Self

I spent much of the day with the seemingly erroneous belief that a friend had been fired from his job at my so-called regular pub, a place I don’t think I have entered in over a month. Apparently this person was drunk texting some nonsense which I misinterpreted. Was not a happy scenario to contemplate, though, as I do not know what this person would do if he lost that job. Sometime I think I know just a little bit too much about this particular individual.

If progress has been made in addressing one aspect of my failed personality it has been that I don’t hate myself as much as I used to. I have always seen myself through a flare of self-loathing. I don’t like my face, nor do I like even contemplating my body. The only passing grades I give myself are for my hands and maybe my cock. I remember talking about this over 20 years ago on an early Internet message board. I still talk to some of the people that would have read that stuff. Some things can never change, but the therapist has coaxed a small amount of self-respect out of this sodden, sorry soul.

So today I was somewhat taken aback to wake up feeling that old familiar loathing again. It is mostly gone at this moment but it was pretty strong earlier. I slept over 11 hours. That kind of sleep, while necessary to compensate for whatever reasons of physical and intellectual exertion, is generally very bad on my mind.

Someone of whom I have absolutely no memory wrote to say that he saw a payphone yesterday and thought of me. He says we used to correspond years ago. I believe him but have no memory of his rather distinctive name. I guess it is true that people throughout the world think of me when they see payphones. That’s not a bad way to be remembered. When I worked at CNN I gave someone a QuickCam I had in my desk. Years later he told me that he thought of me every single time he used that thing, or saw it sitting in his drawer.

Someone just asked me what this is. I didn’t know what he meant, but he was asking about the foldable keyboard, brand name is the oddly-spelled PLUGABLE. I haven’t fielded comments about this somewhat unusual keyboard in a long time. It used to be guaranteed that someone would stop and stare for moment. Not so much lately but maybe that’s a reflection of the clientele at the ghetto coffee shop where I do most of this .MOBI detail. Oh man the other day this woman in there was talking on her phone, telling somebody “Jose owes some drug dealer $200 and I gotta get it for him by 6:00.” She was asking the person she had called if they had the money. Then she said something about having been in jail recently. I guess these people are everywhere among us but sometimes it seems like you really do not want to get to know your neighbors.

I saw some family-type gatherings today, doing speial things in honor of Father’s Day. I tried to imagine being that person, a father, for whom one day of the year is set aside for concentrated praise of my existence. It is not quite a birthday, nor is it an anniversary. I saw one dude with his 3 kids. They put a funny necktie shaped thing around his neck. It was made of cardboard, and had something in Spanish hand-written on it. The dad made faces pretending to look like he was being choked by this cardboard necktie.

Father’s Day always reminds me of Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban kid who was at the enter of one of history’s weirder custody battles. The events surrounding his seizure and return to Cuba were the stuff of Marvel Comics. My takeaway from that incident was that fathers seemed to be considered second-class parents, at least that’s how the father in that scenario was treated by most observers. I haven’t thought about that incident in years, but by stream of consciousness it further reminds me of Jodie Foster’s decision to have a child without the mess and bother of a father or a second parent. I don’t know how far along the general discussion of non-traditional parenting was in those days but a letter to the editor at “People” magazine expressed existential disgust at how fathers are not only no longer needed, but not even wanted. Somehow that sentiment resonated with me, and made me sad. Fathers are like governors. They are relevant and they matter but in a lot of cases no one can explain why.

I am at a coffee shop I rarely visit. It is a hipster type of place with a view onto a particularly non-picturesque stretch of Broadway in Astoria. The LAW OFFICE OF LARRY DORMAN is flanked by a PLAZA REALTY. Why is it called PLAZA? We are nowhere near a plaza of any kind. OSAKA JAPANESE CUISINE sits next to ROYAL NAILS PROFESSIONAL NAILS CARE. A Happy Endings massage parlor, a Dunkin Donuts/Baskin Robbins, a 99-cent store…. then a tree to partly obscure the balance of this uninspiring piece of road. In the distance, seen between the space separating ROYAL NAILS and the Happy endings parlor, is a tall building under construction, with a crane on top. I guess that is another of those much-needed luxury housing high rises that are propagating like mint.