Peripatetic, Writer, Harbinger of Mirth
In which? in da hood!
Range Hoods.
You want knowledge? I got knowledge.
12 hours ago I knew nothing.
Zip.
Zilch.
Now?
You want a remote blower?
A telescoping chimney?
Oh boy am I your guy.
You probably want to stack your Frigidaire cooktop atop your Frigidaire oven AND THEN only have 34” high countertops?
Can do.
Is it in manufacturer’s spec?
No.
Can we do it?
Yep.
Everything except ADA compliance.
[Insert wheely bad joke here.]
In which Our Hero Oscillates
A note I jotted yesterday:
One reason I like New York:
Not only did a question occur to me today, and tomorrow I get it answered. But a second question occurred to me (“what’s the cooktop like?”) and I get to answer that, too! At the same address.
—
Today’s follow-up:
Goddamnit, why won’t you let me make my own bathroom the way I want?
Don’t tell me that I want an ADA-compliant bathroom.
Don’t tell me that one day I might want one.
Don’t paternalize me about my own preferences of how I want to organize my own fucking home.
This isn’t about wet over dry.
This has no impact on anyone else’s safety.
Even if I had a child who ended up in a wheelchair, I wouldn’t want an ADA-compliant bathroom. ADA compliance requires 32” doors. A child-size wheelchair is 22.5in wide. Adult wheelchairs max out at 26” wide. I want to build one bathroom with a 28”-wide door. If I need grab handles, I will install them later. This is not a commercial establishment. This is my own home. If I want a 7’ long by 3’ wide bathtub, you should let me do that in my own goddamn space, not force me to have a 5’ long tub in order to allow for wheelchair rotation clearance. The bathroom is only 40 square feet, and you want to dedicate 10% of it to some theoretical future person who can’t even fit in my front door?
“What’s that,” you ask? “Why won’t they be entering the front door?”
My concrete-surrounded front door is only 27” wide. (29” with the door removed). Last I checked, 27” is narrower than 32”. It’s even narrower than 29”, and that’s assuming you want the handicapped visitor to remove the door and reattach it every time they enter. Why would you want to do that to them? Talk about inaccessible!
This is why people vote small government.
Sometimes days off are the most exhausting of all.
I feel fear.
Fear about the largesse of what I’m doing.
Not about the wrongness.
Just the largesse.
This morning I awoke excited for a day of poker & bedrot.
But my partner (who is currently in San Francisco) texted me about a potluck in Brooklyn.
The potluck: 11:30am. Her text: 9:45am. So I sprinted through a 20min Peloton ride and hightailed it to Brooklyn.
I enjoyed the party. Two people who I especially enjoyed. One an excellent storyteller and the other a skilled hypeman.
Then, two hours of poker. I dialed up my social shenanigans while dialing in my poker playing. Crushed the game. Save for one situation where I lost a 47% vs 53% scenario for $100, the cards were win-win-win!
Then, at the subway station en route to a friend’s penis party (more on that later), a woman held out her phone with a picture, asking me how to get to Times Square. Her language sounded familiar. I said, “French?” She said, “Creole”.
I tried French to no avail. Must be too distant from her creole (despite it clearly being French-influenced). I successfully got her to the right station. But it was through a series of sounds and gestures (“boop. Boop. Bing!” means “not this station, not that station, but the one after”.) Sometimes all those years of French class are less effective than the communication skills I’ve recently learned from my year-and-a-half-old nephew!
Finally, at the penis party. 5 years, he’s had it. (A phalloplasty, specifically.)
The food? Tacos (heh) and penis-shaped cake (pronounced “cock”).
I liked these folks. Lots of laughs, an Irish catholic lesbian my new favorite among them. Great sense of humor and vibrancy for dark humor in life.
That lesbian is a building examiner. She says if my architect self-certifies, I don’t have a building examiner. That’s nice. Sounds like I’ll pass code!
Walking home from the subway, I’m struck by a few elements:
Sometimes I wonder how much we’re carved by influential experiences that we didn’t select. By how much our scars draw us to others who’ve experienced similar.
Then I walk home. Suddenly, I’m all alone. It’s glorious and sad. Lonely and elevated. Freedom and…
…
…
no. that’s it.
just freedom.
In which Our Hero exhibits snail-like tendencies.
No, I did not leave the house today. No, I did not leave the living room today. Yes, I had a good day.
Ah, yes, I correct myself: I went from the bedroom into the living room into the exercise room into the bathroom and into the kitchen, in a series of loops co-overlapping and co-insiding.
How did I have a good day like this, you may ask?
Well.
Everything I need is here.
I’m a bit of a homebody. That’s why I chose to live in one of the highest rent areas of the world.
(That’s a joke.)
I’m not a homebody. I like warm weather, however. And outside is particularly cold.
I don’t like warm weather just for its warmth. I like it for its sociality. Warm weather → people outside. Bopping around, conversing this and that.
I had a good day because I got some stuff done and I had tasty food and I got exercise and my apartment gets good sun and I socialized with friends (through a screen) and I went outside and did sufficient in-person socializing yesterday and have plenty of plans for tomorrow and the weekend.
I’ve set up my life to enable having lots of good things that I like.
So what if some days I am a hermit.
(Two days out of the last week? Yeah. Two days out of the last week.)
In which Our Hero interacts with one separate yet equally important group… Dun dun…
At 8:32am, my doorbell rings three times in quick succession. I groggily roll over and tell Partner I got it. I walk to the door and flick the peephole to open. “POLICE!” says the voice on the other side. The peephole is dark as though covered by something. The something moves. I now see 3 bodies.
“One sec.” I reply. The voice on the other side grunts something noncommittal.
Naked, I go to the bathroom and pee for what feels like a very long time.
I then toss on yesterday’s shirt and pants. I tell Partner, “What do we tell cops?”
She replies something like, “The truth?”
“Nothing,” I reply. “We tell cops nothing.”
On the way to the door, I grab my hat. Just before opening the door, I turn on voice memo mode on my phone.
I open the door. It’s a man in front, two women standing one on either side behind him. The following is a direct transcript.
Me: Hey, good morning.
Cop: Good morning, how are you doing? My name is Austin, from the New York City Police Department. Sorry to bother you.
Me: No worries.
Cop: What’s your name?
Me: Julian.
Cop: Julian, are you the only one that lives here?
Me: Yeah.
Cop: You just moved in here?
Me: Yeah.
Cop: How long ago?
Me: End of January.
Cop: End of January. Do you know who used to live here before you?
Me: No.
Cop: Oh, okay. Do you get any, is it just you that lives here?
Me: My partner is here at the moment, but I’m the only one who lives here.
Cop: Who’s your partner then?
Me: Nikki.
Cop: Nikki. Do you get any mail, or used to, for this name?
[He holds out a piece of paper. It’s a mug shot with statistics.]
Me: [Mispronunciation of the mug shot person’s name]?
Cop: Yes.
Me: I’m not familiar with that person.
Cop: No mail?
Me: No.
Cop: She look familiar to you?
Me: No.
Cop: No.
Me: I received, maybe like two weeks ago, a letter or two in the mailbox that was not addressed to me, and clearly wasn’t for me, and so what people usually do is they put it on the thing next to it, and then when the guy comes by to deliver the mail, he’ll take it back.
[I promise English is my first language.]
Cop: Do you know if it was for her?
Me: I don’t remember.
Cop: Don’t remember, yeah. Okay. All right. I’m sorry about everything.
Me: No worries.
Cop: All right.
Me: Cheers.
I close the door and return to Partner. She says in a deep voice, “NYPD, open up!”. We laugh about how cops are only mildly inconvenient in their normal duties (ringing aggressively at 8:30am, the way a child would ding-dong three times), but when they really want to get you, they’re incredibly inconvenient (like busting down your door at 5am).
Here’s what I’ve heard about the previous owner:
Since this morning, here’s what I’ve since learned about [correct pronunciation of the mug shot person’s name]:
I stopped by the bank earlier today. The banker talked for twenty minutes about the cruise she wants to go on. I told her the story of my morning, being awaken by NYPD. She began singing the Taylor Swift Song:
“Welcome to New York.”
In which? IN THE SPIRIT!
In the spirit of my yesterday writing, here are relatively trivial items I’m happy with:
Ahh. Are these not the joys of life?
(I also completed 4 financial administrative tasks of necessity: opening a credit card; moving a bank account; creating an LLC; closing an LLC. But those, dear reader, are the mere mechanics that allow life’s joys to whir.)
In which Our…
If my previous life was breadth, my now life is depth.
When friends call, I have less to share. Not because I’m doing less, but because my focus is more tailored.
I’m not flâning around Paris, happening upon big brass bands.
I’m not traipsing around Rome eating lasagna.
I’m not hand-over-handing chains to the top of Angels Landing.
But I am doing things I like to do:
It’s just…
The depth of these doesn’t lend itself to sharing.
(My partner disagrees. She thinks I just don’t have practice in sharing it. I agree with her, not with me.)
My poker friend and I talk poker.
But most others don’t have enough context to follow.
And my poker skill doesn’t even go that deep!
What did I accomplish recently?
I selected a cooktop, hood, two dishwashers, and oven.
Did I enjoy it?
Sure.
Not earth-shattering, but sure.
How much of this change is the lowered intensity of my more-flat-than-one-year-ago hormonal state?
How much is a decreased verbal fluency that seems to have come with the switch back to testosterone?
How much is being in the moment more, rather than reflecting less?
I’m not sure.
I don’t know.
One of my dearest friends, when he had kids, shifted his entire focus to them.
This is typical. I get it.
Now, sometimes he calls me with nothing to say.
He’ll hum or say “dum-dah-dum-dum…”
I think he enjoys being with me, even if that’s all it is right now.
Outside my window, the wind swirls snowflakes.
This particular alcove tends to send them upwards.
My partner enjoys watching. “Snowflakes don’t go up!”, she says.
Yet here
they do.
[Says Partner about these last two paragraphs:
I think this is touching and banal and worth sharing in a way you should find more about your day-to-day life.
Today you woke up to some of your favorite people at your front door.
You helped make a delicious dish you’d never made before that everyone raved about.
You wandered through the snow too far through the park because it was beautiful.
You scooted gleefully through Morningside Heights.
You snuggled and played NYT word games until you helped someone vent about their in-laws and recognized your role in soothing their worries.
All of these you could paint beautiful pictures of.
I used to do photography (*cough* also award-winning in a Ukiah competition *cough cough*) and one thing that inspired me about Ansel Adams’ work (other than the fact that they’re beautiful) is that he could see the beauty in the world and capture it to share. He didn’t photograph “interesting” things. They’re just random landscapes that tons of people could see, but he was able to recognize and capture that beauty in a stunning way.
]
In which Our Hero commutes for community.
Partner and I visited a poker friend in Queen. It’s an hour away from our home on transit. It didn’t feel like an hour. Still, that’s two hours round trip. Partner comments that this distance is roughly equivalent to training from San Francisco to Palo Alto for a party.
We did.
The party was hot sauce themed. They collect hot sauces from all over the world and sample them with friends. A great way to get people to cUsually on Valentine’s Day. This year a week late.
I met lovely people. Most work at the NYC parks department. I’m a big fan. Two canvassed for Mamdami. I asked one why she likes him. She said she likes his positivity and that he treats people like people (instead of, I gather, like numbers).
Now, 2.5hrs later, I’m ready to be in my soft snuggly bed. Ready to start the sous vide pork belly in preparation for tomorrow’s morning poutine for the hockey game.
And after my second cat in two days,
Ready to have a cat 🐈.
So what if Partner is allergic?
She’ll learn.
An infinite array of options; I’ll be aye.
My elbow tenses.
At 32 years old, my first repetitive stress injury.
Second, after a pickleball shoulder.
But this elbow is also a pickleball injury.
Squeezing paddle, sure.
But also the orientation of my elbow as I laid on my back, my computer on my chest for too many hours: the hunched-over curl of a crone despite my then-13 years old.
I hunched today as I did then.
Now I pay.
It’s odd to grow old. To scrape off one’s vigor and exchange passion for comfort. To realize my mind may be and continue to be heading farther away from me, not nearer.
To replace exuberance with action.
Having finished most of the big explore, to replace it with exploit.
Enjoying everyday enough to select it among the infinite.
To have experienced enough to know.
How many have made pilgrimage to Seoul for the finals of your favorite childhood sport?
Ran shirtless in Indonesia?
Meditated in Thailand?
How many have eaten pasta two blocks from the Vatican?
Kayaked the arctic ocean?
Swam the Great Barrier Reef?
Negotiated for tee shirts in Mumbai?
I don’t feel like a life unlived.
I feel like the foundation; the fundamentals of everyday existence:
That those thusfar empties are slowly seeping solid.
I don’t need to see the thousand buddhas again.
I’ve seen them, snapped selfies with silly smirks, stumbled upon the graveyard, and biked home.
Share these with a future wife and children, sure.
Invite my extended family to duck and cheese at my Paris pied-à-terre.
Learn what makes my new brothers laugh.
When the door has opened, why keep knocking?
In which Our Hero works hard (or hardly works?!)
Remodeling an apartment is hard work.
Between 10:05am and 6:30pm, non-stop (with breaks only for bathroom; no food), I…
After that work sprint, I…
My Partner has a rule: She goes to Central Park every day. It’s less than a block away. I support this rule.
I do not have that rule.
Today, the farthest outside that I went was to drop trash off in our building’s bins.
I have a rule: Live a good life.
Today I did.
Julian Wise 