...but then at the end of that tiresome swing of the pendulum between attempts at knowing self-satire annotated by the mundane statistics of his life and the bitter clang of strident honesty, without budding out of a pretense of nonchalance or detachment he came to the realization that whether or not anyone could detect a kernel of wanting or needing or the pitiful ache that plated his bones and sat heavy under his eyes and use it to embarrass or belittle him, he still needed to reach up under the collar of The Right Kind of Man and get his attention and that meant he needed to be honest and he needed to mean it.

I'm writing freelance and working for my parents, cleaning and organizing their house. I'm reading as much as I can. I'm working on a collection of short stories, tentatively called "The Fanciness of Loving"

Listening. Cooking. Entertaining... I'm not, say, flush with party hats and tiki torches and Margarita machines and kegs, but I can spin a good yarn, refill drinks, confront and manage the minute emotional catastrophes that alcohol and history can midwife, and slow dance to sad old country songs at the end of the night, ebbed balloons scuttering out toward solitary valences of broken party. Keeping secrets.

I'm very kind and very stubborn.

Like a benevolent mule.

Nina Simone, Nicholson Baker, Borges, Hesse, The Magnetic Fields, Antony and the Johnsons, Raising Hope, Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, The Cardigans, Harold and Maude and a lot more, of course.

Air. Water. Food. Conversation. Language. Hope.

The music I listened to in my teens and whether or not anyone wants to read me propagandize it.

Working, or spending time with someone I won't regret setting aside work for.

I'm the big spoon.

You like literate ginger cubs. If you'd like to recreationally fuck. If you don't have a problem with using protection.