it is cold

My feet are slowly beginning to thaw. I know chucks aren't the right footgear for winter cold, but so far this season they hadn't been so bad and I put on thick wool socks this morning. This was not enough.

Our apartment is generally way too cool but today I just couldn't get warm in there. Our heat never really warms things up much, but with the extra cold outside it really isn't doing the job. But after sending off some emails this morning I didn't really have a good reason to stay in and the lack of food in my stomach was mirrored by a lack of food in the fridge so I did have a compelling reason to leave. Carefully bundled, I weighed my options. I just wanted to go sit somewhere and have some lunch and sit with my computer and type. This is New York; there are a thousand places for this to be accomplished. There are two places right beside my house perfect for this, Cafe Nijasol and Boulevard, but I had it in my head that I haven't been venturing out far enough and that I wanted to go feel the energy somewhere else.

Just going into Williamsburg seemed like copping out and it was too cold to deal with how retarded public transportation is for getting around Greenpoint. The West Village was briefly considered, but I wasn't sure of where to go and wandering in the cold looking for a pleasant place seemed daunting particularly since anything over there was also likely to be packed with college kids or tourists. Chelsea was also quickly panned, though not without briefly pausing to miss Big Cup. I never really spent much time there (not a big coffee drinker), but still it was good for what it was.

Since I wasn't in the mood for more than one train, that left the East Village. It is where I am most comfortable here, but familiarity can be decieving. Once I headed that direction it became apparent I don't know the cafes and coffee shops like I know the bars. And it was too early to go to the bar. I never actually liked AltCafe, but it was good for what it was: a place to plop down with your computer and get online. Like Big Cup, it ain't there no more. So I went with Cafe Pick Me Up as a default. I like it fine for sitting with a friend chatting, but I've never particularly warmed up to the place. This is odd because I've always ended up finding it really pleasant once I sit down and get settled in, so I remind myself that I like it and head there.

Feet already frozen, just walking the few block from the train, it seems perfect when I step inside. Nothing on the menu jumps out at me, but it is warmish inside and I don't care to search out somewhere new so I order. Before sitting down, I ask the lady at the counter if there is a password for the wifi. She looks at me like I am a crazy person and starts rattling off prices for using the internet. I look at her like she is a crazy person, which she is if she expects someone who just gave her 7 bucks for a sandwich to fork out more money for wifi access. She comments that they never had free wifi, and I suppose reading my skeptical expression clarifies that it has been at least 5 years since they did. Which is also not true, since I went there several times this summer and used it. Whatever. So I couldn't relax and write, I'd just sit and read. I do remember why I don't like the place though: the staff. I always get the feeling from them that they would rather not be bothered. The sandwich was bland (meat, cheese, bread) and not very big with a pleasant enough side salad which became the condiment for the sandwich since it had no other. Reading Terry Prachett while eating was punctuated by a fat drama student talking at her gay bff who didn't get a word in edgewise.

Taking leave of this delightful lunch (it was more pleasant than I'm making it sound), my feet, which never really thawed, are already refrozen by the end of the block. My Swedish longjohns are sort of doing their job, but most of my cold weather layers are in Anchorage waiting for me to return and really need them, so I'm looking again for somewhere warm to thaw out and type. My apartment is not warm. It is 3, so bars should be opening but the stools are still on the bar when I walk past Section 218 (and I don't know if they have wifi anyway). I start to go to Nowhere but I remember that the last few times I've had my computer there, the wifi has been screwed. Metro definitely has functional, if slow, wifi AND fireplaces. Propping up my feet in front of a fireplace becomes the most appealing thought in the world.

On the sidewalk and subway I remember that even worse than the glut of commuters pouring out of work into every form of public transportation at 5 is the glut of kids pouring out of school, though I have to say that despite popular opinion that the next generation are a bunch of rotten little bastards, lately the crowds of kids I've found myself sandwich amongst have been suprisingly polite even if boisterous. Of course when I get metro, I see the bartender leaving the bar and locking it behind him and walking off on some errand. Despite wanting desperately to toast my little piggies in front of a fire, it is too cold to wait and even if I am one of those people who shows up at the bar far earlier in the shift than any happy hour bartender likes, I am not going to be that guy who is waiting at the door when they walk up. So back to my neighborhood and my two originaly options.

I chose Cafe Nijasol. I haven't been there since it got cold, but it is small which in my cold-numbed mind equals cozy which = warm. Which is by then my number one requirement. It is a little further, but a block and a half isn't so far if I can warm up then. I can't. It is closed, according to the apologetic sign on the front just for today, but closed none the less. So back to Boulevard, which I am mainly skeptical of because it is a larger space with a big front window and where I have sat in there before is right by the door. I know I can sit in a different place, but I am that kind of creature of habit; if I like the place I sit one time, I want to sit in that same place again and irrationally assume that I won't like sitting somewhere else. I each of the places I have mentioned today I planned out where I would want to sit as I considered it. I know, kinda crazy.

It isn't closed. The guy behind the counter is friendly and doesn't look look like it is annoying for a business to have customers. There is a spot at the counter far enough from the door that I can take my coat off but not so far in the back that I feel quarentined. Most importantly, it is warm! For the first time today, I'm not cold. The coffee tastes fine to me (but I don't drink it very often so I won't pretend to have a useful opinion on this); the carrot artichoke soup is perfect.

fruit danishes, eating disorders, and Tom Cruise

I'm sitting in the galley at the square plywood table with astro-turf on its surface (this isn't as strange as it sounds; on these boats there is almost always some non-slip something on all the horizontal surfaces, especially in the kitchen) eating a strangely delicious pineapple danish. It is one of those not quite industrial but still too manufactured to call baked fresh. They aren't individually packed and sealed to last for months on shelfs, but rather the kind baked in mass at some big bakery then crammed together in an open-topped cardboard box and wrapped in cellophane and sent off to grocery stores. These then found there way into the ice-hold on a fishing boat and have only just come out to the inside refrigerator. Sitting eating this pastry and thinking about how intensely delicious it is and how delicious the apple one I ate yesterday was, I suddenly want to eat the whole box. Not just an expression, I literally want to eat the whole box and find myself thinking about eating disorders.

This isn't because I associate consuming whole boxes of pastries with eating disorders, rather eating has taken on a rather capriciously religious aura when I am on the boats: sometimes enthralling me, sometimes horrifying me. I've become much more intimate with food as a necessity and limits of it and what is and isn't luxury in consumption. And the strange appeals both of gorging and withholding. These are faint siren calls to me that don't have me particularly worried, but they make me think about eating disorders from time to time which otherwise I wouldn't be inclined to think about abstractly.

And then I found myself thinking about Tom Cruise. These two things are not related; he appeared from the ether as I sat eating and pondering because I found myself looking at the dvd case on the table. Almost every boat with anything of a dvd collection has Mission Impossible: III. Why that movie? I have no idea, though action movies are always popular. But this one has been on most of the boats I've been on and one day I'll watch the whole thing. I've seen the beginning and the end, seeing the end earlier today which surely prepped me to think of Mr. Cruise when I saw the dvd case sitting there. There is slightly more synergy to it, though.

There is always a weird unintentional synchronicity out here that I find myself noticing. Like the same actors showing up in every movie and I don't mean someone being a fan of one actor, like the Stephen Segal marathons I'm subjected to, but completely unrelated movie choices piling up, like me watching Alien by myself in my bunk, then someone putting in Holes (also starring Ms. Weaver) then Steel Magnolias (Tom Skerritt) and back to Segourny with Ghost Busters. Today's tangle was less spectactular: Mission Impossible: III on the main TV while I eat lunch and a passing Tom Cruise joke by Dan Savage on a This American Life podcast.

I've discovered podcasts and am in love. They are perfect for this time away from civilization and I didn't download near enough when I was on land this last time, but I did get one episode of This American Life. I've always liked that program on NPR, so I was psyched to have it to listen to here in my bubble life. In this episode, one of the commentaries was Dan Savage talking about portrayals of straight people on television, arguing that they are just as ridiculously stereotyped as portrayals of gay people. To make his point he was listing various straight characters from tv-land , reminding us that real straight people don't act like that. He naughtily adds in, "Tom Cruise on Oprah's coach: real straight people don't act like that." This got hearty laughs. I laughed too; it is funny.

But hours later, scarfing down a danish and thinking about eating disorders, I see the cd folder and suddenly wonder what Tom Cruise thinks when he hears these jokes. Sincerely, like actually wondering what he really thinks, not some kicked in auto-guilt response programmed in to be casually pondered to try to balance out my evil sense of humor. I suddenly really started wondering about it.

I mean, on the one hand, suppose he is gay. What the hell goes through his mind feeling attracted to men and feeling compelled to publicly disavow it but having everyone assume that he is gay anyway despite him taking on all the trappings of a straight identity? Ok, writing out that sentence reminds me why every gay man finds the possibility uber-tragicomic: most of us have been there. Repressive omnipresent evangelical religion into which your identity has been publicly and intimately intertwined? Check. Serious intimate heterosexual partnerships? Check. Feelings of being surrounded by others whose lives would be negatively affected by you going public with your 'secret'? Check. We could go on, but point being been there done that, so if I for a moment treat Mr. Cruise as a real person rather than simply a public figure then I've got to empathize for a moment with how this stuff hits against you when you feel trapped in the best-little-boy-in-the-world loop.

And what if he is actually really and truly straight, totally not into guys? Would it then all be funny to him? Annoying? Actually, if he is really straight, then who cares? I've always gone with the "if it ain't true, who cares?" approach to gossip and such, so if he is really fully total hetero then this gets boring.

He has a look in his eyes that says he is hiding something. His eyes scream it. This is part of why he is interesting as an actor despite over-saturation. There is something there; it might not be that he is gay and for that matter if he was and came out I don't think he'd look any less guarded and walled up behind those eyes. But something is back there and every one of these jokes pokes at it even if we've got our conclusion wrong, so maybe it could still be interesting even if he is straight. Anyway about he is a person and I wonder how he takes it all in. Does he just shrug it off and laugh? I imagine that's what he does in person if cornered and he can't just pretend like he doesn't hear or understand.

Is this whole mental game empathy or just a more vulgar and violating kind of voyeurism? I think I can honestly say that it originated in a sympathetic place, suddenly struck thinking of the actual person behind the facade of celebrity, thoughts of him and his feelings bubbling up from my subconscious. And I pursued the thoughts here in text from a similarly sincerely thoughtful place, just following the original quandry a little further, but at some point, perhaps the moment that this becomes a public musing and no longer a personal sympathetic pang, I can't help but feel that it tipped over into the same celebrity voyeurism that something in me had been reacting against.

Since writing this I've returned to land. In San Francisco I followed a random urge for a french cruller to a donut shop that I've stumbled into in the middle of the night after drinking at Aunt Charlie's, where I found in addition to the desired french cruller an apple danish which cried out for me to consume it. It was delicious and smiled eating it as I walked down the street and remembered how powerful the flavor was in my deprived weeks at sea, but I only wallowed in memory of the flavor and didn't think at all about eating disorders or Tom Cruise.