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I don’t often make friends, as I hate everyone, but recently I met somebody of whom I think the world, so I knitted him a sweater:

Also, as of 9:01 tomorrow morning, I will be 32 years old.

A little over a year ago, I decided to get my own domain name. “Most of the blogs I love and respect have their own domains,” I thought to myself, “and I’m just marking time in boring-layout land here at blogspot. I should spruce things up a bit.”

Of course, along with my own domain name, I had to come up with a new title for a relaunch. After sifting through several promising possibilities, I finally settled on “Accursèd Faustus, Wretch, What Hast Thou Done?”. This is, of course, a quote from the Christopher Marlowe play The Tragedie of Doctor Faustus; our anti-hero asks himself this question after having been told that it’s just too fucking late for him and he’s going to go to hell no matter what. I much preferred this line, from the B text (1616), to the corresponding line from the A text (1604), which is a more self-pitying, less self-excoriating “Accursèd Faustus, where is mercy now?”.

So I had the title, I’d registered the domain name with a host, and I was working on a redesign. I got Movable Type and commissioned a friend of a friend to draw an illustration; with the design help of this man, I eventually had the centerpiece (click on the image for a larger version):

And then I somehow lost steam. I got caught up in other things (like deciding to start speaking to my ex N.T. again, gaining and losing the same five pounds over and over again, trying not to kill myself–you know, the usual) and never got around to setting the damn thing up.

And while I was chatting with him the other day, I realized that “Accursèd Faustus, Wretch, What Hast Thou Done?” no longer accurately describes the endeavor in which I am engaged here. Though the crippling anxiety and implacable self-loathing that have been the mainstays of this blog since its inception are still my constant companions, the combination of a good boyfriend and decent medication has meant that they are joined every once in a while by something approaching, if not happiness, at least glimpses of it.

One could argue, of course, that “The Search for Love in Manhattan” doesn’t accurately describe this blog anymore either, what with the advent of E.S. v. 2.0, but I for one have always thought of the eponymous love as encompassing not just eros but also agape and philia–of which there is little enough in the world to make a search worthwhile.

And so I’m staying put. At least for now.

In less than a week, I will enter my 33rd year upon this sphere.

I have been trying and trying to figure out how the hell to celebrate. A couple months ago I had the most brilliant idea anyone’s had since slicing bread: I would invite everybody I knew to join me at the Roxy, a local gay bar, for Roller Disco. It was perfect: roller disco night is on Wednesday, as is my birthday, and what better way to celebrate my imminent entry into senility and decrepitude than with a return to the birthday ritual of my youth, the gayest birthday ritual of them all, the roller skating party?

I got very, very excited; I spent hours combing the internet for photographs with which to construct my own fabulous evite. It would be divine: my nearest and dearest, as well as the not so near and perhaps even the not so dear (because a present is, regardless of the source, still a present) would all congregate in a tacky bar in Chelsea and roller skate in my honor to “We Will Rock You” and “Dancing Queen.”

E.S. kept insisting that we go to Roller Disco at some point before I actually issued any invitations, just to make sure it was, if not everything I hoped it would be, at least close. Scoffing at the thought that it could be anything short of perfect, I nevertheless agreed to his suggestions just so he would stop nagging me. So a few weeks ago, we walked over to 10th Avenue, rented our skates–shades of 1982!–and went inside.

To be greeted by the sight of a huge room full of straight people roller skating.

Full of skanky straight people roller skating.

Honestly, it was as if the entire population of Hackensack had been magically teleported into the Roxy and given orders to skate as slowly as they possibly could. There were two people in clown outfits roller skating in slow motion.

And I thought, wasn’t it enough that you stole pierced ears and freedom rings from us? You had to take roller skating, too?

I almost started to cry. Why does reality have to puncture all my dreams so cruelly? Can’t she leave one or two untouched until they float, gently, to the ground, like helium balloons three days after the party is over?

At first I thought I might be able to make it work anyway, and that with enough of my friends in attendance, the place would be forced to acquire a sense of irony. But then the clowns skated past me, still in slow motion, and I realized that there are some things that just aren’t meant to be.

We skated for about fifteen minutes more, but our hearts just weren’t in it, so we left, defeated.

For what it’s worth, if you’re reading this, please know that you were almost invited to my birthday party.

From a conversation I had the other day with E.S.:

E.S.: Okay, I’m off the phone. Now we’re going to watch this movie I TiVoed.
Faustus: No, we’re not. We’re going to sleep.
E.S.: But why?
Faustus: Because I’m tired.
E.S.: You’re such a bitch.
Faustus: Why does that make me a bitch?
E.S.: Because you’re asserting yourself and telling me what you want.
Faustus: But you’ve been saying to me for over a year that I have to assert myself and tell you what I want.
E.S.: Yes, but I’ve changed my mind.

Okay, can we talk about Stella Liebeck?

You’ve heard of her, even if you don’t know her name. She’s the infamous McDonald’s Coffee Lady, the one whom advocates of tort reform hold up as an example of how our legal system is rotten to the core. The facts that most people know are as follows: in the early 1990s, Ms. Liebeck sued McDonald’s because a cup of hot coffee spilled in her lap and burned her. She won a judgment of $2.9 million, which was later reduced to $640,000.

And to this day, people are all like, “We’re surrounded by whiners, people have to take responsibility for their own actions, it’s ridiculous that somebody should get millions or hundreds of thousands of dollars because she spilled some coffee, look how bloated and out of control our legal system and our sense of personal responsibility have become.”

Of course, none of these people bother to look at what actually happened, which is that McDonald’s kept its coffee more than fifty degrees hotter than normal home coffee, that they had received over 700 complaints about their coffee’s burning people in the ten years before the lawsuit, that Ms. Liebeck suffered third-degree burns for which she was in the hospital for eight days and had to get skin grafts, that the car wasn’t moving when she opened the coffee, that she had tried to settle the case for $20,000 but McDonald’s had refused, and that McDonald’s own quality-assurance manager admitted on the stand that their coffee was unsafe to drink as served.

This case is not an example of how tort law in this country needs to be reformed. It’s an example of how corporations are evil and can spin anything to their advantage and must all be destroyed.

Except, of course, that McDonald’s chocolate-chip cookies are so damn good.

Before I went to Beverly Hills, I promised my aerobics students that I would come back with a new routine. This morning I made good on my promise. The new routine comprised several steps I had either altered or made up myself; I felt justified, therefore, in naming them.

And so today I took my students through a routine that consisted of the following moves:

Buffy
Xena (twice)
Batgirl
Wonder Woman
Catwoman (Around the World)
Supergirl

And for a few moments during class, even I thought I was too gay.

Here is an excerpt from an IM conversation I just had with a friend in London, where it is already 2005.

MATT: Greetings from the future!
FAUSTUS: Oh, my God! You’re so right! You are the future!
FAUSTUS: So how is it . . . um . . . up there?
FAUSTUS: In there?
FAUSTUS: At there?
MATT: Weird. It’s all spaceships and rayguns and things. I can’t describe it; you’ll have to see for yourself when you get here.
FAUSTUS: Wow. I’ve always suspected it would be like that. I’m glad to know ahead of time that I was right.
MATT: Otherwise pretty normal, though.
FAUSTUS: Oh, you mean full of uncertainty and dread and occasional bouts of despair?
MATT: Yes.
FAUSTUS: I was hoping that would be different.
MATT: Weren’t we all?
Pause.
MATT: So how are you, anyway?
MATT: Sorry, how were you?

Clearly I should have gone with Dennis Farina after all.

About once a week, I have a little fantasy about Law & Order–well, “fantasy” isn’t quite the right word; this is far less hardcore than my Chris Meloni daydreams. We’ll call this a reverie.

In my reverie, I am the murder victim, and my body is discovered in the first minute of the show. Detectives Briscoe–I hope Dennis Farina can forgive me for going with Jerry Orbach in my reverie–and Green (or, if I was also raped and/or sexually mutilated, Detectives Benson and Stabler) will then spend the first half of the episode trying to find out who killed me.

So this is the question:

Who do they suspect?

There’s E.S., of course. My past behavior towards him would certainly have inclined a lesser man to homicide; who’s to say he didn’t discover evidence of a relapse? Then there’s E.S.’s ex-boyfriend, who hates my guts anyway. One of my students? One of the gay cheerleaders? Or perhaps a criminal unconnected to me who killed me because I happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?

The police would of course discover this blog and search it–and the comments–for clues. After expressing Carson-Kressley-like horror at the mess that is my apartment, they would find my porn stash, which might or might not give them any new leads.

I guess the question underneath all these other questions is: are the secrets I keep that I think are interesting the secrets that are actually interesting?

And what about the secrets that I’m not even conscious of keeping secret? What about the small things, the little embarrassments and vast shames, to whose suppression I have become so habituated that they don’t even register on my conversational topics radar?

The most entertaining finale I’ve come up with so far, by the way, is the discovery (almost certainly by Sam Waterston) that E.S. convinced one of his patients to kill me once (s)he was discharged from the psych ward in the hospital.

Though I’ve shared the reverie with him, I haven’t told him about this ending.

On Christmas Eve morning, E.S. and I drove to his parents’ house in New Jersey. Once there, we went grocery shopping and got the ingredients for oatmeal raisin cookies and non-stepped-on peach pie (these being the favorite desserts of E.S.’s mother and father, respectively); then we had some lunch.

Then E.S.’s father took us to the shooting range and we shot guns.

For those of you who may be hoping against hope that you read this wrong, as well as for those of you who are cowering in fear at the thought of me with a loaded firearm, let me be clear: this was not, as on a previous visit, simply a case of giving me an empty gun and explaining to me how one might shoot it safely; someone actually thought it was a good idea to put a nine-millimeter gun and ammunition in my hands and show me how to use it to kill things.

I would make a list here of all the fantasies that ran through my mind about who I would go after–it was sort of like Gilbert and Sullivan’s “A More Humane Mikado” (“My object all sublime/I shall achieve in time:/To let the punishment fit the crime”), except that everybody’s punishment was to have me blow their heads off–but I have to teach aerobics tomorrow morning and I don’t think I’d be finished by then.

In any case, I started off with a target very roughly the size and shape of a human torso (with head), set up about twenty feet away. I was absolutely terrified to shoot the gun; in fact, I was so scared I almost cried. But then E.S. gave me an encouraging pat on the back, and I fired.

And hit the target in the heart.

My next shot took it right in the center of the chest.

I do not have to tell you that I was loving this.

After another dozen or so shots–all fatal–at the vaguely-human-torso-sized-and-shaped target, I felt I was ready for more advanced violence, so we asked the people running the range for something else to shoot at.

Here is what they gave us, after I was done with it.

I really should call the Department of Homeland Security and tell them that I can take care of their little terrorist problem for them. Though I suspect that our respective definitions of “terrorist” would be very, very different. And I would be the one holding the gun.

Anyway, after we were done at the shooting range, we went back to E.S.’s parents’ house, where I baked a peach pie and oatmeal raisin cookies and also cooked some cranberry sauce for the next day’s Christmas dinner; while the pie was baking, I worked on my knitting. Then, after the cookies were out of the oven, I practiced the new combination for my step class and went roller blading on the pair of roller blades E.S. had given me for Christmas, secure in the knowledge that, just hours before, I had been an implacable killing machine.

So you better not try anything.

Because I may be a big fag, but I am now a big fag who can fuck you up.