Spent four days at the AMNH archives squinting at the atrocious scribbles of Clarance Ethan and Mary L. Jobe Akeley, where I found that these two (she was his second wife) were probably living together while Carl was still married. Then I found out that Penelope Bodry-Sanders (right) already had this info in her biography. Not that it’s a competition.
- drank Manhattans at Barracuda, where they played X and some other surprises.
- had a bit of a West Village gay bar tour with D & N, where my Official Non-Pick-Up Pick-Up Line was “Hi! I’m from out of town.” (It works.)
- saw BODIES … The Exhibition, which was overpriced ($28!!) and not, turns out, the original Gunther von Hagens exhibition, which is called Körperwelten. This one, the one at the South Street Seaport, has a sign with this impressively vague language:
This exhibit displays full body cadavers as well as human body parts, organs, fetuses and embryos that come from cadavers of Chinese citizens or residents. With respect to the human parts, organs, fetuses and embryos you are viewing, Premier relies solely on the representations of its Chinese partners and cannot independently verify that they do not belong to persons executed while incarcerated in Chinese prisons.
- stared at the plasticized brains and tumors (and worse) of executed Chinese prisoners.
ate eight friend dumplings at the Dumpling House (right) on the Lower East Side/Chinatown, which dumplings cost $2 total.
- visited the Tenement Museum nearby, where we had Jeffrey (Jonathan?) as a tour guide, and if you go ask for him by name, because he is very good, despite his affected bowtie.
- sat in a cab while Heather gave step-by-step phone-GPS directions to some house in Queens where Mathias gave a reading (with Lily Brown and Joshua Marie Wilkinson) that started off silly and great and then ended sudden and heartbreaking—a masterful move.
- got stood up by an unnamed taxidermist with delusions of grandeur who will forever remain unnamed.
- had a couple high-octane beers with Natalie Stevens, who takes fur scraps, makes new animals out of them, and photographs them in the wild—very cool stuff.
- petted a cat and didn’t sneeze.
- took more photographs of a cat than anyone really should ever take, which seems to be the norm when one lives with a cat.
sat on a Sunday for an hour in McCarren Park (pictured, right) with Steve and ate sandwiches and counted fedoras—they averaged one on every tenth head.
- walked north on Fifth Avenue past the relentlessly paused NYC Pride parade, which had a decided lack of drag queens, I felt, as an out-of-towner.
- applauded, pretty sure, at/during the Mazda of Lodi (N.J.) um … float?
- spent far too long on a Tuesday night standing in the vicinity of a scandalous photograph (made, it seemed, of a bunch of 8.5 ” x 11″ pages taped/stapled together) inside a bear bar called “Nowhere” where they also played X, among other bands, and realized there’s something going among NYC gay men and LA post-punk (new wave?), which heartens me somewhat.
- paid $6.50 for a Yuengling.
- paid $3 for same at aforementioned bear bar.
- had a nice inexpensive Thai dinner in Park Slope with Nick, and regrettably didn’t get around to hanging out with him more (sorry N & A); also missed seeing Mark, again regrettably
- got caught in a sudden freak windblown rainstorm with Amanda at a bar called the High Life on the Upper West Side, ran inside for shelter.
- very lovely seafood dinner at the … um, Mermaid Lounge? with Lisa and Paul, in same neighborhood, where we talked mostly about books and Pittsburgh.
- read Phillip Pullman’s The Amber Spyglass, Melissa Kwasny’s Reading Novalis in Montana, Junot Diaz’s The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Dustin Long’s Icelander, two-sevenths of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, and John Cheever’s Oh What a Paradise It Seems! (book roundup to come).
- Made it home okay. Hello!