easter dinner on 32nd street in astoria

we decided to have everyone over for dinner on easter, since it seemed that a lot of our friends weren't going anywhere that day. at final count, there were 21 people. that is two times ten, plus one. and yes, everyone got to sit down to eat.

i am so glad there were a lot of people. it was fun.

for some reason i am thinking about the gender of my computer. why? i would like to know why. a while back, em said something on her website about her computer, and her computer was a boy, i think.

but really i was thinking about it before that. i repeat: wh-y?

my computer has to be a girl, because of that clitoris in the middle of the keyboard that you use to move the mouse around. i mean, right? the blue thing--you know what i mean.

tell me there's something wrong with me. i dare ya.

i've got a guilty personality. normally i try to hide it--but hey, then i'm hiding something, and i feel guity about it. i hope to god i never have to take, say, a lie-detector test given by the cia, because i can't make it through a simple job interview without thinking they can tell what a sick bastard i am.

you know who else makes me feel guity?--doctors. so i go to the doctor once every ten years. for drugs.

no matter what i say, the prognosis is bad. "do you smoke?" "no." "never?" "well. maybe three times a year, with a friend." (doctor shakes head) "going to have to work on that. sounds really, really bad."

but if i lie, then they say, "are you sure?" and i break down and say, "okay, i admit it, i smoke a cigarette ever four months or so, cause i've got this friend jed, and he wants me to smoke a cigarette with him, and then i say okay, and i don't mean anything bad by it, really i don't, in fact my mom smoked when i was a kid and now i hate the smell of smoke, i hate it, but it makes jed happy if i have a cigarette with him, and he bought me a beer, so i--"

"beer? did you say beer? do you ever drink?"

"um, yes."

"socially?"

"yes."

"ever alone? in the mornings?"

"um."

"i see. mister gallaway, i'm afraid we're going to have to do a heart bypass. it will be very painful. you will likely not survive. do you have any last words?"

"i. . . i never meant to hurt anyone."

"nurse, take him away. for god's sake, stop crying, you pussy. nurse, hit him over the head. call the orderlies." (gets on intercom) "doctor strong to room fifteen. doctor strong to room fifteen. bring out the gimp. repeat: bring out the gimp."

i grew up in a small place in tennessee called waverly. in my lifetime its population has been between three and four thousand people, and my high school graduating class was 106. if you take the rand mcnally atlas and look at tennessee--and especially if you unfocus your eyes--you will see an area of white space to the west of nashville, where there is not a lot of text printed on the page. waverly is there.

last night i talked to patrick on the phone. he is also from waverly. if you live in nashville, which you likely do not, you might have heard patrick as a dj on star 97. while we were talking, he kept saying hold on a sec, and then i'd hear him answering another line and talking to someone requesting a song, usually a drunk person. uh, would you play that song? i forget what it's called. it's, um, you know which one i'm talking about? could you play that song?

sure thing! he'd say, and then he'd be back on the line with me. he'd exhale and say good god.

he said he doesn't go to waverly very much these days, even though it's only an hour away. you can see it in people's eyes, he said, that there's a lot of trouble--like methamphetamines--going around there. people are crazy. it's easy for me to believe, i suppose. we agreed that neither of us remembered such things from growing up, and then we wondered if it can be that different now--can it have changed for the worse, waverly? or is the difference solely in ourselves?

small town america used to seem comforting to me. it was home. then for a while, after i was living in a city, small town america seemed angelic. people there certainly had more wisdom, had more sense, and had chosen the correct path. as if a path can be correct. i suspected that i would end up in a small town myself, but this was just one of the confusions i had in my early college years, when i didn't know myself.

now small town america seems tragic when i see it, and that is a patronizing opinion to have. but that's the thing about opinions--sometimes they choose you, not the other way around. in each small place i see waverly, and i see a thousand blue lights from a thousand tv's. i see a rundown apartment building, where the cops go every day, and i hear a squawking police scanner.

that these are my current associations speaks truth about me, not about waverly. you see what you want to see, and that is what i see. but of course i never forget that that is where i come from. i would not be the same without it. like any good relationship, that of waverly, tennessee and joshua gallaway is a complicated one. i'm happy with it that way.

after nearly a year and a half, my boss noticed the ashtray on my desk. "you don't smoke in here, do you?"

i don't smoke. it just seemed fun to put it there.

me in the crx on highway one in california

i have had my car for a long time. it is a 1991 honda crx, and i got it fourteen years ago in 1991. today it has something a little over 260,000 miles on it. much of the time, i go places for no reason--i have a lot of restlessness. how many times i have driven across the country, i do not remember. as a guess, i think it is ten.

today i donated my car to charity. having a car while you live in new york city is difficult. we've lived here four years, and i have moved the crx every few days for street cleaning that entire time, which involves a half hour or so in the mornings. also, i have found it broken into about five times. the last time was last thursday, when i found the side window smashed in. i decided i couldn't keep it any more.

my mom and dad bought me a new car when i was 17--it was truly my spoiled brat moment. since then, it has always been one of the things that i felt defined me. not the car itself, of course, but everything it implied. movement, speed, a need to go places, to see things.

when the crx turned 100,000 miles, i was driving across ohio with my girlfriend carrie. i pulled over on this straight, flat-as-hell road in the middle of the night and ran around the car to celebrate. a few years later, when it turned 200,000 miles, i was driving in tennessee, coming from new orleans, where a friend of mine named mia had come to visit for mardi gras, and we had done a good job of going across the friend line while she was there. now we live together in new york, of course. that time, i quietly pulled over to the side of the road and sat in silence for a while. the sun was about to go down.

i am going to miss my car, because there won't be a story about what i did when it turned 300,000 miles.


driving across saskatchewan

i have kept it moving around the neighborhood all winter, for street cleaning, and it also helped us move, but the last day i really drove the crx was last fall, when i went to go drive around in manhattan on a sunday afternoon. driving in manhattan is crazy. i love it.

that day i went up third avenue and got caught in a traffic jam caused by a street fair. all of third avenue was trying to funnel onto a one-lane side street to get around the fair. people were honking and yelling at each other, threatening to kill each other through open windows, and cabs were pulling up onto sidewalks to make it through the intersections. happily, i was partcipating in this insanity, and then, for some reason, my brakes went out.

i don't know why the brakes went out, because the brake master cylinder was relatively new, and, mysteriously, they came back a few days later. but that day, the pedal fell to the floor and would do nothing. the correct response would have been to stop and get it towed, so of course i didn't do that. i drove home, through the traffic jam and over the queensboro bridge, using first gear and the parking brake to control my speed.

the bridge is steep, up and down, and i almost hit people a few times when they pulled in front of me, stupidly assuming i had brakes. through the lunatic-designed queens plaza interchanges i adopted the drive confidently and stop for nothing strategy, and people honked and slammed on their brakes when i didn't stop for the just-turning-red lights.

for the last stage before making it home, i decided to switch my blinker lights on, down a busy shopping street, where people kept walking out in front of me. stupidly assuming i had brakes. i drove for a while with my head out the window saying no brakes. no brakes. no brakes. i got no damn brakes, people. i made it home fine.

today when the guy took it, he said, "you ain't sentimental, are yas?" no, i said. it was a dirty lie.

good-bye, crx. i'm glad our last real day together was good. it was not for the faint of heart.

a picture of flowers

i don't think this is like me, something like this. but i am having a low moment. yesterday the snow looked like a white-out, and today there was ice on everything and it didn't get above freezing. how can i tell you--i am so sick of the winter. i am sick of it. if i used the cut and paste thingys and filled up the page with that shit, i am sick of it, it would not express my feelings.

my building has so many interesting people to meet. i came down the steps to the first floor, and there was a white-haired lady standing there. she was all smiles and said, "how are you doing today?"

i said, "good. how are you?"

she said, "very well, thank you. how is mom?"

this last bit i politely ignored as i went out the door. because my mom is a long way away, and she doesn't know her. but maybe i should have said, "she's good." because she is.

a few months ago i had a random thought while i was walking up the subway stairs. i was looking down and saw a penny lying there. what i thought was, don't pick up any pennies you see anymore. and so i don't.

this morning i saw a penny at about the same place, and thought, you're doing a good job. leave that there. i don't know why this makes me happy with myself. i used to pick up pennies, for no other reason than, hey, look, a penny.

a guy i knew in college would always pick up pennies, and when he did it he would say, find a penny, pick it up, and all day you'll have good luck; find a penny, leave it lay, and you will die that day. he was superstitious about many things. he liked telling a story about how he lost a hundred dollars in a parking lot, prayed that he would go back and find it, and then it was lying on the ground when he got there.

when i was fourteen years old and a freshman in the high school marching band, i have a memory of the first marching band competition i ever went to. all the bands had done their show, and we were all assembled in the parking lot behind the stadium, waiting for the results to be announced over the PA system. a thunderstorm was blowing in, and the sky was black in the distance, and the wind was blowing, and the trees were rustling.

the announcer started to give out the results, and all the upper-classmen were dropping pennies on the ground. the purpose was so they could pick up the ones that landed heads-up, and therefore get good luck. the wind was blowing, the announcer guy's voice was echoing, and pennies were making ping sounds as they bounced on the pavement. we came in last.

on tuesday night i went to see interpol at radio city. there are some things you can never know about a band until you've actually watched them play--even if you know all the songs, like all the records, you see it in front of you and say oh, it's like that.

one of the reasons i like interpol is because they are cool. and by cool, i mean they dress up like rock stars, they don't do a lot of funny bantering, and they don't record christmas songs. their records are pretty, but with a dreamy and aloof touch. cool, one might say. and as far as i can tell, being a cool band went out in the early nineties, when the cure wasn't so cool anymore. so, it's good to have it back.

i was surprised to find that the bass player carries all the stage presence for the band by himself. the two guitar players pretty much just stand there and play--they sound great, so it's all right. but the bass player is wearing this splendiferous dark suit with an upturned collar, has his pitch-black hair plastered to his head, and seems to be six and a half feet tall. it looks like he is a stylish indie-rock zombie. he strikes poses, makes absolutely no eye-contact with the audience, and pounds the head of his bass into the floor to punctuate the ends of songs. dude is cool.

this morning

i can't wait to slip on the subway stairs. that is gonna rock.