Birthday. I have nothing planned except maybe a trip to the gym. If I had thought about it more, I would have treated myself to a drink and lunch at the Tap Room, which I have not visited since March or April. Not as momentous a birthday as last year’s, when I was distracted from thoughts of festivities by Moki’s growing weakness (it was not yet obvious that he was not long for this world; he did eat half a hotdog on Labor Day). We weren’t going to do lunch at Gallagher’s; okay. Maybe our anniversary on the 25th? By the time that rolled around I was coming down with an abscess in the gum of Famous Tooth #3, I was arguing with a nutter in New Zealand on Twitter, and Moki had ceased to get up to go to the bathroom. I caught him peeing into the wastebasket and reprimanded him, so that next time, next morning, he staggered to the john, and when he tried to steady himself on the flimsy wire shelving he brought it down on himself. He lay on the floor for an hour and then we struggled, he and I, to get him back in bed—arms, torso, legs finally—the bed in which he would die about 60 days later. I changed bedclothes and put on the new cheap blue comforter which I am lying on now. This was September 26th. Over the next two days we would sign lease renewal forms, my abscess would prove impossibly painful so that I was putting a dry-ice compress on my jaw and going up to Petqua for erythromycin, and I’d get Moki a pair of urine bottles which he never quite used properly.
And yet, at the time and in the coming months I thought of that September as a happy time. We were renewing our lease (though we hadn’t paid rent in a while), and my lawsuit from WF looked as though it would be delayed forever (I still haven’t filed the default-judgment papers at the courthouse; OR my name-change, two things I was preparing last December, once I got the cremation out of the way). I thought the mini Cuisinart had died, so I ordered another one, not as splendid, which turned out to be unnecessary since the Little Pro Plus was perfectly fine after all (and had all its accessories when I looked around, all except some juicer attachment). By error the eBay vendor in Vermont also sent me 64 LED lightbulbs, and didn’t want them back. I found a very nice ‘Montana’ chili recipe. I signed up for MGM+ and started to watch the Philby series with Guy Pearce.
I still spend a lot of time thinking about Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon. Not only did they inhabit Edmund and Carol’s penthouse before E&C bought it, afterwards they lived around here, a block or two away, different abodes. And Bob’s wife number 2, Joan McCracken lived at the Wyoming at West 55th and Eighth Avenue (180 W 55th was her address, a door that no longer exists), while Bob and friend Paddy Chayefsky hung out at the Carnegie Deli, a now-empty storefront a block from here. I was wrong about Giorgio Armani buying the penthouse. Apparently negotiations fell through, or perhaps the co-op board refused it, not wanting an often-absent owner to wield that much extra power in the building. (Edmund was usually president of the board, as largest shareholder, and one of the longest owners.) No, the penthouse was bought by John Legere of T-Mobile, in 2015 I think, and I assume he still has it. I shot him a note on Twitter a week or two ago. I don’t think he responded.
Joan McCracken, recognizably so, 1943.
I’ve listened to the Sam Wasson book on Fosse a couple of times now (from the NYPL), alternated with the Audible Alone book by Michael Korda. Both are rich with detail that was new to me. Korda’s treatment of the Dunkirk Dynamo is much more fully textured than one gets in most history books, which tell the tale mainly as a frame for Churchill’s bold speeches in his honeymoon days as PM.
More recently, I’ve been listening to a book on Stanley Kubrick, on Audible. I’ve successfully resisted looking at bits of the Kubrick oeuvre, other than snippets and criticisms on YouTube.
I drank a pint of Platinum last night and it went down very smoothly. Slight headache in the morning but that’s from cheese. I made two pizzas last night, after letting a mixture of sourdough discard, flour and yeast sit around most of the afternoon. The sourdough-starter project has occupied me for two or three weeks now, and is very frustrating. First I tried to start it all on my own, but the stuff refused to bloom. I bought some California old-tymey pulverized starter for $6 on eBay, and things haven’t done much better. After the last discard yesterday (put into the pizza dough) I fed the starter a little and marked off the line with a Sharpie. It looks to have risen by a half-inch. I’m not going to touch it for the rest of the day.
Time has gotten away from me. I’m broke enough that I’m counting the days till the SS check hits. Other than that I have only a couple thousand here and there, and much owed. I got a check to Jeffries Morris last week. End of August, basically for July. Paid a little to ConEd on Moki’s Apple Card, and paid a little to that and to my own Apple Card last weekend. One happy note of last week was a rare sale of one of my rare pairs of spikes: the Michigan-colorway Kennedys. I got an offer for $50, I countered with $56.50 to cover most of shipping, and the sale went down immediately. So down to the 51st P.O. I went an hour later, the shoe box inside a big padded mailer from Moki’s stationery cabinet; then off to TMPL, I think.
Had a yelling match this week with some of the Bern people. I was asked to fill out a HIPAA form request I submitted in April. I had discussed this a month earlier with Khadija, and now it turns out they’d done nothing at all on requesting my records from MSK.
Semi-napping yesterday, prior to making a TMPL visit (contemplated but not achieved), and listening to the Kubrick book, I had this strange brief dream of being a teenage boy lying in bed and hoping to be fucked in the ass by a man. Is this from a line in Full Metal Jacket? I don’t know. One of those generic thoughts that come out of the sky like a summer squall and disappear just as quickly. When you’re young and these oddball thoughts fly through your dreamy head, you’re inclined to read significance into them. Later on it becomes apparent that they’re just the bad elevator music that anyone can hear.
Wednesday this week—two days ago—I had an appointment at NYU Dental but we didn’t do anything except decide I should get a referral to their periodontal department. I was expecting a deep cleaning, for which I am due, but my teeth and gums have not been acting up lately, so I am not bothered. If I can get perio work covered by insurance, that’s fine with me. I got screwed by Delta back in 2013 and ended up paying thousands out of pocket.
The day I went to the NYU shop I got a text from Coliseum Dental reminding me of a checkup on Sept. 18. I texted back to cancel it. All it would be is a cleaning, but I just don’t want to face those people again. Anyway, I may be down at NYU perio that day or that week.
I’ve been imagining that I had a long shift in Prospect Park last weekend, but checking the calendar I see it was actually the previous Saturday, the 24th. We had a half-marathon with a 5k running inside it. I worked just about every aspect of it except the start and the fluid stations. Handing out medals took up a couple of hours, and then another hour or so hanging them on racks beforehand. Just before the races started, I was alerted that there was a raccoon in a nearby dumpster, which was right near the 5k finish line. I mentioned this to Steve, who thought we should throw a rock at the animal to scare him out. But the raccoon couldn’t get out, not till James P. tipped the dumpster over and the coon—a young animal, I believe—scurried off into the hilly woods south of Center Drive. Prior to that, one of our staffers tried to lure him out by offering the business end of one of our “lollipop” INFO signs.
The shift started at 2am and I hadn’t slept since getting up at 8 or 9 the previous morning. It takes an hour to ride the subway and then walk down to the meeting place south of Bartel-Pritchard, so really I had to be up and around by midnight. Made feeble attempts to relax and sleep after 9pm but it was hopeless.
I expected myself to be really wrecked for the rest of the weekend, and took to bed for the rest of Saturday (home again around 2pm) with some vodka inside me. But after a long nap Saturday afternoon I felt pretty well. Next shift that I know of is the 14th. Something to do with squirrels, another Gov Is race. Next Gusto payment is the day before, so I will be feeling relatively flush by end of week.
My resolution today, this weekend, this month, is to get a paying job, even if only part-time work at Home Depot (which I’d rather like) or Williams-Sonoma (where I at least have history). As I usually fail to land such things, I shall have to aim high, for a substantive position.
