Monthly Archives: June 2006

Inbetweenies

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It’s Friday. Been a good day. No stress really. Rather relaxed. No session with Phillip Beansprout tonight. So that’s two weeks without psychotherapy. I’m handling it ok I guess. Phillip has his issues this week so there was no session. I am as ambivalent as I was last week.

Hung out with Juan last night. We tried watching yet another DVD about the New York Dolls but neither one of us cared much. Their story is compelling but I don’t find the music to be as such. I explained to Juan, I love the Beatles and don’t like Elvis. I love the Sex Pistols and don’t like the New York Dolls. Basically I like those who have been influenced by people I don’t particularly care for.

Work was easy. Felicia was in a pretty good mood. Since I had no session to attend to I was able to partake in the Happy Hour they have every Friday. I had a few Coronas and smoke some cigarettes on the roof with Felicia and a new girl, Natasha. A very nice panoramic view from up there, twelve stories up. A bit confusing when I got upstairs to the roof after climbing up a myriad staircase. Where I thought I’d see Brooklyn, I saw the Empire State Building. Where I expected to see downtown, I saw Jersey City. Maybe it was the beer that messed up my sense of direction.

We hung out, with Natasha and Felicia talking about breast sizes. Felicia whips out her mastectomy scar. Interesting. She’s outwardly comfortable with her battles with cancer. When Natasha left Felicia proceeded to tell me of her story of her parents. Mother committed suicide in South America, Father owed money to some hoodlums. He wound up in jail with a missing finger.

Harsh story but she seems to have a grip on it. I haven’t even told you the whole story of her, for it’s too gruesome for words. Let’s just leave it at that.

I am planning on checking out Teddy Thompson tomorrow at Summerstage. I had hoped on seeing him then heading over to Prospect Park to see Laurie Anderson, but I think that might be too much to ask for. Felicia invited me to her place in Chelsea for a barbecue she was thinking about having. I told her to give me a call. Maybe she will. I might have my bicycle because in the back of my mind I plan on doing a bike ride up to the George Washington Bridge and down the Manhattan side to Central Park. Been a while since I’ve done that.

If I do that I was also planning on taking the elevator at the Light Rail station to Union City so I could avoid the hills going out of Hoboken. Is it cheating? Only hill wise, since I’ll be adding a mile or two in distance. The hill out of Hoboken is not very bike friendly and it goes through the entrance ramp for the Lincoln Tunnel so the elevator would make things safer.

I also had a plan on attending Folsom East this Sunday. I mentioned it to Bill a week or so ago and he didn’t say yes or no, but I should’ve realized that since he didn’t drive at all last week, having a church service to perform at last Saturday and then spending most of Sunday at Tekserve, that he’d be driving this weekend. So Folsom East would’ve been a solo visit for me. Now given the option of going to that and being disappointed and merely dissed, or going to the beach with Mr. and Mrs. Lopez, getting out of town, chilling out and clearing my head while cleansing my soul, I think I’ll head out of town. Nothing to keep me in Hoboken. Bill’s driving. Might as well go and have a good time.

Sounds like an excellent plan.

53 Miles West of Venus

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Bill was up and moving about before me this morning, despite my kicking him in the shins and hitting him once in the face while sleeping. It wasn’t intentional, that’s for sure. He told me about it as we crossed each other’s paths this morning. He understood that I didn’t mean it. He even made me coffee this morning, which was sweet. The gesture, not the coffee.

Bill split as I puttered about. He had a job today, acting as a stand in on the Denis Leary show, Rescue Me. I’m sure it’s a good show, but I can’t stand that Denis Leary. I’m leery about Leary. He reminds me of those bad Fallon kids who lived on Avenue F in Lodi. You didn’t want to get into trouble with those Fallon kids. They were bullies. They lived next door to the Harrops who were from the same church as my family so we sort of knew them.

The Harrops were related to the Neidhardts who my family had some close ties for a time, when my family was more active in parish affairs. My father was a member of the Holy Name Society. An Opus Dei type organization for suburban dads who wanted to associate with other milquetoast dads. I think it was also a group for men that either couldn’t get into, or aspired to join the Knights of Columbus. A group that raises the hair on the back of my neck.

My disdain, to put it way too politely, is because of the United States Knights of Columbus efforts to prevent same sex marriage in Canada, sending money and activists from the States to Canada trying to get Canadian citizen to write Parliament and argue against Marriage Equality. Catholic schools are being shut down because they don’t have enough money to keep them open and the good old Knight of Columbus raise funds to send to Canada to instill bigotry and prejudice. It didn’t work. Same sex marriage became law in Canada and the world didn’t end, Canada didn’t fall apart and the Knight of Columbus had what might have been egg whites on its collective faggot face.

So where was I? Yeah, my father was in the Holy Name game, my mother was in the Rosary Society. A group of Mary devotees, hence the name Rosary Society. Their big thing was the Wednesday night Novenas. Hot stuff, doing the decades. I didn’t realize until years later, between my agnosticism and atheism that we had to say the Hail Mary for each bead and perhaps a few Glory Be’s. I was too wrapped up in religious fervor and very happy to be out of the house away from my father to notice. This was exotic for me even though it was a church I had gone to since I was born. The exotica was from being there on a Wednesday night. Wild stuff. Also got me out of homework.

My family eventually got tired of going to St. Francis parish. It was on the other side of town and Sacred Heart was closer. The next town but only about two miles away. It also had a giant Jesus in a glass elevator. Very cool. But we didn’t know anyone there, not like at St. Francis. After I graduated from grammar school my family stopped going to St. Francis altogether.