Monthly Archives: June 2006

I realize this blog is in danger of becoming nothing more than a transcript of E.S.’s and my bickering exchanges, but I must report the one we had last night.

E.S.: I had a long conversation today with my friend Y. about relationships.
FAUSTUS: What about them?
E.S.: About the fights that we’re inevitably going to get into.
FAUSTUS: Why, because you hate me?
E.S.: I don’t hate you. I just wish you would change.
FAUSTUS: Well, guess what?
E.S.: You’re going to change? Yay! Thank you, sweetie.
FAUSTUS: Don’t touch me.

Then we had sex.

Thank fucking God the flag-burning amendment failed.

That way the frauds who run our country can turn their attention to truly important matters, like disenfranchising and/or torturing everybody who isn’t a member of their country club.

Hmm. On second thought, perhaps I should throw my support behind the flag-burning amendment after all.

I fully intended to march in the Pride parade yesterday, I really did.

But after teaching an aerobics class I was so tired I fell asleep and then my boyfriend and I assembled our new reproduction Victorian four-poster bed and then I went to a party at which I got paid to dance naked and play with my penis for four hours while strange men groped me and put cash in my socks until I ejaculated.

I’m sorry I’m a bad homosexual.

Last night E.S. and I finally saw Wicked, the musical adaptation by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman of the novel about how the Wicked Witch of the West got to be wicked, be a witch, and live in the west. The Wicked Witch (who in the book and the musical is named Elphaba; this may in fact be her name in the Oz books but I’ve never read them so I don’t know) and Glinda the Good meet in college, where they share a room and get to be friends. Glinda is of course graceful, charming, and beautiful while Elphaba is awkward, off-putting, and green.

During intermission, E.S. and I were talking about how much we loved the show. “At least now we know what we’re going as for Hallowe’en,” I said.

“Didn’t everybody already do that last year?” he asked.

“Hmph,” I said. “Well, I don’t care. The only question is which of us is going to be Glinda and which is going to be Elphaba.”

“Oh, please,” he snorted. “Everybody knows I’m Glinda and you’re Elphaba.” I gasped, I called him a bitch, and then the lights dimmed to indicate the imminent start of the second act.

Afterwards, we revisited the issue on the subway home. “Maybe you are Glinda,” he said, “and I’m Elphaba.”

This wasn’t much better, given that Glinda is annoying and untalented. “Why do you say that?” I asked, my eyes narrowed.

“Just to annoy you.”

“That’s it,” I said. “I’m Glinda and Elphaba.”

“Then who am I?”

I thought for a moment. “You can be Elphaba’s paraplegic sister Nessarose.”

“Do you want me to drop a house on you?”

Then I spent the rest of the evening calling him “Nessa” until he made me stop.

My dog A. was fine when she spent her time shuttling back and forth between E.S.’s 396-square-foot apartment and my 815-square-foot apartment. Now that she lives in a house, however, she seems to be finding life very confusing and a little bit lonely–sometimes we are on one floor, for example, and she is on another, and she doesn’t know what the world is coming to.

So we’ve decided to get her a little brother or sister.

A. is a Maltese; at first, E.S. wanted to get another Maltese. “No,” I said, “because inevitably one of them will be cuter and we’ll love that one more and the other one less, and I can’t have that.” E.S. claimed not to understand what I was talking about, but I was adamant, so eventually he relented. We considered other breeds and ended up deciding on a Yorkie. Then yesterday E.S. and I had the following conversation:

E.S.: I’ve been thinking, maybe instead of a Yorkie we should get an Italian greyhound.
FAUSTUS: But you said a Yorkie.
E.S.: But one of the new pet therapy dogs in the hospital is an Italian greyhound and it’s so cute.
FAUSTUS: But I don’t want an Italian greyhound.
E.S.: But it was so cute.
FAUSTUS: Too bad. You already said a Yorkie, so we have to get a Yorkie.
E.S.: That’s very concrete of you.
FAUSTUS: What do you mean by that?
E.S.: “You said X, so we have to do X.” That’s a pretty inflexible position.
FAUSTUS: Have I ever done anything that led you to believe I was in any way flexible at all?
(Pause.)
FAUSTUS: I mean other than physically.
E.S.: Damn.
FAUSTUS: A Yorkie it is, then.

Those of you who live in or near New York City may be interested in stopping by Tuesday’s WYSIWYG, at the Bowery Poetry Club.

This will be my fifth WYSIWYG appearance, but I’m actually very nervous because it will be the first time I’ll be reading something instead of singing. Of course, the thing I have to read is pretty fabulous, if I do say so myself, so if you come I promise you won’t be disappointed, especially because even if you hate me you are sure to be entertained by Rod Townsend, Curly McDimple, Joe Jervis, Greg Walloch and Spinster.

Of course, if you hate me and are entertained by them I will start stalking you and doing whatever I can to make you like me, just like Rose in that episode of Golden Girls in which her coworker doesn’t like her and she tries to make him be her friend through sheer force of will.

She failed but I will succeed.

Yesterday morning, when I woke up, while performing my morning ablutions I felt an odd but very powerful sense of disconnection from reality. The familiar seemed strange, and the strange seemed even stranger.

I racked my brain to figure out what was different.

Could it be that it was the first morning I was waking up in the new house in Brooklyn that E.S. and I finally, after a maddening series of delays, finished buying?

It was certainly a possibility, but somehow it still didn’t seem quite right. And the feeling of unfamiliarity only intensified.

Then, as I was wandering around the rooms (in my socks, since the floors have obviously not been scrubbed since 1972), I saw a box I had marked “OPEN IMMEDIATELY!!!!!!!” I obeyed my instructions and looked inside.

I almost cried with relief when I saw that it was my bathroom scale. I installed it in its proper place and the strange feeling dissipated at once.

Then I stepped on the scale.

I should have stuck with the odd but powerful sense of disconnection from reality, because now I have to go kill myself.

Dear God,

Remember when I said that if You let George W. Bush be impeached I would go an entire week without taking Your name in vain, even while being sodomized?

Well, that deal is now off the table.

However, if he is found guilty of treason and executed, I’ll up it to a month.

Sincerely yours,

Faustus