11:19 PM *

i'm glad you got the naked pictures. it's always nice making your day.

i tugged his bowtie in place, gently sliding the curly straps around his ample neck so the tie was directly under his chin. and straight. that neck. i wanted to kiss the back of it when i was tying his tie, to remove his shirt and collar and kiss the little spot on his neck that i like to kiss. neck. it is a stubbly tanned trunk containing major veins, arteries, and a vocal box that says so many things. and spoke it did:

"how do i look." besides fucking fantastic?

it was more of a statement than a question. as i've mentioned before, he need not say what i will think. it was true that he was deliciously dolled up in his dolce tux and a gorgeous hermes bowtie. the shoes were impeccable and new. here was my man encased in a tuxedo that was like a second skin on him. it hid neither musculature nor personality. i was stunned by the sight of him, magnified by a peculiar kind of evening suit. the fact that i was so used to seeing him with nothing on made this particular costume all the more brilliant.

i love the naked boyfriend time. it makes the clothed boyfriend time so much better.

his neck never moves when i touch the tie, sliding around the muscles enveloping his spine. i am simply a participant in his reflection. or, perhaps, in our reflection: the mirror is neutral enough to keep either one of us from taking control of the scene. he sets it into motion, by staring directly, motionlessly, into the glass. and all there is left to do is for each of the actors to play out his part, to recite a fertile, charged line. i put all of my love, all of my being, into adjusting the tie's position. my part is a wordless part that takes cues and delivers clues through the loving movement of my fingers, the closeness of my lips to the light hairs on the back of his neck, the angle of my head, the vector of my inquisitive gaze.

my face was reflecting all these thoughts, and i did not bother to say what he knew i was thinking. you look fucking fantastic, my love. there was a crooked smile on my face. the mirror's scene now belongs to no one. he knows what i am saying, and when i not-say it, and deliver my final smirk, he knows that i am loving him by playing out the part. we can tell when we are faking it, when we are making a picture and not inhabiting it. and he always loses it when i inhabit and say nothing. for the first time since we began to get dressed, his eyes leave himself, look back at me, and take me fully in.

i took a quick snapshot of him and we left for the party. he hates spending time taking pictures. now you know why. right?

we walked to the party. we were in england. cambridge. at night. in december. it was cold. there was fog and quiet, and loneliness among large nineteenth century suburban houses. we are from new york, so they appeared more like mansions than houses. the quiet seemed to have a presence and thickness, just like the fog, and it was causing the absence of any sound in all directions. our footfalls seemed distant. it was causing a feeling of dread in me, as if something menacing lay all around us in the dark. there were many reasons for this. first of all, because of what someone said a while ago.

"You look at these houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there."

"Good heavens!" I cried. "Who would associate crime with these dear old homesteads?"

"They always will me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside."

in short, i spend too much time in the city, so country time makes me antsy at first.

second was that i did not fully trust the man i was with. in many ways, i could not escape where i was. i had my passport and a very ready credit card, true. but i knew that if i were to leave, he would show up by my side and bring me back to wherever he wanted me. of course, the trust works both ways: i will always be there with him, wherever he may wander off. and i just discovered that love likes to wander.

 

2:53 PM *

i feel like a dollar bill left on a muddy sidewalk. crumpled wet and forgotten. part of me likes the feeling of being quietly ignored while everyone walks over me. i kind of look up once in a while, but i wanna be careful so no one sees me peeking around.

 

1:17 PM *

o, email you are such a wonder!

there will always exist in your life
a one-specific-person
who can write a one-simple-note
and shatter the day, the night
into words-and-lines
that have little relation to your little life.

how do you do that, little message?

i'm forced to think of that little-old-song
you won't be happy with me
but give me one more chance
you won't be happy, anyway
but songs also a-break down the day, the night
into little bits that really hurt, and mean just-as-little.

such a wonder, singing note!

 

12:05 PM *

My bitterness from January appears to have been vindicated.

 

9:10 PM *

HA! i think when one of my employers irritates me, HA HA whenever my extracurricular activities try to smother my time, HA HA when i see a politician i dislike stumble, HA whenever i get paid. fetch me my bling! i kind of lift and tilt in the shower, because i've not spoken to anyone all weekend, (except last night, at my favorite bar, when i had a stunning conversation with one of my favorite bloggers, back from bangkok, our team's scrumhalf) and because i feel light and wet about the way things are going.

in space, the slightest force applied to a large object will, eventually, move that object at great velocity. it's cumulative, and requires only a big bucket of time. the notion requires us to think carefully about how we expend resources. you and me, our future looks so great sometimes. we can build the world, if we apply a tiny bit force every day.

yes, the analogy doesn't work. the force applied in our world is not a push. it's a pull. all pull. all pull, and they come running to you, until you scream and run far, far far away. but the screaming part takes a lifetime and to get to that point you have to make a lot of really good stuff. in fact, there's no excuse to make anything not-good. any chunk of not-good ruins the whole body of work.

this week my favorite part is this grid, where all the pictures lead to different pictures. despite what eisenman said years ago (he has probably since retracted it, just to be safe), architecture never refers to itself. even what appears to index is in fact a connection to an externality. that's why people treat cities like nature, second-nature, as if they exist naturally, like dirt and trees, as if cities were simply things that grow because of earthquakes, lightning, and mudslides. as if they are not objects in and of themselves, as if they have no relation to anything. just the opposite: they are so integrated into our consciousness that we are barely conscious of their existence as things we made.

of course, these days, dirt and trees are constructed objects, placed where we see them. third nature: urbanization of nature. architecture, in and of itself, as a theoretically isolated thing is so rarely a topic of conversation, i find it really troublesome to talk about it, by itself, at all. and i get terribly embarrassed to know that the reason academic architects have no practical success is that they don't have the words to communicate to the world. the words should talk about it, the way we'd take a walk around it, because that way we can take the uninitiated (the well-funded uninitiated) with us. and we should take funny pictures inside it. of porn.

i'm going to send you naked pictures now. i've been working out like a fiend, so i think you'll be happy and surprised. happy pulling.

 

ps all work in this domain is copyright chad the minx.