6 February 1999: Les Gamins

I spent a majority of the day working on my article for LGNY. It was a first draft. My first-ever feature for a real paper. I wrote at Hofstra all the time, but this feels different. Like I can make a difference, or like I am going to make enemies. Or both.

With the article out of the way, I go and meet P and D for dinner. We go to an odd thai place on Eighth Avenue that seems like they are using mexican food as filler. It's good, but odd. I want normal spring rolls and dumplings, but not with salsa in them.

P has a watch with him that someone left at his house one, ahem, night. He wants to return it. He is surprised the bloke has not rung him up. Perhaps he forgets where he was when he last looked at the watch. P and D are oblivious to my now perpetual state of solitude as they ask each other if they have trouble sleeping with someone for the first time. Not having sex, but actually falling asleep afterward. I have not had to consider that problem for many moons. There's a lot to be said for the peace of mind that comes with making smarter decisions. Smarter, not always smart. If I were that smart, I wouldn't have been victim to two pick-up con artists, would I? No, I wouldn't.

Well, after dinner we went to Le Gamin, which loosely translated is "the naughty boy." P and D and I discuss a variety of things. I fear that I must come off as a "Village Voice Radical" as they (P and D) say. They seem to think it's best to stick to one's own kind, which, when you consider their native land, makes sense. But it still sounds horribly elitist and snobbish. Especially in a city where it's hard enough to find a second date.

I have to disagree. The more I see of "my own kind" the more I want someone else. This must be the result of listening to Gang of Four's "100 Flowers Bloom" and their other albums over and over. I also think of the Clash singing, "you must not act the way you were brought up."

Because P and D both come from the same repressive foreign country, so the police here are highly regarded. I set them straight. D has only been here since last year, so he has not read the many years of police violence and corruption, culminating the other day in a poor man from Guinea, Amadou Diallo, being shot by police at least 15 times. They shot off 41 rounds of ammunition, claiming they thought he had a gun. He had a beeper. D theorized that if it was an older beeper it might be bigger. I held my thumb and forefinger two inches apart and said, "that's how big and old beeper would be." I am no fan of the police. They are homophobic, racist, and mostly not New York City residents. They come from outside the city with a whole set of values that are just not conducive to good policework.

So I was the one going on and on about police violence, defending public sex, and the like. D talked about the abundance of gay men in New York, and they both agree how there's this feeling that you can "do better." D acknowledged that it's a little silly and P mentioned how people in places with smaller gay populations "settle"; I pointed out that sometimes you have to "settle" for good. In a life where there is so much badness, good is damn good. Why hope for "better." When "good" is present "better" doesn't exist; why even hope it does. In relationships, there's bad, good, and problematic. I don't think "better" plays into it over the long haul.

Sigh...

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