazenly beside her, and even more brazenly slipped my arm around her thin, comfortable waste. She went through the motions of being accosted, but settled, thank God, down, and put her delicate arms around my neck. We then looked into one another's eyes for a long time. Just sitting there, temporarily abandoned to each other, forgetting our harsh and ridiculous setting. Forgetting all this architecture built up around our future.

She said, "You are a good cook aren't you?"
I said, "Yes."
She said, "You know, some people, they start life and everyone knows that they have it good. We then sit and watch to see how they make out."
I said, "Right."
She said, "But you. You're Incredible. We now sit, and watch, to see how you make out."

I woke up wanting a beer.

(crossposted on boulder-denver08.blogspot.com)

It didn't take me long to adjust. The light was good and this drink, sweet tea, was so tasty. Even this teeth-aiding gum, utilizing the much underappreciated power of xylitol, smacked good. And the music, Michael Garfield, though ambient, was very good.

Okay, so I was sitting in a cafe called The Laughing Goat. Okay, so the walls were covered in some sort of art (the girls' faces were nice to look at, and one even reminded me of June 30th)... I was finding my power to deal.

When I first arrived in this city, I was all, "Hmm." And, "Eww." To do with the inhabitants, you understand. They're crazy. They're different. There is no one in Boulder who would fit in in Calgary, except maybe my friends. Everyone else would be lost and contemptuous, and so what if I felt a little lost and contemptuous too. Right?

You walk past a waitress and a black man sitting on the patio. The black man is saying, "And, you know, that really altered my creative direction. Because I had to ask myself, 'Do I really need this..this materia; these gains?'." You walk further, turn into a book store. There are two men, a young man and an old men, whispering in hushed, nasally, and, God help me but they sounded pretentious, tones. "What's interesting is that if you get into his later work, there's this radical dissipation of centralized meaning, which sort of oozes into a, hmm, a percolation of the id in an almost de-referenced space." You leave the book store. You throw up in your mouth. You see two hippies in intimate congress. You see someone sitting on a park bench compliment a passer-by's rose. All these raised eyebrows and bobbing heads. All these people staring at their shoes, and hugging instead of 'pounding it' or shaking hands. All these people agreeing with each other. Or barely disagreeing. Everywhere you look: beards, dreads, long impotent penises. Screamers on mushrooms. Dirty cootch.

You go to parties and find your discourse---w/r/t to the mathematical and physical backdrop for dystopian/utopian alien races, and our various attractions/contractions to/from them, in the medial world of accessing the energy of no-energy, the life in no-life, and the content of the obvious patterns in matter, body, and oh God, mind---interrupted and horribly brought down by someone who actually believes he has something to contribute, as opposed to someone who offers such advice as, "Holy God, you're fucked! Get laid!"

Is that refreshing? Am I okay with it? Well... yes and no.

On Beer
Households sanction activity. It's a function of households when enacted with a certain acuity, or a byproduct of them. The household that has a sign on its door, 'As for me and mine, we'll serve God,' likely sanctions the activity of communal and private prayer, public worship. The household I am staying with right now green-lights most activity. Exclusivity, the act of prohibition, is not popular here. And yet when it comes to my (sort of) newfound penchant for slow-downing Bud and clam, I believe I'm taking my cues from America as much as from my new surroundings. It's not that this household frowns on beer. Indeed, beer-drinking is as included in the non-noninclusive atmosphere as anything else. It's just... there is something about beer here. For one thing, it costs about a third as much as it does in Canada. 13 for 18 as opposed to 11 for 6. For another, beer can be on your grocery list. Or it can be on your snack list when you go to get gas. Or something you just forgot you wanted.

And instead of getting six of them, you can get eighteen of them for almost the same price. And have some for the week. And it's just easy like that.

On Sport
Today I went to an Ultimate (Frisbee) game with some friends. I have a low center of gravity. I can do speed bursts. I can change directions fast. I can sprint. But I sweat like someone put me in an oven.

Someone did. It's hotter here than in Calgary. And furthermore, I'm out of shape.

If you read a lot of American literature, you'll find there are often areas in the stories that are only about what the characters are eating.

---"I stopped by the side of the road and had two bananas and a giant tuna fish sandwich. I drove a little further and had an apple and a half box of cracakers."---

---"Doc stopped in town for a quart of beer and a roast beef sandwhich. He made two more roast beef sandwiches on the road, and stopped for another quart of beer in the next town. On his way to the next town he ate one of the sandwhiches he made, then stopped for a another quart of beer and to fill up his tires."---

You get the idea. Those aren't direct quotes, but they're close. This sort of thing, these consumptive time-outs, pop up in everything from Steinbeck to Stephen King. They represent one of the most inspiring aspects of American literature to me. A worldview is delineated, via this sort of thing. A worldview of guiltless engagement of product. If it's unsustainable, I don't give a rat's ass.

Further: there are so many more things to buy here in American than in Canada. And each of them is cheaper. The highest quality product here cost what the lowest quality product cost in Canada. People feel at home, it looks, shopping here. For food. For whatever. I walk into a Traget and get excited. Excited because I am going to buy something. Doesn't matter what.

You see, I don't find myself in the choices that I make, or the preferences I exercise. In America, I am found by the choiceless act of purchasing. Anything. At all. And then eating it afterwards. Even if it's pants.

Where else is it so easy to be part of so large a community?

The deer here are a little retarded. Or domesticated. God help me, but sometimes those two adjectives seem synonymous.

Lindsey and I were driving around when I noticed a deformed-looking deer crossing the street. I was all, "You should follow that." So we did. As we got closer my suspicions were confirmed. This deer was not just mentally challenged. It was also physically challenged, and obviously inbred. Later we saw a cousin of our defigured champion. He looked, sad story, perfectly fine. Nice rack and everything. Before driving away entirely we saw the handicapped fellow walk stoically up the middle of the road. Like a gibbled Clint Eastwood with the intelligence of a brick.



PICTURES:


(a from-behind view of the shockingly conformed creature)


(how depressing would it be to be THIS deer?)


(how much more depressing to have this guy chilling next door?)

 
(what preyed-upon creature is THAT comforable?)

It's been dark outside for a few hours now. I am with some friends and our location is less than fixed. This is not simply because we are walking. If the ground beneath us seems infirm, our coordinates incalculable, it's because it is not ground, per se, that we are walking on. We tread, my friends and I, the arc of our voiced thoughts, the meeting-point of our interests. A bridge, a fragile one, of hair and bone and words, is formed between our lenses. We traverse it. It coaleces, that bridge. It fluctuates. It breathes.

For a while we are speaking of our histories, our principles, our tenuous futures. The sinewy threads that bind us to our felt trajectories, these are apprehended subtly more than they are discussed. It's something that people do, you'll find. Chat. Feel each other. The content varies, when talk happens, but the structure is often the same. While we talk we sit out back of a cafe, and consume, like good Americans.

Then we are walking. Red brick beneath our feet. The bright, pencil-crayon green of tree's leaves contrasts a construction-paper sky. Purple, yellow. Our conversation turns to the plight of our friends as we perceive it. Being in the world means wishing everyone the very best, and going about your way. Here we see if there is anything else we can do. But no, not really. We can't.

Then we are sitting. Sitting in front of a house of product. A palace of variegated necessities. Convenience store. Pick your pleasure. I'll take one. I'll sit back down. I'll take more. There is an appropriate settledness to us now. The wheel that is 'us' has found its hub. A hub that, eventually, accrues bored drunks like planks in lakes acrrue algae. But not before a story is unravelled. One of those really compelling stories, unspooled like so much yarn around the fire that is our willingness to stay together. A true story, for as long as it's being told. A story that scares you, makes you want to smoke, deepens your stare. It's a story about the end of the world. As it's communicated, the landscape around us is retextured. This peace, this endless seeming peace of Boulder 08, now hangs by a thread.

And then that thread snaps. But there is no war. Only silence. Dumbass deer. Newspaper men. Quiet, heartfelt goodbyes. The will and volition to do this all tomorrow.

Somewhere, in a new voice, a voice that isn't my friend's, the story of the end of our world is still being told. And so, of course, it must be true.

There are spiders in my room. Not often. Every third day a spider will appear on the wall. The first one was smallish, and its smear was rust-colored and chunky. It seemed male, its legs were hairy. The second one was larger, and female-seeming, and right up by the ceiling. She was more difficult to kill, and her smear was long, trailing, and black. Most of her is on the bottom of my shoe.

The problem is, I have to kill spiders. If I see one, and its not, you know, lethally huge, I'll probably end up killing it. Why? Because I associate spiders with spider-bites. Because when I see a spider on the wall, all I can imagine is that spider, if left alone, crawling under my covers at night and worming its way right inside my pee-hole. Or latching on to my taint. Or walking upside-down onto the ceiling and kamikazing into my open mouth. Or laying eggs in my ears. Or taking a tiny shit in my eyes. Or making a cozy warm bed where my balls meet my thighs. It gets warm in there. So how can I leave such a danger alone? How can I let it live, as, say, Robert Thurman might have me do.

Ah, the Buddhist. God is that fellow funny. He talked and talked. He commented on how much better everything would be if the Chinese left Tibet alone. His mainstay sayings were centered around having fun, rock groups, and he often plugged Barack Obama. On Uma: "Uma is very sweet. She doesn't kill four hundred people before breakfast. That's Quentin's idea." On Berlin: "The wall came down, people started having fun, lots of rock groups were able to play."

Actually, it's hard for me to quote him directly. I went and drank seven or eight quick beer before the show. Not right before the show, mind you, and I was mostly sober/hung-over by the time things wrapped up. But it was enough that I mostly drifted through the interview. It's alarming, looking back, how much I missed. There I was, sitting beside Lindsey, laughing. Laughing a lot. Amused by the various ways in which Thurman was outlining his vision, his very optimistic vision, and shutting down his interviewer, who seemed hellbent on joking his way through the proceedings. Like a horse whose taken the bit and is on a tear. And yet Thurman was just as jokey if not more so.

It's nice to get near someone who raised one of the hottest chicks alive. Other than seeing Kelly, that was the main reason I went. To share a room with the dude who would've seen Uma grow up. And been there. And who still likely shares a dinner table with her every once in a while. Turns out he's kind of neat on his own.

After Thurman finished there was an Eco fashion show. Waylin, or somebody, the fellow who did the interview, now had his opportunity to unleash his class-clown humor upon the world. Effectively ruining the little show, but it was funny. The mainstays of the show were old Ts, old sports jerseys (Michael Somebody's), old sheets, and old curtains. The girls looked nice and there was plenty of side-boob to keep me interested. But when Waylin (I'll call him that) came across a fashion-specific word he didn't recognize he'd say, "I don't know what that it is, but it's Eco."

To close: I would give one of my seven perfect lives to spend a year in Europe with Charlize Theron.

Thursday is the new Friday. At least on Pearl Street. Lots of folks milling about, hitting the bars, donning their gay party apparel. Lots and lots of good-looking girls. People in Boulder travel in incomprehensible packs. There'll be a group of seven guys and one girl. There'll be a group of seven girls and one guy. Does this make sense to anyone?

I can't wait til I turn 21 and start going to the bars. $1 pints. $2 Corona. Beer beer beer. Girls. Music. Relief from the heat.

I got paid today and bought a $1 book at a lesbian book store (yep. And on the shelves there was a section entitled Lesbian Mystery Novels). I also bought a pair of grey jeans. When it is time for Brian David to buy jeans, he finds a good store, he walks in, he sees a pair he likes, and he buys them. He does not browse. I really like my new jeans.

Here are some new quotes I came up with:

"If it bites you, punch it."
"That which makes a fart noise is not always a fart."

I, your humble correspondant, am either a dab hand at sounding out tangible cultural differences by being both a passionate datatician and an ace analyist... or I've got weird issues. What I'm saying is that the differences between two cities' (countries') social scenes, are, to me, as transparent as kids' lies. The subtle differences, the glaring differences. They are articulated to me, you understand, in hue and form. They're as hard to ignore as elephant shit on the kitchen counter. I see things, you understand. I see people who are alive.

So, clubbing and church. These are things that I have moderate experience with in Calgary. In fact, I'd say that when it comes to clubbing (in Calgary) I have moderate to substantive experience. I go. I get in. I bob my head. I tap my toes. I do this oodles of places. Okay? And Church, too, in my five 'r six years of being a resident in that sprawling conglomerate of bubble-dwelling terrace-hoppers---I've seen a bunch of them. In Denver I've only been to one Church, and a handful of clubs. And it's those experiences, the differences between churching and clubbing in Denver and Calgary, that I want to talk about.

One of the few clubs I've been to in Denver, and the one I'll use for the purposes of this blog, just happens to be a renovated Church. A very old Church, re-done to be a party-spot for the kids. The outside still looks very Church-y. Inside there is still some religious iconography creeping about for effect. It's not difficult to intuit what the building was once used for (Lord-lauding, Lamb-praising). And now there are bright, vibrant young folk getting all hot and bothered with each other inside. All heathen, exciting.

There are several rooms, several dancefloors, in the Church. A large one upstairs where erratic/fluid break-dancers carve out a circle of bodies with their skillsets. Want-to-bes inhabit the outskirts like so much tenuous waste, orbiting tonight's avatars of their craft, denied arbitration by their pesky ambition, denied adjudication by these fill-in arbiters of their "shit". It's funny because these guys, the oops-I'm-not-good-enough-y