2005-05-19 - 9:31 p.m.
I've had two people, in the last week, make a point, as I'm going by, to tell me my back wheel on my bike's flat. They were both cyclists, bikers, cyclebikerists. And it is, flat as shit. But I think the valve is broken and I've tried to pump it up but it's stubborn. People are nicer when you're a biker. There's some sort of fraternity there that I don't really know about but I do know that if I ever stumbled upon one of their gatherings I'd sort of lurk in corners because I bought my bike from an old roommate for $50 and it has pink writing on it. Otherwise, it's black. Badass black with pink writing! Wa-chaw!
I notice that a lot of folks who keep journals and blogs and things post the pictures. I guess since I don't pay anyone I can't do that. But I was flipping through a photo album (my last girlfriend called it the Big Book of Ex-Girlfriends and she was drunk and correct when she said this) and I was thinking I could post a sequence of fifteen or eighteen pictures that show me, from age 18 to now, with a series of facial hairdoms. I got an email from a old newspaper coworker today, probably the nicest human being I know, saying she ran into some of my old friends and did I still have the beard? I suppose a full-on, strangely patterned beard was sort of out of the ordinary for a 24-year-old. And I covered business, so I was always going to these groundbreaking ceremonies and meet-and-greets for Northrup Grumman and Southwest Airlines where it's all dark suits and aftershave. Once, another reporter said I looked like I was in Al Qaida. I should have told him he was a terrible writer but I was probably busy eating the free Swiss and pineapple chunks. Yeah, glad I don't have the beard anymore.
I'm having dinner with a girl tomorrow night. This one is moving very slowly. Slower than any previous. I was thinking I'd make her a mix CD. However, very easy to make a corny, wrong move this early. Sarcasm, senses of humor not yet shared. For example, if I were to title the CD "Music To Do Speed To," she might not get that I was referencing the fact that she speeds when she drives and gets lots of tickets but rather mistake it as an invitation to do something else. It's an early title. I mainly just want to make sure she gets this New Pornographers song that I really like driving to. Makes me air-drum. Tempo changes.
I may be going to the Delaware shore again this weekend. The Baltimore crew's playing frisbee golf at a state park, camping with beer and meat and music and I'd love to be there. Surf fishing, too, which I'm terrible at. Also, I swam in the Atlantic for a few minutes (a hot minute?) last weekend. Fucking wow. I know some people need to jump right in, but the only way I could do it was to creep. Either way, it felt as if, instantly, the water transformed my body from bone and skin and warm things into a whole other material entirely, something homogenous and slower and electric.
0 comments so far
