J- has been a friend to G- for years. He will point this out over and over.

You can not rely on J- for anything. He will not remember or think to save ten dollars so you can pay your rent. He will spend seventy dollars on Thai food that he will not finish eating. He will take money from his parents and watch HBO and Pay-per-view at his house, and still consider himself the real revolutionary anarchist squatter of the streets. G- curses J- for his total lack of any responsibility. J- will remark on the hundreds of dollars he borrowed from G-, back when G- was Loaded. G- will grumble about it petulantly, and grouse and whine and talk about his righteousness. G- is righteous. He is stubborn and arrogant and smart. He sits in first year college fundamental courses and questions everything the instructors say until they are too sick of him to even respond. He talks incessantly and lengthily about music and music theory and music composition and musicians and musical instruments and how much of a music nerd he is. Then he goes on tirades about the government and the people and the rich and the poor and the Left and the Right and how they are all stupid. And he then begins to tell me about his newest song, or how Our Lord and Savior, Bob Dylan went about writing a song, or how he cannot write a good enough song and Dylan already had his first album out when he was twenty.

J- says something back to everything G- says, and it’s rarely ever worth listening to. The only person who can give G- constructive feedback is A-.

A- is the person who has forever lived in the East Village and sits at outdoor coffee tables so he can have Cappuccinos and smoke Arbo, and hack and cough and talk with G-, who has enough respect not to dominate the conversation, and to do some listening.

A cube rat introduced G- to E-. E- lives with A-. E- is a computer whiz, self-righteous, pompous, with long straight blond hair and a bone white horse-face. He knows all about computers and will not hesitate to brag. He is such a nerd it seems ok that he brags the way he does.

I mentioned to J- on Christmas that he had decided he was gay three months ago. J-, with rehearsed flame, flapped his hand and told me he’d been gay since he was born. He came out three months ago. J- is not limp wristed. He cannot pull off acting limp wristed, it is too forced, and it looks lame. He was walking around with me in the cold new york streets on christmas, when I am usually down south with family, but this time mom and dad didn’t feel up for the drive. We were passing yellowy lit cafes with rich laughing yuppies. Their smiles stolen from magazines, fake glossy and papery, drinking wine and coffees, and what separates Us from Them is a few blocks and contrived ego and talk, because we wound up drinking wine later in a restaurant place that smelled like family food, with older waiters muttering imperfect english, smiling at us. There were people at the bar. The old seventies punks in leather pants, studded belts and cowboy hats, skipping out on the pta meetings and smoking pot alone in the bedroom life my folks have, respectively: mom and dad. “You’re a sipper.” J- says, pounding a full glass of red wine, leaning back, letting the effect hit him.

I go home and the house has a changed feeling. I want to come in to the garish orange the walls were until I was ten, now a sterile white, in the dark at the foot of the stairs. There have always been cats here, movement in the dark that slithers and mews at you pathetically. This abrupt silence tinging everything blue can’t be shared. So I take it in alone.

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